A Different Approach to the News

Topics Discussed

  • What to Expect from Pantsuit Politics in 2022

  • Sarah and Beth’s Political Resolutions for the New Year

  • Outside of Politics: Our Words of the Year

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Episode Resources

Transcript

Sarah [00:00:00] I'm not looking to be comfortable or righteous, I just want to figure out what's going on. And elections are a good opportunity for that. They tell us a lot about ourselves and our country and our politics and our policy. Sometimes it's like really not fun things to learn. Like that policy doesn't really seem to matter to the voters a lot, and it might make us feel good to take a holy picture and dunk on those people. But what does that solve? Where does that get us? 

Sarah [00:00:34] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:35] And this is Beth Silvers. 

Sarah [00:00:37] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. 

Beth [00:00:53] Hello, everyone, welcome to the last episode of Pantsuit Politics for 2021. I don't know how that happened. It was like so fast this year. It's really impossible to start this episode in any way other than expressing our truly deep gratitude to all of you for listening. 

Sarah [00:01:08] Yeah, when people ask us how we manage to talk about the news and talk about politics constantly, we always say, "Well, it's because we're not alone." Obviously we have each other. That is a huge component of what I tell people when they say, "How can you do that for work?" I'm like, "Well, I have this lovely human who I sit down and process all the stuff with, which is amazing." But getting to work through these ideas with all of you, hearing your perspectives, hearing your stories, it is truly shocking. The breadth of experience contained within this community. Here's a fun thing that happened to me in 2021, just as an example. I have a young woman in my church congregation who's interested in being an aerospace engineer. And I thought I better have somebody in the audience who has this experience so she could talk to her. And then I had to delete the Instagram Story because so many people responded. Yeah, yeah, I do. Me. My husband. My dad. I was like, "Our audience, what is not contained within this community?" But it's so incredibly valuable as we move through stories about Afghanistan or stories about the trans community or stories of like whatever we are talking about from our very limited perspectives of two women in Kentucky, this community is like, "Let me add this whole entire layer of complexity and nuance to it." And it is such a blessing. 

Beth [00:02:29] We know that you have a finite amount of time to spend with news and politics podcasts, and we always want to honor your decision to spend that time with us. So as we think about how to do that next year, we're going to get back to our annual tradition of setting resolutions for how we want to show up to process the news. That's what we're doing today, thinking about how we want to grow as citizens and as people who spend time with you processing the news together. 

Sarah [00:02:53] Before we make those political resolutions, we want to give a sneak peek into some of what will be happening around here at Pantsuit Politics in 2022. And then we'll end this show end of the year, as we always do, talking about what's on our mind outside of politics by sharing our words of the year. 

Beth [00:03:16] Sarah, 2022 is going to be very busy for us, and I keep thinking about an insightful observation that you made early this year, that election years are different for us than off cycle years. And I wondered if you could talk maybe about that a little bit because I think that that will help people understand a lot of what we've done this year and what we have planned for next year. 

Sarah [00:03:37] Yeah, I mean, we've been at this long enough where we're starting to see the trends and the cycles. And we grow a great deal during election year. Probably not surprisingly, like everybody's very consumed with politics and looking for a space in the wilderness to work through those thoughts and process the intensity surrounding election years, especially in news coverage. So I realized that those are just years of growth for us, and it's just like, buckle your seat belts. Here we go. There's going to be a lot to cover. We're going to grow a lot. And then years when it's not an election year, are really good years for us to say, "Okay, so  let's not get stuck in habits or processes that are no longer serving us or that we need to abandon in order to really serve our new and growing audience." And so those are years of really organization, reevaluation, staffing and that's what this last year was for us for sure. 

Beth [00:04:30] And you probably noticed some of those changes. I noticed them big time when I went back through our old episodes to think about what would be in our best of episode. We used to cover so much ground in every episode. 

Sarah [00:04:44] Oh, bless. 

Beth [00:04:45] Especially in our first segment where we try to hit headline news. We would talk about three, four, five topics. Bless our hearts. We can do a much better job and think much more deeply and be prepared in a way that I think honors your time better when we choose what we think is most important. And I think, Sarah, as we grow in what we do here, that curation process is becoming, to me, one of the most important things that we do. It's less what we say about a topic, but more deciding if this topic deserves some time. 

Sarah [00:05:14] Well, I mean, we talked about this in our episode sort of wrapping up the year, but we're just not drinking out of a firehose anymore in the way that we were under the past administration. And so it's allowed a lot of space to say not just what's urgent, but what's important. I mean, that's always the struggle of humanity is not let the urgent distract from the important. And I feel like we've had space to do that this year. I just want to carry that into an election year and we're going to get into that. And then when we talk about our political resolutions 

Beth [00:05:38] And that elevation of the important alongside or even over sometimes the urgent, I think has informed how we've tried to do our second segment of each episode where we pick a main topic to really spend some time thinking about. I have really enjoyed picking some topics that are more politically adjacent, that have a huge effect on politics or that are affected hugely by politics, but are not sort of the cable news cry on, you know, subjects for discussion. 

Sarah [00:06:06] Well, it's because everything in politics in 2021 and so much of our political environment is informed by culture and these cultural conflicts. And you just have to have some space and you have to, sort of, dig in to the adjacent things like multi-level marketing and wellness and how all these interplay inside of our culture to inform the identities that really inform our politics like you just have to. 

Beth [00:06:32] We've also been thinking a lot about how to describe to people what we do here. Folks who've never listened to an episode of Pantsuit Politics, how do we tell them what they're walking into? Some of you have noticed that we change the intro language for the podcast. We no longer say "The home of grace-filled political conversations" because guess what, not everyone agrees what is grace-filled. And that sets up a huge set of expectations for people who have not been here before to understand what we mean by it. And so we're trying to be much more straightforward and to give people room to come in and hear what they hear and just recognize that we take a different approach to the news than you can hear everywhere else. But how you characterize that is going to depend on a lot, on how you think about things as you come into our discussions. 

Sarah [00:07:15] Well, to me, it's like it's less the grace-filled part of that intro that I thought we'd outgrown, I still think that we are grace-filled and I still can make a pretty strong case that grace is a word that should be in our lexicon as citizens, no matter what your religious or spiritual background is. It's more than political conversations because I just think we just were talking about -- like we're not just coming on here and having bipartisan or even partisan political conversations. We don't just talk about the the sheer baseline politics of whatever is happening in the news. We really try to take a different approach to the news, and we really try to process the news and process how culture interacts with the news and how our values as citizens interact with those cultural issues. And it's more expansive than all that. Political conversation was not containing linguistically with what we try to do here even with the adjective of grace-filled. 

Beth [00:08:14] I think that everything we've spent a lot of time on this year is making our premium content that we have on Patreon and Apple Podcasts subscriptions, work that we are really proud of. We really understand what we're trying to do there. For me, that space is our answer to the question how do I pay attention without being depleted because we have a lot of fun in those spaces? I hope we have a sense of light and optimism in those spaces, and I also think that it allows us to be more granular in talking about what's going on in the world than we're able to be in two episodes a week here. 

Sarah [00:08:46] Well, 2021 was a big year for the News Brief because it moved to Patreon and Apple podcast subscriptions, which really did help me clarify and use the feedback of the community to think through what I'm doing there. Like I talked about on that episode, the wrap up episode, I just learned a lot. It also gave me space and clarity to just realize, like to see the threads, to see the patterns in news coverage and help our audience and our premium channels navigate that in a way that I'm really proud of and I'm excited to do more of it in 2022. 

Beth [00:09:17] I have been really proud of the Nightly Nuance this year. We are going to change the name of the Nightly Nuance, which might be a good time to share that. Because I've been thinking again how do I describe this to someone who has never listened before? And the truest thing I can say about what I do in those premium spaces is that I dive into topics where I just have more to say about it. So we're going to start calling it More To Say, because sometimes that more to say is a detailed walk through a Supreme Court decision or a detailed discussion of how nuclear power works, as we shared in our summer series. And sometimes it's a really personal reflection on what's happening and how it affects me, or how some life experience that I've had is causing me to react in a particular way to it. One of the episodes that I'm most proud of this year was about the Alec Baldwin movie set where a crew member tragically lost her life.  So just trying to always better understand what we do and how to share that with people, and I think we've done some good work around that this year. 

Sarah [00:10:20] Yeah, and I'm going to change the name of the News Brief to Good Morning. Because let's just be honest, that's what you'll come for anyway, so we might as well name it that. And Good Morning, we're Sarah Stewart Holland. So those are not the only look and sound changes that are coming here to Pantsuit Politics. The podcast icon is going to be changing in the new year. Just prepare yourself for some changes to the look and feel of the show, both on your podcast player and on our website. We're really, really, excited about that. I mean, it feels like we just did this, but in actuality it's like three years ago. Oh, time is a flat circle. I'm really, really, excited about these changes. I feel like we've really circled in and found some great words and great visual cues to better and more quickly introduce people to what we do here. 

Beth [00:11:09] And we are so lucky that many of you have been with us for a very long time and you've seen a lot of these changes. I know that change can be annoying or hard when you're used to something that you've been with for a long time. And I hope that these changes will feel like a celebration of the longevity that you've listened with us. 

Sarah [00:11:28] Or just an evolution too. 

Beth [00:11:29] Yeah, I mean, we really want to keep things fresh. We always want to be honoring that support and that commitment that you've made to stick with us and we are really excited. The team at Bright Creative has done a phenomenal job integrating all of the ideas that we've given to them, so I really can't wait to to unveil all of that for you in the new year. 

Sarah [00:11:49] And of course, we have a book coming out in May, 3rd. Our book, Now What, will be hitting the -- is there still book stands? Bookshops, book websites? I don't know a good word to say where it's going to be hitting. But we're so excited for that to be coming out. Of course, we might have a possible exciting news in 2022 about a TV show. We're still in that process, so it's going to be a big year. 

Beth [00:12:12] But we are still going to be here with you every Tuesday and Friday to have the kinds of conversations that we've been having this year. We will still be with you sometimes live and in person. We're very excited about the speaking engagements that we're booking for 2022. We are filling up fast. So if you have any interest in bringing us to your school or organization, please let Alise know as quickly as you possibly can. We will still be interacting with you in email and online and in those premium spaces. And we're really excited to interact live with some of you in person in Waco in April. So it's going to be a big year. We're excited to be in it with all of you. And we always want to just be communicating transparently about what we're doing and why we're doing it. All right, Sarah, 2022 thoughts. Lead us to our political resolutions. What is on your mind? 

Sarah [00:13:15] Well, it's just the midterm elections. It's just going to be -- it's an election year we're just talking about. It's going to just define everything. I mean, it's going to define so much of the congressional calendar. Let's just be real. They're not going to get a lot done from this point forward because they're all going to be running for office. Not all of them, a little smattering of senators won't be running again, but, you know, all of the House of Representatives. And I'm just trying to prepare myself for the horse race and all the ways in which that coverage really frustrates me. 

Beth [00:13:47] So if you think about that horse race that's coming, how do you want to react to it here? 

Sarah [00:13:56] I want to sound like an old lady. That's okay. This is going to be irrelevant to my word of the year as well. Look, as you get older, time goes faster. Not breaking a new ground here, right? I'm not saying anything life changing. A two-year congressional term or a four-year presidential term feels much more impactful in your twenties than it does in your 40s when you've lived through several of them. And so I'm just, sort of, orienting myself this way. It's important. It will have huge consequences. And, also, there will be another one. And remembering that, and not I'm not doing a this is what it means for all time. I'm just not going to do it. I'm done with that. This is something that I'm done with as  I've turned 40. As I'm entering my 40th decade, as someone who loves politics and watches politics, works in politics, has been consumed by politics, I'm not doing it any more. I'm done with that particular take on the forever consequences of especially on the parties of the elections. 

Beth [00:15:05] I like that. I've been thinking about the election in connection with my resolutions too, and I think I don't know if this is the opposite of what you just said or if it's really concurrent with what you just said [laughs]. I have been thinking about how I took this blissful break this past year from really following what is consuming everyone on Twitter or what is consuming everyone in cable news or talk radio. And I think it is important for me to jump back in to some of that next year because I think that understanding what is motivating people, and what is motivating people who are highly politically engaged and active in an election year is relevant to what we do and important. So I will spend more time in 2022 listening to podcasts that have a perspective that is very different than mine than I did this year. You know, this has been, sort of, a comfort year for me where I have spent the most time with people who have the most similar views to me. Next year, I'm going to have to go back out into the wild world. And I mean that both right and left without doing any false equivalency about  who's got the moral high ground anywhere. Those perspectives are going to be relevant to the United States of America next year, and I've got to spend some time in those spaces. And so what I keep thinking about is though that I want to do that, and that I want to find a way to do that without it limiting my own thinking about what's important. How can I still do that curation element of prioritizing? This is the thread that I am interested in following, but still understanding what threads everybody else is following. 

Sarah [00:16:41] I think my most favorite thing that we've learned this year or like my most favorite Pantsuit Politics meme, I guess, is the story from Nancy Pelosi's biography that Susan Page writes about. About how a legislator told Nancy Pelosi early in her career that he didn't come to Congress to take holy pictures, and neither did she. 

Beth [00:17:04] There's is a lot of holy pictures taken around an election year. I don't want to do that. If you're not trying to pay attention to polling demographics statistics that mess with your holy pictures -- let me give a really hard example, you know we didn't spend a lot of time talking about 2021. The fact that Donald Trump gained voter shares with Black Americans and Latino Americans, we don't spend a lot of time talking about that in the Democratic Party, and we should, because that's the reality. But that doesn't match up with a lot of our holy pictures. And I don't care about holy pictures anymore. And I just think election seasons are like a magnet for holy pictures. And those narratives that align with what we tell ourselves about elections or what we tell ourselves about each other, what we tell ourselves about the parties, when really they could be -- they're like massive data gathering opportunities to really, like you said, let's just take the lay of the land, whether we like what we see or not. So that's just what I want to do.  I'm not looking to be comfortable or righteous. I just want to figure out what's going on. And elections are a good opportunity for that. They tell us a lot about ourselves, and our country, and our politics, and our policy. And, you know, sometimes it's really not fun things to learn. The policy doesn't really seem to matter to the voters a lot that sometimes they might agree with a party on policy, and it might make us feel good to take a holy picture and dunk on those people. But what does that solve? Where does that get us? And so I just want the election to give us information and not more holy pictures. 

Beth [00:18:43] Related. Especially related to your point about information, I want to resist the pull to nationalize because congressional elections should not be nationalized. 

Sarah [00:18:56] No. 

Beth [00:18:56] Right. That is not the constitutional formulation of congressional elections. And I think some of our best, most effective members of the House know that and run and conduct themselves as members of the House as though they are there to represent their districts. I want to do a better job of developing an understanding of what affects voters regionally, what affects them at that state level, what affects a particular district. Because I think there are lots of places in the United States where there is going to be an issue motivating people. That is, there's just not part of the national narrative. I think, for example, about the Democrats from states mostly in New England who pushed so hard for an increase in the SALT deduction, even though that is as a tax deduction for the very, very, wealthy. It's like a localized issue that, for the most part, goes against what you would talk about as national trends in the Democratic Party and its platform. That's so critically important to understand and how people vote for their members of Congress. And I just I want to do a better job of that, which means following more local reporters and their work, subscribing to more local news outlets, asking listeners constantly to tell us about what's going on in your district and sharing the stories when we get them. That's high on my priority list for next year. 

Sarah [00:20:20] Well, because the truth is those regional stories help us understand national politics better. It's not like you avoid them in a sort of desire to avoid national politics, it will help you understand national politics better. I think some of the best reporting this year has been from The Times and Vox going out there and being like, "Well, if  the Republican Party is the villain and the Democratic Party is the hero, what's happening in Democratic districts? What's happening in Democratic states?" And they ain't all great. I think some of those pieces have been so illuminating. And not just like Democrats suck too, but really pushing ourselves to think about, "Okay, well, why do we all engage in Not-In-My-Backyardism?" Like what is that reflective of? Is that reflective of like -- oh, I don't know, our disintegrating social safety net system? I think that's really helpful, and it pushes the conversation in really positive ways instead of just they're terrible. Their priorities are terrible. We're great. Would I like to see more of that from the Republican Party? And I think there are people that do that, some pundits and writers, but there's always room for more. [laughs] 

Beth [00:21:29] It definitely helps get us out of just symbolic hell, which is what national politics feels like. When I say national politics right now, a lot of what I mean is just every fight is a symbolic clash between left and right, and I hate that. I'm very interested in learning more about the industry and about what's going on with industry post or in a new phase of the pandemic. I think talking about the next iteration of vaccines. There's so many very real concrete, difficult, issues to work through. And I hope that the zooming in on those creates not only better discussions, but better candidates and better campaigns. 

Sarah [00:22:08] So we spent a lot of time talking about our resolution surrounding the election. What does it mean that we're not spending a lot of time on this episode talking about the pandemic? 

Beth [00:22:17] It's probably reflective in some ways of our fatigue because we're not immune from a general fatigue with the pandemic. I did not expect the pandemic to be as present for us in 2021 as it has been. And I just don't know what it's going to mean in 2022. I know that it's not going to be over. I think it will be a very different phase. My church is talking about it as a rebuilding time, 2022 as a rebuilding year. I really like that construction and maybe a good resolution would be to just to stay focused on that.  You know, we said that for 2021 let's not move beyond it just because we're ready to be done with it. Maybe we just have to re-up that one for 2022. 

Sarah [00:22:58] Well, I was thinking that and then I think I'm actually going to go in a different direction, which is the reason it's different is because we have vaccines. We know more about this virus and we have highly effective vaccines. I don't ever want to lose sight of that. I think I just want to hold that up as the blessing that it is. Just because everyone hasn't gotten it, doesn't change the miraculous nature of those vaccines. And so I think for me, with COVID, I think there needs to be some space to say because of the reality of vaccines, sometimes there is space to move on. We don't have to keep it ever present. I read a really great article in the Atlantic about when are we going to reevaluate isolation standards for vaccinated people who test positive because we need to? And so I think that there needs to be space as we move into 2022 because we have highly effective vaccines, especially if we continue to get positive studies around Omicron so that we've gone through two highly contagious variants that the vaccines have held up against. Then I want to have conversations about where it's based, where it's time to move on. Not failed to integrate, not fail to acknowledge the trauma, learn the lessons and permanently change some behavior. I heard an epidemiologist say like, "I'm just going to wear my mask in a grocery store or an airport because I don't really want to talk to anybody anyway for cold and flu season, for the rest of my life and all that." Yeah, it seems fair. It seems about right. I don't really want to talk to people on airplanes. And so I just think but there is space to say, "Okay, well, we're done with it here. We have vaccines. People are vaccinated. We have those choices. We've held up against two highly contagious variants. And so there is going to have to be space to give oxygen to going back to "normal life". Not normal pre-2020, we're not going to get back there, but a normal life that allows people to travel and connect and gather and do those things even more than they already are. 

Beth [00:25:02] Here's what funny, I wasn't even thinking about that stuff. I was thinking about the effect on public school, the effect on mental health there. The new direction for the conversation around vaccines. I mean, the fact that we're even discussing the possibility of universal vaccines that could confront all variants. And, like, where does this technology go next? 

Sarah [00:25:21] Yeah. 

Beth [00:25:22] I think there are some fascinating conversations awaiting us on what did we learn from this scientifically and what could that lead to next? And I'm excited for all of that. Sarah, before we leave everyone for the whole of 2021, what is your word for 2022 going to be? 

Sarah [00:25:51] I'm so excited to announce this. I felt the Holy Spirit move when I wrote this word the other day. I don't remember what I was writing down. It was definitely not deep or important, but I wrote the word release and I thought, "Oh, that's it. That's my word. My word is release." But I don't know if you knew this, but I turned 40 this year. 

Beth [00:26:08] [Laughs] I heard. So I heard. 

Sarah [00:26:09] Yeah. And so I was moving around my house and I thought, I'm holding on to stuff because I have these stories about myself and it's time to release them. For example, I had two Rubbermaid containers full of yarn that a beloved family friend had given me nigh on 10 years ago. And I did knight a lot at the time, and I have knitted since, but two Rubbermaids of yarn is a lot of yarn, I'd have to become a pretty prolific knitter. And I just released the idea that that was going to be who I was in this decade or the next. And so I gave the yarn away. I released it to a just amazing woman at my church named Martha, who is a truly prolific knitter. And it felt so good and I thought this is it. I need to start releasing more things. I need to release like the election year stories. I used to tell myself for years and years and years about how to feel if the other party took charge or how to feel if the candidate I loved lost the election. I'm just releasing some of that. And I want to continue to work on things I'm keeping in my house, either physical or spiritual or psychological that are, you know, just they're not true, they're not who I am, they're not who I'm going to be and that's okay. And so my word for 2022 is release. What about you? 

Beth [00:27:26] My word is extra 

Sarah [00:27:28] Extra [laughs]. Not to be confused with basic. 

Beth [00:27:35] Right. [laughs] I have spent a lot of the last few years trying to confront the unhealthy aspects of my investment in care. So I'm a person who, you know, if you are an enneagram person, I'm a type two. A lot of who I am and have been has been defined by people pleasing. How can I really prioritize other people's needs and have empathy and understanding for them? And there are dark sides to that. I've spent a lot of time in therapy working that out and adjusting my behavior accordingly. And I feel ready to lean into the bright sides of it in 2022. And so extra to me represents that like, yeah, sometimes I do want to do a little bit more for someone than might seem normal or comfortable to everybody. That's fine. And I want to extend that to myself as well. I want to have more fun. If I want to have a party, I want to have the party. If I want to buy the thing, I want to buy the thing. If I want to go to the place, I want to go to the place. And just really create some permission around myself to take a year off from self-improvement, to be perfectly honest with you, and just be and enjoy it. 

Sarah [00:28:47] I've been extra for a long time. The water's warm, you're welcome. Yeah, that's a great way to live. I don't need anybody's permission to do damn near anything, so you're going to love it. It's great. 

Beth [00:28:57] Thank you so much for joining us. We are so grateful again that you've spent so much of your year with us. We hope that you will spend a lot of 2022 with us. We're really excited making big plans for it to be a great year for all of us together, whatever the universe delivers and we make no predictions about that, what that will be. 

Sarah [00:29:14] Mh-mh. No. 

Beth [00:29:15] But here we will all be together, and that is the beauty of it. So thank you for joining us. Have the best New Year's available. We'll see you here in January. 

Beth [00:29:33] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production, Alise Napp is our managing director. 

Sarah [00:29:39] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth [00:29:45] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers 

Executive Producers [00:29:49] Martha Bronitsky, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliott, Sarah Greenup, Julie Heller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holladay, Katie Johnson, Katina Zuganelis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs, The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, The Pentons. Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sara Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katy Stigers, Karin True, Onica Ulveling, Nick and Alysia Vilelli, Amy Whited. 

Beth [00:30:24] Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nicole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

Maggie PentonComment