Episode 304- From DC Spy Dreams To Substack: Amanda Claypool On Media, Money, And Meaning

What if the numbers that dominate headlines tell you less about the economy than the price of your groceries, your rent, and your ability to start a family? We sit with writer and analyst Amanda Claypool to unpack Main Street economics, A.I.’s shock to white-collar work, and why trust in legacy media has frayed. Amanda’s path—from near-CIA ambitions and defense contracting in DC, to cross-country pandemic travels, to building “Tomorrow Today” on Substack—offers a rare, ground-level view of how policy choices ripple through real lives.

We get candid about the post-2008 era, cheap money’s illusions, and the gap between Beltway incentives and the daily reality in deindustrialized towns. Amanda explains why she sees generative A.I. as a Gutenberg-level inflection point: it can upend tasks, compress status ladders, and force a deeper question about what remains uniquely human. That’s where judgment, relationships, and ownership of outcomes come in—and why careers built on brittle prestige need a rethink. We also explore culture and gender debates, how career-first narratives can overshoot, and what resilience looks like when jobs evolve faster than institutions.

Throughout, you’ll hear practical advice for navigating uncertainty: learn the language of economics and accounting, treat A.I. as leverage rather than a threat, and stop hunting only for “a job.” Instead, find work—concrete problems you can solve and get paid for—while investing in community, family, and skills that compound over time. If you’re looking for a grounded, nonpartisan take on media, money, technology, and meaning, this conversation cuts through the noise and gets to what actually matters.

You can further engage with Amanda:

Tomorrow Today on Substack: https://tomorrowtodaynow.substack.com/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@amanda_claypool 

My book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FZ52SVL3/ref=sr_1_2 

Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe to The Common Bridge, share it with a friend who cares about the future of work, and leave a rating to help others find the show.

Transcript

Season Seven And Mission Of Show

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to season seven of the Common Bridge, hosted by Richard Helpie, a leading analyst, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. Now expanded with healthcare, education, finance, science, and world affairs bridges, the podcast now in its seventh season, with an audience of over 7 million worldwide, explores issues in a fiercely nonpartisan way. Find us at the Common Bridge at Substack.com, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.

Why Substack And Media Decay

Meet Writer Amanda Claypool

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Hello, welcome to the Common Bridge. I'm your host, Rich Helpie, and we're continuing today with our series on Substack Writers. I think Substack is a very important platform because we've all seen the decay in the legacy media. People now are treating it like Pravda, frankly. They know they read it, they wonder what was left out of the story this time, they wonder why something's down in paragraph 47 when it really is the lead of the story and other ways of slanting, manipulating the news, manipulating reporting, robbing people of historical context, and frankly, just getting people angry. Well, today we're going to feature a Substack writer, Amanda Clayple. I never met her, don't know much about her, but I do like the way she writes, and she writes a lot. So, Amanda, welcome to The Common Bridge. So happy you've joined us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Amanda’s Path From DC To Writing

SPEAKER_03 1:30

So our audience likes to know a little bit about the folks that are on the show. This our audience will listen, they'll read the transcript, and of course, they'll watch this video. Tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe your what your early years were and what your career arc's been and what's brought you to this point in life.

Pandemic Travels And Writing Shift

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, so believe it or not, I actually had a completely separate career before I started writing on Substack. I was originally a defense contractor in Washington, D.C. My dream job was to become a spy for the CIA. I actually came really close. Uh it just it never panned out. Um, but I got to work on a couple of different really cool projects in Washington, D.C. Um, I helped manage a counter-nuclear smuggling program in the Middle East. Uh, spent quite a bit of time traveling and living um in the region as well. Uh so spent a lot of time in the DC circuit and living in that world. And right before COVID um hit, I decided to kind of hang up my hat, leave that career um, and move back home to upstate New York. Obviously, um COVID happened. So the plans I had to restart my life in upstate New York um were kind of on pause. I ended up spending the pandemic, traveling the country, living in my car full time, um, just you know, kind of seeing what was out there. And that um sort of putting me on the trajectory to start writing because I was remote and just kind of doing a bunch of side hustles um at the time. And so I'd originally started on uh Medium, um, just publishing essays there. I started gaining traction on that platform. And then um about a year or two ago, I switched over uh to starting publishing on Substack, just recognizing that Substack was starting to become, I think, the alternative media platform that so many of us were were craving, um especially after after the pandemic, and we started learning more and more information about how how the how the legacy media was shaping the narrative, withholding information and all that kind of stuff. Um, and so I've I've been publishing uh weekly on Substack ever since then.

Substack As Alternative Media

Support Independent Writers

What Amanda Writes About Now

SPEAKER_03 3:33

That's a great story, and you've out there getting firsthand information from firsthand people. I do want to let our listeners, readers, and viewers know that uh the writers on Substack don't get paid unless you subscribe to them. Or many of us have a tip jar out, so to speak, a Venmo address, a Zealot address, a buy me a coffee. So if you like what you're hearing from Amanda or you just think it's important, I'd encourage you to subscribe or contribute to what she does. And of course, if you got a few nickels left over for the Common Bridge, we'd sure appreciate your support as well. Amanda, what's the name of your page and how can people find you?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So I publish under Tomorrow Today, uh, and it's right on Substack. You can also Google me. Um, I'll come up in a Google search as well.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Okay, tomorrow today is the name of the Substack page. What are you writing about on Substack these days? And I know you cover uh quite a breadth of topics, but if you had to pick out one, two, or three most important things, what are they? Why did you pick them? And are there any that are being undercovered or miscovered by the existing legacy media ecosystem?

Discovering Economics Beyond Schooling

A.I. As A Gutenberg Moment

Work, Value, And Social Capital

SPEAKER_01 4:48

The main thing I love to write about and I'm really passionate about is the economy from the perspective of Main Street. I think a lot of the legacy media really talks about economic issues from uh a really high level, and it talks about from the perspective of Wall Street, um, but it doesn't really talk about it from the perspective of day-to-day Americans and what our lived experiences are like. And I became really interested in kind of the the more economics uh realm of things and the intersection of economics with technology, AI, how our society is advancing as a result of my career um in Washington, D.C., like so many other young people I was struggling to make ends meet. I think now with Gen Z coming up and they're starting to push back against a lot of uh things. I think we're starting to see systemic breakdown just with the cost of living and cost of education, all that kind of stuff. But I was going through this in the 2010s and I didn't understand from my perspective why I had gone to college, did all the things I was supposed to do, got the degree, got you know, all the awards and all that kind of stuff, landed in Washington. My first full-time paid job uh was analyzing open source intelligence information on Twitter, basically following Arabic language media accounts to cover the war in Syria. And I was paid$16 an hour. And I just couldn't wrap my head around like how that that was possible. Um so I started first diving into personal finance and learning more about that. And that was my entry point into writing online. I started a personal finance blog um first, but eventually realized, no, there's this entire economic system underpinning all of this. And even though I had studied international relations, political science, history in college, I never learned about economics. I had one course on economics as an intro-level course on economics. Um, you know, never had to read Adam Smith, never read Carl read Karl Marx cover to cover. Um, so didn't actually know any of the stuff that was really um behind the the the lives we were living, this the fact that we were you know going to these jobs, having to make money, pay these bills, and there's all this economic engine underpinning it. And of course, you know, there's the the political side and the monetary policy and all these other things beyond our control. Um, so I started diving deeper and deeper into that. So really trying to understand, you know, what exactly those of us on Main Street, your average day-to-day Americans, you know, what exactly are we doing with our lives? We're spending so much time working these jobs, like why are we doing it and what's the purpose? And then of course, Chat GPT came online uh in November 2023, at least in November in 2023. Uh, and that kind of changed, that changed everything. Um, for me, I saw that as kind of our our generation's Gutenberg press moment. Um, I and I still believe this to be true. I think it's a foundational technology that really um changes everything and it changes the value proposition of work, it changes the economy, and it changes how we see our own human existence. Uh, and so really trying to understand what it is, what it is we're doing uh every single day, uh participating in this economy and and what what what is the the the entire point of the economy and its existence? There's so much nihilism, I think, today and fatalism in the world, and people are just um anti-capitalist because it's I think fashionable to do so, or you know, pro-socialist because it's fashionable to do so, but they don't really understand the philosophies or the or the ideas underpinning um those ideas. So I try to dive deeper into um some of that stuff, so the economic theory, the thought, but then also how it applies to the rest of us. How is AI going to shape the job market moving forward? And if we lose our jobs, yeah, we're gonna lose social capital and we're gonna, it's gonna change our interactions with one another, um, just in our day-to-day lives. So, how is that going to change society? Um, so that's the thing I'm I'm really fascinated by because I think that has the greatest impact on all of us.

Media Narratives And Education Roots

Audience Reactions And Institutions

SPEAKER_03 8:55

You know, you've hit on many of my favorite topics, and we'll start at the end point that we have this media ecosystem, depending on who's in office, that tells you, hey, you're all fine. What are you talking about? What are you worrying about? These are the best of times. And then the presidential administration changes literally overnight. Hey, it's all not fine. By the way, this is not new at all, in that there were claims of horrible homeless camps prior to 1992 when there was a change in leadership, all of a sudden, hey, we just don't report or talk about those anymore. And I know that's a that was a very long time ago. And then the social contract that many of my generation came up with, hey, give me your labor hours and you can get back from the economy a reasonable standard of living. And part of that included uh an education. And one of the great risks I see in all the AI engines, whether it's Chat GPT or the one that I use often called Perplexity, if you don't understand how that engine's being fed, and I have a long history in computers and data and personal information and the like, you don't know what to believe. And so that we need to get back to a grounding in education. Let's start with physics, which is really important, mathematics, which is very important, and econ and accounting, because everything ends up in some of those buckets. And then chat GPT can be a tool to enhance our lives, not the thing that can manipulate us faster than the current methods. So I'm really applaud what you're out there writing about. What type of reactions are you getting to some of the things that you've penned? And maybe if you want to talk about a recent column that you posted on tomorrow today, that our listeners, readers, and viewers should be finding. And if I haven't mentioned this, they should be subscribing to and contributing to the support of uh excellent writers like yourself.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah, so the reaction has been really good. I'm I'm kind of surprised um at how how good it's been. But I will say it individuals really appreciate it and appreciate what I have to say. I'd say the institutions that still control uh a lot of the media ecosystem, uh, not so much. So I was doing a lot of freelance writing um uh prior to you know really just publishing on my own on Substack. And I I found that's kind of uh a dead end at this point. There's there's no use in pitching pitching articles.

Innovation Outside Bureaucracy

SPEAKER_03 11:37

There's an old saying, and I can never remember the front part of it, but the back part is if they can't take a joke. Innovation comes externally, and that's one of the things in economics that all bureaucracies will ultimately start serving their own bureaucracy. And if there is not a private sector to innovate, then we're just gonna be stuck in a bureaucracy that grinds very, very slowly and produces less and less.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Exactly.

Growth On YouTube And Topics

SPEAKER_03 12:05

From the times of feudalism to today that we need to be battling constantly. Um and it's hard, particularly in the economic condition where what is the social contract? And you asked, what does an economy exist for? We're not here to serve the economy. Economy is about distributing goods and services and harnessing labor and materials to produce a better life. And so the ultimate question is are we producing a better life for the most people in the best way possible? Not that hard.

Feminism, Culture, And Labor

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Exactly. Exactly. And I find those questions are so important. I think I'm still maybe a little naive and hopeful that many of the legacy media would like to entertain uh those types of conversations, but I've just hit a complete brick wall with a lot of that. So I say anyone who's still subscribing to legacy outlets, definitely that has been a no-go. Uh, but for the most part, definitely a lot of positive, um, positive interactions. I know. Uh I think it's May, this past May, I started um posting more video commentaries on on YouTube and within a few months went from zero subscribers to almost 11,000 now. So definitely um resonating with a lot of uh folks, um just a lot of the strife and struggle people are um are struggling with. Um yeah, but I I write a lot of it is is a diversity of of topics. So, you know, the economy is obviously uh, I think the the big one for me because I think it impacts us the most. Um, but also touching on uh political change, political events, um, just because I I did live in Washington, DC and was was part of the bureaucracy and had a kind of firsthand window um into what that experience was like. And then also um I write a lot of social commentary as well uh about feminism um and just the the cultural and gender wars um right now because I've also made a shift in how I I think about that.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

You've got a great perspective and a terrific ability to articulate. I'd love to hear if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Absolutely. Yeah, I've I've written several um different pieces about this and and been talking a lot about it on YouTube because this is a pretty sailing issue and it does pertain to the economy because at the end of the day, you're gonna need workers and we have to reproduce, and if we're at odds with one another, you know, uh it's not gonna end well for the rest of us. Um but yeah, I, you know, I was raised in an evangelical uh Baptist church, kind of grew up with uh one foot in the conservative world but was public public uh school educated. So another foot uh in that world and you know went to college like like everyone else. And I can't say that someone explicitly sat me down and said, here is the feminist syllabi, this is what you must believe. Um but over the period of time I was in college, I it was definitely ingrained in me that I was disadvantaged and you know, the the patriarchy was against me and all these systemic problems. I didn't understand it as systemic oppression in the way that it's being talked about today. Um, but it was definitely being communicated as a structural disadvantage that affected me based on my gender. Um, so for much, much of my early 20s, I was definitely um not not a raging uh feminist in the social sense, but definitely from a career perspective. I believed, you know, career is the most important thing in the world. And I didn't want anyone standing in my way. And I I definitely thought, you know, there was a meritocracy and I had done well in school, and therefore I was owed something. Uh and it wasn't until I I left DC, um, traveled, traveled the country during COVID, the some of the rose-colored glasses and and my belief in the legacy media started coming undone during that period of time that I started to really um critically question feminism. And by the time I got to my early 30s, I realized, wow, I'm I'm gonna be one of these women who ends up um childless and unmarried if I don't, if I don't reject this right off the bat. Um, and so I I made that and that transition, married and and all that and starting a family. So really excited about that. But um, yeah, I'm I'm now seeing, you know, everything I was kind of afraid of starting to play out, where um, you know, women my age and and a little bit older are starting to acknowledge that, okay, this this might not have panned out the way it was supposed to. And then of course you look at it from the context of the AI revolution that's underway, it's like, okay, well, these jobs don't really, they don't really matter anyways. You know, if you if you've staked your entire identity uh and and your well-being in a career that could go away at an instant, um, you're you're living a very fragile existence. So starting to realize that there's there's far more to our lives here on Earth than just a nine-to-five job and and who we work for.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Before we dive back into today's enlightening discussion, we have a quick message for all you Common Bridge enthusiasts out there. Did you know that you can find this episode and over 300 more on Substack as part of the Common Bridge series? You can also find written columns and opinions as well. Subscribe at the commonbridge.substack.com for a full Common Bridge experience. There you can comment and express your opinion on all the topics we cover on this and the past seven seasons of our podcasts. If you'd rather support the show without subscribing, you can do so with Zell at rich at richardhelpie.com or using Venmo at Richard-CBridge. Thanks for listening. Now back to the episode.

Entitlement, Career, And Identity

SPEAKER_03 17:27

To be fair, women were discriminated against, that they were denied the right to vote. I know that my beloved godmother, uh, when she got married, was working for the telephone company, and they said, Oh, you got married, you no longer have a job because we don't employ married women. I came through my business career when women were coming into corporate leadership and coming into the law profession, uh, more into the medical profession, Title IX was a profound event in terms of leveling the literal playing field for women and girls. So there was a mission there. And I think today, perhaps, that it's been overshot in that if a young woman has the opportunity to go to law school or engineering school or medical school or um what have you, become one of those professions and not be denied that opportunity. But you don't get the job because you are female. And in my career, I built a substantial consulting business. And when we were audited one time by the Department of Labor, amongst other accolades, they said, you know, you realize you have 45% women in senior leadership. And I said, No, I didn't know that. We just put the people in place that could do things. And frankly, in computing, it's a binary objective world that either works or it doesn't work, and it doesn't care if you're man, woman, what race you are, what age you are. Just it does the same thing for everybody. But I I understand that the as you were coming up, you kind of caught the tail end of that. And it's kind of like the race industry, they need to keep beating that drum, even though they could easily declare victory and move to a more equal society.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Absolutely. And I like how you use the term overshot because I think that really describes it. Because I think there was a time and place for helping women achieve parity. But I think for with my generation and moving forward, it it really overshot and it transformed from striving to help women succeed to creating a sense of entitlement. And I definitely I was horrible in my 20s. I felt incredibly entitled. Um, and it definitely shaped my my outlook on life and how I participated and the workforce and and it's your interview, Chase, but I I I will only give you one anecdote about how easy it was.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Us to overlook this. And this goes all the way back to the 1980s. And I call somebody who's very close to me who's an excellent attorney, and she is livid. And I'm like, well, what's the matter? Well, the head of the litigation department had taken all of the litigation department to his house. I go, well, what are they doing there? They're playing video games. I said, Well, do you want to play video games? No, but I'm the only woman in the litigation department, and they're all over there doing that. And it was like, oh, I would doubt the guy gave it a second thought, but his upbringing, the way he was culturized, never saw the incredible insult he had just leveled. And so in my professional career, there has been a substantial amount of gain. And I'm very happy that those near and dear to me, women and girls, have opportunity and choice. And I hope that, like you, they lead a full life with higher values as well. Do whatever you want to do. Let there be equality, opportunity, and choice.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Absolutely. Absolutely. Totally agree.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

So we've talked about economics, we've talked a little bit about social, and then you kind of hinted at the difference of the perspective between Washington, D.C. and the rest of us out here.

Capital vs Districts: The DC Bubble

Insulation From Policy Consequences

The Long Recession On Main Street

Deindustrialization And Community Loss

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah. So if you're familiar with the Hunger Games, I think it's a really good metaphor. Um, I know that that was like a young adult uh series that was popular several years ago, but this whole idea that that the capital is the capital district is very different from all of the other districts in that world. And it's very ostentatious. Um, and and everyone is just just kind of of of a higher level and then see themselves as higher, high holier than thou, holier than than everyone else. Um, and I definitely observed this and noticed this when I lived in Washington, DC. Everyone is highly educated, yes, um, potentially overeducated, in my opinion. Um, but they definitely have this ethos where a lot of the people who work in DC believe that they are distinct and better than everyone else, that they have been anointed um with some sort of mission, whether it's uh a political mission, whether it's a social justice mission. There's a lot of nonprofits based in DC as well. They've been anointed to pursue some sort of mission and they're working on the benefit of um humanity. And and a lot, and a lot of these people really believe that. Um, and they don't really understand how they fit as a cog in the machine. I think the USAID scandal that broke last year really highlights this. You have a lot of really good people with good hearts and good intentions working in an organization that now we've come to find out, okay, well, maybe they weren't exactly funding all humanitarian uh efforts. Maybe maybe there was some some other stuff going on here. Um, and so that that is definitely um a part of it. But one thing I also noticed when I lived there is DC was really insulated uh during the 2008 financial crisis. They, you know, the the money kept flowing through government, the contracts kept coming. You know, you say you worked in consulting, so I'm sure you've experienced that as well. As long as you you sign the contract and it's you know a multi-year contract, you're good to go. Um, so a lot of people there have never really dealt with the economic consequences of the policies that are being passed uh by the institutions in the district, um, because everything, you know, the the government money keeps keeps flowing. It's only once the government money stops flowing that I think they they start to go as, oh, wait a minute, we're not as impervious um to the the outcomes of our of our policy choices as we thought we were. Um and so so I personally believe much of the rest of us, much of Main Street America, has been living in a prolonged um recession since 2008. I don't actually think the recession actually ended. Um I think we've just kind of been living under this illusion that everything was fine and dandy, and that's because credit was cheap, it was very easily accessible to folks in in Silicon Valley. They could create and manufacture jobs that weren't necessarily needed, and it created this illusion of opportunities and tech. Everyone was told to go code. It created all of this illusion of all of these opportunities, and then COVID hit and the contraction started shortly after that. Um, and I think people started to realize wait a minute, all this cheap free money that we thought was circulating around the economy doesn't really exist um anymore. So I think the the rest of us on Main Street uh have been aware. We we've, you know, I I'm from a rest belt town in upstate New York. So, you know, I've had a front row seat to the consequences of deindustrialization, uh brain drain. Almost everyone I went to high school with, we we've all left and moved elsewhere. Um now, you know, um my baby boomers, my parents' generation, they're you know, starting to retire in an older age. You know, a lot of mom and pop restaurants I used to go to and diners I used to go to with my parents, they're now they're now gone. And you have, you know, your your strip malls and and your retail private equity chain owned restaurants taking over. So a lot of the character and the culture that I think really built um a lot of communities on Main Street is starting uh to go away and and fade away. Um and so I think I think we've we've lost a lot in the last you know almost two decades now. And um folk folks in folks in DC just they don't really leave the DC bubble. They might go into the Virginia um countryside, they might go into you know West Virginia, but for the most part, they've never interacted with someone who lives in South Dakota or someone who lives in Nebraska. And they they just have no idea uh how other Americans live. And then, of course, the the media ecosystem has created such an echo chamber where they're just fed information that reinforces their pre-existing biases and assumptions and beliefs about how the rest of the country um operates. And it's just it couldn't be further from the truth. And so I think there's just a complete divide between the people who have been put in charge to govern us, whether we elected them or whether they elected themselves, uh, and the rest of us who are in the electorate, who have to face the music of whatever choices they make on our behalf.

Echo Chambers And Governance Gaps

Corruption, Trust, And Nihilism

SPEAKER_03 26:17

I think that's a very excellent articulation in that uh we used to have this thing called servant leadership coming from all levels of our government, our education systems, and you know, people took it seriously. We're we're educating, preparing the next generation. And then to your point, that those that are making those rules are insulated from the impact, you know, and nihilism is, I think, an apt description. You know, there was a time when a elected person would be embarrassed at the hint of personal enrichment or corruption. And now it's kind of expected that, yeah, someone goes and serves in Washington, they're gonna make a lot of money. They don't even try to hide it. If a tenth of what's being alleged in Minnesota and California right now is true, it is corruption on a massive scale. And the flip side of that corruption is that the people that our government agencies are supposed to serve are not only not getting served, they're paying for it, and it's another weight on them, but it's turned into this tribal contest where, well, my party is less awful than yours. And I'm just very encouraged by listening to your intellect and your analysis, and it gives me great hope that for the future. We're also going to be featuring entrepreneurs on the Common Bridge. I've got a series coming up with people that have found a way to make a good living in this economy. And the advice that I give people of your generation is this find work. My generation was told find a job, find a good job with benefits, with a future. And I'm saying, no, go find work. What can you do today that people will give you money for? And if you get up every day saying, I'm going to find work that I get paid for, you'll you're gonna be surprised at the great results. Amanda, you have been very generous with your time. And I think we could probably go on for six or seven hours. But any final comments for the listeners, readers, and viewers of the Common Bridge, I will again say please consider subscribing to Amanda Claypool tomorrow, today at Substack. We need more writers like her out there producing content, doing research, maybe who knows, expanding. Maybe she becomes the daily newspaper someday, and you'll say you were able to support her way back then, which is now. So please lean in. So, Amanda, please take us home here.

Find Work Not Jobs

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, no, I I think we're in this incredible transitional period in human history. I think it's gonna be very destabilizing. I think it's very scary. Uh, I think there's a lot of uncertainty, but I'm also hopeful, I'm also hopeful for for the future. Um, I think there's gonna be unprecedented opportunities as well uh for people who are paying attention to what's happening. They're not just listening to the the day-to-day, you know, hustle and bustle on on X or whatever. Um, although that that that is important to stay stay on top of things, they're not getting lost in it. I think understanding where things are going, uh, the changes that are going to be happening, and just keeping tabs on the bigger macro trends of what is going on, um, I think that will help a lot of folks be able to navigate um what's underway. And that's my goal. That's my goal is to use uh the talents I've been given to write and share my thoughts and do the research and help folks understand, okay, this is where we're at today. This is where we could be tomorrow, and this is how you need to start thinking about things and prepare. And the best thing you can do is just focus on the things that you can control. The world's a crazy place. You can't control everything, um, but focus on what you can do. Focus on the work you can do, the skills you have, the family you have, the things you have, be grateful for those things. Um, and I think the people who can do that, I think they'll come out ahead ahead of this.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

We've been talking today on the common bridge with Amanda Claypool of Tomorrow Today on Substack. This is Rich Helpie on the Common Bridge, encouraging those to support the program. If you're one of our thousands of podcast listeners, please come to the common bridge at substack.com or our Venmo or our Zell. We'd sure appreciate your support there. And of course, a subscription or a contribution to tomorrow today with Amanda Claypool. And with our guest, Amanda Claypool, this is your host, Rich Helpe, signing off on the Common Bridge.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Thank you for joining us on the Common Bridge, where we continue to seek clarity across divided lines. Subscribe and support the Common Bridge on Substack, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Until next time, we invite you to stay informed, stay engaged, and help build a bridge of common understanding.