Pantsuit Politics Flashback: 2024

How much can we know about 2024 yet?

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. In our final flashback, we ponder how much we’re still sorting through the remnants left by the whirlwind that was 2024.

Topics Discussed

• The Whirlwind of 2024

• Violence At Home and Abroad

• Outside of Politics: Beyonce and Pop Girl Summer

Thank you so much for listening! We’re currently out for a short summer break. We’ll be bringing you new episodes of Pantsuit Politics on Tuesdays and finishing up our flashback series on Fridays. We’ll have a couple of new More to Say episodes for you each week, but no Good Morning and no spicy bonus episodes. We’ll be back in your ears in real time and on our regular schedule on Monday, August 11. Until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

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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] And this is Beth Silvers. You're listening to a special episode of Pantsuit Politics, Flashback 2024. This is the last episode in our special summer series. We've been examining our recent history and how we've processed it, what's changed for us, what we've learned, what we see very differently now. And that feels different today because 2024 was about five minutes ago. So we're still sort of in triage mode. It's hard to take a big picture look at the road that's just behind you, but we're going to do our very best.

Sarah [00:00:40] Well, I just keep thinking about the Indigo Girls lyrics. Every five years or so, I look back on my life and I have a good laugh. That's the energy I think we should bring to 2024. Before we start discussing 2024 and how we see it seven months later, we wanted to remind you that we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming next week. New episodes on Tuesday and Fridays, all of our regular premium shows. We're back in good and regular order and we're looking forward to finding our routine again.

Beth [00:01:10] We'd love for you to share Pantsuit Politics with the people in your lives. We're publishing more video clips of our episodes, including like the full episode is on YouTube now, if you want to watch it. But we're making more clips for Instagram. You can find them on YouTube as well. So it's easy to share. And if we have not clipped your favorite moment from an episode, just email us or DM us. We'd be happy to do that. We want to make it easy for you to talk about Pantsuit Politics and our episodes and all these issues with the people You Love. Up next, let's dig into 2024. Sarah, I realized looking at our list of episodes from last year that in my mind 2024 did not really start until the summer because the summer is when we had the June debate between Biden and Trump, the assassination attempt, the switch to Kamala Harris and the very compressed campaign. It's like I've just blocked the first six months of 2024 when we were spending a lot of our time getting Donald Trump convicted in a New York court, walking through all of the legal machinations surrounding his candidacy. And there was a primary, even though it didn't feel like much of one.

Sarah [00:02:29] Listen, here's the long and short of it. It only took me three presidential races while we have been doing Pantsuit Politics to figure out I need to treat this a little more seriously, personally and professionally, because a presidential year to me feels almost like two years. It doesn't have the flow of a regular year because instead of coasting or running-- really there's no coasting during the holiday season. But instead of feeling like you're in a down slope from Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, that disrupts all, it disrupts the vibe of the end of the year and you feel like you have this big massive event that you're counting down to, then it kicks off another type of countdown. So seasonally it's very disruptive. It feels like there's more than one year packed in that year because of the primary. Then you have this intense campaign season in the summer. Then you had the October surprise or whatever the hell happens during that time period and then the election. And so this is the year that I sat down and was like, you know what? This shit's not sneaking up on me again. I mapped out all my family's big milestones for the next 10 years so that I could make sure I knew what was coming during a presidential year. They're not going to sneak up on me again. It only took me three to figure this out, but I have now learned.

Beth [00:04:03] And even with all that planning, we still banked on a normal summer, which we did not have at all. Even for a presidential year, it was not a normal summer.

Sarah [00:04:15] That summer was insane. Even being very methodical in the way we've gone past these last 10 years and thinking about the pandemic and the George Floyd protests and the Kavanaugh hearings and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, all of it. Looking at it, thinking about it, putting it together in a timeline, nothing compares to those six weeks. Not even close, not even a global stinking pandemic compares to the debate, the assassination attempts and him dropping out. I just, it was, still, do you hear me?

Beth [00:04:55] Speechless.

Sarah [00:04:55] Yeah, I cannot put us in this together about what that was like.

Beth [00:05:00] I was also looking through this thinking about how we've heard from some people that they felt a real shift in our show after the election. And I looked at the list of things that happened and the order in which they happened and how quickly they happened. And I just keep thinking, I don't know how you live through this and don't feel a shift in yourself in the way that you look at events and the information you take in and how you take it in. I don't know how go through six weeks like that as a person who loves and pays attention to politics without being upended in any number of ways.

Sarah [00:05:41] As I look back over those 10 years, I can see-- what's that game? The game where you're removing the sticks for the marble to fall through. I don't know what game I'm talking about. Where you're building a little structure out of the overlaying of the sticks? Either way, I'm either building it or tearing it down, but I can all the sticks, right? I can see how this disrupted my ideas and this changed things. And I can see all these skinny sticks, but this is the year when whatever metaphor of this game that I cannot remember plays out, the last stick got pulled and the marble fell through. Who would I be if my politics were the same over these last 10 years? How would that work? How would that work if I sounded the same to you in 2016 with an infant at the beginning of the Hillary Clinton campaign and 2024 after this summer and a 10-year-old? I don't even know how that would work. Of course, all this worked on us and changed us.

Beth [00:07:00] It has been really clear to me something that we've talked about for a long time, but listening back, it is even more stark, that there's a difference between your values and your politics. I think that fundamentally, my values have not changed while we've been making this show. I listen back and I hear a lot of the same themes about how we approach life, how we care about other people. The sense always from the beginning for both of us that we don't throw other people away. I think hitting on Luigi Mangione, which is a part of this year that I feel like we weren't really able to process fully because of when it happened and how much was going on, we never had a moment where either of us was like, well, healthcare is pretty bad and maybe something like this needed to happen. No, because that's entirely inconsistent with our values. We've always been clear about our values. But yes, the politics have changed a lot and are still changing and you can feel the shift in progress right now. I feel a lot of things still moving. It's like maybe we stepped off the airplane when the election was over, but we'd been flying so long that your body still feels like you're on it. That's how I still feel in terms of the movement in my own sense of strategy and tactics and what this is all for and what it can contain and what it can't.

Sarah [00:08:29] Especially this year, I can look back and realize it's not just even values, but that often my instincts, I can feel the moment and then the internet talks me out of it. I look back at this, particularly this election year, and I think about we did a spicy the week before the election or maybe two weeks, where both of us were like, all but said, we think she's going to lose. This is not going well. We were really down. And I had had those moments when he got shot I thought it's over. When he put his fist up, there was a part of me that was like, no, this is over. And Griffin was like, no, nothing ever changes, people will forget. And they kind of did we kind of moved on in the headlines, but that doesn't mean America moved on. The internet moved on, the internet decided what we should take away from this, but that does mean everybody did. And so I talked myself out of it and I got into the vibes and I went to the convention and all this stuff.

[00:09:30] But that spicy, I remember us being like, again, an all but explicitly saying it, she's going to lose. I think we both knew it. And everybody's like, no, don't say it, this is so depressing. I'm on the streets; I'm knocking on doors. You don't know, the vibe is so good. And I was like, okay, I want to believe y'all. But I could just feel these moments where I'm like, no, I knew it. When he got shot, I thought, this is bad. This is bad. People want to root for the guy who dodged the bullet and put his fist up in the air. That's just a real fundamental situation. They're not going to use their reasoning, their frontal lobe to reason their way through January 6th and the downfall of democracy and it ain't going to happen. This is an emotional moment and that's what people are going to respond to.

Beth [00:10:19] And that is part of the reason that I am trying daily now to question my own reaction to almost everything because I could perceive that a little bit happening for other people. But both things were true. Among the people who were in it with Kamala, the vibe was great. The vibe was the best it had been in a long time. She was running the kind of campaign that a lot of us had said we wanted to see. A positive campaign, a campaign that was fun and that was uplifting. And it did feel good and it felt refreshing. It was not heavily policy oriented, but we had all taken the lesson that that didn't matter anyway. It was just about vibes and here was a great one. And I think that split screen, because nothing about him with the fist in the air appealed to me on an emotional level.

[00:11:16] I was physically and emotionally affected by any American political figure being shot. I was devastated that someone took a shot at him, even though it's him and it didn't it matter. Again, fully inconsistent with my values for political violence to play out that way. But I did not think, wow, impressive that he got back up like this. I still just don't find him appealing. And so I just keep working on myself. Okay, Beth, what appeals to you does not represent everything. Okay, your sense about what people are going to gravitate towards has to be different than your sense of what you gravitate towards. And it's shaken me up in a way that I needed to be shaken, but I am going to allow myself to be shaken instead of just doubling down on where I was before this.

Sarah [00:12:08] Yeah, I think that I had the experience with Kamala that a lot of people had with Hillary. I was too loyal to her. I could not see clearly how people were reacting, but I have no loyalty to Kamala Harris. Like I'm not in it with her in the same way. And so from the beginning, I thought, this is not a candidate people are going to be excited for. I had too many people in my life who are not dialed-in in the way I am and I've learned to listen to those people. I have a lot of friends who they're like my little focus group. I know they're surfing above this. They're not completely checked out. They're not complete cynical. They care. They pay attention, but like a normal level. And I had a friend who hated Trump and a former Republican, pays attention through basically watching the news. And when I was like it's going to be Kamala, she was like, I'm not voting for her. And I thought, that's not great. That's not good. That's a hard thing to overcome. And I think I just knew it. I think just knew it deep down. And again my loyalty to Hillary and I'd like to avoid whoever we pick in 2028, that sort of same blindness, because it's the opposite for me.

[00:13:27] I think my gut will tell me the truth, but my loyalty to the party or the candidate will talk me out of it. If I just listen to the signs on the ground. I just think I spent a lot of time, especially with Biden and my loyalty to the Democratic party-- and it wasn't even loyalty, it was just a distaste for anything related to Trump. That's what I have decided to leave behind. I do not want to be-- this is the part of 2024 that I think about all the time. The way we went from 60% of-- that's too optimistic. Like 90% of republicans think the economy is in the shitter and Democrats think it's great. And two weeks later, the numbers were reversed. That's so stupid. I don't want to be one of those people. I really don't. I hate that about America right now. I hate that we tell ourselves if they touch it it's rotten. And if we touch it it's gold. That's what I want to leave in 2024.

[00:14:29] I did that around Biden. I will go look back and listen to me say he's too old and this is a problem. But I don't want to do that anymore. I really want to see how things are as clearly as I can. I don't want them to be defined just by Trump's in the vicinity so everything's awful. Because I think that turns off the people in the middle who actually need to be persuaded and who actually aren't party loyal either way. And so I think that the scales fell of from my eyes in a lot of ways in 2024 to the partisan blindness that I had on so many things. And also I have such a low tolerance for it. Even beloved friends who just, in fairness, want to show up in my group texts and bitch, and I'm like, miss me. I don't want to do this. I don't want to talk about how America sucks on July 4th, even though last year we loved it. I can't do it. I can't do it anymore.

Beth [00:15:32] I don't want to do the America sucks thing, period. I don't want to do everything is terrible this is the worst timeline. I don't want to see the dog with the house on fire anymore.

Sarah [00:15:44] Ever again, as long as I live, I don't want to see that thing.

Beth [00:15:48] I do think that a lot of my posture this year is just like, grow up, Beth, grow up America, grow up everybody. Things are always hard. There's always something hard. In the best of times, there are people who cannot celebrate the 4th of July. In the best of times there are people who think everything sucks and this is the worst timeline. And I just am not going to be one of them. In the worst of times, I want to be the person who can still celebrate and who still finds reasons for hope and examples of things that are going right. And I do not think that 2025 has been horrific. I think some terrible things have happened that I don't support, that I want to fight against, that I want to be reversed when someone else takes power as I believe they will someday, but that's just going to be true every single year.

Sarah [00:16:53] Another thing that was true for me in 2024, I think that fed this shift for me, was just the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. I just don't know how you sit comfortably in your home and say all is lost when a click away, you can see people who are really experiencing all is lost in a profound way. And so the other thing I think that I finally was ready to just abandon is that narrative, because I think it's so disrespectful to people who really experiencing all is lost dumpster fire situation. The situation in Gaza in particular has gotten so horrific where you're talking about being fired upon as you try to desperately procure food because your family is starving. I want to be real about what is going on in the world and not just be so America centric and think-- it's not that we don't have horrific things happening in America and did in 2024, but I just want to be clear-eyed about that. Again, I don't want everything to be defined through partisanship, and I don't want everything to be define through my American perspective either.

Beth [00:18:15] Yeah, I'm undergoing a real moment of feeling lost around my foreign policy because I love thinking about foreign policy. I also just have to honestly assess where American involvement has been helpful over the past decade. And I think the answer is limited in scope. I think it's not that nothing that we do matters. Of course, that's not the case. I think more that does good never makes the headlines than the things that actually do make the headlines. So I think I both want to have a more respectful posture, like you said, toward people who are really in the throes of violence and despair. And at the same time, I want to be more America-centric in what I spend my time thinking and talking about here. I have spent too much time on conflicts that are relatively minor that the United States is not going to get involved in to the neglect of American public schools, at the expense of time that I could be spending on emergency management, the kinds of things that we can do something about. I think I want to put more of my energy into the things that could do something. Not that I still don't want to be curious and a student of the world and a witness to things that happen, a witness just suffering, but that I really lock in on the things that I can influence.

Sarah [00:19:52] I think the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza make that so difficult because they become a part of our domestic politics and have so profoundly, especially Gaza within the Democratic Party. And I think that's another thing that shifted pretty profoundly in 2024. I think even from the convention to like December, you could see a profound shift. And the way that the Trump administration has used that conflict politically within academia, within immigration battles, like it's just going to continue to be sewn into so many things. And that's another place that I think in particular so much is defined by the past and old rules and old understanding across that region that is dramatically different than it was 10 years ago, five years ago in a way that I don't know when the reality is going to catch up with everybody's narratives.

Beth [00:21:06] And we are dependent in so many ways on everybody's narratives because we're not there. We can't live it every day. The stories that are told, the speeches that are given, the strategies that are proposed shape what we can even understand of it. So trying to get good information-- not just good information in that it's reliable and someone's tried hard and vetted it and has reporters on the ground-- but also having any sense of perspective around it, it's challenging. It's hard enough to feel like you're getting a good, thorough investigation of events happening in your own state in this information environment. The foreign policy scene is becoming even thornier.

Sarah [00:21:54] And I do think Mangione was huge this year.

Beth [00:21:59] Yes.

Sarah [00:21:59] Listen, nobody wants to hear me say this. There's a through line from the slap to Mangione. It's where I started seeing people unapologetically on the left advocate violence. If the cause is good enough, violence is okay. No. And not just I, because of my faith, believe that violence and murder is wrong. But what I really want to shout and wanted to shout in the midst of this story is it doesn't work. Nobody feels more profoundly motivated to change healthcare policy because of what he did. It doesn't work. It shuts people down. It makes it worse for your cause to move to violence. And then there was a piece in Axios about how Democratic representatives are going to town halls and the hardcore party activists are advocating basically for shredding the processes and the systems and violence. Donald Trump is radicalizing people, for sure, especially these immigration raids and the ICE. It didn't start in 2024. Mangione is where I saw it so clearly like, oh, okay. Again, this is just another expression of I don't have any actual values, it's about whose team you're on. And so the economy is shit unless my guy's in charge. Political violence is wrong unless it's in pursuit of my policy goals. Like illiberal restriction of speech is wrong unless it's the speech I don't want to hear that I think is harmful. And I'm not doing it. Sorry, I am not doing. Murder is wrong. I feel really good about that one.

Beth [00:23:48] Yeah, it didn't even seem like a hard call to me. It is wrong to shoot a person on the street in any context. Yes. Doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. I don't need any other facts. That was wrong.

Sarah [00:24:00] And I don't care if it's Jeff Bezos, I don't care if its Elon Musk, I don't care if Donald Trump. We do not assassinate people. It doesn't accomplish anything. But the dehumanization around the ultra-rich is a thing. Dehumanization. I do not teach you how to care. It's not hard to say we don't dehumanize the oppressed. That's not the hard call. The hard call is how you hold on to your humanity in the face of an oppressor. And this ain't it.

Beth [00:24:39] It's the submarine too. And I remember having very controversial conversations because I did feel sad that people died in a submarine. And if the Bezos space tourism trip, if that rocket had exploded, I would have felt sad about it.

Sarah [00:24:55] Oh my God, I would have been devastated if Gail had died. Devastated.

Beth [00:24:58] I don't want people to die.

Sarah [00:25:02] No, I don't neither. I don't know why this is hard to articulate. I don't want people die. This is not a good idea. It makes things worse.

Beth [00:25:10] It absolutely makes things worse. I don't know, I continue to think about what would have happened if Luigi Mangione had killed that executive, Brian Thompson, in February instead of in December? What if it had been a time of year when it could have attracted more attention, when the holidays did not come around? The holidays for many, many Americans which remind us of our values and connect us to other people in a deeper way, what would've happened if that went down at a different time? It really makes me nervous to think about it. I am so sad that it occurred and so grateful that if it was going to occur, it happened when it did, because I just think it could have lit this country on fire in a different month.

Sarah [00:25:57] I disagree. I think it happened at the worst time. I think post-election is why people were so nasty about it. I think if it had happened before the election, there would have been an expression. Instead of saying, we're so glad this man died, there would've been like this is why we should talk about healthcare. Because some people feel so radicalized around the cost of healthcare. This is why it should be something that both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are forced to talk about. That's what I'm so frustrated by. Not just the nastiness around the death of another human being, but the idea that y'all care so much you don't care that he shot him in the back. I didn't hear anybody screaming about this during town halls or demanding that these presidential candidates, Senate candidates, House candidates answered for the rising cost of healthcare. Where was everybody? Where was Everybody? That's what was so frustrating to me. I wish it had happened before the election so it could have found a healthy expression inside our democratic process instead of just rage against the machine.

Beth [00:26:53] I feel like the rage against the machine would have been louder and longer and provoked an even stronger counter reaction if it had been at a different time of year. I feel like the holidays short-circuited this in a way that might have prevented some additional violence and tragedy.

Sarah [00:27:09] I just think that the election of Donald Trump is what fed it. I think if there'd still been a choice, people wouldn't have felt so like, well, we're stuck with Trump so who cares if this stuff goes down? It's the Trump of it all that I think makes people so cruel.

Beth [00:27:26] That's interesting. But you still see a through line from the slap because I feel like we are already moving in this direction, Trump or not. We were already moving in this direction.

Sarah [00:27:33] Yeah, but there's no Trump or not. We're moving in this direction because of Trump. He pushes it. He's cruel. He advocates violence and so people go, well, I can too. He's made it okay. If they're going to do it, we should do it too. If the economy sucks, then the economy sucks when you're in charge too. It's just so stupid

Beth [00:27:56] This is the eternal question for me about Donald Trump. Is it because of him or is he because of it? And I just don't know.

Sarah [00:28:07] I think it's because of him. It's probably both, right?

Beth [00:28:11] It has to be.

Sarah [00:28:12] He taps something, but he is not just an expression of something. He is a unique creature. He is a unique political creature that we have not taken seriously from the beginning, I think, in so many ways. Because this was South Korea, too, with their martial law declaration. Like there is obviously something global happening with Nigel Farage and all these other Bolsonaro and all of these people that there's something happening here. But I think that he is kind of a unique expression.

Beth [00:28:55] I think he's a unique expression, but could he have, in any other context, been this successful? I just don't know. And I don't even know if it matters, but that is a question that I continue to think about. And I especially am thinking about it as we come through his first year of his second term and consider how powerful he is and what opportunities he's going to have and will he be subject to the normal political forces like the midterm elections? And I just don't know, because I still haven't put my finger on how much of it is about him.

Sarah [00:29:31] That's probably the eternal question for all 10 years, not just 2024.

Beth [00:29:36] Yeah, probably so. The more fun part of these flashback episodes has been moving on to pop culture. And again this doesn't feel over to me. We talked about Cowboy Carter, but Cowboy Carter is on tour this year. So everything still feels kind of in progress.

Sarah [00:30:03] Not the Eras tour is over.

Beth [00:30:05] The Eras tour is over.

Sarah [00:30:07] Sadly. The love story continues, thank God, but the Eras tour ended in 2024. They got overexposed. This was the year that I think they both were like we got to get out of here. We're going to wrap this up and go quiet for a while. Good instincts, guys. Good instincts Taylor and Travis.

Beth [00:30:24] How long do you think that period lasts? Where are you in the Taylor Swift fandom of thinking that a new album is coming?

Sarah [00:30:32] I want her to get married. I don't care about a new album. I want her to get her married and have babies and then write albums about that. I think my stance is clear. And I think we're close. I think they've taken this year. I wonder how long their we need to stay dark is. I think they need more time. I don't think people are ready for more-- maybe the Swifties. But if she's smart, I think she can look around and say this is not the time to roll out with another big PR move. I would give it a while. I'd give it a minute.

Beth [00:31:03] I would give it a minute too. I would just encourage her to be free and rest and live her best life. So I want to ask you about Cowboy Carter because when we discussed it on the show, I was a much bigger fan of this album than you were. Now we have both seen her live. Where are you on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter after seeing it live?

Sarah [00:31:23] I love the tour, but I don't listen to the album still. I thought it was great. It was a great show. She's an incredible performer. It was time for her and I to be together in the same room as two (very important) 1991 babies. I also had a crazy experience at the tour where she almost died in front of me, guys. If y'all listen to News Brief, you've heard the story, but she did 16 carriages. She's still not doing that number, by the way, with the car. Somebody who went to the DC show on July 4th said she's still not doing it. She almost tipped out of the car in front of us guys, it was crazy, they had to stop the show and bring her down. I was in Houston. They brought her down and got her out of the car. She's still not doing that. No, I liked it, but I still think Lemonade is a better country album than Cowboy Carter. That's my hot Beyonce take.

Beth [00:32:06] Well, I love this album and I thought it was fantastic live. I just thought the show was definitely one of the top five concerts I've ever been to. I thought it was just from start to finish so beautifully constructed. I also had a weird experience. I saw her in Chicago when the Dust Bowl happened. So I got to Chicago the night that the Dust Bowl happened and then I saw her the next night. So my concert experience was not disrupted, but I did have the strange experience. It felt like we were going to see Second City that night and I got out of the cab and it's just like being in a different time and place altogether. You know what I mean? I've never had the experience of just dust blowing into your eyes and nose and throat and like inescapable. It was so, so strange. It was like being transported to a different century. But it was, I thought, just a phenomenal concert. And it was nice to see her take on live performing. You know what I mean? She just has such a point of view and I think shows that it can be done a lot of different ways, all of which are really interesting. So I'm really glad I got to see the car before the mishap because the car was pretty cool.

Sarah [00:33:15] Yeah, it's very conceptual. That's the thing. I think her music itself has gotten so conceptual. The concert definitely itself is so conceptual, I think that's probably why I don't just fall hard for the music itself because I think it's so-- the albums were in this trilogy, Renaissance, Cowboy Carter, there's going to be a third album. The performances they're very, very artistic and very, very conceptual That is not a diss. I think that's incredible. It's just not something I want to listen to over and over again in my car. I just think what she's doing is fascinating to watch. I feel like some of those films in between the sets should have just be in the MoMA more than on stage at a tour or both for that matter. So I'm super interested in that, but it just feels very different. It feels different from then what else happened in 2024 like the Brad Summer and Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter, just like full on bops. I'm going to make music that you can't stop singing if you wanted to. No, you have to sing this on repeat in your head until you die. This is the music we're making now.

Beth [00:34:31] I'm so surprised that we have a new Sabrina Carpenter given the 2024 that she had. I thought she might've felt overexposed and pulled back a little bit, but no there she is.

Sarah [00:34:40] No, I didn't feel that from her. Eras and Taylor and then on top of with the Travis and the Super Bowl thing that's like another planet. That's another universe. Even with Chappell Roan who I think probably had the biggest meteoric year, you just can't touch that. It's such a big thing. We talked about it for three of these years. I don't know, it's another thing. She invented another thing. A thing when the theme of this year, these years have been the decentralization, the changing of media, all this stuff, and she was like, oh no, JK, I can get everybody singing the same song. I can get everybody come to the same show. It's just a totally different ball game. And when people refuse to acknowledge that, it says more about them than it does about Taylor Swift. That's how I feel at this point. That was historical. And if you can't see that, that's on you, not her.

Beth [00:35:42] I think that's a good place to leave 2024. Leave it with Taylor. She brought the most joy of the year, that's for sure. So we'll leave it there. Thank you all for marching through time with us. As we said, we'll be back to normal schedule, current episodes next week. I for one am looking forward to getting back to normal schedule in every way. I feel kind of disjointed when we're in the summer, so I'm excited. Again, thanks for being here. Please share Pantsuit Politics with your people and until next week, have the best weekend available to you.