Beth is out for two more weeks, so I've got a guest host: Laura Tremaine, my co-host over at Slow Read. We start in California, where Laura has lived for 25 years, and get honest about Gavin Newsom — the trolling, Prop 50, the podcast with Charlie Kirk, and why even the people rolling their eyes at him keep talking themselves into him for 2028. That opens up a bigger question we can't stop circling: what does the Democratic Party actually stand for right now, with no leader and no message? Then we get into that viral Atlantic piece, "The End of Reading Is Here." We talk about slow reading as an antidote to algorithmic media, what our civic life loses when people stop reading books, and why neither of us is ready to call it over just yet. We also announce our next Slow Read book. Outside of Politics: the summer the movies came back. The Odyssey, Spider-Man, Toy Story 5, and whether Christopher Nolan is our new Spielberg.

Two weeks left to grab tickets to our live show in Minneapolis on August 29: https://www.pantsuitpoliticsshow.com/p/join-us-in-minneapolis-94f

Topics discussed:

• Gavin Newsom, California Politics, and the 2028 Democratic Primary

• The Democrats' Search for a Fighter (and a Message)

• Slow Reading as an Antidote to Algorithmic Media

• The Atlantic's "The End of Reading" and What It Means for Civic Life

• Slow Read's Next Book: Outlander

• Outside of Politics: The Summer the Movies Came Back

Mentioned in this episode:

The End of Reading Is Here (The Atlantic) — https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/

Slow Read — https://slowread.substack.com

Laura Tremaine's Secret Stuff — https://secretstuff.substack.com

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