Poppy MacDonald: USAFacts’ Mission to Empower Informed Citizens

Guy Kawasaki:
Hello, I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People Podcast. And as you've heard many, many times before, we're on a mission to make you remarkable. So we bring in remarkable people so they can show you what it takes to be remarkable.
And today's guest is the remarkable Poppy McDonald. And Poppy, oh my God, she's the president of USAFacts and she'll explain what that does. She's also the former president and chief operating officer of Politico, which is one of my favorite sources. And she used to work for Atlantic Media, so she has the background in media and data and all that kind of great stuff. So we're going to be talking about data and truth and democracy and all that today. So Poppy, welcome to the show.
Poppy McDonald:
Thank you for having me, Guy. I'm thrilled to be speaking with you today.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm going to give you a nice easy question for the first one. Okay?
Poppy McDonald:
Sounds good.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you think that misinformation determined the outcome of this election? How's that for an easy question?
Poppy McDonald:
Wow. All right, you're hitting hard right from the get go. I appreciate it. I think misinformation is a challenge, as is just the amount of information that's available to the American public. We're sifting through that information, which, many times, can be contrary. So if you turn on Fox and MSNBC or you're hearing from the incumbent, or I guess in the presidential race, there wasn't an incumbent, although there was a current vice president running against a former president.
So in some ways, maybe they were both kind of incumbents. But when you hear from two different politicians, you're getting completely different stories about what's going on in this country. And I think that is a challenge that is driving mistrust, lack of trust, historic lack of trust in every major institution in the United States, including the government.
And for USAFacts, our goal is to be a trusted source, and we do that by making the facts accessible. And our hope is that people can come to a resource, to USAFacts.org and say just by the numbers, what is going on in this country? Without any spin, without any predictions or forecasts or things that are designed to scare you or make you click many times, our goal is to ground people on the facts.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, for those of you who are listening and watching, I just want to point out a very subtle thing, which is I asked her one question about misinformation and the election and she turned it into a pitch for her organization, which I really respect. When people take a question that I ask and then they answer it in a way that serves their purpose, that is an art. I learned it at Apple, so my hat's off to you, Poppy. Yeah, I love it.
Poppy McDonald:
Oh, thank you, Guy.
Guy Kawasaki:
So now, you explained what USAFacts does. Now, what happens in a situation where, what happens if the government doesn't collect facts anymore? There's a lot of things that could happen. So the two questions is first, what happens when the government doesn't collect facts anymore? What do you do?
Poppy McDonald:
That's an important question. And part of what USAFacts does is take the government data that is accessible technically, like publicly available data, and very hard to get access to. And the second part of what we do is call out when data is not there, data that should be there or data that would be very important to answer a question.
In some cases, that's just we're running behind, right? Businesses run behind, people run behind. So we call it out, "Hey." We contact the agency and say, "Where is that data? You're supposed to update it every year. When should we expect it? When is it coming?" So part is we're poking at the government a bit, so I'll just say it's happened before.
There's also a case where, hey, it's not required to report that data. So an example of that was we looked at rape kit testing and there was funding that was provided by the federal government to help with the backlog of rape kit tests.
And we wanted to see, hey, are those tests getting processed more rapidly? Are people getting their answers? And what we found was states weren't reporting the data. So we started calling the states and what we found out was they weren't required to report that data, but most of them were willing to get it. But we got thirty of fifty states were willing to give us that data.
So we made Congress aware, "Hey, this is a challenge. This data isn't reporting and being reported and we think it's really important." And bipartisan legislation was introduced to make that data available and accessible to the public. So that's part of what USAFacts does. I'd say the majority of our time is spent making the data that is technically available, accessible. And part of what we do is call out when data isn't there that should be. So we'll keep doing that, Guy.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what's going to happen if the government doesn't like the data that you're bringing to light? I hate to get all dystopian on you, but I'm just thinking of all the things that could go wrong.
Poppy McDonald:
I think that's a great question. I would say we have worked across the Trump administration and the Biden administration and we make the data available. And I don't know that there's ever been a time where 100 percent of the data coming out of the government is rosy. It's a mixed picture. And our goal is not to shame anyone or to praise anyone. It's simply to put the data, make it accessible, and then let Americans decide for themselves are we headed in the right or wrong direction?
Guy Kawasaki:
Can you go back in time when you guys worked with the Trump administration during COVID and how was it received? What happened there?
Poppy McDonald:
Yes, thanks for asking about that. So I will say in late February, early March, when there was the early outbreaks in Washington State and in New York, we started hearing and seeing people expressing concern. "I can't get access to reliable data about where is this outbreak occurring? Dangerous is it based on where I live in these states?"
And at the time, we had a very small team, we had thirteen people on staff and one of my colleagues said, "Hey, I think I could get this data and make it accessible and just do the hard heavy lift of calling and getting the data." So we started collecting it, publishing it on our site.
And fast-forward, as it spread across the country, we certainly leveraged technology to make it easier. But in some cases, we were still having to make phone calls or go to a sheriff's Facebook page to get that data. The Trump White House ended up making us the official source for the federal government for COVID data, so we were linked directly from the CDC. If you saw Dr. Deborah Birx give a briefing, you would see the USAFacts logo on the chart that was shared.
So we felt incredibly proud to be able to do that service for our country. And I think it shines a light of a challenge that USAFacts often highlights. When there isn't a reliable way of taking local data and reporting it to the state and reporting it up to the federal government, it is really difficult to make decisions.
People need data to make good decisions in this country, and we think it's a travesty that government data isn't more accessible. And that doesn't just look like an outbreak that happens across 3,000 some counties, that looks like 90,000 government entities in the United States of America where there is no standard for what data is collected, when it's reported, or how it's reported. So part of the thing that we will advocate for is that government data should be more accessible to the American public.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, I got to ask you these questions and I guarantee you I'm not the only person who's going to ask you these questions. So now, RFK Jr. is in charge of the FDA and the CDC and he's saying that vaccines aren't safe and you can drink raw milk and you can do all these things. In that kind world, what kind of data do you think the FDA and CDC is going to give you?
Poppy McDonald:
That's a great question. We have had really great luck working with government agencies and I don't expect that to change. We worked well across the Trump and the Biden administration. And it is career civil servants who've been there across years or decades, collecting this data and making it available to the public.
Now, the spin, an individual politician or a group advocating for something may put on those numbers. That's not something we can control, but what we can do is present the data, put it in context, show how it's changed over time, and allow people to make their own decisions.
Guy Kawasaki:
But you use the phrase civil servant and Project 2025 is all about reducing civil service. So now what happens when those civil service people are turned into loyalists?
Poppy McDonald:
I appreciate that question. I will say that already, reporting data is not necessarily the mandate or the mission of federal agencies. So if you look at something like the Department of Housing and Urban Development, their mission is make housing affordable, provide access to affordable housing.
So already, I would say these agencies, part of the reason why USAFacts has to do the extra work of taking that data that's sitting on a PDF or taking that data that's on a CD and making it machine-readable and understandable and analyzing it and putting into context is because our civil servants are already stretched pretty thin.
And what will the impact have? I think it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. And I will say Trump having run businesses, I hope data's very important to how he's run his businesses, and it will be important to how the Trump administration thinks about running the country.
I will say previously, in the Trump administration, with our 10-K report, they were very interested. We do this 10-K, which is something that the federal government requires public companies to file and to share, that shows transparently what is all the data on their business. And we do that on behalf of the US government, and it was something that we kept getting additional requests from the Trump administration for. We hope data will be an important part of their path forward.
Guy Kawasaki:
And now, Poppy, I hate to tell you, but I haven't even gone into my darkest mode yet. Right now, I'm just gray. I'm going to go a little even darker here. So based on what we're seeing going on, I could almost make the case that facts and data don't even matter because people are just looking for confirmation. The confirmation bias is at the highest level. It doesn't matter what data and information there is, they believe what they believe and they're going to continue to believe that. What do we do?
Poppy McDonald:
I appreciate that concern, right? And my business is USAFacts, so I sure hope facts matter to people. My signal of that is when people are aware there is a resource they can go to for facts, that they do come to it. So on election day, we had 450,000 people come to USAFacts to read articles about the electoral college and how many people vote and what's going on with swing states.
And we have over a million people coming to our site every month, we have 330,000 people who subscribe to our weekly newsletter. I do think people want the facts. They may not always be aware of where can I go for those facts? What is my trusted resource?
And I will say that we ran an experiment this election season and we recorded a series of six fifteen-minute videos explaining the major policy issues by the numbers. And I think asking busy Americans to pause and take fifteen minutes to watch a video to learn about immigration or healthcare or the federal debt and the budget is a lot to ask.
And we had over forty million people come and watch those videos. So it does give us hope that people do want the facts, that they are interested in learning that information. We're not in it to change minds, we're in it to make the data accessible and then let Americans have a hearty debate about where to go from here.
Guy Kawasaki:
This is a little bit of a speed round in the middle, all right? Can you just give us the gist, as if we had watched those videos, on a few topics? All right, so give us the gist of first of all immigration. What's the gist of immigration?
Poppy McDonald:
The gist of immigration is looking at, first of all, what is happening, how many people are legally coming to the country? What's going on with border apprehensions? So border apprehensions are up. I will say there was a dip that happened during COVID where I think that was related to what was happening with the pandemic. It's come back up, so there were two and a half million border apprehensions.
The other thing I think is really interesting is the pending court cases. There is a big backlog of people, similarly about two and a half million people who are waiting to have their case heard, and we're only hearing about 10 percent of those cases.
So only a couple hundred thousand are making it through the court system per year, and only about 13 percent of those cases are granted the opportunity to remain in the country. And what we're trying to share people is what is the state of the facts on immigration and allow people to make decisions for themselves.
Guy Kawasaki:
Are you saying that apprehensions are up? So we are under control, our apprehensions are up, so we're facing a flood?
Poppy McDonald:
I don't think we know that by the data. In some cases, we saw guards at the border go up and we saw apprehensions go up. You could interpret that to say, "Wow, we're doing a much better job stopping people as they're trying to come across the border, and so fewer people are coming into the country."
If you looked at the estimate that is provided of how many illegal immigrants are in this country, it stayed fairly flat. But it's an estimate. So some people could also say, "Is that a good estimate?"
Because if we're getting more apprehensions, does that mean potentially more people are trying to come across and more people are able to come into the country? So I think that is one where we don't have definitive government data to say how many people are not being apprehended at the border and making their way into the country.
Guy Kawasaki:
So depending where you are in the political divide, you can use that to support your case. Both sides can support their case, right?
Poppy McDonald:
I would say depending where you are on the political spectrum, you could look at that number and say we need better data or we need more answers, for sure. We don't have a good understanding of what's actually happening.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, what's the gist of the economy? Are we doing better or worse?
Poppy McDonald:
GDP, which measures growth of the economy overall on a broad level for the country, we're doing better. For individuals, so then you would say then why are people so frustrated? The other thing we look at is for individuals, we look at the median wage adjusted for inflation, it has held relatively flat for the last twenty years.
And the cost of some goods are getting more expensive, so you've probably heard a lot about food prices or the cost of fuel, cost of housing. So for people who are at that median wage, the frustration of feeling like, "I know the economy's booming, I know unemployment is low, and yet I don't feel like I can buy the same things that I used to be able to buy on my income."
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. The last one I'm going to ask you about is crime. So is it safer or not safer to be living these days? Is crime on the rise or crime falling? And guess what? I can already tell you that the answer is going to be depends where you are in the political divide.
Poppy McDonald:
I don't think it depends on where you are at the political divide so much. Potentially, but it really depends when you look at the data, crime is falling. But I think it comes to what I said about it depends on where you live. So I would say, and in most cases it's still falling, but if you had the crime happen on your street, you're really upset about it regardless of what the national trend is.
So one of the things we really did this year at USAFacts is give people the opportunity, they find USAFacts because we're presenting the national number. They're probably Googling what's happening with crime or what's happening with housing prices.
But when you come there and you see what's happening for your country, that is less relevant than what's happening where you live. And one of the additions that we've added to our site is allowing people then to look at it by their state, by their county, and to really localize the data so that it is more relevant to the experience that person is having.
Guy Kawasaki:
I read a very interesting thing, that your organization has a data boot camp for congressional aides. Tell me about that, I want to hear about that. And why does it take nine, what is it, nine days or nine weeks?
Poppy McDonald:
Nine weeks.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why does it take nine weeks to teach congressional aides how to deal with data?
Poppy McDonald:
Great question. So we have introduced a Data Skills for Congress class. We've run it for two years now. We've had just under one hundred staff; Capitol Hill staff go through the program. And the reason we do it is because you have people who are helping write legislation, who are helping make decisions about what is the best direction of our country. And as I mentioned, it's really hard to get access to data from the government. So we want to empower those people with the skills.
And it does take nine weeks. Why does it take nine weeks? First of all, it's teaching. Where do you go to find the data? Once you find the data, how would you go about analyzing it in a way that is thoughtful and accurate? And how might you want to adjust it for inflation or how might you want to look at it based on population? So a per capita adjustment. So teaching them how to think about analyzing that data in a way that they're going to be true to what the data is saying.
And then how would you visualize that data? So that if you're trying to share that with your constituents or you want to use something on the Senate floor to show what's happening, how would you visualize it in a way that is understandable. And understanding, we also want to teach them a little bit more about the challenges with government data, how there are some gaps in what's available and how we don't really have a policy to standardize data.
To teach all of that, it does take nine weeks. It's a big commitment, but we've been really thrilled with the reception we've received. And we're actually going to double the availability of those courses next year, so it'll be offered two times. And we do it in partnership with UC Berkeley. So coming out of that program, once you graduate, the staff receive a certification from UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, so these congressional aides, they actually, in person, come to school for nine weeks. They live in Berkeley?
Poppy McDonald:
They don't go to Berkeley. We've had really great support from senators and representatives and their chiefs of staff who are thrilled to have their team participate. I don't know they'd be thrilled to have them go away for nine weeks, so we do the education mostly virtually.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, okay.
Poppy McDonald:
Some in person, and we do the in-person courses work in Washington DC. So we bring the course to them.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's great. Now, in this distribution of data and stuff, and we've talked about slicing and context and all this, how do you see LLMs playing in this game?
Poppy McDonald:
We are excited about the opportunity that AI has to empower my small but mighty team to be able to tackle these 90,000 government sources of data. And we also think it's really important to have a human in the loop at all times to verify the accuracy. Because we've done some experiments with, oh, just put an LLM on top of a government data set and we were getting garbage out of that most of the time.
So there is a lot of work that goes into structuring the data so that it is machine-readable and understandable, and we've also leveraged AI to fact check AI. Okay, great. You have written the response. Now go back and verify that the data provided can be mapped back to the original source. And then we still have a human in the loop to ensure that facts are being delivered.
And I think it's only going to get better. We're working with the US Department of Commerce right now because they were puzzled. "What do you mean you spend all this time trying to make our API data machine-readable and understandable? We should just be doing that for you."
And we're like, "That would be amazing. That would save us so much time." And we are working with the government right now to think about how to improve the way they're providing their data, not only so it's easier for USAFacts to use it, but anyone who wants to leverage AI to understand and leverage that data can do.
Guy Kawasaki:
I got to tell you, I'm so curious because you're so adept at figuring out data and the context and all that. What are your, Poppy McDonald, what are your go-to sources for news?
Poppy McDonald:
Obviously, I have a little bit of a bias because I worked at Politico, I worked at Atlantic Media, so I love Politico, I love the Atlantic. I also think it's important to get a broad swath of coverage, because I think you can become biased if you're only reading one source, no matter how strong that source is.
So I will flip around a little bit and I encourage my team to do it, turn on Fox for a little bit, listen to Megyn Kelly for a little bit. Go over and listen to MSNBC for a little bit. I love NPR, so listen to NPR quite a bit. And I will say I think it's really important to have a wide variety of your diet, especially for USAFacts as we're thinking about what are on people's minds? And we're trying to serve all Americans no matter what media they're consuming and ensuring that they have reliable facts.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you suggest that when people really want to know what's happening with crime or immigration or any of these things, come to USAFacts and we will have addressed that for you up at the state level of granularity?
Poppy McDonald:
We will get as granular as we can. So it is a big lift, but our goal is to provide data that is not only as up to date as the government has, so the latest available government data. Also, our second goal is to get it as local as possible for people.
And I will say it is big lift. I mentioned there are these 90,000 government entities and there are no standards for what data's collected, when it's reported, how it's reported. So that can look like going place by place, county by county to collect the data. So we're working as hard in furious as we can and we prioritize based on what are the biggest questions people are asking or wondering about, and let's go get that data and make it accessible.
Guy Kawasaki:
When you describe it that way, it sounds so inefficient. There's no standard in all that for government data. But I got to tell you, there's a part of me that says, "I like it that way because if it was all standardized and all controlled by one place, if that one place gets corrupted, it's over." But now, in a sense, this kind of unorganized anarchy, it may be more powerful in the long run. You may not want to hear that.
Poppy McDonald:
That's a positive spin. It makes it a lot of work for people like USAFacts, trying to help people understand not only what's happening where they live, but putting in context of what does it look like in other places across the country or in other similar cities. It's a lot of work for us and we know that people are collecting the data they think is important to their constituents, and so they're doing their best.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would say that this is analogous to, I think it's a source of strength and reassurance that Wikipedia is organized disorganization. And if it was only one source, if it was only Encyclopedia Britannica is the answer has everything, it would be a more dangerous world. So I have to ask you, what exactly does it mean to be nonpartisan?
Poppy McDonald:
Great question. So to be nonpartisan means that we use only government data, so we go straight to the source. We don't take a side, so we don't say, "And now because we show the data, this means this is the right decision or this is the thing that should be done." So we only present the facts and then we let people make their own decisions.
We don't do any forecasting or predictions. We think that's where judgment comes into place. That's part of our mantra. And when we go to Washington D.C, it's really important to us we're meeting with a bipartisan group of members. We work across administrations. So it means that we're here to provide the data and we do that behalf of all Americans.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what if you do this completely properly, completely nonpartisan, but the data just shows one side in a negative way and you're accused of being partisan because it doesn't show their preferred side in a positive way? What's the limit of nonpartisanship then? At some point, the data doesn't lie. Not everybody's going to love all the data.
Poppy McDonald:
You're right. There's not one set of all glowing data that completely supports one person's views, and our country is very complex. We find this with the State of the Union. The president is invited by Congress to deliver a State of the Union address annually.
And we went back and analyzed State of the Unions for the last a hundred years. And it's no matter who is in power, it's always, "The State of the Union is strong, never been stronger." And we're like, "Huh? I think it's a little more complicated than that."
So one of the things we did was say, "Hey, when people go to hear the president give the State of the Union, where they're going to hear everything strong and wonderful, and then they're going to hear the rebuttal where they're going to hear everything's just terrible and falling apart, they deserve something right down the middle." They deserve something that's just the facts about what is happening in this country. And certainly, some things are going well, and some things are trending not in a great direction.
So we have a product called the State of the Union. State of the Union in Numbers is what we call it. It's available on our website, and we update that every year and publish it a few weeks in advance of the State of the Union so that people can be able to go and look at the data and keep that in mind, depending on what they're hearing from the person in office.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So we've been talking about media a lot, and I want to go into your past at Politico. What is your assessment of the state of trust in media today? If you were on Threads or something, everybody hates the New York Times, everybody hates the Washington Post. Everybody hates everything depending on the day. Are we at a low point in the trust of media or is it just my filter is Threads and I'm only hearing the worst stuff?
Poppy McDonald:
By polling numbers, USAFacts doesn't publish polling numbers, but we do look at polling data to understand what is happening with trust in every major institution. And I believe, by the Gallup Poll, trust in media has fallen below trust in Congress, the lowest it has been. So it's pretty concerning to see what is happening in terms of the American public and their belief that media is a reliable source.
And what I would say is it's disappointing and sad because I've worked in media, I know how hard journalists work. I could come into the newsroom at seven in the morning or midnight, and people were buzzing and working as hard as they could to make information accessible to the public, which I really believe is an important mission. And that information being accessible isn't as valuable unless people trust that it's accurate and reliable.
And one of the things I will say that got me excited about coming to work at USAFacts is a belief that it could not only benefit the public, but it could really benefit media if they could source back to data and be able to say, "By the numbers, this is what we're seeing." I think because media works at such a frenetic pace, oftentimes their sourcing is more qualitative.
It's what this person said, and the crazier thing the person said, the more clicks it's probably going to get. And that is confusing to people, it's not reliable. And I also have empathy that somebody on a frenetic pace trying to go into a PDF document and parse out the data, they don't have time for that, and they probably don't have the skills for that.
So I do hope that USAFacts will also be a source for the media where they'll go and say, "Hey, we're covering this issue, but what is the data?" And I'm seeing a positive trend, I'm seeing more and more citations in media. So I'm hopeful that data can empower the media to start rebuilding trust as well.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you are still hopeful, you don't believe that it's fundamentally flawed and podcasts and things like that are going to take over the world of mass media?
Poppy McDonald:
I'm still hopeful. I think there is a lot of quality people who are trying really hard to make information accessible to the public. And I think grounding in the data, I'd love to hear the day when I switch to Fox and MSNBC and yes, they're having a completely different spin, but they were grounding on the same set of facts, that would rebuild trust for me. Okay, I'm getting the same foundational information, there's just a different spin on what's the right way forward.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot again, which is, let's pretend you are a billionaire, or maybe you are a billionaire, but let's pretend you are a billionaire.
Poppy McDonald:
No. Not even close.
Guy Kawasaki:
And let's say you own the Washington Post. Would you have let the Washington Post endorse a candidate? And if you wouldn't have and you wanted to change the policy of the Washington Post endorsing a candidate, when would you have let the world know that we are not going to make an endorsement?
Poppy McDonald:
So that is a great question. I came from the Atlantic and Politico where we didn't have an editorial board that published opinion, so we didn't do opinion editorials, nor did we, as a newsroom, publish an opinion on an election. So we felt in being objective, in being nonpartisan, that was not the role of our newsroom. That's where I came from. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and others have a different way of showing up.
And did Bezos make the right decision? I think that was a controversial time to make the announcement, as you mentioned, right? Right before an election. And I don't know the backstory there or why the decision was made. Far be it from me to second guess decisions that were made on behalf of the Washington Post, but it's not the tradition of newsrooms that I've been a part of.
Guy Kawasaki:
And do you think it is a better way to go that these mass media things do not endorse? Is it just better conceptually? I don't think Jeff Bezos not allowing the Washington Post to endorse a candidate really affected the election, but just backing away from 2024, is it a better practice for these publications not to endorse?
Poppy McDonald:
That is a great question. So I would say as a voter, one of the things that I do when I'm thinking about filling out my ballot, as I go right to, in this case, now that I live in the Seattle area, I go to the Seattle Times and read their coverage on the issue or on the candidate, and I see who did they endorse.
And it doesn't mean that's exactly the way I'm going to fill out my ballot, but I find it a very helpful input that, hey, some thoughtful people took the time to sit down with candidates or to sit down with people on both sides of a ballot initiative and to really understand it. I don't have the time to go into that kind of depth, and so I really appreciate that as an input.
At the same time, I think media is in a tough place right now, as the trust has eroded. And potentially showing bias by taking a stake or by endorsing a candidate, is that going to hurt their credibility more? Potentially. I think maybe potentially a compromise is opinion editorial where you get somebody to speak out on both sides of the issue and you publish that so that your reader can see both sides.
They aren't somebody who works within the newsroom, they're somebody who works outside of the organization who has been deemed to be a thoughtful advocate and can present their two sides thoroughly. That might be a nice compromise so people can still be informed, but it's not the newsroom making a decision.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think that is a brilliant answer actually. I would've respected Jeff Bezos more if he said, "All right, so we're not making an endorsement, but we have," I don't know, "Barack Obama making a case, and we have," I don't know, "Tucker Carlson," I don't know, whoever, "Joe Rogan making a case and we're publishing both." That would've been, I think, a much better solution for him.
I think I've tried to pin you down as much as I possibly can for the last fifty-two minutes and thirty-four seconds. I appreciate you bearing with me. I obviously had a lot of questions and I truly appreciate what your organization does. Why don't you finish up with just one more quick explanation of what your organization does and why people should use it and how they should use it because I think it could be a part of the equation of saving democracy.
Poppy McDonald:
Thank you, Guy. USAFacts, we're dedicated to empowering Americans with the facts. So we do that by going to over one hundred government agencies and making that data accessible and understandable. So we're looking at what are the questions Americans are asking? What's important about what's going on in our country right now? And presenting just the data so that people can make an informed decision about is our country headed in the right or wrong direction?
And you can find that information by going to USAFacts.org or by following us on Facebook, on Instagram or TikTok. And really look forward to hopefully being a resource. We also have a newsletter that goes out every week that you can subscribe to at USAFacts.org.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh my God, Poppy, you are so smooth. All of you listeners and viewers, yes, we talked about data and facts and stuff today, but today was also a lesson in how to be a guest on a podcast, which is you take whatever question and you turn it to your advantage and you say, "That is a great question," while you're thinking about the answer and all this kind of, I love this Poppy, you're my new hero in podcast guests here.
Poppy McDonald:
Thanks for having me on, Guy. I really appreciate the conversation.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes, yes. So listen, I just want to thank everybody for listening, and Poppy and Caitlin, and thank you for making this happen. And Madisun Nuismer is our ace producer and co-author, and Tessa Nuismer is our researcher, and we have Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez who's making this come out really beautifully, so that's Remarkable People. And I want to thank you for listening or watching. And until next week, mahalo and aloha.