Culture Study Podcast - July 16, 2025


Why is Montana So in Love With Itself?


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per minute

179.08

Word count

11,338

Sentence count

267

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

52

sentences flagged

Hate speech

30

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne-Helan Peterson.
00:00:10.260 And I am Chris LaTree.
00:00:12.060 Chris, what do you do?
00:00:13.700 I'm a writer, and I'm the current Montana State Poet Laureate, and I'm kind of a public
00:00:20.940 speaker, I guess, now.
00:00:22.320 Sometimes I feel like I'm more that than a writer, but I do lots of different things.
00:00:26.020 It's how one cobbles together the writing full-time life is by doing a lot of different
00:00:32.520 things and saying yes to things that you never imagined being asked to do in the first place.
00:00:37.860 Like, did you ever think that you would teach elementary school students about poetry?
00:00:43.280 The bigger stretch is teaching graduate students writing.
00:00:47.760 And I've never taken a college class in writing or any of that stuff.
00:00:51.940 That's the bigger stretch for me.
00:00:53.640 Right, right.
00:00:54.340 Because like younger kids, you can just be like, what's the cool sounds in here?
00:00:58.800 Where can we find this?
00:00:59.920 Like, what's cool?
00:01:01.240 Yeah.
00:01:01.500 Or I can just glower at them for 35 minutes.
00:01:06.060 And you can't get away with that with graduate students.
00:01:09.560 Do you have to teach like a three hour seminar or is it shorter?
00:01:12.780 I did.
00:01:13.440 So I was the 2025 William Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Environmental Writing
00:01:20.660 Department at the University of Montana.
00:01:22.320 this past spring semester so and it was you know one class a week for three hours at a time and
00:01:29.000 it was a blast you know but you know I was the least educated person in the room so it can be
00:01:34.940 a little intimidating because these people are paying you know but they're paying because they
00:01:39.540 want to hear from you which is amazing I guess yeah and and you're a good talker just generally
00:01:44.020 I have a lot of favorite Montana writers but I think you're in like in competition for number
00:01:49.580 one right now well who do i have to knock off to get to that spot richard hugo okay he's my
00:01:55.440 he's my favorite montana poet and has been for a really long time thank you for that
00:01:59.260 um but you also have a lot of opinions about montana and we always for all of these shows
00:02:05.740 we always want someone who loves the place that they're from and the culture that they come from 0.93
00:02:11.860 but also are willing to like interrogate it and talk shit about it too yeah because we can 0.99
00:02:17.140 you yeah you're vested with the ability to talk shit because of your how do you say that word 0.99
00:02:25.300 bona fides bona fides i say bona fides i guess okay we're gonna kick things off with a light 0.99
00:02:33.800 hearted question from jordan are huckleberry milkshakes and bison burgers just for tourists
00:02:38.560 how old is old enough to drive a tractor okay what are your huckleberry thoughts
00:02:44.340 I'd love huckleberry ice creams.
00:02:46.820 Like when I go to Big Dipper in Missoula and get an ice cream cone,
00:02:51.840 it's going to be like huckleberry and strawberry or huckleberry and maple nut
00:02:55.460 or maybe, yeah, any of those three in combination.
00:02:59.820 Some people don't believe that huckleberries exist.
00:03:03.640 Ask a bunch of grizzly bears if huckleberries exist
00:03:06.040 and then ask them why there aren't as many because people keep going up and taking them.
00:03:10.340 so i feel like grizzlies should be allowed a certain body count as far as huckleberry pickers
00:03:16.300 every year just in trade-off for them losing access to a key part of their diet so huckleberries
00:03:23.360 some people that i know who haven't been to the northwest like they think it's one of those
00:03:28.980 fruits that are made up by like you know like a sparkling water company like to to evoke a feeling
00:03:37.420 of a berry um but they are very much a thing a lot of people go huckleberry picking i love them
00:03:44.040 just plain like i like get like eating them on a hike or something but like yeah you know at the
00:03:49.160 farmer's market they'll sell like two cups of huckleberries like that's not a nice snack to me
00:03:53.980 they're too sour throw it in a smoothie or something yeah with a lot of sugary protein
00:03:59.120 powder, right? What about, I mean, bison burgers, I feel like that's something that like they sell
00:04:08.380 at places like near the national parks to make people feel like they're in the West. Do you
00:04:14.740 know what I mean? Yeah. I, you know, I don't encounter them that. I have a rule with myself
00:04:20.140 that if I go to a restaurant and there's like a bison steak on the menu or a bison burger,
00:04:25.420 I am culturally obligated to eat it yes and and the pretty much the only meat I eat at home is
00:04:31.660 bison so for me there's nothing flippant about it because I am here because I am part of a long line
00:04:38.740 of the greatest buffalo hunters the world has ever seen so I have that perspective on it but
00:04:44.300 you're right you know it becomes one of those things that people use to even like Indians you
00:04:51.520 You know, we used to call the drive between Columbia Falls and Glacier National Park like
00:04:57.680 rubber tomahawk row, you know, just all the gift shops selling, you know, that kind of 0.99
00:05:03.580 shit. 0.99
00:05:03.880 And I hate to see buffalo meat used as a commodity or a touristy thing. 0.99
00:05:12.460 But I had never considered that, but it's probably true.
00:05:16.340 Yeah, it's like a cultural signifier.
00:05:17.720 I remember the first time I started seeing it was around early 2000s when I was working outside of Grand Teton National Park.
00:05:28.320 And I think it was part of an overall signifier or an attractant of what we called dudes because I worked on a dude ranch.
00:05:37.540 Yeah.
00:05:38.720 But when did you start driving a car?
00:05:41.560 How old were you?
00:05:43.060 Well, legally?
00:05:44.260 Or who's listening to this podcast?
00:05:45.840 someone is going to time travel and arrest yeah yeah we just drove that the whole track you know
00:05:52.520 a tractor is one thing a car is another i had a friend growing up in you know i grew up six mile
00:05:58.060 which is west of missoula and we were probably 12 and he had like a volkswagen chassis that was
00:06:05.920 kind of turned into a dune buggy yeah and we'd ride around in that thing and you know he did
00:06:11.460 90% of the driving but you know we were 12 and we were driving this thing and you know growing up
00:06:18.300 in the rural communities that I did that's just what you did you know and and it's what still
00:06:24.580 happens up in places like you know in the Flathead Valley and I'm sure in the Bitterroot Valley and
00:06:29.980 all that stuff it's no different I'd rather see a 12 year old driving a tractor than an 80 year
00:06:36.140 old bombing down the highway in one of those side-by-side things that people buy now I mean
00:06:41.240 And those things are a menace in a way that us in tractors never were.
00:06:45.020 I always amaze people when I talk about getting my daylight license in Idaho and how people
00:06:51.320 had them young enough that you could, people would drive to junior high.
00:06:56.080 Yeah.
00:06:56.820 Like that was, and also I had friends who lived on farms and who started driving truck,
00:07:01.860 which was like grain trucks on the farm when they were 12.
00:07:04.380 Driving truck.
00:07:05.040 you just out you just like lapsed into lewiston idaho speak there with driving truck i know but
00:07:12.540 they started driving truck when they were like 12 and it was legal because if you're operating
00:07:17.300 a farm vehicle on your farm then you can drive you know like the grain truck to the grain silo
00:07:24.360 yeah and i think that sometimes it's like yes obviously your like frontal lobe or whatever
00:07:32.180 is not fully developed like you're not as good of a driver as like maybe i am now i don't know
00:07:37.100 but it's right sometimes it's relative right and some of these things are developed in order so
00:07:41.540 that people can get to school when they couldn't otherwise get to school or another thing like
00:07:46.800 like during hunting season there you go when i was in high school at any given time there were
00:07:52.540 half a dozen trucks pickups out in the parking lot with a rifle on a rack same same this was like in
00:07:59.320 1998 exactly you know and and that's a key date because it was pre-columbine and i think a lot of
00:08:06.320 that began to shift after columbine but until that date they would park in the hick lot
00:08:11.280 and with their big old trucks and they're because they had been hunting before school right right
00:08:16.860 or they were going right after or whatever but yeah that was just how it was we should clarify
00:08:21.480 i can't believe we haven't done this yet i grew up in idaho i spent a lot of time in montana when
00:08:25.880 I was a kid. And then I lived in Montana from 2017 through 2020. And I did a lot of reporting
00:08:33.700 in Montana. So that's part of like, I always thought like, people like, why don't you move
00:08:37.440 back to Idaho? At the time, I would say Montana is very similar to Idaho, but better politics.
00:08:44.520 I don't think I still think actually slightly better politics now, but only slightly. But
00:08:51.400 that's changed a lot. And we're going to get to that.
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00:12:28.480 next question i love talking about the major cities in montana i don't think anyone maybe
00:12:39.800 well hopefully we can make other people love these great cities as much as we can so
00:12:43.820 this question comes from karen i have lived in montana for 21 years and one thing that has
00:12:50.220 always fascinated me about the state is how uniquely different each of the largest cities
00:12:54.200 and towns are. Missoula has always been labeled the liberal hippie town. Bozeman has more of a
00:12:59.420 tech vibe. Great Falls and Billings are still kind of ranch conservative. And Butte has a tough town
00:13:05.280 vibe shaped by a century of mining. So my question is, why do you think that is? And how much do you
00:13:10.640 think that will change as more and more people move into Montana from other states? I love this
00:13:15.460 question. We're also doing an episode on Texas with Sam Sanders. And like, a lot of the questions
00:13:21.380 are about how texas is actually a state of like six different cultures and i think montana has
00:13:29.560 different cultures as well that are pretty distinct um that come together to create this
00:13:36.840 montana ethos i will just say before we start that like the place that i always defend that 0.93
00:13:43.200 people just endlessly talk shit about in montana is the biggest city in the state billings
00:13:48.840 uh-huh i don't hate it it's not bad either yeah i don't you know i don't hate any of the 0.95
00:13:56.780 cities in montana you know even bozeman even bozeman i am sitting in bozeman right now
00:14:03.680 um the city i'm going to talk shit the most about is missoula yeah you know and and you know because
00:14:11.540 that's the city i've been closest to my entire life yeah and you know those definitions in the
00:14:18.660 question I think they're not so much changing they've changed you know Missoula is not the
00:14:24.520 hippie liberal town it was like when I was a teenager it's a kind of bougie wannabe Bozeman
00:14:32.240 at this point I agree you know because Bozeman has become I don't know that it's techie so much
00:14:38.780 it's just incredible wealth and wherever that wealth comes from maybe it is tech and science
00:14:44.700 based and i've kind of lost track of what the focus of the two universities are you know but
00:14:50.820 it used to be we should say historically that it was like people would call university of montana
00:14:56.140 like the dancing school that if you were from montana and you were choosing schools like it
00:15:01.300 was the school you went to for like arts yeah and montana state has historically been the ag school
00:15:07.060 and now that's transitioned a lot into tech and in part through the support of the montana state
00:15:13.300 governor who is um a tech person himself greg jane forte and the wealthiest member of congress
00:15:21.680 when he was there is he a million is he a billionaire or is he just one of those lowly
00:15:26.640 millionaires i don't think he's quite a bit i don't know quite but uh bad politics i'll just
00:15:33.760 say that um so those definitions that we heard in the question what else would you like expand
00:15:40.640 that like to me Great Falls is almost stuck in amber in a really wonderful way it reminds me so
00:15:49.360 much of where I came from in part because of the river going through and like the way that the
00:15:53.680 light works I don't know and it just has resisted the same sort of influx in a way that like the
00:16:01.820 Flathead Valley hasn't and Bozeman hasn't and Billings there's a lot of people who move there
00:16:06.160 It might not have, like, a distinct culture in people's minds, but no one's going to Great Falls.
00:16:11.680 You're right.
00:16:13.440 I mean, Great Falls lacks that immediate surrounding.
00:16:17.300 There's a beauty there, but I don't know that it's as accessible to most people as, like, Bozeman, where every direction you look, there's mountains.
00:16:25.120 And Yellowstone is just, you know, a short drive away, and it's just a beautiful valley.
00:16:31.800 Same said with Missoula.
00:16:33.780 And even Billings, once you get out east of the city, it's absolutely gorgeous, you know, and there's no one out there.
00:16:41.700 Great Falls is just, you know, I don't, I don't, it's a hard city to love.
00:16:47.560 And I spend a lot of time up there because that's where my tribe, the Little Shell, are based.
00:16:52.580 And, you know, I had the conversation with our tribal chairman who lives in Helena.
00:16:57.720 Yeah.
00:16:58.560 And who used to live in Billings, but moved to Helena to be closer to Great Falls.
00:17:02.560 And I told him, you know, to be more involved with the tribe, I'd have to move to Great Falls.
00:17:08.640 And I don't really want to.
00:17:09.440 And he said, yeah, I don't want to either.
00:17:11.580 It's just you're trapped in amber is such a great way to put it because it does.
00:17:17.020 There was a time there where it seemed like was beginning to have a moment.
00:17:20.160 And in that moment, just kind of fizzled away.
00:17:22.580 And now, you know, it used to be a really strong kind of union town also, not dissimilar from Butte.
00:17:28.620 And that's all changed, too. 0.95
00:17:30.220 now it's just a seething cesspool of right-wing ignorant rhetoric and and it's it's challenging to 0.92
00:17:38.480 to go there and kind of immerse in that environment yeah there i mean trump did a 0.94
00:17:45.260 rally in great falls i covered it um that was when he was just so mad at john tester and was
00:17:50.260 like i'm gonna come to the state as many times as possible just to piss you off and john tester
00:17:55.180 still won that election for what it's worth but yeah i think that like a lot of these towns
00:18:03.840 like a lot of places in the united states like they have these roots in whatever industry used
00:18:10.860 to be their guiding force and now at least in montana there's this real tension between tourism
00:18:19.200 them becoming the animating force or just like being a place where retirees move like the flathead
00:18:25.920 well we saw that during covid when so many people came and just kind of hid out so all of the
00:18:33.560 campgrounds were full and even that the the access points to the various reservoirs and lakes up on
00:18:39.320 the reservation you know they had to close those and and put you know people out there you know
00:18:45.360 checking tribal ids and they only made them available to people who were enrolled with the
00:18:48.940 tribe they had to because their own people couldn't access these places because of all the people and
00:18:54.900 and you know even reservation land was being bought you know land on the reservation that
00:19:00.940 was lost due to homesteading and due to the allotment era and which is a whole nother
00:19:04.700 conversation but a lot of that property was getting bought up sight unseen and drove prices
00:19:09.480 up all there so even great falls you know a community at chodo where i'm i'm going this
00:19:14.340 weekend for a Métis celebration is 40 miles outside of Great Falls. But it used to be one
00:19:21.340 of those little communities that I thought, you know, if all else fails, I'll buy an acre in 0.98
00:19:25.360 Shoto and just be a hermit for the rest of my life. But that's, that's unaccessible because
00:19:30.000 even out there, the land prices have been driven up so much, the housing costs, you know, so Butte
00:19:35.420 is kind of the last place that still hasn't totally been just overrun with big money. And
00:19:42.940 And there are a lot of artists and stuff from Missoula who have relocated to Butte because that's kind of the last holdout.
00:19:50.320 And people who work in Bozeman, you know, which is a little more than an hour away from Butte, are living in Butte and commuting because they don't want to live in an RV, you know, off the side of a road here with gainful employment, you know.
00:20:05.420 Yeah, yeah.
00:20:06.360 Because Bozeman is so expensive.
00:20:07.740 And it's not even that they're like, oh, I only want to buy something.
00:20:10.320 It's that there's nothing to rent even in Bozeman.
00:20:13.380 That's how how dire the housing situation is.
00:20:17.280 This teases up well for our next question about the pandemic population boom.
00:20:22.060 This comes from Jessica.
00:20:23.880 My dad's family is from Montana and going back to visit over the past 30 years has shown some real tensions between the white people who have lived there for generations and the newcomers, especially after the pandemic population boom.
00:20:37.940 At times, it feels like the whole state is simultaneously gentrifying while trying to
00:20:42.580 hold on to its iconoclastic, rugged, individualistic identity.
00:20:46.920 Is there a sense that there's a loss of an authentic Montana identity going on right
00:20:51.240 now?
00:20:52.040 And is that even a thing that can exist in the context of white settler colonialism?
00:20:56.640 See, Chris, I told you we could talk about anything you want here.
00:21:00.000 We're going to explicitly evoke white settler colonialism here.
00:21:04.340 Um, I love this question because I think that a lot of Montanans have this idea of like authentic Montana culture. And to me, it's always evoked most vividly in the like people who run for office in Montana who say like, I'm fourth generation Montanan or I'm fifth generation Montanan, which is as far back as the white settlers can kind of go.
00:21:26.800 and then I just loved when um Denise Juno ran for office and was like I don't know she said like
00:21:35.120 250th generation Montana right just to like put a little underline under what it actually means
00:21:42.520 to be from a place for a really long time and who who has been in these places for a longer time
00:21:46.720 yeah what does this what does this make you think about well it's multi-layered so first I have to
00:21:52.680 say you know the people in montana and i have empathy and compassion for them who can't afford
00:21:58.640 to live here who have lived here for however many generations that they want to brag about
00:22:03.000 you know and and now they're being forced out and it's like you know welcome to the last 500 0.65
00:22:07.600 fucking years for the for us you know when all of a sudden you have a class of people moving into
00:22:14.480 your place in 100 back by the wealth and power of the mightiest nation on the planet which has 0.99
00:22:21.460 always been the case and and it sucks and you didn't care about it until it came knocking on
00:22:27.420 your door and so there's that yeah but also you know the kind of the montana culture you know
00:22:36.140 has nothing to do with the yellowstone tv show that i think a lot of people try and attach
00:22:40.300 themselves to you know to me the montana culture that i grew up in is you know there's a story i
00:22:46.920 tell about a neighbor i used to have across the street who had like trump stickers on the back
00:22:50.760 of his truck and all that stuff and I'd see him hauling his guns in and out of the house to go
00:22:55.240 target shooting in the range up in the hills on the other side of the river and all of that stuff
00:22:59.480 but as far as a neighbor goes he was a great neighbor you know he was friendly I knew if I
00:23:04.860 was gone he was going to be looking out um one time we had another neighbor kind of kitty corner
00:23:10.720 from my house and across the road from his house and she clearly had some situations going on and
00:23:16.680 And, you know, one Friday afternoon, she came home and her power had been turned off and she wasn't going to be able to get in and pay for it until Monday.
00:23:23.620 And the Trump guy's wife came over and was saying, do you have any long extension cords?
00:23:27.720 And between our two houses, we ran extension cords across the road so that she had power over the weekend.
00:23:33.900 To me, that is what Montana culture is, is neighbors looking out for neighbors, people with different ideas getting along anyway.
00:23:41.500 and and that's that's what's kind of gone by the wayside is is people you know like an example
00:23:49.020 just like yesterday I heard about it you know Gianforte you know there's you can't fly a pride
00:23:56.180 flag in public buildings and I might get this a little bit off but like like teachers can't have
00:24:02.240 pride flags in their classrooms and things like that so the Missoula City Council but you can 0.98
00:24:07.680 have one of those stupid gadston flags you know they don't tread on me thing 0.99
00:24:11.400 and and so so this missoula city council and this recommendation or whatever they call it was 0.99
00:24:20.060 written by my friend jen savage who i'm going to email and thank wholeheartedly and tell her how
00:24:24.380 prouder of her i am they moved at the city council level to make it a municipal flag because if it's
00:24:31.100 a municipal flag then you can fly it in places like schools and stuff and now g and forte is
00:24:36.300 all in a tizzy about it and all these other people are all in a tizzy about it but you know that
00:24:41.140 that's Missoula too you know you the cowboy might shake his head at the punk rocker or whatever all
00:24:47.880 the different ways that we present ourselves to the world but but you know we generally got along
00:24:54.480 with each other despite our differences and that is what has changed yeah and and that's what
00:25:01.340 troubles me about it i think that to me it's exemplified by the shift from split ticket voting
00:25:07.880 which was something that montana was renowned for a lot of states idaho same thing there were a lot
00:25:14.920 of voters who would vote for one candidate with one political party on the national level or for
00:25:22.260 their representatives on the national level and then for a very different party on the local level
00:25:27.040 and if you talk to people about this which i did a lot of talking to split ticket voters
00:25:31.260 people who had split ticket voted historically they would say it's all about the person yeah and
00:25:37.820 it's all about advocacy and a lot of this has to do with the fact that the parties used to be a lot
00:25:42.080 closer together so that shift between voting for say tester and trump wasn't as massive as we now
00:25:51.040 think it is right but the other thing was just like less of a desire to understand oneself purely
00:25:58.740 through politics right and understand one's identity and orientation to either well yeah
00:26:03.780 i think there are a lot of people voting for republican just because that's part of their
00:26:07.360 identity without even connecting to what that really means anymore and what kind of policies
00:26:12.640 they're advocating for with that vote you know tester's loss to me is the most like glaring
00:26:19.720 indication of how montana has changed because tester tester is like the perfect montanan you
00:26:26.080 You know, he kind of straddled both sides of ideological values in Montana.
00:26:33.260 You know, in a lot of ways, he was just Republican light.
00:26:35.900 In a lot of ways, he was progressive as a kind of a liberal person. 0.97
00:26:39.920 And he did a lot for the state, you know, and he lost to a guy who's an absolute ignoramus, 0.98
00:26:45.760 you know, who just is a jaw and a haircut. 0.90
00:26:49.520 And people just voted for him because he's Republican.
00:26:52.300 You know, and Tester, you know, I didn't agree with everything and I don't feel like I should agree with everything that a politician does. I found his position on Gaza repugnant. And if I think about how long he was in the Senate, you know, if I think there should be term limits, and I do, he was probably due to be gone anyway because he'd been there a long time.
00:27:12.900 But just what it says about our electorate here in Montana and the fact that he lost
00:27:17.240 and really lost pretty badly, that that is an example of like where we are now and just
00:27:23.500 how not any way like what we traditionally consider Montana values.
00:27:30.200 We're just miles away.
00:27:31.720 Yeah.
00:27:32.260 So this is a great tee up for our next question, which is somewhat about like the Halloween
00:27:35.860 out of those values while also like talking about them all the time.
00:27:39.920 This comes from a different listener, also named Jessica.
00:27:42.900 okay it's about state pride so i grew up in bosom in montana and have been happily settled in the
00:27:49.100 flathead valley for over a decade now in my 20s and 30s though i lived several other places and
00:27:54.660 worked with people from all over the u.s i noticed that montana seemed to be uniquely in love with
00:27:59.760 itself as evidenced by the plethora of t-shirts and artwork with the outline of the state
00:28:04.360 the 406 bumper stickers the steinbeck in love with montana quote everywhere the last best place
00:28:11.260 coffee book in every living room, etc. I am admittedly obsessed with Montana myself and have
00:28:16.560 owned a fair amount of the swag over the years, so I'm not judging. Am I right in thinking that
00:28:21.840 this is somewhat unique to Montana? And if so, why? I know it's a very beautiful state, but so is
00:28:27.220 Colorado, for example, where I've also lived, and it doesn't seem to have the same degree of
00:28:31.960 self-obsession. Also, has all of this loud Montana pride contributed to it becoming one of the most
00:28:37.960 expensive states to live in since the pandemic and the increase of jobs that became remote.
00:28:43.380 Okay, let's segment off the remote part for now, because we should we should just talk about a
00:28:49.340 little bit of what we're talking about. I'll put some links in the show notes. But like the 406
00:28:54.120 stuff. So 406 is the area code for Montana. And people who haven't lived in big rural states are
00:29:01.160 sometimes aghast that an entire state can have the same area code. Exactly. They celebrate like
00:29:06.620 april 6th and like because it's 406 day there will be like shirts that have an outline of montana
00:29:14.260 that somehow has like 406 in it somehow and bumper stickers and when my partner charlie
00:29:20.000 moved with me to montana the first summer he was like so many people in montana are like wearing
00:29:26.920 the band swag to the concert like it is unlike any place i have ever lived in terms of montana
00:29:33.420 people wearing montana stuff what do you think is going on here well i have a couple thoughts on 0.92
00:29:40.300 that i was just in colorado like a week ago and i see the same shit there as we have here and the 0.73
00:29:46.660 and the politicians are doing the same i'm a whatever or even the writers well as a fifth 0.79
00:29:52.020 generation coloradan i believe that i have the right to write this thing you know all that stuff
00:29:57.340 And I have a theory on this. We don't have any major sports teams.
00:30:03.200 Yes. 1.00
00:30:04.060 So think about how many jackasses are walking around in like Boston Red Sox hats or New York Yankees hats. 0.72
00:30:11.780 And you are not just celebrating your team, you're celebrating the fact that it's New York, you know? 0.81
00:30:18.440 Yeah.
00:30:18.720 So I wonder if part of it is just that we don't have anything else to kind of, you know, I almost said hang our hat on, but kind of express that regional pride.
00:30:31.940 Because sports teams largely are a regional pride thing.
00:30:37.220 I hate the Red Sox and I hate the Yankees too.
00:30:39.540 I just want to make that clear.
00:30:40.520 And I hate the Los Angeles Dodgers.
00:30:43.620 Who do you root for?
00:30:45.500 Mariners.
00:30:46.140 Yeah, I know.
00:30:46.700 That's the closest.
00:30:47.360 this is the thing that people also don't understand because i i grew up rooting for
00:30:51.360 the mariners and the seahawks and the supersonics like in idaho see i cannot
00:30:56.460 i cannot cheer for the oklahoma city thunder in this year's nba finals because they were moved 0.81
00:31:02.740 from seattle so fuck the thunder have you noticed though there are some people in montana who root
00:31:06.880 for denver teams i guess that's like kind of close i did because the seattle teams didn't exist 0.77
00:31:13.300 so I was already a sports fan before the Mariners existed and before the Seahawks and so I grew up
00:31:20.380 a Denver Bronco fan and the reason I was a Denver Bronco fan is because in the fourth grade
00:31:25.820 this girl Jenny Miller said what's your favorite football team my brother's is the Denver Broncos
00:31:30.960 and I had a crush on her and I said well that's my favorite team too so that's how I became a
00:31:37.980 broncos fan and then the seahawks were my mortal enemy because for years they were in the same
00:31:43.380 division as the broncos so there's all of that but my point is is that people have
00:31:49.440 regional things that are part of their identity that they celebrate by wearing a shirt or a hat
00:31:56.640 or a bumper sticker or whatever and i think part of that is that that's all we have yeah is is our
00:32:05.160 state and i've never noticed it as being any worse here than anywhere else maybe it is i don't know
00:32:11.620 i love that wearing the band t-shirt no one wears an idaho t-shirt like actually some people from 0.89
00:32:18.360 boise would wear an idaho t-shirt but very few people from idaho were like idaho fuck yes well 0.97
00:32:24.500 and i wonder how many of those people wearing the montana shit i've have been here very long 0.97
00:32:28.840 yeah they were just proud to be here because like the back end of that question people move here 0.98
00:32:33.460 because it is great. It is beautiful. We have some of the best stream access laws for people
00:32:41.840 who want to get out on the water, things like that. Our constitution, which was in 1973,
00:32:48.480 1972, is decades ahead of its time as far as some of the values that we wrote into our
00:32:56.140 governing document. And so there is something to be proud of, even as there's plenty of things
00:33:02.200 not to be. Yeah. No, and I think that the beauty is otherworldly in a way that is difficult to
00:33:08.340 understand until you have experienced its immensity. And I'm not just talking about
00:33:13.420 going to Glacier or going to Yellowstone. It's one of those places where you're like,
00:33:19.520 oh, here's another fucking gorgeous place that there's no one around. 0.96
00:33:25.020 And you don't have to, that's it. I was just out in the Bay Area a couple of days ago and I'd 0.96
00:33:30.320 pull up something I'm going to go it's only 15 miles away it will take you an hour and 45 minutes 0.90
00:33:35.140 like fuck an hour and 45 minutes I'm like 150 miles down the road in in Montana you know so 0.58
00:33:43.040 it's it's to me that's worth a lot no and I think that that is part of what drew people is this idea 0.99
00:33:49.240 of like what if I could have all of this beauty and a lot less of the like encumbrances of living
00:33:56.380 in an urban area but could have like some culture right like bands go to montana there are cute
00:34:04.080 neighborhoods that are walkable there's like a lot of open space again because of like lifelong
00:34:09.440 conservation work that allows open access like there's just there's stuff there
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00:38:42.840 Let's talk about this last question because this will give us an opportunity to wax poetic a
00:38:47.400 little bit more about Montana as well. This comes from Lucy. I've lived in Colorado my whole life
00:38:53.880 and occasionally I hear that Montana, nowadays, is like Colorado decades ago. I think there's a
00:38:59.500 romanticization of Montana as, quote-unquote, the last bucolic place in the West, but from what I've
00:39:06.740 heard about the wealth in Montana, I'm sure this can't be true, and the idea of a pristine West is
00:39:12.060 a fantasy anyways. Can you help us non-Montana folks in the West understand how the state's
00:39:17.520 vibes, whether a broad brush or any components that are disproportionately influential,
00:39:21.960 are or are not like the rest of the region?
00:39:25.420 There's so much that's in flux right now.
00:39:28.400 But one thing I would say,
00:39:29.780 like a very real difference between Montana and Idaho specifically 1.00
00:39:33.580 is for a long time there were not Bible thumpers 0.99
00:39:38.040 as like a very essential part of like the state's understanding of itself. 0.77
00:39:42.420 It was very much like that libertarian ethos of like 0.99
00:39:45.220 what you do in your house is your own damn business. 0.99
00:39:48.720 Yeah. 1.00
00:39:49.700 You know, what I think about it,
00:39:51.200 there are places that i can go like old rock logging roads and stuff where i like to go hike
00:39:56.340 and yeah it's not glacier beauty but it's still beautiful and there's nobody else there yep and
00:40:01.400 and when i travel and i go other places and there are beautiful places i'm sharing it with a lot of
00:40:07.360 other people which sometimes is fine but often is not fine you know and and so i am privileged to
00:40:15.780 have so much open space available to me in in Montana that I wouldn't have anywhere else
00:40:22.500 and you know there's there's a lot of value to that and that is one of the things that is under
00:40:27.200 assault by both the state legislature and the the federal level but even then it's two truths
00:40:34.780 because you know so many of the conservationist groups that really advocate for public lands like
00:40:40.920 to kind of forget where those public lands came from in the first place. And I'm pretty adamant
00:40:45.960 that is, you know, particularly as a member of a tribe who was known as the landless Indians for
00:40:50.960 more than 150 years, that has some meaning to me because it's not like we weren't here with places
00:40:56.040 to live for a long time that were taken away from us. So both sides of that conversation need to be
00:41:01.740 addressed every time we have it. And I'm two generations removed from when my ancestors could
00:41:07.960 have been imprisoned or killed for leaving the reservation so you know what's happening now is
00:41:13.880 like kind of that cyclical nature of time and how we just keep making the same mistakes over and
00:41:18.960 over again until we decide we want to do something a little differently to change how we interact
00:41:24.060 with that but you know that's kind of an aside to the fact that Montana is an absolutely beautiful
00:41:28.880 place and you know at any given time when I'm home or even here in Bozeman right now I'm half an hour
00:41:35.000 away from something that there are people all around the world who are just fantasizing about
00:41:40.100 a chance to come and, you know, stand in the river or sit on a trail, just whatever it is,
00:41:46.120 it's all right here. And, you know, we're very fortunate to have that.
00:41:50.500 For people who don't know what public lands are, I found that like, this is something that we grow
00:41:54.700 up knowing and understanding what public lands are and how they are used. But a lot of people
00:41:59.980 in the East, because like there isn't public lands in the same way, like they hear the word
00:42:03.340 public lands and they think like national parks. Yeah. So could you explain a little bit what we
00:42:07.520 mean by public lands? Public lands are, you know, places where anybody can go. You know, if you're
00:42:13.860 a citizen, you're, you know, that the backcountry hunters and anglers have a t-shirt that, that the,
00:42:19.240 you know, the insignia across the chesses are on the backs as public lands owner. You know,
00:42:23.780 they're, they're, they're available to all of us to recreate, to picnic, to hike, to do whatever
00:42:29.100 it is that we want to go and do out there hunting you know public lands are accessible to hunters
00:42:34.280 which is still a large part of our culture here and you know like in texas ask your texas guest
00:42:40.820 how many public lands they have i think it's only like five percent or something right right and we
00:42:46.240 kind of i think take it for granted that we can just go anywhere and i do yeah nothing says come
00:42:52.120 on in like a no trespassing sign as far as i'm concerned you know this is somewhat contentious
00:42:58.200 now but like creeks are public lands so like if you're walking in the creek you can even walk
00:43:03.680 into someone's private ranch area as long as you're in the creek yeah you have access and to
00:43:10.400 the land up to the high water mark yeah yeah and and that is one of the things that that is really
00:43:16.340 under assault right now is is those because these billionaires come in and and buy up these huge
00:43:23.820 swaths of land and you know they even refer to the wildlife living there as my deer and my elk
00:43:29.760 and all that stuff and they're not which is how it is in texas is like people have these large
00:43:33.640 ranches that people can come to and shoot their deer and their elk yeah and i think the understanding
00:43:39.200 with montana originally part of the reason when the government took all of the land of the
00:43:43.940 indigenous people was like well now we got to manage it because we can't like they tried to
00:43:48.860 give it away they try to give it away to white people but a lot of it is hostile to cultivation 0.99
00:43:54.280 and so who's going to take care of it the government's going to take care of it and then
00:43:58.980 we all get access to it but now like this is that one of the slogans you hear a lot is like montana
00:44:04.940 is not for sale but it is kind of for sale under our current legislation always has been yeah if
00:44:11.280 someone wanted to buy it and the current i think a lot of the fight is like people who believe in
00:44:17.300 their think in their hearts like this is central to what montana is but did you see pony is for
00:44:23.380 sale the town of pony is for sale it comes with like a like three or four buildings or something
00:44:29.340 like that yeah the entire town of pony is for sale and that that gets to the heart of like this
00:44:33.480 also this vaunting of like the capitalist ethos so how do we believe in what is fundamentally
00:44:39.380 almost a socialist ethic of like this land is all of our land and well if people have money
00:44:45.740 they should be able to buy things yeah i am you know i'm not a private property advocate in any
00:44:51.640 way yeah so which is a whole nother conversation yes the other thing i think about a lot is like
00:44:58.420 montana is one of the a very small handful of states that has like a very significant
00:45:03.600 native voting block like the native vote can sway elections it can yeah and we're i think we're the
00:45:11.520 fifth most populated as far as native population in the country i think we're number five and even
00:45:18.020 then that's only seven percent of the population so so it's not a huge but in certain areas for
00:45:23.580 sure like the blackfeet that county is per capita the bluest voting county in the state you know and
00:45:29.460 and people have to pay attention to natives here because those votes do matter in these very close
00:45:36.240 elections. Yeah. Or like the CSKT, you know, and, and yeah, it does matter. Yeah. You know,
00:45:42.660 it's hard to, it's kind of what you're familiar with. So, you know, the Pacific Northwest where
00:45:49.460 you are is beautiful, but there are so many people, you know, and, and, and to me, you know,
00:45:56.020 that's what you're balancing is some people like that. And I don't, you know, and I've never lived
00:46:02.720 in any of the other you know i was in the seattle area for 10 or 12 years but that was
00:46:07.220 you know 30 years ago and it's changed drastically since then um but you know it's hard to say well
00:46:15.200 why are you better than the others when you don't really have any context for what it's like to live
00:46:20.860 someplace else i just know how much time i spend in traffic in other places and it's changing
00:46:26.500 even in missoula too where it used to be there was only certain times of days you had to worry
00:46:30.760 about it but now it's all the time everywhere you are and and it's still not as bad as the places
00:46:36.500 the you know what i experienced in other parts of the country but you know that's one of the
00:46:41.020 changes but i still like the wide openness of montana and and it has to change a lot before
00:46:47.160 that goes away yeah no i think about how like i didn't drive on a freeway until i was like 19
00:46:55.500 growing up where i lived in idaho and there are a lot of places in montana if you're not along
00:47:00.460 the i-90 corridor where you wouldn't really have reason to drive on a freeway or when you drive on
00:47:05.800 a freeway there is no traffic like that is mind-boggling to people like there is never a
00:47:10.840 slowdown unless there's road construction but there is never like that is not the experience
00:47:16.760 of driving the experience of driving is always moving yeah like i said hour and a half is more
00:47:24.020 than 100 miles i went to high school in colorado along the front range and literally all i think
00:47:31.060 about is the urban sprawl yeah and it's just as far as you can see it's just housing developments
00:47:37.420 of houses crammed together and the traffic is terrible like yeah colorado's beautiful i will
00:47:43.400 never ever ever move back there yeah i mean for that reason let me okay so hold on a second let
00:47:48.120 the population of the biggest town in montana is 120 000 people like that's the other thing to keep
00:47:57.560 in mind is like there's barely over a million people who live in the entire state and it's
00:48:02.060 the fourth biggest state in the nation yeah and denver is 715 000 yeah so yeah it just is it's a
00:48:10.040 very different experience of place um okay so our last question love this question it's going to
00:48:15.940 lead us to some, I think, complications in the way that sometimes people think about the state. 0.64
00:48:21.100 So this gets into gender and politics, and it comes from Neek. 0.52
00:48:25.120 I grew up in Montana, and in retrospect, was a mega non-binary kid. It didn't cause me a ton 0.92
00:48:30.760 of pain, except for puberty, because I wasn't really held to a strict standard of normative
00:48:35.880 femininity. Then when I went to a fancy pants liberal arts college in the Northeast,
00:48:40.100 it was fascinating to experience other people projecting a non-cis identity onto me because I 1.00
00:48:46.580 wasn't performing normative femininity and yeah it turns out they were right but I bring this up 0.99
00:48:52.540 because I think it's interesting how Montana does have a lot of conservative and traditional cultural 0.81
00:48:57.040 vibes but at the same time it seems like there's rural west vibes and I also associate it with
00:49:02.500 working class though I'm not totally confident about that facet of it but these vibes at least
00:49:06.880 at times have less stringent gender norms for girls and women, possibly because of the working
00:49:12.840 ranch cultural vibes, even in settings where people aren't actually working on a ranch.
00:49:19.080 And then I think of a kind of parallel that Montana is conservative and has had its fair 0.83
00:49:24.260 share of anti-trans bullshit, but there have also been notable disruptions to that, like 0.95
00:49:29.600 anti-trans bills not passing and judges ruling previously passed bills unconstitutional. 0.98
00:49:34.980 I think a big part of that is the hard work of Zoe Zephyr and S.J. Howell, but I also wonder if
00:49:40.220 those disruptions speak to something about Montana culture. Yes, mostly it lands on the
00:49:45.660 yucky politics, but there's something embedded culturally that has been the thing that
00:49:51.100 Representative Zephyr and Representative Howell have been able to tap into. Perhaps the same thing
00:49:57.040 that contributed to Montana until relatively recently, often being a purplish state in the
00:50:03.920 sense of often having mixed party results for U.S. senators, representatives, and state governors.
00:50:10.500 I wonder, is it residue from union culture, similar to how northern Minnesota is working
00:50:15.940 class extractive industry, but dominantly votes for democratic farmer labor? Is it glimpses of
00:50:21.480 non-hypocritical application of concepts of freedom? I want to hear your thoughts.
00:50:27.420 I have a lot of things that makes me think of, but I want to start with you.
00:50:30.180 i think the fact that we see like supreme court overturns of of legislation anti-trans stuff
00:50:39.300 we see that happen because that stuff is on unconstitutional and there's a lot of it happening 1.00
00:50:46.180 in montana so you know if you think of where you know zoe zephyr is not going to get elected in
00:50:52.120 great falls yeah you know she got elected in missoula because that's a remnant of what missoula
00:50:56.900 has been is is kind of that hippie liberal thing and i'm happy that we still retain enough of that
00:51:02.420 to where she can be elected and and how is helena i think missoula yes 100th district
00:51:08.600 yep yeah okay so the fact that they've had successes is is part of where they're coming
00:51:15.160 from all of these terrible things that these governments try and do that are unconstitutional
00:51:19.520 they end up in the supreme court and we hope that the supreme court will hold the line and recognize
00:51:24.540 that that the law protects people so the fact that we see those overturnings in montana is just more 0.55
00:51:30.800 there's a lot of it going on right right so montana is certainly no rosy place for for trans
00:51:36.140 people and gay people or anything that like that especially now in the past maybe it was different
00:51:41.560 um you know we have this that kind of libertarian live and let live mentality that i think is more
00:51:47.460 i think you nailed it as far as that being more what montana traditionally was versus what we
00:51:52.180 see it as today because people come here and they love it and they want to fish and they want to do
00:51:56.100 all that but then they say well you know i left you know western washington to get away from the 1.00
00:52:00.560 gays and i want to get rid of them here too you know and so i think a lot of that is is part of 0.98
00:52:07.360 that influx of people from other places yeah yeah no and i always want to be careful when i talk 1.00
00:52:12.480 about like how much of this is the politics of other places because i think some of the like
00:52:17.220 low-level bigotry was always there yes you know like anyone who has this fantasy of like oh well
00:52:23.820 montanans weren't racist like they should hear montanans talk about native people like or they
00:52:29.620 weren't racist until the californians arrived or something like that but i do think that a lot like
00:52:34.280 there's good demographic data about the politics of people who have moved in the last 20 years
00:52:41.100 especially to places like the flathead valley and the bitter root valley of montana and a lot of
00:52:47.100 them are conservatives coming from what they have come to understand are too liberal of places so
00:52:52.380 california colorado western washington right like they want they like sometimes call it like some of
00:53:00.060 these people are searching what's called the redoubt which is like this yes this new promised
00:53:04.660 land of like conservative uh like theocracy but some of them are just like i don't want to deal 0.64
00:53:12.460 with building codes and also there are too many trans people right like there's like I like there's
00:53:18.660 a there's a heavy iteration and there's a light iteration um but I do think that those people 0.99
00:53:24.380 because of the way that the primary system and the way that polarization works like they get
00:53:28.880 represented in congress by people who go along with bills which are oftentimes like duplicate
00:53:36.060 bills from other states about trans bathrooms and all that sort of thing right like somehow
00:53:41.240 like this is not something that the montana legislature should be caring about it is not 0.96
00:53:45.460 a fucking problem it's not but montana is different than idaho and that you do have 0.91
00:53:51.720 these places that are bright blue like missoula that will elect people and who have this like 0.99
00:53:59.860 the incredible support of their constituents to speak out very publicly and about issues
00:54:06.180 including trans bills but also like all sorts of more like prominently leftist like there's still
00:54:12.560 those voices are are those voices are still audible in the legislature in a way that they
00:54:19.140 have been completely snuffed out in like the idaho legislature does that make sense yeah
00:54:23.240 it does and i also think the idea of montana as being kind of a ranch place you know maybe in the
00:54:30.080 east but you know i didn't i didn't grow up you know none of my contemporaries the kids i went
00:54:35.500 school with lived on ranches or worked on ranches you know we had people who you know my dad was in
00:54:41.440 the forest products industry working at the paper mill things like that you know and you know we
00:54:45.960 were all 4-H kids and things like that and so I don't know that ranch culture has any
00:54:52.840 it might it might not I just don't know bearing on on the kind of you know androgynous idea of
00:55:00.760 gender expression and it being okay. I don't know if there's any correlation in that based on that
00:55:08.560 question. But do you have thoughts on it? I'm glad this person had an okay experience though.
00:55:13.540 You know what I mean? When I think about my upbringing, I do think that there was just
00:55:17.840 a little bit more of an acceptance of tomboyishness and it worked for-
00:55:23.600 That's what it was. It was tomboyish.
00:55:25.360 and it worked yeah for sure worked for people who were um assigned female at birth i think
00:55:31.820 better than people who were assigned male at birth right like that sort of androgyny or in-betweenness
00:55:37.900 but i also think about the fact like i have this vivid memory of camping in sanders county on fourth
00:55:46.520 of july and going to a town pump and this woman gets out of the rig next to me and she has a baby 0.94
00:55:54.900 blue glock that matches her baby blue like rhinestone jeans right like there is a performance 1.00
00:56:03.160 of femininity in cowboy and montana culture as well for sure so certainly now yeah but even like
00:56:12.000 rodeo queens yeah it's like there that's always there has been a like an understanding of like
00:56:18.200 the montana feminine ideal with that said there is also this real celebration of like montana
00:56:24.680 like was the first state to elect a woman to the house of representatives which is true but we also
00:56:31.420 like the state only elects republican women now like it has to be like that to me is really
00:56:37.440 interesting that like you can be a woman but you have to be a conservative woman in order to be like 0.98
00:56:42.400 state but we also have a very loud and and punching above their weight powerful indian
00:56:49.980 caucus at the state legislature also you know a small group but mighty and vocal and and you know
00:56:56.760 defends some important things and gets new things done you know so that's part of it too yeah and
00:57:03.440 some of them are women and it can't be gerrymandered out of existence the way that it 1.00
00:57:07.160 has in other states right because like the way where the districts are like there's no way you
00:57:11.800 can take blackfeet nation and be like oh no we're gonna like combine that with kalispell
00:57:17.440 right it's too much land like you can't do it right um chris this has been a delight i really
00:57:25.820 want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about montana indigipalooza i'm trying to like
00:57:33.580 say both of them in a really smooth way indigipalooza montana indigipalooza please tell
00:57:39.400 us about it so indigipalooza is a big um celebration celebrating you know if we boil
00:57:46.780 it down to one sentence indigenous storytelling and all the ways that that manifests so you know
00:57:52.300 the highlight is joy harjo is our headliner um on friday august 1st with a couple other people
00:57:59.760 reading as well um and then saturday is all not so much like they're just like sessions of
00:58:09.660 indigenous people talking about what they do so there's a poetry section a more general writing
00:58:14.360 section we have a couple indigenous hip-hop people who are going to come and perform there's
00:58:20.080 like an entrepreneurship of of native people and and how they've kind of created their own
00:58:27.000 you know businesses and how that works as native people yeah so it's just this big celebration
00:58:33.400 all the events are free yeah um the the joy harjo thing is the only thing that's not at the library
00:58:41.140 the missoula public library which a couple years ago was voted by some organization as the best
00:58:46.500 library in the world it's pretty fucking because it's new and beautiful and yeah it's it's going
00:58:51.980 to be great and it was something that um i work with a friend anna east who runs chickadee community 0.57
00:59:00.000 services is one of the organizers and then celia avila from the missoula public library is helping
00:59:07.560 coordinate and then me. So it's so far just been the three of us and it's going to be awesome.
00:59:13.280 And it's in part supported by the contributions of people listening to this podcast and reading
00:59:19.400 this newsletter. And we want to encourage people to, if they have any extra, we will put a very
00:59:25.380 prominent donation page on the Culture Study podcast page for this episode. I'm absolutely
00:59:31.660 blown away by the support that's come from small donors. And we hear about that in like
00:59:37.060 federal elections and and small donors but we if we'd pushed harder we probably could have funded
00:59:44.700 the whole thing just with small donors we didn't have to kowtow to anybody and in fact there are
00:59:50.060 people said yeah if we do this and i'm like telling anna and sell you like well tell them 0.53
00:59:54.040 to keep their fucking money you know but because you know this we're going to talk about it more 0.64
00:59:59.940 in our in our online interview but i'm just blown away by how generous people are when they have the 0.99
01:00:07.640 opportunity to be generous yeah yeah i am too over and over again and i think culture study
01:00:14.320 readers and listeners like they they understand that this stuff happens in part because of our
01:00:19.580 contributions to them yeah um all right so we'll link prominently to that where else so people can
01:00:25.640 find you there you'll be there um but where else can they find your stuff online if they want to
01:00:31.200 hear more from you well my irritable metis newsletter remains kind of the primary thing
01:00:39.020 i got a great email from someone i met last weekend who was the former poet laureate of
01:00:45.340 san francisco kim shuck and she's cherokee and that subject was uh from a cranky cherokee to
01:00:51.700 an irritable matey and that's that's probably the greatest email subject line i've ever gotten but
01:00:57.820 yeah that's the main place where i pretty informally connect you know and write and and
01:01:04.300 express my thoughts and you know i try not to be irritable all the time but you know sometimes you
01:01:10.360 gotta call shit out well and it's the highlight of my week i love it so much um thank you and we
01:01:16.560 will also link prominently to that in the newsletter and you are wonderfully off instagram 0.88
01:01:22.600 i am what a what a great decision that was yes oh and becoming little shell comes out in paperback
01:01:30.500 on august 12th that's amazing that is amazing and we'll also link to an interview i did with
01:01:36.000 you last year all about becoming little shell so that's great thank you for talking montana
01:01:40.940 culture with us it was complicated it was weird it's awesome it's fun i'm gonna grab some huckleberry
01:01:47.540 ice cream if i can find it actually i would get black licorice ice cream because that's my favorite
01:01:52.000 flavor from big dipper oh god black licorice is yeah we could have lived the rest of our lives
01:01:58.280 without me knowing about no it's so good oh my god just get just next time thanks for listening
01:02:05.400 to the culture study podcast today paid subscribers got a bunch of recommendations
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01:03:05.720 The Culture Study Podcast is produced by me, Anne Helen Peterson, and Melody Rowell.
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01:03:12.280 You can find me on Instagram at Anne Helen Peterson, Melody at Melodious47, and the show at Culture Study Pod.