00:00:00.000Hey, it's Anne. Just wanted to give you a heads up on the episodes we have planned so you can
00:00:04.340get all of your questions in. We have two episodes related to parenting. Yes, two. One about U.S.
00:00:10.280parenting trends. So like, especially anything that's happening like right now that you're
00:00:14.480noticing happening in your like Facebook parenting groups, stuff that's happening in schools, like
00:00:19.860what seems weird, what seems like a good shift, like anywhere you want to take that. And then
00:00:25.860the other is about the intersection of technology and parenting. And this is a historical
00:00:29.860look. It's going to be really interesting. But so anything that you see in your life or that you
00:00:34.760have noticed in terms of a change in how technology and parenting intersect. We're going to do
00:00:40.920another on how private equity ruins everything. And I know that sounds kind of outside of our
00:00:45.040wheelhouse, but we need your questions to give it that special culture study flavor. And then for
00:00:51.140our continuing series on culture of place, we're going to talk Montana culture with the great Chris
00:00:56.680Latre, and Texas culture with Texas native Sam Sanders. We're also working on an episode about
00:01:03.240church camp, and the questions that have come in so far are so juicy. As a former church camper,
00:01:08.520I have a lot to talk about. I cannot wait. Finally, we're tossing around the idea of a Katy Perry
00:01:13.860episode, but we need really good questions to make this one work. So let us know if you have
00:01:17.480thoughts there. As always, you can submit your questions for episodes and for the Ask Ann
00:01:22.520Anything segment at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod. Okay, thanks, and on with the show.
00:01:35.240This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
00:01:39.580And I'm Tova Danovich, the author of the book Under the Henfluence. I'm a freelance journalist,
00:01:45.180and I also run the sub stack A Little Detour. Can we start by talking about your chickens
00:01:50.700and how you got into them? Yeah. So I think it was 2018 I got chickens. I left New York to move
00:02:00.320to Portland, Oregon, and it was the top of my list. I remember sitting on the subway with friends
00:02:06.300and they were like, what are you most excited about for Portland? And I'm like, I have the
00:02:10.540names of my chickens picked up already. But then it took a few years to get to that point.
00:02:18.020And sadly, I don't have chickens right now because I got divorced and I live in an apartment and they are not good for apartments, as it turns out.
00:02:29.600Like, and especially if you've written a book about having chickens and you're like, and now because of my life changes, I no longer have chickens.
00:02:38.000I totally understand this and feel it.
00:02:40.800But also, like, in some ways, I think it gives you like some objectivity when thinking about chickens.
00:02:46.020You're like, if I have them again, like, I need to choose my choice.
00:02:50.020It won't just be like a lineage of chickens.
00:02:54.720Though my chickens, it took me so long to find them the perfect home because, of course, I love them.
00:03:01.660So they are happily ensconced at a B&B where they get kitchen scraps every day and arguably might be more spoiled than when they live with me.
00:03:14.060And the people who run it are very sweet.
00:03:16.020And they're like, if you ever want your chickens back. So we'll see. But home buying is a single woman who's, you know, a whole thing.
00:03:24.900When I asked for questions broadly related to like this push towards growing chickens, like why is the government pushing growing chickens?0.98
00:03:33.960You know, you you suggested that we could talk so expansively about this.
00:03:38.460Chickens is a gateway to talking about much larger ideas as well.
00:03:42.140But I also think we got a lot of questions that are like, who's buying chickens?
00:03:45.400Like if you live in a city, you can't have chickens and it really depends.
00:14:47.800about how she was a homesteader and for many reasons decided to stop. Some of those is that
00:14:55.160it is really hard. Like she could never go on vacation, which is very true. If you know any
00:15:01.040farmers, I have farm family in North Dakota. All the weddings are around New Year's in North
00:15:07.420Dakota. It is not a time you want to go there, but that's when people are free from farming
00:15:12.780obligations and she also said that you know she did a lot of posting on social media and the
00:15:19.480comments on her posts especially in the last few years have kind of been i started following you
00:15:25.300because i thought you were like me because you're doing this homesteading but you are liberal how
00:15:30.480dare you right um which is a shift uh and i don't know how big that shift no and i think that you're
00:15:39.300I've seen the splintering for sure. It reminds me actually of some splintering that I'm seeing in the Dahlia growing community. You wouldn't expect this to happen, but it's around progressive politics, obviously, but it's about like some growers who are gay and who post about like, oh, the flowers brought me joy today when things are hard, right?0.91
00:16:00.500Like just stuff that people would post in a group that then leads to these larger discussions and then leads to a splinter group of people who are like, this is a place where we can talk about these things.
00:16:10.680And so you get these gradual like, OK, we're the Dahlia group that like is affirming and and liberal.
00:16:18.680And we're the Dahlia group that's more like like tariffs are good is a current fissure in the group as well.
00:16:27.440And I can see that happening in chickens, too.
00:16:29.400it's like oh we're like the christian nationalist chicken people yeah and it's funny because i i
00:16:35.400mean when you said that the thing that comes to mind is many years ago um my grandma's church
00:16:41.120had a splintering because one part wanted there to be a female pastor and the others were like
00:16:46.860no lutherans um yeah lutherans exactly i mean many different scandinavian german
00:16:54.760um yeah well and like something like that can illuminate larger ideological fissures within
00:17:05.460the group which is interesting because you know we feel like this is all new because it's on social
00:17:11.480media and it's things like our our dahlia groups but you know we don't like fewer americans are
00:17:16.600taking part in these community bringing us together things like church so it's like maybe
00:17:21.780this is just the human impulse that anywhere we go we make these communities and then we splinter
00:17:26.880when we disagree with them you know there's part of becky's question that really struck me
00:17:30.880she said um distrust of government and industry has always been part of homesteading waves
00:17:36.620and it really like that seems to be a kernel of like the motivation on both ends of the ideological
00:17:43.520spectrum yes right like i part of my desire to get chickens do not have chickens but to get them
00:17:50.060is that okay i'm thinking about the fallout from an earthquake and a tsunami like i want to have a
00:17:57.360food source on the island that isn't just me like begging other people with chickens for their
00:18:02.980chickens right like I want to be part of the larger collaborative movement and that like that
00:18:10.440comes from a distrust that the government will be able to respond and take care yes of me during a
00:18:16.800moment of national like uh climate crisis and just like general prepper impulses that like uh the
00:18:26.120collapse of society is maybe coming right yeah I mean I I think it's a big thing in the pacific
00:18:32.560northwest also um one of my friends emma her novel tilt just came out which is about like what
00:18:39.260happens after the big one no don't i can't read it don't read it except to um but yeah one of the
00:18:46.260things she's talked about so much is that in you know the research she did for this book about like
00:18:51.280how people deal with catastrophe that community is the way to get through it and like getting to
00:18:57.540know your neighbors and it is interesting because there's this divide between the like
00:19:01.620bunker prepper of like what do I need for my family I'm gonna hide underground I have all
00:19:06.800these secret resources that I'm hoarding and then there's the I live in an apartment I should get to
00:19:13.320know my my neighbors better and I should have like a meet-up point with my friends and also
00:19:18.980get water that I still don't have in my apartment but you know like these these are the things that
00:19:25.680will really help us is is knowing each other and and who to look for um and there is something more
00:19:32.160beautiful in that to me where it's an outward reaching instead of I'm scared so I'm going
00:19:38.960right right or like I'm like okay so I have friends on the island who do have chickens and
00:19:43.960maybe they will share their eggs with me but what what's the thing that I can offer in our
00:19:49.320post-apocalyptic collaborative scenario that's what I want to be thinking about like am I going
00:19:54.720to have more of the water tanks? Like, am I going to have the bleach pills? Like, I want to think
00:19:59.000about these things. What can I bring to the table in this team?
00:20:09.020Today's episode is sponsored by Ollie. So my dog Beverly, she's two years old. She,
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00:20:51.000likes the one that's like turkey blueberry there's all these different recipes that sound like things
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00:22:19.400and enter code culture to get 60% off your first box. Culture Study is sponsored by OneSkin.
00:22:26.180so I'm very much a like face routine person even when I don't shower in the morning I always do
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00:24:41.180For backyard hens, what's the actual cost savings?
00:24:43.900How much are the upfront and maintenance costs versus free eggs?
00:24:48.260there is not is kind of generally the the rule um i i've written a couple pieces about this in
00:24:56.620the last few months and we've just so um economies of scaled the egg industry that even our prices
00:25:05.500right now like what was it four dollars something when they were at their high in january um in the
00:25:12.3201940s like adjusted for inflation eggs were something like seven dollars a dozen um there
00:25:19.300just is no way on a small scale that you can replicate the intense cost savings of industrialized
00:25:27.540egg production and yeah so there is that that said i think if you're looking at like i maybe
00:25:34.860don't want to stuff my chickens into a windowless barn and all all these other things that go along
00:25:40.300with that. Like, I think there is a kindness and environmental thing that you can look at
00:25:45.740that makes the cost even out a little. But, you know, a chicken coop that is actually predator
00:25:52.660proof, especially with costs of lumber. I'm like, even if you do it for yourself, probably $500
00:25:59.120to actually fit your chickens inside of it. And then there's feed. There's all the other stuff
00:26:04.580that goes along with it it takes most hens you know six-ish months to reach laying age um so
00:26:11.440you're raising a chicken kind of for free quote unquote until that time when i had chickens you
00:26:16.980know i i gave a bunch of eggs away to neighbors who sometimes were like can we pay you for the
00:26:22.840eggs um and i was just like anything that i charge you is going to feel like i'm so undercharging you
00:26:30.160it will then make me grumpy so I'd rather just give them away part of the gift economy instead
00:26:35.460of trying to like exactly and then they gave me like tomatoes and peppers so it worked out really
00:26:40.300well yeah it makes me think too about even like economies of scale when we're thinking about
00:26:45.140medium-sized operations or like small medium operations so on the island one of my friends
00:26:51.600runs this farm that is like a local farm that lots of people tourists residents like get flower
00:26:58.420shares from and get lettuce from all sorts of great things and it's on a bunch of land and
00:27:04.380part of the reason that it's easy for her to maintain her flock is because she can move she
00:27:11.500has one of those trailers that you can move the flock around right pretty readily and then it's0.61
00:27:16.060just kind of low maintenance the rest of the year so like you invest in the hens and then
00:27:19.540like it's not thinking you're not only thinking about okay how much does this chicken cost how
00:27:25.960much like how much money am I getting from this what sort of things do I need to invest in it's
00:27:29.640kind of just integrated into the rest of the operation of the farm and she charges I think
00:27:36.620six dollars for half a dozen eggs which always was like oh wow those are quote-unquote expensive eggs
00:27:44.560but at least here if you go to Trader Joe's or even Fred Meyer they're oftentimes even recently
00:27:52.980sold out of the cheapest type of eggs. So you only have the more expensive and pasture raised
00:27:59.620type of eggs, which are the same cost as what she is selling. Yeah, exactly. I would rather give0.99
00:28:04.140money into my hyper local economy, like my neighbor up the street for the same cost as
00:28:10.080paying Fred Meyer. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it's so interesting because the way that we raise
00:28:16.360animals generally, but I think you really see it in chickens, has just changed so much with the
00:28:22.120specialization of these breeds um like back my grandma and great grandma growing up they were
00:28:29.140like on farms so my great grandma raised chickens for egg money which was huge like all rural farm0.97
00:28:35.720women did it it is how it's like their version of pin money right yeah exactly except it would pay0.99
00:28:40.960for like everything um and we kind of looked at it as like they're not really working but it's like1.00
00:28:46.08080% of household expenses were covered by chickens. But these are all dual purpose chickens.
00:28:52.400So, you know, you have the hens where they lay the eggs and then when they're too old,
00:28:57.560they're stew. If you have, you know, male chickens, they just immediately go into dinner
00:29:03.440and you can sell all of them. But at that time, you know, a hen would raise maybe like lay 150
00:29:10.940eggs a year now the industrial hens they have 300 eggs a year but they cost more to slaughter
00:29:18.420than their meat is worth because broiler chickens their own special thing they reach market weight
00:29:24.540in two months like they grow so fast you actually can't keep them alive if you wanted to because
00:29:30.460their breasts get too big right yeah their hearts kind of explode it's crazy um so and that is why
00:29:37.260it's so cheap like we think of it as expensive but it's like it is a lot cheaper than it used to be
00:29:42.920and that also makes it impossible on a money scale to do it yourself more cheap right and
00:29:50.020that's such an interesting thing that like we're always like why would you do this thing if it
00:29:54.280actually costs more and I think some of it is that we're trained to think of oh if you're doing
00:30:00.060something as a hobby like it should also be a cost saver in some way right like oh you're knitting
00:30:05.820your own clothes when actually like knitting a sweater is you are losing so much money but
00:30:11.620you're knitting your own sweater that's awesome yeah and i think also you know sweaters as has
00:30:17.040been well reported they're garbage now so you're knitting your own sweater and you're getting an
00:30:21.060amazing sweater where if you got that same quality sweater would be so much more money um so it's
00:30:27.560like there it's not a one-to-one comparison but yes if you are going into chickens with the sole
00:30:34.000purpose of I want cheap eggs, this is not a good idea. Don't do it. Okay, so our next question is
00:30:41.960from Shauna, and it'll allow us to get a little bit more into the question of why the government
00:30:45.980is participating in the chicken conversation. I recently attended a lecture on antimicrobial
00:30:53.660resistance, and one of the presenters reported that the majority of 2024 salmonella outbreaks
00:30:59.600here in North Carolina, or due to backyard poultry. Backyard chickens can also be a source
00:31:04.720of avian flu, it turns out. I'm very intrigued by the intersection of Maha anti-vaccine,0.98
00:31:10.440pro-chadwife-style home farming beliefs, and the real-life danger of transmissible
00:31:14.840disease outbreaks caused by keeping animals. How do you see this potential issue playing out?
00:31:20.640Oh, and just like add raw milk into like this whole conversation. First of all,
00:31:26.240Shout out to Shauna attending a lecture on antimicrobial resistance and talking to us about it.0.68
00:31:32.000So one of the reasons you reached out to us about doing this episode is that the U.S.
00:31:36.700Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, went on Fox & Friends weekends at the beginning of March to talk about bird flu.
00:31:42.920And before we answer Shauna's question, let's hear the last bit of this conversation between Rollins and Rachel Campos Duffy, who is married to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
00:31:53.120Well, I have chickens in my backyard. Sean started that. And yesterday I went out. They
00:31:58.860just started laying. And yesterday I got five eggs. I guess my question, if you could make it
00:32:03.720just really quick, because I'm out of time, is part of the solution more small farms? Because
00:32:08.380when avian flu hits and you have these giant industrial farms and these chickens, which I
00:32:14.140don't think the eggs are as good anyway, is part of it just investing in smaller farms, encouraging
00:32:18.620that. I think the silver lining in all of this is how do we, in our backyards, we've got chickens
00:32:24.140in our backyard, how do we solve for something like this? And people are sort of looking around
00:32:28.600thinking, wow, well, maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard. And it's awesome. I agree with you.
00:32:33.820Yeah. I think everyone who isn't a farmer right now wants to be. So you're in the right department,
00:32:38.300Brooke. I am. What a blessing. Thank you. Okay. So what struck you about this conversation?
00:32:45.460Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, it's it's not an awesome solution to any of this. And it is just wild to me that the agriculture secretary would say that because anyone with knowledge of how agriculture and our agricultural economy works would not think that that that would be a great solution to, again, prices of eggs and availability.
00:33:11.080or just like containing this bread of baby and flu like yes yeah i know um headed on so many
00:33:20.000fronts like yeah yes um and it it was really interesting this this question makes me think
00:33:26.480of um this was back like pre-pandemic starting so i think like 2019 but there was this
00:33:32.900newcastle outbreak in california uh which is another disease that kills chickens it was very
00:33:39.240transmissible. And I did a couple articles about it. And they initially were like, we need to
00:33:45.620quarantine these chickens, like stop moving your chickens around. It's spreading the disease of
00:33:50.400these chickens. It hadn't hit the California egg industry, but that's obviously what they were0.96
00:33:54.700really worried about because they have a huge egg industry in California. And the backyard people
00:34:00.480were like, I'm moving my chickens if I want to. You can't stop me. And there were conspiracy
00:34:05.280theories that came out about it, where people were like, the government is doing this to keep
00:34:11.360backyard chicken keepers from producing our own food. There is no disease. It was just kind of
00:34:20.200wild. And I hadn't thought about it in a while. But looking back, I'm like, this feels indicative
00:34:25.380of a lot of human behaviors we've seen. Right. It's this whole understanding that
00:34:30.840Like, government regulation is actually here to control you instead of to keep you safe.
00:36:16.480But, you know, we we make a lot of choices about that.
00:36:20.040Like the reason our eggs are refrigerated in this country is because we have decided to wash them rather than do a lot of things on the farm level that would keep salmonella levels down and things like that.
00:36:34.500So we're like, we're going to let farms be kind of as dirty as we want them to be, but we're going to wash the eggs really, really well, which takes off this protective antimicrobial layer on the egg, which is why you have to keep them refrigerated.
00:36:47.740other countries are like maybe the farm should just have clean clean conditions for the hens and
00:36:53.520then the eggs will be relatively clean and so you can have them on the shelves yeah because they
00:36:58.500still have this bloom on them well and it goes back to this idea that anything that is government
00:37:03.460mandated is actually potentially unsafe this is the whole like i'm doing my own research
00:37:10.320yeah strain where it's like if you come to that conclusion yourself from the science even if
00:37:15.700you're not a trained scientist then you are in the right right like if you make your individual
00:37:21.540decisions it is your liberty to make your individual decisions because you have come to
00:37:26.200your own thinking about what is right for chickens yeah or for how to inoculate children or for how
00:37:34.100we should be drinking our milk yeah and i think that that really all connects to this larger
00:37:39.240distrust in institutions that has been brewing for a very long time and i think it's spiking right
00:37:44.440now yeah for sure and it it is so interesting to me that you get kind of the liberal version of
00:37:51.660distrust and the conservative version of distrust and they they come from very different places like
00:37:56.700i think the conspiracies are different but their solutions kind of wind up like you go far enough
00:38:02.020and you meet back in in the middle oh and you meet at raw milk like that's right yeah i know
00:38:07.840and not vaccinating your children um yeah as someone i grew up going to waldorf school uh so
00:38:12.860i'm like very familiar with with that um we had a whooping cough outbreak in my school when i was
00:38:19.060growing up really yeah and i have this great um memoir that my like great grandma wrote that's
00:38:26.960just like only the family has it and it's probably my favorite family thing but she writes all these
00:38:32.580funny stories but she also has a story about her one of her like many siblings but her baby brother
00:38:38.100died of whooping cough as a child and like how heartbroken the family was over that and it was
00:38:44.780just devastating for everyone um and it was maybe five to ten years before the vaccine for that came
00:38:52.920out and i just like can't help thinking about what she would think looking around if like you have
00:38:59.560this chance to stop this from from happening and you you don't well and this is where like cultural
00:39:04.880memory I think comes into play when you do not have the memory of people dying from these diseases
00:39:10.260that we inoculate against and we also do not have the personal at least in America the personal
00:39:17.020memory of like negotiating widespread outbreaks from something like salmonella or like the threat
00:39:23.280every day in your life that a foodborne illness could kill your entire family yeah and the risk
00:39:29.760has decreased so much because of government regulation but the government like the regulation
00:39:34.960has been too effective almost yeah i know i i think it's it's funny that i mean in the scheme
00:39:41.300of human history looking at when we discovered germs existed to when we kind of stopped them
00:39:47.340with antibiotics to some extent it's like that crossover happened really quickly yeah yeah um
00:39:53.480so yeah it's not super surprising that we're like yeah what's the problem go to the hospital it's
00:39:58.520fine. Today's episode is brought to you by Blueland. The other day I was doing a not entire
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00:41:03.940these new Bluelun products that we got, which are super cute. They come in very aesthetically
00:41:08.820pleasing bottles and are great for the environment, not only because of what's in the spray,
00:41:13.360which is much less toxic than the stuff that you usually get, but also because they come in these
00:41:18.520little tablets that you put into the bottle and then add water. And that means that when you need
00:41:24.920more of it, you just get more of the little tablets instead of buying an entirely new plastic
00:41:30.760container. So instead, I use Blueland and that's what I used before I had people over. I loved it.
00:41:37.160It didn't leave that like smell that makes it smell like, oh, this person just sprayed like
00:41:42.540chemical cleanser all over their bathroom because they knew I was coming over in an hour. It's
00:41:47.520great. They are independently tested to perform alongside all of those major brands that leave
00:41:52.400those big smells and are free from dyes, bleach, and harsh chemicals. They are currently trusted
00:41:57.740in over 1 million homes, including mine. Right now, you can celebrate Earth Month and make the
00:42:03.320switch over to Blueland products. You can get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com
00:42:09.340slash culture. You don't want to miss this. blueland.com slash culture for 15% off. That's
00:42:15.880blueland.com slash culture to get 15% off. Okay, so I want to drill down a little bit more with
00:42:23.040on like the subject of Maha, which is make America healthy. Again, it's part of
00:42:27.320Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s larger plan for America.
00:42:35.140So this question comes from Elizabeth and Melody is going to read it.
00:42:39.260I don't know if the government wanting us to have our own chickens, which by the way,
00:42:43.180is a huge bird flu risk factor is about Maha. It strikes me that it must be because it feels like1.00
00:42:49.920glamorizing something that when one actually remembers the past wasn't actually healthy or
00:42:55.120fancy or pleasantly earthy unless you are Marie Antoinette collecting the pre-wiped eggs. My dad
00:43:02.000grew up in poor rural Kansas working with chickens and he described it as dirty, messy, gross, and
00:43:09.120necessary. Not sexy. Based on his account and my own experiences in foreign countries when
00:43:15.140chickens and roosters woke me up at all hours, I've never wanted them, though we love eggs in
00:43:20.060our farm share. My boomer parents are rapidly aging, and a handful in their cohort have recently
00:43:25.560died. I have felt grasping toward them and their memories as some of the last people who grew up in
00:43:31.060truly rural America. How do we preserve and elevate their memories so that we aren't just
00:43:37.060left with fake Maha versions. This feels particularly important given the way the
00:43:42.000current administration seems to want to erase the past. Yeah, like how do we remember how gross it
00:43:48.340can be? Yeah, I know. I'm imagining that like viral milkmaid dress just going out to collect
00:43:53.820your eggs in the morning with all your cleavage. I just think like the stories that were passed
00:43:59.040down to me were just of like endless toil yeah yeah that's that is also what I grew up hearing
00:44:09.260about um I mean a lot of fun too yeah I think that's that is the thing as we kind of glamorize
00:44:17.120I think the communal aspects of it perhaps too like I I think of all the work and then I also
00:44:23.120think of like the barn dances that my great-grandparents hosted I'm like that sounds
00:44:27.440great i do want to burn dance yeah no i know you're like oh everyone coming together for the
00:44:32.800harvest like amazing but yeah i don't know like the that tension right like we don't want to
00:44:38.260romanticize it because romanticizing this past allows us to reject the things that have led us
00:44:44.200to the present does that make sense um for sure but then also we don't want to like make it look
00:44:50.100like a hellscape either because it wasn't right it was just a different way of living it was a
00:44:54.700harder way of living. And I think sometimes we have to remember that technological advancement
00:44:59.460has made a lot of things easier. Our daily life is easier in many ways.
00:45:06.580Yeah. I think it's really interesting thinking again of this memoir that I have from my great
00:45:14.000grandma, because it really puts the highs and the lows into this context versus what we see
00:45:21.760on social media which is where a lot of the best kind of propaganda for like the homesteading
00:45:27.700lifestyle has happened yeah um where you just see the like beautiful dress while you're collecting
00:45:33.580your eggs and you're like perfectly coiffed children and their little like matching plaid
00:45:37.380shirts um and i think it is hard to forget about the things like you can't go on vacation unless
00:45:45.380you have a farm manager which like only the wealthiest people are going to have farms that
00:45:50.740big and even some of them like don't um because that's not really a job that exists so much
00:45:56.020anymore um you know cattle come at inconvenient times like your crops fail like all of these
00:46:04.000things that come along with it and i think we just look at you know this supposedly like return to
00:46:12.640simple gender roles and nothing was hard which of course it was for many people um like there
00:46:19.000there have been people that did not fit in those roles this whole time and had to just do that
00:46:24.060anyway yes um and so yeah it is this erasure of the reality um of what people's personal lives
00:46:32.820were like what their hopes were uh that they didn't get to achieve because they weren't allowed
00:46:38.580to um and so i think a lot of these things are lovely and there can be something really lovely
00:46:44.560in gardening in like raising chickens who I still think are delightful but like do I want
00:46:50.560that to be my only option um no right I don't right and this gets to like so many questions1.00
00:46:58.280about choice feminism and like how dare you degrade these women who want to do that and it's0.80
00:47:03.600like well the difference is that they believe that women should only do this yeah they don't
00:47:08.860want there to be choice right like they want this to be something that you just do because of like
00:47:14.460your chromosomes it reminds me of like almost like a pinhole camera like we like look when we
00:47:20.320look back on the past like this tendency to romanticize when we're dissatisfied with some
00:47:24.800component of the present like the way that young gen z and gen alpha romanticized the 90s
00:47:30.920the millennial culture is so fascinating to me because they're like oh my god they didn't have
00:47:38.660phones like incredible I mean I kind of romanticize that totally totally and like that is real and
00:47:46.680that yearning for that component of that like pre-technological moment is like that expresses
00:47:54.320more about our dissatisfaction with our current moment than anything else and I think sometimes
00:47:58.960we forget though that like also in the 90s like people were bullied in my high school for being
00:48:04.600gay there are all sorts of incredibly regressive components of that moment too that are
00:48:09.300decontextualized from we didn't have phones and we just drove around a lot yeah which of course0.72
00:48:15.600is the thing again where you know maybe i'm guilty of a version of the same thing though i of course
00:48:22.160feel like i'm right in it when i'm like oh but there was community and people like kind of knew
00:48:26.700their neighbors and like how can i bring those things into my modern day not that i want to like
00:48:32.020go back to everything else. But to be like, there were some really beautiful things about that
00:48:37.600connection. I mean, I personally do think it's really important that we know facts about animals
00:48:44.220we raise for food. I talk about this in my book, but I went to a wedding and all the people were
00:48:51.160like, I would really love a pet cow because you can just get milk whenever you want. And I was
00:48:55.020like, that's not how that works. And they argued with me about it. And I was like, I have been an
00:49:00.800agriculture journalists for like 10 years at this point. Like, I know about cows. They have to be
00:49:06.260pregnant to produce milk. This is a basic biological fact. And they Googled it before1.00
00:49:11.680they believed me. And these are all like college educated, very smart people. And so I do think
00:49:17.780it's important to reconnect to some extent from these things that we really take for granted.
00:49:24.720But does that mean we all have to move back to the land and don traditional gender roles0.99
00:49:30.640to do it. I don't think so. Great tee up for our last question. This comes from Emma.
00:49:36.800Does my interest in things like chickens and gardening for my own fruits and vegetables
00:49:43.280mean that I've fallen for propaganda? I love the feeling of being more connected to the earth
00:49:50.040and my food and the seasons. But given the price of things like eggs and food in general,
00:49:56.180it also calls to mind world war ii victory gardens okay so i just love this idea of like
00:50:02.560growing chickens as propaganda or homesteading in this moment as propaganda i think right now
00:50:10.580we're getting it a little bit from the government but that's because the government has intersected
00:50:15.780with christian nationalism so effectively right and i think this is also maybe a time like melody
00:50:20.760just put this in the in the show notes she was like obviously we should also talk about like
00:50:25.560race and who is actually doing the labor of producing the vast majority of our food items
00:50:31.240right now and where this like what this romanticism is actually about right like the dirty stuff1.00
00:50:35.460is done by people who we devalue in our society so it is oftentimes performed by people of color0.62
00:50:41.000immigrants undocumented people etc etc when i think about that i think about once we industrialized1.00
00:50:48.200which did have this interesting switch from you know women used to be the ones that raised the0.69
00:50:53.340chickens and then post-war the USDA stepped in and they're like let's have men do it right move0.93
00:50:58.480it into these big sheds and then who are the ones working in those sheds that is going to be people0.99
00:51:05.120of color immigrants which is continuing today you know who's slaughtering all of the chickens those1.00
00:51:10.680same people so I think you see it more there where when we extracted all the resources possible out1.00
00:51:19.640of the animals we then move to what resources can we extract from people and which people do we want
00:51:25.920to extract those from yeah well and the other thing that to think about is like people who are
00:51:32.980raising chickens like having a garden was a thing that poor people did right either you were a poor
00:51:39.620person who had it for yourself on your small patch of land, or you were a poor person who
00:51:44.040worked for a richer person and you tended their vegetable garden and you tended their chickens.
00:51:49.980And who was the available labor, right? Who were the poor people in a certain area?
00:51:55.400And sometimes it was all white people and sometimes it was like white poors and also0.99
00:52:00.900black poor people. And sometimes it was other people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one funny very behind0.98
00:52:08.140the scenes but just because this is related to backyard chickens is most of them like they come
00:52:14.000through the mail from a hatchery like even if you're buying them from a farm store they were
00:52:18.100mailed to that farm store from a hatchery and if you want chickens especially if you are in one of
00:52:24.780these urban areas where you can't have roosters you are buying them sexed which is very difficult
00:52:31.720because chickens don't have external genitalia it's only a job you can do when they are first
00:52:36.920born like within the first 24 hours and so in my book I went to visit a hatchery and I watched the
00:52:44.460chicken sexers doing it who are all immigrants of color you know doing these jobs incredibly hard0.90
00:52:51.920really hard to find people to do this work where you look at tiny chicken cloacas for seven plus1.00
00:53:00.060hours every day and try to figure out if there's like a little bump in them or not is the difference
00:53:05.460um so it's like yes you do have these lovely pet chickens that are so picturesque but to get your
00:53:12.520hens you're relying on these people in these very dark rooms with like one spotlight lamp like
00:53:18.840holding tiny chicks and doing this work all of the time so yeah they're just there is no way to
00:53:27.300get around exploitation in this country with anything uh if you look far enough so
00:53:32.780So does it feel like propaganda to you? Does liking to do this stuff feel like falling for propaganda? How do you untangle a lot of this?
00:53:42.340Yeah. I mean, I think liking it within the confines of, you know, your life where hopefully you have other like freedoms and flexibility and and are able to follow other, you know, whatever role you want in society.
00:53:57.620Like, I think, no, if the only way you think you can do it is to marry someone and move to the middle of nowhere in the country and become a trad wife, like perhaps you have fallen for the propaganda in that case.
00:54:11.620yeah yeah yeah um so there there are certainly degrees um yeah yeah it's always hard when you
00:54:18.360like something that there is a component of people who like it who just don't like them
00:54:24.240totally totally you're like oh what does this indicate about me and like yeah i think that
00:54:30.180this is where you can point more to you know what we were talking about at the beginning of this
00:54:34.500episode where there are so many different things that direct us to chickens right so like it can be
00:54:42.460distrust of the government for whatever reason it can be like environmental anxiety or prepping for
00:54:49.880whatever reason like there are there are things like different motivators that lead us to a common
00:54:55.120practice i even think something like religious faith like there are a lot of different things
00:55:00.080that make people believers. Or there are a lot of different things that make people interested
00:55:06.480in wearing makeup. And it's more important to parse what is the thing that is making you
00:55:12.320interested in it. Yeah. And sometimes it's so hard to parse. I mean, I think about this all
00:55:19.420the time. Am I doing this because I see everyone else doing it? Do I actually like it? It's kind
00:55:24.080of like no one wore white sneakers. And then one day I was like, I should get some white sneakers.
00:55:28.880that seems great I love how this looks or with like like sock length right yeah like I resisted
00:55:37.520ankle length socks for so long and then and now I'm like oh those calf socks are so dorky and I'm0.97
00:55:44.400like and I got them I got the stupid new socks I'm like this is so dumb but I needed new socks0.98
00:55:51.360and I was like fine it does it now feels like it looks better right right um we are very social0.99
00:55:57.120Well, that is kind of how we work as we look around and we're like, this feels comfortable to me.
00:56:05.140And I think like it's fine to be weird social animals that fall for for trends as long as it is not like harming you or the people around you.
00:56:17.380Or you're making everyone else do the thing that you're doing.