The Ukrainian Counteroffensive with Anne Applebaum

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • The Ukrainian Counteroffensive with Anne Applebaum

  • Outside of Politics: Gardening

Thank you for being a part of our community! We couldn't do it without you. To support the show, please subscribe to our Premium content on our Patreon page or Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, or share the word about our work in your circles. Sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Instagram to keep up with everything happening in the Pantsuit Politics world. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website.

EPISODE RESOURCES

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] Thank you so much for joining us at Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. We are delighted today to be joined by Anne Applebaum. She writes about Ukraine in an exceptionally thorough, thoughtful, and courageous way. It's really easy to get lost in coverage of the war in Ukraine, so we hope this discussion with Anne is as clarifying for you as it was for us. And then Outside of Politics, we are going to talk about life and growth in the form of gardens.

Sarah [00:00:52] Before we begin that conversation, we wanted to remind you that it is the final week of our bi-annual premium drive. We try to take time twice a year to ask for your financial support. We have provided Pantsuit Politics twice a week for seven years for free. We put the show and all of your podcast feed available to everyone for free and we love doing that, but it costs a lot of money to make the show. And that's why our membership community is so important, because they make the free show available. And if you would like to be a member of that group, if you would like to be a part of supporting the work we do here, of helping keep the show free in everyone's feed so that we can continue conversations together, continue conversations with this community, really just put good stuff in the river, it pays off. We get emails all the time: I ran for office because of Pantsuit Politics. I voted for the first time because of Pantsuit Politics. I had a really productive conversation with my family member because of Pantsuit Politics. We think it's a good investment, not just because of the podcast, but because of all the impact the podcast has. And so, we would love for you to join us. You would get Good Morning with me, Monday through Thursday. You will get More to Say with Beth, Monday through Thursday. Right now you'd be getting Succession recaps which are so much fun. We're really proud of our premium content. We're really proud of the community there, and we're exceptionally proud of the work it makes available to all of you here at Pantsuit Politics. So, if you haven't joined us there already, we really hope that you will consider doing so. And as always, there is information on how to do that in our show notes.

Beth [00:02:29] Next up, we're joined by Anne Applebaum. Anne is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She's also a senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-leads a project on 21st century disinformation. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe and Gulag: A History. Anne, thank you so much for joining us. I don't want to be obsequious, so I will just say that I very much admire your work and I am so thrilled that you're here.

Anne Applebaum [00:03:03] Thank you.

Beth [00:03:04] You have the cover story for the June issue of The Atlantic. And the framing is so interesting because you begin with the story about a grave robbery. And I wondered if you might give us that framing as you talk about your most recent trip to Ukraine.

Anne Applebaum [00:03:20] Yes, I was recently in Ukraine a few weeks ago. I went with the editor of The Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg, and we went to Kherson which is a city in southeastern Ukraine, just on the Dneiper River. And one of the things that is famously true of Kherson is that it was built by Prince Potemkin. And Prince Potemkin was Catherine the Great's lover. He was a general, and he was sort of the prime minister at that time. And he built Kherson and built a cathedral there. And he, until recently, was buried there. Potemkin is really the symbol of Russian imperialism in the empire because he conquered this whole part of southern Ukraine, as I said. He built the city, although I should say there was another town there before. There was a Cossack community, the Cossacks or Ukrainians, there were Crimean Tatars, there were other other people in the region. But he conquered it for Russia and became really the symbol of the Russian empire. Putin, the current president of Russia, has always been a great admirer of Potemkin and is known to want to emulate what he did. As I said, to be a conqueror and an imperial leader. Potemkin is also famous for something else, which is that when the Empress Catherine came to visit that region, supposedly he built these villages along her route and painted them nice colors and populated them with fake peasants who were doing dances and cheering. And then every time she would pass one of them, he would tear one down and build one up. These are the famous Potemkin villages, and we still use that expression Potemkin village when we want to talk about something fake. So he's simultaneously the symbol of empire, and he's the symbol of something that's false. And we thought that was a good metaphor to use as an opening for the piece, particularly given that Kherson was until November occupied by the Russians. And when they left, they took Potemkin bones with them.

[00:05:22] So, Potemkin was buried underneath the nave of this cathedral. There's a little trapdoor in the bottom of the church. When we went there, we asked the priest in between services (we went on a Sunday) would he open and let us see? We went down and we were shown this kind of slab of stone where Potemkin used to lie until the Russians, in late October, surrounded the church, went in, took the coffin and left. And we had an amusing time on our way back from Kherson when we were on our way to Kiev, wondering what they were doing with these bones and what did it mean? And did it signify this or that, and did it mean they were never coming back? Or was it Putin's obsession with Potemkin, the Russian empire? And when we were in Kiev, we had an interview with the president of Ukraine, President Zelensky. And we asked him, what do you think of this grave robbery? And he was completely dismissive. He said they had no idea whose bones they were taking. They just steal everything. They steal washing machines. They steal cellphones. They steal paintings from the art gallery. They stole raccoons from the zoo-- this is a true story. And from Kiev region, they stole urinals. "So, I don't care," essentially, he was saying. "And we don't Miss Potemkin." We thought this made a nice opening conundrum with which to begin a story of Russia's attempt to reconquer its empire, the Ukrainian reaction to that, and also this element of falsehood, this idea that when Russia occupy these territories, they announce that now they've restored historical Russia to its true ownership. But, of course, nobody wants them to be there. So there's this element of falsehood and fakery once again.

Sarah [00:07:16] Well, and I just thought it was such a great way to orient us in time through the eyes of both sides. Because Russia lacks the self-awareness that Putin is consumed with this guy who maybe means empire to him, but means Potemkin village to everybody else that is consumed with the past. Whereas, Zelensky was like, I don't want to talk about the past. Like, this is not what this is about. We are living this every day, and this matters not only very much to our present, but to our future. And I think both Zelensky and you, through your article, articulate this is not just about Ukraine, but why this matters to everyone, including Americans, is what this could mean for the future of the region and what it means to citizens all over the world that are struggling with invasions or autocracy or struggling for democracy.

Anne Applebaum [00:08:08] We felt that the Ukrainians very much define themselves that way. It's a notably kind of grassroots bottom up organized society, actually. They've always been very good at creating civic organizations and protest movements. They've also been pretty bad at creating state institutions. But that's served them pretty well during this war. I mean, even the way they fight, which we describe in the article, which is it's not quite centralized hierarchy army the way you're used to thinking of it. There are volunteer groups that are really important and they're outsiders who come and fund the development of drones. And there are Ukrainians who come back from Silicon Valley to pitch in and volunteer. And the war is really fought in that way. Where, of course, they're fighting this autocratic state, where there's a centralized command where Russian soldiers are fighting just in order not to die. They're not fighting in order to keep their own land or to protect their families the way Ukrainians are. And the Ukrainians see this as a war between two ways of living, really. We want to live in an open society. We want to be integrated with the rest of the world. When the war is over, we want to get back and focus on new technology and how it can make people's lives better. And we're fighting a regime that's really locked in this 19th century idea that empire and conquest and who's bigger and who's bloodier and who can kill more people. And that is a struggle that is understood in lots of funny places around the world.

[00:09:46] Right after the war broke out, a Venezuelan friend who was quite a prominent dissident there, and I saw him in Washington and he walked me over to the--- there's a part of the Venezuelan embassy that was controlled essentially still by the opposition, the Chavez regime, and there is a huge Ukrainian flag hanging outside. And I sort of was taken aback. I was like, tell me why Venezuela feels attached to Ukraine. He said, "Are you kidding? It's our struggle. We also are fighting this ugly autocratic dictatorship. And Russia is actually a backer of Venezuela now. And we really want the Ukrainians to win." And I had the same conversation with Iranians. I had the same conversation in Taiwan when I was there last October. People see this really a war against Russia, but it's also against this modern networked autocracy. We aren't in a Cold War. It's not that black and white. And these are countries that have very different ideologies. And I don't think they'll even necessarily like each other much. But yeah, I mean, the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians cooperate in various ways. They borrow tactics from one another, and the Iranians are giving the Russians these kind of killer drones to help them win. The Chinese are helping the Russians get around sanctions. It feels to a lot of people in a lot of countries like a struggle for freedom that they recognize.

Beth [00:11:07] It also feels to me like it is such a statement about whether we're going to just descend into complete nihilism. When I first started reading about the tension, the possibility that Russia would invade Ukraine, I found a lot of pieces that were very sort of equivocal about what does Putin really want? What would the American interest really be here? How big of a deal would this be? And it has been encouraging, for the most part, to see people coalesce around the idea that it's actually pretty simple, that it is a territorial invasion, that it is wrong. I love that your piece says this is what winning would look like. There is a definition of winning here that we don't have to be so mealy-mouthed about. And I wonder what brings that clarity for you.

Anne Applebaum [00:11:52] I've been paying attention to Ukraine and Eastern Europe for a long time. I'd like to say before it was fashionable, but that sounds kind of superficial. I wasn't involved personally, but I wrote a lot about the 2014 invasion, and I have written a book about Ukraine and Ukrainian history, which again seemed like a fairly obscure thing to do at the time. I listen to what they say and how they say it. And so in the piece, I presented what they see as a way the war will end. Remember that there is a way we can have a halt to the fighting that doesn't stop the war. I mean, we can have a cease fire right now which would leave the Russians in charge of some of the occupied territory. It would leave them with the ability to continue repressing, prosecuting, arresting, deporting the Ukrainians who live in the occupied territory, including this horrible deportation of children, taking them away from their parents. We could allow them to to stay in that position. And what would that mean? That would mean that down the road and three years or five years or maybe three months or five months, the war would begin again. The Russians would rearm, regroup and re-invade. And that's essentially what happened after 2014. We said, okay, we're going to essentially let the Russians keep Crimea and this little piece of eastern Ukraine and keep business as usual. And the Russians interpreted that as, okay, we're allowed to do it again. So, if we really want the war to end, and I mean end it forever, then we need to listen to what the Ukrainians say. And they say we have only one set of international borders. They were the ones recognized when we became an independent state in 1991. We all voted for them, including in Crimea, by the way. There was a national plebiscite do want Ukrainian independence. And numbers are mostly over 90%, a little bit less in the east, but not even that much, some 80%. And these are our borders. And for the war to be over, Russia needs to leave the region the way we made Saddam Hussein leave Kuwait. We need to return to the map as it was, and then the war is over. In addition to that, we need some sense of safety. So, the war is over and it's not going to restart again. So Ukraine belongs to some kind of security community or there's some kind of security guarantee. Probably not NATO, because that's hard to arrange and it requires all the NATO states to vote on it or something and we need some kind of justice.

[00:14:29] We need some recognition of the harm that was done and we need some compensation for the damage that was done. The cities that were destroyed and the buildings destroyed. And that's what we want. If we get that, then the war is over for good and we all move on. And we get to talk about technology and building a university and new universities in Ukraine or whatever it is the president really wants to get on with doing. And that's what they say. And I don't really hear from anyone else a description of how the war can end permanently that sounds any better than that. As I said, you can get people saying, well, we need a cease fire now. And I understand that position. People want the fighting to stop. But that doesn't fulfill these other issues. That doesn't explain how it's going to end forever. That doesn't explain how the Ukrainians feel some compensation and that doesn't explain how we create the sense of safety. Actually, when we were there, we had dinner with the defense minister one night and the defense minister said to us, "For me, the war is over and our victory means that I can get on a plane in Kiev." And remember, right now there's no commercial air traffic to Ukraine. "I can get on a plane to Kiev, I can fly to The Hague (he's a lawyer) and I can take part in the war crimes trials. I'm quitting my job as defense minister and I'm going to do that." When that happens, the war is over and that seems to be actually a pretty good definition of victory and one that's reasonable. Nobody's talking about occupying Moscow. There's no vision of the ending of the war that includes conquest of Russian territory. Nothing like that. We're just talking about the Russians going home.

Sarah [00:16:07] And I understand the simplicity and the clarity of that. I think what I struggle is I'm not sure the European allies or the Biden administration agrees with and can articulate those same goals, because I think it's so tied up in not just what would be right for the Ukrainian people, but what is realistic with regards to Russia. Now our track record, we're talking about what's realistic when it comes to Russia, I don't think is great. And that we thought they were just going to steamroll in and every time-- Anne I know you quote a Ukrainian who says every time you think we can't do it, we do it. But it feels like there has to be an articulated vision for what that means to Russia, not just that you guys go home-- and I think you maybe were one of the first people to articulate it's going to have to mean something different for Putin. And I feel like that's where we run up against a wall with Europe and America.

Anne Applebaum [00:16:58] It's fair enough. I can't promise you that Russia will change. But you're right that for the war to be really over, not just over temporarily, as I said, there needs to be some kind of change in Russia. And it does not have to be regime change and Russia does not have to be a democracy. But there needs to be some decision in the Kremlin to say the war was a mistake, and Ukraine is an independent country and we're going home. That's happened in other wars. And it's also even other nuclear powers have done. I mean, the United States left Vietnam. Actually more recently we left Afghanistan. I mean, those are faraway places. Ukraine is closer. But there are other examples. France in 1962 had this massive colonial war in Algeria. And at that time, Algeria was described as part of metropolitan France. It was considered very close. Many French people had gone to live there. Yet there was a decision taken. This just isn't worth it anymore and we're going home. And it was a very tumultuous decision in France at that time. There was like a coup attempt and there was an assassination attempt on General de Gaulle, who was then the president of France. And it was very tumultuous. But they made that decision because it just wasn't worth it anymore.

[00:18:18] And so, there are these examples of countries, even nuclear powers or colonial powers or imperial powers, deciding it's not worth it. That has to happen. And I mean, Ukrainians talk a lot about what is the how to achieve that politically. So the end game is political as well as military. So what is the defeat or the change or what is the thing that has to happen that will make that change? Because really that more than any particular percentage of territory conquered or any particular city or place that matters the most. I don't know how to put this delicately, but there have been these odd events that have happened in Moscow over the last few weeks. There was a nationalist blogger, a very aggressive imperialist ideologue was murdered in Moscow. Maybe that was the Ukrainians, maybe it was not. And there have been a number of little odd incidents that may very well be part of a Ukrainian campaign to convince the Russians that it's just not worth it. And we may see a bit more of that as well.

Sarah [00:19:30] Well, and I don't know why we don't just believe them. Whatever they think is necessary to get there. They're the experts at this point. I don't know why we argue with them every time they say they need something. That's just me personally.

Anne Applebaum [00:19:40] For the first part of the war in particular, there was a lot of fear that maybe Putin was crazy, maybe he was going to start a nuclear war, maybe he was going to invade NATO's states. And that might have been a well-grounded fear. I do think that if he conquered Ukraine the way he thought he would have taken Kiev in three days and the rest of the country in six weeks, I do think that Poland might have been next or the Baltic states. Remember that Putin remembers. He was a KGB officer in East Germany, Dresden in 1989. So he remembers when the Soviet empire went to Berlin. I think all that wasn't impossible. And there was a lot of feeling at the beginning of the war that we need to be cautious in what we can do. We don't want to be too provocative. And I really think that we passed that moment where that was necessary. As I said, I understand where it came from, but we're now in a different stage. It's clear we did give them long range weapons and that didn't cause nuclear war. And we have helped them and that didn't cause-- and we are giving them intelligence and so on. I agree with you that the faster the war is over, the faster we convince the Russians to leave, the more quickly we can move on and do other things and the more quickly Ukraine can recover. So at this point, I genuinely agree with you. I don't understand why we just don't--

Sarah [00:20:57] Yeah, let them close the deal.

Anne Applebaum [00:20:58] Let them close the deal. Finish the war and end it.

Beth [00:21:11] I can feel the cushion of the past two decades of my entire adult life saying we don't want to talk about regime change. It could end another way. I struggle to understand how much of this war is just about Putin. And I especially wonder what your thoughts are about the use of paramilitary forces. How much is this about Russia versus Putin? And to what extent does it matter that he's hiring mercenaries to fight instead of this being the kind of effort from Russia that you see in Ukraine?

Anne Applebaum [00:21:44] Russian society now has in a way been educated to be apathetic. So most Russians don't participate in political life or public life at all. There isn't a public sphere the way we think of it. People don't argue over politics at the dinner table much outside of a few little intellectual circles. And most people think that anything to do with politics is dangerous. And that's been useful for Putin, because it means that there's no organized movement to depose him. But also in the context of this war, it's created a strange phenomenon. I mean, there he goes on TV. He just did it again a couple of days ago. And he says this is a war for Russia and it's about our survival and so on. But nobody is signing up to fight. I mean, it's not like there is a mass movement of people rushing to join the war and rushing to put on uniforms. On the contrary, hundreds of thousands of people have left the country to avoid conscription in order to avoid being there during the war. And some of them are the best educated-- the most talented people are gone. Actually, almost everybody I know who lived in Moscow is gone now. He doesn't have this groundswell of support or this enormous popular opinion behind him that anybody can see. That doesn't mean there's an anti-war movement either, but it just means people have kind of checked out where they're like, okay, it's happening somewhere else; we don't want to know too much about it. We don't want to hear about it and we're staying out of it. So, to that extent, you're right to point to the mercenaries. The mercenary army, this is the Wagner Group, has been doing the bulk of the fighting in the north, which is where the worst fighting has been over the last few months. The regular army appears to be struggling. It's a war that a few ideologues and the president are committed to fighting and everybody else is pretty meh.

Beth [00:23:43] Is the drama that gets reported about Wagner and the Kremlin real and something that we should invest a lot of time in understanding? Or is it kind of a distraction like they'll work that out and this will continue and we need to just press on with arming Ukraine for a counter-offensive.

Anne Applebaum [00:23:58] It's very hard to know. It does seem like there is a conflict between the mercenaries and the mainstream army and that they have a different goals and they have different ways of fighting. The Wagner Group says the Russian army doesn't give them ammunition. I guess it's hard to know whether that's true either. But there does seem to be discontent about the Army's performance, and that seems to be real. And it also seems to be real the fact that Prigozhin (the head of the Wagner Groups) is allowed to talk the way he does about the army. Also means he has some kind of power, some kind of protection inside the establishment. So, yeah, there are conflicts between in the military, there are conflicts with the security apparatus. We know there were conflicts inside the FSB. This is their secret political police. Some people there were also not happy about the war. We know the Russian business community is unhappy about the war. We know that the cultural community is unhappy about the war. There have been some leaked phone calls we've heard where people who think that nobody's listening to them curse out the president and condemn the war in private. There's a lot of conflict inside Moscow about the war and Ukrainians know that. And it's really that conflict that they're hoping it increases.

[00:25:16] Remember, again, this was supposed to be over in three days. The Russians arrived when they went over the border in February of 2022, they were carrying with them their dress uniforms that they were going to wear at the victory parade in Kiev. They found that the Ukrainians found them. And so, the contrast between that and where we are now more than a year later with the Kremlin setting up air defense systems just in case Moscow is bombed and tens of thousands of people coming home in body bags and lots of huge loss of tanks and vehicles and weapons. The destruction of what had been, we all thought, the second largest army in the world really has been a blow. The question is when will that begin to matter? Who can make it matter? One of the weird things about Russia right now is that at least when we were talking about the Soviet Union, there were other institutions. There was a Politburo, and there was the Soviet Communist Party. Now, really, there just isn't anything else. There's Putin. And not only are we not sure who would follow him if something were to happen to him. We're not sure how that person would be chosen. This is a completely autocratic state with no succession mechanism. And that's one reason why it's so unstable and why it's so hard to make predictions.

Sarah [00:26:41] What I really appreciate, though, in your writing is that even though this is a very clarifying situation and that we have a clear violation of international law who is acting apparently, and a clear sort of country that has exceeded everyone's and is doing the right thing. We have a good guy. We have a bad guy. I appreciate how you don't shy away from the fact that it doesn't lead us to this sort of Cold War situation where we have a global situation where everyone sorts neatly. We have a very complicated global situation, even if this situation that exposes and helps us clarify aspects of democracy and autocracy. It doesn't lessen the complications. How do you think about that when we zoom out from, okay, well, this is what we hope happens in Ukraine, and this is what we hope happens in Russia? Well, that's not simple. When we think about China or Iran or the relationships Russia has formed in Africa, not to mention our relationships around the globe.

Anne Applebaum [00:27:49] Yeah, I wrote a piece for The Atlantic a few months ago last year in which I looked at the relationship between these different autocracies. And you're absolutely right. It's not a Cold War situation. There isn't one ideology. You have nationalist Russia and Maoist China and communist Cuba and Bolivarian, whatever it is, Venezuela and theocratic Iran. A lot of these are countries that didn't have anything to do with one another historically. What does Iran have to do with Venezuela before the modern events? But they have found reasons to support and help one another because all them have, in this sense, the same enemy and their enemy is their own democratic oppositions. So the ideas of liberal democracy and the ideas represented in their minds by the United States and Europe and some other countries, that's what they're fighting against. So they are willing to help one another out. The Venezuelan regime would have toppled a long time ago if it wasn't for Russia, China and Iran. Belarus is a very, very weak country, very, very unpopular leader. He also would have fallen if the Russians hadn't come in and rescued him. And so, they do work together. I don't think necessarily like each other much. I mean, these are very transactional relationships, but they're willing to help one another out and really to prevent the victory of any kind of democratic force or movement, because they think that would be somehow inspirational to their own their own oppositions. And so, yeah, we do have the phenomenon of Russia.

[00:29:28] Of course, Russia has been condemned by the democratic world and actually a lot of other countries. But there is a core of they aren't getting weapons from China, but China is helping them sell their oil and gas. They are getting weapons from Iran. They do have some direct cooperation from Belarus, which is right on their border. There is a kind of loose agglomeration of countries that work together. Actually, the expression that I came up with in that article was Autocracy Inc. It kind of functions like a big company with different parts that interact and have slightly different interests, like a big conglomerate really the cooperates together when it makes sense to do so. And that's really what we're talking about. And there are holes in it. There are reasons why some of those countries want to talk to us or trade with us some of the time. But we should be clear about there's a structural element to it too. The autocracies support each other and they have a common interest in undermining democracies, including us.

Beth [00:30:38] If we were to switch definitively in the United States from the current path of really funding Ukraine's survival to saying we are here for Ukraine's victory and we are going to give them what they say they need and we're going to do what they need us to do. How fearful of Autocracy Inc should we be in that process?

Anne Applebaum [00:30:59] Actually, I think most of the leaders in the autocratic world, and this certainly includes Putin and it certainly includes Xi, the leader of China, are more impressed by strength than they are by calibration, rationality, diplomacy. And I actually think that a show of strength in Ukraine is a very important message to send to China. And by the way, the Taiwanese think that too. The Taiwanese say we want Ukrainians to win because we think it's good for us. And so, sending the message that we will defend people and that there is a price to be paid for trying to change international borders, I think is worth doing.

Beth [00:31:44] Well, thank you so much. This has been very illuminating. Thank you for your reporting. And we will continue to be following your work as we try to understand what's happening there.

Anne Applebaum [00:31:53] Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Beth [00:32:03] Thank you so much to Anne Applebaum for joining us. Sarah, I'm trying to be a gardener this year. It's I'm a real amateur, but I have lots of good support around me. And I think that that's what is going to make it work. So I'm really digging it. Haha! see what I did there.

Sarah [00:32:21] Ha! That's really good. God speed. I want to be a person who gardens. And I should say, look, I do have a type of green thumb. I have like 50 indoor plants, the oldest of which I believe is my ZZ plant that I bought when I got my job at the Senate in 2008. I think that's right, 2008. That's my oldest indoor plant that I've managed to keep alive. I love an indoor plant. But when we take this project outside, I just fall apart. I don't like weeding. Indoor plants, there's a little more wiggle room because they're not exposed to the weather as far as like if I forget to water them. Many of them thrive in that scenario when I forget to water them. But the garden is so needy and I think it requires a level of patience and attention span that I do not have.

Beth [00:33:18] You would think this would come naturally to me, having grown up on a farm. However, I grew up with my mom and my dad's mother, my grandmother Joy, both of whom did plenty of weeding and farm helping as kids and wanted no part of it as adults.

Sarah [00:33:33] Haha! Smart ladies.

Beth [00:33:35] They married farmers after promising that they wouldn't because they loved my dad and granddad, but they did not intend to be farm wives in the traditional sense of the word. And so, my grandmother Joy said that what they had at the IGA in terms of produce was just fine for her and she did not need a garden. My grandfather was a very, very sweet man, prone to grand gestures. And so, when my grandmother said maybe we could do a little bit of corn, he planted using the machinery he used for the farm and planted so much corn that there were days and days and days of my mom and grandmother and me to an extent, freezing all that corn, putting it up for the winter. And the profanity from my grandmother would make a sailor blush. I mean, she was so mad about all this corn. So that's the vibe of the women in my family coming into this situation. I know nothing about gardening, but my mother in law is one of those people who can remove a seed from a cucumber and just take it outside and throw it on the ground and suddenly there's a vine. She's amazing. So she came up and helped us. And our neighbors, Jen and Brian, are going to do the garden with us. That's part of what I needed here. I needed community around the garden because I find it very intimidating individually. And I also, if it happens to be successful, don't want to beg people to take zucchini. I like a plan for two families to share what the garden has here. So with my mother in law's totally expert supervision and labor-- I mean, she went outside and started digging before I got the girls on the school bus when she was here. And Chad doing lots of work and our neighbors in it with us, I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Sarah [00:35:16] I come from opposite experience, particularly my mother's parents. My daddy [inaudible] we're expert gardeners. We'll still talk about-- and my daddy he probably still has in his eighties a few little rows. He loves to garden. And so, you get really spoiled because he would bring produce. And let me tell you the produce of [inaudible] not as good. Not the same. Not even close. He brings corn and he brings, of course, zucchini. You're still going to be giving away zucchini. I think you need to adjust your expectations. It's just that's how zucchini rolls. And I love so much of gardening. I love the three sisters, how you grow the beans and the corn and the zucchini all together. I just love all that. We've done it a couple times. We had some raised beds at our old house. Nicholas did the community garden during COVID, but it's not who I am. I just have to accept that about myself, especially now. We traveled so much this summer, it just wouldn't work. But I love the vision, I love the metaphor, and I certainly love to eat food grown in a home garden. But I'm not a homesteader. I also want chickens. And Nicholas was like, get a grip. You have to have a babysitter for your chickens when you leave town. I'm like, oh, right, okay, I don't want to do that. I like the vision. The reality never works out for me.

Beth [00:36:26] Well, the reality right now is so perfect because I get to go out every morning, which I do before Ellen gets on the bus. We go check the garden together. And my joy when I see that there is like a little tiny peep of green coming up through the dirt, I'm amazed every time. I take not a single seed for granted. And I just think it's a beautiful thing. My tomatoes look so happy right now. My cabbages look so happy. My corn is coming up in the rows that we planted. The deer haven't eaten any of it yet. I just feel really proud. I do.

Sarah [00:36:57] I do. I love to see a thing grow. When my tulip bulbs come up, I'm like, "Look at this miracle of life." It took me a couple of decades of life before I noticed that so many trees as the leaves start to grow, it's like the reverse of fall. They come out like a burnt orange, and then they turn green. It's just little things like that you notice for the first time and you're like, "Life. I love it here." I love growing things. My ZZ plant, about every time in the spring, some more shoots come up and this year I got like three and I'm just delighted. I was like this is incredible because, again, I do love indoor plants. Indoor plants are my sweet spot. I love an indoor potted plant. I like to have them with me all winter where we're just like pep talking each other. I'm like, guys, your fiddle leaf trees, you'll be outside in that Kentucky humidity. And in mere moments, just hang with me. You can do it. But just something about the garden. The garden is way more labor intensive than having indoor plants, that's for dang sure.

Beth [00:37:54] Well, and it's temporary. It's not that long term relationship. I could not keep a plant alive to save my life until I turned about 40. And I don't know what it was, but it was kind of like when I was in college, I remember fighting with our laundry machines. We had the kind of washers and dryers on the floors in the dorms that you had to put quarters in. And would get stuck all the time and jammed. And it was such a scene. And suddenly when I became an R.A., I knew how to operate those machines. I didn't have like a lesson. It was just like one day a miracle occurred. I was an R.A. and I could operate the machines for everyone else. And I feel like that's what happened to me with the plants. One day a miracle occurred and suddenly I wasn't killing them left and right. This kind of conversation would have been really triggering for me when I was in my like late twenties and early thirties because I felt like I didn't have enough time to do anything ever. So hearing people talk about the delights of life, like gardening and reading books and doing really anything other than working and surviving was hard to listen to. So I just want to say, if that's you, I see you and get it. And I am amazed at what you have time for when you can say to your children, "Go take a shower." Like when they can do some things themselves, just so much opens up for you. And whatever that is, I hope you enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying seeing these little bits of corn peek through the soil.

Sarah [00:39:14] Yeah, I became a plant person probably-- well, I had this ZZ plant. I mean, I tried. The ZZ plant is notoriously hard to kill. That's not quite the accomplishment I make it sound like having it for so long, but probably 35 years old. I think I told Nicholas I'm going to be a plant lady, go get me a plant. And I found some ways around the ones I kill. This weekend I made the Lego orchids because I cannot keep an orchid alive. I don't think it's me. I don't think I have enough sun light. I have a very light filled house, but I don't have a lot of intense direct light because of the direction my home faces. And that's what orchids like. But my Lego orchid is so pretty. So I just try to find workarounds, like friends with gardens, like having a friend with a pool or a friend with a pickup truck or a boat.

Beth [00:39:59] We have a Lego orchid, but the orchid is actually the first plant that I was able to keep alive. I don't know how I just miraculously put it in exactly the right space and it loves that light. And you will move it over my dead body. The leaves have all fallen off a couple of times. And they come back when the blooms come back. I just feel like I am living my very best existence. I do almost nothing to it. I give it a tiny bit of water once a week. I say, "You're beautiful. I appreciate you." And then I walk away. That orchid wants it space.

Sarah [00:40:31] I usually do worse with plants that require an enormous amount of neglect. Like I will kill succulents. I just like to water things. I really just think with the orchids I just don't have enough light. I just think they like a lot of light and I don't have a space with quite that much. But that's okay because I have a Lego Orchid and it's so pretty. I have all kinds of plants. I've achieved the dream. I have a plant that's literally attached itself to my bathroom wall and is growing up the wall like Ivy, which I feel very proud of, even though I did basically nothing to make that happen. But oh God, it's the coolest look. I do love to see things grow. I think it is like giving in every sense of the word.

Beth [00:41:07] Well, I'm going to take some time off in June and I hope to come back in July and be talking about my harvest. Jane's like I'm going to get you that special basket, mom. You got to go out with a basket and collect the goods of the garden. That sounds like a perfect, phenomenal July vision for me.

Sarah [00:41:23] Beautiful. Love it.

Beth [00:41:24] Thank you all so much for joining us today. We always appreciate your time and attention. Please don't forget to check out the links in our show notes to our premium community options on Patreon and Apple Podcasts subscriptions. Both places offer a two week free trial, so you can check out the work we're doing there before you commit any dollars. But it really is your support of the show that is so meaningful to us. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.

Beth [00:42:05] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.

Sarah [00:42:11] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.

Beth [00:42:17] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

Executive Producers 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. Danny Ozment. Jen Ross.

Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

Maggie PentonComment