Sarah and Beth discuss the viral stories that took over the weekend, and what they reveal about conflict, context, and civic life heading into the midterms:

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Beth talks with Dr. Robbyn Wacker, a former university president (most recently at St. Cloud State University) with a background in gerontology, about the book she's writing on leadership and values in higher education. They cover:

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We're picking back up on artificial intelligence — Mustafa Suleyman's warning about conscious AI, the difference between chatbots and frontier models, recursive self-improvement, kill switches, and what policy response should actually look like at every level of government. Outside of Politics: the foods from our childhoods that still hold up.

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Sports, race, gender, religion, cancel culture, and Donald Trump — this week they're all the same conversation. We cover Caitlin Clark's fouls and the House Republicans weighing in, Sophie Cunningham and the trans-athletes-in-sports debate, the Sydney Sweeney ad everyone's arguing about, SF Giants pitchers under DOJ scrutiny for Bible verses on Pride caps, the golf ad that ended a sponsorship, and LIV Golf's bankruptcy. Outside of Politics: which area of law would we actually want to practice?

Sports and the culture war, generally

Caitlin Clark / House Republicans

Sophie Cunningham / trans athletes / Title IX

Sydney Sweeney ad

SF Giants Pride caps / DOJ-EEOC

Good Good Golf ad / Callaway

LIV Golf bankruptcy

Trump and the World Cup

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After a weekend when an Anthropic researcher quit and warned AI could wipe out humanity within a decade, Sarah and Beth take on the questions listeners sent them about artificial intelligence, starting with what is actually being made and what it costs. They argue that the flyers-and-water critique is stuck in 2022 while frontier models and agents race ahead, and they take the Doomer scenarios seriously without buying that the doom is just sales copy. Beth explains why "can't we just unplug it" would mean unplugging the internet; Sarah argues nobody trained these models on a soul, and that's where we need to put our chips. They disagree on whether building superintelligence was ever the right call, and agree that fear isn't enough to bring to the table with our kids, our employers, or Congress. Then, Outside of Politics, a conversation about quitting: Jessica Strawser's The Quitters Club, Lindsay Crouse's case for opting out, and the biggest things each of them has walked away from.

If you missed our live show in Minneapolis, the full recording is available in our shop for $15: https://pantsuitpolitics.myshopify.com/

Support the show and get access to News Briefs, Spicy Live bonus episodes, and community: https://pantsuitpolitics.substack.com

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Twenty-five years ago today, and Sarah and Beth close out the re-share of their 2018 series on September 11 with the two hardest parts. First, the road from 9/11 to Iraq, from "we will wipe terrorism off the face of the earth" to an occupation that hired loyalists over experts, and a real disagreement between the two of them about whether George W. Bush was a bad man or just a bad president. They end at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where each of them chose one life to be grateful for, Kathy Mazza and CeeCee Lyles, and where the museum asks you to look up at the photos in exactly the way people on the ground had to that day. Parts one through three came out Wednesday.

If you missed our live show in Minneapolis, the full recording is available in our shop for $15: https://pantsuitpolitics.myshopify.com/

Support the show and get access to News Briefs, Spicy Live bonus episodes, and community: https://pantsuitpolitics.substack.com

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This week marks twenty-five years since the September 11 attacks, and Sarah and Beth are re-sharing the five-part series they made in 2018 to do what they felt the country never quite did: process it. Today's episode holds parts one, two, and three. First, a careful, flight-by-flight walk through the morning of September 11, 2001, with attention to the people who improvised when no plan existed for what was happening, from flight attendants Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney to Rick Rescorla to the passengers of Flight 93. Then they travel back eighty years, to the borders drawn after World War I, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and the conditions that produced al Qaeda, with help from Middle East expert Kerry Anderson. Then they ask how we missed it, and find the answer in an FBI and CIA built to distrust each other, an overcorrection after Watergate that stopped agents from sharing what they knew, and two future hijackers living in the United States that the CIA never told the FBI about. It is a hard listen in places, made with care for everyone who carries the day with them. Parts four and five, the road to Iraq and the Memorial, follow on Friday.

If you missed our live show in Minneapolis, the full recording is available in our shop for $15: https://pantsuitpolitics.myshopify.com/

Support the show and get access to News Briefs, Spicy Live bonus episodes, and community: https://pantsuitpolitics.substack.com

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It's a mailbag day, and Sarah and Beth work through everything the Substack Premium community sent in — starting with the Lindsay Clancy jury deadlock and whether the legal system is built to answer a question like this one, then into a new round of tariffs and how this administration keeps finding new legal doors no matter what the Supreme Court says. They spend real time on a listener question about whether the evangelical church can repent from Trumpism, working through what happens when politics and religion try to answer the same question about human freedom on two completely different timelines — and where they land differently along the way. They set the record straight on what Project 2025 actually says about the FDA, talk about who benefits from a weakened food and drug regulatory system, and take on the bigger question of how to keep functioning when people can't agree on the same reality anymore. Then it's the midterms: Sarah's optimistic, Beth's braced for anything, and both explain why. Outside of Politics, they get into what's worth correcting in kids and what's worth letting go of as they get older, the particular chaos of the first weeks back at school, and a rapid-fire round covering summer highs and lows, on-camera style, Sarah Bareilles's new album, early holiday traditions, and who they'd most like to interview under truth serum.

If you missed our live show in Minneapolis, the full recording is available in our shop for $15 — a substantial discount, and well worth your time. That virtual option exists because of the generosity of Fearless Finance and Substack. And if you haven't already, check out this week's bonus live conversation with Jen Hatmaker on Substack.

One quick heads up: next week is Labor Day, so we're recording Tuesday instead of Monday, which means the next episode lands in your feeds on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.

New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Support the show and get access to News Briefs, Spicy Live bonus episodes, and community:

https://pantsuitpolitics.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pantsuit-politics/id1055348656

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/37qY4LmXijGefBvzR0lWKt

Follow us on Instagram: @pantsuitpolitics

—

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

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Meta just settled with 47 states for roughly $17 billion over claims it built a product designed to addict teenagers, and Flock cameras are facing a backlash that runs from Lexington's city council all the way to Capitol Hill. Sarah and Beth connect the two stories: both are about building first and asking permission basically never. They dig into whether this is big tech's big tobacco moment, why the product changes in the settlement should probably apply to adults too, what a national license plate database actually does to civil liberties, and where the two of them land very differently on traffic cameras. Underneath it all is Beth's argument that we are increasingly being asked to live in excerpts, and Sarah's that we are chasing a zero-risk society that does not exist. Then Outside of Politics, they come home from Minneapolis with a joy hangover from the first-ever Spice Conference and talk about what four hundred people in one room says about the community they've built.

Still Listening is coming — a pop-up book club built around our first book, with free discussion guides and a big online session with Sarah and Beth. Sign up to participate here: https://forms.gle/FnSiAH9uD9GSX4g38

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Sarah and Beth dig into the new executive order on childhood vaccines and the request for information the Department of Health and Human Services issued on August 24 — what "shared clinical decision making" actually means, why unbundling the MMR shot asks far more of families than this administration has shown any willingness to make possible, and how two measles deaths in Pennsylvania were both foreseeable and foreseen. Sarah talks candidly about the years she kept one of her own children on an alternate vaccine schedule and what it took to come back from it. Then Beth sits down with Beth Sumner of Grandparents for Vaccines, whose brother contracted polio in 1954, one year before the Salk vaccine became available, and who describes what that did to him and to their whole family across the next six decades. Outside of Politics, they get into the things from their youth that hold up, the things that really do not, and a genuinely contentious disagreement about whether "American Pie" is any good.

Pantsuit Politics is in Minneapolis this weekend for its one and only live show of 2026. In-person tickets are sold out, but virtual tickets are still available and are buy one, get one half off.

Pantsuit Politics is listener-supported. To join the community of paid subscribers who make the show possible, subscribe on Substack.

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