Nothing Ever Changes (Until It Does)

Fighting despair, finding wins, and the case for heat over hot

When we look at the news right now — Iran, the airports, the corruption, the measles — it’s tempting to decide none of it matters because, individually, we can’t fix any of it. Nihilism is tempting, and we talk about how sometimes nihilism represents pride, but maybe in the right dose, it’s more like humility. Either way, “nothing matters” is being proven wrong every day. Special elections are producing surprising results. Courts are holding tech companies accountable. And people are figuring it out when institutions fail (I’m especially moved by the story of an underground railroad set up to bring Ukrainian children home from Russia). I say in this episode that my emotional cocktail has a splash of nihilism in it. But the main ingredient is my conviction that our attention and our care and our efforts make a difference.

Plus: please clap for my favorite segue in the history of Pantsuit Politics. From: “perhaps we aren’t sleepwalking into a dystopian nightmare” to “are we in a smut renaissance?” facilitated by the shelving of an erotic chatbot. If this doesn’t end your Friday with joy, I don’t know what will. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• Nihilism is Having A Moment

• Signs of Hope

• Outside of Politics: Smut Renaissance

Want more Pantsuit Politics? Subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode and get access to our premium shows and community.

Episode Resources

• In Praise of Stove-Touching - by Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark)

• OpenAI puts erotic chatbot plans on hold ‘indefinitely’ (Financial Times)

• Are We in a ‘Smut Renaissance’? (The New York Times)

• Watch Heated Rivalry (HBO Max)

• Red, White & Royal Blue (MacMillan Publishers)

Episode Transcript

Coming soon…

Show Credits

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

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

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.