Positive Paradigm Shifts

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Declining Alcohol Usage

  • The Growth of the Menopause Market

  • Rethinking Education

  • Accountability and Justice

  • Immigration

  • Political Polarization

  • Outside Politics: Planning 2023 Travel

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EPISODE RESOURCES

UPCOMING EVENTS:

CONTENT RESOURCES:

Real Good News with Branden Harvey (Pantsuit Politics)

DECLINING ALCOHOL USAGE

MENOPAUSE 

EDUCATION

ACCOUNTABILITY

IMMIGRATION

POLARIZATION

transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:26] We're so glad you're joining us today at Pantsuit Politics, where we try to take a different approach to the news. And we're going to take a very different approach today. We're going to kind of step back and examine some really positive shifts. Sarah called them paradigm shifts as we were talking, and I think that's a really good way to reflect on it. Where are we seeing good things and new things happening? Not as a result of individual choices necessarily, but coming from larger societal, cultural, environmental forces. And then Outside of Politics, we're going to tell you about our travel plans for the year because that is Sarah's favorite subject to talk about.  

Sarah [00:01:00] It is, actually. Yeah. These are the types of conversations we love having. And if you enjoy them, you would probably really enjoy our newsletter. It offers us a chance to reflect on the conversations we're having on the show. So last week we had a conversation with Gabrielle Blair about perimenopause and had a very commiseration vibe. And then I wrote a piece in the newsletter about how being aware of my hormones has really changed my life for the better in ways, too. We always include listener recommendations and listener feedback in the newsletter. So if you are not already subscribed, we would love for you to be. It's just once a week; we're not going to overwhelm your inbox, so head to the show notes or our website Pantsuitpolitics.com to subscribe.  

Beth [00:01:40] Before we start talking about good news, we want to spend a moment with tragic news. Our hearts are with everyone impacted by the mass shooting that took place in Monterey Park, California, when a 72-year-old gunman shot and killed 10 people in a ballroom dance studio as that community celebrated the Lunar New Year. It's hard to know what to say when every mass shooting in America is singular and unique and also part of this long, horrific pattern. As we're recording, there's a lot that we don't know and particularly a lot we don't know about the victims of this crime. Right now, as we're recording, we just know that most of these victims were in their fifties and sixties and that they were practicing a very popular Chinese dance. I read this morning about some of the ways that Chinese people respond to tragic news. And I loved learning that instead of saying "I'm sorry for your loss," they might say, "This happened too suddenly." And I think that feels right. This happened too suddenly and we are very sad about it. Next up, we are going to examine some good news trends sparked by consumerism. Sarah, I think one of the things that I have learned most through our conversations over the last seven years is how to balance my really deeply ingrained sense of individual responsibility with an understanding of how we are impacted by things beyond ourselves. And I think that's given me a greater sense of grace for when things go wrong. But today we want to think about what we can learn from things that are going right when we consider more than just our individual decisions and actions. So we want talk about some developments that we think represent really good news and what we can learn from the context that creates all of that good news.  

Sarah [00:03:27] Yeah, I've really tried to focus on this in our Good News Brief on Thursdays on the premium community, because good news, as it's constituted in mass media, a lot of times is just those individual choices, right? This person did the right thing or these people raised money to pay for this person's medical treatment. And while I'm not downplaying the positive impact of individual choices like that, to me, good news is more than that. And we talked about that on the podcast with Brandon Harvey (we'll link to that in the shownotes) that it's really noticing these trends. And sometimes the trends are composed of individual choices, but almost never is this some sort of simultaneous accident where we all started shifting these behaviors sort of anecdotally but accidentally all together. There are always forces playing on our choices inside institutions, outside institutions and in community together. And I think when we can see those macro trends and think about how we talk about them as just individual choices is really helpful.  

Beth [00:04:30] What kicked this episode off, as we were doing some brainstorming about things we wanted to discuss, was you saying you wanted to revisit our conversation about alcohol and the shift in our culture around alcohol. And as I was preparing, I found research that Americans are consuming fewer drinks per week than we have in 22 years.  

Sarah [00:04:49] Wow!  

Beth [00:04:49] We have an entire culture around being sober curious. Dry January is not receiving as much attention this year, that's because a lot of people are like how about just mostly dry all year long?  

Sarah [00:05:02] Yeah, I've noticed this in my personal life. I mean, neither you nor I drink. I don't drink because it sets my stomach on fire. I want to be able to drink a cocktail or two, but I keep trying and my body's like 'No, sis, we're done here.' But I have a lot of people in my life who became sober over the pandemic. My husband and I talked a lot about it felt like over the pandemic people either leaned all the way into drinking to the point where it was detrimental to their health-- and there are lots of studies out there saying that they've seen a spike in liver damage with younger and younger people, particularly women-- or people leaned all the way out and said I'm done, or started maybe leaning all the way in. And remember, at the beginning of pandemic, we were doing all these cocktail zoom hours and I think people were using alcohol to mark the end of the day, because it's hard to mark the end of the day if you work from home. And then all of a sudden they were feeling the impact of that. And then you start to see these conversations that I was having in my own life and then these conversations on social media. Every single ad right now I have on Instagram-- I took a picture of like four in a row the other day-- is a company selling mocktails or some sort of CBD drink that is meant to replace alcohol.  

Beth [00:06:13] And I think that that's a part of why this is happening, because there is a lot of money to be made by creating a new category of product, by opening bars that serve fancy drinks with no alcohol in them. It's opened up like a whole new avenue for culinary creators and small businesses and big companies to say let's serve a previously underserved market.  

Sarah [00:06:37] Yes. This weekend Nicholas and I went to see Lake Street Dive in Nashville and we went to Audrey, Sean Brock's new restaurant, that you and I have also been to. And the drink menu is just two equal sides, one that has proof and one that has zero proof. Sean Brock has been very open and honest about his own struggles with alcohol. And I love it. When I go to a restaurant like that and I want a fancy drink and they have an entire menu of options that are zero proof or mocktails or whatever you want to call it, it just feels inclusive in the best possible way. And it's not just the presence of those drinks, I've noticed in my own community that we've started either hosting activities or sort of reinstituting activities that don't involve alcohol. So much of our social calendar in my town revolves around alcohol, distillers dinners and wine dinners, and it's such a bummer if you don't drink. And so this weekend we're going to a dinner; a Scottish dinner that celebrates everyone's Scottish heritage, which is not hard to find in Western Kentucky. And I'm so excited because it's this really fun event we all get to go to together that we're all excited about. It also involves dressing up, which is an extra layer of fun, but it's not revolving around alcohol. I'm sure there will be alcohol there, but that's not the focus of the whole entire thing.  

[00:07:51] And it is hard to think, well, how much of this is fueled by the new industry? And this is my old age coming to play, but it just feels like does it have to be a bad thing? Will we probably overcorrect as we all want to do in American culture? Maybe. But alcohol, as we discussed in our previous episodes about alcohol culture, is so powerful; not just the industry, but the culture to me, like, 'Well, yeah, you're probably going to need a little backup if you're going to chip away at this.' And if some of that backup comes from companies that want to sell you non-alcoholic beverages, I'm kind of fine with that. I just feel like when you're tackling such a big piece of our culture and you're trying to shift it and not take it out-- like I'm not trying to eliminate alcohol from American society, I don't think these companies are either. But it does feel like there's a lot of room for correction and a lot of room to open up conversations and space for choices and, yeah, even industries that can put some money in the game and sort of put the the weight on the scale in the other direction.  

Beth [00:08:58] It bothers me not at all when the potential for new people to make profit and new products and new services being offered drives a positive trend. It drives a lot of negative trends, drive some positive trends. I just have no even hesitation about consumerism fueling good things. It has fueled most good things that we have, most things that make life more comfortable. So I'm excited about this. And consumerism is also stepping in to fill a gap in sort of our next category of good news.  

Sarah [00:09:31] Well, yeah. And did you see that there is also this trend because so much of this is driven by younger generations-- before we move on to our next thing, which is about older generations. So much of this is driven by younger generations. I think a lot of this stuff that we're curious maybe it was in particular. And now there's all this trend on TikTok that they're trying to quit nicotine, any kind of nicotine, nicotine gum, nicotine vaping. And I thought that was interesting that it feels like TikTok and Instagram, if you want to find positive social impact, this hashtag-wrapped wellness trends can be a good one. Because it does feel like when you're trying to change a habit, it's so hard to change a habit-- any habit. It's just hard to build a good one to tear down a bad one. And so when you can find other people out there doing that same thing, which is often how these social trends sort of develop, I think that's great.  

Beth [00:10:25] So the next category of positive trend that we see relates to an episode that we did last week. We shared our conversation with Gabrielle Blair about perimenopause, and we have seen that perimenopausal and menopausal women have been hugely underserved by health care, but they're really not underserved in the market anymore. The menopausal market size, according to a venture capital publication, it's about $600 billion and growing. And if your doctor isn't comfortable and confident talking to you about your hormones, that creates a lot of space for brands to come in. So that's happening. We see telehealth companies focused on women's health apps, drugs, supplements, creams. This is a lot like what you were saying with influencers. There is some real good out there. There is some real garbage out there.  

Sarah [00:11:11] Some real garbage.  

Beth [00:11:12] You don't want to just like, say, "Tik Tok is a great place for wellness," because you're going to find some real bad stuff if you go down that route. And it's the same thing with these products. So this is another space. We are overcorrecting. We're going to flood the zone and some of it is going to be bad, but hopefully this will put pressure on health care to step up to the plate so that we can get better information and figure out what actually helps.  

Sarah [00:11:36] Yeah. This makes me way more nervous in the alcohol space; although, I do think that there are promises being made. Lord, people love to talk about Adaptogens. I don't know if that's a real thing or not, but they're in everything and they're supposed to make you feel better. So, to me, some of the promises being made make me nervous, but some of the promises being made about hormones and menopause make me dang near fearful. Part of the issue we talked about on that episode is the lack of research. And so when all of a sudden you have all these products claiming outcomes around something like your hormones, it really makes me worried. And I do think there's a little bit of this that is inevitable. And I wonder if you could track this, that this is what happens. When you're diversifying and you have people sort of advocating for more products, more health care, more attention-- just more attention that it's like the stages of attention. Well, first we flood the zone and we have people trying to profit from this interest and we have mistakes made and people probably harmed. And then we scale it back and you give time for the real research to come in. And I don't think we're lacking in total research around menopause in particular, but we got a lot of good emails after that episode that were pointing out some experts that people felt were really helpful and that there's-- that's another thing I'm starting to see in a lot of my Instagram feed. Here's another menopause expert. Here's what you need to know about menopause. And there's lots of new accounts to follow and information together. But I still think with the lack of prolific research, ( I guess is what I would use) I'm a little worried about this one.  

Beth [00:13:20] I view it as positive because the destigmatization; because if you have companies out there selling products, then you are going to have more conversation happening about it in public spaces without the weirdness that has surrounded it for so long or the jokiness. I hate that most of what popular culture has done with menopause is make jokes about hot flashes. No, thank you please. This is complicated and destabilizing for people going through it. So I am optimistic that consumerism here will force more conversations. They won't all be better conversations, but at least more of them and hopefully you get some better in the process. And even as you get more conversation, there are risks. I was thinking after our perimenopause conversation, the hard part about publicly talking about perimenopause symptoms is that you don't want anyone listening to minimize what they're experiencing personally by thinking, oh, well, it's probably just hormones. I wish we could permanently delete just in front of hormones for ourselves anyway. I think of that to myself all the time, like, what a dismissive way to consider what is the driving factor of a lot of my personal health right now. But beyond that, if your heart feels weird please go have it checked out. Please at least go through the process of elimination. So there's risk around all of this. I am happy that we're just acknowledging really significant life events for a really significant part of the population.  

Sarah [00:14:53] So maybe that destigmatization is the first part of this process. We flood the zone, we have lots of conversations, lots of people enter the marketplace of both ideas and products to say, "Well, this is something we weren't talking about and now we are and what does that mean?" And that seems to be sort of the first step of the process.  

Beth [00:15:13] We're going to take a quick break and then keep the good news rolling and talk about places where we seem ready to mix up how we think about government. Lest you think that only money creates good news, let's talk about some attitude adjustments that we're seeing in the public space. I wanted to just hover for a second on this headline from Axios. Exhausted Majority Wants to Rethink K-12 Education. Are those angels that I hear in the background? So a new study shows that preparing students for college has fallen from the 10th highest priority to the 47th; that people really want their kids to learn, to think, to find careers with meaning and purpose, to build character, be able to problem solve, manage money, be kind, know the basics of reading, writing and math. And they want schools to meet their students where they are. And that is transformational compared to where we were even a year ago, I think.  

Sarah [00:16:19] I think I'm struggling as we keep talking about good news becauseI don't know if it's good news. It feels like to me what we're really talking about here is paradigm shifts. Now, I think all paradigm shifts are good news, but they are hard for lots and lots of people. But that's what this feels like. And that's what the two previous conversations we just had feel like to me. It feels like paradigms are shifting. It feels like we are standing back up and getting our feet underneath us after the pandemic and looking around and saying, "What do we want to do differently?" We had so many conversations at the beginning of the pandemic about just this. What is this going to change? Is this going to change anything? Are we going to come together as a nation or is polarization going to end because we now have this common threat we need to fight? And I remember some depressing conversations where I felt like maybe nothing's going to change. Now we're just going to go through this hard thing and nothing's going to be different. And I don't think we were giving ourselves enough time, which is what we try so hard to do here at Pantsuit Politics, is give things time to breathe and have space. But it does feel like now going on three years we are finally getting the space to take a deep breath and look around and say what wasn't working. Like what wasn't working for me personally as far as my habits? What's not working inside of our institutions. And what I think is so incredibly hopeful about this answer is that it reflects that participation in the institution. It's not just what are schools doing wrong, it's what do I expect from this? And was I expecting the wrong thing from this institution? And to me, that's incredibly hopeful.  

Beth [00:17:55] This kind of wish for our schools only works if we have a market ready to accept students, not all of whom have gone to college. And so what I view as pretty pure good news is that we have some state governors taking the lead and saying we don't need a bachelor's degree for every single position anymore. The Dispatch referred to this as the paper ceiling, which I really liked. Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, Spencer Cox of Utah, and new Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania have eliminated Bachelor's requirements for a lot of state jobs. And those jobs are a fraction of a larger marketplace, but a meaningful fraction. And you see government here being a leader in providing more training to new applicants and just greater opportunity for a huge number of people. I think it's really exciting.  

Sarah [00:18:50] Well, the paper ceiling is because we require college degrees for more jobs than there are people with college degrees. It's only like 70% of jobs and 50% of people have college degrees. I've been thinking about this a lot because I don't want the paradigm shift to be nobody needs a college degree. I'm thinking about this a lot as my child goes in high school and we start to have lots of conversations about college. And I want my children to go to college. I want them to get a liberal arts degree like I did, that taught me how to be an analytical thinker, how to question. And I thought one of the most interesting parts of this article is when they said employers use a college degree as a stand in for skills they need like communication skills and those analytical skills. And I don't want to downplay that, but I do think as college got more expensive, it became sort of a certification process in a lot of places and it wasn't teaching those skills. And I think that's a paradigm shift we need. It's like, well, it's not just what we want high schools to prepare students for, but what do we want colleges to prepare students for? Because maybe we would care more deeply about going and preparing for college if we felt like college wasn't just a very expensive license. But when I look at this list of what people want, they want it to build character, they want problem solving, the basics of reading and writing. I learned that stuff in college and in law school. Absolutely my college degree made me a better person and not just a better applicant. I am incredibly grateful for that experience and that degree. And I hope that we can go back to a deeper, wider requirement from this institution and that will spread to all of public education.  

Beth [00:20:43] It's interesting that you just use the phrase 'go back' because I looked at all of this and thought, there's a covert element for sure, but I think there's a technological element. You can't wait for college to learn how to communicate and be a problem solver in a world where you have all the world's knowledge on a phone that you can stick in your pocket, right? Knowing how to research, how to write, how to manipulate the tools at your disposal, that is just what it means to be a person now. And so you can't wait for college to impart those skills. And I think you've got to be looking at the middle and high school level at what you actually want students to learn and how you want them to learn it. I was just having a conversation with a curriculum specialist about how she's learning everything she can about ChatGPT because she doesn't want to just fight it. She wants to figure out how to incorporate it. This is the new reality. So what can students learn about the benefits and the limitations of this new reality? And I'm so glad people like her are out there doing this, and I'm glad that we're starting to rethink what is the place of college in a society where all those analytical skills really do need to come earlier than they have before?  

Sarah [00:21:53] Well, I mean, I struggle with that. Griffin has been bringing me these philosophy YouTube channels, which I think is so interesting that that's what he's watching and interested in. Again, when paradigms are shifting, I think people are looking at all ages for explanations, for tools to help, but I don't know how much of that you can do in high school. How much philosophy can you teach in high school? My best friend Elisabeth's kids go to a Latin school. I think she taught me quite a bit, actually. But I wasn't quite ready for it even in college, I took a lot of political philosophy classes which I really wish I could retake now because I think I'd get a lot more out of them. And I think that's what's so hard is how much are we asking of young people and at what age are we asking that? And those are really difficult questions. I'm reading this book right now that I'm really looking forward to talking more about in the show called Of Boys and Men. And his argument is we absolutely know that boys develop differently than girls, so why do we send everybody to school at the same age? Why are we doing that? It doesn't make a lot of sense when we know that there are very, very different things going on in their brain development. And so I guess I'm kind of in this space where I'm like, well, are they up for that if we push these tools on them and these discussions on them earlier? But then I'm thinking, well, Griffin's too hungry for that now. I think everybody-- again, back to that paradigm shift, back to that coming out of the pandemic and asking deeper, harder questions-- is doing that. And I don't know the exact role that both high school and college should play in that. I think I lean more towards the college just because I think you need to be a little bit older to handle some of this-- but I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.  

Beth [00:23:43] It's like two different questions almost. Like learning and growing as a person and developing your capacity for philosophy and even for great literature and great art and all kinds of things. It's just a lifelong endeavor that we try to artificially compress because we're worried about the other track, which is career readiness, right? There are a ton of classes I wish I could go back and take again. I thought more in the last two weeks about the African burial arts class that I took to satisfy an elective requirement than I did when I took the class itself. And I wish that I could go back and redo some of that learning with the benefit of the 20 years of living I've done since then. And so why I love both this study and what these governors are doing is it feels like a recognition that we're trying to do an awful lot of things through the vehicle of school, and maybe we can be more flexible about how we think of some of those things. Provide some of those skills that are necessary for career readiness earlier, because whether you are going into a factory setting or an office setting or professional setting, you do need to learn how to be really resourceful and really communicative. So we have to push some of that earlier. And then maybe some of it gets delayed longer and maybe there are more options for people to come in and just take a class here and there. And maybe there are more ways that we reward that kind of continued development. I don't know. I'm just happy to see people mixing it up. And from the political side, to see it being mixed up on a bipartisan basis. You've got Democratic governors here and Republican governors. Larry Hogan, a Republican, start this in Maryland. His successor, a Democrat, Wes Moore says, 'I want to keep this up,' and talks about how important it is on the campaign trail. And people have different motivations. Larry Hogan's reasons for it are probably different than Wes Moore. There's inclusivity, there's economic opportunity, there's just the reality of the labor force. It's just nice to see people coalescing around what we've been saying for a while, which is something about our educational system is not serving us. And so being willing to dig into that and make some changes feels really positive.  

Sarah [00:26:01] I just think any institution that can meet people where they're at. And I see this everywhere right now that people are asking deeper questions; they are asking and thinking about deeper questions, and they want to have those conversations. Obviously, we are well versed in that here at Pantsuit Politics, but I'm seeing that way beyond that. I think even Ezra Klein's podcast for the last few episodes of the New Year, I'm like, 'Ezra, you're out there doing the work, but you're like thinking through some stuff that's not policy driven,' let me tell you that. And I think the institutions that adapt and figure out a way to meet people where they are, I think all the time about how the most popular class at Harvard is the the one about the pursuit of happiness. That makes so much sense to me because that's what people want. That's what we try to do here, like I said, and I think that's why our community is so tightly knit together, because people want to feel that ability and that space to say, "But why? But why are we doing this? Why does this matter?" And I think that's true of all ages.  

Beth [00:27:08] So, Sarah, you talked about this episode being less good news and more paradigm shifting. And I think one of the paradigms that needs the greatest amount of shifting and is the hardest to get at is our attitude about accountability and punishment. So we've talked about criminal justice reform quite a bit over the years here. Usually when we do that, we're talking about incarceration rates, mandatory sentences, drug related offenses. But we are seeing momentum around corporate crime as well. I'm really excited about this announcement from Assistant Attorney General named Kenneth Polite Jr. And I just have to say how much I love that his name is Kenneth Polite Jr.  

Sarah [00:27:44] What a name.  

Beth [00:27:45]  He announced that the Department of Justice will now not prosecute corporations for crimes if those corporations self-report and fully cooperate with investigators to uncover and fix the problems.  

Sarah [00:28:00] This feels like the Elizabeth Holmes, Fyre Festival [Inaudible] like memorial policy. I mean, those people are still alive, but you know what I mean. This feels like an acknowledgment of we have these scenarios, especially surrounding startups, where the momentum is so strong and nobody wants to go, "I think we're breaking all these laws because then you've broken the laws and then you're afraid of getting caught." I mean, listen, this was the Lisa Hughes parenting philosophy. When I got caught smoking she said, "Okay, you're not in trouble because you confessed. But if you do it again and you get caught, you'll be in twice as much trouble." I do think people are more inclined to come forward and confess if they feel like the world is going to come crashing down around me. Because that shame and that protective instinct fuel some truly, truly bad behavior and bad decision making.  

Beth [00:28:55] I think this works on two fronts because it's not an escape from accountability. If you do something wrong, you're still going to have to go through the process to fix it. You still might have to pay a fine, a lower fine than if you were prosecuted. But it saves the government all kinds of time and resources. They can just deal with this and keep a company going, keep it out in the economy doing what it needs to do. On the other hand, it sends a real signal, like, if we do have to find this out and come after you, we are going to go hard at you. Like we will prosecute very aggressively for companies that don't self-report. So here's an incentive to do the right thing and you best do the right thing. And I think that's a great model, whether you are a mom or an assistant attorney general.  

Sarah [00:29:41] I mean, psychologically, people respond better to positive motivation than negative punishment. We don't like to acknowledge that in our criminal justice system, but it is true.  

Beth [00:29:52] But it seems to me focusing on where this comes from, like this is a logical extension of criminal justice reform. It's a logical extension of the tortured conversation about cancel culture that's been going on, just trying to figure out how do we deal with it when someone screws up, even when someone does something really terrible? What's the next step and what is society's investment in that step? And how can we make that investment most productive long term for society? So this is a really complicated program, but I just think it reflects a lot in our developing sensibilities about crime and punishment.  

Sarah [00:30:31] I just mentioned the Ezra Klein show, and he just did an episode about the teachings and philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr with Brandon Terry, who's an expert on Dr. King. And I thought one of the best parts of the conversation they had was about humiliation and how there is this desire to humiliate, but really a philosophy of love should be focused on redemption. I'm simplifying a very intense and complicated conversation, but it really struck me because it feels like there's just this glimmer, this very beginning conversation of humiliation is such a siren song and it gets us nowhere. It gets us (just like Odysseus) circling the island or whatever the sirens did that we could never escape from. Just this sense that we keep doing this to each other and we're not changing anything. And so let's talk about other ways to motivate our fellow human beings and try to get somewhere because humiliation does feel like this doom loop that we've been stuck in over the last several years, and I am incredibly encouraged by any policy, any institution, any conversation that just says, "Hey, is this working for us? It doesn't feel like it's working very well."  

Beth [00:31:52] That is a good segue way to talking about immigration. We have a new announcement from Secretary of State Blinken about a program called the Welcome Corps. He made this announcement last Thursday. The Welcome Corps will allow groups of at least five people to sponsor refugees to live in the United States and be supported by nonprofit resettlement organizations. To do this, a group of five must raise at least $2,275 per refugee to help with apartment security deposits and clothes and furniture. These refugees will still go through the very extensive security process required for any refugees entering the United States. But what I loved is that in making this announcement, the State Department said this comes from the fact that Americans have been extraordinarily welcoming to our allies, from Afghanistan to Ukrainians displaced by war to Venezuelans and others fleeing violence and oppression, and that this program builds on our generosity of spirit by creating a durable system for Americans to privately bring people into the country. I love this. I love this softening around the issue of refugees. I love that these conflicts that were referenced in the State Department's announcement, I think Americans understood better than some of the factors that create refugees in the world. And I think that understanding has clearly led to an outpouring of desire to help more people. And so I'm really excited about this.  

Sarah [00:33:19] Well, there had been smaller versions of this program that they had launched, again, one of those slow rollouts to see if this worked, which I think is an incredibly smart and efficient way to run the government. And also an acknowledgment of criticism of the refugee program, which is we can't just let people in without any resources to help them thrive. And that's a fair criticism. And I think saying, well, also the government itself doesn't have to be the core and complete source of any support--- or even nonprofits. We have a backlog, we have a refugee crisis globally. So how do we respond to that in a smart and innovative way? And that's exactly what this is.  

Beth [00:34:02] Yeah, I like the idea that you need to have five people. It's not like just if you are a wealthy family, you can say, "Well, we've got $2,200 for lots of people. Let's bring them." Five people feels like be at the beginning of rooting you in community. And five people with their contacts and their contacts contacts start to really build a team around people who are new to the United States and who are coming here under difficult circumstances. Okay. Lastly, as we talk about paradigm shifts around seemingly intractable problems, I'm just really excited to see that we are not out of the woods on political violence, but the Capitol Police announced that their threat investigations dropped in 2022 for the first time in five years.  

Sarah [00:34:46] Yeah, Hallelujah. I mean, they're still too high. This is also hard to think about-- encouraging, but kind of hard to think about as we work through the January six report in our book club. But any drop is to be celebrated. And, look, I think this is due to the reason I feel an overall paradigm shift. I feel like people are behaving less ugly in public. I feel like people are being nicer to each other. I even checked in with my nurse and teacher friends and I said, "Am I inventing this to make myself feel better or do people feel less not just impolite, but violent, aggressive?" And they're like, "No, it's getting better." It's getting better. Again, I think there are a lot of reasons for this. I think with regards to political violence, it cannot be underestimated what it's like to have a president that people don't think about every day because there's some big shocking headline or tweet. I think that was wearing on everyone's psyches, including Republicans. Donald Trump was exhausting to have as a president, whether you agreed with his policies or not. It was emotionally exhausting. And I just don't think you can underestimate the impact of that; just to have a nice, boring president who you have whole days and you don't even think about and you forget he's there. It's great. That's how a president should be. And so I think all of that and just the less aggressive posture from the top matters. But I want to flippantly say life is getting easier. I don't necessarily think it's getting easier, but it's getting more normal and it's maybe getting easier in new ways. I don't know. I think in some ways things have changed that make life easier. These paradigm shifts around talking about our health and talking about substance abuse, I think all of that affects people's lives. It's getting harder in other ways with the economy and the instability and inflation. But it does feel to me-- I've been talking to so many people about this recently-- like everybody's just settling. I don't know another word for that. Like you just tell your kids, like, "Settle down." It just feels like everybody goes, "Okay." And I just feel like there's like a settling overall.  

Beth [00:36:47] I think some of that might be because however you felt about COVID and the varying ways we tried to respond to COVID, it was hard to escape some real tragedy and pain over the past couple of years. And I wish that this were not true, but I just think real tragedy and pain mostly make us better-- not always. And I'm not a proponent of what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, because on an individual level sometimes what doesn't kill you makes you extremely bitter and makes you extremely resentful. And so I don't think it's always a straight line.  

Sarah [00:37:21] Sometimes it just kills you. So... 

Beth [00:37:24] But I think on the whole, going through really hard things fortifies a people. And to see that we have come through some really hard stuff and that we are going through some hard stuff, but being able to put that in perspective. Like I would take eggs being expensive over not being able to safely see my elderly relatives. You know what I mean? I just feel like I have a different sense of perspective and that a lot of people have a different sense of perspective. And I think having some mandatory apartness has made us a lot more interested in togetherness on the other side of it. And seeing videos of people acting ugly in stores makes me never want to act ugly anywhere. I feel like we've just had a couple of years that are like, "Hey, folks, let's get real about what life is and what kind of society you want to create."  

Sarah [00:38:23] Yeah, because I think grief and pain and suffering disrupt the status quo and you do not come out of the other side of that level of disruption without some clarity. You just don't. And maybe the clarity is that you just really hate people and don't want to be around them. I don't know, Godspeed. But I do think that everyone kind of looked around and said, "Wait, what are we doing here?" Even in the midst of people acting ugly, when we would travel, I felt this overwhelming sense of everyone else going, "Imma be super nice. Are you okay? Can I hold the door for you?" It's like we're on a first date again as a society and everybody's taking such care with one another and with our institutions. Even with the public school conversation, it feels like, "Well, I'm frustrated. But, man, I remember when I had no public school. And so how can I think about this institution differently? How can I can contribute in a more holistic and impactful way?" I think even with alcohol it became background. But when you disrupt the status quo in such a dramatic way, you don't have background. There is no background. Everything is new. Everything is different even for a short amount of time. And so, well, if it comes back into our lives, we're going to ask questions about it. We're going to ask questions about it. The disruption to health care, and I don't just mean COVID, but people didn't go to the doctor for a long time. Even the conversation about women's hormones. I had a friend that said, "Well, my physician friend is having all these women experiencing autoimmune symptoms." And she was talking about this in relationship to the vaccine. I wanted to be like, "Yes, all those women got the vaccine. They also mostly got COVID and had an incredibly stressful two years." So is an increase in autoimmune disorders that surprising? Probably not. And so I just think in our bodies, in our habits, in our jobs, in our institutions, in our relationships, everything got disrupted. And so that helps us clarify what's important. It helps us crystallize our priorities and it helps us move forward and shift these paradigms that inform so much of our everyday lives.  

Beth [00:40:36] And we are glad to see some concrete manifestations of those paradigms shifting. We'll continue to talk about them. We would love to hear what paradigms you observe are in transformational modes right now, and we'll keep revisiting this subject. We always end by talking about what's on our minds Outside of Politics. Sarah is always thinking about travel plans.  

Sarah [00:41:05] Always. Every time. All day.  

Beth [00:41:06] So let's just open up a moment to talk about travel plans for this year.  

Sarah [00:41:10] I'm on my way to a place planning a trip to the next place. That's who I am right now. That's who I plan to be for a while. I love to travel, y'all know that. Beth, we have an exciting trip planned together. Do you want to tell the people about this?  

Beth [00:41:25] Well, on Black Friday Sarah texted me and said, "You want to go to Paris in March for a long weekend?" And I don't know what was into me that day, but I said, "Yeah, sure, let's do it." And so we are, we're going to go to Paris on my birthday and spend few days there. It's going be great.  

Sarah [00:41:44] Listen, I had a more complicated pitch than that. First of all, we both turn 40 years in the pandemic and we were robbed. I was sick on my 40th birthday. We were robbed. So we were robbed and I was like this is our do over. Let's go pretend we're turning 40 again, but let's do it Paris on your actual birthday. I am not a travel to Europe for a long weekend kind of girl. Usually, I like to go to Europe and stay there for a while because it ain't easy getting there. But these tickets were so cheap, you guys. We could not say no. They basically gave it to us for free. They didn't, but it felt like that.  

Beth [00:42:14] I think that Chad's "Yeah, sure. Go ahead," has been replaced by a little bit of like, "I really don't want you to go to Paris without me for the first time." He's a little sad about this and he brings it up pretty frequently, but it'll still be fine. And I appreciate his support and taking care of our girls so we can get away. And I'm excited to go with you because I know that you know the city.  

Sarah [00:42:34] I love it. I love it so much. He can lay this blame squarely at the feet of one Nicholas Holland, who when he was a little drunk on Paris when we got there this summer was like, "You know, listen"-- because we were going through French Beat, which is a great discount line. This is where we got these tickets. You should subscribe to their emails, everybody. He was like, "You should just come over here for a long weekend some time. You can do that, you should do that. And I was like, "Can you write that in blood and sign your name to it? Thank you so much." So I put that in my brain. I was like, "Remember when you said that?" He was like, "I remember." I was like, "Okay, cashing that in now. Cashing in that blood oath." I'm really excited because I love Paris. It's basically my favorite place in the entire world. But I've always gone for these big got to see everything trips and I'm very excited to go back so soon and feel like I don't have to go see everything. So tell Chad that's not the vibe of this trip. You are not going to check everything off the Paris bucket list. That's not what we're doing in four solid days. Okay? So just assure him of that.  

Beth [00:43:31] And I'm glad that's not the vibe because I don't like that vibe anywhere ever. That's not my vacation vibe. I like vacation to feel like a vacation. So I think it'll be fun.  

Sarah [00:43:39] I like to check everything off, but that's okay. We're also going to Disney together. We're taking our families to Disney. We're going to have a live show in Orlando. Stay tuned for the details on that, everybody. Get excited. So we've got some exciting travel plans together this year. And that's not even any of our trips to Texas. We love going to Texas.  

Beth [00:43:58] We're going to Texas lot of times this year. 

Sarah [00:43:59] We are. Listen, they invite us you guys. They love us. We love them. We go there a lot. It's fine. They have several Korean spots. It's a great state. It's a great, great state, the state of Texas. And we're also going to Tennessee a lot, going to Tennessee several times. East Tennessee. I'm excited. 

Beth [00:44:15] I think we got Mississippi in there some, we got an Indiana event-- like several events.  

Sarah [00:44:18] Sure.Why not?  

Beth [00:44:19] We're going to be out and about this year, which feels good. It's hard for me to talk about this today because as we are sitting here recording, I am tired in a way that I've not been tired in a long time. I'm almost have an infant tired today as I sit here recording with you, but I also like to have things to look forward to. So I'm just telling myself, "You will sleep, you regain some energy, and then this will all feel really exciting and awesome."  

Sarah [00:44:42] Well, and I know my national park people will ask. We're going at Congaree National Park over February break. We're going to go to Charlotte. That's why I was asking about Charlotte on Instagram over the weekend. I'm very excited. But I don't have any other national park plans which has given me a little bit of anxiety because we have a friend who's like, "Are we going to overtake you?" He's like in competition with us and it's giving me [Crosstalk].  

Beth [00:45:01]  I don't want this. But no, I don't want any of this for you. That's terrible. No.  

Sarah [00:45:05] I like it. I like it. But we are going to Scotland and Ireland this summer and London, which I'm very excited was New York Times' number one place to visit this year. I love those lists. They put those together. I'm like, how many of these can I check off? That's where we're going over the summer. What are your summer travel plans?  

Beth [00:45:19] We're kind of on hold because my sister is going to have a baby in June and I don't want to be unavailable. I love going and staying with the new baby. So we're kind of trying to figure out what we're going to do. We know we would like to go back to Hilton Head. We did not go last year, and our children have not let us live that down. They're like when are we going to go? Why haven't we gone? Have you booked a place yet? Let's go. So we'll probably get back to Hilton Head this year at some point. We've talked about Alaska for a while. That's still on my agenda, but nothing firm yet because all of our brain space has just been family stuff.  

Sarah [00:45:59] I'm trying to convince you to move to Alaska for a month and we'll just go do our show in Alaska for a month-- 

Beth [00:46:04]  I think that would be really fun. 

Sarah [00:46:05] Because there are so many national parks and I'm not going to be able to see them in like a two week span expand because you'd have to fly to have of them.  

Beth [00:46:10] Now that makes me tired. Listen, that hurts your pitch with me.  

Sarah [00:46:12] You don't have to go. You don't have to fly to the Gates of the Arctic. Man, I mean, it's a journey up there in Alaska to get to all the national parks.   

Beth [00:46:21] Interested. I just want to travel without pressure. I just want to travel without feeling like I must be engaged in a series of tasks while I'm on the road.  

Sarah [00:46:30] It just makes me laugh because you watch The Amazing Race and I don't because that feels like what the Amazing Race is.  

Beth [00:46:36] I watch The Amazing Race because my kids love it.  

Sarah [00:46:40] I don't watch The Amazing Race for the reason I don't watch cooking shows. Don't show me things I can't do. I don't like that. I want to do the things. That is my vibe on vacay. I'm like let's. Do. All. The. Things.  

Beth [00:46:49] Listen to me, if I'm traveling and I have to run somewhere, that's a failure.  

Sarah [00:46:54] Oh, not run.  

Beth [00:46:55] Something has gone dramatically wrong. I don't want any part of The Amazing Race, but it is a fun show to watch with the kids.  

Sarah [00:47:01] Well, my husband's charge to me this year with regards to travel is to get better at time because I did book us two things that were just totally on different days when we were in Europe. He missed a cooking class and we missed the Catacombs. And then, fun fact, I booked our entire trip to Congaree in Charlotte for the wrong weekend and had to go back and change those. That was not a cheap flight change. It's fine. He was like, "Can we get better at time? The details are important." And I'm like, "This is not fair because I plan basically everything, so I'm just carrying a lot here." Of course I'm going to drop a couple, you know what I'm saying? But I'm working on it.  

Beth [00:47:36] Well, I hope that all of your travel goes very smoothly this year, starting with our trip to Paris.  

Sarah [00:47:41] I promise not to mess up anything major in our trip in Paris. I promise. I'm going to zero in on the details and not buy us tickets for things on the wrong day.  

Beth [00:47:48] I have total confidence in you. And also I will be fine with missing some things here and there, because that is very much my vibe. Thank you all for joining us today. We cannot wait to hear all of your thoughts about these topics. You can always email us at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. Your email might end up, if you would like, in our newsletter where we feature very thoughtful and interesting messages from this community. If you're not subscribed, just head over to the show notes or our website to do that and we will be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.  

[00:48:33] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:48:38] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:48:44] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers [00:48:48] Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh.  

Beth [00:49:27] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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