I'm Sarah Kensier, the author of the best-selling books, The View from Flyover Country, and Hiding in Plain Sight.

I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic

thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.

And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising

autocracy around the world. And I am thrilled today to have a fellow Missouri-based guest on our show, Lindsay Simmons,

who ran for Missouri's fourth congressional district.

If you know Lindsay from Twitter, she's at Linz for Congress, L-Y-N-Z-F-O-R, Congress, hopefully

you know how to spell Congress these days, where she has a

very insightful account running down problems, not just in Missouri, not just in quote-unquote red

states, but nationally, you know, we've seen a lot of discussion about how to change our political situation

in states like ours, but not a lot of folks from those states actually giving their viewpoint

on things, which is why we've decided to invite Lindsay on. I asked Lindsay for her biography,

and I loved what she wrote back. so I'm just going to read it,

and hopefully that's cool with you. She writes, I no longer have a prepared media biography.

I think most of what I'm going to say and why it's relevant is that I was born and raised in

rural Missouri, but went east for law school in 2012, where I saw a growing divide

between how my classmates experienced the world and how my family and neighbors experienced it.

These divides manifested in the 2016 election, and as the toxicity grew, I felt a pull to try

and build a bridge between these two parts of my life.

That work largely resulted in my run for office in Missouri's fourth congressional district,

where I outperformed every single other Democrat on the ticket.

Now I'm continuing to build bridges and build community through the mighty Missouri Project. And so Lindsay is an attorney,

...