Political Polarization: Why Politics Can't Be Our Religion

Why this Democratic strategist likes talking to conservative pundits

I’m never quite sure to how to show up on the internet. It used to feel easy; it was an extension of my normal self. I posted cringe photo albums full of my college shenanigans on Facebook. I shared my thoughts freely on Twitter. However, as so many people professionalized their online presence and I saw more and more of the back end of being an “Internet Person” through my work here, the idea of sharing myself online became less and less desirable to me. When I log on, I see fighting and name-calling and cheap shots from people I never could imagine acting that way in person. Our Internet selves are angry and bitter and sensitive. I don’t want to be that version of myself, and I don’t want to perceive others through that lens. So I stay pretty quiet, even here amongst this wonderful community I adore.

It takes bravery to show up in an angry space, especially when the people there have already cast you as a caricature of your political affiliations.

Democratic strategist

Mike Nellis

does just that every time he goes on a conservative platform like Fox or Newsmax. When a real person with complex opinions about issues and political parties is in the conversation, it becomes harder to let the caricature rule. The only way for us to get beyond the us vs. them mentality driving so much of our political discourse these days is to get in real conversations with each other. For most of us, that isn’t going to happen on cable news. For most of us, that means getting offline and talking to people in real time. The lessons Mike has learned from his years in those cross-ideology conversations can still apply, though.

When Sarah or Beth is traveling, it’s always a big decision for our team to invite someone to guest-host. This time, Beth knew right away that she wanted to ask Mike to join her for this conversation. (She and Sarah each did a Substack Live with him earlier this summer. You can watch those here and here.) I think it will be easy for you to see why. Mike is smart and thoughtful and more complex than the image you have in your head about who a Democratic strategist is.

-

Alise Napp

, Managing Director of Pantsuit Politics

Topics Discussed

• Trump Delivers on “I am Your Retribution”

• Cable News in the Era of Trump

• Outside of Politics: Staying Grounded in Trump's Second Term

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Episode Resources

Guest Host: Mike Nellis

• Endless Urgency with Mike Nellis

• Mike Nellis (X)

• Mike Nellis (Instagram)

Episode Resources

• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

• Pentagon places further restrictions on journalists' access (NBC News)

• Trump wants an investigation of Democrats' fundraising. His own campaign has issues | The Associated Press

• Ezra Klein Is Worried — but Not About a Radicalized Left - The New York Times

• What College Students Really Think of Charlie Kirk - Puck

• Two-Thirds of Americans Rate the Economy Negatively - Navigator

• Mark Zuckerberg | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #579

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (Mark Manson)

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.

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

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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.

Episode Transcript

Beth Silvers [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is in England this week, leading a pilgrimage for Common Ground Pilgrimages about Pride and Prejudice. And I am delighted to be joined by democratic strategist, social entrepreneur, former senior advisor to Vice President Harris, and the author of Endless Urgency on Substack, Mike Nellis. Mike, thanks for being here. What did I miss in your extensive bio?

Mike Nellis [00:00:32] A dad and a husband.

Beth Silvers [00:00:34] A dad. Love that.

Mike Nellis [00:00:34] And a pretty average kayaker.

Beth Silvers [00:00:37] Very nice. Well, I appreciate you being here. We're going to hit some headlines first, and then I am really excited to talk to you about cable news where you've been spending a lot of time lately. I feel like you are in many ways the news nation go-to progressive strategist. Does that feel right?

Mike Nellis [00:00:51] Yeah. I'm their Democrat. I don't know how that happened.

Beth Silvers [00:00:54] So I want to talk about that and where tone and substance intersect in our politics, especially as filtered by cable news and then Outside of Politics, but completely related, I would like to ask you about your stress levels and keeping your feet on the ground and how you hang in there through this bizarre and difficult work.

Mike Nellis [00:01:10] Happy to talk about all that.

Beth Silvers [00:01:11] Next up, let's have a chat about retribution coming from the White House. During the campaign, President Trump said, "I am your retribution" many, many times. I often think of him as a show runner and how he is producing the presidency. And I feel like we have reached the phase of this season where he really wants to work on the retribution arc. And so we have him publicly pressuring the attorney general, getting rid of a US attorney who wasn't moving aggressively enough on Letitia James, the New York attorney general. And obviously the Jimmy Kimmel situation, there's just a lot in the air right now of let's go after my enemies harder, faster, more ruthlessly. So I'm wondering how you're taking this in and prioritizing those issues?

Mike Nellis [00:02:12] I'm trying to be extra careful in this moment about how I see the retribution arc because I think everything that Donald Trump does is part of his retribution arc. And the republican party is a party of grievances that is not a party that has any solution to your life. And if you look at even just the major stories of the last couple weeks I've talked about Kirk's murder and Kirk murder is horrible, and I think we all agree that is not a way to handle the very serious disagreements that we have. But with Kirk's murder, they're intentionally blowing this up, having this giant memorial service, making a big deal about lionizing him because they want to create the right's Martin Luther King. They're angry that the left quote unquote has a Martin Luther King, that we have a day where we take off and we celebrate his legacy and they find that to be an affront. So that is ultimately what their plan is going to be for Kirk. Not to mention the fact they want to distract from the myriad of scandals that are going on in Washington and be able to justify it as an attack on Democrats. But on retribution, he's been doing this since day one. And maybe it's getting bolder and bolder because the old Roman expression is I reached out to touch the walls assuming they were made of stone and in reality they're made of paper.

[00:03:12] Trump continues to prove what's made of a paper and what's not in this country. Ignoring Supreme court rulings, using the FCC to get Jimmy Kimmel suspended, signing executive orders to go after nonprofits and act blue and stuff like that. They're going to use what happened to Kirk as a justification for that, but it isn't going to change what their plan is. They've been planning to go after anybody that they view as either somebody who has wronged Donald Trump, and that's what Tish James is, for example, which you mentioned before. Or anybody that they think is effective at going after them. There was no reason for them to raid John Bolton's house a few weeks ago, but they raided John Bolton's house because he was an effective pundit against what Donald Trump is doing, aligning himself with Putin and Russia and essentially leaving Ukraine holding the bag at a time when they're being invaded. So I think that what you're seeing is they're amping up the language because they can, they think they're justified in doing so, but they're going to use it as a justification of what they were already planning to do. Whether or not they'll get away with it depends on how the public reacts. Does the public take it seriously? Do they see the American people pushing it back? Or do they see Americans go, "I don't care." And the more the Americans shrug off what's happening as politics as usual when it's not, then it becomes more and more dangerous.

Beth Silvers [00:04:19] I think this is just the pain point for a lot of people who listen to our show. I think we all have that sense that it matters how Americans respond. And also we feel like we have very few avenues to respond, especially in this long run that we still have to the midterm elections. So I know people are out there canceling Disney Plus subscriptions and calling their members of Congress and doing the things they feel like they can do, but I think they just feel like there's not much I can do about this.

Mike Nellis [00:04:49] I think some of the challenge that we have in society today is like, look, Democrats in Washington cannot do very much. They're in the minority. Your minority options are limited. You constantly hear people online going, "I wish Chuck Schumer would do this and I wish Hakeem Jeffries would do that." And usually there's stuff that they either can't do. And that is not a justification for the way that the establishment on the left has reacted to Donald Trump. I don't think that they have been as forceful as they could have been. My advice to people who are feeling that sort of, you have that-- I think we all just kind of deep inside our souls we feel dread about what's happening right now. They want us to feel that dread so much that we quit, that we go inward to ourselves and we don't do anything. We do the scroll online, we watch Netflix over and over again, we scroll through our TikToks. They want you to not be engaged. So the best antidote to that is to go be in your community, go pick up trash, go join a local school council. And I'll just tell you from my own experience, on the weekends, my son and I go pick up trash. We just walk around the neighborhood. We clean up the neighborhood a little bit. I find that restorative more than anything, because I cannot fix what's going on in Washington. I can't fix what's going on in Palestine. I can't fix what going on in Sudan, but I can fix that.

[00:05:48] And so my advice to people is look what's right in front of you. Look what you can fix and try to keep your chin up because they want you to quit. And the real end game isn't necessarily each individual fight that Donald Trump may or may not be winning. And a lot of them are procedural or perception fights. Jimmy Kimmel is probably going to get his show back on some level or he's going to get a massive payout for what's going to happen to him that allow him to create a new media company. And that might be a net positive overall "the left" here. But he wants you to feel that sense of I'm inevitable and you can't stop me. And we can stop him, but we've got to win the elections that are coming up. So we need to win in 26, we need win in 28, we need the win the election that are coming up in a few weeks in New Jersey and Virginia. If we do those things, we'll be able to send that message, but we're going to continue to take it on the chin for a while until we get one hand back on the wheel. And in the meantime, you can take the way you feel and channel that into whatever it looks like in your life to improve your community, your circle of people.

Beth Silvers [00:06:42] On the Jimmy Kimmel topic, I wish that I had different language for this. I have been feeling strange lately that--

Mike Nellis [00:06:49] Let it rip. At least with me...

Beth Silvers [00:06:52] It's not profanity. It's like every metaphor we have is tinged with violence. But what I keep thinking about with Jimmy Kimmel is that he's kind of a soft target because late night television is in decline and was in decline way before this. I think if he were just crushing it in the ratings, ABC Disney would have made a different calculation here. And I feel like Trump sees that in a lot of places. He comes down hardest on Places that are already weak or struggling or on the precipice of some kind of change. I think about higher education in this bucket too. Higher ed was struggling before Trump came onto the scene, so it looked like an easy place to go. I think that left leaning activist groups were already-- I mean, you can't find anyone more critical of their own than people who talk about groups on the left, right? So there are all these places that are sort of easy to take out and that's where he comes in swinging.

Mike Nellis [00:07:48] He is very careful about who he chooses as his opponent. And in the beginning, with the law firms, he was able to do that with executive orders. He's going after ActBlue, which I actually think is a poor choice because ActBlue is very well-funded and he really hasn't done anything wrong, so it's a poor harassment. But if you look at when they sent the National Guard and the Marines to LA, he was intentional about choosing Gavin Newsom as his opponents. And that there's a reason he hasn't it in Detroit, which is that he doesn't want to mess with Gretchen Whitmer because he's scared of Gretchen Whitmer. He's not doing it in Kentucky because he doesn't want to get into a fight with the governor there. I think we need to be mindful of he succeeds with Jimmy Kimmel for the exact reason that you said. Kimmel's ratings are bad. They lose money on these shows. The formats are dying. I continue to maintain I think this way especially for [inaudible]. I'll be honest with you; I have never watched an episode of Jimmy Kimmels show in my life.

Beth Silvers [00:08:33] I haven't either.

Mike Nellis [00:08:34] When I think of Jimmy Kimmel, I think the co-host from Win Ben Stein's Money when I was a kid. That is what he is to me. He's not even the man show because I was too young for the man's show, but I always watched Ben Stein Money. And so I never had that connection that he has. Now, seems like a decent guy. The one thing that I do know about him is he paid for his entire staff during the writer's strike, was that last year or the year before? And that says to me that he's a good dude. And so he's going to be more successful when he can be unshackled by a failing format that he is a part of when he can move and do what Conan did. Conan is more culturally relevant today. And Conan is critical of Donald Trump. Conan has said things about Donald Trump, done impersonations of him, spoke at the Kennedy Center and spoke out about Trump in a very eloquently way. And has Donald Trump gone after him? No.

[00:09:19] Donald Trump doesn't go after people he thinks is strong, he goes after people that is weak, and then he acts strong, and then the left reacts. And so don't get me wrong, what happened to Kimmel is wrong. I'm not trying to brush that aside, but it's not necessarily a sign of Trump's strength, because he can get ABC to get what they want here because they've got mergers and acquisitions they're working on, same with what happened to Colbert. Skydance and Paramount are trying to merge so that they can lord that over him. He's not always going to have that. And so there's going to be moments where he fails because he's not as strong as people think. And keep in mind, his approval rating is declining every day. And one in four Trump voters say they regret it. Now they're not saying that they wish they voted for Kamala Harris, which is a different problem that we have to address. But he is not popular. And the more that he does this stuff, the more most Americans go, "I don't want this. This is not what I voted for."

Beth Silvers [00:10:05] And it's so tricky. When you said that the right doesn't have a positive vision, it's just about grievance, I don't disagree with that. But I also didn't disagree with the Ezra Klein, Ross Douthat conversation where Ezra said also Democrats have become a really defensive party, too. It's a lot about preventing a parade of horribles instead of advancing a positive vision. And at some point we lost the vision. And I think that's right. It makes responding to this kind of thing really tricky. I am so frustrated. Frustrated is not a strong enough word about the memo that the Pentagon issued telling journalists you may only write sanctioned articles coming out of the Department of War. I like to think of it as the artist formerly known as the Department of Defense. But you can only write about information that we allow you to write about, even if it's unclassified. I don't know how to respond to that and advance a winning political argument.

Mike Nellis [00:11:04] Well, I think you almost can't because some of the challenges, like you say, in my view, neither party has a vision for this country. And it's just two very different problems. So what has happened on the left and in the Democratic party is that we are the defenders of the status quo. We are the defenders of the institution. I don't know if you've read On Tyranny, which I literally, no joke, have a copy in my book because I'm trying to write a book that is sort of a counter to this, not because I disagree with what's in here, but because one of my key critiques of this book-- and it's very good and very well written by the authors, Timothy Snyder, for folks who want to know. But rule number two is defending institutions. And what bothers me about it is, and I see this reflexively in the Democratic Party, we defend institutions time and again, the free press, USA, the Democratic party, et cetera, when those institutions are really flawed and broken. And so part of what I want to do is write a book that's like, well, here's what you can do in your day-to-day life. Here's the On Tyranny, but in your life, not about something that's happening in Washington or somewhere else.

[00:12:01] So Democrats are the defenders of a status quo that really for the last 20 years doesn't work for people. And it's my problem with when Democrats are like elect me to Congress and I'm going to save our democracy. Well, if you're like under 40 right now, when has democracy ever worked for you, really? Unless you remember Bill Clinton and maybe Barack Obama, because those eight years were largely pretty good for most Americans, you don't remember a system that worked. So you don't have any buy-in for democracy. And that's part of the reason you see younger folks don't believe in democracy the same way that a lot of older folks do because they remember what it was. Older folks remember what was like when it worked. Younger folk don't. Now, the Republicans on the other end, it's all grievance. All they're trying to do, they're not building anything, they're not solving any problems, they're not offering a vision for this country, they're just destroying stuff. All of Project 2025 is about destroying institutions so that billionaires can make more money. That's really at its core. And obviously there's some Christian nationalist stuff that they're doing too, where they want to tell women what to do with their bodies, they want to tell who you can or cannot marry. I'm not going to pretend like those things aren't there, but it's not a vision for what this country is going to look like. It's just this weird attempt to drag us back into the 1950s for a country that didn't exist then.

[00:13:10] So Democrats have to start to articulate what we're going to do to help people. And one of the biggest things that keeps me up at night is we're very likely going to win the House back in the midterms, given where everything is at, given how unpopular Trump is, given the recruitment that we're seeing on the Democratic side. We have amazing candidates. When we take back the House, And the Senate's probably less than 50/50, because the map is difficult for us. When that happens, we should not assume that Democrats are back. We should not be like, oh, we're popular again. We won the midterms. Look how great we are. We shouldn't be getting high on our own supply. We should be terrified that we're going to lose in 2028 if we don't fix the issues that we have. And one of those issues is Trump is gone. He's gone in three and a half years. He is not going to have another term. I don't care what he says. I don't care what the trolling says. He's done. So there's going to be a new vision of the Republican party. New vision of the Democratic Party. Let's make sure our vision is something that people can believe in. And then we got to get stuff done.

Beth Silvers [00:14:01] I wonder about who the ‘we’ is because I think that a key to Democrats retaking the majority in the House and certainly in the Senate is a real variety in the types of candidates that run under the Democratic banner. And I think diversity should be a strength and right now is also like a real challenge in articulating a message when that message needs to vary. And this should be true on the Republican side too, right? We are a very, very diverse country with really different concerns in Kentucky versus in Montana versus in California. So I guess I'm struggling with a search for uniting principles at a time when the news cycle is driven in a lot of ways by this sort of retribution regime.

Mike Nellis [00:14:56] So I've articulated it this way, which is I'm comfortable being a member of a democratic party that ranges from Joe Walsh, who is my buddy to Zohran Mamdani, who I like. I don't agree with either of them on everything. And I'm probably the least ideological Democrat in the creator space. I don't care about ideology at all. If you've got a good idea, I'm interested in it. But what I know is when I talk to Joe and I've never met Zohran, but when I listened to Zohran talk, they seem like they care about other people. And they care about the struggles and they want to place those struggles at the center of the movement that we're trying to build together. And as long as you're doing that, and I articulate it as like if every now and again you just think about somebody other than yourself and how to help them, you're probably my brother, my sister in that. And so we need to get beyond like is the DSA the future of the democratic party? Is the establishment wing going to blah, blah, blah? Both wings of the party have failed. DSA has largely failed to create any electoral momentum at all. Winning in New York City is impressive, but it is also not proof that there's going to be a democratic tea party. We're going to have a million Zohran Mamdani's in in the primary because hyper specific to what happened there.

[00:15:59] The establishment has failed one because they failed to have the necessary conversations to prevent the rise of Donald Trump, but two, whether you like Joe Biden or not, he failed to deliver enough for the American people at a time of hyperinflation to the point that they returned back to a madman that really nobody liked. Like Donald Trump's favorabilities were not high. It was that people were pissed at us over Biden's health, what happened with the debate, the lack of a primary, the economy more than anything, but also the border. Those are real failures that we've met. So I think it needs to be put your ideology aside, stop arguing about really the margins. I remember that goofy 2019 presidential debate where all the like Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, a bunch of others, they were all arguing about healthcare for like 45 minutes. And I'm like all of your healthcare plans are about the same. You're arguing about how to fund it. Bernie calls this Medicare for all. Kamala has called hers the whatever act.

[00:16:46] But it's we're so close in the problems that we're trying to solve. So I would put all of that aside and start to put together core principles that we can advocate for the problems that we are going to solve and get beyond the consulting class of which I am a part of because I'm a democratic operative, wants to always focus on like it's all protecting social security and it's Medicare and Medicaid and then that's about it. It's very surface level stuff. There's a whole host of other problems that we never talk about that appeal to people who are 45 and under. And also appeal to their parents, by the way. We rarely, if ever, have a candidate like Mallory McMorrow who talks about people who are in the sandwich generation who are taking care of their kids and raising them, but also taking care of their parents that don't have enough for retirement. That is tens of millions of Americans who are voiceless in this government.

[00:17:33] How much got written about young men turning for Donald Trump and the issues that young men are going through both like mental health-wise but also economically because it's the first generation of young men that are going to do worse than the women of the same age, which is amazing and we shouldn't do anything to get in the way of that. But nobody's talking about how to solve that problem or creates solutions for all young men in this country that are struggling with opportunity and loneliness. So when do we get to talk about that stuff? And so there is a positive vision for this. It's just we've got to be able to fight, and we've got to be able to articulate. At the same time it's a hard thing to do when you're in the minority.

Beth Silvers [00:18:07] I think a lot of people, especially today, would say that that's where somebody like Charlie Kirk amassed a lot of cultural cache and power within the Republican Party because it's not a policy agenda. It's easy for Democrats to say, there's no there-there. It still is all just grievance. But I hear the people in my life who listen to him saying, no, he had a really clear vision for what makes a good life. He had a real clear vision. It's not one I agree with, but he had one. And I wonder if part of what Democrats need is to be able to feel free to go beyond seminar policy solutions and say to people, no, here's what I think a good life looks like too.

Mike Nellis [00:18:49] Yeah, I think we should absolutely do that. Now, I'm going to push back on the lionization of Charlie Kirk for a second.

Beth Silvers [00:18:56] Sure.

Mike Nellis [00:18:56] I've been pretty deferential for the last 12 days on this because I wanted to give all of them the opportunity to grieve. And I realized they wouldn't give me that opportunity to grieve in the same scenario, clearly because they made fun of Melissa Hortman's murder like immediately after it happened, which I'm super pissed about. But regardless of that, they have created an image of Charlie Kirk that doesn't exist. And I'm just going to go to the data audit for a second. I hate to be the democratic operative being like let me read you about a poll. But a generation data put out a poll of people under the age of 25 and asked them, do you know who Charlie Kirk is? 94% of people said they knew who Charlie Kirk was. Of the people who knew him, 70% of them were like, I don't like that guy. I don't agree with him at all. 30% were like we agree with it. So all he did was organize college Republicans into another organization. And Charlie Kirk was very much a product of the DC Republican establishment.

[00:19:43] The reason they're so upset beyond the obvious political reasons they want to do is he was their guy. They created him, they invented him, they cultivated him, put him in that position. And then what he was really good at was creating content of (and they would say this themselves) a blue haired Pierce college kids that don't really know what they stand for yet, looking and arguing like idiots. And he would chop that up on the internet. And then people who were 50, 60, 70 would smash the heart button on that because Charlie Kirk would engage in bad faith arguments with them. So I don't think that Kirk had the type of vision and the type impact that they had. I was on Leland's Vittert show on Friday, and I actually called him out for this, he said in his monolog that Charlie Kirk ran the most consequential political organization in American history in TPUSA. It's just ridiculous.

Beth Silvers [00:20:31] Yeah. That's crazy.

Mike Nellis [00:20:31] Even I would honestly argue it was Jerry Falwell, who was the most influential person ever over time advising democratic and Republican presidents. But Kirk was 31. He certainly built a giant audience for himself, certainly gave a lot of energy with the youth for the republicans, solved the problem that they had. But I don't think he's not the reason that Trump won the election and everybody needs to cool it on that stuff because they're going to create this myth of him that it's just not connected to reality at all

Beth Silvers [00:20:56] That content creation is a good segue to what I have to talk to you about next. So let's take a quick break and let's discuss cable news. So we have established that you have become the Democratic friend of a certain conservative news outlets. I experience cable news, which I don't watch very often, as kind of a ritual. And there is a rhythm to it. The couple of times that I've done it, I can feel that rhythm, I can feel that momentum. I can feel the clock ticking, that drive to get as many words out in limited time as possible. I remember sitting at Morning Joe around that table and I could just really intensely feel how every person was like shut up so I can go. Because there are so many people there waiting to speak and so little time. Again, the clock is just beating, beating, beating. It's 24 hours and still it feels like there's not enough time. So I would love to know what your experience of that is, especially going into spaces where you're kind of going in ready to be challenged and combative.

Mike Nellis [00:22:11] Which is a choice, by the way. I'm sure that I could get booked more on MSNBC and CNN if I tried, but I want to go into these spaces. And the original reason I started doing it was I got tired of-- I mean, I have like 50, 60 Democratic members of Congress who are clients of mine and none of them will go on Fox News. They just won't. And I kept telling them, you can handle that. You are articulate, you are smart, you know what you're talking about, go in that space. So my goal when I'm in there is I'm talking to that 10% of the audience that's still open to hearing what I have to say because I'm tired of Republicans getting their news about Democrats from Republicans. And that's why they have images of us that aren't real. To the point of the Kirk video I mentioned earlier is like they think we're all blue-haired with piercings and they just have this image of us as 18-year-old college kids. Which there's nothing wrong with that, live your life. I'm not criticizing somebody who wants to dye their hair blue. I dyed my hair blue for a hot minute during the pandemic when I couldn't go outside because I just thought it'd be a fun thing to do. But somebody will take that clip if I ever run for office and turn that into a thing. By the way, just me admitting that now.

[00:23:09] But I want to go and have that conversation. And there's another thing here too, which is important to me because we I was doing content creation before the election. And a lot of the reason I was doing it was to be pro-Kamala. Kamala Harris was somebody I worked with for a long time. I was a senior advisor to her for a while. I worked for her for five years. She was really good to me. And I wanted there to be somebody, frankly, who looked like me, who could talk about what type of boss she was because I knew what was going to happen. When black women run for office, somehow they're the most difficult people on the planet every single time. And it really pisses me off. So I wanted to be out there to counter that stuff. And I did an interview with the New York Post where I countered all of that and a bunch of criticism that people had of her. Then we lose and I watched the party kind of just melt away and not be willing to engage because they didn't know what to do. And I'm like I'm going to step up and start doing this because I don't know why it has to be me, but if it's going to be me that's fine, I'll do it.

[00:23:58] And so I started with small conservative outlets to prove that I could do it and get space. There's all these really small conservative news networks that I think people don't know about, but there was Merit Media, which was Dr Phil had his own thing. There's NTD. There was a bunch of others. There is Newsmax. And I go on them and it turns out I have a decent affinity for fighting with these people in eight minute increments. And to your point, there's a total flow to how they go. There's a monolog from the interviewer to set it up, then they come to the first person, usually they go to the Republican first and they come me then back and forth. And you try not to really interrupt one another. There's decorum to it. It is very formulaic. And it's a dying format, but it's one where the people who are least likely to hear from us are watching. And so we've got to have a presence everywhere. Like I'm doing Newsmax later today about Kamala's book and the stuff about Tylenol and autism and a bunch of other things. I'll be the only Democrat they hear from that day. And I take that pretty seriously because I think we need somebody to try to break through.

Beth Silvers [00:24:56] Who do you think of as that audience who is there and least likely to hear from you, who's hearing from you?

Mike Nellis [00:25:01] Well, I think it's the people who are not part of MAGA. Number one is I think there's this idea that if you voted for Donald Trump, you're part of the MAGA coalition. I don't think that that's right. The actual MAGA coalitions are the loudest people on the internet, but at most they're 20, 25% of the country, which is a lot of people to be clear, but not nearly as much people as you think. So there's a lot folks who were tuning in who are what I would call like my dad. My dad is a three time Trump voter, 34 year veteran in the FBI. He's a normal Republican. Like he has beliefs that I fundamentally disagree with. He voted for Trump, which I don't understand, but you can have a conversation with him and there's a grasp of reality there. And I had him on my show actually last week. I have my dad on my every couple months to kind of ground him and I in reality a little bit. But I asked him some questions about some really crazy stuff I had heard on Fox News. Like Tomi Lahren claimed that there were trans terror groups that were roaming the country trying to kill Charlie Kirkson. I was like, do you believe that? And he was like, no, that's really stupid. And I asked him a couple of those. Those are like my grounded questions. I go, do believe this stuff? Because I just want to see if it's breaking through.

[00:25:59] And I have a brother that's very similar. My brother voted for Kamala, I believe, but is not definitely like probably center right would be my guess. So my audience is those people. It's somebody who's still grounded in reality, who is feeling the pain of the economy. Like anytime I can go on, they invite me on all the time and they're like let's talk about what Kamala Harris said this week because they want to use her as the boogie person out here. And that's fine, but I'll almost always try to pivot and make my point in it. So I'll be like Kamala said this, this is my reaction to it. Hey, what about the economy? Or what about Russia in Poland, or what about Donald Trump using the federal government this way? I got no problem mixing it up with these people. I've been on with Jesse Watters. I've gone out with Tomi Lahren. I'm doing Sean Spicer show tomorrow. I've been invited on news nation. I go on News Max, which News Max is probably the craziest consistent outlet that I go. You think Fox news is bad. Go watch News Max. They're really out there.

Beth Silvers [00:26:48] So when you think about yourself as the Democrat in the room in front of this audience, how do you think of your purpose? I've been meditating on this a lot about what we do. A listener gave me some insight on this. She was talking about there's a difference when she listens in what's challenging to her and what's comforting to her and how she really needs both. I thought that was a really vulnerable thing to say. sometimes I do just want to hear, like, I hate this too. I'm mad too. I'm losing my mind as well. I don't know what to do too. And so I've kind of been thinking about that combination of things. Where do I skip over the comfort because I want to get to the challenge or I want to get into the what's next. But I wonder when you know you're going into a program where you're set up to be them, (the channel is us and you're setup to be the them) how do you think about your purpose?

Mike Nellis [00:27:43] The best piece of advice that I got was actually from my father. My father is my number one cheerleader somehow, which feels a little bit wrong when you hear my dad's politics, but he will put his kids before anybody else, which I love about him. He called me right before I did Jesse Watters the first time. I went on like six minutes after this, and he called me and he went, "Just remember, you're the bad guy." So I'm here to say the thing that Jesse Waters doesn't want me to say, and that's okay. I'm not here to be friends with him. I'm not here to friends with Leland Vittert. And he knows this. I actually really like Leland Vittert and he and I have become pretty good friends just over text in between it. But I'm there to speak my truth. And to your point is one thing I don't like about cable news, and Trump is representative of this but so are a lot of others, they're playing characters when they're on TV. Tomi Lahren knows the crazy stuff that she says isn't true. Jesse Watters is playing up a certain character. Donald Trump is playing a certain character. If you watch that interview of Bill Maher being like, oh, Donald Trump had me over for dinner and he was nothing like how I see him on TV. He was so nice and calm and respectful. And I'm like, yeah, no shit. He's playing a character. And I met with producers for a prominent TV show a couple of months ago, and they asked me specifically, what is my character? And I was like I don't have a character.

Beth Silvers [00:28:53] Yeah.

Mike Nellis [00:28:54] You're getting the same version of me that that Leland and Jesse Watters are getting. You're getting the same version of me I have on my show. This is not an act. I have the added benefit of actually believing the things that I say. And I'm not just cribbing off DNC talking points, and I'm not being paid for what I'm saying. I believe in the vision I have for this country. I believe the things I'm seeing are dangerous in this country, and I'm going to speak out on them. So it makes me a bit of a novelty I think sometimes. I think it's why they like having me on because it's not four sentences of the same DNC talking point. It's like I'll tell you when I think the Democratic Party is being stupid, which is frankly a lot. And I'll tell you when I think it's wrong. I'll tell you when I think they're right. I'll tell you when I disagree with what the Republicans are doing. So it's a novelty to it. I have a million subscribers on Substack. I have probably like another million followers on other platforms.

[00:29:38] Those people are looking to me because of me. And I'm not saying that in that sort of selfish way. It's like you could pick your flavor of who you want to follow online. I take it seriously. I'm not a news person. My job is not to come here and report the news to you. My job is to give you my take on what's happening and to use my perspective as a democratic strategist, as a person who has dealt with anxiety and suicidal ideation and all the other things I have gone through my life as a father, as a husband, as a football fan. To give me my view of that and give you a little bit of insight into me. It's the same reason Beth so many people follow you. They're following you because you're the institution that they trust because they like your POV and they believe that you're going to be honest with them about it. That's what I'm trying to do. And the hard thing for me is to figure out how to do that on my show when I have an hour to talk, 45 minutes with you, 15 seconds for a TikTok video, and then eight minutes in a very formulaic segment on cable news. How do I get that through while being true to myself?

Beth Silvers [00:30:30] I think this question about what your character is gets to exactly what I am trying to figure out right now, which is where does that ritual of cable news, which has extended beyond cable news for sure, influence and supersede maybe the substance of our politics? I remember it's been years ago now, we had someone who frequently was on cable news panels on the show to talk with me about immigration. And at the time, I was still a Republican and really articulating a lot of conservative points of view. And he was very confused because I said that I think merit-based immigration is immoral. I think people are people. And I don't think that we should screen people coming into this country based on their educational status or their socioeconomic status. It's part of the reason this gold card and the $100,000 with the H-1B visas bother me so dramatically. And he really shocked by that.

[00:31:25] And when we finished recording, he said to me this conversation was kind of what it would be like if cable news were allowed to be interesting. But if you were on cable news and you were supposed to be the Republican, at that time, everybody in the Republican party was arguing for merit-based immigration. He was like if were doing that, you would have a producer in your ear shutting you down and pulling you and you wouldn't be on again. And he said we are conditioned to fill the role, to be the character that we were assigned to play in these discussions. And I just wonder if normal people are doing that. It doesn't sound weird to me at all that your dad is your biggest cheerleader because who cares what your politics are? He's your dad.

Mike Nellis [00:32:05] Right, he's my dad.

Beth Silvers [00:32:07] Politics should be like way down the rubric of things that he cares about and fights with you over. But so many families are not operating that way now. Politics is rising to the top of the list. It's becoming the thing that keeps us from being in relationship with one another. Sarah and I get lots of calls around Thanksgiving. How can we all sit together at the table when we disagree on everything? I wonder how much do you think that ritual of cable news has escaped the format and what is driving the bus?

Mike Nellis [00:32:39] Well, one thing I think everybody has to be careful of, you've heard the phrase your politics is your religion. I think a lot of people say that. I go, “Politics cannot be your personality.” And for a lot people it is, but if you drive me into a room in the middle of God knows where, and I realize there's a lot of white privilege in this, I'd be able to find some kind of common ground with almost anybody because I'm a regular person and just watch a football game. I like what I like, I dislike what I dislike. So it's not about me. I don't wake up in the morning and go, it's a great day to be a democratic strategist when I'm getting myself ready in the morning. I'm a dad and a husband and a Notre Dame football fan and an absolute Marvel dork before I'm any of those things before I go. And I think people kind of forget that. But I want to add two points to various stuff you said. I took notes down here, so hopefully I can get this all out. The first thing is I want to go back to the character that people are playing and just tell you how I eventually articulated my character to these people in a relatively novel way. I am a big pro wrestling fan. I really like pro wrestling and there's this character named Kevin Owens. And in pro wrestling, the stories move really fast and you could be a good guy one moment and a bad guy the next moment. You're kind of flipping around.

[00:33:43] And I think my fandom of that for 20 years has sort of helped me explain how our current politics work because one day you're Gavin Newsom and you have Charlie Kirk on your podcast and everybody's mad at you. And then three months later, you're a resistance hero and you can just change your gimmick really fast. Kevin Owens's gimmick as a wrestler is articulated as I watch the show. Like he watches the show. He references things that happened years ago. He remembers what's going on. And he's the one person who knows that he is on a TV show. And so that's my character. When you invite me on, you're going to get the context of what's been said. I was on News Nation the other night. They introduced Jack Probst as Charlie Kirk's friend. And I reminded people that I know him as the pizza gate guy who nearly got a bunch of people killed for trafficking a fake conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was moving children through a DC pizza place and nearly got a bunch of people killed. So I will remind you of stuff like that. I will bring up what you say. I will be mindful of it because I'm not coming in with talking points. I know what I want to say, but I listen to what you have to say. And I do the research before I come in. And I think that actually, one, it makes the show a lot more interesting, in my opinion, it gets me invited back. But it's a novel approach because so many other people are like I have my character and I have lines that have been prepared for me by the RNC or the DNC and I'm going to do this. I can't do that. It just wouldn't be true to me.

[00:34:58] And then in politics we put ourselves in buckets. And we say, I'm a Democrat, so I believe this, and I'm Republican, and I believe in that. And you voted for Trump, so you must believe in this, and you've voted for Harry, so must believe this. People are way more complicated than that. And most people's beliefs do not align with the political conversations of the day. If you ask people if they're pro-life, 70% of Americans will say they're pro-life. Yet an overwhelming majority of people will tell you that they are pro-abortion rights. So there's a disconnect there because pro-life to you and it doesn't necessarily mean you support abortion rights. But honestly I would tell you I'm a pro-life Democrat who believes in abortion rights. I do. And now I'm Catholic. So I was raised that life begins at conception. I don't think there's anything wrong with believing that. I don't think there's any wrong with not believing that, but that's where I come at it from.

[00:35:43] As somebody who, and this is a nuanced position, maybe, but my wife and I had had a miscarriage a few years ago. We went in one week, there was a heartbeat, we went in next week for week 10, there wasn't a heartbeat. You can't tell me that wasn't life that was lost. It's something tragic that happened to us. But it doesn't change the fact that like the government is the worst possible way to tell women what to do with their bodies. That should not be happening. It's also we never talked about the actual issue, which is unwanted pregnancy and how we incentivize people to want to keep the baby, to make sure like the society works so that people don't have to make that choice or at least fewer people have to be able to. So, but that's my point. People are way more complicated than that. And I think on abortion, on guns, on the economy, on cultural issues, people are way more complicated. And then we show up with like three crappy talking points that are written by a PR guy that's probably never seen the sun and doesn't live in the real world. So we sound so weird and formulaic to people. Does that make sense or am I just rambling?

Beth Silvers [00:36:36] That's 100% right. I am people. Okay, I'm not a strategist. I had a normal job. I have two kids. I have a normal life. I participate in my community. I go to church every Sunday. I'm super involved there. And my politics have never fit neatly in one bucket or the other. I was a terrible Republican. I Was a terrible Democrat. Like I'm just out here floating. What you said about abortion is very closely aligned to what I believe about abortion. And so I think that's why I find a lot of that sort of character-driven politics so repellent, but I believe in the importance of all of this and I want to keep diving into it. It also is really helpful to me when you said at the top that you have advised democratic politicians to go into these more hostile news environments. We cannot book a Republican on this show. We try. There are so many Republicans that I'd like to have an open, curious conversation with and they won't do it. And I don't know if that's because the show's called Pantsuit Politics and it sounds like we're two-dimensional characters. They're making an assumption about what our characters are.

Mike Nellis [00:37:38] I'll tell you that when you invited me out, I was like, wow, Pantsuit Politics is going to have a white dude for Harrison. Like that actually felt like culturally significant to me for a minute.

Beth Silvers [00:37:46] I love to talk to men and I love to talk people who think very differently than I do. I love it when listeners beat up on us. I love that when listeners tell us like here's what I think you're missing. This is not part of my life experience. It's my favorite thing in the world when someone says my life is nothing like yours. Let's talk. Love that. I think that's where a lot of people are. I think most of us have confusing internally contradictory, completely hypocritical views of the world, informed a lot by our life experiences.

Mike Nellis [00:38:18] That's also what I like about Joe Rogan show. I would say like every man in your life has watched an episode of Joe Rogan, whether you believe them or not. If they tell you that they haven't, they're lying. But you watch that show, he doesn't really come in with a POV. And the way most people I think have experienced Joe Rogann now is in like 45 second TikTok clips of him saying stupid shit, which he does say a lot of stupid shit. But you know who says stupid shit? Most people.

Beth Silvers [00:38:44] All of us.

Mike Nellis [00:38:44] Most people will get something wrong about some issue. What I like about it is he'll invite basically anybody on the show and he'll have a conversation with them. Now he's not great at like pushing back because that isn't really his role, but we need more just conversations. And I think we get beholden to this place where everything has to be right. And Joe Rogan has to held to the same standard as Katie Kirk. And that isn't right because what he's doing is entertainment. And I thing for you and I, it's like we're having a candid conversation. Now, I'll have Republicans on my show. I have my dad on the show for that exact reason because I think people should see what I would argue is a relatively normal Republican is like because my dad does not fit the bucket of what normal Republicans look like to most Democrats. My dad gave a great like 10 minute rant on gun control that was phenomenal about the need for gun control and the reason we don't have it is because Democrats don't the balls to get it done. And I was sitting there going, I don't really have an argument for that because that's I think right. I need to crop that and post it up on my YouTube page because it was really, really good.

[00:39:41] Or I'm going to have Leland Vittert on the show for an hour in a couple of weeks. And Leland is, I think, a far better than average Republican commentator. Like he's not Jesse Watters, but I'd have Jesse Watters on the show. I'd had Tucker Carlson on. I'd have anybody on. And a lot of people would get mad at me. They'd be like I can't believe you're platforming Tucker Carlson. I'd be like Tucker Carlson has like a 10,000 times bigger platform than me. He's doing me the favor in that environment. So we get so trapped in our bubbles. And by the way, they want you in bubbles. And James Taylor Rico has talked about this really, really well. There is a class of very wealthy people in this country of which Donald Trump is a part of, they want you trapped in a bubble at the throats of your neighbors. They want to hate your dad. They want you to hate you neighbor. They want you to hate high school friend that voted for Trump.

[00:40:25] They want you to be like I have nothing in common with this person because of their vote. Because if they can keep us at each other's throats, you won't notice the fact that they're literally fleecing the federal government right now. Donald Trump's putting money in his pocket. He's not putting it in yours. If you hate your neighbor, if you hate somebody you've never met in Kentucky because they voted for Donald Trump-- which like, I don't hate anybody. Everybody is my brother and my sister so long as, again, I said it earlier, you think about somebody else every now and again, you can sit at my table. That's just what it is. And I don't hate you because you voted for Trump or maybe you once posted something dumb about me on the internet. I don't care. We have to push beyond the hatred part of it. And so much of what Trump wants is he wants you to match his hatred for you with your hatred of him and his people, and we can't do that. We just can't do that.

Beth Silvers [00:41:11] So your they in that they want you to be divided, they want us to stay divided, who is included in your they?

Mike Nellis [00:41:19] Trump and the billionaires that manage the algorithm. The algorithms keep us at each other's throats.

Beth Silvers [00:41:24] I think that's right. I was having this conversation with a friend whose politics are quite different than mine this morning, and he sent me a video that had this very conspiratorial bent. It was about the Jimmy Kimmel situation. It was like, hey, they (they unnamed they)

Mike Nellis [00:41:41] Yeah. My dad and I often do 'your people' when we're talking. We actually on the show last week we're like we're going to retire that because it feels wrong. Like while we were doing the show, we were like we should stop saying that because I'm your people.

Beth Silvers [00:41:54] This video was kind of saying they want us to think that Disney has good morals and that's why they fired Jimmy Kimmel. So obviously coming at this from a different perspective than mine, but actually they endorse these things and it left you really spun up. Like there's no ground here, everything's confusing. And I don't feel super confused about the fact that the people who control our most salient political infrastructure right now, the internet platforms that allow us to communicate with one another, absolutely benefit from conflict, absolutely benefit from us remaining predictable in our behaviors. And I think that's another way that that cable news character has left cable news and gone everywhere. Because if the algorithm knows who I am, it knows what to feed me to keep me hooked in. I'm pretty clear about that. I don't think that that falls along a left-right continuum, as much as a level of greed continuum. And I'm curious about how that might shift in a post-Trump landscape.

Mike Nellis [00:43:07] Well, you'll probably find that the billionaire class will break apart again because right now there's a whole lot of them that are all under trump because they know him to be vindictive. So do I think that Sam Altman really has any affinity for Donald Trump? I do not. And I just don't think that they care. I don't think Zuckerberg cares either. Now they might be getting the tax cuts that they want and stuff like that, but really they want to be able to-- and I don't have anything against Sam Altman. I actually think of all the billionaires, if you were like, Mike, pick one, it might be that it's Sam Altman. Which by the way, is not an indictment of Sam Alman, it's more about the fact there are a lot of worse billionaires out there. So don't nobody come at me. But Sam Altmann cares about AI regulation So as long nothing's getting in his way that allows him to do what he wants. Mark Zuckerberg cares about social media regulation as long as you're not getting into his way so that he can pollute people's feeds and be held responsible for the things that happen.

[00:43:54] That hearing I believe like early last year where all the parents came in talking about their kids who had harmed themselves because of what had happened on Facebook, there's no accountability for that and there's no government regulation on that. And so with everything being self-governed, they're doing all they can to control Washington so that there isn't regulation on them. They're basically today's gun manufacturers. That's what they are. And it's not the same, but I would argue its impact is just as devastating in the context of how do you allow this new technology that the constitution surely could not have conceived of to pollute our children, to pollute our own brains and destroy our ability to be next to one another. And one of the most chilling videos that I've seen, I would encourage people to look it up because it's a glimpse into the future that scares the hell out of me is this video of Mark Zuckerberg talking on it might've been like Theo Vonn's podcast or something like that. And he's like, "Our consumer research shows that the average person has four friends, but their demand for friends is 11. And we believe we can fill that demand with AI." And I was like get the fuck out of here with that.

Beth Silvers [00:45:04] Absolutely.

Mike Nellis [00:45:04] First of all, I have more than four friends, but I don't want seven AI friends to catch me up. And I'm not anti-AI. I think it's a valuable tool for doing a lot of different things. I created and sold an AI tech startup in the last couple of years, so I'm non-anti-AI. But it is not a replacement for being in community with other human beings. And where's the government? I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Where's the government’s responsibility in that? Why are we not building third spaces? If we're watching a reduction in people going to church and people not being able to afford to join-- I'm a member of entrepreneur’s organization as a small business owner I go. I get to be in community with them. I went to the Bears game yesterday that they helped put together a plan so I could be with like 10 other people at a football game. It was really nice, but I could afford to do that because I'm doing well.

[00:45:46] The average person who's struggling in this economy can't. So how does the government step in to be helpful with that and not allow Metta to turn you into somebody who has seven AI friends that are perfectly calibrated to whatever they want you to do. Because what they're going to do is they're going to fill an unmet need, but then they're also going to go haywire and you're going go down deep, dark rabbit holes. Or they're going to start pushing products on you that you don't really need. And I'm worried about all of it. And eventually people are going to feel more lonely, more anxious, more isolated and become addicted to something like this because our brains weren't wired for the type of dopamine hit you get from our social media feeds, let alone an AI robot. It's going to tell you whatever the hell you want to hear.

Beth Silvers [00:46:21] I think that's right, that we're just being flattened continuously by these devices that are purposefully addicting us to them.

Mike Nellis [00:46:28] And human connection is not a market demand function. Like it is not something that you are hearing a business towards let me provide community for people. That is just not how it should work. And people confuse your relationship-- like Beth this is a lovely conversation that we're having. It is not the same as you and I sitting down and having dinner and talking about our lives and being in community with one another. It's just not the same.

Beth Silvers [00:46:48] Absolutely. We try to get as close to that as we can on our show and it is limited. I called a couple of our listeners last week. They left interesting comments. I said, hey, can I give you a call on the phone? And I loved it. It was such a good experience for me because I'm tired of asynchronous communication. As rich as it is to go back and forth with someone who's listened to a long form piece and wants to deeply engage with it, it's just different than being on the phone, which is different than being in person. I totally agree. Well, let's keep on this theme because Sarah and I always try to end the show with something Outside of Politics. We find that harder and harder to do. But I want to spend a second talking about how you take care of yourself when you host a platform called Endless Urgency. I have to tell you, Mike, it stresses me out the idea of endless urgency for you. How are you keeping your feet on the ground?

Mike Nellis [00:47:51] So, well, let's clarify what endless urgency means because it's two different things. One, it's my personal life motto, and it's also what I want for the Democratic party. So there are two different things. As my personal life motto, the full sentence is endless urgency in everything that I do. Like if I was to get a tattoo, it would probably be that, right here as a reminder. But when I say endless urgency, it's like endless urgency to spend time with my kids. Endless urgency to be on vacation and travel and see new places. Endless urgency to go chase Notre Dame across the country and watch them win or lose football games. And unfortunately this season, they're very good at losing close football games, not winning them. So there's a lot of that. And so what I'm trying to do is for those that don't know, I used to weigh 600 pounds and I've lost about 300 pounds. So I basically, to a certain degree, was trying to kill myself with food and I destroyed my life. I recently looked at a photo of myself on the day I weighed in at 600 pounds and could not believe what that guy looked like and the life that that guy was living compared to me. And so the motto that came out of that was endless urgency, which I don't how much time I have left. I'm going to live life to the fullest.

[00:48:47] But it isn't like work, work, work all the time, although I do work, work a lot. And I spend way too much time on social media shitposting Republicans and shitposting Democrats a fair amount of the time, too. But when it comes to the party, endless urgency is about what I'm watching from the Trump administration to destroy and thieve and be creative and hurt people. I want that, but for good. And my question is, what if we took that energy but we had 60 votes like Barack Obama had in 2009? What if we were just able to do that? Like how much could we help people if we didn't always play by the rules the way that they want us to. I'm not saying we become an evil version of the Democratic party because I don't want to forget who we're fighting for, but that's a lot of what that is. Now your question about self-care, I almost always get a good night's sleep.

[00:49:31] I sleep seven to eight hours. I spend time with my son. I like to kayak. I'm a pretty average kayaker. I just took it up a few months ago. Lately, I've been watching The Godfather. And I feel like this is such a white man in America thing to say, but I watched Godfather one, I watched godfather two, I loved them, and then I deluded myself into watching Godfather three, which I think is terrible. But I watched it, and I watched the series about the making of the Godfather, and then I spun right back and just watched the whole thing over again. And so it's literally that scene in the Barbie movie, when I think they con one of the other Ken dolls into telling them about the God father. I remember watching that scene and sinking into my chair going, that is the most salient analysis of what it's like to be a man in America. Because all I want to do is talk about the Godfather.

Beth Silvers [00:50:15] Well, I relate to that. I have most of the horrifying tendencies of like an Instagrammable suburban mom. I love Target.

Mike Nellis [00:50:22] How many woobles [sp] do you own? This is my benchmark for this.

Beth Silvers [00:50:24] I don't have any woobles. So there is a place where I may be succeeding or failing. I'm not sure. I've become a plant lady.

Mike Nellis [00:50:31] Sourdough bread starters.

Beth Silvers [00:50:33] I have a sourdough bread starter. It's not doing very well, but I have one.

Mike Nellis [00:50:36] Well, they're a real hit or miss.

Beth Silvers [00:50:38] They are. So it's a situation I've looked at weighted vests many times. I'll probably end up getting one.

Mike Nellis [00:50:43] Those are everywhere in my neighborhood. Those weighted vests.

Beth Silvers [00:50:45] Yeah, mine, too. You walk on the street and it's hilarious. And I do kind of wonder like what parts of this is actual relaxation to me and actual self-care versus me just following the script? Feels like it could be.

Mike Nellis [00:51:00] My wife will buy stuff every now and again and I'll just-- because I can't help myself. I'm kind of a dick. And she'll buy something and I see her unwrapping and I go, "What kind of Instagram shit is this?" She'll get really mad at me and then pull out another fucking wooble.

Beth Silvers [00:51:15] Yeah, it's like that. I have found lately actual rest. We have a hammock in our backyard and it is lovely in Kentucky right now. And that's about the only place where I feel like, okay, actually everything has fallen away. And I can just feel the breeze and look at the sky and the trees and be here for a second. And remember that here contains a lot. A lot of what I do in the community just because of the skill sets that I have, even the things that I do that are like I'm making the world better, I can feel that local impact, it still involves my computer. And so I am just searching in every way to get up from my computer

Mike Nellis [00:51:58] One thing on that I want to add another thought too, which is one of my hobbies is that I'm on the school council down the street from me and I go help them with like all the problems that they're facing. And what I've realized is it's just like a much less stressful version of my job where I'm trying to like push through a bureaucracy that doesn't want to listen to me on anything. I love doing it, but I realized it was like such an obvious, like the same sort of experience where I'm like on the phone with an administrator at CPS that doesn't want to help me get beanbag chairs for the kids. And it's like it's a whole thing. I have a book that I recommend to everybody that I think can kind of at least help me is the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. And it has a quote that I remind myself of almost every day, which is the pursuit of the positive is inherently negative. And then paradoxically, embracing the negative is inherently positive. And I think it's just like I look for the good in everything.

[00:52:47] I look for those little moments when I get a little bit of joy when I can refill that well. Sometimes it's a conversation with a stranger while I'm on a walk. Sometimes I take my son to school every morning and we've got an extra 15 minutes so we go to the park and we play catch for 15 minutes and that's okay, too. And when bad shit happens, I try to think of it as not why it's happening to me but for me. Can I find something good out of it? And most of the time that can get me out of it. Now, that isn't to say I don't have moments where I'm overwhelmed. I got really overwhelmed I want to say Wednesday or Thursday of last week where all the Charlie Kirk stuff kind of caught up to me and all the press that I was doing and I was just exhausted and I kind of had to just go lie down for a little while. Because I'm actually a secret introvert. I think people would be surprised to learn that, but I find people very draining.

Beth Silvers [00:53:29] I do, too. And no one will be surprised to learn that about me who has spent any time with this show. I find everything in the world to take a lot of energy, but I still love it. I think the grounding quote for me, "Here is the world, beautiful and terrible things happen." And I go back to that all the time. Here's the world, beautiful and terrible things happen. And that's just what life is. And as much as I want to control all of that or maybe pick my ratio of beautiful to terrible, they're just both here and they always have been and always will be.

Mike Nellis [00:54:01] I always remember that Stephen Colbert talking about a conversation with his mom because he had a large number of family members dying I think a car crash or a plane crash. And he said something to his mom that was like why us? Why is this happening to us? And her response was-- and I'm a practicing Catholic, so it's a Catholic answer. But it was like why would you be so lucky? Why not you? It was just the reverse of that. And when something bad happens, if I have to step back at work, if I'm sick, if there's something goes wrong-- my wife and I have had four miscarriages. Like it is like a very hard path.

Beth Silvers [00:54:33] That's tough.

Mike Nellis [00:54:33] And I apologize to anybody who's triggered by that. If you're going through it, just know I love you unconditionally. And I would not wish it on my worst enemy. But the first one hit us so hard, but now I kind of approach them as just like, all right, this not our moment and we got to roll with that. And what does that give me? So I now have a broader understanding of what a lot of women are going through because of that infertility challenges that I didn't have and that is a skill that I now have or a value add that I have that makes me a better communicator, somebody who can think like that. A better person to be in community with and I accept that I would rather they didn't happen, but to your point, you don't get to pick your terrible and you don't t get to pick your great. You get to you live the life you live.

Beth Silvers [00:55:15] That's right. Well, Mike, this was fun. Thanks for spending time with me.

Mike Nellis [00:55:18] Thank you for having me.

Beth Silvers [00:55:19] Thank you all for listening. We'll be back with you on Friday with another new episode. Until then, have the best week available to you.