A Sort-Of Ceasefire and Other Updates From the Middle East

Plus, "comfort reading" and the delight of book clubs

The headlines from the Middle East are overwhelming:

Hamas says it will only release American-Israeli hostage if ceasefire deal is implemented

As Israel drops bombs on the occupied West Bank, some fear it will become a new Gaza

Kurdish–Israel Alliance May Redefine Power Politics In The Middle East, Challenge Turkish Dominance

Violence in Syria Shows Difficulty in Unifying Armed Forces

Trump blames Iran for Houthi attacks on shipping after U.S. strikes in Yemen

That’s why I wanted to invite Kerry Anderson, our resident Middle East expert and the membership editor at War on the Rocks, back on the show to discuss what all this means. Where do the negotiations between Israel and Hamas stand and what does the ongoing conflict mean for the West Bank? How is Syria doing, months after the overthrow of the Assad regime, and what does it mean for the Kurds? Are the recent US attacks on the Houthis a negotiating tactic with Iran or more than that?

Kerry and I talk about that and much more as we survey one of the most complicated areas of the world and what all the recent developments mean for this region.

-Sarah

Topics Discussed

• A Sort-Of Ceasefire

• The Impact of the Fall of Syria

• The Influence of Saudi Arabia

• Outside of Politics: Book Clubs and Comfort Reading

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Show Credits

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:29] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. You're listening to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Beth is off today, so I am delighted to be joined by Pantsuit Politics longtime Middle East correspondent, Kerry Anderson. Kerry is going to talk us through an update on what's going on in the region. We last had her on the show at the beginning of December, where we talked about the immense amount of change happening in the Middle East. And that has only accelerated with the entrance of the Trump administration. Kerry also stayed on for Outside of Politics to talk about our favorite topic, book clubs, and comfort reading. Before we dive in, remember to check out our new website, pantsuitpoliticshow.com, where you can find show notes, our weekly email, our premium content.

[00:01:07] Y'all, the conversation Beth and I had about Gavin Newsom's new podcast, I'm really proud of it. I thought it was really good. We had an honest and open debate. We very much disagreed, but everybody really liked it. And I think we all came out a little clearer on where we stand not just with Gavin Newsom, but with the Democratic party. We love to hear from you about what these shows mean. Katie says, "It elevates my understanding of the world while simultaneously lowering my blood pressure." What an endorsement of More to Say and the News Brief. Thank you so much, Katie. And thank you so much for coming to join us today. We hope that this conversation will be illuminating. And without further ado, here is Kerry Anderson. Kerry, welcome back to Pantsuit Politics.

Kerry Anderson [00:02:00] Thank you so much. I'm happy to be back.

Sarah [00:02:03] It's always so wonderful to have you here. There's a lot going on in the particular area of the world that you are a resident expert. I guess let's start with the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Is there still a ceasefire? I know that the phase two that we were entering was a little touch and go. So where are we at with that?

Kerry Anderson [00:02:29] Great question. There is sort of a ceasefire. Kind of.

Sarah [00:02:34] I don't know what that means, Kerry.

Kerry Anderson [00:02:37] Yeah, nobody really does. You're not alone.

Sarah [00:02:38] Okay, that's good.

Kerry Anderson [00:02:40] So the original ceasefire that began in January had a phase one and that ended on March 1st.

Sarah [00:02:47] The phase one was basically what everybody had already agreed to-- had gotten very close to already agreeing to, right?

Kerry Anderson [00:02:54] Phase one was basically a cessation of hostilities, partial withdrawal of Israeli troops, a staggered release of Israeli hostages that had been holding Gaza, and Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners. So that actually more or less kind of went the way it was supposed to. But the other thing was that phase two negotiations were supposed to start during the phase one period and that did not happen. So we're kind of now in this weird limbo. On March 2nd Israel cut off all aid into Gaza and there's been no further release of hostages. I think there are about 24 hostages left in Gaza who are still living. And so there's been some Israeli military operations in Gaza, but not much. The war hasn't completely gone back to full fighting. But then there've been these various negotiations, different parties involved in negotiations. It's been quite confusing, but currently the United States has put forward a proposal that (if I understand the latest variation, because it keeps changing) would basically be an extension of the ceasefire through the end of Ramadan and Passover, along with release of a small number of hostages, including I think the last remaining living American citizen who's a hostage. Release of some more Palestinian prisoners and a resumption of aid. I don't know if that's going to happen or not. Hamas basically wants some sort of an agreement to the end of the war, more of a permanent agreement at the end of the war. The Israeli government right now doesn't really want that. So we have diametrically opposed interests there.

Sarah [00:04:48] But there are negotiations happening at least.

Kerry Anderson [00:04:51] There are, yes. So the United States has been involved primarily through envoy Stephen Wittkopf, and the Qataris are continuing to lead negotiations. The Egyptians are also involved. There's been some other players going around and other ideas being thrown out there. But, yeah, so there's definitely these negotiations are continuing.

Sarah [00:05:14] Because it feels like with our Trump-Gaza bomb thrown into the middle of everything, it's almost like some party skipped ahead to the phase three negotiations about rebuilding when we hadn't really solved phase two. So where is it, that rebuilding? I was encouraged by the I think it was Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia coming together with a plan. Where are we at on that?

Kerry Anderson [00:05:39] Yeah, I think that's all very far in the distance. The different ideas are, of course, Trump at one point proposed the United States should basically take control of Gaza and should move most of the Palestinians out of Gaza to other places and then do an amazing rebuild and--

Sarah [00:05:59] Other places. What other places?

Kerry Anderson [00:06:03] That was a fundamental problem. And there are some Israeli government that are 100% want to do that. They also want to move the Palestinians out of Gaza, and some of them want to bring Israeli settlers. And the Arab states are completely opposed to that and have proposed other forms of reconstruction. But this is a fundamental problem where we're talking about 2 million people. And there's regular suggestions from certain segments of Israeli politics about this. And they usually say that they should be going to Egypt or Jordan, but Egypt and Jordan don't really have the resources or the interest in taking them. I did see some news recently about consideration of Sudan and Somalia. Sudan's in the middle of a massive civil war and Somalia is obviously still a primarily failed state. So I have no idea how serious that was. There were some headlines about it. I think if you ask the Palestinian people in Gaza-- what I hear anecdotally, we don't have any good polling data, obviously given the situation. But some people probably would choose to leave if they were going to maybe Egypt or Jordan or Europe or the United States. Not because they want to leave, but for the sake of their families and a future for their children. Other people would not choose to leave. When people have absolutely nothing left, what they hold on to is their dignity and their identity.

Sarah [00:07:37] And their choice. The ability to at least choose.

Kerry Anderson [00:07:41] Yeah. Those ideas are in play and they're in play in a way that they've never seriously been in a very long time. However, I'm kind of not focusing on that right now because it's all very long term. We have immediate issues that have to be dealt with before we can get into any sort of realistic discussion about the reconstruction of Gaza or what its future will be.

Sarah [00:08:06] Well, I do wonder like the way these two phases are sort of dancing (it's the only way I can think about it right now) is because any cessation of hostilities or an end, I mean, there is this component of there's nothing there; everything has been destroyed. And so there is an instability to the Palestinian position that I just think has to be acknowledged. I don't think it's Trump on the scene, just like in 2016. You can see the way he treats Ukraine when he feels like a side is "losing" or doesn't have any power, which it's easy to interpret the Palestinian position that way or particularly with regards to Hamas. It's like they're not even at the table. It's like we'll just move them around like pieces on a chessboard. There's no acknowledgement that these are human beings, that there are millions... Jordan is teetering on the edge of fundamental redefinition because they have so many Palestinians there already. At what point does it stop being Jordan and it starts being Palestine, you know?

Kerry Anderson [00:09:20] I've been thinking a lot about the historical context for everything that's going on in the Middle East. But in this particular case, I think a lot of Palestinians would say this has long been their experience. The international mediators treat them as a party with fewer cards. And that's often been true. And right now it's very, very true in Gaza. However, I think really military operations have failed to completely destroy Hamas, which is kind of amazing because they've completely destroyed Gaza. They've killed a whole bunch of Hamas soldiers and leaders and that organization is still there. And I'm still no fan of it. I think obviously they committed atrocities and the attack on Israel, and I think Hamas exploits his own people. But it has survived this and I think that has to raise questions just realistically about what comes next.

Sarah [00:10:19] So let's then move to the West Bank, because that seems to be a piece of the picture, too. Where are we at with Israeli military operations in the West Bank with resettlements? I was reading recently that the Palestinian Authority was really continuing some military operations to try to show that it could also push out extremists. What's going on in the West Bank?

Kerry Anderson [00:10:48] I think it is very important to mention the West Bank. It's very easy to keep our eyes on Gaza, but the West Bank is super important and in strategic terms probably more important. Basically, when the current Israeli government took power, if I remember correctly, it was late 2022, you started to see a significant increase in violence in the West Bank, which was mostly violence from Israeli settlers and violence between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. That increased dramatically after Hamas October 7th attack on Israel. But then in the last few months it's increased more in terms of the settler attacks are still a part of it, but the Israeli military has massively stepped up its operations. This began several months ago, but it's particularly intensified.

[00:11:37] Basically, the minute that there was a ceasefire implemented in Gaza, the Israeli military really ramped up its operations in the West Bank, primarily in the northern part of the West Bank which is right now kind of where the most Palestinian militancy is. And the Palestinian militants that they're dealing with are very ad hoc groups. So we're talking about some of them are affiliated with Hamas. Some of them are just completely homegrown. Some of them might be affiliated with some of the more traditional Palestinian groups, but it's not a very organized-- they're not just fighting Hamas in the West Bank. But you've seen there are airstrikes, there are tanks, it's a whole other level than we've seen in decades. The UN has said about 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced. So it's getting very intense there, and I think it really raises questions about what the goal is.

Sarah [00:12:35] Have we seen any shift in Israeli politics? Netanyahu, I'm assuming, is still up on these corruption charges. Have we seen any progress towards a more moderate wing of Israeli politics at all?

Kerry Anderson [00:12:55] Not really, it's complicated. The Netanyahu's far right governments, most far right government in Israel's history, absolutely remains in power. Its hold on power is a bit fragile just because it's a coalition government in a divisive kind of situation, but it certainly remains in power. It's a little unclear. The polls Netanyahu's popularity kind of goes up and down depending on what's happening. I think many Israelis are not necessarily on board with the long-term goals of the far-right government. A lot of them want the war to end. For many Israelis, the focus is just on getting their hostages home. But the left-wing peacenik part that we used to have in Israeli politics is pretty much completely gone. You now have more of a centrist pragmatic group and then the far right.

Sarah [00:13:52] How has the overturning of the government in Syria upset any of this conflict, particularly, I think, in the West Bank? I know that there was some recent coverage of increased activity in Syria between the new government and supporters of the-- I couldn't quite piece out who they who was in conflict

Kerry Anderson [00:14:24] So we have Syria and the Middle East is [inaudible] for so many different things. And you really see that in Syria and all of those links to all these different conflicts and happenings.

Sarah [00:14:38] All the way up to Turkey.

Kerry Anderson [00:14:40] Yeah, and Turkey very much. So Syria in some ways I'm going to say is a little tiny bit of a bright spot in the sense that it was a dark, dark, dark, dark nightmare like 13 years, you could argue, before. And there's a little bit of hope, which at this point I'll take. I'm not saying I'm super optimistic, but I'll take something. So the new government which was led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which was one of the groups that had opposed the Assad regime, they ousted the Assad regime in December, and have been basically trying to put together a transition government. So it's currently led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is the head of HTS.

Sarah [00:15:26] I can't quite get a read on. I read so much about him. I think he's interesting. I don't think he's an easy call, I guess is what I would say.

Kerry Anderson [00:15:37] Yeah, he is super interesting. I don't have a great read, but I would say to date he has been very pragmatic.

Sarah [00:15:45] Yeah, okay, good. I was thinking that, too.

Kerry Anderson [00:15:47] So I don't want to predict about the future.

Sarah [00:15:48] But that's exactly how I was feeling, so that makes me feel better.

Kerry Anderson [00:15:54] To date he's shown a lot of pragmatism and has very much tried to pull country together in some form. There's lots of complaints about how he's done it, but it's a tough job. So I'm going to give him some space. Very importantly, just a few days ago, the new Syrian government reached an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces, which are primarily the Kurdish-led forces. and those forces have agreed to basically be part of a unified Syria and to integrate their forces into the Syrian military. We will see. I have many questions about this, but that was a big deal. But we did have all this violence in the Alawite areas, so in the coastal regions. So the Alawites are the community-- there's about 10% of the Syrian population. They're the community that the Assad family came from. And the Assad regime, which was there for about 50 years, drew heavily on the Alawite community for its top officials and military leaders.

[00:16:58] So certainly there are members of the Alawite committee who were not part of the Assad regime, who suffered under the Assad regime. And you can see why (given how utterly horrific the Assad regime was, especially in the last years) there's a lot of anger toward that community. So what is my understanding of what has happened? There's going to be an investigation. It's not entirely clear, but it appears that there are some Assad loyalists who are still in that Alawite area and they ambushed a new, I guess you could say, Syrian military group. And that kind of unleashed seems on both sides. Definitely included some civilian deaths. So it's just an example of how difficult this is. This is a country torn on sectarian lines with horrific war for years. And healing that in any way and putting it back together is a tough job.

Sarah [00:18:02] But I feel like the other bright spot is Iraq. That's very similar to the Hussein regime and the ethnic lines there that I feel like they have mostly successfully navigated, particularly in the last few years. I don't understand. I'm hoping you're going to help me with this because I know the Kurds are such like, as you said, with that agreement, such an important part of Syria. I do not understand the leader in jail in Turkey saying... The Kurdish leader that was in jail in Turkey-- because Turkey and the Kurds have been fighting for so long, do you think this Syrian development is a piece of why he said we're going to lay down our arms and step away?

Kerry Anderson [00:18:40] Yeah, I think what happened in Turkey predated the Syrian Kurds working with the government. So this is another huge deal. There's been a lot of...

Sarah [00:18:50] Massive developments. Yeah. That's why you're here, Kerry.

Kerry Anderson [00:18:56] I keep busy. In Turkey, Abdullah Öcalan, who is one of the founders of the PKK. So this is a Turkish Kurdish group that I think originally was wanting independence for the Kurds and then basically a spot for Kurdish rights, but the Turkish government considers them a terrorist organization. This has been happening for decades. Öcalan has been in prison for I can't remember exactly how long, but a very long time. And there's been a lot of fighting. Over time, there's been a lot of fighting in particularly in the last few years within Turkey. The Syrian Kurds their group is sort of an offshoot of the PKK. So Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish groups to also be terrorists, but basically various factors in the region have weakened the PKK over the last few years. A lot within Turkish politics has given Prime Minister Erdoğan full reasons to want to come to an agreement. And that then led to this now decision to disarm the PKK, which is a huge deal. And certainly that further weakened the position of the Kurds in Syria, which therefore gave them additional incentive to work with the Syrian government.

Sarah [00:20:20] That makes more, because Turkey also helped overthrow the Syrian regime, correct?

Kerry Anderson [00:20:26] Yes. And Turkish proxies and forces in Northern Syria have continued to fight against the Kurdish forces. So they've throughout all of this, they've fought against Syria's Kurds through HTS that was the primary rebel group that overthrew the Assad regime. I definitely would not say they're Turkish proxy, but they had Turkish support to some extent. So certainly this is his interests. to have the Kurds and Syria folded into the broader Syrian government.

Sarah [00:21:02] Interesting. Okay, that makes a lot more sense. So was Erdoğan doing this out of some political weakness?

Kerry Anderson [00:21:09] I'm not an expert in Turkey, but my understanding from talking to a few people who know it a lot better than I do is that Erdoğan is probably going to want to, if I understand correctly, change the constitution to extend his term or to have a new term. And to do that, he will need the political support of the primary Kurdish political group. So the Kurds like the PKK is an armed militant group, but there are also Kurdish political groups that aren't in Turkey.

Sarah [00:21:43] Interesting.

Kerry Anderson [00:21:44] It's a little unclear to me still; I do not feel like I fully understand exactly what the Kurds in Turkey are getting out of this agreement to be honest. So I think there's still more information that will probably be coming out at some point. That's all been moving very quickly.

Sarah [00:22:02] Okay, we're not even done. Let's talk about Iran. So we had some military action from the United States against the Houthis, I believe it was in Yemen, over the weekend. I couldn't tell if this was just flash and bang to pressure Iran into coming back to the table on the nuclear deal, or if they really were pursuing something objective. What's your perspective on that?

Kerry Anderson [00:22:36] I think all of the above. So a crucial point about Iran right now is that the last several months have really weakened Iran's regional position. In late 2024 we had a war between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Israel very badly damaged Hezbollah in that war. And so Hezbollah being the primary Iranian proxy, they're not out, but they're down right now.

Sarah [00:23:09] Same for Hamas.

Kerry Anderson [00:23:10] Yeah, and also then the fall of the Assad regime because Assad was a crucial ally to Iran and Hezbollah and the Iranian military forces were very involved in the war in Syria. So the fall of the Assad regime, and now that you have the Syrians who didn't like the Assad regime are not pro-Iran, so they've lost a lot of their influence and standing in the region. I've seen headlines that they also might be losing their influence in Iraq as well. So Iran's regional position is very down right now. The only proxy that they have left that seems to kind of doing well are the Houthis in Yemen. So the Houthis had been threatening a lot of international shipping, which has led to significantly less shipping through the Suez Canal. They had stopped for a little while after Hamas and Israel signed the ceasefire. But then after phase one, the ceasefire ended and Israel started blocking aid into Gaza again. The Houthis said that they would resume targeting what they call Israeli-linked shipping. So the United States, our military, conducts regular air strikes against the Houthis anyway. Then on Saturday we had ones that I understand were particularly large. I am still trying to understand exactly where that falls into the context. But I think it was partly aimed at Iran and partly aimed at the Houthis. This gets in a bigger picture of what's going on with Iran right now.

Sarah [00:24:52] And what is going on internally? I would imagine this weakening regional position because the Supreme Leader is getting very old, correct? And then they had the Prime Minister that died in the helicopter crash. There's a lot of instability both domestically and internationally.

Kerry Anderson [00:25:09] Yeah, I think it's super interesting what's happening in Iran right now. So after the president was killed in a helicopter crash, they have a new president. He is more of a moderate; however, the hardliners seem to have really quite consolidated their power, which very much limits what he can do. The supreme leader, as you say, is quite old, certainly a hardliner. So politically things are frozen right now. It's very clear that a lot of the population is not in support, but also isn't necessarily ready to take the risk of going out and protesting. The economy has been in terrible shape. It's getting worse. But I understand that somewhat recently President Trump sent a letter to the Iranian government saying that they needed to either negotiate with the United States to end the nuclear program or the United States would visit [crosstalk].

Sarah [00:26:09] Be held to pay. That's the language you're looking for.

Kerry Anderson [00:26:13] Yeah. Thank you.

Sarah [00:26:13] I like that you're trying to put a more intellectual bent on it, but that's just what he said Kerry. Sometimes you just got to quote him.

Kerry Anderson [00:26:20] So that stands. They of course came back saying no. And I think the attack on the Houthis is a part of that. Often there are back channel things that are going on that we don't know about at the time. So I'm not sure where all of that currently stands. But as President Trump said with the Ukrainian President Zelensky, if we're putting things in the context of who has the cards, Iran had just lost a whole bunch of its cards. Its deck is much smaller than it was just a few months ago.

Sarah [00:26:57] And where is Saudi Arabia in all this? I know they were a piece of the negotiation to put together a plan that's not Trump-Gaza. And I know that they feel stuck with the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people, but I don't feel like they're exercising as much power in the region as they were previously. Is that a misperception?

Kerry Anderson [00:27:20] I don't know. It's an interesting question. They certainly are playing an important role as diplomatic mediators, particularly in terms of the war in Ukraine. Since President Trump came back to power, they hosted US and Russian officials. And then, I think it was last week, they hosted US and Ukrainian officials. So it's interesting because Qatar had created this role as mediator among the Gulf states. And now Saudi Arabia is trying to take a piece of that. I think Qatar is still the primary one involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas. But Saudi Arabia is trying to increase its role I think as an international diplomatic actor. They have said that they won't agree to normalize relations with Israel until there is (I forget their exact language) essentially a tangible, practical step forward toward Palestinian state. To what extent they're serious about that is very hard to tell.

Sarah [00:28:25] I was going to say then there won't be any normalization of relations. I don't see any movement towards a Palestinian state.

Kerry Anderson [00:28:32] I think it'll be interesting whether Saudi sticks to its guns on this.

Sarah [00:28:38] So we know that part of the upending in Syria was the fact that Russia was stretched too thin with its own actions in Ukraine, even though they'd played an active role in the region. Has China played much of a role in any of this? Do you see any influence in the region coming from the Chinese?

Kerry Anderson [00:29:02] China so far is primarily interested in economic influence. So they like to be able to come into the Middle East and say, hey, we're here for trade and making money and we don't have all these requirements about human rights or being pro-Israel or whatever. It's like the United States has long been willing to work with other Arab countries but was always pushing them toward a more pro-Israeli perspective and under some presidential administrations had pushed on human rights issues. And the Chinese are just kind of like we just want to trade and make money. And so far they are not very involved politically. They occasionally host, they occasionally will play with negotiations a little bit and trying to be a mediator, but they have not played a major role. I think they did in some of the negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but in general, they're not super involved politically.

Sarah [00:30:01] Interesting.

Kerry Anderson [00:30:01] There's so much going on. I think maybe if I can just zoom out a little bit, I have been thinking recently about I often hear people say something like the Middle East is just kind of a lost cause. It's so violent. Or, well, it must be something about Arab culture or Islam as a religion. It just makes it so violent.

Sarah [00:30:24] Ancient religious conflict is my favorite.

Kerry Anderson [00:30:26] Yes, you hear it all the time. I want to maybe note two things that I think are historically important in understanding why there's so much conflict in the Middle East today, because there is a lot of conflict in the Middle East today. I think part of it is this is a region that geographically it's always been a crossroads. There's a crossroads in ways that can lead to prosperity and creativity and culture.

Sarah [00:30:56] Both profitable and combustible, those crossroads.

Kerry Anderson [00:31:00] Absolutely. It's a good way of putting it. And so you look throughout history, go back to the Old Testament, you can see there are these empires constantly competing across this geographical area. So I think part of this is a matter of geography. Also, so much of the modern conflict can absolutely be traced to the end of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And, for example, we've been talking about the Kurds. The Kurds really, really pushed to have their own state. And the milieu after World War I is colonial powers are drawing new lines and creating new states. And the Kurds pushed to have a state. And some Europeans wanted to give it to them. And then others in the end they said, nope. So they were divided up between primarily Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. We're still dealing with that today. These lines were drawn and the Druze communities in the mountains of Lebanon and Syria and the Golden Heights and parts of Israel were divided up. And so we're dealing with all these kind of these sectarian issues and these national identity issues. Obviously, you can look at Israel.

Sarah [00:32:17] Religious issues.

Kerry Anderson [00:32:18] Religious issues. Yeah. If you look at like the Israel and Palestinians, that conflict goes back to World War I, World War II. And the creation of these problems came out of that period. So I think it's important to know that there are reasons the Middle East is such a conflict prone area. Also, I think often people say, well, the Middle East is just so violent. I'm like, well, look at Africa, look at Myanmar. Pull that historical aperture back just a little bit and look at every other part of Europe. Europe was incredibly violent. So I want to put it in that broader context, if I may.

Sarah [00:33:02] No, I think that's exactly right. Because it gets it to some truly icky territory, the language there, and the way that there is some real stereotypes and blame in a way that I think you're completely right, ignores just the geographic reality and the historical perspective. So I think that's a great place to end our conversation here. Do you want to stay on for Outside of Politics, Kerry?

Kerry Anderson [00:33:27] Sure, if you'll have me.

Sarah [00:33:28] I will. Alright, what's on your mind outside of politics, Kerry?

Kerry Anderson [00:33:41] Oh my gosh, my brain is so filled with politics right now. I need to find something. My book club. My book club is a wonderful place for me to get outside of politics.

Sarah [00:33:52] Listen, you're talking to the right girl. I'm in like six. What is your book club reading right now?

Kerry Anderson [00:33:58] Well, right now we are reading Searcy.

Sarah [00:34:01] That's a great book.

Kerry Anderson [00:34:02] I love that book.

Sarah [00:34:04] It's so good.

Kerry Anderson [00:34:04] I love it so much. I'm very, very, very interested in the reinterpretations of stories in general, but especially right now I love Pat Barker's books about like The Women of Troy. And I like these reinterpretations of these female characters. And when I was a kid I'd read The Odyssey. I was often like, these men, they're not good guys. And what's up with Circe and Calypso?

Sarah [00:34:32] Here's the situation, we went to see Hadestown and my son was like it's so good, I was like, is it, or is it just men on their bullshit? That's what every Greek myth feels like to me. Just don't turn around. It's not that hard. Just don't do it. No, I totally agree, I think that was a great book. And I'm in this book club called Well Read Mom, where you read a lot of classics. It is only me and my friend Kate in the said book club. It's a national book club, but our local chapter, AKA, is just me and Kate, because otherwise we enter book clubs where people don't read the books, and this book club you really need to read the book. And we read the Aeneid, which I had never read. Which I do like better than The Odyssey. I think there's more interesting female characters, and it's just a little, I don't know. I liked it better, what can I say? But reading the ancient texts and partnership with new interpretations, I think, is so interesting. Right now I'm reading War and Peace with Wolf Hall, which is super interesting. Because you're reading War and Peace, they're not the same time period, obviously, but a lot of what's going on in Wolf Hall is still playing out across Europe by the time you're in War and Peace with Napoleon and all the fighting with Russia. And the way they're sort of in conversation with each other, I love it. That's why I like to read a lot of books at a time, because I feel like they're always kind of talking to each other.

Kerry Anderson [00:36:02] Yeah. I'm usually reading one fiction and one non-fiction at a time.

Sarah [00:36:06] What non-fiction are you reading right now?

Kerry Anderson [00:36:09] I just started the We Band of Angels. It's about nurses who were left behind, who were trapped in the Bataan Peninsula during World War II. So it was about American nurses... The Japanese took over the Philippines. And so, of course, everybody's talking about the Bataan Death March. These are the women who were involved in all of that. So it's kind of heavy, but it's really interesting.

Sarah [00:36:39] Wow. I'm reading something much less heavy, but so fun. I'm reading the Facebook expose. Have you heard about it?

Kerry Anderson [00:36:47] No.

Sarah [00:36:48] The global policy director at Facebook for most of the 2010s has written this expose called Careless People about what truly terrible humans Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are. And it's giving me a larger right now. I mean, it's just nice. It's fun to read about rich people being terrible. You know what I mean? It's a good time. Do you see what I'm saying? Objectively, it's a good time. The title comes from the line in The Great Gatsby that Tom and Daisy were careless people.

Kerry Anderson [00:37:22] Yeah, that's another great book- Great Gatsby.

Sarah [00:37:24] It's getting really relevant right now. I feel like really, really relevant, the great Gatsby right now.

Kerry Anderson [00:37:30] Yeah. That's on good vibes.

Sarah [00:37:32] I love a book club and I reading is definitely what offers me just a break from my own brain in the world a lot of the time, for sure.

Kerry Anderson [00:37:42] Absolutely. One of my friends recently called it comfort reading. Instead of comfort eating, we're comfort reading.

Sarah [00:37:47] That's right. That's exactly right. I love that. Well, Kerry, thank you so much for joining me here at Pantsuit Politics. I really appreciate it.

Kerry Anderson [00:37:54] Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Sarah [00:37:57] Don't forget to visit us on our website at paintsuitpoliticshow.com. I'll be back in your ears on Friday with Maggie. We're going to talk about our journey as Crunchy Moms in the context of this recent measles outbreak. So I hope you'll join us for that episode. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.