French Strikes, the Federal Reserve, and Fox News

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Audio from Paris

  • French Strike Over Retirement Age Increase

  • Breonna Taylor Investigation Report

  • The Fed and Interest Rates

  • Tucker Carlson, CPAC, and the Republican Circus

  • Outside of Politics: Our Trip to Paris

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

230310_PP_Final.mp3

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.  

[00:00:25] Thank you for joining us here at Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're going to be catching up on a variety of news stories and sharing some audio we recorded while we were in Paris for Beth's birthday last weekend. Of course, we'll also be sharing about the trip in more detail at the end of the show, so stay tuned for that. Before we start, we wanted to share some exciting news for our premium members. With the fourth and final season of HBO's Succession just around the corner, we are going to be doing weekly episode recaps about the show on our premium channels, you guys. Recaps is probably not expansive enough a word. We'll be talking about what happened and then we'll be talking about what we think what happened means and what's it means for our culture and our world and our politics. We loved talking about the first three Seasons of succession here on the show so much. We're all caught up now. We loved it. You loved it. So, we're going to continue that conversation on Patreon and Apple podcast subscriptions starting when the show returns on March 26. If you are not a member of our premium community and you are a Succession fan, run. Don't want walk, guys.  

Beth [00:01:30] The format will be just like our January six report club. We'll have one episode a week. It will be at that $15 tier. We are a small independent podcast. The $15 tier really sustains our work, so that is where we'll be doing this. We're going to talk about all the political connections in our reactions. And we'll try, as we did with the January six report, to say if you are not watching, there's still something here for you. There's still something really relevant for you in what we're discussing. So, if you're not already a premium member, this is a wonderful time for you to join us and you can get all the information about your options for doing that in our show notes.  

Sarah [00:02:03] Also, another quick reminder, we are going to be in Orlando for a fantastic live show. We had a meeting about it yesterday. You guys, it's going to be so much fun. It's going to be ridiculous. There's going to be live surveys. There is going to be games with our family. You guys, it's going to be so much fun. So, join us in Orlando, Wednesday, April 5th. All the information about that show is in the show notes as well. Next up, since we couldn't take all of you with us to Paris, which I would have done if I could have, we wanted to share some audio ambiance from our trip. So, here's some end of the trip political observations we made our last morning in Paris at the famous English bookstore Shakespeare & Company.  

[00:02:50] Bonjour.  

Beth [00:02:50] Bonjour.  

Sarah [00:02:52] Should we tell the people where we are?  

Beth [00:02:54] We are in the bakery at Shakespeare & Company.  

Sarah [00:02:57] Yes. It's our last morning in Paris.  

Beth [00:02:59] We are here on the left bank. Is that right?  

Sarah [00:03:01] Yes.  

Beth [00:03:02] With the artists and the revolutionaries.  

Sarah [00:03:05] And the writers.  

Beth [00:03:07] The writers. 

Sarah [00:03:07] The dreamers.  

Beth [00:03:09] It's what Steve described to us.  

Sarah [00:03:11] We had the best of intentions to record a bunch of these throughout our trip here, and we didn't. 

Beth [00:03:18] Well, there was a lot of eating to do.  

Sarah [00:03:19] It's true. 

Beth [00:03:20] And a lot of shopping. And a lot of walking. And then more eating.  

Sarah [00:03:23] And then more shopping. And more walking. Yeah. We went to some churches, too. Guys, don't worry.  

Beth [00:03:27] So many churches. We've seen so many beautiful things. This is the problem with Paris. It's visually overwhelming. There are no places to not look.  

Sarah [00:03:35] Well, this was your first trip. So, how did you like it? And why is it now your favorite city?  

Beth [00:03:41] I don't know that it's my favorite city yet, but I have really enjoyed it. You are an excellent tour guide. You planned the best trip.  

Sarah [00:03:48] Thank you.  

Beth [00:03:48] You gave me the best birthday gift. I think it is stunning. You can feel the richness of the history and the culture and the art everywhere. I totally see why it's your favorite city, because every single thing is, like, we'll put a little extra time and effort and money and thought and whatever it takes to make things special. We should not have anything that's not special. And that is very you. 

Sarah [00:04:13] Yeah. I told you on our way here, I was like, "You know why I love them? They're not strivers." The French aren't strivers. It's not that they don't strive for beauty or perfection, honestly, but the culture is not like-- life is to be lived. That's what we're here to do. We're here to have the best cup of coffee-- actually, their coffee is not that great. No offence French people. I love you. We're here to have the best croissant. And we're here to see the most beautiful painting, to listen to the most beautiful music. Life is to be lived. That's what I absolutely love about that. And in that vein, we noticed something. You and I both noticed something about the first day we were here, which is related. Not a big news and politics culture here, even though they're about to have a national strike tomorrow and the day after we leave. We have not noticed that sort of immersive news environment that exist. Even in places like Paducah, where there's 24/7 cable news all the time. And even New York, there's like a newsstand everywhere. That's not what we've noticed here.  

Beth [00:05:14] Yeah, it's really nice to be in a place where there isn't a crawl always, where you can just look around and constantly see what's happening. And I think the strike is interesting. And the deep history of French political participation and revolution is interesting because you get all of that without the constant churn of what tiny little thing is happening every second of the day. I have no idea what French Twitter is like. There could be a whole ecosystem that we're not seeing, but it is really nice to just walk around and not have it in your face all the time.  

Sarah [00:05:46] Yeah. I mean, like New York, you don't escape the news situation for like a millisecond. And I just feel like maybe it's the culture of strike versus the culture of activism. You know strike has an end. Strike has a goal. We'll strike this long. This is what we want. It's very like finite in time, so it doesn't expand and become a part of everything in the way I think activism can do that.  

Beth [00:06:08] Yeah. I mean, we've seen a little bit of graffiti, a couple of labor posters, but for the most part-- and there is a lot to look at everywhere-- most of it has nothing to do seemingly with politics.  

Sarah [00:06:22] Yeah, we saw one sign, a Montmartre about a school that said Stop the Hemorrhage. It was like closing classes. We saw a communist graffiti at a Labor Party headquarters. It wasn't graffiti. They painted the like big closed down garage door thing with. And we've seen a couple of newsstands, but not that many. And I don't even know if they have 24 hour news here. I don't know if that's like a thing.  

Beth [00:06:46] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we haven't seen many TVs either.  

Sarah [00:06:48] No, that's so true. 

Beth [00:06:49] There's no TV in our Airbnb. I can't think of a TV that we've seen since we've been here.  

Sarah [00:06:54] Yeah. The No TVs in restaurants where everybody faces out onto the street, I love that. I wish we had more of that. I hate going to restaurants where it's a wall of televisions. It's not my thing. It's not even like they love sports here. They love sport, they love the soccer, they love the World Cup, but they don't have bars full of televisions.  

Beth [00:07:12] Yeah, it is nice. It has been so nice to escape the screens. Still, though, everybody's on their cell phones, which has kind of made me sad. I'm longing for a place where everyone's not on their cell phone all the time. But it is lovely. It's really nice. It's cold, but we've had great weather. It hasn't rained. It's just been cold.  

Sarah [00:07:31] Well, I do feel like people are on their cell phones, but I also feel like even in the restaurants there are more people in conversation than I feel like there are in American restaurants. In American restaurants we're more on our phones even when we're sitting across from each other. You don't see that as much here. Yes, I have identified 48 degrees as my peak temperature. This is what temperature I want it to be all the time. This is what I like to exist in. 48 degrees. It's a very small window. It does about right for me.  

Beth [00:07:56] The other thing I notice as just first impression, I have not thought through this, but I love not being in a tipping culture. It is a totally different experience to be in a restaurant where that you can tell the goal is not to just turn over the tables. Sit as long as you like. This brunch is out until noon. And it just feels much more egalitarian to not have that the tipping culture be so prevalent.  

Sarah [00:08:25] Egalite. Well, and I just think that it's exhausting and it's like decision fatigue right now in America with the tipping. Should I tip and how much tip? Because you get it with everything now. So, just to have that eliminated is so nice because it is exhausting to have to constantly be thinking through that and deciding what to do.  

Beth [00:08:43] And it bothers me not at all to pay more for the food and not have that decision on the other end. And to not think about the person on the other side of this equation and how much they need me to tip for this to be worth their while.  

Sarah [00:08:55] Well, I kind of was hoping for like at least a day of rain so that we could be like, "Oh, our 40th birthday do over. It rained, so we probably need one more." Sadly, it didn't rain. I feel much better about turning 40 in the pandemic now. I really feel like we've just more than made up for that.  

Beth [00:09:13] We've blown it out, that's for sure.  

Sarah [00:09:14] We blew it out.  

Beth [00:09:16] It's about us. Spoiled as we could possibly be in the past couple of days.  

Sarah [00:09:22] It's so beautiful here. If it's not on your list-- Maggie said she never wanted to go to Paris until now. Let me tell you, it's the place to be. It's my favorite place. I love it here so much. We've had a wonderful time, and we'll probably share more of our thoughts at home, but we wanted to capture the ambiance of the French cafe in Paris generally.  

Beth [00:09:43] Yes. Au revoir. Merci.  

Sarah [00:09:46] Au revoir. Merci beaucoup, Paris.  

[00:09:46] So, Beth, we flew out after we recorded that little vignette on Monday morning, which was just in time because France began a national strike on Tuesday.  

Beth [00:10:11] I know. It's so funny. We're like, it doesn't feel very political here. We could have waited 24 hours.  

Sarah [00:10:16] So true.  

Beth [00:10:17] I watched a report from a French news station this morning and the reporter was standing in a spot where we had been. I recognized the spot where she was standing and the throngs of people-- I mean, it was nothing like while we were there. It was just night and day different from what we experienced.  

Sarah [00:10:34] So, it started on Tuesday. It continues today as we're recording on Thursday. Reports are that the garbage in Paris has started to pile up because the trash workers are on strike. Flights have been disrupted. You stood next to some girl in line at Orlay who was like just barely making it.  

Beth [00:10:49] I did. She was supposed to leave Paris through Charles de Gaulle instead of Orlay, the other airport, and her flight got delayed and delayed and then canceled. And everybody at the airline was, like, you need to find a flight right now because you will not leave tomorrow. There's no way. So, she hightailed it over to Orlay and was able to get on our flight home. But it was intense for a little bit there.  

Sarah [00:11:13] And I read this morning that protesters even got into the roof where the Mona Lisa was. The energy workers at Total Energies have voted to halt production. They were just disrupting shipments, but now they're halting production and it's continued to increase. The strike is in opposition to Emmanuel Macron's proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. There was a really great article in The New York Times that this is seen as a lifestyle, the sort of balance of work and life in French culture. Macron is arguing, like, we're not going to be able to pay for everybody, guys, we got to do something. But they're not having it. They're not having it with this national strike.  

Beth [00:11:49] I was reading about this in The Washington Post this morning that French workers are extremely frustrated with the European and American criticism that these workers are lazy and that this is just a lifestyle issue for them.  

Sarah [00:12:03] Who said that? That's rude?  

Beth [00:12:04] The theme of this piece was that French workers may have more time off than just about anybody in the world, but when they are at work, they are working. And I observed that with my eyes. I did not see a single person standing around anywhere. The service is over-the-top good everywhere you are, and that is true, as we said in our opening, without a tipping culture. Every store we went to, the people in the store were extremely attentive, sometimes aggressively attentive. We saw people cleaning windows and sweeping the streets. So, I think that they have a point that this idea of like, oh, the French just hate work is not true. And French burnout rates are pretty high among workers. There are a lot of complaints about working conditions in France. So, I think there's a lot more going on here than an extension of two years. It's a vehicle for expression of other concerns.  

Sarah [00:13:01] And it's not a debate unique to France. Joe Biden just released his budget. Congress is debating social security-- well, they say they're not. Republicans say it's off the table, so we don't need to debate it. But this idea that people are living longer and the systems we set up to fund and protect them in old age are being strained is not unique to France.  

Beth [00:13:28] The piece of this that interests me, especially after having just visited and being sharply aware of what a different culture we're talking about from American culture, so I feel more cautious than I might normally about not projecting my ideas of what's happening onto the situation. The piece that stands out to me is that we so often talk in America about voting with our dollars. And I just think watching people vote with their labor on such a widespread scale is fascinating as a strategy. And how sustainable is that? How sustainable is it to vote with your labor around something that is probably going to be rammed through the national legislature? I'm interested in how effective this is.  

Sarah [00:14:11] I would not be surprised if it fails. And I do think that organization, that action-oriented organization, is something we can learn from the French. I think it's very powerful and I think we missed that a lot in American activism. We have marches, but we don't have demands. Which is probably a good transition into another piece of news we wanted to talk about where there was a demand and it was met, which is the death of Breonna Taylor. Her family and many of the activists that were protesting in Louisville and around the country were demanding that the Department of Justice investigate the Louisville Police Department for systemic discrimination and abuse. They have done that. It is a multi-year effort. They have released a 90 page report that contains pretty horrific reports of discrimination and abuse and violence perpetuated on the Louisville community by the police department, and a long list of recommendations about what to do moving forward.  

Beth [00:15:11] As a Kentuckian, I am so ashamed of this report. I'm so glad that it exists and I am so ashamed of what it finds. The overt racism. The fact that this report shows that officer's racist words translated into racist action over and over and over again, it just makes me feel ashamed. And it's not something that I see in my everyday life in Kentucky. I live in a place that is more similar to Louisville than lots of other parts of Kentucky. And it makes me wonder what all I'm missing. And makes me wonder what I need to do to tune in to that reality more effectively. I am very grateful that the attorney general himself put his hands into this report and into sharing its findings. Merrick Garland has a lot of irons in the fire. It would have been easy for him to delegate this out to someone else. But the fact that he personally revealed the findings of this report, I think sends a really important signal. And I'm just saying, like, bring on the sunshine here. Out with it. Whatever it is, it's terrible, but out with it. And I'm happy to see that for the protesters who have been so committed in their efforts to sustain these efforts around Breonna Taylor's death. I'm grateful to see that there are outcomes in Memphis changing because of Tyre Nichols death. I'm grateful that the Department of Justice is involved there as well. None of this is fast enough and it's probably not going to be good enough. But it is something and it is something being done by people at the highest levels of the Department of Justice. And I'm grateful for that.   

Sarah [00:16:48] Yeah. I included it in the Good News Brief and I said, "Look, it's complicated. Is there any good news in this report?" Besides the fact that they do say the police department has already started to make reforms, eliminating no knock warrants and having a mental health crisis team available. And that's good. I think if I was a family member of Breonna Taylor calling for this, calling for this, and calling for this and feeling like, okay, so at least it's out. And I can't control everything, but I did everything I could to make sure that her death at least exposed that this is not an isolated incident. Just specific examples inside the report are so heartbreaking. And I think you're right, they are shameful. And I kind of got in my head this morning just so angry at the Kentucky legislature that they're spending all their stupid time harassing trans people when we have issues like this in the state of Kentucky. It's frustrating. And I thought it was interesting to read through the recommendations. I thought about that article I read from the DC police officer present at the January six where he says the training is the same and all the work is different when it comes to the police. And like, oh my God, every recommendation, training, increased training, change training, training, training, training, training, training. There's a lot about internal affairs. There's a lot about supervision. There is a lot about citizen oversight, but there's a lot about training. I can't help but look at a report like this and think, are we going to train our way out of this problem? It's sort of how I feel about teen mental health. Is the answer that every teenager needs a mental health professional? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like we let the sunlight in and we're not honest about we don't know how to fix this. We're going to try some things, but we don't know how to fix. This is a big problem and fix is probably not even available to us. It's not a verb I think we should often use when it comes to public policy, criminal justice or otherwise. But I think it's an important-- not even a first step. This isn't a first step. People have been organizing and doing all kinds of important democratic work to get us to here, but it's an important step along this continued journey. Beth, you know who else is on a continued journey? Jerome Powell and the Fed.  

Beth [00:19:00] I do not envy Jerome Powell's attorney 

Sarah [00:19:02] I do not. We talk for a living. I have to be careful with my language all the time. I told you this. Over Christmas break, I learned that I am, in fact, a closer at taboo because the part of my brain that has to be careful to articulate clearly but not say certain things highly evolved. Nothing compared to poor Jerome Powell. Every word he says is like market surprise. They fall, billions of dollars. But I think the takeaway is he said we're not done here. We're not done. Inflation's not over. We're going to have to raise interest rates maybe even quicker than last time, which I think was a pretty consistent critique, that they were a little slow on that. But I feel confident. When I hear Jerome Powell come and testify, even if I am worried about the impact of increased interest rates, I feel confident that his hands are on the wheel.  

Beth [00:19:47] Jerome Powell job, to me, is constantly choosing your poison in your dosage. If someone told me in March of 2020 that in March of 2023 our big problem would be an overheated economy, I would have said you are on drugs. Absolutely no way. And so, the fact that they have managed this and chosen the poisons and the dosages that they've chosen so far, it feels like a miracle to me. It is not perfect. It is not good. There are problems. But to be where we are today, when you think about where we could be today given the effects of the pandemic, my hat is off to him and I do feel a tremendous amount of trust. And the senators who were grilling him on job losses that could follow an interest rate increase are right. It is pick your poison and pick your dosage. And he is aware of that. And he is right when he says, but if we don't, look what could happen. And so, I just have a lot of grace for that job. A lot of grace.  

Sarah [00:20:52] Well, Beth, we are now going to exit the competency and grace portion of this segment. And we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson. Now, we talked about last week that he got his footage. He got his January 6th footage.  

Beth [00:21:06] All of it.  

Sarah [00:21:07] He got all of it. And the blockbuster he put together, for the first segment, I wasn't impressed. I feel like my prediction that he had a nothing burger and had not been paying close enough attention to understand all this footage was going to be a nothing burger, prove true.  

Beth [00:21:28] I have a single observation about this, which is that if you give a five year old the keys to the car and let the five year old drive, the car is going to crash at some point. So, I just can't spend a second of my one wild and precious life worrying about what Tucker Carlson is spinning over there. Because I am confident that the car is going to crash at some point. And I think we are witnessing the beginnings, at least, of that crash. This is one too many.  

Sarah [00:21:54] I think so, too. It wasn't even the January 6th, that was just sort of the cherry on the sundae for me. Just like this is the best you had. And everybody just sort of rolled their eyes and moved on. It was the combination of the more text message reveals with him saying, "I hate Trump personally. I can't wait until we can ignore him." Which you craven hypocrite, of course you said that. And the combination of that with all the reporting from CPAC, which was just this deranged Trumper palooza.  I looked at Nicholas and I said, "I think the Republican Party is broken." And he was like, "This is a new observation?" I was like, "Yeah, but like for real. Like, for real, for real." I understand that we have been watching this for eon years go down, but we are entering real jump the shark territory now. I guess it is a certain type of scary, but it really is just like a car wreck you can't look away from. They're going to nominate him. To what end? What is happening? It is wild. And it's just watching that alongside all these text messages from Fox News confirming that they are as morally bankrupt as we have always believed them to be in their private text messages. It's a very intense experience.  

Beth [00:23:25] This is also a pick your poison and pick your dose territory because the five year old who crashes the car will do damage in the process. And there has been a lot of damage, and I think there is probably more damage to come. And us saying that this is one too many does not mean that every person listening is suddenly going to hear from their parents or their extended family or their dear friends. Oh, something is really broken here. But the number of people that they are playing to is shrinking measurably so. It's still a lot of people. And it's still a lot of people who, if they believe this hard enough, can do a lot of damage. You don't need 10% of the country to cause another insurrection. So, it is still really bad. But the audience for this is never going to be zero. And so, I just have to adjust my expectations about that and understand that we are on a trajectory where I think Tucker Carlson and Fox News in general is squandering any credibility they might have had with people who actually decide elections in this country. And that's just got to be enough for me right now. It is also enough for me right now to see some elected Republicans in Congress finding space to say out loud what they believe for several years. It is encouraging to me that Senator Tillis is like this is BS. It is encouraging to me that Mitch McConnell is saying, I wish to align myself with the chief of the Capitol Police, not with Tucker Carlson, and saying directly Fox News is making a mistake here. I have wanted for seven years now to hear elected Republicans in Congress speak with this level of candor. It's taken too long, but I feel like we're getting to a better place than we've been in.  

Sarah [00:25:28] Well, and it was also that piece in The New York Times about the Oklahoma Rep Josh Brecheen, that was kind of like another layer on the salad for me when they were reporting about what people were saying to him at Townhalls that Joe Biden is a traitor, that we are going to have to cut things and just live through the pain because we're borrowing from our kids, just absent of the reality of how the American financial system works. Then I thought, when are you guys going to exit this bus? Because there are Republican representatives and senators doing good work right now.  

Beth [00:26:04] Absolutely.  

Sarah [00:26:04] We talked about it on this show. They're doing some bipartisan work. They are trying. And I'm like, when are you guys going to look around and think maybe this gerrymandering into oblivion is a bus you might want to turn around? I don't know, maybe it's time. Maybe you are seeing that you can get work done and you can do your job, but not with Marjorie Taylor Greene running the firm. I just kind of want to be like, "Guys, guys, hey. Well, it's not too late." I mean, in a lot of ways, it is too late. It's probably too late for 2024. You guys are not going to nominate anybody reasonable in 2024 because I just keep reminding myself every time we're like, wow, it's really late, and Joe Biden hasn't made an announcement. Wow, it's really late. And also, only Nikki Haley has. Like, what's happening? But all this banana pants reporting from the fringes, it's really piling up at this point. And I'm to a point where it's like, is it the fringe? I don't think it's the fringe at the center of the Republican Party organization. Not the leadership, not the Reps, not the Senate. The state parties just like on the ground, I don't think that's the fringe anymore. And that is going to end badly if it hasn't already.  

Beth [00:27:22] Because the vast majority of people don't like to be in small rooms. So, if the room to whom Tucker Carlson is speaking shrinks, a lot of people are going to get out of that room. And that includes elected leaders, but it also includes voters. We like to be in big rooms. We're social creatures. It's just a truth of who we are. And if that room keeps getting smaller, it will keep the people in that room feeling even more justified and more righteous and more hardcore, but it will make other people look for the door.  

Sarah [00:27:59] Okay, Beth. We're back. We slept in our own beds several nights in a row. We're hopefully a little less jetlagged. What did you think about Paris?  

Beth [00:28:10] I really enjoyed Paris. I thought it lived up to the hype.  

Sarah [00:28:13] Oh, that's good. That makes me happy.  

Beth [00:28:15] Well, I feel very grateful to you for planning this trip and for being my constant tour guide in Paris. I had no idea where we were most of the time. I would post things on Instagram about our trip and people would be like, "What is this lovely place?" And I thought, I don't know. It's the place with the croissant. I don't know because Sarah has done it all. So, thank you for introducing me to your favorite city.  

Sarah [00:28:35] It's my favorite city. That makes me so happy that it lived up to the hype. That's why I love it so much. My sort of travel rubric is, do you feel like you're in a movie about that place? So, I like New York City at Christmas time because I do. I feel like you still feel like you're in the movie and that's how you feel the whole time in Paris. Even on the subway, you're like, "This feels like a movie." It just is the most beautiful place. And I told you before we left that I even like it when they're snobby. We were walking around one time, you guys. Oh, God, it was so good. There were these two young French people behind us going, "Thank you." And then, like, mumbling in French and laughing. And I thought, I even like you when you're snobby. I love you so much. You have a right to be snobby. It's a great place. You should feel superior.  

Beth [00:29:24] I think most of what I have heard about Paris proved to be true on this trip, that it is filled with amazing art and amazing food. And I love the sort of mandatory politeness. I like being expected to say good day and goodbye and thank you constantly. I role in politeness. I loved it.  

Sarah [00:29:47] Yeah, loved all the formality. It's great.  

Beth [00:29:48] And compared to other European cities that I've visited, is it a little dirty? Yes. It's not dirty to me compared to like Chicago or New York. But compared to Lucerne, Stockholm, yes, it is a little filthy in the streets. I felt like it was a very immersive experience, in part because the architecture, the way that all the buildings are about the same height and the streets are very, very narrow, so it's almost like you're just in a little labyrinth the entire time that you're there.   

Sarah [00:30:17] A beautiful maze. 

Beth [00:30:17] But the labyrinth is filled with dogs and scarves and scarves for scarves, and just beautiful things, you know? So, it's kind of a nice maze to be in.  

Sarah [00:30:29] Well, and I do think that Paris is intimidating. Obviously, not a lot of people speak French, although let me assure you, most Parisians speak some English. We encountered what, two people who really didn't speak English at all. Especially in the restaurants and the department stores and the shops, do not worry about that. But the way the city is organized, understanding the neighborhoods, yeah, there's a learning curve. And that's what was so fun about this trip. It was the opposite of your experience in that it was the first time I've been to Paris where I really felt my bearings. I went in high school and then I went like almost 10 years later in 2009 with Nicholas, and then I went like a little over 10 years later with my family. So, it had been big, huge amounts of time in between. And so, this was the first time that I'd come back quickly. We stayed in the same place that my family and I stayed in the summer. We ate at a couple of the same restaurants, which is a testament to my Enneagram one ability to have some flexibility because there is a part of my brain that's like never eat in the same place twice in Paris. But I love these places and it was great to feel like I knew what I was doing and knew where I was moving. It's so much more enjoyable to feel like you understand the city and you're working your way around it and you get it and you know where you're going. It's the most magical place. The food is as good as you think it is. They love their chocolate there. They love their bread there. They live for it. They love a sauce. We never got snails for you. I'm so sad we didn't do that. Escargot is my favorite and I'm sad we never made that happen. But otherwise, the food was incredible. The people watching is unparalleled. Especially we were there during Fashion week and so I thought we were catching some fun glimpses. So, the people watching is incredible. The city itself is beautiful. It's existed for 2000 years, as we learned during Rick Steves talk about Notre Dame. The language is beautiful even when you don't know what they're saying. Even when you know they're making fun of you, still enjoyable to the ear.  

Beth [00:32:33] It is. And we got to see all the cliches. I saw a proposal at the Eiffel Tower. I saw a man doing watercolor painting at breakfast one morning. I saw a couple kissing in front of the wall of love. Like, everyone just showed out for us.  

Sarah [00:32:45] Leans in.  

Beth [00:32:45] It was very nice.  

Sarah [00:32:47] Yeah. Lean into your Parisian flair. That's what I say. Live your best life.  

Beth [00:32:50] That's right. Now, I will say the best part of this trip for me, Sarah, and this is a little bit cheesy, but I want to tell you, because we're both reading the book Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I finished it on the flight home. And part of what I love about this book, which was also very hyped, is that I think it helps me understand better relationships I've had where you have this incredible collaboration with someone, where you are so good at working with that person and it creates a dynamic between you that is filled with chemistry, and it's chemistry that we can't describe very well because it's different than friendship. It's different than a sibling dynamic. It's not romance. It's not sex. It's just a chemistry driven by collaboration. And there's something beautiful about that, but it's also strained when you're not in the midst of the collaboration. When the work is not there, the relationship gets strained. And, for me, this trip was just such a good reminder that I think we have such a beautiful work collaboration, but we also have a real friendship because we didn't work on this trip. We took in a lot of information that we are using in our work. We recorded a little bit of audio, but we did not pore over the business. Alise sent us something and was, like, I'm sure you've talked about this while you've been on your trip, and we hadn't. But we do not have the kind of relationship where the work is an essential ingredient to it. I just felt like I was in Paris with a really dear friend, and so thank you for that.  

Sarah [00:34:23] Aw. Je t’aime.  

Beth [00:34:24] Je t’aime. De tout mon coeur.  

Sarah [00:34:28] Well, thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to become a premium member so you can listen to us dissect Succession every week at 11. We just dissected one of the greatest cities in the world. We'll be starting that at the end of the march. We can't wait for you to join us. Until next week, keep it nuanced y'all. 

Beth [00:35:04] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:35:09] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:35:15] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers [00:35:19] 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 Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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