Vigorous Debate for the Rest of Us

How do we "Keep it Nuanced" with ALL THIS going on???

I don’t know how to tell you what this episode is about. I know it’s the kind of conversation that I think Sarah and I are best at because it takes our very disparate styles and shakes them around with a topic. It’s like making scrambled eggs: break this idea down, then that one, add salt, add pepper, mix it all up, add heat, watch it change gradually then all at once into something slightly different.

Your comments and emails tell me that so many of us are trying to break this idea down, then that one, navigating heat along the way. I really hope that you listen and feel like you’re in my living room with eggs and toast and friends who care about the world as much as you do, just trying to make sense of where we’ve been and where we are and where we’re going.

Topics Discussed

• What We Know About Charlie Kirk’s Shooter Today

• Can we stop using people as props that shut down argument?

• How do we debate ideas without destroying relationships?

• Outside of Politics: Why do the episode titles keep changing?

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

Episode Resources

• Read the Charges Against Tyler Robinson (The New York Times)

• Russia, China, and Iran Use Kirk’s Murder to Stoke Conspiracy Theories and Division (The New York Times)

• All the Sad Young Terminally Online Men (Derek Thompson)

• Exclusive: Leaked Messages from Charlie Kirk Assassin (Ken Klippenstein)

• We Are Going to Have to Live Here With One Another (Ezra Klein | The New York Times)

• Defending Speech We Hate (American Civil Liberties Union)

• Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

• Yeah, we're going to have to do DEI for conservatives (Jerusalem Demsas | The Argument)

• We rise together (Richard V Reeves | Of Boys and Men)

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 [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we're going to discuss Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, and what we know about him and his motivations. Then we're going to answer some of your questions about where we're at as a country, as a podcast, and as a people. This episode was going to be a mail-back episode, but our conversation went way too long over like the first question, surprise. So we're going to move that mail back over to our Substack page and make it available to everyone. If you are not already a subscriber there, free or paid, now is a great time to get over there and subscribe and listen to that mail-back conversation. Next up, let's talk about what we know about Tyler Robinson. As we are recording on Wednesday, September 17th, Tyler Robinson was charged yesterday in Utah with several counts related to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And along with those charging documents, there was the release of lots of his online footprint related to the act itself, his relationships, how he came to turn himself in, lots of things to process related to this young man and his motivations.

Beth [00:01:38] Like much of the events immediately following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, understanding the motive of this shooter has been confusing and challenging. There's been a lot of incorrect information out there, premature information, unclear information. I was reading this morning about how there are organized foreign disinformation operations underway to further muddy the waters here, confuse and divide Americans. And different operatives are taking different tactics. Iran is trying to make this about Israel and China has an angle, Russia has a different angle. So I am trying to really focus on what Utah authorities are saying. I find that Kash Patel, the director of the FBI is beyond his experience and qualifications in this matter. So I'm really trying to focus on what the professionals in Utah tell us. And my understanding of what the professional in Utah have to say about this shooter is that it is a 22-year-old man who was raised in a Republican household, who came to see politics quite differently from his family, who has been heavily influenced by video game culture specifically. And who lived with a roommate who is male transitioning to female and had a romantic relationship with that roommate. And those are the facts that I feel comfortable describing as the facts as I understand them as we sit here today.

Sarah [00:03:25] Yeah, I think the waters are muddy because the waters are muddy. He doesn't fit neatly into even a political classification because it's not like he wrote some political manifesto explaining exactly his orientation to the world. And even when those political manifestos are present, they are often complicated, muddled, confusing. I can't help but seeing this very American, in some ways, confluence of events. You have this household. And to me the less important part is the political orientation to the household. The more relevant background is that he clearly was very comfortable with guns and had a lot of experience and skill when it came to firearms. So you have that. Then you have this incredible influence of online culture, strong online presence. Again, not a strong online political presence necessarily.

[00:04:35] The most heartbreaking thing I saw was some reporting on Substack from a reporter who released much of the Discord exchanges and his friends were just so confused. Everybody was just like, what? But when the note he leaves to his partner to find under his keyboard that's basically like I had the opportunity, I took it. To me, that feels very in that video game mindset. That I had a mission, the mission presented itself, the opportunity presented itself and I had to take it. That to me feels like a very like soldier shooter orientation to the world. And then of course you have this person in his life who was clearly important to him. And he felt like Charlie Kirk exhibited a lot of hate. That's what he said. The hatred you couldn't negotiate with it. There was just so much hatred coming from Charlie Kirk towards the trans and gay community. And so I just think you get this like confluence of things. But it's a lot of motivations, societal realities, cultural trends on the table to be observed and discussed and processed.

Beth [00:06:06] And the processing is hard. Often when we talk on this show about a crime because it has reached the level of politics, not just true crime, we are clearly talking about someone who is in pain, who has acted out of pain, who often intends to die themselves in the event where they are taking lives as an expression of pain. This situation is really different. This was done with deliberation. To get that shot off, to me indicates someone who is calm and focused and the communications that authorities have shared with the public indicate remorselessness. It's just really different. He intended to cover his tracks and move on with his life. There is a text message that said, I had hoped to keep this a secret until I die. And that is really different than the kind of shooter that we're usually talking about.

Sarah [00:07:13] And it's hard to reckon with.

Beth [00:07:15] That is hard to reckon with.

Sarah [00:07:16] It's hard reckon with. I am so heartbroken for his mother who recognized him immediately when the public released photos of him. And this is what you hear from the people, including this partner, just this sense of like, what? Why? Just such heartbreak and confusion and just shock. And I think that's really hard. And I don't think it's one environment. I don't think it's just the political environment. I don't think it just the online environment. I think it is a societal reality that is the manifestation of multiple environments that puts a person seemingly in no mental health distress or decreased facilities into a space where they think this is what I have to do. And particularly as the mother of three boys, I think there is an aspect of being a young man. It's not that I think that young men are inherently broken or violent, but I do think there's something to being in that place in your life and looking for a mission, looking for purpose that is real. It's how people are recruited into the military. I'm just trying to face that openly and honestly because the quirk of my personality is I don't go to that would never happen to me. My brain goes to that could very much happen to be, so what does that mean?

Beth [00:09:31] Derek Thompson wrote an excellent essay yesterday about this problem for a lot of young men in particular of having way too much sedentary alone leisure time. And the way he put those factors together clicked in my brain. And I thought that's helpful. That's a construct that we can take and recognize as risk factors and do something with. And that's kind of what I'm looking for. Okay, what do I do with this? You've heard two episodes of me trying to search my heart about what's the way that I can most effectively stay connected with my community because that is what has really been tearing me up in the response to this. On the prevention side of things like this, that sedentary alone leisure framework is helpful to me. And then when I think about the vice president and his appearance on Charlie Kirk's podcast and his calls to action, the only thing I know to do with that, which I found devastating all around-- I hated everything about that. I have nothing that I can say that I think was redeeming in that. I thought that was the wrong thing to do at the wrong time by the wrong person with the wrong message. So what does that call me to?

[00:11:03] And I think about how I am in some ways participating in giving young people a hopeless message when I am too down about artificial intelligence, when I'm too down about the prospects of democracy, when I am too down about the family or whatever it is. I think that the only call that I can feel here in response to what the vice president said is just, I want to be a person who says to the young people around me, there's so much hope for your future. There's so many possibilities out here for you. Do not let angry partisan politics or angry doomerism or angry nihilism define you right now because you have opportunities to define your life. You have so much creative potential for where you go from here. I want to be an encourager who helps people see that potential instead of getting them just stuck in this loop that is going to lead some of them to depression and anxiety and some of them to violence and a lot more into places that I can't even describe today that are pretty negative and destructive.

Sarah [00:12:22] Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this, obviously, along with the rest of America-- or not. Good on y'all who just read it like a news story and went back to your lives, just for the record. And I say a lot on the show and I critique the left and maybe I need to watch my language. And when I say we decided or we presented this argument or what we did, well, let me just stop doing what you're not supposed to do in marriage counseling and stop talking about we or you and start talking about me. So obviously a part of my political journey was a young man with a gun changing my life in 1997 with the school shooting at my high school. And then I went to college and I became a women's studies minor and a proud feminist. And I adopted a lot of ideas and language that I look back and regret. I sneered, is the only way I can describe it, at young men who found purpose in the military and young men and women that found purpose in the military. I sneered at people who found purpose in religion and I look back on that and I know I decided that young men were broken that's why I was devastated when I found out I was pregnant with a boy.

[00:14:05] I thought that there was something wrong with them and then in the Ultimate gotcha from the universe, I had three boys. And so I had to do a lot of unpacking of what ideas am I bringing to the table about men, women, and young men in particular, and the relationship statistically between young men and violence? I think about JD Vance in that presentation in his Charlie Kirk show. I think about Charlie Kirk. I think Jordan Peterson. I think Andrew Tate. I think so much of that that just ceded the field and said you guys won't talk about it? We will. You won't about what men are looking for? You won't talk about masculinity as anything but toxic? We will. And the hopeful thing I found about young people is this morning I was reading Puck and they did this survey of Gen Z and college-aged students and 90% of them knew who Charlie Kirk was. Okay, so that tells me that there wasn't competition in the marketplace. This is the story that Wright says, he was some genius. Or that would also mean that Joe Rogan is the best podcaster that's ever lived. Or, hear me out here, maybe they did some things right, but also we ceded some aspects of the field and just let them occupy it. And there wasn't enough competition to put their ideas on display. Because the other thing I know about Gen Z is they are finely tuned to authenticity.

[00:15:57] And the other part of this poll was, yeah, 90% of Gen Z college students knew who Charlie Kirk was, but only 30% of them approved of him. Okay, so his ideas were on display and a lot of kids were going, no thank you. Pass. That's something we can work with, everybody. Good news. What I don't want to do, what I think people are hungry for, and what I thing is an honest strategy, solution, something I'd just like to try out, is assuming people's hunger for critical thinking. I'm trying to think of a way I want to put this. I know nobody, including me, is ready to presume good motives for a lot of people. Got it. Goodwill is in short supply. But what if we just assume people are hungry for some critical thinking? I mean, again, why did Charlie Kirk occupy this part of the market? I think because people were hungry for anything that even appeared to be debate and critical thinking. And I'm going to dig deep below 20 years plus of political experience that says you just call the other person a bad person, which is what I did. I'm talking to myself. I did it for years.

[00:17:27] I just said Republicans are craven. They'll do anything to win. They're bad people. That's my argument. And I don't want to do that anymore because I don't think it helped. I don think it worked. And so I would like to encourage the end of ad hominem attacks. That's my first proposal. If the idea is harmful, say so. If the ideas is dangerous, say so. Present your case. But I think I personally just slid into I don't have to engage with your ideas because you're a bad person. And I don't want to do that anymore. I don't think it helped. I think it ceded the territory to people who, coincidentally, I do find to be bad people a lot of the time. But I just want to engage with the ideas. I want to engaged with ideas about online culture. I want to engage with what's positive, what's not. I want to trust young people when they say this offered something to me, but I lost something in the exchange. I want take that seriously. I want to take that seriously instead of just saying I'm going to shoot the messenger and move on. That's a bad metaphor. Let me say that again. Maybe it isn't. That's where we got to. Maybe we literally got to shoot the Messenger.

Beth [00:19:02] This is an interesting time to roll out let's not do ad hominem attacks anymore. I took in a lot of coverage of the oversight hearing yesterday where senators got into it with Kash Patel. And I hope that we have some unity in America and watching that and saying, this is unacceptable. This is a joke. We do not want Congress to be about content creation. That's all it was. It was awful. Absolutely despicable all the way around. What do you do when it would be easiest to talk about what happened there on ad hominem terms. It would be. So I'm watching that. And then the next thing I start watching is a clip of Tucker Carlson criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi's statement about how there is free speech and then there is hate speech. And Tucker Carlson is saying perhaps she was speaking off the cuff in a place of grief, but it is not okay for the attorney general of the United States to act as though hate speech is a category unto itself that is different from free speech. Now, again, do I trust the messenger here? I do not. It was helpful to me to listen to someone I don't respect as a commentator, I respect him as a fellow human being, but not as a common tater. Talk about a person who I do not respect as our attorney general. She is that and I respect the office and I respected her as a follow human being. But I do think she is discharging the responsibilities of that office with fidelity to the constitution.

[00:21:13] So I'm listening and I'm trying to think about this critique offered under the same tent. And I decided I need to take this and kind of take it as a win. So this is what I want. I want people under the same tent being critical of each other, pushing on each other, vigorously debating ideas. Vigorously debating what an appropriate public and societal response is to something that we all agree we do not want to happen. That was helpful to me. I'm trying to really think critically about the death penalty, because I am very, very opposed to the death penalty. And there's a lot of conversation about the death penalty right now everywhere. The president really likes it. The president thinks it helps. The president things that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. And if it isn't, doesn't matter because it feels just to him. And a lot of people agree with him. How can I think critically about that without getting so wrapped up in what I think about the messengers that I can't recognize an inter-party debate where people are doing exactly what I want them to do. I think it's a real clear and relevant and timely challenge to say, how can I, in every context, walk back from who is saying it and focus more on what are they saying? And can I be glad that they're saying it even if I think it's wrong because it promotes some healthy tension and back and forth and we are getting somewhere because of it?

Sarah [00:22:52] I listened to Ben Shapiro and Ezra Klein. And the moment that really stuck out to me and why I was purposely using the word sneer because it's stuck in my head, is they have this exchange where Ben Shapiro presents Barack Obama talking about people clinging to-- then that secret recording from a fundraiser talking about clinging people to their gods and guns. And Ezra's like, "I heard that empathetically." And Ben Shapiro's like, "I heard it with a sneer." Just like with Mitt Romney talking about his presentation of the world and his ideas around what people do inside the tax. I forgot the exact quote from that campaign about like the taxes or whatever. And he was like I heard that empathetically and you all heard it with a sneer. And I thought now as 44-year-old Sarah, not back in the day mid-20s, early 30s Sarah, I hear both of those men, sincere and empathetic. Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. And I thought, well, no wonder they couldn't get past it because we were all too busy sneering at each other. Doesn't matter how clearly they speak because we have sneered at each for so long and we have such disdain. Disdain is a four horseman of the apocalypse in a relationship. We have such distain for each other that where do you go from there?

[00:24:21] Listen, how could you think critically about what someone is saying if you have decided that they are to be disdained and sneered at and disregarded and they're hateful and they are a bigot or they're a Antifa liberal violent activist? Of course, these dudes in trying to have an actual debate didn't stand a chance because we're too busy laying down fertile ground of disdain everywhere we go. It doesn't matter what they do. They're craven. They're hateful. They're violent whatever. Again, and so they're the enemy. They are the enemy. And I know that it is 10 times worse coming from the president. The way Donald Trump speaks, the fact that Stephen Miller is talking about Democrats as a domestic terrorism has left me sincerely afraid. And also, what am I supposed to do? Okay, well, you're the enemy. You're the domestic terrorist first. I don't see it out that way. I can not see it. I cannot. I don't know where we go from there. I do, and I don't want to go, actually. I do know where go from there, and I went off that train.

Beth [00:25:59] It is a more violent and more painful and more wasteful exercise than even that congressional hearing. And that's what that was. Like, no you, no, you aren't.

Sarah [00:26:10] No, you're the worst. Someone, I think it was Jerusalem Demsas, talked about siblings, and I thought that is the truest metaphor I've ever heard. Like anybody who's felt violent rage towards their siblings understands what's going on right now. And I thought, yeah, my boys are like that. They will get to a place where I sincerely think they could physically harm each other. I think the sibling is like almost the best metaphor. And if you've ever tried to break up a sibling fight, it's like the brains are falling out your ears. There's no reason. It's awful. It's the worst. It the worst of parenting is trying to break-up a sibling fight.

Beth [00:26:59] My friend Maggie is really into the show Couples Therapy right now. And Chad is out of town, and so I watched an episode last night just to have something to help me go to sleep because I don't sleep well without Chad. And I turned it on, and I really loved how, as they introduced the couples to us who we would be getting to know in the show, they showed pictures of them as small kids. And there was this connective tissue of like, hey, remember, the person sitting here today is made up of their family system and everything that came before them. And I was thinking about Couples Therapy as I was watching some of those congressional hearing exchanges, because I really liked how the therapist in this show was different than any therapist I've ever seen in that she really called people on their stuff.

Sarah [00:27:45] I'm into it.

Beth [00:27:46] So there was one couple where I'm just going to call them mom and dad because they have a small child together. Dad has not been taught to do anything for himself in a household. Doesn't know how to clean a bathroom. Doesn't know what to do when he needs to brush his teeth and the little one needs to still be watched. He just can't seem to figure out like, oh, the trash needs to go out now.

Sarah [00:28:08] Bless him.

Beth [00:28:09] Okay, and mom is infuriated by this and tired of having to raise everybody and just thinks he is careless more than incompetent. And so anyway, she's describing all this and he is like, "She disrespects me so much. She can't just say, 'Here's how you clean the bathroom. Now do it.' She has to berate me and make me feel less than in the process.'" What I loved about this therapist is that mom kept saying, "I'm not doing that. I'm just saying this is how you need to handle it." And the therapist was like, "No, you're not. It doesn't matter what words you use. We all hear you saying, 'I'm better at everything." That's what you're saying. I'm better at everything. It doesn't matter what your intention is, what you're biting your tongue about, how you're framing it, this is what you are communicating. And I just keep thinking about that scene and where that role could come from in a hearing like that.

[00:29:09] Where is the place for anybody to kind of step up and say, "Director Patel, it doesn't matter what you intention is here or what you think of the people who've been elected to this Congress. They have an oversight job to do. And senators, doesn't matter what you think of Director Patel, he is the director of the FBI. So we're going to have to have an exchange here for everybody to live up to those responsibilities." Where can that come from? We badly need Orna, the therapist from Couples Therapy, I think, to help us do this. And so then that makes me think, okay, where does that come in my community? Where does that come from on Facebook? I think when people say I want the temperature to come down, that sounds like shut up for a while. And I think that's exactly the opposite of what we need to do, because when we bring the temperature down by shutting up for a while, everybody is just storing resentments for the next time.

Sarah [00:30:18] Yeah, I still don't think online is the place to get those resentments out. I have not seen any productive conversations happening on Facebook.

Beth [00:30:29] I agree.

Sarah [00:30:31] I do think that the difficulty of unpacking this, especially historically, is just the role of algorithmic social media and the way it feeds our conflicts. Now, I would like to discuss because I think before we can get there, the beating heart of where this all goes is what I would like to call the Nazi problem, the fascist problem, the all roads leads to you're Nazi. And at this point, I would like to give younger liberal Sarah a gold star. I'm going to try to get back to her. I was beating up on younger liberal, Sarah earlier. I would younger liberal Sarah to go back to her card-carrying member of the ACLU which defended-- I don't think they do it anymore, which is a real bummer, but defended the right of Nazis to march, to speak, to participate in the public debate. Because I think this, like, it's the worst thing you can be, I know we all know enough about history to know that we are referencing one of the most violent and deadly periods in modern history.

[00:32:05] And so when people say that, when people say, well, he's a Nazi, he is a fascist, I don't know what else that is but a call to violence. I really don't. I can't see another path. And there's a part of me that is so heartbroken that we're losing so much of the World War Two generation, not because I don't believe that was the right thing to do to fight World War Two and defeat fascism, but it came at a cost. A real cost. Even the people who made it through and came home heroes and survived. I think there's a real call for history here the way it's getting rewritten. And also from the people on these shows, on Tucker Carlson's show being like, Hitler wasn't so bad. It's wild out there. It's wild out there. I read a really great piece that called on historians that they're like this has to be a living conversation, a continued conversation, our engagement with history.

[00:33:16] And it can't just be through museums. It can't be through movies. Like it has to a real engagement and historians can't engage with each other. We really need public facing historians to say, don't reduce this down to a simple narrative. This is complex. This came at huge costs. All that complexity it just gets wiped away, just wiped away. And I feel like every conversation I have just ends up with, well, wouldn't you shoot Hitler? And I'm like I cannot do this anymore. What is that? What is our need to just take it all the way there as if that is some sort of actual intellectual exercise. Or then it becomes the trolley. Am I going to shoot the trolley so they don't hit the kids? I'm just like what are we doing?

Beth [00:34:21] I do like to talk about the trolley problem; I'm not going to lie. And I will say, just in case it needs to be said, and I know you feel this too, Hitler was that bad. And there's a lot of complexity and that complexity doesn't mean that we need to enter into Holocaust denial. The Nazis were terrible, yes.

Sarah [00:34:44] It's so weird though, why do we end up with the Nazis and not the Japanese and the atomic bomb. Why can't I even tell you the leader of Japan's name? But we all talk about Hitler nonstop. It's just a wild thing out there happening.

Beth [00:34:56] That is to me where we can draw on a lot of lessons. I watched the Sound of Music this week with Ellen, and I was really struck this time by the conversations about the music festival in Austria before the Von Trapps run away and how important it is that the music festival go on so that Austrians will know nothing has changed. That's the line from the enablers of the Nazis in Austria. Nothing is different. Germany is taken over, but nothing is different. And the music festival is a way that we can reassure and placate people that everything's fine. I was really, really struck by that. And I was thinking during watching the musical and being a little bit more attuned to that piece of it than I typically am, that the problem with the way that we introduce Nazism, fascism, dictatorship, as we have contended with lately, is that we are on the other side of all of it and so it all seems very obvious today.

Sarah [00:35:55] Yes, that's what they talked about in the history thing.

Beth [00:35:57] And it also seems like one decision instead of a million decisions. And what I keep trying to think about, especially with the Trump administration and especially not yet one year into a four-year term under our democratic system for this administration, I keep try to think about how there are long series of decision points here. You apply the fascist label, the Nazi label, the dictator label, I think on the other side of it. Because it's not only about the person, but how the systems responded to the person and how the people responded to the person. Everybody that shares the poem about I thought they were do this and then it was me. That is impactful. I believe in that. I think our individual actions are important, but I also think it is equally important to study that period in history and ask where all of the hinges were for different countries at different moments, for different groups.

[00:37:05] Because it happened and was so devastating and became a true world war and devastated a population of Jews that has not yet recovered because of a million decision points. And I think it's easy to feel like how we respond to the death of Charlie Kirk is the single decision point or the election of Donald Trump was the single decision point. And I want to understand, as much as I can, where are we on the map knowing that it's a different map than existed in the 40s too, you know? So I want to learn those lessons of history. It's not that I think there's no value in talking about those ideas and that time period and talking about it with clarity as much as you can, but I want to introduce more of it because I feel some parallels now to figure out what else is here for me to learn instead of this flattened version that I can rattle off from memory?

Sarah [00:38:16] Yeah, that's the thing. If you read and engage with World War II history, I'm reading Pamela Harriman's biography right now. Do you know her?

Beth [00:38:26] I don't.

Sarah [00:38:27] Okay, so she ultimately became the ambassador to France for the United States. I can tell you the beginning and the end. And she had this online reputation of only being be known for sleeping with men in power. I don't know another nice way to put it. Obviously, her real story's much more complicated than that. Who'da thunk? She married originally Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's son, and became really indispensable to Churchill himself. In part because she would sleep with Americans and gather intelligence. There's just no nice way to put it. That's what happened. Even while married to his own son because his son was kind of a jerk, and had a drinking problem and was not great. Which made me feel better on just a personal level because I thought, look at here, Winston Churchill, who we hold a business hero and had some real parenting problems. You see what I'm saying? There's so many aspects of this. Like when they're trying to get the Americans to help them fight the Germans and they did all these things. And ultimately it was just Pearl Harbor. And it's so complicated. It's so incredibly complicated.

[00:39:50] Like really putting yourself in the shoes of the people at the time, knowing what they knew. They didn't know the ending. It's so tempting to use historical figures as props. And that feels like what happens. I'm going to pick up the prop of Hitler, I'm going to put it in the conversation, and then you're wrong and I'm right. And I hate it. Even though I did it for so long, I would use identity, I would use certain historical figures to end the argument. I didn't want to engage with the ideas, so I would just say because of this, because of your identity, because of my identity, because of this reality of identity, that we don't have to debate these ideas anymore. I'm just holding myself to account. That's what I did for a long time. And especially around World War II it's so incredibly easy to use things as a prop. And then if you point out the complexity of the person, well, then that's just a one-off. Well, no. The idea that you fight violent fascism with a violent uprising can be found in a lot of Zionist thinkers. Let me just throw that bomb in here and let's just lob that right into the middle of conversation. That is a reality. The ideas that we need our own space and not so we can be peaceful abstainers from war.

[00:41:21] That does not belong at the feet of every Israeli since the founding of Israel. It doesn't belong at feet absolutely of the entire Jewish diaspora, but it is reality of thought. That the same people who espouse the only way to stand up to the fascism of the Trump administration are very much opposed to the way it is playing out right now in Israel. And so I just want to grapple with that. I'm not trying to use that as a gotcha either. I'm just saying I want to face it. I want to face the reality of ideas I held and I've played out in ways that haven't been to my ultimate point or ways I could anticipate. That's why I don't want to grapple with the fact that this shooter did have a transgender partner. I'm not just going to go, well, but we know it's just a one-off and there's way more violence on the far right, I win. That's not intellectually honest. And I want to be intellectually honest-- not even honest. Honest is probably like there's a moral bend there that I don't mean. I don't want to look away from things that disrupt my narrative and my argument. I don't want to use people as props as a way to just prop up my own confirmation bias. I'm really trying to unpack because the things I've been fighting for are getting worse. What does that mean? The things that I care about, the rights that I cared about, the communities that I was trying to help, it's getting worse, so what does that mean?

Beth [00:42:58] Yeah, and it's confusing to know how to prioritize in this landscape too when there's just so much. So I think about the Charlie Kirk quotes about Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson and Michelle Obama. And I haven't said anything about that publicly because I think it is so self-evidently ridiculous what he said about those women. Michelle Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sheila Jackson Lee do not need me to defend them. It is self-evident that they have the intellect to do the jobs that they are in. Michelle Obama, his argument makes no sense about whatsoever because it's not like she took someone else's position. Her husband was elected to the presidency. Sheila Jackson Lee was elected. Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the Senate to the Supreme Court. And if you read a single word that she writes from the bench, it is clear that she belongs there as much as her colleagues. Like she is a scholar. She is manifestly qualified to do what she is doing.

[00:43:59] And so what good does it do for me to debate that particular strain over and over again, versus trying to get a sense of how much of that was what Charlie Kirk offered? I don't know. I don't have a sense of that yet. That's what I'm trying to figure out. The people who did love him, the people who listened to him daily, were they mostly there for what he had to say about Jesus? Were they mostly there because they viewed him as the young mouthpiece of Donald Trump? Were they most there because he thought affirmative action was toxic for the country? I don't know. I just don't now. And I'm trying to learn because I want to understand all of those many decision points and what is persuasive and what moves us forward through this instead of just picking a thing that sets me off and spiraling down on that path.

Sarah [00:44:56] To that particular quote, I think it is right and good and fair to also point out when other people are using ad hominem attacks. Charlie Kirk stood on a pedestal of debate and free speech and should know better than to basically prop up his argument by doing exactly what he's using those women as props. They didn't deserve it. Based on what? Okay. That's a weak argument. That's a weak personal argument. If you want to talk about affirmative action, which I think there is lots to debate, particularly based on the polling around America. Jerusalem Demsas just wrote this amazing thing about, okay, the Heritage Foundation is now arguing for affirmative action for conservative thinkers. And she's like, yeah, we need that. They were excluded and discriminated against. That viewpoint was discriminated against. I think the data is pretty clear. So sure let's have some affirmative action for conservative ideology on college campuses.

[00:46:06] Because that's what you're pointing to with Sheila Jackson Lee, is her saying I wouldn't have got there without the spot. She's not saying she didn't deserve it. You're twisting her words. Engage with the ideas. Engaged with the debate. If you want to have a debate about the consequences of affirmative action, I'm willing to have it. And not just say if you are opposed to affirmative action, you're a bigot and that's the end of the story. It's clearly more complicated than that. We have federal legislation with Title IX and now we have the flip. The proportion of men and women in colleges right now is worse than when we passed Title IX to protect women's admission. Let's talk about that. I'm okay talking about that. I would like to talk about that. What does that mean? What are we trying to pursue? Is there some perfect golden ratio we need? Should it be based on the population? Should every college and every state in the United States reflect perfectly the demographic reality of the United States’ population? Is that what you're arguing? I don't know, but let's have that debate.

Beth [00:47:20] Is conservative thinker a static characteristic? No, it's not, clearly. What does that mean?

Sarah [00:47:28] What about if you get on the Supreme Court and you become more liberal, what are we going to do then?

Beth [00:47:33] And here's the thing about the debating of ideas, too. I would like us to know why we're doing it. And this is not a new thought from us. This is in our book that we wrote back in 2017. Know your why. What is the point of your political engagement? Part of the reason that I have said that I think there's a romanticized perspective about the Charlie Kirk debates out there is because Charlie Kirk was trying to win over hearts and minds, but not of the people he was debating with. He was using the people he was debating with as props to try to make them look foolish in order to win over the hearts and minds of a broader audience, okay? That's not unique to the right or to Charlie Kirk. I'm not even saying it's bad or wrong, but that is a different quality of debate than what I think actually helps us figure out what do we value as a society or what policy do we actually want to pursue?

[00:48:24] Not just who do we want to elect, but to do what? Elect them for what reason? And as citizens, as just a person living in my house in Kentucky, trying to raise my children and make my community a little bit better, the kind of debate that Charlie Kirk was engaged in is not the kind of the debate that I want to engage in in my life. And debate is probably even the wrong word. So when you say I want us to get somewhere on affirmative action, I think that means like sitting with people to say, what do we think about this? When we create a board, what does it mean to consider who is naturally in the room and who is not naturally in their room? What does it mean to try to make the room more representative, but how do we do that successfully? I've been on some boards where we've talked about the people served by this nonprofit are not represented in the board.

[00:49:17] And then you try to do that. So you create a seat or two seats for people who are actually served by the organization. And then they come into a structure that is totally unfamiliar to them, extremely intimidating, and it often goes sideways because there hasn't been enough intention and care. Okay, how do you do that intention without being condescending? How do you make the structure actually-- again, it's just all like for what? For what are we pursuing? Why are we doing this? And then how are our actions informed by that why.

Sarah [00:49:50] Well, because debate for content creation is something very, very different. I keep thinking about the moment when we were at the Democratic National Convention and some content creators, I don't remember who it was, were coming through and creating a moment. They were doing that sort of man on the street, gotcha manufactured conflict. Which both sides do. I know people don't like both sidesism, but both sides do it.

Beth [00:50:26] Content creators do it.

Sarah [00:50:28] They go out there and the Daily Show goes to a football game and gets people saying all kinds of stupid shit. And then right wingers go to a college campus and capture all these UT Austin students saying, well, tuffy got shot. I know people don't like both sidesism of them, but I feel pretty good about this one. Everybody does these like man on the street, gotcha things. And if you've ever been around someone filming one, it is so awful. It is unnerving. It makes me think like is this what it's like to be in a reality show all the time? I can't fathom it. Like it's disarming. You feel a little scared and unnerved.

Beth [00:51:18] I felt scared when we saw that. I will talk to that. I felt very unsafe when that happened, honestly.

Sarah [00:51:23] Everything's a little upside down and inside out and all of a sudden you don't really trust what's going on around you. It's really awful. I'm not arguing for more of that. I'm not saying that Charlie Kirk presented some sort of beautiful version of debate. But if Ezra Klein can't have Ben Shapiro on, if Gavin Newsom takes all kinds of heat for having Charlie Kirk on for long form debate, actual like I'm not trying to capture somebody long-term, long-form debate, then it does cede the field to that short-form, gotcha stuff. Like good on Pete for getting in that circle and just doing it and going for it. And I'm not sure that's the most honest form of debate, the all-on-one kind of situation, but it's better, I guess. It's something.

Beth [00:52:19] It's just not a model for the rest of us. That's the problem.

Sarah [00:52:22] No, that's the thing.

Beth [00:52:24] Ezra Klein and Ben Shapiro both have relatively equal power and stature within the audiences that respect their work. And so that feels less like using someone, and more like we're interested. We're curious people. We're out doing a thing. And we're creating tension. And there's a lot to talk about here. And that's great. I respect that. For both of them, I respect them for doing that. The trouble is we've got that, and then we've the man on the street thing of like just humiliate the person. And we've got the cable news where everybody involved-- and we know this because we've done this too. It's palpable how everybody involved is just waiting for their time.

Sarah [00:53:12] Or just has a role to play.

Beth [00:53:14] There's a hoarding of time in those conversations. And so none of that is a very good model for just talking to your friends. I'm just looking for more like what does this look like when you're just talking to your friends and maybe there isn't a conclusion? Or in an organization where you have a decision to make. It's not that I think any of that is wrong, it's that I think that we've lost the context that it sits in.

Sarah [00:53:41] Well, because you also don't want it to be people of enormous power and prestige doing it. Like college kids are hungry for this. There is a reason he's known by 90% of them. I think all the time about that Girl State documentary we watched where they were all like, "We want to talk about it and they won't let us, basically." We want to debate these things. As I look back on my experience inside progressive politics, I did have a golden age in college. First of all, there weren't cell phones and I didn't get shut down a lot in conversations about like-- because I came to college extremely religious and opposed to abortion and opposed to gay marriage and I didn't feel shame. I felt challenged, but I didn't feel shame. And I think, well, what would have happened if I had been? What would have happen if I'd gone into that environment in a debate of ideas, open to learning, there to learn, and been shamed and been called a bigot and been call homophobic and been called all these things?

[00:54:51] I don't know. I worry about that. I want people to feel, especially young people, like they can ask the question, like they present their worldview, like they can have a space to go, "Yeah, but what about this?" And that's okay, and maybe they'll get it wrong. And maybe they'll evolve or maybe they won't. But they want to ask these hard questions. And if we push them and say that's not welcome, that makes you a bad person, the stakes are too high. Like we pushed them into spaces that do not reward critical thinking. We pushed them to spaces that reward high conflict and that put them in a place where of course they think this option has presented itself, I should take it. This violent option has presented itself; I should take it.

Beth [00:55:57] I think that the key to that is adults not trying to control everything. I mean, our professors felt so much freer than anyone in education, primary, secondary, post-secondary, than anybody feels right now. That's one of the frustrating things around the discourse about turning point. You had both a recognition that college students really want this and are uniquely suited for it in terms of their lives and their capacity for it. And a willingness to meet them in that while simultaneously telling them that everybody else that's there to meet that need for you is lying to you or is controlling you or brainwashing you. When there are many, many professors who try to meet need every single day and who feel increasingly handcuffed in their ability to meet that need. We have this thing in Kentucky that just frustrates me so much. So our legislature just passed a law that mandates a moment of silence at the beginning of every school day. It's supposed to be more than one minute, but not longer than two minutes. It's so silly.

[00:57:14] I love the idea of starting the day with a breath, with quiet time. If you want to pray, pray. If you want to meditate, meditate. If you want to draw. Like centering yourself before the day at school starts for a minute. I could see disciplinary benefits of that. I think there are lots of good ideas, not opposed. What I am opposed to is the way that our teachers feel they cannot say a damn word about what that time is. And they try to answer students' questions. What am I supposed to do right now? And they've just been told to say, like, I can't tell you. That's insane. If we want young people to be able to engage in a real way with their societal context, with big ideas, with the materials they're supposed to be learning about, you have to stop trying to control everything about the adults and treating the adults in that process as adversaries. Like, what are we doing? I would hope again that this is another thing that everybody could look at. I don't care if a teacher says you have a minute if you want to pray, pray. If you want to meditate, meditate. You know what I mean? Like what am I afraid of? That's not indoctrination, come on. Like have a little bit more respect for the young people.

Sarah [00:58:32] Yeah. I really keep coming back to that moment where the girl's like, I'm 20 and you're 31. What even is this?

Beth [00:58:38] Oh, in the Charlie Kirk video.

Sarah [00:58:39] And he's like, well, what's the difference between you and Professor? Well, the Professor's not making millions and fundraising off the exchanges, dude. Like, come on. Come one. And I think if you presented that fairly to the American public, including a lot of the American Public, really upset by the way that he died, they could see that. They could be like, yeah, there's a lot of cameras, there's a lot of editing and cutting. Again, doesn't mean he deserved to die, but it does complicate it. We don't need to shy from the complication. They're also not doing any favors to Charlie Kirk and his legacy by putting him on this pedestal. That is a tenuous position. And I said it on last episode; it's also a real disservice to his children and the people that loved him. As the complicated human being that of course he was, as we all are, you do not instill more humanity in people by deifying them. You remove them from the realm of humanity and critique, which I think is what they want, and put them in the realm of the gods.

Beth [00:59:56] Well, and as you were saying, the people upset about his death and the way he died. Look, I do think that that, I'm not asking anybody to mourn someone that you don't know or who you thought was spreading noxious ideas in society. I feel how you feel about him as a person. What I'm really trying to contend with in terms of the criminal justice system is the idea that a crime is a crime because it's a crime against society, not against just a person or a family. And I cannot name a crime against society more heinous than firing a gun into a crowded campus where people of all ages, many, many people of old ages are present, endangering so many people in order to silence political speech. Every dimension of this is about the highest order of crime that I can come up with against society. And so I just put that on the table too here. Again, taking him out of it sometimes is really helpful to try to see this more clearly.

Sarah [01:01:02] Yeah, I'm opposed to the death penalty because we get it wrong sometime and I don't think that's worth the cost. That's my personal stance. We're not perfect. The decision-making is perfect. We have and will continue to execute innocent people. That's not a price I'm willing to pay even to take out the most harmful perpetrators of the most-harmful crimes and the standards you just perpetuated. Happy to have that conversation. Happy to have that debate. That's the thing. I think back to what we've been doing here. And I just worry that Keep It Nuanced became, you have to care about the person. You have to show up from a place of like openness to harm or exposure. I don't know what I'm trying to articulate here, but this idea that I think there's a place to pivot and to say, I'm not asking you to care about the person. What I am asking you do is to engage with an intellectual veracity with the idea. Do you see what I'm saying? I think that we emphasize so much the relationship and the connection and the communication that maybe we were adding flames, adding fuel to this idea of the personification, which in some weird way led to abstraction. Instead of saying, forget about the relationship. Maybe just forget about the relationship. Maybe just debate the ideas. Maybe we'll just get back to the intellectual exercise of debating the ideas. And not trying to hold it alongside all the emotions of the relationship. Does that make sense?

Beth [01:03:04] It does. I don't know that I agree with it. I think that's something we've really gotten right is that the context matters. I'm really proud of how in our second book we said explicitly it's different in your marriage, in your family, on the internet, when you're talking about the state, when you are talking about nation, because it is. I think in our first book we were right to say it matters why you're doing it. Figure it out. I think we've been right to say, try to stay in relationships with the people that you have the greatest opportunity to influence. Because I think if we look at where we are today, cutting those people out of your lives has been a disaster. It has absolutely inflamed the tensions that we feel. It's not that I think that we've done everything right. Certainly not in every conversation, good Lord. There are probably years at a time that if I could like erase my commentary from them, maybe I would. What I mean when I say keep it nuanced is that every situation is worth picking up and turning over and trying to see from every angle. It's worth seeing it. That doesn't mean that every angle is equally valid. It doesn't that every perspective matters. It doesn't mean that we give comfort and affirmation to every angle. But it is that we try to move beyond. And I think this might be similar to what you're saying when you talk about intellectual rigor and veracity. Like test myself to step into this fully, to try to see it for where it is and the position that it occupies right now.

[01:04:48] Test myself to make the best argument opposing mine that I possibly can and meet that argument. Know that there are circumstances where what's correct or effective is temporal, that this is right for now, but in five years, it won't be anymore. That's what I try to mean. And that's how I really try to live my life. I am usually a minority voice, no matter where I am. And I think that's both because of how I think about the world and because of my personality. I'm more soft spoken. There are times even on this show when I have a microphone in front of me and I'll look at the comments and think like, well, I was here too. Did you hear anything I said? Like there is an aspect to just how I engage that always gets interpreted as, well, she's just being nice. As though it can't be intellectually rigorous because it has this element of like relationship involved. So I don't really regret that aspect of our work. And it wouldn't be true to me to do it another way, but I don't think that excludes what you're talking about. And I think it is complimentary to what you're talking about because to me the essence of keeping it nuanced is just not flattening it out exactly like what we're talking about with World War II.

Sarah [01:06:18] Yeah, again, can't shout out Jerusalem Demsas enough. She's done some hella good work over there at the argument on Substack. I keep thinking it about her, and it's the phrasing that a lot of people are using, like, how are we going to live together? And it's a paradox. The paradox is we've decided we live together because we live together, because we're citizens and that's the promise of America. You just get to choose to participate. It's not because you were born here. That's something that right-wing thinkers are pushing back on and I think that we should engage with that and say no. I love when she was like that's bullshit. If you look at the history, all of that nationalism that ethno-nationalism the 18th century the 19th century, it just led to an enormous amount of violence. People will find some shit to fight about especially when borders are on the line. And so saying, no, that didn't take us anywhere. That's not what we do here. We have chosen to be in relationship. It is a choice, not a birthright, okay?

[01:07:21] So there is a relationship here, but the relationship is built on not this like even though I love Habits of the Heart, this connection of the heart, the relationship has built on the exchange of ideas. That's what we have to keep turning to if we're not going to turn to the tribalism that leads to violence. It has to be a constant course correction. Am I breaking down into ad hominem attacks, emotional arguments? Again, this is so hard. Do you know how much of my time I spent as a women's studies minor arguing that the personal is political and being so offended by the idea that emotions were a problem in an argument? I don't know, all of it, all that time. I'd spent all of that time mad about that. And also it's not even true. If you go back to like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and not just through the lens of Hamilton, they were mad at each other. And also they weren't. Like they got mad. They got really, really mad, and they personally attacked each other, and also they kept turning to an exchange of ideas. They just kept, God, I hate you sometimes, but we're going to go back to this debate. Like just that constant you have to remind yourself.

Beth [01:08:43] And that was a lot because they just knew this wasn't going to work if everybody went it alone. I mean, that's the situation with Israel and Gaza right now why it's so devastating. People cannot live there without working together. There is no water, there is no electricity, there is not food if people don't work together there. And that is why it is just devastating and why so many of the groups made up of both Palestinians and Israelis that work together, focus on resources because that is the path back. You don't have to like anybody to recognize we will not eat here, we will not live here, we will thrive here if we don't work together. And I think that that was the founders' ultimate common bond. We will not be free of the British Empire unless we join together with a bunch of people who we think are immoral, obnoxious, who want a completely different life than we do, who worship a completely different God than we think we do. Whatever it is, we have to band together if we want this thing. And I think that that's where the rubber always meets the road.

Sarah [01:09:55] That's where I get frustrated with this argument about the Trump administration and political violence and the sort of they're Nazis, they're fascist, whatever. Play it out. I want no part of the suffering happening in Israel or Gaza right now. I do not want that for my family, for my community, for my state, for nation. I don't want that. I don't want that, for them. This is a road to nowhere. If you have engaged with this story at all, it is a nightmare that keeps me up at night. It is a level of human suffering that I thought we were passed. That was foolish. That's another thing 20-year-old Sarah got wrong. So it's just like if we are any place on that road, I want off. I don't want that. And you don't either. And the fact that you think you do means that you have not grappled with the reality of that. You have not grappled with the reality of suffering that would unleash on you and the people you love.

Beth [01:11:19] And I think that the vast majority of people, certainly the people listening, are right there with us. Absolutely right there with us. So it is again like what are the incentives being built to create content that says otherwise? And what are the strains that convince a 22 year old man that his shot in life, that his opportunity, that his mission is to create that kind of playing field here. And I think that that's just what we just have to keep digging into and figuring out and countering.

Sarah [01:12:01] Because obviously he didn't grapple with it. He didn't think when he was going to live out to the end of his life with the secret that it would be his mother who recognized him and turned him in. I promise you he did not entertain that scenario.

Beth [01:12:17] And how could he? Revisiting Hamilton this week, one of the things that struck me was how different his counsel was to his son going to a duel than the Hamilton of his youth. I was watching it, listening to him talk about how serious it is to take someone's life. You don't want that on your conscience. And I just thought, man, what is the path? Is there a way to expedite that feeling, that journey to fatherhood, for a lot of the people who have way too much sedentary leisure alone time steeped in the idea that violence is the only thing that's real, the only that really gives you purpose and feeling.

Sarah [01:12:59] For that matter, that can change things. That violence is the only thing that change things. I take seriously the idea that people feel pushed to violence because they feel disempowered, that nothing else matters. And the way I have tried to combat that in my own thinking and in my conversations this week, because I know so many people are really afraid, it's hard not to watch JD Vance rail during that memorial podcast and not be afraid. I get it, every time I went on X.com, I found something else to be like, holy shit, oh my God. And also when we do that historical thinking, when we see something happening right now and we decide we know what that's going to mean, we're making the same mistake that we're critiquing. We're saying this will happen and this will happen and will happen. That's also a logical fallacy. It's a logical fallacy that JD Vance and Donald Trump and Kash Patel and all of them are making right now.

[01:14:09] They are operating from a place of belief that they will always be in power, that they always be riding high. That's not true. I'm a student of enough history to know that's not how it works. And so I have to check in with myself, I have to remind myself, they're no better fortune tellers than I am. And it's so easy to decide exactly how this will play out and what this will mean. And engaging with history, not a poem that while well-meaning I think plays on all our worst psychological weaknesses, that this and this-- because that's what that poem is. They came for this and they came for this and they come for this then they came this, right? Do we believe if we're critical thinkers that the reality, political, social, cultural, violent reality of World War II is easily encapsulated in a 10-line poem? I don't think that we do. We put ourselves in such scary, harmful, dangerous places when we let our brains do that.

Beth [01:15:29] Yeah, I don't know what to tell people who are genuinely afraid because I am too, to the point where I have been just riding on the block of the day in my planner don't be afraid. I just keep writing it down for myself. Don't be afraid. Because I know that I don't live when I'm afraid. And I need to keep living and so do you and so does everyone listening, especially if we are to avoid the parade of horribles or the slippery slope that we can so easily imagine.

Sarah [01:15:59] I just tell myself history is not just to be studied; we are a product of it. My grandmother told me one time, we don't come from fearful people. I take that seriously. I come from people who encountered the worst. I'm still here because they encountered it and kept going. Some of them perpetuated the worst. That's just the lived existence of any human being. And I just try to remember, I'll do what they did. I'll do my best. I'll face the challenge in front of me that day. I will decide what to do with the suffering that it's an inevitable part of human existence, some more than others. Some more in historical periods than others. And I'll just take the next step. Sometimes I'll fall. Anybody who promises you any different is a liar. But sometimes my brain is that liar.

[01:17:01] Sometimes my brain tells me I deserve different, I'm being robbed of something different, I've earned something different. And I'm my worst self in those moments. Because that's when I get fearful, that's what I get anxious, that's why I get grieved, that's where I start to sneer. And I don't want to do that. We're going to take a very hard turn for Outside of Politics. Although, we need a new name.

Beth [01:17:39] We do. Agreed.

Sarah [01:17:40] We need a name. Somebody come up with a better name. Because I was going to say Outside of politics [inaudible] except for every headline all week long is how podcasts are the new political reality and they're the new political medium and blah, blah, blah. So it's just never true. Somebody think of a better term than Outside of Politics for what we try to do at the... I mean, I do like the exhale. I thought that's always a good one.

Beth [01:18:00] Also, I love making a podcast. I love being a podcaster. I think what we do here can matter and do good things in the world. We're in trouble if podcasts are the new political reality. It should not be this way.

Sarah [01:18:16] False. No. We're the new Walter Cronkite. Take up that mantle with bravery and strength, Beth. This is the reality.

Beth [01:18:25] I was watching Kash Patel thinking, listen, he should not be the FBI director. He's a podcaster. I should not be the FBI. Go ahead and mark me off your list. If you think of potential candidates for things, I'm not qualified to do that.

Sarah [01:18:39] No, I think that being a podcast doesn't qualify you to do other jobs, but I don't think it's the worst-- hear me out here. I don't think it is the worst thing in the world for people to go back to long form audio as a way they process the news of the world.

Beth [01:18:59] Agreed. No, I agree with that.

Sarah [01:19:01] Because Walter Cronkite was great and also was like kind of problematic because they were really determining the narrative in some ways that was bad. So I don't know, let's just all gather around our radios again.

Beth [01:19:14] I'm not trying to denigrate my profession, but I also every time I read about it I'm like, guys.

Sarah [01:19:25] Yeah, the problem is they think being a podcaster makes you good at other things. Also, for what it's worth, being good at other things doesn't always make you a good podcaster.

Beth [01:19:34] Correct, it flows in both directions.

Sarah [01:19:36] That's right. All that to say-- God, what were we going to talk about? Podcasting. The state of Pantsuit Politics. People want to know, first of all, why do our titles change sometimes?

Beth [01:19:48] Our titles change because we are fortunate to have on our team a person who really likes numbers. It is not me.

Sarah [01:19:58] It's Maggie.

Beth [01:19:59] It's Maggie. Maggie really likes numbers and Maggie is very committed to helping more people find pantsuit politics and growing the community of people who have these kinds of conversations which I do think is good for the world. And so Maggie has been AB testing titles.

Sarah [01:20:14] I love AB test. I don't like numbers, but I love an AB test.

Beth [01:20:18] It's actually like not a very accurate way to describe this either because I think it's ABC. I think she has been doing three titles and testing them. So when we finished recording, Maggie and Alise have the miserable job of trying to figure out what to call one of our episodes. We are all bad at titling. It's very hard.

Sarah [01:20:37] So let's use our moment of hope and say we have been using AI for this. Because AI is good at that. It's a good title generator, it just is. That's fine.

Beth [01:20:46] I think it is good at giving us some words to start playing with. I think the formats get really tired. Like it always wants to do a title, colon, subtitle.

Sarah [01:20:57] Yeah, just like we used to do before we used AI.

Beth [01:21:00] So it gives us something that you can go, mh, not that, but here's this little gem in it that we could try to lift out. And so they've been coming up with multiple titles, putting them in, taking some period of time to see what people are opening in their email. I think that's the way this works to settle on the title that performs the best. And you've probably seen lots of other people doing the same thing because Substack makes it really, really easy.

Sarah [01:21:28] Also, sometimes they just change them. Ezra does it all the time. I don't think he's AB testing. I think he just uses it to get people's feeds and then for the evergreen content, he changes it to something more evergreen, which we also do.

Beth [01:21:38] This is a hard part about making something that is relevant to the moment, but then also continues to live after that, especially when you think like, no, there's something in here that I want people to listen to even if they missed the moment.

Sarah [01:21:51] Well, and Substack is a good way to say we did survive the adpocalypse. Thanks almost completely to Substack.

Beth [01:21:59] To you all.

Sarah [01:22:00] To you all who subscribe on Substack. Worth saying. Worth noting.

Beth [01:22:06] It is the only way that we survived the ad-pocalypse.

Sarah [01:22:09] Yeah, because the ad-pocalypse was also a speaking apocalypse. Although I got a mad hunch that people are going to be hungry for people that want to talk about civil discourse again. So maybe we'll get some speaking gigs.

Beth [01:22:19] It has been wild. What we do and our approach to things has done the whole journey of urgent, relevant, helpful to totally cringe and naive and offensive and an expression of nothing but privilege to maybe relevant and helpful again.

Sarah [01:22:39] It's how long we've been at this. I'm fine with it. I'm okay. I'm shifted some too over time around my ideas about civil discourse as we just discussed for like over an hour. Okay. So what were some other people's comments about the-- I'm trying to remember if there were any other questions about the podcast industry. I'm tired of celebrities becoming podcast co-hosts. That's really not relevant to the state of Pantsuit Politics. I just need to get it off my chest.

Beth [01:23:05] It kind of is though because it has set, I think, a new expectation of what a podcast is and how it's supposed to feel, and that's frustrating. I really wish that YouTube were not the number one podcast player now, and yet it is. So I'm trying to get used to that. I have terrible resting bitch face, everybody. That is just the truth of the matter. It is not at all related to how I am listening or thinking about things. I just don't look warm and welcoming when I am sitting and listening, especially when I'm thinking deeply. And so I find making videos miserable, but I'm trying real hard.

Sarah [01:23:45] I don't think that's true, but whatever. I think that that's another place we've gone all the way around. Well, maybe not all the way around, but a 180. Because when we started, I was so jealous of the narrative podcasts. We would try to do it. We would like go out and record outside audio. And those were the people that were making all the money. Those were the people that were getting all the listens. Like everybody was so hungry for narrative podcasts. And now we've hung out long enough that everybody realized that narrative podcasts are expensive to produce and do not build in the long-term intimacy of a listenership that can be built upon. And that JK the actual best model is basically talk radio. And now we're cool again. It's great. I like being so old, you just go all the way back around to the beginning of when you were right. I dig it.

Beth [01:24:44] Yeah, I also feel like it's nice to be in the space again where people realize a series is not-- because it wasn't just narrative. It was like also the promise of this podcast is eight episodes to manage your time more effectively or eight episodes to deal with your codependency or whatever. And I just like having conversations like the one where we just had where I'm not really sure what it was about.

Sarah [01:25:09] I don't know.

Beth [01:25:10] It did walk me through some things that I've been thinking about, and I hope it will for other people. I mean, that's the great thing about talk radio. That's a big umbrella. It's done a lot of good and a lot of bad in the world talk radio has. But those shows have a lot of staying power because you do just want to call in, dial in and see what they're thinking about today. What are they talking about? Why does it matter? How are they processing it? And I really like being a part of that tradition.

Sarah [01:25:38] Thank you for being a part of that tradition today. So we spend a lot of time emptying our heads into your ears. It's our favorite pastime here at Pantsuit Politics. Now, I will not be here next week. I am going to England with Common Ground Pilgrimages and about 20 of you to walk the English countryside and talk about Pride and Prejudice and eat good food. And you know what? After the past week and a half, I'm real ready.

Beth [01:26:11] I bet you are.

Sarah [01:26:12] I'm really ready to go and be gone. So you have some guest hosts. I think we're going to share some pre-recorded conversations with all of you. So look forward to that next week. And until Tuesday, keep it nuanced, y'all.