Juliette Sellgren 

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Hi, I'm Juliet Sellgren and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote named for Adam Smith, brought to you by Liberty Fund. To learn more, visit www.AdamSmithWorks.org. Welcome back Today on February 27th, 2025. I'm excited to welcome Jo Jensen to the podcast. She has created a bunch of businesses and is super inspiring, so I'm really excited for this conversation, but currently she is, and I'm about to say a bunch of things, so put your seatbelt on. She is the founder of Moviegoer, which we're going to talk a bit about. She's also recently started as the SVP of Digital and Entertainment Strategy at Touchdown Strategies, which is a PR firm, and she is an Aspen Institute, Civil Society fellow at Aspen. All of the fellows have ventures, and so she is currently doing two things, but we're going to be talking about one of them, which I'm super psyched about. She's currently writing a book called America Has a Girlfriend Problem, and that's what we're going to talk about. So welcome to the podcast. 

Jo Jensen

Thanks for having me. That was a great intro. 

Juliette Sellgren

Thanks. I did write most of that down so I wouldn't mess it up. You wouldn't believe how bad I am with titles. I don't even know what my titles are. Podcaster. Yeah.

Okay, first question. What is the most important thing that people my age should know that we don't or my generation? I don't usually forget that part, but So how old are you, Juliet? I'm turning 22 in a few weeks.

Jo Jensen (1:59)

I love it. So when I was your age, I thought I had everything figured out, which was about 18 years ago, and I had just been on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for working on the 2008 presidential primaries, getting young people to vote to show up at town hall meetings. And so I thought everything was downhill from there. So my advice is I think especially when you graduate college, when you have these inflection points, you think, oh no, I know what that life was. It was comfortable, it was familiar, I had a routine. And then you kind of are building your own routine and you think, is it going to be as great? Am I going to lose my friends? Am I going to make new friends? And so I would just say being comfortable with being uncomfortable is going to be the best thing for you for the next few decades of take the chance, do the thing that maybe isn't obvious. I wish I had taken more risks or just let myself know that the unplanned things are actually going to turn into the best things.

Juliette Sellgren 

Does that come with time? I think a lot of the time when I hear some of the responses to this question, I'm like, I see where you are. How do I get there? That's great advice, but what do I do? Does it just take time? And then it just kind of thinking about it just trickles into your essence and then you're like, okay, I know now I’m going to do it.

Jo Jensen (3:13)

I wish I would say no. It's more of trust yourself, because I was where you were. I was looking at who do I want to be, what are the path, what's the stepping stones to get there? I'm very logical thinker. And then just realizing if you left that I'll go and there's not one path. And in fact, if you find your own path, it's going to be even better because when I was just out of college, I thought I would work on the hill and in public policy for forever. So I don't even know if I had seen a documentary film. So let alone knowing that I would be spending full time trying to make movies and using them as catalyst for change wasn't a job description on my radar at all.

Juliette Sellgren 

I can't imagine you hadn't seen a documentary. Documentaries are “it.” They're it.com, everyone watches documentaries. That's wild.

Jo Jensen (4:34)

I think documentaries new. I mean, we still had Netflix on DVD, right? YouTube hadn't been invented yet. So I think we have a renaissance of easy access to a lot of media, but I think the first documentary I might've seen was Michael Moore’s, Fahrenheit  9/11 in the theater.

Juliette Sellgren 

Wow. I do remember when Netflix was on DVD, we would go to the red box dispenser in front of the grocery store down the street from our house, and I bet you my sister doesn't remember, but she's recently turned 19, 20, but she doesn't remember. So that's funny because it's the sort of thing I never think about that. I do actually remember returning a Netflix DVD, and then I did that once upon a time.

Jo Jensen 

Yeah, I made a YouTube video for a job application. It was a requirement back in 2008, 2009, and YouTube wrote me back being like, thanks for submitting a video. We want more people to submit videos. You should ask your friends to submit a video. So it was very new. So yeah, I think we're really lucky how accessible it is.

Juliette Sellgren (5:52)

Okay, A little off topic, but along the same lines, I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I just got an iPhone 16 and they just rolled out one of the updates for the AI stuff, and my Siri now changed interface, uses ChatGPT to answer questions, can do way more. I don't even have to lift a finger anymore. And that is crazy to me. And I literally said to one of my friends the other day, I was like, we are living in the future. We are here. And the story about the YouTube, the fact that YouTube reached out to you, same kind of vibe. We are here, kind of like a fun dinky home version of we're here because if you think of where YouTube is now, it's amazing what happened. But I feel like especially, I mean just based on what we've been talking about, movies, documentaries, like content creation has changed so much. And so I don't know, what do you make of that? How do you feel about it? How do you kind of share that with other people and how has it affected your life? It feels like a lot of the stuff you do touches directly upon that and there's no better person to ask.

Jo Jensen (7:12)

Oh, I love that. So I've got two thoughts to it. First is a cautionary tale. So similar how ChatGPT is new to you. When I was in college, Wikipedia was new and I didn't realize that Wikipedia wasn't a hundred percent accurate. And in fact you had to be go look at the notes and the sources versus just taking it for fact. And I had recruited the US treasurer at the time, her name was Anna Cabral, to come to my college to speak on entitlement reform. I really cared about social security and I convinced the White House to send her and I got to do her intro and I got it from Wikipedia. And luckily she thought that I was playing a joke on her. But on her Wikipedia page, someone had probably for fun written that the US treasurer is in charge of the National Zoo.

So I said that in my intro in front of everyone at my college and she turned to me and said, oh, that's a good one, Jo, you got me. And I thought, uh-oh is Wikipedia not a hundred percent accurate??? So yes, there are tools like ChatGPT, but just know that one, I don't think you should trust it. And two, it shouldn't replace your own voice. I think it's great as a thesaurus, I even really like it for my book or any writing that I'm doing. I'm doing a lot more writing. I'll say grade this on a scale of one to 10, 10 being elite, anything lower than an eight give me feedback on empathy, on persuasiveness, on a will, this spark conversation. So I think in terms of a feedback loop, it can be really great as a tool for humor. You can put in some funny prompts, but don't let it steal your voice and think that your word choice is less than I think ChatGPT’s word choice. And then the other thing I'll say is yes, technology is amazing. Gosh, for filmmakers, you can make a whole movie on your phone, but don't forget about relationships. And that's where I think I'm glad that I'm a millennial where we both experienced not having the internet and having it both for childhood, for professional lives. And so at the end of the day, I think everything still comes back to what's your relationship with your film subject, with your podcast subject with your friends. To me, it all comes back to relationships.

Juliette Sellgren (9:37)

The word choice comment about chat is so funny because every time I write something I'm like, does this sound right? Does that sound academic tone questions? It will be yes, but you could use this adjective instead. Why don't you? And I'm like, I don't like the way that sounds. That word sounds wrong. There are words I avoid just because I want to and I just have decided that I don't care. I mean, the thing is you do the same thing with an editor. Editors can suggest things and you can be like, screw you. I don't want to say that. That's not why I'm saying that. But first that's a funny story, but also great advice. And then okay, along the lines of millennials, impressive that you're very excited to be a millennial. The internet would have you think that no millennial is excited about being a millennial.

So good to know that some millennials are proud. I do think what you pointed out is really important. And I do kind of wonder, I especially as well placed and full of skillful as you are, it means you do have some insight from that among other things. What are we missing in my generation? Where do we have to be careful to think about things like relationships? And yeah, it's just a weird thing to think about. How is our engagement with the world skewed and how do you think, what sort of insights does that lead you to? In what ways do you respect relationships in ways that you maybe see younger people not or just not fully understanding the importance of them or relying on maybe other tools and other or placing different value on different elements of that equation of engaging with audiences And even just existing, I feel like.

Jo Jensen (11:44)

Yeah, okay. There's a lot to unpack there. So first off, and I tell stories for a living, so I'm going to give you another story. When I was a sophomore in college, I was the only one on my campus besides our college president to have a Blackberry. I had worked in the capitol and so they gave me a blackberry and my friends were blown away that I would email them back within a minute, right? Because people didn't have phones that had email, nor were they using email as a primary form of communication. And so I thought I was really cool. My blackberry was bedazzled. Just things that are that's awesome you remember that you're proud of.

And so I say that because I think I have the wisdom now of I used to think it was a pat on my back to instantaneously respond to folks. Even in a work capacity, I time myself, I time others by how quickly I'm responding and acknowledging their email, their comment, not maybe solving their problem, but just letting them know I'm working on it and our technology now lets you be available 24/7, whether you're responding on Instagram, email, text message, slack, like my goodness, you could just be responding all day to every, and if you get a notification on your phone, you're like, was that LinkedIn? Was that Facebook? Was that TikTok? Was that, where was that? And so I think as a proud millennial, I would call it Spice Girl generation, we also recognize the importance of you don't have to be on all the time because we remember that you can get work done by not being on all the time. And so I think for younger folks, I've started doing this with my friends and it's been really great. We don't take our cell phones out when we go out to dinner.

And sometimes that can be unnerving. Then you realize, oh, maybe you have an attachment with your phone problem. But just to be present and be excited, it kind of almost feels like a callback of the Olden days when we were in college. But I've really enjoyed being more present, whether it's for work or for friends. And so doing things in blocks. So I'll get up early in the morning, check email, and then I'll have hyper-focus for two hours and just not listen to notifications, social media, anything. And then I'll schedule time because I don't know about you, but I think your generation's more anxious. I would be being like, did they like my posts? Do they get back to me? Did they do this? And it's kind of like, go have a life and you'll be much more fulfilled. So I don't know if that resonates with you, but I've noticed we're almost trying to go back to it's nice that you can, but you don't have to have access.

Juliette Sellgren (14:30)

I have a crazy story. My roommates have recently informed me that I say crazy way too much and that it doesn't mean anything anymore, but it's a crazy story that relates exactly to this. My house is pretty good at engaging, I think, with the world. We're all kind of go-getters. I'm trying to think of who's home right now before I say this, we kind of put our phones away a lot of the time and just we do try to be present. And I think especially compared to other people I've been friends with, especially since going to college, part of what helped is the community I grew up in was kind of like that. We didn't have the phones in school problem when we were growing up, even though we did have phones because everyone you cared about was right there anyways. And so I think that the in-school part is more of a problem for other younger, same generation, but my sister's age group, people who are younger than we are, but also then I came to college and even people my age were like that and it was very weird.

So it took a while to find people who were just as engaged with the world and it's so wonderful, but everyone is anxious as hell. And it's just weird because we know that the world isn't ending. But the other day we were playing this board game and when it wasn't her turn, it's the sort of game where you need to pay attention to what other people are doing in order to be able to fulfill your turn properly and kind of win or even be competitive, you need to know what your opposition is doing and everyone has their own board, so you really need to pay attention. And she was like, I'm too anxious and would just go on her phone and play a different game on her phone while she wasn't doing her turn and then it would come to be her turn and she would get more anxious because she had no idea what happened and waste all this time it was dead weight loss trying to figure out what had happened.

Then being stressed out about, I don't know how you did X because I wasn't paying attention and I'm learning how to play this new game, what imitation is, how we learn things. It's how you learn language, it's how you grow up into being a human being that does things other human beings do. But it was stressing her out to watch it and I don't know why, and then the phone is the way you do that, but then it makes it worse. And he was just crazy. I mean, stuff like that happens all the time in different forms. People say things you don't want to hear and you literally go on your phone immediately so you don't have to look them in the face. Same thing, professors, you hide behind your computer screen where they're talking about something that's difficult or goes against what you think and then it kind of screws you over because you're not engaging and it just makes it even engaging with the phone, I think maybe by itself makes it worse, but then the distance from actual life also then has its repercussions and it just, I am really into freedom and I really love choice, but it's a big problem and I have no idea what to do and how to connect with people who I feel like you're the person to ask now that I've rambled about this, how do you connect with people who I feel like are farther from you and the way you engage with the world than maybe they would've been if not for this tech distance?

Because I do think every single person has the capacity to not be anxious and to be fulfilled with life and to be excited and whatever. And the thing is, I can't lie. I know that I'm more anxious than previous generations. Even being someone who's not anxious, I can just feel it. I talk to people who were my age once and I'm like, we are not having exactly the same experience because your generation does affect you and the world around you does affect you. And so I don't know what does that mean for how I even can engage with you and then how I can engage with my peers or you engage with my peers and how do we navigate the new strange land.

Jo Jensen (19:03)

Okay, so number one, I'm someone who is an anxious person by nature in the sense that the mental model is I always have a lot of plates in the air, and the reason why I'm so busy is if I am only doing one thing at a time, I overthink it. I've learned recently, maybe not so recently, that I'm a perfectionist. And so the busier I am the less I can touch and perfect and I just have to send it off and be like, done is better than perfect. And so that's a great coping mechanism for me is I am literally the most productive and happy when I have more things going on because you're not obsessing over one thing. Second, I will say it's a confidence almost like safety blanket issue. And that's what I, at the very beginning when I gave you the advice of being comfortable with being uncomfortable, I've started a new job that's uncomfortable, not in a negative way, but it's new people, it's new systems, it is just new.

When I went to college, I went to Mount Holyoke and I actually get to go there next week. It's in Massachusetts. I was probably one of only a handful of conservatives at the entire school and I had no idea that this would be the case and it was probably the best education I could ever have. Was it hard? Absolutely was. I got kicked out of class sometimes. Definitely having to talk about that and instead of cowering in my room or crying, which I'm sure I did all of that, I wanted to win people over and see them as humans, not as labels, but also know that if I was probably anxious, someone else was probably just as anxious about something else they were going through. And so I actually end up making really great friends with just that philosophy of you hear it, but I think to internalize it if you don't know what the next person is going through, and so trying to be vulnerable, trying to just say, Hey, I see.

So for your friend who's anxious, maybe understanding what a good coping mechanism is for her. So for example, I have claustrophobia, so anytime I'm in an elevator, oh my gosh, it's not my favorite place and my coping mechanism is I have learned about the history of elevators and how when elevators were first in inventing, they had an elevator operator because people were like, oh, we can't go by itself. Someone needs to push that button. And there was just a guy in the elevator who rode with them to push the button and Otis invented the elevator. So anytime I'm in an Otis elevator, I start saying, Hey, did you know that Otis invented the elevator? Did you know that they used to have someone just to push the button? And I almost make friends out of me being uncomfortable when otherwise you wouldn't talk to the person next to you in the elevator. You're just trying to get from A to B. So I almost use being uncomfortable and anxious as an opportunity to make friends I think is some insight into me.

Juliette Sellgren (22:04)

Wow, if only we could all do that. I mean, what's impressive, but also I think difficult about the way you've laid this out is it seems like you kind of have to decide that you're going to own it and that you're not going to let it get the best of you. I think what is difficult, and I don't think it's insurmountable in Surpass, is that a lot of people, I almost feel as though the more people my age that feel that are just people generally who are the less surpass it feels, which doesn't mean you can't all make the choice individually and just collectively wherever to try to do that, to own it and be good about it. And as good as we are about mental health, we're like mental health exists, being anxious, true, whatever, and yet for whatever reason we kind of stop acknowledging it instead of doing something about it.

Jo Jensen (23:09)

Yeah, I mean you're a lot better, at least you guys. I'm impressed that we talk about mental health, that we talk about struggles. When I was coming up when someone was like, how are you, especially in a professional environment, life was perfect. You were good. You did not share, you went to work sick, it doesn't really matter, right? Where now we want you to stay home when you're sick, which is a good idea. But I will say I got the opportunity. One of our clients is MIT Media lab and I will send you the link, but some students and amazing professors, neuroscientists kind of got together and created something called Future You. They're actually speaking at South by Southwest next week, and I'm excited to go and cheer them on. And it's basically an AI opportunity that you get to talk to your future self 20, 30, 40 years in the future.

And especially for students, even though it's not real, it's a simulation. We've seen that it lowers anxiety because you're like, oh, I made it through the semester, or I made friends. I passed that test. And I remember, I love that we keep talking about my college days, you make this really fun, but in college I was on the honor committee for the honor code, and you have one of those, they do something really cool where for your finals and midterms, you just take them wherever it's self proctored. It is the honor code. 

Juliette Sellgren 

We used to have that, but we lost that privilege, unfortunately.

Jo Jensen (24:35)

But I don't think you should. I mean it's expect more I think is what I'm trying to say of yourself, of others and the type of people who are willing to cheat. It's not they were horrible people. They just were really desperate or even anxious that they weren't going to get it right. They didn't have enough time if they only had more time, if they'd only studied more. And I think if someone had just said to them like, Hey, just take it and then we'll go from there. So I think that it's the catastrophizing of stuff. Let's play that out. What is the worst that's going to happen? Guess what? You're still here tomorrow. And so I don't know if your generation does practicing gratitude, but my aunt gave me the advice of not only be grateful every night for the good things, but for all the bad things. Because things that we can perceive as stumbling blocks actually probably lead you to something better. You just don't know that yet. So maybe that is a little bit of wisdom, but that's a lot for you to just, yeah, we're down this rabbit hole now we

Juliette Sellgren (25:32)

Are down it, and I'm trying to figure out a way to get out of it, but I feel like it relates. I also am excited to try out this future you. I will send it to you.

Jo Jensen 

I love it.

Juliette Sellgren 

I'm so excited. I feel like that's kind of what we need. It's kind of like writing a letter to your future self. It's something we did when we were younger. I expect that my future self is going to get this is going to see this and laugh and whatever, and you can imagine it. And just by the act of being like, I can see that it's reassuring that there's something there. And it's not like to say it in a, oh, well, you might not be type of way, but there's something there that's not scary or bad or not there. I mean in the worst case and let's hope. But okay, so instead of looking forward, let's look back and bring it to the present.

Okay, college and now you're here. How you have had this incredible journey of producing things and also taking steps that you, I mean as you said yourself, you did not envision being in your future being possible. What got you here and what have you learned along the way just in terms of, I dunno, along the lines of what we've been talking about and just in terms of engaging with people and audiences and how, I guess this is kind of a weird way to put this, but how are audiences different from personal relationships?

Jo Jensen (27:21)

Okay, I'm going to start with the last one first, but I've got some good answers here. So I see everything as a relationship. To me, it is not transactional and I am pretty on my soapbox with this where if you walk into a movie theater, let's say you're just going to the movies, I say hi to the person who's dishing out the popcorn, who's taking your ticket, who's waiting outside and hold the door. This is our community. It's not just the person sitting next to you, it's the whole ecosystem of everyone in that. And I see them as neighbors. I want to know their names, I want to know their stories. So to me, everything is personal, which I truly believe your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. It's great that I think everything is personal, but it can also be a drawback. In terms of how I got where I am, I would say two things.

I was really lucky that I had folks, mainly my peers who believed in me and then two, that I was willing to bet on myself every time. Again, strength and a weakness. But I will take that bet, like let's go. I will do it. So an example of one or two of those, when I was in college, I got the opportunity to help start up a national youth movement on Social Security reform. So President Bush was actually talking about Social Security reform. We thought it was going to happen, but young people were missing from the conversation. It was just a repeat. And some of my friends had interned at the National Economic Council and they really wanted to impress their boss and started this group. I ended up quitting my internship on the hill and joining them. So instead of interning and opening the mail, I was hosting meetings with members of Congress, giving speeches with Carl Rove. I got to go to the White House every week. It was pretty an amazing introduction to education, but it led me to actually drop out of college. So I don't know if you know this about me, I did not.

I had gotten elected junior class president, and I think the magazine article was The Junior is looking for a new president. I dropped out the fall of my junior year to stay in DC and do these things. And so I ended up going back and we obviously did not pass Social Security reform and it's been 20 years later, but at my college you had a lot of pride tied to your class year. And because I had taken off time, I also failed yoga the fall of my senior year because it was an election year and I didn't go. Yeah, you had to take gym and I failed yoga. And so my senior spring I had to take double the amount of classes. So normally you take four, I had to take seven plus a PE. And so they had reclassified me as 2008, and if that wasn't insult enough and Mount Holyoke, you have class colors.

So I was a yellow Sphinx ‘07, and that was very important to me and they reclassified me and I'm a twin, we haven't talked about my twin. And she went to this school next door and I thought, well, I can't not graduate the same time. So not only did I take all those credits and the PE class, I was also student body president at this time. I was now running the nonprofit that I had helped start in DC and I was co-chair of the Massachusetts College Republican, and I had a work study; you had to pay for college. So when I say I thought that was a lot and I had the best time I've ever had. And so one, I think just showing that you have another gear or two more gears or three more gears, if it's important, you'll figure out a way to get it done.

Then the other piece is, sorry to jump around with stories, but I was working in the public policy space, didn't know anything about videos, movies as we talked about, not even, I like cooking shows, not someone who watches at that point a lot of film. One of my friends had made a movie about a nonprofit called Honor Flight. You might've seen them in DC. They fly World War II vets and other veterans to see the memorials at no cost to them. The nonprofit was really struggling. People were like, you want to take my grandfather on a flight for the day for free? Are you sure? And so they made a movie about it, and it's the first movie they had made feature link documentary called Honor Flight, and they convinced me to join them. And these guys were so phenomenal that they didn't just want to make a movie about it, they wanted to break the world record for largest film screening.

So my job was actually to help organize. We bought a baseball stadium in Milwaukee where the movie took place and the local folks were just phenomenal at organizing. And we had to sell 45,000 tickets for this screening. And that's the first film event I ever worked on. was, and I was terrified the same size as Nationals Baseball Park and imagine everyone coming for your movie. That's not even done yet. And so I say that because they had that vision, they let me come along with that vision. And then at some point during that summer, it was 2012, I was like, oh, I've got to believe this too. There was a lot of people, what you're saying with editors or naysayers, they're like, you're not really going to break the world record. Are you hoping for 10,000? 20,000? What's your actual number? And I was like, oh no, I fiercely believe this. And so you almost have to suspend reality in the sense that if you're not believing in yourself and seeing your vision, why would you expect anybody else to? And so that was not only did we break the world record, it showed me that film is such a powerful convener and that we can do hard things. So I probably have an over sense of fiercely believing in myself, but why not? So that was incredibly formative to me.

Juliette Sellgren (33:27)

So on this kind of point of suspending reality, I've been thinking a lot about creating things, building things which you're an expert in, and I like the way you put it. I almost wonder if it's kind of necessary even to think about it like that because how are you going to see something that doesn't exist yet, something that inevitably is going to be difficult because it doesn't exist and the path isn't clear If you stay within the confines of current reality, you can suspend reality today and think, well, reality tomorrow is going to look like this, but you're not thinking within the confines of today. I think kind of inevitably, and I'm trying to figure out if that's the right, I don't know. It seems like it takes a certain level of confidence and kind of a certain narrative of I can do that.

Jo Jensen (34:28)

And not just a level of confidence, Juliette, it takes you've sustained, sustained conference. I think it's easy to believe in yourself for a week, for a year for some of this stuff. I play the long game. And so it's a multi-year, year one, you don't even see it year two, year three, your friends are like, are you going to get a real job? But I mean, I have great friends, but then in year four you're like, holy crap. And so for some of the films I've worked on, one of them was about the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, and we were all really worried that these filmmakers were the first ever to get into this Atari refugee camp. And they thought, oh no, the new cycle is going to leave. We're not going to be able to do this. We had screenings for years and we're able to raise $90 million for the nonprofits that were there, not because we had a three month campaign or a five month campaign, but because we had a two three year campaign, if that's helpful in thinking it's not just, and look, confidence doesn't mean arrogance, right? Confidence is like I want to be the best at getting better is my mantra. So tomorrow I'm going to get better, or actually I don't wait for tomorrow in an hour. I'm going to get better in three hours, I'm going to get better, right? Do it faster, do it now, and then I'm not afraid to break things. I think we've seen a lot of that recently in the news, but the way you build stuff, you actually have to break it first's just something I really believe. Does that make sense? Are you following my track?

Juliette Sellgren (35:57)

No, it totally does make sense. Being the best at getting better. Tom Jefferson says that it's on our fridge UVA thing. I didn't come up with it, but I think it's a really good mental model. Well, yeah, he says, why put things off until tomorrow, which you can do today, or something like that. And he also says, always grab things by your smooth handle. And he also says never be in debt, but he was in a ton of debt. So lessons we can learn and things that can be funny. Okay, I'm going to do it. We're going to talk about the girlfriend problem. If we're going to get better, we have to break something, but first we have to define something. Let's start by defining things. What on earth is the girlfriend problem? I mean, I know we have one, but we have a million of them. So what girlfriend problem?

Jo Jensen (36:54)

So at heart, I'm a marketer, so I think it's a fun, intriguing title to say America has a girlfriend problem. From my vantage point, I've worked on a lot of films that have really done incredible work. The Moving Picture Institute did a film in collaboration with BET. So it's not like people didn't see these films, a lot of people did, but I felt like for some of the public policies that I'm talking about in the book and what America has a Girlfriend problem really means is there's public policies that disproportionately impact women, especially single women. There's no one standing up for them in these rooms being like, wait a minute, we've forgotten someone. We've made it harder for them. And I think when I've seen folks either write a paper or do a movie, it's on one topic. So it's in transportation, healthcare, criminal justice, taxes, it's not across the board.

And so what I wanted to do is I spent the past few months just talking to my friends in the entertainment and policy spaces saying, what is something incredibly egregious that you have seen in your profession that impacts single women that most people don't know about? And so what I'm most excited for the book is we have a knowledge problem. So everything I talk about in the book are solvable problems. But between our two networks, we probably talked to some folks who really understand public policy tax law, they are very well-informed. And nine times out of 10, the people I talk to do not know about half of the topics in my book. And so number one, it's just a knowledge problem. So for example, also my target audience is single women. So when I'm talking about my book to guys, they kind of glaze it over and they're like, I don't get any of this, but I'm going to give you a few chapter titles and see what you think.

So one of the chapters is called I'm Feeling 22. Do you get the reference there? Taylor Swift, thank you. But you'd be, I mean, you would be shocked. And that's about an amazing woman named Kimba Smith who at 22 years old got sentenced to over two decades in prison for crimes. Not only she did not commit, they pinned crimes on her that her boyfriend committed, even the ones he did before they met and she had to get a presidential pardon. And so there's thousands of Kimbas where they're trying to go after the boyfriends and they think, oh, we'll just use the girlfriend as collateral. And instead they're the ones who end up doing time. Chapter three is called Say Yes to the And then Dress is crossed out and it's IRS. Have you ever seen that show? Yes, of course, because it's awesome. And so that's a problem that my friend's dad is working on a law review article, and I had another friend bring it up where if you get married, and this can happen to any gender, it just disproportionately happens to women, and the guy owed a hundred thousand dollars in back taxes before he got married. When you file jointly, you take on that debt as a household. Fine.

Juliette Sellgren (40:00)

Yeah, I've heard a million stories about this happening to my friend's parents. Everyone knows five people this has happened to and it's always women. True. It's always women. Anecdotal fact.

Jo Jensen (40:12)

No, but my guy friend, he was like, this literally happened to my aunt. So I want to interview his aunt for the book if she's willing to talk about it. And so then let's say he beats you up, you get divorced, you're no longer filing jointly. It's not like you merge Social Security numbers. The guy's kind of shady. He doesn't have a W2. So the government goes after the women to garnish their wages, and more than half of them are like single mothers who make less than $30,000. So it's not even worth the amount of money. And again, it wasn't their debt to begin with. It isn't their debt. I've got two more I'll share with you. So another chapter title is called Don't Call the Midwife. Have you seen that Show The Midwife?

Juliette Sellgren 

I have not, but oh, good. Oh, see something for me to watch.

Jo Jensen (40:58)

It's a good show. And so Pacific Legal Foundation, specifically Jamie Kavanaugh is working on this where there are some states, Georgia and Nebraska, I think where the hospital lobby is so egregious, they are requiring thousands of dollars of time for licenses for midwives and doulas. And so I'm taking a spit on the word girlfriend to be girlfriends and friends, where these women are terrified of either losing their nursing license or going to prison if they're helping their friend have a baby. So they're sitting in the driveway, their friend's houses while they're giving birth on FaceTime, talking them through it because they're terrified that someone's going to come put them in jail. And then another one is it's on female crash dummies. So everybody drives cars. And I'm trying to get Ford or Volvo or someone to come to market first. They do not test women crash dummies, only men and little kids. So women are way more likely to die or be maimed in a car accident.

Juliette Sellgren 

I don't like that.

Jo Jensen (42:06)

I don't like that one. It's terrible that it's taken this long. But two, now that we know about this and hopefully can raise awareness, Ford should just come out with an ad with their female crash dummy. And I bet you any husband, any boyfriend who's about to buy a car, the girl's going to be like, are you going with the one that tested for me? Do you care about me? So those are just examples of stuff, but I'm trying to show you see the theme of it's criminal justice, it's healthcare, it's taxation, it's transportation. We have left single women out and we can solve all these problems.

Juliette Sellgren (42:44)

Well, and what's interesting about this, I mean I kind of was like we have to define it before you can break it and remake it. Very clever. Play on my part about what you were saying, kidding. It seemed obvious, but it probably is not as many things I say apparently I've been told seemed not to be super obvious. These things we never talk about. We talk about women kind of, but also part of the past election cycle was hating on single women and then no owning single women. But can we actually just talk about how single women is? It is a group, if we're going to say we got to break down things by sticky groups. If you look at the way government defines and economists define and talk about and measure different categories of people by things that are not necessarily like, oh, what's your race? What's your gender? But single motherhood, it's just relatively sticky. It's things that will not change in the short term and you can't change and you maybe don't want to change. Being single is something which you can't really change. I mean you can, but can we change it just for the sake of changing it? And would we want to, probably not. That's a choice. For some people, it's a choice. Some people have a thrust on them, it doesn't matter. They shouldn't be at a disadvantage in public policy and we should be able to talk about that. And yet for whatever reason, we're not. And you are, I'm glad this issue is your hands because I mean, for one, I didn't know about it and it's super interesting. But also, who better to have elevating this other than someone who knows how to connect with people and market things for a living, where do you see this going? We talked a lot about the confidence and the vision and how to get things done. Where do you see this going and what's your vision for this project?

Jo Jensen (45:02)

Yeah, I mean, my hopes and dreams are two things. One, it irks me to know when people talk about things and don't actually take action, the whole point of this is to be a blueprint of how do we solve these problems. I'm interviewing mayors, governors members of Congress because if you look at the human action model, to go back to economics, to me, we have not done enough. If people are aware of this issue sometimes in the public policy, public affairs space, they're like, at least I created awareness. No, that's not enough. I don't just want you to have unease with the current state. I want you to really understand how we can change it and what your role can be in that. And so my hope is that this becomes almost a lifestyle brand because just in a few months I've been able to uncover 6, 7, 8 issues like this. How many more of them are there? So let's tackle them one by one and get it fixed. But then two, let's also realize that public policy shouldn't be divorced, kind of what you've been saying from our everyday lives. So I'm going to have a playlist in there after every chapter, I'm going to have recipes. So it's almost like it's integrated into everything that we do versus, oh, hey, let's have a serious conversation, Juliette, and then we can go back to the fun stuff. This is serious, but it can also be fun. So that's why I'm trying to be playful with the chapters. So it's not going to read a public policy paper, it's still going to be entertaining, but hopefully I would love for a bunch of women to not only read the book, bring it up to their friends, but then run for office, talk to their elected official about it, or just understand how the government works to get it solved.

Juliette Sellgren 

I love that. It makes me want to do something right now.

Jo Jensen (46:55)

Yes, you can right now. You can tell people about my book or talk about these issues. I get a lot of advice, good or bad, whatever, about Well, are you worried if you talk about all this, it's going to get for the female crash dummies, it's going to get changed before the book comes out. I hope. Wouldn't that be amazing? It's like if people see your movie trailer and then they're like, um let's go donate now. Then it worked. I won. So that would actually be a huge win if one of these got solved before I could even publish a book.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah. Well then you could have it as an end chapter. Look at what we did.

Jo Jensen 

Look at what we did it. This is about doing things. It's about breaking things and doing things.

Juliette Sellgren 

Why do you think just, I know I'm running up on the time. Are you good? 

Jo Jensen (47:43)

I'm doing great. Yeah, I can talk for a little bit longer.

Juliette Sellgren

Because I'm just really enjoying this and I do want to check up later in the process. I feel like this conversation has so much more mileage. So if you're into it, I would love to have you again to continue talking about this because obviously we just scratched the surface, but why do you think you're a doer? Why do you think that you build things and act? Because I feel like we're living in an age where acting and doing and building is kind of more difficult in part because of these things I think that you talk about in your book and that we've kind of been talking about where not only is it a culture, but there are so many rules you can't even help your friend as a doula, as a midwife because of the rules. And that's not even a professional thing, even though it's an economic situation that the rules are constructed around, it affects your behavior as a human being. And I've just been noticing this a lot, and it's honestly really disheartening because I'm like, why are we so afraid in a lot of ways of acting because of the rules, but also because of the culture, and it's this whole mix, this cauldron of just a mess. And so I'm just always floored when there are people that are actually out there doing things saying we need action. Awareness is not enough because even the awareness step is kind of almost fear inducing and difficult. So how?

Jo Jensen (49:24)

Yeah, I've never been asked that. I'm excited to go back and ask my friends what they think. I mean, what I would say is two things. One, I do it scared, of course I get scared. Of course I'm terrified. Whether that means it's imposter syndrome, I don't feel like I have enough knowledge. I'm tired. I am worried about sounding stupid. Run through all the insecurities we all have, everybody has them. But I'm not going to let that stop me because it's going back to that phrase we said of I'm going to be the best at getting better. I'm going to put myself out there and then I'm going to get better. So two examples. When I first was interning in Washington DC, so gosh, early two thousands, I was 15, 16, I worked for my congressman and I had worked for the district, and then I got to go to Washington DC and the office was giving me a tour of the capitol and I was like, where does the president sleep?

And they're at the White House. And I was like, right. So we're in this building and they're like, we're at the US Capitol. And I realized I was so ignorant on the difference between the capitol and the White House, but how many Americans probably mix that up too. And so it's okay to get things wrong and to say, oh, I'd like to learn more. Like, oh, I need to get up to speed on this. I think we get nervous to show our ignorance. We shouldn't be proud of the ignorance, but you should be proud that, Hey, I'm starting somewhere and can you help me? And I probably know everything about the capitol to the point where at the top of it is a statue of freedom and I could tell you all about it. So everyone starts somewhere. And then two in my DNA. And again, this is a strength and a weakness.

I'm a rule breaker. So I once worked at a company, and this was back in the day, but they banned Twitter. And I thought it was really important that everyone at the company learn Twitter, that I would host Twitter training lunches for staff. And they were like, Hey, how did you get access to Twitter? And I was like, oh, I pretended someone else was my manager so that I could train everybody on Twitter just because they didn't understand that social media tool. And so for whatever reason, if I just have the gumption or the gall to be like, we've got to do this, I think this is important, I will do it despite the consequences,

Juliette Sellgren (51:56)

Low key make rule breaking cool again. I mean you see all these stats of young people being like, they're not having sex, they're not drinking anymore. And okay, we can talk about drinking. Yeah, drinking is probably not very good for you, but when else are you going to do stupid things? You got to do some stupid things. And I mean, I just think the stupid things train for when you actually need the confidence to break a rule when it's like the rule, sure could be super wrong or misguided or whatever, but if you haven't broken it in a minor context, maybe I drank one too many drinks, or maybe I sent a stupid text to someone because I had a crush on them, or I don't know, I snuck out of my house when I was 16. That sort of thing. If you're not breaking these sorts of rules when you're young, I dunno, you could have a whole conversation about whether or

Jo Jensen (52:55)

Not how do you bounce back. So I'm not afraid to fall flat on my face. Do I love it? No. Do I do it all the time? Yes. If you're not failing then you're not pushing the envelope. And that to me is super boring. But also how are you learning? If you were successful then I don't think you tried hard enough. Here's an example. We had a campaign for an organization I helped start called Generation Opportunity. We call it gen op for short. And we came up with a really cool campaign called Keep Texas awesome. And it was about economic freedom and progress and how come Texas had just as many Fortune 500 companies as California. And we showed up at UT Austin with orange shirts, that was their school color, and it said, keep Texas awesome. Well, we totally messed up and I'm a Notre Dame fan, so I did not understand the intricacies of Orange at the University of Austin for Texas.

And so for UT, it's burnt orange, it's not Tennessee Orange, and our shirts were Tennessee orange. People were booing us. They're like, get that shirt out of my face. We quickly learned we had the wrong color shirts, so we showed up two weeks later to the next college football home game and with Burnt Orange, we gave away over a thousand in the parking lot. So if we hadn't messed up again, we could have just talked to a college football fan. We would've never understood the importance of that color and getting it right. Again, I know that sounds like a small embarrassment, but try being in a parking lot with the wrong color.

Juliette Sellgren (54:35)

Especially. I really know that down there they care a lot about that. Where like UVA, we are just not very good, so we don't care that much about that. But I mean, you get our colors wrong and we'll get angry the wrong color orange can be kind of ugly, but that's more of the lines we care about. But also, how are you supposed to know? I think what's clear to me about that example is it's just the color orange. Why do we care what shade it is? How are you supposed to know certain things if you don't just try? You would've never learned because there is no reason for you to think to ask a college football fan, which shade of orange. That's such a bonkers example. That's wild.

Jo Jensen (55:20)

But it's a great example of some organizations, especially think tanks who are really cautious and don't take a lot of risks. So the risk tolerance is really low, would've been like, oh my goodness, we should have known we messed up. We're never doing that again and shut down the organization. Instead of being like, aha, we have learned this and we're not only going to do it for Texas for every school we now go to, let's talk to a local and show them our t-shirt design and be like, how would you make this better? I feel like a lot of times, as I consider myself a conservator, we're not living out our principles. So for economics, we always talk about one size doesn't fit all yet. Here I am trying to essentially plan the color of a t-shirt rather than going to the actual source and being like, Hey, which shirt would you like?

And not even just AB testing, but getting their feedback, their buy-in along the way. So that just really opened me up to our model was wrong, but because had that experience of screwing it up, I knew how to fix it. Where to your point, I think a lot of leaders are afraid to take risk and look, you've got to take calculated risk. I'm not saying bet the farm here, however, our risk tolerance just needs to be different. You were giving examples of alcohol or whatnot. I mean it's also when I dropped out of school, there's a difference between reckless and risk, but it's a line and it's a spectrum and

Juliette Sellgren (56:50)

It's how you learn. Maybe don't drink and drive because we know that that's bad. We know that's bad, but I having half another beer, not really something that's probably super risky relative to, I dunno, having three shots of vodka without thinking about it first. We almost think absolutely in terms of what risk we're willing to take. Oh, I'm not going to do that at all. Because on the extreme it could be really bad. I'm going to stop using alcohol as an example, but

Jo Jensen (57:26)

Can I just say about for the alcohol thing, I think it's actually riskier to be the person at the party being like, I'm not going to drink. And you don't have to explain why or even how many times are you asked to get drinks or hang out with friends and being like, I'd love to get a drink, but it's not going to be alcohol. I almost respect my friends even more who are like, I'm not drinking tonight. I'm like, wow, great.

Juliette Sellgren (57:48)

Yeah, no, this is true. I think it depends on the context and again, drinking is maybe not the best example because it does depend on the context like that. I think within my generation, when I was hanging out at frats when I was 18, maybe don't say that. When I was a first year in college and I did the normal thing, it was a totally different context. It would've been so much cooler for me to like, yeah, I'm going to not drink. Whereas now it's kind of cool to be like, I'm going to have a beer after class because I can. And that's a step into adulthood. I'm doing it. Except if you were a first year and you were having a beer after class, you were doing something probably not great. It's just hard. It is kind of context dependent.

I feel so much more confident now talking to you about this. Basically, I am writing this paper and creating this model that it's kind of a crazy idea that I've just decided to put on paper and I'm presenting it at a conference next week. In front of my boss and my boss is so awesome, but I'm terrified and I'm breaking a lot of rules. I'm just doing things that aren't really done, but I just decided I wanted to, and I have been kind of stressed out about it all week and now I'm like, I can do it. What's the worst that can happen? A bunch of economists tell me that wrong and that I have to fix it. That would be great because I don't even know what I'm doing wrong.

Jo Jensen 

And in fact, I truly believe people give you feedback when they want you to succeed. But I would flip your thinking of not what's the worst that can go wrong. It's like, and what if it all goes amazing? Right?

What would you do if you knew it worked out? Is there an extra step you would take an extra think bigger? I like to surround, I have amazing friends and colleagues and clients who are always, let's think even bigger. We can think and you're like, wow, I didn't even know that there was a bigger, so I would even challenge you. You're scared. Good. Add one more thing to it. Keep pushing it as you said. And then I would say be vulnerable. People are very empathetic and just say, Hey, here's what I'm vulnerable about. I want your feedback on this. I might not get this right, but I'm trying and I'm really excited to hear what I got wrong and what I got. I think sometimes a lot of times when people give feedback, they want to tell you what you're doing wrong. As you kind of highlighted, you also want to know what you're doing so you can scale that up. I think normalizing rule breaking and normalizing, giving positive feedback of like, that was awesome. Let's do more of that.

Juliette Sellgren (1:00:37)

Yeah. Wow. Thank you so much. I feel so excited. I'm going to take the next step. I don't know what it is. I'll think about it, but I'll figure it out. I have one last question for you though. Thank you so much for indulging all my questions in the long winding road of everything. What is one thing that you believed at one time in your life that you later changed your position on and why?

Jo Jensen (1:01:06)

Oh, yeah. I mean I did see that question. This is going to be a can of worms, so I will leave it there and you can have me back. But when I was student body president at Mount Holyoke, we had a police officer named Kevin the party cop. And so if you can just imagine it's a women's college, there's not a lot of crime, and Kevin had gotten beat up at a party and the police officers, the campus police wanted to have tasers added as an extra tool so that hopefully that wouldn't happen again. And when it first came up in the student senate. So it's not necessarily that I changed, but I didn't have an opinion, which I actually think is worse. I was pretty ignorant on it. I don't know honestly, if I'm being honest, if I cared one way or the other, and a lot of my friends who were black were terrified and came to speak out about it.

We had town hall meetings. We have Mel Cookies at Mount Holyoke, so we m and Cs, and so we went around M and Cs to talk about it, and they're like, it's our guests who are going to get taste first. And I was like, what are you talking about? It's Kevin, the party cop. What do you even mean? And so we took a vote and they did not get tasers. And now knowing way more of what we know about people being profiled, families, having to have talks with their daughters and sons just because they're black being treated differently. I wish I could go back to myself in that moment and be like, not only are we not doing tasers, let's have a discussion about what else we should not be doing and kind of militarizing the police. And again, we're just talking about tasers, but that's a first step.

And if we're a campus community, and it's a little bit different, I think, in the real world with your neighborhood, but you're on a campus now, how can you expect more but also have more dialogue of what else should we be doing? And the school's gotten a lot better. We used to walk with the public safety and say, Hey, we wish we had a light here. This is scary. And there should be extra lights, there should be extra things. And I think especially as women being heard is great. So I don't know if you were expecting that answer, but I think about that moment a lot and I'm really grateful that I had that education, but I'm pretty pissed at myself that I didn't know and that I know now.

Juliette Sellgren 

Once again, I'd like to thank my guests for their time and insight. I'd also like to thank you for listening to the Great Antidote Podcast. It means a lot. The Great Antidote is sound engineered by Rich Goyette. If you have any questions, any guests or topic recommendations, please feel free to reach out to me at Great antidote@libertyfund.org. Thank you.