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Hello and welcome to the waves for Thursday, October 25th, the She's Running Edition.

I'm Christina Cauderucci, a staff writer at Slate and host of the Slate podcast

Outward, and you are in for a treat this week. In anticipation of the upcoming midterm

elections, we have a very special episode, TM, planned for today. And because of that,

I am pleased to welcome a Waves host from the other week of the show,

Hannah Rosen of NPR's Invisibilia. We overlap at last. I know. I'm so excited. And I've gotten so

into the midterms. It's unusual for me. I'm like listening to every podcast I can listen to

about the midterrant. I've listened to like, you know, 30 episodes of 538. I'm like I'm just, I'm just into it this midterm time. It just I feel like I feel all the drama. Well, you'll have another episode to listen to on Thursday. Also here with me in D.C. is Latifah Liles, a vice president at the National

Network to End Domestic Violence and the former director of the Women's Bureau at the Labor

Department under Barack Obama. She's also a D.C. Democratic State Committee woman. Hi, Latifah.

Hi. And this week's episode is a collaboration with glamour magazine. So to help us dig into the midterms, we have a fourth host this week, Glamour's senior political reporter, Celeste Katz, who is calling in from out on the trail where she's reporting. Welcome to the wave, Celeste. Hey, it's great to be here with you. Thanks so much. Yeah, we're so happy to have you. So if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably not news to you that there is an election coming up on November 6th. There's been a lot of talk about this proverbial blue wave, a backlash to Trump that could win Democrats the House. And with more women running for office

than ever, a lot of people are hoping that the election will usher in an unprecedented number

of female senators and representatives in Congress and maybe even governors. So today, we are going

to devote the whole episode to women in politics. First, we'll take a look at how female candidates have presented themselves in their campaigns this year. We'll discuss how this slate of candidates has changed what it means to be a woman running for political office. Then we'll decide whether electing more women to office will make a substantive difference in the lives

of their constituents and whether gender parity is really the key to better policies. And finally,

we will talk about fictional women in politics and how those depictions have evolved over time.

If you're a Slate Plus member, you will get an especially juicy Slate Plus segment today, I hope.

We're going to discuss whether or not it's sexist that activists have raised millions of dollars to fund a challenger to Maine Senator Susan Collins as punishment for her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, while the many, many, many male senators who supported Kavanaugh are just getting ignored.

If you're not a Slate Plus member yet, and you should be, you can start your free two-week trial by visiting slate.com slash the waves plus.

And before we get started, we actually have one order of business.

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