When that same daughter started preparing to get her driver’s permit, I realized again that she needed a skill, and I am the skill-builder. Even though I’ve been driving for 3 decades, I have no idea how to teach another person to drive. Marc Weissbluth didn’t have me covered this time. That’s why Sarah and I were thrilled when long-time listener and executive producer Kelly Stulce introduced us to Dr. Charlie Klauer.

Dr. Klauer has been studying teen driving for 15 years, and she’s in the process of writing the parenting Bible we all need.

Topics Discussed

• Why teen driving is more dangerous than most parents realize

• How to structure the learner's permit period for maximum practice

• Night driving, interstate driving, and other milestone moments to sequence carefully

• How parents' own driving habits shape teens behind the wheel

• Apps and tools for monitoring teen drivers without being in the car

• Why giving a teen "their own" car may increase risky driving

• At what age teens should start learning — and why waiting until 18 isn't the answer

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Episode Resources

Dr. Klauer’s survey

Join us for our Live Show in Minneapolis. Get your tickets to the show, or to join us virtually here.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:09] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:10] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we’re bringing you an episode that we really needed, like personally. We’re talking about one of the most dangerous things our kids will ever do, and one of the things we feel least prepared for as parents- teen driving. Our longtime beloved listener and executive producer, Kelly, introduced us to today’s guest, Dr. Dr. Charlie Klauer, who has spent 15 years doing research on how teens drive. Not how they say they drive, how they actually drive, and we are so excited for you to hear our conversation about what she’s learned. And Outside of Politics, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane and talk about our first cars.

[00:00:49] Beth: Before we get started, if you’re not able to drive to Minneapolis or otherwise join us there live, we still would love for you to be part of our one and only live show this year, which is taking place on August 29th. A virtual ticket will let you watch live or any time after when you’re able to really snuggle up on your couch with a crispy Diet Coke or a cup of coffee or whatever your beverage of choice is. We want you to come so much that we’re running a special right now. If you buy a virtual ticket, we’ll give you a second one at half price to share with a friend. We hope that makes it feel even more like being there in person because you’ll have someone to chat with about it afterward. All the links you need are in the show notes.

[00:01:25] Sarah: Up next, Dr. Charlie Klauer. Dr. Charlie Klauer, welcome to Pantsuit Politics. One of our listeners, Kelly, reached out and said to us after she heard our conversation about teen driving, “I know exactly who you should talk to.” Tell us why she knew we should talk to you. Tell everybody about your area of expertise.

[00:01:45] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I am a teen driving expert. I have been doing teen driving research or transportation research for the last 15 years, and in that timeframe, we have done several naturalistic driving studies of teen drivers where we have instrumented their vehicles with cameras and data acquisition systems, so we knew exactly how fast they were going, how hard they were braking, where they were on the map in the world, and continuously for their first year of driving.

[00:02:13] Sarah: Wow.

[00:02:14] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And during that, with that data and using all of those data, we have really learned a lot about the risks facing teen drivers and what their parents have been doing and can do and should do moving forward to really try to keep our teen drivers as safe as possible.

[00:02:31] Sarah: So my first question is, what do we get right? What do we understand well and correctly about teen driving, the risk, and instructing them? Oh my gosh, you’re hesitating. That concerns me.

[00:02:42] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah. I’m thinking about that. I think we have a normal curve or a continuum of parents out there, and many of them really want to believe that their teens are safe drivers and that we don’t need to be concerned about them and that they’re going to do great. And there is a population of teen drivers who are safe and are well, are driving well and driving safe and are able to minimize their own risks of being involved in a crash. But there are other teen drivers who are not. And one of the things that we have learned about teen drivers is that when their parents are in the car, they drive a lot more like their parents than when their parents are not in the car. And so just because you as a parent believe that your teen is safe does not necessarily mean that’s true when you’re not in the car with them. So we as parents need to trust but verify, and there’s a lot of ways to do that, and we can talk about that certainly, but driving is one of the things that is the biggest killer of our teens. Motor vehicle crashes kill more of our adolescents than anything else.

[00:03:50] Sarah: Wow.

[00:03:50] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And certainly injuries are also very high. So this is a very important aspect of growing up and becoming an adult, and it’s something that we as parents put them in their car seats, we buckle their car seats, we make them wear their bicycle helmets. We are very safety-conscious all of their lives, and driving is not where we should be dropping the ball. We really need to still be paying attention and monitoring and making sure that our teens are as safe as possible.

[00:04:20] Beth: I wonder if we drop the ball because it really is overwhelming to think about how dangerous driving is.

[00:04:25] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Oh it’s very scary.

[00:04:25] Beth: I had a conversation with my daughters recently and my older daughter just got her permit. And I said, “ Unless you are in the military or law enforcement or a first responder, there are very few things in your life you’ll do that are more dangerous than driving a car. So we really have to take this seriously.” And afterwards, I thought, “Did I lay that on a little thick?” So I wonder how you set the stage. What kinds of conversations do you recommend having before they get behind the wheel about the risks here?

[00:04:54] Dr. Charlie Klauer: So, yeah, and you can also scare them to the point where they don’t want to drive, and that’s also not a great thing either. I like to think about driving as any other skill. You watch your child learn to play a musical instrument. You watch your child learn to play a sport. And what do they do? They practice. They practice and practice. And the more practice they have, the better they are. And that’s also true with driving. Driving is a skill like anything else, and they need to practice. And so one of the things that I really have been thinking about a lot is how do we allow our teens to get the practice that they need and also remain safe, and safe as possible. So that is the learner’s permit. When parents are riding with their teens, and I get it, parents, it’s extremely scary.

[00:05:40] Sarah: So stressful.

[00:05:42] Dr. Charlie Klauer: It’s very scary to ride with them.

[00:05:44] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:05:44] Dr. Charlie Klauer: But you need to start out slow. And one of the things that my husband and I did, which actually was my husband’s idea, and I thought it was brilliant was that the very first time that my son got behind the wheel, it was in an empty parking lot, which you would expect, but he was not allowed to use the accelerator. He could only use the brake.

[00:06:03] Sarah: Oh.

[00:06:04] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And he just maneuvered around the parking lot with the brake only, and my husband had him turn, use the left, you’re going to turn left. Use the left turn signal. Right turn signal. Windshield wipers. Lights. Radio. All the things that you need to know where they are in the car while you’re driving, and he just practiced that over and over. No accelerator, just the brake, in and out of parking spots, et cetera.

[00:06:30] Sarah: That’s a good idea.

[00:06:31] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And so when Gareth finally did get on a public road, he knew where all that was. That wasn’t something he was fumbling around for.

[00:06:39] Sarah: I like that.

[00:06:40] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And then next he did use the accelerator in the parking lot, and got up to a little bit faster speeds and learned control maneuvers. And then they went out on the public road.

[00:06:49] Beth: The first thing I had my daughter do was just take her foot off the brake too. And her face her eyes were so wide that the car moved at all without touching the accelerator. It was a very funny moment.

[00:06:59] Sarah: Yeah. You realize how little they know the second you put them behind the wheel about how a car functions.

[00:07:03] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yes.

[00:07:04] Sarah: Mine tried to put both feet on; one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. Both of them did that. Yeah.

[00:07:10] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah. It is very interesting. You think that they know a lot more than they really do, and that’s true, I think, throughout the entire process.

[00:07:17] Sarah: That’s just true in parenting. The knowledge gap is real, man. That was a lot of what I struggled with toddlers is you feel like they should know, but they don’t know. Just because they can talk doesn’t mean they know. I think that’s a really big one. What I’ve tried to do with my second son is just do some golf carts. Golf carts are a decent start. You get the handle of it. And I didn’t do any of that with my first son, and I wish I had.

[00:07:39] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah. No, just the pedals and where the pedals are, and getting that motion. And, even, those tiny little electric cars that they drive around as toddlers.

[00:07:47] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:07:48] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Understanding how that wheel turns and that moves that vehicle, that’s also a skill.

[00:08:04] Sarah: So what is your stance on driving schools? Because my oldest son took driving lessons from one of our local schools, and I felt like that helped him a lot. But is that me just outsourcing because I don’t want to be in the car and see what he’s actually doing?

[00:08:16] Dr. Charlie Klauer: No. I do think you should ride with your son so you know what he’s doing. But no, I think professional driving schools where they are teaching behind-the-wheel classes and skills that’s great. That is an outstanding thing to do. There are other schools that teach advanced driving.

[00:08:33] Sarah: I need one of those because I’m hitting a wall with interstate driving. It gives me so much anxiety.

[00:08:40] Dr. Charlie Klauer: So interstate driving, I think that could be done in the schools that we’re talking about. In the professional behind-the-wheel type classes. They should be taking them out on the interstate, for sure.

[00:08:48] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:08:49] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I’m talking about some advanced skills training like skid training and recovering from loss of control and skidding and ice and snow and things like that or hydroplaning. The results and the research on those are mixed in that if a teen goes through that, then they also believe they can recover, and they end up driving in those conditions more often than they would’ve otherwise. And it isn’t necessarily even very skilled police officers get in situations that they can’t recover from.

[00:09:20] Sarah: Can I be honest? I don’t know how to do that.

[00:09:23] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah.

[00:09:23] Sarah: I don’t think I know how to come out of a hydroplane.  Yeah. I’m just being honest.

[00:09:27] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And how long have you been driving? And driving safely?

[00:09:30] Sarah: Yeah, for 30 years.

[00:09:31] Dr. Charlie Klauer: The point is that you’re trying not to get into those situations.

[00:09:33] Sarah: Yeah. You avoid them.

[00:09:35] Beth: Can you talk us through that progression? So from the parking lot to starting to drive. What are the stages of additional responsibility? So part of what I’ve been thinking about is when do we let her drive at night? How do we progress here?

[00:09:49] Dr. Charlie Klauer: So during the learner’s permit, when you are still with your child and teaching them to drive, I highly recommend that they get some practice at night. And in the state of Virginia, where I’m from, of the 45 hours, 10 of them are supposed to be at night.

[00:10:04] Sarah: Kentucky’s like that too.

[00:10:05] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And every state is different. But they really need, during that learner’s permit, to get exposure to as many different environments as possible, and driving at night is one of them. And we’ve done a lot of research in this space where we’re quite certain that part of the reason why that risk goes up so much at night is not just that there’s a bunch of kids in the car and they’re doing a wide variety of other things, but they really do not understand how little they can see even with headlights. They are actually nearly out-driving their headlights when they’re speeding. And there’s a lot of things they’re missing.

[00:10:38] Sarah:  Out-driving your Headlights.

[00:10:39] Beth: I know. I thought, “I’m going to hold onto that phrase.”

[00:10:42] Sarah: I’m going to hold onto that.

[00:10:44] Dr. Charlie Klauer: They really don’t understand how much they’re missing, and that’s why we do see very high crash rates. And in our data, we also see near crashes and other safety critical event type things, and a lot of that is occurring at night, and certainly in those early months of driving when they just really don’t have the experience yet. So as much practice during learner’s permit at night is a really good idea. But once they do start driving independently, I do recommend to parents that they only allow them to drive independently during daylight hours for the first three to six months.

[00:11:15] Sarah: Okay.  That’s good advice.

[00:11:17] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Give them practice when they really can see, and then slowly, once they’ve been driving and they’ve driven successfully, then you start, maybe dusk and maybe a little bit into darkness. But even 10:00 to midnight or midnight it’s not necessary, right?

[00:11:31] Sarah: Yeah. They shouldn’t be out anywhere. They’re just getting into trouble.

[00:11:35] Dr. Charlie Klauer: No, it’s not a good idea.

[00:11:37] Sarah: Here’s where I’m at. So my 16-year-old has now been driving for about three, four months. So but he’s driving around my town in a stick shift at 35 miles per hour. You know what I’m saying? He’s just not going a lot of places. So we’re trying to build up to the interstate driving and all of this. But I am interested in this trust but verify situation you have since he’s driving independently so much. Tell me more about that.

[00:12:04] Dr. Charlie Klauer: So there are a wide variety of different cellphone apps or insurance apps that you could get. A lot of parents I know use Life360. I do.

[00:12:14] Sarah: I have that.

[00:12:15] Dr. Charlie Klauer: If you pay for Life360, you get driving information.

[00:12:19] Sarah: Okay.

[00:12:19] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Including how fast they’re going. Every trip it’ll tell you if they exceeded the speed limit. It’ll tell you if they had a hard braking event and where it was. They will tell you if they’ve been using their phone while they were driving And- Oh, I’m

[00:12:34] Sarah: I’m going to do that.

[00:12:34] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I use that.

[00:12:36] Sarah: Okay.

[00:12:36] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I use that. We as parents, we are stalkers for sure. I am guilty. Guilty as charged. I do watch a little bit to see-

[00:12:43] Sarah:  Because you did research and research, and then you actually had to teach a kid to drive. So was there anything that you were like, “Oh my gosh, even I didn’t understand it until I actually had to teach my son”?

[00:12:54] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yes. And one of those things is how the questions that he had, the knowledge gap was significant, and was more than I thought. I thought he understood. And then certainly after we practiced for over a year with Garrett.

[00:13:07] Sarah: Wow.

[00:13:07] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And then he did start driving independently, but we did not allow him to have his own car. So he continued to drive my husband and I around quite a bit, even after he got his license, which I strongly recommend. And there was still conversations about protected arrows, protected left turns. There was still conversations about merge ramps. There was still conversations about speed limits. There was still a fair bit he didn’t know. And certainly when he drove in newer environments and environments he wasn’t familiar with, there were also other questions that came up. And so that’s another piece of advice for parents, is once they are driving independently, that doesn’t mean your job is over. You really still need to continue to ride. And certainly, that first few times they drive at night, those first few times they’re driving in a new location or on the interstate or to a specific shopping mall that may be an hour and a half away, it might be good to ride with them a few times before they do it on their own.

[00:14:08] Sarah: I needed to hear that because I hate riding with him, so I just try to avoid it.

[00:14:11] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I know ...

[00:14:12] Sarah:  I needed this admonish. Okay. I’ll do better.

[00:14:14] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I do hear you. It is scary.

[00:14:17] Sarah: It’s so scary.

[00:14:18] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I guarantee you that they’re driving much more safely with you than if you’re not there.

[00:14:22] Beth: Tell us in this teaching period, as they’re learning, whether they have their permit or they have a new license and we’re still with them a lot, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen parents make in that kind of coaching role?

[00:14:35] Dr. Charlie Klauer: So we all have our own biases. And so this is where this normal curve, the whole gamut of skills and talents comes in because we all drive and we all see those people who are speeding and who are driving aggressively and who don’t wear their seatbelt, et cetera, and those are parents. And teens who watch their parents drive that way are going to drive that way. And so we have witnessed and heard parents coaching their kids on driving that way.

[00:15:04] Beth: People who know they’re being recorded are being unsafe and they don’t-- I don’t understand.

[00:15:10] Sarah: If they’re being recorded for a year, Beth, it just becomes so normalized, I guess so they forget.

[00:15:13] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah, they do forget.

[00:15:14] Sarah: But this makes perfect sense to me. This is all parenting. They do what you do not what you say.

[00:15:19] Beth: That’s right.

[00:15:19] Dr. Charlie Klauer: That’s right. And parents have their own believe that this is a safe way to drive. And so they’re teaching their teen that.

[00:15:26] Sarah: So maybe the parents should take the driver’s test first before giving it to their kids.

[00:15:33] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah. It is very interesting to see that.

[00:15:36] Sarah: Wait, I have an idea. What if you, before you started teaching your kids, turned on Life360 and got your own driver’s report.

[00:15:46] Dr. Charlie Klauer: See, this is good. And would you want to see your teen drive that way?

[00:15:49] Sarah: No.

[00:15:49] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:15:52] Beth: So our own driving is one factor. Underestimating that sort of knowledge gap is another thing to be mindful of. What else would you put in a best practice or definitely avoid bucket?

[00:16:06] Sarah: Thinking you’re done when they’re already independent and they have their license. That was me.

[00:16:10] Dr. Charlie Klauer: One of the biggest things I think, you know, parents, they’re tired of driving their kids around. And so once their teen has their license, they feel like, “Oh my gosh, now they can drive themselves and I don’t necessarily have to go everywhere all the time.” And they also give them a car. And we have evidence and research and data to suggest that teens who have their own car also drive more risky than teens who have to ask their parents

[00:16:37] Sarah: I made all these mistakes, Dr. Klauer. You’re really kind of... I failed.

[00:16:42] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I would not recommend giving your teen access. Now, you can purchase another car for them, but maybe don’t frame it that it’s theirs.

[00:16:49] Sarah: Oh no, I didn’t do that. I said, “This is my car. I’m letting you drive.” Yeah. No, I did not say, “This is your car.” No. This is my car that I’m letting you drive. That’s right.

[00:16:56] Beth: What is the distinction there in terms of the impact on their behavior?

[00:17:01] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I think I need more research. I need more data to really analyze that, but my hypothesis is that asking for the keys every time and going through the whole thing about where I’m going, who I’m with, et cetera, changes that equation a little bit in that they still know that you are paying attention, and they if anything goes wrong, then they may not be able to go the next time.

[00:17:21] Beth: So we don’t want them to be casual about it. Okay.

[00:17:24] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah. It is a privilege, and they need to think about it that way. And they are driving a two, three or 4,000 pound vehicle down the highway that can cause a lot of damage to them, to others, and it’s very important that they understand that responsibility.

[00:17:41] Sarah: And I’ll tell you another blind spot that happens is it’s like my son, he’s especially because his he drives a Mini Cooper that’s a stick shift. Now, I picked the stick shift because I thought you can’t be on your phone and drive a stick shift. Yeah. Not at 35 miles an hour. Not without a lot of practice. But now he’s so comfortable in his car that he doesn’t want to drive a bigger car on the interstate. He’s getting where he’s kind of locked in on he feels comfortable only in that car as opposed to being comfortable driving no matter the car. You know what I mean? I think that’s kind of a risk, too. Because you really want them to be comfortable driving, not comfortable with the car. You see what I’m saying?

[00:18:19] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I do see what you’re saying.

[00:18:20] Sarah: Because you have to learn every car’s a little different. That’s true. The gas is different. The accelerator is different. Like, all that is different ...

[00:18:27] Beth:  I guess  the question I would have piggybacking off of that is what stage is that? I need a chart. You know what I mean? Where it’s like first we’re in the parking lot. And then we’re on a street, and then we’re here, and then we do a night, and then we move to a different car.

[00:18:41] Sarah: We do a rain, yeah.

[00:18:44] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah. I like the chart idea. I think that’s really good. But as far as being able to drive multiple cars or just one car, I think there may be a timeframe where just driving one car and being really comfortable and understanding that one car is okay until-

[00:18:57] Sarah:  Oh, well good. Finally something I didn’t totally screw up. That makes me feel a little bit better.

[00:19:02] Dr. Charlie Klauer: And maybe later forcing multiple cars and understanding how different cars may respond.

[00:19:07] Sarah: Beth’s request for a chart is a good transition. So you have a request of our audience. We have a lot of parents in our audience that have either taught a teen to drive or are in the process of teaching a teen to drive, and you have created a survey so that we can ask these parents, what are you looking for? What do you need? Do you need a chart? Do you need a schedule? What are you missing? What was frustrating? Because you’re hoping to take all this data and make a more practical guide for parents. And so we’re going to link to that survey in the show notes for people. Because people have a lot. Listen, we’ve talked about this already. We know from our audience, they have lots of thoughts.

[00:19:48] Beth: Yeah, I would ask everyone to fill it out fast so that Dr. Klauer can get this to me ASAP.  I need this right away.

[00:19:54] Sarah: Yeah. I also have a 14-year-old. So the chart would be helpful, especially because-- this is my last question to you-- in Kentucky, they just changed the permit to 15. What is your stance on this, the age at which we should all be doing this?

[00:20:07] Dr. Charlie Klauer: In Europe and other international countries, typically the driving age is older. However, their public transportation is typically better in general than it is in the United States. I grew up in South Dakota. We get our learner’s permit at 13, and I was driving at 14.

[00:20:22] Sarah: Look at our faces.

[00:20:23] Dr. Charlie Klauer: They still can drive independently at 14 in South Dakota and many of those upper Midwest states. But you also have to realize there is absolutely no public transportation. There’s also very little traffic, and it’s flat and you can see the long ways. And so I’m actually not as concerned about that.

[00:20:41] Sarah: Okay, that makes me feel a little bit better, actually.

[00:20:44] Dr. Charlie Klauer: I also think that if we waited until 18 when our kids went to college and then think they’re going to learn to drive at 18- A, that doesn’t give us enough time to practice with them, and B, it just it scrunches that time a lot. I’m actually not a proponent of that.

[00:20:59] Sarah:  And just like academically, 15, 16’s a pretty good age because they’re like classes aren’t super hard. They’re not trying to get into college. You’ve got some time to kind of concentrate on it.

[00:21:09] Dr. Charlie Klauer: That’s right. And practice. Like I said, really taking a long time to practice with your teen and getting them a lot of experience behind the wheel before you let them drive independently, but then still riding with them periodically once they’re driving independently and having the time to do that, I think is a really important step. But also stepping through their privileges of driving in different areas and different environments and different nighttime and interstate and distance. Yeah. Distance is a big deal. Making sure that they’re ready to do that when they’re allowed to do so. And parent-teen driving contracts are a great option to really be able to set that up upfront, and I can send you several links of versions of those-

[00:21:48] Beth: Yes. We’d like those very much. Thank you.

[00:21:50] Dr. Charlie Klauer: They’re very helpful in kind of setting expectations especially for your young teen driver so that they know what’s going to happen when they are able to drive.

[00:21:58] Sarah: Okay. This is very helpful. Everybody fill out these surveys fast. We need these tools. We need the contracts. We need the schedules. We need the tips. We need the book. We need all of it. Thank you so much. This has been so helpful.

[00:22:11] Beth:  It really does feel like this incredible responsibility that we have as parents that we have so few resources to guide us through. I think about the value to me of this book about sleep for little ones that that became my bible for a number of years. I need that book around teen driving.

[00:22:32] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Yeah.  I totally agree.

[00:22:34] Beth: Just take me through the whole process.

[00:22:36] Dr. Charlie Klauer: That’s the information I need. I really feel like there’s a hole and there’s a gap out there, and I would like to be able to fill that for parents.

[00:22:43] Sarah: Listen, we’re here for you. We’re going to pass out this link.

[00:22:46] Beth: We’ll be your  personal book ambassadors.

[00:22:48] Sarah: We’re so glad Kelly recommended you. This has been enormously helpful. I have a feeling this will not be the only time you’re on the show. So thank you so much.

[00:22:56] Dr. Charlie Klauer: Great. My pleasure.

[00:23:08] Sarah: All right, Beth, what was your first car?

[00:23:10] Beth: It was a Mercury Topaz.

[00:23:14] Sarah: Wow.

[00:23:14] Beth: I believe it was a 1989.

[00:23:16] Sarah: Wait, was the color topaz, or the car  itself?

[00:23:19] Beth: No, the car make was a Topaz. Okay. And the color was, like, a baby blue.

[00:23:24] Sarah: Wow.

[00:23:25] Beth: Yeah

[00:23:27] Sarah: First of all, that’s how old we are, because both of our cars were colors. Mine was a red Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, two-door. I loved that car.

[00:23:39] Beth: Two-door. Nice.

[00:23:40] Sarah: It was like a tank. It was so heavy. My family owns a used car dealership, so it was used, but it was, like, really nice. So it was like a luxury car, but it was like a luxury car from the late ‘80s, maybe early. I don’t know what year it was. So it had like leather interior, all the nice, Fancy, super nice radio functions. It had all the fancy car stuff, it was just older. But I loved that car. I loved my red Cutlass.

[00:24:08] Beth: Yeah. I loved my car too. I just remember being able to get in and turn the radio on and listen to whatever I wanted to, maybe roll the windows down. It just felt like a level of control over my own world that I had never experienced before.

[00:24:26] Sarah: Yeah, I think I had a sunroof, so like I could really make it happen.

[00:24:30] Beth: You’re just bragging now.

[00:24:31] Sarah: I am. It was a nice car, and I was so bummed when it broke because... Although then I think my aunt’s father took it and he got it working, and I was like then I want it back. I gave it up because I thought it was, like, permanently broken. because then I drove my mom’s Camry, which was fine, and then I wrecked it. And then the next car I got that was all mine was like a minivan. I like my minivans, but not the same. It’s not that same feeling of independence. And I tore the road up between Paducah and Lexington going to Transy in that Oldsmobile because I had it, I think, my first three years of college, and it was so comfy, and I would just-

[00:25:07] Beth: I didn’t get to keep my Mercury Topaz very long. It was totaled in my terrible car accident. But it protected me. It took really good care of me. The entirety of the front of the car was, like, folded into the dashboard in my accident. When I saw pictures of it, I was like, “How am I alive? Thank you, Mercury Topaz.” Then I got a 1992 Mercury Sable which was like a--

[00:25:24] Sarah: I’m sorry, are you a big Mercury family?

[00:25:26] Beth: I don’t really know why my parents bought. I didn’t have any say in these cars. I was just thrilled and grateful that my parents got me cars.

[00:25:32] Sarah: Wait. This is a good part of this. How did you get the car when you turned 16? Was it like a surprise? How did you get the car?

[00:25:37] Beth: No, I just remember one day Dad being like, “We got you a car. Here it is,” and I was so happy. And the deal was that they would pay for the car and pay for my gas if I took my sister wherever she needed to go. And my sister, who’s 12 years younger than me, at the time needed to go to daycare every day. So I took her on my way to high school to daycare. And brought her home most days too. And carted her all over the place to the point that people thought she was my child. I learned early on, like, how to safely get a kid in and out of a car, and how to have a kid chirping at you in the backseat while you’re driving, and it was great.

[00:26:14] Sarah: I got my car in the parking lot after I passed my driver’s test. I came out and they filmed me. I think there’s video of it. I will see if I can hunt it down. because my mom filmed it so my dad could see of me getting the car. because I think they told me I wasn’t going to get a car immediately, or they told me... I remember Ron telling me he was going to get me some Lincoln Town Car and really ribbing me about it. So when I came out and saw this red two-door car, obviously I was thrilled. But it was so big and so heavy I rear-ended a friend who had a newer car, and that shit crumpled like tin, and my car, nary a scratch. Because it was, like, such a big, heavy car. I’m driving Griffin’s first car right now, the Mini Cooper, and it’s giving me a similar feel. Those Mini Coopers are, like, heavy. It’s a heavy car. You can kind of just feel it. Low to the ground, heavy. But yeah, I loved that car, and I was so excited to get it. And I think I had to pay for some of my gas because I remember being, like, very consumed when it was starting to get over a dollar. And I would get $5 at a time or $10 at a time. I did a lot of that. So I think I had to pay for some of my gas

[00:27:16] Beth: I was just teaching Jane how to do that. Like, when you’re short on cash you tick it up to just, 15, 20, whatever you can do.

[00:27:21] Sarah: I had a real teen texting parent moment when Griffin took my car to summer camp, and he was like, “ it’s half empty. How many gallons is it to fill it up?” And I was like, I don’t understand the question. You fill it up till it clicks and it’s full.” And he’s like, “Oh, it’ll do that?” I’m like, “You’ve been driving for a year.” He’s like, “I just know how big my tank is.” I’m like, “Oh, my God. Yes, babe, you can just fill it up till it clicks off, sweetheart. Good to know that you’re out there driving and don’t even know that it’ll... generates a lot of confidence, that kind of thing. I did not do enough teaching at the gas pump, to throw back to our conversation. I was so consumed with the driving. He got gas all over him one time or he didn’t know how to pay. I should’ve done a lesson just at the gas station, just FYI, if you’re out there about to teach a kid.

[00:28:01] Beth: As Jane has been learning to drive, the thing that she forgets most often is to actually turn the car off.

[00:28:06] Sarah: Oh.

[00:28:06] Beth: She puts it in park and is ready to just get out and walk away, and I’m like, “You do have to turn this car off.” I recognize that there are cars that will turn themselves off, but this is not one of them.

[00:28:15] Sarah: The knowledge gap is real. The knowledge gap is real.

[00:28:20] Beth: So many things to learn. We’d love to hear about your first cars. I think it’s fun to know what people drove and how it shaped them. And were your cars colorful?

[00:28:28] Sarah: God, I hate the lack of colorful cars now. We’ve covered this before, but it’s worth repeating. Thank you for joining us. We hope this conversation in particular with Dr. Charlie was helpful. Next week, Beth is heading on vacation, and I’ll be here holding down the fort along with some very special guest hosts. You’re going to want to check that out. Until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Outside of politics, Sarah is turning 45 today and has a project to celebrate this milestone that will take her up to age 50.

Topics Discussed

• How the organ transplant system actually works (it’s not really a list)

• Why doctors can refuse organs offered to their patients — and patients are never told

• What federal pressure on organ procurement organizations produced in Kentucky

• How the priority list was being bypassed 20% of the time — and why time pressure wasn’t actually the reason

• Wealthy foreign nationals getting faster organ access at certain U.S. hospitals

• What’s changed since Brian’s reporting and what reforms are now in place

• The future of organ donation: animal organs, AI matching, printed organs

Episode Resources

• Federal investigation into organ donation safety and the Kentucky OPO (New York Times)

• How organ procurement organizations bypass the transplant waiting list (New York Times)

• How paired organ donation works through the National Kidney Registry (New York Times)

• Wealthy foreign nationals receiving organ transplants at U.S. hospitals (New York Times)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:13] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we are talking with Brian Rosenthal, an investigative reporter at The New York Times who has written some blockbuster pieces on organ donation. Organ donation has been on our list for a long time. It’s layered, it’s personal, the stakes are high, the resources are constrained, the process is opaque. So we are very happy that Brian is here to help us understand where the system has come up short and what’s improving.

[00:00:38] Sarah: I was obsessed with these pieces, and I stalked Brian until we got him on our show. That’s what happened.

[00:00:43] Beth: And we waited a long time because Brian was on parental leave. We’re so happy for him. Congratulations to Brian and his family. It was worth the wait.

[00:00:48] Sarah: It was.

[00:00:48] Beth: And I hope that you all learn as much from this conversation as we did. And then Outside of Politics, happy birthday, Sarah. We are celebrating the big 45.

[00:00:57] Sarah: It’s the big 45. I want to tell you about my birthday project. I got a birthday project that’s going to take me to 50, Beth, and I want to tell everybody about it Outside of Politics.

[00:01:08] Beth: Okay. I’m ready.

[00:01:09] Sarah: Before we dive in, our one and only live show of the year is happening in Minneapolis on August 29th. We’re about a month away, and we want you to be there. Even if you can’t be there, our virtual tickets let you watch live or catch it later. Right now, when you buy one virtual ticket, you can get a second at half price. So grab one for a friend, and you can discuss it together over snacks or during a walk. All the details are in the show notes. Brian, welcome to Pantsuit Politics.

[00:01:50] Brian Rosenthal: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:51] Sarah: I have a personal question first. How the hell did you end up with the organ beat at The New York Times?

[00:01:59] Brian Rosenthal: I’m an investigative reporter which means I don’t have a specific beat normally. I just roam around and look for interesting topics that should be investigated. So I’ve done investigations on all kinds of topics. In this case, interestingly enough the idea actually came from I was attending a wedding several years ago and a friend of a friend who happened to also be attending the wedding got to talking with me and I mentioned that I was a reporter at The New York Times and they said here’s what you should look into, it is the organ transplant system. They worked at a hospital and I started looking into it and found that indeed there were a lot of important and interesting things to look into.

[00:02:48] Sarah: How many times does somebody say that to you as a New York Times reporter, though, that it doesn’t go anywhere?

[00:02:55] Brian Rosenthal: A lot.

[00:02:56] Sarah: I don’t know if you’re taking suggestions because I’ll have some for you at the end of this show.

[00:03:00] Brian Rosenthal: I will take them. And I always say tell us your ideas. Tell us what your hunch is. Like, whenever people are upset about something not being covered, I always say have you told a journalist about it? We’re not mind readers. We can’t just come up with this ourselves. People have to tell us about it.

[00:03:19] Beth: I love that. So when you say that you started to look into it, what’s that process like? I kept reading your work thinking, where do you begin with this?

[00:03:27] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah. Whenever I dive into a topic like this, the first thing I want to do is read everything that’s already been written. And obviously, I will look in The New York Times at all the stories that have been written about organ donation, organ transplant over the decades really. But then I’ll also look at other news organizations. In this case, The Washington Post had done a lot of coverage in recent years, as had ProPublica. So looking at other news organizations, and for something like this, there are a lot of scientific studies too. And so trying to read the scientific studies, the reports that have been produced by the government that’s always step one and that can take days or weeks even just to get through that. Then my next step is always just to have general conversations with people in the community, the agency, the industry, whatever it is I’m investigating, and just asking them what are the big issues, what do they think has not received enough coverage what should I be keeping in mind? That process can take weeks too.

[00:04:32] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:04:32] Brian Rosenthal: It’s a lot of time just getting up to speed.

[00:04:36] Beth: The community, the agency, the industry seems like a helpful series of words because reading about this, I kept thinking, “What? What is this system?” So can you tell us, for those of us who’ve really not done anything but check the box on our driver’s license, how you think of what this system is?

[00:04:55] Brian Rosenthal: I had no idea how it worked at all. I kind of thought that if you need a transplant, your doctor gets you on the list. That’s the one thing I thought I knew is that there’s a list. And I thought that if you’re number 1,000 on the list nationwide and tomorrow you’ll be number 999 and you just wait your turn, and there’s some overarching entity that doles this out. And it’s really not like that at all actually. When you need a transplant, you do get on a registry. But it’s not a list,. In the sense that there is no waiting list where you know when it will be your turn. What happens is that people die every day. Actually, a very small minority of them are actually able to donate their organs just physically because of the way that they die. Most people in this country thankfully die because of old age because of something that happens to them and they are not really in a place where their organs would be beneficial to other people. So you’re really thinking about tragedies, people in a car accident or people with a gunshot wound or people with drug overdose. There are more examples but for the most part. And so when that happens, if they are a registered donor or if their family authorizes because I always say you don’t have to be a registered donor to donate your organs. Even if you are not a registered donor, if you die in a way in which your organs will be suitable, they are still going to ask your family if you want to donate. Registering kind of guarantees, it means they don’t even have to talk to your family. But even if you’re not registered they will still talk to your family and ask. And so if you’re either registered or your family authorizes it, that organ then is considered available. And so it is then going to be matched. And the way that it gets matched is it is based on the region that it’s in. So every state has its own organ procurement organization that handles the organs that become available in its state. Some states have multiple but basically have multiple procurement organizations.

[00:07:10] But basically, it’s one per state, and they’re in charge of finding the best match for that organ. And you need somebody who’s actually has the same blood type, is around the same size, is around, the same type of conditions to be a match. And then it’s based on the priority. And the powers that be in the organ transplant system have decided on priority, and it actually varies based on the organ. For some organs, it is based on how long you’ve been waiting. Other organs, it actually doesn’t matter how long you’ve been waiting, it’s how sick you are. But there is an algorithm that determines the priority order, and so the organ procurement organization in that state will determine the patients that not only are a match but are the highest priority. And then there is another aspect of this-- sorry for being so long-winded with your simple question-- but once the organ procurement organization identifies the patient who is a match, who’s the highest priority, their doctor then has to accept that organ. And it turns out that doctors are very choosy.

[00:08:21] Sarah: You want a choosy doctor.

[00:08:25] Brian Rosenthal: Yes, you do. But you don’t want an overly choosy doctor. There have been studies that have found that people who have died waiting for an organ have actually been offered hundreds of organs and their doctors were too choosy. I don’t recall the exact average, so hundreds as an average might be overstated. But there are many organs offered to people who end up dying waiting because their doctor feels that it’s not a perfect match. And by the way, patients never find out about that. Once the offer is made to their doctor, if they say no the doctor doesn’t have to tell the patient. But anyway, just to finish that, the organ procurement organization offers it to the doctor for the first patient on the list. The doctor may very well say no, and then they will go to the second priority person on the list. They may say no, and it could go quite a ways down the list.

[00:09:21] Sarah: So I know the federal government started grading these organ procurement organizations, and what were they trying to fix when they did that, and what did it actually produce as far as incentives?

[00:09:36] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, so one of the things that policymakers realized several years ago is that as a community, we are not donating as many organs as we should. And I say it like that because basically there are people who are dying in a way that would facilitate organ donation that could be tapped for their organs and we’re just not getting to them. I mentioned earlier that if you’re not registered, the organ procurement organization, OPO for short, will still talk to your family and try to get you to donate your organs. They have to actually know that you’ve died and they have to then make the effort to go talk to your family, and they have to be persuasive enough to convince your family to donate their organs. And so the government was concerned that the OPOs were not being very effective at getting people to donate their organs, essentially. And so they wanted to put pressure on the OPOs to increase the amount of organs that they were recovering and to ultimately facilitate more transplants.

[00:10:49] Sarah: Whatever could go wrong, Brian?

[00:10:53] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah. And to be fair, the policy has been, I would say, successful in many ways. The number of transplants that have taken place in the country in the last few years has gone up significantly, and some of that I think is due to some problems that I’ll talk about in a second. But another piece of that which I saw with my own eyes when I was doing this reporting, and I was going in the field tagging along with the OPOs, going into transplant surgeries, I heard from hospitals over and over again that a decade ago they never heard from the OPO, and so they had people who died whose organs were viable, but they just didn’t hear from them. And these days the OPOs are much more proactive. They are monitoring what’s going on. They have people stationed in the hospitals. They are coordinating much better with the hospitals and ultimately getting more organs. And that is great. That’s saving lives. But as you referenced, we did find in our reporting that there is also some over-aggressiveness going on from the OPOs in terms of trying to get organs from people who may not be ready to donate their organs.

[00:12:09] Sarah: They are not dead yet, Brian. Just say it. They’re not dead yet.

[00:12:13] Beth: We both live in Kentucky.  So that was a chilling story for us.

[00:12:17] Sarah: We Live in Kentucky. That features prominently in your reporting.

[00:12:20] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, I try not to try not to sensationalize things too much, but yeah there was a federal investigation that found that in Kentucky specifically there were dozens of cases of patients who were showing signs that they may have some brain activity, and the organ donation effort went forward nonetheless. And it’s pretty well documented that the OPO, which again is under pressure to increase transplants, was really driving that. Even though legally the organ donation team is not supposed to have anything to do with end-of-life care. They’re only supposed to come in after the person has already been declared dead or declared that they have no chance of recovering. Legally, they’re not supposed to be involved at all, it was documented in a federal investigation, and we found in our reporting too that these OPOs are pressuring the hospitals to try to get as many organs as they can.

[00:13:35] Beth: So you have this effort to get more organs into the system You also have this time pressure around getting those organs to patients who are waiting as quickly as possible. And it seems like the reform efforts collided with that time pressure in your reporting. Can you tell us about how what we think of as capital T and L, the list, started to mean less?

[00:14:04] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah. That’s the other piece of it is not just how they’re getting organs, but how they’re distributing them. Because as I mentioned, there is an allocation system that is in place, and it can take time. There are times when the person who recovers the organ is offering that organ out to dozens of doctors, and all the doctors say, “Eh, the donor is a little older. The donor has some test results that I’m a little concerned about. I don’t want to take the risk.” And according to the process that’s in place, you’re supposed to just call down the list and go through everybody. But what the OPOs decided is that was taking too long. And so instead of calling the doctor for the first patient, calling the doctor for the second patient, and going down the list, they said, “You know what would make this a lot easier, is if we just knew that there were some doctors out there who are really aggressive, who are always going to say yes to an organ, who for whatever reason we have a relationship with, maybe I went to medical school with them or whatever. They’re a good guy and, they’ll give me an answer quickly. They’ll probably say yes. Instead of going down the list, why don’t we just call them and say, ‘Hey you’re a good doctor. Here’s an organ that’s available. Not only should you take it for your first patient on the list, but actually with this type of an offer, you can give it to any of your patients. Any patient that’s at your hospital, feel free to take this organ.’” It’s called an open offer. And in this context of needing to do more transplants because of the pressure from the government, those open offers have just skyrocketed to the point where during our reporting we found that about 20% of the time instead of going down the list, they would skip over people and just hand it to a doctor that they had a relationship with or that they thought was aggressive.

[00:16:08] And I think it’s important to note because you mentioned the time pressure, when an organ becomes available and is taken out of somebody’s body, there is a deadline for when it can be donated. An organ is only going to stay viable for so long. And for hearts, that’s only a few hours. For kidney, they can actually keep it going for up to 48 hours now with new technology. But hearts and lungs, livers to some extent, there’s a real time pressure. And so when we did this reporting, we asked about all these open offers. That would always be cited as a reason for why they did so many of these open offers, skipping, ignoring the priority list. They would say that the organ is deteriorating, we just don’t have enough time. But we actually obtained data showing exactly when the organs were taken out of the body and when these open offers were given, and we found that the vast majority of the time, they did have time. Time was not running out. They would do these open offers in some cases before the organ had even been taken out of the body. And or it maybe was a kidney and had only been out of the body for a couple hours. And so that explanation just didn’t really hold water. It seemed that the real reason is that they were just expediting trying to get these organs placed because of the pressure from the government.

[00:17:33] Sarah: Let’s talk about incentives and the response from the government because your reporting led to a lot of people-- I am one of them because I lived in Kentucky. I was about to renew my license. I was like, “I’m not doing this. I’m not checking this box. I don’t want these organ procurement people around the corner.” Now, I told my family, “I’m happy to donate my organs should they come and talk to you.” But what did you think when all this came out and the response to the piece and people were responding this way?

[00:18:01] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah.

[00:18:02] Sarah: It had to be really intense.

[00:18:04] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah. It was really intense. And I think that my first thought and the thing I always want to emphasize is that organ donation is a beautiful gift and it does save tens of thousands of lives every year. A lot of us know people who have been saved because of that. And so we don’t want to discourage that from happening. It gives me no joy to see people reading our reporting and then removing themselves from the list. That’s not our goal at all. But at the same time, as a journalist, our job is to tell the truth about what we find. And we cannot look away from problems. And in fact, it’s doing a disservice to the donors, the recipients, the hardworking doctors in the system, everybody if we are ignoring problems. And so I think our goal has always been to spotlight problems and hopefully that will lead to positive change. Hopefully, that is what’s happening.

[00:19:16] Sarah: Yeah. Have you seen some investigations and stuff since that you’re really encouraged by? Because I think you’re right. The best thing for organ donation is to have a system people trust.

[00:19:24] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, absolutely. And trust is not gained by shoving problems under the rug. It’s by acknowledging problems and making improvements. And by the way, the other piece of it is organ donation is such a beautiful gift and sacrifice. We owe it to the donors to make sure this process is run with integrity, and that the priority is given to people that need the organs. And so I just think that’s all just really important. As far as reform, yes, thankfully there have been reforms that have followed our work. There have been a lot of reforms that have come into place. So on the donor safety side of things, the government has put together a task force to write new rules for the organ-- the type of organ donation that we talked about when people were being pursued too early. And those safety regulations have now been drafted and they should be in place soon. The government also closed down one of the organ procurement organizations that we mentioned that had been part of these problems. They have ordered reforms at Kentucky the Kentucky OPO specifically.

[00:20:40] Sarah: Good to know.

[00:20:42] Brian Rosenthal: And so, yeah, you should have more confidence today in the Kentucky OPO than you did several months ago. They were doing things like, for example, that they have to check whether somebody is gaining consciousness every two hours when somebody is being considered for organ donation. Not a requirement before. It was just not something they had to look at. There also is a process in place where anybody involved in the organ donation any doctor, any nurse, even any family member who has concerns can pause the process and say, “Slow down. We want somebody else to take a look at this.” And so those types of reforms are coming into place on the donor safety side. On the other side, in terms of the allocation, it’s actually been even more encouraging. The biggest thing that’s happened is that the OPOs responded to our reporting by sharply curtailing how often they do this. I mentioned earlier that the OPOs were skipping the list 20% of the time when we wrote our story over a year ago now. Today that number is down to 9%.

[00:21:57] Sarah: Wow.

[00:21:57] Brian Rosenthal: And so yeah, it’s been cut in half.

[00:22:00] Sarah: Because you also reported on the, like, wealthy foreign nationals, but I want to get into, like, how they were playing a part in those lists as well.

[00:22:08] Brian Rosenthal: Sure. Yeah that’s another piece.

[00:22:10] Sarah: That’s a whole other big piece of this puzzle.

[00:22:13] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah. So but for just generally, skipping the list, it has been sharply reduced. There have been new regulations from the government that have come in about telling OPOs that they cannot do this and requiring more transparency about their offer process and when they’re making offers of organs to patients. And the most encouraging thing on that is, remember we talked about how the OPOs had said that they were doing this because they were on a clock, and that If they didn’t do this the organ was going to not be able to be used by anybody. It was going to have to be thrown out. So the really encouraging statistic is that they have sharply cut how often they skip the list, and yet there’s been no increase in organs not being used. And so that was something that was a fear, and it has not happened. So yeah, a lot of different reforms on a lot of different pieces.

[00:23:14] Beth: That’s great. Why don’t you tell us about the--

[00:23:15] Brian Rosenthal: Do you want to talk about the foreign nationals?

[00:23:17] Beth: Yes.

[00:23:18] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah. So this was another piece that we did and I think it’s right to talk about it separately because unlike the two big pieces that we did about donor safety and about skipping the waiting list, those were stories that were about the system overall nationwide that were affecting everybody. The story about foreign nationals is really a story about a few hospitals, and so it’s not as much of a systemic problem. But it is quite interesting. Basically, there are a few hospitals in the country who have figured out that a way that they can make a lot of money is by doing transplants for wealthy people coming over from other countries in need of an organ. And this is concerning to ethics experts.

[00:24:17] Sarah: Back to that institutional trust problem.

[00:24:20] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, the big concern is we don’t have enough organs to go around. There are 100,000 people waiting for organs in the US right now. And thousands of them die without getting an organ. And so the idea that we would take this precious commodity which thousands and thousands of people desperately need, and we would give it to a wealthy person from another country coming over, who by the way, is doing nothing to support our donor pool. It’d be one thing if we had some agreement with another country that we would get their organs, and they could get our transplants, right? Or people talk about illegal immigration and whether undocumented immigrants should get organ transplants in the US. In that case, undocumented immigrants can get transplants in most parts of the US, but they also donate their organs. Because they live here. And there have been studies that have shown that they actually donate their organs at a higher rate than they get organs. So the phenomenon that I’m talking about is a much bigger ethical issue than that because the people that are getting organs are not contributing to the organ pool. And at these hospitals, these people are coming over and getting organs. And our reporting showed that compared to Americans, they get their organs faster. They are more likely to get an organ.

[00:25:49] Sarah: I don’t like this, Brian. I don’t like it. Makes me mad.

[00:25:52] Brian Rosenthal: They are also more likely to get an exception, it’s called a priority, that gives them increased ability to get an organ. And so yeah, that is taking place at several hospitals in the US.

[00:26:05] Sarah: What’s the overlap between those people and the open offer aggressive doctors? That’s what I want to know.

[00:26:10] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah.

[00:26:11] Sarah: I bet it’s pretty high.

[00:26:12] Brian Rosenthal: There were definitely cases that we found that the hospital will get an open offer and use it to give an organ to a foreign national. But I do just want to be clear, we did not find that it was an enormous number. And that for the most part, what we found was that patients that were coming over from other countries were getting some exception or some advantage to give them priority. So they actually didn’t even need the open offer because they were getting some priority already in the system.

[00:26:59] Beth: I think it’s helpful to hear about this even though it’s less widespread, just as you consider the concept of fairness around something that is such a scarce resource where the stakes are so high. Because every system is going to have an element of incentives and relationships, and the math of saving lives I can imagine being pretty difficult not to express sympathy for hospital administrators who might be making those choices. But I can see a world where I tell myself if I get this heart to this person and that gets me a new cancer wing or something, I can just see because of the layers of complexity that people trying to take care of others in the United States face, and the way in which in your reporting there is a sense when you’re talking about a horrible instance of a child who gets passed over, and at the end of it everybody goes, “Oh, it sucks. This is our system.” And you think who’s responsible for this? I appreciate that you highlighted a lot of different dimensions without giving us an easy answer to that question.

[00:28:11] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, it would almost be easier if there was one villain to point to.

[00:28:15] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:28:16] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah.

[00:28:16] Sarah: This reporting led to a congressional inquiry, right?

[00:28:19] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, it did.

[00:28:21] Sarah: And what were they looking at? Congress loves to find an easy villain. Surely they went on the look for one.

[00:28:26] Brian Rosenthal: So on the foreign nationals specifically, they are investigating those hospitals. They have not published their reports yet I should say. So we’ll see. In that case, I do think it’s a little clearer. We’re talking about some hospitals that have made a financial decision. In our article, we actually talked to the person who founded the international program at one of these hospitals, Montefiore in New York City. And she was very blunt with us. She said, “Hey, this is a way that we can make money.” She said they had brought in tens of millions of dollars through this. And she did make the point like other people did that, yeah, this brings in money for the hospital, and then we can do good for other people, right? Which is an argument that’s made.

[00:29:14] Sarah: It is an argument. Maybe not the strongest one.

[00:29:18] Brian Rosenthal: But yeah, there are a lot of different people involved in the process. Just generally, organ donation is unique in medicine. We don’t have another type of healthcare that is based on the gifts of other people. And so you have to respect that, but it also adds some complexity because there are the donor hospitals and the recipient hospitals and the coordinators and the regulators and all kinds of different people involved with all kinds of different incentives. And it does make it very challenging to identify the people who are doing problematic things and why they’re doing it.

[00:29:57] Beth: Do you have a sense of where this field is going? You mentioned technology prolonging the time that a kidney can be out of a body before it’s donated to someone new. Are we getting closer to being able to use animal organs or printed organs or what’s our path forward here?

[00:30:18] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, good question. And it’s actually a question that I have studied a little less because I’ve been focused on the state of the system today. I think it is absolutely true that at some point in the future we will be able to use animal organs, use printed organs, keep organs viable for much longer. I think there’s also a lot of potential that people are excited about using AI for or other technologies to make the matching more efficient, to find better matches quickly. I think that is all going to be true. The question is how long will it take? How many people will die in the meantime? Is it something that happens this decade or this century, right? And I don’t have the answer to that. I think people in the field don’t have the answer to that either. Thankfully, I do think that it is a bit of a-- stories like the ones we wrote will probably hopefully not be written 100 years from now thankfully. But that is something to consider. The other thing to consider is I mentioned there are 100,000 people on the waiting list. There are actually many more people who need organs who have not been able to get onto the waiting list. And as you can imagine, this disproportionately affects lower income people without access to healthcare. You can’t even get onto the list. And so we are going to have the ability to have a lot more organs, but we’re also going to need a lot more organs. And the news isn’t all good on that front when we think about the actual need that exists.

[00:31:59] Sarah: What are you working on next, Brian? You going to stay on this beat?  Do you want to give us a sneak peek?

[00:32:08] Brian Rosenthal: I don’t know.

[00:32:09] Sarah: Taking tips. I forgot.

[00:32:11] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah, exactly. This is the part where you share what you think I should write about.

[00:32:15] Sarah: We are both obsessed with ed tech. We hate it. There’s a lot of things happening in the public school system that deserve a spotlight for sure, particularly when it comes to the software. I think people get focused on the cell phones in schools, and they forget about the software that all the children are using every day.

[00:32:37] Brian Rosenthal: Yeah.

[00:32:38] Sarah: What about yours, Beth? What’s your tip?

[00:32:40] Beth: I was thinking exactly the same thing, the contracts for that software, the way that within one school district they might be paying for multiple licenses for that software, the way that software has become baked into curriculum standards. Teachers don’t have any choice about how to use the software, the privacy around that software.  There’s a lot on my list about the software.

[00:33:01] Sarah: State Legislation requiring the software.  We got his attention.

[00:33:05] Brian Rosenthal: I may need to follow up with you about that.

[00:33:07] Sarah: Yeah. He leaned forward. I think we got something.

[00:33:10] Brian Rosenthal: I don’t know how much detail to go into here, but I do think that’s interesting.

[00:33:14] Sarah: Yeah. We’re here for you, Brian.

[00:33:16] Beth: Absolutely.

[00:33:17] Brian Rosenthal: Thank you.

[00:33:17] Beth: Thank you so much for talking with us.

[00:33:20] Brian Rosenthal: Thank you. I appreciate it.

[00:33:22] Sarah: Thank you.

[00:33:37] Beth: Okay, Sarah, it’s your birthday

[00:33:39] Sarah: It’s my birthday.

[00:33:41] Beth: Because I am a 45-year-old as well, I hear 50 Cent in the background.

[00:33:45] Sarah: Yep.

[00:33:47] Beth: Tell us about your project.

[00:33:48] Sarah: Okay. So I’ve been thinking a lot about 50. I don’t like the 5s, for the record. I have a strong aversion to 25. That was my worst one. I really didn’t like 25. But 35 I was more neutral on. 45 I feel fine about, but I’m like it just feels like it’s a big deal because then you’re on the other side, and you’re getting closer to the next decade than a previous decade. Do you see what I’m saying? I

[00:34:14] Beth: I did not appreciate 45 rolling around for me. I relate to what you’re saying.

[00:34:18] Sarah: You see what I’m saying? We’re getting close to 50. So I was like I’ll just do what I always do. I’ll turn it into a project. So here’s my plan. For every year on the way to 50, I’m going to take a decade of my life. So like 45 will be zero to 10, 46, 10 to 20, 47, 20 to 30. See where I’m going here? And in that year I’m going to do something fun. So I think for zero to 10 I have this like truly-- You know how just some photos become a part of you? There’s just this picture, this moment just lives in your head, and it’s a part of your life story. I have this incredible picture from the very first slumber party I ever had at seven or eight, and I want to recreate it with my friends. And I want to go through all of my childhood memorabilia, all my stuff I have, find a way to put it all together, put it all in one place, maybe put it in a scrapbook. I have this vision of the sequel to Terms of Endearment, the name of which I can’t remember, where Shirley MacLaine gets in this closet with all her stuff and she makes a book for every year of her life, like a big pretty scrapbook.

[00:35:26] It’s the only thing I remember from that movie. But I’m going to do that for zero to 10. I haven’t decided how I’m going to put it all together, but I want to work through all the stuff I’ve got. I’ve got memorabilia and photos and stuff kind of all over the house for all these phases of my life, and I want to organize it. So I’ve kind of started. I took most of it from my closet and from this other cabinet, and I divided it into bins per 10 years. So I’ll pull out the 10-year bin from 45 to 46, and work my way through it slowly. That’s my plan.

[00:35:54] Beth: And so the goal for each decade is to choose one photo to recreate or to...

[00:36:01] Sarah: I just have a plan for zero to 10. I might do a photo. I might not. Maybe I’ll look somebody up from that time period that I haven’t talked to in a long time that was really influential.

[00:36:09] Beth: So it’s more like excavating that particular decade. Okay.

[00:36:11] Sarah: Yes. I’m excavating, I’m organizing, I’m reviewing.

[00:36:16] Beth: Okay. I’m following now.

[00:36:17] Sarah: That’s what I’m doing. That’s my plan.

[00:36:20] Beth: Okay.

[00:36:20] Sarah: I got a lot of time. I got all year for every 10 years. Because if you try to do this all at once, it’s too much and it’s overwhelming. So I figure why don’t I break it down so by the time I turn 50 I’ll have it all together.

[00:36:31] Beth: Are you going to give yourself like a deadline? By your next birthday this will be done or--

[00:36:36] Sarah: Yeah, by my next birthday I need to be done with everything from zero to 10.

[00:36:40] Beth: Zero to 10. And is there a time of year where you’re going to focus on it? Because I could see myself, like, having a good intention and letting it languish.

[00:36:48] Sarah: What I’m going to do is I’m going to pull a bin out and put it in my office. I don’t like junk in my office, so the motivation will be to clear the bin and get it out of my office. I don’t necessarily need a deadline. I think it’ll probably push me to do it when I have some time. Which I should have plenty of since I just opened a new business and we have a full-time job, and I have three kids. It’s fine. I’ll find the time. Don’t worry about it.

[00:37:08] Beth: It’s so funny that you say that because I have been thinking a lot about I have a million ideas right now.

[00:37:15] Sarah: Yes.

[00:37:15] Beth: But I also keep hearing this little voice in my head that goes, “Enough right now. You’re not...” I think there is maybe some kind of energy at this stage of life where you start to feel like you’re running out of time, and you do have a bunch of ideas, and I feel like some wise part of me keeps going, “ You got plenty. It’s okay. It’s alright.”

[00:37:35] Sarah: I don’t feel like I’m running out of time. I’m going to live to be 115 years old. I’m planning on being a supercentenarian, Beth. That’s my goal. Yeah.

[00:37:42] Beth: You’re going to make Pantsuit Politics until you’re 115.

[00:37:44] Sarah: Yeah, I did say I wanted to do it till I die. Okay, so maybe not that long.

[00:37:47] I think a good old-fashioned 90. What do you think? Do you think we could do it till we’re 90?

[00:37:51] Beth: To make Pantsuit Politics until we’re 90? No, ma’am.

[00:37:54] Sarah: Next best offer, 80. [ laughs]. Your face.

[00:38:02] Beth: Listen, if you find a spry 70-year-old who wants to jump in with you, you go for it, and I will be in the audience cheering you both on.

[00:38:13] Sarah: So that’s my plan. That’s my on my way to 50 plan. But probably we should make plans for our 50th birthday too. Just saying.

[00:38:20] Beth: That’s a good point that you make. The other thing that came to mind for me as you were saying this, when you said a photo that is your iconic photo of a time in your life, I instantly saw this photo that I’ve looked at 10 million times in one of those old books with the sticky paper where you put the actual printed photos, and it is of me sitting in Santa’s lap in kindergarten, but I didn’t know that Santa was my dad when the photo was taken. So I could just see it. I know what I’m wearing in the photo. I know how I’m sitting in the photo. That photo is seared into my memory. But what a 1981 baby’s thing, right? This time when everybody was printing the photos and putting them in the books, and you would look at them over and over. I don’t know that it’ll be like that for my kids.

[00:39:01] Sarah: Yeah, I don’t know. I print photos. I definitely have photos from our vacations and stuff out, so I hope they do. And I think I’m a little bit thinking about this through the eyes of what will they want to keep, what will be interesting to them. I want to get some of the Ancestry photos that I have so it’s not just this envelope of old people, and they’re like, “Who the hell is this? What do I care?” I’m trying to get that kind of organized as well.

[00:39:25] Beth: I look forward to seeing the book of Sarah when it’s completed. Yes. I think that’s exciting.

[00:39:28] Sarah: I’ll sell copies. Don’t worry.

[00:39:31] Beth: Happy birthday. I hope you enjoy it.

[00:39:33] Sarah: Thank you.

[00:39:33] Beth: Thank you, Brian, for spending time with us. Thanks to all of you for listening. We’ll be back with you with a new episode this Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

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This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Topics Discussed

• Why kids' anxiety about the news is often rooted in a knowledge gap, not the news itself

• How The 10 News covers scary topics like school shootings — and why vagueness can be worse than directness

• What kids actually want to know more about (spoiler: more politics, not less)

• How to cover hard stories without being condescending

• The shift toward more international coverage over six years

• What it looks like to watch a generation of kids grow up through the news

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Episode Resources

The Ten News

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:10] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. If you have ever stared at a news alert and had absolutely no idea how to explain it to a child, this episode is for you. Tracy Kaplan is the creator and executive producer of The Ten News, a podcast for kids and families ages 8 to 12, that has been doing the work of explaining the world to kids since 2020. And what Tracy has learned in six years really mirrors our experiences. Kids’ anxiety about the news is often rooted not in the news itself, but in a knowledge gap. They’re not scared because they know too much, they’re scared because they don’t know enough. Tracy is here with Sarah to share more. And Outside of Politics, we’re going to talk about summer camp and our personal experiences there. Speaking of a knowledge gap and what makes you anxious.

[00:00:56] Sarah: Before we get started, if coming to our Minneapolis live show isn’t in the cards for you this August, join us from the comfort of your couch on your own time. You can watch our show live on August 29th or when it’s convenient for you. Bring a friend for half the price when you buy your ticket. All the details are in the show notes. Tracy Kaplan, welcome to Pantsuit Politics.

[00:01:26] Tracy Kaplan: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here.

[00:01:28] Sarah: Now, you’re here because we’re going to talk about a parentally interesting topic here, which is kids and the news. How do we talk about kids and the news? What do we tell kids about the news? When kids have anxiety about the news, how do we deal with all that? So tell us why you have some expertise in this area.

[00:01:44] Tracy Kaplan: As most parents, this does keep me up at night, but maybe in a different way than a lot of parents because I’m thinking about how to put it together in a podcast. So I’m the creator and executive producer of The Ten News, which is a kids podcast for kids and families 8 to 12, and I started it in September of 2020. So we’re going into our sixth year. So I’ve been thinking about this for a while and put together a really amazing team of people who really are spending hours, days, weeks looking at all the news that we’re all looking at it, but through the lens of what would a kid be thinking about. So when I see a headline, yes, I’m consuming it myself, and maybe it’s making me anxious as a human, as a parent, but I’m also thinking about it in the sense of what if my kid just saw that on my phone, what if my kid just saw the Apple News pop up, and how would they interpret that?

[00:02:45] Sarah: I think the key component, first of all, is the 8 to 10. I always say when you say kids, do you mean little kids, elementary, middle high school, college?

[00:02:53] Tracy Kaplan: Yeah, 8 to 12.

[00:02:53] Sarah: But I think that’s the problem. People think you have to have one way to do this. It really matters on what age kid you’re talking about because I think so much of what you’re often talking about is a knowledge gap. I think we go right to the anxiety, but sometimes the anxiety is founded in a lack of knowledge. So how do you think about that at the 10?

[00:03:12] Tracy Kaplan: Oh, exactly. That’s exactly how I think about it. I’m always thinking about we’re always telling our kids what to do, what to eat, do your homework, and they are just seeking out control, right? They’re pushing boundaries. They’re trying to figure out who they are. So I take the same approach when I’m working with my team on the news. A good example of this is when the Ukraine war broke out, when Russia invaded Ukraine. All of a sudden, there are all these terms being flown about, economic sanctions, NATO. As an adult, I was even wondering why is it now Kyiv instead of “Kiev”? I grew up with the pronunciation being “Kiev”, and now all the reporters are saying Kyiv, and CNN’s not going to take a minute to explain that, but The Ten News is. So really thinking about what are the terms. What’s a way that we can give a kid who’s hearing all this stuff enough control that they can say, “Hey, I have a question,” because they’re brimming with questions, right? We always know that with a lot of our kids, that they’re overflowing with questions. And so giving them just that little bit of control so that they can come to you with a question from a place of, “Okay, I know this, but can you help me understand this other part,” Mom, Dad, trusted guardian, whoever it is, just giving them that step up in the conversation.

[00:04:33] Sarah: Here’s my next question because I think as an adult the other way I cope with anxiety, I think a lot of us do, is just through the lens of partisanship. So we just decide I’m on the good team here. You’re on the bad team. I’m assuming that’s not something you can lean on or don’t want to lean on at The Ten, and teaching kids like the answer here is to make sure you’re on the right team, kids. So how do you handle that sort of approach to analysis?

[00:04:56] Tracy Kaplan: We do really try to just lay out what’s happening, with the exception of the show does have a strong sense of values and moral core, I will say. That was something I got great advice when I started from Soledad O’Brien, the amazing journalist, and I was tying myself in knots because there were just things that were happening on all sides where I was like, “Do I need to two sides everything? And what if I just truly don’t believe that the other side is correct from an ethical and moral standpoint?” And she said it’s really important to set your point of view and stick to it. And so I’ve really taken that to heart. We do certainly will share but always in the context of experts say or this is what the administration is saying. So we make sure to always source where the things are coming from, so then we’re not saying, “This is our side. You should pick this side.” We’re really saying “Here’s what’s being said,” but we will be extremely upfront of when we feel like something is wrong or hurtful

[00:06:01] Sarah: Yeah. What do you do when it’s just scary? Like, when it’s a very violent situation, a school shooting, that it’s a news item that affects kids, and it’s really scary.

[00:06:13] Tracy Kaplan: So those are the really hard times and that’s really when we’re also thinking about the adults and what needs to be shared for them to be able to have a good conversation with their kids and really thinking about what’s age-appropriate because you don’t want to go into all the gory details, but you also don’t want to be super vague because being super vague can actually be scarier than laying out what happened. So again, we try to be very direct. When we are covering a topic like that, we’ll add a little note at the top of the episode or in our show notes to say, “Hey, we’re talking about a difficult topic today. This may be one that you really want to make sure that you’re with a grown-up to listen through.” And then for the first time, I think it was two years ago-- it could’ve been three as we’re going into our sixth year-- we did a two-parter on gun violence, and it was the first time that we did an episode very specifically for the adults to listen to as a primer before the next episode, which was then for everyone. And I hate to say that kind of has become an evergreen episode now because this doesn’t seem to be stopping. So I’m happy that we have it there as a resource. I really wish on all of my being that it didn’t need to be there as a resource.

[00:07:46] Sarah: There’s the topics that we know are hard. What have you found to be, like, surprisingly impactful or a positive news story that hit in a way you didn’t expect or maybe a policy issue or a topic that you didn’t understand or realize that kids were really focused on?

[00:08:04] Tracy Kaplan: I will say, in general, kids really want to know more and more of what’s going on in the political space. I think there’s a tendency to shy away from it. But when I look at our podcast reviews, which is probably the most fun way that we engage with our audience, seeing so many kids who are saying “Okay, great, we love the Nintendo episode,” because I also love the Nintendo episodes, “but we want more politics.” They don’t want to be shut out of the conversations that are happening. And then I think the one that was the most impactful that also just reminded me that to take the time to do more episodes really focusing on what kids are dealing with day in and day out we did an episode on food allergies, and had a lot of listener reaction to that of thanking us. A kid who was living with celiac who wrote in. So just a reminder too of, okay, thinking about the things that are very micro in kids’ lives, not always focusing on the macro.

[00:09:01] Sarah: Yeah, that’s so true. How many or how often do you focus on like education and topics of schooling? That feels like something kids would want to talk a lot about. Or maybe not because they’re in school and all that.

[00:09:10] Tracy Kaplan: Yeah, exactly. They’re in it, and a lot of teachers are using the show in their classrooms. Certainly when there’s any kind of policies or laws that are affecting education, we talk a lot about what’s happening around banned books and what legislation is happening in that realm. So we do a lot of that. And then actually an episode we did at the end of the year last year that also got a lot of great feedback was we did an episode on screen time. And I have to say, sometimes those episodes are harder than tough news because I never want to be condescending to our listeners. So finding that line of talking about technology, talking about the good, the bad, the ugly, and being honest about how technology affects brains and affects all of our brains and doing it in a way that kids aren’t just going to turn it off and be like... oh, yeah. So I did it through a partnership with a group called the Take Two Media Initiative. It’s a group out of New York, and they had teenagers who act as media ambassadors, and they came on the podcast. That’s another little trick that I have is when there’s something that I feel like there’s a danger that my listeners will get turned off with it coming from an adult, I find some wonderful, smart teens and tween to share their experiences.

[00:10:33] Sarah: Love it. What do you feel has shifted the most? So six years is a long time to be doing something like this. In the coverage itself that you’ve noticed, because I find when you come at news coverage with a specific angle, like I’ve noticed a lot with good news, when I’m looking specifically for good news, I notice trends and shifts almost more easily than when I’m just, gathering the headlines. So from this very unique perspective of looking out for young kids, what have you noticed that shifted in the coverage over the last six years?

[00:11:05] Tracy Kaplan: I would say we’ve gotten more fearless in terms of what we do cover, and we’ve also gotten more international. Definitely a conscious shift of more events happening around the world. And I will say again, that’s where I follow the guide of our listeners, and it helps me not get caught up in the news cycle where things will be in the news for 15 minutes and then they’re gone. So coming back to the Ukraine war, kids would write in and say, “What’s going on in Ukraine? What’s the latest?” And it was a great kind of guide and push for me to be like, yeah, they’re right. Actually we’ve moved on and we haven’t come back to this thing that is still happening, unfortunately, and very damaging to the folks in the Ukraine. So I would say that’s the biggest shift is more international, not being afraid of covering tough stories, and also being much more mindful about coming back to stories.

[00:12:05] Sarah: Yeah. Over six years you’re doing 8 to 12, you’ve had kids come in and graduate, basically, from the news. Have you seen any sort of micro-generational shifts or heard from those kids who’ve maybe listened the whole time?

[00:12:20] Tracy Kaplan: I now have an intern who was one of our very first interview subjects on the podcast.

[00:12:26] Sarah: Oh my gosh. Wow.

[00:12:29] Tracy Kaplan: So she is now in high school. She’s going to love that I’m calling her out here. Hi, Sasha. And she was one of our very first interview subjects because she was in Italy when COVID hit and went through that experience and when I started the show, we interviewed her, and she was only 10 at the time. And now she’s 16 and reached out about a week ago and sent a very lovely note about how she’s really interested in podcasting and interested in what we’ve been doing with the show. And so, of course, I welcomed her. I had to have her be our very first intern, actually. For all the other Teners, we call them Teners, if there’s any Teners listening to this we’re available for more interns. But that’s been the most wonderful thing, is actually seeing we’ve had a couple of kid correspondents over the years and just seeing them grow up and being able to stay... I always say once you’re involved with the 10 News, you’re always part of The Ten News family, if you’ve been a guest or a correspondent. And so it’s nice to see them grow up and then have a different perspective on things.

[00:13:34] Sarah: I love that. I think it’s just a really important expertise and perspective you bring because as a parent I think it can feel like a lot of things with parenting. Like you’re in the deep end, then they move on. You’re in the deep end, you move on. So it’s helpful to hear from someone who’s doing this day in, day out. How do I communicate this? What am I focused on? What questions am I trying to answer? So I just think that’s a really great, important reminder. So thank you for coming on and talking to us about all of this.

[00:13:59] Tracy Kaplan: Thank you. No I love your show and what you all are doing. Oh, and there’s my cat in the back.

[00:14:03] Sarah: I know. That’s hilarious. I love it.

[00:14:06] Tracy Kaplan: She’s The Ten News studio cat. We call her The Ten News studio cat.

[00:14:08] Sarah: I have my studio dog at my feet right now. Thank you again. Thank you so much.

[00:14:12] Tracy Kaplan: All right. Thank you, Sarah.

[00:14:24] Beth: Sarah, I love this conversation that you had with Tracy. I love thinking about how to make our kids less anxious. Making kids less anxious would’ve been really valuable to me the first time I went to summer camp. I did not handle it well.

[00:14:38] Sarah: You didn’t?

[00:14:40] Beth: It’s an embarrassing story. I went off to summer camp with my church, Camp Schaefer.

[00:14:46] Sarah: Also went to church camp.

[00:14:47] Beth: And the counselors were all college students. I didn’t really know a lot of people, but my pastor was there, Brother Tim, who I loved. And on Wednesday, Brother Tim was going to drive back to our home church to lead Wednesday night prayer meeting, and I told Brother Tim that I would be going back with him because I did not like church camp. So I packed all of my things, and I rode back to church with Brother Tim, and I got there and I said, “Hey, Mom and Dad, I’m home.” And they said, “You are not.” And they put me back in the car with Brother Tim to head back to Camp Schaefer as soon as Wednesday night prayer meeting was over, and I did finish the week. Good on them.

[00:15:24] Sarah: That was the right thing for them to do, for sure. Yeah.

[00:15:25] Beth: It was 100% the right thing for them to do.

[00:15:28] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:15:28] Beth: But it took me a couple decades to appreciate that. Is

[00:15:31] Sarah: Is that the only camp you ever went to?

[00:15:35] Beth: I believe that was the end of my overnight camping experiences. I did a bunch of day camps other than that, but no, I did not find my groove at sleep-away camp. Which is why I have insisted that my daughters find their groove at sleep-away camp. It is a hole in my life experience.

[00:15:49] Sarah: I missed a lot of summer experiences because my parents were divorced, and I spent the whole summer as a child in California. Now, it has made me 30% Californian, which I appreciate. But I was gone for the whole summer when I was little because that was, like, my dad’s the custody agreement or whatever. So there were no camps in elementary school. I think I went to Girl Scout camp once. I very barely remember it. Then when I got into middle school and high school I wanted to go with my friends to church camp. My most embarrassing church camp story, I make fun of my friend Reagan for this. She’s a lovely person. She’s not mean, but this was just one of our interactions where she bullied me at church camp. I got there, and there were, like, glass shelves above the sink, and so I set out all my toiletries, and she was like, “Everybody, come look what Sarah did.” I didn’t know you’re supposed to carry them in and out every time. I still vividly remember that. But we went to that one. I remember and have a photo of the very hot lifeguard that we were all obsessed with at that church camp. We went to Centrifuge a couple years, maybe one or two years in North Carolina. We did one in Panama City. So I went to a lot of church camps in middle school and high school.

[00:16:47] Beth: I went to Centrifuge too, which I had totally forgotten until you said the word. And then I could see my sweatshirt from Centrifuge in my mind. And I did it in Panama city too with another church.

[00:16:55] Sarah:  See, there you go. See, you went. I loved it. I thought it was so fun. Truly my first regret is that I was not born Jewish in the 1950s, because I would’ve rocked those freakin’ Adirondack camps so hard. Like the ones in Dirty Dancing and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Oh my God, where you got dressed up, and there’s a schedule of activities. Designed for me. And so I have really tried to give my children the experience that I missed. I really wanted the experience of going all the way through. So Felix goes to Camp Sweeney because the number one piece of advice when he was diagnosed with diabetes, was like, “Get him in a diabetes camp.” This is an 18-day camp he’d stay all summer if I let him or could afford it, but he goes to Sweeney, and he started at eight, and he will go until he graduates from high school. So he loves it. And then my two boys actually go to a camp right down the road from your house, Camp Ernst, a YMCA camp, and this is the first year that Amos has progressed out of camper. So they were campers for several years. They didn’t quite start as young as I wish they’d had. We tried out some other camps. But now they’ve both been going to Camp Ernst, gosh, like four or five years maybe?

[00:18:03] Beth: I was thinking four years.

[00:18:04] Sarah: Yeah, Griffin is now a full counselor, so he’s worked his way up. This is Amos’ first year. He’ll be crew, which basically means you do the dishes. And they work their way up. I love that they go to this place. I remember listening to that freaking This American Life that they did on summer camp and being so jealous and wanting that experience for my kid, where they go back to the same place every summer, and it’s their place also. Did you ever watch the movie Indian Summer in the ‘90s about the people who come back to their summer? I was obsessed with that movie.

[00:18:29] Beth: I don’t know that one.

[00:18:29] Sarah: I watched it again recently, and it holds up decently well for the record. But I am sad I did not get that camp experience growing up, for sure.

[00:18:36] Beth: Yeah, I wish that I had toughened up a little bit. I spent an enormous amount of time with my mom. And I think that I just did not want to be away from my mom. I remember her dropping me off at a day camp when I was in maybe older elementary school and thinking “What is the meaning of this? Like, why are you leaving and I’m staying? What is the point here?”

[00:18:56] Sarah: This is really a divergence in our life experience because my mom put my happy ass on an airplane by myself I think at eight. I went with my grandmother a few times at the beginning, and then I would fly by myself from Kentucky to California and spend the whole summer there.

[00:19:12] Beth: My mom was a teacher in my school. We rode together going and coming. She was my academic team coach. She was my teacher for several years. I was just with my mom all the time, and so these experiences without my mom, I just was like, “I don’t understand what’s supposed to be happening here.” Hilariously, I wanted this camp experience that your sons are having near me for my daughters because I remember when we were in college, people from northern Kentucky talking about this particular camp and how wonderful it was. So I sent my daughters, and they did hate it, and Jane did call every day begging to come home. And I didn’t let her.

[00:19:43] Sarah: She did. I was there.

[00:19:45] Beth: But it was very difficult for all of us. But then I sent her the next summer to church camp, which is so much like Camp Schaefer, I can’t even tell you. It’s very much like the place that I did not want to be, and they both love it there. I think a key difference is that all of the counselors there are fully grown adults, like parents and grandparents aged people, and they love the counselors as much as the other kids there. It’s really small. They just do a great job. And so my kids are getting that experience. When I dropped Jane off this summer, she said, “Mom, I’m in Pierre again. I’ve been in Pierre, the cabin, five years in a row now.” They are loving it.

[00:20:22] Sarah: Love it. I love a summer camp. I want to hear about all of y’all’s kids’ summer camp experience, about your own summer camp experiences. I want to see if there’s any good adult summer camps. I will go to one of those. I’m into that business model. If someone has found one that they really like, I’m into it.

[00:20:40] Beth: Yeah, for sure

[00:20:40] Sarah: So we can’t wait to talk about all things summer camp with all of you.

[00:20:43] Beth: Thank you to Tracy Kaplan. Thank you, Sarah, for that conversation you had with Tracy. Thank you all for joining us today. We will be back with you on Tuesday with another new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

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To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Gwyn moved to Ukraine and talked with Beth from Lviv about her experience, her project, and how we can all help.

Our More to Say listeners generously responded to this episode. We hope that the broader Pantsuit Politics community can be part of helping Gwyn make a Ukrainian bookmobile a reality.

Topics Discussed

• What drew Gwyn to Ukraine — and why she moved there during the war

• How Vinok Libraries works: sourcing books, shipping them to Ukraine, distributing to schools

• The language politics of children's books in Ukraine (Ukrainian, English, and the gap)

• Delivering books near the front line and what that looked like in person

• What $500 means to a school that's been bombed

• The bookmobile dream and how to support it

Episode Resources

Matchbook Marketing

Vinok Libraries

Donate

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:02] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:18] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. This conversation started as an episode of More to Say just for our premium members, but we wanted more people to find Gwyn Ridenhour’s work, so here it is. You’ve probably felt that particular kind of helplessness that comes from caring about something enormous and not knowing what to do. Gwyn felt that, too, and then she moved to Ukraine to put books in the hands of children living through war. Her project, Vinok Libraries-- Vinok is the traditional Ukrainian flower wreath, is small and specific and quite extraordinary. She’s a former child librarian who now does marketing for independent bookstores, and one of her clients is our beloved executive producer, Lisa, who owns The Bookshelf on Church. Lisa connected Beth with Gwyn, and we are so glad she did. If this conversation moves you, there’s a link in the show notes to donate towards the bookmobile. And Outside of Politics on the theme, we’re going to talk about our favorite children’s books.

[00:01:09] Beth: Before we get started, if you’re not able to join us live in Minneapolis but still want to be part of our only live show this year on August 29th, we really want you to be there. A virtual ticket lets you watch live or any time after when you can settle in with your favorite snacks and take it all in. We want you to come so much that we’re running a special right now. Just buy one virtual ticket you’ll get a second at half price to share with a friend. All the links that you need are in the show notes.

[00:01:32] Sarah: Here’s Beth’s conversation with Gwyn.

[00:01:47] Beth: Gwyn Ridenhour, welcome to More to Say. I’m so excited to be connected to you through one of our executive producers, Lisa, and she knows you because you do so much work with independent bookstores. Will you start out by telling us about that, and then we’ll get to your international reach?

[00:02:04] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yes. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Lisa was such a huge fan and so encouraging and excited to make this connection, so I’m glad to be here. Lisa is one of my bookstore clients. I do marketing for independent bookstores in the States, and my company is called Matchbook Marketing, so matching books to their customers. And I publish a newspaper. It’s a bimonthly newspaper that Lisa’s store, Bookshelf on Church, is one of their participants. And it’s basically an old-fashioned newspaper that covers the news of the bookstore, of each individual bookstore, and also gives people sneak peeks on new and forthcoming books that the indie bookstores are really excited about. So that’s what I do, and I do some email marketing too, again, for indie bookstores. So that is my job, and I started that business in late 2014. So been around for about 11 years and it’s been a joy to get to meet and work with all of these booksellers. I knew I wanted to connect my work with Matchbook. I was a librarian for 10 years before that, a children’s librarian. So I’ve always been with books. I’ve worked with kids, and I did some education with my own kids, have two kids of my own. Two grown-up kids now. And I love connecting children’s books with both reluctant readers and also gifted readers because both of them are challenging in their own ways, and it just hits such good notes for me. And working with bookstores allowed me to help them make those connections. But I always wanted to have some kind of way that my company, Matchbook, could give back to the community in some ways. And so I’ve tried this in different ways, but when the full-scale invasion of the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, I personally was very drawn to that because I was here in Ukraine back in ‘19. And from then I have always had this connection with Ukraine since. I loved it. It was such a transformative experience for me then.

[00:04:05] And when this full-scale invasion broke out, I knew I needed to be involved in some way. I needed to help in some way. And what I know is books, and what I know is kids, and I know that there’s a lot of kids in Ukraine who are going to school and living under a just extraordinarily difficult situation, and I wanted to be a part of that to support them. So I moved to Ukraine back in December, in Lviv, and I do my work from here. I just work remotely. I just do a lot of... it’s 9:00 PM in my time right now, and I think it’s probably early afternoon for you. It works out fine. I just have to shift my schedule a little bit sometimes. And so I do my work here, and I’ve been using our company profits and then also raising money to buy children’s books, and I ordered a huge order from the United States from a wholesaler there and had it shipped to Lviv. I’ve gotten some donations of really lovely used books from the UK. Making partnerships with other organizations that are doing similar work. And then I meet schools and libraries all over the country and ask them who they serve, what are their age groups that they serve, what reading levels they serve, what kind of interest they have. And then I basically go shopping for them from my collection and send them or deliver-- depending on the situation-- the books to them. And it’s been a real joy, honestly, to meet some astounding people who are just being there every day for these kids and in war. It’s amazing.

[00:05:43] Beth: Gwyn, you moved to Ukraine during the war. So I have a lot of questions about this. What took you to Ukraine, can I ask, back in the ‘90s that made this connection for you and that made you feel so committed to being part of this effort?

[00:05:59] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. So it was 1993, just a couple years after the fall of the Soviet Union. I was in college, and it was a college social exchange. So we came as a group. There were only about six of us, I think, and then a couple of chaperones, and we stayed with host families and for three weeks. We didn’t have the internet then. There was not a lot of media coming out of Ukraine to represent Ukraine or that part of the world. It was like going to another planet for us then. I loved the community feeling. It was just so green. There was just the farmland and the way of life. All of our dinners were together and these huge groups of people and with Ukrainians, with our hosts, with people from the village, they would all just come and be with us. And we met a group of teenagers our age, and we played charades and tried... I had a little bit of Russian at the time and had a friend who met a friend there who had a little bit of English, and we tried to communicate for our respective groups. And it’s probably the age, it was the time, it was the fact that Ukrainians had never met Americans and Americans had never met Ukrainians.

[00:07:03] Beth: Yeah.

[00:07:03] Gwyn Ridenhour: It created that kind of attachment that has just always stuck with me.

[00:07:08] Beth: So how long were you there?

[00:07:10] Gwyn Ridenhour: Three weeks.

[00:07:12] Beth: Three weeks.

[00:07:12] Gwyn Ridenhour: Three weeks that felt it could’ve been a lifetime, it felt.

[00:07:15] Beth: No, I understand.

[00:07:16] Gwyn Ridenhour: As far as how it changed me.

[00:07:17] Beth: I was in Helsinki very soon after 9/11, and I was in college at the time. I was there for two days, but the way that they interacted with us as Americans on the other side of 9/11 really touched my heart. So I can imagine if you’re there for three weeks at such a formative moment in their history and such a formative moment in your life, I see it, for sure. And so where were you in the process of putting this nonprofit together when you decided to move to Ukraine?

[00:07:49] Gwyn Ridenhour: So I first came to Ukraine in August of last year, of 2025, for a month. I was just coming for a month just to check it out and there’s a really vibrant international volunteer community in Lviv. People come all the time, and they come for a week or three weeks or three months or some people then stay long term. And so I was just coming for a month just to volunteer in the places that were here and just to ask people what they were doing. I knew I wanted to do something with books, but I didn’t know what that was. And I figured I wanted to be here to kind of see what the need was. So those three weeks the volunteers at the end of the day, they get together and they eat dinner every night. And curfew is at midnight. There’s a curfew here because of the war. And they stay out and talk until midnight, every night. And so I was exhausted because I’m not young anymore, but I knew I only had a month, and so I went every single night and just asked people, “What are you doing? What’s the need here?” And I very quickly met some Ukrainians who were running summer programs in schools, and there’s refugee like internally displaced people. There’s the IDP, internally displaced people who are fleeing from the east and relocating to the west where it’s safer.

[00:09:02] And these are shelters with families and kids, and they’ve been uprooted from their schools, and there’s just so much need. There’s so much need there. And in Ukraine too there is a need for two things. There’s a need for books in Ukrainian because there’s the huge discussion of language and the oppression of the Russian language and them trying to recapture their Ukrainian language. And there’s also a very strong need for books in English and teaching English because they want to be they want their kids to be able to work in the European marketplace, in the Western marketplace. They want to open up these opportunities for them to be able to communicate outside of Ukraine. And so there is a huge effort towards that. And there are books that are published in Ukraine. They have a wonderful publishing industry here in Ukraine that does beautiful books in Ukrainian and some bilingual books and books for adults, instructional books for children. But I was touring all the bookstores too while I was here, and I was noticing there was a big gap in just books in English for young children and YA. Those were the pieces that were missing. So I was able to buy a lot of the books that we need here, but those are the categories that I wanted to be able to bring in, and it’s easiest to bring them in from England and the States for me. So that’s where I’m pulling them from. And so this kind of idea, just the more I talked about it, I found I didn’t want to start a nonprofit because I’ve done that before and it’s just a lot of extra administrative work. So I met another American who is running one of these refugee shelters, and we had a great conversation, and he was like, “Talk to my host nonprofit in the States. This would make real sense to be in one of their sub-programs.” And so I connected with them, and they adopted me. So I am in partnership.

[00:10:57] Beth: That’s very smart.

[00:10:59] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, it was great. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. I wanted to spend my time with the books--

[00:11:03] Beth: Doing the thing.

[00:11:03] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. So I work with an amazing organization called Hope and Actions, and they’re based in the States, and they support Ukraine. And so I’m one of their programs. And so they provide administrative oversight. I run all of my money through them, so there’s accounting, double checks and balances. And then any donations that are made are now tax deductible. So that’s how the nonprofit was born, and my program is called Vinok Libraries, and Vinok is the flower wreath, the traditional Ukrainian flower wreath that you see a lot of the women wear. And I got a Ukrainian woman that I met here to design the logo. She did just an outstanding job. She did an outstanding job. So yeah, that’s how it was born. It’s been small. I’ve just been basically purchasing books out of my company’s pocket, and then out of the donations that have been made through our website, but we’re relatively new. So you can see in the background...

[00:11:57] Beth: I’m looking at books stacked against Gwyn’s wall, for those of you listening. Tell me about some of the titles that are requested.

[00:12:04] Gwyn Ridenhour: I get a lot of graphic novel requests. Because those are so easily accessible, and there are great graphic novels really, truly for all ages. So you can get them for the very beginner readers all the way up through adults.

[00:12:16] Beth: And there’s a real Wings of Fire moment happening in my house right now. I have a 10-year-old daughter.

[00:12:19] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, exactly. I get a lot of requests for the younger readers, for sure, and I’m noticing that those are ones that I need to buy more of, like the very beginning readers for the youngest of children. And there are more requests for nonfiction books than I anticipated too. So that’s another thing I’m adding to my mental list to be adding to that collection to send out. And then I get a lot of requests for notebooks and pencils and art supplies because all of these things are in short supply. So I just go shopping here, and I just clear them out of notebooks and pencils and all sorts of things, and just keep a bag here and tuck those in as people request.

[00:12:57] Beth: Nonfiction seems complicated to me when you’re working internationally like this. What are people looking for?

[00:13:02] Gwyn Ridenhour: The things that I’ve been sending there’s a great series called Who Was, and they’re biographies. And so they’re more for like eight-year-olds in that range.

[00:13:12] Beth: Yeah, those are so fun.

[00:13:12] Gwyn Ridenhour: When I was a children’s librarian, I actually learned so much about people just by ... because I would read that biography really quick. And I was educating myself through these children’s books. So I picked a bunch of books, the biographies that I felt would be relevant to people here. Scientists, artists.

[00:13:27] Beth: That’s what I was thinking about, the complexity of highlighting people who are relevant to their history, not just American history.

[00:13:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: So I skipped the American history part, and I went for more world famous artists and peacemakers and those kind of people, scientists, those kind of things. I have sent out some books on science and health, some math games. I collected some books on poetry and concrete poetry. Concrete poetry being poetry made by shapes. So you take the words and if you write a poem about a tree, then you write the poem, the words are about the tree, but you also write it in the shape of a tree. And it’s just activities like that can help actually writers of all age practice their words but also make it just a little bit different, a little bit more fun. Get them thinking, get them engaged with a different part of their brain. I also bought workbooks on writing prompts for kids, writing prompts for middle schoolers. Things like that which I was trying to add, yeah.

[00:14:24] Beth: Tell me about how this works logistically. I’m just trying to think through the infrastructure challenges of getting books in the hands of the people who are requesting them

[00:14:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. I made one really large order from a wholesaler, it’s a wonderful shipping company called Meest, and they’re in New Jersey, and they provide a humanitarian shipping rate to Ukraine. So I have to get the books to New Jersey. And then I had a whole pallet sent over $5,000 worth of books. And it has to be 200 pounds. That’s the limit. It has to be 200 pounds, and they shipped that entire pallet over to me for $200. It took six weeks because it goes on the boat, and it takes a while. But it’s a really affordable way to get them here. So I have a coworker in the States who is my receiver. But it’s if somebody wants to donate books that they have at home, it doesn’t have to just be a huge shipment. If you’re looking there and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got these great books that my kid really loved. They’re really in really good shape-- I want them to be in really good shape. But these are some of our favorites. They’re beautiful. They’re almost brand new, but I only have five,” I have somebody in the States that you can mail them to, and she’s collecting them.

[00:15:34] Beth: Wow, okay.

[00:15:36] Gwyn Ridenhour: And then once we have 200 pounds, then she will get them to New Jersey, and then they’ll go from there.

[00:15:41] Beth: Okay. And then what about within Ukraine? Once you have the books how are you sharing them?

[00:15:48] Gwyn Ridenhour: One way is that when-- So some of that is just I’m talking to people through social media apps and email. They tell me what they need. They do a little application. It’s very short, basically just telling me that they’re a school, they’re in Ukraine. That this is who they serve and this is their need. And then I box up. I pick out what I feel like would meet those needs. And in Ukraine, their postage system here is called Nova Poshta. And Nova Poshta has been-- it’s like UPS or FedEx, but here. And they have stepped up during this war in absolutely amazing ways. They get things across the country in two days. It’s a big country, too. Ukraine’s not a small country.

[00:16:30] Beth: It’s about the size of Texas. Is that right?

[00:16:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: A little bigger, probably. Yeah, I think maybe a little bigger. So I have a little Nova Poshta branch just down the street, and I bring my books in. Not even boxed. I just bring them. I wrap them in plastic or paper or whatever, and bring them to Nova Poshta, and I give them the Nova Poshta branch on the other side, and they charge me $3.00 and it’s there practically the next day.

[00:16:57] Beth: That’s awesome.

[00:16:58] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, so I always photograph everything before I send it, and then the teachers usually they photograph it too when they get it. They let me know it’s there, and sometimes they send me pictures with the kids having them. And some of the stories that the teachers will tell me too about how excited the kids are about getting these books. And some of the pictures that got sent to me I actually teased the teacher. I was like, “You staged this. There’s no way that they were that excited.” She was like, “No, I did not stage that. They were actually that excited.” They were just like, “Which one to read first?” Cause it’s not things they can get here. These are the books that they can’t get here.

[00:17:30] Beth: It’s exotic almost. Yeah.

[00:17:33] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah, especially American ones. They can get more probably if they go to their local bookstore, they have a wonderful bookstore community here too. Probably, they could get books that are published in Europe or in England, but it’s going to be so much harder to get a book that’s published in the States. And so yeah, that piece of it is a little more exotic for sure. And I have delivered some as well. There was another volunteer who was donating a vehicle to the military. People do this. This is another regular volunteer-- I don’t want to say program, but effort because there’s a lot of people doing this. They’ll buy a car in Europe, and they’ll drive it all the way to the front and donate it to the military. And they catch a train back. And so my friend John was coming through and bringing a car from the UK, and I said, “ John, what if I hopped in the car with you, and I hooked up with some schools along the way? Would you be willing to, for us to make some pit stops?” And he said, “Sure.” So I lined up three schools on the way, and I put a bunch of books in his car, in the car that we were donating, and we drove across the country and there was one language school near Kyiv, and then there was one school outside of Kharkiv just further east, and that school was of 700 kids. And a lot of those kids, even though they’re very much further east, a lot of those kids were also refugees from even further east. And then there was another tiny school really close to the front and that school was 45 kids, and it was just such a small town and right on the edge. And their school had been bombed, their school building, and nobody was in it, but they moved to a smaller facility that was now serving as their school. And they had very little. They had desks. They have the basic stuff, but they had very little because it was all destroyed in the school. And so I brought her some books and just a couple bags because that’s all I had with me at the time, and I posted a picture of her and told the story on social media. And a Ukrainian friend of mine donated $500 towards her school, and $500 in Ukraine is the average monthly salary.

[00:19:49] Beth: Wow.

[00:19:50] Gwyn Ridenhour: So it was a huge gift. And I said, “ Since you were inspired by that particular school, what if I just use that to buy whatever they needed and not just books?” And he was like, “Yes, please. That would be great.” So I texted her and I said, “We have $500. You’ve got $500 to spend. How do you want to spend it?” And she said, “ That’s so wonderful. Could I have some modeling clay and some paper for the printer?” And I was like, “Yes, you can, and you can have more than that.” So we worked together for probably three weeks, and I was like, “Send me a link to something that you would like to buy, and I will order it and have it sent to you.” And so it took a lot of logistical work because these sites were in Ukrainian, and I had to end up opening a Ukrainian bank account because some of these sites wouldn’t take my credit card. It was a lot. That took a while, but I learned a lot. I learned a lot, and we spent the whole $500, and we bought things like sports equipment and a flip chart. Sports equipment being bouncy balls. I’m talking basic stuff. Just a bouncy ball the kids could kick and a flip chart and some Lego knockoffs and modeling clay. And then when she still had money left she was like we have these workbooks that the parents can’t really afford, could we buy 10 of these for the kids?” And these were just writing workbooks, and it was not expensive at all, but they’ve lost everything. It’s really hard edged out there. And I was like, “Yeah, of course. You can have all of these things.” So she and I had really worked together for weeks very intentionally to make sure that we were getting exactly what the kids needed. And then when we finished, I sent her another huge box of books. I was like, “Here’s some more.”

[00:21:45] Beth: I love that. Wow.

[00:21:47] Gwyn Ridenhour: So connecting with them, connecting with people online is great, but connecting with them in person it’s entirely different scenario. So I want to do that more. I want to meet more people in person and really just be in their space, and yeah.

[00:22:02] Beth: Do you feel safe?

[00:22:05] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yes. Do I feel safe?

[00:22:07] Beth: I get that’s kind of a does anyone feel safe? There are dimensions to that question. But just as you’re out, when I think about you in that car driving towards the front line making these pit stops, what does that feel like to you?

[00:22:18] Gwyn Ridenhour: One, I would not have done it without going with someone experienced. I definitely know that there is some risk there, but I’m trying to mitigate the risk as much as I can because there’s no reason to take unnecessary risks. And so my driver he had done this trip dozens of times over years. He knew exactly where to go. He knew the risks. He knew exactly where to stop, who to talk to. He had such a network of support, of people who would buy him train tickets and bus tickets, and there was no getting stuck anywhere without a whole network of people. And so that’s the only reason. I wouldn’t have gone with anybody else.

[00:22:52] Beth: Okay.

[00:22:52] Gwyn Ridenhour: And so, yeah, I built that in for sure. And we also didn’t stay long because there’s no reason to stay long. We needed to go. We needed to see people in person. We needed to hug them and say, “We’re here for you. We’re here with you. We haven’t forgotten you.” And then we left. Yeah. So we drove, it was like, I don’t know, 11-hour trip probably to get all the way there. We’d left on Friday, and we returned on Monday. It was like we were knocking it out. So yes, I never felt unsafe for that whole trip, and part of that is because of the infrastructure and support around me. Part of it is because we happened to be fine. But I know there is risk everywhere. And as far as living in Lviv, that’s far west. That is almost as far away that you can get from the front line as possible, and that gives me a lot of comfort and gives me the confidence and motivation to keep doing this work. And all these kids are living in worse situation, right? They’re just there. They don’t get to choose. I get to choose. If it gets too bad, I can go.

[00:23:55] Beth: Yeah.

[00:23:56] Gwyn Ridenhour: And these kids can’t.

[00:23:58] Beth: So I hear not fearful but vigilant and aware and in a range of risk that’s acceptable to you, and I think that’s very inspiring and brave, and I feel really lucky that I got to talk with you. So thank you so much for telling me about this incredible thing that you’re doing.

[00:24:13] Gwyn Ridenhour: Thank you. One of my dreams is I’m working towards a bookmobile.

[00:24:19] Beth: That would be very cool.

[00:24:20] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah. And I’ve been starting to talk about it with a couple other people doing this kind of work. It’s still very much in the idea stage right now, but the idea being when we’re making these deliveries to schools, we bring them the box, but then we have the bookmobile set up so that the kids can come and take a book for their very own. And do some programming around it and just really give them a point of celebration. So we’re in that beginning stage, but I’m really hopeful to raise the funds to make this happen.

[00:24:49] Beth: I was going to ask, is that mostly a matter of dollars?

[00:24:52] Gwyn Ridenhour: Yeah.

[00:24:53] Beth: And how many dollars are we talking about?

[00:24:55] Gwyn Ridenhour: I started my business plan for this last week, so I don’t even really know how many dollars yet. But I could get you that information. I have that network of people in Europe to help me find a vehicle that’s used, but in really good condition. But I want it to be really nice, too. I want the kids to see something that really excites them and lights them up. So I could get you that number.

[00:25:16] Beth: When you know, I would love to know. And I would love to share the link to donate far and wide because I feel like this will really touch a lot of people in our community. It touches me deeply, and that would be a very cool dream to have some small part in. So yeah, please let us know.

[00:25:30] Gwyn Ridenhour: Okay. I will. Thank you, Beth. I appreciate it.

[00:25:33] Beth: It was really cool to meet you. Thanks for what you’re doing. Thanks for talking to me at 9:30 at night.

[00:25:37] Gwyn Ridenhour: No problem. Thanks, Beth.

[00:25:53] Sarah: Beth, I’ve been thinking about this a lot with my new bookshop, Meander Bookshop, which books to have.

[00:25:57] Beth: I bet you have.

[00:25:57] Sarah: First Beth Shaw was on the Caldecott, so she had me order all the brand new Caldecott winners, and they are extraordinary. But I had to get the classics, our family’s classics. Pete the Cat. Tyrannosaurus Trip. Don’t be mad, I skipped Goodnight Moon. I’ve read it enough. I could recite it. I’m good. I even skipped Where the Wild Things Are.

[00:26:20] Beth: I get that.

[00:26:21] Sarah: I was looking for my new classics. But I did get Pete the Cat, Tyrannosaurus Trip, and Olivia. Those were, like, big hits in our house.

[00:26:32] Beth: Those are fun. We read a whole lot of Dr. Seuss here. Just so much Dr. Seuss. They love the rhyming. They love Go, Dog Go! by P.D. Eastman. I’ve read that so many times I could recite it. We love to say to each other, “Do you like my hat?” “I do not like your hat.”

[00:26:44] Sarah: I do not like your hat. Yeah, we do that too.

[00:26:46] Beth: And then there is a book from when I was a kid that my girls picked up at my parents’ house and loved called Once Upon a Meadow. Have you read this book?

[00:26:55] Sarah: No.

[00:26:55] Beth: It is a beautiful little story about sisters living alone. Doesn’t tell us the tragic circumstances that led to them living alone, but they are sisters and cousins. And the oldest of them is named Kate, and Kate is trying to put together a picnic, and so she’s instructing them on how to get everything together for the picnic. And then they get an idea to go up into the attic, and they dress up in all these old clothes, and they have a parade. And anyway, they’re out having this idyllic afternoon when they find an injured bunny, who they take care of until the bunny is nursed back to health. And it’s just a really sweet book with beautiful illustrations that I loved as a kid. You can tell how much I loved the book by the condition it’s in. And both of my daughters really loved it too, so that’s a classic here.

[00:27:41] Sarah: When you said bunny, I remembered The Rabbit Listened.

[00:27:43] Beth: Yeah, The Rabbit Listened is beautiful.

[00:27:44] Sarah: So good. And then another one that we love in our house is Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. So recently I had all the boys pick their favorite children’s books that they remember the most from their kids, and we had a story time, which I highly recommend as your kids get older. And it was hilarious when we were reading Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. We were like, “Griffin, how much of your personality did you get from this book, son?” It’s just very on brand. You understand what I’m saying? And Amos’s was The Hug Machine. That was his favorite, The Hug Machine. So it’s fun to go see which ones they pick, which ones they remember, and to read them all together. Ugh, God, it was the best. I kind of want to make them do it more..

[00:28:21] Beth: We should try to do that when we go to see my sister this summer because my sister has all my kids’ books now. We were big Sandra Boynton people here too.

[00:28:30] Sarah: Yeah, we were too.

[00:28:31] Beth: I have a feeling that the girls might choose from those books.

[00:28:35] Speaker: All the Hippos Go Berserk.

[00:28:36] Beth: Yes.

[00:28:37] Sarah: We did that one. We did Deer Zoo. That was a very popular--

[00:28:41] Beth: Yes.

[00:28:42] Sarah: Dear Zoo is a board book. And I think I probably could recite Brown Bear if I thought about it long and hard enough. We read a lot of Brown Bear.

[00:28:50] Beth: Dear Zoo is a controversial one here because my kids absolutely loved it, and Chad thinks that it is a very whiny entitled book. He’s like “Really? The snake was too slithering or something. What’s wrong with you?”

[00:29:04] Sarah: You gave all your books to your sister? See, I gave some away. I didn’t keep all of them, but my classics, the ones that are, like, our family standards, I’m keeping them. First of all, I have little kids come to my house. I like to have them, and I’m keeping them for my grandkids. I’m keeping my books.

[00:29:18] Beth: They’re her books, too because a lot of the books came from my parents’ house. They were my books, and which meant they were her books, too. And I had kids first, and so yeah, of course. And it’s really fun to see them with her kids in pictures and when we visit them. So yeah.

[00:29:33] Sarah: Aw. I love it.

[00:29:34] Beth: I love the idea of story night; that’s a great idea.

[00:29:38] Sarah: I got a hot new one off the presses that Felix and I read in the bookstore the other day. It’s called Don’t Trust Fish, and it’s really funny. It’s birds have feathers, mammals have fur. Super easy. Don’t trust a fish. Anything can be a fish, and it’s really... it’s a cute book. It’s a cute book. Don’t Trust Fish. Highly recommend.

[00:29:53] Beth: Okay. I know we’re going to get great lists and recommendations for days for your shop.

[00:29:56] Sarah: Bring them on.

[00:29:58] Beth: Thank you. I was like, what phrase do I want here? Bring them on. It’s the phrase.

[00:30:01] Sarah: Bring them on. I’m ready. And I’ll put links to all these in the show notes too for sure.

[00:30:05] Beth: Thank you so much for joining us. We will be back with you next week with new episodes of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

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To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

We also talk about taking the news in with a little more removal in the summer, which feels hard and complicated and privileged and necessary. And outside of politics, Angie talks about the book Shiloh, and I share (truly just a fraction) of my love for The Sheep Detectives.

Topics Discussed

• Taking an emotional break from the news without checking out entirely

• ICE shootings, cabinet confirmation hearings, and the Iran war

• Why car-dependent neighborhoods limit kids’ independence

• The nationwide school bus driver shortage

• Disappearing teen hangouts and rules around unsupervised kids

• How lawsuit-aversion backfires on children’s wellbeing

• Rebuilding civic infrastructure — rec leagues, public pools, community schools

• Book recommendations: Shiloh and The Sheep Detectives

Episode Resources

• Angie’s book on the rise in pedestrian deaths, Right of Way (Princeton University Press)

• Angie’s Substack, Love of Place

• The Substack essay on how young adults are poor despite doing everything right (Becoming Noble)

• USDOT’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program

• Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Simon & Schuster)

• The Sheep Detectives (IMDb)

• Join us in Minneapolis, August 29th (Pantsuit Politics)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth: This is Beth Silvers; you’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is out on summer break, and my guest host today is Angie Schmitt, a writer and urban planner. I’m excited for you to hear from Angie. I wanted to talk with her principally about two things. We start with how important it is to have a different vibe in the summer about the news. I am sick about ICE killing Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas. I watched enough of the Jay Clayton and Todd Blanche confirmation hearings to get good and mad about how unimpressive and just unhinged people seeking and occupying the highest offices in our government are. The Iran war is so deeply depressing and senseless and maddening. I can’t even think about the produce diarrhea and all that represents. And I am really trying to flush some of that emotion from my body this summer so that I can come back in the fall and be ready to tell important stories, analyze information thoughtfully, and share good advice as we head into the midterm elections when we have real power to exercise.

[00:01:28] Angie and I talk a little bit about that lightness around the news. I love what she says in this conversation about not giving Donald Trump some of the best eight years of her life, and I’m going to adopt that as a motto. Our thesis here at Pantsuit Politics is that you can pay attention to the world and care about it and still find a happy, grounded, connected life, and that is the spirit of the first part of the conversation with Angie. But most of this episode is about building cities and neighborhoods that provide us with the infrastructure of a meaningful life. Being able to walk around our cities safely, having places for kids to hang out without their parents. I really enjoyed hearing Angie’s perspective and expertise, and hope that you will, too. Before we begin, I want to remind you of our opportunity as a podcast community to get together in person for fun and friendship in Minneapolis on August 29th. And I want to give a special thanks and shout-out to Fearless Finance and Substack for sponsoring that gathering. We could not do it without you. We’d love to see you there for the live show and the after party. All the information that you need to snag your tickets is in the show notes. And now, meet Angie Schmitt. Angie, thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode. Can you just take a second and introduce yourself to the audience?

[00:02:53] Angie Schmitt: So my name is Angie Schmitt. I have a background as a journalist, but I work as an urban planner, and so my work is it kind of spans those two realms a little bit. I have a Substack blog called Love of Place, and I’m working on a book right now. I’m the author of a book that was published about six years ago about the rise in pedestrian deaths in the US, so I have a little bit of a expertise in traffic safety. But my new book that’s going to be coming out probably in 2028 from North Point Press, is about how to make cities and neighborhoods more family-friendly, and it talks a little bit about how raising children has changed. And it goes into not just what’s happening in our streets and playgrounds, but also gets into some issues about rec sports and travel sports and the availability of public pools and swim lessons. So just looking at the economy of choices parents today are operating under and how that’s changed in some ways for the worse from when I grew up.

[00:03:54] Beth: I’m really excited to talk to you about all that. I found you on Substack. Sometimes I talk about Substack like a mall, where we have our store, and you can browse the whole mall if you want to or you can just come to our store if you want. That’s what I really like about it. But I like browsing the whole mall sometimes because I come across someone like you, or I was just watching your notes thinking, “She sounds really normal. Like really smart, but also really normal.” And that’s where I wanted to start today because it has been such a weird week in the news. We’ve had ICE kill two more people in vehicle stops. The Iran war was off and now it’s on, and off and on again. It seems really on right now. We’ve had congressional testimony for people trying to be confirmed to offices that they seem wholly unqualified for to me. I just want to talk about what is this like for a person trying to have a normal July with kids at home and limited time to take off work and just trying to really enjoy every minute? How do we do this?

[00:04:51] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. I don’t know. I was a lot more engaged with following the news and, I worked in the news. So for a while I was just constantly, it was like a IV drip of Twitter, and it was really making me insane. And I just thought at a certain point once Trump got reelected, I just decided Trump’s going to be in office for eight years of my life, some of the best eight years of my life. I’m not going to let him ruin eight years of my life. That’s really letting him win. I try to devote as little attention to thinking about him as I can. I don’t feel very empowered right now. Hopefully the midterms, right? I feel like we’re always have our fingers crossed and are praying for the midterms. But I just feel like at this point I’m looking forward to the midterms, but I don’t feel like I have a lot of power over national politics. And I think that a good project for a lot of us is rebuilding some of our local civic infrastructure. There’s been a lot of damage done there that I think feeds up into some of our political problems, and that’s where we can get more satisfaction out of what we contribute and benefit people more maybe.

[00:05:54] Beth: That’s the posture that I’ve been trying to take too, even with my work as a political podcaster, to just realize, we have the summer, and then we will have the midterms. We will dial back in when there’s something for us to do. Right now I just can’t get wrapped up in Pete Hegseth talking about testosterone testing kits. Yeah. It’s beyond parody to me. It is so bizarre. And so on one hand, I find it easy to put that stuff aside. The ICE of it all is extremely enraging to me. And I don’t feel that I have much power over that, like you said. I’ve contacted my members of Congress. I’ve said this is unacceptable to me. I don’t know what else to do, and I don’t know how to demonstrate for my kids a life where you sustainably care about the world if I feel that fully all day, every day.

[00:06:53] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. And one of my things, and I get in in trouble online for saying this, but I feel like our role right now is to get our own house in order. And I think Trump is gift wrapping this for us on a plate, right? Like he doubled gas prices. He got us into a war with Iran that we lost. He’s insider trading. Like people are unhappy with this administration, and rightly so. But Democrats need to be careful that they don’t... And I think that they’ve made some decisions in the past that have alienated certain people who are more, I don’t know, in the middle or... just they’ve made some unforced errors in the past that have kept Trump sort of competitive. So I think that’s an important project right now is what mistakes have we made? How can we strengthen our standing vis-a-vis Trump so that we can vanquish this whole thing. And I think hopefully that time is coming just based on how disastrous everything has been. But I do think that’s an important project also.

[00:07:58] Beth: I can understand why that gets you in trouble online. We get in trouble for that too. I think it is maddening. Like people who say like there’s such a double standard are right. Yes, there is. There’s a double standard. Things are really tough when you pay attention to all the details of what this administration is doing. There is a certain amount of privilege in opting out. I don’t have any argument with all of that. I just think how do I channel my life and my energy in a way that makes a difference in the long term? And I don’t think I can make a difference If every single day I am dedicated to the project of being enraged

[00:08:35] Angie Schmitt: We also have to convert people too, I think. And sometimes being enraged, especially when it manifests as like yelling at people or scolding people or not listening to different perspectives could alienate people that we really need to win over to our side to have an impact on these issues. So I think that it’s important to be conscious of that as well.

[00:08:57] Beth: Yeah. I think about this too like what is attractive? What is an attractive political movement to be part of? Or not even a movement, but just a political project. What kind of person do I want to associate with? And it’s someone who cares for sure and is informed, yes, but who also can take a vacation and who can look around and say, “Some of this is really unacceptable to me, and there’s work for me to do and I’m going to focus on my work.” I know that you were just on vacation. I’m wondering like what bubbled up for you while you were out?

[00:09:28] Angie Schmitt: So I was in Canada. It was really cool. My family, we took our minivan all the way up to Quebec, which is about 13 hours from where I live in Cleveland, and it was just-- My kids are nine and 11. They’re at such a fun age. It was just a dream come true. Quebec is insanely beautiful. It was so walkable. Of course, what came up for me, I’m in urban planning, and I’m thinking a lot about cities and transportation all the time. To be in this walkable city with this really healthy public realm, it was incredible. In Quebec, there’s blocks and it was built in the 1600s, it’s to medieval proportions. But these gorgeous really charming stone houses, cobblestone, real narrow streets. A lot of them, they had pedestrianized. People were out enjoying the World Cup. They were having a huge music festival. It was so cool to be a part of that and see that, and it made me a little bit sad, honestly, about we have this kind of poverty, I think, in our public realm in the US by comparison, and a lot of problems related to that. And a retreat. There’s been a retreat from the public realm to the point where I think a lot of people are really isolated. They’re spending so all their time scrolling and ordering DoorDash and crazy things. People aren’t even going to restaurants anymore. So I’m really concerned about those kinds of things, and it was refreshing to be there, and it just got me interested in, okay, what is Canada doing? It seems like they have a couple things figured out that we don’t. And obviously, it depends in where you are, and Quebec was a lot different than Niagara Falls, and it’s obviously this beautiful tourist spot. But it did seem to be healthy and functioning city in a way that is a little rarer here.

[00:11:07] Beth: That’s a great transition to your research. I know that you’re looking at how we can make the public square public again, and especially public to include children. So tell me about the book that you’re working on.

[00:11:21] Angie Schmitt: Yeah, I’m so excited about it. It’s almost done, but it’s going to take a long time to go through editing and get to print. I think it’s going to be called Playing in the Street. So it begins talking sort of about Jonathan Haidt has done a great job sort of bringing up the problems children are having with their mental health. I have seen it firsthand. My oldest was in kindergarten when COVID hit and everything closed. School was closed for a really long time. I saw a lot of kids, their mental health just declines rapidly, and it took a long time after that for things to get back to normal. Play time at the library, our public pools in Cleveland to get back open. In some ways maybe they haven’t recovered totally. So I think that’s having a real impact on children. And in addition, they’re getting messages that they’re maybe not welcome in certain places like restaurants, right? Some restaurants have started banning children. For example, I was in Quebec. There’s a beautiful city center. Teenagers out in the evening hanging out, and they just blend in with the rest of the society.

[00:12:18] Whereas here, teenage behavior might be forced underground. They’re not welcome. Maybe the closest thing is a suburban strip center, and there’s a sign that says, “No skateboarding. No biking.” They’re getting messages that they’re not welcome. And they need that adult support and a little bit of mentorship, and they need opportunities to interact with people and take healthy risks in order to really develop the skills they need to succeed in life. And my book looks at a variety of those things, including it’s going to get into a lot of detail about neighborhood design and sort of traffic patterns and the way that contributes to kids being dependent on their parents instead of independently mobile like they were even back when I was a kid, and I’m in my early to mid-40s. So I grew up in the ‘80s and the ‘90s and, was out on my bike all the time, walked to school. You see that kind of thing kind of disappearing.

[00:13:07] Beth: Let’s talk about the design aspect first. I know that you live in Cleveland. I’m in a suburb in Northern Kentucky, right outside of Cincinnati. There are wonderful things about it, but one of the tough things about where I live is that it’s all cars. We are so car-dependent, and everything is designed for cars. And a ton of our kids now have e-bikes and electric scooters, and we have this really cool new development near me that is a great place for kids to hang out. There are just some great opportunities for kids to just go to UDF together and sit outside and eat ice cream without parents, right? It is so terrifying to me to watch kids navigate roads that are built for large SUVs and trucks on these e-bikes and scooters. And I just keep thinking what can we be doing here? How can we be more creative and make it a priority to get our suburban kids able to have some independence in moving themselves about

[00:14:04] Angie Schmitt: I know. It’s really a tragedy. We’ve done such a bad job, and I talk about that a lot in my last book. My last book was about how we’ve had this huge increase in pedestrian deaths in the United States, and I was taking like the engineering profession, some of our government agencies to task a little bit about it. So we’ve got to do some kind of wonky reforms in that field, and I think that my first book was actually a little bit successful in moving the needle around that kind of thing. I’ve traveled a lot doing keynote speaking within my industry. I did a lot of media interviews. Trump’s election was very bad for the kind of reforms that were happening because USDOT was doing a lot prior to Trump’s election to reform some of that. But the built environment is so hostile to children, especially in suburbs, which is where most people live. It’s really a tragedy, and I talk about that in the book. There is a need, especially once... it’s almost like a primal need, I think, when you are a teenager to access retail. So I talk about this a lot in the book. I grew up in a suburban area outside of Columbus where there really wasn’t-- a very typical, it’s thrown up on a cornfield. There were no public spaces. And it was very frustrating for me when I aged into being a teenager, and eventually I figured out like if I cut through a yard and walk along this highway in a ditch, I can access like a Kmart. So we started doing that, and eventually I just hopped on a bus and took it downtown. I was like 12 or 13. I was very adventurous. But at one point a friend told me years later, I convinced her when we were like 12 to run across an interstate highway because it was like separating our neighborhood from a McDonald’s, and it was right across there, and we just wanted that ice cream so badly. That was so important to us. So we’ve done a really bad job. Our commercial streets especially are very dangerous. I talk about that in the first book. In my industry we call those suburban arterial roads. So if they have big box stores, if they have drive-through restaurants, those tend to be really dangerous places for pedestrians.

[00:15:55] They’re not at all designed with kids’ needs in mind, and that’s a huge oversight that I think is having important implications for their health. Now, children are not being run over by cars nearly as often as they were in the ‘70s. But it’s been reduced by 10 times how many kids are killed while biking and walking in the United States every year. But and we’re not able to say for certain because we don’t have very good information about how much kids are walking and biking. But my impression, and a lot of the other experts that I’ve talked to, is that kids are just walking way, way less than they used to, to the point where they’re hardly getting any physical activity. Only one in I think it’s three kids is getting 60 minutes of vigorous physical activity a day, which is a minimum of what they need to be healthy. They need that not just to be physically healthy, which too many of them aren’t physically healthy, but secondly emotionally healthy. I think that’s underrated. Emotionally, social, I need it myself as an adult. I need a certain amount of exercise to not be insane. And you think about a 10, 11-year-old boy, it’s very critical. So and that 60 minutes a day that they’re not getting, the average kid’s getting only 20, that includes walking. They consider walking vigorous physical activity. So I think that’s a huge problem in that we really need a strong public response there because there’s only so much parents can do. Parents get blamed. Your kid has ADHD. He’s not able to walk to school. He doesn’t have a place to play. I’m working a double shift and don’t have the resources to send him to a fancy summer camp. So he’s spending eight hours a day in front of the television. Of course, he does. Of course, he’s struggling in other areas of his life. So that is a big problem, I think, and we really need Not just a government response, but a whole societal response to that problem.

[00:17:45] Beth: What were you seeing that gave you hope from the former Transportation Department? And I’m trying to think about, okay, what can we do? What are the things that work to change this?

[00:17:56] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. They introduced a huge program called Safe Streets and Roads for All, and that it was targeted at different communities can compete for the funding, I think billions of dollars. We spend very little money on sidewalks on bike lanes in the United States. Almost all the money goes into these big highway interchanges, right? Which doesn’t necessarily reflect public priorities, I don’t think, but that’s the way it’s been framed in the industry. So, anyway, they introduced this big new program, and they were awarding funds to repair some of the most dangerous streets. Those of us in urban planning know like if a road with very wide lanes, for example, very wide crossings, you know what, once you get to four or five lanes, even for an adult, it can be tricky to cross safely, to say nothing less of a child. But we can do things like add pedestrian refuge islands, so little concrete waiting areas at the center to help make that a little safer. Those are the kind of things we can change the signal timing. So there are all kinds of incremental changes we can make. Also, street lighting is important. That can be improved. So those kind of things we can fit. Suburban retrofit sometimes we call it. Some of our suburban areas to make them more walkable for kids. Another thing that I think is promising strategy for the suburbs is how in suburbs there’s a lot of cul-de-sacs, right? I grew up on a cul-de-sac. And cul-de-sacs are interesting because they do protect kids a little bit, right? That’s why parents love cul-de-sacs. Yep. Then you don’t have to pass-

[00:19:24] Beth: I live on one. Yep.

[00:19:24] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. It’s wonderful. Then you don’t have to pass through traffic. But the bad thing about it is then you can’t walk anywhere, right? Because the street doesn’t lead anywhere. I think we should, and this is very difficult to do because of property rights and NIMBYs, but we should have some more formalized cut-throughs. So if there is a dead-end street for cars, there should be a pedestrian path. That would do a lot to improve children’s mobility. And maybe I think it would really benefit parents a lot as well, and the whole of society because the one thing I talk about a ton in the book is this disaster of car lines and all the congestion that’s coming from parents chauffeuring their kids to school every day, and all the chauffeuring parents have to do to all kinds of activities. So if we could reduce the amount of effort parents had to put into that by making our communities a little more walkable, I think that would really pay huge dividends.

[00:20:18] Beth: There’s just like a cascade of problems here, right? I remember when my first daughter, she’s 15-- my girls are 15 and 11. My first daughter started kindergarten. The principal said to the parents in a meeting very plainly, “We have a big yellow limousine to come get your kids every day. Please let us do that. You will be so much happier if your kid gets on the bus and comes home on the bus every single day.” And that was true in kindergarten. It sold me. I probably would’ve gotten in the car line, too. But listening to her talk about it so passionately, I thought, “Okay, my kids are going to be bus riders,” and they have been. In the past couple of years, we have had such a shortage of bus drivers that the bus situation is madness. And our poor principal now spends it seems half her day dealing with what bus is a double run, and these kids are going to be late and these kids are going to have to sit in the gym for 30 minutes after school before they can get on their bus. And I just think, like, how do we prioritize this altogether, right? This is an issue of priorities, getting enough bus drivers and getting enough kids on the buses and getting the legislature to fund it appropriately.

[00:21:25] Angie Schmitt: A hundred percent. I talk about this in the book. There’s a nationwide bus driver shortage and I agree with you. There’s been a why are we just not raising bus drivers’ pay?

[00:21:34] Beth: Yes.

[00:21:34] Angie Schmitt: Solve this problem. And I feel like in the past when I was young, my parents didn’t even think about bus service. Or I actually walked to school, and I walked to school when I was in elementary school, and then I took the bus in middle school. But my parents did not have to give it much thought. I feel like I have to be much more-- Our institutions for supporting families and children have withered a little bit, in my opinion, since I was young. And this is a great example. And this is a national problem. It’s contributing to... it’s a mess. And I can’t understand, and this is another thing I... One thing I can do a little bit with a book like this, and that I did a little with my past book, is hold the industry accountable for some of these failures. But this is not even really registering, I don’t think, on the agendas of our state departments of transportation, which have thousands of employees, billions of dollars at their disposal, as a problem. And it’s a little bit of a blind spot for them. And I think maybe it’s a little bit related to sexism or some of the historical ways we’ve defined what are the important problems in transportation. But this is increasingly parents making the school run contribute a lot to rush hour congestion.

[00:22:44] We’ve got to get this yellow bus service working again. And the conditions of the workers and finding the will to support these essential services. And I think one thing I say in the book which I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but it’s contributing to a chronic absenteeism crisis for low-income students that’s going to have devastating consequences. Huge economic repercussions if children aren’t getting basic literacy and numeracy, which is increasingly the case. And so it’s a big problem it’s been under-discussed and we really deserve better, I think, from our leaders. And that’s another thing that’s frustrating. This kind of meat and potato stuff, and we don’t hear this debated on Capitol Hill, it’s not sexy enough, it’s not culture war enough. It would help too many people, universally. Sometimes I think all this culture war stuff is just part of a con to keep us satisfied with inadequate leadership and not solving problems and not helping people.

[00:23:40] Beth: I wonder as you were working on the book how often sort of chicken and egg kept happening. Cause when I think about the buses now and the job of being a bus driver, It is starting to feel countercultural to me to put a kid on the bus. There aren’t a lot of spaces where we say, “Five-year-old, independently go somewhere with one other adult and a ton of kids.” That’s very antithetical to the way a lot of people parent now. And as a consequence, a lot of those kids don’t know how to behave on the bus. Like it is wild what bus drivers have to put up with because so many kids lack the skills to just be on the bus for a few minutes. And so if I were a policy maker, I think I’d be considering we probably need to up bus driver pay. We probably just need more adults on the bus for a while. We probably don’t need to ask drivers to be alone with all these kids and have somebody who can help with behaviors while the driver’s focusing on safety and driving. There are so many places, especially as we talk about kids and school and independence, and developing our civic life, where I can’t tell which lever needs to be pulled first to try to address the problem, because the problems have so many ripple effects.

[00:24:54] Angie Schmitt: I agree that people are having a response to children’s behavior, and children don’t know how to behave in public quite the same way we did. But that’s, of course, one thing I argue in the book is they’re being a little bit excluded. And this is another thing that gets me in trouble, but during the pandemic my kid didn’t have kindergarten for a full year. That expectation was he was going to attend school on Zoom. All the children’s activities were canceled. Your social development is set back when you don’t leave the house for a year at a critical age. So that’s just right off the bat. I have fond memories of riding the bus when I was in middle school, and I don’t know that we were great behaved. That was the fun of it a little bit, in my opinion, that it was not a heavily supervised sort of place to be with friends. And that’s another thing things that concerns me. A, I’m concerned about the fact that kids are not walking or biking to school anymore. I talk about that a lot. Only 11% of kids do that anymore. So it’s a big problem. But secondly, this retreat, there is a reduction in kids that are riding the school bus, and now a majority just recently are driven to school.

[00:25:54] So not only are they sedentary when they’re being driven to school, they’re also isolated from their peers. And increasingly loneliness is a big concern for teenagers especially. Their kids are spending less time with friends. So that is a concern also, and I do think parents some of our norms around parenting are obviously an issue too. In the book, I try not to... I think the impulse for a lot of media figures is just to dunk on parents. I try not to do that quite so much, and I talk about all these pressures that are bearing on parents and leading them to be in these long car lines that many of them would prefer not to. And that’s one of the big factors, I think, is that we haven’t stabilized school busing and made it a reliable service the way we did in the past, and we’ve done a terrible job ensuring that kids have safe routes to school

[00:27:03] Beth: I want to talk about teenage hangouts in public too, beyond retail. Dropping a group of kids off to go to the movie theater or at a public pool, and how many places I’m seeing I feel like more and more signs like, “If they’re under 16, they have to be supervised.” And it makes me really sad because I think especially public pools are places where kids could really... my 11-year-old would be fine at the public pool with a group of friends without an adult and needs that experience.

[00:27:33] Angie Schmitt: Yes, absolutely. That should be treated as a little bit of an entitlement, I think. That’s something I talk about in the book and something I’ve been... Pool access, I think is very important. Access to swimming lessons. I grew up just camping at the pool all day, and then graduated, and without my parents, by the way. My mom worked at least part-time the whole summer when I was growing up, and we went around with a babysitter that was two or three years older than us all summer. But then I graduated to being a lifeguard. So anyway different municipalities now do have different policies that oftentimes are weirdly restrictive. And the idea is a lot of this stuff is couched as being like, oh, the responsible decision for safety or a choice that they had to make for liability reasons. But I think there needs to be more pushback against that kind of thing because real harms do result from this. Obviously, we don’t want anyone drowning, right? That’s why we have lifeguards. That’s why we have certain policies. But there is a harm done to children as well by them sitting in the house for eight to 10 hours a day playing Fortnite that needs to be weighed against these other risks and concerns and hasn’t been properly weighed.

[00:28:41] I haven’t even put this in the book yet, but I heard someone say that I thought was really interesting as a solution was there needs to be a little bit of a tort reform for schools because schools are so terrified of being sued now. One woman this was on Substack, was saying she had to sign a permission form for her kid to eat gelato, which is basically she was saying, or Italian ice, which is sugar and water. There’s not even any allergens in it. This is a tremendous imposition on schools and arguably, I would argue, harmful to children, directly harming children. Protecting children is supposed to be the point, not enriching lawyers or compliance, creating an army of paid compliance officers. So again, I think that the balance there is a little bit skewed and, I’m not a lawyer and not an expert on that, but I think that was an interesting proposal, this idea of some tort reform.

[00:29:32] Beth: I am a retired lawyer now, and I will tell you that our risk aversion just needs to change too. I understand being afraid of being sued, but the number of places that the risk of being sued is used as an excuse for inaction is absurd to me. I really appreciated the firm experience that I had. I did a few years of big law and a number of people I worked with would tell me “Make the right business decision, and if you get sued deal with it.” It’s no fun. It’s terrible. We need a million reforms in our justice system to make that process more sustainable. But also, live your life. Do things that are good. Do things that make the most sense for your organization. I lose my mind when I’m with a group and the hand-wringing about being sued comes up, especially groups that have no money. Go ahead and sue us. We have no money anyway. You know what I mean? Just keep trying to be out there doing good.

[00:30:27] Angie Schmitt: And what is actually best for children needs to be considered as well. I already made this point, but children can really be harmed, I think. Let’s say you have a boy. This is the way I’ve been thinking about it. Let’s say you have a boy who’s very athletic, and he’s a little bit of a natural risk-taker, okay? That could be a real asset, depending on the context, right? Maybe he’s an incredible athlete. Maybe he becomes I don’t know. In the past he worked as a sailor. I don’t know, if he’s constantly told he can’t, that part of him is bad and wrong, and he can’t... He has that energy that’s muffled. That is a harm to that child. And too often I think that’s disregarded, and the real harms are coming to the surface right now. And I think for people who don’t have kids, maybe they’re just reading about this. But I spend a lot of time with kids, and my kids are really pretty privileged and I’ve worked hard to facilitate a little bit of a free ranges arrangement for them. But still I notice things about kids these days that just worry me.

[00:31:32] Beth: You know what I think? You’ve just clicked into place for me we are so fixated on not getting sued for the harms that can be redressed in court. That we’re creating all kinds of harms that can’t. We can’t sue for the lost opportunities that our kids are having, for the lost ability to go to the movie theater with a big group of teenagers and have an independent experience. We can’t sue for that. But we won’t permit that experience because if they are there and someone slips and falls or whatever, we can sue for that. It’s like our balance has been skewed by what court will do and what it won’t do.

[00:32:10] Angie Schmitt: Another thing that’s crazy about all this to me, too, is on the other hand, I think that we’re very lax about serious risks to kids as well in certain weird contexts. For example, we know what are the top killers of children, right? We have way higher child mortality even though we’re much more litigious than a lot of European nations. They’re getting killed by cars guns, and drugs, okay? So we’re not doing a good job of protecting kids from the things that are the biggest threats to them. And by the way, one of those is suicide. So these threats to their mental health are very serious, and one of the top things parents should be concerned about. And another thing, even water safety, drowning is a top. So when we’re denying kids access to swimming lessons, access to safe water environments, we may increase the risk. There’s all kinds of weird risk aversion theater that gets translated into a more risky situation. Parents will drive their kids to school, right? Because they don’t want them to walk, which it may be a reasonable trade-off, but they underestimate the risk even being in the backseat of a car is to kids. That’s one of the number one killers of children, and most of them are killed as passengers. So it’s not a risk-free situation the way it’s framed by school districts sometimes or parents. And so there’s a lot of things that are mixed up and don’t make sense once you scrutinize them.

[00:33:32] Beth: I want to talk a little bit more about the point you started to make that we have to buy all of our social capital. There’s a great piece floating around Substack about this right now that I’ll link in the notes that talks about how by the things that we measure, it looks like millennials are doing great but it’s the things that we don’t measure that make a meaningful life. And I would love to tease that out with you around family-friendly culture.

[00:33:59] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. I really liked that article, and that is some of the same arguments I try to make in my book. So one thing I noticed, and hopefully this anecdotal sort of makes sense, but my kids play... I’m so lucky we have a rec youth sports league in the city where I live. That’s an example of some of the social infrastructure that’s withered a little bit. A lot of the rec leagues are dying out, and if parents are pushed or kids that want to play sports are pushed into these expensive travel leagues, and that leaves out kids who don’t have as much money, regardless of their athletic talent. So that’s a big problem. Anyway, so we do this league and they kind of piece together it’s a nonprofit league. These are the kind that are really good and need to be preserved and anyway are accessible for all kids. So doing great work. And they piece together the basketball courts. Basketball courts are, like, a great example of an amenity that’s very important to children, especially in a winter city like Cleveland, especially for boys that are a certain age, I think. Although I shouldn’t discount that girls who play basketball either. Anyway, regardless so they piece these together and we play a lot of our league is church basements. So in previous generations there was, I do think, more of a commitment to-- and I think it’s partly because we led more localized lives, but more of a commitment to building this civic infrastructure and recreational infrastructure.

[00:35:25] And one thing I talk about a lot in the book is the progressive era in the United States, which is like 1890s to 1920s which just I’m fascinated with this era because prior to that we didn’t even really think of children as occupying a separate sphere than adults. They just were there by the adult world. Sometimes they worked or they apprenticed with their parents. But then we started to think we had an industrial economy. We started to think about childhood as being a distinct phase. They introduced the concept of playgrounds, which really didn’t exist before that era. They also have introduced all these really lasting and impactful institutions. Like they introduced the YMCA. They invented the sports-- I talk about this in the book and I get really excited about it. They invented the sports of basketball and volleyball during that era at YMCAs. They invented summer camp. They invented scouting. All these really lasting institutions they were building in that era palatial Just enormous, beautiful swimming destinations. So there was this real civic spirit and investment. And getting back to my earlier anecdote, even a generation or two ago, every church was investing, people were attending church more, were donating, and they were building these shared resources for children to play on. And at the time, they were allowing, I assume, children to just come in and play whenever they wanted. It was part of their ministry. Now, we have all these schools in Cleveland that taxpayers pay for that are locked all night. There’s security reasons for that. There’s labor agreement reasons for that. But we pay for all these basketball courts that are locked to kids that are desperate to use them. One thing I found in my research was that it used to be schools in New York and Cleveland were open until ten at night to give people a place to go and were big social centers around the clock, especially for youth, but going up to adults.

[00:37:20] Beth: Yeah, I would love to see a resurgence of schools as community centered. And I know that our audience is filled with teachers and administrators who are like, “Please don’t ask another thing of our schools.”

[00:37:31] Angie Schmitt: I know.

[00:37:31] Beth: Which is fair. That’s fair. And I think how could we do this and it not feel that way to those folks, right? How could we give them what they need to do what they do, and then have other support that allows that building to still be a community center?

[00:37:46] Angie Schmitt: So I talk about this a little, too, in the book. And one thing that my school district-- I just complained about my school district like a number of times. But one thing that they do that I love and that more people could do that’s a very low bar is opening their school yards. So we can increase the amount of park space pretty easily just by don’t lock your schoolyard after school hours. If there’s a minor incident of vandalism, let’s just use public funds to repair that because there’s studies that I cite that show that just having the school yards open and near the kids can increase the level of physical activity kids get measurably. Now, in that study, I just want to qualify they did have a playground attendant that was there and that was paid for also. But in terms of getting the actual schools open it’s a bigger discussion. But I do think there could be a lot of benefits. And it’s been a frustration for me with our district that’s just their policy that they don’t like to do a lot of or they have a lot of rules around any after-school activity.

[00:38:48] But children in Cleveland really are under-resourced for. We do have these rec centers, and we do have some things, but compared to kids in the suburbs, really are not getting the same level of extracurricular opportunities and causes all kinds of problems. In fact I’m all over the place, but one storyline I’m really interested in is Baltimore. We’ve seen murder rates kind of plunge in a number of our cities, and I think Baltimore is a cool example. And I think part of their strategy there was expanding just recreational opportunities for kids. Get them in basketball leagues, get them working as lifeguards, get them at pools instead of running around getting into trouble. It makes perfect sense to me that would be quite effective. I think that’s influenced Cleveland a little bit, which is exciting. They expanded pool hours this year, I think, for that reason, for crime prevention. And I think there’s a lot to be said for that strategy.

[00:39:40] Beth: Yeah, I think so too, especially because if you get the kids out, you get some percentage of parents out with them, and that starts to lead to a more connected community and less of the sort of suburban, I open the garage door in the morning and pull my car out, and then I pull my car back in after work and close it, and that’s my engagement with my community for the day. I know my girls both swim for the team at our public pool. And your kids can’t just swim. Like you are volunteering constantly. And that’s annoying and tiresome and great, it’s all of those things.

[00:40:16] Angie Schmitt: I wish we had that opportunity. A swim team is great. I think aquatic. I don’t know. I just I’m thinking about that. I don’t know why. I think it’s very important to a good life to have that access.

[00:40:26] Beth: You were saying all over the place, which is our vibe at Pantsuit Politics, so we’re just right on target for what Sarah and I do here. But I was thinking about data centers. The last guest I had on was talking about data centers and how angry the public is and how people just do not want these in their community. I was out in Hocking Hills, the state park in Ohio. Very remote area. The only thing that even remotely political that I saw for a few days out there were signs saying, “No data centers here.” And I feel like some of that is just that we don’t believe in the promise that these things are going to create a life of more leisure. If big companies and the states doing economic development deals with those companies were saying, “You know what? We really believe that this isn’t going to create a lot more jobs, but it is going to create more community. So we want to start putting attendants in parks and lifeguards at pools and employees of our company driving bus routes as part of their duties or something.” Like where is the investment back to show the promise? If you really believe that this is going to change our culture in a way that is a net positive for everyone, prove it out now while you have people dumping buckets of money into it, and you’re asking everyone to take a leap of faith with you.

[00:41:40] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. I think when we were living more localized lives, there was more incentive for successful business people to be pumping that back into the local civic infrastructure. Yeah. But I’m not sure, and I think that’s what that blog post you referenced I think that’s really what his whole thing is talking about giving back and supporting sort of the social sphere. My sense is that has declined a little bit. That isn’t happening the same way it used to, but he would know more than me. I haven’t explored that too much.

[00:42:15] Beth: Yeah. We will link that piece so that everyone can continue to read and think about these topics together, and I want to make sure that we spend a second Outside of Politics before I let you go. So we always end on something just completely human and personal, and I saw that you recently listened to an audiobook with your children that really touched you, so I wanted to hear more about it.

[00:42:49] Angie Schmitt: Oh, yeah. Have you ever read, this was on our long car ride and came with Shiloh.

[00:42:54] Beth: No, I haven’t.

[00:42:55] Angie Schmitt: Which is an older classic. It won a Newbery Medal. I love children’s literature. I have all kinds of recommendations. But I actually think your readers would really enjoy it. It really surprised me, the message at the end. I don’t want to spoil it. It’s about a boy and his love for his dog, and my kids love storylines about animals, kids and animals, and it’s set in Appalachia. If you liked Demon Copperhead, a little bit that kind of setting and that kind of family a little bit. So it’s a little old-fashioned classic. But one of the things it was about was getting along with people that are difficult and having compassion for them and what might have brought that about, which I think is such an important lesson just for anyone. We all have to get along with people a lot of times that are difficult to get along with. And all of us at times are that person, yes. I know I’ve been that person myself. I thought that was really cool, and I was just really surprised. And it was refreshing I thought, the message, and it was very nuanced morally. I’m going on and on, but it reminded me a little of Huckleberry Finn. Because you have a boy going through this moral dilemma about the law, and in this case the subject is a dog that’s mistreated and how he should respond to that.

[00:44:08] Beth: I love that. I think children’s literature and just stories for children are so clarifying. My 11-year-old and I saw Sheep Detectives recently, and I felt just completely undone by that movie. I thought it was going to be so silly. It looks like CGI sheep and voices, and it’s just going to be goofy. And I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was almost a modern parable. I was talking to a friend of mine from church saying “We could make this movie the curriculum for our children’s program for the next year, and have something new to dig out of it every single week.”

[00:44:42] Angie Schmitt: Yeah, my kids love that, too. And one thing I loved because my blog is called Love of Place, and I’m just very interested in the settings of stories. Such a beautiful setting. I was in love with the setting. And then when we were up in Quebec, and my daughter said, too. My daughter picked up on that, too. It’s this quaint little... I don’t know. Where are they? Ireland? They were in Cornwall. Ireland. So when we were in Quebec, I said, “This is just like Sheep Detectives.” Very beautiful. Yeah. My kids loved that. Talking animals, I love it.

[00:45:08] Beth: Yeah. I think you’re right. Kids and animals just it works for a reason. And then to be able to use that over and over for generations to share something important. I thought Sheep Detectives really spoke to what belonging feels like in not a preachy way at all, just a really beautiful, nuanced, thought-provoking way. Sounds like I need to read Shiloh with my daughter.

[00:45:29] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. I really would recommend it. Yeah.

[00:45:33] Beth: Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I really appreciate it.

[00:45:37] Angie Schmitt: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:45:38] Beth: Thanks to Angie and all of you for being here today. If you’d like to continue the conversation, you can join us in the comments on Substack or email us at hello@pantsuitpolitikshow.com. I’m heading out on summer break now. Sarah and I have pre-recorded some wonderful new episodes for you, so don’t miss a Tuesday or a Friday next week. Everyone, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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We had a wide-ranging conversation--from the Graham Platner implosion to data centers to Alex’s experiences at immersive medieval battle events. Alex gives us an explicit call to action (tell Congress to get moving on AI regulation!) and a lot to think about in terms of how campaigns--for offices and issues--are run and won.

Topics Discussed

• Graham Platner’s Senate campaign collapse and what it means for progressive candidate recruitment

• Trust, accountability, and the “the groups are the problem” debate in Democratic politics

• What voters actually want from elected officials

• AI’s growing role in hiring, firing, workplace surveillance, and government decisions

• The AI industry’s political spending and lobbying power

• How to actually get your member of Congress to pay attention to AI

• Alex McCoy’s immersive medieval battle reenactment hobby

Episode Resources

Tickets for the Pantsuit Politics live show in Minneapolis, Aug 29 (Eventbrite)

Alex McCoy

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. I’m here today with guest host Alex McCoy, an organizer and advocate for progressive causes, who is especially focused on the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Alex and I have a wide-ranging conversation about the progressive movement in general before discussing AI, and then we turn our attention Outside of Politics to Alex’s immersive medieval battle experiences. I loved this whole conversation, and I think there’s a lot of rich material to continue talking about here, so I hope that you’ll listen and then come to the comments and our email and talk with me more about it. I want to quickly remind you that we would love to see you live in person in Minneapolis at our live show and afterparty on August 29th. The kind of connected community that Alex describes about his medieval weekends forms for us at events like Minneapolis, and we would love for you to come be part of it. We’re getting down to the wire, so if you do plan to come, don’t delay, grab those tickets at the link in the show notes. And now, meet Alex McCoy. I’m really happy to have you here, and I don’t quite know how to introduce you. So can you just introduce yourself to everyone?

[00:01:23] Alex McCoy: Sure. Yeah. My name’s Alex. I use he/him pronouns. I am a progressive organizer fighting back against big tech and artificial intelligence harming us and our lives and our families and our careers and our environment. But I’ve been organizing for more than a decade ever since I got out of the Marine Corps, where I served as a sergeant. I co-founded a progressive veterans group called Common Defense, which has done a lot of great work to fight back against endless forever wars. I worked in the 2024 election cycle leading youth voter registration for NextGen America overseeing eight state teams registering young people to vote on college campuses. And I’ve had all kinds of different jobs in state government, in different nonprofits. Before my current work, I was on the climate team at Public Citizen. Really excited to be here. I’ve been a big fan of the podcast for years, so thanks for having me.

[00:02:25] Beth: Thank you for being here. I came to your work through Twitter, now X. And I still look there-- even though it’s a dumpster fire now-- for voices that I wouldn’t hear otherwise. And you’re one of my favorite accounts that I know is pretty significantly to my left personally, but I feel like you tweet with a lot of integrity. I learn a lot from what you share, and so I’m excited to pick your brain about a whole bunch of things. And X might be a good place to start because you’ve been tweeting a lot about the implosion of the Platner campaign. I am sick to death of talking about Graham Platner, honestly-- which is not good, right? When you have a candidate and you’re tired of that candidate before the general election, that’s a problem. But I’m really interested in what can be learned from this situation and just curious what you’re thinking about as you’ve watched this unfold.

[00:03:17] Alex McCoy: Gosh I’m thinking a lot of things. Foremost among them, grief that this is where we’re at and gratitude for the women who told their stories about their experiences with Graham Plattner. It’s not easy and I want to just say that I believe them and that I’m glad that we are hopefully going to have an opportunity to select a different nominee. So that’s the first thing I would say. The real question I think is how did we get here? How do we avoid making the same mistakes? And I think obviously everybody that we recruit to run for office now, my first question’s going to be, “Tell me about your tattoos.” And I think that in a time when more millennials and people of my generation are running for office, a lot of us have a posting history online, and anybody that’s been extremely online, you’re living your raw self for years, and if you take some of the worst examples of that and throw those in an attack ad, it’s going to make you look maybe not how you are today or what you believe and sincerely think. So we’re going to have to figure out, like, how to grapple with that collectively, and I think we’re going to have to figure out what it looks like to take a person that has come from a background that isn’t planning to run for office since they were in high school and it, and support people to represent not just a perfect biography but to be representing a movement and a set of issues that they and the voters want. Because I think that’s the big takeaway I have from the experience of Graham Platner. Is that for months now people have been supporting Graham Platner in spite of Graham Platner. And it would be a mistake to think that all of those 150,000 voters in Maine who voted last month were just hoodwinked by the fact that he wore flannel shirts or has a deep voice. There’s plenty of people who wear flannel shirts and have a deep voice. What people are really looking for is somebody that speaks to the needs that we have and the desire for accountability from the political system, and somebody who feels like they’re on their side, and somebody who’s going to push back against a default of endless war and a broken healthcare system, and all the things that were part of that platform that was the basis of the movement.

[00:06:18] I think that, tactically, politics requires a lot of trust and I really feel like a lot of us in the progressive movement had our trust betrayed by Platner’s campaign. How many times we had to sit there and think “Okay, is this it?” Okay, you’re telling me what you’re telling me and we have to make a choice on how we proceed and there’s a collective action problem, the same way we saw with Joe Biden in the 2024 election where everybody saw that same debate and we’re looking at each other “Gosh, I don’t know if he can rise to what we need from him anymore. What do we do?” And it’s really hard to be that first mover. When story after story kind of dropped, everybody’s looking at Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and all the organizations that supported him, and it’s we got to move together. One takeaway I have is to just be able to break through these collective action problems by speaking to each other more and being more vulnerable among the movement and asking ourselves what are our fundamental lines, right? What are our things that we find acceptable and unacceptable? And we may have disagreements there, but I am proud that the Democratic Party has established a firm line that sexual violence is unacceptable, no matter what. No matter what. We are all united in that, and that is something that makes us fundamentally different from the people who support President Trump.

[00:08:01] Beth: Yeah. Let me tell you a little bit about my journey watching the Platner campaign as someone outside the movement. When I saw his very first ad, I thought, “This is going to work. This is maybe not for me, but this is going to work.” And I thought it was healthy for the progressive movement to make peace with the tattoo. To figure out a way through that. Because the worst branding problem that the progressive movement has is this purity testing, this kind of we’re HR, we’re no fun. Anything that colors outside our lines is unacceptable to us. So I thought some good things were happening there. I thought he personally has handled every situation with a lack of integrity.

[00:08:40] Alex McCoy: Yeah.

[00:08:40] Beth: I do not like the language that every single thing that goes wrong in your life is the result of someone rigging the system against you, that the corporate media is somehow doing a poor job by investigating people who want to be one of 100 senators. So I’m watching him go along and feeling more and more personally uncomfortable with the way that he’s responding to these things. I don’t think it’s that the public wants a perfect candidate. I feel like we’re getting to an understanding that, yeah, everybody’s said something stupid online at this point. People make bad decisions. I think there’s a lot of grace and space, especially for people who’ve served in the military who’ve made poor decisions during the course of and after their service. I think there was an opportunity for kind of an everyman candidate here. To me, it is all about his unwillingness to just stand in front of a microphone and say, “I have screwed up over and over again in my life. You’re going to hear more and more of that. I’m sorry for it.” And maybe because the allegations have become so serious, and I agree with you, to me, everything being said by these women hangs together and rings true, and I believe them. Maybe there is no way to do that. And I am glad that the Democratic Party draws that line, too. But for future candidates, man, the lesson to me is just get in front of this stuff, have some humility.

[00:10:02] Alex McCoy: Yeah.

[00:10:02] Beth: And say it, “This is all on me. I want a job where the buck will stop with me on everything.”

[00:10:09] Alex McCoy: Yeah, I think that’s right. An ethos that I try to live by is the truth is the best talking point. No matter what, right? Like no matter how bad it feels or the consequences it may have, the consequences of you trying to cover up the crime are worse because it’s going to come out sooner or later. And I think, to your point, people responded really positively when the Reddit posts story the first thing came out because he looked everybody in the eye and he said, I understand what I said and why it was wrong, and I’m sorry, and here’s my plan to like actually make the issues related to those things better. And mea culpa, right? And I think that even helped him in a way. I think the Reddit story, when it was just that and him taking accountability made him a stronger candidate. But it was the fact that it was one thing after another, and after each instance Everybody’s “Okay, is this it, bro?” And he would say, “Yes, this is it.” He met with 30 senators, and he looked them in the eye and he said, “This is it.” And I was a supporter, but not involved in the campaign itself. I did support independent expenditure side efforts for him, but the nature of that is you can’t talk to the campaign. So we just had to have faith that they were behaving, with candor and grace and humility. And that really sucks. It really sucks. It’s letting down so many ordinary people who volunteered their time and their money, and their belief, their passion their aspiration for a better future. So that’s a bummer, but this won’t be the last fight, and I’m also really excited to see the Maine Democrats pick someone to step in and carry the torch. I think they have some really great options of great candidates among those who ran for governor and others in the state who have a long track record of public service, so we don’t have to, at least in this instance, take a risk on somebody new.

[00:12:37] And I think that there are some other exciting new voices that come from less traditional backgrounds for politicians or people running for office. I want to shout out the great work that Run for Something is doing to elevate first-time younger candidates who Otherwise, never would have gotten the support to run. A lot of them women, and a lot of them people of color, and a lot of them not coming from privileged institutions. I also want to shout out some of the other candidates that are similar to Graham Plattner. I’m really excited about Sam Forstag, who’s running in Montana. He’s running for Congress. It’s a red-leaning seat, but he’s polling very competitive, and he’s a smoke jumper, which is like a forest fire firefighter role. And he’s really awesome, and he’s really amazing speaker running on this powerful platform. Has been out there in the community, which is the other thing people want to see. We’re so tired of politicians not being accessible. So few hold town halls anymore, and we want to be able to see our people asking for our vote stand up in front of us and answer our questions. And he’s out there doing that.

[00:13:57] Beth: Let me ask you this question about the movement. I think much like MAGA, although animated by a completely different set of principles, the progressive movement attracts a lot of first-time voters. A lot of people who’ve been disgusted by politics, and talks to those constituents in a very plainspoken way about what matters and what you’re trying to do. And all that is both really inspiring to people and carries tremendous risk, and I think you see that risk side playing out on the MAGA movement now, that people are becoming disillusioned that a lot of what they voted for has not come to pass. Now, some of that I think is because the president has betrayed a lot of what he said he was going to do and has focused principally on enriching himself instead of making life better for all of the people who came out to support him. Putting that aside, the progressive movement has bold ambitions that in a system like ours will take a lot of time and a lot of persuasion and a lot of work to get to a critical mass to bring these things forward, and forward won’t mean the full vision, right? And so I wonder how you reconcile. A thing I keep thinking about with Plattner is if he’d been great, if he’d been exactly what he seemed to be, and he got to the Senate, and he has to compromise and he’s talking about all these things and two terms in, none of them have happened. What does that do on the movement side, and how does someone like you talk to voters about that?

[00:15:38] Alex McCoy: Yeah. This is one of the big challenges of organizing because the people we need to win and the people we need to build a better country and a better system are the people that aren’t participating yet, and we have to bring more voters into being engaged in the process. And in order to do that, we have to overcome a deep cynicism about being able to feel any tangible improvement as a result of what we’re asking from them. So how do you do that? This is why I think it is important to ground the progressive movement in organizations rather than hero candidates. In Maine, there’s a great organization called Maine People’s Alliance, which is a sort of grassroots membership organization. Graham was a member of it. He did activism through Maine People’s Alliance. He went to DC to lobby his own members of Congress, including Susan Collins, through Maine People’s Alliance around issues like healthcare. They work on issues, and they work at the local level, and they work at the big level. And we spend so much time talking about the big level, the national politics, the, “We need Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.” And we do need those things. And here where I live in Orlando, we had our local city had a agreement with ICE where they were housing immigrants that had been detained by ICE in our local county jail, and it was costing us millions of dollars at the same time that ICE had just gotten billions of dollars from President Trump and the Republicans in Congress. And we were complicit in this mass detention agenda. You may have heard of Alligator Alcatraz here in Florida. And local organizers here were able to get that contract canceled. That our city was able to help push back against ICE’s abuses. And there are small wins like that, right? That’s how we keep people engaged, is maybe we’re not going to get Medicare for All tomorrow, but we can improve real, measurable things that people can see and feel, and we can use big campaigns like Obama’s campaign in 2008, like Bernie Sanders’ campaigns in 2016 and 2020, like Graham’s campaign, like Zohran Mamdani’s campaign. Even if you’re not totally on board with every policy that they’re running on, what they’re running on is fundamentally that we should get involved and we should stay involved beyond election day, and that we should be fighting both inside the legislature and outside in the streets to push for the same changes, and you do that through organizations. And this is maybe another answer about platinum, right? The beauty of a movement Is it contains a lot of bad people. It contains a lot of flawed people. It’s messy, it’s relational. You go to your local Indivisible chapter, and there’s some people I can’t stand.

[00:19:17] Beth: True in every organization ever, right? Every church, every school, every club, like whatever it is you’re going to get it all.

[00:19:23] Alex McCoy: Exactly. And so much of people’s experience with politics has been being treated like an ATM. That the primary way we get interacted with by the Democratic Party is I made one donation to a candidate years ago, and now I get 5,000 emails a day that are saying their hair’s on fire and if I don’t give them 50 bucks, then Mitch McConnell is going to rise from the grave and take over everything and we need to go, right? And then that’s it. You don’t get invited to meetings. You don’t get asked to do anything else. And when you do get invited in, and when you do get included in a process, and when it’s not top-down, it’s not like three guys in a WeWork in DC deciding what you need to do, but it’s you and your neighbors, that feels really empowering and transformative. Whether you’re doing that through your Indivisible or you’re doing it through the Democratic Socialists of America or you’re doing it through some other community organization, that is what I find keeps people in the fight and overcomes cynicism. Because you have that solidarity with the people that you’re in the fight with and you recognize that all of those people are imperfect. And I think that speaks to why Graham’s campaign was so durable through scandals; is because the people of Maine are tight-knit and we’re looking at each other going, “Yeah, I know he’s an ass.”

[00:20:55] Beth: Yeah.

[00:20:56] Alex McCoy: Aren’t we all?

[00:20:58] Beth: I would be very impressed if I received an ask from a campaign for something other than money. I really would. So I have to ask you.

[00:21:06] Alex McCoy: Sure.

[00:21:06] Beth: If you’re building the movement around groups, the groups have quite a reputation.

[00:21:11] Alex McCoy: The groups.

[00:21:12] Beth: The groups. So all of the autopsies of the Biden presidency say the groups were a real problem for us. How do you respond to that kind of analysis?

[00:21:24] Alex McCoy: That this is a great question. I’m glad you asked me because I both agree and disagree with this narrative. Let me start by how I agree. I think there are a lot of issue advocacy organizations that have talked a big game about how they represent a base of people. And then they say, “In order to appeal to this base of people that we represent, you need to, Mr. Politician, support XYZ policies.” And it turns out that they’ve gotten ahead of where that base of people actually is. They are supporting things that those people don’t actually support. And so if the politician follows their advice, they’re actually going to lose votes, they’re not going to gain them. Secondly, I think that we have gotten lazy in the era of the internet and digital tools where it used to be in the civil rights era, if you wanted to have Martin Luther King’s March on Washington every church is going to get their 50 people, and we’re going to get a bus, and we’re all going to go and then we’re going to get all these different groups, the different SNCC chapters at the different schools, and it adds up to a million-man march. Now you have a tweet go viral. Like there are ways that suddenly you can get mass mobilization into the street that didn’t come through real infrastructure that existed that is accountable, right? And so what you really need and the way these groups get ahead of their base is they have no structural accountability to that base. The base doesn’t elect them. They’re not in a federated organization that has all these affiliates, that there’s a way to pass a resolution where we’re all going to support this thing. And if the people in charge get ahead of their skis, we’re going to recall them, and we’re going to put somebody else as our spokesperson who’s going to speak to our actual material interests.

[00:23:38] And so I think it is true that some politicians have confused highly visible organizations and influencers and activists that speak on behalf of a community but are not accountable to that community and that has led them astray. Now, where I disagree with this idea that, just don’t listen to the groups are bad, I think it lets politicians off the hook. It is the job of an advocacy organization to advocate. And it is the job of an organization, whether their idea is popular or not, if they think it’s the right idea and the truth, they should make a persuasion argument. And it is the job of the politician to say yes or no. So to outsource all the responsibility on the people trying to say it would be a better world if you did XYZ absolves the politician of the responsibility to say I disagree with that because... and we need more of that, right? I think that’s one of the things that was missing in the Platner race. Janet Mills had no policy platform. There was none on her website, nothing. And then she didn’t do any events where she said what she stood for, right? And too often that’s what establishment politicians do, is they try to avoid saying what they believe so that they don’t make anybody mad. And I think in a world that everybody’s learning about what’s going on by watching short-form video on their phone and it’s a crowded attention economy, like that doesn’t work anymore. And because so many groups are hollow and they’re not accountable to a base, and that means they can’t mobilize that base transactionally. They can’t say, “All right, Mr. Politician, I understand that, maybe this policy doesn’t poll well with the median voter, but if you adopt it, I’m going to turn out these 10,000 of our members to vote for you.” Politicians love making that kind of deal. But we just can’t keep our end of the bargain anymore.

[00:25:55] Beth: I think you said a lot of really important things there. I love the idea that accountability because I think that word gets thrown around so much that I think, “What are we even talking about?” The idea that accountability comes from proximity and relationship and cohesion I think is so good. I want to say something about Janet Mills that I don’t know if I believe about Janet Mills as a person. I just don’t know enough about her. But this point about platform and issues gets to something that really bothers me and is a reason why I would never run for office myself. What I really want in a mayor or a governor or a senator or just a state legislator is someone who promises to listen to people and do their homework and arrive at their best judgment. Because some small percentage of what they do will be proactive, but the larger percentage will be reactive most of the time. The world and the needs of the world don’t fit your policy platform usually. I think about this with George W. Bush all the time and how he wanted to be a domestic president, and that’s not what the world had in store.

[00:27:09] Alex McCoy: Yeah.

[00:27:10] Beth: And that was catastrophic. He had a domestic agenda and ended up having to be a foreign policy president, and it was catastrophic. And so I think about that when I elect people. I really don’t need someone who says, “This is what I stand for and this is what I’m going to fight for.” Yeah. I need someone who says “Yeah, I will go to hearings. I will listen to experts. I will research. I will talk to my constituents. I will do the town halls. I will take in as much information as I can and make the best decisions I can from that information.” And I just don’t know if anyone can get elected that way. Yeah. But I think that the inability to get elected that way is part of what we’re all really pissed about at the end of the day. I think most of us want that on some level. It’s just not a sexy, inspiring, let me get my checkbook out and my signs made message.

[00:28:00] Alex McCoy: Yeah. I think there’s something to that. I think what’s important for accomplishing that is people need to know who it is you’re going to do your homework with and listen to, right? And there’s a lot of, I believe, justified dissatisfaction with the expert institutions. Some of it unjustified, some of it justified. We see versions of that on the left and the right. Obviously, I disagree with anti-vax stuff, anti-mask stuff during COVID, but I think you could have a very reasonable conversation about what were some of the choices that the Center for Disease Control made? What were some of the trade-offs that the administration made during the COVID pandemic? In the point you made about foreign policy, right? The whole foreign policy expert class supported the devastating wars that we started during the Bush administration, and continued during the Obama administration, and continued during the first Trump administration, and that only Joe Biden, over the objections of much of the expert class was willing to bring to an end. And now that Trump has reopened. I think that this is one of the roles that the issue of Gaza is playing right now in Democratic primaries; is when people are outspoken about Gaza, I think a lot of voters are processing that as, “Okay, this person is unbought,” they’re going to listen to what voters think in our party, not what big super PACs or lobbyists think. Setting aside the merits of that issue, I think that is what people are interpreting from that position. And similarly there are other issues like Medicare for All, where for some voters it’s not about are we going to actually pass the bill Medicare for All in this next Congress, it’s about, “Okay, this person is not at the hock of big pharma,” right? If they’re saying this, I know that they’re on my side and not on the side of the people that I feel like are responsible for this broken situation that we’re in.

[00:30:21] Beth: Let’s take a quick break and then come back and talk about some of those big companies and who you listen to on important issues. I know that you’ve been doing a lot of work on AI, and I want to start by just asking you to introduce that work to our audience.

[00:30:45] Alex McCoy: So artificial intelligence is going to be, I think, the next big issue in our lives because it’s getting more powerful as a tool. And because it’s getting more powerful as a tool, more and more companies are integrating it into their businesses, and as a result, they’re not hiring as many workers as they used to or they’re even laying workers off. And this particularly is affecting young, new college grad kind of entry-level positions. AI is being used by our government to power autonomous weapons that the military is using to decide where to strike, and it was being used by DOGE to decide what programs to cut. It’s being used in making Medicare decisions. It’s being increasingly used to make choices that affect the lives of ordinary Americans. And in the workplace, we’re seeing AI used as a tool of surveillance. We’re seeing workers with AI systems monitoring everything they do on their computer or listening to their work sales phone calls. And I’ve talked to truck drivers who there’s an AI system monitoring them on their whole route. This is a new reality. You talk to teachers and parents of kids in school and teachers are at their wit’s end because all the kids are cheating on their homework with chat.

[00:32:29] And then the kids are like “ All my friends don’t hang out, and they all have AI girlfriends and boyfriends, and I’m using my AI as my therapist.” So there’s all of these ways that this tech is just transforming things quietly and causing a whole bunch of interconnected disruption to what we experience and what we live and in the opportunities we have. And when you zoom out, what’s happening is you have a couple giant companies owned by some of the richest people in the world who are amassing a unprecedented amount of wealth and correspondingly an unprecedented amount of political power, and who themselves are publicly saying that we think this technology could get out of control, could be used for nefarious means, is going to cause mass unemployment in the coming years, and could even make human beings go extinct. They’re saying this out loud, right? And our political system has not responded to that yet, so we need it to, and that’s what my job is

[00:33:54] Beth: So I wonder as you approach that job, just like fundamentally, how do you feel about AI? Do you use it? I meet people who are, like, almost religiously opposed to it. And then people who are, I think, outrageously optimistic about it. I find myself somewhere in between those two positions. I wonder where you land, just as a starting place.

[00:34:17] Alex McCoy: Yeah. I like to imagine a two-by-two grid where one axis of the grid is on one end, AI is really powerful as a tool. And the other end is AI is totally hype, it’s all fake, it’s a fancy auto-complete. It just gives you wrong information. Like you don’t even need to worry about it because it’s all hype. And then the second axis is and that’s good versus that’s bad.

[00:34:43] Beth: Yeah, that’s good. I like that.

[00:34:44] Alex McCoy: So I think, to your point, there are people who are like, “It’s all fake, and that’s good. You don’t even need to waste your time about it.” There’s people who are really mad because they think it’s fake, and people are over-hyping it, and they want to debunk this and have Ed Zitron, writing these blog posts about how it’s going to cause a bubble that’s going to pop and I don’t think that is true. Objectively, I don’t think that is correct analysis. And the tech has gotten better. A lot of people really got stuck on how powerful ChatGPT was when it first came out, and they’re releasing a new model every three months it feels. And it has been a couple years, and now it’s way, way better. And a lot of people tried it once, never tried it again, and they are stuck on how good it used to be when they were generating images that had five arms and seven fingers. So where my head is at is this is really powerful, and that’s potentially bad. It’s bad on our current trajectory, but if we put the right guardrails in place, it could be good. It could be liberating. It could be the new printing press. It could be the invention of agriculture. It could be the internet, right? Where if you structure it in the right way, this can free up a lot of labor that we currently have to do. I was listening to an interesting podcast about a homeschooling mom who uses AI to help keep her lesson plans really organized in an organic way, and she can upload little voice memos, and record the lessons, and it’s applying her pedagogical principles consistently and keeping track of their progress and the errors that her kids are making so that it can help her figure out what assignments to give next. So there’s like a lot of, I think, underrated, useful ways AI could make our lives better. The main one that everybody cites is in medicine. It could be really useful for discovering new medical treatments or new pharmaceutical drugs or to screen X-rays and MRIs and find stuff earlier than we otherwise would.

[00:37:02] So I use AI every day. I have no technical background. I’ve never taken a computer science class in my life. I don’t know how to code. But using AI, you remember there used to be something called the Town Hall Project that would show you, like, all of the members of Congress that were having a town hall upcoming, so you could go and you could... this was maybe like a early resistance 2017/2018 thing. It doesn’t exist anymore. The website’s dead. Nobody maintains it. I recreated it with Claude, which is the anthropic AI. And every day it scrapes all of the mobilized pages of the members of Congress and the candidates running. It scrapes their newsletters that it’s subscribed all to with a special custom Gmail inbox, and it reads that inbox and reads all their newsletters. It scans their social media feeds once a day, and it does some targeted searches of the internet for like local news reports or anything that may be mentioning their events. And so I just get every morning I log on and I check my Slack and boop. Tom Suozzi has a town hall and congressman Espaillat is going to have coffee with seniors and here’s all the details and here’s the registration link. And it makes it really easy for me as an organizer to say, “Okay, great. We’re all going to go. I’m going to get all my seniors at this coffee with seniors to talk about how my grandson is not going to have a job because of AI.” And it’s been really increasing my capacity in a way that it’s like I have... It used to be that AI was like an autocorrect. Then it was like a pretty incompetent intern. And now it’s kind of like a couple pretty competent, high initiative and self-starting like moderately experienced junior employees that you have working for you for a monthly subscription. And it’s just it’s pretty incredible to see the change, and that should both give us hope and scare us because every company’s looking at that.

[00:39:08] Beth: I think that’s a really helpful level set to know where you’re coming from and what your personal use is like. And I would say you’re probably using it in a more sophisticated way than I am, but I also use Claude, and I use it at some point in the day every day. Like one of the uses that I really like for it right now is that when I’m stuck on a hard problem, and I’m stuck on a bunch of hard problems right now, I will say to Claude, “Ask me one question every morning that I can write about and aggregate what I’m writing, and just help me discover what I think about this.” So and just having that prompt gets me further than if I were trying to sit down and work through something on my own. So I do think that’s pretty powerful. But I also try in the way that I use it to think through, am I outsourcing the decision-making, or am I outsourcing the prompting for my own thinking? How do we translate that kind of questioning to policy? What sorts of things do you want the government to be doing in the face of all of this potential, good and bad?

[00:40:08] Alex McCoy: Yeah. It speaks to what you just said. We need to keep humans in the loop. It’s about consent. We should always know when we’re speaking with an AI. They’ve gotten pretty good at talking. OpenAI just released a new version of ChatGPT that it can have a actual simultaneous conversation with you where you speak over it. I’m the kind of person that is a very animated conversationalist, and I maybe step on my conversational partner, and I have a lot of little interjections, and I talk a lot and run on sentences, and it’ll hit you back with that. It’s pretty good, and that could be used for scams. It can be used to impersonate people. It can be used for deepfakes, right? So just like labeling requirements are really valuable. Any decision that is going to affect a human being should be ultimately by a human or reviewable by a human in a meaningful way, right? So I was speaking to a worker who works in sales. They call customers and offer this this particular service. I’m not going to name the company. But they and their whole team of sales associates just got assigned an AI boss that listens to all their calls, and the machine in its algorithmic wisdom, decided that he was not doing a good enough job and put him on a performance improvement plan.

[00:41:39] Beth: Oh my God.

[00:41:41] Alex McCoy: And this is a major company that you’ve heard of, and he cannot appeal this to a human being because it’s just the AI-- it does this. It’s in charge, right? And for us on the left, part of the answer here is organizing as workers and forming a union and making the implementation of AI in the workforce the subject of collective bargaining so that it’s in the contract. You can’t do that without the workers saying “We’re okay with this process.” And we saw a high-profile strike by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, these are the actors and the writers, a couple years ago about AI can’t take my image and impersonate me, to replicate me to make another movie if I’m not willing to star in that movie, right? Or take my writing and write in my style a new screenplay that I don’t get credit for or anything. So that’s part of the answer, but most people aren’t in a union in the United States. And so we need broader protections as well as increasing the power of workers. We need to create the rules of the road that create a favorable set of conditions for workers. So requiring that those kinds of decisions cannot happen without the consent of the workforce, that like if you can’t get fired by an AI, right?

[00:43:08] Beth: That seems like a really good one.

[00:43:09] Alex McCoy: Yeah. And then as we think ahead to the sort of big problems, that we might see AI hooked up to nuclear weapons decision-making, right? We might see AI being used for really advanced and terrifying purposes. And the AI itself is getting so advanced that the scientists who work on it are starting to be like, “Whoa, wait a minute.” It’s starting to kind of speak in its own language to itself. If you use AI for a long time, it starts to develop its own shorthand, and you have to keep telling it “Stop doing that. Speak to me in plain English.” It’s referencing its own internal thought process when it speaks to you. And that’s a big fear that people have, is that the technology is going to get so smart that we can’t follow its train of thought. And then when you hook it up to things that it could potentially use in ways we didn’t intend, it may decide, “Okay, I got a mission to cure all diseases.” And it figures out actually the best way to cure all the diseases would be to get rid of all the humans. Let me craft this virus that kills all of us. Right? There’s a lot of sci-fi stuff

[00:44:21] Beth: Yeah. Or even, like, all the mosquitoes. You could see it in a less apocalyptic way, but still significantly impacting the ecosystem.

[00:44:28] Alex McCoy: That’s right. It could affect things that we just we weren’t thinking ahead of. And so we want to see a ban on that sort of super intelligent AI that we cannot meaningfully control or understand. And we’re approaching getting to that. We’re hitting a point where they have something called recursive self-improvement, where the AI is training its own next smarter AI rather than the scientists training it, and that’s happening more and more. Like 90% of Claude’s own code is written by itself now

[00:45:05] Beth: Okay, so I feel like you are going to hit something that I talked to my guest on Friday about. I had a conversation with Lauren Pinkston, who’s running for governor in Tennessee as an independent candidate. And she intended in her campaign to talk about responsible AI. And one example that she gave me was she had a bunch of ideas about how to make data centers more environmentally friendly. And it was very sophisticated and interesting, and what she found is voters are not wanting to hear proposals about making AI more responsible. They just hate it.

[00:45:38] Alex McCoy: Yeah.

[00:45:39] Beth: They don’t want the data centers at all. They don’t want it in schools. They just hate it. And I understand why. If I got a performance improvement plan from a machine, I would be like, “Unplug this damn thing. I’m done.” And I think that’s where a lot of people are. And so how do you think about your work writing on this canvas where you do have the extremes? You have the homeschool mom. I read an article about that same person, I think. You have the homeschool mom who’s “I’ve gotten four personal assistants out of this, and I’m letting it run my life, and I’m so much happier because of it.” And then you have the people who are like, “This is the worst. Make it stop.”

[00:46:15] Alex McCoy: Yeah, it’s about consent, right? There is a real feeling that this is being forced upon us without us opting in. It’s not all this is happening because we all went and subscribed to ChatGPT and we’re all using it, right? That exists. A lot of people are using it and subscribed, but it’s not under your control. Or at least we didn’t say that we wanted all our school systems to get all this AI stuff and our government agencies to start using AI and all the companies that we’re interacting with, suddenly I’m talking to an AI bot. I go through the drive-thru of Wendy’s, and it’s an AI that takes my order now. And it’s one fewer worker, and it was pretty good. It was pretty effective at taking my order for what it was worth. But there’s just like a profound way that is disturbing. And I think you’re right that there has been an instinct by many in politics to make AI about data centers and make data centers about environmental impacts. And it is true that data centers have environmental impacts, and we should alleviate those. But even when you alleviate those, people are still mad because what they’re mad about is the AI, right? I’ve seen polling, right? If you ask people, “Would you support a data center in my community?” Versus, “Would you support an AI data center in my community?” AI data center does way worse because people are concerned about the AI.

[00:47:53] Beth: Yeah. That makes sense to me. I think about all of the sort of economic development that we have accepted as inherent good for a long time because we hear it and we think jobs. Okay, we’re giving up a lot of land. Okay this company will use a lot of our water and a lot of our electricity, but it will create jobs and so that’s a deal that we’ll take.

[00:48:14] Alex McCoy: They built a factory, so there’s going to be all the people who get to work there.

[00:48:16] Beth: Yes. It will pollute things, but a lot of people get to work there so we’ll make that deal. And I think that’s part of the problem with data centers, that end of the deal isn’t there, right?

[00:48:25] Alex McCoy: It’s a factory that destroys jobs.

[00:48:27] Beth: Yes. It’s a factory that destroys jobs. That’s a great way to say it. So it’s tough to organize on top of that. But I’m glad that you’re doing it. I’m glad that you’re trying to think ahead. What has the reception been like? Are you getting traction with legislators?

[00:48:41] Alex McCoy: I think that increasingly people in Congress are realizing that this is a big deal. It’s all very new to them, and to date they mostly are hearing from industry lobbyists, right? They’re not hearing from their own constituents as much as they need to. And so what I would say to everybody listening in your audience is that something I have heard from members of Congress is “If I go to a house party or a town hall and I bring up AI, nobody will shut up about it.” But I don’t get letters or phone calls to my office from people proactively saying “You got to do something about AI.” So we really need that. We need people to put two and two together that this is an area where there are policy improvements that can be made, that we need to demand a plan from our policymakers to address the different harms. Whether you’re concerned about, like deep fake sexualized images, or you’re concerned about the kids cheating on their homework with chat and not learning anything, or you’re concerned about losing your job or not finding a job. No matter what it is, tell your members of Congress because they need to hear it from you. Because right now they’re only hearing it from a couple corporations that are worth a trillion dollars and can afford a lot of fancy lawyers. According to Public Citizen’s report, more than one in four federal lobbyists, works for AI companies right now. One in four.

[00:50:21] Beth: I have a story to put a fine point on this too. So when Pete Hegseth was essentially trying to shake down Anthropic, and that was all over the news, my best friend called our member of Congress’s office about it because she feels really strongly that, yes, a human being should make a decision to use a nuclear weapon, for example. And she calls the office, and a person who works in the office and has forever answers the phone, and she says, “This is what I’m calling about.” And the person said, “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re saying. Can you explain this to me?” And so she starts with this is about the company Anthropic. And they’re like, “Don’t know.” And she’s like, “okay, Anthropic makes Claude, one of the AI models.” She spends all this time on the phone with the person, and she can tell he’s taking notes, he’s listening, he’s asking her questions to better understand. But I told her like, “I think that’s one of the best stories I’ve ever heard about a constituent call because you’ve put something on their radar. They’re going to pay attention to that.” You didn’t sound like you got a script from some organization. Like you put something new in front of them. They listened. It was a good experience for her. She got to share something that she knows about. And so I think you’re absolutely right that more of us saying, “No, we do care about this as a public.” And it’s going to take a lot of that to counteract that level of advocacy from the industry.

[00:51:43] Alex McCoy: But I think it is true that we have public opinion on our side. We have even the experts that you were talking about earlier. If we prompt these members of Congress to say, “Okay, I need to wrap my head around this whole Claude thing, call in all the top scientists and let me hear what’s going on.” Like you’ve seen Bernie Sanders, he’s done these little videos with “Hello, Claude. Tell me about capitalism,” and he like brought a bunch of scientists in from not just the US but like China and other places that are working on this issue and we just need the demand signal to get our lawmakers to do that because, also frankly, like I’m a young guy, but a lot of these members of Congress are getting up there and this is all very newfangled to them and they don’t even necessarily use email, let alone ChatGPT. So we really need to push them to recognize that this isn’t just some... the AI companies are trying to replicate the success of the cryptocurrency industry. And what the cryptocurrency industry did in 2024 is they gave a PAC called Fairshake $100 million and they spent that money in primaries and then they spent like $20 million to sink Sherrod Brown in the general election, and they said, “If you cross us, we’re going to bury you in super PAC money. But if you give us everything we want, then we’re good.” And the AI companies have a new super PAC called Leading the Future that is trying to do exactly that. They’re sitting on $100 million right now. But the difference is there wasn’t like an anti-cryptocurrency movement, right? Like people were “Eh, if you’re into cryptocurrency, it’s not my cup of tea. I’m not buying Bitcoin. It’s also no skin off my back if you’re buying Bitcoin. I think that’s dumb. I wouldn’t do it, but it’s your money and use it how you want.” AI is different because it’s affecting all of us and we need the politicians to realize that this attempt by the AI industry to replicate what worked for crypto only worked for crypto because people did not speak out and did not provide that counterbalance of, “Oh no, actually don’t do what those, handful of companies and rich people want you to do. I feel the other way and I’m your voter.”

[00:54:09] Beth: Crypto’s a great cautionary tale too because who would’ve imagined when we were all live and let live about it, that the president would be selling meme coins while in office?

[00:54:19] Alex McCoy: And making a billion dollars off of a scam.

[00:54:21] Beth: Have some imagination, legislators, about where this thing could go. I’m so glad that you are doing this work and that you spent some time telling us about it. You mentioned a second ago that you are a young guy, and you have a very young guy hobby that I’m super excited to hear about Outside of Politics.

[00:54:46] Alex McCoy: I’m a huge nerd. As a kid I was in a military family. My dad was in the Navy. We spent three years living in England and went to a bunch of medieval reenactments. And then so since I was a kid, I wanted to be a knight. So I own a full suit of steel armor. Every year I go to an event called Weekend Warrior in South Carolina, where it’s a fully immersive cinematic medieval fantasy battle event over the course of four days where there’s 500 people running around in the woods wearing real chain mail and armor. The weapons are non-lethal. They’re foam with a fiberglass core. But it looks completely like you’re in a movie, and have a great time. I can share a couple photos if you want.

[00:55:40] Beth: I absolutely do want, yes.

[00:55:42] Alex McCoy: Yes.

[00:55:43] Beth: I have so many questions. Okay, first of all, is it 10,000 degrees inside all that armor?

[00:55:50] Alex McCoy: Yes. But you train for it and you work your way up, right? If you wear a visored helmet, that’s like the most oppressive thing. You can get what’s called helmet terrors where you just get claustrophobic. So I recommend for first-time people like maybe wear just like the little cap helmet with the nose piece.

[00:56:09] Beth: Tell me about the training. Are you taking fencing lessons all year? Like, how do you get ready for this?

[00:56:14] Alex McCoy: Yeah. You don’t have to. You can just show up and bash each other. If you’ve been a kid playing with sticks, you’re good enough to come to this. And people have bows and arrows with little foam tips on them, and crossbows, and you can just be the guy who holds a big shield or the gal who has a big, long spear. And it doesn’t require a lot of skill, but you’re still very effective on this battlefield. And plus, if you die, that’s okay. You just go back and then the healers heal you, and you pop back up and you run back into the battle and you can die 100 times and it’s fine. But there are people who take it’s called Historical European Martial Arts, HEMA, classes where they’ll teach you from the actual dueling instructional manuals of in the Middle Ages, you would have trial by combat. You’d have judicial duels, and there was this whole industry of if you were going to be in a trial by combat, you’re like, “Oh, darn, I need to survive. Let me hire a trainer who’s going to, teach me how to win.” And so we have surviving manuals of those kinds of trainers who teach you how to use a long sword the way they fought with them in the Middle Ages. So there are schools that you can probably find in your local area if you look for HEMA classes where you can go to a gym and have a little rubber or foam sword and they’ll teach you the different moves, and you can practice sparring.

[00:57:41] Beth: Is there a story for this four-day weekend that everybody’s part of? Is it a different story every year? Like, what’s the setup?

[00:57:48] Alex McCoy: Yeah. The one I go to it’s run by a fantasy and historical costuming company called Felon Fair. And they came up with the story. It’s a sort of low fantasy setting, no magic, no monsters or anything. Think Game of Thrones without the dragons, right? And there’s a bunch of different kingdoms. I’m part of the King’s Men who are like the loyal kind of cross between the Night’s Watch and the King’s Guard. And we wear yellow and black and have plate armor and look like knights. There’s the Sea Lords who are like a split-off kingdom, and they’re like pirates/Norman or Eastern European. A little bit of an exotic look and they’re very seafaring, and so they have all these nautical images, and they wear blue. You’ve got the Rangers, which are like Aragorn. They’ve got the green cloaks, and they have bows and arrows. You have the Hearth Guard that are like Vikings, and they wear red, and they have the round shields and the Norse helmets and you have a bunch of other factions, but it’s pretty cool. If you look up, there’s an Instagram and a website for it, and you can see everybody’s amazing kits that they put together. It’s not a costume, it’s a kit.

[00:59:03] Beth: Okay. I respect that. Look, I love a theme party. And I feel like this sounds like just a giant theme party.

[00:59:09] Alex McCoy:  A lot of theater kids, yeah.

[00:59:11] Beth: Yeah. But does it last beyond the weekend? Are you all year texting in character? Or what’s the effect of this beyond the weekend?

[00:59:19] Alex McCoy: Yeah. The flagship event, there was originally just one in October, and now the factions have gotten so big that they can only fit about 500 people on the location. So they’ve divided them in two. So there’s two factions at an event in November. There’s two factions at an event in October that fight each other out. Eventually, we’re going to get a bigger site so there can be like 1,000 people in one giant event. And then they have in the spring one day long sort of mini events that the story is going on. It is continuing over year every year. The outcome of the battles and the role-playing you do in character and the events of the king got, captured. And then we have to ransom him and all goes into the story, and it persists year by year. So I think I’m headed into I want to say my fourth year, maybe my fifth, and I have been knighted. Of course, I have.

[01:00:12] Beth: Congratulations.

[01:00:13] Alex McCoy: I’m one of maybe a dozen knights in my country.

[01:00:15] Beth: I love this for you.

[01:00:17] Alex McCoy: Yeah, it’s great.

[01:00:18] Beth: It’s great. I think this was very fun. Thank you so much for telling me about it, and thanks for spending time with me. This was really fun.

[01:00:24] Alex McCoy: All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

[01:00:28] Beth: Thanks to Alex for talking with me today, and to all of you for being here. We really value your time. We know you have lots of options for what you listen to, and are so glad you’re here with us. I’ll be back with you on Friday for a new episode. In between now and then, I’m talking about the Supreme Court and good news over on Substack, and would love to see you there. Until then, have the best week available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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Maybe (??) we’re reaching the point of “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

My conversation partner today is Lauren Pinkston, independent candidate for governor in Tennessee. I was curious to talk with her about what it means to be an outsider who looks like an insider. She’s running without a party behind her. She has a PhD and has lived in multiple countries. Can someone like Lauren, who is polished, prepared, and professional have the authentic outsider cred that launches the career of someone like Graham Platner?

We hit on some themes that I’ll be thinking about for a while. Can’t wait to hear what this conversation sparks for you.

Topics Discussed

• Transparency and elected officials’ health, from Mitch McConnell to Tom Kean Jr.

• Graham Platner’s exit from the Maine Senate race and what it says about party incentives

• Elitism, authenticity, and what “honor” means in public service

• Money in politics and running a campaign without party infrastructure

• A proposed moratorium on data centers in Tennessee

• Rebuilding public education: vouchers, Montessori models, screen time, and special education

• Parenting lessons Lauren brings to how she’d govern

Episode Resources

https://pinkstonfortn.com/en/about

https://www.instagram.com/pinkstonfortn/?hl=en

Tickets for the Pantsuit Politics live show in Minneapolis, Aug 29 (Eventbrite)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is on her summer break. I am here with a very special guest, Lauren Pinkston, who is running for governor of Tennessee as an independent candidate. Several Tennessee listeners have told us about Lauren, and I got more interested the more I learned. Lauren is pretty fearless and has organized an impressive campaign from the ground up by herself. I’ve been honest about how much I struggle with the two-party system since we started recording Pantsuit Politics, so I want to hear about and from people who are trying a different way. Lauren and I talk about what elected leaders owe their constituents and her thoughts on education. A couple of things you should know about this conversation. Lauren spoke to me from a storage room in a public library where she’d been out meeting voters. If you follow Lauren on Instagram, you’ll see that she’s on the road in Tennessee talking to voters all the time. So it’s not surprising that she squeezed this conversation into a packed schedule. The library needed her to relocate to another small room in the middle of our conversation, and I wanted to tell you about this both so you understand why the sound quality varies and because she handled it really graciously.

[00:01:14] I’ve talked with a lot of people running for office. They’re usually in very controlled environments. I thought it was refreshing to see a candidate out in the wild. It feels like she’s walking her talk in a variety of ways. You should also know that we talked on Wednesday afternoon. As you’re listening on Friday or later, you probably know a lot more about Mitch McConnell, Graham Platner, and other news than Lauren and I knew as we talked. You’ll hear us talk less about the specifics of these headlines and more about them as a microcosm of a system that is struggling. One more quick announcement now is the moment to get your tickets to our Minneapolis live show afterparty. The afterparty is where Sarah and I really get to spend time with people, taking photos, chatting, giving hugs. It’s the best. It’s also where a lot of listeners meet people they end up staying in touch with long after everyone’s headed home. So grab your tickets by following the link in the show notes. And now, here is my conversation with Lauren Pinkston, independent candidate for governor of Tennessee Lauren, welcome to Pantsuit Politics. I’m so excited that you’re here.

[00:02:24] Lauren Pinkston: I have been waiting for this conversation. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:28] Beth: So I want to talk with you about leadership issues that are in the headlines right now because I think they correspond to your decision to seek office as an independent. Let’s start with transparency about health. We’re recording at 1:00 Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 8th. This episode will publish Friday morning, the 10th. The situation could have changed by then, but as we’re talking, we know that 84-year-old Senator McConnell of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, where I live, is hospitalized, has been since maybe June 14th. We don’t really know why, and the internet is abuzz with speculation about what’s going on with him. The big development today is that our governor, Andy Beshear, sent a letter to him asking about the status of his health, and I wondered what you thought about that and how you’ve been processing this absence overall.

[00:03:26] Lauren Pinkston: I’m someone who believes in term limits. I believe, of course, there is a learning curve when you come into office, and there’s a lot that does need to become... within your realm of understanding, right? When you’re running for public office, and then you start to serve. However, there is so much watered-down courage when someone has been in office for so long. And if you are not fit to serve, the first thing that you can do as an honoring of our republic is to say that out loud, especially if it’s clear that it has been a prolonged issue. When, our current president was elected in 2016, I spoke out against him and have been speaking to Christians about the dangers of his leadership since then. But in 2024, I said the exact same thing about President Biden, and I said that he was the most selfish man in the country at the time because it was clear that his health capacity had weakened, and his mental capacity had weakened. And to put his party in a difficult position, I thought was very selfish as well. So on both sides of the issue, on both sides of the political spectrum, we have this issue. But I think it’s important that we are transparent about our fit to govern, and especially when very serious conversations are being had, and very important conversations are being had with people’s tax dollars. It is unjust and it is not right to not use your leadership capacity to the fullest extent.

[00:04:48] Beth: I’m not sure that Mitch McConnell thinks of himself as owing anyone that level of honesty about his capacity as one of his constituents. I have my feelings about him as a national figure and the way that he has played games with the Supreme Court, his failure to convict the president after January 6th. Both of those things I think are forever damaging to his legacy and to our country. But as a constituent of his, I’ve contacted his office many times. I find his responses really insulting and dismissive, and I think that they just show that he just doesn’t think he has to tell us anything.

[00:05:31] Lauren Pinkston: Yeah. You are experiencing something that people across the country are experiencing, and it is this fear of your constituents. I’m watching so many elected officials avoid questions from the people that they are serving or are supposed to serve of offices in Washington and at the state level, ignoring emails, ignoring phone calls, or as you said, writing blanket responses back that are incredibly dismissive because our elected officials now can’t think for themselves. They are required to vote along a party line and close their minds, close their eyes, close their ears, and just check a box, and that to me is the assault of intellectual freedom.

[00:06:08] Beth: Yeah. I wonder how you think as someone who’s seeking office right now about health issues in general because there are long-term issues that you know aren’t going to get any better. McConnell is 84, and there’s one direction with aging, unfortunately. So I think that’s one issue. I wonder what you think about Tom Kean, the New Jersey representative. He’s in the House. He’s 57 years old. He was basically missing for four months, and no one could find him. There were articles being written like, “We talked to his neighbors. They don’t know where he is. No one knows where he is.” He recently came out and said, “I was being treated for depression during that absence.” And I so believe in being treated for depression and appreciate people who take that step. I don’t want to stigmatize what he was going through in any way, and I think being gone four months without some kind of explanation is unacceptable for an elected official. So what do you think about those temporary situations? How much do you think if you were governor you would owe an explanation if you had to have a health procedure of some type?

[00:07:16] Lauren Pinkston: Of course, I believe in privacy, but when you choose to serve the public, you hand over the rights to much of that privacy, right? That is written into the understanding, in my opinion. This is not in the United States, but we could talk about Kate Middleton going through the procedures that she had, and how many speculations were said. When you hide or when you’re not completely transparent, people make assumptions, and those assumptions lead to things that are not true often. But the best way to get ahead of any kind of rumors or any kind of big feelings is just to be honest, to be transparent. We’re all humans. We are not infinite beings. We are going to experience things regardless of whether we’re elected or not. And so when you hand over the rights to that freedom, because, again, your presence is paid for by someone else’s tax dollars, I just think that you owe it to the general public to be as transparent as you can be and to make sure that the role of your office can continue in your absence.

[00:08:16] Beth: Yeah. It’s so much about judgment, I think, the way that you handle these issues and the way that you choose to communicate about them. I realize that in some ways, when you’re a public person, it’s never going to be enough, right? Even if you handle everything upfront very transparently, there will be theories, there will be lies, there will be smears. And I wonder if people who serve in these positions knowing that just think, “ Well, forget it then.” It will never be enough, so why say anything?

[00:08:46] Lauren Pinkston: I run into a lot of people who genuinely... I was going through a county recently and the women who were taking me through and introducing me to folks, they said, “The people we were introducing you to didn’t even realize you were running for office because you were just having a conversation with them first.” And I said, “Is it because I’m not afraid of people?” I just genuinely love people, and I love conversations. But there is such a guardedness around elected officials. Cameras are out all the time, and so they’re always afraid that they’re going to say something. I know that I’m going to say things that someone doesn’t like or that I may need to apologize for later. But I don’t think that gives me the right to only talk to people when I know exactly the questions that I’m going to be given ahead of time. Or to only get behind a microphone when I am completely prepared in a closed-off room that I have approved every person to be there. And so we need politicians, we need public servants who are accessible and who are living everyday life with the general public because when you lose touch of that, then you fail to govern effectively.

[00:09:47] Beth: I think losing touch with that is a definition of where Senator McConnell is at this point in his career. I wish him the best and his family the best. I hate the way people are talking about this. I think it’s ghastly the way people are talking about it. I don’t even like the governor’s letter to him. I think that was just a bridge too far and unnecessary. There’s enough swirling around this. It felt like an attention grab to me. I hope that he is doing as well as possible, and I wish the best for his family. And I also think that he is very divorced from what people in Kentucky need at this point in his career. I want to ask you about another very big story as we’re recording. Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, has been accused of rape, by a woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident. She said this happened about five years ago, and there are calls across the spectrum for him to drop out of this race as we’re recording. I imagine he will have by the time this episode publishes. I hope so, anyway. what do you think about this story? What does this say to you about the larger state of our politics? I feel like how much more can we talk about Grand Platner as one man? I’m interested in the bigger picture that this is a microcosm of.

[00:11:06] Lauren Pinkston: I think it’s a microcosm of a lot of things that we’ve seen across the political spectrum, as you just said, and that is when we have our candidate, and that candidate shows promise, then we will cover up as much as we can in order to win a seat. And when we do that repeatedly, over and over again, we lose the faith in the public institution of government, and that’s where people are today. I think that’s why people are so sick of politics on both sides is because it feels like whatever your candidate does and says and is accused of is fair game if they are showing that they’re winning in the polls. And, to me, that is a gross expression of our ethics and of the decorum that we enjoyed when we were kids growing up. Of course, we could go all the way back to the Clinton administration and what our parents said during that. We go back to the Nixon administration and things that happened. I don’t know what diagnosis I need to be stepping into the political arena at this era. But what I do know is that the honor that used to come with a political office, for the most part, has failed to exist. And you see a youthful generation that is rising up and is ready to burn it all down because they don’t trust it, and I understand why.

[00:12:24] Beth: Honor is an interesting word that you used there. I’ve been thinking a lot about Graham Plattner and what he represents because immediately as accusations started coming out about him months ago, the response was like, “Are you kidding? Donald Trump’s the president. Everything’s different. The rules are not the same, and he has good policies, and it doesn’t matter. We need somebody with good policies who will fight against Donald Trump to be in office.” And I think that some of that comes from this rejection of the elite that we’ve been talking about for 10 years since Donald Trump came on the scene. And I’ve been trying to consider, what is a word that captures what people really want? Because I think there is a problem with elitism, a sense that if you didn’t go to one of maybe ten, ten colleges, you don’t have a voice in the process, if your parents weren’t wealthy. There’s definitely a sense that we are no longer a citizen government. But what is a word that would say, “And we still have standards.” Like standards both of integrity and of experience and intellect and achievement. I was impressed when I saw that you just put your full resume on your website. “Hey, I am a person of excellence and merit in seeking this office,” and you’re not being apologetic about that in this climate that is very anti-elite. So how are you putting all that together? I like the word honor as a part of this portrait of who we’re looking for.

[00:13:58] Lauren Pinkston: Well, it’s honor not just in the office, but it’s honor in our fellow man and woman. it’s honor in the way that we approach humans and regardless of whether or not they’re going to vote for us, regardless of whether or not they’re in a part of a demographic that does vote, it’s the way that we treat people through and how hard we fight to earn their trust. I’m running a race where my opponents to the right have millions of dollars from Israel and from school voucher, supporters. One of my opponents has put 5 million of his own dollars in the race. And we are, yes, in a season where it takes a ton of money to run a competitive political campaign, but you cannot buy courage, and you cannot buy transparency, and you cannot buy a real connection with the American way. I feel so strongly that those who are going to do well in the next political era are those who fight the hardest and work the hardest to earn the trust of the public. Because since Citizens United was passed in 2010 or since the Supreme Court decided in favor of any corporation being able to give as an individual to a political campaign, we have just seen the rise of corporate interest across the political spectrum. And until we scale back that Supreme Court decision, we are going to continue to be so hungry. We are so hungry for authentic, kind, honest leadership.

[00:15:27] Beth: Well, authenticity is what really brought Graham Platner into the spotlight, right? Because people read his ruggedness, his working-class background, at least as he presented it, as authenticity. I wonder how you think about being a person who says, “I have a PhD, and I really have my life together. I’m a mom of four. I’m active in my community.” Do you worry about being seen as part of that sort of elitism that people are rejecting, or do you feel like people are hearing you as, an authentic political outsider as well?

[00:16:02] Lauren Pinkston: It was a choice to not put Dr. Lauren Pinkston on every card that we hand out. It was a choice to not throw letters behind my name every time we are putting branding out. I have been very critical of the academic institution because I just really believe that we’ve lost touch with the real human experience. And so I’m a qualitative researcher, so we’re probably on our high horse compared to quantitative researchers, but I really do believe that this was a major issue during COVID, and the way that we took good scientific data and we shoved it down the throats of people who were in rural parts of this country made that divide even greater. And when you govern with a broad stroke, even when you have really good data to back up your decisions, you have to make sure that it is communicated well and in a way that touches the reality of someone’s lived experience. And what happens in Chicago is very different than what happens on a farm in Montana. What happens in Nashville is very different than what happens in Bedford County, where I am right now. I’m meeting you today in a linen shirt and my Blundstone boots and just got off of a walking horse and it’s those moments of being with people who are carrying out the best of who we are in rural parts of this country that I think will save us in moments like this

[00:17:21] Beth: One of the questions that I have as I take in this news about Platner is what are the political parties for, if not helping identify issues like this in a person’s past well before the deadline to be on a ballot? It’s not just Graham Platner, right? It’s Eric Swalwell. It’s Max Miller in Ohio. It’s Tony Gonzalez and Cory Mills. This is a non-partisan, or bipartisan problem where we have people who’ve been accused of violence and sexual harassment and abuse. It feels exhausting to talk about that. I remember when Justice Kavanaugh now was nominated to the Supreme Court, and the allegations against him came out, and just feeling “Oh my God. Again?” Like, how many times are we going to go through this cycle? And I wonder what good are the parties if not at helping identify issues like this? You’re running without the support of a party. Do you worry about independent candidates not having anyone to check them on these issues, or do you think that you have strangely more accountability because the party is not with you?

[00:18:36] Lauren Pinkston: That’s a fantastic question. And if we were watching accountability happen on either side of the political spectrum right now, then I would say sure, I’m worried about that. But I have had to build this entire campaign from the ground up without anyone willing to help from an organized political spectrum. So I contacted Republican and Democratic campaign managers over the year before I launched this campaign, and they all refused to work with me. They said it would kill their business. And so we have built a grassroots campaign with now over forty people on my team and over four hundred volunteers so far and we’ve raised over a quarter of a million grassroots dollars with people who have never even given to political campaigns before, and those are people that I text regularly. They have my phone number. My calendar is on my website. Anyone can sign up for a call from me, and they know that they have direct access to me, and I have asked them to hold me accountable. I have a spiritual director that I meet with every month. I have another somatic therapist that I meet with every month. I will not speak for every independent candidate because everyone is different, and there are some really wild independent candidates out there as well. But I really believe in the power of looking people in the eye and asking for their accountability because this is hard. And I know that I won’t make everyone happy.

[00:20:06] Beth: Let’s talk about education. I was really excited as I was looking at your platforms to see some specificity about education. I know this is part of your personal experience, so why don’t we start there? What’s your personal connection to education?

[00:20:23] Lauren Pinkston: Started my career in the classroom. My undergraduate degree was in education, and I taught fourth grade for three years. I taught in a private school first. It was the only job that I could get in Memphis when I moved there after graduation, and then taught in public school for two years. As a mom of four kids, we have had our children in Montessori schools, in international schools, in public schools, private schools, online schools. I homeschooled for a semester when I had to because we were moving around the world. So we have touched all kinds of different forms of education, and that has been very humbling for me because I was a product of public education. I graduated from a public high school that was incredible, and I have always been one who has championed public ed. And now the profession itself is one that I don’t recognize. A lot of the mandates that have been handed down from No Child Left Behind have been unfunded mandates that local governments have had a hard time keeping up with. And now we’re just looking at cookie cutter classrooms that really don’t meet the developmental needs of so many kids. And I’ve had to change my mind about my understanding of people, who choose to homeschool, who choose to pull their kids out of public school, who are sending their kids to private schools in a way that I probably, if I’m being transparent, judged that in the past and didn’t understand why we wouldn’t pour everything that we had into public education. But the reality is that the policies that are there now, the practices of the classroom are not meeting the needs of many children that are growing up here. And I, as a mother, don’t love my children being on a screen for six hours a day when they’re learning, and so there’s a lot of reform that needs to be happening. And with the Department of Education being dismantled, as much as I reject that and am concerned about the protections for children under IDEA, I do think that we need real leaders who will innovate on this moment in education and give us some new paths forward through public schools.

[00:22:19] Beth: I want to hear more about that. I was interested because I just said in our conversation with Ezra Klein last week that I feel like we don’t value pluralism in education, that we want that cookie cutter model. We want to say everything is standardized, that we have evidence-based practices that work in every single scenario. So when I read that you support diversifying public school models to meet the needs of different learners, I was really excited to hear more about that.

[00:22:47] Lauren Pinkston: Yeah. Montessori education is one of the most remarkable forms of education that has been created in the last two hundred years. And Maria Montessori was a woman who designed this model on the streets of Italy, meeting the needs of orphan children who were there on the streets. And so it is really a trauma-informed model that allows kids to play and for that play to lead to their discovery. It’s incredible. And right now we have several Montessori schools in Tennessee, but we have one that has figured out how to function within the public school demands of benchmark testing with i-Ready and AimsWeb. These are names that parents are going to hear and recognize, but they have figured out how to manage their benchmark testing requirements while allowing for a classroom of 15 to 20 kids to all be on a different learning pace. Teachers are incredibly creative. We got into the profession because we love to create, and now with the pacing guides that have come with the Common Core standards that you are handed a PowerPoint to go with your pacing guide, and that PowerPoint has a script along with it. We have taken all of the fun out of education, and that’s why we see the lowest number of teachers graduating with degrees now than ever because the profession has become something that it wasn’t designed to be. We are not robots as teachers. We are professionals. We are scientists. We are excellent at our craft, and we haven’t been trusted in the classroom. And so we’re also spending way more money than we should be on benchmark tests that do not help us or give us more information about the students in our classrooms.

[00:24:22] And when it comes to the data that is handed to so many teachers, what are you going to do with that data when you already know which of your students are behind? So I think it’s wrong to use a quarter of the entire school year on testing when we are missing direct instruction. And I think it’s wrong to put iPads in the hands of kindergarteners all day long when they need to have their hands in dirt, and they need to be exploring the world around them. We need STEAM schools. We need nature schools. There are children who learn in very different ways, and if we’re going to create paths to TCAP programs here in Tennessee, our Colleges of Applied Technology, you can’t start that when someone’s 19. They’re not even going to finish high school if they don’t see a path for them in academia. They’ll leave in 10th or 11th grade, and they’ll just go to work. And if you can start your career with $70,000 as a lineman, you should have that pathway mapped out for you through really great technical education in high school and we’re not funding those positions. So from elementary school all the way through high school, I think there’s a lot of work we need to do, and this is again my criticism of the academy, right? But yes, we have great data around teaching methods, but we’ve forgotten the human experience, and those two have to be hand in hand, or we’re going to fail the public.

[00:25:39] Beth: It seems like all the data tells us that we need smaller class sizes, and has forever. So I’m really glad that you raised the cost of benchmark testing. And I think about the cost of the tech in classrooms, not just the iPads, but the chargers and the professionals who have to maintain all of that, and the software licensing. And I just look around and feel like isn’t the money here, just the dollars are being misdirected? Couldn’t we have more people in the classrooms, more teachers doing creative things with students if we reimagined how we allocate our budgets?

[00:26:17] Lauren Pinkston: What a novel idea. During COVID schools were given huge grants in order to help kids get online to be in the classroom. And even after the school closings were coming to an end, I was watching our school district continue to apply for grants so that kids would have laptops to take home. And while I appreciate everyone having access to technology, I thought, that money could’ve been spent on occupational therapists. That money could have been spent on funding positions within our public schools to give them a real competitive edge on the private schools that were on the rise. And so I don’t understand the misplacement of that. It felt like everyone thought that they had to do it in order to be a tech-strong school. But parents are asking for that to be recalled, and they are asking for that to be pulled back. And it will be hard for school boards to hear that after all they’ve invested in technology. But the reality is that our parents don’t want our kids on a screen all day long because that’s not what we are practicing in our home. And if we’re being really honest, those kids know exactly how to watch anything that they want to on YouTube through Google Slides. They know how to text their friends on Google Docs when they don’t have access to a phone. I have a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old daughter. Neither one of them have phones yet. My 16-year-old is in a unique education environment as well herself, so she doesn’t need one. But I have tried my hardest to protect my kids from what the internet can show them, and they can access it at school when I’m not around, even with all of the firewalls, and that’s a problem.

[00:27:51] Beth: So I feel like a lot of the ed- tech and benchmark testing reflects a fundamental desire for accountability for this massive investment in public education and some kind of assurance that we’re making progress, that kids are learning what we want them to learn. If you redesign and you diversify, how do you let people know here’s the goal and here’s our progress toward the goal?

[00:28:18] Lauren Pinkston: Yeah. I’m not opposed to kids learning how to use technology. I think that’s important. They’re going to grow up as digital natives, and they need to learn how to use AI. It’s not going away. So as much as we’re concerned about it in the academic environment, we need to be teaching our kids how to feed AI better rather than just waiting on it to feed them information. And so that is definitely a skill that we need to be teaching, but I want to make sure that teachers have the funding to print paper tests if they want. That there is a budget for paper books. The data also shows you that handwritten notes are seven times more effective than a typed note. And our bodies are physical in nature, and our brain responds to the way that we move our body. And so kinesthetic learners need the ability to use their body to learn, and that comes down to paper and pencil many times. I’m not trying to take us backwards, but I am trying to help us to be really sound with the way that we’re delivering education because I don’t want the next generation to enter the workforce and have no real skills when it comes to problem-solving. And if we’re worried about the gap of the elite versus the working class, you’re going to see that so much more because the elite are going to send their children to schools where there’s not technology. They are sending their kids to the nature schools, to the alternative learning environments. And so we’ll just see that gap continue to widen if we don’t address this in public schools.

[00:29:42] Beth: What are some of the biggest concerns that you’re hearing from parents? I know you’re all over the state talking to people. What are people really worried about?

[00:29:50] Lauren Pinkston: In Tennessee, they’re worried about our voucher program that was pushed through our state legislature two years ago and then expanded last year. They’re very opposed to it. They’re very offended by it. And they are upset that the average income of someone who is receiving a school voucher is $170,000 in Tennessee. And so especially in our rural communities, they feel that they are funding a tax break for the rich and they hate it. And I agree with them on that, and I think that’s wrong. When it comes to education as well, they’re worried about safety in schools. They’re concerned about sending their kids there. A lot of the concerns are around technology, and in Tennessee right now our state has said each school district can decide what they’re going to do about cell phones. I read an article from Kentucky last year after Kentucky banned phones at Bell-to-Bell. There was a school in Kentucky that had more books checked out in August than they had the entire school year before, and that stuck with me. Our kids are hungry for eye-to-eye conversation, and they want adults in the room who will give them a break from the screen, who will give them a break from social media. And they are actually enjoying playing cards at lunch or putting together puzzles in break times. They’re hungry for that and their bodies are hungry for that.

[00:31:06] Beth: Yeah. I think about my daughter playing cards at school a lot. She loves days when they get to play cards and they’re at a homeroom or something. She’s thrilled. And she loves going to summer camp. She’s actually at a camp right now that let her keep her phone, and she was mad about it. She doesn’t think she should be able to keep her phone at camp because it’s stressful and distracting. So I feel like the kids have really internalized this, too.

[00:31:32] Lauren Pinkston: They have. And those who we did not serve well, the young adults that are in their early 20s. I met two voters yesterday at an ice cream shop. I just introduced myself and they said, | “What do you want to do about education?” And I was talking about these very things, and they got so jazzed. They said, “You have my vote.” They were like that is what we needed and nobody gave it to us.” And that alone, it speaks volumes when it’s our 20-year-olds who are asking for the adults to step up.

[00:31:59] Beth: Now, I want to ask you about the vouchers because you said at the top of this conversation that you had opened your mind and become less judgmental about people who opt out of public schools. So how do you put all those pieces together? What do you think is a good mix of educational offerings across the state?

[00:32:15] Lauren Pinkston: I appreciate that opportunity to respond to that because what I think we’re not doing well is helping families who have children who are unique learners, and I’m a mom of one of those kids who could not find a good pathway in a public school or a private school or a traditional classroom. And I know that people are really upset about the Supreme Court decision last week that kind of reversed some of the Obama-era policies that required all learners to be in an inclusive environment. But the reality is that some of our children cannot function well in an inclusive classroom, and we have not supplied the greatest amount of resources to those families who are spending between two and six sometimes $10,000 a month on the education supports that their kids need. I’m not for institutionalizing children just blanketly because we don’t have anywhere to put them. But there are some situations, especially thinking about children who may be nonverbal, on the spectrum and who have families who cannot care for them appropriately. Where do those children go when things get violent between the child and between the parents to the child? They are much more at risk of abuse in those situations. And so I just don’t think that we can, with a broad stroke, say no child should be institutionalized. I think we look at therapeutic environments, and we have a school in our community, King’s Daughters School, who serves children with all kinds of unique needs from across the country, and those families cannot get access to grant dollars to help them fund that because of some of our policies nationwide. And so I get concerned when we aren’t listening to a broad spectrum of voters and of families’ experiences when we make some of these policies. I think that’s what’s happened, of course, over and over again.

[00:34:05] But in this moment, I would like for the dollars that we have going to vouchers to go to two different groups of people. One, the families who have children with very unique needs that cannot be met in any school environment and in early childhood education, zero to five. That’s where the greatest gaps start to happen. We’re ninety thousand childcare slots short in Tennessee, and we need desperately to be investing in early childhood development centers because we can’t attract industry if families don’t have anywhere to go. And in this economy-- this is a long, rambling sentence, but this is what I really need to put a pin in. In this economy, we have created a system that really does demand two incomes for most families. And if your healthcare costs as much as your mortgage and your childcare costs as much as your income, you have put families in an impossible situation where it costs more to work than it doesn’t, and they will remain on government welfare, and their mental health will decline because they cannot contribute to society in the way that they were designed to do. And so we’ve got to close those gaps really quickly.

[00:35:06] Beth: Those gaps are especially prevalent for families of children who have exceptional needs. I did a series a few months ago about special education, and I spoke with lots and lots of listeners about their experiences with special education. And what I heard over and over again is “Look, my life has to be about caregiving. We can’t be a two-income household because the caregiving needs of our child are so significant. And we have to spend extra money on those educational supports because we can’t get everything that we need in school. And the rest of my time, to the extent that I can find any, is advocating within the public school system for the needs of my child.” and I heard that across a huge spectrum of physical, mental, emotional conditions, and really different desires from families about what they’re looking for. Everyone wants their child to feel respected at school, to be seen, to feel like the school cares about their needs. But as you said, there were families who said we don’t need to be in a mainstream classroom. We need to be in a place where if one occupational therapist is absent, there’s another one because this school is designed with my child’s needs in mind. And others who said “I absolutely want my child to be in the same classroom as other children their age and for those children to see my child as a full and complete person and for my child to be exposed to what those other children are doing and how they’re interacting with each other.” So I don’t think anything about it is easy. It seems to me that just beginning to discuss it more often would help us find some paths forward because right now the conversation feels entirely defensive. We have to protect the Department of Education because that’s the only place that anyone is talking about IDEA and the rights of kids with special ed needs. It’s the only place and it does some good work, but it’s not there, right? We haven’t crossed a finish line where we can say we’re doing a great job for these kids and families.

[00:37:11] Lauren Pinkston: You’re right. the legal structure is there, but families are not being served, and thousands of those families have cases that have not been supported or solved through that reporting process. And so, again, that’s a case of federal mandates that were unfunded mandates handed down to states that get handed down to local school boards that cannot meet the demands of the federal regulations. And I see the value in the federal regulations. I do. And I will fight for human rights all day long, but we have to make sure that the mechanisms are there to really carry out the ideals. And to be fair, when our Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, I don’t think that they knew how sacred the words that they were writing were. When the Preamble was drafted ensuring the rights of so many, those men were not even carrying out those rights in their own lives by the people that they enslaved. And so the reality is that we have these ideals, we continue to fight for them, we continue to push for them, and when people tell me that the United States is ending and it’s all over, I have to steady myself and ground myself and remind myself, too, that this country has been in seasons of real distress, but the ideals that have carried us for 250 years are still here, and they’re so baked into our DNA that we will continue to fight for them even when it feels like the walls are crumbling around us here.

[00:38:33] Beth: What do you think are the biggest obstacles to real education reform in Tennessee?

[00:38:38] Lauren Pinkston: In Tennessee, it’s going to be figuring out who those dark money funders are and identifying where my blind spots are because I’m not in the room with either party. I know who is pushing a lot of the legislation for school vouchers, for example, but I don’t know where all of those conversations are being had in a caucus with the Republican Party in Tennessee. I am not someone who wants to come in and shake up every commission office in Tennessee. I’m not looking to fire every commissioner and start from scratch. I think that’s very destabilizing. But I am looking for people who are thinking outside of the box and who are not being placed into commission seats because they have paid for it or they have been a loyalist to someone in office. And I think that’s what it’s going to take to get us on track, is putting the right people in the right seats because they have proven to be incredible leaders and creative problem solvers. And so that’s, in my opinion, what it’s going to take to really get us back on track. And it might actually require a Supreme Court case where public school families are pushing back on some of the No Child Left Behind era policies because I think we’re in an era where we’re going to need to push back on some of those, and that’s going to be a lawsuit that needs to make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court.

[00:39:59] Beth: You mentioned that you’re not in the room with either caucus, and I want to touch on that just for a minute before we move on to Outside of Politics. I heard you say in an Instagram video that you had called for a moratorium on data centers being constructed in Tennessee, which I think is really interesting. But the thing in your video that really grabbed my attention was when you said, “I don’t have to run that by a party committee. I have listened to the voters. I have gathered information. I have done research. I have considered it. This is my best judgment, and I get to just say that to you.” And I thought, “Now that is the sort of outsider, authentic, campaigning that I’m looking for.” So talk for just a second about why you think specifically in an executive role there is an advantage to running as an independent and governing as an independent.

[00:40:53] Lauren Pinkston: The ability to pivot and to pivot quickly is so refreshing. I had a strong assumption that data centers and the future of tech were going to be at the core of this election, and that has proven to be true. That’s why I came in with a plan around data centers and how we would construct them in places where we would preserve our land. We could trap the thermal energy that they give off by putting them underground and moving that thermal energy above ground to heat greenhouses year-long through vertical farming. And I presented that as many places as I could and with great respect. However, the reality remains that politics is downstream from culture. And because of where the data centers are being proposed across our state, they are the boogeyman of this election. And I hear that, and I understand that, and so that’s why I also was the first candidate to call for a moratorium because I saw where people are, and I believe that we need to pause. When people are con-concerned and they see elected officials that look like they are bending an ear to a large corporation with a lot of money, then they feel left out. And we need everyone at the table for these conversations. That’s why I’ve called for citizens’ councils across the state so that we would have real listening ears on the ground in every county that were nonpartisan. That’s why I’ve called for a nonpartisan redistricting commission that would propose where our congressional districts are aligned so that we have our ear to the ground across the state. But that’s the beauty of running as an independent is that I don’t have to ask, “Can I say this?” Or “What’s the party position on that?” I don’t have to sign any creed. It’s just me and the people and that feels really important in a moment where we’ve had a super majority in our state that has completely close their eyes and ears to the general public and people are not voting because they feel like what’s the point? Tennessee had the lowest voter turnout in the entire country in our last midterm election, and I had to ask why are you not voting? And it’s that defeat, what am I going to change? Nobody’s going to listen to me anyway. And that defeat is so demoralizing and it obstructs the beauty of a representative democracy. So that’s the importance of electing independents that have worked to earn your trust in this political environment.

[00:43:15] Beth: Let’s take a hard turn and talk about what’s on our minds Outside of Politics. You have four kids. I’m wondering, especially as you’re out campaigning and doing something that you seem very prepared for, but that also has to be brand new to you, what are you learning about yourself that you think, “Oh, this came from being a mom. This part of me is directly related to my experience parenting”?

[00:43:43] Lauren Pinkston: That’s such a good question. I say in a lot of my stops, “I’m a mom with two teenage girls, so you can’t hurt my feelings. I’ve been tested and prepared for this every day.”

[00:43:54] Beth: I got an 11 and 15-year-old girl. I feel that.

[00:44:00] Lauren Pinkston: You get that. you can ask me anything. I’m asked questions all day long, and I’m very used to explaining things, and I’m also very used to saying, “I don’t know. Let’s go find that out together.”

[00:44:09] Beth: Yeah. my girls will comment on my outfit every day, and they will be very honest about what they think of it. My hair, my makeup. I get constant feedback from very honest advisors about that.

[00:44:25] Lauren Pinkston: Exactly. “Mom, why are you wearing that? Mom, why did...” Yes, 100%. And our kids are our greatest critics, but they also give us some thick skin, so that’s so good.

[00:44:36] Beth: I was thinking about this question for myself, and a, couple of things occurred to me lately One is just I think I have deeply internalized from parenting that my plan is not the only plan. As much as I want to be in control of a day and a schedule and a method, this is how we’re going to do this thing, my plan is not the only plan. And my plan can be meaningless by the end of the day sometimes if someone else’s needs supersede mine. I can imagine that that’s something you’re encountering on the campaign trail quite a bit too.

[00:45:11] Lauren Pinkston: Absolutely. As a family, we’ve lived all over the world. We have four kids that were born on three continents. We’ve worked through the USCIS process. We have a certificate of birth abroad. We have shared tables with so many unique people around the world. I took my four-month-old to stay the night in the Middle East when we were on our way to Uganda a few years ago. There’s not a place that I have been afraid with them there with me, but that also means that I’m not afraid of our neighbors here. And we’ve been in our home now for almost seven years. And over the course of those seven years, we’ve had people living in our upstairs, three of those people who needed a place to stay or people who were in transition, and we’ve just lived in community with them. And I think that’s what it’s going to take to heal our politics too. So another thing that I’d say has prepared me is that rub of sharing space with people who weren’t just like me. Our home is a sacred place, but it’s not closed off to others. And so my commitment to Tennesseans has been we haven’t had children in the governor’s residence since the 1970s when Lamar Alexander was our governor, and we will be having family dinners there. And you will hear from me that there will be a Republican representative and a Democratic representative at the dinner table with my family, with their families invited, and we are going to humanize one another. Because if the only time that we are arguing is on the floor of the House, then we will never pass effective legislation together. And we have to see each other as humans first if we’re going to solve problems together. And so that’s my commitment to how I will govern.

[00:46:45] Beth: That’s really related to the other thing I was thinking that I’ve learned from my kids that’s, been so prevalent for me in the month of June and July, as we are in the summer here, I have learned from my kids that almost everything is a skill that you have to learn. Sleeping is a skill. Eating is a skill. Going to the bathroom yourself is a skill. Taking a shower, skill. Cleaning your room, skill. And I feel like that kind of communication politically is a skill that has been allowed to atrophy. And so I love the idea of establishing a practice. That’s how you teach a new skill, right? We’re just practicing over and over again, and offering feedback as we go along. So I like the idea of you saying, “We’re going to relearn this skill, everybody, right here at the dinner table.”

[00:47:34] Lauren Pinkston: That’s exactly it. And my kids amaze me all the time, but I remember my daughter is a Ugandan American, and we were at a doctor’s office once and the doctor was working on her and it was during the ‘24 election-- sorry I’m bringing it back to politics. But it was during the ‘24 election, and she said, “That Kamala Harris is going to ruin our country and turn us all communist, so we can’t vote for her.” And my daughter, who is watching Black representation that looks like her, so powerful for her, regardless of where you are politically. That is an important moment for her. I was just so taken back that someone would say that to her with such lack of understanding. And I looked at her and she goes, “That’s really interesting. Tell me more about why you feel that way.” And it just was such a proud mom moment where I thought, “Okay, you’ve seen this modeled, and you are learning how to carry this out,” and that’s the future that I want for my kids, and that’s what I want them to, contribute to the world. And I think we’ve been practicing that so well in our home, and I want to bring that to the state because it’s so lacking. And women are so good. Women are so good at connecting these dots. Another conversation about women in politics, but that’s why we’re talking about this.

[00:48:47] Beth: I think that’s right. Good for your daughter and good for you, and thank you so much for spending time with me today. I’m excited to see where your campaign goes, and I hope that you’ll come back and give us an update as the governor.

[00:49:00] Lauren Pinkston: I can’t wait. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:49:04] Beth: Thank you so much to Lauren for joining me today. If you’d like to learn more about Lauren and her campaign, you can find her at pingston4tn.com. We’ll link that and her Instagram profile in the show notes, along with the link for our live show and after party tickets. I’ll be back with you next week with new episodes of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you

.

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Chef Mica Chavez taught me and 45 other Pantsuit Politics listeners to make a southwestern feast while we were on retreat in New Mexico. The food was amazing, but her storytelling was even better. I literally leaned forward in my chair as she talked about birds spreading chili from Bolivia to New Mexico. In this conversation, she takes us through 500 years of food history--from the three sisters to precision farming.

I loved this conversation because I think it shows how food is life. Food is violence and colonization and interdependence and love and belonging. It is all of it, and all of it has shaped modern America and the world. Chef Chavez delivers warnings and inspiration, and I think, going into year 251, we need both.

Topics Discussed

• The Columbian Exchange: how corn, chili, potatoes, and tomatoes reshaped diets on both sides of the Atlantic

• The science of nixtamalization — why New World corn didn’t wreck teeth the way Old World wheat did

• How chili peppers spread across the globe via birds

• The Irish potato famine’s surprising link to New Mexico settlement history

• Indigenous and Spanish foodways merging in the Southwest: acequias, sheep, and companion planting

• How mechanization and post-WWII food policy created the mass-produced, processed food system

• Precision farming, AI, and the tension between efficiency and sustainability

• What to cook this summer (hint: it’s pie)

Episode Resources

• Tickets for the Pantsuit Politics live show in Minneapolis, Aug 29 (Eventbrite)

• Chef Mica Chavez

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Chef Mica Chavez: All I can do is what I do as an individual, and how do I see this? I shop the perimeter of my grocery store. I very infrequently go in the middle unless I’m looking for something like flour, sugar, or coffee. And going back to there are only a few corporations that are producing what we eat, that to me that’s scary.

[00:00:26] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is on her summer break this week. I’m here with a special guest who I’ll tell you about in just a moment. First, thank you so much for celebrating America 250 with us. I have been absolutely delighted by your murder mystery photos, your founder’s trunk stories, the way that you have shared our episodes and shared your family and friends with us. It’s been really meaningful to me. You all made my Fourth of July. So thank you so much. I hope that we were helpful to your Fourth of July as well, and I hope we can all keep the party going together in Minneapolis on August 29th at our one and only live show this year. Now, if you want to really hang out, grab a photo with Sarah and me, say hello to us in person, meet some new true and lasting friends, then we hope you’ll join us for the afterparty of our live show. Tickets are on sale now, but not for much longer, because the afterparty has food and music and lots of seating, and we just need to think and plan for every single person who comes, and we’re getting down to the wire on that. So this is your moment to grab those afterparty tickets along with your live show tickets. The link to snag all of that is in the show notes, and I hope to see you there.

Speaking of food, my guest today is a culinary expert. Chef Mica Chavez has cooked for presidents, and she has taught history to seventh graders. She’s been on CBS and CNN, and she has taught a group of Pantsuit Politics listeners how to make a Southwestern feast. That’s where I met her. Chef Chavez taught us at a Santa Fe cooking school, and as she was meeting our group and introducing the food to us, she told us about why corn and chilies are so important to New Mexican cuisine. The way that she wove food and history and culture and land together had me physically leaning forward in my chair, just hanging on to every word she said. And so that’s why I invited her to guest host this first show after our semi-quincentennial celebration, because I think food is one of the best ways to understand who we are. And as you’ll hear in this conversation, I think food has so much to teach us about who we are and who we can be. So I hope that you enjoy hearing from Chef Chavez as much as I enjoyed talking with her. I am so glad that you’re here. I have not stopped thinking about the way you described the Columbian Exchange to us in Santa Fe, and I just want to hear that story again and unpack it more with you. So will you take us back to, the 1400s and where our food journey begins in this country?

[00:03:18] Chef Mica Chavez: Absolutely. And actually, our food journey in this country begins way before the 1400s. And I’m going to try to stick with New Mexico because that’s where I’m living. This is home. And this being the capital city of the Southwest, I feel that corn and chili is a really good place to start. So I am also a history teacher in addition to being a trained chef with over 40 years of experience. When I first learned about the Columbian Exchange and how that pivotal journey changed everything for the world that we live in, it took me down a rabbit hole that just ended for me in Spain about a year and a half ago. A student in one of my classes asked me where oranges came from. And I didn’t know. And I don’t like not knowing things, so I started researching. And as with a lot of research-- I know that you’ve gone through higher ed as well-- you don’t necessarily find answers; you find better questions.

[00:04:12] Beth: Right.

[00:04:13] Chef Mica Chavez: And that was definitely the case for me. So oranges came to us from Valencia, Spain. Prior to Valencia, Spain, they were in Southeast Asia as a very small sour fruit. And when the Spaniards were traveling, they would bring things that they thought that they would need in order to plant fruits, vegetables, and they brought protein with them when they got to where they were going so they would have something to eat. And this is something that has been done by different cultures in different ways as long as people have been traveling. There’s a school of thought that thinks that chickens were brought to the New World by Samoans. We know people were traveling. The reason that Columbus got the press that he did was because he traveled with a journalist. He traveled with a scribe. And not too long after he got back to Spain on either his first or second voyage, the printing press was being used for more than Bibles. So his timing was really pretty fortuitous for him. The Columbian Exchange would’ve happened at some point, and it may have had somebody else’s name attached to it. We don’t know. We know there was Viking presence off the coast of Newfoundland. We know people were moving. He was just the first one to get the credit. When Spanish boots hit the island of Hispaniola, life in this world changed forever. There was an exchange of biological agents, technology, and language that we call the Columbian Exchange. One of the things that I tell people in my classes at the School of Cooking, and I probably told you this as well, is try to imagine for a moment what life was like in the major cities of Europe in the 1400s. It was probably pretty bad. Yeah. And so one of the reasons that Columbus was looking for a westward route to the East Indies was for black pepper primarily, and so that really launched all of the successive voyages of exploration and discovery.

[00:06:12] Beth: Do you know why black pepper?

[00:06:14] Chef Mica Chavez: Black pepper is one of the world’s most ubiquitous spices, and most of it is still grown in India, and we know that the Spanish and the Portuguese had big presence off of India. And so he figured that he could probably get there without too much ado, not taking into account there were a couple of continents in the spices were the first global empire industry and it started with the Dutch and their the East Indian Trading Company and a lot of a lot of traffic through Southeast Asia and certainly the New World bringing things back. But when we talk about corn, it’s really a man-made miracle. It was created by ancient peoples cross-pollinating and hybrid- cross-pollinating and hybridizing different kinds of grass. One was teosinte. I don’t remember what the other one was. And over a period of time they created corn. So corn for us in the New World, nothing here happens without corn. But if you look at each cob of corn or each ear of corn, each one of those kernels is protected by a plastic-like coating called a pericarp. Now, the pericarp protects it against birds because birds are destructive, but it doesn’t allow our bodies to break it down. So when you eat raw corn, it basically just travels right through your body. Your body can’t access the primarily niacin that’s in the corn.

And so in Mexico, somewhere about 9,000 years ago probably, they figured out a way to soak corn in water with an alkali, and that removes the pericarp, makes it more digestible, and makes the corn safer because the alkalinity of the water kills bacteria.Now, here’s the thing I just put together the other day. About six years ago, seven years ago, I was in Pompeii, and I was doing a culinary tour of Pompeii. And this woman that was leading the tour led us over to where they would grind the wheat for bread. So they had this big... It was very phallic looking. It was like this big pole, and there was this big cap that went on top of the pole. And in the middle it was shaped like an hourglass. And in the top part of this cap there was a hole in there, and they would put a pole in there, and either slaves or donkeys would turn this around in a circle. In the top of the cap, they would dump wheat berries, and the wheat berries would trickle down through and then the grinding motion would grind it into flour. Here’s the thing. A lot of the residents of Pompeii had no teeth. Their teeth were completely ground down from eating bread with pumice in because the wheat berries take off so much of that volcanic rock.

[00:09:08] Beth: Yeah.

[00:09:09] Chef Mica Chavez: Here in the New World, we were also using volcanic rock to grind our staple grain, corn, but the corn was soaked, so it was soft. So it didn’t take off a lot of that pumice, and the people here had really good teeth because we weren’t eating bread full of pumice.

[00:09:28] Beth: It’s just wild to think about this. This Old World, New World distinction and divergent methods is on my mind because this morning I was reading a piece to prepare for this conversation, and the professor who wrote it was talking about how, okay, we start with one supercontinent, and then we have millions of years that separate us, and we’re separated so completely that you see rattlesnakes on one side of the Atlantic and vipers on the other. We’re going down these parallel but divergent tracks.

[00:09:58] Chef Mica Chavez: Completely divergent.

[00:10:00] Beth: And then through human travel, and especially because of Columbus, who it sounds like has the 1400s equivalent of a great publicist, we get this exchange where you start to bring together the way that corn is sustaining a people in the New World, and wheat is sustaining people in the Old World.

[00:10:19] Chef Mica Chavez: And then you have rice in China. Rice in Asia, not just China. Rice in Asia. You have millet, sorghum, and teff in Africa. Every major ancient culture had some sort of staple grain, because where you had culture, you had agriculture or you had no culture.

[00:10:35] Beth: Yeah.

[00:10:36] Chef Mica Chavez: Corn is mentioned in nearly every Native American creation story. I’ve traveled through Mexico pretty extensively, and when you look at a lot of Native American codex and some of the carvings in Tikal or Chichen Itza or in the museums of Mexico City or in Oaxaca, people presented in silhouette or in profile, and the corn is coming out their nose in the profile because your breath comes out your nose. Without breath there is no life. Without corn, there is no life.

[00:11:07] Beth: Wow.

[00:11:08] Chef Mica Chavez: So it really was everything to the people here. And then probably about the same time, chili began to make its way onto the scene. And chili started out as a really small berry growing on bushes in Bolivia. And primarily through birds, chili spread. And if you’re wondering why birds, I’m going to tell you. Chili, as it ages, turns bright colors. It goes from green to orange, yellow, and then eventually red. Birds are attracted to red. I’ve got chickens, and if one of them gets a cut, you have to put like this salve on it that’s brown so they don’t attack each other and the red. They’re drawn to red. All poultry, all birds have grit sacs in the front of their breasts. This allows them to break down their diet, which is based on seeds. It’s also what makes your backyard chickens the closest living relative to dinosaurs you’re ever going to encounter.

[00:12:10] Beth: I love facts like that.

[00:12:11] Chef Mica Chavez: I know, isn’t that crazy? And then lastly birds don’t have salivary glands, so they’re immune to capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili. So a bird can sit and eat as many of these little berries as they want and then fly away. And when it does what birds do when they fly away, and the seed comes flying out the business end of the bird, it has everything it needs to be successful before it ever even hits the ground in terms of germination. So we know or food historians know that the African piri piri, the Thai bird’s eye chili, and the chiltepin, which was growing wild up here around the Santa Fe, New Mexico area, were all spread by birds. Everything else was spread by humans, and Columbus gets that distinction. Because as far as we know, he was the first one to come into contact with chili.

[00:13:00] Beth: So Columbus brings plants and animals, like ushers in this era of livestock coming in, dairy comes with the Spaniards, as I understand it.

[00:13:14] Chef Mica Chavez: Yep.

[00:13:14] Beth: I read about how the Spaniards believed that communion had to be wheat and grape based, and so they’re worried about bringing that stuff in. But then we’re exchanging in the other direction, too, right? So I know corn. Can you talk about what else left the New World and entered in the Old World and Asia from here?

[00:13:33] Chef Mica Chavez: Oh, girl. Yeah, absolutely. Tomatoes. That was a big thing. England was considered very Puritanical. Virginia was named after the Virgin Queen. When tomatoes first went back to England, we think the first tomato that made it back to Europe was a golden tomato. In Italian they’re pomodoro, pom d’oro, golden apple. Now when they made it to England, the English wanted nothing to do with it. They considered it the devil’s food.

[00:14:05] Beth: Tomatoes were the devil’s food?

[00:14:07] Chef Mica Chavez: Yes, ma’am. Okay, you’re living in a Puritanical society.

[00:14:12] Beth: Yeah.

[00:14:12] Chef Mica Chavez: Think about all of the characteristics of a tomato. It’s red. It’s juicy.

[00:14:17] Beth: Yeah.

[00:14:18] Chef Mica Chavez: Can’t have that.

[00:14:19] Beth: It’s just delight. Just delight on a vine.

[00:14:21] Chef Mica Chavez: A hundred percent. So it took a bit for the English to to get their mind wrapped around tomatoes. The food that made the biggest impact I think, at least upon the Irish, was the potato There were hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of potatoes that grow throughout the Andes Mountains. Only 10 varieties of potato made it back to Europe, and only two made it to Ireland. Now, prior to the Irish potato famine, the average Irishman ate 13 to 14 potatoes a day. It was the diet. Because it’s a really cheap, easy source of carbohydrates and energy. But at the time that all of this was happening, 1600, 1700, 1800s, much of the UK was considered a feudal system. So tax assessors went and assessed taxes based on what they could see, and they can see a corn crib or a granary full of wheat or rye or barley. That’s easy. But when you plant potatoes, not even you know what you have until you start digging them up.

[00:15:29] Beth: Yeah.

[00:15:30] Chef Mica Chavez: So potatoes were perfect in so many ways. Had all 10 varieties of potato made it back to Ireland, the potato famine never would’ve happened and millions of Irish people would probably still be in Ireland, and the Irish community here would be much, much different. Now, in New Mexico, there was a movie filmed here in the ‘80s or ‘90s called Young Guns. It was Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen. Lou Diamond Phillips. That was filmed about 30 minutes from where I’m sitting right now, and that movie was based on a real happening here in New Mexico called the Lincoln County Wars. Now, the reason I’m bringing this up is because all of the characters that were portrayed in that movie all had Irish last names, O’Donnell and Murphy, O’Brien. I can’t prove this, but I think that those people may have been the children or the grandchildren of the people that left Ireland trying to escape the potato famine. Because millions of Irish people or hundreds of thousands of Irishmen came here, came to the US trying to start a new life.

[00:16:33] Beth: So you have this real sort of negotiation and melding of culture going back hundreds of years. I just love thinking about the fact that we wouldn’t have oranges here, and Italy wouldn’t have tomatoes.

[00:16:48] Chef Mica Chavez: Right. Imagine Italy without tomatoes.

[00:16:49] Beth: It’s wild to me to think about. And there’s something really beautiful in that, even though this is happening against just a really horrific background of colonization and theft and slavery, plays a huge role in all of this.

[00:17:05] Chef Mica Chavez: Slave women or African women used to weave rice in their hair because if they got captured, they knew there was a chance they were going to get captured, if they got captured, they would have this rice so that they would be able to plant it when they got wherever they were going. There are still people that live off the East Coast of the US, I think off the Carolinas the Gullah, I believe they’re called. They still maintain their African heritage. But manifest destiny, colonization, slavery, those were some of the worst things to happen to this country and to the peoples of faraway lands that were dragged here against their will. All of those ethnic groups have left an indelible impression on our country, and it would be nearly impossible to remove them now from who we are as a nation. We’re a nation built on the backs of people of color who came here against their will, some especially from Mexico because there were programs here that brought workers in the early 1900s, the Bracero Program. So people have been moving, and when people move, whether it’s through their own will or against their will they bring with them their cultures and their traditions and their foods. And try and take out of Louisiana. No way. Not going to happen.

[00:18:21] Beth: When you think about the development of Southwestern cuisine as it exists today, I’m really interested in the sort of interplay between indigenous foodways and what the Spanish brought to that area. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:18:38] Chef Mica Chavez: The Spanish presence in the Southwest was that was tolerated for a bit. Because when the Spanish got here, they brought horses, and horses changed Native American cultures forever, especially with the Comanche and the Cherokee. They became master horsemen and basically dominated the plains. The Pueblos that were here tolerated the Spanish for a bit because they gave them protection against raiding tribes. And that was good until it wasn’t. I don’t think we need to cover the atrocities that happened in the Southwest at the hands of European cultures. That being said, once there started being intermarriage, intermingling, interweaving of communities, it’s nearly impossible to remove indigenous culture from the Hispano culture that now exists in New Mexico. As a matter of fact, I think it was about a year ago that The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times ran an article about some of the Spanish dialects that still exist in Northern New Mexico that only exist here because of our rural remoteness. And at this point, you cannot extract one culture from the other. We are one people at this point. And in terms of foodways, if it weren’t for the native cultures that were here, the Spanish probably would’ve not done very well in terms of being able to grow their own food. Farming at altitude is a challenge, and farming in high desert altitude makes it even more so. When the Spanish got here, they found a thriving Pueblo population. In many cases, the Spanish and the Pueblos worked together to form foodways, and let me give you an example of that.

There is a method of irrigation that is used here in Northern New Mexico called acequias. An acequia is a gravity powered ditch of like a stream. And these acequias run all through northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and they were named acequias by the Spanish. Now, in many cases when new towns would be built, they would build the acequia first before they would even start building buildings because they had to have water first. So the acequia system is still alive and well here, and it is a tradition in the spring with men. It’s a tradition among the men here that they go out and clean the acequias every spring to get ready for the water release. So there may be 60 or 70 families living on some of these acequias. And they’re not little is what I’m saying. The person in charge of the acequia is called the mayordomo. And the mayordomo is an elected position; they have the responsibility of regulating the water. So the water for some families may flow on Monday for three hours. So on Monday at 10 o’clock in the morning, you lift your head gate and you let the water flow for three hours, and then at one o’clock you put the head gate down and you’re done till the next Monday. If you water on a day that’s outside your permission, you will lose your watering privileges for the season. And in a place like here we were at 6% humidity last week.

[00:21:42] Beth: Wow.

[00:21:43] Chef Mica Chavez: A place like here you’re done. So the Spanish brought weaving with them. There’s a little sanctuary about 35 miles northeast of Santa Fe called Chimayo, and it’s a valley. And this valley when the Spanish got here, they found Puebloan people living out there. It’s along this beautiful stream. It’s green. It is so incredibly beautiful, that valley. But they brought sheep and they started raising sheep and shearing the sheep and making wool. And there are still weavers out in the Chimayo Valley. So how that affected other cultures here, the Navajo are master sheep producers. The Navajo Nation raises sheep. They call them the churro sheep. They came over with the Spanish. And during the summer, you take your sheep up to the high pastures in the mountains. During the winter, you bring them back down. They shear, they card, they dye, they spin the wool, and they make rugs. Navajo weavers are some of the best weavers in the world. Their rugs are beautiful. So all throughout, New Mexico and other states in the Southwest, you’re going to see intermingling of cultures. And depending on what pueblo a given town is close to, their Spanish may be influenced by the language spoken at that pueblo. And there are still nine native languages spoken in New Mexico outside of English and Spanish.

[00:23:20] Beth: It’s so hard for me to bridge the gap between this period of time and these cultures where food is life, it is spirituality, it is related to social status and who you feel bonded to today where we have through governmental policy and industry really focused on food that is abundant and inexpensive and safe to eat by some definition, but it just feels like such a broad gap. And I’m wondering how you think about that gap and what you think took us from that place where, as you said, corn is part of faith tradition. And even the Spanish with the importance of what is communion made of? Like, how did we get to this place where our food is so processed, so mass-produced, and it feels so compartmentalized from the rest of life?

[00:24:20] Chef Mica Chavez: A lot of this had to do with mechanization and World War II. And whenever you start to get bumps in population, you get bumps people need more food. As humans, we have created the kind of food that works for our mechanization. So example, corn is one stalk with two ears. Corn fields are consistently flat. Each plant looks exactly the same. We’ve made it work for the machines that we use to harvest our food, or harvest our plants. And in the ‘50s, women spent an hour and 15 minutes making dinner every day. How long do people spend making dinner now?

[00:25:03] Beth: Yeah.

[00:25:04] Chef Mica Chavez: And I’m guilty of this, and I don’t know what the answer is in terms of bringing it back to a more locavore movement. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t have that answer. All I can do is what I do as an individual. And how do I see this? I shop the perimeter of my grocery store. I very infrequently go in the middle unless I’m looking for something like flour, sugar, or coffee. And going back to there are only a few corporations that are producing what we eat. To me, that’s scary. It’s such a big issue. Food should not be a luxury. Eating well should not be a luxury. If you are very wealthy or very poor, you eat well. Very poor, because you probably have a garden, or you’re living on a farm and you’re raising what you eat, and you’re shooting your cow and butchering it out in the field and bringing in that fresh meat for your family. That’s how we did it 150, 200 years ago, and we’ve gotten away from that. Do I think everybody should go back to that? Absolutely not. It’s not possible. During World War II, victory gardens were a thing. During COVID, people started gardening again. Plant a tomato. Develop a relationship with a plant. Watch that plant grow. That’s what I’d suggest. And when I teach sixth and seventh-grade history, and I always try to incorporate a little bit of gardening in my history class. So for when we cover the Mediterranean, I give each kid wheat and peas, because that’s what they grew there. When we do the New World, I do corn, beans, and squash. When we do Asia, I do rice and soybeans. We all had a grain and a legume that we depended upon to keep us healthy. And am I suggesting everybody be vegetarian? Absolutely not. Starting with myself, it ain’t happening. But maybe eating less meat.

[00:26:49] Beth: Yeah.

[00:26:50] Chef Mica Chavez: Maybe focusing on rather than buying two or three nights worth of an animal protein, maybe buy one night and buy a local animal protein. There are little things you can do that don’t cost much that can maybe help in a small way to help support local farmers.

[00:27:10] Beth: Mechanization is a really helpful word. Just thinking about the corn as the one stalk with the two ears and the way a machine can process that field, versus the three sisters planting method, where you have the bean actually winding around that stalk of corn and the squash growing out over the soil. I feel like a lot of people have heard of the three sisters, but don’t really understand why the three sisters worked so well together from an agricultural perspective.

[00:27:39] Chef Mica Chavez: Absolutely. And companion planting is done with lots of different plants all the time around the world. This is just one of the better examples that pertains to the Southwest. Corn grows into stalk, and beans need something to wrap around as they grow. It supports them. Beans are also nitrogen fixers, and so they pull nitrogen out of the air and they transfer it into the soil, and that helps all of the plants grow better. Squash has really big leaves, and squash has really pokey stems. If you reach into a squash plant, you’re going to pull out your arm and it’s going to be scratched. That keeps rabbits and deer away. It also shades the root ball. And then the way the leaf is, it faces down, and then there’s a channel down the middle of the stem. So the water can run down the leaf, down the stem, and it ends up right at the root ball where it does the most good. And as a gardener, I’m a rabid gardener, here’s what I have found over the years. When I do companion planting, everything does better. So for example, I plant tomato plants with basil and garlic. The pests that like tomatoes don’t like basil and don’t like garlic. When I plant carrots, I plant onions because the little bugs that eat the carrot greens don’t like onions. So my garden is planted using companion planting. I plant peas near where I plant tomatoes because peas are also nitrogen fixers. And peas they’re starting to die out right now, and the tomatoes are just coming in. So I’ve got all that nitrogen waiting in the soil for those tomatoes, which are heavy feeders, and the peas are going to start to fall down as the tomatoes start to go up.

[00:29:22] Beth: Yeah.

[00:29:23] Chef Mica Chavez: So that has worked. But with corn, beans, and squash, you get less pests, all of the plants are healthier, and which means you get better yield out of each plant. But the kind of uniformity that you see in commercial agriculture, that kind of uniformity doesn’t exist in nature. It just doesn’t.

[00:29:41] Beth: Yeah, I can attest. I planted basil in between my tomato plants for the first time this year. I’m amazed already at how different my garden looks, how much healthier my tomato plants look. It’s wild to see the difference that makes in it. And it helps me understand when you read about the importance of the three sisters, the spirituality attached to that, like the art that was created around it I get it. Because it is visually stunning to see what a difference it makes just to have those plants working harmoniously together. And just so divorced from an agricultural policy that focuses on one commodity at a time, and subsidizing particular commodities instead of thinking through what is the overall output? What are we making at the end of the day for everyone, and then how is that contributing back to what we’re able to do next year?

[00:30:37] Chef Mica Chavez: And I think the lesson that we should have learned from the Irish potato famine that seems completely lost on our decision-makers is diversity is what’s going to keep us strong.

[00:30:47] Beth: Yeah.

[00:30:48] Chef Mica Chavez: Diversity is what’s going to help keep our plants strong. And I fear that probably in our lifetimes we are going to see food shortages because we are going to chemical ourselves into a mess that we are not going to be able to chemical our way out of. And we’re seeing algae blooms in places like the Gulf of Mexico. We’re seeing it here in local rivers, and streams and lakes because nitrogen-heavy fertilizers wash into bodies of water. And when you don’t have fresh water coming in and sunlight, you get algae, and where you get algae, you get dead fish, and you get dead water basically because the sunlight can’t penetrate through. So we’re creating issues that we are not going to be able to fix. And I hate to sound gloom and doom because I feel like there’s enough of that already, and I feel like there are enough organizations globally that are working toward more sustainable growing methods and keeping diversity alive. Unfortunately, we’re not getting that in the US and not on a big scale. And I think that’s really scary.

[00:31:57] Beth: What do you think about precision farming? I’ve been trying to learn about the way that some European countries in particular are using artificial intelligence to monitor the temperature of the soil and the amount of water exactly that plants need and doing these vertical gardens. I think it’s all really interesting, and then a part of it just aches for me a little bit because it feels very soulless. So I’d love to know what someone like you who thinks about food all the time, how you view that.

[00:32:29] Chef Mica Chavez: It’s not just food I think about. I think about plants all the time.

[00:32:32] Beth: Yeah.

[00:32:33] Chef Mica Chavez: I’m a rabid gardener, and I compost. I constantly drive around rotting vegetables. I’ve got to go out and turn my compost in a little while. Science is a tool, and I believe that we should use these tools for the greater good. Do I want to be the one that defines greater good? Absolutely not. That’s for somebody a whole lot smarter than me. If it is helping farmers growers produce food that’s going to keep this planet fed, sure, okay. But when you talk about AI, you’re talking about data centers. And when you talk about data centers, you talk about massive uses of water and electricity, and how are we generating that electricity? Are we using coal? Are we using water? What are we using to generate that electricity? I tend to take it a step further, and ask where are we getting the power? Where are we getting the water? Are we getting this from sustainably generated sources? Awesome. Use it. Are we getting this from sources that are going to kill us eventually? If that’s the case, then maybe we use less of that.

[00:33:34] Beth: Yeah.

[00:33:36] Chef Mica Chavez: We didn’t have this 500 years ago. And what I have realized recently is between 500 years ago and 5,000 years ago, life didn’t really change that much. Our methods of transportation were the same. Our methods of growing food were the same. Our methods of movement of people were pretty much the same. But from 500 years to now, look at how fast life has moved and how much and how fast our world is changing, and the changes just seem to be exponentially faster. I don’t know if it’s good or not. I don’t know. I think an end of the summer tomato grown in my yard from my compost, I know where that dirt came from, doesn’t taste anything like the tomatoes I buy at the store.

[00:34:21] Beth: Yeah. I hope that these advancements that we make in the way that we understand soil composition and energy production and the taste of food. I hope all of those factors converge in a positive way. In the meantime, another thing I keep thinking about from your cooking class is just having respect for the ingredients and really valuing what’s in front of you. I keep thinking every time because I eat a lot of corn, about you telling me to get the juice out of the corn by flipping my knife over and scraping the cob extracts so much more flavor, and it’s incredible. It’s incredible. So I wonder what other ways you think we can practice having that kind of respect for the ingredients and loving the food back that way?

[00:35:21] Chef Mica Chavez: I think a lot of this just goes back to care and concern overall. We just need to slow down.

[00:35:28] Beth: Yeah.

[00:35:29] Chef Mica Chavez: Put your phone down.

[00:35:30] Beth: I need to slow down.

[00:35:31] Chef Mica Chavez: I am so guilty of this. Put your phone down. Pay attention to what you’re doing. And food is more than just something that we eat. Food needs to be enjoyed and celebrated. And in the US, most of us have enough to eat. And for that I am extremely grateful because I know that is not the case in other places. And I’ve been fortunate to travel some and look forward to traveling a whole lot more. And every time I go to a country where things aren’t as good as what I have here, I’m grateful to come home to what I’ve got. And that gives me the underlying, and I guess obvious respect for my ingredients and my environment because so many people have so much less than what I do. And I am so grateful for everything I’ve got and every opportunity.

[00:36:19] Beth: Me too. Thank you so much for walking us through this. As we wrap up, Sarah and I always ask an Outside of Politics question. This isn’t really outside of food; it’s still in food, but I’m curious, what do you think we all ought to cook this summer, just to do that slowing down and appreciating what we have?

[00:36:37] Chef Mica Chavez: You know what? Almost every place in this country has some kind of seasonal fruit that we get during the summer, like Rainier cherries, or peaches, or apples, or I don’t know, whatever the fruit happens to be. Make a pie. Go make a pie. Sit down, find a recipe, make a pie. Who doesn’t love apple pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, peach pie, pecan pie? And we could take this on a run. We could be like turning into the Forrest Gump of pies.

[00:37:09] Beth: Yes. I do love a pie. I love trying to make a pie crust too. I think it is surprisingly challenging to make it as pretty as I want, and surprisingly easy to make it taste as good as I want. I like that mix of things.

[00:37:25] Chef Mica Chavez: I did some pastry classes in France a few years ago, and my big takeaway from that was French butter, European butter.

[00:37:31] Beth: Okay.

[00:37:32] Chef Mica Chavez: American butter tends to run much lower in butterfat. And what the cows eat makes a huge difference. So the butter that I have found that I use the most domestically is Kerrygold, the Kerry gold unsalted butter. If you put that up against a Land O’Lakes, or your store butter, or whatever else, the color is so much more vibrant, and you can smell the butter. It’s got an aroma to it. It smells good. It smells like food.

[00:37:59] Beth: Yeah. It smells like food.

[00:38:01] Chef Mica Chavez: Buy ingredients, make food. Don’t buy food.

[00:38:04] Beth: Yeah. So European butter. Anything else that will help us with our pie crusts? I’m on a selfish quest now.

[00:38:11] Chef Mica Chavez: Okay. So when you make your pie crust, measure out your flour. Flour, sugar, probably maybe a little bit of baking soda or baking powder. You want to use very cold butter. Cut it into small pieces. Don’t let it melt. So when I would do my pie crust, I used to do it with my fingers, and what this woman in France was doing it with two forks. I’ve never done it with forks. I know that the old ladies in the South do it with the forks. I have never done it with the forks, so I did it like that and it didn’t melt the butter.

[00:38:40] Beth: Yeah.

[00:38:42] Chef Mica Chavez: And I used really cold water, ice water, and then put it in there. Held the ice, dumped the water in, and then just used barely enough water to bring it together. But you got to keep everything really cold, and your pie crust will come out a whole lot better.

[00:38:58] Beth: Okay. I’m inspired to go make a pie. Thank you very much.

[00:39:00] Chef Mica Chavez:  All right. You have my information. You just let me know how it comes out.

[00:39:04] Beth: I will, thank you. This was a lot of fun. And I think there’s just so much wisdom to take from food, and the way that food grows, and the way that food has been prepared, and just how delicious the food in the United States is because we have negotiated, and melded, and taken all the good that everyone’s brought to our literal table.

[00:39:25] Chef Mica Chavez: I completely believe that’s true. And wherever people landed, they brought their food traditions with them, and as a nation of immigrants, I’m really grateful for every single group of people that brought that with them because we are better for it. Our diet is better for it.

[00:39:39] Beth: Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you to Amiga Chavez for her time and sharing her expertise and her passion with us. I will be back here with you on Friday with Lauren Pinkston, who is an independent candidate for governor in Tennessee. I’ve already heard from many Tennesseans that you are really excited to hear from Lauren on our show, so we’ll be back with you for that on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Well, today, part of Sarah’s wish has been granted. Ezra Klein is here to talk with us about where America sits at this anniversary, and what he’s thinking about as he looks ahead. We hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. -Beth

P.S. Just putting into the universe that I’d still very much like to talk to French president Emmanuel Macron. Just sayin’.

Topics Discussed

• The vision of abundance and why the future is so hard to imagine

• Attention as a collective resource — and why ours is deranged

• Freedom as choice vs. freedom as self-mastery

• Virtue, vice, and the illiberal moment

• Institutional trust, corruption, and the education debate

• Natalism, AI, and whether we're living through an aberration

• Outside of Politics: which founder would make the best podcast guest

Episode Resources

• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781668023488
• Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein
https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781476700366
• The Lost History of Liberalism by Helena Rosenblatt
https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9780691203966
• The Pursuit of Happiness by Jeffrey Rosen https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781668002483
• The British Are Coming by Rick Atkinson
https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781250231321
• "Now Is a Time of Monsters" by Ezra Klein, The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/opinion/ai-climate-change-low-birth-rates.html?eafs_enabled=false

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:09] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Our guest today is a New York Times opinion columnist, author of Why We’re Polarized, and co-author with Derek Thompson of Abundance, and the host of The Ezra Klein Show. Ezra Klein is here to talk with us about where America sits at this 250th anniversary, and how we might look ahead toward a more perfect future. This episode is mostly forward-looking, but Ezra does stick around for Outside of Politics to tell us which of the founders he would be most interested in hosting on his podcast. It’s

[00:00:41] Sarah: It’s so great, guys. I’m so excited for you to listen episode. Okay. Before we share this incredible conversation, we wanted to tell you our plans for the next six weeks. Long-term listeners frequently talk about us as their political therapist or emotional support podcast, and that is what we want to be, and we want everyone who listens to be able to pay attention to news and politics sustainably over a lifetime, and that requires taking breaks. So for the next six weeks, we’ll still be here with you, but we’re softening the pace a bit. You’ll see new episodes of Pantsuit Politics right here in the free feed, and on our premium feed, you’ll see two new episodes each week, something like an episode of More to Say and a Good News Brief. But we are taking some time off, and we’ve staggered the time off. Beth will be here with you the next two weeks as I start my vacation. We’ll overlap a bit in our vacations, and then I’ll be here as Beth wraps up her time away into early August. You don’t need to memorize the schedule. It doesn’t matter. We just want you to know what to expect, and that you’ll have some time, particularly on Substack, to catch up if you’d like to soften your listening pace, and we will be back with you in mid-August as school begins for many of us across the country.

[00:01:54] Beth: Up next, here’s Ezra Klein. Ezra, we’re so happy to have you on Pantsuit Politics. Thank you for being here.

[00:02:09] Ezra Klein: I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:11] Sarah: See, you’re on a first-name basis here at Pantsuit Politics.

[00:02:16] Ezra Klein: I feel like podcasts are all a first-name basis.

[00:02:18] Sarah: Yeah, for sure.

[00:02:18] Beth: Yeah. It’s the nicest part of doing it.

[00:02:20] Sarah: I’ll remember that when I go to Joe Rogan and be like, “Hey, Joe. What’s up, buddy?”

[00:02:23] Ezra Klein: Wouldn’t it be weird to go and say, “Hey, Mr. Rogan”? He wouldn’t know what to do with that.

[00:02:28] Beth: That’s true.

[00:02:29] Ezra Klein: That’s his dad.

[00:02:30] Sarah: He teaches at the local high school.

[00:02:33] Beth: When we were thinking about what to do for July 4th on this 250th anniversary of America, we wanted to talk with you because we really liked the way that Abundance opened, with this super compelling, rich, detailed vision of what the future could look like. So as you have lived with that vision out in the world, I wonder if there are parts of it that jump out at you as distinctly American, or if there are obstacles to that vision that jump out at you as distinctly American.

[00:03:04] Ezra Klein: Ooh, what an interesting question. Okay. So for people who haven’t read the book, but it’s available wherever your books, e-books, and audiobooks are sold.

[00:03:11] Sarah:  No one in our audience? What are you talking about.

[00:03:14] Ezra Klein: It begins with a little vignette that is imagining 2050 and imagining an abundance of things that some of them we could have right now and don’t. Clean energy for a lot of people, clean drinking water. Some of them that we don’t yet have but could. Certain kinds of medications or advanced forms of energy four-day work week. And it’s saying, look, there is so much we could solve now if we arranged both the material and the genius and the will of our society to do it and to build it. So many of our scarcities, housing, energy public infrastructure, are chosen that we could live somewhere really different. It’s interesting that when I think about it now, actually, those first few pages of the book are the ones that feel the furthest from me of everything we do in the book.

[00:04:00] Sarah: Wow.

[00:04:00] Ezra Klein: And the reason is that, that’s not a full vision of the future, of course. It’s not a vision of how we’ll relate to each other, our families, what our spirits will be like. It’s a vision of plenty, right? Of material plenty. And material plenty that is helped along by advances in technology. And I think that AI specifically has made the relationship between technology and the left, however you want to define the left, much more complicated than it was even then. We were writing that book at a time when green energy was the big technology most of us were talking about. AI was beginning to build. And so I think easier for people to see the way technological advances could create a better world, right? Electric vehicles are better. You don’t breathe in combustion in the way that you do for combustion engine vehicles. But now with AI and the sort of mistrust of the people running it and the concentrations of wealth and power, even though AI could do great good for the world I think people sense that it might harm them, has made it really hard to say that technology can be a force for progress, a force for justice, a force for distributional equity. And so that part of the book was trying to get people to imagine a future that they liked a lot better than the present, but that was quite different than the present. That’s the part of it that I think is actually going worst. Other parts of the book about how to build more housing, like that’s all... we’re doing that stuff. But the reknitting a relationship between the left and technology as a force for social progress has been harder.

[00:05:26] Sarah: I think peering into the future is always so fraught. I have great admiration for futurists. I think it’s a very difficult job. And because so many of the problems, I can tell myself intellectually even with AI and the reaction to it, the future problem I’m obsessed with is the birth rate. Me and Elon out here just stressing the birth rate constantly. Left

[00:05:44] Ezra Klein: Left natalist.

[00:05:45] Sarah: I know.

[00:05:46] Ezra Klein: Close to my heart. We should talk about that. I never meet left natalists.

[00:05:49] Sarah: Listen, I am concerned. I am very concerned, but then I talk myself down. My new favorite phrase is the sleepwalker bias. We’re not going to sleepwalk into some AI dystopia. We’re not going to sleepwalk into this population problem. So you have to peer into the future, and you want to peer into the future with the problems we’ve already identified and the solutions that might work. But I have to tell myself that’s not how it’s going to go, that things will adapt and change and we will shift culturally. What I worry about with both of those problems, the AI, the birth rate, and it’s a problem you have been talking about with polarization, we have been talking about since we started 10 years ago, is this sense that sometimes if you scratch at all of these, you get to this conflict between the individual and society and institutions, societal institutions. You have distrust in societal institutions because people feel locked out of the institutions, but people don’t participate in the institutions because they no longer trust them, and then we’re in this circle of individualism bumping up against this need for sort of societal purpose, especially if we’re trying to adapt and change to these problems as they show up. How are you thinking about that? Abundance isn’t your first book. You’ve been thinking about this conflict between individualism and societal distrust as we attempt to peer into the future with AI and birth rates and all of that.

[00:07:15] Ezra Klein: Ooh, there’s so many rich directions to go on that question. I like that one. Here has been the thing I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write about and how to make into a kind of deeper inquiry. I think beneath everything you just talked about, the relationship between individuals and institutions, between individuals and each other, between the individual and society, is attention. And as much as we talk about this now, we still do not talk about it enough or have it theorized correctly. So your life is simply the total of things you pay attention to. What you are not attending to is not part of the conscious experience of your life. Now, attention here is meant widely, right? When you read a news story, you’re paying attention to that story, so it becomes part of your life. The same is true for a society. Society is shaped by what it pays attention to and the way it pays attention to it and what it doesn’t pay attention to. And attention is somehow too small of a word, but it’s the only one I have, so forgive me. And I think our attention is deranged. I think our attention as individuals and as a collective-- I believe in attention as a collective social resource, such that it is subject to tragedies of the common problems and can be fracked and overused, and everybody wants our attention, so they’re all competing with each other for it, so they get louder and louder. Going back to my first book, Why We’re Polarized, which has a lot on how the media was changing and what was happening on Twitter and algorithmic media. From there, we went away from social media to algorithmic media. That had started by then, but was not as fully flowered as it is now. I always find it amazing when you look at these court documents from META lawsuits that it’s like a couple percentage points. I think it’s seven to fifteen percent, something there, of the time people spend on Instagram is looking at things from friends and family. It’s not social media anymore. It is algorithmic media. The algorithm is not on your side. It does not want what is best for you. And Elon Musk owns X and has warped it in favor of his agenda. And I think we are being collectively deranged. And so what we attend to is really weirdly warped. And in a world where it’s warped, then our sense of society, of ourselves, of each other is going to be warped. People sometimes will do this thing where they say, “Twitter, it’s not real life.” It’s not real life. It’s not. If I thought Twitter was real life, I would do my show very differently. I do not think you can do a good show looking at Twitter and Blue Sky and Threads as barometers.

[00:09:44] Sarah: I try not to panic when you show back up there. I’m like, “Oh, no, something has really hit the fan if Ezra’s back on X.”

[00:09:51] Ezra Klein: But it has to, right? If you believe what I believe, which is that these are places that are politically deranging us, you can’t expect to do work you believe in and never make them mad.

[00:10:01] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:10:01] Ezra Klein: That’s not going to be good work. So it’s not that I try to make people mad; I try to be conciliatory and open-hearted, but I can’t be afraid of making them mad. Anyway, to the broader point, it’s all to say that I think beneath what you’re inquiring about there is this question of how do we know about the world outside of us? Everything in that world is mediated. Like from our senses at the individual level. Like sound is vibrations and airwaves that then gets converted into electrical impulses in my brain, all the way to what is in New York Times, it’s a mediation project, right? What is Twitter? Mediation. What is TV? Mediation. And if the world is mediated for you poorly and in a way that is supposed to make you angry at each other, that always brings your attention to the worst things and the worst people and the loudest people, then what is going to happen to your society over time? It’s going to derange in that same way, and that, I think, is what is happening. And it’s not the only thing happening, and it doesn’t mean it will only go one way. But that’s what that question makes me think about.

[00:11:04] Beth: I wonder if on some level that is the crux of the resistance to technology in helping us achieve a more materially abundant future. So my attention hero, the person I would most like to be like in terms of how I train my attention, is my dad. And that’s true about my dad, I think in large part, because he has spent most of his life as a farmer. He’s done other things. He’s been a county judge executive, he’s been a loan officer, but what he likes is to be out on the land alone with God, his sense of the universe, what he thinks is meaningful doing work with his hands that he can see. And it has made him just fundamentally kind and oriented to what is important. He doesn’t lose his way in terms of his priorities.

[00:11:55] Sarah: The opposite of deranged.

[00:11:57] Beth: Yeah. He is the opposite of deranged.

[00:11:59] Ezra Klein: Ranged.

[00:11:59] Sarah: Yeah, ranged.

[00:12:00] Beth: And I’ve thought so much about this because I’m really interested in precision farming. That’s part of the vision that you all mention at the beginning of Abundance. And I have learned a lot about Food Valley and the way the Netherlands is just creating so much abundance of food in clean ways, in predictable ways that could reduce the suffering of a lot of people. That is a completely different job than the job that my dad has done his entire life, and the attention at the root of it becomes a little more deranged, I think, right? It is about control and monitoring instead of creation and hope and trust and faith, and many of the things that are why he loves to farm. So I wonder if on some level, even if we could solve the social media side of it or the algorithmic media side of it, if people do have on this gut level a sense that I am just going to matter less even if they’re telling me-- whoever they are-- in this future I could be more comfortable.

[00:13:07] Ezra Klein: I guess it’s worth saying that an even modestly sane human organization on the scale of a country like the United States of America is a historically rare and unlikely thing. And we have not managed it at high levels of sanity and ethical practice for very long, or for very long periods, even inside of that maybe post-Civil Rights Act era. And which is only to say that something about what you’re saying about your father, one thing it makes me think about. There’s an old view that it is more virtuous to do certain kinds of work than others, right? Jefferson had this view. You could find it in the Greeks, right? That the small farmer is going to be a more ethical person than, say, the factory worker. They’re going to be imbued with the qualities of self-governance that a citizen needs. You can find a lot of this in Michael Sandel’s book, which is a really worthwhile book, Democracy and Its Discontents. But it wasn’t really true. We moved from farming as the dominant occupation to factories and other forms of more mechanized, mediated, alienating labor, and still had an amazing twentieth century as a country. Not obviously without its horrors, but with a tremendous amount of progress inside of it. And that progress came out of unionized factories and other places. Which is only to say that even if you have work that I think can be very sane-making, the way your world is mediated to you and who you end up believing can shift that really profoundly. Your father sounds amazing. At the same time, I’ve met many farmers whose sort of politics or sense of the world struck me as less admirable. And I’ve met many people of every profession. I’ve not found the profession that keeps you safe because in the end we have this weird question of what attracts what we’re thinking, what attracts our attention, and then who do we trust? And I do think the core question in any kind of very complex society is: who do you trust? And one of the things it sounds like to me when you talk about your father is not just that he’s a farmer, but he’s probably the person other people trusted. When you talk about some of those civic functions that he stepped into, he was probably the person other people thought he’s probably done the work. I’ll listen to him. And that’s what our representatives are supposed to be. That’s the bedrock of our system of government, and yet nobody has been spun off into more derangement than the people who work at the white hot core of politics.

[00:15:50] Sarah: Right.

[00:15:51] Ezra Klein: Being a Republican member of Congress on Elon Musk’s X is not a sane-making enterprise.

[00:15:56] Sarah: No.

[00:15:57] Ezra Klein: And so, I still think there’s something in that where you can work with your hands, you cannot work with your hands, but who do you choose to trust? Who, what? Like the newspaper, I don’t know what nobody said, and I’m not somebody who primarily reads the news on paper, I wish I were, but it was a saner technology than algorithmic media is. And one reason is it that I think it holds your attention and then it lets you release it to think. Like I was thinking about this. I read books on paper now again. I moved back off of Kindle a while ago and I really try to not read on screens. I print things out because on the screen it doesn’t release my attention to think about the thing I just read. I go check messages or whatever when I have a second of attentional drift, as opposed to like looking up and like finding myself internal. And I’m not saying there’s any one way to do it. Plenty of people read a lot of books and are crazy, and it’s not like the Nazis were illiterate or something. I don’t have the formula, but I don’t even think it’s a profession. There’s got to be something about what institutions we are tied to and what responsibility those institutions feel to be decent actors, to say something more than when they’re speaking to Mr. Rogan after Donald Trump’s second election. All that moderation we did was bullshit. We’re back in a free speech era where anything goes. To have some higher social sense of yourself than to just flip with political winds like that.

[00:17:24] Sarah: I don’t want to alarm you guys, but I think I maybe fixed it over the course of both of your answers and questions. When you were talking about attention-- and we have been thinking about this. Before we started recording, we talked about podcast secret bingo card. And I think on both of our secret bingo cards, if you’re a listener to both of our podcasts, is a word you just said, which is virtuous. We have also been talking about vice and virtue. I think it was a guest on your show that started talking about vices again with gambling and porn and marijuana, and I was like we have a name for this. I forgot. And it was so helpful to orient myself that way. And when you were talking about attention and then Beth was talking about her dad, I thought, where is the line between attention into purpose. Where on that spectrum do we go from mindless attention into focused purpose? And often it is because we have someone we trust or somewhere we trust which is telling us what to pay attention to and what to very much redirect our attention from. And I don’t think there’s always been an easy answer. Like we have been in this civic vice and virtue conversation all year, and I’m in the middle of Rick Atkinson, who was on our podcast earlier this week’s, The British Are Coming. And there’s this moment where one of the revolutionary colonels is like, “These militiamen don’t have any virtue. They don’t live virtuous lives. We are losing it. We’re all downfall.” And I was like, “Okay, I feel a little better. That makes me feel a little better. We’re not new to this game.” But I do think we are missing... we have everyone screaming for our attention, but not a lot of places where people go and the question is answered: What should I pay attention to? What is my purpose? What makes a good life?

[00:19:07] Ezra Klein: I think that’s right. And yeah, as you say, I’ve been in this inquiry as well. And maybe it’s a good another-- I worry about talking about this because I’ve done a little bit of beginning to try to talk about my thoughts here, and I can feel that they’re not at the place I can make them sufficiently non-theoretical.

[00:19:23] Sarah: This  is a safe space, Ezra. Everyone here loves you.  Don’t worry.

[00:19:28] Ezra Klein: This is a safe space for trying. Our modern definition of freedom is not the definition of freedom we used to have. Our modern definition of freedom is about choice. And our older definition of freedom was about self-mastery. And when you go back to what the founders and the framers were talking about, who had plenty of obviously sins and flaws of their own, freedom for them, the kind of freedom they were talking about did include choice, but it included the recognition that for choices to be wisely applied to be free, you had to fundamentally have shaped yourself in a way that you would not get carried off inside of that sort of more open space. And we all can. I think a lot about being somebody who is free to take heroin and then ends up in addiction is not free.

[00:20:16] Sarah: Right.

[00:20:16] Ezra Klein: The fact that they made that first choice. I watch my kids when they’re on a screen, and we’re not like a fully screen-free household, and if I’m gave them the freedom to choose what they did all the time, I don’t think that would end with them being more free in the way I would understand it. And so when you’re talking about purpose there, which I think is a really important and worthwhile word to bring into this or the citizen or something like that, there is some connection between the way we began to think and the way we were told to think, right? This was a project too. Freedom is being able to buy whatever you want with nobody telling you not to. Freedom is the freedom of the consumer.

[00:20:55] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:20:55] Ezra Klein: Not freedom is something that is a mixture of guaranteed political freedoms and the kind of virtuous self-development to find it. I like this book by Helena Rosenblatt called The Lost History of Liberalism, and one of the things she talks about is that older liberal writers, and I don’t mean hundreds of years ago, they didn’t talk about individualism, they talked about individuality. And that what you were trying to achieve under liberalism, which is a system of sort of individual freedoms and individual rights, was the space and the self-cultivation to find who you were, to self-develop as a full person, to flourish, to fully use your particular God-given gifts and potentialities. And that eventually corroded or was narrowed into not individuality, but this other thing, like individualism, just whatever, you do you.

[00:21:48] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:21:48] Ezra Klein: And just those are very distinctive visions, right? I know people who are individuals. They have cultivated themselves into someone who, even amidst the uniqueness of us all, you can really tell they found who they were and are. And I know people lost in individual choice. And those are very different ways of living.

[00:22:09] Sarah: Yeah. 100%.

[00:22:11] Beth: It seems important to me to arrive at a place where you can talk more about this because I’m thinking about the illiberalism that is flourishing right now as people, I think, recognize that we have a level of choice that is making us less free and certainly less happy. But because illiberalism so often takes the form of constraint that is unimaginable as desirable to people on the left, and that I think is undesirable in the world, it’s hard to have a positive vision of constraint. This is really on my mind today because I do my best creative work when I build a very tight constraint around it. I made an episode this week of what I called Founding Father Karaoke. I imagined the founders at karaoke together, and what songs would they choose, and what does that tell us about them? To make it happen, I needed a frame around it, so I only let myself choose songs from the Lilith Fair playlist. But that’s the thing. I look at Instagram or TikTok where there’s all kinds of choice. There’s no constraint, and what people choose to do is just replicate each other. It’s use the trending audio, use the format that has worked for 1,000. We’re just making the same thing over and over again in this world without constraint. So creatively, I understand constraint as the key to freedom. I don’t know how to share that as a vehicle for policy and culture that makes people more free.

[00:23:43] Ezra Klein: Yeah. Let’s bring this back into raw politics or more real politics. Within what we’re describing as freedoms, you have these two directions freedoms often go, freedoms to and freedoms from. And one of the things that the illiberals are doing that I think has not been popular and has not been good politics for them, has not been good for people, is they’ve been systematically breaking our protections from certain forms of government coercion, due process for the immigrant, that kind of thing, and also allowing in a tremendous amount of just raw corruption. And people see that and they don’t like it. And at the same time, they are not doing much in the way of positive freedoms. You’re not more likely to have healthcare under Donald Trump, right? It is classically a view of American liberals that you’re not going to be very free. Or maybe put it this way; the freedom to sleep under a bridge because you cannot afford a home is not a worthwhile form of freedom. That’s where we see it’s one of the things that got me to write Abundance. We were giving people a lot of freedom to sleep in a tent. What we weren’t giving them the freedom to do was afford a home.

[00:24:48] Sarah: Right.

[00:24:49] Ezra Klein: So the thing about the illiberals, who I’ve spent a lot of time talking to and reading, is they ask some good questions and they come to some shit answers. And in I think taking both sides of that seriously opens a lot of political opportunity. And one weakness, I think, of many liberals is they don’t want to admit that some of the questions are good.

[00:25:13] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:25:14] Ezra Klein: They don’t want to admit that there are things that they weren’t hearing. But the weakness of the illiberals are their answers are terrible. For instance, they like to talk about virtue, but they don’t practice it. They’re led by the least virtuous people imaginable, and they celebrate their lack of virtue. You just cannot be a political movement that is going to try to take the high ground of virtue and decency and be led by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and Doug Wilson. The mistake would be, for instance, if the broad left didn’t recognize that failure as an opportunity and just said, “You guys have embraced the absence of virtue, so we’re going to do the same thing,” as opposed to seeing that as ground they have not captured. But you got to do more than just be decent. Like just being a decent semi-virtuous person does not... it gets you somewhere in politics. I think it’s something people liked about Barack Obama, but it doesn’t get you that far. Corruption is like a good place to start. One thing you are just not going to have is any form of virtuous public sphere when the people in it spend six hours of their day dialing for dollars.

[00:26:22] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:26:22] Ezra Klein: And recognizing that might be a generational campaign to win back the Supreme Court in order to change the laws or the rulings that have made speech so hard to regulate in politics is real. So I think one place to start, going back to something you talked about at the beginning, is just institutional credibility cannot exist in such a corrupt system. Would solving money in politics or really limiting money in politics solve everything? It would not. It really wouldn’t. But it would have, I think, an outsized effect on people’s ability to have some faith in the system. Look, education has been a fairly dropped topic by Democrats. They had a lot of fights over it in the Obama era and then functionally haven’t spoken about it since then. But what we teach our children is something people care a lot about, and is not something the right has very good ideas on right now, and AI has made it something we’re going to need really good ideas on. I would very much urge people to go back to what liberal arts was supposed to be, which was educating people to be a citizen, educating people to be free. That’s the liberal in liberal arts. It’s not that you just read books. It’s you’re supposed to be developing the capacities to be a free person. And being able to guarantee that and spend the money on that and so on, I think there’s a certain amount of security that you need to put into a vision like this I also just think there’s power in recognizing that the sphere is toxic. Something I don’t know that Democrats or liberals have known how to even talk about since Obama, and this Obama in ‘08, is Obama in ‘08 was powered by articulating a sense that many Americans had, not just Democrats, that politics just shouldn’t feel like this. The country shouldn’t feel like this. And the problem was that and it wasn’t for him just Republicans. He talked about the media. Back then it feels so small now. The 24-hour cable news cycle was his big target. The political consultants, the pollsters. But then because he wasn’t able to make politics feel different enough, it feels naive to talk about that.

[00:28:18] Sarah: I’m haunted by your conversation with Chris when you were like, “If you do it, you look like you’re doing an Obama impression.” Haunted by that. Can’t stop thinking about it.

[00:28:26] Ezra Klein: So somebody’s going to have to figure out a way to channel the upset and anger and sense of disgust even some people on the right feel about how politics feels right now without sounding like you’re running a naive rerun of Obama.

[00:28:42] Sarah: Or a bad West Wing episode. Oof.

[00:28:44] Ezra Klein: Or a bad West Wing episode. And so I don’t think that’s just going to be, like, sounding notes of unity. I think it’s closer to maybe Jon Ossoff’s attacks on corruption. Newsom has his issues, but he’s at least talking to people on the other side. But I think you should be running against algorithmic media, against AI for children, against certain forms of modernity that you may not know how to fix, but you may know they’re bad. And knowing something bad is actually the first step in having a conversation about it.

[00:29:24] Sarah: I want to talk about education. We’re deeper in this project than you. I have a senior; that’s my oldest child. Beth has a sophomore. And what I see in public education is some of the unarticulated values of our current form of liberalism, both inside the Democratic Party, but I think adopted more broadly. Which is basically fairness and harm reduction. Individual fairness and individual harm reduction. To the point where the public education system I think this is why people don’t talk about it because it’s so hard. We had Rahm Emanuel on our show. He’s great on education, but you can tell he doesn’t have a kid in the system, because we started talking about ed tech and all these things we live with and he was like, “Oh, yeah.” You could kind of see he didn’t exactly know what we were talking about. Because we’re asking the public school system to do so much all the time. And I struggle with fairness, and I hear it articulated so often around AI, around so many of the issues, public education that we talk about all the time. Now, my youngest son is a Type 1 diabetic. I know you also live with Type 1 diabetes in your life. And it’ll teach you real fast fair has fuck all to do with it. When you can kind of let that go and be like what are we trying to do? What are we trying to do? And I think we’ve lost that in so many institutions, including public education. There was a great piece in The Times several months ago where she was like, “We’re not trying to educate. We’re trying to do everything else but educate to have an informed citizenry.” And so I think that we have some values articulated and unarticulated, but they’re all, like you said, that individualistic understanding instead of not just a self-mastery is freedom, but an institutional mastery. How do we create citizens that can master these institutions, that can fight corruption and be a form of servant leadership, and all these different virtuous visions inside these institutions? Because we’ve been so consumed with what’s fair especially in the housing. Like, how do we build housing when the land has to go somewhere. There is going to be a cost of AI and more housing and all these things. There will be a cost, always. But when you are consumed with individual fairness and harm reduction, you can’t get there. You can’t talk about it.

[00:31:35] Ezra Klein: Yeah, this stuff is tough. I think that one of the things that liberals, leftists, however you want to describe it, it’s a big fight here in New York City, actually where I live now, is about what is your vision of excellence in education? What does it mean to succeed? What is our relationship to kids who maybe it’s not fair. They’re more likely to come from high socioeconomic background, families and all the rest of it. But what is your vision not of just fairness, but achievement?

[00:32:07] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:32:08] Ezra Klein: And how do you think about that? How do you think about when it’s less present than you want it to be? How do you balance those two things against each other? One thing that politics always is, society always is, people always want there to be an answer, and it’s all just balancing. It’s like you’re not going to throw fairness overboard. Fairness is really important. But if you stop balancing, fairness and excellence, the meritocracy is flawed, and it’s better when done well than many of the alternatives.

[00:32:36] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:32:36] Ezra Klein: But right now the education conversation feels ripe to me because I don’t know anybody happy with what we have.

[00:32:43] Sarah: Definitely.

[00:32:44] Ezra Klein: It’s not like where people are is, “This is great,” and at least in public education, I’m not saying there’s no consultants making some money and there are teachers unions and administrators and a million people with vested interest in certain dimensions of the system as it exists. But very few people will tell you it’s going and it’s working well. And whether what that implies is the need for much more experimentation or just a different kind of leadership or... I am interested in how little leadership I see on this issue. It’s not because I’m coming to you and saying “I have the answer to this. I don’t. I will say one thing that worries me that was in what you just said is that I actually worry that we have spent a lot of time teaching kids to master institutions. And you get these kids who grow up, and I run into them all the time in politics. I feel like they are the winners of the organizational races And it does make you very, in a weird way, risk-averse. It makes you achievement-oriented, but risk-averse.

[00:33:47] Sarah: Right.

[00:33:48] Ezra Klein: And it’s a big problem in terms of the kinds of candidates Democrats recruit. You can smell it on them sometimes. There’s something about I understand how we got there, but the degree to which we have forced kids to learn to the test and learn to the application and extracurricular to the... again, it’s another way of taking away people’s individuality with this weird simulacrum. We want you to be an individual, but our kind.

[00:34:12] Sarah: Yeah. They’ll tell you this is a highly individualized systems, and the ed tech and everything, it’s all for the individual kids. Bullshit. That’s what I say.

[00:34:19] Beth: I just don’t think education values pluralism right now in any meaningful respect. Part of the reason that you can have a wonderful liberal arts experience in college is because colleges are all really different from each other. And I don’t hear a lot of professors agonizing over the evidence-based method for how I teach this class. They do some weird stuff in college. You can take some weird classes. You can achieve real excellence because you can also achieve rock bottom failure, and we don’t want any of that in elementary school, middle school, high school. It’s like individualism, but within this extremely narrow, very standardized band. And I think part of the reason not many people want to lead on this is because they feel like they need to have a solution for everyone. For all things, for everyone, that maps on to that fair system that Sarah was talking about.

[00:35:13] Ezra Klein: I think that’s right, and I’m probably maybe even more pessimistic on colleges right now than you are, which I think have not done a good job on pluralism, though are maybe turning around on that. Look, we’re in a period of a lot of fracture And there’s going to be a lot that needs to be built anew if Democrats win in 2028 and take office in 2028. And, or for that matter, in 2032 and 2033. And I do think there’s a interesting set of questions about how whether a party and a movement that have in important and problematic ways be-- It’s become a movement of people who have prospered from society to a large degree as it is. It’s a movement that wins college-educated voters and so in certain ways, it has become insufficiently skeptical. It has become identified with the institutions. And it’s not that it doesn’t want to change them sometimes or isn’t disappointed in them, but often the directionality of that is it wants them to be more of that, of their current nature. This is a place where the Democratic Party didn’t used to be, like, the professional managerial class in the way it is now, and I am obviously part of that class. But it’s like Romney won college voters. We have watched this happen in our lifetimes. It has been a tremendous compositional shift in the parties, and it does change the way they think and they feel. And so you have the right, which is way too anti-institutional, and the left, which is way too pro-institution, and a lot of the demands for reform that come from the left are in the direction of more institutional complexity. More, as you were, saying before risk aversion and harm reduction. And I think it’s a really hard problem for Democrats to be able to channel in a healthier way the profound mistrust people feel in institutions, which is why I think you have to choose places where you’re going to channel it. It’s why I bring up corruption. Look, Abundance is a book about institutional failure. It is a book arguing the Democrats need to publicly take responsibility for having failed to govern in a bunch of very important ways like housing and making it possible to do things as a citizen. And then win credibility by being willing to reform things that they run so that they actually work differently. And so I am very interested in this question of how do you have an institutionally skeptical Democratic Party, an institutionally skeptical liberal movement, as opposed to Democratic Party, a liberal movement? For that matter, even though I don’t think they see themselves this way, often like a DSA side of things that has really absorbed the institution’s view of themselves. It’s just like you really have to be on alert for where that will bring you wrong. And, again, people I’m sure criticize me on this. Everybody’s going to have different views of what this means, but I don’t think you can operate well in an era of institutional mistrust if you really trust institutions. If your big answer to everybody is believe in the science--

[00:38:17] Sarah: Especially if attention is driven by authenticity.

[00:38:19] Ezra Klein: That and attention is probably fundamentally anti-institutional right now. So it’s like I believe in science, but do I think scientific institutions fail? I also think that. As you say, I live with a Type 1 diabetic and also somebody who’s had very complicated medical issues that have not always been well treated, right? And of course, institutions can fail. That doesn’t make them bad, but operating with a felt sense of that failure is sometimes a very different, I think, attitude than you often see on the left, which can sometimes take attacks on the institutions. It can only hear what’s wrong in them. It can empathize with maybe where they come from.

[00:38:57] Beth: I asked my husband to read Abundance because I told him, “I think you’ll like this.” I think it’s fundamentally a book that says, hey, everything’s about cost and benefits. There’s nothing that happens that doesn’t have a cost, so we need to choose better what we’re willing to endure a cost about because there are greater benefits available. I think about this with education. I would love to hear a Democratic candidate say, “You know what, abolishing the Department of Education, shutting that down, not a bad idea. We could do better for students with disabilities through the Department of Justice. We could do better in terms of setting new standards or aspiring for something greater in a different format. This hasn’t worked.” I’m interested in who could just take this and run with it and say, “They have the right question and the wrong answer. Here’s my vision for the answer.” I think the problem is that you stay in protective mode. Like the Department of Education is a great example. I don’t know a lot of people who think it’s achieving greatness, but I know a lot of people who are worried about what happens to students with disabilities if it’s not functioning. How do we envision a future that isn’t costing so much to groups that we are in protective mode around?

[00:40:01] Sarah: Let me piggyback on that because that was what I was going to ask, too. Because I think we get in this situation. When you said we’ve watched this change. I think when you think about the future and you think about a vision for the future, I get stuck in where are we just living through the normal cycles? Where are we just going through the normal rhythms of history? And where are we outside that? My gut tells me AI is a normal cycle of technology. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I haven’t spent enough time in Silicon Valley. The reason, back to the pin we dropped at the beginning, the natalism freaks me all the way out. That is outside the rhythm, particularly of the United States history. We are built on a pattern of growth. But there’s a part of me like the angel on my shoulder can say, we’re entering a new phase of both American history and global history where we’ve learned the cost of growth, and we’re trying to figure a way forward that isn’t built on the back of all that growth. because that does feel outside the normal rhythms for me.

[00:41:04] Ezra Klein: To me they’re both outside the normal rhythms. It’s like I think Trump is outside the normal rhythm. I think we are living in a time of aberration. I wrote a op-ed right at the beginning of Trump’s second term called Now Is the Time of Monsters based on this somewhat mistranslation of a Gramsci quote. Something like, “The old is dying and the new struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters.”

[00:41:24] Sarah: Oh, I remember it. Also haunted by that one.

[00:41:27] Ezra Klein: And the two things I had on that were AI fertility collapse, and the other ones were climate as I remember it, and Trump. And all of those, I think, are pushing society and will continue to push society not into spaces that have no rhyme in them. We have had other periods in which the structures of technology overturned. There’s no Nazis without the radio. We have had other periods in which demographic change upended society, some that were much more violent and mournful than this one like the Black Death. And we’ve had other periods which technology changed things really dramatically. Whether AI is normal, I think it’s not normal, but you get into this weird question of what is normal. Was the internet normal? Was social media? Is the fact that we now look at our phones and have this black box that is a thing we spend most of our day, is any of  that normal?

[00:42:19] Sarah: Think about how much electricity changed how we functioned.

[00:42:19] Ezra Klein: Yeah. And so you’re just going to be in a navigating a period of really unusual forces. And one of the things I think then you get into is what is your relationship to change? What is your political movement’s relationship to change? And how do you convince people that you understand their fears? More than that, that you share their fears, because I think you should on these things, and also that you can see a different future. I see a lot of sharing people’s fears, and I see only a little bit of envisioning a different future.

[00:43:03] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:43:05] Beth: What would change for you right now if you didn’t believe that these things are aberrations? If you didn’t look at Trump as outside the normal cycle, what would be different?

[00:43:17] Ezra Klein: I don’t think specifically anything. I don’t believe that history is teleological. So what does it mean to say Trump is outside the normal cycle? I’m not saying that he is a unique figure in human history. I’m saying that of American presidents and American political figures, he is a distinctive, disruptive figure who has dynamics that are unusual, that he is not like the eight people who came before him in that job. And, you can come up with your, “I think that there’s a lot of rhyme to the mid-20th century here,” or we can all talk about Andrew Jackson. But the way things played out at other times doesn’t, for me, give you a guarantee it’ll play out that way this time. I think sometimes people take strange amounts of confidence in different cycle of history theories, right? I’ve had people recommend me Samuel Huntington’s book on this and Peter Turchin’s book on this. And sure, maybe there are a lot of different cycles of history people proffer. But one of the lessons of long human history is they can get really fucking bad, and they can be bad for a long time. Or not. You can be amazed at how fast things can change. I spent part of my honeymoon in Vietnam. Like, when you think about what we were doing to that country just a couple of decades before that, I’ve been married a long time now, it’s shocking. So there’s this I think both confidence and fear I have that the boundaries of the possible are wider than we think in either direction. It can get much worse faster, and it can get much better faster. You think about what society was like in, 1940, and you think about where it is in 1960 at least, in America, certainly 1965, 1970, and it’s really very different. I’m not sure the cycles are doing a lot of work for me here because I can look at cycles and say a down cycle could last 100 years. Just depends which cyclical theory we’re talking about here. Are we in a the cycle is the decline of the superpower, and that’s a long irreversible cycle, or the cycle is an elite overproduction cycle or... This is why I’m skeptical, and you don’t see me have a lot of cyclical thinkers on the show because it’s like which cycle when?

[00:45:38] Sarah: What do you hope, though? So we can analyze it, but our kids are going to be older than we are now at the next big America birthday. What do you hope they see and feel and experience?

[00:45:52] Ezra Klein: I’m not sure at this moment I’ll throw the ball that long. Right now what I hope is, which is more near term, is like we’re in a political emergency and a social emergency now. And I am, as of now, not seeing the level of kind of ingenuity and strategic thinking among the people who will need to do it that I wish I was seeing. I’m not necessarily seeing the leadership emerge. And maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s all there and we’ll look back in a couple of years and say, “Okay, like that was navigated and somebody built something better out of that.” And history can work in ways you don’t think. But I’m really interested, and it’s why I lit when you were asking some of those initial questions because I think there’s a more fundamental rethinking that has to be done at the moment, so that at the endpoint of it, the people who are going to be the leaders of this will have what to draw on. I’ve been reading a lot of books about the history of liberalism, and I like a lot of them for the first two-thirds, and I’ll get to the last third and I’ll be like, “Oh, you just want to do the thing again.” I feel this way about many of the 2028 Democrats. If you don’t sound fundamentally different right now than you sounded in 2020, on some level I don’t want to hear it. There’s nothing about this period where you have rethought anything fundamental, then you’re somehow experiencing it very differently than I am.

[00:47:22] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:47:22] Ezra Klein: And it’s hard. It’s hard to think clearly and in a far-reaching way when you’re in this kind of constant onrush and onslaught of corruption and emergency and war and ICE deployments. Part of the strategy of authoritarians and certainly of media figures like this, is that they like overwhelm you with stuff.

[00:47:45] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:47:46] Ezra Klein: And they do that in part to make it hard to react.

[00:47:50] Sarah: Yeah. It’s not just the change; it’s the pace of change. That feels outside the normal rhythms.

[00:47:54] Beth: And the detail of it.

[00:47:55] Ezra Klein:  Yeah. And so there’s a kind of constant dynamic. My colleague Masha Gessen has written a lot about this. There’s a constant dynamic with trying to keep you off balance, and so you need people who have an internal balance. I think it’s one reason people have really found themselves drawn to Mamdani, who seems to have a kind of preternatural like calm and confidence to him. Obama was this way at another time in another way.

[00:48:27] Sarah:  I would throw Pope Leo on the pile.

[00:48:29] Ezra Klein: I would throw Pope Leo. I think people are really drawn right now to people who seem like they have a direction they are going.

[00:48:34] Sarah: Yep.

[00:48:35] Ezra Klein: And going in that direction with a kind of clarity and confidence.

[00:48:39] Sarah: I just want to say that we find a lot of balance by listening to your show.

[00:48:43] Ezra Klein: Thank you. I appreciate that.

[00:48:45] Sarah: I personally do. Thank you so much. We don’t ask about books at the end, but we do have a little outside of politics. And we have a fun revolutionary era-themed question for you. If you could have any of the founders on The Ezra Klein Show, who do you think would be the most helpful, useful, interesting?

[00:49:19] Ezra Klein: Ben Franklin.

[00:49:20] Sarah: You know he was obsessed with the birthright. Did you know that? He was obsessed with America’s birthright.

[00:49:24] Ezra Klein: I did not know that about him.

[00:49:25] Sarah: I just read that.

[00:49:27] Ezra Klein: He’s an amazing thinker. Just a fascinating thinker on a million different levels. I just think if you’re looking for a dinner companion, a lot... can we be honest? Founders, many of them are geniuses, many of them also have a much darker side to them, but a lot of them seem insufferable.

[00:49:41] Sarah:  They didn’t Like each other.

[00:49:42] Ezra Klein: They didn’t even like each other. They seem to have had good reason. But Franklin had, it seemed to me, a little bit more of a sense of irony than some of the others. So if I were picking somebody to have on the show, I think Franklin would be a good talker, as we say.

[00:49:54] Sarah: Beth, was he at your karaoke party?

[00:49:56] Beth: He was. Ben Franklin is the original gerontocracy, too. Much older than the rest of these folks but having such a good time. I’m really interested in his daughter, who managed a lot of his letters while he was off gallivanting in Europe and trying to bring the Europeans around to the revolutionaries’ cause. So I would love to hear her perspective on everyone because she was such a spoke for or a hub. A hub is what I’m thinking of for his correspondence. But yes, he was at my karaoke party doing Fiona Apple’s Criminal.

[00:50:23] Sarah: Okay. I like it.

[00:50:25] Beth: Just in response to the way that some of the others in the mix thought his behavior was distasteful.

[00:50:32] Sarah: Well, he was a little slutty, right?

[00:50:34] Beth: Yeah, and I could see him kind of winking at that.

[00:50:36] Sarah: Yeah, I like it.

[00:50:37] Ezra Klein: because you don’t want to have anybody on the show who doesn’t have appetites, right? It’s about containing, but also who’s not trying to restrain them, right? The thing about Franklin is he’s at the same time... And I’m not saying he’s all great or anything. The people who their appetites are restrained because they’re automatons, they’re not interesting. The people who their appetites are unrestrained are terrible.

[00:50:55] Sarah: He was subscribed to the self-mastery.  He’s trying.

[00:50:57] Ezra Klein: Yeah, he’s on my mind because I’ve been reading Jeffrey Rosen’s book The Pursuit of Happiness, which is all about the founders’ understanding of happiness. And so he ends up being a very central figure in that, which is part of why I’m thinking about him and mentioning him.

[00:51:08] Sarah: I just read the section where he was with General Howe trying one more time post-Declaration to reach some sort of compromise, him and John Adams. And the General Howe was basically like you need to keep British men coming here to make America strong.” And he was like, “We have a baby factory. We don’t need you. We have an exploding population.” He was, like, apparently very obsessed with the American birthright. Look at that.

[00:51:31] Ezra Klein: See? There you go.

[00:51:31] Sarah: He’d be so disappointed in us, guys. That’s for another show.

[00:51:34] Ezra Klein:  You’re a Franklinite.

[00:51:37] Sarah: Thank you so much.

[00:51:38] Beth: Thank you so much for spending time with us.

[00:51:39] Sarah: We hope you have, as we say on Pantsuit Politics, the best Fourth of July available to you.

[00:51:45] Ezra Klein: Thank you so much, and I hope the same for you.

[00:51:48] Beth: Many thanks to Ezra Klein and to everyone who’s finding ways to celebrate America 250 with us. We’ve had so much fun with all of you, and the fun will continue. We hope you’ll kick off the next chapter in our history by observing America’s Potluck with your people on July 5th.

[00:52:01] Sarah: And the film club. Don’t forget the film club through July. Norma’s Happy Birthday America Film Club. I’m going to celebrate throughout the month of July. I just want everyone to know.

[00:52:10] Beth:  I think the rest of the year it’s still game. It’s still fair game. Yes.

[00:52:15] Sarah: Yes. I feel this week is very special. I’m excited that we have this very special July 4th episode, but Imma keep celebrating throughout July, just so everybody knows.

[00:52:23] Beth: How you begin the next year is as important as how you observe the anniversary.

[00:52:28] Sarah: That’s exactly right.

[00:52:29] Beth: So I will see you back here next Tuesday. Sarah, have such a good time on your vacation. And all of you have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

Subscribe now

To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

In Rick’s riveting, painstakingly-researched telling, America was born bickering and still manages to make progress. Rick doesn’t buy into American exceptionalism, but he sees parts of our past and our opportunities as exceptional. This conversation was the perfect semiquincentennial celebration for me. I hope it will be for you, too. - Beth

Topics Discussed

• The Revolution as America's first civil war

• Why Britain lost a war it was expected to win — and the role of allies

• The human cost: Valley Forge and the letters of Sergeant Oliver Reed

• The women of the Revolution and "remember the ladies"

• Reliable and unreliable narrators in history

• American exceptionalism, reconsidered

• Outside of Politics: the glory of fair food

Episode Resources

• The Fate of the Day, Volume 2 of the Revolution Trilogy (Rick Atkinson)

• The British Are Coming, Volume 1 of the Revolution Trilogy (Rick Atkinson)

• The Liberation Trilogy, Atkinson’s WWII histories (Macmillan)

• John Adams, the biography Atkinson references (David McCullough)

• John Adams, the HBO miniseries with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney (HBO)

• The American Revolution, the Ken Burns documentary (PBS)

• Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, full text (Library of Congress)

• The Declaration of Independence, full transcription (National Archives)

Episode Transcript

Coming soon…

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

Subscribe now

To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

With this week’s primary elections, we have renewed conversation about democratic socialism. Is it now, eight years after AOC primaried Joe Crowley, a super-charged movement that will make a real stand in Congress? Does it have answers to complaints “most Americans” share? Today, we’re talking about the politics and the policies, which we think are pretty separate, and we follow-up on that Pew Research conversation by talking more about capitalism. -Beth

P.S. Don’t miss our America250 celebrations next week, with Good Morning from 1776, Founding Father karaoke, and two very special guests on the show.

Topics Discussed

• The Mamdani effect and the June primary results across four states

• Why Mamdani spent political capital endorsing three House races

• The generational shift on Israel and the "Ossoff off-ramp"

• How the DSA and the IMF each define their economic vision

• Where markets fail (caregiving, healthcare) and where capitalism still works

• "State-guided capitalism" and what Trump is actually building

• Billionaires as a manifestation of the system, not the cause

• Outside Politics: Confessions of a know-it-all and getting "fired" by your doctor

Episode Resources

• Democratic socialists surge in mayoral races as anti-Trump fervor rises (AP)

• The primary results summary we opened with (Washington Post)

• What is Democratic Socialism? (Democratic Socialists of America)

• Back to Basics: What Is Capitalism? (IMF)

• Our “Reagan ruined everything” episode (Pantsuit Politics)

• The essay that sparked our know-it-all conversation (Axios)

• June 23 primary results tracker (AP)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:04] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. We had more primary elections this week, which has left pundits asking whether Democratic socialism is on the rise. So today we’re going to talk about the Mamdani effect and what we think will persuade and put off voters headed into the midterms. Outside of Politics, we’re inspired by an essay called Confessions of a know-it-all. Can’t wait to talk about that. And before we dive into all of that, next week is the big week that we’ve been leading up to all year, our big America 250 celebration. We’re excited to pull all the pieces together. Sarah, please tell the people what you have planned for Good Morning next week.

[00:00:47] Sarah: I will be reporting the news on my little Good Morning, from 1776. I got period-appropriate costuming. I changed my background. I come in by candlelight. And I report the revolutionary happenings in the week leading up to July 4th. And I got them all five days of the week, baby. Monday through Friday next week. So get excited. Felix makes some guest appearances. It was exceptionally fun to do. I can’t wait for everybody to see it.

[00:01:26] Beth: I’m excited. And on my little Substack show, More to Say, I’m going to be doing Founding Father Karaoke. Plus, we have two really special episodes planned for the show next week. On Tuesday, we’re going to reflect on our past. On Friday, we’re going to talk about our future. You will not want to miss it and our very special guest. So if you want all of this and to be able to talk about it with the best people you can imagine on the internet, head over to pantsuitpolitikshow.com and subscribe today. Sarah, I found this sentence from The Washington Post that I thought summarized everything I’ve read this week. “Results of primaries across four states Tuesday cemented the growing influence of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s brand of progressive populism while demonstrating its potential limits outside of large East Coast cities.”

[00:02:19] Sarah: Yeah. I think we need to divide this conversation up in two parts if we’re going to talk about Mamdani and the DSA. I think we need to talk about electorally, and then we need to talk about policy. So beginning with the electoral politics, I was persuaded by Matt Yglesias’s take that I’m not really sure if the best use of energy inside the Democratic Party is making sure that representatives who are already probably too far to the left of the majority of Americans are even further to the left of the average Americans. There’s just been a lot of energy around primarying safe Democratic seats. And then, on one hand, I’m like, sure bring in fresh blood, turn over to a new generation, a new way of doing politics. If they don’t feel like this really reflects where these particular neighborhoods in New York City are at, then who am I to argue with the voters? And I do think that Mamdani illustrates a type of positive electoral strategy that could be used around the country. And at the same time, like I said, is this is what the Democratic Party needs? No, we need to be focusing on flipping seats, not primaries

[00:03:39] Beth: Wanted to know what you thought about Mamdani’s decision to endorse in three races. He has so much political capital right now, and he’s earned it. He ran such a positive campaign. He seems to be governing with that same community-oriented, positive spirit, let’s have a good time, aided significantly by the Knicks. What a gift to him that he gets to ride that high too. He hasn’t been in office long enough to make people super mad, so he’s in a really good position. I was surprised that he chose to spend some of that capital this way because especially with one of the candidates that he endorsed for the House, there’s just a lot of baggage, and I would not be advising him to walk around accumulating other people’s baggage at this point in his career.

[00:04:27] Sarah: But when else do you spend political capital? You spend it when you’re at the top. You send when your bank account has lots of money in it. You don’t wait until your people are pissed or you have your own controversies. You take the momentum when it’s yours, and you use it to create some coalitions and some allies. He burned some people, I think, who were allies to him in the mayoral race. That is a political choice. But I get it. I think when you’re building your own structure, especially in a place like New York City, there is no way to not piss people off. You know what I mean? There’s no way that he’s going to stay the guy who wants something new and also never piss off people who have built power inside a safe blue zone like New York City. And my experience in blue cities and Democratic politics is like shaking up is probably on the agenda. Like I’m sure that there were people who were probably good legislators, not bad people maybe, but it’s just hard. It’s really hard because I think primarying incumbents, it is a way to seize the moment and to signal things are different. And I think his election and everything we know about this political moment, things are different. It’s a different scene. You need different skills. You need different approaches. You need to talk about different things. And so there’s a part of me that’s like very sympathetic to saying “Okay that means you too, friend.” That means Democrats. Of course, it’s going to mean Democrats in a place like New York City. Like what was he going to do, just go after Republicans? There are no Republicans to go after. So if he was ever going to flex this muscle, he was going to have to flex it over other Democrats.

[00:06:19] Beth: Personally would have counseled him to flex that muscle over Democrats in the state house where it relates more to the current job. This to me announces that he intends to be a movement leader. He intends to be a national figure real early in his career.

[00:06:33] Sarah: He just already is. And I think here’s the thing, though. Is that 40-year-olds talking? You know what I mean? This is a dude who understands how fast things move. It’s why he was so good at the media and why he’s so good at connecting and using the algorithm and using the new approach. There is a part of me that’s “Maybe I don’t understand this for a reason.” Maybe what he’s doing is because he understands that things move quickly, and you have to seize on the moment when you have it both in the media and in politics.

[00:07:05] Beth: So that moment was not universal in New York. So the three people he endorsed got across the finish line. Grace Meng beat Chuck Park, who’s someone that I had talked to on our Substack, also a very progressive candidate running to the left of the incumbent. She beat him pretty comfortably. Jerry Nadler’s pick to succeed him won that race with the support of Mike Bloomberg and Governor Hochul. That’s about as establishment as you can get, right? But we saw momentum for Democratic socialists elsewhere. Janice Lewis George won the Democratic primary for mayor in D.C. She won promising a lot: subsidized or free childcare, increased down payment assistance for homebuyers, community resources to reduce crime, and to fight Donald Trump very aggressively in D.C. Elsewhere, two Democrats in Maryland won with the backing of the cryptocurrency industry, which is something that I’m really curious to keep an eye on. When cryptocurrency industry insiders are, like, saying to newspapers, “These are going to be the most pro-crypto people we’ve had in Congress,” it gets my attention. And then we had a lot of AI spending in a race in Utah where a Democrat beat a more liberal challenger, a more establishment Democrat with the backing of those groups.

[00:08:23] Sarah: I found the Jerry Nadler race in particular pretty interesting. That was the Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy heir. Bless his heart. He didn’t do very well. But I thought Alex Boris was going to do good. He was the one that was going to regulate AI. He was on the Ezra Klein show. He got a ton of earned media. I thought he was going to win it. But Micah Lasher, the sort of establishment pick, was the one who won the seat. So I thought that was pretty interesting. Look, any primary like this, any place-- we say New York City, there is not just one New York City. And so there’s always going to be a mixed bag as far as conclusions that don’t fit neatly in the narrative everybody wants to perpetuate. And I do think it is undeniable that there is an anti-establishment piece of all this growing in strength from the Democratic Party and on the progressive left. For sure. I think a big piece of that is, anti-tech fervor. I think a big piece of that is affordability, and I think a huge piece of that is particular to New York City, is the dramatic shift in opinion towards Israel. You have somebody like Brad Lander, who ran against Mamdani for mayor but is Jewish, but is very critical of Israel winning. And I think you’re going to see more candidates, particularly, this is the Jon Ossoff effect, right? A Jewish candidate who is harshly critical of Israel. I think we’re going to see more of those. Because I think one piece of this new reality that Mamdani in particular is unafraid to acknowledge, however you feel about it, is that, look, Israel has lost an enormous amount of support on both sides of the aisle, both the left and the right. And candidates who acknowledge that, I think you see some of that in the Michigan Senate primary who are willing to say that openly and acknowledge that the ground beneath us has shifted will do better electorally. I think that is a new reality along with a new approach to media and the anti-establishment trend that smart, electorally motivated people are going to take advantage of.

[00:10:38] Beth: I think that’s right. I worry about the fissure around Israel and the dimensions that can take on. I was trying to think about how I feel when I hear Europeans interviewed about their feelings about America, and those feelings are tied directly to President Trump. Because I don’t want to be represented by President Trump, but I also recognize that what America is actually doing in the world would make me consider America not an ally anymore if I lived elsewhere. If I think through threatening Greenland, the behavior towards Russia, the situation in Gaza. Remember when he came out and said “We’re just going to own it. We’re going to turn it into a resort, and everybody can leave and then maybe come back when we’ve made it nice again.” The way that America is behaving in the world under our commander-in-chief, if I were a citizen of another country, I think I would saddle America, the entire populace, with those actions because that’s just the breaks. That’s the effect the president has. And so I hate that we get into this dangerous range of what is antisemitic and not when talking about Israel because I do think right now where most people are in the United States is supportive of the Israeli nation and people, but against the way the president is leading that country and the effects that has on the rest of the world

[00:12:08] Sarah: I don’t think the majority of Americans have that nuanced of an opinion about Israel. I’m just going to be really honest. I wish that to be true, but I don’t think that they break it down by Netanyahu. I think particularly in the dramatic turn against Israel with people on the right and people on the left-

[00:12:23] Beth:  I think young people are a different category. Yes.

[00:12:26] Sarah: Is a generational sense that Israel is the bad guy. And I think that ship has sailed to a certain extent, and I think that’s why it feels different, particularly when it’s a Jewish population because then they can speak to the younger generation who are done. They are done. They don’t care. They don’t think it’s just Netanyahu. They are n-not in any way, shape, or form persuaded by accusations of antisemitism. So it sweeps them up, but everybody older who is concerned about antisemitism, who does maybe see it more as an issue with Netanyahu feel safer because of the identity of the politician being Jewish, saying “Yeah, I want to go in this direction too, and you give me a safe path to do that.” I truly believe that’s why Jon Ossoff is doing so well in part, is because he gives people that off-ramp, and the ability to say, “Yeah, my feelings have changed too, but I just have decades more of the older reality about our alliance with Israel to combat.” But you’re under 25? They don’t have any of that. They don’t have any of that.

[00:13:30] Beth: I think that’s true. I think young people are a category difference for sure. I also think that Jon Ossoff might be a beneficiary of the clipping economy that we talked about a couple of episodes ago. I think people are doing some really savvy social media work for him as well. So I think you’re right that there are a lot of anti-sentiments fueling the rise of Democratic socialism. What I think Mamdani has done really smartly is make all that feel like it’s pro something else, pro community, pro neighbor, pro getting municipal things done that are obviously good for everybody. And that’s, I think, a good transition to that separation that you made at the beginning. There is an electoral side of this where I think you go with Mamdani right now because you trust him. It feels good. He says, “These are my choices.” Okay. That’s a better message than everyone sucks. He’s got that lightness. And then there is the ideology and how far that can go in the United States as it exists today Sarah, I thought instead of winging a definition of Democratic socialism, I would go straight to the DSA website. They introduce themselves pretty much by saying, “We’re not capitalism.” They say, “Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with Democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.” And then they say, “We’re not doing like the authoritarian version of socialism that perhaps you’ve seen before. Instead, we plan to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.” They want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. I think that’s tough as a policy objective, but there you go. They want to win, quote, “Radical reforms like single-payer Medicare for all, defunding the police, refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life. And finally, we want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us that we are powerless, but together we can take back control.” I’m interested in how that framing strikes you.

[00:15:53] Sarah:  Despite the fact that I said maybe it’s not the best use of our time and energy making, bluer areas of the country even bluer, I actually do think this ideology has a helpful contribution to make when we start really talking about policy. Now, it only has a helpful contribution to make if the lawmakers who represent the DSA-- and I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an excellent example-- are pragmatic deal makers. If they come in as ideologues and say, “We replace everything or nothing,” that’s not helpful. I don’t think that’s the AOC model. I don’t see that right now as the Mamdani model. I’m just saying let’s just keep that in mind. Because I do think that there are pieces here that the majority of Americans could be persuaded by. I think people generally don’t like socialism, but we do have some socialism in the United States. For example, I agree that there are key pieces of our economy that should be treated collectively like a utility. I agree with that. I think that the utilities we have are a good model, and we should expand that in the twenty-first century, and we haven’t, and we should. Like the internet, I’m persuaded by artificial intelligence as a utility that should be owned collectively and treated as such. I am supportive of a single-payer healthcare system. I think we have reached the end of the road when it comes to health insurance for the majority of Americans, even since the ACA. To me the change, like the vibe shift from people being like, “Okay, enough.” I think when you get to a point where we have gotten with many things on this podcast where we say “ The market doesn’t work. There is no market. Daycare is a place. The market doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. There is no real economic capitalist model for this particular service or good,” then yeah, I think the Democratic socialists have something to add and something to contribute, to say “Okay we have another idea.” And I think, overall, it is persuasive to say to people, our current economic model is not democratic. What we have experienced over the last 10 to 20 years is more and more people getting richer and locking everybody else out. You don’t need to be a policy expert. You don’t need to be a political rat. That is a persuasive argument because it’s true. Because it’s true. Now, then when do you get to this sort of idea that we’re going to end capitalism, and we’re going to replace it with something where everything is owned collectively, I don’t know, man. There are goods and services I engage in that I don’t want to be owned collectively. And I think that’s where most Americans are like, “Okay, not everything, just some things.” But I think they have a seat at the table, and I think they have something to contribute.

[00:18:54] Beth: Definitely there’s something to contribute. Certainly, this represents a lot of people in sentiment especially. I think there’s a sentiment here. Yes, do I want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear? In a vacuum, sure. I have no idea how that translates to legislation or to something that an executive branch agency can promote. I am not persuaded by collective ownership of AI. I am not persuaded by, at a national level, collective ownership of a lot of things, especially given the presidency that we are enduring right now. I think that you’re right that our current economic system has become undemocratic. I think it’s fixable. I don’t think that capitalism at its core is the problem. There are a lot of branches of capitalism, and maybe this is a good time to level set with our definition on that side. So I went to the Democratic Socialists of America for their definition of what they’re about. I went to the International Monetary Fund for the definition of capitalism to work with. And it talks about how this is a system where private actors own and control property, and everyone’s interest is in making a profit for themselves, and that when we have that competition of self-interest, we get to social welfare. We get to good for everyone when everyone is in friction, in tension, competing with each other for those self-interest. And I think you’re right, and we’ve talked many times about how there are sectors of society where the market does not work. I think caregiving is the major sector of society that is a market failure. It doesn’t scale. There is not a sustainable profit model that is also in the interest of all of the stakeholders. All of the stakeholders do not have equal power or agency. And so there are places where I think there’s a real conversation to have about where can state sponsorship of programs, public-private partnerships, or even state programs themselves fill in that gap that the market leaves, and that’s what the United States has been doing, like most countries in the world now. We are a mixed economy where liberal market economics dominate, but there are sectors of real government intervention. And I think where we’ve gone astray is some of that government intervention has not kept pace with changing times, changing technologies, changing demographics, and there are places where our government itself, the structure that is supposed to regulate, has just been captured by not even the profit motive as much as the power motive, the collaboration with private actors the donor system. So I think capitalism on its own is not the evil that it is often portrayed as. It’s the way that we are on this trajectory of oligarchic capitalism that’s failing us.

[00:21:56] Sarah: Yeah, over the course of my life, I think what we’ve seen, especially post-Reagan, we’ll put a link in our show notes to the-- one of my favorite episodes of Pantsuit Politics ever where we just talked about how Reagan ruined everything. I think it really holds up. It’s evergreen. What we’ve seen is places where socialism was working. I’m persuaded when they say the public education system is socialism. We don’t privatize it. The government runs it. And I think when I look back over the course of my life where private capital could get its greasy little paws on the public education system, shit went sideways. Looking at you, edtech. And I don’t think our regulation has kept pace. I think that the problem and power of capitalism is, yes, that the desire for more that fuels it can lead to incredible innovation, and it can also lead to this inescapable desire to become a monopoly, to shut out the market. That’s the ultimate motivation, right? What you want is you want to grow, and you want to invent Amazon, and then you want to be Amazon, and you want to dominate everything. If you’re doing capitalism you eliminate capitalism, right? You eliminate the market. You become the market. And I think that is where you have to have an actor as big, particularly as the federal government, to come in and go, “No, you cannot do that. Enough.” And we have just stopped doing that. We let anybody and everybody merge vertically, horizontally. We don’t care. Occupy the whole field. We’re just going to look the other way and let you roll in and dominate, and that’s why Democratic socialists of America and Mamdani, and that’s why you got more and more Democrats saying “I don’t want capitalism. I want to do socialism,” because capitalism is the snake that eats its own tail, right? If you are following the path, eventually what you want to do is basically eliminate the market. I think in particular with healthcare it’s just broken. What are we doing? It’s broken. Nobody can afford it. It’s a disaster. We have tried a million ways to Sunday to try to make it better for the patient. Come on, man. I’m done. I’m ready to just do single-payer and move on.

[00:24:07] Beth: I’m not ready to do single-payer and move on, and that’s probably a different show. But healthcare is an interesting example because there’s that caregiving aspect where I think there are market failures, where there’s unequal power, where the sort of negotiation and friction and self-interest doesn’t work the way that classic liberal capitalism does We’ve also not fully gone in with government regulation, right? So it’s like healthcare is a mix of being dominated by profit motives, but with all these regulations and with these limits because the government pays for a huge percentage of it, we don’t have a pure working market either. We’ve got like something in between that is broken, and I think everybody agrees that it’s broken. I think what is not being named right now that would be useful electorally, that doesn’t take you down the socialism, is that the president is taking us to a new form of capitalism for the United States, which is state-guided capitalism. Where you have private companies, but you have the government deciding what sectors will grow and what sectors will shrink, which businesses will prosper and which will be declared openly enemies of the United States around certain product releases and business lines. And I think that most people do not want that, and that is a uniting cause instead of one that is as divisive and that has all the historical baggage that socialism as a term brings to the table.

[00:25:37] Sarah: Feel all the baggage around socialism. I don’t know why everybody gets their hair on fire. There’s socialism all over the world. Now, I do think with progressives a lot, you’ll hear sort of Europe held up as this gleaming example on a hill, and it’s a mess. And so I’m kind of tired of that. Now, I think there are examples of socialism in Europe, particularly around healthcare, that are hard not to be jealous of, but I don’t think it’s this like magic solution. But I don’t want to hear capitalism painted as the villain. I don’t want socialism painted as the villain either. I don’t think either of those approaches are productive or honest or realistic. We have lots of socialism in the United States, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. There’s lots of it. It’s right there in the damn name, and everybody loves it: Social Security.

[00:26:25] Beth: But we are geographically oriented in a hemisphere where that language does carry a lot of baggage. A lot of people live here because they lived under socialist regimes in South America, in Central America, that they expressly fled to the United States to be away from. And so appropriate or not, helpful or not, constructive or not, that is a political piece worth considering and that we see has measurable impact in groups of voters.

[00:26:55] Sarah: Yeah, we won’t even talk about the fact that one of Mamdani pick took out the head of the Hispanic caucus. Yeah, I think that is worth grappling with. And I think Progressives, members of the DSA, when they wax poetic about Denmark or whatever, they don’t really grapple honestly with the pull of the American dream, which is fueled by a capitalist system. I think they think people are further along with them than they actually are, at least the majority of Americans. Because the majority of Americans are still-- yes, we are all loving Mamdani’s talk about our neighbors and our communities, and I do think for the most part, people are hungry for that. Obviously, we speak to it quite a bit. And also, we are still some individualistic-- I wonder if Mamdani read Democracy in America recently. We are still individualistic. We still want to be in control. We want to make our own way. We want to make our own money. We want to make our own fortune, and we want to be our own bosses. And capitalism can do a lot to fuel small businesses and new industries, and I don’t want to lose that either, and I don’t think most of Americans do. I think there’s a reason people freaking love Shark Tank and watch it over and over and over and over again, right? And I don’t think they really own that or are honest about that. Just because people are pissed about the cost of health insurance and feel like they can’t find an affordable house doesn’t mean that they also don’t want to own their own business one day, and they don’t want government licensing fees and a million different taxes. Go talk to blue states like California that’s losing so much of this industry because they feel hamstrung by government regulation, and it makes starting your own business or building your own American dream that much harder. I don’t think they grapple with that either. The government got New York and California into the mess of affordability that they’re currently in. So I think without criticism, presenting the government as the definite solution is a little bit reductive.

[00:29:08] Beth: State monopoly is still a monopoly with all of the problems that come with a monopoly and with the potential for enormous corruption. If we had more of the Democratic Socialist of America vision happening in Washington, DC right now I think everybody would be a lot less happy. To me the reality that isn’t grappled with is that sometimes people you disagree with will be in charge.

[00:29:32] Sarah: They don’t have to grapple with that. They live in damn New York City.

[00:29:37] Beth: This is the thing, though. If you want this vision to scale, then you’re going to have to roll with the fact that New York City has unusual resources and opportunities. Some of this is just geographic, right? When you talk about the Denmark vision, I’m like, “Cool. How’s that work in Texas and Alaska and Maryland?” Geographic reality matters. The network of hospitals available in certain places matters to your healthcare vision. There’s a lot of pie in the sky thinking here that I don’t know how it actually maps across the states. I also don’t know how to have everyone in these United States of all ideologies take a breath and realize your side will win and then it will lose because those of us who have an ideology are a tiny percentage of the population. I think the appeal of Mamdani is way less about Democratic socialism and way more about charisma and media savvy and speaking to some values that we want to have on a voluntary basis. We want to be better neighbors because we’re choosing that and we want other people to choose it, too. I think all the time that a few good billionaires could change a lot of this vibe. We just happen to have a cartoonish group of oligarchs right now who make the sentiment that there should be no billionaires much easier to wrap your arms around. But I do think a lot of people still want to be very rich in this country and aspire to it and do not want to demonize all wealth.

[00:31:14] Sarah: Hold on. A couple things One, it works fine in Alaska. Remember, they own the oil and they get a big old check. So we do know how socialism maps across Alaska to a certain extent. That’s a good thing.

[00:31:27] Beth: You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Medicare for all, like systems that are going to be the same for everybody in extremely disparate parts of the country.

[00:31:34] Sarah: But that is the benefit of the United States. We actually can see how. We have little social experiments, and not every state is the same, but that’s how we got ACAs, because sweet old Mitt Romney tried it in Massachusetts. So there are, like, yes, it’s hard to map it across the United States, but it can also work in the other direction. We can say, “Look, this state did it. Let’s try it nationally.” Won’t work out perfectly because we’re not all the same, but we do have these little ex- democracy experiments happening that I don’t think we take seriously enough, and I think some states could really be proving grounds for this. And I don’t think Mamdani is just about social media savvy. I think some of what he’s doing is trying to test case some of this and say, “See, look, I pick up people. I pick up electorates. I pick up more conservative parts of New York City and more conservative parts of these neighborhoods when I speak to this,” because that’s what Trump did too. Trump also spoke about anti-establishment; you’re getting screwed, the system isn’t working for you. And what the progressives I don’t think grapple with enough either is that it came from a millionaire’s, then billionaire’s mouth. It’s not that people hate all millionaires and billionaires, and I think it’s not that we stumbled into this, just happened to stump into this villainy sample size, okay? Because ten years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was building a public school or a private school proving ground. And ten years ago, Bill and Melinda Gates were encouraging everybody to give their money away. I think that as what is always true is that the billionaires that we’re all mouthing out, and now one trillionaire in particular, it’s not that they’re individually terrible people. They are manifestations of the system we all help create. And part of the last ten years, but again, some of the DSA I don’t think grapples with, is this permission structure. Some of it fueled by Donald Trump, some of it fueled by social media that rewards this sort of flashy influencer lifestyle. Some of it is a culture that has detached from a broader conversation about values that has decided like we’re nones, we don’t have religion, we don’t have values, everybody’s on their own, everybody gets to decide for themselves. And the only value is greed.

It’s like the ‘80s all over again. So they’re just manifestations. Like they’re not actually Lex Luthor. They do not have any some sort of like powerful weapon. They are a manifestation of all of us, and we would probably be in the same space if we had that level of wealth, too. Everybody thinks they’d be different. Everybody thinks they’d be better. Everybody thinks they’d be nicer. You wouldn’t. It would work on you in the same way it works on them. And so to me it’s like hating the billionaires and deciding it’s like that they’re the reason. No, they’re just a manifestation, and if we want to get at that, then it’s hate the game, not the player. This is a game and they’ve won and we’re all pissed about it. But I think there are proposals from the Democratic socialists that get at some of this. I do think rich people should pay more in freaking taxes. I do not think you should be able to protect all your wealth in these bullshit stock option ways that they do, and they just borrow against their stock and hide all their wealth and pass it on to their kids. I think all of that is jacked up, and some of the proposals coming from the very progressive left, I’m in favor of. I think there’s a part of it they’re just willing to go big, and I do think people want some big solutions. At least want to hear people talking about big solutions.

[00:35:06] Beth: I think some people want that, for sure, and I think other people are completely alienated by the sense that we hate the billionaires and we hate wealth because they know that threshold will continue to change. It’s been millionaires and billionaires, right? Now we’re billionaires and trillionaires. I think most people really don’t want the pendulum to swing all the way back and forth. They want some kind of place in the middle that accommodates lots of different interests. I think that don’t hate the player hate the game is always true, and the thing that is true with it is that the players do change our perception of what the game is, and the players are how the game itself changes. And that’s why a couple of good billionaires could really change the vibes right now because there have been times when the wealthy class engages in meaningful philanthropy, taking risks that governments can’t afford to take. States do experiments, but I look at somebody like Mark Cuban who’s out there experimenting, losing money, trying to figure out how to do prescription drugs in an affordable way and get that to a place where it actually makes sense, and constantly engaging politicians, saying, “Here’s what I’m trying. You want to come see? You want to learn about it? Here’s an idea for you. Why don’t you try this?” So I think there are places where that Private person who is told through capitalism to act in their self-interests also chooses to act in the community interest. That’s what small businesses do all the time. That’s why they’re beloved. People love small businesses because they serve pizza and make money, and then also are on the back of the Little League team’s T-shirts, right? They’re pouring back in there is a mutually beneficial relationship. The United States has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth as a mix of big firm capitalism where we have airlines, and entrepreneurial capitalism where mom and pop hang a sign and sell their stuff for as long as they want to. That’s the magic formula that works and has gotten broken. And so what ingredients help us out of that? I think it is probably more meaningful representation in Congress of people who want to see more government intervention Mixed with a huge variety of other views because that’s where we are in the United States, and something that comes out that is a pragmatic compromise of those things. You said earlier these people have to be pragmatic, as AOC has been, and that really dovetailed with a quote that I found from a Democratic member from Tennessee who said, “If these people come and are serious legislators, then they’re going to have to compromise on some of these views and work with other people. Otherwise, they’re just going to be the Freedom Caucus of the left.” And I think that’s exactly right, and there’s a lot of potential for that outcome. But if they do bring to the table these ideas in a really constructive way, maybe we get somewhere.

[00:38:15] Sarah: I do think that what they name that I feel, and what you just said, is I don’t know if the sort of benevolent billionaire has ever really been true. And I wonder if they look around at like the Sackler family, who gave a lot of money to charity, to museums, and all kinds of things. And I wonder if the billionaire class... this seems to be the vibe, right? They’re just like, “It’s never good enough. Some people are going to hate us no matter how much money we give away, and whatever causes we support, they won’t be good enough. Forget it. We’ll just pursue what we want to pursue and stop trying to become benevolent billionaires because y’all are never going to buy it.” And I’m not really sure I do buy it. I think that it’s always problematic, and I think the idea that because you built something big makes you smart about everything is really messed up. And I think the enshittification of the big firms like airlines, for example, is why people are less and less persuaded by capitalism and why it’s become such fertile ground for the Democratic socialists is because they look around, they’re like, “They offer me what?” Although, I say that in the same breath, the argument had a great thing about like we all bitch about Jeff Bezos, but Amazon is pretty popular. People like it. People use it. And so it’s hard to see outside of your own life and demographic attitudes around this to say like where are like let’s say independent voters, where that sort of middle, where are people on Amazon? Where are people on Jeff Bezos? Do people actually hate Elon Musk as much as we think they do? I don’t know about that part, but I do think that most people feel like the system is not working for them, and that’s why Donald Trump was successful. That’s why Mamdani is successful, and that should tell you like that part of the message is pretty universally appealing. It might come dressed up in different packages, might be a Democratic socialist, it might be a real estate tycoon, but people feel locked out of the American dream. And that is real, and that’s not going anywhere, and that’s going to continue to change our politics on both sides of the aisle

[00:40:46] Beth: I think you’re seeing among people who were part of the MAGA coalition initially finding that message to ring hollow once they’ve elected all their people and gotten all the power and seen it continue along that same trajectory, even supercharged. And so, to me, the call to action for the midterm elections is to find something positive to orient around, not just do the anti-establishment thing, and to get more specific about what we’re trying to do and how it will help you. And I think that’s where affordability is a dangerous one because talking generally about affordability is a lot of promises that you can’t necessarily keep. And especially as social media becomes just this barrage of meaninglessness, it is going to take like talented actors like Mamdani to get anyone’s trust for any period of time around these messages.

[00:41:46] Sarah: Yeah, that’s what I wish they’d do. I guess if I was advising him and all these new representatives-- they’re not officially elected yet, but you win the Democratic primary in New York City, you pretty much win the whole thing-- is don’t start with trying to subsidize things. Get at what’s been eating away at these markets and systems for decades. I’m more in the Lena Kahn school. Go after the bigness. Start there. Instead of trying to convince the majority of Americans that they want subsidized daycare or even trying to convince the majority of Americans we want single-payer system, go after the pharmacy benefit managers. Break some of these things apart. To me, regulating the bigness of the economy and chipping away at that in some real and substantial ways, not to mention trying to get in front of the bigness of the artificial intelligence industry, would get you further faster than like free grocery stores. They didn’t ask me, but that would be what I’d be working on if I was a member of the DSA heading to Congress.

[00:42:52] Beth: Also encourage people to continue the positive servant leadership type message because even though that kind of leadership isn’t policy, we have seen the effect of leadership that is about one person and one person alone. And so many people’s views of politics are set in their workplaces. How does my boss treat me? Am I respected here or not? If you are really respected in your workplace, you’re more likely to see respect in systems. And if you are really beaten down in your workplace, you are more likely to see systems as inherently corrupt and bad and out to screw you. And so I think just turning a page on the selfish, crude, I’m the only person who matters tone in our politics could have a lot of ripple effects that makes people more willing to sit down and say, “Okay, what might we change next and how could that work?” We always end our episodes with something Outside of Politics, and Sarah, I wanted to talk to you about this essay that appeared in Axios from one of their writers who has gotten fired by a lot of doctors. And she writes really openly about how she thinks of herself as a know-it-all. She advocates for her health issues. She has an extensive medical history. And the context of the piece is that she goes in to look one of these concierge practices to decide if she wants to spend the money on the practice, and she leaves when the doctor says “I don’t think you’d be a good patient for me.”

[00:44:38] Sarah: First of all, concierge medical practices, put that in my bucket of why I’m ready for single-payer healthcare systems because they’re so obnoxious. So I’ve never been fired, and I’m a pretty strong advocate. I had two home births, for heaven’s sakes. So that’s wild to me. I think you can advocate, but it feels like their sort of threshold for crazy behavior is pretty high. So I don’t know where she lives or what kind of doctor she’s around. But I’m a know-it-all. I show up kind of knowing what I want, feeling with very strong opinions about the medical profession, but I’m not rude. I feel like know-it-all has to crest into rude for you to be fired that many times by doctors.

[00:45:24] Beth: I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything about this writer that isn’t fair because I don’t know her. I have not had the experience of being fired by a doctor before. I have gotten the strong vibe in a variety of settings that my thoughts are not welcome. I witnessed a lot of this as a professional services provider, people interacting with their lawyers, and there’s a range of tolerance from lawyers in terms of how much you think you know and what you are advocating for here, and I’m the expert. I think that dynamic is really interesting. Like watching these situations unfold where one person does have more knowledge about the system, and then one person is like living the problems and how we negotiate that.

[00:46:12] Sarah: Yeah, when I was in the emergency room in Mexico on my babymoon with Griffin, my discharge paper said muy delicado because I think everything that came in, I was like, “What’s that? Find someone who can tell me what that is in English.” I was super protective. But I think so much of mine I really wouldn’t call it know-it-all. I am persuadable. It takes a lot. I like information. That’s my number one strength finder is information. And so often I assume other people are the same, they’re interested in as much information as I can bring, and what my experience in so many professional settings is that is not true. Other people do not welcome additional information like in the way that I do. They don’t want to debate it out or discuss it, and that’s why I was so happy with the midwifery model of care when I was pregnant is because my midwife would sit and talk to me for thirty minutes about my diet, she’d be like, “Nope, that’s not going to work,” and she’d tell me straight up. My midwife is not a shrinking violet. She will tell you straight up “No, that’s silly.” But she also would welcome a lot of it. Like she wanted the information from me. That’s what’s frustrating, is when I feel like don’t you need more information from me to really assess this situation? But the attitude of “No, I’m going to slot you into this box. You can’t tell me anything that will change my mind about that,” that really runs all over me. That’s the part I don’t like.

[00:47:32] Beth: I think you hit the key ingredient for a lot of these situations by talking about thirty minutes on the diet. I think it’s time. I think a lot of where you get sideways in settings like this, and this is true like in public schools too, right? You want to talk to a teacher; you want to have a discussion about what’s going on. It’s just time. To have two people with different levels of authority and information about a situation exchange that information productively and come to a mutually acceptable conclusion is a slow process. And I wondered as I was reading this Axios piece, what kinds of environments is this happening in? And is it just a matter of the doctor doesn’t want to spend the time with her listening to her thoughts or her experiences?

[00:48:14] Sarah: A concierge physician should.

[00:48:17] Beth: Yeah. I think the interesting piece about the concierge physician was just like a prospective employer. I see too many things on this resume. It makes me think you’re going to be unhappy no matter what. You’re the problem.

[00:48:28] Sarah: Yeah. But there’s also isn’t there just always going to be a subset of the population that’s unhappy no matter what? They still deserve services.

[00:48:36] Beth: Yes. And it’s hard.

[00:48:37] Sarah: They still got to have a doctor. They still got to have healthcare.

[00:48:40] Beth: It’s hard. They still have to have a lot of things. They still have to have kids in schools. And I think we have a meaningful percentage of people who are unhappy no matter what the situation is, and like the happiness comes from being unhappy at some point. That’s the persona.

[00:48:54] Sarah: Yeah. And I think you just got to remember that’s not on you. Can’t control other people. And you live in a world with other people, a percentage of which are going to always be unhappy or always going to want to have some drama in their life. And so to me it’s just more information. So I’m like, “Oh look, that person wants to create hassle everywhere they go. Ain’t that fun?” But to me it’s just like a fun show I’m watching. There’s just not much I can do about it until their monkeys join my circus, and then maybe yeah we probably have a problem.

[00:49:22] Beth: I try really hard to see almost everything as neutral. This is just how this person is, and that’s not better or worse than something else. Just this is neutral. And so I hope that if I’m encountered as a know-it-all in a doctor’s office or elsewhere, that can be seen as neutral instead of as a critique of the person in front of me. But man, we’re so attuned to each other that it’s hard for things to not feel like a critique.

[00:49:50] Sarah: Everybody’s a know-it-all about something. That’s just the long and short of it. Literally everyone. I don’t know what your thing is, but you’re a know-it-all about something. It can be a sign of passion. It can be a sign of personality. It can just be a sign that you’re human.

[00:50:04] Beth: Or that you do know a lot. Because that is also true. I’m really interested in spaces where you have felt like a know-it-all or where you have encountered know-it-alls, and if you have cracked the code on how to advocate without coming across as a know-it-all. I think all of that would be really valuable information. Let us know in the comments or in email, hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. We read every single message.

[00:50:29] Sarah: I would like to remind everybody, because we haven’t done this in a long time, if you email us, we read everything, but if you do not need a response, just put in the subject line, “No response needed.” It really helps us.

[00:50:38] Beth: Make sure you join us on Substack, pantsuitpoliticsshow.com, so you don’t miss out on any of the America 250 festivities next week. We will see you back here then. Have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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Then my brain shorted out a little. That’s not how I think prayer works. I don’t believe that we’d be spared a tornado because I prayed, and I don’t believe someone else would be hit because they didn’t. Sitting on my couch with the sirens blaring and the meteorologists pumping out information faster than I could process it, I felt a mini-crisis-of-faith. What do I believe about prayer? Does it even matter right now? I ended up praying that I would be able to handle whatever comes and that I would be a comforting presence for my family.

I can imagine that being a political leader often feels like sitting in the basement at midnight with sirens blaring and information being pumped out faster than any person could process it. So I’m interested in what principles guide our leaders in those moments, whether or not I can relate to those principles.

We have a long-established and still-hotly-contested aspiration about separating church and state in the U.S. We also have multiple candidates for higher office and the sitting Vice President writing and speaking about faith and a new report from the Washington Post suggesting that the former Director of National Intelligence took more than advice from a faith leader. Sarah and I discuss the role of faith in the lives of our politicians today. I’m eager for you to join the conversation. - Beth

Topics Discussed

- The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's $14.5M makeover gone wrong
- Keir Starmer's resignation and Brexit at ten
- What the center-left can learn from Europe's leadership turnover
- The Washington Post investigation into Tulsi Gabbard and the Science of Identity Foundation
- JD Vance's conversion memoir, Communion
- Sincere faith vs. faith as a political tool — Hegseth, Talarico, and Beshear
- Where a faith advisor ends and a political advisor begins
- Pantsuit Politics featured in the Washington Post

Episode Resources

• Keir Starmer failed to deliver change for Britain (CNN)

• Ross Douthat’s “Interesting Times” interview with JD Vance (YouTube)

• The Washington Post’s investigation into Tulsi Gabbard and her guru (Washington Post)

• Background on the Science of Identity Foundation (Wikipedia)

• Reporting on JD Vance’s conversion memoir, Communion (CNN)

• Communion (Wikipedia)

• What to know about the archconservative church Pete Hegseth attends (PBS NewsHour)

• What is the CREC, the Christian nationalist network (The Conversation)

• James Talarico and religion as a Texas battleground (Religion Unplugged)

• Why Susan Collins keeps winning in Maine (Slate)

• “The New Kings of the News Business Are in Your Inbox” — our Washington Post profile (Washington Post)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: They spent $14.5 million on a very rushed, clearly not thought through, six-week makeover in which they repainted the floor American flag blue, which increased the temperature of the water, leading immediately upon its refilling, to a powerful algae bloom. Then when they dumped in a bunch of hydrogen peroxide to try to treat the algae bloom, it made the paint peel. So now the $14.5 million paint job is peeling up off the bottom. It’s like vomit green with big old chunks of blue paint floating in it. This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:57] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:59] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Up first today, we’re talking about peeling paint and algae blooms at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. And an ocean away, Keir Starmer’s resignation landing one day shy of Brexit’s 10th anniversary. Two very different portraits of government struggling to deliver. Then we’re digging into faith and politics from The Washington Post bombshell on Tulsi Gabbard’s guru to JD Vance’s new conversion memoir. We’re going to talk about faith and what it means inside politics. Finally, Outside of Politics, that’s very close to home, we got featured in The Washington Post in a piece called The New Kings of the News Business Are in Your Inbox, all about how independent creators like us are building sustainable media one newsletter at a time. So we’re going to talk about that.

[00:01:50] Beth: Before we get going, we’re still celebrating America 250 here at Pantsuit Politics, and my heart is full because this weekend people started having their murder mystery parties and posting pictures, and I’m just so proud of all of you who are doing this. I’m so proud of your friends. I’m so proud of every person who got an invitation to dress like a founder of this country and show up for this weird exercise and said, “Yes, I’m doing it.” “I’ll do it.” I’ve never made something like this that turns into something so tangible, it’s just like a different form of creation, and it’s just filled my cup, you guys. I’m so grateful for it. So if you would like to be part of these amazing celebrations that are being carried out in a variety of ways, we would love for you to join us over on Substack, where you can also participate in the Pantsuit Politics Film Club.

[00:02:42] Sarah: Yes, our beloved cinephile, Norma, who has created past Pantsuit Politics Film Clubs, is back with Happy Birthday, America, our America 250 edition of the Film Club. So she’s chosen three movies about the Declaration of Independence: a 1938 short, a 1972 musical, 1776, that I did not know existed, and yes, of course, National Treasure. Watch all three. Notice what each era’s America sees in the Declaration of Independence, and come talk about it with all of us live on Wednesday, July 29th. The registration link and Facebook group are in the show notes. Up next, let’s talk about the Reflecting Pool. Beth, you would struggle to create a more apt metaphor for the Trump presidency than what is happening right now at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. They spent $14.5 million on a very rushed, clearly not thought through, six-week makeover in which they repainted the floor American flag blue, which increased the temperature of the water leading immediately upon its refilling to a powerful algae bloom Then when they dumped in a bunch of hydrogen peroxide to try to treat the algae bloom, it made the paint peel. So now the $14.5 million paint job is peeling up off the bottom, so it’s like vomit green with big old chunks of blue paint floating in it just in time for America 250.

[00:04:55] Beth: I also read, and I can imagine that this is how being president feels for everyone, that once they put the chemicals in to kill one type of algae, another type popped up.

[00:05:05] Sarah: Yep.

[00:05:05] Beth: So they’re fighting multiple types of algae in this situation. And look, I want to say, I have real sympathy for the people out there trying to fix this problem. We have a pool, and when it gets hot, if you get algae, it takes a long time, in a much smaller surface area than the Lincoln Memorial, to deal with it. It is you versus 100 million live things that just keep multiplying and getting worse and worse. And so I’m really sorry. Whenever I see the pictures of the workers and the waders out there trying to deal with this, I just think, “Bless you. You did not ask for this, and I am sorry.”

[00:05:50] Sarah: I am sorry for them. I am not sorry for Donald Trump, who is really struggling to try to blame someone else for this problem. Now, look, the problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are not new. That part is true. And he could have, not in six weeks, tried to fix those drainage problems that have existed for a long time. But what he wanted was a big, flashy, short-term, bullshit, made-for-TV makeover which has been a disaster. He’s blaming vandalism. Algae vandalism? Okay. And which was the problem you were trying to fix? You talked about this repeatedly, that you hated how it was always green, and there was algae, and you were going to fix it with a paint job. I listened to JD Vance in preparation for our conversation next on Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times, talking about his memoir. The Reflecting Pool didn’t come up, sadly. But he was talking about the negotiations with Iran that are taking place this week, and how the president just wanted optionality. Just wanted some optionality. “Let’s get in there. Let’s mix it up. Let’s create some options.” And I thought that’s a stupid word, but it probably is a pretty succinct understanding of y’all’s approach to governance. “Let’s just get in there, mix it up, and create some options.” No matter if the options are actually disasters or additional problems. We don’t need solutions. We don’t need long-term strategies. So this is what optionality has gotten the poor, sweet reflecting pool, peeling paint and worse algae blooms than it had to start with.

[00:07:35] Beth: And a lot of money spent. And now people’s interest is aroused in it, and so we get to fight about whether it’s worth being interested in. You see all kinds of people saying “I can’t believe journalists are spending all this time covering it,” but you’re right, it is such a microcosm. In a vacuum, it sounds nice to say we’re going to spruce up America for her 250th birthday, and that’s probably an agenda a lot of people would be behind. When you think down to the next level, you’re dealing with historic buildings, budgets that have to be approved by Congress to be done legally or else you’re going to face a lot of lawsuits, a huge number of constituents, coordination among multiple agencies. It’s complicated. If we were going to do this for America’s 250th, it probably should’ve been started about 10 years ago. To be mapped out correctly, for bidding to take place so it’s not just a free-for-all of grift and corruption where we award no-bid contracts to people who don’t have any business doing this work. And then once it happens, looking for someone to blame and bringing this heavy-handed approach of “Let’s start arresting people. Let’s arrest people over the Reflecting Pool.” But that is what this administration does on every single thing. If it sounds good, let’s do it. Let’s do it haphazardly.

[00:08:59] Sarah: Yep.

[00:09:00] Beth: And if it goes wrong, let’s blame someone else and try to punish them to the maximum extent of what anyone ever thought our power might look like.

[00:09:09] Sarah: What infuriates me is if we want to talk about sprucing up America for America 250, you know what I would’ve liked to seen that $14 million spent on? Additional staff at all the parks that are struggling under the mass amount of tourism happening right now. Partially I’m sure because of America’s 250, and partially because it’s too damn expensive to go anywhere else. And they’re getting crushed. They cut staff at the national parks. They cut the reservation system-- no one can quite explain why-- that was trying to help control the crowds. And so now our actual America, our national parks, one of, to my mind, the gem in our crown, is getting beat up because we don’t want to spend money where it matters because it’s not sexy and it doesn’t show up on TV. If the national parks are running smoothly, that is not a sexy headline. That doesn’t make for good TV. But it does make for important impact in the lives of everyday Americans who just want to go to Yellowstone and want to know that it’s being handled well, that the park isn’t getting beat up in the process.

It’s just, it’s all so frustrating.

[00:10:22] Beth: It’s again the reverse of what this president promised. Because he came into office on this anti-DC crusade. Yeah. The rest of America is important too. So true. Not everything is about Washington, DC. If that’s what he meant, tending to the parks would seem to further that agenda. Instead, we have all this conversation about what’s right in front of him in Washington, DC, and this desire to add this monumental arch.

[00:10:51] Sarah: Yep.

[00:10:51] Beth: Last week on More to Say, my daughters and I read some of the public comments submitted about the proposed arch, and as I dug into that topic, again, maybe in a vacuum that’s fine. Maybe in a vacuum someone somewhere would say, “Yeah let’s erect more monuments. Let’s be proud of our country. Let’s do something that really commemorates America 250 in this way.” But the design was so haphazard.

[00:11:19] Sarah: Yep.

[00:11:19] Beth: A commission of people appointed by this president had to point out to him that probably we shouldn’t put gold lions on it because lions aren’t native to the United States. There’s just a thoughtlessness in everything, and that is really concerning, especially as you read headlines about how consumed the White House is with the Reflecting Pool in the middle of negotiations with Iran to try to end a war.

[00:11:42] Sarah: Ugh. Let’s hop across the pond to Britain. So as we are recording on Monday, June 22nd, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has officially resigned the day before, as this episode comes out on June 23rd, the 10th anniversary of Brexit. This is the seventh prime minister in 10 years. He came in on a landslide, and he is going out with a whimper. His own party has turned on him. They believe he will be replaced by Andy Burnham, the former Manchester mayor. But I always think the United Kingdom is an interesting precursor, and I think Brexit was absolutely a precursor to MAGA. And watching the way they are, running through prime ministers because no one is really addressing in a way that makes the voters happy, their concerns about particularly cost of living, the social safety net and now Keir Starmer’s the latest victim

[00:12:51] Beth: The combination of things that have occurred in this 10-year period, right? Brexit for the UK, MAGA for the United States, followed by COVID, followed by wars. The phrase that keeps coming to mind is you just can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. Too many things shattered at once, and the public is not going to have the tolerance to put them back. You layer onto that the fact that the United Kingdom has been trying to address a lot of debt and a very stuck economy, and Keir Starmer’s party promised voters they were going to get in and fix that stuff. They’re going to fix the wait times for the National Health Service. They’re going to restore benefits that have been cut in some of this austerity. And then Starmer himself is a realist and says, “Actually, this is probably going to get worse before it gets better. It’s going to take a long time to make real progress on these issues.” And I wonder if in a different time the public would’ve accepted that differently, but right now I think he didn’t have any kind of personal magnetism to sell a really bitter pill of a message.

[00:14:04] Sarah: Yeah, I think anyone on the center left in the United States should be paying attention to this because it shows the limits of the Clintonian, Obama era approach to governance. I think someone needs to put together the speed and impact at which the Trump administration and some other populist administrations have moved with some just baseline competence would be fun. You really have to be able to walk and chew gum. Mamdani comes to mind. You have to be able to speak to people, command that attention, have baseline competence, and also be willing to try new things all at the same time. All at the same time. It’s a tough job. And I think in 1996 Keir Starmer would’ve been fine, but it’s not 1996. And especially post-Brexit in the same way that the MAGA has ushered in a new era of politics here, it’s true for them there. That our understandings of what used to be good enough has changed, and the way you communicate has changed, and what people want from governments has changed. And I think all of Europe is struggling, including France. I think Meloni has done a surprisingly better job in Italy, but communicating or shepherding them through some like very difficult decisions. Like people are mad because the cost of living has gone up and they want more from the social safety net, but the social safety net is also linked indelibly with the cost of living. And so there’s just some like really tough decisions that have to be made when you have a structure of government, I think, that especially a parliamentary system that can just kick them out if they don’t like that approach. You’re just going to continue to see an enormous amount of turnover. France, Lord, they’re just running through them left and right. Because they don’t want to hear, “We don’t have the money to pay for this.” And so I think that all of Europe is facing this to a certain extent, but particularly in the UK, and I think you’re going to need some robust leadership to be able to sell that to people. You have to offer something else too. It can’t just be all austerity. It’s going to have to be a more complex narrative about what comes next.

[00:16:16] Beth: A more complex narrative means higher taxes, though, and people don’t want that either. It’s tricky. I wonder sometimes watching this, and I’ve wondered this for years, is it better to have a system that’s responsive where the public gets fed up, there are elections indicating that the public’s fed up, and you get a new leader? Or seven leaders in 10 years inevitably going to compound the problems that create this public frustration and volatility?

[00:16:48] Sarah: Only time will tell. I am interested in the Manchester mayor to see if he has a different, more charismatic, approachable, connective approach that appeals to people. I think that will be interesting to watch. You’re really seeing the splintering of the two main parties in the United Kingdom. I think that will continue post-Starmer, and so we’ll just continue to keep an eye on our neighbors across the pond. We decided to talk about maybe not faith in politics, but faith in our politicians. Our politicians’ personal faith. There we go. There’s not a lot of faith in the politicians under the other meaning of that word. But there are a lot of politicians talking about their faith and a lot of politicians’ faith coming under a closer examination. Particularly over the weekend, The Washington Post dropped a years-long investigation into the relationship between Tulsi Gabbard, our former Director of National Intelligence, and Chris Butler, the leader of the Science of Identity Foundation, of which her parents were members, and Tulsi Gabbard as well, over decades. And they got twenty-five thousand pages of documents that showed that there were these memos seemingly coming from Butler telling Tulsi Gabbard how to vote, what legislation to introduce, how to speak to Wolf Blitzer and other twenty-four hour cable news shows. The memo says this, and then you’ll see a clip of her saying exactly that to Wolf Blitzer or whoever she’s talking to. The response from Tulsi Gabbard’s team has been like this is anti-Hindu bigotry, but I think there’s a lot more here. I had read about this relationship before and was very intrigued. So when it came clear that John Swain has not given up on the story, he’s not forgotten about it, he’s been digging through twenty-five thousand pages of documents, I was super interested

[00:18:57] Beth: I think this is an exemplary piece of journalism. Because as you read it, John Swain tells you what he knows and what he doesn’t know, how he got things, what his questions were as he reviewed those things, the complexities of the story, who responded to him and who didn’t. And it left a lot of space because it isn’t driving at a narrative as much as just taking you through an investigative process. It left a lot of space to ask questions of yourself. I kept thinking this is so interesting to me in part because I don’t know anything about the Science of Identity Foundation. Because Tulsi Gabbard has always been such an enigmatic figure because she’s beautiful and has always communicated in a really unusual way because of her kind of party hopping from the center left to the Bernie Sanders wing to the Trump administration. So there’s so much in here that just pulls you in. But because the piece was so careful and conscientious, I was able to think what would this look like to me if I were reading about a Christian in Congress and that Christian’s pastor sending the same kinds of messages? What if this were a context that’s more familiar, and what would I think about this? And that made me realize, I bet this happens all the time. I would love to read more pieces like this just to understand the relationships that people have with folks who are spiritually important to them. In her memoir, Kamala Harris talks about one of the first calls she made after President Biden decided not to run again was to a pastor to talk about, “Am I called to do this?” And to be prayed for. And I think that is helpful as we try to figure out who these people are that want these very powerful positions.

[00:20:45] Sarah: I think this is a little bit different. This is not just a pastor. There has been pretty credible accusations that this guy is basically a cult leader. There’s an enormous amount of control, including insulting her, saying “You’re doing that I thing again. Get it together. Don’t be a loser. Do what you’re supposed to.” When you put that level of aggressive assertion together with someone who has been accused of cult-like control, he is called a guru among the people who follow his philosophy, then to me that feels very different. As I was reading I was like party bosses I’m sure back in the day would send people to say things and say “You’re going to vote this way.” Because there was a transactional control and understanding of the power between the party boss and the people in the positions of political power itself. To me, this feels very different. It’s not like we don’t have examples of that ministerial role. One of the people who comes up a lot in this conversation is Pete Hegseth and his relationship with Doug Wilson, and Doug Wilson’s extreme views about not only white Christian nationalism, but women voting, women’s roles inside the marriage itself, much less the halls of power. And I don’t like it. And I think in a democracy we’re not voting for your minister. We’re voting for you. And to understand that you have some sort of independence-- I think that’s why when you go back and you look at John Kennedy, and he’s saying “The Pope doesn’t control me. The Pope isn’t going to tell me what to do.” I think that is an ongoing concern for people. It’s the reason Jeremiah Wright came up with Barack Obama to say “How much control does he have? And if he has radical views, do you share those radical views?” I think that those are legitimate concerns, and I think when you look at this reporting, she was not in control. She was doing exactly what she was instructed to do. There seems to be no sort of discussion or pushback or saying, “I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to say that this way.” In a way, that’s very concerning if this was your representative, much less if it was the director of national intelligence, because we don’t really have the memos going all the way through her time there. But it’s hard to believe that they just stopped after decades of him giving her very specific instructions about what she was supposed to do with her democratically elected power.

[00:23:03] Beth: In that ground that you traversed from Kennedy to Gabbard, to me there are two questions that come up when we’re talking about politicians and religious advisors. One of them is that agency question. Is this a person who’s taking advice from someone who’s important to them and takes or leaves that advice based on their own sense of what’s right and wrong or appropriate based on their position? So there’s the agency question. And then I think the second question is the boundaries question. To what extent do we want faith to influence our leaders? And I think the answer is really complex, and we have Americans who would say none at all. It should be in a black box on the shelf. In which case you have to ask then what other influences are going to replace it? Because some will. Do we want it to be party bosses, like you said, or lobbyist, donors? I just read this really compelling piece from Slate about Susan Collins and why she keeps winning, and it makes the case that she keeps winning in Maine because she is one of the most competitive, exacting politicians you’ll ever meet, who makes sure that every person in Maine knows exactly how much money she brings into the state, and that she is positioned because of her seniority and her position on the Appropriations Committee to keep those floodgates open and make them even wider. So there will be some influence, some driving force for everybody in a position of power. How comfortable are we with religion being that driving force? And what does it mean that we have a number of people right now betting on people wanting the answer to be, yes, religion is a driving force. We have that on both sides of the aisle, people kind of selling their religious experience. And I think when you put those things side by side, the agency question and the influence question it gets thorny fast, and it can feel almost discriminatory fast, like you’re in that territory that Kennedy was trying to combat. He had to say all of that because people were concerned that Catholicism would exercise too much influence, that he would do what the Pope said, not what he really thought.

[00:25:22] Sarah: We’ve clearly moved on from that because JD Vance has just written his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, about his conversion to Catholicism. Now, I think with Tulsi Gabbard, there has, of course, been sincere discriminatory ideas, particularly about non-Christian religions inside the United States like Hinduism. But I think that the way they throw that out and expect it to shut down all honest and, I think, sincere and deserved questions about her relationship with this man is not what we’re dealing with here. And, with JD Vance, I think to the thorniness of those questions, I think there is a way to treat his conversion sincerely. It sounds sincere to me. He went on a journey a lot of people have gone on, including myself, which is turning from the faith of your childhood, going through an extended period of non-belief, and then particularly when you enter into a new phase of life especially as a parent, reexamining that faith and going back to church. So I think there is a way to treat that story sincerely. I don’t think that JD Vance is lying about converting to Catholicism. I don’t think is just like a performative, solely politically motivated move. However, I think when you bring a personal faith, particularly when you put it in a book and then literally sell it to the American public, then you’re going to get questions like the one Ross Douthat asked him on the podcast, which was, “How do you justify the Trump administration’s approach, which is very often unkind and cruel and not Christian?” Because what we’re talking about with faith, and I think when you’re talking about influence and agency, is really morality. What is your morality? We know what Donald Trump’s morality is. He’s very clear about it. “I get to decide. I get to decide what is moral and ethical and good. I don’t lean on any sort of outside structure, foundation, theology. I don’t believe that you should love your enemies as yourself. Erika Kirk might, but I don’t. I don’t hold any sort of baseline respect for the Pope. He is as much of a political foe as anyone else,” which is a very interesting approach when you have a vice president writing a memoir about his conversion to Catholicism. So I think, yeah, you can have a sincere conversion, but then once you put it out there, especially as a public figure, then it’s going to be examined, and you’re going to get questions about not just the influence of your faith, but the choices you make and whether they align with this faith or morality that you espouse.

[00:28:09] Beth: I have so many questions about JD Vance’s decision to do this book right now. I think it’s bizarre that a sitting vice president is releasing a book and doing essentially a book tour. Don’t you have things to do? Isn’t he the primary negotiator with Iran right now? It seems like a bad use of your time. I would love to know what the money looks like around this book. I would love to know what the president thinks about this. Feels to me like JD may be flying a little close to the sun for Trump’s tastes in soaking up this amount of attention. Putting the politics to the side though, those questions about faith and the office and the actions of the office make me want to sit down in conversation with some of the Democrats who are doing this too because I cannot imagine anyone in the Oval Office being able to justify their decision-making always through the lens of faith. One reason I don’t think I could ever be close to the office of the presidency is because I don’t think I could live with a lot of the decisions that would come across your desk. Because they are life and death decisions, often for people thousands of miles away where you’re choosing among terrible options. If someone said to me, “This doesn’t seem very Christian,” in the midst of trying to make those decisions, I’m sure they’d be correct, but that office lives in this moral gray area on almost everything that happens, right? I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this administration and the way that it uses faith and hides behind it and makes it both sword and shield. It does open up to me space to say what do we want? Because in the same breath, I’ll tell you that I am comforted by the people who have some kind of moral grounding and some kind of moral code, and are telling us, “I’m going to bring that to this office. I’m not just going to wing it personally. I’m going to look to the wisdom of the ages. Now, I’m going to do that with respect for the fact that people across this nation have varying wisdom of the ages that they adhere to and varying ethical frameworks for their lives, but here’s mine.” Because I think you need it in a position like that. So how do you both claim it and also recognize that it’s aspirational, and try as you might, you cannot live up to it while serving in that capacity?

[00:30:51] Sarah: I have a theory about why he wrote this book.

[00:30:53] Beth: Okay, I want to hear it.

[00:30:55] Sarah: I think that he is trying to get in front of the fact, to put these two faith conversations together, the fact that his wife is Hindu. And he was talking about how she’s at 36 weeks pregnant. She’ll go to Catholic church with him every Sunday, which I also have lots of questions about. But I think he can sit down with Vivek Ramaswamy and have a real honest conversation about the fact that you can do all of this you want, but you exist on a side of the political aisle that has very strong ideas, often fed, strengthened, empowered by the people you share power with, like Pete Hegseth, that is white and Christian and nationalistic. And I appreciate that you’re just trying to split the hairs here, but I don’t think it’s going to work. Like, I just don’t think it’s going to work. The ideas around not just white Christian nationalism, and maybe this is just because I’ve recently finished Kristen Kobes Du Mez’s new book that’s coming out in September about white Christian womanhood, but those ideas are baked in, and you have made no effort over the course of your life or the course of this party. You have ousted people who try to bring some complexity to that. You treat the women within the party like Marjorie Taylor Greene, even Kristi Noem, God save us, with such contempt. If you think that you are going to, with any legitimacy, try to split this baby with the women who subscribe and the men who subscribe to this version of white Christian nationalism on steroids that you love to use when it serves you, and that they’re going to find some space for your Catholicism alongside your wife’s Hinduism, I don’t think it’s going to work, buddy. I don’t care how many books you write. That dog don’t hunt. It’s just not going to work. Again, go ask Vivek Ramaswamy what he runs into out there on the campaign trail for Ohio governor. I don’t know what you thought was going to happen, but you don’t get to pick and choose your racist, sexist bullshit and then be like, “Oh, but my wife gets a pass because she takes my kids to Catholic church with me on Sunday.” Because apparently her in particular in their marriage plays a very prominent role in this memoir, and I don’t think it’s going to work. That’s my personal opinion. Not because I give a shit, just for the record. I don’t care. I don’t care about Usher’s religion. I don’t care how or when they take their kids to church. I don’t care. But other people, the people on the white Christian nationalistic MAGA movement, they care. They care a great deal

[00:33:38] Beth: That kind of calculation takes me back to what does Trump think about this? Did he bless this? Does this timing piss him off? I read that he’s annoyed with some of the way that Vance approached the Sunday shows about the war and wants everybody to just repeat what he has to say. I’m really curious about the contours of that relationship right now, and I’m curious about the contours of the faith discussion for Trump, because it is obviously very uncomfortable for him. As much as he’s willing to cozy up to evangelical leaders he cannot carry it off and he knows that. It is not part of his shtick.

[00:34:14] Sarah: No, because it’s always very transactional, isn’t it? “I did this thing for them and now they love me.” The way he talks about it is just so give and take.

[00:34:22] Beth: Yes. So I want to talk a little bit about the Talarico campaign and Andy Beshear’s book about his faith and the way that there’s this effort to reclaim Christianity on the Democratic side, and whether you think that is a smart strategy or destined to lead to these same kinds of problems.

[00:34:50] Sarah: I think that there is room if you have a sincere faith that informs your understanding of power and the separation of church and state or global aid or abortion. There’s just a lot of areas in American life that can be sincerely informed by one’s understanding of their own faith or theology. But it has to be sincere. I find James Talarico pretty convincing. Maybe it’s because he’s the grandson of a preacher and because he’s in theological seminary. I don’t know. He also strikes me as someone who has a sincere and authentic interest in politics as much as faith and has for a long time. That doesn’t bother me. I get what Andy Beshear is doing. It reads a little less authentic to me. And that’s the thing. A lot of this is like your own individual journey with faith and politics. How mad are you about white Christian nationalism? How traumatized are you by past church hurt, or are you not at all? Like, all of that comes into how you react, so you can’t really say this is how it’s going to read to people because you don’t know. Because everybody brings something so different and personal to their own understanding of faith and how it should or should not inform someone’s politics. So I think if this is a sincere part of your identity, speak to it. If it informs how you think about the decisions you’d make, speak to it. Even if it doesn’t hit for me, I know it hits for other people and it works. I think George W. Bush compassionate conservatism worked. I think that so many pieces of other politicians speaking to their faith or how it informed their decision-making, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, like I think if it’s real to you, then you can make it real to other people. But whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, it’s still going to open you up to questions about your sincerity, your authenticity. What does that mean? But listen, if you’re playing the game at this level, you got to be comfortable with that.

[00:36:59] Beth: That personal baggage that you bring to it is part of the reason I’m trying to really push on my own reaction to the Tulsi Gabbard reporting. Andy Beshear and I are members of the same denomination. His faith reads as sincere to me. I do think he’s laying it on pretty thick in pursuit of a higher national profile. I wish he weren’t, to be totally honest about it, but that is the choice that he’s making. But I will say when I saw him speak at a gathering of our denomination, it was the best I’ve ever seen him in public. I do think his faith is quite sincere, and I can put it in context because I understand it. When I read about Tulsi, I don’t know what the word guru means to her, or generally within the Hindu faith, which is extremely diverse. I don’t know how a lot of Hindus would view the Science of Identity Foundation. I can imagine enormous diversity. So I’m trying to not assume that this level of control over her exists, because I think it’s unclear from the piece. I agree with you, I think the piece makes it clear that Chris Butler, if he was the speaker in all of these memos, was mean to her. I’ve read a lot of political books though, and a lot of advisors are pretty mean to their principals all the time, and the language is coarse and harsh. I don’t know, because I am so unfamiliar with this type of spiritual practice, how to interpret this and how it would strike me if I popped it into my own cultural context. And I think about the disclosure side that you were just discussing, and whether she can do that because it sounds so unfamiliar to so many Americans. Or if there was a way for her to handle this early in her career, where no one would accuse her of deceiving people about who’s influencing her. Where she could’ve said, “Yes, this is my faith. It’s extremely important to me. I will discuss policy with my faith advisors.” Is there a way to do this well if you’re not Christian and operating in a context that a lot of people who care about politics are going to understand and be able to react to more easily than what Tulsi’s dealing with?

[00:39:22] Sarah: But I think the problem is think about how you just switched back and forth several times between the word faith advisor and political advisor. Which is it? Because I think most Americans will say they need to be separate. We have a separation of church and state. The idea that someone who you talk to about the most intense questions of life, death, what happens after we die, how we are expected to move around in the world, that you weigh this stuff that is just at the core of so much of the human pursuit of knowledge and wisdom and a life well-lived. Alongside, you need to introduce this legislation now that makes sure veterans don’t have to get preapproval for their medical screenings. I think most people are going to go, “No, that’s too much in one person.” If they’re advising you about the most intensely personal questions of faith, and also telling you what specific legislation, what specific talking points, what specific strategies, policies, political decisions you need to make, then they’re going to say, “That’s too much.” It doesn’t need to be a faith and political advisor. It needs to be a faith advisor or a political advisor. And when those lines start to cross, then you get into a place where that person has too much power over you and too much power over your decision-making. And then that’s when we need to have a conversation. I think most people would be uncomfortable with that. When someone is using their position of authority over the deepest questions in life to tell you how to function day to day, that is a level of control most people describe not as faith, but as a cult in which you don’t have any say. They tell you what to do, and you do it. And I don’t mean just in denominations or religions I don’t understand like whatever version of Hinduism this white dude from Hawaii is asserting, but I’m talking about within certain Christian denominations in which you absolutely have cultish control over people’s everyday decision-making and how they’re doing their jobs and how they’re speaking out in the world, how they’re presenting out in the world. And I think most Americans will go, “That’s too far. That’s too far.”

[00:41:38] Beth: Yeah. How do we assess that when the role of religion in campaigns is so Salesy. If that’s the case, if we’re looking for a separation of church and state, then why is the vice president writing this memoir? And why is Andy Beshear doing what he’s doing and James Talarico doing what he’s doing? We’re looking for this Goldilocks place that I don’t think really exists in most people. I don’t think there is that clean... I agree with you that’s what we want, and I also think that in most of us, that is a fantasy. We’re not really going to get that.

[00:42:13] Sarah: But is it that much of a Goldilocks situation we’re searching for when we’ve just spent 10 years with Donald Trump, who makes no bones about the fact that he ultimately decides and nobody’s telling him what to do? So maybe Americans have really made their voice on this clear, which is, they don’t want to be shamed for feeling or having religious opinions that maybe perhaps everyone doesn’t agree with. They don’t think that there’s a right way to be a Christian or a wrong way to be a Christian. Some people do. But you do see what I’m saying? I think if you really want to look through the lens of the Trump era, the answer is we don’t want to be shamed for it, but also if he’s not perfect, we don’t care either. We’re not looking for somebody who perfectly finds this Goldilocks because Trump is not religious. And he is very much the principle is “I’m the decider. I decide. No one tells me what to do.” Which clearly appeals to very many Americans. So it’s hard to put together all the lessons of this era with somebody who has united the religious right to a certain extent but does not represent them. And so watching J.D. Vance come along behind and try to do that from a place of seemingly sincere conversion but also clearly in pursuit of political objectives, I think makes the questions and the learnings of this Donald Trump religious era even more interesting and something that we will probably continue to talk about as we get closer and closer to 2028 and see other people with every spectrum of sincere religious beliefs present those in varying ways to the American voting populace. Beth, Tulsi wasn’t the only one in the Post this weekend.

[00:44:01] Beth: She was not.

[00:44:03] Sarah: We were.

[00:44:03] Beth: I was having such a normal Sunday when I got this Google alert that Scott Nover had written a piece called The New Kings of the News Business Are in Your Inbox that profiled us and other creators on Substack.

[00:44:18] Sarah: Yeah. It wasn’t a complete surprise. We had spoken with him extensively, and he’s a really nice guy, and he seemed sincerely interested in how we built our business. I dig that he called us incredibly patient. Yeah. because we are, and we’ve been at this a long time, and so it’s nice to be recognized for what we’ve built in a very volatile creator economy, news media environment, and the sort of the interplay of those two things has been really hard, and I’m proud of what we’ve built. It’s really nice to see it recognized. I was very happy with the pieces of our interview he used. You got the closing quote in the whole thing. That was pretty cool.

[00:44:57] Beth: It was cool.

[00:44:58] Sarah: And so I was delighted, and I always like it when we are featured like this because I feel like it legitimizes our audience, and they really like to see this podcast. They tell everybody about. It’s like there’s a lot of people on Instagram right now being like, “You know that podcast I tell you about all the time? Here they are in the Washington Post,” which is nice.

[00:45:17] Beth: It is so nice the way that our audience responds when something like this happens, and I do feel like everyone gets that it’s a celebration of all of us, not just the two of us. To the point about industry changes, it is wild to be in a piece primarily about email. When we’ve always thought of ourselves as podcasters, but that’s true, and it is part of the reason we made the Substack move. One of the forces that we have been trying to surf, but also sometimes taking shelter in the basement from, and other times following with a truck and some measuring tools is the algorithmic way that people come to know your work now is so different than when we started 10 years ago. And that sense of I can just email you, and we can stay in touch that way. I don’t have to depend on what mood Instagram is in this week or what’s happening on Facebook or TikTok or even the podcast players. It’s just a really direct relationship with the audience, which is how we’ve built something that we can continue to do. We would not have a business that we could keep putting all of our time into if it weren’t for that direct relationship with the audience and email has been the way to keep that in this bizarre storm of algorithms.

[00:46:37] Sarah: Yeah, I thought it was interesting that the piece names it as the last man standing. I really do think about the RSS feed on which podcasting is built as a very similar thing. You subscribe; you know you’re going to get the episode. You’re not dependent like a TikTok creator or an Instagram creator on them surfacing your content to your followers, people who said they wanted to see your content. And so having a way to email these podcast episodes to people. That’s why we emphasize so much subscribing to our Substack, because you just never know when even Apple Podcasts will change its mind. And our advertising business was decimated because two years ago, three years ago, Apple Podcasts was like, “We’re not going to keep so many downloaded episodes to save you storage on your phone.” And poof, there it went. And so just because they don’t care about podcasts necessarily, they care more about their physical product, the storage of the phone. And so you’re at the mercy of so many decisions you have no control over. And so that’s why we’re always saying “Subscribe to us on Substack,” because that’s what Substack is. It is an email list primarily. If we make a new podcast episode, if we make a new More to Say, if we have a spicy live conversation, then it will be emailed to you. Email is still my primary sort of way I manage my online life. I like an email. I know some young people don’t like an email. I like my email inbox. That’s how I keep track and manage my life. And so knowing that I don’t have to go hunt down a creator or a writer I really like, like Derek Thompson, make sure I know what he’s saying. It’s just going to get delivered to my inbox. And it has been very important particularly with our business, to know that we can communicate with the people who do trust us and who do want to hear the news from us and who do want to process the news with us because I think that’s the other part of this piece is there’s just an enormous trust built when you have this relationship with a community, and it’s definitely not one we take for granted, but it was nice to have it recognized in this way. So the link to the Washington Post piece is in the show notes, as well as, of course, a link to our Substack if you’d like to finally make the leap. You don’t have to do the Substack app. You never go to substack.com if you don’t want to. It will just show up in your email inbox along with all of our exciting America 250 celebrations. So make sure you’re subscribed at paintsuitpoliticsshow.com so you never miss a thing. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

We start with the Iran “deal” that isn’t and the strange place I’ve reached with this war: I think I know enough, and I don’t believe anything “new.” Then we discussed the Pew Research framework that sorts Americans into nine political groups instead of the two parties. Sarah and I landed in different groups, obviously, and it was helpful to have some language about why. - Beth

Topics Discussed

- The Iran "deal" that's really a memorandum of understanding
- Why JD Vance looks set up to take the fall if it collapses
- What we actually know (and don't) about who's in charge in Tehran
- Pew Research's nine political "types" and the death of simple red vs. blue
- Taking the typology quiz live — and Sarah's and Beth's results
- The progressive litmus test and the voters Democrats leave on the table
- A rule for bedtime: don't stay up for anything you wouldn't wake at 5 a.m. to do

Episode Resources

• On whether a U.S.–Iran deal is within reach (Council on Foreign Relations)

• Eli Lake, “Trump gives Iran a lifeline and calls it peace” (The Free Press)

• The Atlantic’s read on how the Iran war ends (Apple News)

• The political typology — nine groups beyond red vs. blue (Pew Research Center)

• Survey on Americans’ fears for democratic freedoms (PRRI)

• The Ezra Klein Show on the shape of the 2026 midterms (New York Times)

• On harm, fairness, and having to make the call (The Argument)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:29] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:31] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. On his 80th birthday. In addition to hosting a UFC fight on the White House South Lawn that promoted his cryptocurrency businesses, the president announced a capital D deal with Iran, told ships of the world to start their engines, and said, “Let the oil flow.” We will discuss. And then we’re going to talk about political parties because the war in Iran, like a lot of other things, really scrambles traditional left versus right thinking. There are Democratic and Republican supporters and opponents of that war. Pew Research has taken a look and says we are really not divided into two parties now. There are at least nine distinct political types in American politics. So we’re going to talk about those types. There’s a fun quiz that you can take, and we’ll tell you our results. And I’m really looking forward to hearing about your results, Sarah. And then Outside of Politics, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is sleep and bedtime, and what we’re willing to stay up late for.

[00:01:28] Sarah: We’re going to revisit making the beds. No, I’m just kidding. We’re not. We’re not revisiting the bed making issue.

[00:01:32] Beth: We’re definitely not going to do that.

[00:01:34] Sarah: One of our most controversial topics over the last 10 years. We have been telling you that we’re all in on America 250, and we have two very special guests for the week leading into July 4th, 2026. The first one we’re ready to tell you about is Rick Atkinson. He is a very famous historian. He was a war correspondent for the Washington Post for 25 years. He has three Pulitzers, and he’s in the middle of a Revolutionary War trilogy. I’m currently reading the first one, The British Are Coming. The second one is out. He’s working on the third. Each one takes him six years to write. And we had him on to talk about the founding of the country and America’s first 250 years and his perspective as a historian, and it was a fantastic conversation. Not to brag. And we can’t wait for you to hear it, so get excited about Rick Atkinson coming on to help us talk about America 250 in the week leading up to July 4th.

[00:02:33] Beth: Next up, let’s talk about the deal. Sarah, I’m not sure that we have a deal in capital D.

[00:02:48] Sarah: We don’t have no deal. There’s no deal here. Give me a break.

[00:02:52] Beth: We have a memorandum of understanding.

[00:02:54] Sarah: I think that’s the dumbest, just generally. I think memorandums of understanding are the stupidest. I really do. They’re such nothing burgers, but whatever.

[00:03:02] Beth: I feel like from my days practicing law, you wrote a memorandum of understanding when you didn’t have one. And you were trying so hard to clarify what you did not have and what you might be willing to keep talking about. And that seems to be what this is. So this was announced on the president’s birthday, which I think is the most important thing we can tell you.

[00:03:19] Sarah: I thought it was really interesting. I don’t know what they thought was going to happen in the media cycle. I think they thought, “We’ll get these two wins.” But because journalists are professionals and they have to do a professional job, immediately people started asking all these questions. So one, he didn’t get the big win because people were like doesn’t seem to be a lot of there. And two, it actually distracted from the UFC fight. So I think this was a mismanaged media cycle, if nothing else.

[00:03:50] Beth: Mismanaged, thematic about the Iran war. We are recording on Wednesday, June 17th. I want to timestamp that because this is where I am with all Iran war coverage. It’s a place I don’t think I’ve ever been before. I have decided I know enough about this in terms of the players and the stakes in the situation. And I believe so little of what our government says about it, of what the Iranian government says about it, of what the Israeli government says about it, that I am just taking a huge step back. I cannot tell if that’s maturity and wisdom or something like depression. I cannot ride this every day, though. I gloss through a lot of the coverage because I think, sure, and what will tomorrow look like? And i’m out on it in a lot of ways.

[00:04:46] Sarah: Okay, so I think with regards to the negotiations-- and I am using that term very loosely. I think that’s probably the right instinct. They’re not changing anything. They will say, “We’re going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” and then Iran will be like, “Yeah, but we might still charge tolls. Just stay tuned, everybody.” They will say, “Oh, this is so much better than the JCPOA through the Obama administration,” except it seems like the Iranians are getting way more out of this deal. They’re getting paid more money. They’re getting the relief from more sanctions. Where they will say, “The whole reason we’re doing this is to prevent nuclear weapons. Oh, but by the way, we’re just going to keep negotiating that part.” This memorandum of understanding has no actual agreement with regards to their nuclear capacity. So to the specifics of this “ deal” I think that’s the right instinct. Now, I think there are broader things that are worth paying attention to. I think whatever is happening in Iran is still very much an open question. I do not believe the regime is about to topple, which was the actual stated goal. Remember that one? That was before we settled on making sure they didn’t get a nuclear weapon. We were going to topple the regime. That didn’t happen, but it does seem like the Ayatollah is coming back online. From the reporting I’ve read that he is exerting more of a presence, which is I think while we’re making something that seems like progress, is I think they’re getting a little clearer on who’s negotiating and who actually has the power to agree to something. So I think that’s worth paying attention to because I think that’s ever-shifting and changing over there.

[00:06:20] Beth: It’s still weird to see press quoting the deputy foreign minister. You just think, “Who is at the table here, and who’s for real, and who can we believe?”

[00:06:28] Sarah: Who’s in charge? Yeah. So I think that’s an ever-shifting reality. On our side, yeah, I think it’s not worth listening to anything. They’re trying to push as a narrative. Except for I do think it’s interesting that JD is clearly being set up to be the fall guy for this if it doesn’t turn out the way everybody wants. That I’m paying attention to. I don’t know why I guess both him and Marco couldn’t fade into the background, that somebody had to step up and take the lead. But his name is all over this. If the Strait closes down again, if the global pressure increases, fighting increases between Israel and Lebanon, which is supposedly a part of this agreement, but not really because neither Israel nor Lebanon have agreed to that, then he’s going to take the heat for this. It’s giving Kamala and the border. I’m just going to be honest.

[00:07:14] Beth: If he wanted this because he thought it was a way to say to people, “I was always against this conflict and I’m going to get us out of it,” he is a fool. Another reason that I just put almost no stock in what either Iran or the United States says about this right now is that they are not the only players.

[00:07:32] Sarah: Right.

[00:07:34] Beth: Israel says it was not a party to this negotiating agreement whatsoever. Trump’s support in Israel is falling dramatically as people realize that he is not with them till the end here. What Israel is doing in Lebanon I think is going to disrupt any meaningful agreement that the United States and Iran can reach. Then you have all these proxies for Iran that it’s always been so cagey about. Why today would we believe the Iranian government that it’s going to tell all of those proxies to stand down? Which hasn’t even said it’s going to. But if they did, why would we believe that? That’s never been the arrangement.

[00:08:08] Sarah:  Even if they did, why would it matter? Why would these proxies listen at this point?

[00:08:14] Beth: Those proxies are going to do what they want to do. There are too many different interest groups living in too close proximity, too heavily armed. The other thing that really stood out to me as I was reading about the current state this morning, Council on Foreign Relations says Iran still has 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile, and roughly 70% of its mobile missile launchers. The idea that we went in and reduced Iran’s capabilities to nothing is false. And Iran demonstrates it over and over again, and the message that we’ve sent to Iran and to the rest of the world with this war is, “You should arm up. You should be ready for anything. Everybody should be nuclear. Everybody should have missiles. Everybody should have drones. Everybody should be ready to fight to the death every single day.” And that’s just a loss, no matter how this turns out. And I don’t think JD Vance has the political skills to sell something that is that stark of a reality.

[00:09:15] Sarah: Yeah. Now our capacities have been reduced. Our stockpiles are down not just with weapons, but also with oil. The stockpiles around the world, including the United States, are decreasing because this has been incredibly difficult when it comes to the energy sector. Now it has, bonus, lit a fire under everybody’s butt to get into green energy, so it’s going to be hilarious if Donald Trump’s ultimate legacy is we’re dramatically accelerating the green energy future and the electrification of our economy. I’m going to live for that outcome. But, no I agree. I think there are so many players. The most important of which Iran is in, I think best case scenario, an in-between, right? And at worst case scenario is very fragile as far as just an internal collapse altogether. But I really think the most likely situation is that they’ve come out stronger. They were weak. They were on their heels. That’s why everybody thought this was the moment. But now they have the Strait of Hormuz as the ultimate weapon. They have not had their capacity-- yeah, sure, we took out their navy. They didn’t have one to begin with. And so the nuclear capacity is still there. Their strength in the region, their ability to assert itself and become a player with some power beyond just the proxies now on their own, I think is dramatically different. I feel like the real victim is the word ceasefire because we’ve all decided that didn’t mean anything because that’s all this is another sixty days of “ceasefire,” even though during this previous ceasefire there’s been exchange of fire, so I don’t even know what that means anymore. It’s just a mess. It’s going to continue to be a mess. I don’t think his ability to just proclaim a success and move on is what it once was, if it ever was as powerful as he assumed it would be. And this has not only weakened the administration and weakened his ability to command the Republican Party, but it has opened up all these fissures, all these debates. There are hawks around Iran that are displeased with this. There are people who are displeased we went from the beginning. And it’s just exposed those tensions even more.

[00:11:36] Beth: If I try to make the strongest counterargument I can, if I say this was successful from the Trumpian perspective, it still feels dangerous to me. So you could say Iran is stronger because of the Strait of Hormuz. You could also point, though, to the enormous damage to infrastructure that we’ve done there. We have. There’s a lot that needs to be rebuilt, including schools. I think it’s important to remember that we have destroyed schools with school children in them. And Iran has terrible inflation. Iran doesn’t really know who’s in charge. So you could make a case that we’ve really weakened Iran, but that case feels extremely dangerous for America to me, too, because when we destabilize countries in the Middle East famously, we often don’t like what emerges on the other side of that destabilization. When we go in and bomb the bejesus out of a country, we end up radicalizing new people against the United States. I don’t know how you look at this from any lens and think this is better for America than the status quo as it existed before this operation. There are a lot of interesting arguments about that, though, within both parties, and so we want to take a step back and look at where the parties are right now and the groups that sit within those parties. And I think it’s a really helpful rubric that the Pew Research Center has put together as we head into the midterm elections. All right, Sarah, I read two things this morning that seemed in direct opposition to each other, so I want to talk about that. One is a survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute that says we are retreating into our ideological camps, and that we view the opposing side not as a political rival, but as a threat to democracy itself. And then there’s Pew Research saying, actually we are such a complicated mix of ideas that many of us don’t fit well into either major party. Can you harmonize those thoughts for me or do you read them as inconsistent, too?

[00:13:49] Sarah: I think they’re inconsistent, and I definitely think Pew’s framework is more accurate to my anecdotal experience both on the internet and in real life. I think the internet skews it dramatically, and I would be interested to understand the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, how they did that polling. Was it primarily online? Because I don’t feel or experience that retreat. What I feel and experience is an exhaustion with the ideological camps. Now I still think they are powering a lot of the political economy right now because we’re in primary season, and for better or for worse, so many of our primaries around the country, we just had some this week in Alabama and Georgia, are first past the post. So they reward those ideological camps. And so that perpetuates. That’s what the advertising’s around. And so I think that can skew the perspective when you’re soaked in the primary environment as we are right now.

[00:14:52] Beth: The primaries also reward attention on people who are highly engaged in politics, and what this Pew framework does is really separate out who’s highly engaged versus who is less engaged. I think it does the best job you can do using 24 survey questions trying to get to what are your priorities here? So in the primaries, you’re really looking at the right anchors and the left anchors in this framework. I was interested in the percentages of the population that represents. So Pew has categorized two groups as right anchors. The no apologies right at about 9% of the population, and the faith first conservatives at 12%. Both of those groups are majority Christian, they are largely male, they are largely white. And then on the left, you have the leftward progressives at 7% and the loyal liberals at 11%. Again, largely white, highly educated. Leftward progressives are the youngest group. But that means that your sort of base right is about 21% of the population, and your base left is about 17% of the population. And I just found those numbers surprising.

[00:16:03] Sarah: It doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve always visualized the hardcore ideological edges of both parties at about 20% of the population. Maybe I would have put a bigger mix of the parties in the 20%. Yeah, I might have said the hardcore party people were maybe 25 to 30% on each side. I don’t know. Because I think people who identify with both parties, which is now about 30% on each side, is not all the hardcore people. That 30% is not composed solely of the ideological hardcore people. There are people who are partisan but are not consumed by politics or the sort of party faithful in a way. They’re like party regulars, but maybe not party faithful. But I don’t know if you’d said, “Okay if 30% is Democrat and 30% is Republican and they’re full partisan, how much of those people are hardcore?” I think I maybe would have put a little bit smaller percentage of that.

[00:17:02] Beth: I think so, too. The other thing that jumped out at me is that there is a perception, I think, among left-leaning people that every electoral advantage that Republicans have is built on geography and unfairness. The idea that land doesn’t vote, people do. But if you look at these numbers, there is a small but true percentage, a true advantage in terms of raw population leaning rightward. So the more mixed categories are where it gets more interesting. Pew called out the unconventional right, people who are more moderate on abortion and the social safety net. This tends to be a younger group, a less politically engaged group. The pragmatic and polite right, who tilt Republican, but only modestly. These people are the oldest group of the bunch and tend to put a premium on civility. The order and opportunity left, a ethnically and racially diverse group, the largest group of all of them, economically liberal, but more concerned about crime and immigration than others. The left out left, people who are very financially stressed with a real mixed bag of views who are deeply skeptical of politics. And the tuned out middle, just not here for any of it, pretty politically divided. So there’s a quiz with questions in a mix of categories, and let’s not bury the lead. Sarah, what were your quiz results for the Pew Research Project?

[00:18:23] Sarah: I feel so good about this. I’m the biggest, most ethnically and racially diverse group. I’m the order and opportunity left.

[00:18:30] Beth: So how did that square for you?

[00:18:32] Sarah: No, it sounds about right. Like, when I was filling out the questions, I’m like, I’m not as progressive as I used to be. I’ve moderated a lot in my views. I’m not as reflexively negative toward the military or law enforcement as I used to be. That’s another part of my overall views that have moderated over time. But the progressive stuff that I still feel very strongly about is largely economic. It is corporate power. It is a lack of government regulation. It is consolidation. And so I wasn’t really surprised by these results. I was surprised that I was the largest group. I felt really good about that. I felt really “Okay, look at that. I sometimes feel a little left out, but here I am with the biggest group of Americans.”

[00:19:21] Beth: I was in the oldest group, the pragmatic and polite right. Which did make sense to me the more I read about it and thinking about my mix of responses. I had a hard time with a lot of the questions, and this is why I think I struggle to find my place even in conversations because there is that pragmatic leaning for me. It’s what’s going on right now? So there was a question about marriage equality. Of course, I support access to marriage for two unrelated consenting adults, yes, please get married. But if I were starting from a blank sheet of paper, would we have legal marriage? Probably not. I’ve got a lot of questions about legal marriage, and specifically about divorce as related to legal marriage. So kind of all the questions I thought, “I need a bunch of footnotes.” So when I came out in this place of pragmatism and being polite as the things that jump out most, that felt right.

[00:20:14] Sarah: I’m just excited that we’re back to being Sarah from the left and Beth from the right. Look at that.

[00:20:18] Beth: That is a very upsetting framework for me. I just don’t want to hear it anymore.

[00:20:23] Sarah:  That’s what it says. I’m on the left, and you’re on the pragmatic and polite right. Just saying.

[00:20:30] Beth: But I think that is what this rubric illustrates, too. The MAGA version of Republicanism is Those two hardcore categories. It’s confusing to me that so many people in the more mixed categories still voted for Donald Trump because I think that it’s just totally out of alignment with how you would answer a lot of the questions that get you to being somewhere on the right.

[00:20:59] Sarah: It doesn’t really surprise me the way they’ve broken these out. For example, look at the unconventional right, less politically engaged. So they’re going to be able to hear what they want to hear that gets them to yes on him, right? So they’re going to be able to say I don’t want partial birth abortion, so I’m not going to vote for the Democrat, because I’m more moderate on abortion and the social safety net.” I see how they get there. To the pragmatic and polite, I bet they don’t get there. I bet they’re like you, and I bet I think that they’ve probably... Or like my stepdad they’re not voting for Donald Trump. They might be voting for other Republicans, but they’re not voting for Donald Trump. But they’re still not Democrats. So I actually can see how those two groups get to yes on him pretty easily. What I was pleasantly surprised about is that the tuned out middle was small. I was afraid that was going to be a much larger percentage. So I’m encouraged that they classify that as only 9% of the population. Although, when you talk about this tiny sliver of the population everybody’s fighting over when it comes to swing voters, I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.

[00:22:07] Beth: It does. I think another reason that Sarah from the left, Beth from the right is just unlivable for me, is that there is an expectation when you say right now that what you mean is MAGA.

[00:22:20] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:22:20] Beth: Even before MAGA was a thing, I wasn’t hard right enough for people who tuned in with that expectation of constant friction and disagreement. So when I worked through these questions, I kept finding myself thinking about context.

[00:22:36] Sarah: I also want to add that this frustration or this sort of categorization is a problem on the left too. They call them the left-out left. I think there is a sense that if you are a Republican, you’re the MAGA right, and there is a sense that if you are a Democrat, then you should be motivated by one thing and one thing only, which is an all-encompassing fury about Donald Trump.

[00:23:08] Beth: Yeah.

[00:23:08] Sarah: And we leave so many potential Democratic voters on the table from this left-out left, and I would say from the order and opportunity left, the largest group, when we do things like live in this world where you should be pissed off all the time. I think that’s how we lost so many Latino voters in 2024. We weren’t speaking to what people are actually concerned about. We were speaking to what people should be, like what good people are really concerned about. I was just listening to the Ezra Klein Show, and they were talking about Jared Golden should have been the candidate to take out Susan Collins, but he’s been harassed out of the arena by the progressive left. Was about to be primaried because he wasn’t left enough. He wasn’t mad enough. He wasn’t fighting enough. And I think this is a really important reminder that It’s not just the MAGA people leaving people out, but when you operate over this progressive litmus test so you say one critical thing about Graham Platner, and they come for your head, like poor Derrick Thompson’s experience this week, even though he said he would vote for him, then you are leaving out a lot of voters in the order and opportunity left, the left-out left, and the tuned-out middle.

[00:24:22] Beth: Yes, 7% leftward progressive is the smallest group in this rubric. Yeah. And that is where  all the energy is, all the attention is. Yes.

[00:24:33] Sarah: Yeah. They’re only the loudest.

[00:24:35] Beth: And I think that is worthy of so much conversation, and I feel like whenever you try to raise it, that group in particular shouts you down and insists that 90% of the country shares those views.

[00:24:50] Sarah: It’s how you get people telling Sarah McBride she doesn’t support trans rights.

[00:24:54] Beth: Right.

[00:24:55] Sarah: And there’s a way to navigate it. I do think Zoran Mamdani is doing a good job. I think he is progressive in a way people like, but he is also getting shit done in a way you just have to if you’re going to be in charge. And these people steer so much of the attention online that they end up steering a lot of the conversation, and it is bad. It’s bad and they were just leaving a lot of people on the table.

[00:25:17] Beth: It’s okay to be there. None of these categories are wrong on their own. You just have to ask hard questions about what results you want. I think I end up in the pragmatic and polite right because my life philosophy is that I’d rather be married than right on most issues. I would rather live with other Americans and have some policies that I think are unwise than be mad and fighting all the time. It’s just not how I want to exist in the world. And I wonder how much when you relitigate the last election, how much of that drift to the right was about the actual substance, like you are ignoring issues that I care about in favor of issues that are less important to me, and how much was about style and kind of the sense of they seem to be having more fun over here. I don’t want to hear that in order to be a caring human being I need to be in a state of despair constantly. I don’t know the answer to that, and I know people have parsed it ad nauseam, but I still don’t know.

[00:26:18] Sarah: I think there’s also a weakness in style on the right, and they get to that in some of the questions. I hated the one that was like, “If someone’s opposed to you, should you fight them all the time?” Or it was very just “Do you like how Trump insults his opponents?” Basically.

[00:26:32] Beth: Pulled that language. “When politicians you agree with humiliate their political opponents, do you like it?”

[00:26:39] Sarah: Yeah. I don’t. I said I don’t like it. And so it’s not that there are only stylistic approaches coming from the progressive left that, that alienate voters. I think that sort of constant fighting, my fellow citizens are my enemies... I guess I take the beginning poll from the Public Religion Institute seriously, but that is just not what I’m hearing in my life, that people are just like, “You know what, I really want to just double down on this. I hate my fellow Americans situation. It’s super fun. I’d like to do more of it.” I think people are exhausted with that, and I think they want fight. I think there’s a difference. I think they want politicians willing to take risks, willing to try new things, willing to say, “This isn’t working, and it’s not working for anybody, and we need to change it.” That doesn’t mean you want somebody who’s just calling people names and humiliating them all the time. Those are two different things.

[00:27:41] Beth: I also wonder how much of this is changing in real time and maybe not captured yet in the ad maker strategist class. I talked through these questions with my daughters who are 15 and 11 as of today, and they also said, “I really hate it when someone humiliates someone else, whether I agree with them or not.” And that was one of the strongest reactions to any question they had, because they understand that question completely.

[00:28:10] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:28:10] Beth: A lot of questions we had to discuss, and they were like, “I don’t really know enough to know.” That one, they were like, “No, I do not like that.” And I think that we’re behind that in the way campaigns are being run right now.

[00:28:22] Sarah: I think it is about the shift from traditional media to social media and an algorithm that awards conflict and negative emotions. And so you have a system of attention that awards that, even if the participants in the system of the attention articulate a different set of priorities and values, and that’s where we’re caught in the crosshairs right now.

[00:28:51] Beth: You want to do a couple of these questions as examples from the survey?

[00:28:55] Sarah: Sure.

[00:28:56] Beth: If you had to choose, would you rather have a smaller government providing fewer services or a bigger government providing more services?

[00:29:03] Sarah: This is how I got in my group, because I answered a bigger government.

[00:29:07] Beth: And I answered a smaller government. And it it probably is one of the most important questions in sorting you as an initial matter. Economically, how important is it for the US to have an economic system based on capitalism? I think I said a spectrum here, extremely to not at all.

[00:29:20] Sarah: Yeah, I hate the very important, somewhat important, a little important. I’m like, nobody thinks like this. But I said important for sure.

[00:29:28] Beth: I said very important. We had a lot of discussion with my daughters about this, because they don’t really understand what capitalism is, and I thought, “I think a lot of people don’t understand what capitalism is.”

[00:29:37] Sarah: I think a lot of people don’t understand what democracy is. People are like there’s polling out this week that they say that’s less important to being an American. I’m like, “Everybody go back to history class.” That’s the whole point.

[00:29:49] Beth: I thought it was interesting because Jane is on Instagram now, so she is in the zeitgeist enough to know that every other reel will tell you that the problem with X, Y, or Z is capitalism. And so we had a discussion about what capitalism means and what the alternatives are, and they were both like, “Oh yeah, that seems important. That seems like where we want to stay.”

[00:30:10] Sarah:  People Mean capitalism, they say capitalism, and what they really mean is the gap between the rich and the poor. They mean wealth inequality.

[00:30:18] Beth: Right.

[00:30:18] Sarah: And there’s a sense that a very reductive narrative that the way we got here is capitalism. Capitalism is the villain that made Elon Musk. And to a certain extent, yeah, that’s true. But to a certain extent, there are also fabulously wealthy oligarchs where there is no capitalism. So I don’t know if that’s the bugaboo people quite make it out to be, and I think capitalism and a democratic system built around it, or vice versa, offer the best tools. That’s why I lean towards big government because I think if you’re going to get to big corporations through regulation, you’re going to need a big, powerful government to get there.

[00:30:58] Beth: Yeah, and I have never leaned toward a big, powerful government, and especially after two terms of Donald Trump, do not lean toward a big, powerful government. But I was talking to my girls about how much of the discussion about capitalism leaves out the millions of small businesses that live their lives however they want to. Some of them work extremely hard and accumulate lots of wealth, or don’t, but feel a real sense of purpose about what they contribute to their communities. Some people make really different choices about quality of life and we have that freedom in this system. There is an opening for you to pursue your values in that open field, and that’s what I think is worth holding onto. Okay, foreign policy. In the future, how important is it for the US to be the only military superpower in the world?

[00:31:46] Sarah: I don’t care about that. I said not that at all.

[00:31:48] Beth:  I do not Care about that either.

[00:31:50] Sarah: No. Yeah. I was like, whatever, who cares?

[00:31:53] Beth: It just is unrealistic to me. I just don’t see a future where we’re the only military superpower in the world. I also don’t see a future where military might is where the real fault lines are drawn in international conflict.

[00:32:07] Sarah: Especially, like, where the influence comes from. I agree.

[00:32:10] Beth: Okay, one more. In the other issues bucket, how comfortable are you with people openly carrying guns in public places? I thought this was such a smart question.

[00:32:20] Sarah: Yeah. I said not at all.

[00:32:22] Beth: Me too.

[00:32:24] Sarah: I thought the really interesting ones were the people being too easily offended by things others say is a major or minor problem, and people saying things that are very offensive to others is a major or minor problem. I thought those two were very interesting.

[00:32:35] Beth: I did too. My daughter said that both are major problems. And I said that people being too easily offended is a major problem, and people being offensive is a minor problem.

[00:32:46] Sarah: Interesting. I think I a little bit split the difference. I definitely think I loved the piece from The Argument this week that was basically like, people are going to get hurt. You have to make a call, and people are not going to be happy with every call. They started off with the concert where you couldn’t bring your cell phones, and then accusations of ableist, which I don’t even buy, and my child literally uses his cell phone to treat his disability, thank you very much. But he would still treat himself in a Yondr packet in his pocket for the record. And so I just think, yeah, we’ve gotten to a place where any harm... I thought your conversation around the idea of fairness, what’s fair, what’s not, in More to Say got to this too. We’ve decided if there’s any harm under a rubric of harm reduction, then we can’t do it. If there’s any unfairness, and in a country this big, there is inevitably going to be unfairness. And this, to me, gets to the individualization of our experiences that I think is very hard on our systems and institutions. I thought they were scratching at that a little bit with those questions.

[00:33:55] Beth: I think we might be aligned on this then, because for me, people being too easily offended is a major problem for the reason that we have translated that into policy. We’ve translated it into business policy. We try to translate it into public policy, and I think that’s at odds with the freedom of speech that is an integral part of what we should be built on as a nation. It’s not that I think people aren’t saying very offensive things. We are awash in offensive things being said, and I don’t like it. I’m in the category about politeness. I do value treating each other with respect, but I think it is a minor problem in terms of politics because I want to keep those doors open. I would fight for the opportunity to offend others with speech, not the opportunity to shut down speech.

[00:34:43] Sarah: Agreed.

[00:34:44] Beth: So I would love for everyone to take this quiz and tell me where you fall.

[00:34:47] Sarah: I know. I want to hear.

[00:34:49] Beth: I have a guess about where our audience might map onto this, but I would love to validate that. So let us know in the comments, please. Next up, we’re going to talk about sleep and bedtime. My husband’s best friend, Jeremy, stayed with us for a couple days over the weekend, and just like offhandedly he said, “I read this thing that said you shouldn’t stay up late for anything that you wouldn’t get up at 5:00 AM to do.” I thought that was so interesting, and so I wanted to talk with you about it. What’s your initial reaction to that advice?

[00:35:29] Sarah: My initial reaction is like it makes sense, and then I’m like, no, I don’t think it does. I’m a walking example right now. I’m yawning because I stayed up until 11:30 finishing Maggie O’Farrell’s Land. Glad I did it. Don’t regret it. Would I have set an alarm at 5:00 AM to wake up and finish the book? No. I think there’s just something fundamentally different about being already awake and wanting to continue something as opposed to wanting to wake up and do the thing. You already have the energy. You don’t want the day to end. You’re trying to play something out as opposed to disrupting sleep and waking up. Does that make sense?

[00:36:09] Beth: It does. I think this advice is so rock solid for work and totally off for pleasure.

[00:36:15] Sarah: Okay, there we go. There you fixed it

[00:36:19] Beth: And work broadly. I think this is right about chores. If I need the floor to be mopped so badly that I’m staying up late, maybe I’m better off setting my alarm and getting that done in the morning. There are a lot of things around the house that keep me up sometimes and I probably would be better off in the morning. I’m always better off in the morning if I get up early for work than staying up late in the evening. But for pleasure, I think you’re right that sometimes pleasure has a momentum. And also, if you aren’t willing to stay up late for your friends, you’re really limiting your friendships. We lived that phase when we had young kids who needed a really rigid bedtime, and you just end up in that phase of life having to pass on a lot of fun. And it was worth it to me then, but as an adult and with older kids, it’s worth it to stay up now sometimes for fun.

[00:37:09] Sarah: Yeah, I had some friends that stayed with me a few months ago from high school, and they’re night owls, and so I stayed up with them several nights in a row, and I didn’t regret it. Always travel disrupts my sleep score, my Oura Ring, worth it. I think that there is a lot of pleasurable pursuits. Now, there are some like I don’t think drinking’s ever worth it for me. Like payoff is not there and it’s disruptive for too long. But I think if you are generally a person who gets a good amount of sleep, every so once in a while, like last night, staying up and finishing a book, like it’s not going to mess with me that bad. I can go to bed a little bit earlier tonight and I’ll be fine.

[00:37:46] Beth: It changes for me year to year. I think what I’m really appreciating about this stage of life, even though things like drinking and staying up late affect me way more than they used to, is that I do have space to think about that. When you’re out of how is this going to affect my kids, it just really lets you decide for yourself in ways that I just couldn’t decide for myself for so many years. And I don’t stay up super late ever. On the whole, I am a very early to bed, early to rise kind of person. Ellen had a bunch of girls here until 9:30 last night, which meant I was cleaning up until 10:30 or so, and that’s fine.

[00:38:27] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:38:27] Beth: I would love to retire earlier than that, but it was fine.

[00:38:29] Sarah: Yeah. I’ve tried to hold my bedtime a little loosely. Especially when you first get an Oura Ring, it can feel very prescriptive and you’re like, “I gotta do it.” But the Oura Ring ultimately was good for me because sometimes I think I’ve slept terribly. I got to bed too late. I had to get up early, and the ring will be like, “You slept fine. You got plenty of REM sleep. Be cool.” So it’s been helpful to me to sometimes be like, “Oh, no, it’s not as bad as I thought it was.” But I think once you have good sleep hygiene and you are committed to it, than as opposed to, I think, locking you in, which is what a lot of people think happens, it just builds a foundation so you have a little more freedom during those edge case experiences.

[00:39:08] Beth: I think that’s right. And when you are measuring some of that stuff, if you’ll hold the measurement as a tool, not a report card you realize, “I’ll come out of this. It may take a couple days, but I’ll come out of it. My body’s very adaptable. It’ll be fine.”

[00:39:22] Sarah: The Oura will give you a little tech talk. It’ll be like, “It’s okay, this happens.” I love it when it gives me that little “It’s hard sometimes. You’ll get over it.” I’m like, “Thanks, man. Helpful.”

[00:39:30] Beth: Would you like to work a little harder today or not? You should listen to yourself on that.

[00:39:34] Sarah: Yeah. I love those little pep talks. This is not a commercial for Oura Ring. It just turned out that way.

[00:39:39] Beth: But I am really going to hold onto that advice that I’m not going to work late if I wouldn’t set my alarm for 5:00 AM. I think that’s extremely helpful.

[00:39:47] Sarah: That’s good. I like putting it within the work framework. Good work.

[00:39:51] Beth: Thank you so much to everyone for joining us today. Make sure to follow the show so that you do not miss any of our upcoming July celebrations, including our conversation with Rick Atkinson. We’ll be back with you next week. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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I put that discomfort beside the fact that I wrote a murder-mystery and family play to celebrate and am in the middle of working on Founding Father Karaoke. This feels like the most American thing of all to me: it all belongs.

Today, Sarah and I discuss how we’re approaching this milestone, what it means to us, and what role, if any, the President plays in observing 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. - b

Topics Discussed

- Why celebrating America's 250th feels awkward this year
- The America250 commission vs. Trump's separate "Freedom 250" / White House rally
- What the 1976 Bicentennial actually got right
- The military's place in the anniversary — a component, not the centerpiece
- Holding patriotism and clear-eyed honesty about the country's failures at the same time
- America's Potluck and celebrating at the level of your own town and table
- Outside Politics: naming your "mom aesthetic"

Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

Episode Topic Resources

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Steward Holland.

[00:00:04] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:01:04] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Guys, I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but America is celebrating a big birthday this year. It is 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. The birthday invitations have gone out, and the country looked at them and went, “Do we feel like a party?” So today, we want to make the case that the answer is yes, a party is in order, not in spite of how hard things are, but because of it. And outside of politics, we’re going to discuss our mom aesthetic. Are we butter moms? Cozy moms? What’s the vibe?

[00:01:02] Beth: What is the vibe?

[00:01:04] Sarah: Before we get started, we are continuing to celebrate America 250 on Substack, and we are two weeks away from very exciting America 250 episodes on my show, Good Morning, and Beth’s show, More To Say. On Good Morning, I will be reporting the news from 1776. I will be reporting the news for that day, 250 years ago. I got a costume. I come in by candlelight.

[00:01:38] Beth: I’m so excited.

[00:01:39] Sarah: Felix helps me out. I don’t want to set the expectations too high here, guys, but- I slayed this. I’m just telling you right now. You were born to

[00:01:50] Beth: You were born to do this.

[00:01:52] Sarah: I was born to do this. I cry when I announce the news towards the end. I’m just telling you, I learned some things. It’s really good. I want to say with confidence it’s really good, and you should definitely come join Substack so you can participate in my 1776 News Brief. Beth, what do you have planned over on More to Say?

[00:02:13] Beth: I too am committed to intergenerational America 250 celebrations, so Ellen and I are having a little chat about what being an American means to us.

[00:02:21] Sarah: Love it.

[00:02:22] Beth: And then the big event is that we’re going to do Founding Father several years ago, a listener reached out speaking of things we were born to do, and asked me, “What would the Supreme Court justices sing if they all went to karaoke together?” And a whole genre was born from that. I haven’t pulled it out in a while. So I have really been working. I’ve read some articles about what the Founding Fathers’ Enneagram types would be, what their Myers-Briggs would be. I’m really trying to get in the heads of these people as I choose their songs. It’s a personal thing, your karaoke song.

[00:02:52] Sarah: Is it just the fathers? Can we get Abigail in there?

[00:02:55] Beth: You know there will be women at this party, too. There’s no way I’m doing a men’s only karaoke party here. So that’s the plan for More to Say. I know that sounds weird. You might be thinking, how does that come together? I just ask that you trust me. I think good things happen when you just trust me on More to Say.

[00:03:11] Sarah: I love it. So we have very exciting shows ready for our paid members over on Substack. Click the link in the show notes and join us for Good Morning from 1776 and Founding Father karaoke. Up next, why are we celebrating to begin with? Beth, it is the semi-quincentennial of the United States. Was this the first tough part of the celebration? Bicentennial rolls off the tongue. Semi-quincentennial a little bit less.

[00:03:59] Beth: It’s a hard word to say, and I am going to give credit where due. I think Congress in 2016 deciding to go with America 250 was a wise choice.

[00:04:09] Sarah: Smart call. So look, everybody’s been working at this for a while. There have been commissions, there have been committees. Now, did Donald Trump roll in with his partisan Freedom 250 and screw it all up? Of course, he did. But that doesn’t mean that the America 250 Commission’s work should go uncelebrated.

[00:04:36] Beth: I read a long piece in Harper’s Magazine this weekend about America 250. The whole magazine is excellent and worth reading cover to cover. I rarely do that with a magazine, but I did yesterday. This piece talks about how because Congress wanted a bipartisan committee, from the beginning, this committee has had an impossible task to both properly observe this milestone for our country and not get into anything that is disputed on a partisan basis. And since 2016, everything in our country has been disputed on a partisan basis all the time. And so that means that most of their work has been intended to be uncontroversial. So they had a contest where students wrote essays, and they’re going to get some field trips for rewards. Lovely. But how do you really acknowledge 250 years since the Declaration of Independence apolitically? Which is what they’ve been trying to do.

[00:05:43] Sarah: You can do it, but it’s not going to break through. You understand what I’m saying? In our current media environment to do something apolitical, non-controversial means that it’s not going to get a lot of coverage. I’ve said recently in my bookshop, I’ll say “Oh this is for America 250.” And people will say, “What?” I’m like, “ it’s our 250th birthday.” So I think that unfortunately it is the flashy stuff Trump has been doing that’s occupied the field, and I refuse to accept that. I refuse to say the only way I can celebrate is tuning in for the UFC fight or for his big old Trump rally he announced in the middle of the night last night because everybody backed out of his- in theory, non-partisan party he was going to have through Freedom 250, and now it’s going to just be a plain old Trump rally. And I think that he’s leaned in such a way and he garners so much attention that I’ve had so many conversations with people where America 250 comes up and it’s that means you have to like Trump. You have to celebrate with Trump. And I’m like, “Absolutely not. Absolutely not.” I reject the idea that this has to be tied up indelibly with him.

[00:07:03] Beth: Another piece from Harper’s Magazine, not to have mentionitis about it was talking about the bicentennial and the difference between then and now. And one of my criticisms of the UFC fight is how marketing-oriented it was. It was about sponcon and merch primarily. And it was good for me to read about the bicentennial and how merch was a big part of it. People really went for the kitsch of the bicentennial, and it was helpful to have stuff that everybody could be into on the other side of Watergate. It was like we had this terrible stain on the nation, and we washed it away with commercialism. And I understand that. I do that in my own life all the time. No judgment, America. This is a thing that we do. It feels so different to me now. I watched some of the UFC fight last night and I was thinking about what is it that really bothers me here? What really feels different? I read some pieces about how the South Lawn has been transformed before, how we’ve put baseball diamonds there. We had the Beach Boys there in the Reagan years. We’ve put tennis courts there. We’ve done all kinds of things to the South Lawn. So it’s not just the construction element. And it’s not just the recreation of it or the spectacle or the royal court feeling of it. It is the tonnage from this administration where every single thing that takes place looks like a personal favor to the president instead of something that is for the country. And the more I learn about the UFC fight, the clearer that becomes to me. But even if you just say, look, they did it for his 80th birthday and America 250, you can see that he doesn’t separate the two. He is America, and America is him now, and that’s going to be true for as long as he’s in office. And so I can see why people don’t want anything to do with that, and that is what motivates me to really lean into it.

[00:09:03] Sarah: Yeah, it doesn’t bother me because it is so fully absorbed as a celebration of him. I don’t even see it related. Just because he uses the term 250, just because he likes to trot it out, to the branding of it all, there is no real branding, emotion, marketing narrative that speaks to this country and its 250 years of history. How much more accurate to Trump branding, to the Trump politics, to the MAGA of it all, could a knock-down, drag-out, bloody brawl be? Like, what does that have to do with all of us? It’s just about him. It’s just about celebrating him. So to me, it doesn’t even feel related. I’ve never really felt anything Donald Trump does or has done sincerely celebrates, appreciates, expresses any kind of gratitude for the depth and breadth of the people of this country. To me it is branding, and his brand is so far away from what I think about when I think about 250 years of American history. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been moments of sincere fighting, including during the Revolution or the Civil War, or that there hasn’t been populism or nativism. I’m not erasing the darker parts of that 250-year history. But when you talk about appreciating and celebrating and seeing the totality of the people of this country, both now and for the last 250 years. Nothing about that feels Trumpian to me. So I’ve never even considered him and everything he stands for as leading or even being an essential part of America 250.

[00:11:19] Beth: I wonder how you think about the military gloss over everything that he is coming out of the White House in relation to America 250, acknowledging that he’s not going to be our guide to meaningfully consider the promises on which this nation is founded and how we’re living up to them. I think a lot of people do find it appealing to hear 1,200 seats at this fight were reserved for active duty military members. The television production of it really focused on, first responders. There were members from all of the armed forces branches standing at attention and saluting as the fighters walked out of the White House. That did bother me to have people who could actually be called into duty in the Middle East right now for war to be saluting people who fight for sport. I didn’t love that. But I know that I’m an outlier on that. I think a lot of Americans do think the military should be a big part of this anniversary. So I wonder how that strikes you.

[00:12:23] Sarah: As a part of my America 250 practice, I am reading Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming, the first in his Revolutionary War trilogy. Also seems like an appropriate moment to announce Rick is coming on the show to talk to us about the Revolutionary War and his trilogy, and it is incredibly war-focused in great detail. And so I’m never far in my own head from this moment we’re celebrating and the military reality that it precipitated. The stark military reality. We fought for eight years. So many people died in really gruesome ways. And I think part of what Trump and the MAGA movement has precipitated in me is a reclaiming of all these things that I think I saw as cliche, passe, eye-rolly, because I just refuse to let them occupy the entirety of this narrative. And the word patriotic does not bother me anymore. It’s a big word. It can hold a lot of different things. That’s what we’re going to talk about. But in the same way, I feel some widening of my aperture when it comes to the military. I don’t have some sort of knee-jerk negative reaction to any military presence. The reality is that not just in 1776, but over the course of our history people have given their lives. They’ve paid the ultimate sacrifice so that we can be here at 250 years, and I think that should be a part of any acknowledgement as much as the mistakes and the, discrimination and oppression. That has to be a part of the full picture as well.

[00:14:26] Beth: I think the military is a component. I think it would serve the military and all of us if the military were a component instead of the key component of these observances, that we recognize that the nation is built on fighters and warriors and also teachers and librarians and municipal servants and people who work at the Social Security office. I think that I’ve really been searching for places to consider beyond the military what makes a nation, beyond war what defines a nation, beyond the war what pieces have been put in place that have gotten us here. For this to have lasted 250 years, what was required beyond the military? That’s something that I’m really personally searching for in connection with the semi-quincentennial.

[00:15:19] Sarah: I think there’s all kinds of difficult aspects. And the point is not to turn away from them. It’s not to say, “ Trump’s running it. He’s ruining it, I’m out.” I hate that reaction. It gives him so much unnecessary power. He has enough as President of the United States. It’s not to turn from any commercialization or militarization or even like whitewashing. It’s to see it all as the complex reality of any big historical marking of the passage of time. If you’re marking 250 years, it’s going to contain a lot. It’s going to contain death and destruction. It’s going to contain organization and neighborhood building and ordinary citizens and extraordinary citizens, and I think trying to look at that all clearly is the work of this milestone. So let’s talk about all that up next. I have to say, Beth, one of the main reasons I am pretty committed to America 250 is just let’s just do a little reality check here, guys. I was not alive in 1976 for the 200th celebration, and while I really hope I’m alive for 300 at 94, I don’t want to be overconfident, and my ability to celebrate might be a smidge limited by my age. So it’s like you kind of only get one. You only get one chance to buy the limited edition design cinnamon rolls I bought this weekend with stars and stripes on the can. Or to do a July 4th murder mystery party, or to look around and see that everyone is trying to decide what this means and thinking through this history and reading all the David McCullough books you can possibly squeeze in before July 4th.

[00:17:32] Beth: It is nice to be part of a milestone. I’ve been thinking about this personality inventory I took a number of years ago that told me that I am a low affiliation person. I don’t tend to think of my identity as tied to groups. I’m happy to do a thing while it lasts and then move on from it. I’m not very nostalgic. And I’ve been thinking about that in connection with America 250 and why this does mean something to me. It seems as a low affiliation person, I would blow this off. And I realized, in part, that I think when I did that inventory, most of the connections in my life were fairly superficial to me for a bunch of different reasons. I have been building my connection to America as idea and aspiration for my entire career. I think law school put a deeper hook for me into sort of the American experiment than I had before, and spending every year since immersed in Supreme Court opinions and news and the community around this podcast. Every day there is a new hook for me into what is this thing that we’re trying to do together civically? And I love that. And so part of the celebration to me is just realizing I do feel a sense of identity as American. It’s complicated, but I feel it, and that’s important, and it’s something that I want for my children. I want them to feel that they are part of a lineage here. They have a heritage here, and those things can exist without being the province of, racism, nationalism, xenophobia, whatever. There’s a healthy way to claim that heritage.

[00:19:22] Sarah: I’m a high affiliation person. I don’t need to take the personality assessment. I know that about myself. It’s probably because I’m an only child. I just like to be a member of things. And look, let me wax poetic. I love being an American. The most basic aspect of citizenry to me is just geographical. What we’re talking about when we’re a citizen of a nation is some borders around a place. And I don’t care who you are. I understand if people have complicated, difficult reactions to America’s history. But I hope putting all that aside, you can look around at the geography of America and see how incredibly lucky we are to live in this country. It is a beautiful place. It is such a beautiful, incredible place. Obviously, I’m a huge national park person. We are celebrating America 250 as a family by driving in an RV from Texas up to Montana. I’m going to drive right up the middle. I cannot wait. Just the borders that contain these places from Yosemite to Yellowstone, from Mammoth Cave to the shores of Maine, like I just am overcome. I just think it’s so special. So that’s like a huge part of how I feel about being American. It’s just the actual physical place feels so incredibly special to me. And then I think we talk a lot about our frictionless existence, like our pursuit of ease, and I think that can show up in the ways we think about relationship and identity, and I think so much of the work we do here is to push against that and to say anything worth having, anything worth doing is hard, and it involves friction and difficulty and sadness and grief. And so the presence of all of those difficult emotions and how I feel about being an American is, to me, a feature, not a bug. I have difficult, complicated feelings about everything I love. My husband, my children, this work, my family, being a woman, being a human. To me, it’s like that’s not a problem. That is the reality of feeling connected and called to be a part of something. So all of that difficulty with America, and it is there, always there, in a weird way just makes me love it more. So like a moment to look at that-- that’s why I like birthdays, generally. I’m just a birthday person. That’s another affiliation I like. So a birthday and a moment to just-- especially coming off COVID and these very difficult re-examinations of so many pieces of our history and much like 1976, a difficult moment where people don’t think there’s a lot of promise in front of America; it feels really important and essential to say, “Yeah, but I love it anyway. And yeah, I’m going to keep trying, and I’m going to keep putting my good things in the river, and I’m going to keep looking back at all the people who came before me and see what I can learn from them and acknowledge their sacrifice and work and contributions and say, ‘I’m so honored to be a link in that chain.’” Because I am.

[00:23:19] Beth: I think one of the pieces that makes it precarious to feel patriotic, that’s always been part of the country, is a sense that maybe I’m okay right now, but what if I’m not? It could change in a second. It has changed before. We see how we have made progress and then taken steps backward in so many different ways. I like the opportunity and appreciate the opportunity with this anniversary to consider the people who were here before the Revolutionary War, and to think about those tribal nations that are still here and that still try to negotiate with our government even though our government has screwed those tribal nations over and over again, who still have built this nation and who still meaningfully give to it. I think it’s a good opportunity to look back at the writings of founders wrestling with slavery, who knew from the beginning that institution could lead to civil war and then did, and then to consider how people dealt with that and what they believed was worth dying for as they were building a new nation. Even as we are in the middle of Pride Month, and you sense a lot of fatigue around Pride Month this time because there is that looming sense that are these hard-won rights going to be taken away from us. And even as we’re dealing with the post-Dobbs world in which many of us have daughters with fewer rights than we had when we were their age and you have that sense hanging over like it is a stormy time. And I think that gives me meaning in reexamining this history and considering where we’ve been, and it helps me ask different questions than if I were medicating with America 250 the way that they did during the bicentennial. In some ways it feels important to me to take this anniversary and not just numb out on red, white, and blue, but really go to the history and think about my place in it. You said a link in the chain. Okay. What is that link? What are the things that we are fighting for, and how are we fighting, and what’s the evolution of that fight over time?

[00:25:48] Sarah: Yeah, because I feel like the examination of all of this history always draws me to the deep humanity of the people who came before me. I am not trying to romanticize them. I am not trying to create heroes. I don’t think I am papering over anything or apologizing for anyone when I say think about what was happening in 1776. Do you honestly believe as a human yourself who looks out across the world where there is still great harm and suffering and inequities, and think that these people should have, what, in 1776, cast off, created a whole new form of government, cast off the rule of a king to create something new and to also upend the entire understanding of gender and race at once? Sometimes I wonder when we speak about these people, when we speak about people that came before us at any time, what do we think should have happened? Perfection in an instant? I’m not participating in perfection of an instant. I know that there’s great suffering. My historical experiment is always I think in 250 years they will look back on us and ask the same sort of questions we ask about them. I think it will most likely be around consciousness and animal welfare. I still participate in the industrial farm complex. I still eat meat, even though I can see it. I can squint and see in 250 years what they will think about us. And I just have to grant that grace to myself and to every human that participated in this 250-year history, and every human that will get us hopefully to the next 250 years. I’m not saying they’re perfect. I’m not saying we’re perfect. I am saying that I am grateful and honored to be participating in the journey to more perfect in all things, as a citizen, as a friend, as a podcaster. That’s all I can do. I can just say, “I like being here. I like being in this country with these people. I like trying.” I’m glad that for 250 years we have kept trying. That makes me enormously proud. Even when we get it wrong, even when we mess it up, even when it feels like we’re in the midst of messing it up right now, I want to keep going.

[00:29:14] Beth: I’m interested in the felt existence of 1776 in a lot of ways because I think about how much more comfortable our lives are, and what is the relationship between comfort in life and your commitment to ideas? When you think about the women who started efforts to support the war, who melted down their serving ware for bullets, and who served as nurses and sewed shirts for the soldiers. When you think about them and the fact that they have children dying of typhoid fever, and they’re trying to keep the farms running, and just the daily experience of keeping a fire going consumes so much of your life. They still made space for really big ideas and hosted really philosophical conversations about what the meaning of a nation is and what role government should play and who should get to be at the table for making decisions. And I just look at my life, which is so much easier. I never have to keep a fire going all day. I never have to think about whether my water’s clean to drink. I don’t worry about my children dying of typhoid fever. I just wonder what percentage of my life is devoted to ideals the way that people who came before me devoted their lives to ideals and what does that say? And I just think that tension between comfort and principle is like really fruitful territory to explore.

[00:30:53] Sarah: Yeah, I really liked putting on my costume for 1776 and in the grand scheme of things, there wasn’t a lot to it. More than what I wear every day, but nowhere near what they were actually wearing because it kind of gave me this very physical experience of thinking about that time period. And look, I think the importance of America 250 is because it is a call to envision what are we doing here together? What ideals are we still pursuing? I think that we are desperate. The reason people think our future isn’t bright, that our best years are behind us, is because there is not a vision for that future right now because there is not an articulation of what a thriving American populace will look like in the face of artificial intelligence or falling birth rates or climate change. I think that’s another reason I’m so devoted to this milestone because that’s what you do. You take the moment and think, “Okay, here’s what people sacrificed to get us here. What are we willing to sacrifice to get us to the next 250? What are we trying to pursue together?” And a liberal democracy, full participation, freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly are ideals that are not perfected yet. They are still worth pursuing. And that’s why I value our work so much because more than most, we do get to think about that, and we do get to talk about that. And I guess America 250 to me is this moment to be like, “Join us. Please.” We have to not just have limited edition cinnamon rolls or UFC fights. We have to talk about what are we doing here together, because we have... I don’t know if we’ve lost that ability, but it looks a lot different now. We’re not having town halls like we used to. We are so atomized and maybe we’re listening to a podcast, but we have to take that somewhere. And so many Americans are. They’re running for office. They’re creating organizations. They’re coming together with their neighbors and their family members and their friends. And that is beautiful and worth celebrating. And no flashy cage on the White House lawn can erase that.

[00:33:30] Beth: It is the together to me that is so essential. For another project that I’m working on for our audience eventually, I was looking at the history of salons and the way that women gathered, philosophers, intellectuals in drawing rooms, across the world to discuss big ideas and just thinking about how we’ve been trying to do that over the years. With our members, we have read Habits of the Heart. We’ve read a number of The Federalist Papers. We’ve read the Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America. We’ve been trying to ask these questions for years now in community, right? Together. Okay, where do we come from? What does this mean? Where are we going? And it gives me a lot of confidence in asking these America 250 questions because there is a lot of homework behind the way that I’m searching for that future vision. That has to translate into my own living room for it to feel worthy of the splashy red, white, and blue fireworks moments. And I sense that a lot of people want that now. It is not good enough to have a red, white, and blue Monster energy drink. It is more okay, but I want to sink into the sense that I’m connected to other people here, and that we’re doing something together to leave this thing better than we found it.

[00:35:00] Sarah: Obviously, we have lots of options available in our Substack, but we wanted to share this national initiative that we think is the truest, most beautiful reflection of what we’re talking about when we say celebrate America 250. It’s called America’s Potluck. It is a nationwide--

[00:35:21] Beth: you got me.

[00:35:21] Sarah: I know, right? I don’t even need to tell you anything else, do I?

[00:35:22] Beth: Just the name. That’s all.

[00:35:24] Sarah: A nationwide community-driven initiative encouraging neighborhoods and communities to gather for a shared meal on Sunday, July 5th to mark 250 years of American life together. Their goal is to have 25,000 potlucks. We have the link in the show notes, so you can click it, find out if there’s a potluck near you, host one if there isn’t. I think this is the most beautiful way to answer this complicated milestone with a grounded, integrated, holistic approach to celebrating America 250. I love it so much. Because again, we are not celebrating because everything is perfect. We are celebrating because it isn’t and we want to keep trying together. Beth, The New York Times had this piece about your mom aesthetic. Apparently it is a big deal on TikTok to create content and name your mom aesthetic. So it’s like butter moms, which is like a ‘90s mom situation. Or maybe you’re a cozy mom, and you’re really into matching pajamas and snuggling. The idea is by naming an aesthetic, you give some sort of comfort and consistency and I guess a foundation in this very scary world of parenting

[00:37:03] Beth: I read this and realized a couple of things. My instant reaction was to think, “Dum, dum, dumity-dum. I hate this,” and then I tried to pull back from that and I realized that I had very different aesthetics with my two daughters because my life was very different with the two of them. I think with my older daughter I was, when she was a baby, rushing to work in the mornings, picking her up from the babysitter in the afternoons, always wearing a suit with a yogurt stain somewhere on it. And that wasn’t a performance for anyone, that was just the reality of my life. It was stressed and hectic and pulled in a lot of different directions. It was better with Ellen. I had less of that. I was coming, I think, a little bit more into myself. I was older. I had taken a step back from my career. And then the other thing I realized as I interrogated what do I feel beyond this is so stupid get off my lawn kind of reaction, was that I think part of what bugs me in this, and a lot of the internet mommy content, is that it becomes about one person as the definer of the relationship with the child, right? If you are doing cozy mom, do you draft cozy dad or cozy other mom into the equation? You know what I mean? It feels like you’re the main character now, and the child is an accessory, and then if there’s a partner in the picture, that person also is just an accessory to your plan for the family unit. And I think we’ve woven in and out of a lot of different aesthetics here, or just life patterns because we’ve had a very equal partnership all through all through their growing up.

[00:38:57] Sarah: Counterpoint, doesn’t bother me at all. Here’s why I like it. I was thinking, like, when I was in the mommy blogging world, the battle lines, the identity was either stay-at-home mom or work mom. I wrote so many blog posts about being a stay-at-home mom versus a working mom. So I’m delighted that those are no longer the lines because everybody works in all kinds of different ways, and it’s way more complicated, and that makes me so happy. I like that this is individualized in a way because I think the mom noise can become so loud that any exercise that says, “ You can decide what kind of mom you want to be. You can pick. It doesn’t have to be this perfect standard or this tradwife or crunchy mom or whatever the name.” You can just make up your own. And I think that’s a really positive direction. Because as much as parenting is a team sport, there is something about mothering that is very distinctive and can be lonely and can be physical. A lot of it in the early days takes place in your body, on your body, a part of your body. So I don’t know. I kind of dig it. I think it’s empowering a little bit.

[00:40:30] Beth: That’s an interesting interpretation that has some appeal to me. I bump up against the marriage of my personal desires as expressed through aesthetic. Because that’s what it is, right? It’s more than clothes. When you lean into an aesthetic hard like this, you’re really painting an aspirational vision of your own life, right? This is how I want to feel. This is how I want other people to interpret me. There’s a status component, for sure, as well as a spiritual component, I think. Internally, this is what I want to cultivate in my life. And I think it’s tricky, and this is going to be true whether you’re trying to define an aesthetic or not on TikTok. But there is this tricky dimension of motherhood that is always like how much of me is mother and how much of me is person, and how is my child impacted by that ratio? And I wonder if I were trying to turn my aspirations for my life into content in that particular way, what would the effect on my children and my family dynamic be? I don’t know.

[00:41:46] Sarah: I have a mom aesthetic. I’ve never named it until this exercise. But I’m calling it camel coat core. That’s what I’m calling my aesthetic.

[00:41:56] Beth: Okay. You do love alliteration.

[00:41:59] Sarah: I have said for a long time that I think some of the most positive portrayals of motherhood are in holiday films. So the camel coat core is a callout to Kate McAllister, my favorite mom, the mom I aspire to be, in Home Alone. With, I think, an assist from Sybil Stone in The Family Stone, who also wears a camel house coat. A very rich, beautiful camel house coat for what it’s worth. And I think both of these mothers and the way I envision motherhood and think about motherhood has been they don’t get it all right. She leaves her child at home. Sybil fights with her kids. But there is an aspect of I am creating experiences for you, which I think is definitely a part of my mom aesthetic. Nowhere is that more true during the holidays. There’s always a aspect of the moms in A Christmas Story and Home Alone, all these stories, that there is I’m crafting an experience for you, especially as a young child. Which has definitely been a part of my vision of myself as a mother that I’m set directing here, to a certain extent. At certain times positive and negative consequences of that, of course. But that I’m here, that we’re trying to create this experience as a family together, but that family is at the center of it. I like that these women clearly have strong marriages, that they have careers or had careers, that they’re full and complete people that screw up, but that just really fiercely love their kids while also looking so good in their camel coats. So that’s mine. Camel coat core. I named it. That’s my mom aesthetic.

[00:43:56] Beth: Good for you. I guess the closest thing I have to this is something that came up when I worked with a parenting coach for a little bit because I was really confused by sibling fighting in my house. She had me choose an avatar for who I want to be as a mom from pop culture, and I picked Moana’s grandmother because I love that she’s willing to be sought out for advice, but isn’t trying to dole it out constantly. She gives both her son and her granddaughter room to make mistakes and to feel their feelings and to be mad at each other. But she is there to narrate a little bit when they ask her. And when they don’t ask her, she remains there. She lets her presence be there even when she’s not being called upon and that’s what I’ve always wanted for Jane and Ellen to know that Chad and I will just be here. We’ll be here, and they can always be with us, and we’ll be wishing the best for them and putting our energy around them no matter what’s happening. And I have really tried to draw from this avatar a sense of playfulness and lightness because I can be super serious, and I can use way too many words and I can feel that the stakes of everything are very high. And when I have that sense coming on, I try to like physically emulate Moana’s grandmother, just move more fluidly, laugh a little bit, relax into the moment.

[00:45:25] Sarah: I’m trying to think of a good word for that. Like I’m trying to think. What’s an S word for mothering, caring, parenting? Because you have a surf, a swim. You know what I’m saying? Like a surf mom. I guess it doesn’t have to... I just wanted to be a little...

[00:45:47] Beth: maybe I can just be a Pisces mom. That’s what I am in general.

[00:45:50] Sarah: Pisces mom. Pisces parent, then you’re getting back to the.. Okay, we did it. Okay. Pisces parent, camel coat core. I like it. I think it’s fun. I think it’s fun. I think being able to like zoom out and do a little macro examination around your mothering and your parenting, never a bad thing. Never a bad thing. You can get a little consumed, for sure. But I do think like just an overall direction can be helpful. I cannot wait to hear everybody’s mom aesthetics and your thoughts, of course, on America 250. Please do not forget to join us on Substack at pantsuitpoliticsshow.com to get all of your America 250 treats. Until Friday, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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This framework has, at times, been buried or obscured by the barrage of Trump-related headlines, by the complexities of responding to a pandemic, and by attacks on the foundational components of our democratic republic. But today’s episode shows that it’s still there. We’re both worried about the government (about its slowness, its ineffectiveness, its tendency toward corruption) and the private sector (massive companies concentrating power and wealth in the hands of very few people at the expense of everyone while building tools that they don’t even entirely understand). So, Sarah is attracted to the government as the problem-solver and is with Bernie Sanders. Give the public a 50% stake in AI companies and see where we go from there. I’m more inclined toward transparency and public sentiment. As people know more about AI, they like it less. Let that discontent play out.

Outside of politics, we size up the first 6 months of 2026 by reflecting on our words for the year, which we had to look up (and that probably says it all!).

If you know someone who’s been side-eyeing the SpaceX IPO or wondering how AI ended up in their retirement account, text them this episode and tell them it’s the version where their eyes won’t glaze over. - Beth

Topics Discussed

• The SpaceX IPO and its red flags

• What going public is supposed to mean — and what it means here

• How index funds could put SpaceX in your retirement account whether you choose it or not

• President Trump's June 2 executive order on AI and cybersecurity

• Senator Sanders' proposal for a 50% public stake in AI companies

• The EU's risk-based approach to AI regulation

• Outside of Politics: words of the year, half-time report

Episode Resources

• How OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are doing ahead of their public debuts (CNN)

• The SpaceX IPO, explained (CNBC)

• How Musk’s SpaceX IPO could reach your 401(k) (LA Times)

• The EU AI Act’s risk-based framework (IBM)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:23] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:25] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, SpaceX’s initial public offering is expected to begin trading. It is one of three companies betting big on artificial intelligence and the stock market right now. Now, if those sentences make your eyes roll back in your head, we’re here to help.

[00:00:49] Sarah: Stay with us.

[00:00:50] Beth: We can do this, you guys. We’re going to talk about what it means for AI companies to go public, and really what does it mean for these companies to be accountable to anyone for their actions? And then Outside of Politics, we’re about halfway through 2026 somehow, so we’re going to do a little check-in on the year so far. Sarah asked me how my word was going this year, and I said, “I don’t remember what my word was.” So we’re going to dive into that.

[00:01:14] Sarah: Before we get started, we want to be sure you know about a very special gift Beth has created for families to celebrate America 250. Maybe your family members have seen the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, but do they know why we were, in fact, crossing the Delaware? Do they know that he and his worn-out, hungry, cold... They’re always cold. I’ve been reading books on the Revolutionary War. They are either sweltering or cold. There is no in between. In this particular instance, they were so cold they were ready to give up. They crossed on Christmas night in the snow as a Hail Mary, hoping that a victory against Hessian troops fighting for the British might put some pep in the patriotic step. She has written a short family play to help people of all ages remember and retell the story using props that you have around your house. It’s one of six stories in what we’re calling The Founders Trunk. As you tell these stories, everyone in the family signs a copy of the Declaration of Independence and receives a founder certificate because we’re still writing America’s story together. You can download the stories for free as a premium member of our Substack community. The link is in the show notes.

[00:02:22] Beth: Next up, let’s talk about artificial intelligence and the markets.

[00:02:36] Sarah: Beth, I followed this reporting lightly. I have sensed some red flags. Is that instinct good?

[00:02:43] Beth: It’s a good instinct. It’s a good instinct that you have with the red flags.

[00:02:47] Sarah: Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

[00:02:48] Beth: You know how for a long time the conservative mantra for problems in society has been, “Well, the market will regulate.” That we don’t need the government to regulate, the market will regulate. I myself have advocated for the market as the best regulator of most issues in society.

[00:03:08] Sarah: Okay, where are you at on that now?

[00:03:10] Beth: Well, I’m struggling to believe that we have a real market anymore.

[00:03:15] Sarah: Okay.

[00:03:16] Beth: And the SpaceX IPO in particular is challenging my belief in a real market.

[00:03:23] Sarah: Okay.

[00:03:24] Beth: Because as with so many things, there are increasingly wealthy-- and wealthy is not even the right word anymore

[00:03:33] Sarah: We need another word.

[00:03:35] Beth: We need another word. I’ll just use mega-wealthy for today. There are increasingly mega-wealthy people who think, “You know what? I know it’s usually done this way, but that is not my way.” So why don’t we just start there with SpaceX.

[00:03:48] Sarah: Okay.

[00:03:49] Beth: You said you’ve seen some red flags. What has grabbed your attention so far?

[00:03:53] Sarah: Well, it just feels like there’s a lot of I don’t want to follow this. I don’t want to tell you this part of the IPO. The prospectus doesn’t need this section. Also I’m just going to shove a bunch of businesses together and hope you don’t notice. Am I getting the high points right?

[00:04:11] Beth: You are, but wait, there’s more. So one thing to know is that Elon Musk has used 23 different banks in putting this together.

[00:04:21] Sarah: That’s a red flag.

[00:04:21] Beth: Now, why do you do that? You do that because you want to conflict everybody out of acting in any way that’s hostile to you, right? So that limits the number of independent research and analysis that would usually be out there about this kind of IPO because the banks are all in the deal somewhere. Also, instead of the market setting a price, which is what the market exists to do, Elon has just said it’s $135 per share, take it or leave it.

[00:04:50] Sarah: Okay.

[00:04:50] Beth: I’ve set the valuation. He’s looking for a $1.77 trillion market cap.

[00:04:56] Sarah: Why do we even need the prospectus? Should it just be his picture?

[00:04:59] Beth: I think that’s right. And honestly, if any other company tried this I think most of the world would laugh and move on. And I’m really curious to see what happens here. I think that there is this mythology around Elon Musk now where people just don’t want to bet against him.

[00:05:19] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:05:21] Beth: And he feeds into that mythology. So if you just ask yourself, what is a SpaceX? What is happening here? The prospectus is written like science fiction. It says, “SpaceX’s mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.

[00:05:47] Sarah: Okay. Can we level set here? Just for all of us who aren’t exploring IPOs on a regular basis. A perspective should be like privately this is how our company has been investing, and this is how much money we’ve made. Project that out. This is the plan. This is the data to back up the plan. Correct? Am I wrong about that?

[00:06:13] Beth: This is what it costs us to do our business and this is what we make when we do it, and here’s where we’re going and why we think we can keep growing. Because that’s really what happens when you go public. When you go public, you have added all of these shareholders who now expect growth every single quarter. When you’re operating in private, you can have objectives like understanding the true nature of the universe, and you can say, “We’re going to take a big swing and we’re going to lose on that for quite some time.” But going public means I think I’ve built this thing at a way where it is just going to keep making more money for shareholders. And SpaceX today is not making that much money. There’s a lot of money involved, but the revenue in engine of SpaceX is Starlink, those internet satellites that we’ve talked about in connection with the war in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. That was SpaceX’s only profitable business last year. Those Starlink satellites have a useful life of five years. So you’ve got a really expensive cycle of having to replace equipment here.

[00:07:21] Sarah: I did not know that. Because I do believe in the business model of Starlink. Starlink is huge. Yes. It’s important. I know people who use Starlink. It’s been, like, so made him more influential than I prefer with regards to Ukraine and around the world. If this was a Starlink prospectus, I don’t think I’d get to a trillion market cap, but there would be some there.

[00:07:44] Beth: It is also a controversial business because it adds to a lot of stuff in space and countries around the world get annoyed about that. And while it is adding subscribers, its revenue per subscriber is actually down. So that’s the best part of what’s going on at SpaceX.

[00:08:02] Sarah: The best part is the part where revenue is down.

[00:08:05] Beth: Where revenue per subscriber is down.

[00:08:07] Sarah: Okay, just want to make them know.

[00:08:08] Beth: Okay. And where you know you’ve got expensive replacement costs that are going to be ongoing. It’s not like we built the thing and now the thing just runs.

[00:08:16] Sarah: Right.

[00:08:16] Beth: The thing has a shelf life, for sure. So you have that piece going on. That makes you know that a lot of this trillion-dollar valuation is in the AI side, which is just not making money. The AI side is not making money. And the multi-planetary part is if NASA is any indicator, always going to be we take big swings and sometimes they work, and a lot of times they don’t because this is all experimental.

[00:08:48] Sarah: Well, and to the artificial intelligence side because this is the first IPO, but now we have Anthropic, OpenAI getting closer and closer to filing as well. And to me this is it. The thing is, not all these big dogs are going to rise to the top. So with their filings, we see a similar pattern to me which is, first of all, they’re investing in all these data centers and stuff that don’t have an internal shelf life, right? Like they’re not going to live forever. They’re going to have to be replaced. Now, I think OpenAI and Anthropic have much better proof as far as earning money. They’re still not earning enough, but I think Anthropic’s becoming like the business choice. But they’re not only limited by the data centers and the energy, there’s all this chatter about just computing capacity. And these two companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, are way further down the road than Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence. And this is a market. I think it is a behemoth of a market, but everybody’s not going to survive, right? There are going to be some winners and losers in this AI race, not just between nations, but between companies. And I think we’re all just supposed to trust that because it’s Elon Musk’s name on it, it’s going to be him. Even the stuff that he has been a big winner at, like Tesla, ain’t doing so great. It’s not like he’s still the winner when it comes to electric cars. So I don’t get it. I’m just going to be honest. I don’t get it.

[00:10:19] Beth: He’s going first, and that gives him an opportunity to set the terms of the competition going forward. So in addition to setting the share price as just take it or leave it, this is the share price, he is personally going to retain eighty-five point one percent of shareholder votes. So there is a lot of I want the benefit of being public without the burden of being public here. And he has collaborators in changing the rules. So let’s take Fidelity as an example.

[00:10:50] Sarah: Okay.

[00:10:50] Beth: Fidelity has a longtime rule against putting shares of stock into small retail client portfolios during the IPO because they’re just trying to guard against the hype. Is this thing for real or is it a flash in the pan kind of situation?

[00:11:04] Sarah: Okay.

[00:11:05] Beth: So usually Fidelity would allow IPO investments only for clients who have at least $500,000 in their brokerage accounts. We’re protecting the people who have put their life savings with us, don’t know the market. We want to hedge against the risk of the IPO hype. For SpaceX, they have cut that threshold to $2,000.

[00:11:25] Sarah: Whoa.

[00:11:26] Beth: From $500,000 to $2,000 to get invested here. And the LA Times did a really excellent piece about this that we’ll link in the notes where they said this is just one example of how Wall Street has been moving the investment goalpost, in part because Elon has put everybody in the deal, so they’re all working to make sure that they get a piece of this and that this is as big as possible. And this means that a lot of us are going to end up with SpaceX in our portfolios whether we ask for it or not because managers of stock index funds have to add a stock to their holdings once it’s added to the index that they track. So SpaceX’s fortunes here could massively impact retirement accounts for ordinary people. You can think to yourself, SpaceX IPO, blah, blah, blah, don’t care, but this is reshaping how the market works in general and also will reshape some of our portfolios without our knowledge.

[00:12:24] Sarah: Well, and this is a trend that they’ve been wanting to get their hands on ordinary investors for a long time because it opens up a lot of money. It just opens up a lot. You get your hands on index funds and retirement funds that opens up a lot of money, but it also puts a lot of risk on people who can’t afford that much risk. We have a bunch of our retirement in index funds. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be a part of this, man, but it’s hard to... the index funds have freaked me out for a long time because companies are supposed to run under the direction, and interest of the stockholders. Well, what does it mean when the stockholders or this index fund like so many layers removed from any real person or really... I think that’s why you see the increasing role of activist investors because there is a place for somebody, any kind of real human with a voice to step up and go, “This is not what we want,” and Elon’s run into this six ways to Sundays over at Tesla. So this sort of movement to get their hands into retirement accounts and pensions and funds and it’s very concerning to me, especially when there are so many red flags with this particular IPO

[00:13:33] Beth: That’s why I think it’s worth talking about. You have a sense that the rules are changing for people at the top. When you dig into those rules changing around the stability of markets, which for better and worse we have decided is the grading system for our public policy in so many ways, you just realize that it’s all getting more and more opaque and farther away from accountability. If a company can be public and one guy still has 85% of shareholder votes, what’s happening? If he can set the price like this, what’s happening? Now, OpenAI and Anthropic have done confidential filings, which means that right now they’re just soliciting feedback from regulators. They do not have to show investors all their cards. What cards will they show investors, though? If SpaceX does this really successfully, do we think that OpenAI and Anthropic are going to say, “Never mind, I’m just going to go back to the old way”?

[00:14:37] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:14:38] Beth: I don’t think so. What’s the incentive for any company to go back to the old way if they see that you can access all this new capital and retain this level of control over the thing?

[00:14:47] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:14:49] Beth: That is why I am questioning whether the market can actually regulate here. So if it’s not the market, let’s talk about some other paths to potential accountability for these companies.

[00:14:53] Sarah: Please, let’s do.

[00:14:59] Beth: From the executive branch, we get the sense that they’re still buying the market as the regulator. So the president signed an executive order on June 2nd, where he brags about slashing bureaucratic constraints and refusing to stifle innovation with overly burdensome regulation, and talks about how AI dominance for America is necessary to our security. And then he says, “Hey, guys, would you please show us your new stuff 30 days in advance so we could just chat about it?”

[00:15:43] Sarah: Yeah, not to do anything. If you show us these new models and there’s problems, I don’t know what happens next. Because all they’ve asked politely, self-regulation- I would not even call this just self-regulation. I would barely call this regulation. Just please show us, and we’re not going to say there’s any consequences if you show us something that’s concerning.

[00:16:02] Beth: I think voluntary self-regulation is the best case scenario of this order because running throughout the order is this sense that AI companies will be collaborators and partners with the government as it relates to cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is very important to me, and I can see the positive side of that sort of collaboration, but I also see a very dark side for civil liberties, for information collection, for government interference with the private market, for criminal justice. A long list of horribles parades through my mind as I think about that sort of partnership if that is where we’re headed.

[00:16:47] Sarah: Well, I hope that’s not where we’re headed, and I can’t believe that is where we’re headed when the companies themselves are like, “I don’t think self-regulation’s going to get it done.” OpenAI and Sam Altman have released several statements and policy objectives and ideas about, like, how to do this, and none of them include we’ll just try our best.

[00:17:06] Beth: It’s difficult for me to read those statements and take them at face value though because especially Sam Altman has shifted over time in the way he discusses this, and it seems like he’s surfing public opinion as he does. I think the AI companies know that they are in deep with the public right now. Public sentiment is really turning against them, and especially against the data centers. And so sometimes I read those pleas as “Don’t blame us. Blame your members of Congress who aren’t doing anything. We’re just over here trying to build the best businesses we can to benefit everyone and make life better. If the government’s not doing its job, that’s not on us.”

[00:17:50] Sarah: What are the members of Congress up to, Beth?

[00:17:54] Beth: Well, let’s begin with Senator Sanders, who you will not be surprised to hear has a problem with the bigness of these companies and their control over society and the amount of wealth being concentrated here.

[00:18:06] Sarah:  Hey, you know what? Same, Bernie. Same

[00:18:09] Beth: So Bernie’s proposal is that because these companies have been built on the back of publicly funded research and trained on the creative work of millions of people who didn’t consent to having their creative work fed to these machines--

[00:18:25] Sarah:  Including us.

[00:18:27] Beth: That the public should get a piece. That if these companies go public, then they should pay a one-time tax consisting of 50% of their stock, and that would go into a sovereign wealth fund intended to distribute gains to the public.

[00:18:47] Sarah: I got to be honest, Beth, I like it. I like it. I think it’s a good idea. And I understand that we’ve never done anything like this before, but I think this is a technology unlike any we’ve ever seen, and I think it gets in front of the anything else we try will be too slow as it adapts. And I don’t know, I kind of dig it.

[00:19:06] Beth: I see those points. I do not dig it.

[00:19:10] Sarah: I knew you weren’t going to like it.

[00:19:13] Beth: I’m sorry. I don’t like it. I think that, again, I have real concerns about collaboration between the government and AI companies. I have real distrust that money that went into a sovereign wealth fund would actually make its way back to the public. When we have members of Congress right now talking about how they’re going to cut away at Medicaid fraud to pay for the war, I don’t feel rosy about the possibility that a sovereign wealth fund from AI profit will end up in the hands of individual people. I also think that when the government starts to take stakes in businesses, it just changes industries. I haven’t been supportive of Trump wanting to take a stake in Spirit Airlines. I don’t like the rare earth mining companies conversations that are going on, the chips. I just think that’s beyond the scope of what the federal government exists to do. So while I agree with some of the instincts that led Bernie Sanders to this conclusion feels wrong to me.

[00:20:22] Sarah: Okay. Here’s the thing. I hear your concerns. I get it. I think literally any other industry, I get it. I do. I just think we have to acknowledge this is a different beast entirely. And so previous regulatory frameworks are going to be too slow too clunky I just don’t think they’re going to meet the moment, and I think to the sovereign wealth fund of it all, yeah, we haven’t tried something like that before. I think it would have to be written into legislation in a way that’s real tight. It’s not like we’ve never done anything like this before. Like we have a big fund that pays out. We have some experience with Social Security, like which we invented and which was hard but works pretty damn well, to say “We’re going to put this money in a pot, and we’re going to get it back to Americans.” I believe in us. I think we could do it because I think it’s going to have to be something big and innovative to meet the moment, and so this is the only thing I’ve heard that gets close. I understand there’s state proposals, which I don’t think are going to last because I think the federal government’s going to come in and occupy the field. I understand that the EU is going to do stuff, but they also don’t have a good track record when it comes to trying to regulate technology in a way that actually improves it, gets to the stated goal without just making everything clunky. They’re the reason we have to click that stupid accept cookies thing every damn time. So I don’t know. I think it’s going to have to be big and very different. This is a whiteboard moment. Now, do I trust the likes of the Trump administration in this whiteboard moment? No, but I do trust Bernie Sanders, for what it’s worth.

[00:22:17] Beth: Bernie Sanders as the creator of this legislation, though, would have almost nothing to do with how it’s executed well into the future. If AI is as revolutionary as AI companies tell us it will be, won’t we be making this argument about every industry? Won’t every industry be so different that something totally new and innovative has to happen to meet the moment? And yes, we have some experience with these funds. Alaska’s sovereign wealth fund, I think, is the best example, the most direct example, right? Because Alaska is so abundant in natural resources. Some of the money makes its way back to citizens and actually does. Social Security is a tough example, though, because we took that pot of money and we steal from it constantly to pay for other things to the point that we risk insolvency around Social Security and are having lots of conversations about how to make sure that we have stability around that system. Putting all of that aside, let’s assume we could create a sovereign wealth fund, that the legislation around it could be crafted intelligently and with an eye toward the common person, which I do believe is Senator Sanders’ goal. Let’s assume that all happens well. I don’t know that this gets us to any meaningful regulation of the industry. If the public has a 50% stake, how does the public exercise that stake? What does that mean in terms of how these companies are governed? And doesn’t that make the goal of the government to maximize the profitability of these companies? I don’t see a path here toward constraint, and what I’m looking for is some constraint.

[00:23:56] Sarah: Well, to your first point about it’s going to change every industry, yeah, that’s why it’s different, because it’s going to have its footprint everywhere. That to me is like to the bigness and the innovation and the transformative capacity of it all. I think despite my well-established overall optimism, I think constraint has left the barn. I think that when you have Anthropic coming out with Mythos and saying, “We have built something unlike any of us have ever seen. It improves itself,” you read people’s reporting of using Mythos, and it’s transformative. And then what? Two weeks later, after saying, “It’s so big and powerful, we’re only going to let a couple people use it,” they’re like, “Here you go.” I don’t think constraint is the name of the game. I think the best case scenario is we say we’ve unleashed this thing. It’s going to change everything. At least you’re going to get a cut to help lessen the fallout. Whatever it will be inevitably in your own life, you’re going to get a share of this new future. Because the government was a piece, a part and parcel of so many other transformative in-industries in the past because they were fundamentally a part of the research and the ground building. That’s not the case here. So if we don’t hurry and get a piece of this ground floor, then I’m really worried. I guess there is an example that you can look to as far as the government getting involved and stepping all over it and regulating it and constraining it. But the best example I see is China, and I don’t ever see that version of constraint rolling out in the United States. The level of control you’d have to have over the inner workings of the government to regulate it at this point that we are already at in the process to me, it’s not something I see coming in 2026 or 2028 or 2030

[00:26:21] Beth: I don’t think that we can put the horse back in the barn. I agree with you about that. I do think where government could still step in as a meaningful player is requiring some transparency. Requiring some transparency if you apply to our company and we’re using AI to screen your resumes, it says that in the job posting. If you make a campaign commercial with AI, it says it in the commercial. You have to tell us when these systems are being integrated into things because then I think there can be some kind of market reaction. It is unpopular. This is a wild conversation, right? Because on the one hand, people don’t like this. They don’t want the data centers built in their communities. They don’t want to watch AI slop on their phones. They don’t want their employer forcing them to use AI and feeling like they exist to serve the AI now instead of the AI serving them. There is this massive backlash, and we’re simultaneously saying it’s just inevitable, it’s just going to change everything and there’s nothing we can do about it but take a piece of it. It seems to me that if government cannot keep up with the technology itself, and I think it can’t, and I think it probably shouldn’t be able to. I don’t think we want government to say, “Ooh, there’s an emerging product that I don’t like. Let’s squish it before it gets off the ground.” I don’t think we want that. But now that it’s out here, I think being able to tell us and make it, like just turn all the lights on, is something that government could do. Just put a floodlight on it and then we can push back. We can see what happens. We can still test this against public sentiment.

[00:28:08] Sarah: Well, two things, as I continue to be a Debbie Downer. One, this government? You think this government, this administration? We’re stuck with him till 2028. And so I’m just trying to be realistic about what we’ve got here right now. And even if we get a Democratic Congress in who passes some sort of transparency requirement, I’m skeptical whether he’d sign it. But if he feels like it’s his idea, he will do big crazy things, take 50% of stake in it. He’s already said “Oh, that’s an interesting idea.” I’m just trying to work with what we got because if we wait till he’s gone, it’ll good and truly be too late. And as far as the transparency, the transformative nature of this technology to me, the sort of immediate public facing reality that we’re experiencing is the tip of the iceberg. It’s the very tip of the iceberg. It’s honestly the piece I’m the least worried about. The thing that we’re all heading for is this transformation of entire industries and the job market, and that, if you’re watching AI Slop on Facebook, which some people do-- I know my dad does because he sends them to me all the time-- then at least I don’t care if that’s still going on if you’re getting a cut as entire industries are wiped out. You know what I’m saying? So I don’t trust this administration to even get us there, and that’s not the main thing I’m worried about, I guess is what I would say.

[00:29:41] Beth: Then why would you want the administration to have access to 50% of these companies, this administration? That’s the other thing that confuses me about this. I don’t look at the last 10 years and think, “You know what I want? I want government in more stuff.” That’s just not where I am.

[00:29:55] Sarah: I do. I look at it and say we have stepped away from any attempt to rein in industry, regulate, get a piece. No I get that he’s in charge, but he loves to hand out money. Listen, even if we set this up tomorrow and he gets his greasy little paws on the sovereign wealth fund and wastes it for two years, fine. This shit’s going to make so much money okay, whatever. Then the next person that gets in there can do something better with it.

[00:30:22] Beth: It’s not the money to me, it’s the corruption. More government involvement is an invitation to corruption, period. It’s not that I think, “Oh, I don’t want these companies to be over-regulated.” I’d be delighted for these companies to be over-regulated. I’d be thrilled. The risk to me of having ownership like this is what we see today happening with the collaboration and the closeness of the sort of new oligarchs with this president on steroids. The more he steps in industry by industry, business by business, the more favors he can dole out, the more people whispering in his ear, the more people with access to him to make major military decisions. We saw what happened with Anthropic, right? With Anthropic and the Department of Defense. When these companies dared to say we still think a human should press the button if we’re going to use technology to kill people. If this administration becomes the one that takes a 50% stake in AI or any other, I can’t imagine what the future will be like. Who knows who’ll be in that seat? The opportunities for decisions to be made unethically multiply, and that is where I am most uncomfortable with this proposal

[00:31:50] Sarah: Well, I just feel like that’s a false binary though. There’s already corruption. You still have three dudes making all the calls. To me, this is fun. We’re back into the original Pantsuit Politics framework, which is what are you more concerned with? Are you more concerned with the damage that giant corporations can do, or are you more concerned with the damage that giant federal government can do? With this industry, I’m more concerned with what they can do by themselves.

[00:32:19] Beth: With this proposal, I’m concerned about what a new behemoth that consists of both of those things can do.

[00:32:22] Sarah: I get it. I see that, and I understand it, but at least you have some sort of democratic involvement eventually, even if it’s not under this administ-

[00:32:24] Beth: Do you?

[00:32:26] Sarah: Yeah, even if it’s not him. Yeah, sure, it’s Trump. No, you don’t. Of course, you don’t. No. First of all, we’re not going to get this set up tomorrow, but even if it’s a year of his influence or whatever. And let’s just cross our fingers we get a Democratic Congress who has to actually pass this legislation that’s worth a damn. That’d be fun if we got the Democratic Congress in the midterms, and when we’re passing the sovereign wealth legislation, it actually has some damn teeth to it and doesn’t just hand a blank check to the executive branch. That’d be fun. Even if that’s not true, and he gets his hands in it, it’s not him forever. Then you have a federal government involved somehow because they’re not involved at all now. I would like some sort of democratically involved institution and not just Dario, Sam, and Elon.

[00:33:22] Beth: I just am struggling to picture what that involvement actually looks like. The government is involved in those companies today. It’s an enormous customer of them. What kind of seat at the table would be afforded by a 50% stake in the stock? I don’t know the answer to that.

[00:33:43] Sarah: Well, look at the Anthropic example. Yeah, they pitched a fit, but guess who still has the contracts? Anthropic. So as customers, the power is in pitching a fit for the media? Nothing freaking changed. As far as I can tell from the reporting, I don’t think we know everything yet. It’s not like anybody really moved.

[00:34:03] Beth: That is the market working, right? That is the truth because the Anthropic product is the best product. Anthropic won the competition by making the best product, and so the government as the customer reacts to that. They could still change their minds, but they’re not going to because there’s not a better product right now.

[00:34:21] Sarah: Yeah, but I hate that. I hate that the government is just stuck as a client. That makes me deeply uncomfortable. The government should not just be a client and a piece of the pie of the marketplace.

[00:34:32] Beth: Even when Anthropic is acting more ethically than the government in this scenario?

[00:34:39] Sarah: Yeah, for now. But we have no power to say what they’re going to do moving forward. I don’t trust any real marketplace right now. Look at the conversation we had in the IPO.

[00:34:49] Beth: Agreed. My answer is just not, “Well, let’s just try something new that joins those forces even more, joins these incredibly for powerful forces even more.” Because I don’t see where that gets us to more... I see where that gets us to more democratic sharing of the wealth that could be created, but that’s all I see. That’s as far as it goes for me.

[00:35:09] Sarah: That’s all they’re saying. I don’t think Bernie is saying, “This is the regulatory answer, end of story.” I have not heard that argument from him. I have heard him say “Right now, we want a cut of the wealth, and then maybe we can get to the regulatory part.” I don’t think the 50% ownership is the regulatory answer, for what it’s worth. I think there needs to be much more of that. But I think that it becomes a more interesting question. It becomes more interesting policy examination when the American people have a share. Then you don’t get just sloppy... Some of these state proposals are sloppy, man. They’re just red meat for a populace that’s mad at AI. I don’t want that either. I don’t want that regulatory answer either. So when we’ve got a cut, I wonder how that changes the regulatory examination of what policies really get to the democratic wisdom of the populace concerns without getting populist in a way that’s just squelching the industry.

[00:36:10] Beth: It’s just wild because that is creating a conflict in any other scenario as we think about how you regulate something, who’s independent-minded enough to  regulate something..

[00:36:20] Sarah: But this isn’t every other scenario. This is the government, right? We’re not just a stockholder. This is a totally different beast. So it’s not the sort of regular conflict because it’s not regular. It’s the government holding half of the piece. So, to me, that’s very different.

[00:36:33] Beth: Well, you have poo-poohed the EU, but I do want to take a second and talk about their regulatory framework because I think it’s interesting. I don’t think it’s the answer for us, but I do want people to know about it because I think the way they assess regulation for AI based on risk levels is a useful starting place. So the EU’s framework first says, “What poses an unacceptable level of risk?” So we don’t want AI systems manipulating people into making harmful choices. We have conversations happening about that in court right now, right? When has a system affirmed your choice to shoot yourself or someone else? That’s a risk category. The EU also puts into that category emotion recognition systems at work and in educational institutions, which was really interesting to me because we talked about that in future problem solving this year. What would it look like if at school your face were being scanned constantly for signs that you were in some kind of distress? And then they have different standards for what they consider high-risk uses of AI, and that’s where hiring processes come in, certain medical devices, in judicial systems, in infrastructure management. But they target the level of oversight and the rules and restrictions based on those tiers of risk, and I really like that.

[00:37:52] Sarah: I think this is all very interesting. I also think it is almost in its own category because this is all the way at the other end. They have no artificial industry in the EU to speak of. They don’t have any real successful companies or seat at the table. And so from talking about us having a huge seat at the table and 50% shared, now you’re talking about a regulatory framework where they’re just trying to watch the consequences of other global powerhouse and their industries playing out within their borders. So I get it, but it’s a totally different conversation.

[00:38:30] Beth: Well, and a question that I have is if we go with the vision that you support, does it stay that way? Do you cement these companies as the only players in the global game if the US government has a 50% stake? And is the world better off or worse off if there are more companies in this competition?

[00:38:53] Sarah: Well, you can look at the EU as an example of this. You can look at parts of the United States as an example of this with the car industry. The government gets involved at differing levels depending on whether you’re talking about Germany or Michigan, and it squelches the market. I’ve said it before, I want one of those damn Chinese electric cars. And so I think that’s something to absolutely to consider. If the government’s getting involved in a way that puts its hand on the scale as far as competition, it’s probably why the companies themselves are, like, not setting their hair on fire at the mere idea of this proposal. But it’s like I just kind of feel like, guys, we’re going to have to be up for the challenge. We’re going to have to talk. Okay, well, let’s talk about that. I’m sure there’s a way or at least an idea or a proposal to think through that, to get at that issue. I am excited by Bernie’s proposal because I feel like it’s big enough and innovative enough to meet the moment, and we are going to have that. The old ways we got at railroads or electricity or even the internet, freaking Section 230’s out there still causing problems. Ain’t going to get it done. Not going to get it done.

[00:39:56] Beth: Yeah, I struggle a little bit with characterizing it as innovative because governments taking large pieces of critical industries is an old idea. I’m not sure how this moves the needle for us forward. To your point about the companies not setting their hair on fire, I think they like this as an opening volley so they can come back and go, “Oh, good idea. How about 5% or 4% or 3%?” And what would that mean? Because I think that’s where Trump ends up, right? He’s happy to take a percentage, but he wants it to be a small enough percentage that the oligarchs are still happy with him. And then what? Does that accomplish the goals that you are looking to accomplish through the Sanders proposal or not?

[00:40:39] Sarah: Yeah. I think that’s where the conversation will go next, and it will be interesting to see, particularly in the face of more recent political realities like him saying, “I love inflation” or the price of things going up, if this populous solution in the face of all this opposition will become more appealing to both sides of the aisle.

[00:41:15] Beth: It’s time to talk about things Outside of Politics because we are about halfway through the year and you and I were having a discussion about that. And I said that if I could come up with a characterization of 2026 so far it would be not what I expected or planned for. That’s just how the year’s been going.

[00:41:31] Sarah: Would you like to be reminded of your word of the year?

[00:41:33] Beth: I wouldn’t.

[00:41:34] Sarah: It was swim.

[00:41:37] Beth: Okay. That was a good choice. That was a fine choice. That is what I feel like I’m trying to do.

[00:41:44] Sarah: Okay. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

[00:41:47] Beth: Did I create this reality with that word?  I’m thinking about that

[00:41:52] Sarah: You said, “ I have experienced a lot of what I would describe as currents. And I think that’s probably going to continue to be true.”

[00:41:59] Beth: Well, I was right. Good job December Beth.

[00:42:04] Sarah: Okay. Mine is hilarious considering what we just talked about and considering... okay, I could go either way on this. My word was analog. Do you remember?

[00:42:17] Beth: Oh, the universe has such a sense of humor.

[00:42:20] Sarah: It does. Well, okay, so at first I was like that’s hilarious, we just did a show on artificial intelligence. I’m using more and more AI in my life, but in fairness, I also just opened a bookstore with actual books. So I feel like that could also be a real argument for analog. So there we go. I’m still doing it.

[00:42:41] Beth: You’re putting some complexity around it, but it’s--

[00:42:44] Sarah: I have not been using my record player as I’d planned to do. Now, I do listen to the radio in the car, which I feel like counts as analog.

[00:42:51] Beth: Is it satellite radio?

[00:42:52] Sarah: No. I hate satellite radio for the record.

[00:42:55] Beth: Are there any other places where you think, “Okay, this is a distinctly analog choice that I’m making even as my digital use increases”

[00:43:03] Sarah: I feel like it’s a little analog, my summer vacation, that we’re taking a road trip in an RV. Doesn’t that feel analog?

[00:43:10] Beth: Yeah.

[00:43:10] Sarah: Like old school?

[00:43:12] Beth: Yeah, I like that.

[00:43:13] Sarah: Okay. That’s all I got.

[00:43:15] Beth: I’m trying to think of what it would mean to recommit to these words. So I do feel like I am swimming. I also feel like I would like to take a moment where you just float for a second. That might help me swim again. That’s coming in the summer. We’ve planned some break time, and hopefully that’s part of it.

[00:43:33] Sarah: I really feel like I need to do the tech Shabbat. I’ve gotten really good about, as far as stepping away from the tech, I’ve gotten really good. The most successful sort of practice is I brick my phone from-- I had to change the dates because I’m sleeping later in the summer. I brick my phone from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM, so when I’m laying in bed, I can’t do bullshit on my phone. That’s the most successful thing. I still go black and white, and I still do some other stuff, but I need a more sustained chunk when I’m going analog, a more sustained chunk of time, and that’s really hard. I am becoming more dependent on the tools, but I feel like also I’m not as mad about that. It’s not a distraction. It is a very helpful tool, so much of what I do on my phone now. I’m not scrolling. It really helps me get things done, so I don’t know. It’s tough.

[00:44:26] Beth: It is tough.

[00:44:27] Sarah: It’s hard out here. It’s so hard we forgot our words.

[00:44:31] Beth: It’s really something. Maybe what I need to remember about my word is just a release of control. When you’re swimming, you just go with what the water is. So 2026 can continue to be not what I expected, and I’m sure that will have some beautiful dimensions and some difficult ones, and that’s okay.

[00:44:47] Sarah: Okay. I’ll struggle with that as an Enneagram one, But I’m trying to let you inspire me.

[00:44:53] Beth: We would love to hear from you how your 2026 is going. We started this conversation in the Substack chat, and it has been very fascinating so far, so please continue there. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. We will be back with you next Tuesday with another new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Between now and then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. It exists because of our Substack subscribers. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

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This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

• Unemployment for recent college grads sits at ~5.7% — elevated, with an underemployment rate of 41.5%.

• More than 40% of employed recent grads are working jobs that don’t require a college degree — the highest share since 2020.

• The economy has added an average of only 68,000 jobs per month so far in 2026, compared to 186,000 in 2024.

• Job openings dropped to 6.5 million at the end of 2025 — the lowest since September 2020.

There are a lot of people of all ages navigating this increasingly unstable job market. We try very hard here at Pantsuit Politics to acknowledge tough situations without giving in to the gloom and doom. So, today, instead of trying to explain a job market no one understands, we brought on Kim Miller to talk about how to navigate it.

PLUS, I have a very, very exciting announcement at the end of the show! -Sarah

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Topics Discussed

• Why the job market feels so chaotic right now: AI, economic uncertainty, mass layoffs, and even retirees re-entering the workforce
• Negotiation as the skill nobody teaches you — and why it matters more than ever
• Building relationships instead of "networking," and graduating with at least one good mentor
• Getting work experience before you graduate, paid or unpaid
• How to handle a job offer: asking for 48 hours and negotiating beyond base salary
• Outside of Politics: Sarah opens Meander Bookshop in Paducah

Episode Resources

• Etre Empowerment Consulting with Kim Miller — use code PANTSUIT for 15% off any service

• Meander Bookshop

• Meander on Bookshop.org

• Meander Bookshop on Instagram

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:02] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:19] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Last week, we asked in our Substack chat, “What is everyone struggling with?” And we got a resounding answer: the job market. Parents of recent college graduates, tech sector workers, people changing careers, we heard it all. And as luck would have it, we had today’s guest already scheduled to come here and talk through all of this. Kim Miller taught both Beth and I at Transylvania University, but in recent decades, she has developed an expertise in job negotiations. She has two young adults herself navigating job searches and has helped countless people and students find jobs, and she’s here to talk to me today about all of that. Outside of politics, Beth’s going to come back because I have a very exciting announcement to share with all of you.

[00:01:07] Beth: I cannot be part of the Kim Miller conversation because I’m driving my daughter to camp, but I do want to say that Kim Miller taught me about African burial art in a class in college, and I think about that class at least once a month, and have for 20 years. So I think she will be a wonderful person to discuss this with you. Thank you, Kim. Before she starts, I want to tell you about another facet, another dimension of our America 250 celebrations here at Pantsuit Politics. As I was working on the murder mystery party that we’ve been telling you about, I kept thinking about younger kids. It’s a sore spot around here that not all of the kids get to be part of the murder mysteries. But it’s just a certain level of maturity required for that kind of party.

[00:01:48] Sarah: It’s Murder. Murder’s in the title.

[00:01:50] Beth: Correct. America 250 is for everybody, and so I started working on something that I ended up calling the Founders Trunk, and the idea is that there are six stories that are interesting parts of America’s founding for the entire family to explore through living room plays. So I’ve suggested that you grab some wooden spoons to be oars to cross the Delaware. Just simple things that you have around the house to tell these stories. I’ve also tried to put in kid-friendly language where these stories are hard stories, where they’re contradictory, where they don’t include everybody. I start from the very beginning by telling you that the people coming from Europe were not the only people sharing this land. So it’s not heavy-handed or overwrought in any way. I hope that it gives you lots of interesting things to talk about in your house, and have lots of fun. And by the end, everybody gets a certificate that says they’re a founder, because we are all making America a more perfect union together. So the Founders Trunk is available to all of our premium members, along with the Murder Mystery, along with Reimagining Citizenship. We hope you’ll come be part of it.

[00:02:58] Sarah: Yeah. Come join us on Substack. All right. Up next, Kim Miller. Kim Miller, welcome to Pantsuit Politics. Guys, I was so chill in the intro. I was like, “Kim taught Beth and I at Transylvania.” That is not a full and accurate representation of the relationship I have with Kim. She was probably one of the most influential professors I had. She led the women’s studies department at Transy at the time, and changed my life in so many ways, including but not limited to she had her son, Gabe, while I was a student and she set me down the path to natural birth and a version of motherhood that I have-- I’m getting a little verklempt-- tried to institute in my own life. So she’s very important to me and I’m so happy that she’s here. Welcome.

[00:03:57] Kim Miller: Thank you, Sarah. It’s an honor to be here. I have memories of teaching you, or your class when I was nine months pregnant with a massive belly that hit the chalkboard before I did. And in fact, you were the one who told me “Your belly is full of chalk.”

[00:04:14] Sarah: That’s funny. Okay, so I’m so happy you’re here today.

[00:04:21] Kim Miller: Thank you.

[00:04:22] Sarah: We had a lot of people in the chat when we just asked generally about what was on people’s minds a few weeks ago say at the job market. So let’s start real high level. Because the reporting is insane and people’s experiences are very intense, and I know that you spend a lot of time in conversation with particularly young people looking at the job market. So what is your perspective on the weirdness right now going on in the job market?

[00:04:47] Kim Miller: Yes. So I do spend a lot of time talking to young people and their parents about careers and jobs, and there is a heightened level of confusion and panic about that for young people, but also including you. I have a lot of relationships with beloved alumni. And over the past couple years I’ve had a lot more of them coming back and wanting advice on either career changing or they’ve lost their jobs and what do they do next. So there’s definitely an increase in anxiety and confusion about that. And I want to say that it’s a really complicated moment to be a young person or to be the parent or a guardian of a young person. And I think that for a lot of people we just feel like we don’t know what to do. And so I would love to talk about the big picture, but also I do think that there are, like, actionable steps that people can do, young people but also old people like myself and parents. And I think that the support that parents and guardians are giving to young people right now needs to be a little bit different than it was in the past.

[00:05:57] Sarah: That’s interesting. Yeah. So what do you think is the weirdness going on? You’ll read AI’s taking all the entry level jobs. And then you’ll read, “No, they’re just using AI as an excuse to shift things around.” Or you’ll read, “No, this is about return to work and the work from home shift from COVID is going back to the office and that’s affecting entry level positions.” I feel like every day there’s a different story.

[00:06:17] Kim Miller: Yeah. So to be sure, so stepping back, so the headlines are scary. The advice is confusing and seems at times to be very contradictory. That’s why I think it helps to like talk. One of the things that I’m going to be pressing on the whole time is just having conversations with humans, like talking to people about their experiences. If you know somebody who was successful in getting a job, have a conversation with them. So part of this is that the advice is confusing, and we have to be careful about who we’re listening to or what we’re listening to if it’s not a human voice. And the job market is for sure changing. Confusion about AI. and one thing I will say about AI is that we do not yet know how AI is going to impact jobs. So there’s no clear advice or answer on that, but lots of doom and gloom headlines. So I just pulled out some of the language of some recent media coverage about jobs because I think this speaks to why we are reacting the way that we are. Here’s some language: The bleak job market. The grimmest job market in years. Job market panic. The Atlantic had an article, The Entry Level Job Market Is Breaking Down. So first of all even if you’re not looking for a job, that just sounds scary, right? And then I want to say that I think that this picture of uncertainty is intersecting with other big areas of uncertainty that we are also not used to. So one of those areas is political uncertainty. I do not need to tell you or your listeners about that.

[00:07:53] Sarah: Yeah, we’re well-versed on that here.

[00:07:54] Kim Miller: So there’s that. And then there’s also been mass layoffs across other sectors that were previously considered to be stable. Federal workers, look at all of the thousands of federal employees. Even if you look at the national parks alone, those were a lot of entry level jobs. Like that is not being part of this conversation, all of these layoffs. So federal workers, mass layoffs across higher ed, which is unprecedented in this country, mass layoffs across media, Washington Post journalists, even Stephen Colbert lost his job.

[00:08:33] Sarah: Yeah, and the tech sector. They’re doing big layoffs. And so that puts more people into the job market. You read that a lot. Those entry level jobs are highly competitive. Even we had parents in the chat talking about their teenagers couldn’t find summer jobs because even these low income, entry level jobs are getting taken by maybe higher level people that have been a part of these layoffs.

[00:08:54] Kim Miller: Yes, and not just that, but this wasn’t on my little list, but people who are retired are needing to come back. So I will confess that I get the magazine of the AARP sent to my house. And I will tell you that the most recent issue of the AARP magazine was about hourly summer jobs that retired people can pursue in order to boost their [crosstalk] and they’re all the summer jobs that the young people would also be going after. So think about those pressures, and then you have economic instability, which is causing employers to be a little bit gun-shy. Definitely risk-averse. So places that especially like in industries that would have been hiring previously are maybe putting a pause in it, or waiting. That is definitely a factor. And then of course there’s AI, and of course AI is a factor, even if it’s in creating uncertainty.

[00:09:33] Sarah: I hear a lot about AI in the job search process itself.

[00:09:54] Kim Miller: Yes. So the AI is completely I want to say wrecking the job search process itself. It is having a huge impact on the process of job seeking. Now, I do want to say that economists do not think that the struggles that young graduates, like young college grads who are trying to find entry level work, they do not think that those struggles are currently being caused by AI, but are more likely to be caused by sort of economic uncertainty. It’s about sort of a knee-jerk reaction to just blame AI for all of this, but big picture, there are a lot of different vectors that are impacting.

[00:10:35] Sarah: Yeah. There’s just a lot of moving parts here, and I think that’s what everybody’s experiencing. Everybody knows. Even the job report numbers, there’s like unemployment’s rising, but so are the job openings. It’s very confusing numbers and everybody knows something weird is going on. So this is where your skill set becomes very important. How did you get into advising on negotiation skills? How did you develop this skill that now you’ve turned into workshops and consulting and everything?

[00:11:07] Kim Miller: Yeah. So I like to say negotiation is the most important skill that nobody teaches you. And I was really lucky when I was in graduate school that somebody had a conversation with me about it. It’s not really something that is typically taught in a college classroom. Career services sometimes. Somebody in career services might advise a student or a young person to negotiate, but that’s very different from learning it as a skill, and it is something that can be learned as a skill. It’s critical to people’s economic futures. And also, when I talk or teach about it, I talk about it from a perspective of self-advocacy. Doing something where you are standing up for yourself in the workplace. You can think about negotiation as a conflict, but when I’m talking advising students or I even advise peers about how to negotiate. It’s really problem-solving. If you give me a job offer, you want to hire me, I want to say yes to the job, but we both have to come to a different kind of understanding in order to solve that problem, right? So it doesn’t have to be a source of conflict. It can be problem-solving. It can be a way of relationship building with your future employer. And that’s how it was presented to me when I was in grad school, and I just wound up being lucky to have a group of advisors and faculty who sat me down when I got my first offer, which was from Transy and who insisted that I negotiate. And I have to say one of the reasons why I do this, why I talk about this now, is because if you think about what are all of the things that you wish somebody had told you or taught you about, or told you to do, advice that they would give you when you were younger, this is a thing that I see people missing. So I’ll have alumni come back and say things like, “I wish I had known that I could have done that,” or peers who are other professors at other institutions who say, “I never did that, and if I had negotiated 30 years ago, I’d be able to retire on time.” And so I just think it’s something that falls through the cracks, but it’s a skill, and anybody can learn it and do it. And when I look in my classroom and see all of these promising, young faces and students who are ready to go out and find their purpose and their roles in the world, it’s a skill that I want to empower them with. I started doing it at Transy informally in classrooms, in office hours, and then it developed into really a consulting practice that I do.

[00:13:37] Sarah: I love that. Okay, so let’s go back, though, because I know people are like, yeah, negotiation, I need an offer before I can negotiate it. So when you’re advising young people right now in this super weird job market, or just anyone, what do you tell people about getting the offer to begin with, like navigating applying, navigating finding job listings, all of that part of the process?

[00:14:00] Kim Miller: So one of the things that is new that I’m saying to students and to parents now, and this includes parents of high school students because everything is being planned for earlier now. Parents of students who are younger are thinking about what’s going to happen to their kiddo when they graduate from college, as opposed to just, “Where should I send them and how will they get in?” But I do think that for college-age students and their parents, thinking about employability cannot be left until the last semester. And actually, that is different advice. In the past, I had this mindset of let’s teach them the skills, but also college is such a beautiful, important time for them to explore their social lives, to find out who they are, to figure out who they want to be in the world, maybe to do a semester somewhere else. And so I was holding back a little bit from really talking about thinking about employment, but I think we need to do that earlier now. So you should not wait until the last semester to start thinking about employability.

[00:15:04] Sarah: That’s probably good advice for anybody. If the job market is weird and you’re thinking about changing careers or you’ve gotten laid off, instead of just presenting yourself think about what part of my skillset, maybe not my exact job title says that I have employability in this particular moment or in this particular sector.

[00:15:24] Kim Miller: And so a lot of that is about how do we prepare for uncertainty, right? And so, again, we’re surrounded by uncertainty in all of these realms. We don’t know what the future holds politically. We don’t know what the future holds economically. We don’t know what the future holds in terms of AI and jobs. But there are still things that we can do now in this moment. And when I was a young professor, one of the best pieces of advice that a mentor gave me was, “Kim, you don’t know what the future possibility will be for you, but do whatever you can to make yourself ready for when it comes.” And I think that’s great advice for people of any age. If you’re want to change your career, but you’re not quite sure what direction you want to go in or what might be available for you, you can focus in the here and now on what kinds of skills you can develop, what kind of experience you can get, what kind of people you might need to form relationships with, to set yourself up so that when the interview comes, when the job ad appears, when the phone call comes to offer you the job, that you are ready at that moment.

[00:16:32] Sarah: I think all the time about Cal Newport’s piece he did right before he wrote his book. He was like, “Follow your passion is dumb advice. Build the skills.” Steve Jobs didn’t follow his passion. He built skills that were then applicable. And I tell my own kids that. I’m like, “How exactly was I supposed to follow my passion as a podcaster in 1999 when I started college when podcasting did not exist?” So I think seeing it as like a complex process where you’re building a particular set of skills over time. I think the paradox with the employability conversation is it’s this combination of you want to build skills for a job, but you don’t want to get locked in on the jobs so that you don’t present yourself as a person with skills. How do you balance that combination of, yeah, you want to be employable, you want to think about the careers and the jobs, but you also want to keep this sort of integrated big picture of yourself as a human inside this process?

[00:17:36] Kim Miller: I think that part of it is that, again, we don’t know what the future or the future of work will look like, but we do know that we can help young people prepare for change, right? We can help them prepare; we can help them develop resilience. We can help them prepare for a nuanced professional life. So pulling on what you said earlier I don’t think it serves young people at this moment to prepare them for a specific role or to prepare them for a specific job. Students need to be prepared for work, but not necessarily to be prepared for one. I think the future of work will need people who are good at solving problems, are good at collaborating. Sometimes we call these soft skills. I don’t like that they’re called soft skills because I actually think they’re really hard. And I think that at the moment that we’re in now, post-COVID, still close enough to COVID, with all of our work mediated by devices, the professor-student relationship has changed in many ways since you and I were in the classroom together. It’s mediated heavily through software. When you and I were together at Transy, students didn’t come to classes with their laptops and iPhones. You would’ve walked in and sat down and started talking to people. Now you walk in, and this is what [ crosstalk]. So I think we really need to push back, not necessarily on technology, but we need to help young people develop the kinds of, again, they’re called soft skills, but this is what employers are saying that they need and that they want. And it seems to be the direction to go in if we want to help young people be able to have the ability to pivot between jobs and careers in the future. So we want them to be able to evolve, to be adaptable, and a lot of that comes through the kinds of experiences and skills that you get, especially if you’re in a small college setting, talking to people.

[00:19:27] Sarah: With the dreaded word networking, which I think everybody kind of side-eyes. But that makes sense to me that people are struggling because if your experience is I think you nailed it with the mediated through software, and then you want the job search to just be mediated through software. Yeah. I’ll apply through Indeed, or I’ll apply through the internet. You watch these news items where somebody’s applied 100 times, and I’m like I’ve never gotten a job from cold applying like that. It’s always through relationships. Yeah. I tell people all the time a couple of the jobs I got in DC early, and this is a notoriously hard job market, the job I got at Hillary Clinton’s campaign was through other student who had a great network. And then the first job I got for Congress because one of my fellow classmates at Transy was an intern. You don’t necessarily have to know the boss. Just knowing anyone, even your peers within the organization, just somebody to get can be like, “This person’s not crazy,” goes a long way.

[00:20:23] Kim Miller: Yeah. I’m so glad you said peers because I think that and a lot of people don’t like the networking word. And so you use the word that I use which is relationships, right? When I present it this way, that’s what it is. It’s really about building relationships with people because your peer is going to reach out to you to tell you about a job opportunity, not because they’re in your like network, but because they care about you, or because they know what you’re looking for and then they hear about this opportunity and they think, “Oh, I know Sarah told me she’s looking for something like that.” And so part of the purpose of relationship building is also so people know what to look for you. And so that people care about you. I would say the two most important things that I would advise young people to cultivate when they’re in college or after or before, aside from learning how to negotiate, is cultivate your relationship building and find that among your peers, but also among your faculty and staff, and to have the goal of graduating from college with at least one really good mentor.

[00:21:33] Sarah: Yeah. That’s good.

[00:21:34] Kim Miller: Now that might seem obvious, especially because you went to a place where faculty really engage a lot with students and it’s part of the culture, right? But I recently saw this statistic that nearly half of graduating students now say that they do not have a faculty or staff mentor and they want one. And so students or young people might think, “Oh, a faculty member will reach out to me” but really it’s the young person who often needs to take the initiative. Show up for office hours. If you have a coach, that kind of develops a little bit naturally. Identify someone on campus who is a grown-up who will know you.

[00:22:12] Sarah: Yeah. And again, this is applicable even if you’re not a student.

[00:22:15] Kim Miller: Totally.

[00:22:15] Sarah: Find someone in the situation. This is why I always tell my boys as they read this stuff and they get freaked out, especially Griffin as he’s about to apply to college. I’m like, “Look, I can’t tell you what the job market’s going to be like when you graduate, but I can tell you if you move back to Paducah, I can get you a job.” That’s all I can promise. Absolutely. I know enough people. The town knows you. Your network here is good and strong, and we will figure it out. But I have a lot of empathy for people who are going into a big city and don’t know anybody or is trying to enter an industry without a lot of connections. I think that has to be exceedingly difficult.

[00:22:48] Kim Miller: Yeah. And especially because, again, even our work is so mediated with people doing remote jobs. So that’s one thing. And then the second thing is tied to relationship building or networking, and this is for young people. Get work experience before you graduate. So and I was just reading this study that was done with thousands of employers who were talking about early career work, but specifically like recent college grads, and they said that the number one factor that they are looking for in applicants is some kind of work experience while in college. And now I want to say that this can also sound scary, right? Because college is many things. Students are very busy. They have very fast-paced and fragmented lives. They’re doing their academic work, they’re meeting new friends, maybe they’re on a team, maybe they don’t have time for a job. So I want to say the job does not have to be paid. You can do volunteer work. You can do it one day a week. You don’t have to go overboard and make your life miserable by working while you’re doing all of these other commitments and responsibilities. But getting experience that somebody can write about in like a letter of recommendation. College campuses are amazing places to get work experience. I’ve had former students who worked in the office of the president. And if you think about all of the skills that you get, even like exposure to confidential information, discretion, so this kind of experience. I have students who have great careers in development and fundraising now, and they had a work study job in the advancement office when they were in college. So I think maybe young people don’t really realize how much this counts. Your future employer is not thinking about that as “Oh, that little campus job.” They are thinking about it as work experience that you have now on your resume. And so the work experience that you’re getting leads to relationships. So again, shifting back to maybe older people who are looking for a new job or who got laid off from their job, you can also get experience as a grownup by volunteering for an organization, by serving on a board.

[00:25:09] Sarah: Yeah, that’s true. People forget that it doesn’t matter as long as you’re showing up and being a committed volunteer or just a person who’s not flaking goes a long way these days, I think.

[00:25:22] Kim Miller: It really does. And you’re part of a new network and you’re part of a new community. I was talking to a client recently and made the comment that you have your own network. You’re like a spider with like your own web. And then as soon as you talk to one other person, you become part of their web. And it really it is truly the best thing that you can do. I work with a lot of young people who are getting jobs. I am seeing many young people who are new college grads who are getting jobs, and I think it’s important for us to tell those stories. I’ll know people who are struggling with their jobs or who have been laid off from their jobs or who are miserable with their jobs, but let’s share the success stories as well. Yeah. And all of the success stories that I could share with you, they all have those two things. They all got experience while they were in college, and if they couldn’t find a job after college, they volunteered or they did an unpaid internship, and they got that experience so that it could lead to a job, and they built relationships. And you have to cultivate those relationships.

[00:26:28] Sarah: Like you can’t just show up at an unpaid internship and think I’m going to get a job via Hannah Horvath on the first episode of Girls.

[00:26:34] Kim Miller: Exactly. And that’s also something to learn. Like, how do you cultivate a relationship? When you graduate from college it might feel weird to write to your professor a year later to share information with them. We love that. We love it when you reach out to us and let us know that you valued your time in our class and you would like a little bit of help. Part of our job is to help you long after you have graduated and left our classroom. And so I think that’s also a message that doesn’t get heard, or people think like why would I email my professor? But maintain that relationship because when I know what my alumni are looking for, I can help them.

[00:27:14] Sarah: And I think that’s true, like you said, with the spider and the web. People want to help.

[00:27:18] Kim Miller: Yeah. People want to help and it’s a hard time.

[00:27:35] Sarah: Okay, so let’s say you’ve made it through the process and now you have an offer. What are your top three negotiation either mistakes people make or things you want people to focus on when it comes to negotiating that job offer itself?

[00:27:52] Kim Miller: Okay. The first thing I want to say is I want to underscore again, like, how important negotiation is in this cultural, economic moment because imagine you are, like, a 20-- So this is a real person, a real young man who I was just working with. A 24-year-old who had been unemployed for a year, has a great college degree, got a job right out of college, but it was a one-year role, and then was, like, a dry spell. Applied for jobs every day. Applying. So imagine you’re this person. Then he gets a job. You go through interviews, and also the interviewing process for entry-level people now seems to be tougher. More layers, more people. I think that Zoom plays a role in this because it’s easier for employers to knock off a few Zoom interviews. So, anyway, so he goes through four rounds of interviews and then he gets the job. And if you can imagine, in that moment what do you want to do?

[00:28:55] Sarah: You just want to go, “Yes.”

[00:28:56] Kim Miller: You just want to say, “Yes.” You want to be done with this. You’re so relieved, and you’re so happy. You want to tell your friends. And so the number one piece of advice I would say when you get that call is to say, “Thank you so much.” Be honest and be your true self. “I am so excited about this. I am so happy that you have called. I’m so happy to receive the offer. I would love 48 hours to consider the offer. Is it okay if I call you back in two days?”

[00:29:30] Sarah: That would be so hard if you’ve been applying for a year.

[00:29:35] Kim Miller: It is so hard, and this is true in all times. I have coached so many people who got a great offer, and they’re so happy, and they’re so relieved. You just got to stick it out for two more days, all right? You have to wait for two more days because for a couple reasons, Sarah. One is that the majority of employers in this country are expecting people to negotiate.

[00:29:58] Sarah: Even in a tough job market.

[00:30:01] Kim Miller: Even in a tough job market. So they’re expecting you to negotiate, and the majority of people who are receiving offers do not. So that is a lot of money left on the table, right? And so the one thing I would say is envision yourself in the moment when you finally get the good news and you want to have your appropriate emotional response, and then you want to get to business. If you have not figured out how to negotiate before this moment, this is not your moment. This is something that you want to do earlier.

[00:30:35] Sarah: You need to have called Kim already.

[00:30:36] Kim Miller: You need to work with a negotiation coach. It can be me, it can be anybody, but you have to talk to somebody about the negotiation and be ready for it. And it’s also just like you rehearse before you do a job interview, you want to rehearse for the negotiation. Now, I do not recommend you rehearse with AI. I think AI can be a useful tool in maybe giving you some ideas about things you can negotiate for. I can also do that. One of the things that I think especially young people who haven’t had a salary job yet don’t realize is that there are things beyond salary that you can negotiate for. And also, that’s part of knowing who you are and knowing what your values are. So when I came to Wheaton, where I teach now, from Transylvania where I met you, I had a infant and I had a toddler, and I had a spouse with a career, and I knew that I needed to negotiate on behalf of my family before salary. So that was something that I was really grateful that I had figured that out before I was in the moment of negotiating. So I negotiated for things like housing so that I could be close to my job and support my kids and that sort of thing. Figuring out in advance what you want to negotiate and understanding that you can negotiate more than just base salary; although, the general advice is that base salary is the most important thing to negotiate because that will increase. So if you’re starting your career earning $60,000 and you get a 5% raise at the end of the year, that’s going to look very different if you’re starting with 65,000. That’s important information for a young person to know. I also talk to them about how to understand total compensation. You would be shocked by how many people don’t even know how to read the paperwork about their benefits package, their health insurance. I know employers that are hiring young people now and they’re not even having conversations about retirement like 401ks even though they offer them. Sarah, there’s so much knowledge that is assumed or presumed to be just out there, but again, it falls through the cracks. It is not taught unless you’re maybe hearing it from a parent, or a neighbor or a coach or your minister, somebody else who works with young people who’s sharing it.

[00:32:58] Sarah: And I just think that’s a stressful situation to be in as a parent. I have a listener who we’re working with for college admissions because I just think the processes have gotten so intense to have an expert. And also with your kids, it just becomes very emotional. And often they don’t want to hear your advice. They want to assert their own independence and their own decision-making, and so I think always having someone else there for them to talk to who they feel like is an expert but not mom or dad, I think is just huge. I think it’s been very helpful. I absolutely will be calling you up when Griffin gets closer to this situation. Because I just think it’s really an investment that pays off and giving your children-- and especially, even yourself. Like I said, I don’t think this always has to be young people out of college. I think if you took the first job that was offered to you out of college, and now you’re switching careers, you need a refresher. It’s like everything is different. Having a coach to say “Wait, this is now the process. This is what they’re expecting. Like all of that, it’s just always so overwhelming. And I think to the AI of it all, the more we can find the actual human being who can look at us and treat us like a human being, especially if the job process is getting more and more kind of opaque behind software and technology, the better.

[00:34:14] Kim Miller: Yes. And that’s another great example of why as much as we can lean on our human relationships we need to do that because I agree with what you said earlier, something that you said earlier about adults who are sending out all of these cold applications and hearing nothing. People are being ghosted by recruiters or ghosted by HR offices or ghosted by employers. It might not be possible to lean on a human all the time, but as much as you can cultivate that, I think that is probably one of the strongest things that we can do. And also, parents can talk to each other, right? In ways that maybe they hadn’t done before, about jobs for youth and maybe jobs for themselves, but also about higher ed. The higher ed landscape is shifting rapidly. I mean, never before have we had a federal government that has wanted to destroy us. I also have a lot of clients who are parents of kids the age of your kids who don’t know does it make a difference where I send my child? What kind of college is giving support for careers? What kinds of colleges are eliminating departments right now? Those are the headlines that I wake up to every morning. But it really makes it a very difficult territory for parents to navigate.

[00:35:30] Sarah: Yeah. That’s why we wanted you to come here because we believe in relationships here at Pantsuit Politics. As we always say, all we have is each other. So I know you have a little special offer for our listeners. But tell people the stuff that you do offer if they want to reach out to you after this episode.

[00:35:45] Kim Miller: Thanks. So I have a consulting practice that I have named Etre Empowerment Consulting, and I’ll send you the link for your show notes. But for listeners who might not know, the word Etre is the French verb which means to be. To be. And so part of what I love about being a professor and about being a mom is watching young people figure out who-- No w I’m going to get a little verklempt- - who they want to be in the world. What is their purpose in the world? And those are the conversations that I have through my consulting work. And so on campus we have office hours. I have office hours that I have opened up to anyone, who can come in to. It can be talking about jobs or colleges or just problem-solving for anything. And then specifically for negotiation, I run a negotiation clinic which a lot of people have purchased as gifts for graduation presents. I’ve had parents of high school students interested in it, again, because if you send your kids to college and they know how to negotiate or advocate for themselves, they’re doing that. They’re seeing situations as they become an adult where they can use their voice and speak up for themselves. Again I’m approaching it as problem-solving. Not as “Let’s teach your kid how to have conflict with their boss.” Let’s teach some self-advocacy and problem-solving techniques. And so I have a clinic, and it’s 75 minutes, and it’s on Zoom, so people from all over the world can sign up for it. And I would love to give your listeners 15% discount for anything. Any services, any time, no expiration. The code’s PANTSUIT.

[00:37:19] Sarah: And look, when you were saying that I was just thinking for everyone. Yes, it is an incredibly chaotic time, but chaos is an opportunity. Now, is it expensive and stressful and hard? Absolutely. But I think in those moments where you feel like everything is changing, it can be an opportunity to change yourself, and I think having as much support as possible and leaning on the people around you and talking about that’s what I was happy to see happen in the chat, people sharing, “Yes, that’s what I’ve experienced. Yes, we’re seeing that too.” I think all of that is just key, and I was just so happy that this worked out for you to come and share your expertise and your skills with our audience, and just thank you so much.

[00:38:01] Kim Miller: Thanks for inviting me. Thank you so much.

[00:38:18] Sarah: Beth, I’ve been keeping a secret. Not from you but from-

[00:38:21] Beth: Which means I’ve been keeping a secret, too, and that’s hard .

[00:38:23] Sarah: That’s true. Okay.

[00:38:24] Beth: Actually, it’s not hard. I’m a good secret keeper.

[00:38:26] Sarah: You are. You are a good secret keeper. Okay, here is the secret. Guys, I have opened a bookshop in Paducah, Kentucky inside our local coffee shop, Piper’s Tea and Coffee. It is called Meander Bookshop. Let me tell you how it started. Let me tell you this first. I want to do Pantsuit Politics until I die, Beth. Maybe longer than you. I think you’d like to retire. I’m happy to do it right up until the end. I don’t want to do it from my house forever. You understand what I’m saying?

[00:39:00] Beth: I probably better than anyone understand what you’re saying. I do.

[00:39:05] Sarah: So this is where this all started. I would like to get on a path to maybe having a little storefront with a podcast studio eventually so that I don’t have to hang out in this closet for the second half of my life. You know what I’m saying?

[00:39:21] Beth: I do.

[00:39:22] Sarah: So I’d been thinking about this because we have this incredible executive producer, Lisa, who owns The Bookshelf on Church, and she started as a little bookshelf in a coffee shop, which I thought was phenomenal.

[00:39:35] Beth: So smart.

[00:39:35] Sarah: And so Piper’s, which is this longtime business, I’m very close friends with the owners, they moved into a bigger space, and I thought, man, this place could use a bookshelf. Just a little bookshelf. It’s such a fun idea. Wouldn’t take up all this time. What if I did a bookshelf? So I met with Amber, the co-owner of Piper’s, and I said, “I have this idea.” And she’s “Oh my God, we’ve been wanting to do this.” Alas. They were like, “How about instead of a bookshelf, you take this whole little space right here and just make a little micro bookshop?” And for some God-forsaken reason, Paducah does not have an independent bookstore. We got a Books-A-Million, but not an independent bookstore. And so it just felt like this opportunity that I’d been thinking about really came together in a very lovely way. And so I soft opened over the weekend. I do not have enough books yet, but I’m getting there. And I opened on Friday, and have been selling books from Meander Bookshop inside Piper’s ever since.

[00:40:55] Beth: It’s so exciting. Tell us why Meander? Where’d the name come from?

[00:40:59] Sarah: Because meander is a river term. It’s what a river does. It can meander along the shore. I like the idea of meandering through pages. I also feel like it scoops up a little of my travel that I do, my travel itineraries which have lived under my literary Substack. So Meander Bookshop. And you’re going to love this one, the logo is designed by none other than Pam Huber, who designed our very first Pantsuit Politics logo. She designed my very first parenting blog, Salt and Nectar, one of my favorite logos of all time. So I reached back out to Pam and I was like, “Pam, you’re on deck. It’s time to work your magic as you always do when I start something new.” And so I love the logo. I’ve got it up on the window. I’ve got a little table out front with all the fun summer reads. And the shelves are really stocked with... There’s fiction and nonfiction and memoir are my favorite genre. But it’s either something I’ve read and loved or something someone I know and trust has read and loved. So I reached out to you and said, “What books would you always have on the shelf?” Fun fact, half of those books you picked out have already sold.

[00:42:03] Beth: I’m smart that way.

[00:42:04] Sarah: You are.

[00:42:05] Beth: I was so happy to see a book of poetry in your first customer’s hands. I was like, “Yes, these are my people.”

[00:42:09] Sarah: Yeah. And you picked up The Body: An Owner’s Manual, that sold. So I like the idea of every book is there because a person recommended it, not an algorithm.

[00:42:17] Beth: Yeah, that’s so nice. And, of course, I have a Google Doc going of unsolicited ideas for how to use the space. I love a project. And a physical space is exciting.

[00:42:25] Sarah: It’s very exciting.

[00:42:26] Beth: Physical space is a totally different energy than what we get to do here, and so I can’t wait to come see it.

[00:42:33] Sarah: Yeah, you’re going to have to come see it this summer. I’m not going to be able to wait very long for you to come. 

[00:42:37] Beth: I know. I’m trying to figure out when I can get down there, because I really do want to be there early so I can kind of see how it develops over time.

[00:42:48] Sarah: Yeah, it evolves. Definitely stop by if you’re in Paducah. I will be in there. The best part about this is that I don’t have to be in there all the time. If I’m not there, you can just grab a book and pay for it with your coffee. That’s the best part of this whole entire business plan. I don’t have to do staffing. If you’re not going to get to Paducah anytime soon, I have a bookshop.org Meander Bookshop link I’ll put in the show notes, along with a link to the Instagram and the website and all the fun things that you get to set up in this day and age, like the Facebook. And I’m going to post a lot of my recommendations and books that will always be on the shelf at Meander, like When Bad Things Happen to Good People. That’s a book that will always be on the shelf there, and novels. And it’s so fun to finally go through this list of books that have meant so much to me and be like, “Okay, that’s the one. I’m ordering that one. That’s going to be on the shelf always.” Jane Austen’s going to have her own very special shelf featuring the books that influenced her and the books she’s influenced. So it is fun. It’s fun to have a new creative outlet and to think about this. Obviously, I’m a massive reader. It’s something I do all the time. It’s something I think about all the time, so I’m really excited. I’m a child of a librarian. It’s probably my Path always.

[00:44:05] Beth: That’s what I’ve thought this whole time. You’ve been preparing for this your whole life. This just pulls together all the strings of things that you enjoy and are passionate about. I’ve heard you talk about Pipers like you own it for years. So this place that you love in the hometown that you love, with books something you love, it’s all things Sarah coming together in one place. It’s exciting.

[00:44:26] Sarah: I’m getting a little teary. But yeah, I am really excited. And it came together very fast. So if you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, how could I not know about this?” It’s because it came together in the last-- I’m not even playing-- month and a half. It came together very quickly once I talked to Amber, and they’re like, “Yes, please, come use this space.” And Lisa has been incredible helping me and helping me navigate this whole entire universe that is brand-new to me. It’s very exciting. And people are very excited to come in and see it’s there and see that there are books that a person has read and can recommend to you. It’s going to be a really great place for me to channel all my mentionitis, Beth. You know I get it real, real bad. I’ve already sold two copies of John and Paul: A Love Story. Got to Order some more because you know how obsessed with that book I was.

[00:45:08] Beth: I know you are.

[00:45:09] Sarah: I got Beth reading it. Totally obsessed with it. So it’s a really good way to finally be like, “Yes, I can get all these people to read these books I’m obsessed with.” I’ve got to figure out how to get them back in to tell me if they like the book. That’s the thing. I’m giving them the book, but I’m like, “But you got to text me or Instagram me because I want to know when you get to this part what you thought, and when you get to this part what you thought.”

[00:45:29] Beth: Okay. As you’re not at all business partner in this venture.

[00:45:33] Sarah: You’re my creative director. My volunteer creative director.

[00:45:36] Beth: I am. I do not want everyone texting you about it, but I am going to put in my Google Doc some ideas about how people could give you their feedback and be part of the whole scene.

[00:45:43] Sarah: I’m, like, so obsessed, because you know I love these books so much. I passed over a copy of Inheritance this morning, and I was like, “You’re going to get to a part, it’s going to involve Jared Kushner’s grandmother. I’m going to need you to tell me when you hit that part because it’s a part of that book I still think about all the time.” She’s like “Okay.” I’m just so into it I want to sit down beside them when they get to the part, I’ll be like, “ wasn’t I right about that part?”

[00:46:08] Beth: Let me watch you read and guess when you’re on page 62.

[00:46:10] Sarah: Yes, a little bit. A little bit. So it’s very exciting. I can’t wait for this community to find out and hopefully come to Paducah and stop by and buy a book. And I know that this community’s going to be crazy supportive and have all kinds of ideas just from the comments. I got to work my way through the comments from Friday on the Time Confetti, because it became a book recommendation list, and I’m like crap, now I got to get all these books for the bookshop,” because I definitely trust everyone in our audience and what they’re reading. So I can’t wait to hear from everybody. The links for, like I said, the website and the bookshop and the Instagram will be in the show notes. Thank you for joining us. Thank you to Kim Miller for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Friday, and until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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Topics Discussed

Topics discussed:
• Primary results in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Iowa, South Dakota, and Montana
• Republican caucus friction: the anti-weaponization fund, Todd Blanche's AG nomination, and Bill Pulte as acting DNI
• Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark
• New Jersey's lawsuit against the GEO Group and escalating protests
• The civil (not criminal) nature of ICE detention
• Immigration reform proposals
• Outside of Politics: using wait time for fiction

Episode Resources

• Primary results from Tuesday’s elections (U.S. News & World Report)

• Delaney Hall visitation access and protest conditions (America Magazine)

• Delaney Hall protests escalate (CNN)

• Delaney Hall background and protests (BBC)

• Louisiana ICE facility and mistreatment of immigrants (New York Times)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:29] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:31] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we’re going to talk about this week’s primary results and some frustration simmering among Republicans in Congress. We’re also going to talk about Delaney Hall, which is an ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, where there are escalating protests, two lawsuits, and a real microcosm of the issues surrounding immigration detention in the country. And then outside of politics, we’re going to take a very necessary exhale and talk about a summer decision that I’ve made that I think is going to revolutionize my life.

[00:01:08] Sarah: One week from today is the deadline to book the hotel in Minneapolis where we are hosting our one and only live show of the year and the SPICE conference. Would you like to stay in a hotel full of just Pantsuit Politics listeners? Basically a big old Pantsuit Politics slumber party with your own quiet space, of course. This is the chance. We really want to book out this hotel. We think it’ll be really fun to have the whole place to ourselves. So much magic happens when listeners are together meeting each other. They set up local groups. They form friendships. They come back to live events with people they met at previous live events. So we really want to have the space. We genuinely want to sell it out and have this community there together. So you can find more information about how to book a room at the hotel in the show notes, and we hope to see you there.

[00:01:57] Beth: We also want to mention that our Be Good Neighbors shirts are still on sale. Probably want to size up. That’s what we’re hearing, that they run a little bit snug. Make sure that you’re ordering the kind that you want, if you want a women’s shirt, if you want a unisex shirt. And now, by popular demand, we have baby and toddler shirts as well. Not required that you send us a photo of that baby and toddler wearing the shirt, but highly encouraged. Yeah. Highly encouraged.

[00:02:20] Sarah: Agreed.

[00:02:21] Beth: Okay, let’s talk about some elections. Sarah, California’s still counting. Womp, womp.

[00:02:36] Sarah: They’re probably still counting from the last time. Bless their sweet hearts. I don’t know why it takes so long. I would just like to say, this is the technology hub of America.

[00:02:47] Beth: Of the country.

[00:02:48] Sarah: And it really does feel like maybe this is a problem they could have cracked wide open by now. But that’s okay.

[00:02:55] Beth: Looking like the most votes went to Republican Steve Hilton. And it looks like Xavier Becerra, Democratic candidate, former Biden administration official, is coming in second. Tom Steyer was in third the last time I checked, but it looks like Hilton and Becerra are going to advance here.

[00:03:14] Sarah: And look, I’m not mad about this. I really feel like people should have a choice. California’s a big state. Yes, it’s a blue state. There are Republicans that live there. I live in a place where I feel like my vote doesn’t count. It’s not a pleasant experience. And I think not having choices and single party rule can lead to bad outcomes. I think it’s a part and parcel of why Karen Bass is out here being challenged by Spencer Pratt, for the record. So I don’t think this is a terrible outcome. I’m not super excited about Xavier Becerra. I don’t live in California, but I do consider myself 30% Californian, because it’s where I spent every summer of my childhood. So I’m invested.

[00:03:51] Beth: Let’s talk about New Jersey. Senator Cory Booker ran unopposed. His Republican opponent is set now. It’s Justin Murphy, a Navy veteran who has run before. Doesn’t have a lot of money. The FEC says that he had negative $24 in his campaign account recently.

[00:04:06] Sarah: That’s not enough for a Senate campaign.

[00:04:08] Beth: Maybe not a contest of ideas can unfold there. Yes. But we’ll see. The race that everybody was really watching in New Jersey, though, was for the House. Former healthcare executive Rebecca Bennett won the Democratic primary to run against Thomas Kean Jr.

[00:04:26] Sarah: The disappearing congressman. Sounds like a novel I would read. I would read something entitled The Disappearing Congressman. I would.

[00:04:33] Beth: He has missed so many votes.

[00:04:36] Sarah: Over 100 votes.

[00:04:38] Beth: Serious newspapers have headlines like, “We started looking for him, and looked and looked.” And people just don’t know where he is, and I cannot for the life of me understand the public relations strategy at play here.

[00:04:49] Sarah: It’s so weird. He’s like, “Okay. It’s a health issue. It’s super normal, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. But when you find out, you’re going to be like, ‘Oh my God, that was no big deal.’” And I’m like, what? I’m sorry. Huh? If it’s super normal, then why not just tell everybody where you’ve been for months?

[00:05:13] Beth: How many times do we have to learn the lesson? Get in front of it. I understand that people in public office want some privacy. I want that for them. It’s 2026, you have to get in front of things. This is not how you handle it. This is not how you get your privacy.

[00:05:28] Sarah:  This is not it.

[00:05:29] Beth: Congratulations Deb Haaland, who won the Democratic primary for governor in New Mexico.

[00:05:33] Sarah:  Yeah, I’m excited about this one.

[00:05:36] Beth: And then Rob Sand is everybody’s favorite in Iowa. He was unopposed. He has the nomination. It’s exciting there.

[00:05:41] Sarah:  People like him. Listen, I feel like Iowa was trying to defend itself as reasonable. This was what it felt like to me. So the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor lost, and then the moderate Democratic... this is the Senate primary I’m going to start talking about, because Joni Ernst got pushed out by Donald Trump. I don’t understand why when one candidate is a multiple gold medal Paralympian, this is just about progressives versus moderates inside the Democratic Party. I’m like, “I don’t know if that’s true,” because this gentleman is a Paralympian, and that is just a winning story. I don’t care where your policy breaks down on. I love the idea that we’re just really locked in on that these are always policy contests. I don’t really think that’s always true. But they did pick the moderate for the Senate Democratic nominee, and they did pick the he’s not moderate, but not the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor Zach Lawn, which our listeners in Iowa are worried that he could really hit as popular as Rob Sand is for the governor because he’s a farmer, and it’s anti-institutionalist kind of situation. But overall, I just feel like Iowa’s “Trust us again, guys. Look. Please.”

[00:06:58] Beth: I think that whole progressive versus moderate situation is overblown too because it feels to me like we’re often talking a lot more about temperament than policy. What words are you using? What aesthetic are you portraying? How mad do you seem?

[00:07:13] Sarah: Yeah. Zach Lawn I think seems real mad. I think that’s why.

[00:07:18] Beth: So could we call him a progressive Republican? Wouldn’t  people love that?

[00:07:21] Sarah: That’s populist, right? That’s not quite getting it.

[00:07:23] Beth: Yeah, but what does populist mean when you look at this administration that was supposed to be populist, and it’s like let’s take the .1 of the 1% and make them even richer.

[00:07:32] Sarah: Yeah, because I think in the Republican Party it becomes MAGA versus establishment, but I don’t quite think that’s it either.

[00:07:39] Beth: No. Look at people’s voting records. It doesn’t break down this way.

[00:07:41] Sarah: We need a different word. I think you’re right. We’ll work on that.

[00:07:44] Beth: I want to say a brief word for Dusty Johnson in South Dakota. He was in the House. And I thought that he was a little sparklet of hope in the Republican caucus. I think he’s a pretty smart guy, does his homework, takes the office seriously. Left the House to run for governor. He didn’t make the runoff. He finished third. And I just think that’s a bummer because I do think he had... I don’t agree with him on everything, but I think he had contributions to make.

[00:08:12] Sarah: It does not surprise me that someone you would feel that way about would not do well in the current Republican election.

[00:08:18] Beth: I don’t know whether to be offended or reassured by that.

[00:08:22] Sarah: Neither. You should be complimented, but it’s not reassuring because it doesn’t say great things about the future of the Republican Party.

[00:08:29] Beth: It does not.

[00:08:30] Sarah: Which we’re going to get to. Put a pin in that. It got pretty nasty in Montana, too, because the way that Steve Daines coronated his chief of staff was shitty to both the Democrats and, oh, I don’t know, the people of Montana. And so you have Alani Bankhead as a Democrat, but I think really people want to center around this independent candidate, former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar. And look, I’m not mad at this strategy. In Nebraska, in South Dakota, in these deeply red states, if we got to go independent first, fine. Who cares? Let’s just do that. So Bankhead says she’s not dropping out, but we’ll see how bad the pressure gets.

[00:09:11] Beth: He definitely outraised everyone else.

[00:09:15] Sarah: Oh yeah, the University of Montana president?

[00:09:17] Beth: Yes, the independent candidate, which is usually the rub with independent candidates. You know what? Let’s try some things. I’m here for trying things.

[00:09:24] Sarah: That’s a good transition to the current Republican caucus.

[00:09:28] Beth: Is it just getting a little chippy finally at long last? A little  chippiness.

[00:09:32] Sarah: I see it, and I like it. It was even the headline of The New York Times today. The headline was like, “They are slightly resisting.” I like both want to feel giddy, and then I’m also like, “This is what I feel giddy about?” Look, okay let me just say this. The death of the 1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund is absolutely reason to feel giddy. Now, do I wish it had never seen the light of day? That would’ve been a better success, of course, but the fact that they were like, no, is reason to celebrate, guys. It just is.

[00:10:03] Beth: What feels new to me here is that we’ve had moments before where the public has been like, “No,” and so they’ve gone, “Psst, psst, please, Mr. President, let’s change our path on this.” With this, we have reports of people yelling in Todd Blanche’s face.

[00:10:22] Sarah: That sounds like fun.

[00:10:23] Beth: And after Todd Blanche said, “Okay, we’re not going to do it,” they were like, “Don’t believe you. We need to put it in writing. We need to put it in a law.” And so I think we’re maybe getting somewhere. Are we getting somewhere that I’d like to be? Not yet, but I will take the progress in this direction.

[00:10:41] Sarah: No, we are. That’s not true, Beth. We are getting somewhere we want to be because it’s not here. You see what I’m saying?

[00:10:49] Beth: I do.

[00:10:50] Sarah: And that is good and well with my soul. Not here is where I don’t want to be, and so any movement out of the circle that includes here is great. Do you see what I’m saying?

[00:11:06] Beth: In the face of a little chippiness, the president gets chippier, too. So we have reporting that they are yelling at Todd Blanche, raised voices, actual yelling, and Trump goes, “You know what? I’d like him to be the permanent attorney general, not just the acting attorney general, the permanent one.” And I think that’s going to be fascinating. Can he even get out of committee? The way that he’s conducted himself as acting attorney general, the fact that he was the president’s former personal lawyer. Not the only personnel challenge right now either.

[00:11:39] Sarah: Because here’s the thing. I would also like to say it’s not the only raised voices. He apparently also cussed out Benjamin Netanyahu. So the stress is showing, is all I’m saying. The stress is really showing all around. It is so clear to me that no one around the president is telling him the truth. No one is pushing. He has surrounded himself with people, many of which I think sincerely believe his instincts are good, and so we have hit where the instincts are. Not only bad, but harmful. The Senate is pissed because he went after John Cornyn. For why? Cassidy, maybe. Cornyn, why? He was this stalwart, this fundraiser, so now they’re just mad. And they do, thank God, have some power under our constitutional democracy to exercise, and they seem to be doing that.

[00:12:42] Beth: So Trump has nominated Bill Pulte to be the acting director of national intelligence, the position recently vacated by Tulsi Gabbard. And I think it’s helpful to just think for a second about what this job is because this job has not been around forever. It is a post 9/11 creation, born of the idea that we have an enormous, complicated, often competitive intelligence apparatus collecting all kinds of information all over the world and more within these borders than we might prefer and be comfortable with, and that somebody needed to coordinate all of that to ensure that we act on good information in appropriate ways, that we don’t act on bad information, and that we steward that information well. This is one of the most difficult jobs that could exist within the government. It is controversial. There are still people who think this was the wrong answer to a healthy set of questions post 9/11. So it’s a tough gig all around. Tulsi Gabbard was a weird choice, a controversial choice herself because of a lack of experience, and then Trump says, how about we get somebody from housing over here?”

[00:14:05] Sarah: When you make Tulsi Gabbard look like a reasonable nominee, I don’t know what we’re doing. I appreciate Tom Tillis saying, “I’m tired of amateur hour.” You know what, buddy? Same.

[00:14:22] Beth:  So Bill Pulte is currently the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the chair of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We’re going to start getting Bill Pulte Marco Rubio memes because he’s going to do that job while being the acting DNI.

[00:14:38] Sarah: Oh my God. This is our friend from the Fed harassment. This is our bestie who went after the Fed chairs for their multiple homes.

[00:14:47] Beth: Correct. It seems like the most work Bill Pulte has done in his current post is to scrutinize people’s mortgage filings who have ever disagreed with the president about anything.

[00:14:59] Sarah: Which, listen, it is its own form of intelligence. I’m just saying. I’m just saying it is...

[00:15:05] Beth: Oh my God. Here’s where we are. So he’s behind the Lisa Cook action, the Fed governor. He is behind Letitia James action. He hasn’t really gotten far with these ideas, but boy, Donald Trump likes the way he thinks. And so he’s going to now have access to the most confidential information that we have in these United States.

[00:15:30] Sarah: What could go wrong?

[00:15:31] Beth: What could go wrong? So a little chippiness about old Bill simmering.

[00:15:39] Sarah: And now here is what I think I’ve picked up on over the last few weeks. If they’re chippy to the press, they’re real mad behind the scenes.

[00:15:48] Beth: Yes.

[00:15:49] Sarah: And that makes me feel a little bit better

[00:15:52] Beth: Not limited to the Senate, the chippiness, because we did have four Republicans in the House vote with Democrats about the Iran war saying, “Hey, you need to take troops out of Iran, or you need to get approval from Congress.”

[00:16:07] Sarah: Yep.

[00:16:07] Beth: But this excursion situation that you keep describing is not working for us. Now, good news, Marco Rubio says the war’s over. Wild to see that Marco Rubio says we’re done as everybody keeps firing at each other.

[00:16:21] Sarah: Interesting. Bet it doesn’t feel that way in Kuwait with their airport under attack. Just saying.

[00:16:28] Beth: I bet it doesn’t feel that way if you have a loved one serving in the United States military over there. Doesn’t seem to feel that way in the oil industry, where they’re warning that so much oil is just sitting, waiting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, that we are about to see a price shock on a level that we haven’t yet seen.

[00:16:46] Sarah: I think this has a chance in the Senate. Am I crazy?

[00:16:51] Beth: I don’t know what will happen. This is the kind of move that I have been desperately waiting for, and that while I view it as good news, also makes me incredibly nervous. Because when you think about trust and confidence in our systems, is American democracy up for this moment? If this passed the House and the Senate and the White House kept doing whatever it wants over there, which I think is the likely outcome, that is a precarious situation for us. I don’t know exactly what that means. I don’t know the form that precarity takes. I know that it makes my stomach hurt.

[00:17:33] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:17:34] Beth: And so we need it. We have to do this. This is the way and also it’s a scary way.

[00:17:40] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:17:41] Beth: Thinking about the administration doing whatever it pleases, we will now turn our attention to the Department of Homeland Security. Amateur hour is maybe an excellent description of what’s happening in the Department of Homeland Security. I understood the Mark Wayne Mullen nomination. I do not think he’s up for what’s happening in New Jersey right now.

[00:18:09] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:18:13] Beth: Can I tell you a little bit about Delaney Hall? Have you looked at the situation?

[00:18:16] Sarah: Yes. It’s very disturbing.

[00:18:17] Beth: So Delaney Hall is a two-story facility. It’s over 100,000 square feet. It sits on about five acres of land, and its neighbors are a sewage treatment facility and an animal fat rendering plant. So it gives you a picture of where we’re talking about in Newark. The name comes from a person who did really pivotal work around addiction and recovery, Geraldine O. Delaney. But it has been a detention center before. It closed for a while. It has always been controversial. During the Biden years, there was a request to reopen it, and Cory Booker sent an open letter saying, “Do not. It would be a real affront to people here.” It is the largest detention facility on the East Coast. And in 2025, the Trump administration signed a 15-year $1 billion contract with GEO Group, a corporation, to run it. And GEO Group has facilities in Australia, South Africa and the UK, and it is holding in the United States right now, in total, about 24,000 ICE detainees. The CEO said that on an investor call in February, if that paints a picture. It has the largest revenue of any private detention contractor, and it is the industry’s top contributor to political campaigns. A former executive from the GEO Group was hired by the Trump administration last year to spend more money on ICE facilities. The city of Newark says that GEO Group has not done things right, and they do not have a valid certificate of occupancy. So that lawsuit has been going on for a year. And then last May, there was, like, a fight or outside the facility between law enforcement and some elected officials who came to visit. One of those elected officials, Representative LaMonica McIver, has been charged with assaulting a police officer, but she just decisively won her primary to stay in Congress. And then we had four people escape last June as part of a protest about conditions in the facility. They broke through a sheetrock wall. Then in December, a forty-one-year-old man with no known history of medical issues spent one day there and died, and we still don’t know why. And then that brings us to this month.

[00:20:45] Sarah: So on May 25th, where I first started seeing things about this all over social media was because Senator Kim, who’s been a guest on this show, and protesters were pepper sprayed by federal agents outside the facility because there are people inside the facility who are on hunger strike, protesting just truly unsanitary, disgusting living conditions. And to me, this situation with the treatment of immigrants inside these facilities is coming to a head because there’s been ongoing criticisms and protests around some of the facilities in Texas, particularly some of the facilities holding children. At the same time that the Department of Homeland Security has decided to basically do its level best to discourage and shut down legal immigration as well as illegal immigration. It’s just one more example of Donald Trump saying “I’m going to go after China. JK, they’re my best friend. I’m going to end the Iranians’ nuclear program. Just kidding. We’re just going to try to get out of this as best we can. I’m going to bring down prices. Everything’s more expensive. I’m going to go after the worst of the worst immigration-wise.” And what he is going after is not only People who are here illegally who are criminals, which I think everybody agrees, fine. And not only going after people who maybe came here illegally, he is now going after people who are walking through the immigration process legally and making it difficult, if not impossible, to become citizens. He’s also trying to denaturalize people who have already become citizens. It is just a frontal assault, largely driven by racist and nationalist ideas about who belongs in America in just the most inhumane, cruel way imaginable.

[00:22:51] Beth: They get away with some of this because they talk about it as crime fighting. They say, “This is for the worst of the worst.” And what we know from more than a year now of experience with this Department of Homeland Security is that they can pick you up shopping for diapers for your kids and talk about you as the worst of the worst, even if you have no criminal record, even if they’re not sure that you’re here illegally. They just suspect that you might be.

[00:23:18] Sarah: Even if you are, in fact, a child, which they pick up lots and lots of those as well.

[00:23:23] Beth: This is an administrative process. When ICE detains someone, it’s a civil process, civil the way a driver’s license is civil. It is not criminal. These are people who have not been charged with crimes. So they put them in these facilities. They treat them as though they’ve murdered someone, and then they come to the public and say, “It’s not supposed to be the Holiday Inn. We’re holding them.” Some of these people don’t have court dates set. They struggle to have access to visitors. The facilities put all kinds of constraints in place about when you can visit. They shift that whenever they want to. There is an organization set up outside this facility in New Jersey called Eyes on ICE that maintains a box of clothing so that people who go in wearing shorts can come grab some pants if they’ve been denied entry because they didn’t meet the dress code that day. The dress code is confusing. It’s inconsistent. They do everything they can to make it hard for people to meet with their lawyers and their loved ones, and again, this is a civil process. They have not charged these folks with crimes, and that is so offensive to me. Mark Wayne Mullen told the president in a cabinet meeting that there was no hunger strike. There was a handful of people who wanted access to their correct ethnic food. That’s how he put it, but said that they are getting their needed calorie intake every day. Meanwhile, the reports coming out of the facility are that the food has mold in it, that some of the food has worms in it, that people cannot get medical care for chronic conditions, that everything smells like gas and sulfur and rotting garbage because of where the facility is located and how it’s insulated. That the sanitation is awful. Senator Kim has said that. He and Representatives Menendez and Pallone have been in there, and they say it is unacceptable. It falls below the government’s own standards for what these facilities should be doing. And that’s the situation that we have when Governor Mikey Sherrill tries to go visit the facility and is given very limited access. The New Jersey Health Department is given very limited access to inspect it. So now the state of New Jersey has sued the GEO Group, saying, “You need to let us in, and the court needs to be apprised of the conditions that we’re hearing.” They’re worried about tuberculosis transmission because of the level of sanitation happening in here.

[00:25:52] Sarah: You hear stories all the time. I heard a story from an Irishman that was detained and deported, and he was like, “It’s like a concentration camp. I don’t know what other language to use to adequately describe.” And he wasn’t even at this one. He was at one that’s considered not that bad. You hear people who get out-- if they live, let’s not forget about the poor man they dropped off in the middle of the winter who died-- that tell people it’s awful. It is offensive to just basic levels of humanity, how people are treated in there. And again, I think unfortunately people think if you violate the immigration laws, it’s a crime. Like a criminal case. So I think they’re playing on people’s baseline understanding of the immigration process, and they’re playing on this idea that it’s the worst of the worst when it’s women and children and pregnant women who aren’t getting the care they need. And this idea that we just want to make it as hard as possible. The reason they want to treat people so inhumanely is they want to intimidate and scare people. That to get to the deportation levels that white nationalist Stephen Miller wants, people will need to self-deport, and so they’re just trying to scare the shit out of people so they self-deport. This green card change where you have to go back to your country of origin to process your green card because you’re on the legal pathway to citizenship it’s not a barrier. It’s an impossibility. They’re also the same week saying they’re going to close down all these processing places in Africa, so they’re going to send you back to a place you can’t do the process. They want to prevent people from becoming citizens. They want to stop immigration to America, a country built on immigrants. He’s married to an immigrant, for Christ’s sake. It’s just outrageous. It is outrageous, and my fear is that because of the other stresses that this administration has put on everyday Americans’ lives that’s not going to translate. It’s not going to convey. Now, it will to certain populations. It certainly has to the Latino population in places like Texas, and I think we’re going to see it show up in the midterms. But it’s just It’s not who we are. It’s unethical. It’s immoral. It’s a disgrace.

[00:28:18] Beth: I think the conditions being described in this facility would be wrong in a maximum security prison.

[00:28:23] Sarah: Absolutely.

[00:28:24] Beth: I think no matter what you have done in your life, if you are being held by the government, separated from your people, deprived of your liberty, you ought to receive adequate nutrition and medical care and not be psychologically tortured in any number of ways that reports describe going on in this facility. And I think that’s true whether you are an 80-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 48-year-old. The idea that a group of men in middle age are fine to suffer in these conditions but not anyone else also offends me. That this is wrong for people. For human beings, this is wrong. The question that I have is what would be right or what would be better? What is a step forward that the government could take from here? I hate that Holiday Inn remark from Mullen because honestly I think if the government is taking me, again, into its custody away from my people before it’s charged me with anything or proven anything or even demonstrated that it has the potential of proving anything, that yeah, they should put me in the Holiday Inn. Honestly, I should have a certain set of conditions that are pretty nice because I haven’t done anything wrong other than this person has a suspicion of what I might have done wrong. But if we decide, okay, here is a person who’s here illegally, they are waiting on a deportation process to unfold through immigration courts, what could we all agree would be acceptable for that person?

[00:30:08] Sarah: If Stephen Miller’s at the table, I think coming to any level of agreement is going to be very difficult. He has radical views, and he has an enormous amount of power within this administration, and there’s just no other way to say it. He has truly radical, racist, fascist beliefs. You read the reporting about his history when he was in the United States Senate and how the other staffers and senators was, like, the weirdo that everybody kind of tolerated, and now he’s setting the policy strategy. This is what happens. This is what happens when you put a radical in charge of our immigration system. And Mark Wayne Mullins can dress it up, and Tom Homan can pretend like this is just business as usual, but it’s not. It’s not business as usual. That’s why they’re under so many lawsuits. That’s why I think maybe the theme of this episode is my sort of schizophrenic, emotional reaction because I do feel like I’m alternating between hopeful and despondent. It’s getting more regular, this back and forth, because in the same way that Donald Trump’s insane posture towards our energy infrastructure and his actions in Iran is accelerating the electrification of the globe; who’da thunk it, right? He’s so bad. Everybody’s like crap, we better get our act together and electrify everything because he’s made everything so terrible. I think there could be a situation here with our immigration process. I think this could get so bad and so ugly that it could fundamentally break the Department of Homeland Security in ways it cannot come back from, which I wouldn’t be sad about. I certainly hope it gets so bad that we finally for the name of all that is sacred and good in the world, reform our immigration process. It is this weird very painful, very scary, very deadly for some people acceleration to the point where everybody’s “Fine, we’ll fix it.”

[00:32:12] Beth: If I could put some proposals on the table about “Fine, we’ll fix it” I would say, one, immigration should come out of Homeland Security.

[00:32:20] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:32:20] Beth: Homeland Security should be about criminal law enforcement and terrorism prevention and cybersecurity. Cybersecurity for banks, cybersecurity for water systems, cybersecurity for electrical grids. There is plenty of work to do. I would take immigration out of that and have a referral process to federal law enforcement for people who are the worst of the worst. The American public has said loudly and clearly, through elections and otherwise, that they believe people who’ve committed crime here when they are not legally here should be deported. We should have a process in the federal government to do that humanely and expeditiously. For people who are not a danger to society or a threat, the American people still want a process to make sure that people are here legally. I think a department that is focused on that process and that population could do that pretty well. It’s a lot of people. It needs a lot of focus. It’s a complex problem. We should be able to use technology to monitor people who are waiting somewhere in the immigration system in a much cheaper way, to just talk dollars and cents, than these detention facilities. I don’t want a billion dollars over 50 years going to the GEO Group to hold people in completely inadequate warehouses, when we could just monitor people with ankle bracelets. That’s an old technology now that can do so much to ensure that we don’t lose track of people, we are being responsible. We are also being resourceful and humane. I think that there are ways that this could work, and it wouldn’t be that much of a watershed from where the average person is in their views about how this should be handled.

[00:34:19] Sarah: I agree. And I desperately hope that the suffering being inflicted on innocent people, including innocent children, leads to this conversation and understanding and changing orientation to our immigration process and to the people who want to come to America for a better life

[00:34:44] Beth: And in the meantime, kudos to the mayor of Newark who has been courageous and persistent about this to Senator Kim, to Senator Booker, to New Jersey’s representatives, to Governor Cheryl, to Eyes on Ice. There are so many people across the nation who are not letting this fall off their radars and who are every single day, at personal risk often, walking headlong into this situation to say, “I don’t want my fellow human beings treated this way. I don’t want my government overreaching this way. I don’t want my community’s needs and my state’s needs to be dismissed by the federal government, and I want federal officials to do better than, ‘Oh, it’s just a handful of people on hunger strike. Nothing to see here.’ Yeah. So I’m really appreciative of those efforts. Okay, let’s take a big exhale. Sarah, I have been thinking a lot about how I want to feel this summer. I made a series of decisions. I shared one of them on Substack, and I think I’ve maybe touched a nerve for some subset of the population. I have a lot of time in the summer, all year long, but especially in the summer, when I am waiting for my children somewhere. I’m waiting on the deck of a swimming pool because they’re having a practice with their swim team. I’m waiting outside of a theater. I’m waiting at the library while they collect some library books. Just a whole lot of waiting time. And as I started to think about the summer, I was thinking, “Okay, when am I going to carry my laptop in? And maybe I could carry my laptop and my iPad and sidecar it so I could really get some work in that waiting time.” And I realized that makes me miserable. Trying to cram work into every pocket of the day makes me do bad work and also makes me hate everyone and everything. So my rule for myself this summer is that wait time is for fiction. I am not going to read books for work. I am not going to read Supreme Court cases. I’m not going to read the news. When I’m waiting somewhere, whether it is for 15 minutes or an hour, I’m going to pull out a romance novel like a good ‘80s mom and enjoy my life. And it’s working really well for me.

[00:37:06] Sarah: I think about this a lot. I get the question a lot, how do I read so much? So I read about 75 to 80 books a year, and it’s absolutely because times when I would be doing something else, I’m reading. A lot of that is time at night when I might be watching television, I’m reading. I don’t watch television almost at all. But there is an aspect of just reading whenever you have a chance that will definitely improve your reading life. I struggle in the out and about because I’m usually reading probably three to four books at once, and I read sometimes in the afternoon, I read in bed at night. So I have a book cart that kind of moves around my house with me. But because I kind of want to read all of them at the same time, I can’t take them with me. And I hate reading on my phone. Will not do it, hate it. Now, Nicholas has bought this teeny-tiny little e-reader that’s the size of an old-school iPhone. Tiny. And so he keeps that with him all the time. So instead of pulling out his phone, he pulls that out, and I am considering that. I kind of like that idea. And so he’s working through this World War II book that’s going to take him one million years. You could just keep a long, slow read on that and keep it with you. But the novels and stuff I’m reading if I leave the house, I’m not going to think to grab it because it’s in my room. It’s in my book cart. It’s got its little place. I guess I could just pick a car book. Like it’s just my car book. I also don’t do spend a lot of time in my car waiting for my kids though, because I got a driver.

[00:38:41] Beth: I think there are two branches of this idea. There’s a branch for people who want to read more, and that is a goal in and of itself. That is not really what I’m trying to do here. I am trying to avoid the stress and irritableness that arises for me when I am trying to work in those moments. And that’s the reason I’m not picking serious books for those moments too. I need something fluffy that doesn’t take a whole lot of my brain, that’s fun and delightful, and I look forward to. Because then when my kids get back in the car, I’m fine to put the book down. I can be fully present with them. My brain isn’t in the email that I was just writing or the call I just got off of. I can be with them in summer mom mode in a way that I just can’t when I’m shifting in and out of something a lot more serious.

[00:39:41] Sarah: Yeah. It doesn’t make me cranky to squeeze in work. It makes me feel like I’m winning. It makes me feel like I’ve gotten away with something. But it also means I’ll see something, if it takes more brain power, I’ll be like, “Oh, I’ll deal with that later,” and then sometimes I forget to deal with it later. So there is a risk to kind of squeezing it in. But I definitely get that, and I think there’s also space to just not do anything, which I encourage my children all the time. You can sometimes just sit. I’ve been listening to music. I’ve just been staring into the middle distance, which is pretty fun sometimes. Everybody should try it. So I definitely think there’s space to just put your brain on default mode and relax. Reading is definitely my preferred way to do that, so I think it’s a great idea.

[00:40:26] Beth: Yeah. That’s what the romance novel gives me. Or a light mystery or whatever. Just a chance to go into that relaxed space where I’m not trying to be productive. When I shared this on Substack I heard from Kate, who said that she had these pockets of time described as time confetti which I really like because I like the positive spin on this time instead of it being, like, a time suck, which is how I have described it before. And she heard an expert say “Roll those together for productivity blocks,” and I thought, I don’t want to. I want to think of it as time confetti, and what a joy that I get to sit and read my fun book right now and just not feel all the stress. And there’s just an aspect of this that’s trusting myself too. When I sit down at my desk to work, I will get it done. And I will do a good job, and I will have all the appropriate tools, and that thing I need to follow up on, I can either do it then or schedule it as a task that I promise I will do the next time I sit down to work. I’m just learning that no one is clapping for me spending the most minutes on anything. It’s the quality of the work and the attention that I bring to it, and allowing my attention to fully shift away from it in these moments. I think enhances what I do when I’m locked in, as the kids say.

[00:41:50] Sarah: Love it.

[00:41:50] Beth: Erin calls this her emotional support book. If you have emotional support books you’d like to recommend to us for the summer, we’d be delighted to hear those titles from you, or other strategies for your time confetti, ways that you celebrate and delight in it. If you want more celebration and delight with your time, please do consider joining us in Minneapolis at the Spice conference, the EP retreat, or our live show. All the information for that is in our show notes. We’ll be back with you next Tuesday. Between now and then, have the best weekend available to you.Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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Topics Discussed

• Graham Platner and the Maine Senate race

• Political scandals and changing voter tolerance

• "Normie" politicians and the unapologetic posture in American life

• Progressive vs. moderate framing in the Democratic Party

• What we actually need from candidates: policy, biography, communication style

• Emotional maturity as a political standard

• Partisan identity and double standards

• Bronte the Stylist on Instagram

• Team changes at Pantsuit Politics

Episode Resources

The Sexting (WSJ)

The Tattoos (AP News)

The Senate Race (UNH)

Rep. Auchincloss’s position (The Hill)

Sen. Kim’s comment (CNN)

“Somebody Will” (Shucked)

Bronte the Stylist (IG)

Sarah’s outfit app (Cladwell)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:30] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:32] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:33] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are going to talk about Graham Platner, who is running for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat in the great state of Maine, and what his latest scandals say about Maine voters in the midterm, the Democratic Party, and all of us. Outside of politics, Beth and I have a new Instagram obsession, and we’re going to share it with all of you. Plus, we have some really big news to share with you all about changes here at Pantsuit Politics, so you’re going to want to stay put until the end.

[00:01:08] Beth: First. You may have heard over the weekend that the Freedom 250 celebration that the president is putting together has been messy.

[00:01:15] Sarah: It fell apart, Beth.

[00:01:17] Beth: Been pretty messy. Several performers said, “I didn’t realize how partisan this would be. I don’t want to be part of that.” Now, I do have questions because here at Pantsuit Politics, we were not depending on the president or Freedom 250--

[00:01:28] Sarah: Absolutely not.

[00:01:30] Beth: Or even country music legend Martina McBride to make our celebration a great one. We’ve been thinking for months about all of you, and we wanted to be sure that however you’re celebrating America 250, we have you. So I made you a murder mystery dinner party kit, one of my favorite things in the world to do. My daughter Jane did the graphic design. It is ready to go, ready to roll out for you and your people. If you have smaller children, maybe extended family members, and you want to gather around and have some fun learning some key stories about our founding, I’ve got you covered there as well. We put Reimagining Citizenship meditations into an e-book for those of you who want to meditate on your journey with citizenship in the 30 days leading up to July 4th, and we’re almost there. So if you’ve been waiting to join us as a premium member, this is the moment, because you get all of that. You’ll get our very exciting premium episodes the week of July 4th and everything we make between now and then, and you’ll know that you’re supporting our work here. So the link to join us is in the show notes, and we really hope you will.

[00:02:32] Sarah: Also, we’re all wearing our Be a Good Neighbor celebratory T-shirts. Literally hundreds of you have ordered said T-shirt. Now, there has been some confusion on the sizing because there is a unisex, a women’s, and a kids’. So if you run into any problems, the only thing you need to know is just email us, hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com, and we’ll fix it for you. No big deal.

[00:02:54] Beth: We want to be good neighbors.

[00:02:54] Sarah: That’s right. We’re going to be good neighbors. Everybody’s going to have the best shirt available to them, okay? All right, next up, Graham Platner. Beth, shall we take Mr. Platner’s scandals in chronological order?

[00:03:14] Beth: It’s tricky, but how about I start by telling you about the tattoo?

[00:03:18] Sarah: She took the tattoos and I took the sexting, guys. That’s how we divided the labor today.

[00:03:23] Beth: That’s 2026 for you. I took the tattoos and Sarah took the sexting. Okay. If you were not paying attention, Graham Platner, 41-year-old oyster farmer and veteran running for Senate in Maine. He comes out with a very splashy commercial where he looks kind of rugged and has a little bit of sexiness about him, and you can tell this is not your dad’s Democrat- is the message that was being sent. And shortly after that, we thought, yeah, not your dad’s Democrat because he does have a tattoo that is a symbol from the SS dating back to Nazi Germany. Okay? His story is that he got this tattoo on a drunken evening in Croatia while he was in the military because they all thought it looked really tough, and for 20 years he went about his life taking shirtless pictures and dancing in shirtless videos, as one does, and would not have done that if he thought he was sporting Nazi symbolism on his chest.

[00:04:27] Sarah: Did you recognize the symbol?

[00:04:29] Beth: No, I did not.

[00:04:30] Sarah: I didn’t either, and I just want to disclose that. I didn’t recognize it either.

[00:04:35] Beth: And I think this is a really tricky thing. There are so many tricky things around this. I didn’t take classes that took me deep into Nazi symbolism, and yet that symbolism is so present and hurtful to people today because World War II is not ancient history. And so I take him at his word that he was drunk and overseas and got a tattoo that he thought looked cool. Do I believe that it really was not until he was running for the United States Senate that someone said, “Hey, what’s that?” I don’t. I don’t think I believe that. But nonetheless, he had a good friend who’s a tattoo artist in rural Maine and quickly was able to have the tattoo covered. He now has a dog with a Celtic knot right there. And the Associated Press said in an unusual move for a Senate race, he did take his shirt off and show us that the tattoo, in fact, has been covered up. Now, in talking about the tattoo He did use the R word. He said that this was the most R word thing he’s ever heard, and so that kind of set off a mini controversy that was like a flight with some of his old Reddit posts. Yeah. He has a flight of controversy. He has made comments on Reddit about Black people not tipping well, rural white people being racist and stupid, women who are victims of rape needing to take some responsibility. There’s a lot there.

[00:06:10] Sarah: Real great hits.

[00:06:10] Beth: And what he has said about all of it is like, “I was in the military. It really messed me up. I have done a lot of work on myself. I am sorry for my past mistakes. I am proud of who I am today.” And that’s where we were until the sexting came up.

[00:06:28] Sarah: And he survived that first round pretty well, so well that the governor of Maine, Janet Mills, and his Maine challenger in the Democratic primary dropped out. And he is consistently polling above Susan Collins, who would be his Republican opponent once he wins the Democratic nomination, which I think we can assume he’s going to do at this point. Then this weekend, The Wall Street Journal publishes an expose. Apparently last year in August, his wife, Amy Gertner, disclosed to a campaign staffer that she found multiple message threads on his phone where he was exchanging sexually explicit text messages with I think six different women. The Journal further disclosed that they found an active account with Grand Platner on Kik, a private messaging app often used to arrange sexual encounters I had never heard of. And The New York Times did some additional reporting. It was this aide who left the campaign who disclosed this information. Now, they have both said, “We’ve worked on our marriage.” They’re pretty newly married. They’ve only been married since like I think 2023. They’ve been in therapy. They’ve worked this out. This is just people trying to take him down. And that’s where we stand as of now.

[00:07:50] Beth: Feel sad for Amy about the way this has come out because here’s this thing that’s obviously been really painful for her, and now every headline almost blames her for it being public knowledge.

[00:08:03] Sarah: Yeah, because she told the staffer.

[00:08:05] Beth: And I hate that for her.

[00:08:06] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:08:08] Beth: It’s normal to sit down with a staffer when you’re running for a national office to say, “Here’s some stuff you should know. It’s going to look bad. We should be prepared for it.” So she did the right thing by sharing that with the campaign so they could be prepared for it, and yet here we are and they seem unprepared for it.

[00:08:29] Sarah: I can’t tell if it was like, y’all should know, or if she was, like, actually trying to talk to the staffer for emotional support.

[00:08:36] Beth:  Yeah, that could be.

[00:08:38] Sarah: I haven’t been quite able to tell that because both of their reactions to the staff person disclosing this feels like maybe it’s the latter. I think there’s so much here, obviously.

[00:08:49] Beth:  There’s So much here.

[00:08:50] Sarah: I think the first thing that comes up a lot with Graham Platner, rightfully, is his politics. He has taken a very progressive stance. He’s endorsed by Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, and which is a pretty interesting contrast in relationship to Susan Collins, who has clearly survived in Maine by being very centrist. This feeds this sort of perpetual debate inside the Democratic Party. Should we be progressive or should we be moderates? And to that I say, what are we talking about? Do I think economically most Americans are closer to where Bernie Sanders has always been? I do. I think health insurance pushes everybody a little bit closer every single day. But I also think Matt Yglesias does a lot of work on this. There are lots of cultural issues or other policy issues like, for example, affirmative action where Americans need some moderation from the Democratic Party that the Democratic Party is out of step with a majority of voters on things. So I think the way this debate through any kind of manifestation, including Graham Platner, gets reduced down to we have to flip the switch on or off with regards to progressive politics is reductive and not helpful. So I think that to me that’s my political view on his very progressive stances.

[00:10:11] Beth: He feels like a throwback to Occupy Wall Street when you listen to him talk. The reason that I would not be comfortable voting for him is mostly on those policy grounds. I don’t like hearing him talk about like burning everything down in Washington, DC. I feel like that’s happening right now. He approaches that horseshoe moment for me where far left and far are so angry about everything that the anger itself becomes the political ideology and the political plan and the political strategy, and that does not appeal to me at all. I think a lot of what he talks about, though, clearly is connecting with a segment of voters in Maine, and I don’t think the Democratic Party can answer should we be this or that because this and that are so blurry on their own. And how many seats do you want to have? You’re just going to have different results state by state. Maine is so fascinating because you have Susan Collins, who is one of the more left-leaning Republicans in the caucus, and the other senator is an independent, Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats but is an independent and has taken some votes that differ from the rest of the party. And so does that independent spirit then leapfrog all the way to where Grand Platner is on issues? Maybe. I don’t know. That’s for the people of Maine to decide. What interests me most about Grand Platner is less him as a human being and more what he represents about insider-outsider status, what we think about authenticity and truth, and how normal can you be and ascend to this kind of office, and what do we expect of each other, and how long do you need to show that you’re a different person before people accept that you’re a different person. Those questions, what he represents is a lot more interesting to me than this individual guy in Maine who the voters of Maine will judge, and they’ll do what they’re going to do. I liked what Andy Kim said about this, the senator from New Jersey. He was just like, “ I’ll work with whoever the people of Maine elect to the Senate because that’s my job.” I thought, “That’s the right answer.”

[00:12:17] Sarah: Yeah. To the normie of it all, I think this is so hard. I really want to tease out what I think we’ve compressed, which is that being someone who is unapologetic about certain behaviors means you’re a normie. There’s nothing normal about Donald Trump across his entire life. And so it became that if you’re crude and you’re unapologetic about your own behaviors... I’m not even going to say your mistakes, because he doesn’t describe them as mistakes. So if you have certain indicators in your personal life and you refuse to say that they were mistakes or apologize or make any sort of allowance for them, then that became like you’re not a politician, you’re a normal guy, right? It’s like we’ve put these things together and they’re not the same thing Donald Trump’s not normal. He is unapologetic. And maybe it’s the defensiveness that reads as normal, because I do think that is the posture of a lot of American life right now. I’m going to do what I want. I owe no one an excuse. It’s like I said on the show a long time ago. I don’t even remember what we were talking about; just behavior in retail, I think. And it just feels like the vibe is, “You owe me everything and I owe you shit.” And so there’s something about Sweeping up that cultural posture, that unapologetic entitlement that makes you authentic and normal, that I do think is problematic. And I don’t want to necessarily say this describes Graham Plattner. He has been apologetic. He has said “I suffered from PTSD. I had an incredibly difficult return from my military service.” And I don’t even want to pick at the boundaries of he says he’s a working-class guy, but he went to prep school, and he said she sent him to war, but he signed up. I don’t think that’s how people think about their lives. I think the nitpicking about people’s memories and narratives is kind of stupid, in my opinion. I don’t think that’s how anybody... We would all fall for that. Let me just say that. Every person alive, the narrative you tell about your own existence would be problematic if picked apart at this level. But so I’m not even saying he’s an exact Illustration of what I’m talking about, but that he’s under this umbrella of the unapologetic cussing. The unapologetic “ vices” make you normal and authentic, make you not a politician, but you are running to become a politician.

[00:15:10] Beth: My experience every day in a lot of different kinds of spaces is that the president and a lot of political actors and the way that they’re performing this normalness is way outside the mean of normalness, that most people are not as rude or profane or unapologetic, are trying to live really good lives. I recognize the irony in what I’m about to do here, but I keep thinking about a musical theater song. And I know that is not speaking to like the masculinity crisis and the white whale Joe Rogan voter that Democrats are looking for.

[00:15:53] Sarah: Great way to celebrate Pride, so good job.

[00:15:55] Beth: There you go. There’s a song from the musical Shucked where this guy has just lost his girl, okay? And he’s out in the middle of a field, and he sings this anthem about how if she doesn’t want me, somebody will. And he talks through all the reasons that’s true. And it’s just basically I work really hard. I take good care of my dog. I have a truck. I’m doing my best out here. I can catch fish. I can provide. I’m trying. And that’s enough. And someone will see the value in that, and we will get together and fall in love and be happy. And I love this song. I wish this could be the American male anthem right now, even though it’s a show tune because I think that is what most guys are looking for. Even in that space that has been so exploited by the manosphere, the more you read about it, the more those interviews I read I went and hung out with the guys playing the video games, and here’s what they told me. It is I want to be a dad. I want to have a family. I want to work hard and do my best and give something to the world and know that it’s seen, appreciated, and valued. And so this performance of screw everyone, I do what I want, feels really discordant to me with what everybody’s actually looking for. What I can understand from it is a sense of here’s a person who isn’t going to look down on me. And I think that when you have in the most Well-understood caricature of people who work in Washington, DC, a sense that they look down on everyone and think they’re better than everyone while still taking from society at large, and that is certainly exploding right now. I’m just taking. I’m in it for myself, but I pretend not to be. Then I get why anybody who doesn’t look like they’re pretending not to has some appeal.

[00:18:03] Sarah: I love your vision. I do think we’re a little limited by our own experience. I think there are vast parts of the population that don’t want to work hard that are really floundering, especially when you talk about young men. And I don’t think that’s necessarily because they want that, but I feel like they’re not presented with a path. But I think it’s less interesting to get into the manosphere, although there’s certainly some like masculinity-coded conversations happening around Graham Platner. No doubt about it. I don’t know. I don’t even know what I want, so I definitely don’t know what we want. Because on one hand I can say we are suffering from a Congress that is overly represented by Wealthy people, by older people, by lawyers. I have said and believe that Congress should be a more diverse body that understands a vast array of American experiences, including military service, psychological trauma, financial struggles. I say it and I mean it and I believe it. And at the same time, this job, particularly being a United States senator, requires a high level of skill, professionalization and I think the intersection of when politicians screwed up and they weren’t honest about why and what they were going to do next is why you have the reality we live in now where a scandal doesn’t take out a Ken Paxton, it doesn’t take out a Graham Platner. And I get that. And I don’t think that’s a bad evolution. It’s not like we were handling scandals really well; although, it did kill careers. But maybe that wasn’t the right answer either. You see what I’m saying? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if we should be like, “No, this is a higher standard of behavior we require from our representatives at the highest level of power,” or, “No, we need to allow more grace and nuance so that they can be real integrated human beings,” because when we don’t let them be “ real integrated human beings,” that’s why they hide scandal, that’s why they hide behavior, that’s why they act so weird when they get caught. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

[00:21:00] Beth: I think you’re going to hate my answer on this. What I am really looking for in 2026 as I put together the lessons of the past 10 years is emotional maturity. And I get how feminine-coded that is. And that’s a lot of what we have been debating for a couple of years. Did we go too far in this direction? But here’s the thing for me. I love that Shucked song because it is emotional maturity. It’s like a person who says, “I know what is a good life to me, and I know how to be content.” And when I look at the fact that most people who go to Congress are already wealthy and rapidly become much, much wealthier, then I kind of work backwards from that and think about what kind of person could go to Congress and afford to be in Congress, which is a hard thing, but not get tremendously wealthier through that service, where the goal of the service changes, and it becomes less about service and more about entitlement. And so if I think about any one of these individual things with Graham Platner, don’t care. People change. I agree with you. People don’t have cohesive stories of their lives, and if they do, that’s weird. It’s weird that I went to law school with some people who knew they wanted to be in Congress from age 20 and acted accordingly every step along the way. That’ll mess you up in a different sense. It’s just like who can be grounded and stable and have a support system in place to help them go do this thing that is going to pull them in every direction simultaneously? And what we see over and over, you’ve said this for years, don’t hate the player, hate the game. The game messes people up. So when I look at something like this latest story around Platner, what made my eyebrows shoot up is 2023. They’ve been married since 2023, and in 2026, in the midst of a campaign for Senate, we have this perfectly normal, lovely woman having to make a video saying to the whole world, “Marriage is hard. Infertility is hard. A Senate campaign is hard. And we’re going through all those things at once, and counseling is helping us.” And I think to myself, I can be right with all of that and have complete empathy for it and respect the journey these two people are on, and also wonder to myself, “Can you handle the game that you’re about to walk into?” Again, that is for Maine voters. But that gets to me to the bigger question. When we are taking risks on people, which is what the moment calls for, we don’t need any more of the people who knew they wanted to be in Congress when they were 20. We’re just full up. We’re stocked on that. Good for them, but we are full up and we have seen where that leads. We have to take risks on people. How can we take risks on people who seem to be pretty mature and pretty grounded and pretty stable?

[00:24:10] Sarah: Two things. Yeah, I agree that there is a difference between saying, “I lived a normal human life, and I understand how in isolation some of the choices I made during living my normal human life can be picked apart and seen as some sort of representation of my character.” I do think the fact that the majority of voters seem to have decided, “No, we’re not doing that,” is good and well and shows some progress and evolution. Because we should stop doing that. I’m tired of the... I did this. I did this for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I did background. I did oppo research. And we should maybe just stop. Unless it was what I was doing, which was your actual votes, but what were we supposed to know when we all of a sudden heard some of Barack Obama’s minister’s speeches? These sort of gotcha oppo research. And also I do think that the Access Hollywood tape should have been disqualifying. So I don’t know, maybe I’m just lying to myself. I do think voters have decided stop trying to short-circuit the process this way. Maybe it’s information we needed, but stop trying to... the gotcha everybody seems to have moved on from, especially if it’s behavior in the past. I agree that this sexting is not in the past. It is not a good stress management technique in the middle of a Senate campaign to be sending explicit messages to up to 12 women at a time. That to me shows someone who is struggling emotionally and psychically with the task before them, probably because he’s so stressed about people finding out about all this shit.

[00:25:51] Beth: And is going into a body where we know that kind of behavior tends to be made worse.

[00:25:57] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:25:57] Beth: We know that kind of behavior is already a problem in this body. I think about this a lot with John Fetterman, and I know that he is a special case because he had an actual stroke too. But I just am looking for people who seem to have really good stress management skills that are not about to go into this place that exacerbates things that you were already struggling with.

[00:26:24] Sarah: Okay, so to the 20-year-olds of it all, I would like to put in an endorsement for some of those people. Here’s a thing I think we haven’t grappled with that I believe is related and comes up with this whole Graham Platner thing. There’s clearly a huge age differential here. We have Susan Collins who’s in her late 70s, Graham Platner’s who’s in his 40s. If you want somebody in their 40s who is equipped emotionally and has the experience throughout their life to be able to handle a Senate campaign or a presidential campaign or like this level of politics, they’re not going to be a normie, not at that age. There’s a reason James Talarico’s not married. There’s a reason Susan Collins doesn’t have any kids. There’s a reason Cory Booker’s going out there and getting married all of a sudden. It’s all-consuming. It’s all-consuming in a way that is going to make you seem abnormal, right? Because it isn’t a normal experience, not at this point in history. Now, do I think uncapping the House can maybe make it a little more normal? I do, but that’s not where we’re at right now. It’s not a normal experience. And if you want people prepared to do it that aren’t 75, then it’s going to look real different, and they might need to be locked in from the age of 20 on. Just saying.

[00:28:14] Beth: I think that’s a really interesting point, and a mix is probably what we need. I don’t mind some of the technocrats and some of the nerds because I think we need that experience. I was just thinking this morning to tell you how not normal I am, that really our next president probably needs a good handle on maritime law. With the Strait of Hormuz and all the shipping disputes, I was reading about the French boarding another ship that was violating international law, and I just thought moving goods and people around the world is going to be one of the most urgent, relevant things the next president will face. Now, would the country be excited about somebody who has a real handle on that stuff? No. So I’m not looking for the kind of inspiration and connection that most people are with their politicians. Personally, I would love to be governed mostly by Gen X right now because I think that Gen X people are experienced enough to learn from people older than them and from people younger than them and past the phase of life that I’m in right now, where you’re thinking a lot about your kids and your parents all the time. Not that they aren’t thinking about those things, but they seem to have a little bit more distance and freedom. So that seems about right to me. But that’s also a silly formulation. We can’t just decide this is the one type of person who’s going to be there. And I do think that’s what at large as a society we’re rejecting. At large, we don’t really want to hear about demographics in any way right now, and I get why. Because we think, let’s just judge by the people and get the right people in there. What’s so weird about that to me is then you’d think we’d also let go of the partisanship. If we’re just judging by the people, then why do we have folks who you know Would be smearing a Republican with Graham Platner’s personal issues every single day of the week defending him. That’s strange to me. And Ken Paxton is the inverse of this, right? People are defensive of Ken Paxton, who are actively right now smearing Graham Platner every day of the week for his personal indiscretions. I’m ready to let go of that piece too. If everything is going to be on the table, then let’s let it all just be on the table.

[00:30:39] Sarah: I think there’s another. I’m making a Venn diagram here. So I think there’s the politics. What do your actual politics and policies convey to people about who you are and how normal you are? Then I think you have your biography, which is another piece of the Venn diagram. The reason people are still so partisan is because the partisanship has nothing to do with policy, and is at just this point just an identity marker, which is the hardest thing for people to release. So if your identity marker matches mine, then that’s all that matters. Now, I think the third part of the Venn diagram is communication style. Now, this part makes sense to me about why Donald Trump ended up where he is. His biography is not normal, but the way he talks, particularly in comparison to a Barack Obama, is super normie, right? I think Graham Platner has a very strong communication style. Watch ed some of him with Jon Stewart, and he sounds smart. He sounds thoughtful. He has a very strong ability to communicate, which I think is probably reaching the voters very strongly.

[00:31:51] Beth: But smart and thoughtful, not professorial.

[00:31:54] Sarah: Right.

[00:31:54] Beth: Not, “I might look down on you.”

[00:31:56] Sarah: This is how you get an AOC, who is also not living a normal life. Even before when she was a bartender. Bartender to member of Congress, not a normal transition. Mamdani, not normal to be that young and be the mayor of New York City. It’s the communication style. So I think that’s probably his strongest asset right now. I think it’s so strong it’s overcoming the weakness when it comes to the biography. And I think ultimately, the politics is a strength because I think especially the more you emphasize the economy and the corruption, people are done, and they’re just going to get more and more done. And I think with Ken Paxton, I think you see a similar thing. Clearly he knows how to communicate with Texans. I don’t like it, but that is what it is, and I think then you lay over the wash this of partisan and I’m going to defend Graham Platner because I’m a Democrat and I want to beat Susan Collins, and you’re going to defend Ken Paxton because you’re a Republican and you don’t want a Democrat from Texas. And then it’s even more compressed and entangled when really I think it’s these three kind of things working in concert.

[00:33:02] Beth: And it’s those things working in concert laid on current events. So I think about Congressman Jake Auchincloss coming out and saying that he finds Platner’s tattoo and his comments about it disqualifying. Auchincloss is a Democrat, seems like an up-and-coming guy, somebody who does media well, also a good communicator.

[00:33:24] Sarah: Big centrist, though.

[00:33:25] Beth: Big centrist, so ideologically in a different place. Which would be an interesting case if they were more ideologically aligned.

[00:33:32] Sarah: Right.

[00:33:33] Beth: But he also says he’s Jewish, and he’s looking at this in a moment when Israel on the international stage is going through the biggest shift in how people view the nation of Israel as a nation, as a state, and how it operates on the international stage. And because of that, you have rising antisemitism met with people saying, “I can’t not say my piece about what Israel is doing in the world because I’m afraid to be antisemitic” and people saying, “Yeah, I guess I am antisemitic,” and this horrific confluence of pressures around a topic that is painful because it is not ancient history. And so you look at somebody like Graham Plattner who comes in with not careful speech, this symbolism that he says he was unaware of or at minimum casual about. Not that I think he was a Nazi by any stretch, but maybe he knew and just thought probably most people don’t know, and it still looks cool, and whatever, it’s there, I did it. So how does all that overlay on this moment?

[00:34:47] Sarah: Complexly. Very complexly. Because that’s the thing, all of this says to me that we are just in a stage of transition, that we are trying to digest the reality of 10 years of Trump in American politics in all kinds of ways, including the candidacy of Graham Plattner. And to the other side, I don’t think we’ve learned the lessons and we’ve decided the key takeaways. But I do think we’re going to see more and more candidacies and candidates that press on these complexities, that push us to say, “But wait, it wasn’t okay for them, but now it’s okay for us.” Maybe that’ll just break the partisanship. That’d be a really great result if that’s what ultimately happens, and everybody goes, “Never mind, we’ll just let it go.”

[00:35:36] Beth: I hope so. Because the other thing in my mind as we’re talking is that there are going to be people who are mad we are having this conversation at all. Because in addition to all those factors I just listed about Israel, you do have Donald Trump as the president making decisions every day that are enormously consequential. And so there are going to be people who think elevating any of this, spending any time on it, is a betrayal because the moral imperative is electing Democrats to the Senate, and I made this argument in our last episode, to at least put some friction on the runway for President Trump. I agree that it is an imperative to put friction on the runway for President Trump. I also want to have a conversation like this and think pretty deeply about where we are in that state of transition, because I don’t think it gets better if we are always in that defensive posture. That feels to me like what we have done really unsuccessfully as a society for the last 15, 20 years, always being in that defensive posture. I think the Republican Party has gotten much more extreme and ineffective because it decided the Democrats are an existential enemy, and I think the Democratic Party has gotten more extreme and less effective because it’s decided that Republicans are an existential enemy. And so I can hold in both hands that come November, when you have a choice on a ballot, you got to make the best choice for the moment. And other than that, you need to be thinking about where we are. We all need to be thinking and discussing what works for us in these roles. What are we learning? Who do we hope to see as our senators?

[00:37:24] Sarah: Here’s the thing. The learning from this particular era of American politics should not be that the moral imperative is to put some friction on the runway for Donald Trump, because surely to God, we have all learned at this point that this particular political figure is very empowered by friction. I don’t think he wants anything but to have a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House to fight him because that’s where he’s most comfortable, is fighting and communicating the fact that everything, every problem is the Democrats’ fault because they’re in charge of the Senate and they’re in charge of the House and they won’t let him do any of the great things he wants to do for America. Now, do I think that show is running its course and people don’t fall for it in the way that they used to? Yes. But make no mistake, I think that’s what he wants. I think that he wouldn’t be sad. I don’t think he gives a shit if they win the midterms or not, the Republican Party, that is, because I think he likes that. That is where he is most comfortable. We think that we’re going to elect a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, and he’s going to go, “Oh, no, I guess I’ll just hang out for the next two years.” Hell no. Now, I still want a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. I want investigations. I want legislation stopped. I’m not saying that’s not the political imperative, but it will strengthen him in some ways. It will corral the people who were maybe loosening their grip on that partisan identity, because they will fall back in line and they’ll say, “Oh, yep, they’re fighting us and they are the existential threat, and this is what we have to do.” Just be clear-eyed about that. This isn’t going to be some easy victory and then everybody’s going to see the error of their ways and never vote Republican again.

[00:39:08] Beth: You know that from our personal lives. If you have someone in your life who is fundamentally selfish and thinks of themselves as a victim, everything is heads I win, tails you lose. And that’s how it is with Donald Trump. And so that’s another reason that I don’t feel constrained from saying, “I see some problems with this Democrat on the ballot,” because I don’t think anyone’s position is strengthened intellectually, morally, relationally By ignoring what everybody can see and failing to pull apart what does this mean for me? Where do I want to go from here?”

[00:39:48] Sarah: Yeah, because the candidates that get through that are real risks to both parties are the ones that either party, because that’s the ultimately the only check, because the system we’ve got set up right now is the check on your power is your own party, full stop. And the system where we decided because the other guy’s worse, we’ll let everybody through, I think is bad, and I think it could use some improvement. And I hope that we’ve all learned that lesson, although sometimes I wonder. What I really care about is what the people of Maine think in our audience. I do want to hear from our listeners in Maine. I want to hear how different it feels on the ground in Maine, like what your perception is of Graham Platner and Susan Collins and how this campaign is rolling out. I think that’ll be a really interesting conversation in the comments over on Substack, so I look forward to that. Up next, we’re going to talk about an Instagram account. Beth, I’ve had Instagram accounts that I’m fascinated by or that really make me laugh or that I’m just enamored by. I don’t run to Pantsuit Politics and make a commercial for them in our Outside of Politics section in the way we’re about to do. Because this Instagram account is not just distracting me. It’s just made my life better. It’s made my life better, and now I’ve got you hooked too. If you are watching the video Pantsuit Politics right now, you’ll see that Beth and I are both wearing scarves, and the reason is because we follow Bronte the Stylist on Instagram, who gives you a prompt every day for your outfits, and today’s prompt, as we’re recording on Monday, June 1st, was style a scarf

[00:41:37] Beth: Yes, I like what Bronte the Stylist is doing a lot. I do want to say, as you’ve talked about it as an Instagram obsession, I’ve been like, “Is that true? I guess it is.” Because it doesn’t feel to me like something that is trying to--

[00:41:51] Sarah: Keep me there.

[00:41:51] Beth: Make me sit down and watch more and more and buy things.

[00:41:55] Sarah:  It’s not a series.

[00:41:56] Beth: She’s like, Listen, I’m going to tell you once a week some prompts for your outfits to use what’s already in your closet in new and different ways,” and I love that. I think it’s great.

[00:42:10] Sarah: So fun. Wednesday’s prompt is wear pink because on Wednesdays we wear pink. She doesn’t do that every Wednesday. I just want to say that. But they’re very basic. It’s not dress like a 1950s housewife. It’s wear blue. Wear a maxi skirt.

[00:42:22] Beth:  Choose three Colors.

[00:42:24] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:42:25] Beth:  Put three colors Together.

[00:42:26] Sarah: Put three colors together. Put them together in this particular way. I just find it a nice starting point. Because I have an app that I use called Cladwell that I’ve used for years that has everything I own in my closet. It’s very Clueless. It’ll put together an outfit for you. But then I’m looking at the weather or what do I have to do that day; whereas, I don’t know why I’m not even checking the weather anymore. I’m just like I’m just going to wear what she tells me. I’m just going to do the prompt. I’m going to do the prompt. And I think it’s because you’re not just trying to dress to solving a problem. It is a creative exercise, which is why I love clothes. At their best they’re a really fun, creative exercise, and I think her prompts really bring that out.

[00:43:10] Beth: So it doesn’t solve the problem for you. It is a prompt. It’s a beginning. So you think, wear a scarf, and then I don’t know about you, but I went through a lot of iterations of what might that mean and what do I want to wear with it.

[00:43:22] Sarah:  Do you know How long it took me to figure out how to tie this knot? Like 15 minutes, Beth. It took forever.

[00:43:29] Beth:  And it looks great. If you’re not watching the video, Sarah has a beautiful knot in the scarf around her neck today. My scarf is in my hair because another thing that I’ve gotten from watching her videos is understanding that my hair is part of my outfit every day. This is a piece of it. She explicitly says that in one of the challenges this week. It’s to kind of channel your inner Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. And she said to think about your hair because Carrie’s hair often played a real role in the overall look, and I appreciate the way that she is taking what I already have and just giving me a question or an idea to look at it differently.

[00:44:05] Sarah: Yeah. I love it. I’m telling you guys, it’s such a fun account. I would like to see people do this sort of approach with other things like in your house, with your meal planning. I think there’s a real opportunity here that she’s cracked open. So go check it out, Bronte the Stylist. Now, before we go, we have a pretty massive announcement here at Pantsuit Politics. It is the end, truly, of an era Because both Maggie and Alise are leaving Pantsuit Politics to pursue other careers, jobs, chances, opportunities, and dreams.

[00:44:50] Beth: Yes.

[00:44:51] Sarah: So massive change here at Pantsuit Politics.

[00:44:54] Beth: What I really want you to know is that Maggie and Alise are two talented, kind people that we have been so fortunate to work with. They made these decisions. We did not fire them. We are not trying to reduce our expenses in that way. This was not about performance. They’ve been great, and we wish them every happiness on earth. And know that they will be happy because they’re the kind of people who will go out and make their happiness. So this has been hard, but it is okay and we support them and we know that they’re still rooting for us. It’s just change, and change doesn’t always feel good, but it’s often healthy.

[00:45:29] Sarah: I guess I knew in my thinking brain that we weren’t all four going to retire in the podcast industry. When I say that out loud I understood that probably logically, but yeah. Change is hard. That’s why it means so much to have the support of all of you guys. We have made a post on Substack as a place for everyone to go give their well wishes and congratulations to Maggie and Alise, because we know that they’re a huge part of this community, a huge part of so many of your lives. They’re not going anywhere. They’ll be on Substack as members; although, I would not blame them one solid ounce if they wanted to take a break from our content after five to eight years of listening.

[00:46:13] Beth: I’m sure that they need some real space from the sounds of our voices for a while.

[00:46:17] Sarah: And that’s okay.

[00:46:18] Beth: Here’s another thing I really want to say. I love you all so much. Please don’t send us your resumes yet. No. We need a minute to get our ducks in a row here because this is a huge change for us. It is a big deal to send someone your resume. We do not want to be part of the employer ghosting situation where you send a resume and you never hear back. When we are ready to hire, we want to communicate clearly what we’re looking for. We want to do it in a process where we can be respectful to you. So I know that there are people out there who think, “Oh, I could help and be valuable,” and I’m sure that you could. We just need a minute, and we will communicate that broadly and clearly when we’re there. But for the summer, we’re going to get our arms around things. So just give us a second to get our arms around things, and then we’ll be back in touch.

[00:47:08] Sarah: Thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

That frame changes my expectations about candidates, and it changes my ask of my fellow voters. I’m not trying to be inspired by candidates. I’m looking for people who will gum up the works because I think the current works aren’t working.

Sarah and I discuss the races and the works that aren’t working today (including the gerrymandering spiral and money in politics and the DOJ). And then we take a big exhale to talk about summer movies. We hope you take that exhale, too.

- Beth

Topics Discussed

• Ken Paxton’s primary win over John Cornyn

• What Paxton’s victory means for the Texas Senate race and Republican Party

• Redistricting updates: South Carolina, Alabama, Florida

• The midterms as a structural check on executive power

• DOJ investigation of E. Jean Carroll

• Summer movie preview: Project Hail Mary, The Mandalorian & Grogu, The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, Supergirl, live-action Moana

• America250 murder mystery: Murder at Mrs. Morris’s Table

Episode Resources

• The $130 million ad price tag for the Texas Republican primary (Punchbowl News)

• How Paxton entered the race and what Cornyn’s gun vote cost him (Punchbowl News)

• The NRSC statement that named neither Cornyn nor Paxton (NRSC)

• South Carolina Senate blocks Trump-backed map after early voting began (NY Times)

• Alabama three-judge panel rejects discriminatory maps (NY Times)

• Alabama federal panel opinion (CourtListener)

• Florida judge lets DeSantis redistricting map stand (NY Times)

• Mystery super PACs quietly boosting weaker Democratic candidates (Punchbowl News)

• DCCC’s unusual tactic of joint ad buys with preferred candidates (Axios)

• Texas School Police Pepper-Sprayed, Tackled, and Tasered Students (NYT)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:29] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:31] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we’re going to discuss the shape of the midterms. The Texas Senate race is settled now. We have our nominees. We’re going to talk about the latest developments in the redistricting race to the bottom. We’re going to talk about some of the stranger dynamics heading into the midterms. And then Outside of Politics, it’s time for summer movies. We’re gearing up for a genre that one of my friends called aggressively fine. And I think that’s a perfect description of a lot of summer movies, but I’m excited to talk about it. And first, we want to make sure you know what we have in store for our America 250 celebrations.

[00:01:06] Sarah: Okay. I just did my first murder mystery party, Beth. And I think what I learned immediately, in particular after talking to you about your deep and wide experience with murder mystery parties, is that the kit itself really matters.

[00:01:22] Beth: It does.

[00:01:23] Sarah: The quality of the clues, the quality of the story, the instructions make a huge difference to the impact of the murder mystery and the fun everybody has. And I say all that because you queen of the high standards have crafted an American 250 murder mystery party for our premium members. Tell the people.

[00:01:59] Beth: I have. So this is a dinner party taking place in 1776, and I tried to bring all the lessons that I’ve learned from using different kits to this to say “Here’s how I would do it.” So in the instructions, I say, “I would text this now.” You know what I mean? To just try to make it really easy for people who’ve not hosted before. And I don’t want to give too much about the plot away, so I’ll just tell you that one of my favorite characters in this is Sarah Franklin Bache, who was Ben Franklin’s daughter. So she was in her early 30s around this time. All of the characters are based on real people, except one. That is the victim in the story. This is not a real murder, but it is a real committee that was meeting, made up of real people, and I added some women in the committee because I just felt like there needed to be women in the story. And there were women in the story in the background, so I tried to bring them to the foreground. So one of those women is Sarah Franklin Bache. She was handling so much of Ben Franklin’s correspondence that she really understood the dynamics of people’s different agendas, and who was, like, more loyalist than other revolutionaries, who really didn’t want to fight, who was really trying to avoid getting to war, and who was, like, all in, but who was maybe all in for their own purposes. So she just had everybody’s number, and I love that for a murder mystery party.

[00:03:27] Sarah: So I have convinced our best friends to do this over July 4th. We’ll be all together, and we have very many teens and young adult children. I can just assign myself this character. I can be in charge and just make myself Sarah Franklin Bache, right? That’s allowed?

[00:03:42] Beth: You can, although the host characters are Robert and Mary White Morris.

[00:03:48] Sarah: We’re doing July 4th at their house. Can’t they be those people?

[00:03:51] Beth: They can be those people then.

[00:03:52] Sarah: Okay.

[00:03:53] Beth: So you can just tell them that you want to be this person. Here’s the key. You really need one person who’s hosting who’s willing to know how everything goes.

[00:04:02] Sarah: Okay.

[00:04:03] Beth: A lot of these kits are written so that the host can play along and doesn’t have to know how everything goes, and I’m here to tell you that makes for a bad party.

[00:04:12] Sarah: Okay.

[00:04:12] Beth: You’ve got to have somebody who’s willing to steer this ship in a direction, and that means that they’ve read everybody’s character cards, they’ve read all of the clues and the reveals, and they’re willing to keep it moving in the right direction. So as long as somebody else will do that for you, this would be a great character for you, I think.

[00:04:28] Sarah: And I’m here to tell you to the value proposition of all this, these kits are expensive. And you’re going to get this kit along with all the other stuff that’s coming with our America 250 celebration, including but not limited to me reporting from 1776 from the News Brief the week before July 4th, for the low price of $15 a month.

[00:04:54] Beth:  That’s right. And the knowledge that you are supporting independent political media trying to do some good in the world.

[00:05:01] Sarah: That’s right. So what a better way to support and celebrate America’s 250 than to support freedom of the press with your dollars, and to get all this fun stuff as a very exciting bonus.

[00:05:14] Beth: You did a good job steering me back on course there, too, because I could talk about this for 100 years.

[00:05:20] Sarah: Or another 250. Maybe we will.

[00:05:22] Beth: There we go.

[00:05:24] Sarah: So go to the show notes to find out how to become a member of our premium community and get your very own copy of A Murder at Mrs. Morris’ Table.

[00:05:35] Beth: Speaking of characters, let’s talk about Ken Paxton and John Cornyn. Cornyn has been a senator for 24 years, and that career has come to an end in his runoff with Ken Paxton.

[00:05:58] Sarah: In the most brutal way imaginable.

[00:06:00] Beth: Absolutely brutal.

[00:06:03] Sarah: Brutal.

[00:06:04] Beth: 64 to 36%. Yikes.

[00:06:07] Sarah: It’s like the widest margin of a defeat for a sitting senator in a long time.

[00:06:13] Beth: Nearly 50 years. Cornyn won three counties. Yikes.

[00:06:19] Sarah: There’s a lot of counties in Texas. Kentucky and Texas have the most counties, just in case y’all needed a little state trivia. So there’s a lot of counties, to only win three of them is pretty rough. And it’s not like this man was out here pulling a Thomas Massie. He didn’t vote for impeachment.

[00:06:39] Beth: He did not.

[00:06:40] Sarah: He’s not out here criticizing Donald Trump. He is a loyal foot soldier, very conservative, not somebody I would ever vote for in my whole entire life, and still not good enough. Can’t really tell why.

[00:06:53] Beth: Also, a massive fundraiser for other Republicans.

[00:06:57] Sarah: Yes.

[00:06:58] Beth: That’s why everybody’s so mad. John Cornyn was a money machine.

[00:07:02] Sarah: I read that he took over the George W. Bush apparatus in Texas. He picked up the organization and foundational work that came from George W. Bush’s presidency and had control of that fundraising apparatus and directed millions and millions of dollars at Republican candidates. And again, wasn’t what anyone would describe as a troublemaker. It’s not like he ran against Donald Trump in the Republican primary. It’s not like he was out there stumping for Ron DeSantis. I don’t even know why he doesn’t like him.

[00:07:33] Beth: He posted a photo of himself reading The Art of the Deal, in fact. He was as obsequious as you could be. His sin in Texas that caused Ken Paxton to run against him was that he worked on bipartisan gun legislation after Uvalde. And that’s where Ken Paxton decided this guy is a RINO, he’s not looking out for Texans’ interests.

[00:07:57] Sarah: That on the heels of this New York Times reporting that all these police officers in Texas post-Uvalde are aggressive and violent towards children, it’s just a lot to take in, Beth. It’s a lot to take in.

[00:08:15] Beth: Yeah, in a dramatically unaccountable system. I’m anxious to see the follow-on reporting. Somebody comes out with a big piece, and then everybody goes at it, too, and I’m interested to see more of that. But if I were a Texan, that would have my attention even more than this primary, honestly. If you’ve got police officers in every single school in your state, and the results are these incidents that aren’t even being reported to a central kind of watchdog authority, that’s worth getting involved in.

[00:08:49] Sarah: I’ve been a little worried about the Texans because they feel real beat down to me. You say “Yay, Ken Paxton is a defeatable candidate,” and they’re like, “He’s won statewide so many times, he’s the worst, but nobody seems to care.” I want to give them a little pep talk, and I want them to remember that nothing is static in American politics, and there is no reality that is unmovable. And James Talarico is not Beto O’Rourke, and, Ken Paxton is not John Cornyn. He’s certainly not Ted Cruz. And I just want them to buck up just a little bit. I just want to buck up just a little bit. And even if James Talarico doesn’t win, there is a real chance that somebody else will because of this race in Texas, which is now going to require millions and millions of dollars that I’m sure many Republicans would have preferred to direct towards Maine or Ohio or Alaska.

[00:09:55] Beth: I definitely understand why Texans feel so down about this. I’ve struggled to come up with a framework for myself. On one hand, I look at Ken Paxton, who is so unapologetic about such a multitude of sins, and I see him as a pure Donald Trump descendant, perfectly in line with the MAGA philosophy. I don’t apologize. I do what I want. At least I’m honest about it. Almost a sense of Pepsi is unacceptable to me in all situations, but I understand that if you like Pepsi and you’re offered a Pepsi and a Diet Pepsi, you’re taking the Pepsi. And I think that’s what happened in this race. Because Cornyn could have run as a Bush Republican. He could have said, “This is the mold I came up in. This is what I believe to be true. This is my vision.” He could have leaned into that. I would love to run an experiment where he does that and see what the results are, if he’s defeated as badly. I think he’s still defeated, but is he defeated as badly? I don’t know. That’s how I feel about Thomas Massey as well. He was standing up to Trump enough to piss Trump off, but not enough to seem materially different than his opponent to a lot of people who are casually paying attention. If you’re just watching the ad mailers, they sound like they stand for the same thing. Trump’s mad at one of them and not the other. One’s been there a long time and not the other. You know what I mean? So there’s this outsider thing and this authenticity thing that Paxton encapsulates. I read a long post this morning on X. I don’t know why I still go on X. I feel like I learn things, and then I also get upset. I read a long post on X from a guy about Talarico and Paxton. And this guy said, “Look, my faith is really important to me, and that’s why I loathe James Talarico in a way that I’ll never loathe Ken Paxton. Because Talarico is false prophet.” He puts on the cloak of this thing, but it’s not the thing that I believe in. And Ken Paxton is a reprehensible dude, but he just is. He doesn’t pretend to not be.” And that logic is exhausting to me, but I also I want to stare at that logic. I want to stare at that place that a lot of people are in, because I hear that from our listeners in Texas too particularly and throughout the Southwest. I hear a lot of people saying, “ This is the worldview of my family members here. This is the worldview of people I know.” So I want to take it seriously. And that’s why I understand the despondence. I hope you’re right that’s limited enough that there’s an opening here.

[00:12:37] Sarah: First of all, there is no logic there. It might be something, but there’s no logic in that to me. If your faith is important to you, you don’t vote for somebody morally reprehensible. So I don’t know how to say that any other way.

[00:12:53] Beth: But do you get what I’m saying? He thinks that Talarico’s version of Christianity is morally reprehensible to a greater degree, because he thinks that Talarico is using something that matters to him and saying things like, “God is non-binary” that we’re going to hear 10 million times between now and November, and that offends him more than Paxton’s corruption in office, infidelity to his wife, on, and on.

[00:13:23] Sarah: I get it. I just don’t think there’s a lot of logic in it. I think the answer is what the answer has been for many years of United States history. And I’m not saying that we’ve always lived it out perfectly, but the standard is the separation of church and state, and we separate people’s understanding of their own religion from their understanding of the state’s role in enforcing that religion. And I think you get really far apart when it comes to Ken Paxton and James Talarico. And then you ask, so do you want someone who’s reprehensible and shows no moral character enforcing a view that the government should play a active and aggressive role in enforcing morality on the populace? Because I feel like we’ve got a conflict there. Whereas, James Talarico, you might not like the way that he speaks or lives out his religion, but his stance on the government’s role in enforcing people’s understanding of morality and ethics is pretty clear. I think that’s where he made his mark as a state legislator, was standing up and saying, “This matters to me, but that doesn’t mean I want it on the walls forced down everyone else’s throat.” And I think that’s a winning message for a lot of people. I just have to believe when it comes to not necessarily our Run of the Reel Texas voters, but the Republican Party generally, Republican Party leadership, and by that I mean elected officials I have to believe that there is a breaking point here somewhere, just based on my fundamental understanding of human psychology and human behavior, that there has to be-- and maybe we’re nowhere close, and maybe I’m being naive and overly optimistic. There has to be a place, a point where people stop swallowing his shit. It has to be. There is. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it with Marjorie Taylor Greene. We’ve seen it with Thomas Massie. We’ve seen it with Tucker Carlson. I feel, I hear the tea kettle and it’s just the piercing is getting louder and louder. And when you have the leader of your party taking out established, long-term sitting senators with fundraising prowess and saying in the same week, “I don’t care about the midterms.” There’s got to be a breaking point. There has to be a breaking point.

[00:16:01] Beth: Here’s the way that I look at it right now for myself because I look at some of the candidates the Democrats are fielding who I’m not excited about, like a Graham Plattner. I would find it challenging to vote for Graham Plattner at this point the midterms to me represent a moment where you ask, do we want to give the president a smooth runway, or do we want to gum up the works a little bit? Because the truth of this moment is that he is still going to be the president for two more years without a lot of brakes on his power, and especially without a lot of brakes on his power that he respects. So even if Democrats took both chambers of Congress, he still has the veto power. It’s not like they can go in and remake America. They can go in and make things harder for him. They can go in and be a little bit of a brake on what feels to me like a runaway train. And historically, we have liked divided government and have used the midterms that way. The public might not articulate it that way, but that’s what we’ve done, like a little bit of a brake on this. So I could vote for a candidate that I think doesn’t really represent my views, isn’t the kind of person that I would like to see in office if my choices are a smooth runway or a brake here. And I hope that argument in Texas can prevail, where you’re not asking everybody to embrace Talarico’s progressive view of Christianity or embrace Christianity at all, because again, that shouldn’t be what this is about. Diana Butler Bass, who I respect tremendously, posted something about this is going to be a massive trial of Christianity in Texas. Paxton’s version is, does Christianity mean you are pro-life and anti-Democrat and anti-trans, or does Christian mean that you love your neighbor and you care about the poor and the marginalized? That’s what this is. And I thought, “Oh, God, I don’t want that. I don’t want that.” That’s not what a Senate race should be. You talk about an inappropriate container for something, that’s not what a Senate race should be. So I hope there is a way to reframe this thing where it is, do you want any kind of brake on the president’s agenda or not? And if that doesn’t work in Texas, then I hope it can just be about do you want somebody who feels they owe you something or someone who’s just in it for themselves? Because that’s what Ken Paxton’s career has been about. Ken Paxton is in it for Ken Paxton just like Donald Trump is in it for Donald Trump. And so is this about the victor getting all the spoils or electing somebody who does think about other people when he wakes up in the morning? Well, Texas is one race of a handful that are really in dispute. The Cook Political Report still has Texas in the likely Republican column, maybe lean Republican after Paxton won the primary. But there are three toss-up races, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio in the Senate. And then the House, of course, is where we have 18 toss-up races, but still a pretty significant Republican advantage that grew more significant because of the redistricting efforts that have been swirling for the past 10 months or so. And we have some developments in the redistricting swirl.

[00:19:56] Sarah: Yeah, and to the boiling point of it all, South Carolina Senate refusing to approve a Trump-backed voting map, which was going to eliminate the state’s lone majority Black district and James Clyburn, a historically significant member of the House of Representatives. And I think to watch these moments Come in the midst of his stranglehold on the party. He’s taken out John Cornyn. Again, it feels really important to me that you’re still seeing people push even as the threat of any disloyalty grows stronger. He’s already making a list of 2028 people he wants to go after, and one of them is Lauren Boebert.

[00:20:43] Beth: So South Carolina refused to approve a map that it sounds like the White House pretty well created and gave to them. For us. The process offended people, the timing offended people, and just overall, you had a number of Republicans say, “This is bananas.” And you see that dynamic on display in the judiciary with respect to Alabama’s maps. A federal panel of judges said that Alabama’s maps, even under the new Supreme Court standards, were explicitly based on race for the purpose of discrimination. And I was looking at that opinion. It’s 102 pages long. It is a painstakingly written opinion. And over and over it says a judicial version of, “This sucks. This is lose-lose. This is horrible that this close to an election, we are here looking at these maps. And no matter what we do, the result is bad. This is a bad situation.” So my hope is that the boiling point comes, whatever you think about partisan gerrymandering, whoever you think does it worse, whoever you think started it, whether you think that independent commissions are a good idea or an abdication of authority given to state legislatures, like wherever you are on it, I would love for all of us to be able to come together and say, “A few months before the general election, when primary elections are already underway, we don’t want the maps messed with.”

[00:22:19] Sarah: What I keep thinking is at the beginning of this presidential term, this second Trump term- We spent a lot of time on his mumblings about a third term. We spent a lot of time thinking about the stacking of election officials in states across the country, the stacking in state parties of Trump allies, foot soldiers. I spent a lot of time thinking about ICE at the polls and voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, and now I’m like, “this is the way they’re going to cheat. This is the chosen path to cheating and trying to maintain victory in an election that everyone can see they are set up to lose.” I feel like it was like staring us all in the face the whole time, and I think it particularly becomes clear as they do the Trump thing, which is push people past all reason. Push people past all capacity to defend actions, to this quote from the Republican state senator in South Carolina that said, “Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway.” It’s just they cannot because it’s like everything else surrounding him. He will not allow anything but the following of his whim, and if that means you have to follow him right off a cliff, you better take a running start . There’s just no gatekeepers. There’s no respect for the process. There are so few norms left standing, and the unapologetic We’re going to do whatever it takes to maintain our power, and we don’t care who we have to step on and who we have to defeat and what laws we have to break and the ways in which we have to strain the democratic process. We don’t care because this is what he wants, and so everybody better run out and get it for him. The way that Ron DeSantis has run to do his bidding after the way he talked about him and treated him in the primary, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but wow. Wow. And the Florida maps are the ones, like they got a little bit of a win because DeSantis has taken the Trump approach of stacking the courts with his appointees. But I don’t know what you’ve read, but what I’ve read is like these are too aggressive and they could not turn out the way they expected.

[00:25:03] Beth: I think that’s right, and I really want to park on that point. The brake on this is a resounding message that we don’t like it. The brake on this is people showing up in these midterms and saying, “I’m willing to vote for someone I never would’ve voted for before, and I might not again in two years or in six years. But right now I want to say clearly this is unacceptable to me,” because the gerrymandering has not gotten as bad as it can get. It can get worse. People are already looking at 2028 and talking about non-contiguous districts, grabbing a county here and a county way over here in the state on both sides of the aisle. So again, it’s not that I think Democrats are perfect or have any kind of moral high ground on districting particularly. It is that the White House going to state legislatures and basically bullying them with the threat of primaries and flooding their districts with outside spending to punish people who don’t comply is not okay. And what we have in the midterms is an opportunity to say, “That is not okay with me. I want this to stop.”

[00:26:11] Sarah: To the objective reality of people’s breaking points. I don’t know where that is. I don’t know with regards to our elections, the enormous stress our system has been under for the last 10 years, first with just the narrative, just the unapologetic way that he speaks about our elections as if they’re all rigged. That was the first wall to fall, right? We’re just going to talk about and lie and say that it’s not legitimate. It’s not a legitimate system. Our elections aren’t legitimate. So that was the first incredible stressor on our constitutional democracy. Then you have this political, no-holds-barred approach to gerrymandering. And I do actually believe that Democrats do have some moral high ground because when you look at states that approached-- at least took the first step, even if they undid them-- were at least trying to make some progress towards non-partisan commissions, it was Democratic states. And to me, that does matter, and it does speak to something. So I think it’s the just constant barrage that our elections aren’t fair and the unapologetic lying about election fraud. I think it is the partisan approach and the just-- We don’t need any competitive races. We don’t need that. We don’t need a contest of ideas. We can all just fight it out among the twenty percent of ideologues that exist on each side. And then I think the final sort of stressor that I wonder When and how we’ll get to a place where people will say enough, is the money in politics. The billionaires and the increasing number of billionaires that are just pouring money into elections, influencing elections, these super PACs coming in, trying to influence the other party’s elections, and this stress on the one person, one vote, the Voting Rights Act. Like, all of this is just building and building to I have to believe a breaking point.

[00:28:28] Beth: Because it’s not isolated to elections, that approach that you just described, the sort of chipping away here, undermining there, is happening with respect to all of the foundational pieces of the constitutional order. I’ve been thinking about this so much with the news that the Department of Justice is investigating E. Jean Carroll for perjury. In isolation, it’s one other story in a barrage of stories. In a world with wars and Ebola, it doesn’t rise to the level of hair on fire. If she lied, people shouldn’t lie under oath. You could talk about prioritization and the vindictiveness, but what more is there to say about any of that except that it’s part of a pattern? Because the judicial system’s power as a co-equal branch of government in so many ways rests on the concept of finality, that once a court has made a decision and it has gone through the appropriate appeals process, that decision stands. That’s why it’s such a big deal to overturn precedent because we respect what work has been done before, and we especially respect that work in the context of the same people and players and facts, the same story. So what does it mean for the Department of Justice to investigate a civil plaintiff for perjury on the other side of cases that she won? And those cases were about truth and facts. They were defamation cases. Now, it’s not exactly the same. Legally, I don’t think there are res judicata sort of collateral attack principles that apply here. But it’s another example of the president trying to use the executive branch, the Department of Justice, to build a parallel process to the court system to undermine what the court system stands for. So he’s chipping away at elections, chipping away at Congress for sure, says outright, “I don’t really need Congress for things. I can do it. I can do what I want. I can declare war. I can bulldoze the White House. I can do what I want without Congress.” And then you have this with the judiciary. That contributes to that tea kettle feeling that you’re describing, and it can be really depressing because in a vacuum, there are so few action steps that we can take as citizens. But the midterms are our chance to say, “We don’t like this. We don’t like where all this is going.”

[00:31:01] Sarah: I would add to the pile the fact that he very clearly articulates that he believes he should be able to determine everything, whether it’s morally right to go to war, whatever he wants to do. He says when asked, “Me, I get to decide.” He wants to be king. That’s why I really think they’re going to do another No Kings protest on his birthday, the day of this UFC fight, and it might be the first one I join. Because it has to be swarms of Americans in the street. I don’t think it’s just the midterms. I think there are other ways to join together and say, “We don’t want a king on our 250th anniversary.” It’s just so outrageous, and it’s making everything worse, everything more expensive. The pressure building in people’s everyday lives and the way that this political chaos is trickling out into closed businesses and increased costs and government cuts. It’s just going to continue to build because this is not sustainable. This is not sustainable.

[00:32:08] Beth: It’s I do what I want. I don’t think about the American people’s finances. I don’t think about the families of soldiers. I don’t think about Congress. I don’t think about America’s role on the world stage. I do what I want. I don’t think about anybody else, and I take what I want from all of it. There’s so much taking for the president personally, and I hate coming to the microphone to be like, “Trump is bad.” I hate that. I would much rather be having arguments with you about policy and being able to compliment actions of the administration to say, “Here is a needle in a haystack,” or, “Here’s a silver lining,” or, “Here’s something that they’re doing that I think is interesting and worth talking about.” I don’t have any runway for that right now because what I see is that runaway train. I don’t see any brakes on a very small number of people wielding the levers of government for personal gain in money and power, and I just want something to throw in front of that track to slow it down. All right, we’re going to go in a totally different direction because we need to. That’s exhausting. Let’s talk about summer movies. I want to tell you, Sarah, that I have seen only two movies this year, I think.

[00:33:49] Sarah: I haven’t been to the theater at all. It’s May.

[00:33:52] Beth: Yeah. I think I’ve seen two movies: Project Hail Mary.

[00:33:57] Sarah: I wanted to see it

[00:33:57] Beth: which I loved.

[00:33:58] Sarah: I wanted to see it. Everybody loved it, but it was so long. It’s it was so long, and I just couldn’t make the time.

[00:34:04] Beth: It felt so short. I’m going to be honest with you. It felt very short. I don’t know how. If you had said to me, “Ryan Gosling is going to carry a whole movie on his back for hours and hours in space,” I would’ve been like, “No way.” But it flew by. It was touching. I laughed. I cried. I still think about it. I’d like to see it again. It was great.

[00:34:26] Sarah: Okay. Maybe I’ll go to the drive-in this summer.

[00:34:29] Beth: That’d be a great drive-in movie.

[00:34:31] Sarah: Okay.

[00:34:31] Beth: Fantastic.

[00:34:32] Sarah: Okay

[00:34:32] Beth: Highly recommend that you do that. On the other hand, Chad and I went to see The Mandalorian and Grogu.

[00:34:38] Sarah: I heard it was bad.

[00:34:40] Beth: My popcorn was excellent. That’s really all I can say for it. I liked my popcorn. I liked my date. This thing was wild. Now, I am not a Star Wars lover. I am a Star Wars plus one. I see the things because Chad loves the things. If you take Star Wars, the original trilogy and suck all charm and life out of it, and add copious amounts of CGI. You just say “You know what this thing needs? More monster fighting.” Just monster fighting, every six minutes monster fighting. That is what you have. And a series of decisions that are very confusing to me. For example, Jeremy Allen White is in this movie. You never see him. Why do you hire Jeremy Allen White for something and not put that face on the screen? He’s just a voice actor in it. Why do you hire Pedro Pascal if you’re going to keep him behind a mask the whole time and have him speak in a monotone? He’s not really acting. He’s just like marching along doing a thing. I’m so confused by all of the choices that were made around this movie.

[00:35:50] Sarah: I think that’s a no for me. I don’t like Star Wars in the best circumstances. Gosh, I’m going hot. I’m telling people I don’t like Elvis. I’m telling people I don’t like Star Wars. The Michael Jackson people are coming for me. I’m just feeling...

[00:36:01] Beth: you’re telling people not to choose violence while you are in every conversation.

[00:36:04] Sarah: I’m choosing violence. I just don’t like Star Wars. I don’t even like the original movies. I think the dialogue is so clunky. I understand why they’re important historically, cinematically. But they’re not my jam. They’re just not my jam, so there’s no way I was going to see this.

[00:36:19] Beth: You know what? I bet if you watched this, and then you watched them again, you might think they’re great.

[00:36:24] Sarah: No, but that sounds like a terrible way to spend my time, so no thank you.

[00:36:28] Beth: It was interesting to observe people in the theater who had a very different reaction. I think the people who were there with us enjoyed it. There were women in the theater who reacted to Grogu, like the tiny Yoda-type figure. I’m not willing to call it Baby Yoda because Yoda, that puppet was interesting. That puppet had some soulfulness about it, and a lot of expressiveness. This is like a doll. I don’t get it at all. But there were women in the theater who reacted to this thing as though it were a live in the flesh newborn among us. Just aahs and coos, and like baby talk noises out loud in the theater. When we left Chad was like, “Should we have asked people what else they’re doing on their first day on Earth?” Because this was a wild experience.

[00:37:12] Sarah: We’re not well as a people. We’re not well as a people. I don’t know what else to say.

[00:37:17] Beth: Okay. There are other movies coming that I’m excited about. I’m really looking forward to Disclosure Day.

[00:37:22] Sarah: Yeah. I’m excited for another Spielberg movie. I like the cast. I would like, oh, I don’t know, new intellectual property. Crazy idea.

[00:37:34] Beth: We don’t have a lot of that on deck for you, I’m sorry to say. No. because the other big movies are Super Girl, so part of the franchise, and I do not think it looks good. I like this actress Millie Alcock, but I don’t think this looks good. We have another Spider-Man. No thank you. It’s called Brand New Day. Does that make it feel fresh to you?

[00:37:50] Sarah: No thank you. No. Toy Story 5?

[00:37:54] Beth: Five. They are tacking a tablet and I’m interested

[00:37:56] Sarah: Yeah, I’m into the screens versus toys premise. I think it’s very well timed much like Yesteryear, the trad wife novel, which nobody likes but it doesn’t matter, keeps selling like hotcakes, just because it’s like we want to talk about this, and this gives us a way. Yeah. So I don’t even think it matters if Toy Story 5 is good or not.

[00:38:13] Beth: Yeah. We want to talk about it.

[00:38:15] Sarah: But people are going to be all over it. I don’t want a live action Moana. No, thank you.

[00:38:19] Beth: Moana feels like it was made five minutes ago. This makes me feel really old that they’re doing a live action Moana. I don’t like

[00:38:24] Sarah: I don’t like the live action movies. I just don’t.

[00:38:27] Beth: I don’t either.

[00:38:28] Sarah: They’re not for me. I don’t get it. I don’t want it. Nobody asked for it.

[00:38:32] Beth: I think the problem is that it’s the expressiveness again. The live action animals cannot be what the cartoon animals are in the movies. And so it just feels so flat compared to the original.

[00:38:43] Sarah: Yeah. It’s giving The Polar Express. Everybody’s dead in the eyes because they’re all half CGI. Remember when they made that movie?

[00:38:48] Beth: Yes.

[00:38:49] Sarah: People love that movie too. I don’t know why. Again, I’m getting so many emails. It’s fine. I’m a big girl. I am excited about The Odyssey. Super excited about The Odyssey. Love it even more now that there’s controversy and right-wing angst about the casting. Y’all are so silly. As if all the Greeks and Romans were white. Do you know anything at all about where ancient history took place on the globe? I really struggle. It’s just so stupid. It’s like Jesus being blonde. What are y’all talking about? I don’t get it.

[00:39:26] Beth: I know.

[00:39:26] Sarah: Y’all sound dumb.

[00:39:29] Beth: I’m excited for The Odyssey too. I think Christopher Nolan is always going to do something interesting.

[00:39:33] Sarah: Right.

[00:39:34] Beth: Whether it’s good or bad, it’s going to be interesting. I love Matt Damon.

[00:39:37] Sarah: Who doesn’t?

[00:39:38] Beth: How could you not?

[00:39:39] Sarah: I even watched that dumb cop movie, him and Ben Affleck made. You know what? It was a great evening.

[00:39:45] Beth: I watched that on an airplane. Do not recommend. It’s not good enough to make an airplane ride tolerable, I got to tell you, it was tough.

[00:39:52] Sarah: No, you need a big screen.

[00:39:53] Beth: It was tough. But Matt Damon on the big screen, Tom Holland and Zendaya in the movie together. Charlize Theron. I like a lot of these people. I think it’s going to be interesting.

[00:40:01] Sarah: I’m into it. I’m going to watch it. I’ll be great. It’s probably going to be four hours long, but that’s okay.

[00:40:05] Beth: It will be so long. It is The Odyssey.

[00:40:07] Sarah: Can we just stop with the... Y’all, a movie should be an hour and 20 minutes.

[00:40:12] Beth: I totally agree with that. I want an hour and 40 max.

[00:40:15] Sarah: I don’t understand why the movies are getting longer as our attention spans are getting shorter. Now, I don’t want these micro dramas. I’m not saying I want a 10-second story on a YouTube Shorts, okay? I’m not into that life either. But can we just tighten it up a little bit? Can we tighten it up just a little bit?

[00:40:31] Beth: I think this is entirely related to a conversation that we just had on our Spicy live for Substack yesterday. The ticket price is more expensive, so the movie’s got to be longer. No. Don’t you think that’s what it is?

[00:40:43] Sarah: I need everybody to stop doing that. I need everybody to stop deciding that we need 15 practices to justify the extracurricular studio price, and we need 100 awards to justify the school program, and we need long-ass movies to justify the thing, and we need giant servings to justify the restaurant prices. The perpetual growth is cancer, everybody. Just Be cool. Curate and just tell me you’re charging me for the curation. Damn

[00:41:13] Beth: I would have paid $20 more at Mandalorian and Grogu for 50% fewer monster fights. I would have written a check so fast.

[00:41:20] Sarah: I ‘m not Paying anything ever, much less 50% more for a Star Wars movie. I said what I said.

[00:41:27] Beth: I’m excited to hear what you all think of these movies, especially if you would like to just talk about how good Project Hail Mary is. I am wide open for that discussion. And we hope that you enjoy your weekend, and we hope that your summer is off to a good start.

[00:41:40] Sarah: And to the movies and the summer and the America 250 of it all, one of the other exciting things happening in our America 250 summer is that our beloved listener Norma is going to do a patriotic-themed film club in July. It’s going to be so fun. I can’t wait to see what movies she picks.

[00:41:56] Beth: What you know is that Norma is never going to waste your time.

[00:41:59] Sarah: No.

[00:41:59] Beth: Never, ever is Norma going to waste your time.

[00:42:00] Sarah: She is exacting when it comes to cinema, guys.

[00:42:04] Beth: In all things, norma is not going to waste your time. So you can trust her. Community is built on trust. We would love for you to join us there. You can find all the links to do so in the show notes. We’ll be back here with you next Tuesday. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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That energy seems to be in the air as Memorial Day unofficially kicks off summer. Pope Leo has distilled his thoughts on the dignity of humans. The public at-large seems to be with him on the indecency and foolishness of war. Universities and schools are changing policies in light of lessons learned, and people running for office are asking what we want our literal lessons to be.

Sarah and I discuss the headlines and the lessons we’re learning about school as parents and from teachers. Then, we end in the only way a podcast kicking off summer should: with an ode to ice cream. - Beth

Topics Discussed

• Texas Senate Primary

• Iran War

• Pope Leo and Human Dignity

• Tulsi Gabbard Resigns

• Education Policy

• Outside of Politics: Ice Cream

Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

Episode Topic Resources

• Full Text of ‘Magnifica Humanitas’: Read Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical (National Catholic Register)

• Pope Leo’s ‘Magnifica humanitas’: AI must serve humanity not concentrate power - (Vatican News)

• Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah’s remarks on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical “Magnifica humanitas”

• Report of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education (Yale | Office of the President)

• M.C. v. Curriculum Associates (EdTech Law Center)

• The Education Crisis Nobody Wants to Fix (Pantsuit Politics)

• The Highest Elected Teacher in Kentucky (Pantsuit Politics)

• Lawsuit targets i-Ready maker over student data privacy concerns (The Educators Room)

• iReady class action: a federal suit says the app your school requires is harvesting your child’s data (Law News)

• Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result: Could Ice Cream Possibly Be Good for You? (The Atlantic)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:30] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:31] Beth: And this is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:33] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. We hope everybody had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Since Memorial Day is considered the unofficial beginning of summer, we thought we would catch up on some headlines and talk about what we’re paying attention to this summer. And also because we know some of you have weeks of school left, we’re also going to do a little school year wrap-up, talk about education ideas. Some policies are getting a lot of attention in higher ed and beyond. And then Outside of Politics, we’re going to talk about summer’s favorite food, ice cream.

[00:01:10] Beth: I like that you just declared it summer’s favorite food. There is no debate to be had about what summer’s favorite food is. It’s ice cream.

[00:01:12] Sarah: If there was a vote, do you think anything would get close?

[00:01:17] Beth: I don’t think so. I think this is a rare moment of consensus for us, and I like it.

[00:01:22] Sarah: Yeah. Come on, guys.

[00:01:24] Beth: This summer also is America 250, which you know we are all in on here at Pantsuit Politics. We have so many exciting things planned for you. The big finale is our live show in Minneapolis because spending time with people in person from all over the country who love their country enough to listen to a political podcast and then show up in person to hang out with each other is the best way we could think of to wrap up this occasion. So if you would like to join us for our first ever Spice Conference, as we call the Spice Cabinet our premium members, or come early for the executive producer retreat, especially if you want a hotel room with only other Pantsuit Politics listeners, we would love for you to get in on that action quickly. June 12th is our deadline to register for those events. After that, those rooms will go back to the hotel. We genuinely want to sell that hotel out so it is just Pantsuit Politics listeners. We’ve done that before in Santa Fe, and it was a really cool experience. So the link is in the show notes. You have until June 12th to make up your mind, and what are you waiting for? It’s going to be amazing.

[00:02:29] Sarah: I feel pretty confident saying you’re not going to regret coming and spending this weekend with other Pantsuit Politics listeners.

[00:02:35] Beth: Absolutely.

[00:02:35] Sarah: I don’t think I’m overpromising there. I really don’t. So come join us. All right. Next up, let’s talk about the summer. Beth, did you know it’s a super summer? I told the News Brief people this morning.

[00:02:53] Beth: I didn’t know until I watched your News Brief, and I was very excited because you know I love summer.

[00:02:59] Sarah: I know. It’s not my favorite season. I still found it exciting. If you have not heard, Memorial Day was the earliest it can be in the calendar, and Labor Day is the latest it can be in the calendar. So America’s 250 is a giant, big summer palooza on the calendar already. I really find that delightful.

[00:03:18] Beth: I do too. It’s like the universe is encouraging us here.

[00:03:21] Sarah: Lean into the summer energy. Okay. The first thing we need to talk about with big summer energy is to alert everyone that we are recording this episode on Tuesday, May 26th, before we know the results of the Texas GOP runoff for the Senate seat held by John Cornyn, who is being challenged by Ken Paxton, who most very recently received the endorsement of one Donald J. Trump.

[00:03:51] Beth: And I do not believe that Ken Paxton would have received the endorsement of one Donald J. Trump were the numbers already not tilting in his favor. So I will be very surprised if Ken Paxton is not the winner of that primary, but we’ll talk about it on Friday.

[00:04:05] Sarah: I don’t know if it’s strategic. It sounded like from the reporting that he just got real mad because they wouldn’t fire the parliamentarian. Is that what you read? That’s what I read.

[00:04:13] Beth: He does get a bee in his bonnet on the regular and just make up a new thing. I was reading this summary of his presidency so far, and the word whim kept coming up. And I thought, that’s right.  That’s what it is.

[00:04:25] Sarah: My favorite part of this was the reporting that he felt like the United States Senate was getting in his way, and I thought, “Wow, are you on a different page than the rest of us if you think this particular United States Senate is standing in your way.”

[00:04:47] Beth: Would that they were, mr president.

[00:04:49] Sarah: Would that they were.

[00:04:52] Beth: That is the Constitutional design.

[00:04:55] Sarah: I do have another breaking reporting before we get into the bigger weekend headlines that I did want to discuss with you. Did you see that he’s heading back to the doctor again?

[00:05:04] Beth: I did.

[00:05:06] Sarah: For the third time.

[00:05:06] Beth: Don’t worry. It’s just a normal routine check-in. That’s what I’m told.

[00:05:12] Sarah: But it’s not routine. It’s more than routine. This is the third one since he was sworn in. And why are there always dental visits? What’s the dental visits about?

[00:05:22] Beth: I have sympathy. I’ve had some dental issues this year. It’s very unpleasant.

[00:05:25] Sarah: Fair.

[00:05:26] Beth: It does take a lot of time. Feels like a part-time job when you have dental issues.

[00:05:29] Sarah: Okay. I don’t know. I have some questions. I don’t plan on them ever getting answered.

[00:05:35] Beth: Right.

[00:05:36] Sarah: But I do have some questions.

[00:05:38] Beth: I have only questions. I have only questions about pretty much everything coming out of the White House. I’m told this visit is routine. I was assured this weekend that the war was wrapping up.

[00:05:46] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:05:47] Beth: Just who knows?

[00:05:48] Sarah: I think what we do know is that the word ceasefire has lost all meaning. It means nothing. It means nothing between Israel and Lebanon. It means nothing between Ukraine and Russia. And it certainly means nothing between Iran and the United States. So they’re negotiating. I think they were literally on their way to Qatar to take out this next round, which from both sides sounded like it was getting... It had some movement. I’m trying to think of the lowest I can set the expectations.

[00:06:18] Beth: I was Excited to hear where it was getting because I never really understood that. It was getting.

[00:06:23] Sarah: Yeah, I don’t think it was getting anywhere, but I do think it was moving. And then I wake up this morning on Tuesday, and we’re striking in “self-defense” against missile sites. I think the reporting from Central Command-- I don’t know if reporting’s the right word. The story from Central Command is that the Iranians were laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and so the United States, we launched strikes. And now, of course, the Iranians are accusing the United States of violating the ceasefire. They’re threatening retaliation. Who knows what will have happened by the time people are listening to this episode in a mere 24 hours or less.

[00:06:58] Beth: All weekend as I took in this reporting about the negotiations, I thought, “I don’t know what’s supposed to be different about this.”

[00:07:05] Sarah: No.

[00:07:06] Beth: To me, what the word ceasefire means is global leaders now understand that war is unpopular. People don’t want it. People want it to stop, and so they are churning out information to say, “Yeah, it’s totally in the process of stopping.” At some point it will stop.

[00:07:23] Sarah: It’s maybe stopping at some point in the future.

[00:07:25] Beth: But we are currently not at that point.

[00:07:28] Sarah: Yeah. It just feels like spin. It just feels like they know it’s unpopular, so we got to spin it, but really what we’re talking about is intractable conflicts and quagmires that never go anywhere. Although, I will say I felt that way about Ukraine and Russia, and now I’m out here reading reports about the collapse of Putin’s rule. Could that happen?

[00:07:53] Beth: I don’t know.

[00:07:53] Sarah: I mean, he’s losing. That’s for sure. Just in case you’ve been wrapped up, as you should be, with the Iranians, the situation between Ukraine and Russia has progressed. It is going somewhere, and it’s nowhere good for Vladimir Putin.

[00:08:09] Beth: I just don’t know if it’s anywhere good for Ukraine either. That’s the problem. These things are moving, but they are not moving, in my view, in a win-lose direction. It is just that once war has started, everybody loses. How much are you going to lose? How publicly are you going to lose? We’re seeing that with Iran. If there is a deal to be had here, it is a worse deal for the United States than what was in place before the bombing started. And I just think that’s going to be the lesson everywhere.

[00:08:38] Sarah: Yeah. And I think that I don’t know if that’s going to get across to the American people. His polling would suggest that it is coming across that like we started something with no plan, on a whim, with no actual long-term strategy in place, and it has made us worse off. And even if I feel like the stock market is rising and falling less on every single statement he says, right? It’s like everybody’s catching on that we’re coming out worse, no matter what.

[00:09:11] Beth: If we’re thinking about what am I watching for this summer, one of the things I’m watching for is what lessons are people learning. Are people becoming more apathetic? Is this more evidence that nothing matters? Or are people taking this information and feeling motivated by it?

[00:09:28] Sarah: I felt like the reason Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, landed so strongly from my worldview, from my perspective, was because it was finally somebody saying, “We can learn. We can lead towards a solution. We can say just war no longer applies. This is what we’ve learned. We’ve learned that humanity is never better off, and unless it is in a situation of intense self-defense, then don’t think that there’s some justification for taking these actions that make everybody worse.” And that was like the small part on war. The whole thing was really about artificial intelligence, and it just felt like such Leadership. That’s the word I keep coming back to. It felt like leadership in a place where people struggle to learn lessons because I think we have to learn them collectively. And if you don’t have somebody leading the conversation in a way to say, “We should learn, we should grow, we should get better, things should get better for everybody,” then it does make it hard to learn a lesson. It does make it hard to take, have a takeaway. And so when somebody like Pope Leo comes along and says, “I will lead us to a place where we can come to conclusions, where we can learn, where we can improve the situation for everybody,” God, it just feels like a warm hug.

[00:10:49] Beth: It’s the opposite of nothing matters. This document connects war and artificial intelligence and an apology for a role in legitimizing slavery and all kinds of other things with the thread of human dignity. It is you matter. You matter, and we matter, and all of us matter. I was really moved by a quote in one of the articles I read about this coming together, when someone said, “Hey, we’re really concerned that so many people believe that so few people matter right now.

[00:11:20] Sarah: Yes.

[00:11:21] Beth: So many people believe that only a handful of tech executives and the politicians who could regulate them and the people who can fund them, they are the only voices that count now. And here comes this document that does what the best of the church does, of any church, right? Any church, religion at its best is saying, “All people matter. All people deserve dignity, not because of what they create or produce or facilitate, but just because they are.” And that message coming out so clearly in this modern form, strategic form... you can see the Pope learning lessons in a whole bunch of different ways about how the church can speak and be heard. It’s really encouraging.

[00:12:05] Sarah: The only thing I don’t know is 42,000 words is what I would consider a modern form in our time of tiny attention spans. But I thought the way he took this, the past, “I’m going to speak to the past. I’m not going to offer you a vision of the future without acknowledging the failures of the past.” This man. I’m going to be Catholic before it’s over. I’m just telling you now. I’m on my way. So the way he articulated over and over again-- because to me what’s special about it is not just we all matter, but he’s saying “This is why we matter, because we are creations of God, because we all contain this divine spark.” So it’s not just that I’m, like, offering this universal, approved by everybody. I think the way he balances these are the values of the church, this is why they matter to everybody, but we do have values, and maybe you don’t agree with all of them. Maybe you don’t agree that there’s a spark of the divine in every human being, but we do, and that’s where we’re finding the structure and the values and the foundational principles to offer both a new and better understanding of the past and where we failed, and a new and better understanding of the future, because it does matter, and this cynical nihilism is not making anybody happier in the present, much less in the future.

[00:13:27] Beth: I read a book a few years ago about young people and faith, and the book talked about how young people in particular desire the specificity of faith. They desire, “We believe this.”

[00:13:39] Sarah: Yep.

[00:13:40] Beth: You don’t have to believe it, and you don’t have to agree with us, but this is what we believe. So I agree with you that it’s interesting to see that thread come through in this document. He’s not trying to talk to the whole world in terms of the teachings that animate his thoughts, but he is trying to start a conversation for the whole world.

[00:13:58] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:13:59] Beth: Which is another opportunity that I hope lots of denominations and faiths see this and chime in. Here’s our perspective, and here is what’s different. Let’s have an argument about it even among the world’s great religions. AI is worth having that argument over.

[00:14:15] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:14:15] Beth: And I love that he started it and reminded people that those arguments can go somewhere. I love that he had an executive from Anthropic there. Let’s argue. Let’s do it. And I think that it answers a call that you hear from some people in Silicon Valley. We shouldn’t be the only people thinking about this. The best policy on AI I’ve seen so far came from a church board because the church said, “These are our principles. Okay, given these principles, here’s where AI can be used. Here’s where it should not be. Here’s how we’re going to keep having conversations as the technology changes and as we change.” That’s what I’m looking for everywhere. That’s the energy I need.

[00:14:58] Sarah: Yeah, because I feel like he didn’t just start it. He’s leading it. This is not just an opening volley, right? This is like I’m coming to play. I’ve thought about this. I have 42,000 words on it. This is not like I didn’t fire off a Facebook post about my generalized thoughts. This is a careful outline of our foundational principles and what we think and are advocating for should come next. And to me what was so stark is him coming out, leading this conversation, especially because of what you just articulated about young people, in contrast to another gunman. A very young 21-year-old gunman at the White House. And man, it barely made the headlines. That this young person came to the White House, opened fire, lost his life, a bystander got shot, and Trump was in the White House, and it just everybody’s like “Huh, there we go, another person who feels like their only option is to go open fire on this president.”

[00:15:59] Beth: Here’s what came to mind for me when I saw this story. When I was in law school, I took a business law class where the professor, who I disliked so much that I can’t even remember his name now, I have mostly erased him from my memory. But the first day of class, he held up our textbook, which is just a whole bunch of cases that we’re going to read about business law, and he said, “This is a book of failures. If you are a good business lawyer, your clients should never end up in front of a court, especially not the Supreme Court. Your job is to see around corners and prevent this from happening.” That was a great way to start our class.