Culture Study Podcast - Don't Mess With Texas Culture

00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. This is Anne. We have a bunch of upcoming episodes that we need your questions for, specifically about baseball culture, about running a small creative business in a way that's like sustainable and doesn't make you want to quit doing the thing that you love.

00:00:16.760 And then we're doing another episode that's all about like different ways of hanging out and like thinking through like why does hanging out sometimes feel satisfying or unsatisfying or like what makes it difficult?

00:00:27.900 all that sort of thing. We're also working on an episode with Jen Hatmaker about starting over in

00:00:32.880 midlife, so you can take that in any direction that you want. And then we're also talking to

00:00:38.340 Leigh Bardugo about whatever. That means fandom, genre, YA, fantasy, how you convince someone to

00:00:46.060 read Ninth House, whatever you want. If you have questions about any of those topics, please

00:00:52.180 Submit them at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod.

00:00:56.540 And we also always need ask-in-anything questions, so submit those there as well.

00:01:01.560 Thanks, and enjoy today's show.

00:01:10.220 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:01:13.800 And I'm Sam Sanders.

00:01:15.160 I was just informed that this is my fourth time on this show.

00:01:18.640 Yeah.

00:01:19.460 You're a main character.

00:01:20.740 You're a main character.

00:01:21.460 Next time, do I get a tuxedo jacket?

00:01:24.760 SNL style.

00:01:27.740 And what are you hosting right now?

00:01:29.900 Oh, girl, what am I not?

00:01:31.200 I host two shows right now.

00:01:34.620 I host an entertainment talk show called The Sam Sanders Show.

00:01:38.640 I produce it in conjunction with KCRW, the coolest radio station in the world.

00:01:44.360 We publish episodes every Friday.

00:01:46.640 You can find them in podcast feeds.

00:01:48.120 You can find them on YouTube, and you can find them over the weekends on a few dozen public radio stations across the country. 1.00

00:01:55.600 Yeah, you're syndicated, bitch. 1.00

00:01:57.380 We're trying. Old school, baby. Syndication. 1.00

00:02:00.940 That's amazing.

00:02:02.960 So we're going to start out—

00:02:04.880 Can I plug the second show really quick, too?

00:02:06.340 Oh, yes, of course.

00:02:07.100 But y'all know about that one.

00:02:08.120 Vibe Check, it's been around for years. It's the OG.

00:02:10.440 I host it with my dear friends, Zach Stafford and Saeed Jones.

00:02:13.800 It's your favorite group to come to life. It's just a kiki. 0.96

00:02:16.320 But these days, we spend a lot of time talking shit about Donald Trump and Elon Musk. 0.99

00:02:22.560 Zach was just on the show to talk about Katy Perry. 0.99

00:02:25.860 Oh, I wish I could have been a fly on that wall.

00:02:28.020 So good.

00:02:29.520 So you grew up in San Antonio.

00:02:31.820 Whole life?

00:02:32.980 Pretty much.

00:02:33.580 I didn't leave until I was 23.

00:02:35.520 So I spent my young, young years in a town called Seguin, Texas.

00:02:39.540 It's about half an hour outside of San Antonio.

00:02:41.540 It's known as the pecan capital of the world.

00:02:44.140 They have a large concrete statue of a pecan outside the courthouse. 0.98

00:02:49.580 Makes no goddamn sense. 0.98

00:02:51.820 It makes no sense, Anne Allen. 0.97

00:02:53.820 Like, why?

00:02:55.540 And then I spent middle school and high school in, like, the close outer suburb of San Antonio.

00:03:00.960 And then I went to undergrad at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.

00:03:05.260 And I didn't leave the San Antonio area until I went off to grad school when I was, like, 23.

00:03:10.160 So I know a lot about Texas, but I'm not from Texas.

00:03:13.580 More on that in a minute.

00:03:14.920 But I want to start with something that I actually don't know anything about.

00:03:18.060 But supposedly, you know something about.

00:03:20.360 And that's the chopped barbecue sandwich at Bill Miller.

00:03:24.460 Yeah.

00:03:25.300 Okay, what makes it Texan?

00:03:27.520 And, yeah, just tell us about it.

00:03:29.880 I'm trying to think where I told this story.

00:03:32.240 Someone heard it on a podcast.

00:03:33.980 Okay, I think it was on Doughboys, a really great food podcast a while back.

00:03:37.400 And we're talking about food.

00:03:38.260 And I told them, I said, you know, I think a lot about barbecue.

00:03:42.420 I love good barbecue. I grew up eating good barbecue. But one of the things that like

00:03:48.600 kind of jarred me in terms of my emotional connection with barbecue was working at an

00:03:54.240 actual fast food barbecue restaurant. I worked at Bill Miller Barbecue for maybe a year and a half

00:04:00.280 or two years at the end of high school. Bill Miller is basically a fast food chain that is

00:04:08.120 Texas regional, but it's

00:04:10.460 barbecue, which means it's not

00:04:12.580 great barbecue, but

00:04:14.440 it works. And they actually have

00:04:15.820 amazing breakfast tacos. Like, the breakfast

00:04:18.340 tacos are the best thing on their menu.

00:04:20.380 However, when I worked there,

00:04:22.620 I had an experience

00:04:24.520 with chopped beef sandwiches

00:04:25.660 that made me never want to eat

00:04:28.100 chopped beef sandwiches again, unless I

00:04:30.200 see it happen. Like, I see the

00:04:32.300 whole process.

00:04:34.920 I will tell you why, Anne Helen.

00:04:36.580 Tell me. Oh, good. Yeah. 0.99

00:04:38.120 tell me so when i worked there my job was uh kind of three things i bust the tables i wash the

00:04:48.140 dishes and i fried the chicken that's how they start you in the back and i still am like why is

00:04:53.780 the why is the person busting the tables also frying the chicken that seems not the best well

00:04:59.200 they don't no one else wants to smell like the fried chicken for the rest of their day that's

00:05:03.240 probably why yeah go ahead my skin was so oily i was it was wild but eventually i also got to

00:05:13.740 work the first drive-thru window and um one of the stations right next to the drive-thru window

00:05:22.480 at a bill miller barbecue at least in my day was the chopped beef sandwich station so a chopped

00:05:29.120 beef sandwich you all know how this works it's sloppy joe but barbecue it's kind of a lot of

00:05:34.600 edge and end pieces that stew in a sauce and then that goes on to the bun and that is your

00:05:40.800 choppy sandwich and uh at bill miller there's always the vat of the chopped beef it's like an

00:05:47.680 oily meat stew which whatever that's what you're doing but i'll never forget when i first began to

00:05:55.060 make the chopped beef sandwiches one of the rules they told me was well you know sam if any of the

00:06:02.140 chop falls out of the vat onto the counter or falls off the bun onto the counter you just

00:06:10.760 scrape it back up and put it in the vat again oh yeah everyone's touching that counter

00:06:16.500 ever since i knew that i i have not eaten the choppy sandwich since then

00:06:24.040 I mean, think about what it is.

00:06:26.380 It's all of the meat that, like, it's the ends, right?

00:06:30.160 It's like the leftovers.

00:06:31.440 It's the stuff that you would throw in the garbage that they're trying to make second use of, which is good, right?

00:06:36.180 Reducing food waste.

00:06:37.300 Yeah, right.

00:06:37.700 Eat the whole tail, the snout, or whatever they say, all that, yeah.

00:06:41.900 Highest incidence of, like, handling of any item.

00:06:46.840 Yeah.

00:06:47.200 What do you think makes it Texan?

00:06:49.660 Not necessarily touching all of your food all the time.

00:06:53.580 Yeah. Yeah. But like that experience, just working there, this sandwich in general.

00:06:58.320 What what do you think? The fact that like the fact that this shop, this barbecue shop operated with the attempted efficiency of a McDonald's is so Texas.

00:07:13.280 Because when you think of barbecue in the classical sense, the whole point is it takes forever.

00:07:17.620 you are working that meat all day

00:07:20.700 you are working it till it's

00:07:22.440 it's low and slow

00:07:24.200 and barbecuing takes a day

00:07:26.620 or more

00:07:27.780 and the entire conceit

00:07:30.040 of having a barbecue restaurant with a drive-thru

00:07:32.840 this reminds me

00:07:36.960 of one of my favorite barbecue places

00:07:38.520 which is not like the most authentic

00:07:40.420 in any capacity but it's the Salt Lake

00:07:42.800 outside of Austin

00:07:43.680 which is not bad

00:07:45.120 no it's not bad at all but it serves a ton of people but the thing that always struck me is

00:07:51.100 so funny was that it was located in a dry county so they wouldn't serve you booze but you could 0.91

00:07:57.400 bring your own so people actually just got more shit face right like a whole the whole thing of 0.92

00:08:03.220 like texas which has what is it 354 254 counties a lot and each county each county gets to decide 0.94

00:08:10.940 like we're dry we're not dry but then the next county is like 20 minutes away like what are you

00:08:16.420 doing this doesn't it doesn't do anything it doesn't and also pound for pound i think texans

00:08:23.720 are maybe the most consistent drinkers in the union really we drink whether we say we're sober

00:08:30.680 or not texans drink i mean like there are the decided holy rollers of which i was a part in

00:08:38.420 my youth but if you're not that you're drinking i went to catholic schools for a lot of my youth

00:08:42.820 luscious texas catholics drink texas lutherans drink texans drink so the fact that we even play

00:08:50.500 around with dry counties is hilarious to me my favorite my my my second texas barbecue was weird

00:08:56.560 story um so i grew up in san antonio in that area but we went to church in lockhart texas

00:09:02.280 And on the drive to Lockhart, Texas every week, we would pass multiple Black's Barbecue.

00:09:08.480 Black's Barbecue is some of the best barbecue in Texas.

00:09:11.860 It's ranked every year because we have barbecue critics down there.

00:09:15.220 But I didn't realize until adulthood, there's Black's Barbecue and the original Black's Barbecue.

00:09:22.640 Because the black family got into a fight and they said, we're keeping the name.

00:09:27.920 And the other side was like, no, we're keeping the name.

00:09:30.040 so you think it's all just blacks barbecue no it's a family feud barbecue chain

00:09:37.100 100 also lockhart understood as the the barbecue capital of texas oh yeah um the other thing that

00:09:46.460 this person asked for us to start and i think this is a great way as well to to ground us in

00:09:52.080 Texas culture is what is so Texas about H-E-B? Oh my goodness. The beauty of H-E-B.

00:10:01.820 Which is a grocery store. It's a grocery store chain, but like a cut above. Just to give you

00:10:06.220 a quick sample of how great H-E-B is, a year before COVID hit, they were running pandemic

00:10:13.700 drills for their food supply chain. And in the midst of not just the first pandemic lockdown,

00:10:20.860 but also in that great big texas freeze yep heb never lost food or power and they sustained

00:10:27.780 their systems they're just so good i remember growing up people competing for jobs to be

00:10:37.080 general managers at heb after undergrad because it was that great of a place to be um they have

00:10:42.680 their own line of condiments they make their tortillas fresh in the store and they're so

00:10:48.360 freaking good so cheap and so good so cheap and so good and then there's an elevated heb um central

00:10:56.320 market central market which is better than whole foods 100 100 i love heb and the heb also whenever

00:11:04.260 there's disaster like hurricane relief like they just show up with these giant trucks and we'll

00:11:08.260 link to some articles that have been written about like how they conceive of aid and it's

00:11:12.780 specifically about texas aid and like helping other people also the last name of like part of

00:11:18.900 the reason it's called heb is that the last name is howardy butt but here's the thing that i think

00:11:25.820 really like here's why heb is quintessentially texas it is more than anything above politics

00:11:33.480 it is non-partisan it is so non-partisan republicans love it democrats love it and

00:11:39.240 they make it a point to always stay out of it and i think like at its core when i think about

00:11:43.700 the parts of texas that are the deepest within me it is actually quote unquote normal texans

00:11:50.480 not caring about your politics if the thing that we're doing is towards a common goal and if it's 0.92

00:11:57.880 good shit yeah i see it all the time when i go home to see my family and friends and they're at 0.88

00:12:04.120 the football games or they're at the christmas plays i walk in these rooms and i don't know 0.99

00:12:10.700 who's a trumper and no one's trying to figure it out and i'm not saying that's good or that's bad 0.99

00:12:16.440 i'm saying it is such a different emotional experience than being in los angeles that's

00:12:21.640 very true like no matter where you go and i think this is particular not okay let me backtrack it's

00:12:26.900 No matter where you go, if you are in a more urban area or suburban area, it is not as easy as you think it is to predict the politics of the people.

00:12:37.060 Truly, truly.

00:12:38.880 All of the cliches you think about what a Republican or Democrat looks like, if you are in a major Texas city, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas, even El Paso, you don't know.

00:12:54.280 You don't know.

00:12:55.180 and it used to perplex me and now it's like whenever i go home i know that like i'm just

00:13:03.680 in the sauce i'm in the sauce and hopefully and thankfully and usually texas hospitality

00:13:09.780 keeps it from ever being in conflict but yeah you just don't know like there there are certain

00:13:14.440 pockets of texas where the loudest republicans are brown-skinned latino people and it's like

00:13:21.840 okay, we all want to eat some good food. 0.98

00:13:24.640 I'm not talking to you about that.

00:13:26.400 We're eating, you know?

00:13:27.980 Yeah.

00:13:28.880 I went to grad school at University of Texas at Austin.

00:13:33.220 Yes.

00:13:34.000 I got my PhD there.

00:13:35.960 So I was there for four years.

00:13:36.820 UT was a different place back then.

00:13:38.660 It was.

00:13:39.140 This was 2006 through 2011.

00:13:43.060 So a real time of transition for Austin.

00:13:46.100 There was evidence of like Austin still being weird,

00:13:48.700 but it was far from like the Austin of Richard Linklater.

00:13:51.840 films um but then I really didn't know much about Texas even being there because I was working all

00:13:59.180 the time and I was so poor that like I went to San Antonio once right like I went to went to

00:14:04.220 Dallas once and I was like this is weird um I don't like this but I then I went back and did

00:14:09.960 so much reporting in the state of Texas after Trump's election for many many different reasons

00:14:16.700 I did so like several different stories but the one that really brought me all over the place

00:14:21.400 is I followed Beto O'Rourke around on the campaign trail several times.

00:14:27.580 So one time I was there for two weeks, and really,

00:14:29.880 this was when he was visiting every single county.

00:14:31.400 He was driving himself, right?

00:14:32.820 Yes.

00:14:33.180 Was he in the truck?

00:14:33.800 He was in a truck.

00:14:34.660 Yeah, he was in the truck.

00:14:35.960 And he had his family with him sometimes,

00:14:38.580 another campaign manager who was like 20,

00:14:42.140 other people along for the ride.

00:14:44.000 But it was all over the place, and I loved it.

00:14:48.800 Like, I love, like, figuring out, like, oh, what's San Angelo like?

00:14:52.980 What's Del Rio like?

00:14:54.880 We used to go to church convention in Del Rio.

00:14:58.460 It's a great town.

00:14:59.660 It is.

00:15:00.180 Really interesting.

00:15:00.840 The politics there are fascinating.

00:15:03.440 Right on the Mexican border.

00:15:05.860 Like, Abilene, fascinating town.

00:15:09.420 Yeah.

00:15:10.140 They're, like, I just spent a lot of, and then I came back several times before the election

00:15:15.200 that he lost by however many points.

00:15:18.800 Not a ton, like smaller, you know, there was hope that maybe that he would actually pull it off.

00:15:23.960 But so that is when I learned a lot and talk to a ton.

00:15:29.040 Like, I probably had hour long conversations with at least 200 Texans because before I would go to whatever event that he was putting on, I would find two people in that area.

00:15:40.720 Yeah.

00:15:41.400 Through various connections, through Twitter, whatever, to sit down and have coffee with.

00:15:45.460 and I like my question would be more like okay tell me about this place I love that like what's

00:15:50.500 the history how have the political lines changed that sort of thing and we'll get more into this

00:15:54.780 when we talk about whether or not Texas is southern or not but they're like yeah the whole

00:15:59.520 like the shift from like old white Anglo Democrats who are more like Dixiecrats right like right like 0.56

00:16:05.720 maybe just have forgotten that they should probably be Republicans and still like cling to that

00:16:10.080 democrat like understanding and then on to like and all the conversations about voting blah blah

00:16:16.140 blah like there's just so much there and i love the state it is so much more than most people

00:16:21.780 understand but before we keep going we're going to take a quick break

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00:20:29.540 It is the most interesting state, I think, in the country.

00:20:32.760 I think so, too.

00:20:33.700 Because if you go way to the East, like East Texas is like Louisiana and feels very much like the South.

00:20:39.880 My father's from East Texas, and he sounds like he could be from Baton Rouge.

00:20:44.000 But you go to West Texas, and you're in the Southwest.

00:20:47.600 El Paso is New Mexico, right?

00:20:49.380 El Paso is in the mountain time zone.

00:20:52.160 Yes!

00:20:53.080 It's an hour off the rest of the state.

00:20:55.900 People don't understand, and it looks like you're in New Mexico.

00:20:58.980 It really does.

00:21:00.320 And it's eight hours side to side from Texas.

00:21:02.240 Eight hours just to drive across Texas.

00:21:03.940 And, you know, you mentioned Del Rio.

00:21:06.000 You mentioned El Paso.

00:21:07.520 I grew up in San Antonio.

00:21:08.420 these are also cities and urban areas that are majority minority a lot of these cities are

00:21:13.820 mostly latino people which means that in the latino population of these cities you have latino

00:21:22.420 republicans and latino democrats and people on the coast cannot fathom that like what do you

00:21:28.920 mean the latinos don't vote as a bloc and it's like it's not the latinos here it's just people

00:21:34.100 It's people.

00:21:35.300 So many generations of people who have been there their entire lives because they've never been displaced.

00:21:41.240 Yes.

00:21:42.320 Yes.

00:21:43.140 This is the thing. 0.99

00:21:43.660 It's like there's so much flattening of, quote unquote, Latinos outside of Texas. 1.00

00:21:52.300 And then you get to Texas and you realize it is the most unflat population you'll ever encounter. 1.00

00:22:00.360 So I'm so glad that we actually got here naturally. 0.94

00:22:02.800 We were going to read some questions that were basically saying, like, how can you talk about Texas culture?

00:22:07.040 It's like eight cultures in one.

00:22:08.640 Yeah. 0.91

00:22:09.300 True.

00:22:10.160 Yeah.

00:22:10.560 Maybe we can.

00:22:11.360 So we talked about East Texas.

00:22:13.500 Mm hmm.

00:22:14.440 I like that's definitely a culture there.

00:22:16.280 I think Houston's kind of separate from like that Texarkana.

00:22:19.420 Yeah.

00:22:19.960 Houston is just like megalopolis.

00:22:23.760 Yeah.

00:22:24.020 Houston is.

00:22:26.540 City of Babylon.

00:22:27.820 But an incredibly and a great way.

00:22:29.920 Incredibly diverse place.

00:22:30.940 It is more diverse than New York City.

00:22:32.800 Yeah. Or like people when we were talking about in a previous episode how diverse Los Angeles is in so many different ways.

00:22:40.220 You have so many different cultures kind of coming together.

00:22:42.640 A lot of people in the comments said like the only city that feels like that to me is Houston.

00:22:47.080 Yeah. Yeah. There are square miles of Houston where it's majority South Asian people.

00:22:51.780 Yeah. There are square miles of Houston where it's majority Vietnamese people.

00:22:55.880 There's like this like this is what you're dealing with. 1.00

00:22:58.340 And I think Americans think that only happens in New York.

00:23:01.380 it happens maybe more in Houston with better food yeah the food is very good in Houston 0.96

00:23:08.880 what is the blackest part of Texas 0.96

00:23:14.000 in San Antonio I remember growing up the population the black population in San Antonio was maybe like 0.57

00:23:23.320 eight to ten percent yeah and there were places you knew to go in San Antonio that felt blacker

00:23:29.360 the rest of the city but it was never a lot yeah um i think the further east you go uh the blacker

00:23:35.980 it gets my father's from east texas um he went to this is texas history he went to prairie view

00:23:44.900 a&m university which was the historically black university down the road from texas a&m

00:23:51.340 because the blacks couldn't go there and he was so proud of going to this school

00:23:56.180 and his when I was young he always wanted me to go to Prairie View A&M and I was like no I would 0.96

00:24:01.940 go to one of the big schools if I went but like that was his legacy yeah so I couldn't put my 0.65

00:24:06.120 finger on which town in East Texas but it's East Texas I mean you know all of Texas was a slave

00:24:11.080 state we have Juneteenth because of Texas Texas freed their slaves last didn't tell them until

00:24:17.160 the harvest was done and the date of their freedom was June 19th which became Juneteenth

00:24:21.420 but culturally east texas feels more or most confederate slave state etc i grew up in san

00:24:31.060 antonio and i didn't see a lot of the iconography of the confederacy uh and the further west you go

00:24:35.980 you'll see less of it yeah yeah well and you see it in austin because i think like you had like the

00:24:40.580 the largesse of like the various landowners who wanted to demonstrate like that heritage

00:24:46.480 putting that in scare quotes

00:24:48.160 like in the statues and all that sort of thing

00:24:50.860 Austin used to not be

00:24:52.560 like the city

00:24:53.940 it was all Dallas

00:24:55.460 it was all Dallas and people forget San Antonio

00:24:58.260 was several times bigger than Austin

00:24:59.700 it's about an hour and a half south but

00:25:01.800 San Antonio in my youth at least was one of the

00:25:04.240 ten biggest cities in the country

00:25:05.700 and Austin was always dwarfed by it

00:25:08.520 someone told me

00:25:10.120 because I was talking about Texas

00:25:12.100 and whether it's south or not on an episode of

00:25:14.260 Vibe Check and a listener

00:25:16.040 wrote us back and she was like part of why you don't see so much confederate iconography in san

00:25:22.080 antonio was because san antonio was always so mexican and indigenous uh they never let the

00:25:28.880 confederacy get a foothold in san antonio so less of that stuff but what you will see in san antonio

00:25:34.220 is a legacy of a different kind of colonization and that's all the old missions yeah all the alamo

00:25:40.620 shit alamo's a mission yeah yeah exactly yeah um and like most people don't know or maybe they don't

00:25:47.220 if they're not from texas i guess like like there's this whole river walk like there's like 0.85

00:25:51.820 part of san antonio that's like it could be new orleans in my head oh totally you know what i mean

00:25:56.560 like that downtown is very like this is where the tourists go like so the river walk for those who

00:26:02.560 don't know it used to be um irrigation channels that ran all through old san antonio i want to

00:26:09.440 say they were put in place not by white settlers but by people that are indigenous but check me on

00:26:14.820 that um and eventually san antonio kept those waterways and made it a quote-unquote river that's

00:26:22.620 now a tourist attraction and like a lot of rivers in texas it's just like brown and sludgy yeah

00:26:28.960 yeah and it's only like three feet deep you could walk through it but it's lined with bars and shops

00:26:35.000 and tourist stuff and when the spurs make the playoffs everyone's out just drinking it feels

00:26:39.840 like new orleans and the fact that like you're expected to be on the riverwalk with a drink in

00:26:42.940 hand it's fully open carry with your alcohol and then okay so north texas like up in the panhandle

00:26:49.800 oh my god north texas for me like you know how in the lion king mufasa is like everywhere the

00:26:54.340 light touches is yours but not where it's dark that's north texas for me i don't really be going

00:26:59.320 up there and helen i don't really be going up there i don't know what y'all do up there i don't

00:27:03.300 no that's actually that's the part that i did not spend that much time in is like way up in the

00:27:08.160 panhandle it's pretty sparsely populated um and i think like has more in common than with oklahoma

00:27:14.100 obviously for sure and then like west of like so i-35 goes kind of down the center of the state

00:27:21.220 and it's like dallas austin um san antonio and then west of that there's a bunch of small like

00:27:29.780 there's abilene there's amarillo all these towns that i first learned about in country songs by

00:27:35.220 like you know black or something um to me like those towns are more churchy like that area is

00:27:45.080 more churchy like church christ's big oh yeah and much more like stereotypical friday night lights

00:27:51.440 football yes yes like that sort of thing all of that well and i think like that is the version

00:27:59.480 of texas that i think is the most outsourced yeah and it's not a coincidence that that is

00:28:05.720 a pretty white version of texas right when we think of texas especially right now in terms of

00:28:11.060 politics we think of white people and we think of conservative white people and those towns you're

00:28:16.780 speaking of get to that but what's so interesting to me is the ways in which right now the most

00:28:23.480 dominant conservative faction in texas is conservative latinos not conservative white

00:28:29.860 people yeah yeah yeah you know yeah but yeah we've definitely outsourced the most like the image of

00:28:36.160 all of texas as friday night lights yeah well i encountered a lot of that kind of like um that

00:28:41.900 i don't even want to say schism it's just like a political difference in the latino voting bloc

00:28:47.320 in places like corpus corpus christi um where there was a lot of conversation at the rallies

00:28:52.820 that I went to about like okay how do we

00:28:54.700 appeal like how do we convince

00:28:57.040 older Latinos

00:28:58.620 or more conservative Latinos

00:29:00.100 to vote in this interest

00:29:02.400 like to vote for Democrats and that sort of thing

00:29:04.460 oh yeah well and I mean so much of the conversation was

00:29:06.640 and I remember hearing these words like

00:29:08.240 well I came here the right way

00:29:10.280 my family came here the right way or

00:29:12.240 my family was here first for hundreds of years

00:29:14.680 and my story

00:29:16.460 is not the same story

00:29:18.600 as the immigrants who might be punished

00:29:20.760 right now and they're not my concern

00:29:22.440 you know this idea that and i think it's just an idea that like coastal liberal elites have

00:29:30.020 that like just because latinos are latino they'll all either think in lockstep or can be convinced

00:29:35.740 in lockstep we know it's not true yeah okay what we i love this is the longest we've ever gone

00:29:42.560 without actually asking oh my god it's my fault i'm sorry i'm rambling today i want to think about

00:29:48.380 uh let's see like zoom in and a little bit more on the conservative progressive like

00:29:53.480 stereotypes so this question comes from sarah from what i tend to see online it feels like

00:30:00.040 non-texans generally think everyone here is super conservative in my experience that is not the case

00:30:07.740 and i believe this narrative can actually be quite harmful in fact as a houstonian i experience real

00:30:15.220 culture shock in some more quote-unquote progressive places because of the lack of

00:30:20.820 diversity. Houston is extremely racially diverse and there are a lot of folks that feel safe to

00:30:28.540 express their different gender presentations and show visible queerness. So what can we do to show

00:30:36.000 folks from other states as well as young folks growing up here that Texas can be incredibly

00:30:41.640 progressive and is in fact a safe place for marginalized communities it's not it's not 0.97

00:30:48.780 texans job other folks just open their fucking minds but i cut you off go ahead no i was just 0.71

00:30:54.360 gonna say that like i think that a lot of these cities are trying to be a place that's a better 0.98

00:30:59.420 place for marginalized communities but at the same time you have to deal with the state politics

00:31:05.460 like the state laws jeopardize the safety of people who are living in these places even if

00:31:12.740 the city norms are different does that make sense oh totally totally i also feel like

00:31:18.780 i you know there's there's always this conversation about the south

00:31:24.360 that wants and i'm lumping texas into the south right now you know liberals not from the south

00:31:32.140 always want to demonize all of the south as conservative and therefore bad right but i always

00:31:38.140 say first off the bat you know they have black people all of these places do are you saying 0.99

00:31:43.540 the black people are bad too are you saying that because you know they're like we should cut off 0.97

00:31:49.540 all benefits to the south because they don't vote the right way and it's always white people saying 0.99

00:31:53.660 this you know because people of color know that we are everywhere you know and so i mean just like

00:32:00.260 the the the political diversity even within my own community growing up i i was raised pentecostal

00:32:07.280 in an evangelical pentecostal black church where we spoke in tongues and the women couldn't wear

00:32:11.980 pants or cut their hair it was very socially conservative uh very homophobic but i'll never

00:32:18.040 forget the day before george w bush launched the war in iraq our pastor over the pulpit

00:32:26.040 prayed for no war and it's just like that's the kind of like you can't put those kind of

00:32:32.780 politics in a box and that's always been my experience of texas yeah so yeah i mean to

00:32:38.400 this question how does texas do a better job of showing people that i mean i would ask how does 0.82

00:32:43.640 everyone else get their heads out their asses and understand that we contain multitudes yeah 0.57

00:32:48.920 one thing that i always try to do when i wrote about texas when i wrote about any like the 0.93

00:32:52.500 political the voting tendencies of any state was to try to understand okay not just why are these

00:32:59.860 people voting this way but who is voting right and in texas there are incredibly difficult voter

00:33:05.840 registration laws like it is so fucking hard to register to vote and when you move to re-register

00:33:12.060 oh my god it's insane there is a reason for this oh yeah like they're there they don't want college 0.81

00:33:16.940 students to vote they don't want people to vote they and they make it they don't want working

00:33:20.980 people to vote like people who work any sort of irregular hours like it is really hard to vote

00:33:26.160 yes and even in the midst of that and this is a thing i always tell folks when they question texas

00:33:30.660 politics all of the major cities all of the big cities they usually vote blue el paso austin san

00:33:36.680 antonio dallas um they're blue and i want to say dallas and houston even dallas they had they've

00:33:43.520 had queer mayors san antonio has always voted blue in elections people forget this and that is in

00:33:49.560 spite of all of the draconian voter suppression happening in texas all the time yeah and they have 0.62

00:33:55.600 incredible gerrymandering this is all over the south my house district went up like i want to

00:34:01.120 say 30 or 40 miles totally you look at it's like this long like in dallas there's like it's just

00:34:06.560 a skinny and it's you know what's called um pack and crack where like they they pack all they're

00:34:12.520 like okay yes we admit there's democrats and they're like okay let's get them all into one

00:34:18.200 place in the skinny-ass district so then all of the other outlying districts can be

00:34:24.520 for Republicans. Or they'll crack a black population into several districts so they 0.99

00:34:31.680 never get to flex their power. But yeah, Texas has taken gerrymandering to a high art. It's kind 0.87

00:34:37.520 of wild. And we're talking about both in like congressional, like national congressional

00:34:42.940 districts and also in terms of the state legislature um i was just interviewing uh chris latre about

00:34:51.040 montana politics and the thing with the montana legislature is like the the reservations are so

00:34:55.380 large that you cannot pack and crack them it's too big there's like there's a legitimate native

00:35:01.520 caucus yeah montana legislature because like there are a lot of tribes and there are a lot

00:35:06.540 of reservations and so they're going like each of those tribes and the the districts that pull

00:35:11.320 mostly from those reservations are going to have representatives no matter what and yeah there's

00:35:16.020 enough of them that they can like good make their voices hurt and that like texas yeah yeah yeah

00:35:24.440 but this is i mean it's so wild i will i get home a lot still and i'll talk to friends that are there

00:35:29.980 about the state of the politics and everyone right now is just like when is greg abbott gonna leave

00:35:35.860 feels like he's been around forever no one likes greg abbott no one likes the greg like

00:35:41.240 Like, even, like, Trumpers don't even like Craig Abbott.

00:35:43.820 Yeah.

00:35:44.460 And he's doing, he is, you know, he is, people don't talk about it enough, but he was right

00:35:49.300 up there with Ron DeSantis in terms of, like, the governors that wanted to run for president

00:35:53.920 who were just doing everything crazy to try to, like, beef up their bona fides with the

00:35:59.800 far right.

00:36:00.920 He just recently made all of Texas a voucher state for education.

00:36:08.340 I mean, it's going to change things big time. 0.97

00:36:11.240 Just a funny, crazy story about Abbott and his foolishness.

00:36:13.940 A dear friend of mine, she works for the state government. 0.74

00:36:17.700 She helps process benefits and such.

00:36:21.280 She works in Austin in an office building.

00:36:25.140 They all went remote during pandemic, and they all stayed remote, and it was working for everybody.

00:36:32.060 But a few months ago, Greg Abbott was like, all state employees must go back to work.

00:36:36.600 And I was like, what the hell, what the hell?

00:36:39.340 And I was following up with my friend after this order because she was like, I don't know what to do.

00:36:43.580 I take care of my toddler at home while I'm working and now I got to pay for child care.

00:36:47.960 The math's not mathing. How am I making this work?

00:36:50.320 So I check in with her and I say, hey, what happened with that?

00:36:53.380 She said, Sam, we thought we had to go back to work.

00:36:58.260 But they realized that they had leased out the parking lot during the work from home era.

00:37:03.840 So can't nobody park at the office so we don't have to go.

00:37:06.860 well and also if you can't drive to the office in texas there ain't going you're you're not going

00:37:13.400 especially in austin they're trying but like the pub like the way the the way that that city is

00:37:20.580 not built for public transit or it used to be when they had street cars but the way that they

00:37:25.600 have dismantled that public transit and how difficult it is to try to like re-engage that

00:37:30.620 infrastructure it's wild the traffic the traffic on i-35 is unlike i mean what do you live in la

00:37:38.720 is it worse on i-35 in texas it is because in la everyone tells you you could be a thousand

00:37:46.540 miles away and someone's yelling at you la traffic beware so you walk in girded for battle

00:37:52.960 yeah no one tells you when you get to austin that the traffic is that bad all they tell you is we

00:37:59.800 got live music and barbecue baby come on down and then you end up on the texas 405 and you're like

00:38:06.200 what the fuck i mean it's horrible it's totally you're like oh i thought that it was just like a

00:38:12.200 quick little drive over to waco and they're like four hours later yeah yeah i used to make the 0.99

00:38:17.880 drive a lot from austin san antonio when i was a kid in like high school and college you could

00:38:22.760 always do it in less than 90 minutes a little over an hour now you have to give yourself two hours

00:38:27.440 at least what an opportunity for an incredible train just to go down you know there's been drama

00:38:33.700 about that they've been trying to do it for a while and it keeps getting blocked by various

00:38:37.440 lobbies but everyone in south texas is just like give us a train run it right next to the highway

00:38:42.620 you got the track already anywho now i'm yelling i know i want the train

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00:40:57.260 Melody.

00:40:58.120 Yes.

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00:41:06.960 Oh, well, falling asleep, I'm usually just rehashing all of the TikToks that I just watched in my pre-bedtime ritual.

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00:41:24.840 Yeah, probably since age seven, probably.

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00:43:22.140 so texas is always changing and we have a question about this even as much as people 0.73

00:43:30.760 like to think of like texas forever and all of this bullshit this question comes from katie

00:43:35.640 could you comment on how immigration causes cultures to change i moved to the dallas texas

00:43:41.180 area from central california when my husband's job was transferred here three years ago and i 0.79

00:43:45.900 was surprised to have way more indian neighbors than native texans the native texans are panicking

00:43:50.700 about the changes to their culture.

00:43:52.520 You should see my neighborhood Facebook group.

00:43:54.860 Some of it is racism,

00:43:56.180 but some is wrestling with whether immigrants should assimilate

00:43:59.020 or whether they can colonize,

00:44:01.180 meaning changing the existing local culture

00:44:03.220 to one that they're more comfortable with.

00:44:05.160 I also hear a lot of, don't California, my Texas.

00:44:08.860 Dallas has the, like,

00:44:13.020 it's one of the refugee resettlement capitals

00:44:15.000 of the United States.

00:44:16.220 I didn't know that.

00:44:17.280 Which surprises people.

00:44:18.860 I would assume it would be Houston.

00:44:20.700 but it's dallas so dallas has a shit ton of apartments right and a decent bus system

00:44:28.080 and cost of living is still low so i did a big story on this several years ago because

00:44:34.820 a lot of the people who work with refugee resettlement in dallas are parts of churches

00:44:41.400 yes that voted for trump and so like when trump first like this is like post 2016 2017 they're

00:44:49.240 like how do i reconcile the work that i'm doing that i believe is godly work that i believe it's

00:44:54.740 like the good work yeah with this person that i voted for we now know that people can reconcile

00:45:00.820 pretty much anything but i i learned so much about why and how dallas and texas in general

00:45:08.460 became such a like a site of refugee resettlement but then also immigration too there's jobs there

00:45:14.420 And this is this is, of course, a tension, I think, within conservative and liberal politics is that like in these red states, because there is less regulation, there's more housing and everyone's everyone is working in Texas.

00:45:27.820 This is the thing. This is this is I'm so glad you bring this up.

00:45:31.620 Like, I have so many people close to me in my family.

00:45:36.840 My brother, actually, he's been splitting his time between Texas and Anaheim, California for family reasons.

00:45:45.840 He has kids in both places.

00:45:48.160 And we both, we vote Democrat.

00:45:51.380 We know how this goes. 0.93

00:45:52.960 He complains to me so much about all these protocols and union bullshit and this and this and that in California. 0.95

00:45:59.360 And I'm like, I hear you. 0.90

00:46:01.620 it's real and like this is the this is the irony of texas um sometimes the folks

00:46:09.420 who enjoy the lack of regulation the most in that place yeah are people on the lower end of the

00:46:18.560 earning spectrum yeah and people of color because you can show up and you can get a job right away 0.98

00:46:25.220 and it's and you can work yeah it's this real hard tension right because it's like you can work

00:46:30.340 but then also because it's a right to work state they can fire you have no power as you work and

00:46:35.040 you're not getting benefits but yeah no right you can like and so it's like the immediate 0.66

00:46:39.980 gratification for lack of a better word of like at least you can fucking work at least there's 0.97

00:46:44.800 jobs at least there's housing at least i'm not sleeping in my car but also there's no negotiating 0.96

00:46:51.840 power no i don't make a living wage or like i barely make a living wage you know like it's a

00:46:56.780 real tension yeah well this is a roundabout way of talking about this question which is like

00:47:03.480 okay so you make your state a place where people want to move to you can't control who moves there

00:47:11.940 and you can't control where they live you can't control where they live my favorite 0.98

00:47:16.460 what the fuck texas story right now a dear friend of mine from childhood now lives in 0.98

00:47:21.260 kyle texas this is the suburb of austin uh kyle is full of new development miles and miles of 0.98

00:47:28.560 housing because it's just wide open space but there was a recent wall street journal article

00:47:34.480 maybe like a year old that basically says suburbs like kyle uh they're one getting way too hot way

00:47:41.180 too fast and two they don't have enough water no water they're stealing water from other counties

00:47:46.380 Stealing is a harsh word for it, but you get it.

00:47:49.060 But like the parts of Texas that are growing the fastest are the least ready to sustain the growth.

00:47:56.260 Like this is Kyle is still growing and they're already out of water.

00:47:59.440 Yeah.

00:47:59.720 It gets to like 115 degrees there in the summer and the homeowners are still watering their lawns.

00:48:05.660 It's wild.

00:48:06.980 This very different story, but also kind of along the same lines.

00:48:10.960 i just heard a story about um outside of dallas as well a muslim community center it started as

00:48:16.880 like a community center they were like we have so many people who you know like they want to have

00:48:23.140 all of the services that the muslim people in our community use they want them centralized right

00:48:28.160 they want like the butcher and all like everything just kind of centralized right yeah and what if we 1.00

00:48:34.120 did a planned community where we had all this stuff we had a mosque but we also had all of

00:48:38.480 like the other things like clothing shops spice shops places where like our kids go like all that

00:48:43.280 sort of thing and then we like and everything could like you can hear the call to prayer

00:48:47.880 like it's just oriented around this yeah this is just a conversation about something that they

00:48:54.720 they want to like start having conversations with developers about and there has already been

00:49:00.460 republicans who are like i'm sure sharia law is coming as soon as you start to mention it i began

00:49:05.900 to think of the Tulsa Race Massacre. 0.97

00:49:07.840 I was like, oh, these white folks would burn it down. 0.98

00:49:10.160 Right. 0.99

00:49:11.080 Because it's just, well,

00:49:12.300 and it's this tension between assimilation,

00:49:14.480 like, oh, okay, anyone can move here,

00:49:17.700 but also you have to behave like us.

00:49:19.880 Yeah, and maybe join our religion,

00:49:22.220 start to dress like us,

00:49:23.940 learn the King's English, or Texas English.

00:49:27.220 But yeah, but as soon as folks come here and say,

00:49:29.660 this wide open space full of possibility,

00:49:32.480 can we carve out our own corner?

00:49:33.940 Oh, hell no.

00:49:35.200 Oh, hell no.

00:49:35.900 yeah i also saw that in some of the efforts the refugee resettlement efforts like there were some

00:49:42.280 that were very much like oh you're coming from iran and iraq and afghanistan and uh let's preach

00:49:50.300 about jesus's love like we want to help you we want to we want to get you a new set of dresser

00:49:56.800 like we want to get you a new bed we want to you know teach you how to drive car in the united

00:50:01.280 states get your driver's license and also come to church with us yeah and but the most most of them

00:50:08.080 and this is at least the people who would talk to me as a reporter we're not doing that okay good

00:50:13.820 they were like like that's not my mission yeah yeah even if i'm a christian yeah like that's

00:50:20.380 not my work yeah it's so interesting hearing you talk about how the focus of assisting folks in

00:50:27.500 need in texas a lot of times the focus is like thinking about conversion and religion i find

00:50:34.360 that a lot of the energy around the way angelinos in la and southern california think about helping

00:50:40.240 the people most in need it is driven by southern california's religion which is housing value

00:50:45.920 wow yeah good liberals in los angeles want to help the homeless until it affects their property

00:50:51.900 value and i i feel a lot less of that energy in texas because there's just so much space just

00:50:58.260 go somewhere else so much just go somewhere else so many apartments yeah i think it is very difficult

00:51:03.680 to describe to people who have not visited their urban areas how many apartments and dirt cheap

00:51:09.860 like a good apartment in san antonio for like twelve hundred dollars yeah all look the same

00:51:14.420 like there's the divider the like bar that divides the kitchen from the living space yeah and then

00:51:20.780 there's one bedroom maybe two maybe two bathrooms and it's like two stories maybe three yeah did

00:51:28.520 you watch that well of course you did because i think we talked about it oh yeah the show the 1.00

00:51:32.600 show the dallas cowboy cheerleader show a lot of those women live in the the texas apartment 0.96

00:51:37.660 cliche yes there's always a pool though yeah i was a pool yeah oh my god you know i'm visualizing

00:51:44.660 this i'm visualizing this yeah okay melody's gonna read the next question it comes from rayanne

00:51:50.660 And I really want your reaction to this.

00:51:53.520 I'm from Texas and I've lived here my whole life, but I never really care for Texas culture

00:51:58.280 or feel like a Texan until I leave Texas or I meet someone who is new to Texas and doesn't

00:52:03.360 know the cultural foundations. 1.00

00:52:04.900 It's like I am suddenly overcome with the need to evangelize for Buc-ee's and explain 0.79

00:52:09.820 what happened at the Alamo or that we do, in fact, have a state pledge that is said 0.71

00:52:13.880 every morning in public school.

00:52:15.660 I don't even care about any of these things, but I notice this pattern of behavior constantly

00:52:19.920 from myself and other people too i'm sure this happens for other areas or identities but what

00:52:25.380 is going on okay sam do you experience i do i do and i find that that innate need to defend texas

00:52:33.020 is a direct response to liberal condescension i that's so real right that's so real because 0.94

00:52:41.960 that's how i feel about idaho although most of the time i just i do still now talk to shit about

00:52:46.460 but it is like you want to like recuperate it somehow yeah yeah and you want to let people

00:52:54.140 know that like everything is there i always tell folks texas is so wildly diverse that it gave you

00:53:02.500 george w bush and beyonce yeah texas did that right and i think that you know most of my life

00:53:10.340 in texas now and the friends and family i have there they're people of color so my usual experience

00:53:16.900 of texas whenever i'm home is like not the white friday night lights version that these folks 1.00

00:53:23.840 shitting on texas are thinking in their minds so first i tell them that but then i tell them 0.93

00:53:29.240 i'm like part of why black folks brown folks white folks everybody can find a bit of texas to love 0.99

00:53:35.700 is because I think the two big themes of Texas culture,

00:53:41.700 and it's been this way since the start,

00:53:43.760 are that in Texas, we fully believe in the idea of bigness and of freedom.

00:53:51.440 So this listener mentioned Buc-ee's.

00:53:53.760 The whole point of Buc-ee's is that it's massive.

00:53:56.460 It is a gas station as big as two Costco's.

00:53:59.240 It's bigger there, and everyone likes bigger.

00:54:01.980 It's fun.

00:54:02.640 No matter what color you are or what your politics are,

00:54:05.700 And, you know, liberals want a big backyard, too. Right. You have you have the promise of bigness in Texas. And then, too, and this was in the state's DNA before Texas was a state. It was its own country for a while.

00:54:17.100 right texas has the promise of freedom and i think for a lot of folks who love texas you have

00:54:23.700 the freedom to expand as you want you have the freedom to build where you want and you kind of

00:54:31.500 have the freedom of the state's bigness that just makes me i feel so much more independent

00:54:37.640 when i'm in texas than when i'm in la yeah and there's also this feeling of like

00:54:42.860 like i actually don't think people complain of like the only people i hear who complain about

00:54:48.320 the traffic are like almost always like liberals from out of state like me right um it's like

00:54:54.760 yeah we in houston we made it so that like there would be no regulations and we could sprawl all

00:55:00.140 over the place and now we're gonna fucking deal with it yeah we did this and you know what it's

00:55:05.100 like in the midst of the bigness and the vastness and the sprawl houston feels like an incredibly 0.86

00:55:10.960 free city because everything is happening everything everywhere all at once i like i'm

00:55:15.560 always drawn back to these feelings of largesse when i'm in texas and that that for me is a

00:55:23.180 cultural core of texas that and that is a that is actually a feeling everyone enjoys in some

00:55:29.600 capacity and i do think that's why some of like the the the new urge amongst like this current

00:55:37.420 crop of conservatives i'm not talking about george w bush i'm talking more about like

00:55:41.480 the abbots yeah like yeah like kind of christian christian fundamentalist yeah like the like people

00:55:49.700 who believe more in the theocratic understanding of like you know we shouldn't teach evolution

00:55:54.920 in even our textbooks kind of thing like that seems counter freedom it's very counter freedom

00:56:02.040 And I think the way our coverage of politics and Texas politics works, we do a disservice to all Texans because we act like there are more of those theocrats than there really are.

00:56:15.060 Right. Right.

00:56:16.460 That's the problem.

00:56:17.600 They are incredibly overrepresented in the political landscape because of the way that they have assured that they will remain overrepresented.

00:56:27.980 Exactly.

00:56:28.120 Yeah.

00:56:28.940 Yeah. Like, I think people outside of Texas would think that a majority of Texan voters are Christian nationalists.

00:56:38.020 But in fact, a small fraction minority of Texas voters are Christian nationalists.

00:56:44.260 Yeah. Yeah. OK, this is that this makes sense to me and also makes sense why I sometimes defend Idaho.

00:56:50.240 Right. We're going to go to our last question before the AAA segment.

00:56:52.960 And this is about something minor but baffling. But I know you know about this comes from Allison.

00:56:58.220 okay i briefly worked at a texas high school while completing grad school in texas

00:57:02.740 and i was unprepared for the size and work that goes into homecoming mums which as a native

00:57:08.260 midwesterner i'd never heard of or seen before when i showed pictures of them to other non-texans 1.00

00:57:13.800 they almost always have never seen them before either how did homecoming mom culture start and

00:57:19.460 turn into such massive personalized flair i like you don't know you just gotta google i can't even

00:57:27.560 describe it. You got to Google. So here's my experience with Homecoming Moms. So I went to

00:57:32.420 two public high schools in the San Antonio, Texas area. First, Jetson High School for two years,

00:57:37.500 5A state champs, many, many years. Go Rockets, go. And I transferred when my parents moved

00:57:45.040 for a bigger house to Samuel Clemens High School, also a 5A high school, not as good in football.

00:57:50.800 But my senior year, I got, I was elected band president, took it very seriously.

00:57:55.960 and the thing about these south texas schools and these texas high schools they don't just do moms

00:58:01.740 like every part of the school and sports industrial complex does their own version of moms so the

00:58:09.020 football team is doing their own mom program and the chili just have their own mom program and the

00:58:15.040 band does its own moms so when i become band president one of my jobs is to like help with

00:58:22.060 facilitation of like the mom program. So I wasn't trying to study up on this, but I just knew that

00:58:28.380 it was like a thing on my list. And so when it came time to think about the moms, I was like,

00:58:32.220 how do I figure this out? How do I figure this out? And I want to say Lindsay, who plays French

00:58:36.200 Horns. She was like, my mom does it. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, my mom is 0.74

00:58:42.300 the mom lady. She does the moms. That is her small business. Don't say a word. We got this. 1.00

00:58:49.080 give me a verbal yes and it's done and then i want to say lindsey's mom comes in 0.99

00:58:54.600 and it's a fucking operation describe what a mom looks like a mom 0.96

00:58:59.900 you know those ribbons like a first place ribbon where it's like a circle at the top 0.99

00:59:06.980 with fringe around in like a long tail a mom is like that but like a cancerous growth yeah i was

00:59:13.840 just gonna say cancer growth 10 times bigger and it's weighed down with little trinkets and

00:59:21.060 medallions of the school and its colors and sometimes there's flowers on it and it trails

00:59:26.200 down very long sometimes to your knees or even further and a big mom can weigh between 10 and

00:59:32.080 15 pounds and you wear the mom on your person at the homecoming pep rally or the homecoming game

00:59:41.440 And it's a whole thing about what's on your mom and how it's decorated.

00:59:44.940 And a lot of times you want your mom to kind of be in the same spiritual mom family as the other athletes or band nerds.

00:59:51.880 So you all make the moms and organize them together.

00:59:55.260 But it's a whole thing.

00:59:56.300 Thematically linked.

00:59:56.860 Thematically linked moms.

00:59:58.220 And I'm trying to think for those who don't know mom culture, it's up there with like how do you figure out your prom dress?

01:00:06.440 Yeah.

01:00:07.080 It's up there.

01:00:07.560 we had we and i know kids do this to some extent but we had like a big you had a matching um corsage

01:00:13.880 and boutonniere when you would go to a formal dance which we had like five of every year because

01:00:19.960 there was nothing else to fucking do right like that's the thing it's like and we had like that 0.56

01:00:25.180 you had a portrait with your date but then you also had like single portraits right that would 0.85

01:00:29.320 go like on the other side and this is all done by like the the local photography studio because

01:00:34.680 again how do you make money no one else is doing anything exactly there's weddings dances yeah oh

01:00:40.740 and senior photos obviously uh but yeah this is but that's this taken to a whole nother level

01:00:48.180 it's hard to over explain how big of a deal this is and how much it is its own industry it's an

01:00:54.760 industry yeah every small town that's doing moms they got mom ladies yeah or that's like half their

01:01:00.560 income for the year doing the moms it's wild yeah wait have you said how much one costs

01:01:05.640 it's been so long i wouldn't even know how to adjust for inflation i also once i signed off

01:01:10.400 on the mom lady i didn't know okay somebody in the comments tell us how much we're paying for

01:01:16.520 moms these days yeah tell us or like your kids what are you seeing moms going for yeah fascinating

01:01:23.300 um okay so we're gonna pivot to the triple a segment this is the ask and anything and this

01:01:28.380 is really this is ask both of us segment okay we have two questions for this one's about a type of

01:01:34.380 drinking establishment and one's about a very specific food item that you and i both love

01:01:39.400 this part of the show is going to be just for paid subscribers so head over to culturestudypod.subsec.com

01:01:45.080 and sign up if you want to hear all about our favorite parts of texas culture sam where can

01:01:51.180 people find you if they want to hear more yeah so uh you can find the sam sanders show wherever

01:01:56.580 you get your podcast we're also on youtube uh i have a lot of interviews with creatives you love

01:02:02.720 but my favorite of those episodes so far are the ones where we offer our hottest pop culture hot

01:02:08.500 takes there are a few in the feed uh we also have a really fun feed where we build a black

01:02:14.140 hollywood mount rushmore which ended up spoiler alert being a bunch of the weigh-ins

01:02:19.060 love them i'm just like literally picturing mount rushmore with just their faces

01:02:25.880 so good

01:02:27.840 right

01:02:28.540 so that show publishes new episodes

01:02:31.180 every Friday

01:02:32.820 we launch it in October

01:02:34.600 but there's a bunch of episodes that you can find

01:02:36.820 in whatever feed you want

01:02:37.880 and then the old standby Vibe Check

01:02:40.260 is always there, it's been there for years

01:02:42.580 you can listen to

01:02:43.860 Zach Saeed and my group chat

01:02:46.800 come to life and if you're feeling really frisky

01:02:48.700 we have a Patreon for Vibe Check

01:02:50.900 where we share even more

01:02:51.940 amazing, thank you again

01:02:54.060 Thank you. I appreciate it. This was so fun.

01:02:56.980 thank you so much for listening to the culture study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you

01:03:06.860 get your podcasts we have so many great episodes in the works and i promise you don't want to miss

01:03:11.320 any of them if you want to suggest a topic ask a question about the culture that surrounds you

01:03:16.580 or submit a question for our subscriber only advice time segment check the show notes for

01:03:22.120 a link to our Substack. If you want to support the show and get bonus content, head to

01:03:26.760 culturestudypod.substack.com. The Culture Study Podcast is produced by me, Anne Helen Peterson,

01:03:32.800 and Melody Rowell. Our music is by Poddington Bear. You can find me on Instagram at Anne Helen

01:03:38.260 Peterson, Melody at Melodious47, and the show at Culture Study Pod. Thank you so much for your

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01:03:52.120 Thank you.

Culture Study Podcast - August 20, 2025

Don't Mess With Texas Culture

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