Pantsuit Politics

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:

- The New York Times report on Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola's treatment of staff
- The Boston Globe story on Last Ditch, a COVID-cautious lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts
- The Giants game "mom of the year" couple and iced coffee at job interviews
- Taylor Swift's four-song encore to The Life of a Showgirl

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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:

Robbyn's path from gerontology and legal aid for older adults into higher-ed leadership, and eight years as a university president

The current state of higher education: flipped funding models, the enrollment cliff, cuts to research funding and student loans, restrictions on international students, and a growing public skepticism about the value of a degree

Why Robbyn's book centers on values rather than tactics, and how to choose two or three core values as an actual decision-making tool rather than a platitude

"Values drift" — how leaders rationalize small departures from their stated values until those values stop driving behavior at all

A detour through Lindsey Graham's admission that his real value is "relevance," and what that reveals about naming one value in service of another

Whether organizations — and an entire sector like higher education — can meaningfully hold values, and how to navigate different constituencies without seeming inconsistent

Beth's own reflection on the three values guiding her work this year: honesty, distinctiveness, and joy

A closing story about the real budget dilemmas university presidents face, and how a "North Star" value holds up under pressure

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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

Sports' grip on America sparks summer of political warfare – Axios

Caitlin Clark / House Republicans

RSC Chairman Pfluger Leads Letter to WNBA Demanding Accountability Over Unfair Treatment of Caitlin Clark

House Republicans absurdly ask WNBA to investigate fouls against Caitlin Clark – Yahoo Sports

Sophie Cunningham / trans athletes / Title IX

Inside the disunited United States that shadows the WNBA – ESPN

WNBA star Sophie Cunningham defends her views on transgender athletes – The Hill

Destroying Women's Sports In Order To Save Them – Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring

Sydney Sweeney ad

Sydney Sweeney under fire from athletes over nude sports-prediction ad – CNN

Sydney Sweeney Faces Backlash for Sexualized Sports Trading Ad – Hollywood Reporter

SF Giants Pride caps / DOJ-EEOC

Giants 'Pride Night' cap controversy prompts investigation into MLB for religious discrimination – Yahoo Sports

DOJ opens probe into MLB after Pride Night controversy – The Hill

Good Good Golf ad / Callaway

Golf ad showing man shove woman to ground taken down after backlash – CNN

Callaway Golf ends partnership with Good Good Golf after controversial ad – ABC News

LIV Golf bankruptcy

LIV Golf files for bankruptcy protection; Rahm, Bryson owed millions – ESPN

LIV Golf files for bankruptcy protection as it seeks to restart in 2027 – NBC News

Trump and the World Cup

2026 Trump–FIFA red card controversy – Wikipedia

Trump's FIFA Intervention Draws Global Backlash – Time

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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.

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