What We've Learned After 9 Years of Political Podcasting

Discussion post for November 5, 2024

Election Day is finally here. We’ve got some updates on the race from over the weekend, but we also know that today is a lot of trying to distract ourselves from doom scrolling. So, we’re reflecting on nine years of political podcasting - what we’ve learned, how this year has been one of the hardest yet, and the changes we’re making for the future. Plus, outside of politics, our Election Day self-care coping strategies.

Make sure you have your subscription set up here on Substack so you can join us for live election night coverage tonight! Our whole team will be in the chat and Sarah and Beth will go live in the Substack app at 9pm ET.

Spicy Live Comes to Substack!

TOPICS DISCUSSED

• Election Day Check-In

• Pantsuit Politics Turns Nine!

• Outside of Politics: Self-Care During Election Week

EPISODE RESOURCES

Process your post-election stress with Sarah, Beth and Vanessa Zoltan of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text! Join us in Boston via live stream on November 7 - for a fun night among friends. As premium members, you can use the code FIVELIVE2024 for $5 off the price.

• Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day. Here's how (Des Moines Register)

• A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms (Pro Publica)

• Inside the Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign (The Atlantic)

• One-Third of Voters Have Already Cast Ballots. See the Early Vote Breakdown. (The New York Times)

• Sammi Tannor Cohen (Instagram)

• Podcast Media Bias Chart (Ad Fontes Media via Facebook)

• Kamala Harris and Maya Rudolph on SNL (TikTok)

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.

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.

[00:00:30] Hi. Hello. How are you? It is Election Day. We are trying to wait today and manage our stress levels. We don't know when we'll know anything. I feel like everything I've read today Sarah has been like, well, she could win or he could win. And she could win today or tomorrow.

Sarah [00:00:53] Or later.

Beth [00:00:53] Or next week or in December. Or he could win today or tomorrow or next week or in December.

Sarah [00:00:59] Later.

Beth [00:00:59] And so those are the things, these are the options that we have. And because of that, we're going to take a little detour today. So we'll do a little tiny bit about the election in our first segment, but then we're going to get to something just fun. Pantsuit Politics turned nine this weekend.

Sarah [00:01:17] Yay!

Beth [00:01:18] Yay! I told Chad maybe that means that we are moody and a little awkward and don't fit perfectly into any space at this point.

Sarah [00:01:25] That's true.

Beth [00:01:26] It seems right.

Sarah [00:01:27] Yeah.

Beth [00:01:28] So we thought it would be a good time for us to give you a state of the podcast, what's happening here at Pantsuit Politics. It's been a big year for us. We want to give you some glimpses behind the scenes about how our business runs, the struggles that we've had this year and how we are adapting for the future.

Sarah [00:01:41] Listen, podcast people love nothing more than talking about podcasts. This is an appropriate detour for Election Day. I'm just saying.

Beth [00:01:47] I hope that's true. I hope it meets you right exactly where you are. And then Outside of Politics, we're just going to talk about like how we are in fact managing our stress levels for the next 48 hours through January. I think is what the experts believe we need.

Sarah [00:02:01] That's correct.

Beth [00:02:02] So today, hopefully, we get what you need. Election updates, something to distract you, ways to take care of yourself. It's all here. Let's do it.

[00:02:09] Music Interlude.

Sarah [00:02:17] Beth, last night Felix looked at my dad and went, "Have you seen that Iowa poll?" And my dad was like, no. And he was like, "Kamala is winning." And then it devolved into a conversation about the mic stand performance, but it was hilarious. That's how big the Selzer poll was. The nine year old at the table was like, "Hey, have you seen that Iowa poll?"

Beth [00:02:38] I would be very interested in hearing how the mic stand conversation went down at your family dinner table.

Sarah [00:02:44] It went badly. The 15-year-old was simulating me. And then he said what in front of my 88 year old grandmother. And we all went, whoa! And he was like, what?

Beth [00:02:56] She knows, too.

Sarah [00:02:58] He was like, what? Everybody at the table knows. And I'm like I guess it's fair, but gross and also gross.

Beth [00:03:05] I thought that was one of the more revealing moments of this campaign. And I thought that SNL nailed it. I wondered if you were happier with James Austin Johnson this week?

Sarah [00:03:13] He's still not orange enough. He's not orange at all. And it really upsets me. Every time I'm like, why are you not orange? Maybe it's just too hard to get off for the other skits. This is the best excuse I came up with while watching Saturday Night Live. Maybe it's just too hard to get off. I almost thought that they were going to pull a South Park. Remember when South Park would do those huge episodes on Scientology and Mormonism and then at the bottom they just have a thing that, like, this is actually what they believe. I thought they were going to throw up like this is not satire, this is actually the things he said. My favorite moment was that I'm blowing my arm up here. Holding this mike, blowing out my arm for you people. That was actually, I thought, the most funny and revealing moment, even beyond the simulation. Which I'm not even sure that's what he was doing. If he didn't realize that's what it looked like, then we really have a problem. But it was just the I'm holding the mic, blowing out the muscles in my arm for you people. that one got me.

Beth [00:04:09] That's what I liked about the SNL portrayal because he is not having a good time and it's so obvious.

Sarah [00:04:14] He is not.

Beth [00:04:14] He doesn't want to do this anymore.

Sarah [00:04:15] Well, who asked him? Didn't somebody asked him it looks like you're having fun.

Beth [00:04:19] It was Hannity, I think.

Sarah [00:04:20] Yeah. And he was like, clearly not. He couldn't answer it. He was like, yeah, I'm not. I mean, I'm working really hard. I'm not having any days off. I mean, who would do this? Who would want to do this [inaudible]. Again, never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He lobbed such a softball at him. Tell the people how much you love them and how much you love being with them. And he was like, I hate this. I wish I was at my golf course.

Beth [00:04:40] Yeah, I think that's the truth.

Sarah [00:04:42] I think that's the truth.

Beth [00:04:43] He wishes he was at his golf course. I think that's it.

Sarah [00:04:45] And when he said I should have never left the White House, I'm like, You don't believe that. You also didn't enjoy being there.

Beth [00:04:51] No. While I think the Selzer poll, whatever its accuracy, looks like in the end, and she is known for accuracy.

Sarah [00:04:58] I like the person on Twitter who was like, listen, the margin of error could be she's 6.7 Iowa I was like, you know what? I like it.

Beth [00:05:07] Yeah. The fact that she is anywhere near even with him in Iowa, given everything that's transpired over the last year, however it turns out, I just think the data in that poll captures where we are. What I see in my life, the older women have no patience for Donald Trump at all this time. None. And as much as I dislike the keep your vote a secret from your husband commercials, I did stand in line for an awfully long time to vote early looking at couples and thinking, I bet you're going to split. I bet she's voting for Kamala and he's voting for Donald Trump.

Sarah [00:05:51] Yeah. I will say there's a fair amount of older men that are like, I'm done. It's kind of bananas to me the over 65 vote, the gains she's made there; not to be missed or underestimated. And I just think if you're talking about over 65 women and 20 year old guys as far as who's going to turn out and vote, my chips are definitely going to be on the over 65 year old women, not for nothing. What really got me is how many places and public restrooms people are saying your vote is private vote Kamala in women's restrooms. Those really got to me. And also just the news, we just are learning about more and more women who have died. That 18 year old in Texas.

Beth [00:06:34] Yeah, it's awful.

Sarah [00:06:34] Enough is enough. And I think that she has communicated that beautifully. I thought the SNL appearance was pitch perfect.

Beth [00:06:46] Me too.

Sarah [00:06:47] Fun, short, self-effacing, communicated what she wanted to communicate. Just perfect. Perfect. I even like the TikTok they made afterwards. I don't really think she could have asked for a better closing argument, and I don't think he could have-- I'm sure he could have done worse. Always available to him. But he just had to keep the train on the tracks and he couldn't do it. Again, that Tim Alberta piece, the other highlight of my weekend which should have been titled never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The part where he was basically bored because he was winning, I was like this is everything. This is everything.

Beth [00:07:24] Yeah. If Tim Alberta is not a household name for you, and he definitely is here.

Sarah [00:07:28] And he should be, though, because he is really good at his job.

Beth [00:07:31] He writes for The Atlantic. He is an outstanding writer. A number of people have recommended his book to me just in the past week, so I definitely I'm going to have to put it on my list.

Sarah [00:07:41] If he loses, that's first on my list. If he wins, I might need a minute. Just saying.

Beth [00:07:45] I think that's fair. But Tim Alberta had a piece in the Atlantic over the weekend talking about the final months of the Trump campaign and how really he did, as Sarah said, get bored when they were doing well. He did not like the tight, disciplined campaign.

Sarah [00:08:01] No, the best. The subtitle: What's Discipline Got to Do with Winning? That was a quote from Trump. That was the subtitle of the article What's Discipline Got to Do with Winning?

Beth [00:08:09] And he deliberately sabotaged his own team by bringing Corey Lewandowski back to make everybody mad at everybody else. It's just what he does. It's another data point under the headline Donald Trump is happiest when other people are pissed off.

Sarah [00:08:24] Yeah.

Beth [00:08:25] And that's where it is. So should we just wrap up this segment by reiterating she could win. He could win. We might know today. We might not.

Sarah [00:08:34] We might know later.

Beth [00:08:35] Democrats could take the House and the Senate or neither, or one and not the other. It's all on the table.

Sarah [00:08:43] I have a good conclusion for us. How about this? How about those early voting numbers? Amazing.

Beth [00:08:50] Almost 800,000 people have already voted in Kentucky.

Sarah [00:08:54] It's like half of what is it? Like 40 percent of people nationwide. It's clearly going to be massive turnout. And that is incredible. We love that. We love to hear it. We love to see it. And that is something to sort of ground yourself, I think, as we try to get through these next hours, days, weeks or months.

Beth [00:09:14] Hard to know.

[00:09:15] Music Interlude.

[00:09:24] Okay, Sarah, happy ninth birthday of Pantsuit Politics!

Sarah [00:09:27] Happy ninth birthday to you, too!

Beth [00:09:30] We thought we would take a minute and talk about the state of our business. And I was thinking about this and a number of dives into the podcast industry that I've read or listened to lately, and I thought it might be good to start very fundamental, especially for people who are new to us, and just say Pantsuit Politics is owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and we each own 50 percent of that business. So we are we are the owners and there are just the two of us and we own it equally.

Sarah [00:09:57] Well, I think that's a really important point because we have nobody wants this with this podcasting fictional situation that everybody was watching. And in that show, I've only watched two episodes. But in that show, the very first episode, they're trying to get acquired. They're trying to sell their very successful podcast to, I think, Spotify, because that's a lot of people's reason for being. They want to get a big enough listenership and they want to get acquired. They want a big chunk of change so that Sirius or Spotify or iHeart Radio or somebody owns the podcast. We do not operate under that business model. We are not trying to be acquired. We like very much owning Pantsuit Politics, which means we own the episodes. It's our intellectual property. The RSS feed belongs to us, the listenership, the numbers, all that. Those are our property. Those belong to us equally, not any big company.

Beth [00:11:03] Which is especially important when you think about what we make and how we make it. So it matters to us that no one can tell us what to talk about or not talk about. And it matters to us that as we talk about those things, we aren't thinking about anyone. And I think that's a promise we both kind of made ourselves from the beginning, too. I try not to think, oh, my mom's going to listen to this, so I'm going to censor my view or my pastor is going to hear this or, my colleagues, when I was still working full time and making the show, are going to hear this. We have just been very independent and very transparent from the beginning, and we intend to stay that way. And if there has been a lesson for me over the last year, maybe the last two or three years, it's that our show only lasts if we own it. Because when a big company owns it, then the trajectory always has to be growth.

Sarah [00:11:58] Yeah.

Beth [00:11:58] And while we've had some nice growth in certain years, mostly we've been pretty steady. And that is not something that investors tend to have patience for.

Sarah [00:12:09] So the industry of it all, I think you see some really long term players who have always owned their podcast. The Popcast, Matt Bam Bam, Jesse Thorn’s Maximum Fun, the people I feel like who have been in this industry for a very long time do own their podcasts. And as I look back and I think about the podcast that I envied when we first started who had a lot of immediate success, so many of them were owned by companies and are no longer around. Even the type of podcast form that was very enviable, the highly produced, like the serial model, I think has not had the legs people expected it to have because it's expensive to make that. And there's no sort of intimacy or loyalty that you get from a talk podcast, which is basically what we have. And so I really think inside the podcasting industry you have movies and then you have TV and then you have talk radio. It's like you can almost put them in those kind of buckets. And I do think the talk radio, which I would put us in that bucket, has the most sustainable model.

Beth [00:13:23] I think so, too. So we started this in November of 2015. We really took it full time like it is our full time gig in the beginning of 2018. So we did it as a hobby for a couple of years.

Sarah [00:13:39] A very demanding hobby.

Beth [00:13:40] Well, exactly. That's where I was going. I was thinking over the weekend about how that just doesn't feel available anymore. We're going to talk a little bit about the business pressures we've experienced over the last year. And I guess in the back of my mind, I've always thought, well, if I had to get another job and we just do this as a hobby again, so be it. But I actually don't feel that way anymore. That doesn't feel possible to me.

Sarah [00:14:02] Yeah. It is very demeaning. I think people could do it depending on how often you wanted to publish, what you were talking about. You could still do it as sort of a side hustle. It's so funny when I think back to 2015, I don't remember what the goal was. I didn't have a plan. I didn't think we'll start this and it'll be both of our full time jobs. It sounded fun and my husband really thought I should start a podcast. I did get Miss Talkative in high school. And so, it was really the thing they always say, which is you should do the thing that you would do for free, which we did for several years. Again, I think it I didn't have a plan because I didn't see it as a business. I saw it as something I just wanted to do, but I don't know what that would look like now. I don't. I think it would be harder. Especially the ages of our kids and the demands that life put on you. I think we started it at just the right time in the podcasting industry and just the right time in our lives.

Beth [00:15:02] I think that's right. I wouldn't do it again as a hobby because the information environment has changed so much since 2015.

Sarah [00:15:09] Yeah, it would be really hard to find people.

Beth [00:15:10] Well, I don't even mean listener acquisition. It takes me so much longer to prepare now because there are so many sources, there's so much out there. I used to prepare for our shows in the elevators at work. I worked in a 20th floor office and an 18th floor office. And I would go up and down those elevators scrolling Twitter, looking at the New York Times. That was my show prep. You absolutely cannot do it that way anymore. Maybe we could do some other kind of podcast, not news and politics as a hobby. But I take so seriously and I know you do too our obligation to try to be as accurate as possible and to try to be as well informed as possible and to have as much context as possible. And that just continues to become more and more time consuming.

Sarah [00:16:01] Yeah, for sure.

Beth [00:16:02] So we own it 50-50. We have two full time employees. So you probably hear us talk about Alise and Maggie. Alise was our first employee who started as a volunteer with us, so she kind of had the same journey we did. I like this. I think it sounds fun. It's a lot more than just fun. It's very demanding. And so she has been with us for a long time now and is absolutely indispensable. And Maggie has become the same. Alise really functions like a chief operating officer for our business in a lot of ways. And Maggie is our community engagement director. So Maggie reads every word anyone sends us anywhere and helps us make sense of what all we're hearing.

Sarah [00:16:42] Yeah, I never anticipated being a boss. It's wild. It's wild to me that we have two employees. Luckily, they're fantastic. But I do think I see so often, especially in a company setting in the podcast industry, there's just like a lot of acquiring employees, a lot of staffing up. And that never appealed to me. We have always run a very lean machine here at Pantsuit Politics and we like it that way. And I think it is absolutely how we were able to survive this last year.

Beth [00:17:12] One hundred percent. I have done my chore of duty in HR; I don't ever want to do it again. And I think a team of four has its own challenges, but what we make is so personal to us that the idea of involving more and more and more people I think could only undermine that way in which we make is so personal to us.

Sarah [00:17:36] Yeah. And I think there's always something appealing about people that grow up with you. That's true for Maggie. That's true for Alise. That's true for Studio D, our audio production which started out as just Dylan, who we hired. Gosh, I got on like a Listserv for audio producers and he interviewed and we really loved him. And he was just starting out just like us. And so the way that we've sort of grown up with a lot of our team and people who help us make this podcast has always been, I think, really special.

Beth [00:18:06] So we pay Studio D as a contractor. They're not employees of ours. It's just the four of us in the business, and then Studio D is obviously a critical partner to us. And then we have an agent. And this is another thing that just sort of happened. We were at this point in our business where we were kind of trying to figure out what the next steps were. We got some advice that we needed an agent. We had just met an agent and the person who gave us the advice, someone who was pretty high up at Apple at the time, told us that there were about three agents in podcasting who knew what they were doing, and the person that we had just met happened to be on that list of three. So the stars just aligned.

Sarah [00:18:46] Our beloved agent Caroline, she's a big deal if you Google her name; you'll be so impressed by her because we are. We had met her because we were doing the tour and we were going to be in L.A. and my friend Dave was like I have my friend's friend Caroline, is big in podcasting, maybe she could help you get a guest for the show, which she did. Piper Perabo. And then she came to the show and I had met her at Podcast Movement. That's when I went and had drinks with her to figure out if she would know somebody for the show. And she came to our live show and then said, "I'd love to represent you guys." I can't believe it's been so many years. It feels like that was yesterday. But it was like pre-pandemic for the love-- it was a long time ago. But she's fabulous. First of all, she's very grounded in an industry that is anything but. That's the first thing. You have to have somebody who's willing to try new things, but also not get shaken up very easily. And that's just the hard combination of finding people. A steadiness, but an adventurous spirit. You know what I mean? That's just not a common combination in people, but she has it in abundance.

Beth [00:19:58] So Caroline is our agent. She helps us do things like negotiate deals with advertising agencies. So, Sarah, something that I feel like we've been really aligned about from the beginning is that we don't want to be in multiple businesses at once. And we understood that if we were going to sell our own advertising for the show, that is entering a new business and it is a business that we don't have the skills to do or the time and enthusiasm for. We need to outsource that, so Caroline helps us.

Sarah [00:20:28] Well, I did it a little bit at the very beginning and that was exhausting. Because I had some relationships from my time in blogging, but it's just a lot of work. And especially early in the industry to explain to people what podcasting advertising was, you had to sell it twice. You had to sell the person on podcasting, then you had to sell them on you. And it was just an enormous amount of work. So back in the beginning it was like Midroll was like the place to be. That was like the killer agency. I think I was like the only agency, and we had to kind of hustle to get on Midroll. It took us a minute to get on Midroll. We finally were on Mineral and we were happy there, but the industry changes, always lead to more changes. But it's been so fascinating to watch. Like you said, that's almost like a separate business. And to watch the way that has evolved over time alongside the podcasting industry has been really fascinating.

Beth [00:21:17] Yeah, because some of those agencies now are really about sales and advertising. Some of them are more about the technology that they use and the way that they sub ads in and out. There's just a lot going on in that industry. We are always on the phone with people who are a couple decades younger than we are at this point in our lives.

Sarah [00:21:35] I mean, a decade and a half. A solid decade and a half.

Beth [00:21:39] The pressures that people who work in that industry are under are very different than the way that we approach our business. And so there's always a dance going on between us and those agencies. And so we are in the process of transitioning that relationship again to try to work with someone who we think is going to be more congruent with how we approach our business. But advertising is hard.

Sarah [00:22:03] Yeah. I think it's just because there's the growth model that you always want to be growing. Then you throw in the ad apocalypse with Apple doing a software update that change everybody's numbers. It's just things like that. And I can get in my head like it's so hard to be in this industry, but I think there are things like that in every industry where a butterfly flaps its wings and then everything is different in what you're do inside your business. I'm sure that felt like that way to Blockbuster video back in the day. So navigating that and surfing those changes, you got to have a lot of flexibility in every industry but particularly this one.

Beth [00:22:40] We always get a lot of questions about ads. Advertising is really a challenge to figure out what kind of partners you want to work with. You have varying levels of control over the ads that run on the show. The big things that we have said we don't want to do this are like gambling ads, weight loss ads, firearms ads, alcohol ads. We have some categories that we have just excluded completely.

Sarah [00:23:04] We're anti-vice here at Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:23:07] And we don't want you to listen and feel bad about yourselves for any reason. Anything that would just be a burden on the audience, we don't want to include. But it doesn't always work. Sometimes we'll listen to our fully produced, out there published episode, and we will be surprised by an ad that is running in it and we will have to have a conversation. As much as you try to stay ahead of it, on top of it, and Maggie on our team does a really good job with that, it's tricky.

Sarah [00:23:32] And the reason that is, is when we started we would record the ads into the episode. We would just talk, stop talking, record an ad together, keep talking. So it was just one audio file. And then several years ago, the industry evolved to dynamic ads, which means we place markers inside our audio file and the advertising agency can put any ad they want there. Now, in theory, it's an ad we've recorded. It's an ad we have approved. But these are big companies and they're doing a lot of things at once. And so stuff sneaks through because they're just ad markers, they're not recorded into the actual audio file. When we changed that, we had to go back through all our audio files and strip out the old ads and put in ad markers. So again, it's not just like the industry evolving, it's the technology evolving. And I think with advertising it's so fascinating. I follow this Instagram channel and she does all these business reviews. She'll talk about a company that was like the darling of Wall Street and now it's bankrupt or whatever.

[00:24:26] And Beth, it's like a trip down memory lane. So many of the companies. This morning I saw her do one on Brandlist, which we definitely advertised. I remember it. Away is like really struggling now. All these direct to consumer companies that we've advertised for a long period of time and now they're all struggling because I think the next evolution of podcasting will have to be away from just direct to consumer, but more of the massive advertising you see everywhere: Ford, Coke, Pepsi. You're going to have to see some of the main stream like brand awareness, not necessarily like coupon codes. I'm hoping that comes to podcasting soon.

Beth [00:25:07] I think it is coming to really big shows. The question to me is whether those brands will work with shows like ours. And I just don't know the answer to that. I love it when we're able to work with listener businesses on our show. That feels like really good alignment to me. But this space is always difficult and like I said, we are in transition. We are moving our relationships, so we'll have some more information about that for you soon. Hopefully, it's not something that you notice other than you like the ads that you're hearing and you feel like the ads that you hear really respect you as an audience and our products that you're interested in. So we make money in three primary ways: advertising on the podcast, listener support, and speaking. And that used to be a really good, solid three legged stool for us. But here in our nine year old era, our preteen era, the three legged stool has become more like a top that we just try to keep spinning around listener's support.

Sarah [00:26:04] Yeah, there was a dramatic drop off in advertising-- not just for us, for the industry. Most people experienced somewhere between a 50 to 60 percent, some as high as 70 percent drop in advertising revenue, which is dramatic obviously. Even if it's a third of your income, it's much higher for other podcasts. And we also experienced a really dramatic drop off in speaking. We used to do a lot of speaking. I think there's a lot of reasons for this. I don't think it was us. Everybody says post-COVID speaking is harder. We love public speaking because we get to be out with you guys and see communities and learn a lot more and learn in a deeper way about what's going on in our country. But that just fell off a cliff, too. And so we had two legs of our stool falling off a cliff. Luckily, we have the most amazing listeners and community because there would be no Pantsuit Politics right now on Election Day if not for that support.

Beth [00:26:56] That's exactly right. I think what's happened in some ways, both with advertising and speaking, is what happens in a bunch of industries. Like you have a very small number of really big successful podcasts and speakers who still make a ton of money on advertising and speaking, and then you have everybody else. And we are often in like the top percentage tier of podcasts,. We know that we're really good speakers; we get incredible feedback and a lot of interest. But it's kind of like wealth. You know what I mean? The top 10 percent is a huge range. So we have really struggled with those two stools, but listeners support has been steady for us. And so we've been talking a lot about our transition to Substack, which was a big, scary move. So we took a look at the situation and realized listener support is the lifeblood of our show and we had it spread out over Patreon and Apple podcast subscriptions, and that was not working for us from a bunch of different angles, which is why we moved over to Substack. So we kind of made a big hard bet on listener support continuing to be the lifeblood of this show.

Sarah [00:28:19] And on Substack (and I've been so happy) I just feel like the chat there is like a really, really good group text. That's what it feels like to me. And it feels like that's where everybody wants to be. They want to be in the DM or the group text. And so I'm happy that we've found a place for that. And I just love the seamlessness. I like the platform. Because you want to be in a place where there's a real interest in the industry and where it's going and vision. That's what it is. That's why I feel good about the move to Substack, that's why I feel good moving our advertising to Lemonada. It just feels like there's a vision and that's where we're going. It just feels like that there is a vision for where the industry is going and a willingness to put some effort and to pushing it that way. So I feel like Substack understands how important it is to have listener support and subscribers and feel independent. And I feel like Lemonada has a real love for the listeners and for a particular demographic of listeners that just happens to align very closely with our show. And I think that's so smart. Instead of just scale, scale, scale, say no, no, no, let's pick the listeners that we know we're reaching and let's really dial into what they want. I just think that's really smart. I'm really excited about both these moves for that reason.

Beth [00:29:39] I think the thing that we learned over and over again is that we cannot work with people who don't listen to our show.

Sarah [00:29:46] Yeah.

Beth [00:29:46] The relationships that work for us are relationships where our point person listens to the podcast and understands where we are and what we're about and what we're making and how we're making it. Caroline listens to our episodes. We know that because she texts us. The folks at Lemonada and all of these initial meetings have made it very obvious that they have listened, if not to every episode, enough to really get it. Bayley, our amazing contact at Substack, is obviously listening to a lot of what we make and that is just the only way that it works for us. We're kind of a weird show. We're not like every other podcast and we don't intend to be. But it means that the people who work with us have to work a little bit harder to get what we're doing over here.

Sarah [00:30:31] Well, and I don't think the podcasting industry is going anywhere. We're not going anywhere. And I think the people who love our show also love the industry and the medium-- I would say the medium more than the industry. I think that's the key, is to love the medium and to love the intimacy that podcast listeners find with the shows that they listen to. And understanding that a lot of the challenges the industry are facing are not that different than the challenges other media industries have faced. As far as why are there so many celebrity podcasts? Well, because people like known properties. They like known intellectual properties. It's why you see a million Marvel movies until that don't work anymore. That kind of gives me comfort to know we're just navigating a lot of similar things that people in other media industries have navigated. And now we're interesting because we don't just navigate media, we navigate news as well in politics. And so I think that just shifts with the political winds, which I like being responsive. I like being able to be reactive, and so that sort of appeals to me.

Beth [00:31:33] I think over the last nine years, I just keep getting clearer on what we mean by a different approach to the news. Being able to say, okay, we are not and have never been journalists. We are not and have never been party pundits. We are not really doing the kind of analysis that you see in most traditional media formats. It is very personal commentary that we provide here. Very, very personal commentary. And I feel good about that. And I feel good about how we've been willing to calibrate pressures around what that commentary looks like. I'm thinking, for example, about how we never had a conversation that was like the audience might not like it if we say that President Biden should drop out of this race. We just felt that that was true and so we said it. I remember talking way before his trials about how I think Hunter Biden had probably done crime. And I got some messages that were like, that's so unhelpful to the Democratic ticket. And I was like, well, my job isn't to be helpful to the Democratic ticket. It's to be honest about what I see. I just think it would be easy to hear messages like your show isn't balanced enough anymore. I expect more right/left balance and try to respond to those in a way that would be authentic to us. So I'm proud of how we have understood it is very personal commentary that we're offering, and that's our value proposition. And that has to be our guiding light.

Sarah [00:33:02] Well, the issue for me is if I am not being authentic, if I am not just showing up and saying what feels true to me and in conversation with you, I just get really bored. So if you want to keep my attention, you got to let me be me. You got to let me do what's interesting. It's not just that we have stayed true to what feels right to us. It's that we've just followed our interests and the audience has gone with us. It's not like we're always talking about politics. We spend a lot of time talking about cultural issues and talking about the deeper policy implications of stuff or talking about Taylor Swift. And that's how it goes in life. I think about all the time the focus group with our listeners that said when people shut me down, I feel like I am being silenced and there's no intimacy. There's no connection. And I think that that is what I've always found here. And I hope that's what the listeners have always found here, is that we just get to follow what's interesting and sometimes that's not going to align with what the rest of political media is talking about or the latest headline. But if it's personal and it's true, it's probably also going to be interesting not just for us to talk about, but for people to listen to.

Beth [00:34:18] And to the partisanship of it all. Several people have sent me the graphic charting different media sources on a left/right.

Sarah [00:34:28] I liked it. I thought it was really good.

Beth [00:34:31] You did? I thought it was garbage with respect to the makers of it. Just because I think left/right is useless. I think left/right is useless right now. I was thinking about how could you even graph where American politics is? Because in a sense you need to know how someone feels about economic policy domestically as distinguished from globally. You need to know how somebody feels about liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. You need to know how someone feels about the separation of church and state. There are just too many dimensions to plot it on a left/right or even on a quadrant kind of system. All of the things people are trying to do right now to sort folks into cohesive categories as though our views are going to cluster around something that really makes sense, I just think all that's broken right now. And so I don't care where anybody puts us on any particular chart. They're welcome to make the call that they decide to make. But I don't know that it's very informative.

Sarah [00:35:33] I didn't mean the chart they put us on. I meant the chart where people put you at the bottom where it got stretched and the center moved. You know what I'm talking about? The one Maggie shared in Instagram.

Beth [00:35:42] Yeah. That was just a tweet where somebody talked about how the right ran away.

Sarah [00:35:48] Yeah.

Beth [00:35:48] Yeah.

Sarah [00:35:49] I thought that one was really good. In some ways I want to say our partisanship is the least interesting thing about us. And then also I want to say that's the secret to our success. The thing I know to be true for my experience in blogging is that an elevator pitch and the right timing is really key to success. And we had good timing. And the partisanship at the beginning was a great elevator pitch. It just was. It got people in the door. I still think it gets people in the door. The sense that we're different from each other. Now, some of it might be personality, some of it might be partisanship, whatever the case may be, it's like I do feel like a debt to it.

[00:36:26] I feel a debt still and I don't feel sad when I think back to Sarah from the left and Beth from the right, because I feel like we owe a debt to that elevator pitch. No shouting, no insults, plenty of nuance. So I think it just happened that it made a really great elevator pitch because everything was about to blow up with regards to the partizan spectrum which I think is 100 percent true. Our third co-host, as I think about him, Ezra Klein, just this issue on the political order and how it's all very dramatically changing right now. I think that you're right. But that's what's so fun, I think, is that we let it be a pitch, but we didn't let it be our identity. We let it be a shortcut, but we didn't decide that our oath was to the shortcut, that our allegiance was to that, to who we were being on air, but that we allowed ourselves to just be on air.

Beth [00:37:18] I'm so glad you feel that way. I don't. But it has just been incredibly painful for me because it has been so disappointing to people that I have not stayed within some umbrella that they consider conservative. And that's hard. It's hard to be the person who's disappointing people's expectations. It's also been really important to me to just speak with integrity about where I am at any given time on any given issue. I think if I were trying to make that new plotting system in addition to all those different spheres, those questions I would have about where someone falls, another question is how consistently do you hold these beliefs with changes in circumstances? It's not wrong to be convinced by a compelling leader with a vision who might take you in a direction that you wouldn't have thought you'd go on your own.

[00:38:06] It's not wrong to think the government's role should be different in times of crisis than it is in times of stability. So how evenly do you hold those beliefs over time? That's really shifted for me and I think will continue to shift. And I want to be honest and open about that. But I hate that some people still hold on to this initial elevator pitch that I'm supposed to be here always as a foil to your more left leaning views because I can't do that. And the level of left leaning that you've been [inaudible] issue to issue and over time as well and I think we just have to have room for that.

Sarah [00:38:38] I guess I don't feel any allegiance to it, I just feel grateful for it because I do think it got a lot of people through the door. I'm an enneagram one, so I don't really give a shit about people's expectations of me. I had to let that go. I don't even know if I ever held it to begin with. That's an interesting question and probably a deeper question for my therapist, not for this episode. But the closest I ever got to understanding how that was for you in particular was during the Joe Biden thing, because I just felt like I can't stay here. I can't be where I felt pretty solidly myself inside the Democratic Party if we keep this man as our candidate. I thought, I might have to leave. I can't do this. And I thought, this sucks. But it really wasn't about disappointing people. It was feeling disappointed. I wonder how much you can pull apart, how much is feeling disappointed that you're put in this position in the first place by a party that you had, even if it was just a stupid little form, put your name on. Because that's what's been going on this whole time. We're talking about the podcast industry, but what's so different about us is that our podcasting is just intimately tied up with whatever the hell is going on in American politics. And I don't know if y'all been paying attention, but it's been a lot over the last nine years.

Beth [00:39:46] It's been a lot. And there is no great place to land because it hasn't shaken out yet. The Biden thing is a good example. I said 18 months ago that Joe Biden would not and should not be the Democratic Party's nominee. I said Joe Biden should debate Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips and RFK and whoever else should be on the stage. And the party faithful come back and say, no, no, that's not what we do. He's the incumbent. And I'm like, sure. But I don't know, if you've noticed everything is messed up now. It's a totally different landscape. And so I think the continuous lesson for me is what you said about the industry, too. It's just surfing with these really tumultuous changes in American politics and knowing that it might never really land. I think it probably felt more simplistic to me when we started because I had never worked in politics before and I didn't spend this kind of time thinking about it. I wonder if you spend this kind of time thinking about it, if it always feels earthquaky in a sense? And maybe that's okay.

Sarah [00:40:52] Yeah, I think it does. There's always that sense when I was living in D.C. that like this is the beginning of Republican dominance. The Democratic Party is over. It felt like Dick Cheney was going to take the reins of power and change some stuff and that it will never going to be able to be up again. It definitely feels like that. I think that's probably why I have shifted so much over time. It's because I've just lived through enough that I'm like, no, it never shakes out quite like you expect it to. Even this morning Griffin was criticizing the Kamala campaign about something and he was like, it would be historical. I was like, why would you know? You haven't lived through enough history. You don't have enough perspective. It's not that big of a deal.

[00:41:39] I think there's definitely a piece of that. That's how you get to be one of those grizzled, old political consultants saddling up to the bar and not affected by much. But I don't think there's any way that the history of these last nine years politically is not a real moment, a real era. And that's what I like. It's so hard to detach our podcast from the Trump era and the nine years-- he came down the escalator like a month before we launched this podcast, and so it's just so tied up. I'm really hoping that this next era of Pantsuit Politics is detached from that man. I think that would be great. But then it's sort of like the Partisanship. Would there have been Pantsuit Politics without Donald Trump? I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer to that question.

Beth [00:42:28] I don't know either.

Sarah [00:42:29] I think it's a hard one.

Beth [00:42:31] It is it hard one. I just know that I've learned a ton and that's what I love about doing this. I learn a ton every single day. I was making fun of other media for being like maybe he wins, maybe she wins. We don't know anything in the first segment. But honestly, that feels super healthy to me. So much healthier than where we have been in previous years around previous elections, because that's the truth of it. And it's a lot more empowering to say to people, no, your vote really matters. You need to get out there and vote because we can't tell you what's going to happen otherwise. It's important that you show up. I think about the right/left dynamic and the elevator pitch. That has been the hardest part of this job for me. It's like that an elevator pitch really doesn't fit what we do because we allow ourselves to grow and learn and evolve and shift. And I can't really say, well, here's the promise of every episode other than you and I are going to show up as whole people and give it our best and prepare hard for it and hope to give you something interesting to chew on. But I think that's the conundrum that a lot of media are facing right now. So people either go hard at that promise, which means that they're delivering a product instead of thinking with you and trying to inform, or they get kind of lost in this really big ocean of people making an awful lot of media products.

Sarah [00:43:55] Well, and I don't think that's new. I would love for every one we ever sell anything to have listened to an episode of Pantsuit Politics when we're trying to pitch a speech or an advertising campaign. But that's not the reality. I mean, people have to sell pilots that have never been made. So it's like you have to sell books that haven't been written. And I think that that's always the hard part. So I try not to feel too overwhelmed by that or discouraged by that because I think that's just the reality on so many levels. If you're creating something, the act of creation is unknown and you have to have belief in what you are going to do even before you do it. And that's true of every episode of Pantsuit Politics even after nine years. It's an act of faith. And I'm just so grateful that everyone comes along with us. And I'm grateful that you've come along, that you said yes to that email so many years ago and that we just keep stepping out and face together with everyone that listens.

Beth [00:44:53] So we would love to wrap this segment by being like, and here are our plans for 2025. But that is not how this works. We've learned from the very beginning that we can't really even have a good six month plan because we are so tied to current events. And that's okay. We are going to take a weekend as a team this month to put our heads together after we know the election results and think about what the next year's going to look like. We are hoping for some stability. We're settling in at Substack. We so appreciate those of you who made that move with us. We would love for anyone who isn't there already to join us there. We are hoping to really settle in with Lemonada, and we're just going to go from there.

[00:45:32] Music Interlude.

[00:45:40] Okay, Sarah, we have some unknown period of time in which we need to manage our election stress. And I'm just wondering if you have any tools that you're really leaning hard on today, tomorrow, the next day?

Sarah [00:45:51] I am annoyed by my list of stress management at this point. I just don't think it should take this much to be me. I don't. I list it all for my therapist because I go to therapy. That's one of them. Because he was like, well, what do you do? And I was like, do you want me to make you a list? It's long. I exercise every day. I journal every day. I meditate every day. I eat right. I don't drink caffeine. I don't drink alcohol. I try to get outside and walk. I try not to sit too long. I get seven to eight hours of sleep every night. I really protect my sleep environment. It's obnoxious. I should not have to do all that just to get through an election season. But let's be honest, that's not even elections season. That's just my everyday life. I got to dial it up even more for election season, and I think I resent it Beth. It's all I'm trying to say. I resent how much effort it takes.

Beth [00:46:39] I think that's really fair. It is a long list. Your list is longer than mine, but I feel like I have a pretty long list, too. I am very, very, very committed to my yoga practice, probably even more so now than I usually. And that's always a discipline for me. I have done yoga every day in some form for 10 years now, but right now I am much more focused on it and committed to it and I'm more dialed into what kind of yoga do I need today? So that's important to me. I also just grabbed a novel to read this week so that when I feel like I should spend some time on X, I can think but you have that book waiting, maybe head over to that fun book. And it's a fun book, not an on my list to read for work book. So I'm trying to just give myself a couple of real visual reminders. I leave my yoga mat out in the floor instead of putting it away. I look at my big, pretty hardcover novel and think let one of these things call you, Beth.

Sarah [00:47:34] Well, I'm just trying to spend time with my people, but it is just exhausting. I got some hormonal stuff happening right now. I'm trying to get on the other side of this. That's all I'm saying. I'm trying to get on the other side of this. For real. I need Kamala to lock it up tonight early. Real early would be great.

Beth [00:47:51] That's kind of how I feel about 2024. I think I'm just ready.

Sarah [00:47:55] Bitch go on. You can go. You have been not kind. And I was really over the anthropomorphizing years and feeling that way, but 2024 can go. Bye. Bitch bye.

Beth [00:48:09] When Kamala says turn the page, I think there are a lot of pages I'm ready to turn. I'd like a new book, actually. I think I'm ready for a new book.

Sarah [00:48:17] I'm almost done with my planner. So I'm going to get a fresh planner. It wasn't a year planner. I think I've been in this one for more than a year, so I'm going to get an actual fresh page on January 1st. So that'll be fun.

Beth [00:48:28] That'll feel good.

Sarah [00:48:29] Anything that feels good. Chocolate chip cookies. Apple cider donuts. Walk outside in the falling leaves. Whatever. Lean in and find. It's all I'm saying.

Beth [00:48:38] Head over to [inaudible]for some ice cream.

Sarah [00:48:39] Whatever.

Beth [00:48:40] It's all good. The two biggest self-care ideas that we have for you this week are to join us on Substack. Tonight, we're going to be on 8:00 Eastern, 7:00 Central. And it's just fun to even scroll through the Substack chat and see everyone's beautiful faces out there voting. It's incredible. So Substack is a good place for self-care with us. And then, of course, Thursday we will be in Boston with Vanessa Zoltan for our live show, which I hope is a joyful celebration. But it could be lots of things. It could be anything like everything else could be anything. But I know it will be a good time and that it will be very nourishing to everyone's spirits. And so if you cannot be in Boston with us live, we hope you'll join us virtually.

Sarah [00:49:21] And we're going to have a really cool program. We're going to treat the oath of office as a sacred text. So we're going to really dive in to the wording and our emotional connection to the oath of office. I'm really excited.

Beth [00:49:32] I'm excited about that and I'm excited about our magic one plan for the end. We're going to talk about if we could change one thing in our system right now, what would we change? And I'm excited to hear what you and Vanessa think about that. I've been working on my answer for a while. So lots of good ways to be involved. You can check our show notes for links and details. Thank you for spending your pre-election time with us. Thank you for letting us do this for nine years. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the ways in which you all have been the engine of our personal growth and our business stability. And because of that, we will be able to be here together through whatever happens. We will see you back here on Friday. Until then, have the best election available to you.

[00:50:14] Music Interlude.

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Emily Helen Olson. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. Megan Hart. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. Genny Francis. Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen. The Munene Family. Ashley Rene. Michelle Palacios.

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.