"Living well is a challenge."
Trying to build better habits of the heart and mind
A note from Beth
A few months ago, I started receiving a daily email entitled “Interesting Facts.” I don’t know why. I didn’t subscribe. Lord knows I do not need anything else in my inbox. But I like interesting facts. I’m powerless to resist subject lines like “What animal tastes food through its feet?”1
I was tempted to label this newsletter a nuisance, to rapidly unsubscribe from the list that I didn’t subscribe to in the first place, and to move on to more relevant matters. Now, I look forward to learning something strange every morning. It’s a highlight of my day. It inspires me. Sometimes it makes me a little weepy in the best way. It enhances my life. Surely that clears the bar for a relevant email?
What is a nuisance, and what is relevant in a world where everything competes for our attention all the time, in all of the places? As someone who makes podcasts and writes newsletters, I’m part of that attention-competition. How can I publish work that is relevant to you, that is worthy of the time I’m asking you to give it?
Last Friday, I put “accountability time” on my calendar. I made a chart of every episode of More to Say, Pantsuit Politics, and our Spicy Bonus Episodes from the month of January. I wanted to distill what each episode was about. With the benefit of a little hindsight, I wanted to see what I gave my attention in January, what I asked you to give your attention to.
I added columns for likes and comments as a very rough indicator of how well a topic met the moment for you. And then I stared at the chart for a very long time to see what I could learn and how I could take that learning into plans for February.
What is a nuisance, and what is relevant? Here in this space where I have agency and authority, am I falling into nuisance? Am I prioritizing relevance? How do I know?
Sarah and I decided to slow-read Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life this year. I’d say my enthusiasm for reading it fell from high (after we finished Democracy in America, I was very jazzed to read a modern follow-up) to mid-at-best over the past few weeks. How on earth with (waves hands) all of this going on does it make sense to add this book to the mix? “I’m buried in executive orders and district court decisions over here!” my brain shouts at itself.
With this distinct feeling of nuisance, I opened the book.
I was hooked from the first sentence: “Living well is a challenge.”
It sure is.
I soaked up the stories of Brian, Joe, Margaret, and Wayne—these ordinary people trying to live good lives—and the authors’ urgent, persistent, demanding question: “what makes a good life?” The authors are pressing into everything that I’m wrestling with in my political life, my spiritual life, my ordinary life, even my inbox. This book is no nuisance. It is relevant in demanding a better definition of relevant. Relevant to what? What is the point of any of this, and how do we know?
We’ll start talking about Habits of the Heart this month. I hope our conversations are relevant to you. I hope that we’re separating nuisance from relevance. I hope that even when you don’t agree with our editorial decisions, they point toward something valuable for you. That you continue to share your attention, your questions, your ideas about what’s relevant and what’s a nuisance with us…this is the great grace of my career.
“Accountability time” for February’s work is on my calendar. “Interesting Facts” are in my inbox. And what is relevant to you is forever and always on my mind.
What We’re Reading and Listening To This Week
Sarah: Sarah’s enjoying a little time off this week, but you know she’s still reading. I can report receiving screenshots from The Storm Before the Calm from her with airport flooring visible in the background.
Beth: I’m reading Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future (because I feel very clear on what could possibly go wrong!) and A World of Curiosities (the next book in the cozy-mystery Louise Penny series, although this one is decidedly not cozy). I also wanted to highlight this very honest essay that I mentioned on Friday’s episode about shedding identities.
Alise: I (Alise) finally got off the library wait list and have Onyx Storm in my possession as of last night. Let’s all say a prayer my toddler - who has made clear he’s closing in on the end of naps - cooperates this weekend so I can read it.
Maggie: From Wake Up to Politics by Gabe Fleisher - David Hogg: The Phones Are Dooming Democrats
Something Nice to Take You Into the Weekend
I cannot imagine a better use of seven minutes and 32 seconds than this compilation from 50 years of SNL musical guests. I’m all in on everything related to SNL’s anniversary, but this? This is special.
Copyright (C) 2025 Pantsuit Politics. All rights reserved.
The answer is butterflies for those of you who are similarly powerless. In a process called contact chemoreception, butterflies use their feet to analyze a leaf’s chemicals and determine if a plant is safe for her larvae to eat after hatching. Please be impressed that I put this information in a footnote instead of building some extended metaphor that overtakes the entire newsletter.
It is helpful for me to see how you use the data points of likes & comments. I occasionally comment and inconsistently like...especially since I listen to most content in Overcast, not Substack. Also, I don't use social media much at all, so I'm not in the habit of either. I will tell you that I get a lot out of MTS 99% of the time. You guys are worth every penny of my premium subscription 😊
I realized reading this that I don’t think I’ve ever hit like on anything I read. At about 25 years your senior, it doesn’t occur to me that I actually have any input on what I’m reading beyond the choices I make. Am sorry you missed another information point in your month, you can add a like to every MTS. MTS is the reason I am subscribed. My wife and I are low income, living on our Social Security. I have lived with a disability, unable to work since a car accident 35 years ago. She now has dementia and we are navigating that.
You bring significant value to my life. Thoughtful, deep, well researched pieces, that help me think about things from perspectives beyond my own. Being a lesbian who came out 50 years ago, I could not understand how thoughtful caring people could possibly support a political party that demonized my very existence. (I have never belonged to either party, though I’ve never missed an election since I registered st 18 in 1975. Got to vote for Jimmy Carter twice ;-) Listening to you has helped me understand that. We share many of the same values, I just never found them being articulated in ways I could grasp in the Republican Party. I got caught up in my apparent lack of “Family values” (which my 5 siblings, parents and now 15 nieces, nephews and greats find hysterical) to be able to countenance the party itself.
We were told so often then that we (LGBTQIA+ folks) should change ourselves for the good of society, that it felt like one more way we were being asked to deny ourselves to be asked to vote for a party that demonized us for the good of the nation. I’ve been told I am selfish for not being willing to put others in front of myself and vote republican for the country’s benefit. In all honesty, I have not found Republicans to be of the country’s benefit in my lifetime. My political memories start with JFK’s funeral, sent home from school in first grade when he was killed. I watched his funeral seeing Caroline, who is my age, and John the age of one of my younger siblings, watch their father being buried. Knowing that it could be my father, as he was a Navy pilot and every time he went out to fly he might not come back. Don’t ask me why we knew that so young. It was a different time. I remember watching us land on the moon at 12 in Johnson’s years. My formative political years Richard Nixon was president and the Vietnam war was constantly in the news. Kent State happened, my oldest brother got his draft number. Nixon resigned the year I graduated from high school. Seriously disliked Ronald Reagan, didn’t vote for him as governor of California, and definitely not for President. He was far too simplistic and racist for me.
So thank you. For your time, thoughtfulness, the depth of your research they matches the depth of your love and care of others. You reach many who may, like me, be old enough not to fully participate in this back and forth that we didn’t learn young and are still working on. (I’ll hit like when I read from now on!)