Pantsuit Politics Flashback: 2020

Tiger King, TikTok, and Covid-19

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 the big moments and lessons learned from the rich text that is 2020.

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

• Parts of 2020 That Were Not Covid

• Covid-19

• Outside of Politics: Tiger King and TikTok

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

Episode Resources

• Lessons from the Covid War with Dr. Charity Dean (Pantsuit Politics)

• What We Got Wrong About Covid (Pantsuit Politics)

• The Knowledge

• Centrist Democrats are convinced they hold the answers to their party’s problems (Politico)

• Kids and Covid-19 (Pantsuit Politics)

• Community Covid-19 Experiences (Pantsuit Politics)

• What We Have Gained In This Election Cycle (Pantsuit Politics)

• The Varied Effects of Coronavirus (Pantsuit Politics)

• “Mountainhead” writer/director Jesse Armstrong (On with Kara Swisher)

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 [00:00:08] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:10] This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Flashback 2020, a special episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today's flashback episode, Sarah, stands out to me, in part because we've already looked back at 2020 in a lot of different ways. If you are a brand new listener, welcome, we're so glad you're here. We will link two episodes for you that I still think about all the time. One of them is called Lessons from the COVID War. An interview with Dr. Charity Dean about public health professionals after action review of the pandemic. And another we recorded in August, 2023 called What We Got Wrong About COVID. So I guess this all goes to show that 2020 is a rich text and at least for people our age, a seminal year in our lives. And I think today it's important to just continue to discuss what we see with the benefit of hindsight.

Sarah [00:00:58] Before we do that, we just want to remind you that virtual tickets for our live show in Cincinnati are on sale. You can watch the live show in real time from the comfort of your home, or you can watch it when it's convenient for you. Either way, we'd love for you to join us and our families for a night that promises to be filled with laughter and probably a few of the best kind of tears through laughter. You can find a link for those tickets in the show notes.

Beth [00:01:21] And now let's revisit 2020 with a little more distance and perspective.

Sarah [00:01:27] I don't want to.

Beth [00:01:28] No one wants to. Should we just start there? No one wants this.

Sarah [00:01:45] Okay, I do want to say to the rich text point, I think about all the time because I didn't like it when she said it. And I thought, I don't want to then as well. When who is our friend who was the virologist researcher?

Beth [00:02:01] Michelle.

Sarah [00:02:03] Michelle. And she said, "We're still studying the 1919 pandemic." And I viscerally remember being like, oh no, I'm going to have to talk about this for the rest of my life and that won't even get to it. Pass.

Beth [00:02:20] Do you remember the Budweiser commercial that had the guy who went, "That is correct." That is what I hear in my head when you say that. That is correct.

Sarah [00:02:29] But when she said it, I was like, but I don't want to. I don't want to deconstruct this rich text 3,000 times over the course of my one wild and precious life. But it doesn't matter what I want because it changed everything and we have to talk about it until we die. I think there's a sense that what would it be like to live through history? And it's so hard to think about that without looking at it through the lens where we know the ending already. When we look back and we think what it would have been like to live during the Civil War or during the civil rights movement, we know that ending and we forget that it's not just making the call of are you going to do this thing or that thing and what's the right thing to do? It's that you don't know the outcome. I try to remind myself that a lot with the Declaration of Independence. Like they didn't know the outcome. That could have easily had ended in death for treason. And I think that the not knowing the precarity is what makes living through moments like that so hard. And it's really difficult to understand and to empathize with if you already know the ending of whatever they were living through in previous moments in history.

Beth [00:03:44] What if we ease in by talking about what was not COVID from 2020?

Sarah [00:03:49] Okay. Were there things that weren't? Okay, I believe you.

Beth [00:03:53] There were. Okay, so in January, we started implementing Brexit. It took four years for them to start the Brexit implementation, but that happened in January 2020.

Sarah [00:04:06] I've already said this. I just feel like Brexit it wasn't like a canary in the coal mine. They were just in front of us on this cultural, political situation. I don't know what to call it. I get this newsletter called The Knowledge that's primarily written in British politics, but they talk about America a lot because everybody talks about America a lot. And it's just so often something happens and I'm like, oh, that's a good heads up. That's a helpful heads up, thanks pals.

Beth [00:04:45] Do you think it's because they live in closer proximity to other countries? That's what I think. Like we share a lot, but they're a lot closer to other people. And I think that accelerates some trends.

Sarah [00:04:59] Well, I think it's because they're a smaller country and that also accelerates trends. You know what I mean? There's fewer people, so there's fewer battles. Obviously, they have battles. That's what Brexit was. But I think the size of the country, the makeup of the county, and the parliamentary system means that they can enact change a little faster than we can. And so they do. And so a lot of times they're enacting changes like particularly the progressive left like dream about. And then you get to see them play out and you're like, oh, that's not what we thought would happen. Listen, I think this all the time when I hear people talk make snide comments about how we don't have nationalized healthcare. Not because I don't want nationalized health care. Let me be clear about that. I hate how much I pay in insurance every month. But because they speak about it as if it's like this utopia. And that means you are not in conversation with people inside a nationalized healthcare system because that's not how they feel about it. In Britain, France, they got some complaints. They got some issues.

Beth [00:06:10] Well, even the countries that people don't complain a lot, like some of the countries where people are really happy with their social services, those countries are so different from us. I just think about this all the time. Operating that kind of program at our scale, with such a diverse population, it's going to be different. It's going to look a little different.

Sarah [00:06:29] And I'm not sure there's anywhere that they're like just thrilled with it from top to bottom. I really don't think that exists. And I think that's what Brexit was showing us. It's like the policy is not the issue here. It's the distrust of the institutions. Maybe that's what I feel like the red flag was that we weren't picking up on. We thought we were fighting about like, I don't know, taxes or immigration, but really what we were fighting about and what we've continued to fight about is institutional malaise.

Beth [00:07:04] Institutional malaise supercharged by social media.

Sarah [00:07:09] Yeah.

Beth [00:07:10] Because every place in which an institution earns some distrust, which they all will, every single one of them for all time, gets blown up and packaged and recycled and sold and ingrained in our attention span. So I do think 2020 is where a lot of that just new politics, which is that collision began or was birthed. So, okay, in addition to Brexit, we also had the first impeachment trial of President Trump. The Senate heard the allegations about the perfect phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky and acquitted President Trump. And I do hold onto that moment with a lot of intensity. That was a very intense time for me.

Sarah [00:08:03] I need to say something controversial. I wish we hadn't done that.

Beth [00:08:08] You wish you hadn't impeached him the first time? Do you think that they would've convicted him the second time if there hadn't been the first impeachment?

Sarah [00:08:19] Yeah.

Beth [00:08:19] Do you?

Sarah [00:08:19] Yeah.

Beth [00:08:19] That's interesting.

Sarah [00:08:21] I think they rightfully adopted the posture to a certain extent of it doesn't matter what he does. Which I think is both true at the same time that he was doing some crazy shit. You know what I think I really pivoted on this? I think there's a couple of things that have changed this for me. One where I read Zelensky talk about he thought it was a great phone call and it was successful. So if the person on the other end of the line did not feel pressured, then what were we prosecuting? And then I think you could say, well, we were prosecuting the standard, that this is not how we behave on the world stage. Cool. Except for since and I've also read all these diplomatic experts around the world say Trump just made explicit, which was always the American position, which is what's in it for us.

Beth [00:09:22] No, he didn't. He made it what's in it for him. To me, that was what we were prosecuting.

Sarah [00:09:28] This is when we get into like men’s rea. I don't think he sees a difference. And I don't think they do either.

Beth [00:09:37] Sure, but the Senate should. But the United States Senate should, that's how I feel about it.

Sarah [00:09:41] Politically, if his constituents and their constituents agree that his benefit is their benefit.

Beth [00:09:50] And that benefit is only electoral. I disagree. I think you're probably right on the politics of this.

Sarah [00:09:56] That's what I'm talking about. Not the ethics of the politics.

Beth [00:09:58] I think on what should the standard be that he should have been convicted and removed from office for that phone call. I still believe that to my toes, but I think your right on the policy.

Sarah [00:10:08] But even though Nixon was out there doing the same or worse, Reagan's out there interfering in the election, I look back at all these moments where people were doing this. They absolutely were using any levers within foreign policy to manipulate the narrative to their political advantage. This was not new. So why him?

Beth [00:10:37] Because in this case I think it was so clear that it was about him, not the United States. I think that was crystal clear in this case. Here's my hot take though. While I'm on my ethical high horse, I think that President Biden should have pardoned him and we should have abandoned all of the prosecutions and I think he would not be president today if that had happened.

Sarah [00:11:00] I don't know. I really can like fold in on myself with regards to if the power resides in the people, and the people through the electoral process say we don't care, what does that mean? I'm not saying that should be the standard but it can't also be irrelevant.

Beth [00:11:35] I think that's right. I think that's why our system provides this mix. And I think that what is most disturbing where our system has really failed is that the people don't pay enough attention to Congress to make Congress's role have more accountability around it. I think that's the failure point that we have right now.

Sarah [00:11:58] Yeah.

Beth [00:11:59] Okay. Well, that was a lot of hot takes baked into one little section. Let's keep moving. Justice Ginsburg died in September and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett [crosstalk].

Sarah [00:12:09] I've already exercised this hot on our Substack community. I have nothing nice to say about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I'm sorry. I just don't. She should have retired. It's inexcusable that somebody of her age with her medical history didn't. And it was ego. And that has to be a part of her legacy as much as the good parts. I cannot do the Ruth Bader Ginsburg worship. I'm still so angry about it.

Beth [00:12:46] Look, I think she had a very compelling personal story. I think she came up in a time and a way that is really significant. I understand why the biographies of her are so well read and loved. I think her jurisprudence is fine. Like as it goes, I think it sits on the shelf beside lots of other justices who were smart people and good writers, whether you agree with them or not. I don't think she stands out as one of the greatest justices of my lifetime in terms of just her legal work. And I do think that this was a bad call and it's a bad that I'm worried that we are going to be in danger of repeating multiple times over because it is so hard for people to give up these seats. I will say Amy Coney Barrett has been interesting to watch for me and not exactly what I thought she would be on the court. I hate a lot of what this court has done. And I probably would disagree with a lot of her-- listen, you're going to disagree with every Supreme Court justice if you read all their work. It would be the cases they get are too hard for anybody to be exactly what you want them to be. I do think more than some of her colleagues, Justice Barrett is trying to do what she believes the job of a Supreme Court Justice is and to confine herself to that job instead of expanding it. And I respect that.

Sarah [00:14:19] You've said something that will be the work of my heart. I am trying to get to a place where I don't hate the player, I hate the game. It's not that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a bad person. This is what putting human beings in this position does.

Beth [00:14:38] Yes.

Sarah [00:14:39] It is the exception, not the rule that you get a George Washington. And so that says, I'm done, I am out. This is better for everybody. And so why can't we just acknowledge that and set up some protections? I think that we should do that. I think we should be like, okay, so this doesn't work, and let's try something different. And maybe we could get together with all the MAGA people who are furious with Amy Coney Barrett right now. Enemy of my enemy is my friend. And say, "Hey, you're mad at how this ends too. Want to talk? Want to brainstorm?"

Beth [00:15:23] I just feel like there is such an obvious solution to this sitting in front of us, which would be to expand the number of people on the Supreme Court and have different jobs for them. And to say after age 75, you now go to the panel that decides what cases the court will hear at all. And a different group of justices decide what the court will hear at all versus the people who decide what the outcome of those cases will be. And I think that would benefit our system in so, so, so many ways.

Sarah [00:16:00] Okay, but I just read an article, it was called Welcome Fest. Did you hear about this?

Beth [00:16:07] I heard about Welcome Fest, yes.

Sarah [00:16:09] This moderate political gathering. And they had a whole table set up where people could sign up to fight any expansion of the court.

Beth [00:16:20] I just think that's wrong.

Sarah [00:16:21] That's crazy. Moderate does not mean you don't want any changes ever, guys. That's not what moderate means.

Beth [00:16:27] No. And expand the court does not mean pack the court. Those are different ideas. It's a different idea to recognize that this court is serving a bigger population every single year and getting more litigation and taking fewer cases, because there is a messed up relationship between how the justices vote on what cases to hear and how those cases turn out. And I really think that we could be not agist. Not ask Justice Ginsburg to not do the work that she loves for her entire life if that's what she wants to do, but to say at some point there's a rotation and you flip to a different job because the political stakes of this are not working anymore. And I just feel like it's right there. It's so obvious.

Sarah [00:17:12] I remember Joe Biden making promises about that during the election of 2020.

Beth [00:17:15] I do, too.

Sarah [00:17:17] Nothing happened.

Beth [00:17:20] Nope.

Sarah [00:17:21] That's what my 16-year-old says. Nothing ever happens.

Beth [00:17:22] He was elected that year, though. That is the other item that is on my not-COVID list. Joe Biden was elected.

Sarah [00:17:29] I was also doing this election review and there was all these episodes we did or probably two about the debate. I have no memory of it.

Beth [00:17:43] It's this the debate where they talked about golf for a minute?

Sarah [00:17:46] I don't remember, Beth. I have no memory of this debate.

Beth [00:17:49] I think so.

Sarah [00:17:49] Now, wait, is this the one where he was mean about Hunter and Joe was like I'm not going to be mean about Hunter? I bet that's what it was.

Beth [00:18:00] Maybe so.

Sarah [00:18:01] But I was just looking at these episodes where we were, like, the debate that changes everything. And I thought, I don't remember this.

Beth [00:18:08] Didn't change that much. I mean, that's what I've said. I don't remember it. If I am remembering the correct debate, part of what this series is teaching me is that I have no concept of time whatsoever. It all blends together for me. If I'm remembering the correct debate, this was the debate where I felt so angry that they were our choices. And I felt that in 2020, not just 2024, but so angry that these were our choice in 2020.

Sarah [00:18:37] Yeah, I think you're right. I think they talked about their golf swing. I think it's when he was mean about Hunter. But that's all I remember from this pivotal political moment.

Beth [00:18:46] Okay, so can we backtrack a little bit more then and say if we're just doing, like, here's my considered hot take, what's hotter than hot? Like something that's been like an overnight crockpot kind of take or something, but where we've been sitting on this for a long time and it's still kind of spicy. I just look back and as much as I praise the Democratic party for consolidating around President Biden in retrospect, I wish that they hadn't.

Sarah [00:19:14] I know. I think, I agree. At the time I was like, look how smart we are, we're not going to beat each other up and allow-- I guess we thought Bernie was the Donald Trump equivalent, which is a crazy thing to think. That's a crazy to think. And so we thought like we're going to be smart. I mean, do you remember my praise of the smoke-filled room?

Beth [00:19:35] Yeah.

Sarah [00:19:35] Like, what was I thinking? I am ready to abandon the smoke-filled room because they're all too old in the smoke-filled room. I'm sorry, call me agist. I stand by that take. I think that was seen as so wise, but Pete and Amy should have said like shove it up your ass. No, I'm not doing this.

Beth [00:19:59] I think that's correct. And I also think, and I cannot believe I'm going to say this, that if the mood of America was change, as it clearly was, if Bernie made it out of that primary, then that's just what the mood of America was. And he probably would have had a better chance than any of us who thought he needed to be stopped believed. And if I'm going back in time and we're going to have a change election, would I rather it be a Bernie Sanders change election than a Donald Trump change election?

Sarah [00:20:32] Hell, yeah.

Beth [00:20:32] Yeah, I would. And I am no fan, but he remains so popular, Bernie Sanders. He connects with the voters who are not coming along with what people like me want to see from the Democratic Party. And I just have to realize this is a democracy and I need to live with that.

Sarah [00:20:54] Well, and that's back to my thing about the impeachment. At what point do we say it's just hard for people to think that they're not with the majority.

Beth [00:21:04] It is.

Sarah [00:21:05] People struggle. I struggle. I was still carrying so much frustration from 2016. Really, it wasn't even about Bernie. It was about the Bernie bros. They were rude to me. They were sexist. And I'm still carrying some of that frustration. But that's not right either. I shouldn't do that. Now, I think that political deal struck in South Carolina was a devil's bargain. But, listen, so I'm going to pick up from what we were talking about the beginning. Here's the thing I just read about Britain. A member of parliament did this study where they found that basically prosecutions weren't happening or like the government resources weren't being distributed around sexual assault because when the predator was of a racial identity group that people felt was a sensitive topic, they didn't touch it. So the predominant group showing up in these numbers were Asian men and I think it was specifically around sex trafficking. And basically the conclusion was like, well, because of sensitivity around racial groups, they don't want to say it. And I just think that this is what I talk about Britain; I'll read something and I'll be like, oh look, they're getting there sooner than we are. You read these 2024 moments that also reached back into 2020 and talked about some moments around picking Kamala and all this stuff. It just became a truth inside the Democratic Party that if at some moment any decision touched race or gender, then we couldn't debate it.

Beth [00:23:09] That was just headed that way and then George Floyd was murdered in front of all of us. And of course that altered everyone's decision making. Of course, that broke us all. It was horrifying. I remember sitting down to record that episode and just thinking I don't have a clue what to say about this because this is just agonizing. There's just no way around this. And I cannot get over the fact that there are people who still troll that event and joke about it. I just think that's monstrous. This was awful.

Sarah [00:23:49] They're not trolling. They're organizing to get Chauvin pardoned. It's bigger than that.

Beth [00:23:54] It is monstrous to me. That event to me is one of the clearest things that's happened the whole time we've made this podcast. I don't have nuance around that. That was wrong and devastating and broke the nation in so many ways. And I think one of those ways was really affecting the mentality of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was already feeling constrained in so many ways. Constrained by holding together all these different coalitions. Constrained by trying to counter Republicans on everything, especially as Donald Trump has been ascendant. Constrained by living up to all the ways that they're saying, look at how these guys are failing. And this just tightened that even more in a way that I think did not serve when it came to a long-term relationship with a big tent of voters.

Sarah [00:25:04] Yeah, and that goes even back to 2016. I still think about Tyler Austin Harper saying, well, that started with Hillary saying, like, trying to shut down Bernie through the lens of identity politics. I think he's right. And I don't know what to do with that. Well, and I think the biggest lesson for me as we get into COVID and the COVID aspect of 2020, the lesson I learned is people don't learn the lessons you want them to. People do not learn the lessons you want them to. I think that every turn of 2020, I'm like, right, I wanted people to learn this lesson and they said, no thank you, I'll learn my own lesson. God bless you.

Beth [00:25:47] Well, that probably is a good place for us to pivot to the COVID of it all.

Audio clip [00:25:54] I just fear that many Americans' trust and perception of the CDC will be greatly damaged when this is all over due to the hamstringing that the Trump administration is doing. And while the daily press briefings may not serve as good reminders of this, I want Pantsuit Politics listeners to know that CDC staff are working on so many cool and important and timely things to protect the health and safety of Americans.

Sarah [00:26:34] And I think I just underestimated the economic impact, one, because I don't want to be the person that's like what does this mean for the economy? Because I think that's a gross reaction. But the economy is people's lives, you know? And I that it's a really hard line to walk between not being the person who only pays attention to what does it mean for their markets and being the personal that acknowledges things like if people aren't traveling, if South by Southwest is getting canceled, people are going to lose a huge portion of their income and an economic recession in Europe or the slowdown of the Chinese economy and what it means for the supply chain. That all has real difficult impacts in the day-to-day lives of so many people in America and around the globe. And taking that seriously, instead of saying it's the flu, don't overreact, is really, really key. And walking that line between this is serious, and we're dealing with it because it is serious and not provoking panic, being that sort of calm leadership, that feeling like there's somebody at the head of the ship that is in control and that is trusting experts and that has a good perspective about the impact on everybody, not just themselves, would be really great right now. And I just don't feel like we have it.

Beth [00:28:05] Sarah, I don't mean to be presumptuous, but I took a look at your notes for this section and something jumped out at me that I really want to talk about. And that is you noticed that so much of what you think of as 2020 is actually 2021. And I think that is a very, very important fact for all of us politically again to just meditate on.

Sarah [00:28:29] Yeah, and I want to just volley that out there so we can really have some time and talk about it next week when we talk about 2021. But when I looked back at 2020, I thought, right, we were just surviving. We weren't processing anything. And that includes George Floyd, the actual outbreak of the pandemic. Like we didn't have vaccines. It was a triage. And you don't have good memories of the triage. You know what I mean? Like that's not where your brain starts picking up and coming back online. I feel like when I think back to 2020, I remember us being in New Hampshire and Iowa. I remember the first day I had to 'homeschool' and how I worked for like two hours to make a plan that lasted approximately 15 minutes. I remember crying on the way back from my mom's hot tub because it just felt so good to like be in the hot tub. I don't even remember why I was crying. And I don't know, I think that's about it.

Beth [00:29:48] I remember being in Texas for the last live event that we did that year, and the last live event that we had for a very long time. And being aware of COVID at that point, and we were in like a thousand person room. And I remember getting to the airport and CNN or something is on at the airport and I'm watching, and I texted my most skeptical friend. Like the person in my life least likely to freak out about anything and said, "I don't know, I think it's getting pretty serious." He was like, "I think is too." And I said, "Sarah and I are supposed to do this live show tour. I think we need to cancel it. Am I overreacting?" And he was like, "I don't think that you are." And I thought, okay, I think this is the affirmation I needed.

Sarah [00:30:37] And if you just go back and you listen, we are all trying so hard. I do remember saying to everybody-- and I went back and listened to that moment where I said we were doing the best we could. Everybody was doing the most they could. Because you just hear the try hard. Like, we're trying to be caring and we're trying to do the right thing. I was really proud of us for having a conversation of the economic impact of seeing that early. Of like we have to take seriously that this is going to impact people's livelihoods. I kind of was like, oh, I thought I was insensitive to that. But I did notice, even as a person who worked from home, go, "Wait a minute, what is this going to mean for people?" But we just thought we could fix it. Like, we'll just give the money and that will fix it and zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

Beth [00:31:26] Which, look, COVID is another place where that lesson lands hard. The people don't want to just be given money. They want to earn it. They want to be out doing their thing. There is more to our jobs and our economic participation than the money.

Sarah [00:31:42] Yeah. And so I listened back to our conversations about it. And I do feel like we sound a little more confident than we should. Like I'm listening to myself and I'm being like the one that was really hard to listen to is I listened to where we were talking about schools and we had all these experts on and they were all just, like, everybody just really needs access to the internet and a computer and this is issues of equity. And I thought, oh wow, were we missing the forest through the trees?

Beth [00:32:23] Yes.

Sarah [00:32:24] Like, oh dear, oh no. That one was hard to listened to because we confused our caring for confidence. We thought we're the side who cares, we're this side who's paying attention to everybody and that means we have complete information. And we just didn't have complete information. And just because you care doesn't mean you can't get things wrong.

Beth [00:32:51] In addition to being in triage, which I think is a really good word for this time, I also remember the sensation of waiting. It felt like something we were waiting out. We were waiting for it to be over. I was constantly thinking, okay, well, they're going to give us a new date soon and the kids are going to go back to school and the restrictions are going to be lifted. And I did not realize what a long haul we were in for. I think waiting is the hardest thing to support other people through. When someone's waiting to hear if they got a job or not, or someone's waiting on a test result, or waiting to see if their book submission has been accepted, whatever it is, waiting is so hard on us. And that whole year was a waiting year. And we didn't even understand that we just needed to let go of the waiting because the timeline was so much longer than we could have conceived. But I think that that's part of what was broken in my ability to analyze this. I just thought I was waiting for good news, it's over, we're done. And even with the vaccine, we thought we were waiting for the vaccine and that's going to fix it all. And then it didn't. And that was a lot to process, which we'll get into for the next flashback.

Sarah [00:34:07] I remember my friend Mark as we were leaving church on Wednesday in like March. He was like, "We'll see y'all in the fall." And we were like, Mark! Mark was right. Mark was so right. And I look back and I see my underreaction, I see by overreaction. I remember sitting in my living room and thinking, oh my God, what if my parents and my grandmother and all five of us don't make it out of this alive? And so I can look back and see both reactions where I wasn't seeing the whole picture either way. Like what I should have been taking seriously and what wasn't I taking seriously enough. Because I also look back and I spent basically the whole summer outside with people. Now my gut also told me the vaccines were going to save us, so a real hit-and-miss situation here. But my gut told me that you're safe outside.

[00:35:02] When they were like shutting down parks. That was a bad call. And so, I look back and I'm like, well, I followed my gut in some places that led me well like we could be outside. But other places, I really was practicing some real amateur virology in a way that was ill-advised. But I'm not mad at myself and I am really mad at anybody. That's the thing. That's where I really kind of branch off when I think about all this processing of COVID and how people are still mad about COVID. I can see it. I could see all the mistakes. I can get there, but I'm not really mad at anybody about it. I'm not even really mad at Donald Trump about it! What good would that do me? I really don't think anybody was trying to get people killed. I really don't. I don't think there was some mastermind, sociopath, COVID manipulator. I just see everybody trying so, so hard.

Beth [00:36:17] Well, I think other people are not real enough to Donald Trump for him to have that intention. I think that this was a situation that he was just in every way ill-equipped to understand and deal with.

Sarah [00:36:36] And it was so obvious I felt like people would really take that lesson, but they did not.

Beth [00:36:40] No, I agree.

Sarah [00:36:41] I was livid for years about the bleach. Remember that just spray bleach on them? We voted for him again.

Beth [00:36:48] Yeah, because I think it's also hard to believe that something this real could happen again. This will feel like a fluke to some people and other people will spend the rest of their lives worrying about the next one. And the healthy place is probably somewhere in between, but maybe I just feel that way because that's where I am. And maybe that's another bias that I have.

Sarah [00:37:07] I've stumbled in a few corners on Substack where people are still like COVID's dangerous and we don't take it seriously.

Beth [00:37:13] Yes, absolutely.

Sarah [00:37:15] And I'm like, oh, wow. That's just fascinating to me. Not how I feel at all.

Beth [00:37:21] People are still mad in every single direction about this. There are the mass people who are still mad. There are the people who are mad that anyone told them to wear a mask or get a vaccine. And there are people who still mad that people are still not masking when they have a cold. We're going to be working this out for a very, very long time.

Sarah [00:37:42] I just think maybe forever. And again, I'm not thrilled about that. I don't love that journey for us, but I don't see another one available.

Beth [00:37:52] And sitting here today do I feel a hot anger at Donald Trump? No. But I feel the failure represented by the initial days of this virus and how it was handled. I mean, so many people died who did not have to. I think the other piece of this that's so hard, in retrospect, I realized we didn't have another vision of how this could go because there was no reference point. If this happened again, I think we might have some ideas about what this could look like. Like you, I dabbled in the advice. I never wiped my groceries off. I never worried about being outside with people. And my bubble was much bigger than bubbles were recommended to be. I look back on all those things and I'm super, super grateful that that's the direction I went because we did have some happy times in this period. And we made some really deep connections with people that we might not have otherwise. And we felt a sense of support and kind of family around us, even as we couldn't be with my parents who I really, really worried about in this period.

[00:39:06] I remember the trauma of my mom getting COVID and her being hospitalized and what that was like and how scary and awful it was. And I don't know that I could have gotten through that if I didn't have my too big bubble here in my community. So I'm glad I did kind of hold it somewhere in the in-between of being too worried and not worried enough. The thing that I probably have the most present emotion about is what this will mean in the story of my kids' lives. I went back and listened to our episode where we invited our kids and lots of listeners' kids to just reflect on COVID and it tore me up. It tore me up to listen to that because you could just hear how our kids were internalizing all of this. And again, it's not that I think we all did anything wrong. I don't. I think you're right, we did our best. We tried so hard. We did our best. Ad it was momentous for them in a way that I can't fix or water down.

Ellen [00:40:11] I'm Ellen, I want to talk about how I feel about the Coronavirus. I'm four years old and I really feel like people should just stay at their house, wash their hands really good when it's breakfast time, bathroom time, bedtime, morning time, do it. Anytime you want to wash your hands, just wash your hand. That's the best way to keep germs away from you. Plus, my dad just got me face masks.

Jane [00:41:00] My name is Jane and I am nine years old and I feel I feel like I want to punch Coronavirus right now because I hate it so much. It's not letting us go to school right now and we get to do really fun things at the end of school but we can't really do them now because of Coronavirus. And it's just not letting us do the usual things we do, and it's making us change our schedule. And it making us be together all the time, which can be really good sometimes, but then also can be like really, really, really annoying.

Felix [00:41:51] My name is Felix. I'm five and you're five

Amos [00:41:56] My name is Amos and I am eight.

Griffin [00:41:58] I'm Griffin Holland, I'm-- should I just say 11 years old? I'm about to be 11 years. Right now I'm 10. And that's all you need me to say?

Audio clip: Sarah [00:42:08] No. How long have you been off school, Amos? Being homeschooled.

Amos [00:42:11] I think like two months?

Audio clip: Sarah [00:42:19] Yeah, about a month and a half almost. What do you think about being homeschooled because of Coronavirus?

Amos [00:42:25] I kind of like it, but regular school was much easier.

Griffin [00:42:33] I think it's not awesome, but there are a lot of worse things that could be happening. There could be like real deal food shortages, there could be a nuclear war going on, there's a lot of worse things that could be happening than staying in our homes.

Felix [00:42:50] That I get my screens faster.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:42:52] And what's your least favorite part?

Felix [00:42:55] That I have to do nap time, it's evil.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:42:57] That you have to what?

Felix [00:42:59] Nap time. It's evil.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:43:00] Nap time is evil. It's evil, okay. What do you know about COVID-19?

Amos [00:43:05] That it's started from a bat, or some people think it's snakes for some reason.

Felix [00:43:14] It's not fun.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:43:18] Yeah, it's not fun.

Felix [00:43:18] And people sometimes have the Coronavirus and they don't know if they have it.

Sarah [00:43:32] That's true. They don't know when they have it. And so, why is that important? Why is it important that some people don't know if they have the Coronavirus?

Felix [00:43:41] It's not important.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:43:43] It's not important?

Felix [00:43:45] I think so.

Sarah [00:43:45] I think it's pretty important. Is that maybe why we don't go anywhere? Because nobody knows if they have it.

Felix [00:43:51] Yes.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:43:52] Because we don't want to do what?

Felix [00:43:55] Because we don't want to get the Coronavirus.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:43:57] That's right. We don't want to get the Coronavirus. It seems like people want to know everything there is to know about COVID-19, and when they don't know, they make up stories like your friends were doing at school before we started homeschooling. What do you think about that?

Amos [00:44:15] Don't make up fake stories just because you don't know everything.

Griffin [00:44:18] I think that's what usually happens except for with like Flat Earthers, where you have all the information you just don't believe it.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:44:29] Sometimes when it 's scary, people want to know the answer. Don't you want to know the answer to when this will all be over?

Amos [00:44:35] Yes.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:44:36] Yeah, but we don't really know the answer, do we?

Amos [00:44:38] No.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:44:39] That's hard, isn't it?

Amos [00:44:40] Yes.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:44:41] How does that make you feel?

Felix [00:44:45] Sad.

Sarah [00:44:48] We have an idea of childhood that it escapes that sort of pressure or momentous events. That's just not true. It's not true. This was a different type than say September 11th or the AIDS crisis which really screwed me and a bunch of my friends as kids. Or World War II or Vietnam or whatever the case may be like. But it changes things. And I think the reason I don't feel that white hot anger is I think at the time it felt like there is a way to do this right and escape the harm. But what I see now across the world is that's not true. There's no nation we hold up as like they got through it and didn't feel the impact of this pandemic. That doesn't exist. Everybody, everywhere is going to be processing this event for the rest of their lives. Whether you were a baby, whether you were an elderly person, it doesn't matter. And it doesn’t' matter where you lived or how old you were, it was a global pandemic and it impacted you and we're going to be processing it forever. No leader came forward and did all the right things and there was no cost. Do you look back and think, boy, I wish I'd lived here? I don't really look at any nation and think they did it right and we should have done it that way.

Beth [00:46:37] No, in fact, I look back with real gratitude that I lived in Kentucky through this. This was really tough, but it was not so tough that I didn't have a lot of good times in 2020.

Sarah [00:46:51] Well, the testament that you know that's true is that Andy Beshear got re-elected.

Beth [00:46:59] Yeah, which is tough. That was a tough period and he asked for some tough things of people. And I think that he did manage that really, really well. The constant communication, the emphasis on support and being positive and motivating each other in it together, I think he really did do the best that could be done with that.

Sarah [00:47:22] I totally agree. I told people at the time and I still say that I lived in purple COVID land. Some people took it too seriously. Some people didn't take it seriously enough. And my kids went back to school in August. They didn't stay there, but they went back. And kind of on and off over the course of the year. And we had good times. We took some road trips, went to the beach. We did some things. And so the triage component of it, I look back on and I think the main thing I just realized is I talk about all the time that individually we don't escape the chaos lottery and historically you don't either. Like you're just going to get swept up in some shit. I don't know how to say it any other differently. Like you just are. And this was my thing. And this is my kid's thing. And that might not even be the last one. But I guess when I listen back to the triage and I'm like so desperately trying to, like you said, either get to the point it's over, get to the point we figured out what it was about, like process it, and now I'm like I'm less desirous of a conclusion.

[00:48:50] You know what I mean? Like I just see it and I'm like, right, we were just in the thick of it. We were just in thick of it. That's what we were. And to a certain extent, your moment in the think of it will define you for the rest of your life. It'll be the filter through your particular thick of it. Well, it's like how we talk about my great grandparents and how they grew up in the depression. So they'd save like little things of food. You know what I mean? It will define us. There will be things we do because of COVID forever. It just changed. It changes us. It changed us. And did I think I was going to get away without that? Like I was going to escape that? Like we'd reach some sort of end point of history. Of course, not. That's so silly. And so I just look at it and go, right, of course, our ticket got pulled.

Beth [00:49:48] Yeah, and what I feel grateful for, I remember a conversation where we were kind of asking ourselves if we had to live this way always, if there isn't an end date, can we have a happy life this way? And I realized that I could. And I have carried that with me for just an unbelievable amount of gratitude for my family and my friends and people in general. It's just so, so much gratitude for how we did get through it together. What is there to talk about Outside of Politics from 2020? Nothing. It was all very political. But if we're thinking pop culture, I think the thing to talk about here is TikTok. 2020 is when TikTok took us by storm.

Sarah [00:50:46] Well, here is the thing. I think because, paradoxically all of culture became political, but also culture became political because the politics was high stakes, so you really couldn't see clearly the cultural stakes at the same time, even though all culture was political. Do you see what I'm saying?

Beth [00:51:18] I do.

Sarah [00:51:19] That there was a component of this sort of like populism, the political populism we talk about so much, happening with regards to media that I missed. And now I look back and I'm like, oh. When people are dying in a global pandemic, I understand that in the moment we're triaging, we can't exactly turn on the sirens and be like the decimation of shared culture and the movie industry is bad. But I look back and I think the decimation of shared culture in the movie industry was really bad. And I wish I'd like noticed. I mean, we would talk about all these times like it was so fun when there was a shared event. But streaming sucks. I think it sucks. And I think it’s bad for so many things. The movie industry, creativity, sports, I think it sucks. And it was just slow rolling across all of us. And I think TikTok's a part of that. You know what I mean? The atomization of our entertainment.

Beth [00:52:43] I look back and just see TikTok as the ultimate Trojan horse because here we were in our homes, sad, scared, watching people pass away from this virus. And TikTok is like what if you just watch other people dance? Isn't that fun? Doesn't that feel good? What if you dance, too? And you could feel seen and cared about and like life is not so heavy. And that's going to be the beginning of a bargain that you never read the terms and conditions on. And I feel like that's what happened.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:53:22] It's so true. I even look at the things we were watching together not on TikTok like Tiger King. Well, but why? Why were we so caught up in that? That seems bad. I think I'm also just in a place where I'm just so in love with what art can do. Just came back from New York City where I saw four Broadway plays and it was like a really, really good season. Just such powerful performances. And I think some of it was like the snaking in its own tail because I do think some of what happened wasn't just this atomization, but that politicalization it's like you couldn't make anything important unless it was saying something, especially fiction. And so that left an opening for something like Tiger King and TikTok because people didn't want one more freaking political statement in the guise of a Gray's Anatomy episode. You know what I mean?

Beth [00:54:55] Yeah, Tiger King wasn't trying to teach us any lessons.

Audio clip: Sarah [00:54:57] No. And, look, here's the thing. I think good art does say something. I just don't think it's trying to. Does that make sense? You know what I mean? I want to see and hear and experience something impactful not because you're trying to teach me something. You know what I mean?

Beth [00:55:23] Absolutely. I just listened to this great conversation between Kara Swisher and Jesse Armstrong about this exact thing. Jesse Armstrong is the creator of Succession and Mountainhead. And he was talking about his process and how it is important to him to say something with his work, but he feels like it's only good work if you don't feel like something's being said to you. If it just feels like you're in a story and you're getting lost in the story. And I think that's right. And I do think in this period shit got very heavy handed. Just very, very heavy-handed in a lot of ways.

Sarah [00:55:55] You know what it is? I heard somebody say, like, what you're trying to do with a story is basically point and be look at that. That's it. Look at that. And it became not look at that, it became let me tell you about that. It became like, I'm not just asking a question, I'm telling you the answer. There became an aspect of that in culture. And, look, this is when Hamilton hit Disney Plus. It's not like Hamilton doesn't have threads of [inaudible].

Beth [00:56:28] The third thing too though, I think, which is like as the creator, I'm proving that I'm a good person.

Sarah [00:56:35] Yes. That I care about the right things.

Beth [00:56:39] And I think that that is where we really got lost. You talked about when we got back from New York on this trip, how your Oura ring thought you were taking a nap during some of the shows. And I have that experience all the time. When I see a good movie or a good show, always my ring thinks that I slept for part of it. And I think that that tells you that the art did what it was supposed to do. I became dreamlike. I was somewhere else. I was fully absorbed in it. That takes time. Like TikTok can't do that for me, because that takes time to bring you in, in that way. And I don't want to be just like curse the young people and their things. I get that I sound old in this conversation and I am getting there. I am. But I do think something sad happened this year in terms of how we relate to each other and our culture. I do not mind trash. Like it's fine to read a trashy novel. It's fine to watch trashy shows. Sometimes I think there's a part of us that needs that. I'm not really mad at us about Tiger King. It sort of makes sense to me. All things considered.

Sarah [00:57:57] No. Yeah.

Beth [00:57:58] I do mind slop and what is just generated by computers to keep us hooked in. And I feel like this year was the beginning of that sense of like I am a fish on a line to these big companies who just want to keep my attention.

Sarah [00:58:22] Well, listen, young people have all kinds of things to say about that. My oldest son, Griffin, he talks a lot about what happened when he was online way too much in this period. That is a regret I have as a parent. Because we were all so overwhelmed and we were just trying to numb out. But that is so fascinating to watch him and his generation because it was so intense there. It's like they're like Britain. They're like accelerated down the path, you know? Truthfully, like him and his friends, even though their politics have not necessarily changed, they started busting on a woke culture before MAGA did. They started busting on Hamilton. They were the ones that were like Hamilton's cringe. Hot tip though, Hamilton's back. Just FYI. It's come all the way back around. But it was interesting to watch them. Because they were so consumed by it, they got kind of got further down the path quicker than I feel like I did. Where they were like, oh no, this is crap. I mean, they're so funny now. It's like every other day, woke is dead, woke is back. Like during the No Kings protest, he was like, is woke back? I think woke is back. They use that shorthand to just make fun of what they experienced I think very profoundly in this moment, which is culture is politics; politics is culture.

Beth [01:00:07] And to be able to look at this period with humor is probably the best outcome that we could possibly get. Because it was a lot. And I think we did it. I think were done. I think made it through 2020, Sarah.

Sarah [01:00:17] I think there are some people who have not. I'm just telling you, don't stumble into those corners of the internet or you will be traumatized.

Beth [01:00:25] Well, thank you for joining us today. We hope that we did not retraumatize anyone with this conversation. We'll be back to talk about current events with you on Tuesday. Until then, don't forget to grab virtual tickets to our live show in July, where there will be a lot of laughter. And until then, have the best weekend available to you.