Blind Plea - Introducing: Pantsuit Politics

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

We’re excited to share a show we know you’ll love: Pantsuit Politics. Hosted by Kentuckians Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers, Pantsuit Politics offers a refreshing, thoughtful take on news and culture. It’s all about paying attention to what’s happening in the world—without the anxiety.  This week, destruction can be part of the building process; it certainly is a key part of Elon Musk’s approach to business and his new - legally ambiguous - role with DOGE. There is, however, a fine line between disruption and destruction. The tech mantra of “move fast and break things” can be dangerous, particularly when applied to the government. On today’s show, Sarah and Beth explore this idea and how the new Trump administration is letting Musk run full steam ahead. Plus, they discuss the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy, most notably marked this week by Ukraine’s exclusion from the negotiating table with Russia. Outside of politics, Beth shares her new hack for managing her online shopping. Topics Discussed Ukraine Excluded from Negotiations Is Elon Musk Building or Destroying Through DOGE? Outside of Politics: Online Shopping Strategies Visit our Substack page for complete show notes and episode resources. For more episodes, listen to Pantsuit Politics wherever you get your podcasts or head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/pantsuitpoliticsfdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonade. This is Sarah Stewart-Holland. This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. If you are new to our show, welcome. We've been doing this for 10 years and we have learned to take a different approach to the news. We don't chase headlines and we don't lean on outrage. It doesn't mean we ignore our emotional reactions. We just try to work through those together so that we can respond with curiosity and stay grounded and motivated instead of anxious and depleted. And we're going to do that here for you today. We have both had very emotional reactions to the president attacking Ukraine, so we're going to work through that first. Then we're going to slow

down and zoom out and talk about Doge and the federal government and whether we are building or destroying right now in America. And as always, we will end our episode with a little exhale, what's on our mind outside of politics. And today it's our new approach to online shopping. As with every episode, our goal is not to convince you of anything. It's to invite you along as we process the news and discuss our politics so that you can do the same with the people in your lives. If you like our show there is so much more for you on our sub stack. Yes every morning from Monday through Thursday I host Good Morning.

It's a short summary of what's happening in the headlines. Thursday's is special. It's the Good News Brief. And that's where I share positive trends, genuine good news that might have gotten missed. I don't do like such and such town paid person medical bills. Not that that's not beautiful and important, but I really try to find good news articles that

have broader impact. I just covered a great New York Times piece on the ways in which our juvenile incarceration rate has bottomed out and what led to that incredible breakthrough. So it's more along those lines on the good news brief. On Monday and Wednesday, I host More to Say, where I spend 15 to 20 minutes digging beneath and around headlines so that hopefully we have more context and new questions and new ideas. As an example, in the past couple of weeks,

I've covered everything from geothermal energy to online dating to corruption in the Trump administration. So it's wide ranging. I try to keep it fun and interesting and thoughtful. And the comments to those episodes are often just the most rewarding part of my week. Then on Thursday, we come together for a spicy bonus episode of our show.

And this one, we lean a little bit more on the hot ticks. And also the outrage. Because listen, we're human after all. We gotta get it out somewhere. So that happens on Substack. And if all that weren't enough, we've started recapping the new season of White Lotus because we needed a treat. We figured everyone else does too.

That sounds like a lot. It is. Our Substack is a little like a buffet. There's lots of options. You can take what you want and leave the rest. We have an amazing community there. You will learn just as much from the community in the comments as you do from us in the shows. I truly believe that. So please join us on Substack if you're interested. And now let's get to

the show. We're going to talk about Ukraine. The first 100 days of a new presidential administration have the potential to be the most impactful. Campaign promises and concepts of plans begin to take shape and become reality. I'm Sarah. And I'm Beth. Together we host Pansu Politics, a podcast where we take a different approach to the news. Join us for this different approach where we ask questions, resist hot takes, and have fun no matter what the world serves up. We'll get you through the first 100 days and beyond of the new Trump administration.

Stay informed without all the anxiety. Join us for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcast. It was late past midnight when they broke into the farmhouse. Never in a million years would you think that you'd see your parents house taped off by that yellow tape. And they said your mom and dad have been killed. They left behind a wall of blood and the key to a secret. It was a very brutal crime scene. One of the worst I've ever seen. Murder in the Moonlight, a new podcast from Dateline.

Listen now. Beth on Tuesday, the United States and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine. Guess who was not at that meeting? Ukraine. Ukraine was not at that meeting. No, Ukraine was not in that meeting, nor were any leaders of Europe at that meeting. Completely excluded from this negotiation, Donald Trump had already spoken with Vladimir Putin

the weekend before. And since then has been, I don't know how to describe it any other way, but attacking Vladimir Zelensky and the people of Ukraine. He's calling him a dictator. They're trying to extort Ukraine is the only way I can think to

describe it with this agreement that they'll have to pay back $500 billion. And I have to be honest, of all the things the Trump administration has done in the last 30 days, this is one of the ones that has upset me the most. Why do you think that is? Because the cost here is in order of magnitudes different than anything we're talking about in the United States. I'm not saying that there is not suffering. This is not the suffering Olympics, okay? You know, I know that with the brute force reordering of the federal

government, there has been enormous suffering, particularly among our federal workers, much less among migrants and asylum seekers who are being detained, basically incarcerated without their documents. Like this is all documents like this is all horrendous. But we are talking about 80,000 people in Ukraine sacrificing their lives for the cause of freedom. They have lost 10 million people from their country either due to occupation or people fleeing as refugees over the last 10 years because of Russian aggression. And this is a country that has given so much and sacrificed so much.

And to see him speak about them this way, to be an American and be represented by someone who is just abdicating any sense of responsibility to people who are fighting for freedom. It's just so hard to stomach. so hard to stomach. I have so many conflicting feelings about what's happening right now because I really have been working at being open-minded about any negotiating approach that would change the status quo here. This war of attrition, as you said, has cost Ukraine so much. It is costing the Russian people so much, And I try to think of the Russian people

as distinct from Vladimir Putin. Now North Korean soldiers are being sent to just die. They're just being sent off to die in this fight. And again, the North Korean people distinct from Kim Jong-un, very much so. So as much as I have kind of encoded in my neural pathways because of my age and life experiences a pretty neocon approach to foreign policy, I'm trying to open my mind to the fact that we're three years in and this is stuck.

So I am trying to be open minded to solutions I would not have generated that might get us unstuck. I think that's great. But you can do that without trying to rewrite what happened here. To say that Ukraine was the initial aggressor is either ignorant or compromised. That's just wrong. And to talk about Zelensky, who is the closest thing the world has had to a heroic political figure in a long time, as though he is a dictator and a grifter,

is a form of projection that makes me lose my mind. So I really agree with you that this is so consequential in so many layers, the impact that it is going to have on our relationship with Europe, the way it broadcasts that America is an unreliable global partner, and worse than unreliable, we also will turn into a propaganda machine that does the bidding of autocrats throughout the world. It's bad.

I agree with you. I'm open to different negotiation tactics. Both of us, I think, spoke honestly about what happened between Israel and Gaza and the fact that the Biden administration and the Trump administration, to my surprise, work together to unstick it and get something done. But this is not that, these are bad negotiation tactics. You have the administration officials going, Ukraine doesn't have a place, oh no, we'll use, well, Ukraine has a place in negotiations.

Like the underlings, because there's no policy and there's certainly no diplomatic process you go through before you speak, as in previous administrations, are just popping off thinking they're following him, but then he weaves, then they have to follow behind. And so it makes us look weak, much less announcing. I mean, this is just basic negotiation 101.

You announce to everyone that you're in a hurry, that these are your goals, this is what you want. Like this is just terrible negotiation tactics that clearly Vladimir Putin took advantage of. If not, I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, I don't know, throwing some money in Trump crypto coin to back it up. I mean, like, I don't know how else to justify

the meanness, the hard swerve. You know, there is some here that is recognizable, right? He always is hard on our allies since 2016. This is a consistent pattern from Donald Trump. I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna go after the people who are supposed to be on my side because this is about a transactional approach Not about a coalition recognizable and he always seemingly Props up the enemies to make himself look

strong, but in the long term like are we better off because he pulled us out of the Iran nuclear deal? No, they're closer than they ever were. Like, he gets a short-term pop, but it doesn't actually make us safer or make us stronger or make our enemies weaker. In the long term, Russia was going into this week. They've sacrificed 200,000 people as basically cannon fodder. When they didn't have a lot of population growth to depend on to begin with.

Their economy is suffering. Like they were not in a strong position, but they are now thanks to us. Like I'm not saying that Ukraine was in a strong position, it wasn't. Zelensky acknowledged that. He acknowledged like, I understand we're not going back to where we were territorially. We are going to have to cede some territory.

But like, what is this? Again, I'm open to different approaches, but like this is the same bullshit that leaves us weaker than we started. It's also not isolationist Right. So if you think we spend too much money, we should stop spending money Then I think you would say you guys have to work this out. Yeah, we can't broker this deal for you We can't focus on you. We're done. Nothing about his foreign policy right now though is isolationist

Yeah, I don't see how it's America first Because this is taking more responsibility. If you want Europe to step up to the plate, then why don't you say those European leaders need to get in a room with Vladimir Putin and figure this out. Yeah. Put that pressure on them.

He has the microphone to do it. You know, he has more than the bully pulpit. He's so good at capturing the world's attention that if he truly wanted America out of it, he could get America out of it. That's different. Instead, we're building Gaza Lago, right? Like it's the opposite.

Every time he gets a microphone, it's the opposite of what he claims he was going to do, putting America first. And no universe is putting America first, volunteering to rebuild Gaza. So I try to think about when he came of age and political awareness and what are the salient moments

in his life. And I think that he has, I think he shares with Vladimir Putin an admiration for the Soviet Union. But that doesn't make sense with his age. That's the part that's the most confusing to me. He's a boomer. He lived through the Cold War. That's so confusing to me. I know. But the part of the Cold War that I think appeals to him is that there was a great power struggle because Russia was also great, right? And America was great. Now, look, I don't think there's any question where Ronald Reagan would stand on this issue. If you try to ask yourself, what would Ronald Reagan do here? It is not what Donald Trump

is doing. Ronald Reagan probably would have put Americans on the ground in Ukraine to fight the Russians. So this is not conservative to me, and it is not directly tied to that period, but I think he admires empires. And that's the way he's talking about America right now. When he talks about potentially using the military in Panama, when he talks about buying Greenland, like it's expansionist, it is growing America's role in the world, not contracting it.

And it's just doing it in a way that is more aligned with Putin's approach than with anything that we've seen in my lifetime, at least, from an American president. But they are bragging about undoing Ronald Reagan's legacy. I've read interviews from Trump administration officials that are like, our biggest enemy is Reagan policy. Like, that's what we're trying to undo. So they are going after that. And to me, it's just so mind blowing that you would brag about negotiating the release of an American American from Russia. They were held for years

unjustly in Russia and then turn and say Russia was really wronged in this you just had to negotiate an American out of their prison Do you remember last week like it's just what are you doing for doing it? Thank God they did I'm so happy that America is home. Credit where due. But you're right. To not have clarity about who you were dealing with

and to try to deceive the whole world to rewrite what happened in Ukraine. It's very consistent with the rewrite of January 6th here. He has to tell a new story because his ideas alone don't survive scrutiny. So they have to rewrite the story in order to have their ideas pass muster. And I just, I would love to sit in a room with Marco Rubio and say, tell me what you really think. How do you feel about being an instrument of this? Yeah, where do the how are the Cubans that voted for Donald

Trump gonna feel about this alliance with Russia? Like I'm just I'm so confused. And look, here's the thing. I think the other reason this is so upsetting to me is because foreign policy is just the president's purview. There's nothing really we can do about it until there's a different president. But Donald Trump came to power by doing what you were talking about at the beginning, by upending the assumptions

and stating some realities about US foreign policy that Americans were feeling and that no one in either party was articulating. And I really hope that there are people who have ambitions to either be the next Republican nominee for president or the next Democratic nominee for president or the next independent nominee for president. Let's dream big here. Let's say this is what foreign policy is. Not the whims of a man who responds only to the last strong man he had on the phone. Because this is, it's just all driven by transactionalism and strength. Because there's so much inconsistency even within this administration. You this like you said you have the

isolationist we're gonna put America first you have the expansionist and then you have the people going after USAID using progressive justification for America's role in the world going after America's sort of soft colonialism and You know this this truly like very liberal critique of America's foreign policy soft colonialism and, you know, this truly like very liberal critique of America's foreign policy and using that to justify the dismantling of USAID all within one administration. That is not a consistent foreign policy. It's wide open for not just critique but dangerous situations. And so just like with domestic policy, just like with so much we've been talking about,

what do we want it to look like? What do we want America's role in the world to look like? What is the next iteration of American foreign policy going to look like? I don't know if Americans know the answer to that. And so I think that's the tough one. I think we don't know. We don't really know who we wanna be in the world anymore.

Maybe it's not for the next ambitious person, but maybe it's for all of us to think about. And that's why I try to be open-minded. I truly am more comfortable with investing in defensive systems than offensive systems. That's more aligned with my values. Say, how can America be safe no matter what's happening in the world versus be the most powerful, have the biggest guns, have the biggest nuclear weapons, have the biggest arsenal to go out and be on offense in the world? I am okay with that.

If we are going to go more isolationist, I think that that's something that I could learn to live with and that a lot of Americans would be comfortable with. I think people are tired of fighting fractional wars where we send some troops out into terribly dangerous situations, but we don't want to go too far and we don't want the public to really understand it. And we want to keep the sacrifice contained. I think there is a lot about, you know, generations now of foreign policy that hasn't served the country and it doesn't serve the world. So I'm here for a rewrite,

but that doesn't feel like what this is. This feels like it is walking us and the entire world into some very dangerous situations. And it feels like the United States is being played while doing tremendous damage to a people who have shown strength and a willingness to fight for democracy in a way that we haven't in a long time.

Well, that's my question to you. Because what I'm coming around to, as I'm asking myself, what comes next, where are we in this turnover, in this new cycle, and is there a vision articulated that I think we can follow? The place I keep coming back to, and it's a place I was in in 2019 when we went on a Nuance Nation tour and did like these little sweet Google slide presentations as part of our show. I just think America is ready for bigness.

And I think Donald Trump is a cheap imitation of bigness. I think we need to put a lot of things on the table that would have seemed bananas even two, three years ago. When we did in 2019, mine was to uncap the house. I think we need more House of Representative members. 435 people is not enough to be a responsive representation for 330 million. That's one of them. As you sat there and talked about our foreign policy and were asking like, what comes next? Is what comes next mandatory service for Americans? Would that be a big solution to what ails us to

say, okay, it's time that we had mandatory service? We talked about mandatory citizen service, like mandatory volunteering, like the AmeriCorps for everybody, but should a part of that be mandatory military service? It's not my vision. Because I would like to see our military less engaged in the world, not more. I read a book a number of years ago about how often we are sending our military on what are essentially humanitarian missions. And the phrase that really jumped out at me at the beginning of the book was like, they are handing out water bottles and carrying AR-15s and it doesn't make sense.

I think the book was called armed humanitarians, something like that. And people die in those missions. And I would like a rethinking of what the military's responsibility is, because I think the military, like a number of institutions, has been asked to be too many things. And I think that if every American had to do some type of service, the incentive would be for the military's responsibility to continue growing.

So that's not the direction that I would want to go. But would it grow or would it clarify? Because the hard reality, what we say all the time is those situations where people need water bottles, where there is famine or conflict, they affect us. They lead to migration. They lead to upending of social orders that do not stay contained.

So the idea that we have no role to play in the world as the world's most powerful country and military, to me, doesn't quite add up either. It just doesn't, it's not pragmatic. Like, what are we going to do if someone starts committing genocide? That's the question that hangs over all of this, even though people have and do and are right now.

So I just wonder, like, if we're talking about a responsiveness, isn't one of the big issues that we're so far removed from this, and isn't one of the way to prevent that, is to make it very real to all Americans. And maybe what it is is when it's more responsive and people see it up close, then you're having people making decisions in the military who I know we're allergic to DEI, but you had mandatory service. It's a much more diverse, even though the military already is much more diverse than so many institutions. I'm not saying that they like are terrible at this, but you get mandatory service, then you have a lot more congressional members.

You have a lot more local politicians. You have teachers. You have everybody who understands either why that armed humanitarianism doesn't work or why it does. Or you know what I'm saying? Like I do wonder if that if that disconnection is at the core of our inconsistent foreign policy. I hear that. I would want to think about it a lot more.

I am not sold on it. I would rather invest in a service program that lets people serve their country in a lot of different ways. I just think anything that gets us out of ourselves would help tremendously. And I think our foreign policy is damaged by a lack of geography education. You know, there are lots of pieces that I think factor into us as a public really not understanding what our commitments are in the world and who we want to be in the world. I think it's a project to say, what is America's role in the world?

Because you're absolutely right. I don't want to withdraw from the world. I think that's dangerous. In the most selfish respect. I think that's dangerous in the most selfish respect. I think that's dangerous. And I also think it's ungenerous and inconsistent with my values and what I think are a lot of shared values in this country. But I think right now we are kind of lost on what our role is in the world. And we decide crisis to crisis. And you can't make good decisions crisis to crisis. I want to rethinking of all of this and I think there will be opportunities for that because of the ways that the Trump administration will disrupt what we've done before.

And again, I'm trying to keep my mind open to where some of those ideas will be good. They will not all be bad. I've said before and I will say again, I read all of Project 2025. The foreign policy and defense section was, I thought, extremely compelling. It was extremely compelling. I still would love to talk to the author of that section because I think they are getting a number of things right. I think they are getting this approach to Ukraine, this specific approach to Trump's retelling of the story of what happened here, gravely wrong. Well, that's a good transition into our next conversation. We want to talk about what is

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wherever you get your podcasts. ["Swan Lake"] Much like everyone else, our team has been in a constant conversation about Elon Musk and Doge and the Trump administration's approach to the federal government. And we had a pretty extensive conversation on whether Elon himself is a builder or is a destroyer. I don't think his approach to any of his businesses, I mean, at this point, they're so vast and so diverse, from PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX to Starlink to Neuralink. Like, I don't know if you can sum up his, So diverse from PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX to Starlink to Neuralink.

Like, I don't know if you can sum up his approach easily. But I was on the firm side of he has built some things. He has absolutely built some things. Now, I think his approach to building begins with destruction and demon mode. Now, I think his approach to building begins with destruction and demon mode. But I think arguing that Elon is all smoke and mirrors and has never built anything is inaccurate. But you've read the big treatise on Elon. You read the Walter Isaacson biography.

So what's your perspective? Well, I think all builders also have to be destroyers, so it is not a binary. And I think that he is quite comfortable with destroying to build his vision. I do think Elon Musk has vision. It is telling to me that we kick this segment off just by saying, Elon and Doge, and everybody knows what that means. Something that did not exist a few months ago is now in the daily lexicon. He is excellent at capturing attention. He is excellent at moving what is just an idea in his head

to something that is concrete and living and happening. He makes ideas go from unthinkable to inevitable. And a lot of people who've been really successful in creating things are like that, but you don't get any building without a whole lot of destruction along the way. I say none of that as an endorsement to his approach, but I wanna be honest about the fact

that he has just created a lot of things. I mean, we bought a Tesla Model 3 when the first cars were coming out that were affordable for normal people. And to see the charging stations, it's not the car that impresses me. It's that in Kentucky we can drive almost anywhere and hit a Tesla supercharger and

The and the car maps that out for us and moves us from one place to another That takes a lot of vision. That is a project that I don't know many other companies Institutions governments that could have accomplished at that speed and with that efficiency. A lot got broken in the process. A whole lot got broken in the process. But still he made something. And I think that's his appeal to a lot of people.

Yes, he breaks all the eggs, but he makes the omelet. And I'm ready for someone to make the omelet. Can I take us on a side tangent really quickly though? I love a side tangent. quickly though? I love a side tangent. When you're talking about vision I cannot stop thinking about I think it was the Wall Street Journal piece about Elon and Sam Altman from OpenAI, another company he was instrumental in founding. These two are in a in a death feud right now. But there was this reporting that when they first met and started working together,

they would go to these dinners and have long conversations about the apocalypse and how they thought basically it was inevitable that AI would take over and destroy the planet and how they were going to get off and where they were going to go. And I thought, what? Wait, what? Wait, what? So his vision is fueled by the fact that he thinks these companies he's a part of are going to destroy humanity. I mean, he is clearly used to be climate change. That's that's kind of actually where I I don't know find some hope is probably not the right word. I think over, you know, years of engaging more and more

with Elon Musk than I would prefer, that he's just apocalyptic. It's either climate change or it's demographics or it's artificial intelligence, but he is inclined to apocalyptic thinking. He is inclined to think. So. He is inclined to think. So the vision is just that there's a ticking clock over his head at any given moment.

And maybe that's just the fuel for demon mode and everything else. That seems very different to me than Donald Trump's approach to the world. Although what does he care if it's apocalyptic? He's 78. A lot of what the Isaacson biography made clear to me is that Elon Musk grew up

where violence was a daily reality of life. And he has seen an amount of brutality that I personally cannot touch. I cannot relate to. And like world ending violence, like earth shattering violence, not just crime, violence in South Africa, a different level.

Yes. A range from the personal to the world ending, like a range of violence, a constant reality of violence, the sense that nature itself is brutal. Okay, and so I think that if you have that in your neural pathways, then the consequences of the way that he is going in

and allowing federal workers to be treated, for example, right now, just doesn't register as a real consequence. Again, I'm not excusing it, and he's not doing this alone, and it's wrong, and it's awful, and it is shattering the faith of people who are incredible citizens of this country,

incredible patriots. It's terrible, absolutely. And so please don't hear any of this as like an excuse or an apology or a boosting of Elon. I'm just trying to understand because here is the most powerful man in the world right now. What can we understand about him?

And what I understand about him is that he believes in destruction as a fact of life, and he trusts himself to problem solve and build through it. And that building path, I do think he believes in his bones, takes him eventually to some kind of colony in space. Yeah. That's what was so interesting to me is this contrast between Jeff Bezos' approach,

which is we want to save this place, and Elon's approach, which is no, this is lost. We have to get off this planet. That's so interesting to me to build so much, and particularly to be consumed with the federal government. What does that have to do with getting you to Mars? You know, like I am trying to understand the motivations and the strategy and the vision,

because that's the only way you can respond to something that you feel is wrong. Democratic politics is about persuasion. You have to persuade your fellow citizens that another vision is better for them and their families. I think what I've been responding to, particularly with regards to this upending of the federal government,

is chaos is always an opportunity. I am a person with a very high threshold for change, way higher than most people. I understand that about myself. But as you heard me say before, I'm up for big ideas. They don't scare me. It's not scary to say, but what if we just got rid of this department?

Okay, you got my attention. What's your plan for that? I do think that we have been stuck for a long time. And this isn't a character judgment. This is how human beings and institutions and societies and nation states, like this is sort of the cyclical thing that happens, right? People, it gets bad enough, people call out for change,

they get the change, the status quo becomes a place of comfort for the majority of people, so they're going to protect it. And I think that's what we've had for so long with the federal government. Look, let me just confess, almost always in this reporting about Doge and Elon Musk, something will come up in the reporting that they're either reporting on or someone's correcting what they said or whatever it is. And I'll go, oh, my God, I had no idea. Who knew that existed? Why are we doing that?

Like, and I am a person who studies politics. I am a person who worked for the United States government as a Senate aide. Like, I am not necessarily shocked by the breadth and depth of the federal government. It's just like, you know, I was reading a thing about the Presidio National Trust. Now the federal government runs the park by, you know, the and you just get into that and you're like, what are we doing here? Not because I think any of these purposes are bad, but I do think it's bad for democracy when they are so big and so wide that literally no American,

including the Americans running the federal government, understand it all. That's just what we built was something that was just waiting for someone to come in like Elon and blow it up because there's no way for anyone to protect it, it's too big. When it gets too big, it's easy to attack and that means it's hard to protect. So when you read about SpaceX in the Isaacson biography, and I'm sorry to keep citing it,

but it is the most instructive point of reference that I have right now. It helped me imagine that that the entire experience of dealing with NASA has convinced imagine that the entire experience of dealing with NASA has convinced Elon that the government is an instrument of constraint only, not progress. And I think a lot of what he's doing right now is informed by his sense that the government is an instrument of constraint

and we need to get it out of the way and unleash people who can see to the next thing. I think that is mixed in with his parenting experience and the transgender child and the public backlash to his perspective on that. There's a lot going on here. I think he's a person who probably is just constantly going through a lot of things and not dealing with them in a healthy way. And yet he does a lot and he can see a lot.

Where I relate to some of this is recognizing that common sense, they like to talk about common sense, often dies in bigness. As you were just saying, as things get bigger, it is harder to say, well, you know what I meant. No, because now there are 6,000 people who read your memo and they are not all going to know what you meant, right? There's just, there is no way in bigness

to have a vibe of, well, let's just do what makes sense. And so we get things that don't make sense. My 14-year-old daughter just got her first job for the summer. Filling out the tax paperwork for a 14-year-old summer job does not make sense. Nothing about it makes sense. The process to get a passport does not make sense.

There are so many places where we interact with the government now, and it is slow and it is unwieldy. It feels purposefully hard. The ease with which we can do almost everything else in our lives highlight that our government is slow and unwieldy and purposefully hard in a lot of places. And you know who knows that better than anybody else? The people who work in it every day.

Who would love to fix it and get constrained in a bunch of different ways by things that they cannot fix. So I get where he's coming from and I get that he trusts himself in a way that he doesn't trust anyone else. And I think that pride goes before the fall always. And I think that the way he's doing this

is going to have generational damage. They're not gonna be able to rehire all the people they accidentally fired. Yep. A lot of talent is going to decide that the government, just like the world is gonna decide that America is not a reliable partner, a lot of talented people are gonna decide

that the government is an unreliable employer and it's not worth it. And I don't think those people are gonna be rushing to work for the tech oligarchs who made it this way. So this is shaking things up and I think some good will come of it and I think a lot of difficulty will come of it. Which is sad because as some of the Republicans who are trying to like very delicately nudge him

in a different direction are saying, he could do a lot of good if he would slow down and have a tiny bit of humility about this. Because they're not really still clear on what he's supposed to be doing. I can't decide if he's supposed to be making it more efficient or supposed to be saving money or supposed to be cutting the federal workforce or supposed to be doing all three because all three seems like a tall order and they seem to want

to save money until someone points out you can't save money and you're going to get nowhere fast at these numbers if you're trying to save the amount of money you want to save. So it feels like the firing people became the goal as opposed to saving money through salaries. We're just trying to shrink the federal workforce. That has now become the entire goal. Whether it saves us money or not, we just want to shrink the federal workforce.

And then when someone points out that could make many, many things less efficient, why don't you pay attention to some of the processes that are already not that efficient and are going to be made exponentially harder when there are thousands and thousands of positions left unfilled, then again, efficiencies, then we talk sideways around that goal as well. So it is frustrating because I do think there's so many like particularly software issues where departments don't have the same software, you know that there was a great piece in the Times where the guy said when you heard Elon going on about the mine like it's real

I've been there where they store people's retirement records and they take 60 days to process a federal worker's retirement because all the systems are mismatched. That feels like a place that Elon could apply his expertise. But then we're being told that he's not even in charge of it. He's not a government employee, he's a special government employee. What they're saying on true social, what they're saying to reporters versus what they're saying in court are also completely different from each other. And I think that's because the government does still have some real constraints baked

in. And when they go to court, they run up against those constraints. And so they backtrack, you know, when Donald Trump is flying around on Air Force One with Elon and doing interviews with Elon in the Oval Office. It's something different than what gets put on paper where he's just a special government employee. He's only going to work 130 days this year and he's going to file all these disclosures. Don't worry because there are real restraints baked into our system and we're going to test all of those over the next couple of years. You're so right about not having identified goals. And one problem with the bigness in federal government

is that there are so many agencies that there can't just be one goal. It would be nice to say we would like to shrink the discretionary budget by X percentage this year. But when you get into the details of that, it's extremely hard and you see that playing out among senators who are saying, Republican senators saying, but not my state. What my state is doing is important. We got here for a reason.

I think that's the hard thing to acknowledge. The status quo always is working for someone or it wouldn't be the status quo. And so unwinding all of this is going to take time and care and a vision. It should be unwound in a lot of places. We are doing things backwards in a lot of places. We have programs that really served someone when they started that probably should be revisited now. We have things we're not doing

that we probably should be doing. I had an experience this week in my house. I've started using Claude more. Claude is like ChatGPT from Anthropic, a different company. And I work with Claude a lot because I'm trying to teach myself how to use artificial intelligence. It's not going anywhere and I don't wanna be left behind.

And this week I realized I could not hire a writing coach that's better than Claude. It is the best, most detailed, thoughtful feedback on my writing that I have ever gotten anywhere. Wow. I could not hire a person who does this as well as this AI does. And that's weird and it's a little unsettling.

It's also extremely helpful. And it tells me there's tremendous opportunity to change the way that we do things everywhere. Tremendous opportunity. I just wish they would get to it and see the people in the process as partners instead of as necessarily obstacles. There are people in the CDC

who would get excited about those ideas, right? You're telling me that we can do this more efficiently, hooray. You're telling me that we can start to incorporate new technology, amazing. And instead they're just calling them Marxist and communist and lazy and useless and shoving them aside. The very people who could combine what they know

with what he knows to great effect. It's a tragedy. Here's where I keep bumping up against the edges of my own brain. First, I wanna say what I think I've learned from them that we should adopt. The we in opposition, resistance, Democratic Party, whatever. When you are protecting the institutions, when you're protecting the status quo, there are so

many constituencies that you're looking out for. I think this is really what hamstrung the Biden administration. There was just too many constituencies. You cannot think big. You cannot, you can think big, but you can't act big. If you're looking out for climate activists and union organizers and social justice organizations and tech entrepreneurs, somebody's gonna get left behind. Elon was one of them.

They hurt his feelings because they didn't invite him to the electric car summit because they didn't want to piss off the union people because Elon's pretty anti-union. So like, you just can't, you cannot act big without pissing people off. They don't care. They don't care.

It's like a superpower they have. They act big because they don't care what Republican senator from the great state of Alabama is going to get mad because they're cutting federal funding even though that's a huge source of Alabama's income. They don't care. They just say, this is it. This is what we're doing. And I think what they're showing is like the American people are hungry for that.

Even the farmers. I mean, I've seen a lot of these videos where people say I'm a big Trump supporter or I've heard the reporting from the Venezuelan community who says we supported Trump, but he didn't mean us. But I haven't heard anybody say, I hate him, I'm a Democrat now, have you? Everybody's like, I'm still on board.

I just thought he was gonna think about me a little more clearly. There's a lot of power in saying, we're gonna do this, consequences be damned. That's what I mean about like every builder is also a destroyer. So I think one unfortunate thing that's happening in a lot of the post-mortem for Democrats is that by saying there were too many constituencies,

it sounds like you're saying, and those constituencies are terrible. It's not wrong to have climate activists. It is also a fact that climate activists disagree about the path forward in so many respects that you end up in litigation over how to build clean energy. You're trying to build something to deal with existential problems.

And people are going, but that's gonna take a lot of water and that's gonna displace a certain species. And it's true, everybody has a point. When you decide to build something, some things are going to get destroyed in the process every single time. And so I do think you're right that the appeal of Trump in many ways is clarity about what he wants to build

and a decision to just keep moving forward and not be constrained by other voices. And it's so powerful, he doesn't even have to achieve it. That's how powerful that attitude is. He's not a great builder in his personal life and definitely not in his first term. Now he seems to have learned some things this second term, at least about the destroying part of building. But like, he's not even that good at it.

It's so appealing. It's so intoxicating. It's so impactful politically. He doesn't even have to deliver and he can change his mind a million times. But the idea that like, we just going to do it, action. I think people are so hungry for action and where I keep bumping into the edges of my brain is a new vision for the federal government.

Because in so many areas, like I just articulated with the mandatory service, I think we need bigness. I think it's time to go big. I think it's time to build big. I think it's time to include people in a big way. Like I'm ready for bigness. I'm ready for some big solutions that make people real uncomfortable because they're so outside the norm of what we thought we could do, right? And I can't, I can't cross that or make that square with a federal government that I do believe was too big. And this, I'm a, you know me since we started this podcast. I was the guest in the car on the federal government. Government can solve problems, government can solve problems. And now I'm like, okay, but wait, where did we go wrong here? Where, how do I, how do I match this bigness with the fact that I think it got too big in so many ways?

And I think it's the responsiveness. I think it's the feedback, the close to the ground impact of what's happening. Because what you hear a lot from these organizations, administrative departments, people who public, dedicated public servants who believe in what they do, is like even on the ground, they could see how their impact

wasn't what they wanted it to be. Like they had the feedback and they couldn't do anything with it. And I think that's where we're missing it. And I don't think Elon's gonna get us any closer to that. I don't think Doge is gonna get us any closer to that. Like they're just destroying things right now. And even though I do think Elon has a record

of building some things in the wake of that, he also seems, how I put this kindly, highly distractible. And I think this is a long-term vision. That, you know, I don't even see a long-term vision with these companies he's built that are very impactful. So I think we need a long-term vision. Okay, if we don't want this federal government, what kind do we want?

Same with the foreign policy. I think that's a really hard question. And I think you're right that it is very hard to square what is politically necessary with what is politically wise in the long term. You know, I was telling you in another conversation about Kentucky sports radio, going to UK's campus and asking students to identify people by picture. eSports radio going to UK's campus and asking students to identify people by picture. And they all knew who Dave Portnoy was, the Barstool sports guy, and almost none of them knew who Andy Beshear, our governor, was.

And that tells me that even though we have really big government, it is not relevant to people. So what I've been thinking about is how can government be relevant in a positive way, whether it's city government or state government or national government. Because right now, if I'm honest, most of my experiences with government

are experiences of annoyance, expense and constraint. So how can we have experiences of government at any level that feels like a runway for you to take off and do your best work and live your best life and create economic opportunity and create art and beauty and music and all the things that make life good. How can government facilitate that

instead of constraining it? And I don't see a whole lot of vision for that anywhere right now. I think Josh Shapiro gets close to that when he talks about we want you to be able to come through any door and get what you need from state government. So I want to hear more thinking in that direction because I don't know how the Democratic Party competes with the clarity of Trump until it decides we're going to let some things go in order to not just rebrand our party, but rebrand people's experiences with government at pretty much every level.

Well, and I think Westmore, same thing with the bridge and Josh Shapiro with the interstate, right? Like, but they shouldn't have to be emergencies for us to get there. And I think that responsiveness, the relevancy, it's not gonna, I'm gonna get a little teary because it doesn't, it's not gonna come from just one person. I think that's why I keep this mandatory service.

There's something of this that's really kind of caught me because it's gonna take all of us. It's gonna take what we experienced post-World War II, which was an entire generation of people who had on the ground experience with their government. And so there was trust because it wasn't just this veneer. That's all Trump is, it's a veneer of change. It's a veneer of trust.

It's a veneer of responsiveness. And, you know, the paradox of that, of what he offers but doesn't deliver, but still is a source of political strength. There's something there. People want a purpose. They want something to believe in, not just something to critique. They want a government.

That's why they brand everything with this America is back, this wash of patriotism. Because people want that, but all they're doing is Consolidating just like I don't think in China or Russia or Turkey or Hungary that authoritarianism is any long-term path to Strength it's all authoritarianism is any long-term path to strength. It's all so brittle. What they're doing is brittle.

If they're building anything, it's so brittle because it's about one guy. Now, I was thinking to the party of it all, I mean, we talk about it's just Trump, but Trump's power over the last 10 years has been his ability to take over the Republican Party. It is built on a foundation of people power, right? It was because of the Republican Party,

if at any point, particularly the second impeachment, they had turned and said, enough is enough. Still to this day, I think, if the Republican Party if at any point, particularly the second impeachment, they had turned and said, enough is enough. Still to this day, I think if the Republican Party said enough is enough, it would crumble. It is brittle. I agree. But there's always some truth in the paradox, right? That there's some people power there.

There is an appeal to strength within our institutions. There's an appeal to participation in our institutions. But it's all coming from him and coming from Elon, this cheap veneer. Okay, so I wanna push into this a little bit from the other side, because I think that's really well said. I think that there is a veneer from Democrats or the establishment, which I think is, I do think Trump voters are against Republicans as much as Democrats.

The hardcore Trump voters, probably not the middle, but yeah. Right. I think there has been a veneer of help and protection from the other side too. So I think about my friend who has a child with severe disabilities. Navigating the structures that have been built and sold by politicians as protection for families like hers has within the school system. Has within the school system and now within the legal system, cost thousands of dollars, enormous expense.

At every turn, just trying to get what her child needs, she has been treated with a lot of hostility, as though she is an adversary instead of a constituent. And I think that's a lot of people's experience with government, with systems that are supposed to be for them. Democrats, in partnership with some Republicans, have built systems that are not that brittle.

They're like iron clad. And they've kept a lot of people out and they haven't been responsive to changes and they haven't updated and modernized and haven't listened to the experiences that people have with them. The entire legal system is like this. I believe in the rule of law, but man,

I don't wanna be sued. I don't wanna sue somebody because that process is so slow and miserable and expensive and you are treated so poorly in it by design. I was trained as a lawyer to go treat people poorly, right? As adversaries because that's what zealous advocacy means. You know, we have built systems, like there are veneers being built, I think, by Trump. I think you're right,

that are brittle, that are going to come apart, that don't actually accomplish what the goal is being sold as. But man, that is true of everything that came before too. And the problem is it's not brittle enough. It hasn't changed enough. It hasn't moved enough. And that's why I think this enough and and that's why I think this moment requires something so different than defense from people in opposition to Trump because there is a lot that happens every single day in the system that is indefensible and it's important to be honest about that to try to earn back people's trust and to have ideas about what to do about it that don't sound like you need a master's degree to follow them. You know, I appreciated the conversation

that Ezra Klein just had with Jake Aukenkloss. I was about to say the same thing. That is not a conversation that the average person can follow. A value-added tax discussion is not gonna get us out of this. They're not bad ideas. I can agree in a lot of ways, but policy has become something so insular and so limited in terms of who can participate in it. And that's what we've gotta work our way through here. Well, I was gonna cite it

because when you said we have made mistakes, I really appreciated that he was like, "'We were wrong about school closures and we should apologize to people. Thank you. That's helpful. That's a helpful thing to hear from a politician. I'm not trying to be critical. He was great in a number of ways.

Like I said, I don't even disagree with a lot of it. But that conversation to me epitomized how removed that is why people know Dave Portnoy, not the governor of Kentucky. You know what I mean? To the ironclad nature of the federal government. Again, the truth is in the paradox. Yes, and clearly when that's dirty because they're tearing it apart without even trying. A lot of this was just built on agreement, gentleman's agreements,

including apparently some of our constitutional structure. You know, there's a part of, again, all this reporting on the federal government that I think, and no other people feel this way, I think they hear these things, these departments, and they hear these jobs within the federal government either even and they think that sounds important. I didn't even know existed Nobody asked me if I wanted to do that job You know what I'm saying like whole ways of being That people feel completely excluded from they're not necessarily disagreeing that it's bad work

But I think there's a resentment of like, this is a whole universe that I didn't even know existed. I didn't know there was a job to do this. I didn't even know this was a thing our government did. No one asked me if I wanted to contribute and be a part of that. I think that builds the resentment that there's like a this, it's like, there's

like a second United States of America that some people get to participate that some people don't even know exists. Which is crazy in a country where public school is historically available, right? How is it that we have public schools and still a universe of opportunity within the government that so many people don't know about? Listen, I take that critique as a Democrat. I think it's completely fair. We have become laser focused on protecting that we were also not building. We were also not building, including anything sturdy on which to protect

the populations we claimed to care about the most. We were protecting culture, we were policing language, and the people we were trying to protect, from asylum seekers to transgender children, are less safe. They are less safe. We should be asking very difficult questions about why that is so. Instead of doubling down on those approaches.

I know people are tired already in our audience of hearing me say that. We got an email that said, it feels like you're just yelling at us or scolding us. It's because I'm yelling at myself. I have people in my life in those populations that I feel like I have failed, who are less safe, who feel less protected. And so I am asking myself those very difficult questions. And I am pushing so hard, like I said, against the edges of my own experience,

my own expertise, my own brain to say, what will work? What comes next? my own experience, my own expertise, my own brain to say, what will work? What comes next? It's hard. It was much easier to just critique, to just point out the problems. That's an easy thing to do. It's painful in its own way, but having conversations about the problems

isn't getting them solved. And so I don't wanna do that anymore. I wanna push, I wanna struggle, I wanna fight. I wanna, you know, it's that good girl trap, right? You don't try because you don't wanna fail. You don't try to write the thing, you don't try to make the thing, you don't try because you don't want to fail. You don't try to write the thing. You don't try to make the thing. You don't try to do anything because you don't want to fail. And so we were protecting things we knew we were good at.

As a valedictorian, I'm very familiar with that approach to life. But I want to do, I don't care if we fail. Like I just want to try. I want to do, I don't care if we fail, like I just want to try. I want to try something new. And so there is a part of me that's like, if they figure out a way to destroy and take the heat and somehow turn it into strength, I want to learn from that. And I sure as hell want to be there when people are like, we hate this to go, okay, good, because I know what we should build next. Yeah, that's what motivates me right now.

I want to be a builder. And I want to contribute with the skills that I have to that. Like what I would love to be working on right now is a competitor to Project 2025. I would be good at that, that uses the skills that I have. And I would like to put something together that an ordinary person could read

that is not 900 pages long and filled with jargon, that an ordinary person could read that is not 900 pages long and filled with jargon, that an ordinary person could read that says, this is the next vision. This is what we think should come next. They're doing what they're doing right now and they have the power to do some of that and what they don't, the courts will deal with. But in the meantime, this is where we think things should go.

I would love to work on something like that. And again, that's part of why I'm working so hard to sort of protect my mental peace, because you can't build if you are so weighed down by everything that's happening. I don't wanna lose sight of the fact that we have different opportunities to be in that space. The more I talk with people

who are in executive branch agency jobs right now, the more I understand that they cannot be in that space right now. It's so bad for them. I don't think people have any idea what some of these folks are being subjected to. Any idea, the indignity, the disrespect, the meanness, the just inability to do the work

that they're there to do every day in the face of like really serious things that we couldn't sleep if we knew about. It's terrible. Can I just say, this is what I keep thinking about. This is a dumb example. The other day I was in the drive-through line for Penn Station and this lady thought I sat there too long

and she yelled at me. And you know that feeling when you're out and you're not expecting someone to like scold you or yell at you or be mean to you or be rude to you and how it just totally short circuits everything for like, depending on the depth of what happened, hours, days, like just to think about if that happened to you at your job from the president over days and days and days.

It's just a short circuit. You just short circuit. You short circuit when someone's mean to you like that in a Walmart. Much less if it rolls into your work inbox. Are you kidding me? Yes, especially when it's so undeserved, right? Why? It just comes out of nowhere?

You're like, what the? So I don't expect everyone to be in a builder place right now, because not everyone can be. I don't expect people who are running organizations that serve refugees to be in a builder place right now. There are different calls depending on our place. But you know what though? Some people are like me.

And some people you treat like that, and they're the part of their brains that comes up with new ideas, they get a little radical. And I'm excited for those people and those personalities in the front, because they're there. There are people who got those emails and they're just, their brain exploded.

And they went, oh, is this what we're doing now? Because I have some radical ideas I've been working on for a long time. Anybody want to hear them? Like that's going to come too. They're going to go to state government. They're going to go to local government. They're going to run for office. And it's going to be awesome because I know those people are out there.

I know they are. Yes. And that makes me excited too. And if any of you would like me to help you create a document about your vision, I'd be so delighted to do it. This to me is why it's useful to kind of look at Elon Musk and say, are you building or are you destroying? What combination of those two things are you doing? What percentage is breaking out? And what can I learn from that? There's a whole list of two don'ts from Elon Musk and the approach that Doge is taking

to the federal government right now. But there are some useful bits in there. And that's why I like having these conversations where you sort of try to excavate those useful bits and then deploy them to greater purpose. To destroying them. Greater purpose is the name of the game. I said on the news brief the other day, we are gonna have to be adaptable.

We're gonna have to be nimble. We're gonna have to dig deep within ourselves. We talked about on our bonus episode on Substack. It's not gonna be by getting mad about his plans for the Rose Garden, picking our battles could not be more important. And not just picking our battles, but like picking the place you can protect the energy for those solutions. Because that's the greater purpose right now.

Their vision, if it exists at all, is brittle. So what is ours? Are you looking for ways to make your everyday life happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one bestselling author of The Happiness Project, bringing you fresh insights and practical solutions in the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co-host and happiness guinea pig

is my sister, Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore ideas and hacks about cultivating happiness and good habits. Check out Happier with Gretchen Rubin from Lemonada Media. Hi, I'm Emily Deschanel. And I'm Carla Gallo and we're excited to tell you about

Boneheads! Our new Bones Rewatch podcast. I play Dr. Temperance Brennan. And I play Daisy Wick and we are going to watch from the very beginning. We're going to watch the episodes. We're going to reminisce. We're going to laugh. We're going to cry.

We're going to tell behind the scenes stories. We're going to go on tangents. A lot of tangents. So whether you're a seasoned Bones fanatic or a newcomer looking to dip your toes in to the wild world of forensic anthropology, this show is for you. Bone Heads from Lemonada Media is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

We always end our show with talking about what's on our mind outside of politics. And Beth, you have stumbled upon a new approach to online shopping. Because here's the paradox. I've articulated this many times on Substack. I really do feel like the treats are going to get us through. Sometimes when you're just taking a crisis day by day, we can't have any overarching approach to self-care. It's going to have to be a treat.

We're just going to have to need a treat for the next hour to two hours, and that's all that we can get our hot little hands on. And for better or worse, online shopping is the source of treats. It is. It just quickly becomes a source of too many treats. And then I feel bad about myself and the treat has lost its purpose. So I think what I've stumbled on is a new old way. Because I love window shopping.

I feel that I have been shopping if I have been out in the world looking at things and I don't buy anything. I'm very content in that experience. And I think what I needed was a way to have that feeling in my online shopping. I get a lot of emails from stores that I love buying things from. And then I open them because that feels like a treat. COLLEEN O'BRIEN Oh, see, that is... We got to pause there. I hate a store email, but you like them.

You feel like they're a treat. See, I'm like, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. It's like a catalog in the mail for me. I love the catalog. It's just, I'm going through my inbox. It's a lot of horror, a lot of days. And here's something that no one's asking me for anything.

They are asking me for something, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like they're offering me something. Look at these amazing things we have for you. You've shopped here before. You'll probably like this. And some of those algorithms are great, right? Like you loved this dress. I bet you'd love this one too.

You loved this bag. I bet you would like this one too. So I open them, I look at them, and then I have this, I think what I've realized is I have this fear that I am not gonna be able to find that thing again in the wide digital world. And so I will buy it because I like it enough that I don't wanna lose it. And so my new approach is I just have a note

in the notes app on my phone and I put the link right there and I just keep a rolling wishlist. My birthday is coming up, so I sent that wishlist to my husband and he said, what you need to do is power rank these. Okay, so this made the process even more effective because then I get to look at all these things that seem lovely to me again

and really question how much do I want this? And so some things fall off and some things get added and they get moved around and reprioritized and all of it is giving me like that fun treat like stimulus and response, even more of a treat if I think about something coming to me as a gift, right? But I'm not doing the dark side of online shopping because it's all kind of hypothetical. Well, I'm all fast fashion. So I've tried to end the dark side of online shopping because it's all kind of hypothetical. Well, I'm all fast fashion. So I've tried to in the dark side of online shopping.

I'm also pretty much off Instagram, which was the source of all my fast fashion shopping. That was my New Year's resolution, no fast fashion. And that's helped a lot because that feels very empty. The treats feel a little like a quick sugar high and not really sustainable, especially when you have to go through your closet and get rid of all the fast fashion that you never wore.

Or you wore and it wasn't good enough. Do you know what I'm saying? Yes. So I did formulate a wish list over Christmas, populated primarily from Anne Helen Peterson's very good sub stack roundup she does at Christmas every year with gift suggestions. I made a wish list over Christmas, populated primarily from Anne Helen Peterson's very good sub stack roundup she does at Christmas every year with gift suggestions

and the New York Times gift guide, which I thought had lots of really great things on them. I didn't power rank them, which was a mistake, because that also solves the problem of when we are all online shopping like that all the time, boy does gift giving get hard. Yes, it does. Oh my God, you don't know what to, what are we going to buy for everybody?

They buy everything they want anyway. So I think that's a part of it too. But you know what, as you were talking, I've realized my approach to shopping is now, I just shop when I travel. I used to never want to shop when I traveled. I was always so big on like museums and clicking off the sites. And I've just realized that shopping is really great and clothing makes the most amazing souvenir.

You know, like I have two pairs of shoes, like kind of like fashion tennis shoes, one I bought in Japan, one I bought in Paris. You know how fun those are to put on and wear about in the day? Like my favorite articles of clothing. Like I put them on, I'm like, I bought this sweater in Ireland. I bought this, you know, I bought this sweater on my last trip to New York with my friend, you know, or it doesn't even have to be far away. Like first of all, I want to shop in person, particularly for clothes.

I'm 43 years old, I need to try it on. I don't know how to say this anymore plainly. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't care how good your AI, blah-ditty-blah version of the model, and I pick her size, I don't care. It doesn't work, I want to try it on. And so that solves that problem.

It imbues the item with an additional thing besides I just wanted to consume it. Now it's kind of special. It's linked to a memory and an experience. And so I'm just realizing, I'm doing a lot of my shopping just when I travel. I got plenty of shit. It's not like I need to,

I got a real inventory problem. You know what I'm saying? That's not the issue here. Let me just confess that right now. And it really makes it fun and special. Because even with the wish list, like, I did get some things off my wish list. And I really, but like some I picked out and I'm like, I don't like this as much as I thought I would. Then I returned it.

You know? Well, I have on my list a wide range of things. So I have some books on my list that are like sort of artsy books, you know, not books that I'm gonna read for work and not fiction, just books that I think I would go back to like for writing inspiration or things like that. So I have some books, I have some jewelry, I have some bags, cause I really like bags.

So actually there are not a lot of clothes on my list. The thing about trying on for me is that I mostly buy all my clothes from two stores. So I pretty well understand how the sizes work and don't really need to try on one of them. I can't, it's online only. So that solves those problems. I don't travel as much as you do.

And I get very anxious when I buy things when I travel about like suitcase space Especially if I'm flying or you just bring an extra one Yeah, I don't want to do that. I like to travel lightly so that no no not an extra suitcase Just to extra I have this bag that falls down tiny, but it opens up into a big bag So I don't have to carry a lot, but I have lots of ways to carry home even I was like, you know what I'm looking at right now? Like I'm looking at myself in the zoom and realizing my flannel I'm wearing is a Pendleton flannel I

purchased in Oregon. That was my souvenir for Oregon. That's fun. I'm just looking at my list though, and realizing that a lot of what I have on it are kind of little things to like I put a lipstick on it. Because I think some of what I have on it are kind of little things too. Like I put a lipstick on it. Because I think some of what I have realized is that shopping online is so easy that the treat feel of it is diminishing for me. I have gotten to where I order so much that a package is not fun anymore.

It's a thing to process. And so just anything that comes to me that I think this would be nice, like the fact that I might not get it that I think this would be nice, like the fact that I might not get it, I think will make it more special if I do in a way that I haven't been accessing with my online shopping. Well, I do think with my wish list, what I did was like put things on there that felt just a little exorbitant.

Like I really wouldn't probably spend this on myself, but I'm happy for my grandmother too. Do you know what I'm saying? I'm taking the opposite approach. Yours are cheap. Like I am just looking at anything that I think I would normally click buy and saying, no, I don't need this. I definitely don't need it right now,

but I would enjoy it and therefore it would be a good gift. And so it goes in my note. It's not lost. Okay. I can retrieve it if I decide I really do need it at some point, it's here. But it also is something like totally reasonable. Like I would have no problem sending this list to my mom or my sister or anybody in my life

who was just like, I don't know what to get you. Okay, interesting. I have kept my wishlist from Christmas because I'm like, hey, you know what? This would be like a good reward for a goal I'm trying to achieve. If I do this, then I will purchase this. But I still think my, you know, I don't really,

I don't get a lot of packages. I mean, we get a lot of packages for family stuff, but I don't buy a lot of stuff. I really, I also gotta go through peaks and valleys and I'm coming off a peak so I'm just like I don't want any more stuff for like a long time which I think is a hope normal because I do it a lot. And so I think just you know the most important part whatever you choose to me is just more conscientiousness. Yeah. So many companies' profit model is built on scalability. They need a lot of people to do it.

And the easiest way to get a lot of people to do anything is just to do something without thinking that hard about it. That's why everything, particularly around a company like Amazon, is built for convenience, so you don't think about it, which is why I canceled my Amazon Prime. So I think that's the most important part, is just bringing some conscientiousness to it.

Because it's not just about punishing yourself and saying, I need to think harder about this because I'm a bad person, all that impact. It's also like when you're more conscientious about it, it is more enjoyable. Pleasure has to be conscientious. I think we think convenience is pleasure, but convenience is just convenience, it's not pleasure.

And that's why I think this has been such a good solution for me and my particular issues. It may not help anybody else, but it doesn't feel like deprivation. It feels like I'm just building in a new step to actually make it more enjoyable if these things do come into my life. You know, that like there's a little,

it's like a little bit of friction built in. That's nice. That's nice. And I do really enjoy maintaining my list now. Well, we look forward to hearing if you found solutions to bringing a little more conscientiousness to your online or real world shopping. We love hearing from you guys always about your insights and feedback and experiences. Thank you for

joining us for another episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show if you haven't already. If you want even more Pantsy Politics, join us on our sub-stack page. The link is in the show notes. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday with a new episode and until then keep it nuanced y'all. Pantsy Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Elise Knapp is our managing director. Maggie Pinton is our director of community engagement. Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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That's lemonada.supportingcast.fm. Hi, everyone. Gloria Riviera here, and we are back for another season of No One Is Coming to Save Us, a podcast about America's child care crisis. This season we're delving deep into five critical issues facing our country through the lens of child care, poverty, mental health, housing, climate change, and the public school system. By exploring these connections, we aim to highlight that childcare is not an isolated issue, but one that influences all facets of American life.

Season 4 of No One is Coming to Save Us is out now wherever you get your podcasts.