Pantsuit Politics Flashback: 2018

Mass shootings, family separation Brett Kavanaugh, and our personal hustle

Pantsuit Politics is celebrating ten years of podcasting this year!

A lot has happened politically, culturally, and personally in the last ten years. This summer, we’re revisiting each of the years we’ve been podcasting with a special flashback episode. Today, we are looking at what, in reflection, is one of the hardest years of the past ten.

We’d love for you to celebrate with us! Join us for our 10th birthday celebration in Cincinnati, OH - or with a virtual ticket - this July 19. Learn more and get your tickets here:

Pantsuit Politics 10th Birthday Celebration

Topics Discussed

• Horrific Headlines: Parkland Shooting, Family Separation, and the Death of Jamal Khashoggi

• The Confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh

• Outside of Politics: Cultural Highlights of 2018

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Episode Resources

• The Kavanaugh Hearings and the Anonymous Editorial (Pantsuit Politics)

• Faith, Doubt, the Bible, and Politics with Rachel Held Evans (Pantsuit Politics)

• The WHCA Dinner, a #MeToo Moment, and Faith and Politics with Jen Hatmaker (Pantsuit Politics)

• The Danger of Othering (Pantsuit Politics)

• Raising Kids in Light of Kavanaugh (The Nuanced Life)

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.

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:10] This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Flashback 2018, a special episode of Pantsuit Politics. As we think about the 10 years we have been making this podcast, we're revisiting each of those years. It's really been interesting to pull on the threads of things happening today and see where they connect with our recent history. Today we're going to revisit 2018, a year that I found to be the hardest of the last 10. There's so much to discuss here and we'll dig into all of that in just a moment.

Sarah [00:00:37] First, we want to make sure you aren't missing anything happening in the expanded Pantsuit Politics universe. For premium members on Substack, we make more episodes. We have a film club. We're in the middle of a 30-day series of meditations leading up to July 4th. We're doing a long read of Habits of the Heart, which I think about constantly as we revisit these last 10 years. We'd love to have you come join the fun. You can search for us on Substack or follow the link in the show notes.

Beth [00:01:02] Next step, let's rewind the clock to 2018. Okay, Sarah, I mostly remember therapy from 2018. That's what I remember about 2018.

Sarah [00:01:23] I've been putting like a little label for myself on every year. And I did write that 2018 was an emotional year.

Beth [00:01:31] Yes.

Sarah [00:01:32] It felt very emotional.

Beth [00:01:34] And I have to be honest that some of it is personal because 2018 is the first year that I did Pantsuit Politics full time. So I quit my full time job at the end of 2017. The draft of our book was due in February of 2018. So January was like a scramble to get that draft done. I was trying to build a business coaching practice in addition to doing the podcast because I wasn't sure we were going to make enough money for it to work for me to be full time with the show. So I think that I was just frantic most of the year. Are we going to be financially okay? Am I working hard enough? What does it feel like to do this as a full-time job? Can we get the book written? I was a little bit frantic. And on top of that, the news didn't do us any favors.

Sarah [00:02:21] Yeah, I was definitely frantic. I've been kind of going through my Facebook posts or looking through some of my photo albums for each year. And I was still a city commissioner. I was running for re-election as a city commissioner. I ultimately lost that re-election campaign in November of 2018. And so I just see a lot of hustle. And I remember being on the phone with you always. Like I was your free business coaching client because I was like why are people acting like this? Why is this fellow commissioner trying to make my life terrible? Also, that's the year they accused me of cheating at the debate. And so it was just so much. And so when I think about that in context of the major news events then I'm like, okay, well, it makes sense that everything hit me so hard. Because everything did hit awful hard.

Beth [00:03:12] The other thing that I think has to be held alongside all of this, as we think about everything hitting us hard, is that my kids were three and seven. So yours would have been three, seven, and nine. So we're in it as parents. You got a three-year-old, you are still really, really in it. And the kinds of stories that occupied our time on the show were just overwhelming as parents of young children. I really think of the year as starting in February with the Parkland shootings. We've got the Trump administration happening in the background. We're still figuring out what that means and adjusting to the pace of news. When I went back to listen to some of our episodes, we were always like, well, a lot happened since we were with you last. It's like that's adorable, guys. It's going to be that way forever now. But we were dealing with that pace and then you have this mass shooting at a scale and just in a way that hit different than some of the other mass shootings have. It was a really hard one to process.

Sarah [00:04:18] Well, because there was so much video. That's what I remember profoundly from Parkland, is that the kids were videoing and that was a moment where a lot of kids had cell phones in schools. Another mass experiment we were running over the course of these 10 years. And so that's what hit me so hard. I remember thinking, okay, this will do it. Now we can see what the kids see because we had long conversations about people are protected from these shootings. They don't have to see what first responders see. They don't have to what the victims see. Can I take this on a tangent for a minute?

Beth [00:04:50] Please do. That's been my favorite part of these 10 years.

Sarah [00:04:53] I feel like these first years have been so predominated by shootings in a way that the last several years have not. And I hesitate to say that out loud in the same way I won't speak to cold and flu season until May and whether or not I am surviving it or not or have escaped any virus. Like I don't want to speak it out loud. That's not to say there aren't any mass shootings in America, but it's just hard not to notice a difference as we go back and look at so many very, very headline-grabbing mass shootings in the first years of this podcast because I don't feel like we've had as many in the last several years.

Beth [00:05:38] And those are also some of the hardest things, right? Because we were talking about them all the time. I always have this sense of I don't know what to say. I don't know what else to say about this. I've said what I have to say. I don't want to live like this. I don't want anyone else to live like. Here are some policies that we talk about every damn time this happens. They seem to go somewhere in states, but not at a national level. I don don't what to make of that. Parkland is one. Legislation came out of Parkland. Florida changed because of Park land. That's different than the entire country changing. There's always disappointment to be felt if you are part of the gun control movement, but Parkland did make a big difference.

Sarah [00:06:22] Well, I feel just like the schools have been hardened. I can trace the journey of our school, a particular elementary school. When we started this podcast and Griffin started kindergarten, we walked him in every morning. Anybody could walk in the building. And the school has very much been hardened since then. Like you can't just walk in. All the doors are locked. You have to be buzzed in at all our schools. So I think some of that has to be a result of the hardening of the schools themselves. And obviously I'm not immune to the fact that there are still mass shootings, but it just feels different as we go back and listen to these earlier episodes.

Beth [00:06:58] So the other thing that makes me think of Parkland in a different category, maybe a category of its own, is how quickly those students turn to advocacy. The social media generation and the savvy that those students had about trying to bring people in and make them feel this experience was very impactful. And as a mom to two young kids just thinking about what those kids must have been going through, the way people accused them of being crisis actors. Just the swirl that surrounded them, not just because of the shooting and the devastation and the trauma they experienced, but then over and over again because of activism that they jumped into.

Sarah [00:07:41] Yeah, and I wonder at what cost. For some reason, I looked up ex-Gonzalez, the student who was known at the time as Emma Gonzalez, and just an enormous amount of mental health burden placed on them and David Hogg and just the way that people lashed out at them. There was no sense of they are also victims. You know, it was another funhouse mirror of it doesn't matter what you're talking about once it gets a partisan wash. That's it. It doesn't. We're done. And we've lived that out in so many ways, including the other big stories from this year.

Beth [00:08:19] So we get to June, and that is when the zero tolerance policy at the southern border goes into effect. And we all start becoming aware of families being separated at the border. We become aware that that is part of the design of the policy, because the Trump administration believed it would deter people from coming to the country. We start arguing online about whether Obama did this too, and is this actually new, and is this actually cruel? And I remember just feeling adrift during this time, too. It was the first time, I think for me, as a person who has lived an exceptionally lucky life, that I have ever thought, wow, I really do not trust my government right now. And that is a strange feeling.

Sarah [00:09:07] Yeah, I was very activated. I protested at an ICE Center in Southern Illinois. I took a group to Mitch McConnell's office, which you can no longer do if we want to speak to the hardening over the last few years. That's not a thing available to you anymore. But I showed up with a group of women and we just said, like, look, we're here peacefully, but this is unacceptable. This is unacceptable. It was so heartbreaking to live in that moment and just think I have this three-year-old and they're pulling these babies out of their mother's arms. And we would hear terrible stories of assault and abuse at these centers where the children were, or babies not being cared for. It was awful. And it is a stain. It is a stain on our nation that Stephen Miller, the architect of this policy, is now back at the upper echelons of power. It is a stain.

Beth [00:10:02] Totally agree.

Sarah [00:10:03] He is evil. I don't use that word lightly. That was an evil policy. He continues to perpetuate evil, dehumanizing policies towards migrants and refugees. That should have been the end of him. It should have the end him, this policy. It's one I still think about all the time.

Beth [00:10:19] I distinctly remember having lunch with a friend this month. And this is a person who doesn't get very exercised about politics, just not his thing. Definitely not something he gets emotional about. And he brought this up at our lunch and said, "You know me, I never protest things. This is not who I am, but I am vibrating with rage about this and wondering what are we doing and how are we going to allow this to go on?"

Sarah [00:10:49] Yeah, vibrating with rage was the theme for 2018.

Beth [00:10:54] So September comes along and we have the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which we'll talk more about in a second. We'll just give them a little bit more attention. But then in October, it really jumped out at me looking at this list and just thinking about where we are today, that 2018 is the year that the Saudi Arabian government killed Jamal Khashoggi, an American journalist. And talk about stains on our country, the way that we have never demanded any kind of accountability for that, the way that we continue to treat the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, as though he's a great partner, we're all going to get rich together, when our intelligence agencies assess that he probably gave the order to kill this journalist, it's appalling.

Sarah [00:11:43] Well, all the signs are there of what we're dealing with in a more extreme way in the second Trump administration. The cozying up to Kim Jong Un. The just complete, like, what does that have to do with me when it comes to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? Even the China trade war that we had also this year, it's all there. The treatment of migrants, the complete inability to actually lead the country through something like Parkland. We're all in it for ourselves. That's the message. And at every turn from Donald Trump, we're all on our own. Like you have to fight for every little piece you want. And maybe I'll fight for you sometimes, maybe I won't, but this is a dog eat dog world. There are no ideals and there is no striving to reach our better natures. This is it. We're in the dirt and we're not trying to aspire to anything; we're just trying to fight and grab for whatever we can get our hands on.

Beth [00:12:48] And it's really hard to look back on this and see our stamp of approval on it via re-electing him. And so many of the principal architects of the worst of that administration.

Sarah [00:13:02] You do have the midterm elections this year, where Democrats did win back control of the House of Representatives in really a huge, huge, huge game, I think it was like since the Watergate era. So there's moments where you see the American people are like, I don't like this. I don't want this. And I think but for COVID, which obviously we're going to get to in a few years, and had it been a direct referendum on some of these policies and the chaos that he had caused over the previous four years. Who knows? Or if he'd just been re-elected. I don't know. You know the first term it's so hard to go back and think what could have been different? What could we have saved ourselves from? We don't what we saved ourselves from taking this path. Something.

Beth [00:13:48] So many sliding doors moments. And a big one happened in September as a new Supreme Court justice was confirmed. So we'll talk about that next. Sarah, this is what I really remember working out in therapy. Brett Kavanaugh is nominated to replace Justice Kennedy, which I hadn't thought about in a long time, that that's the seat he occupies. I guess that's a good thing. It's not Justice Kennedy's seat. It's just one of the nine, but it did make me feel a little something just thinking about the role that Justice Kennedy played on the court and the way that Justice Kavanaugh likes to pretend that he plays that role sometimes, but then dramatically lurches to the right from that role other times. So I remember sitting with my therapist processing our audience, processing these hearings because we were just flooded with stories of people being sexually assaulted. This hearing just brought up so much in the people who listened to the show. And it was really an honor to be a repository and sounding board for that. And it also really took a toll.

Sarah [00:15:14] Yeah, I think one of the exchanges over the last 10 years that will never leave my mind, it's a core memory, it's seared into every time I think about Pantsuit Politics or every time I think about all the episodes we've recorded is the exchange we had where I said.

Clip: Sarah [00:15:31] So during the Access Hollywood tape, I wrote a blog post. I'm going to read a section of it and I'm definitely going to cry. It says, "Because when you say boys will be boys, you mean my boys. You're implying that there is something dark and carnal lurking deep inside my little boys. The ones I cuddle and hold tight, the ones who hold my heart in their grubby little hands as they run and jump and smile widely up at me. 'I love you, mommy.' You're saying that they will grow up and become men and become capable of taking something that does not belong to them, of breaking it, of destroying it. I am capable of accepting a lot of things about motherhood. I am able of facing the vulnerability inherent in this endeavor. I can face the lack of control. I can the frustration and the bittersweet grief. I can even face the inherent risk of losing them forever. But I cannot and will not accept that deep in their core lurks a rapist. Of course, there is another underlying presumption, which when people say boys will be boys, when you blame the victim for the fact that she was drinking or flirting or being sexual, it's that the boys aren't dark and sinister for taking because you can't take what already belongs to you. I've seen it a million times in men who look at me and comment on how I look or how I walk or how act, and you can hear it dripping in every word Donald Trump says on that tape. 'You are here for my enjoyment. You have no value outside of what I assign to you.' I laid in my bed and wept because there are the impossible choices available to me as a mother of three young boys in 2016. Believe that my children are capable of rapes based solely on their sex or believe that I have no value because of mine. There is something dark and cruel lurking deep within, but it's not deep within my boys. It's deep within all of us if we continue to support a culture that assumes men are driven to terrible things because they are men or that women deserve terrible things because they're women. Culture always wins, but culture can change. We can change." And I still feel that way. I still feel like we're facing that same that's my choice. That's the choice available to me as the mother of boys.

Sarah [00:17:26] And then you also were so emotional about what this means raising girls. That exchange is core. I feel like it's sort of when we grew up, it's when we turned a corner, whatever metaphor you want to use as podcasters. Like having to navigate that moment, even more honestly than the election of 2016, really stands out in my mind.

Beth [00:17:51] I totally agree. I think that this is a pivotal year in so many ways. And what hit me listening back, especially to our September 7th episode from that year, was realizing that I remember the Kavanaugh hearings just through that filter of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, how everyone was feeling, the fights that you were having with family members, and I had lost that this was also a moment that I think-- I don't want to be too dramatic and say this singularly broke the Senate, but it really changed the Senate too. The way that these hearings were conducted, the personal animosity that people felt towards each other on the committee, the way I was saying in this episode, because this was early in the hearings, I really hope that Senator Harris can back up the things that she's laying out in front of Brett Kavanaugh, because these are extremely serious allegations. I hope Senator Booker has the receipts. This is really what built Kamala Harris's profile. So, so much was contained in this set of hearings. And I do think we're still working out some of the ways that this altered the way folks, especially on the Judiciary Committee, felt about each other.

Clip: Beth [00:19:16] I have thought at so many points over the last two years, have we not escalated to the ceiling? But no, there are 20 floors above what I thought the ceiling was of escalation.

Clip: Sarah [00:19:28] I think we're falling through. I feel like we're fallen down. Instead of going up. I feel I can't think the floor is any lower. When I think we can't sink lower, we find another basement.

Sarah [00:19:42] Well, I just look back and think that the Democrats were playing by old rules. As much as they were like putting up a fight and coming with their A game as Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. They're ready to tear it apart. They'd already shown that with the death of Scalia. They're ready to shred it, so playing by the same rules just never was going to work. And I think we've seen that with the Supreme Court over and over and again, and Kavanaugh was just one more example. Going back and watching these Supreme Court fights, or listening to these Supreme court fights through the lens of our podcast, we're all just trying to keep it together. You can really hear this Democrats, including us, including me, trying to defend the status quo. I listened back to those Kavanaugh hearings and our analysis around them, and we're trying to find positivity really fast. Like we're trying to get to a place where it's like going to be okay and fighting a group that's like everything's broken, can't you see? So you can't just come with like Suzy Sunshine, we just have to get to the end of this. That's what I feel a lot. Listening back and seeing all these battles is just-- and because it's so exhausting to be in an environment with Donald Trump, everybody's just like, let's just get through this. Let's just get through this. We'll just get through this one. No, we'll just get through this one. Everything will stabilize. No, baby. That's not it. We're not going to get through the midterms and then it'll be okay. We're going to get though the next election and then we'll be, okay. We're going to get through that. That was never available to us and we could never see it.

Beth [00:21:25] I think that's why this year felt harder to me than COVID because this is the year when that reality sunk in. And I didn't even fully get it. I didn't fully integrate it. But this is year where it was like, nope, it's not just going to be better next month or tomorrow. Things are not going to calm down. It's not going to get quieter. We're not going to go backwards. This year was just relentless. It was relentless. And so by the time we got to COVID, I feel like I had at least built some muscles for that that I didn't have in this year. This is the year where I just felt like I personally came undone in so many ways.

Sarah [00:22:01] Well, listen, spoiler alert, for 2019, that's when Anne Helen writes the burnout viral article about millennial burnout. And it's at the beginning of 2019. So it was all cooking during 2018. But it's funny we're saying that, and I'm like, but we were recording a series about 9/11 this year, which I'm still really proud of. I thought it was really good work. I really liked that we went to New York City and saw the memorial. And I'm, like, we were the recording this series about how everything was different and we were never going back, while living through this time and thinking like no we'll just get through it and we'll get back to like a stable position. It's like you can't see the forest through the trees even when you're recording a series about how things are permanently altered by history.

Beth [00:22:45] That pull to the status quo is so strong. They say inertia is the strongest, most powerful force in the universe for a reason. What episode jumped out at you as you were re-listening?

Sarah [00:22:57] Heartbreakingly, this is the year that we recorded an interview with Rachel Held Evans. So listening to that was really intense. I had not listened to it since she passed away. It was also when we had Jen Hatmaker on, which was really, really special. But beyond our Kavanaugh conversations, I was listening to The Danger of Othering, which is an episode we recorded, and I had this moment where I talk about the resistance to dehumanize.

Clip: Sarah [00:23:27] The resistance to dehumanizing even someone as horrendous as Donald Trump for me is really, really important because what I've been thinking about a lot and when I think the conversation with Brene Brown and Kerry's point about the risk of tribalism is you don't need to dehumanize someone to find justice. You just don't, that's not necessary. But you do need to dehumanize someone to be cruel. And that's not my values. And I want to avoid cruelty at all costs. And there's just this sort of-- I'm not going to lie and say I don't feel even it's like a little bit of a gendered conversation around this. Like you're not paying close enough attention. You don't care enough. You're not angry enough. No, I'm just not going to dehumanize and other someone in the search for justice because I don't think that's required.

Sarah [00:24:22] And I thought, well, the thread is there. Even as we were struggling against the status quo, the thread to say, like, don't, just stop. But again, there's a part of me that's like, yes, good. We were on the foundation of our values the whole time. And there's part of me that's like, yeah, but you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. They don't care about dehumanizing you. But I feel like that's the journey of these last 10 years; is saying how do you respond to someone that's willing to lie, dehumanize you, commit violence? That's why we all feel so wrung out at the end of this year. And this is where the ringing out-- we're dividing this up so cutely in the series. We're doing the headlines and then we're doing the cultural moments. But especially as you talk about the Kavanaugh hearings and the Me Too movement, I keep thinking these headlines are not beating people over the head with progressive ideology because Donald Trump was president. Progressive ideology was losing in the halls of power over and over and again. And it's culturally where people feel beat over the head. When I look at these cultural roundups, I'm like, okay, now I can see. When you put this all on a list, I can why people felt like berated. It's the only word I can think about.

Beth [00:25:50] Yeah, I would say this is the year that Me Too went corporate. When it became like the times up pins at the award shows and around every corner we're having that sort of conversation, but less of a conversation. Like shrunken now because it is a slogan and because it is something that is like an obligation almost of people to talk about culturally. And you can see in retrospect where we lose the plot when it goes corporate.

Sarah [00:26:23] Well, and it's like every moment had a political.

Beth [00:26:28] Gloss or something?

Sarah [00:26:30] A political gloss. So we'll still put them in their little container and talk about culture, I guess. But that's what I noticed this year-- and it wasn't this year, I'd been noticing it for several years that the headlines are if not wins, certainly, advancements for conservative ideology, or at least the MAGA universe's ideology. And then the cultural are just in direct conflict with that.

Beth [00:27:12] So one of the big cultural moments from 2018 was that Black Panther was released in February. I loved this movie. I still think Black Panther is one of the best of the Marvel movies.

Sarah [00:27:26] Really? Because I don't love it that much.

Beth [00:27:27] Oh my gosh. I think that just seeing Wakanda on the screen like that was phenomenal.

Sarah [00:27:34] The universe of Wakanda is wonderful. I'm such a terrible person; I'm critiquing somebody who's passed away tragically. But I kind of felt like everybody, except for Angela Bassett, was not up to the universe. You just got to have a lot of stature to compete with the universe of Wakanda. And that's always what I felt some push and pull against, especially, well, maybe not in the first movie, but definitely in the second movie.

Beth [00:28:02] I did not like the second one either, but the first one I loved.

Sarah [00:28:06] So that's what I'm talking about though. Everything had this wash. So you have Black Panther, you have Beyonce's historic Coachella performance, you have Roseanne, and then she has all the controversies because she gets fired. And then you have- I can't believe this, I feel like Meghan Markle has been in my life for two decades, but this is the year they got married. And then you have all the controversies surrounding her and their marriage that's coming for us. And so I'm like looking back at all this and I'm, like, dang! That's why I think we get to Taylor Swift's Eras tour she feels like such a breath of fresh air because we're like, dadgum, just give me something that's fun! Everything, when you look back at these years, you couldn't have a cultural moment unless it had some sort of political impact. That's how it feels a little bit looking back at these around ups.

Beth [00:29:00] The other thing that jumped out at me from 2018 culturally was death. I really remember learning that Kate Spade had died.

Sarah [00:29:12] Yeah, it was Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, really close together.

Beth [00:29:14] Yeah, I really remember Anthony Bourdain too. Those two just stopped me in my tracks and made me think so much about the people around me. I remember looking at people in my life differently and thinking, what's going on that I don't see? Who's feeling alone and I'm unaware of it? Who's struggling and I don't know? That was really hard.

Sarah [00:29:38] Yeah, it was heartbreaking. They had such devoted fan bases. Anthony Bourdain, when you work in the vehicle of food, it's just different. It's just very connecting. Not everybody understands art. Not everybody likes music. Not everybody like movies or TV. Everybody eats. And so I think in the way that he had been so open to the world, I think was what made his death so heartbreaking. You just want to be like, but you love the world! You spent your time traveling around, loving the world, sharing that love with everybody else. I'm tearing up right now. That's what's so heartbreaking and the same for Kate Spade because her esthetic was so joyful. It was happy. Like that was the Kate Spade esthetic, was this brightness and lightness. And so it was so sad to realize that that was masking something. Not that Anthony Bourdain had not been honest about his struggles in the past, but with both of them, I think there was a shocking component of it that was really, really difficult.

Beth [00:30:46] There were three books that Kate Spade released that I bought in college, maybe, that were about hospitality, making people feel like a guest in your home, making days feel special, making meals feel special. Writing notes that feel special.

Sarah [00:30:58] I still have those three books on my bookshelf. Those were Nicholas's first wedding anniversary gift to me because it was paper and so he got me the three Kate Spade books.

Beth [00:31:07] I loved those books. I read them over and over and over again and I think about those books every time I think about her and her tragic passing this year. It was just really a shock to me.

Sarah [00:31:21] I wonder if Justin Timberlake knew 2018 was his like last hurrah.

Beth [00:31:25] Like his apex?

Sarah [00:31:27] Well, it's not his apex because I don't really think that's like the peak of his fame, but it was like the last time he was going to glide on that fame as the Super Bowl's halftime show, which was good, but it the first time he'd been there. So we had to revisit all the Janet Jackson stuff from 2004. See what I mean? There's always something, man. There was nothing that was just easy, even culturally in 2018. That's how it felt.

Beth [00:31:52] Well, and that is how it feels in my body revisiting this year. Like nothing was uncomplicated and everything was straining.

Sarah [00:32:00] Now I will say this, because there's like the big cultural moments and then there's what you discovered or what you fell in love with, and 2018 is the year I discovered Lake Street Dive. That is the year Good Kisser hit. I love that song so much. I love them so much. I've seen them in concert. Mad shout out to my cousin Taylor who sent me this song. And I discovered Lake Street Dive and that was a gift. 2018 didn't contain many gifts. Although, probably losing my election was absolutely a thank God for unanswered prayers kind of situation. But Good Kisser and discovering Lake Street Dive was definitely one of them.

Beth [00:32:37] I love that. Well, my gift shout out to 2018 was Kurt, my therapist. He was fantastic. He really, really carried me through this year and I wish I could just go knock on his door right now and tell him that. And thank you to all of you for weathering this year with us. If you were with us in real time, man, we did it together. We pulled ourselves over the finish line and we're so grateful for you. We'll be back with you on Tuesday for another new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.