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A podcast where a woman from the right and a woman from the left accessorize the news with a fresh perspective. Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers bring a nuanced perspective to discussions about politics and current events.
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Everything is Different
Dec 6, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDKilling of United Health Care CEO Brian ThompsonInternational News from South Korea, France, Lebanon, and SyriaOutside of Politics: Errand BrainEpisode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideThe Bookshelf on Church | Shop The Shelf Pantsuit Politics BoxUnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Live Updates: Police Release Photos of Suspect in Killing of Brian Thompson (The New York Times)South Korea's Yoon faces impeachment after martial law debacle (Reuters)French government collapses after no-confidence vote in PM Michel Barnier (BBC)More to Say About France's Government of Losers (Pantsuit Politics Premium)North Korean soldiers' hooked on porn instead of fighting in Ukraine? Surprising impact of unfettered internet access (The Economic Times)US can’t confirm Putin’s North Koreans are ‘gorging on pornography’ (Politico Europe)Who are the Syrian Democratic Forces? (The Economist)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. Sarah [00:00:29] Hello, thank you for joining us today. We had planned to have a more in-depth, expansive conversation about the Middle East today after a surprise resurgence of violence and the Syrian civil war. However, there were several shocking events in the U.S. and around the world that we could not ignore. And so today we're going to be talking about the murder of United Health Care CEO Bryan Thompson on the streets of New York City; the collapse of France's government; the coup in South Korea and the violence in Syria. All of which are feeding the sense that we have and that we know all of you are feeling that everything is different now. And Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about what Beth has termed errand brain. Beth [00:01:11] While we have those conversations, we want to remind you that we have a Pantsuit Politics fan gift guide. One thing I want to highlight on that gift guide is that our independent bookstore partner, Lisa McLoughlin, has put together a book box with our two books. I think You're Wrong, But I'm Listening. And Now What? How to Move Forward When We're Divided About Basically Everything, along with some little treats. Lisa is very good at little treats. She's a wonderful partner to us and has put a lot of care into this box. So if you would like to give our books to yourself or someone you love, this is a great way to do it. And you'll see all the information in that gift guide, which you'll see linked in our show notes. Sarah [00:01:45] Next up, we're going to talk about the horrifying death of Brian Thompson. Beth, I said to you and Maggie before we started recording that I anticipate a capture of the person who shot Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City before we record another episode. I think they're getting closer and closer all the time. They have identified a photo of the shooter's face. They have identified his backpack. There's lots of surveillance video. It feels like about every 30, 45 minutes, another detail comes out that adds in some sort of identifying characteristic to the person who shot Brian Thompson early on Wednesday morning. Beth [00:02:38] I think that's right. This is so hard because we're going to have this conversation and all along you have to have awareness that this is a real person who has a family and has friends and has colleagues and a community. And so much of the conversation about his death is less about that man and more about the symbol. We have chilling details that tell us that he was shot as a symbol, not just as a man. Instantly we all figured that was the case. Instantly you hear the CEO of United Health Care has been shot and you don't even have to think about what the motive might have been because there is such personal, deep anger and sadness and grief about the state of the insurance industry right now. And I just want to make sure to keep holding both of those things that there is the symbolism and there's a very real conversation to have about that; alongside the fact that this is a real person with a real family and people who interact with them for whom it is not symbolic at all. It is just tragic. So I hope that we can do that as well as as it can be done in this conversation. Sarah [00:03:58] Yeah, the word I keep thinking about and really a word I'm probably going to use a lot in this episode as we talk about a lot of very different events is unleashed. It just feels...
Transcribe →Pardons, Strategy, and the Joe Biden of It All
Dec 3, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDPresident Biden Pardons Hunter Biden The Joe Biden of It AllOutside of Politics: WickedEpisode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuidePete Hegseth’s Metamorphosis: From Critic of War Crimes to Defender of the Accused (The New York Times)Exclusive: The Harris Campaign On What Went Wrong (Pod Save America)Kash Patel Will Do Anything for Trump (The Atlantic)How the Ivy League Broke America (The Atlantic) BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman (Amazon)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. [00:00:29] Thank you so much for joining us today. We are going to talk about President Joe Biden. If you've not been following the news this week, President Biden issued a pardon on Sunday night for his son, Hunter, and that pardon was a very expansive one. It covered any crimes Hunter committed or may have committed from January 1st, 2014 to December 1st, 2024. Hunter had been convicted on gun charges earlier this year. He also pled guilty on tax charges. And the circumstances of this pardon are almost undoubtedly related to President elect Trump's intended Cabinet appointments. So we're going to have more conversation about that. In all the discussion and writing and rumination about the pardons, people are obviously still working out post-election feelings, so are we. We're going to talk more about how we're viewing President Biden and what we're learning about ourselves right now. So a ton of international news that's a little hard to follow without some background. So rest assured, we will get to you on Friday. We're going to devote Friday's episode to breaking down headlines from the Middle East and South Korea. We'll, end the show talking about Wicked, because that's what people are talking about right now. And we, like many of you, saw it over Thanksgiving. Sarah [00:01:37] You might notice this episode is on your feet a little later than usual. Because of the pace of the news right now and what we anticipate the future pace of the news will continue to be, we're experimenting with recording our episode on Tuesday morning and publishing it as soon as our audio team has it ready for you. We'll still publish new episodes on Tuesday and Fridays, and you should typically see those Friday episodes in the early morning. But our intended plan is to react to the news on Tuesday and think about bigger picture questions on Friday. So that Tuesday episode will come a little bit later. We're experimenting here and on Substack throughout the month of December as we continue to evaluate the world and our contributions to it post-election. Beth [00:02:14] Next up, President Biden's decision to pardon his son. Sarah [00:02:25] Beth, before you heard the news about Joe Biden pardoning Hunter, what were your thoughts on presidential pardons? Beth [00:02:32] I have always felt that presidential pardons are the closest thing the Constitution gives the president to a magic wand. It is exclusively in the president's power to do this. There are very few checks on it. We had a lot of conversation about presidential pardons when Donald Trump's presidency was coming to an end and there was speculation that he might pardon himself. Could he pardon himself? No one knows. And the scope of that power was largely undefined then, and I think it became wholly undefined and undefinable when the Supreme Court said that what is a core presidential power is none of our business. And so I think it's basically a magic wand. Sarah [00:03:17] Yeah, they've always felt like treats to me. It doesn't feel like a check on the court. It feels like we're going to give you a little treat because you were president and it's hard being president and here's a little treat for you. So you can pick any of your friends or family members, influential donors, perhaps, that you would like to pardon. And the list of pardons is super weird. I saw this list on X of Jimmy Carter's pardons. That was Wild. G. Gordon Liddy. Why, Jimmy? Why would you pardon G. Gordon Liddy? And this weird legislative thing he did with former confederates like Jefferson Davis. I'm like, what were you doing? He pardoned his brother. Bill Clinton, pardoned his half-brother. So it has never felt in any way, shape or form like an important constitutional check or some way to exercise policy. And it was just felt like a treat and just like a little gift to the president on the way out the door. Beth [00:04:18] And like many treats, it can turn to poison pretty quickly. I think maybe some presidents-- and maybe this is Jimmy Carter, I don't want to speak for him. But I think some presidents have maybe a high minded view of the pardon as closure. We often discuss the pardon as closure related to President Nixon. When people have advocated for a pardon of Donald Trump, it has been discussed as a closure, a unity, ...
Transcribe →Show Gun Safety: A New Approach to Gun Violence
Nov 29, 2024Tap to summarizeWe’re revisiting an episode from September 2023 about safe storage, the portrayal of weapons in media, and reducing gun violence. We hope this episode is helpful to you as you prepare to spend time with friends and family over the holidays. Episode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideRed, Blue, and Brady Podcast.Brady's ASK programShow Gun SafetyThis 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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. Sarah [00:00:29] Thank you for being here today. Our team is off for Thanksgiving, so we're going to reshare a conversation we had last August with actress Piper Parable and Kris Brown of the Brady Organization about The Show Gun Safety program and ways to have better conversations about guns with the people in your life. Look, we know that under a Trump administration, it's a lot less likely we'll see sweeping gun reform passed. But that doesn't take all options for meaningful change off the table. And we hope this conversation reminds you about what is within the power of us as individuals and how we can help reduce gun violence in our own circles. Also, don't forget, it's officially gift giving season, and we have a very lovingly designed gift guide for Pantsuit Politics fans. So if that's for yourself, get yourself a gift. If you want to share that with the people in your life and say, look, I'm always talking about Sarah and Beth, here's what you could get me. It's merch, it's tote bags, there's cameo options. It's all kinds of really cool gifts for the Pantsuit Politics fan in your life. And this weekend only, we are running a Black Friday sale with 24% off all our merchandise. So make sure you check out our shownotes for a link and for more information.Up next, Show Gun Safety.Music Interlude. Beth Kris and Piper, thank you so much for spending time with us at Pantsuit Politics. I was thrilled when I found an article about your advocacy work around guns and Hollywood because I feel like a very stereotypical suburban mom on my soapbox about how I don't like the way that guns are depicted in TV and movies. And I feel like the parents of my childhood ranting about video games. But it was validating to see that you see this too. And I was reminded of how in business we say all the time that culture eats policy for breakfast. Why would that not be true? Why would Hollywood not have a role? So tell me about the work that you're doing with Brady. Piper Perabo Sure. Thanks, Beth. Hi everybody, I'm so glad to be back on Pantsuit Politics. I was so excited that Brady was going to do this campaign to bring together a bunch of showrunners, where like basically creators of the TV shows we watch to talk about how we can put ideas about gun safety into television. What I like about Brady is they're not trying to be prescriptive. They're not saying like no guns or control the creativity of the writers. But one thing that they talked about, which they went to Washington, D.C., to talk at the White House about these ideas is safe storage. And my husband had been working on a show like a month earlier where there was a corrections officer, his wife woke up in the middle of the night in a scene on television, and he wasn't in the bed. And that was very unusual. And she rolled over and opened his bedside table drawer where there was a lock box, which she opened with her fingerprint and checked to make sure his service revolver was there. It was. She closes the box. Now she's really doesn't know what's going on. And you see her creep out of the room, like, what's going on? And I thought, that's the perfect way to do it. Because we're not saying that there aren't guns in the house, but we're normalizing safe storage and we're interlacing it right into a hero character. We're showing how it works, actually builds tension in the story. And so when I found out Brady was supporting this kind of idea about how we can normalize safety, that seemed like a great fit to me. Sarah I still remember-- I think this movie is probably 15 years old. It was this dumb comedy called, I think, Couples Therapy with Vince Vaughn. And he does that. He rolls over and he touches his entire handprint on a gun safe before he opens it. And I don't remember anything else that happened in that movie, but it caught my attention so strongly. I still remember it straight up like 10 years later, because it was so impactful to see. It didn't have anything to do with the plot. I just thought, 'Oh, that was so smart' and it had such impact on me. Beth Kris It seems like that is so consistent with Brady's goal of minimizing family fire. Could you talk a little bit about the connection between this project and Brady's larger campaign? Kris Brown Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm a big fan of your podcast and also of Piper, so it was a great thrill to get to work with her, others in the Hollywood community. And as she said, showrunners, those people who are really at the very genesis often of the shows that we love and are the folks who give birth to how most scenes are cut and the use of firearms. And so, the really exciting thing for Brady is that this is an offshoot of our End Family Fire campaign. That's something that we started in 2018, taking a look at other successful public health social norm change campaigns of which the United States has been a leader really ...
Transcribe →Returning Home with Chef Sara Bradley
Nov 26, 2024Tap to summarizeBack in the spring, Sarah was featured on the cover of her hometown magazine, Paducah Life. As part of that cover story, she sat down with fellow Paducah native Chef Sara Bradley. They talked about leaving Paducah, coming back, and how they have worked to integrate personal and professional choices.You can see a video version of this interview on YouTube. Episode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideIn Celebration of Award Winning Podcaster Sarah Stewart Holland (Paducah Life Magazine)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. [00:00:29] Hello. Thank you so much for joining us today. Everyone on our team observes the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. And so we are taking this week off to be with our families. We hope that wherever you are and whatever you celebrate, you are getting some good time filled with rest and that you are surrounded by lots of love as we are this week. So instead of talking about Headline news or big current cultural stories, we're going to do something different today and share a conversation that Sarah had last spring with Top Chef runner up chef Sarah Bradley. Both of the Sarah's grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, and then they left to pursue career goals and they came back to raise their families and begin new chapters of their professional lives. So the two of them sat down together for Paducah Life magazine to talk about those journeys. [00:01:19] And this week, as many of us are traveling to hometowns, we hope that this will be a fun and relevant conversation for you. Don't forget to check out our fan gift guide for the Pantsuit Politics fan in your life as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday. I know for me, the pressure to complete my gift giving is on. And so we've tried to make that easy for you and fun, and so at least put the link for that in our show notes. And we appreciate all of your support. I do want to make sure as we are in the Thanksgiving season that I say thank you for listening. Thank you for spending time with us. Thank you for allowing us to continue to do this work. And for all the ways in which you make it possible and better. And without further ado, Chef Sarah Bradley and our own Sarah Stewart Holland. [00:02:01] Music Interlude. Sarah [00:02:09] So thanks for doing this interview I roped you into. Sara Bradley [00:02:10] Thank you. I was driving over here and I used to live like your house is just a couple blocks from where I grew up. And now I just live a couple of blocks even farther. And I was like, I wonder if Sarah, like, when she moved away, did she ever think she's going to come back? Did you plan to come back here? Sarah [00:02:30] That's a very good question. Now, 18 year old Sarah would have told you absolutely not. I'm getting out of here. I'm never coming back. Just like I think every 18-year-old says when they leave their home town. Sara Bradley [00:02:39] Did Sarah also? Sarah [00:02:39] Yes, that makes sense. Synchronicity on the never coming back. I went to [inaudible]. I went to WCL. I think at a certain point when I was in D.C. because I still really wanted to run for office, I got there and realized I'm not going to want to run to be a representative from Maryland or Virginia. That's not what I want. That's not who I am. That's not what I want. I do want to run in Kentucky. So I guess at that point I started thinking like, okay, I'm going to go back to Paducah. And then when we started talking about having kids, that's when I was like okay. Because by that point I had worked enough around people who were having kids as staffers, having kids in D.C., and I was looking around going, this is not what I want. I do not want to have to get on a list for the Congressional daycare center five years in advance. I lived in a third floor walkup. I didn't know exactly how that was going to work with a child in a stroller in this tiny apartment. And Nicholas worked all the time, weekends, early in the morning, late at night. And I thought, no, I'm ready for the next phase of life and I do not want that phase to take place in Washington, D.C.. Sara Bradley [00:03:50] I never thought I was coming back. If you ask my parents, they will tell you of all of our children we thought that this one-- Sarah [00:03:58] This was definitely not coming back. Sara Bradley [00:04:00] Was not coming back to Paducah. I don't know. I think Paducah is very different than it was 20 plus years ago. Sarah [00:04:07] A hundred percent. Sara Bradley [00:04:11] How old are you talking about when you lived in D.C.? Sarah [00:04:14] I graduated from undergrad, so I'd been 21 that year we spent in North Carolina. I had Griffin when I was 28. So like 22 to 27 is when we were there. Sara Bradley [00:04:26] At 22 years old I had no clue what I wanted. I still was like trying to figure that out. So wasn't even really probably until-- like and then I worked a few more years and I finished up college and then I went to culinary school. And so when you were turning 27, I was just starting to probably professionally think about cooking in that 26, 27. You're a little bit older than...
Transcribe →America in 2024: A Problem Solving Exercise
Nov 22, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDFuture Problem Solving: AmericaOutside of Politics: Paying Kids for ChoresEpisode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideFuture Problem Solving A Chorus of 10,000 Voices (Pantsuit Politics)Chris Murphy Twitter thread on crisis of meaning (X)How Cheerleading Became So Acrobatic, Dangerous and Popular (The New York Times)Upcap the House (X account)Ryan Salzman Episode: When the News is Overwhelming (Pantsuit Politics)Studying Conservatism on a Liberal Campus with Eitan Hersh (Pantsuit Politics)Happiest Toddler on the Block | Top Toddler Books (Dr. Harvey Karp)Does Your Teenager Know How To? (Nicole Shiffler via Instagram)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. Sarah [00:00:29] Thanks for being with us today. Our team was able to take time together in person earlier this week, which is a very rare occasion for us. And we spent a lot of time putting on our own oxygen masks after this very brutal election cycle, but also planning for the future. And it feels like a real whiteboard moment to us both as a team, but as a country, definitely as a Democratic Party. And so we hope to have a lot of conversations in the coming months and years that open up our politics and understanding to new approaches and ideas. And Beth had the best idea that one way we could do that right now is using the Future Problem Solvers framework. And then Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about teen responsibilities inside of family and whether or not you should pay for those. Beth [00:01:19] Before we dive into all of that, please don't forget that we have tried to make your gifting easier through the Pantsuit Politics fan gift guide that's on our website right now. You'll find it linked in our show notes. There are lots of fun ideas for you to share with someone who might want to spoil you this holiday season or fun ways to enrich your own life by participating even more with the wonderful community of people who listen to this podcast. Sarah [00:01:43] Next up. Let's solve some future problems. [00:01:46] Music Interlude. Beth [00:01:57] Well, thanks for saying this was my good idea, Sarah. It actually came, though, from you. We were sitting at breakfast when we went to Boston for our live show, and you said, "I got some things that I've been unhappy with for a long time." And I was like, "I would love to hear what those things are." And you started making a list. And that list reminded me of the first step of feature problem-solving, which is a competition that involves teams of four students. I coach this for our middle and elementary schools. It's a six step process where you take a feature scene like a little story about something 20, 30 years down the road and work through those six steps to find a path forward. Not to solve anything, which is misleading because solving is right there in the title, but to improve the situation. And so I wondered if a good post-election whiteboard container might be a riff on those six steps. Now, if any of my students are listening, we're going to skip some very technical parts of this process and we're doing that intentionally. And we're not taking a future scene today; we're taking the current scene. Just the state of America as we personally experience it, to talk about some of what's bugging us and then to use those other steps to think about a path forward. Sarah [00:03:13] Important Pantsuit Politics trivia note. Not only is Beth a future problem solving coach, but we were both future problem-solving competitors. In fact, we realized at one point during our high school careers, we competed against each other in the State Governors Cup competition. So her knowledge and comfort with this process is much better than mine because I haven't done it since high school. So that's a long time. But we both have a deep love and loyalty to the future problem-solving competition. Beth [00:03:43] So step one in this process is to identify challenges, and it is a true brainstorming step. So we are going to put the chorus of 10,000 voices, as we've talked about before in the draw, because when you're listing challenges, you don't stop and say but somebody else has a worse challenge, or this challenge comes from a place of privilege, or any other filter that you might use to talk yourself out of naming the challenge. You just list the challenges. And so that's the first process that we're going to go through today. As we experience America in 2024, what are things that we personally find difficult, con...
Transcribe →The Time to Be Bold
Nov 19, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDTrump AppointmentsThe Time to Be BoldOutside of Politics: The Sexiest Man AliveEpisode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideFrances McDormand - Telephone Monologue from "Almost Famous" (YouTube)John Krasinski Is PEOPLE's 2024 Sexiest Man Alive! (People Magazine)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. [00:00:29] Thank you so much for joining us today. We probably sound a little different. Again, we are together in person, this time in a lovely farmhouse where we're having a team retreat. Alise, our managing director, Maggie, our director of community engagement, are here with us. The four of us are together thinking deep thoughts about who and how to be in 2025 and beyond. We have the foresight before the election to know that would be a before and after moment for us. And so we are thinking about the after now. And it's really great for us because I think we're all feeling like all of you, some burnout, some depletions and what do I want to do now? And so this is a chance for us to get our thoughts together. It does mean that our sound is a little echoey. Thank you to Studio D who does our sound production for trying to clean that up, and to all of you for your patience. And big thanks to listener Kim and John and Cindy who are allowing us to use this gorgeous space. Today, we are going to talk some more about the shape of the Trump administration and how we are personally responding to some of these picks and how we would like to see others respond to them. And then Outside of Politics, in what I think is a really deep conversation, surprisingly so, we're going to discuss the sexiest man alive and whether rankings like that are useful any more. Sarah [00:01:46] Before we dive in, we wanted to remind you that our team put together a Pantsuit Politics Listener Gift Guide. This is a gift guide for people who love Pantsuit Politics. Okay, so if you're just a big fan and want to buy yourself some stuff that is also allowed, but if you're looking for gifts for the Pantsuit Politics fan in your life, premium gifts, subscriptions, merch, books, cameos, lots to choose from for yourself or another listener in your life. Send it to your loved ones so they know what to get you. And if you're going to do a Cameo, it must be ordered by Thursday, December 19th in order to get it to them by the end of the year. Beth [00:02:17] Next up, let's just talk about Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr. It's going to be great. Well, Sarah, we have some more insight into how the Trump administration is coming together. Sarah [00:02:37] In a hurry. Beth [00:02:38] It's coming in a hurry. How are you taking this in? We talked about this a couple of times, but it's a flood of information and I feel myself evolving day to day in my approach. So what's your November 18th approach to taking in information about the incoming administration? Sarah [00:02:55] I'm still kind of in a huh phase, even with Matt Gaetz. I was shocked. I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't shocked by that appointment. I was. And Tulsi Gabbard, not RFK. I mean, they communicated that very clearly, that that's what was going to happen. But I'm just trying to remind myself that these people haven't been confirmed yet. These are just nominations. I am balancing this sense of the vibe is they want to tear things down, but the strategy is what it's always been, which is barely put together. This is happening so fast; they're clearly not vetting these candidates after all this. It's a constant balance with him in his administration between taking them seriously and also recognizing where they don't take the process seriously, or at least maybe in trying to blow it up they think they should blow up the process, too. I don't know. But you know I'm saying? They're moving very quickly, but it's sloppy like it always is. It's just sloppy. Beth [00:04:02] I keep trying to remind myself that Donald Trump is the president elect and that is the subject and the predicate in the whole sentence and probably the whole essay. And so why would it matter to him if Pete Hegseth had settled a sexual harassment allegation? Sarah [00:04:20] The nominee for secretary of defense? Beth [00:04:21] Yes. Fox News host who has served in the military and now is going to run one of the largest organizations on earth, one of the largest most complex organizations on earth. Sarah [00:04:32] And no leadership experience, just military experience. Beth [00:04:36] But that's the thing. They view that as a feature, not a bug. They've got the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, on the Sunday show saying this is what people voted for. They voted for this kind of disruption. How fantastic. And who is going to go to Donald Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault and lying about it? Who's going to go to him and say, well, we really can't have this guy because he settled a claim like this in the past. Who's going to go to him and say, well, Matt Gates is really a bridge too far for X, Y and Z reason, all the reasons that are part of Donald Trump's personal biography. We elected him as the president. This is what we're going to get. Sarah [00:05:18] I had a friend of mine who's a big T...
Transcribe →Clear Eyes about the Down Ballot
Nov 14, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDTrump Appointments and Expectations Lessons from the Down BallotOutside of Politics: Is It Time for Christmas?Episode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Pantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideOpinion | How to Talk About Fluoride, Vaccines and Raw Milk (The New York Times)A Letter To Elon Musk - by Francis Fukuyama (Persuasion)She Should RunWishful Thinking on Abortion Politics (The New York Times)Counted OutA Common Sense Democrat manifesto (Matt Yglesias - Slow Boring)This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans by Seth GodinThis 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.TRANSCRIPTBeth [00:00:00] Hi, it's Beth. We're working on a weird schedule this week. Both life and the news are coming at us fast. So we recorded the episode you're about to hear early in the afternoon on Wednesday. Just hours later, we learned, among other things, that President elect Trump will appoint Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. And I just owe you an apology. I feel like this is almost my fault because I have been saying that my expectations are so low that the nominations have exceeded them. And then here comes Gates and Gabbard, and I feel like there's the Donald that I know. We also learned after we recorded that Senator John Thune was elected by his colleagues to serve as the Senate majority leader. [00:00:45] And all of this and more, who knows what will have broken by the time you hear these words? It's just a lot to take in. We are taking it in a little bit behind you because of the way the week broke down for us. We always say we're processing the news here. So thank you for your patience as we process at a different rate than you are. We will have more to say about all of this on Substack and back here next week. In this episode, we're also talking about down-ballot races and what we're learning about issues like abortion and ranked choice voting. So I hope that you find real value in what we've made for you. And I appreciate you in so many ways continuing to just put one foot in front of the other with us. Here's the show. [00:01:30] Music Interlude. Sarah [00:01:32] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. Beth [00:01:33] This is Beth Silvers. Sarah [00:01:35] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Beth [00:01:37] Where we take a different approach to the news. [00:01:38] Music Interlude. Sarah [00:01:54] Thanks for being with us today. We are still processing the election and we're going to talk at the opening of the show a little bit about the second round of Trump appointments. And we're going to then process what we're trying to learn or be open to learning from down-ballot races both electorally, referendums, policy-wise. We're going to talk about all that. And then as always, we talk about what's on our mind Outside Politics. And it's Christmas because we just need a little Christmas. And we're going to talk about that. Beth [00:02:22] And it's going to be here in a hot second. So if you are busy looking for a gift for the Pantsuit Politics fan in your life or to treat yourself or to help someone in your life along with your gifts, we would love for you to check out the gift guide for Pantsuit Politics fans. Alise wanted to make this easy for you. So the gift guide is in the show notes. You can find merch, our trip to Switzerland, the Substack membership, all of the ways in which you can enjoy a little pantsuit politics with your holidays in that gift guide. Sarah [00:02:53] Next up, we're going to talk about the latest round of Trump appointments. [00:02:56] Music Interlude. [00:03:08] Beth, we recorded an episode yesterday where we talked about the encouraging signs of moderation inside some of Trump's early appointments, including Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state. And now less than 24 hours, I'm ready to say JK. Beth [00:03:29] Well, we definitely, I think, are back in the era of needing to timestamp our episodes because life is coming at us fast. So we're recording this at 12:13 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, November 13th. I still have this posture of my expectations being set so very low that I'm not super surprised yet. I don't like it. And I have criticisms and I have lots of huh! The sort of I'm just going to not overreact, but react a little bit. But honestly my expectations have been so low that as long as Gary Busey isn't going to be at the FBI, it's a little better than I thought it could be. Sarah ...
Transcribe →Donald Trump: Master Politician?
Nov 13, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDThe 2024 Trump CoalitionWhat to expect from the second Trump AdminsitrationOutside of Politics: Common Ground PilgrimagesEpisode ResourcesWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. Lemonada MediaPantsuit Politics Fan Gift GuideCommon Ground PilgrimageA SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION2024 Presidential Election Results (AP News)Opinion | The Democratic Blind Spot That Wrecked 2024 (The New York Times)AOC Split Ticket Voters (Instagram Highlight)Who Trump has picked for key administration positions so far (AP News)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. [00:00:29] Thank you so much for being here with us. It has been a week since the election and we're still receiving results and processing them together. Today, we're going to share more of how we're thinking about the landscape post-election, as well as some initial things we're hearing from the Trump camp as they plan the transition. Outside of Politics, we have a super exciting announcement to share with you. We're going to take a group to Switzerland next year with common ground pilgrimages, and we'd love to invite you to come along. We just went on one of common grounds pilgrimages this weekend. So we're going to tell you about that experience and what we are planning. We also have an exciting announcement to share. Sarah, you want to tell the people? Sarah [00:01:04] Yes. Today is our first episode with our new network, Lemonada. Lemonada has been impressively changing the podcast game for several years now. I've always been so impressed by not only their work, but the values that are clearly backing up the work they do. If you got tired of me talking about Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, that a Lemonada podcast. They're just doing really incredible work. And listen, it doesn't affect you guys at all; just except that we're hopefully going to have fewer and better ads. So that's the only hopefully thing that you're going to notice from this change as listeners. But we're just really excited to be joining the team over there and we wanted to share that with you. Beth [00:01:51] You might see the Lemonada media logo added to our podcast logo. We're really pumped to join forces with them. But everything we said in our episode about the state of the podcast is still true. We own the show. Lemonada is not going to tell us what to make or how to make it. They are just enthusiastically supportive of what we're doing here and we of what they're doing. And we think they are so excited to have this audience join their larger audience as well. So Huray for change and fresh starts and new beginnings. The other thing we want to share is that we know it's time to get serious about the holidays. I'm getting very serious about the holidays. We were gone all weekend and approximately all of the Christmas presents that I ordered came in while we were out. And my dining room table is just a sea of boxes and packages now. We know that some of you would like suggestions on what to buy for the Pantsuit Politics listener and your life and we're here to serve. We want to make it super easy for you to be able to share our show and everything that we have to offer with your loved ones or friends or for you to treat yourself. So we will link the Pantsuit Politics Ultimate Listeners Gift Guide in our notes, or you can find it on our website: pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. Next up, let's talk more about the election. [00:03:01] Music Interlude. [00:03:09] What strikes me today, Sarah, that we did not know fully the last time we recorded an episode, is that it looks like the American public has given Republicans the keys to the entire car. We know that Republicans have taken control of the Senate. They'll have probably 53 seats in the Senate. We know that Trump received 312 Electoral College votes to Harris's 226 and has won the popular vote. That margin is unclear because they're still counting ballots. Right now it looks like about 3.6 million. Probably will be a little less than that when all is said and done, but who knows? The House is still not called. There are 16 races left to count, but Republicans have 214 seats and they need 218 for a majority. So that's what it looks like as we sit down to record today. Sarah [00:03:53] Yeah, there are some real heartbreakers among those who have lost particularly in the Senate. I'm sad to see John Tester go. I'm sad to see Sherrod Brown go. I'm not all the way ready to call Pennsylvania yet, but it looks unlikely that Bob Casey Junior will win. And same in the House. And I agree, I think that it is likely that it will be a trifecta. Not by a lot. It's not a mandate. This is not a massive margin, which I think that the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress will interpret it as. And we can talk about what that means I suppose in a minute. Beth [00:04:29] I wanted...
Transcribe →The Results Are In: Buckle Up
Nov 8, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDProcessing the Reelection of Donald TrumpThe Path AheadOutside of Politics: Jason KelceWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. 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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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. Sarah [00:00:29] Thanks for being here. We are here for our first episode after the 2024 election, where Donald Trump won in a decisive victory over Kamala Harris. Republicans took control of the Senate and we are still waiting for the results of which party will take control of the House. Beth, it feels good to be here in person recording together for this very impactful moment. Beth [00:00:51] Yes, our sound quality is going to be a little different than what you normally hear because we are in our Boston hotel room. But it is nice to be in person together. We say all the time together is what we have and we have it today in an even more present, energetic way. And I hope that you all can feel as you're listening like you're in the room with us, too. Sarah [00:01:10] And if you want to be together in other ways with each other, our Substack community has really been showing up in the last few days. It just feels like a DM. It just feels like a group chat, like a really good Instagram DM group or a phone group chat in the chat where everyone's just showing up saying what they're feeling. You can reply that, you can start a new thread. That's where I'll start to go when I need something to do on my phone. Beth [00:01:36] Well, people are sharing a lot of photos too, which really changes the conversation and it just feels like people are really vibing there and I enjoy it. I find it very uplifting and I'm so appreciative of all of you who've decided we're going to make this thing happen here. So if you want to be with people who are doers like that, get involved on our Substack. Sarah [00:01:56] All right. Next up, let's talk about the election. [00:01:57] Music Interlude. [00:02:07] Beth, we did a live together on Substack at about 9:00 Eastern, 8:00 Central. It was not an uplifting chat because I think at that point we both could see the writing on the wall. When it didn't start flowing in and she was blowing it out, I thought we're done. Beth [00:02:26] Yeah, I think we both knew where it was headed on that live. In retrospect, wouldn't do it again. I mean, I loved being with everybody, but it's that in-between time when you really don't know. And so you got a lot of people who want to keep the optimism and you don't want to be a person who throws in the towel too early in the evening. But we were also just seeing the numbers and understanding how much bigger her numbers needed to be even in the rural states that she was going to lose. She needed bigger numbers coming out of those states to indicate where the trends were going. And so I think we both just felt it settling in. It's why we were like I'm going to bed. I'll deal with this tomorrow. Sarah [00:03:07] And I had already thought, like, do I want to watch any of this? I don't think I'll do that again. I don't need to watch Steve Kornacki. I just want to know. And there is a part of me on Thursday as we're recording that I'm just glad it's over. That's what I needed more than anything else, to be honest with you. I needed it to be over. I could not live in that space with the tie and the tie poll and then this and then that. It was affecting my mental health. I was like on the edge of a panic attack several times on Election Day. I had to do my alternative nostril breathing just to get my nervous system to take it down from the 13 it had about apparently settled on. And so I was like I'm just going to go to bed. At this point, I just want it to be over. Beth [00:03:51] I went to bed and then I also woke up in the middle of the night and considered looking at my phone and I just decided I'm not going to do that. There is nothing to be gained right now from that. I'm going to get the sleep I can get because that's important. I think that sometimes watching it feels like you're contributing, but you're not. You're just watching. It's great to care. It's not great to tear yourself up in knots. And the other thing that's not great is to prematurely reach conclusions about what happened. I feel like there is such a rush to describe what happened instead of just taking a minute to be like, well, let's see what actually happened, what the facts are before I start to make meaning of the facts. Sarah [00:04:32] There's a famous story I think I told on the podcast before, I don't remember, but my mother talks about when I was an infant that she would listen and she felt like I was too quiet in my room sleeping when I was like a newborn and she would think, should I go check on her? Well, if she's dead I'll need my sleep to deal with that. This is the thing my mother told me. And so I think I have really put that in myself. If it's bad news you're going to sleep to deal with it, so go back to bed. Because I definitely woke up in the middle of the night and was like, no, I'm going to sleep. But then when I woke up in the morning, Nicholas came in and woke me up and told me, which is how it happened in 2016 as well. And honestly, I didn't cry until I talked to Griffin. I think I was upset for Griffin. I didn't cry when Nicholas told me. I had a few moments of-- and I mean a few minutes, not very long-- of shock, oh my gosh, by such a margin. And then I just got very quickly to a place of I knew this. I knew this was going to happen. Like just my cellular level just settled into you've been slow rolling this; we've been watching this for nine years. This is, if not expected, not the surprise it was in 2016. That's for sure. Beth [00:05:57] I didn't get anywhere quickly yesterday. I didn't speak much yesterday. Very few words came out...
Transcribe →What We’ve Learned After 9 Years of Political Podcasting
Nov 5, 2024Tap to summarizeTOPICS DISCUSSEDElection Day Check-InPantsuit Politics Turns Nine!Outside of Politics: Self-Care During Election WeekWant more Pantsuit Politics? To support the show, please join our Premium Community on Substack or share the word about our work in your circles. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website. To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive. EPISODE RESOURCESJoin us on Substack for live election night coverage! We’ll be in the chat and then live video at 9pm ET.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.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)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.TRANSCRIPTSarah [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 t...
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