Research shows that young podcast listeners seek two specific things: a fresh, unique perspective and a sense of belonging. At Pantsuit Politics, co-hosts Beth Silvers and Sarah Stewart Holland have been bringing fresh perspectives and a sense of belonging to their listeners — who now number in the millions — for seven years. From the start, Pantsuit Politics was different. They were analyzing the ways politics shape how we live and how we feel about it. It takes skill, chemistry, and diplomacy to work together seamlessly the way Silvers and Stewart Holland do. We talk about their very different approaches to hosting, and how they perform as interlocking puzzle pieces — and why they feel it's even more important for the show to serve them than to serve their ever-growing, devoted audience.
Scroll down for takeaways about co-hosting well from Sarah and Beth
About the guests: Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers host the popular podcast Pantsuit Politics, which was named one of 2021’s best shows by Apple Podcasts and has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Good Morning America 3, The Guardian, Elle Magazine, and Parents Magazine. They are also the authors of Now What? How to Move Forward When We’re Divided (About Basically Everything) (2022) and I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversation (2019), which was featured on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Sarah and Beth met in college before going their separate ways for law school. Sarah pursued a career in politics as a congressional staffer and campaign aide and Beth practiced law before serving as a human resources executive. Sarah lives in Paducah, KY, with her spouse, Nicholas, and children Griffin, Amos, and Felix. Beth lives in Union, KY, with her spouse, Chad, and children Jane and Ellen. Sarah’s dog, Cookie, and Beth’s dog, Lucy, are beloved (and involuntary) contributors to their work.
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How to be a great podcast co-host: Takeaways from Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers
1. Respond from a place of humanity.
As co-hosts of a news and politics show, Sarah and Beth are driven by what’s happening in the world.
“A lot of the news media and a lot of the political podcasters are in that same reactive posture. We just try to take a very different approach. We try to react from a place of humanity, instead of a place of expertise; a place of lived experience, instead of a place of … ‘decided-upon’ perspective. We really just try to show up as our whole selves.”
2. Don’t try to be a brand. Be yourself.
“We are here to be Sarah and Beth. And so our honest reactions after the [2016] election, I hope are the kinds of honest reflections that you get anytime you listen to our show.”
3. Take your listeners on your journey, no matter where it takes you.
Accepting and being transparent about her own evolution was particularly important for Beth. In 2015, when they launched Pantsuit Politics, their premise was that although they came from opposite sides of the political spectrum — Beth was a Republican, Sarah a Democrat — they could hold nuanced, “grace-filled conversations.” That changed after the 2016 election, Beth says — a change that easily could have threatened the show.
“Trump was the beginning of the end for me as anything that someone in 2022 would identify as conservative,” Beth says. “And I've tried to be really honest with our audience about that. We didn’t get stuck in a brand.” Instead, the podcast evolved as they evolved.
“What we're doing is changing all the time,” Sarah says. “That's what’s so life-giving about it. That's why we like to do it. That's why I think our audience is so invested. The work at Pantsuit Politics — it's an invitation to just take a journey with us.”
4. Their secret to producing Pantsuit Politics for more than seven years
“We know that we can continue to do this at the rate that we do because it's always met a need for us. And it continues to meet the need… We really wanted to sit down and have this conversation that we weren't hearing somewhere else.... And when it stops feeling like that, we check in with each other and say, 'Do we need to take a break? Do we need to shift the topics?' If we started down a path, we [may] need to ditch that path because we want to come back to meeting this need that we have.
“And so that's our guiding light: If it doesn't feel helpful to us as individuals, it’s not going to be good content for the audience. And we need to take a step back.” — Beth
5. Differences are essential for a good co-hosting partnership. Lean in.
It’s not just OK to look at the world through different lenses. It’s a fundamental reason to have a co-host in the first place.
“Our general thesis from the beginning of the show [has been that] personality is a huge part of politics. And our personalities are different… you hear that a lot in the show. And I think our strength is that we allow both things to be true. We allow both perspectives to live and thrive and trust that the audience will gain something from each of them, because we absolutely gain something from each of them.” — Sarah
How are you similar to and different from your co-host? When you’re different, like Sarah and Beth, the sum of your parts is greater than the whole. As Beth says, “I can't imagine doing this with someone who was just like me, or really with anyone else. I think it is the contrast that is interesting to listen to.”
6. Who are you? What do you value? Who do you want to be to your listeners?
Beth can sound professorial — wise and a bit distant. Sarah is more emotional and expressive. As she says, “It’s not unusual for me to cry on the show.” These two personalities, both naturally who they are, complement each other like interlocking puzzle pieces.
7. Resist the temptation to sacrifice deep thinking for speed.
Being first with a scoop may feel crucial. But often the more valuable content is not that which we can publish immediately. Thoughtfully unpacking the news, a cultural phenomenon, or a feeling, is often far more valuable to listeners.
“Honestly, just can we slow down for a second? Not compete for the hottest take or the correct take? For the one-liner that's quotable… but instead really figure out what are we talking about? Why is [that headline] so captivating to everybody? What is it touching that we aren’t naming, [the real reason] that makes us fascinated by it?” — Beth
8. When you know your listeners well, you can meet their needs.
“Sometimes, we have a really in-depth look at an issue planned. And we realize our audience is worn out right now. We're just hearing it in emails, they're tired. They need something… people need some delight. How can we serve up some delight right now? Maybe we need it too.” — Beth
9. A simple way to understand what your audience wants: real-life avatars
“We have an amazing community manager, Maggie Penton, who just reads the room. She’s really good at [knowing] this is where people are at right now; this is what we're struggling with. She's also just an excellent listener avatar. She’s been listening to our show for a really long time.” — Sarah
10. Listen to your audience — and your heart
“We're not going to produce a show that we feel everyone's consumed with if we don't want to talk about it ourselves.” — Sarah
11. How to avoid perfectionism
“I just tell myself, we're gonna make another one. We can get that wrong. There are two a week, you know, we will have another chance if we feel like we missed the mark.” – Sarah
12. Set yourself apart from the competition
“We’re constantly pushing ourselves to say, ‘what could we add?’ Because every conversation is so saturated. When we started Pantsuit Politics, there weren't a million…news and politics podcasts, it was a totally different time…. Quiet quitting is a good example. When we discussed having this as a topic, [we asked] what could we possibly say about this that hasn't been said? We are challenging ourselves all the time to ask, what's new? Or what could we say differently? Or how are we thinking about this that we haven't heard somewhere else or read somewhere else?” — Beth
13. The value of premium channels goes far beyond revenue
Rather than reporting on and analyzing every headline, Sarah and Beth confine themselves to a few well-chosen topics each week. The freedom they feel to be selective comes in part from having “escape valves” — premium feeds that satisfy the needs of different listeners.
“In the beginning, we felt like we had to…report on every news story. We don't do that anymore. Because there's lots of new summary podcasts. We produce one every day, so if you’re into that, you can get it on our premium channel…. Our premium content that we produce has…freed us up to approach the show differently, because we know there's other places where if that's what the listener is looking for, they can find it.” — Sarah
14. Emotional intimacy builds devoted communities.
“I didn’t understand how deeply people connect with a voice that they listen to. Sarah says, all the time, ‘You can't skim a podcast.’ People do connect, because you're in their ears and they are paying attention. And there's something really powerful about spending almost two hours a week with the two of us just in your headphones, as you're buzzing about doing other things — when we are a part of dog walks and laundry and dinner preparation and commutes.” — Beth
15. Stop overthinking.
What Beth wishes she’d known about hosting when they started: “Understanding the entire premise of your show — that it is about the host. I am not trying to make something. I'm just being and letting people into the experience of me being. Developing that trust in myself is a journey that I'm still on…. If I could go back, I would say to myself, ‘Don't overthink this. Just trust that you can just be you and that's what people are here for.’”
Credits
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC.
Host: Elaine Appleton Grant
Project Manager: Tina Bassir
Sound Designer: Andrew Parrella
Illustrator: Sarah Edgell
This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Last year, NPR and Edison Research asked young podcast listeners: why do you listen? Two answers were really striking. Listeners said, we're looking for fresh perspectives, perspectives we can't find anywhere else. And we're looking for a sense of belonging, a feeling that you're out there, talking about the things I talk about, making me feel seen and heard and understood.
Fresh perspectives and a sense of belonging are core to what Beth Silvers and Sarah Stewart Holland have been sharing through their podcast, Pantsuit Politics, for years. When they started down this path in 2015, they wanted to show the world that it was possible for a Democrat and a Republican to talk about politics with nuance and grace. From the start, their show was different. They were talking about the way politics shape how we live. They talk directly to their listeners about how they and we feel—like in this clip from Beth, in the episode they published immediately after Trump won the 2016 election.
Clip from Pantsuit Politics
Beth Silvers: And I'm going to hope for the best and pray for the best and continue to try to let all of our listeners who might be fearful today know that I don't want you to ever be afraid in your own country. I don't want you to feel unloved because of your color or your country of origin or who you love and who loves you back and how you organize your family. You know, we are a nation that will embrace you. And I do not—I firmly do not believe that the American people are gonna take us as many steps backwards as this result might indicate. And I'm just gonna hope for the best.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Almost from the start, listeners who now number in the millions began referring to them just as Sarah and Beth, as friends they can trust to explain the January 6th hearings and who they can turn to for the stuff of everyday life. Today, we're gonna delve into their two very different approaches to hosting, and what they call a different approach to the news, with Sarah and Beth. On Sound Judgment, where we investigate just what it takes to become beloved podcast hosts by pulling apart one episode at a time together. I'm Elaine Appleton Grant.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Sarah and Beth, I'm so happy you're here and to see you again.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Thank you for having us.
Beth Silvers
Thank you so much. Thanks, it's good to see you.
Elaine Appleton Grant
When I asked the two of you to share an episode with me that you loved, I thought that you would probably choose one of your episodes covering the January 6th hearings, which were amazing and incredibly helpful. But you didn't. You referred to the one that the clip I just played comes from. And Alise Napp, your managing director, said, “Sarah and Beth have grown and changed so much since that fateful night, but their raw responses also really capture the values and intent we feel are core to our show.” So talk about how that episode in particular captures what she said, you know, the values and the intent that are core to the show. I mean, these were really raw responses. You opened the show with Sarah in tears.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Well, me being in tears is not a particularly unique situation on Pantsuit Politics, so I should probably disclose that. I am highly emotional. I think at the end of the day, Pantsuit Politics is reactive. You know, we are not going out into the podcast space with an agenda or a perspective or this niche we're trying to fill. We are really at the mercy of the news cycle, which is both a blessing and a burden.
But I think why that episode is so foundational is because it illustrates that, that there's no real content calendar at Pantsuit Politics. There is—but if something happens, it doesn't matter. We have to respond to what happened. And so I think it illustrates like how much we are in this reactive posture. And then I think it also illustrates how a lot of the news media and a lot of the political podcasters are in that same reactive posture. We just try to take a very different approach to that. And we try to react from a place of humanity instead of a place of expertise, a place of lived experience instead of a place of decided upon perspective, I guess I would say. We really just try to show up as our whole selves.
And that's what we were doing that day. It was a really, really hard moment in American history. And we're Americans. And so we were living that history in that moment. And that's what we were trying to capture.
Elaine Appleton Grant
How about you, Beth?
Beth Silvers
I think it's important that we are not pundits, and we try to check ourselves on that all the time. And around this election in particular, I was blindsided by the results. I did not expect it. I spent most of election night on Twitter saying, don't worry everybody, just hang in, it's gonna be okay.
And then it, from my perspective, wasn't OK. And I think that episode is also important in illustrating the journey. In your really generous remarks about our show at the beginning, you talked about how we started as a Democrat and a Republican. That's no longer true. Trump was the beginning of the end for me, as anything that someone in 2022 would identify as conservative. And I've tried to be really honest with our audience about that. We didn't get stuck in a brand because we're not here to be a brand. We are here to be Sarah and Beth.
And so our honest reactions after the election, I hope, are the kinds of honest reflections that you get any time you listen to our show.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Yeah, and I'm, you know, as you know, I've been a long-time listener. And so I certainly was well aware of that evolution. And I think that you've handled it beautifully. And it's an evolution that a lot of people have gone through and I'm sure have responded to you about.
And in a way, to me, showing that evolution as you’ve grown and changed is part of what makes the show so compelling, because we get to know you—gotten to know both of you so well.
What I wanted to do is leap from that show to where you are today. I want people to hear what it's like now. And I also wanted to give listeners who aren't already Pantsuit Politics fans an introduction to the show today six years later. Six years. That's amazing.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Almost seven in November.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Almost seven, yeah. So you know what, before we get into the episode that we're really gonna talk about at more length, about quiet quitting, just tell me: it is so hard to do this all the time. And you guys are incredibly prolific. And in addition to all of the episodes that you released every week, you've also written another book while you're doing this. You go and speak and travel now that we can again, and you both have families. How have you managed to keep it all going?
Beth Silvers
I think that we know that we can continue to do this at the rate that we do because it's always met a need for us and it continues to meet a need. We started this show when I was working full time in a law firm, all day, in a C-level position. Sarah and I both had tiny babies. Sarah was running for office and knocking on doors all day every day. So it was a labor of love from the beginning that met a need.
We really wanted to sit down and have this conversation that we weren't hearing somewhere else, much like you identified from the survey at the beginning. And it has continued to be that, even as it's become our full-time work and our business. And when it stops feeling like that, we really check in with each other and say, do we need to take a break? Do we need to shift the topics? Do we need to ditch something that we've—if we started down a path and we need to ditch that path because we wanna come back to meeting this need that we have. And so that's our guiding light. If it doesn't feel helpful to us as individuals, it's not gonna be good content for the audience. And we need to take a step back.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I love that. I think very few people actually say, what's it doing for me first? Especially if they set out to say, well, it's a business. And that's where you really get into trouble. I think that's wonderful, wonderful guidance for people to hear.
So I wanna play something for you. A very recent show on the phenomenon of quiet quitting. And it's kind of long—it's well over a minute long—but it illustrates so much. We're gonna talk about what it shows, I think, about the differences in your two styles and who you are and how you both work together and contrast with each other, as sort of yin and yang. And at the same time, you've got so much in common.
Clip from Pantsuit Politics
Beth Silvers: But I think we are in a space where work is being rethought so dramatically by so many people that we're going to see a lot of new phrases around work and new trends around work and a lot of discussion.
Sarah Stewart Holland: So my father called me yesterday. And he said, I have a quiet quitting story for you. I said, oh, OK. I called him back. I said, well, I'm very excited to hear your quiet quitting story. He said, so what is quiet quitting? And I thought, that's it, right? That's—this is that entire trend. Everybody's like, I have thoughts on this. What are we talking about again? I have thoughts on this from an employer's perspective and an employee perspective, but also what are we talking about?
And his quiet quitting story was not about quiet quitting. It was that my grandfather worked two jobs when he was growing up. And my father is—I think he feels like the narrative is, he suffered because his father was working so much, and his story was, no, my grandfather came home every day, had dinner with him, played basketball with him for an hour, and then went to his second job. And so my dad did not suffer at all from his father working so diligently at two jobs. And we had a good conversation where I said, yeah, but maybe he was suffering, maybe he was tired. And maybe people don't wanna work those many hours. And we had a good conversation about it, but I thought that was so perfect. What is quiet quitting?
Elaine Appleton Grant
I loved that. I just have so many thoughts and questions about this. But one of the first things that I notice is that, Beth, you're kind of being the professor here. You're saying not only is it time to have a whole cultural conversation about this phrase, quiet quitting, but also that we need to take apart the phrase and that it signifies more than just this phenomenon, whatever that means—but also that you're predicting that we're in a time where a whole lot of new phrases and terms for work are gonna be birthed.
And then boom, all of a sudden Sarah's there, jumping in with this really fun story about her dad that essentially says the same thing—that we've got to talk about differences in the way generations and cultures and you know, everybody think about work. And that even though the phrase has gone viral, we don't actually know what it is. And this strikes me just viscerally as sort of like music. Beth, you're sort of calm and measured and cool and Sarah, you're hot and more intense and very lively, and yet you're both bringing both mind and heart to the table.
So as you can see, I can get a lot out of a minute and a half of conversation, but first, what do you think of my characterizations? How do you see yourself?
Sarah Stewart Holland
It is undeniable that we have what I call complimentary styles. I would think I would probably be described as more emotional and more personally expressive. I think it's just our orientation to the world. I think I am very internally—not motivated, oriented—in that I view everything through the prism of my own experience. Beth is much better at being able to see the experience through the prism of other people's experiences. She's just better at reading a room and seeing people's needs. It's like, I'm an only child and I just never developed that muscle.
And so I'm very sort of looking at the world through my perspective and sort of interpreting it that way. And I just think they're complimentary because one is not right and one is not wrong. They're just both doing very different things. And it's just—it's really funny, I think, in these moments, where you see that perspective sort of diverge and unite. It just depends on what we're talking about and what cultural moment we're in. Because on paper we have a lot in common, right? We're both, you know, white ladies with legal educations and kids in the middle of life, long-term committed marriages. We both live in Kentucky. Like there's just a lot that aligns us. And I think one of our general sort of—thesis from the beginning of the show is that personality is just such a huge part of politics.
And our personalities are different, no matter how much our lives look like on paper. And I think you just hear that a lot in the show and I think our strength is that we just allow both things to be true. We just allow both perspectives to live and thrive and trust that the audience will gain something from each of them. Because we absolutely gain something from each of them.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Yeah, I like that. Beth, what would you say?
Beth Silvers
Working with Sarah is so fun because she's so smart and her brain works so quickly and she's just constantly soaking in new ideas and spitting them back out in really interesting applications. And sometimes I worry that we're all gonna be a few steps behind where Sarah is. So I try to come in and be like, well, let's slow down for a second and make sure that we've defined this word or that we've put this in the context that we all remember and can keep up because she really is such a quick—to say she's a quick thinker doesn't even do it justice. She just integrates things so fast into a new context. So I always wanna make sure that I'm sort of the voice of the listener—or that I'm at least anticipating the voice of the listener saying, wait, what? And that's, I think, part of my role. But yeah, I am calmer. It's just something that I've practiced throughout my life, probably for a bunch of reasons that are worth exploring in therapy. I...
I don't bring a lot of emotion, but some of that is because I don't have Sarah's emotional elasticity. Like if I start crying, I'm stuck for a good long while in my tears. Sarah can just talk right through it and be out of it in a second, and I don't have that.
I feel very passionately about all the things that we discuss, but I think it just translates in a completely different way than Sarah's passion does.
It's interesting that often—when I meet people face to face, often a listener will say to me, you know, I'm really more of a Sarah, but I've appreciated your voice so much. And I think, wow, I just never think when we're sitting and recording that people are so eager to identify with one or the other of this kind of binary that they perceive in us. But I do think that contrast is what makes the show. And I can't imagine doing this with someone who was just like me or really with anyone else. I think it is the contrast that is interesting to listen to.
Elaine Appleton Grant
But it's more like you're interlocking puzzle pieces. You're bringing different things to the table, but you have this ability of just stepping back a little bit, and saying, okay, let's unpack this word or this phrase or this cultural phenomenon in a way where we can get to first the fact that we're not all talking about the same thing when we're using the same word. What are the broader implications of this that none of us are really thinking of? Let's open up that conversation in a way that helps me understand what I'm going through, and that what I'm going through is part of a much bigger picture than I can see from my own kitchen or my own desk or my own computer or my own argument with somebody or whatever. Does that make sense?
Beth Silvers
Absolutely, and I appreciate that. And that's our intention with the show. Honestly, can we slow down for a second, not be competing for the hottest take, the one-liner that's quotable about this, but to really figure out: what are we talking about? What is the goal of talking about it? And why is it so captivating to everybody? What is it touching that we aren't naming that makes us fascinated by it?
Elaine Appleton Grant
I like that. What is it touching? That's a great question to ask.
How do you think of your show? Is it political analysis, political therapy, cultural analysis, all of the above?
Sarah Stewart Holland
I mean, I think...
Beth Silvers
We struggle with that question.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Yeah, our listeners, I think, are some of the first that said political therapy, described us as political therapists, which I think is a pretty good description of what we do.
I mean, the truth is the reason we struggle with that is because it's changing all the time. What we were doing in 2016 and through the Trump presidency is different than what we're doing now. What we do in the summer is different than what we do right before election day. What we were doing during the January 6 trial is different. I mean, that's why we struggle, because we don't do one thing. We do many things—because we are reactive to where we are in the news cycle, to where our country is, to where we are in the calendar year, to what Congress is doing…And so that's why it's difficult for us to say, well, this is what we're doing, because what we're doing is changing all the time. That's what's so life-giving about it. That's why we like to do it. That's why I think our audience is so invested in the work at Pantsuit Politics, is because it is an invitation to just take a journey with us. I can't tell you what it's gonna look like next year. I can't tell you what it's gonna look like by the end of this year. It's adaptive. That's probably the best word for what we do.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Did you set out with that intention? Like, we're gonna react to things. We're not gonna plan it too far in advance. We're gonna let it evolve?
Beth Silverd
100%, I mean, we didn't have time to plan it in the beginning. We would sit down and say, what did you read about today? What do you wanna talk about? And do it. So there was no sense of—here's kind of our long-term driving theme, or anything like that. We plan more now than we ever have, but we do want to keep that spirit of just—what are my friends curious about? Or what are my friends upset about? Or what do I see everyone talking about and and I'm realizing as they're talking that they don't understand it and maybe I don't either and it merits further investigation?
I think that goes back to—it has to meet a need for us, and our needs are different all the time. And that has been true for our audience as well. Sometimes we have a really in-depth look at an issue planned and we realize our audience is worn out right now. We're just hearing it in emails, they're tired. They need something—Sarah said this the other day—people need some delight. How can we serve up some delight right now? Maybe we need it too.
And that does make it really difficult to put in a category. And that's what I love about podcasting: we don't really have to. Staying independent gives us tremendous freedom to just be whoever we happen to be at the time we record for the next episode.
Elaine Appleton Grant
What are you hearing from your audience? How much are you getting from your audience through email or other ways? How do you know what the zeitgeist is in your audience?
Sarah Stewart Holland
I mean, I think it's hard because we get emails, we get Instagram DMs, we have a Facebook group, we have a Discord group, we have Instagram comments. Like, it's just a—and we have an amazing community manager, Maggie Pinton, who just reads the room. She's really good at that. She's really good at just being like, this is where people are at right now, this is what we're struggling with. She's also just an excellent listener avatar. She's been listening to our show for a really long time. She has a really crazy catalog of our episodes in her head that she can just kind of pull forth. It's pretty impressive.
And so we just have people in our lives, I think, too, that are just sort of those avatars. That we know, well, this is what we're talking about in this group text, and so we're not the only ones. But it's always gonna have to be—we don't—we're not gonna produce a show that we feel everyone's consumed with if we don't wanna talk about it.
We just had a content meeting where we're like, man, where's the news? I still think we're recovering from the Trump presidency where it felt like we were drinking from a water hydrant all the time. And so it's just—there's still that sense of, well, is that coming? Is it just around the corner?
We don't wanna feed this sense that everything's on fire, if it's not and things are going good. We don't wanna feed the negative bias that happens so often in the news industry. So there's just all those factors weighing on us as we're trying to decide what to put together. And paradoxically, also, I just tell myself, we're gonna make another one. Like we can get that wrong. There's gonna be another one. There's two a week, you know? We'll have another chance if we feel like we missed the mark. We'll just do it again. It's not a big deal.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I don't want to let this go by. You said people need delight right now. What do you have planned?
Sarah Stewart Holland
Well, that was in response to an episode we did with Rick Steves, who's a travel writer and wrote a book called Travel as a Political Act. And he's just like the Mr. Rogers of travel. Like he's just a lovely human being. And we got to talk to him and it was great. And our audience was just—they were delighted. There's just really no other word for it. They were just straight up delighted by the interview. And I think part of that delight is because we love him. I in particular love him. I've been using his books since I was 18 years old.
So we're just trying to think, who are the people that delight us? Who—just having this conversation, is it 100% responsive to the news? No, of course not. But it is important, because everything is political. Politics is downstream from culture. It's always sort of relevant. And so we just try to keep that in mind.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I like that. Politics is downstream from culture. That gives me a great segue back to the quiet quitting episode, which is very cultural, but not apolitical at all.
Sarah says in this episode about quiet quitting, I think the idea of I'm not gonna let work consume every moment of our life is beneficial. And then you identify this major change that you say sort of happened to all of us during the pandemic.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Before the pandemic, we'd had a lot of conversations about—does America need to go through something hard to push us out of this polarized environment, so we feel like we're having to tackle something together? We had a moment, I think in the pandemic, where we had a conversation—is this actually gonna change anything? And now it's like, well, yeah, it changed everything. And did it fix our polarized political environment? No. But I think you're just seeing in so many ways. You know, we had this conversation with Rick Steves about travel. I think it shows up a lot there. It shows up in divorce rates. It shows up in mental health challenges with kids and teenagers. Like it's just all these manifestations of that moment where everybody—it's like the forward momentum of the status quo got halted in a very dramatic way. It's like the emergency brakes just got thrown on. And so there's nothing that wasn't affected.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Could you have even made a statement like this? If this had happened when—you know, around the time you started this show. Could you have even gone there? Because it requires this ability to have this 30,000 foot view, which to me seems like it must come in part from having done the show for so long, and being fed detail after detail, story after story. And so you're able to look at what's happening as a series of phenomena affecting enormous swaths of the population. So you're sort of predictor, participant, and observer. And I think you both do this so, so well. And I'm just curious about the evolution of this. Is this just something that you come by naturally or is it something that's developed as a result of what you've been doing? That 30,000 foot, I can name a phenomenon. Beth, why don't you take a crack at that one?
Beth Silvers
I think it's developed for me. I think a lot of our skills have developed doing this for almost seven years now. And I think we're constantly pushing ourselves to say, what could we add? Because every conversation is so saturated now. When we started Pantsuit Politics, there weren't a million independent shows talking about news and politics. And there weren't a million professional news and politics podcasts. It was a totally different time. Now we are beyond saturated.
Quiet quitting is a good example. When we discussed having this as a topic, it was kind of like, what could we possibly say about this that hasn't been said everywhere, six ways, already? And so we are challenging ourselves all the time to ask, well, what's new? Or what could we say differently? Or how are we thinking about this that we haven't heard somewhere else or read somewhere else? And so that zooming in and out of micro, macro, which this episode does a lot. There's Sarah's dad's story, then there's this kind of 30,000 foot view, and we talk about what are employers looking at, and then I tell a story about the FedEx driver in my neighborhood. I mean, I think that in and out is what helps us ground ourselves in our own experiences instead of being tempted to just summarize the research that we've done to prepare or what we're hearing from the zeitgeist.
Sarah Stewart Holland
It's a really interesting question. And so yeah, I think it's absolutely because we've been podcasting for so long and we can say, remember how we all felt on 2016? Remember how it felt in the middle of the Trump administration? Remember how it felt during the election cycle last time?
I'm a big history person. And every time you can say, this is similar, this is dissimilar from last time, I find incredibly helpful. And I mean, I'm proud of that. I think it's valuable to the audience. I think it's absolutely valuable for me.
And I think, you know, especially in the last year or so, we've had a lot more of those sort of broadly cultural conversations. In the beginning years, we did a lot of just feeling like we had to respond to every new story, almost report on every new story in a way. We don't do that anymore. There's lots of news summary podcasts, if that's what you're into. We produce one every day, so if you're into that, you can go get it on our premium channel.
That's probably part of it, too, is our premium content that we produce has sort of freed us up in the show to approach the show differently, because we know there's spots and other places where if that's what the listener's looking for, they can find it.
Elaine Appleton Grant
And so you feel more freedom to analyze whatever seems to be hitting people's hearts right now?
Sarah Stewart Holland
Yeah, I think that's a fair description. I think that's a fair way to put it. I think that we—it's funny, because I think it gives us the ability to explore things in more depth, both because we have my news brief, which is going to touch on a lot of things, and Beth’s More to Say, which is an in-depth sort of look. So we don't feel like we have to hit everything in depth because there's another place to do that. And we don't have to feel like we have to put everything there—for— basically eliminating the possibility of depth—because we're hitting stuff in the news brief.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I'm curious about what you said, as gosh, you know, this has been talked about a lot. What can we bring to this conversation? How did you arrive at this?
Beth Silvers
Usually once we bring up a subject and Sarah and I start talking, about five minutes in, we say, all right, we should stop talking about this. We have something to say. This is interesting.
Sarah Stewart Holland
We always have something to say.
Beth Silvers
Or not.
Sarah Stewart Holland
That's the long and short of it.
Beth Silvers
That's true. I mean, occasionally—so here's an example. We had a conversation in a team meeting today about natural disasters, which we have not covered a lot on the show recently. And what we came to in that meeting is that we care a lot about natural disasters, but we don't have a new angle to share about a natural disaster right now. Our hearts are with the people affected. We've talked a lot about climate. We've talked a lot about disaster response. We don't today have a conversation that we think is worth somebody hitting play and spending 40 minutes with us breaking down.
So we know fast. Is this engaging? Is there something between the two of us, back and forth? Because another thing we've settled on over this seven years is that we don't want to be civics teachers. We don't want to do an episode educating people about what the Secretary of State does. And because we have these premium spaces where Sarah can do that macro look of everything going on today, and I can get really into the weeds on whatever interests me, we try to save our podcast feed, our main show that's free for everybody, for that chemistry between the two of us. Where can we find a topic that there will be chemistry between the two of us to create something that's different than you can get anywhere else?
And so as we're discussing what that topic might be, it really is just like—three minutes in, okay, we have it or we don't.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Super briefly—because I've got a couple of lightning round questions I wanna make sure that we get to before we run out of time—sum up for me your different approaches to preparing for a show.
Sarah Stewart Holland
I do a lot of auditory preparation. It is helpful for me to listen to other conversations about whatever we're gonna talk about. So I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. That's sort of my favorite way to do research—or reading books. I like to do sort of long form thinking and giving myself space to sort of pick up threads from maybe unrelated places.
Because sometimes the hardest thing is not gathering the information, it's just organizing it. I think that's often the struggle with our preparation. I don't need 25 citations, I need a way to figure out to synthesize this and put it in a way that we can have a free flowing conversation around it.
Elaine Appleton Grant
How about you, Beth? How does your preparation differ?
Beth Silvers
I like the 25 citations. I like articles. If we're discussing a piece of legislation, I want to read the text of the bill beginning to end. I like legislative notes. I'm a person who loves to go to Wikipedia and hit the footnotes and click through to the White Papers. If Brookings has a paper on something, I want to check that out. So I'm more in the weeds.
I read a lot of Supreme Court decisions. I read a lot of appellate court decisions. So I just try to cover the primary source beat. And then we'll come in and Sarah will say, well, I think this is maybe a framework for the conversation. And that really helps me. And I feel like I have details to round out that framework. And I think that the balance has been really successful for us.
Elaine Appleton Grant
So you do come in with a framework. I mean, you're not scripting anything, but you do come in with a—we know who's going to start this off, and basically the kind of overall outline of the show.
Beth Silvers
We take turns. So our Tuesday episodes, I put the framework in—here's where we're going to start and end. And Sarah does that for Friday. And sort of know you're going to be the captain today to guide this and move it along and watch the time.
Elaine Appleton Grant
And I'm sure that over time you've found that you have to have a captain. You can't both be in charge of each thing.
Beth Silvers
It helps us keep the episodes under an hour and a half or two hours—that they might be if one of us weren't kind of checking in on that.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I started this whole thing out by saying, you're providing a sense of belonging for people. I've seen some of the letters that people write or the emails that people write, including one recently where someone described, quite eloquently, the struggles of her teenage child. That was very moving and very raw. And that's not the average podcast listener. What's your experience of that? And did you start out with the intention, we're going to build a community, or did it just happen?
Beth Silvers
Oh, it just happened for me for sure. I didn't understand what a podcast was, let alone what the average podcast listener was looking for or like. And I certainly didn't understand how deeply people connect with a voice that they listen to. Sarah says all the time, you can't skim a podcast.
People do connect because you're in their ears and they are paying attention. And there's something really powerful about spending almost two hours a week, maybe, with the two of us just in your headphones as you're buzzing about doing other things in your day. I mean, we are a part of dog walks and laundry and dinner preparation and commutes.
So from what we know, we have listeners all over the United States who are kind of spread like peanut butter across the states. Age-wise, we hear from people who are in high school. We hear from people in their 70s and 80s. We know demographically that a lot of people who follow us on Instagram are about our age. That's not surprising, because that's kind of the medium for women our age. We really value that there are folks for whom we are their only news source. And then we have listeners who work in news in Washington, people who work on political campaigns, people on Capitol Hill.
It's a beautiful thing to know that no matter what we talk about, someone's listening with real lived experience, real expertise, and a real willingness to share their story with us and sometimes with our larger audience, if they give us permission to do that, who will add a lot of richness and texture to the conversation.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Okay. So the lightning round questions, the first one is, what do you know now that you wish you had known about hosting several years ago?
Sarah Stewart Holland
I think the intimacy of podcasting really caught me off guard. The connection people would feel to us was so different than both my experience blogging and my own experience as a podcast listener. I was listening to This American Life, you know? It just was a kind of a different vibe.
Elaine Appleton Grant
How about you, Beth? What do you wish you'd known?
Beth Silvers
I think just understanding the entire premise of your show that it is about the host, that I am not trying to make something, I'm just being and letting people into the experience of me being. And developing that trust in myself is a journey that I'm still on. It's not like I've got it and I've arrived. But if I could go back, I would say to myself, hey, don't overthink this. Just trust that you can just be you and that that's what people are here for.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I love that. I love that. And if you were to have a dream guest for Sound Judgment, somebody else who would be willing to be grilled the way you guys have been willing to be grilled, who would it be?
Beth Silvers
He is not currently hosting the show anymore, but Casper ter Kuile was one of the hosts of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, which I know is an interesting poll here. But I love that show. I think the premise is so innovative. Let's treat a work of fiction as though it were sacred and see what lessons we can draw from it. I think that whole show is about flexible thinking. And I thought Casper ter Kuile was delightful and insightful and so well prepared, but also very at ease in every episode. And I would love to hear him talk about how he prepared for those shows and how he thought about that experience.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Wow. Now that's one that I am not familiar with. And so you've really piqued my interest. I am going to go listen to that. That's fascinating. Sarah?
Sarah Stewart Holland
So listeners of our show know that I'm a very dedicated devotee of the Ezra Klein Show. Enormous respect for him. I think that he is an incredible interviewer and an incredible host. I would love to grill him about the sort of more personal things he's been talking about. He comes from a reporter background. And I think the podcast is the most successful part of his career now, and you can feel him sort of pull and tug on this. Okay, well, now that I have this intimacy with the audience through the podcast, I need to reveal more about my personal life because that's sort of the piece of the game. You can hear him dancing with that throughout the episodes, and I think, in a way that's so interesting to me because I do not think it comes naturally nor do I think he particularly enjoys it. So I just think it's super, super interesting. He's a brilliant, brilliant man.
Elaine Appleton Grant
I am so glad that you didn't just say, I'd love to hear from Ezra Klein, but why? Because had we had more time, I would have played back a clip from the quiet quitting show to you, Sarah, where you talk about being sort of eaten up by anxiety in your 20s looking for the perfect job that was going to give your entire life meaning and why that's a really bad idea for people to do. And it's very personal, as a lot of your content is. And I was going to ask you about that because as a longtime journalist, I am still struggling with this myself. It is hard.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Well, I didn't come from a journalist background unless you count college and high school papers. I came from a mommy blogging background. So all that was, was personal disclosure. So it comes very naturally to me.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Well, I assumed as much, but it's interesting that you did pick up on the fact that it's hard for somebody like Ezra Klein to do that, and that he's changing his style.
Thank you both. This was really interesting. And I'll be listening avidly.
Sarah Stewart Holland
Well, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation.
Elaine Appleton Grant
You're welcome.
Beth Silvers
It's very interesting to hear what someone else is hearing. So I really appreciate your questions and all your thought and that you have been such a long time listener.
Elaine Appleton Grant
At the end of every episode I try to give you just a few of the many takeaways from these episodes. Here are a few from today's show. You can find the whole list—a long and useful list—in the show notes.
And thanks for listening to episode three of Sound Judgment. Please rate and review us on your listening app, and better yet, share the show with a friend, personally or on social media. Tag us with the hashtag, great host. We need your help to grow this brand new show. Every single one of you matters.
Who's your dream guest for Sound Judgment? Write us at allies@podcastallies, or tweet me at Elaine A. Grant and tell us who it is and why.
Sound Judgment is produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. Sound design by Andrew Parrella. Our gorgeous cover art is by Sarah Edgell. Project management and all the things by Tina Bassir. Tune in next time for a mystery guest with a mystery show from everyone's favorite genre. No more clues, but that in itself is a clue. Can you guess? See you next time.
