How UNASB Impacted My 2025

How being a part of the UNASB has helped us build community, develop empathy, and remain hopeful in a year where things have been really, really cooked.

A couple weeks ago, ~ 20 LA-based Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath (UNASB) members made it outside the group chat and met up for the third time this year. ICYMI, we’ve spent the last year meeting biweekly via Zoom to discuss right-wing podcast episodes with hundreds of strangers from across the country in hopes to be able to start having long-term persuasive conversations with the apolitical or right-leaning people in our lives who are consuming this. Given our usual interactions are virtual, our UNASB in-person meet ups are a special touchpoint that don’t require hours of consuming Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens beforehand.

However, in true UNASB fashion, we couldn’t be totally chill and felt the need to collectively share “how has your thinking/perspective changed from Dec 2024--Dec 2025?” for each of us. You may think standing in the middle of a food hall in LA, answering a question that inevitably takes you all to a pretty real and candid place, sounds terrible, but alas, new year new us.

The last year has been particularly brutal, and things are bad—potentially worse than any of us thought

As I was reflecting on my answer, I was struck by how I could barely pinpoint a single memory from last December. It was an amorphous black hole of sadness, anger, frustration, disbelief, and deep-seated fear for our country—which is basically how the rest of the year felt, too. While we went around the circle, many of us expressed feeling jaded, and in some ways, even more so after we dug into the right-wing media machine. Listening to hours of everyone from Candace Owens to Peter Thiel was eye-opening and terrifying, but the massive audiences consuming it are perhaps even more staggering. They are cruel and ignorant. The content is appalling. The hate is real. UNASB has allowed us the space to conceptualize the fact that a lot of people are moved by this content and shock-driven algorithms are fueling it at an alarming pace.

Despite all of this, many of us mentioned having more empathy towards the other side

A lot of people expressed having much more empathy and understanding for those who voted for, supported, or even passively stood by this evil regime. In 2016 and even 2024, many of our approaches looked like, “You all created this hellscape, and therefore you deserve every bad thing that happens,” which in practice looked like unfollowing/blocking people on Instagram and multiple bitch sessions to people who wholeheartedly agree with us about our dumb childhood friends or racist uncles. Exposing ourselves to this content has helped us all realize just how persuasive and compelling the right’s messaging is and it’s motivated us to be active participants instead of passive haters. Given how lonely, scared, and desperate people are, it makes sense they’ve found respite in these echo chambers that are feeding them everything from religious text to convenient scapegoats. Where we used to slam the door shut, this year, being a part of UNASB has forced us to reflect and ultimately come to the conclusion that nothing will change unless we open the door and invite people in.

Community is the point

We all feel the impacts of the loneliness epidemic, and I definitely don’t need to sit here and tell anyone how hard it is out here to create new, sustainable connections. What we all seemed to share while standing in that circle was that UNASB didn’t take away how jaded we were; it gave us a place to process, learn, and grow alongside non-judgey ass people who genuinely want the same thing - a more humane and cohesive country that works together to improve the lives of everyone in it. We all show up and engage every other Monday for no other reason than that we want to be there, for ourselves and for each other, building community bit by bit that we want to bring others into.

The grief is immense, and so are the joys

The biggest difference between today and 12 months ago is not that things are all that much better; it’s that for this extraordinary group of people, we are allowing the good and the bad to coexist. We shared our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual highs and lows of the last year, but we also enjoyed delicious soup flights, cheese pizza, and laughed about hangovers. We talked about struggles and triumphs with our families and jobs while watching Red Zone and discussing our fantasy football teams. People exchanged wine, candles, and hand-knitted socks, despite having met in person only a handful of times (or never at all). We feed each other’s motivation on the good days and serve as tangible reminders of hope on the bad ones. These connections have transcended our bi-weekly virtual meetups and have transformed into deeply valuable relationships that are rooted in shared respect, curiosity, and a deep desire to help make real improvements in the lives of all Americans.

There’s a beautiful saying in Spanish: “Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo,” which essentially means only the people can save the people. It’s going to take more than the members of UNASB to rechart the course our country is on, but I’m hopeful that when I’m writing this next year, we’ll be continuing to grow this incredible community that is trying to do just that in every food hall, dining room table, and computer screen across the U.S.