The Era of Global Boiling

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Staffing in Public Schools

  • The Era of Global Boiling

  • Outside of Politics: What We’re Reading

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EPISODE RESOURCES

Get your ticket to the Pantsuit Politics Live show in Paducah, Kentucky, on October 21! Get information about our weekend in Paducah here.

SCHOOL STAFFING SHORTAGES

THE ERA OF GLOBAL BOILING

BOOKS (Bookshop.org)

Fiction

  • Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum

  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

  • The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

  • Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

  • Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Nonfiction

  • Small Victories by Anne Lamott

  • Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania  by Frank Bruni

  • Monster by Claire Dederer

  • This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan

  • Hey, Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson

The Well-Red Mom book club

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:00:34] Welcome to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. School is starting and we're going to talk about the chaos caused by staffing shortages and why we've made a decision to feel cared for by our school districts. Also, we're going to talk about the climate. As you may have noticed, it's hot! So hot. Which has huge implications for not only our climate, but lots of little implications for our culture. And so we're going to talk about that too- the big and small implications of this intense heat and how it's going to change our future summers too.  

Beth [00:01:06] It was really fun to see everyone interacting on Instagram around the debate. It also means so much to us to hear that you trust us to watch it for you and save your blood pressure or your time, as the case may be. And interacting live and then here on the show really demonstrate how we approach the news, to try to help you stay informed without being anxious. And that's why we do what we do. And hearing you validate that is very, very rewarding. So thank you.  

Sarah [00:01:34] Yes, we love the people who are with us throughout the debates and the people who are like, "Oh my God, I could not." You're all welcome here at Pantsuit Politics. We did want to say that if you are a user of the Stitcher app to listen to your podcast, you probably already know that they are shutting down their app today, August 29th, 2023. As this show is coming out, they're ending operations. So if you listen to our show on Stitcher, you'll need to find another podcast player. There are lots of options out there and our team is happy to help you find us in another place. If you have any trouble, feel free to send us an email at Hello@pantsuitpolitics.com. Thank you to all our Stitcher listeners and we hope you find a new platform that meets all your podcast listening needs. Next up, we're going to talk about staffing shortages and the public school system.  

[00:02:13] Music Interlude.  

[00:02:30] We have been talking about staffing shortages around schools for a long time here at Pantsuit Politics. And with school starting, we are now seeing how those shortages can create some real chaos. In our home state of Kentucky, Jefferson County schools made headlines when the combination of not enough school bus drivers and a new routing software resulted in kids sitting on buses for hours on the first day of school. We're talking about getting home at 10 p.m. guys, and then school being canceled for several days while they sorted it out.  

Beth [00:03:00] Here in my county, we have not had routes canceled. We have comparatively a really good situation. But we do have kids standing on buses. There are so many kids on each route.  

Sarah [00:03:13] What? 

Beth [00:03:14] Because there aren't enough drivers. Everything has been on time, but we still do not have enough people. On a day when everybody shows up for work, there are still not enough drivers to serve all of the kids in our county.  

Sarah [00:03:26] We have the opposite where our buses are like half empty.  

Beth [00:03:29] That's hard to plan for too.  

Sarah [00:03:30] Yeah. And what was so interesting as we had a conversation with a friend who lives in Jefferson County about how this situation surfaced, all these other feelings about school, about government, about parental freedom that we thought could lead to a really interesting conversation, because we talked about the buses in particular in the Jefferson County situation on our premium channel, and then that kicked off all these other conversations and we thought, well, there's a lot here going on with regards to the schools and the shortages, because it's not just bus drivers, it's teachers. And it's this sense that the road is crumbling as we walk across it. That's what I always tell Nicholas. It feels like we're in some sort of Indiana Jones situation with the public schools; like, we're racing as the road is collapsing behind. I can't imagine how it feels to have a kindergartner.  

Beth [00:04:20] I have a split screen about that because in one sense I have that same vibe, and I think that's a really rich metaphor for what's happening. And on the other side of my split screen, my kids are doing great. We had a seamless back to school experience. They are excited to be back in school. We got a note from my daughter's principal at the middle school. She is very communicative and I very much appreciate that about her. And she sent a note one afternoon to say it is starting to feel like pre-pandemic time here. The kids are doing awesome, and it is such a relief to everyone. And I so appreciate getting that feedback from her because I do always sense that the teachers are not okay, the administrators are not okay. And so to hear on their end things are starting to settle again, I hope that is a broader experience than just my daughter's middle school. I took a deeper breath when I got that message from her.  

Sarah [00:05:13] No, I definitely agree. Where we live, there is a sense that people are finding their footing. The students, the administrators, the teachers. We still have staffing shortages. We still have issues. We still need to just pay people more so they want to do the job and they are fairly compensated for it. But we have fantastic teachers in our school system. We have new hires that are amazing. We have a new art teacher-- new as she's been there a couple of years. But we had decades long art teacher before that. She's fantastic. She's incredible. And so, I have that same split screen. To me, some of this is not that the public school system is facing challenges on the level it's never faced before. I think the public school system has always had distinct challenges different from what we're facing now, but maybe not less intense. When we were growing up or in the seventies or in the sixties or whatever, it does feel to me like the politicization of the public school system and the way people wrap all their feelings up with any public school controversy with how they feel about the government or how they feel about the other political party or how they feel about politicians. That to me is what I think is wearing everybody out. I don't necessarily think there are any challenges in the public school system that we can't innovate or be creative or just band together and face with clear eyes and full hearts, as the case may be. But the politicalization, I think, is taking a toll and it's just teaching people that that's the only way to address anything in the public school system, is this visceral anger. And I'm like, how is that work in everybody? Do you feel like that's like a really successful strategy, is just just to be pissed off all the time about public school?  

Beth [00:07:13] There's a podcast I like called Class Disrupted. It's two educators who just talk to each other about trends in education and what they're seeing. And their last episode released sometime in June. They they make podcasts on seasons. But I was just listening to it this week, and one of the things that jumped out at me, which tracks with our friend's observation that in Jefferson County this crisis around the buses just became a mirror for everything else people feel tension about. The host who had served as a principal said:  

Audio Playback (Horn) [00:07:46] What prompted my desire to talk about anxiety and fear and maybe people's habits was this. I was talking recently to a head of school over coffee and she was telling me these stories about how much the schooling community has changed from pre-COVID to now. She was telling me that parents don't communicate with the school anymore and that they instead just talk to each other and work themselves in a frenzy over everything that happens, whether it's big or small, and it's over all sorts of issues, Diane. From school security, which you and I have talked about on the show, to gender issues. You can sort of imagine it. And pre-COVID, the school had said that parents would just come in and talk to her much earlier once the issue arose. There was an open door. They would just come in. But now they're not doing that. And the parents, whether it's in small, little communities or even bigger, they sort of egg each other on. And whether that's on social media or text message threads or WhatsApp groups, I don't know, but you can almost feel how this would occur.  

Beth [00:08:52] And I thought, that's it. I agree with you that nothing happening in public school is insurmountable, except that people make it a "Let me make a sign and put on a t shirt and show up with a crowd at a meeting to complain about this." Instead of one to one saying, "Here in my classroom or my school or the one place where I'm impacted in the system, this is what I'm seeing. Help me find some perspective on this and let's figure out together how to move forward."  

Sarah [00:09:23] Well, and it's so hard because I hear you say that and I think, well, what have we been saying on this podcast for the last several years? Don't be an individual consumer, have a community mindset. And in some ways this is like a dark version of that. It's like, don't go to the principal and say, "I have a problem and help me solve it." Go to your friends and neighbors and say, "We have a problem, help me solve it." It's just like I kind of want to say, well, that's not what we meant guys. We didn't mean go to social media, get people riled up, and then show up at the school board meeting screaming your head off. Then I think, well, isn't that what we've been telling people? Get involved in local politics. Go to your local school board meeting. Don't just have the nationalization of politics be your entire perspective on what politics means in your life. Really get involved at the local level. And I'm trying to figure out where we went astray.  

[00:10:19] Like, where did this seemingly good advice-- not that I think our personal advice at Pantsuit Politics has caused where we are right now. I wish we had that much influence over the national body politics. But I do think there's something there. We tell people to get involved in local politics, but we tell them don't go and yell at the school board meeting. And we tell people to be community minded. And then we're like, well, don't join Moms for Liberty? So what do we mean? What are we trying to articulate that would be helpful and productive? And I just think part of it is we think taking this direction will absent yourself from the national political energy, but I don't think it's that simple. I think it is a virus. And I use that purposely because I think the COVID virus itself accelerated this sensation, this energetic exchange in a way. It made something so personal political. And I don't know the answer. I don't know how we calibrate what we want people to do that's manifesting in this dark way.  

Beth [00:11:28] I don't know either. I think it's a really good point and a hard question. What comes to mind for me as we think through this is that it is more effective to be community-minded and engaged with other people around a solution than it is around problem identification. So if you find there's a need at my school and it's a real need, and I've checked my perspective on that need, and then you're able to marshal a bunch of resources to help meet that need, that's great. If you find there's a problem and you have not checked your perspective and you just start getting everybody worked up about the problem and you go to all the places screaming problem, problem, problem, that is not healthy. And I feel like a lot of what's happening right now is problem identification out in public. And I want to say, I think the pandemic has helped some of this. Every time I've seen on Facebook somebody complaining about kids standing on the buses, someone has come into the comments and left the link to apply to drive a bus. Someone is saying, here is the only solution that's available. We must have more bus drivers.  

[00:12:35] They're doing the best that they can. So share this with your people. Try to help find more bus drivers. So I think some people are getting on board with that. And it's not that you can't ever surface a problem in public, but I do think with the school system, the people who are sitting in those public meetings have to feel like Swiss cheese, like people just show up to poke holes in all of the good work that they're doing. Don't stick around for the reports of that good work, or roll their eyes at the reports of that good work, or decide that the good work has been prioritized incorrectly. That this problem I see is the most important thing and anything else being done is distracting you from addressing my problem. So maybe that's the first step. Find out if there is a problem beyond your own perspective by going directly to a person and then partner with them on what the solution might be, and then use all of your great resources to try to help with a solution.  

Sarah [00:13:33] Well, and I think if you back up just a little bit before that, that's like a real frontal lobe reasoning process we're talking about when we get to solutions and problems. And I think some people are just not in their frontal lobe yet.  

Beth [00:13:45] That's true. That's fair.  

Sarah [00:13:46] I think that you can really sort of divide America-- I try not to create false binaries, but I do feel like you can divide America into the people who feel like they're listened to and the people who feel like they're ignored. I am minorly obsessed with Oliver Anthony and his song Rich Men North of Richmond.  

Beth [00:14:06] I'm aware of that, but I didn't see it coming in this context.  

Sarah [00:14:09] Well, because my friends and I keep talking about why did this hit so hard? Why did this song hit so hard? And if you don't know what we're talking about, this is a young man, his real name is not Oliver Anthony it's Christopher Anthony Lunsford. But he has this viral song, Rich Men North of Richmond. And he has an incredible voice. He has a very distinctive songwriting approach. He starts off, I've never worked a day of overtime in my whole entire life, but he starts singing and I'm with him.  

“Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony [00:14:39] I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day. Overtime hours for bullshit pay. So I can sit out here and waste my life away...  

Sarah [00:14:48] Now he has a second verse that is very controversial.  

Beth [00:14:50] It's mean.  

Sarah [00:14:51] It's mean-spirited. It's punching down in a way that's not reflected in the rest of his songwriting. And it got taken up by both sides of the political aisle, the right wing, as like he was their messenger, the left wing, as he's everything that's wrong.  

And what was interesting, it got used in the debate and then he did a video that was like, I'm talking about y'all. I don't speak for the right wing. And the left wing, he's like-- I thought he was really fair. He said, "Basically, I can't express everything I'm trying to say in 3 minutes and change. Everybody has the right to interpret my words, but that's not what I meant. So trying to hook me into either place is not where I want to be." But I think that articulation of I am getting left behind, we are getting left behind and no one cares, that's what you hear in the public school debate. That's why that song went viral. That's why you can't get people to solution or problem really, because they're just so mad that they feel ignored and they feel not listened to. And I've articulated during the pandemic, I felt very cared for by my school system. I understand that's a pretty unique experience or maybe it's not. And maybe the people that do just don't insert themselves to the debate, to the level of people who did not feel cared for during the pandemic. And so I just think that that's where it turns dark, is because we're skipping a step where we say, "We hear you, something's not working. You feel left behind. You feel ignored. You feel like your kids are being ignored." Again, not a new problem inside the American public school system. But maybe it turns dark because we're skipping this important step of care to say, hey, we're in it together and we care about the outcome for you and your kids. Doesn't mean I can assure you the outcome you want, but I do care.  

Beth [00:17:18] The worst thing, though, is that our expectations as parents of the public school system are conflicting with each other. I think our two primary expectations are you are going to take my kid for the day and educate them. You're going to do that pretty solo, and simultaneously I will have a ton of control over what that looks like.  

Sarah [00:17:44] Right.  

Beth [00:17:45] There are numerous expressions of care from both the schools that my kids attend. Constant outreach from administrators, from teachers, it's a lot to manage as a parent to keep up with it. If I didn't do what I do and have the kind of flexibility I have, I don't know if I'd read all those emails. I don't know that I would sit through several paragraphs of communication. So it's much like when I was doing HR work, I would hear all the time from people, "You don't communicate with us enough." And I would say, "How can I tell you where you will listen? Do you want another email?" "No, we don't. We get too much email. I cannot read another email." "Great. D o you want a meeting?" "I don't have time for a meeting." Okay. I started putting things on the inside of bathroom stalls when it was really important, because I figured, like, this is the one moment when you're not being bombarded with other communication and you can hear from me. But what are the schools supposed to do to express that care? I think it exists. I really believe it exists. People don't get into education because they don't care about kids and families. I believe that care is there. It is how to express that care for parents who just feel like they're drowning in their own lives and their own stuff. It's hard to be in your frontal lobe parenting at all.  

Sarah [00:18:58] Ever. Yeah. 

Beth [00:18:59]  And it's hard to release a sense of control over your kids. So it is hard to prescribe like here's what will help this problem, because everybody's doing their best and it's a hard situation.  

Sarah [00:19:13] Well, and that's the thing. It's like the decision to feel cared for is that it is a decision. I don't agree with every decision my school system makes. Some make me hopping mad. This not a paradise where everyone is making the best call all the time, but I have decided for myself that people are doing their best and I might not like it. I might arguably hate it. There are things I hate. You know what I hate? I hate the freaking clip stick with every core of my being. I hate it. I don't think it serves my sons at all.  

Beth [00:19:53] All of those behavioral measurements. If you don't know what clip stick is, there are tons of programs where kids are basically awarded a point or a color or something for good behavior, desirable favor, and subtracted for undesirable behavior. Sorry to interrupt you. I know clip stick is not everybody's experience.  

Sarah [00:20:13] That's true. So that's the thing. But I have to decide that they're still being cared for. They benefit from multiple different approaches from strict adults who are too hard on them so they can see and understand how that feels. From adults who I think are too lax so they can see and understand how that feels. It takes a village and the village is not a monolith. The village is going to look a lot of different ways, but it's a choice to see it as a village. You know what I mean? It's a choice to say I can only get so mad because I'm a part of the village too, and I'm going to screw up sometimes and I'm going to scream when I shouldn't have and I'm going to be judgmental when another kid acts out in a way or maybe snap at somebody else's kid. You know what I'm saying? You have to decide that you're going to see the care even if you don't like the decision.  

Beth [00:21:06] One of Jane's teachers, I think it was her science teacher, sent home this form for us to fill out. And the forms are a lot. But this form was all about how can you help me get to know your child faster? The questions were great, really thoughtful about what are her strengths, where does she struggle? What are you worried about this year? And I stared at that question. What are you worried about for her this year? And I thought about it for a long time and I wrote down, I'm not worried. I trust her. I trust the school. I have a lot of confidence in everybody here. Whatever comes up, we'll manage it. But I wonder what those responses look like. I would love to sit and read those. And another question that came up is whether there would be any major changes in her life this year. And I thought about that for a long time and I wrote down nothing is planned. But it made me think, I don't know. There could be enormous changes in her life. Some of the biggest life changes are completely unplanned.  

Sarah [00:22:07] Yeah.  

Beth [00:22:07] And what generational progress for these questions to be asked. No teacher ever ask about my strengths and weaknesses and desires and dreams of my parents when I was in school. That is generational progress that they are trying to see all of these kids as individuals. And no wonder that's completely overwhelming at the same time.  

Sarah [00:22:30] It's overwhelming for me to see my three own children as individuals. Are you kidding me?  

Beth [00:22:34] Absolutely.  

Sarah [00:22:35] So, listen, we are thankful for all of you out there starting the school year with not enough bus drivers and not enough teachers. There was a story on NPR about how some school systems don't have air conditioning, which is relevant considering our next topic: the heat. So we are grateful, and we hope everybody can hold the complexity of what's being done every day in the American public school system and hand out grace like candy, as Beth always says. Next up, we're going to talk about the heat.  

[00:23:07] Music Interlude.  

[00:23:22] July was the hottest month on record globally, with the global temperature at 62.52 degrees Fahrenheit, surpassing the previous record from 2019. Europe had heat waves. We're currently under a heat dome where we live in the American South. The ocean's surface in parts of Florida where the temperature of a hot tub. It's hot. And that manifests in extreme weather like the wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, as well as a hurricane in Los Angeles. It's a lot. The U.N. Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, cautioned last month that the era of global warming has ended and the era of global boiling has arrived.  

Beth [00:24:05] Well, I don't like that Mr. Secretary. The global boiling, that's a lot.  

Sarah [00:24:12] It's a lot. But I needed that. This summer has been difficult. I think I am such an optimist and I'm so focused on forward momentum. And I believe and see the evidence that the pace of adaptation is accelerating, that we're getting technologies and infrastructure up and running, that we're building markets around these things faster than ever. But I think I focused so much on that, that sometimes it's easy for me to turn away from the fact that temperature is also compounding and accelerate in ways that are not pleasant to think about.  

Beth [00:24:51] I just talked to a teacher over the weekend who teaches in a school in Cincinnati that doesn't have air conditioning, and they had to go to NTI for a couple of days this past week because of how hot it was. And I often focus on how grateful I am around this every time it's really hot here. I recognize that our really hot is a baseline summer temperature for our friends in Texas and Arizona and parts of California. So I try to keep some perspective knowing that I have always lived in a state that has four true seasons and we get a real smorgasbord of weather, but it is all within a manageable range. And seeing how our manageable range keeps inching upward makes me so cognizant of places that already live in a pretty challenging range of temperature and what that must be like.  

Sarah [00:25:44] And it just feels as if it's compounding. Like it's getting hotter and the effects of that heat, particularly on the oceans, are accelerating in a way a lot of the models had not predicted. And I think that's the reality. I think we will speed up our ability to deal with this and we will develop technologies faster than we anticipated. And also some of the negative consequences will not play out in the exact way we anticipated either. And that is really hard to face. It's hard to face when you have little kids. It's hard to face like it's so damn hot. And it's not just hot that makes you cranky; it's hot that is endangering lives. And that to me this summer is really something that I hope has sort of come home for people and they're internalizing and realizing that I just think we talk about the heat in sort of a flippant way and I hope we're really starting to come around to how dangerous it is. It is its own type of natural disaster. It is incredibly dangerous to be out in that heat. People dying in national parks going out on hikes where there's no shade. It's just really, really dangerous and you can sort of look in the future and see how this heat is going to become like blizzards where you just have to stay inside. You just have to stay inside.  

Beth [00:27:06] I remember reading over the summer about people getting burns from falling on concrete in Arizona. That the concrete is so hot that it was dangerous to fall for your skin. With the wildfires, so when it's really hot and the air quality is poor. I was talking to our pediatrician because Jane's ear, nose and throat have just tracked the air quality this summer. She is extremely sensitive to it. She doesn't have asthma, but she's just really sensitive to it. And the pediatrician said, "Some of us just are and all I can tell you is stay inside. And I never thought as a pediatrician I would be saying to kids, you need to stay inside this summer, but that is all I've got for you. And it might be all I have for the foreseeable future." And that's tough. It's psychologically tough to be in another situation where you're saying to your kids outside is dangerous right now. Outside is unhealthy. We've got to be inside. That's just not what you want to be saying as a parent. It's psychologically damaging for people to go on vacation and see dead fish on the beach, which is a story that I heard several times over the summer from people who'd been to Florida. I can't imagine what it's like to live there and see that all the time. Having weathered COVID and then coming right into this summer with COVID coming back (everyone's getting COVID again just in kind of a different experience of it) and it being so hot, I think it is unnerving and on a really base level. And it's hard to make sense of this world when this world seems to be at odds with us in so many ways.  

Sarah [00:28:43] Yeah, unnerving is definitely the word I would describe it. Now, there is a part of me that feels a little confirmed. Read several things that were like summer is the worst and we dress it up and say it's this like, carefree, beautiful time when really it's a very intense time of year and at least we should all be honest with each other that we're all not just relax and in a hammock all summer. And that's definitely not going to be the reality as it gets hotter. And as a person who has hated Summer for a very long time, I did feel confirmed that this is forcing-- because I do think there is this damaging thing that happens and it makes all this weather even more impactful because there is a narrative in our culture in particular that summer is just carefree. Everybody's living their best life. Everybody's on the beach at the pool just relaxing. And for a lot of reasons, not just the weather, that is not the reality of summer. And it's, like, at least if we could all just be honest about it, we wouldn't be dealing with this unnerving temperature change along with these dashed expectations from our cultural story around summer.  

Beth [00:29:44] I'm glad you feel confirmed. I don't feel any of that. I like summer a lot, but I do see that we are going to have to make a lot of changes. If summer continues to be this hot, we very much need to change our school calendars. If summer is going to continue to be this hot, we very much need employers to change their rhythm for the year so that people are able to take time off when they can enjoy being outdoors. A lot of that story that we tell ourselves about the rhythm of the year has to be changed. But on a more basic level, we are going to have to change our buildings structures, our transportation modes, our health care systems to address the heat in this way. And our food production is going to have to change. Agriculturally, this is an enormous crisis and I don't know how much more basic you get then, what can we grow, when, in these temperatures and how can we continue to feed everybody as the climate changes to this extent?  

Sarah [00:30:40] Yeah. My friend has corn planted next to her house for the first time in a long time and she was, like, they don't expect to harvest it until November because of the way they had to wait to plant and the rains came late. I think the psychological impact of these changes will be easier if we can just abandon some of our sort of cultural structures that are just built around a different way. And I think it's hard every time you talk about the climate crisis, this balance between adaptation and warming and alarm and political solutions and infrastructure, I think you see this play out in the way the Biden administration is trying to roll out massive infrastructure improvements, particularly around electricity. And they're running up against environmental activists who want to protect areas and species and don't want more pipelines. And I thin that's really, really hard. I think even the environmental movement itself is stuck a little bit like 20 years ago, just like the rest of us. I know the fashions from the nineties, but there's a lot about the nineties that is no longer relevant and you can see that sort of death grip we have on the old ways of doing things. Especially in the environmental movement, there's industries, there's whole careers built around using these processes that were originally put in place to protect the environment, to slow down infrastructure improvements that will in the end help us transition off fossil fuels.  

Beth [00:32:19] It is incredibly tough. I've been following with a lot of interest a piece of all of that infrastructure funding focused on building hydrogen power plants. And what I keep learning, the more I dive into different ways to create electricity, is that there is not a way for people to flourish without electricity and there is not a way to produce electricity that doesn't take from something. There is going to be some waste associated with it. There is going to be an opportunity cost. We're putting solar or wind collectors on this land that could be used for something else. We're building this hydrogen plant or this nuclear plant, and it is going to use so much water. It is a lot of tradeoffs and it's a lot about what's your timeline and what are you trying to accomplish. Even managing for the heat, knowing now we need to build probably everywhere to be prepared for extreme cold and extreme heat, all of it, that is at odds with conservation, right?  

Sarah [00:33:21] Yeah. 

Beth [00:33:22] But it's but it's difficult to say, like, what is our way of working with the planet as we meet this challenge, knowing that we are still always taking from the planet to some extent?  

Sarah [00:33:33] Well, I was encouraged. The New York Times shared an interview with Al Gore, he's been on this beat for a minute, is what I'm trying to say. I think we all know.  

Beth [00:33:41] It's not a hot take.  

Sarah [00:33:43] It's not a hot take coming from Al Gore. And he talked a lot about how he is very concerned about the rising global temperatures, obviously. But in the end, he is still hopeful. He quoted the economists, Rudiger Dornbusch, "Sometimes things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could." And that he does see every second counts, but that there are really growing markets for sustainable energy more easily available and cheaper than it has been. And so I feel like, well, I'm going to keep looking to people like Al Gore who've been doing this a long time and who still find reasons to be hopeful because it has been a difficult, hot summer.  

Beth [00:34:22] Well, and a thread running through this conversation to me and this school conversation is that you just had to check your timeline. Improvements in the public schools that were being thought about when we were kids are starting to show up for our kids, and some of them will not show up until their children's children. And that's how it is with climate change. I think sometimes, especially when we're focused on those individual actions, I recycle, I use a plastic straw, some of the really cliche stuff around climate change, it's a little bit like I started lifting weights and I've done it for two days so I should be very strong now. Things just take much longer to pay off. So it could be that our lifetimes are extreme temperatures, but that we're still making progress for people in the future. And I have to love those future people to find that hope and to stay on this track.  

Sarah [00:35:16] Well, I live with those future people. I know this is an incredibly hard conversation many of us are having with our kids. And it reminds me of a moment we had with Griffin, I think probably last week or the week before. He is very, very concerned, as most people of his generation are rightfully so, with rising global temperatures. He likes to place a lot of the blame at the feet of capitalism. We have a lot of very passionate debates about capitalism in our home.  

Beth [00:35:47] Will you remind people of Griffin's age as he tell this story?  

Sarah [00:35:49] Griffin is 14 years old. We had this moment we had a very passionate discussion, tears were shed on both sides. I said, "How about this? How about we channel some of this concern about capitalism into something concrete in our everyday lives? How about less YouTube and more you can go volunteer at our local food pantry." Because that's the other thread I see from both the school discussion and the heat discussion. Taking your anxiety online is not going to solve a thing. It's going to make you more stressed out and more anxious and less empowered. And the more we can ground ourselves-- even as things globally get more intense, even as things locally get more intense, the more we can ground ourselves in action in our everyday existences, I think the better we feel and the more impact we have.  

Beth [00:36:50] Well, that's A plus parenting, first of all. So kudos to you.  

Sarah [00:36:52] Thank you.  

Beth [00:36:53] I think it helps me with that question that we were talking about with the schools too. Maybe it is just always trying to stay in the mode of contribution. Sometimes identifying a problem is contribution, but coming to it with a spirit of contribution instead of a spirit of accusation makes it really different. Raising a question in a public meeting can come from a spirit of contribution or of accusation and punishment, retribution and vengeance or whatever. So maybe having that intention helps us decide what the next step looks like.  

Sarah [00:37:24] Well, and I think you feel that similar thread of what I hear from Griffin and what I hear from young people and climate activist a lot of time is it's not dissimilar from what you hear at school board meetings, which is you don't care. Because you're not doing what I want you to do, you don't care. And we talk about that a lot. I'm like, I do care. I care deeply. People care. People want to live and flourish on planet earth indefinitely. I promise you, that is a universal human value. They want their kids and grandkids and great grandkids to live and flourish on planet earth. They do. They really, really do. Because that's where you feel hopeless. That's where you feel despair, is when you feel like you don't care. That's the thread I hear. And so, that connection of no we do care, it doesn't mean we're always going to agree, but we do care. Because I think when you create a narrative where they don't care, they want to destroy the planet, they want everybody to die-- I mean, that's what it feels like. Or you don't care about my kids. You want my kids to fail and rot in their rooms. You can hear that thread running through both places. And I would imagine if that's how you see your fellow human beings, you can feel very, very powerless and very, very angry and very, very heartbroken.  

Beth [00:38:55] I think your point of making the decision to feel cared for applies equally in the climate section as well. I will say something nice about Ron DeSantis here.  

Sarah [00:39:06] [Gasps] Okay.  

Beth [00:39:07] At the debate that we talked about last week, there was a moment one of several moments when the Fox News moderators decided to do like a raise-your-hand-if kind of question and the climate change questions began with raise your hand if you think human activity is causing global climate change. And I respected somewhat that Governor DeSantis came in and said, "Let's have a debate." And I think he's right that doing this litmus test of you're using the right language about this or you're framing it the same way I frame it, is getting us absolutely nowhere. And I do think even Governor DeSantis cares about this. He's in Florida. How could he not? He had to stop campaigning to go home because there is this tropical storm that looks like it could be really dangerous for the people he's responsible for. And so that's a choice to look at Ron DeSantis, who would not use many of the same words that I would about any of this and still see that care and still find some hope and optimism in it.  

Sarah [00:40:09] And we're not saying any of these choices are easy. The choice to say something nice about Ron DeSantis is not easy. The choice to feel cared for is not easy. But as we face challenges small, (our local school) and big with our global environment sometimes are individual choices, as difficult as they can be, are what move the conversation forward.  

[00:40:46] Music Interlude.  

[00:40:47] With schools starting and the fall coming, we're going to do another round of our book club on our premium channels. We're so excited to share all that information with you soon. And we thought in that spirit we would talk about great books we read over the summer. Beth, did you do a lot of reading this summer?  

Beth [00:41:04] I did some reading this summer. Two books stood out to me as I was thinking about this. I read quite a few things, but there were two books that I just really enjoyed. My favorite summer fiction was like an actual just beach read. Just easy, breezy, fun. And that was Emma Rosenblum, Bad Summer People. And it's a perfect title. It was about people who act badly in the summer. Rich people who vacation on an island together every summer. They've all got their personal histories. I picked it up because I saw in some email newsletter that if you liked the White Lotus, you would enjoy this book. And it totally delivered on that promise. It was just fun. And this weaving together of a bunch of complicated folks who acted immorally at best much of the time. It was great. I really liked it.  

Sarah [00:41:53] A lot of my summer reading got occupied by travel reading. Because I try to read a book either on my way to the place or while I'm at the place, about the place. In fact, I'm going to go into all my travel guides and add the books I read too. I just realized that would be like a fun addition.  

Beth [00:42:11] Oh, that's good!  

Sarah [00:42:12] Yeah, I'm going to do that. So for this summer I did read three fiction books while I was in the countries. I read the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks when I was in Scotland because The New York Times has these great like Read Your Way Through blank City and they'll pick a famous author to tell you what to read about their town, which they're the best. So that's I got that recommendation from there, Read Your Way Through Edinburgh. It's a wild book. It's about a this teacher post-World War One before World War Two. And it was a short book, but I really liked it. And it was very Edinburgh focused. Then I read Foster by Claire Keegan when I was in Ireland. My friend Amy recommend. It's a short, beautiful book. Just heartbreakingly, beautiful, amazing. And then I stumbled upon, and this is my number one wreck for the summer, The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. You guys, this book is such a delight. Delight is the absolute perfect word to describe this book.  

[00:43:16] I stumbled upon it in Hatcher's, which is the royal bookseller. You know I love a designated royal merchant. I live for a designated royal merchant. If literally if it was like we are the designated royal sellers of toothpicks to the royal household, I would go in and check it out and be like, well, I better go check out these toothpicks. So I went to the royal booksellers. And they Hatchet's makes special editions of books and it's really cool. They pick books not obscure necessarily, but not super famous. So I'd never heard of this book. It's about if the Queen became a super, super crazy bookworm and just was consumed with reading. Oh, my God, I cannot tell you how delightful this book is. It's so well-written, it's so sharp and funny very sort of Jane Austen-esq British social observational humor. Oh, God, it was so, so good. I read it in the lobby of The Ritz. I was peak. This was like a peak experience for me.  

Beth [00:44:18] I love that you are like, "You know what? I'm going to go on a trip. I'm going to create a whole lot of homework for myself for this trip.".  

Sarah [00:44:23] Yeah.  

Beth [00:44:24] I've realized this about me. I've had a bunch of health care appointments lately, and I would like to know if you work in health care, do they train you to say, "Going to work after this? That's too bad." I don't know if it's supposed to make you feel like being there is more of a treat than it is cause at least you're not working. But it's fun because I always say, "Yes and I love my job." Like, it's not a bummer. I love what I do. But when I describe what it is I'm going to do, it always sounds like homework to other people. If I say I have a podcast that sounds cool and fun, but if I say that means I'm going home to read three Supreme Court opinions, people are like, okay. But it's so fun for me. And I realize, yeah, I do kind of like homework and that's why I love what I do.  

Sarah [00:45:07] I love homework. I love reading homework. I love reading about the places I'm in while I'm in them. It checks so many boxes for me. And especially so many of these like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it's an older book (and Imma get into this in a second) but I'm becoming a crazy book lady who really only wants to curl up with Moby Dick. I'm not far from that. Now, I did read one light fiction book. I read Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. She's an incredible writer. Have you ever read any of her stuff, Prep or Rodham?  

Beth [00:45:37] I have not. I followed her on Twitter for the longest time, so I feel like I know a little bit about her, but...  

Sarah [00:45:42] She's so good.  

Beth [00:45:43] I should check her out.  

Sarah [00:45:44] You would love this one because you love Saturday Night Live. And this is set in a fictional Saturday Night Live where one of the comedy writers falls for one of the hot celebrities.  

Beth [00:45:54] Okay, I'm going to put that on my list. 

Sarah [00:45:57] It's very good. Excellent sex scenes, prerequisite for my summer reads. Thank you very much.  

Beth [00:46:00] I like a light, breezy read. I really do. When my work day is a lot of kind of intense homework, I like a light, breezy reading.  

Sarah [00:46:07] That was the only one I read. The rest of summer I read a lot of nonfiction. So what was your favorite nonfiction book?  

Beth [00:46:14] Well, I have the summer tradition of reading Anne Lamott book every summer, and it's always my favorite nonfiction. And it was again the summer I read Small Victories. It met me exactly where I was, down to the fact that two days before we lost our dog, I read her chapter about losing her dog.  

Sarah [00:46:32] No.  

Beth [00:46:33] It was so comforting to me. And the way that she described the death of her dog helped me tremendously. I didn't know how much I needed someone to offer that intense description. Now, look, here is the thing about Anne Lamott. She is so mean to herself about weight. 

Sarah [00:46:53] It's so bad.  

Beth [00:46:54] And you just have to know that she's so mean to herself about weight and it is going to sound mean to you about weight. And as a person who struggles with weight, it's not great often, but it's worth it to me because of the vulnerability in her writing. It's kind of like she doesn't get this right, and that's part of how you know that she's being honest. She is putting her full self on the page.  

Sarah [00:47:19] There is some connective tissue there to our previous conversation about Oliver Anthony. I'm just going to say it.  

Beth [00:47:23] And this book was very helpful to me, it really was. The other thing that helped me-- and I don't want to get too religious because I know we have like such a spectrum of feeling out there about religion. But the way that she often in her writing will talk about feeling really disconnected from a higher power and so just being like, "Hi" and that's the whole prayer, that helps me enormously too. So it was by far the most impactful book. I read a bunch of other things. I read the book that everybody recommended about college admissions after we had that conversation. I read some of what I know is on your list too. But for me, Small Victories was the gem of the summer.  

Sarah [00:47:59] Yeah, I read Monster, which I won't stop talking about by Clare Dederer. I read This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, which is about fandom by Tabitha Carvan. And it was so good I cried-- not even cried, I wept at the end of that book. It was so beautiful and funny and well done. And then we both read Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson, which is about multilevel marketing. But it's so interesting because it's like her memoir of coming up. And it's Rodan and Fields. She doesn't call it Rodan and Fields. It's Rodan and Fields, guys.  

Beth [00:48:25] Can we talk about that for a second?  

Sarah [00:48:26] Yeah. It was so identifiable. I'm like, why did you hide it?  

Beth [00:48:29] Yeah, I don't understand that. To me, it almost created a little bit of a trust gap or something. I just thought like if you're going to tell it all, just tell it all. Why are we doing this?  

Sarah [00:48:39] Well, I guess it's probably legal liability. As long as you don't name them explicitly, even if everybody knows what you're talking about, you can protect yourself to a certain degree. I have a friend in Rodan and Field and so it was super interesting, and who's been in it a long time. And Emily Lynn Paulson has been in it. She was like all the way up the ranks, million dollar earners. That's the thing. It's like with all this multilevel marketing conversation, there's been a lot of testimony from the people who get in, lose an enormous amount of money and never make it. You'll so very rarely hear from the people on the upper rungs of the ladder. And that's what I thought was so, so interesting about her story.  

Beth [00:49:18] Yeah, I agree. I enjoyed hearing about what it took to be successful, what attracted her initially. I had no idea how much alcohol was kind of part of the bonding early on in some of these companies. And just to hear a woman reflect on like, "Here's where I was in my life and why this really spoke to me and what spoke to me about it. And then on the other end, what I regret about that time." And I honestly thought that she was like a little hard on herself about what she regrets on that. I thought the book got a little like there was the zeal of the converted on both ends. When she got in, she was really in. And when she got out, she was really, really out. But I do like hearing a variety of perspectives about that industry because people don't have one experience in it.  

Sarah [00:50:02] Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. We want to hear from all of you, obviously. Actually, I don't. Because you know what happens when people pour out about all the good books they read your to- be-read list gets so long. I need the equivalent of the strike in Hollywood so we can all catch up. I've said often in my life, can everybody stop writing books for like maybe just six months? Six months would get us a long way. But I've started a new book club Beth called The Well Read Mom. Have you ever heard of it?  

Beth [00:50:28] No.  

Sarah [00:50:29] I'm so excited. So it's very religious based. It's not a Bible study too, but there's lots of religious reading along with it. But you read classics. So every year there's a theme. This year is the year of the Seeker. And we're reading like Dracula and Brideshead Revisited. You know I love classics, I like older books. I like the pace of older books. And I find when I'm just chasing the newest- everybody's-reading-it, I don't get the satisfaction out of my reading life that I do when I'm like very particular in reading, particularly older works of fiction. And she talks about classic literature is classic for a reason. We're watching people struggle with universal themes. Because I think too our previous conversation about when you get so consumed with our present day problems and you lose that timing and the perspective, it becomes more overwhelming. It feels like we're dealing things which humanity's never dealt with before, and it's also overwhelming. And she talks about like when you read works of classic literature and you see these universal human themes. I talked about how I felt this way when I watched Shakespeare this summer in London, and I'm laughing and jokes that are 500 years old. Like, there's just something deeply grounding and comforting to me about that. So I'm so, so excited. So that's my summer reads. My reads for the fall or winter are going to not be as interesting as the ones for the summer because it's going to be like, you know, I read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, which I'm still not done with, which was supposed to be my big classic of the summer read. But there you go.  

Beth [00:51:58] I also love that you have more book club energy in you. I feel like I work out all my book club energy with you. Like, doing this it's good. I'm good. I've got all my book club energy out. And you're like, no, I'm going to be in six other book clubs and just continue to find more texture there.  

Sarah [00:52:14] Yeah, more homework. I'm always looking for people to give me more homework. That's probably the long and short of it. Well, thank you for listening today. We are so grateful to have you here. We love all of you. We love how you hunger for homework in so many of the same ways we do. If you want to support our work, please consider becoming a part of our premium member community through Patreon or Apple subscription and you can find more details about that in our show notes. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

[00:52:56] Music Interlude. 

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. 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. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. The Lebo Family. 

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

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