Elon Musk, UFOs, and the Mysteries of the Universe

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Technological Advances & Elon Musk

  • UFOs & Extraterrestrial Life 

  • Outside of Politics: Astrology

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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.

Sarah and Beth are booking speaking engagements for 2024 now. Find out how to bring Sarah and Beth to your organization here. Sarah and Beth will be speaking at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA at 2pm CST on November 9th and Giving Diabetes the Blues with the Diabetes Coalition of Mississippi at 11am on November 10.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES & ELON MUSK

UFOS & EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

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.  

[00:00:34] We're so glad you're here for our new episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, that different approach means thinking about some big trends in technology and also space. So we're going to start out very practical. Spend a minute since we have hit artificial intelligence and the economic impact of Silicon Valley. And as you're going to hear, it's been a minute because Sarah is not all that interested in this, but we're going to take a second and chat about it.  

Sarah [00:00:56]  I'm just tired of talking about Elon Musk. That's the long and short of it.  

Beth [00:01:00] Then we are going to be much less practical. We have been trying for actual months to make an episode about UFOs, and today is the day. And Outside of Politics, we're talking astrology. And I think this whole agenda, Sarah, is worth celebrating.  

Sarah [00:01:13] And we stumbled upon a Paducah punking of my husband, which I'm very excited about. Look for that later in the discussion. Okay, before we jump into the entire universe, actually, we are working on filling out our speaking schedule for 2024. And just like Amy Poehler and Mean Girls, we are not regular speakers. We are called speakers, guys. We don't do presentations. So let us give you some examples. We had a corporation reach out and say we are having a tough time transitioning back to working in the office. We are having a tough time motivating our team to meet goals. And so we worked with them on that and we were really, really happy with that presentation. We've had universities say our students are feeling a lot of pressure around this election or a lot of pressure around civic engagement in general, or a lot of pressure around their student government. Every student government is experiencing pressure on parking. In case you all wanted TLDR. This is what we've encountered. This is the universal threat across campus universities. How do we talk about parking? That's what we will do with them. We will talk about parking. We will talk about the challenges in front of that particular student body and craft a talk speech Q&A workshop with them.  

Beth [00:02:31] And we would love to talk with you about what this could look like where you are, in your school or your business or organization. You can learn more on our website, Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com or by reaching out to Alise at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com for more details. Next up, let's talk about tech.  

Sarah [00:02:46] And Elon...  

[00:02:46] Music Interlude.  

Beth [00:03:05] Sarah, There have been so many headlines about the tech industry lately and we could just march through them, but I would rather know what has really captured your attention lately.  

Sarah [00:03:14] Do you want my honest answer?  

Beth [00:03:15] I do.  

Sarah [00:03:17] None of it.  

Beth [00:03:17] Really?  

Sarah [00:03:18] Is that bad? Does that make me a bad person?  

Beth [00:03:20] It doesn't make you a bad person. But that surprises me.  

Sarah [00:03:24] Yeah. I am a little bored with AI. I'm not even using it that much. I am encouraged that the federal government is setting some standards and stepping in. I think that's a very positive move and much quicker than the federal government is known to act. So I'm encouraged by that. I think the antitrust suit against Google is interesting, but it's going to stretch on for so long. I just think it's going to take a long time to really learn anything or see how that's going to shake out. And I'm so tired of talking about Elon Musk. I can hardly see straight. That's just where I'm at.  

Beth [00:04:04] We are in completely different places because I am reading the Elon Musk biography right now and I can hardly put it down. I think it is so interesting. The lawsuits interest me, not because I think we're going to have an outcome in a long time. I agree with you. But especially these lawsuits where famous authors are suing ChatGPT to say you need to pay us, ask for our permission before you train your large language models on our life's work.  

Sarah [00:04:32] Yes. 

Beth [00:04:33] We don't have precedent for that kind of issue. And we have copyright precedent. But watching how courts deal with something that is really brand new, I'm interested in. And I think not to go back to Elon Musk, but the fact that Neuralink is moving into human clinical trials, this is his idea to put chips into people's brains and specifically to help people who are paralyzed. The trials are going to recruit people who are suffering with quadriplegia and things like that. I'm just fascinated by that. I have no idea how I feel about it. I can talk myself into feeling 100 different ways, but it does feel like we are again on the cusp of all of this rapid acceleration of what we are capable of doing. And that makes me both excited and concerned.  

Sarah [00:05:24] I do think artificial intelligence application inside health care and medicine and pharmaceutical breakthroughs will be enormous and impactful. I still think we're probably a little bit away from that, but I guess that's it. I'm more in the traditional birth posture of just waiting and see. I just don't think there's a lot to assess right now. I really don't. I think that we are just at the very beginning. I think it is smart and good that the federal government is getting involved this early. I think we all got very excited around artificial intelligence last fall when ChatGPT really became available to the public. But for the most part, I've seen sort of that burst of attention fade. I still think it's getting used a ton in education, which there's a lot of interesting writing about. And I think that people who are early adopters and figure out how to use it and how to use it well will thrive and flourish. And as much as I want to be one of those people, I can't make myself use it. It's still so clunky for what we do. And so I guess that's it. I just feel like there's so many unknowns. We're at the beginning. The risk of overreacting either way, overreacting to its promise or overreacting to its threat is so large that I'm just in a very pondering posture.  

Beth [00:06:53] The best take I've read recently was in the Financial Times. It talked about how we're probably transitioning from a phase of golden age technological innovation around consumers to technological innovation around our more traditional big industries: manufacturing, health care, transportation and logistics. That makes a lot of sense to me. I feel your sort of malaise, boredom around the application of chat to content creation. I don't want to see what people made on Instagram. I don't want to read captions generated by it. I think that it is super flat and there is a lot of promise in all of this, but not for what I do. And I'm kind of happy about that and kind of bummed about it. At the same time, the idea that we could really materially improve our ability to deliver health care services makes me excited. Again, I want to be really sure and super careful and take that slowly. Neuralink does feel so promising and so scary to me at the same time. But I want to pay attention to all of that, in part because of the way that Elon Musk's biography has hooked me in. And he's a lot of things and dramatic is one of them, and egomaniacal is another one. But he talked a lot as he was developing Space X about how technological progress is not inevitable. It takes people pushing really hard for it and it takes tremendous investment and almost obsession to move technological progress forward. And I think reading that juxtaposed with my seventh grader coming home every day and telling me about what she just learned about the Middle Ages, I just feel good that there are people who are egomaniacal and egotistical and obsessed with continuing to push us forward.  

Sarah [00:08:48] I read the Ronan Farrow piece on Elon Musk and his outsized role in so many aspects of our world and our government. And I begrudgingly will probably read the Walter Isaacson biography that you are currently reading because it just feels like he's not going to leave us alone. We're not going to get to ignore Elon Musk, which is a real bummer. And I just try to hold it with that he is one man. He is very rich. He has had enormous impact. I think it's just hard to listen and learn and hold all these stories and all this reporting about his enormous power in so many ways and his enormous insight and innovation. At the same time, you're watching him run Twitter into the ground, and he seems to have such enormous blind spots. And I don't know if it's the disruption that our current media environment is playing in our traditional understanding of the big genius. We weren't getting this level of day to day insight and just reporting on Steve Jobs, certainly not somebody like Albert Einstein, somebody that we understand as much as we can. I don't think I understand Elon Musk. He's very confusing to me. You know what I'm saying? We weren't watching them stumble. We weren't reading their tweets. And Steve Jobs could be a massive jerk, we don't know. But we didn't know at the time and we were on our iPhones. And I think that's what's so kind of disorienting around Elon Musk. Is we're getting these big tomes of biographies about like, what a genius he is and how impactful he is and long reads on how he's like shutting down the Internet to Ukraine in this massively impactful way. At the same time, we're watching him behave like a total fool on Twitter, which I refuse to call X. Thank you so much for asking.  

Beth [00:11:01] Yeah, it's coming together for me in the biography. First of all, he's just obsessed with the letter X.  

Sarah [00:11:12] Which is weird. Why?  

Beth [00:11:12]  It's like Sesame Street. He is brought to us by the letter X. He loves the letter X, he always has.  

Sarah [00:11:17] But why?  

Beth [00:11:18] I don't know. I mean, people are allowed to have their quirks. He is not trying to reinvent Twitter. He is trying to create what his vision of PayPal was all along and what the other deeply invested folks in PayPal put the brakes on. They ousted him because he wanted to take PayPal in this big everything platform direction. He wanted to call that X.com. They were like, no, PayPal is a better name. And so he's working out old stuff now. And that makes a lot more sense to me than just Elon Musk is free speech crusader. So he's working out those old grievances. He's also running so many companies at one time. He's also dealing with this hurt he feels about his broken relationship with his daughter. And he fundamentally believes that everything is an engineering problem and a social network is a people problem. And so, I think his failure in the Twitter space-- I also do not want to call it X because I think it's dumb. But I think what's coming across so badly in that space is that he is not good at reading emotions and empathy and vibes in general. He wants to just engineer his way through everything. And this isn't it. I'm not trying to be an Elon Musk apologist or fangirl here. I don't feel either of those things. I'm just interested in him as a character study. I'm interested in the question of whether it matters for the world that Steve Jobs was a big jerk. I'm interested in why all the guys that went to Chuck Schumer's AI forum look like the tech pros and why there isn't even greater, especially gender diversity in that sector. I just think that he is a case study and lots of factors that have been with us for a long time. I mean, Oppenheimer is also this mercurial, flawed, obsessive, egomaniacal. Do you have to believe you're a modern day prophet who has no God to be able to succeed in this space? I think that's all pretty fascinating.  

Sarah [00:13:26] I have concerns about the man supposedly ushering in the new era of technology being driven by old grievances. I have real concerns about that. I don't know why I am not as fascinated by geniuses. I think political figures are infinitely more interesting to me. Maybe it's because it is more a people issue and good politicians understand people that I think that they are infinitely more fascinating than these engineering technological geniuses that are so consumed by software or math or science. They're just not my strengths. Maybe that's who I am fundamentally. I don't know. I am fascinated by people. I just feel like there's enough eyes on Elon Musk. Does he really need one more person, like, totally fascinated by the inner workings of his psyche? It's also true of Donald Trump. But I read Mary Trump's book, every page of it, and really help me understand him. So I don't know why one fascinates me and one doesn't. It's not that I don't think he has enormous impact. I think he does and will continue to have enormous impact. And I think he needs therapy, but I don't think he's going to get it at any time soon. Again, also true of Donald Trump. But I don't know why one fascinates me and one I kind of roll my eyes at.  

Beth [00:14:43] History of the world. Who do you think will matter more, Elon Musk or Donald Trump?  

Sarah [00:14:50] Oh, that's really hard. I think you could run that historical experiment with Oppenheimer. Who do you think mattered more? Oppenheimer or FDR  

Beth [00:15:03] Yeah.  

Sarah [00:15:04] I think probably FDR, just because of the federal program and the structure of government that he fundamentally changed. You got Joe Biden out there still trying to replicate that with this new Climate Corps, America's Climate Corps. But I don't know. I mean, it's an impossible answer. I think you could make a very strong case for either. And I think that'll be true for Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I think probably the long tail Elon Musk, because I think Donald Trump sort of had blown some stuff up. But you have figures like that in American politics that nobody talks or thinks about anymore. We don't talk about William Jennings Bryan anymore. And so I think that probably like 100 years from now, people will still be talking about Elon Musk in a way that they're not talking about Donald Trump. Maybe unless somebody rescues him like they did Tesla, nobody was talking about Tesla anymore. It's Thomas Edison that got all the play. And then Elon Musk pulled Tesla out of the history bin to a certain extent. Maybe somebody will do the same for him.  

Beth [00:16:05] Well, I think the answer is it depends in a lot of ways. For me, this is not closed between Musk and Trump. I think Musk will matter more for a lot of reasons. But like the Oppenheimer question, that to me is still TBD, because if we are able to build on his work in a way that gives us new forms of power that fundamentally alter our ability to live safely on this planet, I think that's bigger than the ideal. I should also acknowledge my American bias and the Oppenheimer versus FDR equation. I imagine that if I lived in Japan, I would have a very different perspective and calculus on that. I think Elon did not invent electricity or electric cars, but he put those two concepts together in a way that no one had been able to do before. People were making electric cars; they just always sucked, right? In some ways, his insights were we need to control more of our own supply chain and we need to make it look cool. Instead of making it about being green, we need to make it look like a fast, fun sports car. And that's what propelled at Ford. And everybody thought he was bananas in the process of creating it. And now it's it's really working. It's not working easy, but it's working.  

[00:17:19] And I think the same thing with space travel. He didn't invent space travel and he relies in Space X on government contracts to take satellites up. But he has altered a lot about how those bids happen for government contracts. And SpaceX is impressive, and his motivation for it impresses me. Reading in this book how he he was saying to people, "We have this fragile candle of human consciousness that could be lost if we become unable to live on this planet, and I don't want that to happen." I think that is an outsized responsibility to put on oneself. And I would not want to either have the ego to believe that I could accomplish that or the burden of carrying the belief that I could accomplish that. But I think it matters tremendously. And I think that's probably a good segue way to our next topic, because we do want to spend a minute talking about space and I hope this interest you more than technology does right now, Sarah We're going to finally have our long awaited discussion of extraterrestrial life and UFOs.  

[00:18:23] Music Interlude.  

[00:18:42] Sarah, first question, softball. Do you think there's life beyond the earth in the greater universe?  

Sarah [00:18:48] Of course. Does anybody think no? I don't think anybody sincerely thinks no.  

Beth [00:18:53] I hope not. That seems like such a sad way to perceive the greater world to me. I think there has to be more. It's so big.  

Sarah [00:19:03] It's a big universe. And it seems like the scientists are all a pretty firm yes, of course, there's life out there. No telling what it looks like. No telling how far away it is. But there is definitely life. It's not that there was not a very finely tuned arrangement of situations that led to the development of life on this planet. But in a universe that is vast, surely we could stumble upon that arrangement of incidences again. I didn't say infinite because they don't really think the universe is infinite anymore.  

Beth [00:19:45] What I realize, the more I pay attention to things like the Webb telescope, is that I still have not grasped the relationship between space and time. And I find that very limiting in these conversations. Because I can imagine a lot of possibilities, but then I realize that my imagination is limited by how I just don't fully grasp that connection.  

Sarah [00:20:06] So I have two dear friends that I've talked about on this podcast before, Mike and Smith, and we have a book club. And Mike is very into physics and space and time and the relationship between the two. So he is always picking books for us that I would never in 1 million years read on my own. But it's been really helpful as we think about this conversation, because a connection I've made is I think that the reason we are hearing so much conversation about life on other planets and more importantly if that life has come here, is because there has been due to the Webb telescope and lots of other developments, some really fundamentally reordering of our understanding of space and time and the universe. Our tools are getting better. And it's like every tool opens up this sense that like, oh, we had this all wrong. There was a really great piece in The New York Times called The Crisis in Cosmology. It's by Adam Frank and Marcello Glaeser, professor of astrophysicists and a professor of physics and astronomy. The book quote is, it's starting to look as if we may need to rethink the entire universe. We're pulling back images from the Webb telescope. They're talking about the standard model, which we understood. The sequence of events that follow the Big Bang. First, the force of gravity pulled together denser regions and the cooling cosmic gas, which grew to become stars and black holes. And the force of gravity pulled together the stars in the galaxies. Well, the Webb data is revealing that some larger galaxies formed in too short of a time for that model to be applicable. And you have things like string theorists having to go back to the drawing board. And I think it seems to me like that huge, massive reorganization of our understanding of the universe and space and time has bubbled up in lots of ways. And these growing conversations about not just is there life out there, but has it come to Earth, is just like one small manifestation of that.  

Beth [00:22:20] Well, in some ways, everything that I try to follow from the Webb telescope discussions makes the question of whether we're calling them UFOs or unidentified anomalous phenomena, as is the acronym now, it makes it very small. It feels like a very small question to me compared to the questions that we're out there trying to explore, especially because the government office responsible for figuring out what is in the sky has said they've gotten in the last year or so like 800 reports and between 2 and 5% of them, they still can't figure out what it was. I think it's important to follow the UAP conversation because there is just more stuff in the sky. And knowing what that stuff is seems really important to me, especially as technology advances in foreign powers that wish us harm or that wish to gather information from us. As a national security matter, I think following that UAP discussion is important. As a climate matter, I think following that UAP discussion is important. It also seems pretty small to me in terms of fostering greater understanding of what the universe is and what our place in it is. And I really kind of struggle with people who don't care about that. As hard as it is to track, philosophically, what would it mean for us if there were beings with our level of consciousness or greater out there? I don't even need to take any mind altering substances to get really excited about that.  

Sarah [00:24:01] Again, I think it's helpful to me and I hope helpful to other people to just see that as a small piece of a bigger conversation. I don't even think it has to be national security; although, I think that's true and important. It doesn't have to be like we're choosing to spend billions of dollars on the Webb telescope because we're concerned about life on other planets or we spend money building more affordable housing. I just think I think that is a false dichotomy. I think that back to our previous conversation of Elon Musk, the drive to innovate, the drive to understand is essential and foundational to the human species. And Elon Musk gets a lot of media, and these government reports about the flying objects gets a lot of media. But there is an entire industry, an entire piece of academia, an entire like population of people out there trying to answer almost impossible questions. This rethinking of cosmology it's like it's not even like, oh, we got the wrong answer. It's like we don't even understand what questions to ask. And the pursuit of those questions opens up not just our understanding of the universe, but our understanding of elements and minerals and energy. And so it could answer questions that could change everything, including how much housing there is available to people. I just think it's fundamentally about the pursuit of science and understanding.  

[00:25:51] And I think that the way it manifests in some of these arguably even silly conversations, I think some of the way this is pursued, it gets drowned out to-- our conversation on Tuesday-- by the conspiracy theories and people thinking they found something. And then you just have human psychology at play. I read this piece about Avi Loeb, who's this astrophysicist, and he thinks that life in the universe has already come to earth. That seems to be the dividing line for science. All scientists mostly are like, sure, there's life out there. When you say it's come to Earth, they're like, oh, hold on, pump the brakes. But and he just gets in this posture of like-- again, very much like Elon Musk-- the more you question me, the more I'm going to double down. Well, that's just psychology. That's astrophysics. That's just basic human psychology. And you see so much of that at play around this conversation about flying objects. People feel questioned, then they double down. And you need to understand. And, of course, there's secrets. And it's like you got to put it in a box and you got put it over there and that's like a whole different thing. To me the much more interesting thing is that this is surrounding a bigger fundamental reorganization of our understanding of space, time, and the universe.  

Beth [00:27:05] I was reading the NASA report that came out this week, and one of the items that caught my attention was NASA's belief that we need a centralized place for people to report sightings of what they believe are UAP. Because right now, if you're a civilian and you see something, maybe you call your local police department, well, that doesn't go into anything. And your local police department has very little ability to respond to that, depending on where you live. Maybe you posted on Facebook or TikTok. Where does it go? And when I first read that, I thought, do they really want civilian reports of this stuff? Because this human psychology element could come to play in ways that waste a lot of time, Right? But the more I read the report, the more I thought, no, that's essential and probably would help tamp down some of this sort of anti-government everything's being hidden from us streak in this field. If there were a place for you to report what you saw and for them to get back to you and say, here's what we learned about that, or for you to just know that you contributed to the larger body of knowledge, whether what you saw turns out to be anything unusual or not. To know that was a balloon and thank you for telling us, because we're trying to get a sense of where all the balloons are and what they look like from different vantage points in different environmental conditions. I think that having a little bit more grace and empathy and patience with things that do sound sort of chaotic would advance this discussion pretty significantly.  

Sarah [00:28:38] Yes, we should definitely have somewhere to report that. I'm surprised we don't already. That seems like something we should have put in place a long time ago. But it's not going to matter because-- well, I don't want to say it's not going to matter. I think it's important and good, but I don't know if there's anything we can do honestly, just truly and honestly, to even tamp down the conspiracy theory surrounding this particular subject. Conspiracy theories come up when there is something we fundamentally can't understand or explain. People who do this for their entire lives don't understand and can't explain space and time and the universe. It's like we're never going to get in a place where you can say this is the answer and this is how we'll explain it to you. Because like I said, I'll read entire books about dark matter, and at the end I'll be like I'm pretty smart. I still got to read the whole book, and I'll try to explain to my husband. I'll be like, the universe is not infinite. And he's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, I don't know. But this guy was very smart, and he explained it to me and I understood it when I read it. But please don't ask me to explain it to you. And so it's like just the depth of knowledge which we are only millimeters into understanding is just so ripe for people to see something in the sky and say, I don't understand it, there must be a conspiracy theory. Have you ever gotten that app where you can point your phone at the sky and it all and it'll show you how you can watch satellites. You just watch them drift right across the sky. And it's wild to see how much is out there that we put up there, much less out there that we don't understand. I think the conspiracy theories are here to stay forever.  

Beth [00:30:22] And everything's like that. It blows my mind to think about how many animals live in Australia and don't live anywhere else. It blows my mind to think about all the stuff that's in the ocean. Again, the stuff we put there in addition to the things that just are there that we don't understand yet. I don't know what it would mean for my sense of spirituality to have confirmable proof that in the universe there are beings with higher levels of consciousness than we have. I think that's that's a lot to contemplate, especially when you consider how many major world religions tie a whole bunch of their theology to, like, "Here's the stone or Here's the place where this happened." What does any of that mean? I don't know. And I think that's really fun to think about. And then I think over here there's the separate question of whether there are secret government programs. Are they transparent enough? To Congress understand them? I have not found any of the recent witnesses who've been before Congress particularly credible. But that just might be a set of biases that prevent me from hearing that with the open mind that I wish to have about this subject. It's just a vast set of questions. And like you said, sometimes I wonder if we're even close to the questions that really matter.  

Sarah [00:31:43] That I am confident in saying I don't think that we are. And, look, it's fun for you, but it's not fun for everybody. That level of unknowing and unknowable is deeply uncomfortable to people. I'm a person who likes change and likes information, and I wade into this stuff and I'm like [Mimics crying] it just makes me want to cry. Because I just feel like every single one of us is this universe unto ourselves and this complex mix of memories and experiences and traumas. And it's overwhelming to me to think of the billions of us out there interacting with this complex universe. I remember one time watching Planet Earth, and they were in the depths of the sea and there was this wild fish that only lives in the dark. And he looked like a creature just like invented by somebody's monster imagination. And I was just so overwhelmed by the thought like that fish exists. And not only do I exist, but I exist in a world where somebody went down, captured the fish with a camera, turned it into a program, broadcasted on streaming for all of us to watch. I'll never forget one time we were watching Planet Earth and Amos goes, "How does he know all this?" And I just thought, that's it, right? Just to think about that.  

[00:33:04] His knowledge gap is he thinks Attenborough knows all this and can't read it. And Attenborough is gathering the pursuits of all these. And again, that's just Planet Earth. That's just Planet Earth, which we also don't understand all of. So I just think it's overwhelming for me. I think it's very overwhelming for people. I am so grateful for the people that it is not overwhelming for. For the physicists who go out there and can work in a field where you will discover something and it'll be like, oh, well, I guess I got to start over with that. That was not our understanding of dark matter. So back to the drawing board. And I don't think there's probably enough of that even in that particular field. I guess that's hard to just go back, wipe it clean, start over every time. But I am grateful that humans-- not all of us, but some of us-- will continue to pursue things just blind, just like let's just start and see what we can figure out. I read this history of physics and it was like it basically started with Democritus seeing dust in the air and going, "Hmm, there must be particles in the air." Well, how did this happen? And you just keep going and keep going and keep going. And I'm grateful for that. But I don't think we're anywhere close to understanding even the questions, much less the answers.  

Beth [00:34:25] Yeah. I don't have the intellect for this. Feels like I struggle with how the dishes don't cause my cabinets to come crashing down. I don't really trust basic physics or have a grasp on it, but I love that overwhelmed feeling. I love that feeling of like, whoa, that fish exist and I exist with it. And what does that mean? And there could be other planets where something like that fish exists and is in charge. I mean, who knows? I love that kind of wonder. I think that's what I enjoy about this. And here's the real pragmatic political tie in for me. When I can access that kind of wonder, I can put in much greater perspective the consequences of the next Republican debate or the war in Ukraine even. Some of these things that are hugely consequential, that create enormous suffering that will alter the course of history, I can see them differently when I step back and just realize that I don't even understand the relationship between space and time. And so maybe I could give myself a little break about having the Diet Coke today or sleeping in or whatever it is. Like, I can access so much more patience and grace in sort of that long flow of history when I imagine the possibilities of the wider universe.  

Sarah [00:35:46] Yeah, it's humbling. I mean, we all need it. Listen, I was ready on our premium channels yesterday to arrange everybody's marriages, so it's good for me to tap areas where I just feel completely out of my depth. And, look, I think that that is a cure for what ails us in the modern era. I love that tweet that was like, Read classic books where people are worrying about the same things you are and then maybe you won't feel so upset all the time." I think that's true of history. I think that's true of science. I think feeling small, which a sense of wonder, absolutely makes you realize the things I am consumed by, being torn up in the middle of the night about something I said at a party two weeks ago is not that important. And if I'm small in the space of this exploration and the space of our universe and the space of this understanding, then absolutely, some of my concerns are small. And that anxiety is lying to me, telling me that they're the most important thing. There are so much bigger pursuits, bigger questions out there. And it's not an answer. It doesn't solve everything. It doesn't mean that the way we feel or saying something hurtful isn't important. But I just think that perspective and that sense of vastness is much needed in our modern life, which is probably why people are drawn to these hearings and these sightings. And I think there is a pursuit of smallness that's pretty consistent throughout human history.  

Beth [00:37:18] Well, I'm glad that we were able to finally make space for some bigness today as we return to some of the smallness next week and continue to think about the importance of the smallness. It's not to diminish anything that's in front of us. It's just to maintain a little bit of humility, like you said, in the face of it.  

[00:37:34] Music Interlude.  

[00:37:45] Okay, Sarah, we always end the show talking about what's on our minds Outside of Politics. What is your zodiac sign? How do you feel about astrology? Tell me all the things.  

Sarah [00:37:53] I'm a Leo. Y'all just sit down with your shock over that revelation. I told my husband that you're becoming a big astrology person and it is testing his love and devotion to you because he hates it. He hates it. So my interest is always balanced by the person I live with. Let's just organize a massive prank on Nicholas. It must be fun. If you are coming to Paducah, please at every opportunity, make some sort of reference to the full moon and how you think people are acting crazy about the full moon because you'll get to watch his head spin around backwards. It will be really fun for everybody involved.  

Beth [00:38:38] What bothers him so much about this?  

Sarah [00:38:41] Well, the full moon he hates because when people say like kids act out at school, like the hospitals are crazy, he's like, that's a countable thing. You can count it. You can count how many babies are born. Like, we know how many babies are born, and there are not more babies born around the full moon. You can count discipline actions at school, people have measured this. There is no correlation between the full moon and these things. So that part just runs all over him. It's so fun. I barely got him on board with the Enneagram. And I mean just barely. Like just let's use these tools to understand ourselves. The idea that, like, this is driven by the planets, no, that's a hard pass for him. It's a hard pass. And I'll be honest with you, I'm probably closer to him that I am to you.  

Beth [00:39:24] So I'm an astrology newbie. I've never cared much about this, but I am starting to find it more interesting. Not because I'm going to read a daily horoscope and be like, okay, well, this sets my course, but I find it a lot like a journaling prompt or something.  

Sarah [00:39:41]  I like that.  

Beth [00:39:42] You pull up the horoscope and it tends to provoke for me a question. Is somebody walking all over you right now? Does your cabinet need to be reorganized? Like it just pops the question.  

Sarah [00:39:53] I like that.  

Beth [00:39:54] And it's a huge range of questions. I feel like this about tarot cards. I don't think that there's a whole lot of mysticism happening, but I respect the idea that there could be. And more than anything, I find it to be like a window into something that's going on in me or in my relationships that just invites me to consider things differently. And I think that's really valuable.  

Sarah [00:40:19] I like that. And I do think there's something about astrology that invites people to see energy flows and the cyclical nature of life that is very helpful. I think about Jenny Odell's book about saving time and how we really try to orient our whole lives around days like the hours of our labor. And that's just not how life works. It's certainly not how I work now, especially as I get older and my hormones have much more control. I tell people, I live my life right now at 42, I'm just trying to make my hormones happy because if I don't, if I don't, they make me miserable. And that's a cycle, obviously. I remember the first time I read something that was like, during this part of your cycle you're more open to finishing projects. And I thought, I feel that. I have felt that my whole life, like there are certain times where I'm like driven, I feel super, super motivated and sometimes where I'm like quiet and I just want to sit and read. And I think any tool that helps people orient themselves away from like these daily, I got to do this every day. I got to be productive every day. I should be equally productive. I'll never forget as long as I live the quote from Bonnie Raitt that says, "I can only go as fast as the slowest part of me can go." And so I think that any tool that helps you do that, that helps you just ask those questions like, where am I at right now? Am I up for being motivated? Should I beat myself up about that? I do think that orienting people away from that sort of 24/7 capitalistic structure is good.  

Beth [00:41:57] Well, I love capitalism, but why would it be the case that this clock we've invented to count time in our way matters more than where we are in the rotation of the planets around the sun? Like, that's silly to me. It is as silly to me as reading a horoscope seems to other people. And I really like things that just remind me-- it's totally congruent with the conversation we just had. I like being reminded that bigger things are at work and I do believe those bigger things have some effect on us that we are incapable today of understanding and may always be. And I like that mystery. That mystery makes me happy. I don't have to completely understand what Mercury in retrograde means to enjoy it as a shorthand for, I don't know, shit happens. It's just freeing. I think that I don't like personality tests. And even the way some people talk about the Enneagram and astrology when it is used as this limiting thing. Well, I am a Pisces and therefore these things have to be true about me. And it's an excuse for all unwise behavior on my part that I fit into this category. I like all those tools when they are about being more expansive, and that's what is alluring to me about astrology right now.  

Sarah [00:43:13] And it does seem to be the new sort of orientation around astrology is these are the factors working on everybody. It's not just about your individual sign. This is the rotation of the planet or the whatever that's working on everybody right now, not just you're Leo and that means you're outspoken. I mean, I do fit the stereotype of a Leo, but I also share a birthday with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who could not be further away from me personality wise. Like the opposite. So, that always catches you.  

Beth [00:43:46] But see, this is the other thing I'm learning about astrology. Exactly like the Enneagram, you gravitate to a number, but you have all the numbers in you. And that's the astrology things too. You're born at a certain moment, but everything's in your chart somewhere. It's just where is it? And what kind of effect does that have on you? Again, I am talking about things that I am like a total newbie on. And there are people who are listening who understand this much better than I do. And I would be delighted to hear from you about this. Because I just think it is another interesting lens on who we are and what we might be doing here. Well, thank you all for joining us for this discussion. When we say we take a different approach to the news, we get serious about it sometimes. And I think today is one of those days. We will be back into the regular headlines next week and hope you'll join us. We would also, just as a reminder, love to join your community in person or virtually sometime next year. Hannah Petersen from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said that years later, conference attendees who heard us speak are still discussing our keynote. And we love having that kind of long term impact and it's always our goal. We would love to do that with you. So please go to our website, Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com or email Alise at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com for more information. We will talk with you again on Tuesday. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:45:05] 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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