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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Saver, a protection of iHeartRadio. I'm

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Speaker 1: Annie Red and.

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Speaker 2: I'm Loren vogel Baum, and today we have an episode

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Speaker 2: for you about the semi fictional foods of Little House.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, And this was such a fun

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Speaker 1: one for me because I know nothing about it. We

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Speaker 1: will talk about more because this is an interview episode.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we got to do an interview with Okay,

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Speaker 2: so a couple of our co workers just launched a show,

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Speaker 2: a podcast called Wilder, which is about Laura Ingles Wilder,

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Speaker 2: the author of the Little House series, and they go

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Speaker 2: on this whole journey and so so yeah, so we're

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Speaker 2: gonna have an interview with with their producer Emily Meronoff

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Speaker 2: and the host Glennis McNichol in a little bit here,

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Speaker 2: which was a terrific conversation and really places that I

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Speaker 2: did not did not expect to go.

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Speaker 1: Me either, And I mean, even as someone who didn't

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Speaker 1: really know much about this at all, I was like, oh, really,

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Speaker 1: goldn has commented and that she said that she wished

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Speaker 1: we had like video, there's a way to translate my

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Speaker 1: facial expressions, as I was like learning.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I say this having a lot of

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Speaker 2: experience with this series because I read and reread the

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Speaker 2: books a lot. It had to have been dozens of

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Speaker 2: times when I was a child, Like this is very

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Speaker 2: much something that I grew up with, and uh, you

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Speaker 2: know rereading. I reread the first book in preparation for

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Speaker 2: doing this episode, and like I remembered a lot of

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Speaker 2: the wording verbatim. Is how often I read those books.

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Speaker 2: So wow, Yeah, yeah, it's really weird to revisit as

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Speaker 2: an adult, by the way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, which we talk about a lot in the interview,

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Speaker 1: but I have friends who love it for sure, and

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Speaker 1: this to be fully transparent, I kind of just got

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Speaker 1: to sit back on this one because I didn't know

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Speaker 1: anything about it. And then the interview, which is fantastic,

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Speaker 1: was so thorough and I was like, all right, all

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Speaker 1: right around, and then you came in and contributed a

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Speaker 1: bunch more.

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Speaker 2: I love it. Hey, we have a weird division of

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Speaker 2: labor around here. It all comes back around in different ways.

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Speaker 1: It does, it does. But I am very excited about

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Speaker 1: this one. And I know a lot of you listeners

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Speaker 1: have written in about this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, But for.

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Speaker 1: Those listeners who are like me, no idea, I guess

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Speaker 1: that brings us to our question, Little House, what is it?

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Speaker 2: Well? The Little House Series is a set of books

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Speaker 2: and various media adapted from them, written by Laura Ingles

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Speaker 2: Wilder as autobiographical fiction depicting events from her childhood through

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Speaker 2: her starting her own family in the American West and

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Speaker 2: or Midwest, and like the eighteen seventies through the eighteen nineties,

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Speaker 2: the main series consists of nine children's novels. Wilder wrote

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Speaker 2: and published the first eight in nineteen thirty two through

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Speaker 2: nineteen forty three, and the last one was published after

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Speaker 2: her death, plus then a TV show adapted from them

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Speaker 2: that ran from nineteen seventy four through nineteen eighty three.

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Speaker 2: They're like warm, family oriented slice of life stories about

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Speaker 2: growing up as a homesteader out in the country and

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Speaker 2: in very small towns, about being poor but creating richness

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Speaker 2: for yourself and your family through like hard work and

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Speaker 2: simple pleasures, often those pleasures being food. It's hard times

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Speaker 2: seen through rose colored glasses. That is a pun because

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Speaker 2: her daughter, whose name was Rose, had a large impact

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Speaker 2: on the series. More about that in the interview portion.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, it's.

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Speaker 2: Like comforting and homey and polished to an absolute gloss

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Speaker 2: and also very ugly sometimes and really blind to greater context.

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Speaker 2: So it is just the most dang American thing I

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Speaker 2: can possibly think of.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, I was picking up on that vibe a

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Speaker 1: little bit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So yes, Wilder was born in eighteen sixty seven and

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Speaker 2: lived through nineteen fifty seven. And like this is a

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Speaker 2: phrase that we say a lot sardonically around here, but

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Speaker 2: earnestly in this case, what a time to be alive,

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Speaker 2: Like just you know, like she grew up going around

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Speaker 2: the prairie and covered wagons, and she took an airplane

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Speaker 2: to go to to like tour the world as an

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Speaker 2: author as before her death. Like wow, like wild no

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Speaker 2: pun intended the books. I'm pretty sure I use that

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Speaker 2: put in the interview too. I'm so sorry anyway, So right,

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Speaker 2: the books do give super detailed descriptions of meals, end

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Speaker 2: of treats, which is kind of why we're talking about

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Speaker 2: it here, but also of the sheer labor that went

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Speaker 2: into getting supplies, most often by hunting and gathering and

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Speaker 2: farming and then producing what you need by hand, sometimes

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Speaker 2: less often by like traveling to buy something or ordering

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Speaker 2: something through like a very distant and still developing supply chain,

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Speaker 2: and at many points, especially reading this as an adult,

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Speaker 2: the books are more about hunger than they really are

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Speaker 2: about food, about crops failing, like literal plagues of grasshoppers,

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Speaker 2: about getting snowed in. For example, in the book The

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Speaker 2: Law Winter, they're just absolutely stuck with no hope of

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Speaker 2: supplies coming, like they have to eat their seed wheat,

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Speaker 2: like they're not going to have anything to plant the

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Speaker 2: next year. But they are literally starving alone in this house. Laura, then,

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Speaker 2: a teenager, is sort of doing the math, and in

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Speaker 2: the book she says, half a bushel of wheat they

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Speaker 2: could grind to make flour, and there worthy few potatoes,

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Speaker 2: but nothing more to eat until the train came. The

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Speaker 2: wheat and the potatoes would never be enough. Yeah right, houfta. Nonetheless,

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Speaker 2: like what depictions of food that there is in the

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Speaker 2: books are glorious, and amidst the series popularity, a couple

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Speaker 2: of cookbooks have been published. The Little House Cookbook was

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Speaker 2: first published in nineteen seventy nine, right when the show

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Speaker 2: was super popular. It was written by Barbara Walker and

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Speaker 2: illustrated by Garth Williams, who illustrated a version of the

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Speaker 2: book series as well. A Walker wrote in an interview,

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Speaker 2: food looms large in this Pioneer Chronicle because there was

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Speaker 2: rarely enough of it. The real grown up Laura's memory

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Speaker 2: for daily fair and holiday feasts says more about her

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Speaker 2: eagerness for meals, her longing for enough to eat, than

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Speaker 2: it does about her interesting cooking.

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Speaker 3: Yeah right.

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Speaker 2: Another cookbook called the Laura Ingles Wilder Country Cookbook was

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Speaker 2: published in nineteen ninety seven. That one was written by

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Speaker 2: one William Anderson, and it's based on the scrap book

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Speaker 2: that Wilder compiled and cooked from herself, like using recipes

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Speaker 2: for magazines and newspapers along with her own memory of

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Speaker 2: family recipes. Anderson said about it, recipes were pasted over

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Speaker 2: pages of a cardboard covered invoice book used by her husband, Almonzo,

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Speaker 2: when he was a fuel oil delivery man in the

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Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds. Internal evidence suggests that the bulk of

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Speaker 2: the cookbook was assembled by Laura during the nineteen thirties

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Speaker 2: and forties, so when she was in the midst of

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Speaker 2: writing the series, and it does include a recipe for gingerbread,

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Speaker 2: which became a kind of iconic as Wilder rose to

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Speaker 2: celebrity as an author in the forties and fifties and

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Speaker 2: was asked to share some favorite recipes. That's one that

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Speaker 2: really often comes up. We'll talk about this a bunch

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Speaker 2: of the interview, but I wanted to put here in

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Speaker 2: this intro that like, part of why the family struggled

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Speaker 2: so much was that after you know, this is all

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Speaker 2: happening like right after the Civil War, and during that time,

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Speaker 2: the American government and a number of private interests were

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Speaker 2: encouraging colonists to go settle the West as part of

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Speaker 2: like this grand idea of manifest destiny and also the

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Speaker 2: growth of industry, and also to push Native Americans out.

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Speaker 2: But like a lot of the land was not good

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Speaker 2: for settling the way that white people were trying to

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Speaker 2: settle it. Laura's own biographer later wrote, homesteaders could not

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Speaker 2: succeed no matter how hard they worked, they were bound

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Speaker 2: to fail. The land had limits, and no solitary, undercapitalized

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Speaker 2: farmer could ever hope to overcome them. Also, in twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 2: amidst a growing conversation about Laura's portrayal of Native Americans

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Speaker 2: and other non white groups in the books, the American

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Speaker 2: Library Association's Association for Library Service to Children changed changed

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Speaker 2: the name of their book award from the Laura Ingalls

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Speaker 2: Wilder Prize or oh gosh, I forget, I'm sorry it

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Speaker 2: had her name in the title and now it does not.

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Speaker 2: Because yeah, there was rightfully so growing conversation about about

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Speaker 2: like the appropriateness of these books to give to children

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Speaker 2: without any further comment, right, because yeah, it does depict

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Speaker 2: very real sentiments that people very really held and sometimes

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Speaker 2: do still hold. You know, like, just putting that out

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Speaker 2: there without commenting on it is maybe not maybe not

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Speaker 2: the best idea, right, Yeah, all of that being said,

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Speaker 2: it is. It was really remarkable to me reading the

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Speaker 2: first book and going through some other passages after having

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Speaker 2: worked on this podcast for a few years, like the

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Speaker 2: sheer number of historical touch points that come up in

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Speaker 2: Laura's like everyday narrative. They make maple syrup. They talk

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Speaker 2: about needing to slaughter a calf in order to make

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Speaker 2: cheese because at that point you didn't have mass produced rennet,

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Speaker 2: you didn't have vegetable or you didn't have microbial grown

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Speaker 2: rennet substitutions. So you wanted to make cheese, you had

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Speaker 2: to slaughter a calf. They talk about eating squeaky curds.

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Speaker 2: They talk about gram flour bread. At one point they

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Speaker 2: make hard candy by painting sugar into the snow and

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Speaker 2: then taking I'm like sugar panting what like. I never

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Speaker 2: thought that that would come up. I didn't remember. And yeah,

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Speaker 2: you know, like the food that's talked about. You know,

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Speaker 2: she describes her father hunting deer and bears and buffalo

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Speaker 2: and fish and breaking breaking down the venison. The family

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Speaker 2: raises pigs. Sometimes they have cows for dairy and chickens

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Speaker 2: for eggs and for meat. You know, there's corn and

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Speaker 2: whole wheat and oats and maple sugar and honey if

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Speaker 2: you can get it away from a bear. You know,

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Speaker 2: there's all kinds of wild berries and a gardenless squash

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Speaker 2: and carrots and cabbages, potatoes, beets. They go gathering for

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Speaker 2: walnuts and hazelnuts in the woods. On special occasions, like

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Speaker 2: when company comes, they might put store sugar out on

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Speaker 2: the table for your tea, or gets store bought candy,

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Speaker 2: like like pretty sticks made of pulled sugar, and wants

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Speaker 2: a candy heart that was too pretty to ever eat.

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Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, I saw people. I came up in a

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Speaker 1: lot of examples looking this up.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they make baked goods of all kinds. There's bread

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Speaker 2: and pies, sweet and savory pies. Vanity cakes come up

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Speaker 2: in the first book, which are like an egg and

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Speaker 2: flour dough deep fried and lard until they ballooned out

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Speaker 2: into a sort of crunchy puff, sort of like an

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Speaker 2: unsweetened doughnut. One time, she describes making a rhubarb pie

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Speaker 2: and forgetting to put in the sugar. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes,

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Speaker 2: I think in the interview I mistakenly said that she

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Speaker 2: put in salt instead of sugar. I think she just

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Speaker 2: forgot to put in the sugar. Anyway, It's been more

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Speaker 2: than twenty years since I've read that book, and I

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Speaker 2: it is stuck in my brain, like that.

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Speaker 5: Is just yeah, it's so weird.

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Speaker 1: I do that too. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know

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Speaker 1: why I was so convinced of this, and it still

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Speaker 1: trips me up. Yeah, but that's what it is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And Okay, I wanted to read a couple passages

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Speaker 2: just you know, for anyone who like Annie, you know,

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Speaker 2: might not have any experience with the actual verbiage from

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Speaker 2: the books. And so the first one, the first one

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Speaker 2: is about it's from the first book from from Little

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Speaker 2: House in the Big Woods, and they slaughter their yearly pig.

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Speaker 2: And this is a detail that is stuck in everyone's mind,

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Speaker 2: and so okay, here we go. Paul was blowing up

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Speaker 2: the bladder. It made a little white balloon, and he

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Speaker 2: tied the end tight with a string and gave it

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Speaker 2: to Mary and Laura to play with. They could throw

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Speaker 2: it into the air and spat it back and forth

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Speaker 2: with their hands, or it would bounce along the ground

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Speaker 2: and they could kick it. But even better fun than

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Speaker 2: a balloon was the pig's tail. Pa skinned it for

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Speaker 2: them carefully, and into the large end he thrust a

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Speaker 2: sharpened stick. Ma opened the front of the cookstove and

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Speaker 2: raked hot coals out into the iron heart. Then Mary

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Speaker 2: and Laura took turn holding the pig's tail over the coals.

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Speaker 2: It sizzled and fried, and drops of fat dripped off

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Speaker 2: it and blazed on the coals. Mos sprinkled it with salt.

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Speaker 2: Their hands and their faces got very hot, and Laura

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Speaker 2: burned her finger, but she was so excited she did

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Speaker 2: not care. A roasting the pig's tail was such fun

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Speaker 2: that it was hard to play fair. Taking turns at

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Speaker 2: last it was done. It was nicely browned all over,

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Speaker 2: and how good it smelled. They carried it into the

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Speaker 2: yard to cool it, and even before it was cool enough,

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Speaker 2: they began tasting it and burned their tongues. They ate

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Speaker 2: every little bit of meat off the bones, and then

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Speaker 2: they gave the bones to Jack and that was the

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Speaker 2: end of the pig's tail. There would not be another

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Speaker 2: one until next year.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 1: I mean it does sound good.

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Speaker 2: It's heck evocatives. It's yeah, like, it's just really good writing.

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Speaker 2: Jack is their little bulldog. Yeah, anyway, Yeah, and just

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Speaker 2: write like like that the description of that bladder balloon

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Speaker 2: and that most succulent, amazing pigs tail.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And then in case you guys aren't excited about pigstails

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Speaker 2: and bladder balloons, I wanted to give you one more example.

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Speaker 2: This is like maybe the most uh one of the

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Speaker 2: more like like luscious descriptions of foods that you get

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Speaker 2: from Laura growing up. And this is during a town

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Speaker 2: Thanksgiving where a whole like like one of the ladies

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Speaker 2: societies has has brought in this big feast for the

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Speaker 2: whole town, and so okay, in the very center of

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Speaker 2: one table, a pig was standing, roasted brown and holding

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Speaker 2: in its mouth a beautiful red apple. In all their lives,

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Speaker 2: Laura and Carrie had never seen so much food. Those

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Speaker 2: tables were loaded. There were heaped dishes of mashed potatoes,

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Speaker 2: and of mash turnips, and of mashed yellow squash, all

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Speaker 2: dribbling melted butter down their sides from little hollows in

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Speaker 2: their peaks. And there were large bowls of dried corn,

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Speaker 2: soaked soft again and cooked with cream. There were plates

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Speaker 2: piled high with golden squares of corn bread, and slices

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Speaker 2: of white bread, and of brown, nutty tasting gram bread.

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Speaker 2: There were cucumber pickles and beet pickles, and green tomato pickles,

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Speaker 2: and glass bowls on tall glass stems were full of

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Speaker 2: red tomato preserves and wild choke cherry jelly. On each

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Speaker 2: table was a long, wide, deep pan of chicken pie,

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Speaker 2: with steam rising through the slits in its flaky crust.

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Speaker 2: Most marvelous of all was the pig. It stood so lifelike,

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Speaker 2: propped up by short sticks above a great pan filled

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Speaker 2: with baked apples. It smelled so good, Better than any

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Speaker 2: smell of any other food, was that rich, oily brown

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Speaker 2: smell of roasted pork that Laura had not smelled for

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Speaker 2: so long.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I love a good feast description.

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Speaker 3: Right, oh my hair.

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Speaker 2: And right. And it's so weird because like she doesn't

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Speaker 2: even get to eat that feast at that moment. She

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Speaker 2: goes into the kitchen immediately and starts washing dishes, and

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Speaker 2: she's washing dishes for the entire feast because she's being

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Speaker 2: a good and dutiful daughter and helpful child. And like

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Speaker 2: she she gets like like the like the scraps from

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Speaker 2: the bones later and you know, talks about how delicious

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Speaker 2: it is anyway. But yes, threaded through the books, there's

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Speaker 2: this real like pull yourself up by your bootstraps self

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Speaker 2: sufficiency kind of thread that I didn't I certainly as

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Speaker 2: a child was not thinking about the fact that that's

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Speaker 2: like kind of really insidious, right, Yeah, And even as

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Speaker 2: an adult it had not occurred to me.

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Speaker 3: How much.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of propaganda.

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Speaker 6: Mm hmm.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about a little bit in the interview. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: for sure. Well what about.

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Speaker 2: The nutrition donate propaganda? Yes, agreed, I'm on board with that,

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Speaker 2: no matter how lovely it is.

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Speaker 1: We do have some numbers for you.

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Speaker 2: A couple a couple sort of and some like random

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Speaker 2: facts that I didn't fit in anywhere else.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, yes, okay, here's my contribution. They're very popular.

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Speaker 1: They have sold millions of copies and have been translated

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Speaker 1: into over forty languages.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't realize how big they are in other countries.

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Speaker 2: That's very weird to me because they are so American.

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Speaker 3: But okay.

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Speaker 2: There are also spin off book series about Laura's mother

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Speaker 2: and grandmother and daughter. Her diary and a number of

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Speaker 2: her letters have also been published as books. In twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 2: a biography called Prairie Fires, written by Caroline Fraser, won

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Speaker 2: a Pulitzer or it was published that year. I don't

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Speaker 2: know how the Pulitzers work off the top of my head,

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Speaker 2: but in addition to the original TV series, there have

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Speaker 2: been TV movies and mini series, and a stage musical,

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Speaker 2: a documentary, an anime in Japan seventies. Also wanted to

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Speaker 2: throw this in on the side of the TV show.

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Speaker 2: Apparently what the cast was eating was very often fried

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Speaker 2: chicken from KFC.

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Speaker 1: Wow, it feels like some kind of metaphor symbolism or something.

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Speaker 2: There are also like this. It's so the fandom of

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Speaker 2: this is so big and I had no idea. There

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Speaker 2: are museums located around all of the places that she

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Speaker 2: talks about in the books where the family lived, and

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Speaker 2: a couple others. For example, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic

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Speaker 2: Home and Museum is out on Rocky Ridge Farm, which

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Speaker 2: was Wilder's adult home. Like her daughter Rose helped set

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Speaker 2: it up after her mother's death. They have a garden

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Speaker 2: there with heirloom vegetables representative of a late nineteenth early

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Speaker 2: twentieth century home. They They also host a Wilder Days

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Speaker 2: every September, which is like a festival. This year it's

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Speaker 2: going to include their eighth annual fiddle contest. They also

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Speaker 2: have someone come play pause fiddle.

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Speaker 3: Wow. The whole thing.

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Speaker 2: It is a whole thing.

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Speaker 1: It really is.

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Speaker 5: It really is.

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Speaker 1: Now it's the whole thing that as a podcast.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh man.

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Speaker 7: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And like they're they're I mean they're they're not sponsors,

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Speaker 2: they're like like Emily's a friend. Yeah, it's they're just

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Speaker 2: doing a really cool job. And and we've been, or

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Speaker 2: i'd been This might have not been on your radar

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Speaker 2: at all, but but I've been wanting to do a

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Speaker 2: little house episode for a while.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, it's just a good fit.

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Speaker 2: The timing is right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And we are

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Speaker 2: going to get into that interview we keep talking about.

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Speaker 2: But first we are going to take a quick break

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Speaker 2: forward from our sponsors.

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Speaker 1: And we're back. Thank you sponsors. Let us get into

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Speaker 1: our fabulous interview.

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Speaker 2: First of all, Hello, Hi, thank you so much for

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Speaker 2: being here.

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Speaker 5: Thank you for having us. We're so excited.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.

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Speaker 2: And we like to start these things off with a

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Speaker 2: nice easy or hypothetically easy, depending on how you're feeling today.

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Speaker 5: Who are you? Wow, that could get very existential very quickly.

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Speaker 3: I know, right.

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Speaker 5: I'm Glennas McNicol and I am.

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Speaker 7: The host and writer of the Wilder Podcast and also

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Speaker 7: a writer and journalist outside of the Wilder Podcast.

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Speaker 4: And I am Emily Maronov, not usually on Mike, usually

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Speaker 4: behind Mike, producing the podcast.

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Speaker 6: I'm producer and.

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Speaker 4: Co creator of Wilder and yeah and all around, yeah,

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Speaker 4: all around producer currently for iHeart Podcasts.

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Speaker 2: Hello, thank you. It's very succinct, not too existential. So okay, So,

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Speaker 2: so Wilder is a podcast about Laura Ingles Wilder and

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Speaker 2: the Little House phenomenon. Did did you both grow up

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Speaker 2: reading the books or watching the show.

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Speaker 3: A little bit of both.

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Speaker 7: Emily and I are very different ages, I think, maybe

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Speaker 7: a good way to begin this conversation. You're twenty years

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Speaker 7: younger than me, Yeah, twenty seven. Yeah, I'm forty eight,

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Speaker 7: I think. Yeah, so we have very different experiences with

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Speaker 7: Little House. But I actually think that that has, you know,

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Speaker 7: propelled the podcast and a lot of takes on it

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Speaker 7: and a lot of interest in it. When I grew

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Speaker 7: up fully gen X, Little House the TV show was

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Speaker 7: still on in primetime new episodes and was also on

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Speaker 7: in reruns in the afternoon on different channels, so that

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Speaker 7: I could come home from school and watch one episode

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Speaker 7: and Laura would be, you know, like a teenager in

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Speaker 7: love with Almonzo, and then at five o'clock she'd be

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Speaker 7: eight years old and a child, and then you could

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Speaker 7: switch to the primetime one and she'd be a grown.

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Speaker 5: Up with a kid. It was just like it was

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Speaker 5: just she was everywhere.

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Speaker 7: And I was a very and continue to be so

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Speaker 7: voracious reader as a kid, So I also had all

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Speaker 7: of the books. But it's very hard for me to

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Speaker 7: separate what I came to first, because they were both

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Speaker 7: so present, omnipresent.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, is very true of a lot of people

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Speaker 5: my age.

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Speaker 7: That's like a very Not everybody was as devoted to

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Speaker 7: the books, but Little House was very present, whether you

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Speaker 7: liked it or not. I think most people have some

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Speaker 7: impression of it because there was fewer channels, fewer TV

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Speaker 7: sets in the home, and like it just was everywhere.

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Speaker 3: Uh wow. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I'm forty one, so I when I was growing up,

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Speaker 2: the show was already in reruns entirely, so I grew

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Speaker 2: up with the books. I was rereading the first one

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Speaker 2: a little bit just before we came in here, and

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Speaker 2: it's wild to me, no pun intended, how much of

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Speaker 2: it I just remember because I had to have read

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Speaker 2: them dozens of times.

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Speaker 7: Were you surprised at how much of the first book

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Speaker 7: is like animals being slaughtered and eaten?

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 5: A little bit, Yeah, a little bit.

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Speaker 2: I did love the food parts the best. I've always

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Speaker 2: been a little bit obsessed with food, so I was like, oh, cool, yeah,

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Speaker 2: tell me about that. I know about the pigs bladder.

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Speaker 2: Is the tail really the tastiest part?

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 7: I make fun of on this podcast for bringing up

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Speaker 7: the pigs blatter so much, but I think as a

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Speaker 7: kid it really resonates with You're like a pigs blatter

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Speaker 7: sounds awfully fun to play with, and that pigs tail

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Speaker 7: sounds delicious.

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Speaker 2: Right. Okay, So so Annie meanwhile, has not consumed any

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Speaker 2: of this meeting.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 7: I'm really appreciating the look on your face as we

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Speaker 7: say that, because it seems very normal to me. But yeah,

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Speaker 7: I feel like pigs blatter could be code for did

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Speaker 7: you read Little House or did you not read Little House?

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Speaker 1: I did. I did research before coming in here, but

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Speaker 1: it was It's interesting to me because I'm normally in

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Speaker 1: a lot of these situations. I'm a very fanish person,

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Speaker 1: like I'm the fan one that was like I can

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Speaker 1: tell you what episode this happened in, this happened in.

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Speaker 1: I'm not usually on the side, so it's very interesting.

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Speaker 1: I have friends who are very big fans. But my

440
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:01,399
Speaker 1: only interaction with it research was I just had a

441
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:06,399
Speaker 1: vague image of like a wagon in the prairie and

442
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: that's like it.

443
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:11,199
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I mean that's an over That's where the

444
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 7: books and the TV show overlap, is that's the opening scene,

445
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:17,199
Speaker 7: that's like the credits opening of the every show. And

446
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:20,880
Speaker 7: also that's sort of the emblematic of all the books,

447
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 7: like that iconic covered wagon I think comes from the

448
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 7: Little House. Like our idea of the covered wagon, the

449
00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 7: prairie is very much rooted in Little House.

450
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, Little House and also Oregon Trail. I guess for

451
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 2: me growing up as a kid. But Emily, you you

452
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 2: grew up watching the show, right, I did that.

453
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:41,719
Speaker 6: Yeah. I came to that first.

454
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 4: I was a big like Hallmark TV land Nick at

455
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 4: Night kid, so I was already watching a lot of

456
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 4: seventies TV. And then I don't know who introduced it

457
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 4: to who, but my friend and I became obsessed with

458
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 4: the TV show, the Little House TV show and just

459
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 4: got all of the DVD box sets and I actually

460
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 4: remember it being really dramatic of like convincing my dad

461
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 4: to get me the first box set and it was

462
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 4: like fourteen dollars.

463
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,120
Speaker 6: It was expensive at like best Buy or something.

464
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 4: And I like don't know if I threw a lot

465
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 4: of fits as a kid, but I think I did

466
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 4: throw a fit about that, and I was like, just

467
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 4: like I want it, yeah, And I just watched that constantly,

468
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:21,239
Speaker 4: and my friend and I would like play in our

469
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,359
Speaker 4: backyard pretend to be pioneers, would want a forage for

470
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 4: food and all this stuff, and then I think I

471
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 4: did read the books after that, but kind of opposite

472
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 4: to you, Lauren, I like that was so different from

473
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 4: the TV show that I was also maybe a little

474
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:38,160
Speaker 4: bit too old at that point, and like I wasn't

475
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 4: really ready for it yet, but I did and I

476
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 4: brought it somehow got my hands on the Little House

477
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:46,879
Speaker 4: Cookbook as a as a kid while I was a

478
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 4: fan of the TV show, And that's one of my

479
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 4: main memories of being a Little House fan growing up,

480
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 4: is like then reading these recipes and being like, Mom,

481
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 4: what's lard?

482
00:27:56,880 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 6: Can we get lard? And can we like and can

483
00:27:59,359 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 6: we make some?

484
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:05,040
Speaker 4: But now for this podcast, I've obviously reread all of

485
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 4: the books, and I mean, yeah, the food is still

486
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 4: my favorite part.

487
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 7: Unsurprisingly, I feel like I have to do a full

488
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:14,639
Speaker 7: disclosure right now and tell you guys, the food is

489
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 7: the part of the books I cared about least. And

490
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 7: a running joke of this podcast is we interview so

491
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 7: many people who who took like this love of making

492
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 7: things and there's sort of survivalist skills and it came

493
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 7: out during the pandemic and I was like, I live

494
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 7: in a studio in New York, and I've never turned

495
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:37,400
Speaker 7: my oven on, So.

496
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 5: Whatever was that appealed at the Little House books?

497
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 7: To me, I liked reading about the food, but it

498
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 7: never translated into I want to make the food for

499
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 7: whatever reason. I was much more like I want to

500
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 7: run around the prairie on a horse and see some wolves. So,

501
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 7: but it's fascinating to me how going back to read it,

502
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 7: how she's sort of like an original food blogger almost

503
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:07,479
Speaker 7: like she's so good at writing food.

504
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 5: It's kind of amazing.

505
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, and the detail that she puts into it,

506
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 2: and how clear and present from because she was writing

507
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 2: these when she was in her what late fifties, early sixties.

508
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 5: Mid sixties, since she was sixty five.

509
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 2: The first when the first book came out, and yeah,

510
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 2: and so she was recalling these details from childhood. That's

511
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 2: I think to when we're talking about her writing of food.

512
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 2: The first book came out in nineteen thirty two, at

513
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:40,640
Speaker 2: the at the beginning of the depression. It wasn't quite

514
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 2: the height of the depression, but the depression was in

515
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:46,800
Speaker 2: full swing, and she was writing about her childhood in

516
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 2: the eighteen seventies, which I don't know that we learn

517
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 2: about it in these terms anymore. But that was sort

518
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 2: of the first great depression. There was a huge depression

519
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 2: in the eighteen seventies. So she's writing about a childhood

520
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 2: of real deprivation and poverty at a time when the

521
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:04,960
Speaker 2: country is also experiencing it in the depression.

522
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 5: And I think.

523
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 7: The degree of the vividness that she puts into the

524
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 7: descriptions of food almost feel like she's feeding her childhood

525
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 7: self at a time when so many people are starving,

526
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,840
Speaker 7: and that this is offering sort of some strange I

527
00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 7: don't know if food porn is quite the right description,

528
00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 7: but this like she's providing people with a sustenance that

529
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 7: they don't have access to in real life, while also

530
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 7: providing her childhood self with this bounty that was not

531
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 7: available to her as a kid. So there's a like

532
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 7: the bracketing of those two things. Once you understand the

533
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 7: time line of when the books are written is really intense, I.

534
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 3: Think, yeah.

535
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:52,920
Speaker 2: And I mean the food that she's writing about is

536
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 2: often very much not fancy. I mean, it's not some

537
00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 2: of the other properties that we've talked about an episode

538
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 2: and in fictional foods, episodes are like Game of Thrones

539
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 2: or you know something like that where you have these

540
00:31:04,680 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 2: lavish feasts and there's like pages and pages devoted to

541
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 2: talking about all of the fanciest ices and whatever it is,

542
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:16,760
Speaker 2: and pineapples everywhere, and this is like for Christmas, we

543
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 2: each got one stick of candy. Holy crap, it was

544
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 2: the best thing that ever happened to us.

545
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 4: And you believe it like that was that was truly

546
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 4: the highlight of their year. And she never forgot it,

547
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 4: and she wanted to give that to her readers too,

548
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:30,120
Speaker 4: which is yeah.

549
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 7: Yeah, But you know, she talks in one of the

550
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 7: books about getting oranges, right, they each had an orange,

551
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:37,479
Speaker 7: or she went to that party and she had a

552
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 7: slice of orange, and the way she describes that, she

553
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 7: could have been describing sort of a Game of Thrones feast.

554
00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:46,880
Speaker 7: And I remember my grandmother, who grew up during the Depression,

555
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 7: saying when I was a child, getting an orange was

556
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 7: such a big deal because of course they are not native.

557
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 7: I grew up in Canada and you didn't have you know,

558
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 7: fruit was not transported the same way. So it rings

559
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 7: true in that sense of if you've never had an orange,

560
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 7: you had no access to sugar whatsoever. And you got

561
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 7: that one stick of sugar that mister Edwards swam across

562
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 7: the Vertigrius River and you know, Indian territory, or you

563
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 7: had one orange that would probably stand out in your

564
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 7: memory the same way that my going to like a

565
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 7: ten course feast might or I'm not even sure that

566
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 7: would stand out in my memory to degree like sugar

567
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 7: would have for her.

568
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's very strange. Like we talk, we wind

569
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 2: up talking on the show a lot about sugar because

570
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 2: it impacted so many so much of colonization and just

571
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 2: everything else that was going on in the world from

572
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 2: the time that the American colonies were started up through

573
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 2: I mean easily the beginning of the nineteen hundreds, I

574
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 2: mean easily the time that that Laura was alive. And

575
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 2: we talk a lot about this time period, like the

576
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 2: eighteen seventies the eighteen nineties, being a time when sugar

577
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 2: was becoming very much more ubiquitous, like like or very

578
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 2: much more like something that like any old anybody could afford.

579
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 5: But it's so not true for them.

580
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 7: It's even as you say that, I can think of

581
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 7: the moments in the book where she gets sugar in

582
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 7: Little House in the Big Woods, when they go to

583
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 7: the store and they each get the little sugar candies,

584
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 7: but she's jealous of the one Mary gets. And at

585
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 7: Christmas where they get something wrapped up in a little ball,

586
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 7: or the little house in the Prairie, the book where

587
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 7: they get you know, the Christmas candy or paw eats

588
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 7: the Christmas candies survive snow bank, like.

589
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 2: He's starving in a snow bank and she doesn't mind

590
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:42,239
Speaker 2: that he ate it because he would have starved, right,

591
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 2: but he still apologizes like it's like the worst thing

592
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 2: that could have possibly, like.

593
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 7: The oyster crackers too, they had oyster crackers, And she's

594
00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 7: so good at imparting the significance of everything that they have,

595
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 7: and like the attitude for even the smallest things that

596
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 7: as a kid, you're just like this sounds like the

597
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 7: I don't know what an oyster cracker is, but I

598
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 7: bet it's delicious. Or in the long winter when the

599
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 7: turkey barrel comes in and you're like, oh my.

600
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 5: God, they got a whole turkey.

601
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:18,719
Speaker 7: And meanwhile, as a kid, you're probably reading this with

602
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 7: like a plate of chips, ahoy cookie, glass of milk,

603
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:24,399
Speaker 7: your peanut butter and jam sandwich. You like, you know,

604
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 7: crap dinner and like four other meals you had that day.

605
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's oh my goodness.

606
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 2: Well okay, so you guys, is part of your research

607
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 2: and experience for this podcast. You went to a bunch

608
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 2: of the locations that she was writing about in the books.

609
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, obviously the world has changed

610
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:48,880
Speaker 2: a great deal in the past one hundred plus years

611
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:50,960
Speaker 2: that that part of the country has changed a lot,

612
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:52,879
Speaker 2: or has it, Like, like, how much of a sense

613
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:55,399
Speaker 2: of place did you get from from going to there.

614
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 7: Well, all of the houses that she writes about in

615
00:34:59,920 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 7: the book, they're not standing, but they have been either

616
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 7: reconstructed or turned into museum sites. So you actually can

617
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 7: drive around to each of the little houses and many

618
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 7: of them have artifacts, actual artifacts from the books, and

619
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 7: they hold pageants in the summer, which is what we toured,

620
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 7: and a lot of people do this. I've been to

621
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 7: them more than once. This is Emily's first impressions there.

622
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:28,720
Speaker 7: But like a lot of these places in the country,

623
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 7: it doesn't feel like they've changed hardly at all. They

624
00:35:32,080 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 7: are all three to four hours away from an airport

625
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 7: by car. The population if you look up what the

626
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 7: population when Laura lived there. It's you know, similar to

627
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 7: what the population is today. They're very, very small. The

628
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:50,880
Speaker 7: landscape is not identical to what she describes. You know,

629
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 7: environmental factors have a lot to do with that, but

630
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 7: there's a similar sort of remoteness to it. And so

631
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 7: when you're in sort of desmet South dakotahich is where

632
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 7: the last four books take place, you can walk down

633
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:05,240
Speaker 7: that main street and really feel like you are walking

634
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,239
Speaker 7: in a chapter of her book, which increases sort of

635
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 7: the intensity and the veracity of some of the experiences

636
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:18,720
Speaker 7: is like it doesn't feel that far removed, which is strange.

637
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 5: But a lot of the middle of the country. You know,

638
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 5: this is a huge country.

639
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 7: America is enormous, and I sometimes that sounds funny to say,

640
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:26,719
Speaker 7: but I'm not.

641
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 5: Sure people fully grasp how big America is.

642
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 7: And so you try and drive across it and you're

643
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 7: just like, yeah, oh my god, we've been living on

644
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 7: gas station food seven hours.

645
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, well right, and and yeah that the

646
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 2: sheer luxury of when you live in a city like

647
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 2: New York. You guys are in New York, where in Atlanta,

648
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 2: of having a grocery store once every three miles, you know,

649
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:50,720
Speaker 2: at the most, at.

650
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 7: The most stores downstairs within one block of my apartment.

651
00:36:57,480 --> 00:36:59,880
Speaker 5: Really, I mean I'm literally.

652
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 7: Upstairs from Trader Joe's, Faraway, Cinderella, and a Key Foods

653
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 7: that's always in a one block radius of my apartment,

654
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:10,319
Speaker 7: So it's very But I also think it's access to

655
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:11,840
Speaker 7: I think a lot of times, when you're in the

656
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 7: middle of the country, your best source of fruits and

657
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 7: vegetables is Walmart. And a lot of the conversations we

658
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 7: have in urban centers around you know, the proliferation of

659
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 7: Walmart's and whether or not that it's problematic and unionization

660
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 7: sometimes loses sight of that being a source of the

661
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 7: reality sure food that you wouldn't otherwise have access to,

662
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 7: Like that might be the only place you're getting avocados,

663
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:37,320
Speaker 7: and that might be the only place you're getting fresh fruit,

664
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 7: and both of those things are true at the same time.

665
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 5: Sorry, but Emily, what was your first impression with No I.

666
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 4: Mean, yeah, all of that, I mean, and we talk

667
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 4: about that so much. I think the biggest thing was, Yeah,

668
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:50,799
Speaker 4: the thing that you mentioned that, Yeah, the towns are

669
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:54,839
Speaker 4: almost always the same close to the same population as

670
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:55,799
Speaker 4: when Laura lived there.

671
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 6: Some of them even less.

672
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 4: Burroke, Iowa, which is not in the books but is

673
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 4: a huge chapter of Laura's life that she left out

674
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 4: of the books, isn't even a city anymore. It's it's

675
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 4: like an in what was the word that.

676
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 7: They used to think it's I think it's just incorporated.

677
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 7: And what's fascinating some of these places that, like Burr Oak,

678
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 7: they it was more thriving in Laura's time than now.

679
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 7: They thought the railway depots were coming that way, they

680
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 7: thought trade was coming through there, and then it just

681
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:26,839
Speaker 7: got rerouted a slight distance away and the town has

682
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 7: sort of disappeared. Or when the Interstate, I mean, we

683
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:32,160
Speaker 7: know that on Root sixty six in the South, like

684
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 7: when the Interstate went through and took traffic off of

685
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 7: Root sixty six, which had initially been linking all the

686
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 7: main streets through America together, all of those small towns died.

687
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 7: So it can be intense to be in places that

688
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 7: were far more thriving and diverse in some cases then

689
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:52,399
Speaker 7: than they are now.

690
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I And I think the main difference from

691
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 4: when she lived there is that now the people who

692
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 4: live there know how powerful the draw Laura Ingles Wilder

693
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 4: is like when she was alive, obviously this was just like,

694
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 4: oh Laura went and later in her life, now she's

695
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 4: writing about all of us.

696
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 6: Now people know what our town is.

697
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 4: But it is like the americanness of being able to

698
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 4: capitalize on this icon. And that's really the only reason

699
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 4: all these tourists, Like these towns might still exist because

700
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:23,800
Speaker 4: of farmland or because of other industries, but Laura really

701
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 4: is the main industry of all of these towns, and

702
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 4: everyone kind of knows.

703
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:29,239
Speaker 6: Each other because of it.

704
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 4: It really was when we were prepping to go on

705
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:33,920
Speaker 4: the road trip and finding contacts in all of these

706
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 4: small towns, sometimes they were very hard to find, and

707
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:39,320
Speaker 4: I'm like Producer freaking out of like we're not ready,

708
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 4: We're not ready, like we don't know who we're going

709
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 4: to talk to, and Glennas is like, it's fine, we

710
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:45,400
Speaker 4: meet one person, we'll meet the entire town. They'll just

711
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 4: walk us and sure enough, and sure enough we met

712
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 4: Anne Leash, who we love, who runs the Ingles Homestead.

713
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 4: Into Smet, South Dakota connected us to pretty much every

714
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 4: single person we needed to know and more. Into Smet

715
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 4: like walked us into a retirement home, sat us down

716
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 4: with a woman who like constructed all of the oral

717
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 4: histories about the Ingles family with people who actually knew them,

718
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 4: and that it was those moments were really magical, and

719
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 4: that is I am from LA and I now live

720
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 4: in New York. I am definition of just a coastal person.

721
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,239
Speaker 4: And this one was actually my first time driving through

722
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 4: the Midwest and I really really loved it, and just

723
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 4: having those experiences were yeah, really wonderful.

724
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:35,880
Speaker 2: Uh you you mentioned you mentioned gas station food. I

725
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,520
Speaker 2: hope that you got some other things than gas station

726
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 2: food at some points in your journey. Did you get

727
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 2: any like regional specialties, Like was anyone like, oh man,

728
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:46,360
Speaker 2: you have to go to this diner and get the

729
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 2: pie like it. Were there any moments like that on

730
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 2: the road or was it more like, oh, heck, let

731
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:52,839
Speaker 2: me eat a cheese sandwich and keep going, Like what

732
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 2: was the most boasts?

733
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 5: I think it was.

734
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 7: I've done enough road trips to know to go to

735
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 7: Walmart and pick up the baby care bags and the

736
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 7: you know, apples and whatever it is that you might

737
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 7: want because you might not see fruit or vegetables again

738
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 7: for a while, or like you get super excited if

739
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:10,320
Speaker 7: you spot a cracker barrel.

740
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

741
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 7: But also, I mean there are food deserts in the

742
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 7: Midwest without question, but there's also you know, when we

743
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 7: were in here on South Dakota, there's this place called

744
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 7: the Primetime Tavern, which serves you like I've been dreaming.

745
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 7: It's like you get a slide of prime rib with

746
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 7: a baked potato with sour cream and a wedge of

747
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 7: iceberg lettuce and it's so with ranch dressing and it's

748
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,120
Speaker 7: like the only thing they serve and it's so good.

749
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 7: And some of the little coffee shops would have homemade pie.

750
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 7: And you know, with con when we were in Wisconsin,

751
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:48,600
Speaker 7: we ate really well, like it's a hit and miss

752
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:54,760
Speaker 7: sort of thing. And I think it's just this sounds

753
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 7: it's hard to talk about traveling around the middle of

754
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 7: the country. That's sort of sometimes veering into sort of

755
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:01,560
Speaker 7: Norman Rockwell territory. But a lot of it is like

756
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 7: generosity when you meet people. And when we were driving

757
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 7: was it from bur Oak to Mankato when we was

758
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 7: made through Minnesota and we stopped and they're like, oh,

759
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:12,400
Speaker 7: I've just I went in to get a coffee and

760
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 7: they're like, oh, we've just pulled out this tray of

761
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:17,960
Speaker 7: fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, or like the people had

762
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 7: brought their eggs in from the farm. And then at

763
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 7: the same time, you go three hours and you're like,

764
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 7: I cannot eat another bag of cheese. It's or I

765
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 7: literally am going to die. But that's the best thing

766
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 7: they have at this gas station. So like it's a

767
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 7: real hit. And miss I will also say that there's

768
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 7: weird quiss, not weird weird it's the wrong word. But

769
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 7: there's cuisine that you would not expect to find in

770
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 7: certain places, like there's we had really great sushi and

771
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:47,280
Speaker 7: shared in Wyoming, you know, and it's and it's funny

772
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 7: to go into places like that sometimes because it'll be

773
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:53,240
Speaker 7: it's a sushi restaurant set up, and like everyone walks

774
00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:55,399
Speaker 7: in in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and they're

775
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 7: also thrilled to have access to sushi, so you know,

776
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 7: those sorts of pockets. I had been in a lot

777
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 7: of these places before them. I made Emily. We were

778
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:07,720
Speaker 7: doing an interview and I go, we have ten minutes

779
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 7: if we want sushi, because it's an hour and a

780
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 7: half to get to the sushi and it's closing at

781
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:12,760
Speaker 7: six and I want some sushi.

782
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 5: I was like, speed up, the speed it up.

783
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 4: That that was the same energy for the primetime Tavern,

784
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 4: which glenns was speaking about for months before.

785
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 6: We actually went on the road. So like all of.

786
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 4: It was leading up to that, to the primetime tavern.

787
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 4: And here on South Dakota and there were two we

788
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:31,279
Speaker 4: were there into smet for two nights.

789
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 6: There were pageants both nights.

790
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:34,960
Speaker 4: We got everything we needed the first night, so that

791
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,439
Speaker 4: the second night we went and we went we said

792
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:39,480
Speaker 4: goodbye to the pageant directors and we're like, we're so

793
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 4: sorry we have to leave the Primetime Tavern closes, and

794
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:45,799
Speaker 4: they said, oh, no, you have to go go.

795
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:47,919
Speaker 5: Out there too.

796
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 7: I think we think driving, you know, you drive twenty

797
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 7: minutes to dinner or whatever, even just in the suburbs,

798
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:54,839
Speaker 7: and when you're in that part of the country, it's

799
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:56,919
Speaker 7: not unusual to drive an hour to dinner, like that's

800
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 7: just a normal thing. But yeah, where was there was

801
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 7: I'm trying to think of. We had some really good

802
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:05,359
Speaker 7: molkshakes too. I mean, of course we had really good

803
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 7: breakfast in Pepin, Wisconsin. But Pepin, Wisconsin is right in

804
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 7: little house in the big Woods. When they're on Lake Pepin.

805
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 7: Lake Pepin is actually I don't know if the right

806
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:17,359
Speaker 7: term is it's actually part of the Mississippi tributary. It's

807
00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:20,680
Speaker 7: like an estuary maybe, like it's actually just the Mississippi

808
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 7: that's widened, so it's not actually a lake. And a

809
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 7: lot of people from Minneapolis Saint Paul have their cottages

810
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 7: there now, so when you go there. We went to

811
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 7: a great winery there, but you don't feel like you're

812
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 7: in the middle of the country in Wisconsin, whereas when

813
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 7: you're in Wannack Grover when you go west of just

814
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 7: smet like when you hit Waldrug. But Waldrug has great

815
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:42,280
Speaker 7: pancakes for breakfast.

816
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,840
Speaker 4: So Waldrug was well. I feel like Waldrug is worth mentioning.

817
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:45,720
Speaker 5: That was a highlight.

818
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:48,759
Speaker 4: I also think that was the start of like Bisenberger territory.

819
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:50,399
Speaker 4: I think that's what I ate in the wal Drug.

820
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 7: I don't know if you guys are like when you

821
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 7: my perception of the West is if you're doing that

822
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:59,239
Speaker 7: northern route, you are in eastern South Dakota and it

823
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 7: still feels like the Midwest and farming, and then you

824
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 7: cross the Missouri River and you hit Buffalo grassland into

825
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 7: and that's when you start feeling like you're in the west,

826
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 7: like there's a really clear divide that once you cross,

827
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 7: you feel like you've switched to the West.

828
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:18,239
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's like flat and no trees and right,

829
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:19,240
Speaker 2: and it's just that.

830
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 7: There's a wildness to it that's so beautiful and the

831
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:25,879
Speaker 7: farming sort of disappears. And then you hit Waldrug, which

832
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:30,240
Speaker 7: is right by the bad Lands, the bad Lands National Park.

833
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 5: Have you guys been to Waldrug? No, it's this very Americana.

834
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 7: They have literally hand painted posters for hundreds of miles

835
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 7: that are like glasses of water five cents and if

836
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 7: you're if you're part of the military, you drink coffee

837
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 7: for free. And they are so persistent that by the

838
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,600
Speaker 7: time you get to Waldrug, there's no chance you're not

839
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 7: stopping because.

840
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:53,839
Speaker 5: You're like, what is this place? Waldrug?

841
00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:59,319
Speaker 7: And it started because people driving across when vehicles first

842
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 7: came around, even before that, they would just literally the

843
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:05,760
Speaker 7: pharmacists that lived there started offering free water to people

844
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 7: on the road, and then they started pulling off and

845
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:10,399
Speaker 7: they started selling them something. And that's where wal Drug

846
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 7: comes from. And they have it's like this crazy Americana,

847
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:17,440
Speaker 7: like Warren of stores. And also they have wonderful breakfasts.

848
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:19,800
Speaker 7: It's it's what do we have for breakfast?

849
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 4: I don't think we we didn't actually have breakfast there.

850
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:24,279
Speaker 4: We had we had a lunch there. Oh yeah, because

851
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 4: I had I had a burger because we were in

852
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 4: the middle. We went to a rapid city that night, and.

853
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 7: We went to rapid city is very glamorous too, some

854
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,240
Speaker 7: of those very western places that hot all the railroad

855
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 7: money in the turn of the century.

856
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 5: We went to this very sheet hotel with this like roofed.

857
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:39,239
Speaker 7: We'd just gotten off eight hours on the road of

858
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 7: gas station food and Beisenberger's.

859
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 5: And I was like, can I please have a martini?

860
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 2: It is funny have something in like a really awkwardly

861
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 2: shaped glass, just like scream civilization. You're like, oh man,

862
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 2: I finally feel like a human again.

863
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 1: Thank you like it.

864
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:56,359
Speaker 5: It's so funny too.

865
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 7: And then bartender is like absolutely, and I'm like, okay, okay,

866
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 7: thank you.

867
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,840
Speaker 1: We do have some more of our interview, but first

868
00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:13,320
Speaker 1: we have one more group break for word from our sponsor.

869
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:27,719
Speaker 2: And we're back. Thank you sponsors, and back to the interview.

870
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 2: I wonder I don't expect either of you to know

871
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 2: the answer to this question, but I'm just sort of

872
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 2: musing aloud, like I like, I wonder how many food

873
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 2: ways that you know are from that colonial period have

874
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:42,640
Speaker 2: stuck around, Like how many? How many foods and dishes?

875
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:44,920
Speaker 2: And I mean they probably weren't making burgers out of

876
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 2: bison back then, but right like, like how many how

877
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 2: many of those plants and animals are still staples?

878
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 7: I I don't know, And part of me thinks some

879
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 7: I mean not this maybe is obvious, but like so

880
00:47:57,960 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 7: much of that is like just what did you have

881
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 7: access to? And now we have access to so much

882
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 7: more that when I noticed that it's the baked goods,

883
00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 7: right like, it's it's the pies and the pastries and

884
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 7: the cookies more than the prime rib.

885
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 5: Like you're really in meat. You're in like steak and meatland.

886
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:24,200
Speaker 7: But it's much different, I think, in that part of

887
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:26,719
Speaker 7: the country than when you do the southern route and

888
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 7: you start getting down south into more southern cooking, where

889
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:34,440
Speaker 7: I think the history of culinary is much more obvious

890
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 7: than when you're in the Midwest, because how would you

891
00:48:38,719 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 7: I mean, I guess it's just once you get out

892
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 7: into Wyoming and Montana, there's a lot more beef.

893
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 3: H oh.

894
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, it might be obvious, but dairy definitely was not.

895
00:48:50,120 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 4: Well again, I live in Brooklyn, which is the land

896
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:56,360
Speaker 4: of oat milk. Now, the default, the default latte is

897
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 4: oat milk, and you could not get that at a

898
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 4: lot of the places I went unless you were in

899
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 4: like more of a little college town and similar to

900
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 4: what I think. It was the same place where we

901
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:09,760
Speaker 4: stopped in and they brought us the tray of homemade cookies.

902
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 4: I got a coffee and asked for milk. I had

903
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,040
Speaker 4: learned then not to ask for alternative milk. I was like,

904
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:17,680
Speaker 4: I know, I know, I'm getting regular milk. But it

905
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:20,759
Speaker 4: wasn't just whole milk. It was like in a jar

906
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,720
Speaker 4: like this, and I'm holding up like a glass canister

907
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:26,239
Speaker 4: that looks like it could be in Laura's house. And

908
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:30,280
Speaker 4: it was like the thickest, like foamy thing of cream,

909
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:32,280
Speaker 4: as if it had just come out of the cow.

910
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,760
Speaker 4: And I was like, I am in the middle of Minnesota,

911
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 4: like there is not another town for a long while,

912
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 4: and I like, I did I am, Hey, I'm Jewish,

913
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 4: I'm lactose intolerant. I brought I did prepare for I

914
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 4: brought a lot of lactate on the trip and got

915
00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:47,879
Speaker 4: made fun of for it.

916
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:48,759
Speaker 5: So I don't remember me.

917
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 7: Maybe that was Joe, but I do think you know,

918
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 7: you find you know that you're in a college town,

919
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:57,759
Speaker 7: or you know you're in a place where someone has

920
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,560
Speaker 7: either gone to college in a big city, come home

921
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 7: and opened something up, or has like returned moved there.

922
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:07,799
Speaker 7: Where you walk into a coffee shop and they're like, oh,

923
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 7: look they have almond milk, or oh look they have

924
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 7: like two different types of milk. There's signifiers like that

925
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,880
Speaker 7: where you're like someone has gone and come back, or

926
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 7: someone has left, like been priced out of a city

927
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 7: and brought some of these things we associate with more

928
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 7: options here. And I think I noticed that more than

929
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 7: any sort of in that part of the country, than

930
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:34,720
Speaker 7: any sort of cooking that feels native to the history

931
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:37,759
Speaker 7: of that part of the country. Is this more like

932
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 7: a migration of while there's a little hashtag brand Brooklyn,

933
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 7: like that sense of whether that applies like Nashville and

934
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 7: Atlanta and Portland, all these places you find these little

935
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 7: like pockets and you're like, oh, I can sense it's

936
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 7: almost like a new type of emigration or immigration where

937
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 7: you're sensing like a movement has happened that has dropped

938
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 7: this into this cop fee shop, some milk options for

939
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 7: my coffee, or you can get an ice coffee, or

940
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 7: they have simple syrup. Like it's these very small things

941
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 7: that sort of stand out to you when you're on

942
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 7: the road in those parts of the country. And that's

943
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 7: very interesting to me because I think, as we all know,

944
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 7: housing prices are pushing people out of urban centers and

945
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 7: COVID at the same time too. I mean, this road

946
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 7: trip was done last summer, so this is the first

947
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 7: time a lot of people have been back out on

948
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:29,840
Speaker 7: the road since COVID, So that to me is interesting

949
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 7: of what signifies city living, moving returning, or moving or arriving.

950
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I mean, you know, the Laura's stories

951
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:44,320
Speaker 2: are all about migration anyway, you know, like like starting

952
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 2: in a home place where what like like Ma's family

953
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 2: was near little house in the big woods, and then

954
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:54,759
Speaker 2: just being like, well, there's too many people here now,

955
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 2: so we need to move, we need to go find

956
00:51:57,680 --> 00:51:59,040
Speaker 2: better resources.

957
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 7: Well, well, you know one of the things we talk

958
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 7: about is did they have to do that or.

959
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:07,320
Speaker 5: Was palm man? Because I think a grown up reading

960
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 5: of this.

961
00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:09,799
Speaker 7: Book after quite a lot of therapy leads you to

962
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,440
Speaker 7: a lot of people, not just us, but so many

963
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:14,720
Speaker 7: people were like, Yeah. When I reread this as an adult,

964
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 7: I was like, what is wrong with paw? And I

965
00:52:17,680 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 7: think that's a real question because but her book is

966
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 7: a lot about migration. And someone pointed out to us

967
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:26,680
Speaker 7: that even though sort of the sense of the book

968
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,359
Speaker 7: is that sort of movement west and manifest destiny, in

969
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:32,799
Speaker 7: fact the Ingles family travel north and south, there's very

970
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 7: little Western movement. It's up and down. And of course

971
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:39,319
Speaker 7: when they went down the first time, it was to

972
00:52:39,680 --> 00:52:43,280
Speaker 7: what is now Kansas, what is then the Osage Diminished Reserve,

973
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 7: and they were illegally squatting there. So there's a lot

974
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 7: of complicated. All movement in America is complicated, I think,

975
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 7: and fraught when.

976
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 5: You really start to peel back the layers.

977
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 7: But in this book, especially from the beginning, it was

978
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,440
Speaker 7: who gets to go where?

979
00:52:58,760 --> 00:52:59,240
Speaker 5: And why?

980
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 7: What's not being said in this you know, as someone

981
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:04,839
Speaker 7: pointed out, just when you said that land is too

982
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:07,839
Speaker 7: crowded and there's not resource as well, there is some

983
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 7: truth to that. You know, all of the Homestead Act

984
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 7: and everyone who was invited into this land that had

985
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 7: been cleared by the government of Native Americans in brutal

986
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 7: and violent fashion. And then all of these homesteaders were

987
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:25,720
Speaker 7: moved in as a way sort of an occupying force,

988
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 7: right in some ways by the end the railroad, and

989
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:34,840
Speaker 7: they stripped the land bear. And so the extinction of

990
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 7: bison on the plains in such a short period of

991
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 7: time is evidence of a removal of a main food

992
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:44,200
Speaker 7: source of a people who were native to the land,

993
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:47,080
Speaker 7: and subsequently their removal which opened the land up to

994
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:51,919
Speaker 7: occupation and everything that followed. And of course you don't

995
00:53:51,920 --> 00:53:53,680
Speaker 7: get any sense of that in the book. You get

996
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 7: a very you get an echo of it. Someone pointed

997
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 7: out to us in one of the books, Laura talks

998
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 7: about the buffalo the flowers growing in the buffalo wallow,

999
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 7: but of course there's no buffalo there, and there's no

1000
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 7: mention of why there's no buffalo there. So there's that

1001
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:10,800
Speaker 7: is that sense of sort of elegy in the books

1002
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 7: of a lost World, but without any not without grounding

1003
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 7: it in what was lost and why.

1004
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, and you know.

1005
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 5: We've been talking about this NonStop for a year.

1006
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:28,239
Speaker 2: Just no, no, no, no, it's great it's great.

1007
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 6: Keep going.

1008
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 5: Deep end of this for quite some time.

1009
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I think.

1010
00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:38,080
Speaker 4: The only thing I would add to that food wise,

1011
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 4: also is like she Yeah, we talk a lot. We

1012
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 4: have an episode coming up that will talk a lot

1013
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 4: about the environmental history of the region and how because

1014
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 4: of the homesteaders it's all gone. They dug up the

1015
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:53,040
Speaker 4: buffalo grass and that caused, you know, eventually caused the

1016
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:56,359
Speaker 4: dust bowl that Laura was living through while she was

1017
00:54:56,480 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 4: writing these books. So she was definitely memorializing what the

1018
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:03,400
Speaker 4: land looked like before humans had completely manipulated it.

1019
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 6: But also back to food.

1020
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:09,440
Speaker 4: And food and just any household chore, just like their

1021
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:13,960
Speaker 4: way of life like before when Laura, Laura and Almonzo

1022
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:17,520
Speaker 4: and their daughter Rose had moved to Mansfield, Missouri after

1023
00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:20,040
Speaker 4: South Dakota, and that's where they settled for the rest

1024
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:21,239
Speaker 4: of their life, and that's where she.

1025
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 6: Wrote all of the books.

1026
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:26,799
Speaker 4: And her daughter, Rose was was a very famous at

1027
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:30,640
Speaker 4: her time, uh freelance journalist, which is a whole other

1028
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:33,400
Speaker 4: thing that we also have many episodes on. But she

1029
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:35,640
Speaker 4: was the one who convinced Laura to start writing, and

1030
00:55:35,719 --> 00:55:38,759
Speaker 4: originally as a journalist, and she was writing for the

1031
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:43,279
Speaker 4: Missouri ruralist basically articles of just like practical tips for

1032
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 4: housewives and.

1033
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:45,799
Speaker 6: Or for farmwives.

1034
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:49,280
Speaker 4: Sorry, and her and yeah, and it was like product

1035
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:50,760
Speaker 4: are what are these titles?

1036
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 6: We say? Production of eggs?

1037
00:55:52,239 --> 00:55:55,239
Speaker 7: And Laura was an egg farmer and she wrote about

1038
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:57,240
Speaker 7: egg farming. It was so funny because we met someone

1039
00:55:57,280 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 7: in Mansfield who was, like, I was so disappointed to

1040
00:55:59,560 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 7: find out she.

1041
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 5: Farmed white eggs and not brown eggs.

1042
00:56:04,080 --> 00:56:08,320
Speaker 7: And lie, clearly the significance of this was lost on me,

1043
00:56:08,600 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 7: but this was a real The people we were talking

1044
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 7: to who I think maybe were they, And many women

1045
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,080
Speaker 7: we talked to referred to themselves as farm wives, like

1046
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:20,600
Speaker 7: that was that's a term that was relayed to us

1047
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:21,520
Speaker 7: by them.

1048
00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:25,399
Speaker 5: Her sense of disappointment at the type of.

1049
00:56:25,320 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 7: Eggs that Laura raised was palpable, and that to me

1050
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 7: was so interesting, like that Laura's early journalism was very

1051
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:41,400
Speaker 7: servicey and very food oriented, and like the degree of

1052
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:44,240
Speaker 7: responsibility and conservation. You even see that in that first

1053
00:56:44,239 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 7: book where I really think Little House in Big Woods

1054
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:48,720
Speaker 7: could be a survivalist guide if you really got stuck.

1055
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 7: And they described the churning of the butter and but

1056
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:54,759
Speaker 7: then Ma Molding the butter in her pretty mold and

1057
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 7: then taking the care like squeezing the carrot juice out

1058
00:56:58,000 --> 00:56:59,760
Speaker 7: to color the butter so it would.

1059
00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 2: Be yeah, or because butter in the winter is white

1060
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 2: because they're eating hay, not fresh grass, and so it's

1061
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:07,719
Speaker 2: not as pretty. And everything that mob puts on her

1062
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 2: table is pretty, so.

1063
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, so pretty and cozy and it is. I really

1064
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:16,080
Speaker 4: do think that that's the best evidence of her service

1065
00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 4: journalism roots is like she was preserving they're just their

1066
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 4: way of life and the way because there had already been,

1067
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 4: just from the eighteen seventies to the nineteen thirties, so

1068
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 4: much modernization that I do think she was trying to

1069
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:32,320
Speaker 4: preserve what all of the customs were. And actually this

1070
00:57:32,680 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 4: Little House cookbook, the author is a Barbara M. Walker,

1071
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 4: and I'm fairly sure she's like she is a food historian.

1072
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:40,920
Speaker 6: She has every recipe that are.

1073
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 4: In the books is in here, and it is historically

1074
00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:45,560
Speaker 4: accurate to the way it would be made, and.

1075
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:48,080
Speaker 6: Has some suggestions if you want to do it yourself.

1076
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, like if you cannot find three pounds of lard,

1077
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:53,200
Speaker 2: then maybe get some canola oil, Like you should be fine,

1078
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 2: but right, if.

1079
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 4: You're not if you're not near a pumpkin patch where

1080
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:59,240
Speaker 4: you can get an unripe pumpkin to make a green

1081
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 4: pumpkin pot and.

1082
00:58:03,360 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 7: Shoot the blackbirds because that are eating the crops and

1083
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:09,560
Speaker 7: then turn them into a black a delicious blackbird pie.

1084
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:12,480
Speaker 5: And when you really think about that, you're like, huh.

1085
00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:14,760
Speaker 7: But in the books you're like, oh, this sounds like

1086
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 7: the best pie anyone's ever eaten in their life. And

1087
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 7: they had grave er like her ability to make gravy

1088
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:25,000
Speaker 7: or the way like the coffee grounds, and that just

1089
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 7: because there was so little didn't mean that it shouldn't

1090
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:32,920
Speaker 7: look beautiful. Like there's a deep, deep respect for quality

1091
00:58:32,960 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 7: of life. Even if the quality is so minimal, it

1092
00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:40,240
Speaker 7: does not release you from it's self respect. I think

1093
00:58:40,280 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 7: at the core of that, right, is the life you

1094
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 7: are leading should be as pleasant as you're capable of

1095
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:50,320
Speaker 7: making it.

1096
00:58:50,880 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and it was.

1097
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 2: It was so striking to me kind of like like

1098
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 2: doing reading for this because you know, like I said,

1099
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:01,160
Speaker 2: like the food was my favorite of these books growing up,

1100
00:59:01,240 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 2: but as an adult reading this, like there's stories about hunger,

1101
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:10,760
Speaker 2: there's stories about uh, just basic substance, and it's there,

1102
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 2: and I guess like kind of those parts were my

1103
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 2: favorite parts too when I was a kid, Like like

1104
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:17,280
Speaker 2: The Long Winter was my favorite book because tiny goth

1105
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 2: Lauren was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, really, time to

1106
00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:23,160
Speaker 2: buckle down, like you know, in my flannel nightgown with

1107
00:59:23,200 --> 00:59:25,240
Speaker 2: the heat on in my house and like a laborator

1108
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 2: retriever in my lap.

1109
00:59:26,280 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 7: But do you remember when pau goes to almonzo and

1110
00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:32,000
Speaker 7: royals and they're making flapjacks with all the butter and

1111
00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 7: the syrup and it it seemed like the most delicious

1112
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:39,120
Speaker 7: meal anyone has ever had. But then I and when

1113
00:59:39,160 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 7: I went back to read that as a grown up,

1114
00:59:40,520 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 7: I was like, paw, your whole family is starving, Like

1115
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 7: can't you pack up to go bag of these flapjacks

1116
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 7: and walking back on the block like what yeah, like like.

1117
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:53,040
Speaker 2: I hop delivers, Like let's go, like we.

1118
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:54,200
Speaker 6: Can make this up.

1119
00:59:54,680 --> 00:59:56,560
Speaker 7: It never occurred to me as a kid, but I

1120
00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 7: was like as a grown up, I'm like, wait a second,

1121
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 7: all these women are down there grinding coffee and like

1122
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:04,280
Speaker 7: or grinding wheat and a coffee grinder, and you're eating

1123
01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:04,760
Speaker 7: flap dups.

1124
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:07,040
Speaker 5: Couldn't you just like bring a few with you anyway?

1125
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, like I like, I just it makes

1126
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:17,520
Speaker 2: me wonder how much Laura, you know, really loved cooking,

1127
01:00:18,040 --> 01:00:20,400
Speaker 2: or how much it was sheerly just right. It was

1128
01:00:20,440 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 2: just a way of life. It was what you literally

1129
01:00:22,040 --> 01:00:25,320
Speaker 2: had to do because you don't have a Walmart or

1130
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 2: a steakhouse to go to. And so if you want

1131
01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:30,200
Speaker 2: a nice thing like a pie, you figure out how

1132
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:32,760
Speaker 2: to make a heck and pie. You and you do it,

1133
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 2: and you do it as nicely as possible. One of

1134
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:37,919
Speaker 2: the one things sticks with me, Oh go ahead.

1135
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 7: No, I was just when you said, like rereading them

1136
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:41,720
Speaker 7: and realizing how much they were starving, I think coming

1137
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 7: I think it is a measure of her skill as

1138
01:00:45,320 --> 01:00:49,760
Speaker 7: a writer that she made everything feel so safe and delicious,

1139
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 7: and that when you come back to it with grown

1140
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,640
Speaker 7: up eyes, you're like, wait a second, they're really starving,

1141
01:00:56,000 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 7: like for real starvation and terror and hunger to a

1142
01:01:01,200 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 7: degree that must have been so that that so many

1143
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 7: people experience, but also that you only get a sense

1144
01:01:09,040 --> 01:01:11,120
Speaker 7: of as a kid, because the way she writes about it,

1145
01:01:11,160 --> 01:01:14,200
Speaker 7: she's not lying, but it's it's wrapped up in so

1146
01:01:14,240 --> 01:01:17,320
Speaker 7: many other things that you're like, I remember telling my

1147
01:01:17,320 --> 01:01:20,160
Speaker 7: grandmother I wanted to live on the prairie in these times,

1148
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 7: and she was like, no, you don't, let me tell

1149
01:01:25,680 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 7: you something, kid like if she was so like so

1150
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:31,480
Speaker 7: scoffed at me that I remember being quite upset, And

1151
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:33,640
Speaker 7: in hindsight, I'm like, can you imagine growing up in

1152
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:35,800
Speaker 7: the depression and having your grandchild be like, I want

1153
01:01:35,840 --> 01:01:37,160
Speaker 7: to live in the olden days And you're like you're

1154
01:01:37,200 --> 01:01:37,960
Speaker 7: an idiot.

1155
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:45,120
Speaker 2: Like no, that's cute, honey, because you're like pouring out

1156
01:01:45,120 --> 01:01:46,760
Speaker 2: your candy and being like, I want to live in

1157
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 2: the olden days. Yeah. One of the I was going

1158
01:01:52,680 --> 01:01:54,360
Speaker 2: to say, one of the one of the food scenes

1159
01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:56,040
Speaker 2: that stuck with me, that's always stuck with me was

1160
01:01:56,080 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 2: when Laura, when she's an adult and she's making a

1161
01:01:59,320 --> 01:02:02,920
Speaker 2: pie for some of the workers who come by the

1162
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 2: farm maybe, and she makes it with it's a rhubarb pie,

1163
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:08,160
Speaker 2: and she makes it with salt instead of sugar, and

1164
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:10,920
Speaker 2: everyone is too heck and polite to like, they're all like, oh,

1165
01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:13,360
Speaker 2: this is a really interesting pie, ma'am.

1166
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:14,640
Speaker 3: Thank you for your.

1167
01:02:16,360 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 2: You're just thinking of like right, like you couldn't that

1168
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:22,080
Speaker 2: was just all you had, Like you if you suck

1169
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 2: at making a pie, that's just what you're stuck with it.

1170
01:02:24,520 --> 01:02:27,640
Speaker 7: Also, I'm so sorry to say this, but it also

1171
01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:31,360
Speaker 7: makes you realize why men were like, I want to

1172
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:31,960
Speaker 7: marry her.

1173
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 5: She's a good cook. I mean truly.

1174
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 7: Now, I mean as a grown up now, I'm like, yeah,

1175
01:02:39,160 --> 01:02:40,760
Speaker 7: i'd want to marry someone who could cook too.

1176
01:02:40,880 --> 01:02:41,200
Speaker 1: Like it.

1177
01:02:41,240 --> 01:02:43,120
Speaker 5: As a kid, you're just like, it doesn't matter.

1178
01:02:43,440 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 7: But as an adult when Paus constantly complimenting Caroline on

1179
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:52,360
Speaker 7: her ability to make do, in her ability to make

1180
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 7: everything delicious, and you think, oh, yeah, this is the

1181
01:02:55,640 --> 01:03:00,000
Speaker 7: difference between everyone losing their mind and life having any

1182
01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 7: shred of joy or pleasantness to it. And remember when

1183
01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 7: Laura goes off to teach and the she's staying with

1184
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:08,960
Speaker 7: that awful couple and the woman's going mad. And as

1185
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:11,280
Speaker 7: a kid, you're like, she's an evil woman who wants

1186
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:13,240
Speaker 7: to kill everyone, And as a grown up you're like, no,

1187
01:03:13,400 --> 01:03:15,560
Speaker 7: that would be me. I would also try to stab

1188
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:20,240
Speaker 7: my husband in the middle of the night for dragging. Yeah,

1189
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 7: but yeah, I'm like, I too would want to marry

1190
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 7: a good cook. I sort of get these terrible tropes

1191
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:27,160
Speaker 7: that we're still living with, but they kind of makes sense.

1192
01:03:30,840 --> 01:03:33,800
Speaker 4: Yeah, I also think she does the first especially the

1193
01:03:33,800 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 4: first few books before Mary goes blind, Like there's so

1194
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:40,600
Speaker 4: much on how in terms of housework and chore and

1195
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:42,840
Speaker 4: you know, cooking and chores, like Mary is just so

1196
01:03:42,920 --> 01:03:46,200
Speaker 4: much better than her and everything. And coming up with

1197
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:48,200
Speaker 4: these as a kid, I was like, Laura's not the

1198
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:50,720
Speaker 4: one who cooks, Like, Laura's the tomboy. She's running around,

1199
01:03:50,800 --> 01:03:53,600
Speaker 4: she's riding horses. But also when you read them again,

1200
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:55,560
Speaker 4: it's like she wouldn't be able to write about this

1201
01:03:55,600 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 4: so well if she wasn't forced to do that for survival,

1202
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:01,200
Speaker 4: like and you have, Yeah, you have to get good

1203
01:04:01,240 --> 01:04:03,880
Speaker 4: at it if you're going to be a successful woman

1204
01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:08,120
Speaker 4: and on the prairie, like that is one of the qualifications,

1205
01:04:08,160 --> 01:04:11,720
Speaker 4: just that. And then there's so much Laura hates sewing

1206
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 4: in the first few books and then works in a

1207
01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 4: dress shop or or works for a tailor and de

1208
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:21,040
Speaker 4: smet for like two full books and and just has

1209
01:04:21,080 --> 01:04:22,680
Speaker 4: to do it to help her family get by and

1210
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 4: obviously got very good at it.

1211
01:04:27,760 --> 01:04:30,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like that's not part of like all

1212
01:04:30,080 --> 01:04:32,480
Speaker 2: of these survival adventure books that I was honed into

1213
01:04:32,560 --> 01:04:35,160
Speaker 2: as a child. I was like, oh, yeah, Tom Boys rule,

1214
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:38,200
Speaker 2: let's go like yeah, and like just this stark actual

1215
01:04:38,240 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 2: reality that she did write about was like like nope,

1216
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:43,160
Speaker 2: Like nah, I'm still running around in the creek, like

1217
01:04:43,240 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 2: getting leeches, Like that's probably gonna be fine.

1218
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:48,600
Speaker 7: And you realize that in By the Shorts of Silver Lake,

1219
01:04:48,640 --> 01:04:50,360
Speaker 7: where her and her cousin Lena are out on the

1220
01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:53,200
Speaker 7: prairie riding around on horseback, and it's such a magical

1221
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 7: chapter and you think back on it, like as a kid,

1222
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:57,760
Speaker 7: you're like, I want that life, and you really realize

1223
01:04:57,800 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 7: as a grown up it was one day in a

1224
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 7: life of severe I mean drudgery. Laura worked from the

1225
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:10,160
Speaker 7: age of nine, so like that that day was not

1226
01:05:10,240 --> 01:05:13,000
Speaker 7: reflective of her life. That day stood out to her

1227
01:05:13,200 --> 01:05:16,920
Speaker 7: in that extraordinary detail because it was such a rarity

1228
01:05:17,160 --> 01:05:20,640
Speaker 7: for her to have that kind of freedom, and I think.

1229
01:05:21,880 --> 01:05:22,800
Speaker 5: Putting you know.

1230
01:05:22,840 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 7: And later in that chapter, her and Lena go inside

1231
01:05:25,840 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 7: and they have to wash like two hundred dishes. And

1232
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:31,120
Speaker 7: then you know when they spend the winter in the

1233
01:05:31,160 --> 01:05:36,040
Speaker 7: surveyor's house and Ma opens up the ground floor to

1234
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:39,440
Speaker 7: take in all these travelers and lets these men sleep there,

1235
01:05:40,000 --> 01:05:42,520
Speaker 7: and they're cooking for them morning till night and washing

1236
01:05:42,560 --> 01:05:44,400
Speaker 7: dishes and they can't keep up. And what you take

1237
01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 7: from that is, oh, they might have some money now

1238
01:05:46,360 --> 01:05:50,520
Speaker 7: that they can keep, but the reality of the physical

1239
01:05:50,640 --> 01:05:54,080
Speaker 7: labor and how awful it must have been over and

1240
01:05:54,120 --> 01:05:58,640
Speaker 7: over and over again is sort of lost in that

1241
01:05:58,720 --> 01:06:01,880
Speaker 7: writing because of where she allows your focus to land.

1242
01:06:01,960 --> 01:06:02,880
Speaker 5: And again.

1243
01:06:04,160 --> 01:06:07,560
Speaker 7: There's a sort of a very subtle small line where

1244
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 7: Ma says, go upstairs to the attic and lock the

1245
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:12,320
Speaker 7: door behind you, and you don't fully get as a

1246
01:06:12,400 --> 01:06:15,920
Speaker 7: kid what Ma is terrified. They're in a house of

1247
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:19,080
Speaker 7: all of these men. Pa is not around, and she's

1248
01:06:19,120 --> 01:06:23,520
Speaker 7: got four young girls, you know, and that where the

1249
01:06:23,600 --> 01:06:26,720
Speaker 7: danger is coming from. In that moment, you're so like, well,

1250
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:28,560
Speaker 7: maybe they'll have some money for Mary to go to

1251
01:06:28,600 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 7: school for the blind, not like, oh my god, Ma's

1252
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:34,640
Speaker 7: terrified they're going to be sexually assaulted. And also they've

1253
01:06:34,680 --> 01:06:36,840
Speaker 7: been working eighteen hours a day for three weeks or

1254
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 7: whatever it is. Yeah, it's intense to Yeah, it's really

1255
01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:44,959
Speaker 7: intense to think about the degree and that she sat

1256
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:46,959
Speaker 7: down at sixty five to write about all this after

1257
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:50,120
Speaker 7: such a lifetime of hard work, Like it is intense

1258
01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:52,840
Speaker 7: to think about the degree of work that went into

1259
01:06:53,640 --> 01:06:56,080
Speaker 7: making a meal like you'd make a morning meal, you'd

1260
01:06:56,080 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 7: turn around, you make midday meal, you turn around, you

1261
01:06:58,200 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 7: make the evening meal, get up and do it all

1262
01:07:01,040 --> 01:07:01,600
Speaker 7: over again.

1263
01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:05,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole day of the week where you

1264
01:07:05,480 --> 01:07:08,439
Speaker 2: just churn butter because that's because the cow is making milk.

1265
01:07:08,480 --> 01:07:09,600
Speaker 5: What else are you going to do with it?

1266
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,840
Speaker 2: You need to preserve it somehow, So let's go, it's

1267
01:07:12,880 --> 01:07:13,800
Speaker 2: time to churn the butter.

1268
01:07:15,200 --> 01:07:17,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I wonder how much.

1269
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:19,800
Speaker 2: Of it is like it is like her sort of

1270
01:07:20,760 --> 01:07:24,960
Speaker 2: golden lens of the past, or her own personal nostalgia

1271
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:27,880
Speaker 2: for it, or her wanting to write provide like a

1272
01:07:28,000 --> 01:07:32,080
Speaker 2: nice story to people during this also very hard time

1273
01:07:32,120 --> 01:07:33,880
Speaker 2: that a lot of Americans were going through.

1274
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:37,040
Speaker 7: I think what comes through is she loves her family

1275
01:07:37,120 --> 01:07:39,480
Speaker 7: so much. Yeah, Like, I think that's the thing that

1276
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:44,080
Speaker 7: that's not fiction, and that permeates a lot of the

1277
01:07:44,160 --> 01:07:47,360
Speaker 7: terribleness and why she wrote I mean, there's a lot

1278
01:07:47,400 --> 01:07:48,800
Speaker 7: of reasons why she wrote it, and how much her

1279
01:07:48,840 --> 01:07:50,840
Speaker 7: daughter was involved in the writing and the structuring is

1280
01:07:50,920 --> 01:07:55,040
Speaker 7: in two entire episodes of this podcast. Because her daughter

1281
01:07:55,240 --> 01:08:01,280
Speaker 7: is like this crazy journalist who makes a lot of

1282
01:08:01,280 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 7: things up and was one of the early founders of

1283
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:07,160
Speaker 7: the Libertarian Party. So there's a lot of narratives in

1284
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:09,840
Speaker 7: Little House that when you come to it through that lens,

1285
01:08:09,840 --> 01:08:14,960
Speaker 7: you're like, wait a second, but yeah, I think her

1286
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:17,280
Speaker 7: love of her family it comes through in some of

1287
01:08:17,320 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 7: the descriptions of the food is the truth, Like how

1288
01:08:19,520 --> 01:08:23,240
Speaker 7: you're describing safety and comfort and joy and coziness, and

1289
01:08:23,280 --> 01:08:26,120
Speaker 7: it's coming through in the food of which there was

1290
01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:26,719
Speaker 7: very little.

1291
01:08:27,920 --> 01:08:35,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh and yeah, it's really it is really weird

1292
01:08:35,640 --> 01:08:38,120
Speaker 2: to me how recent I did not understand as a

1293
01:08:38,200 --> 01:08:41,720
Speaker 2: child growing up, how recent this really was. Like it's

1294
01:08:42,080 --> 01:08:44,559
Speaker 2: putting into perspective that she was alive when my parents

1295
01:08:44,600 --> 01:08:48,760
Speaker 2: were born. What like that, Like, because this, you know,

1296
01:08:48,840 --> 01:08:51,720
Speaker 2: reading it, it reads like another planet.

1297
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:54,920
Speaker 4: My favorite line in our first episode is that she

1298
01:08:55,040 --> 01:08:56,760
Speaker 4: was born in a covered wagon and by the end

1299
01:08:56,800 --> 01:08:59,080
Speaker 4: of her life she had flown on an airplane, so

1300
01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:03,360
Speaker 4: she like she is so so recent, like she probably

1301
01:09:03,439 --> 01:09:05,639
Speaker 4: knew who Elvis was, you know, right.

1302
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:08,760
Speaker 7: I used to get mad at my mother that she

1303
01:09:08,800 --> 01:09:11,080
Speaker 7: hadn't driven to meet Laura Ingles because they lived at

1304
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:11,599
Speaker 7: the same time.

1305
01:09:11,640 --> 01:09:12,040
Speaker 5: When I was a.

1306
01:09:12,080 --> 01:09:14,640
Speaker 7: Kid, I could not conceive of being live at the

1307
01:09:14,640 --> 01:09:16,800
Speaker 7: same time as Laura Ingles and not. My mother grew

1308
01:09:16,880 --> 01:09:19,599
Speaker 7: up in a tiny town in northern Ontario with more

1309
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 7: resources than Laura Ingles had, but like, relatively.

1310
01:09:22,479 --> 01:09:26,000
Speaker 5: Speaking, not a ton. And I was like, I don't understand.

1311
01:09:26,200 --> 01:09:29,320
Speaker 7: Why didn't you drive down to Missouri in nineteen fifty

1312
01:09:29,479 --> 01:09:30,360
Speaker 7: six when you.

1313
01:09:30,360 --> 01:09:33,800
Speaker 5: Were twelve years old and meet Laura Ingles? And my

1314
01:09:33,920 --> 01:09:34,920
Speaker 5: mother was like.

1315
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:37,920
Speaker 7: Why don't we pin some braids onto your hat today? Okay, like,

1316
01:09:40,680 --> 01:09:42,639
Speaker 7: you know, dial it down a little bit, kid.

1317
01:09:44,520 --> 01:09:44,720
Speaker 2: You know.

1318
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:47,280
Speaker 7: Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Olsen on the show, we

1319
01:09:47,360 --> 01:09:49,639
Speaker 7: interviewed her for the podcast and she made a point

1320
01:09:49,640 --> 01:09:52,559
Speaker 7: that we think about a lot, which is one of

1321
01:09:52,560 --> 01:09:55,760
Speaker 7: the reasons these books continued to appeal is that they

1322
01:09:55,760 --> 01:09:58,240
Speaker 7: are describing the way a lot of people on Earth

1323
01:09:58,320 --> 01:09:59,040
Speaker 7: continue to live.

1324
01:09:59,640 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 5: Right.

1325
01:10:00,240 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 7: Degree of limited resources and poverty is not the way

1326
01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:08,920
Speaker 7: we live now, but it is the way a lot

1327
01:10:08,960 --> 01:10:13,120
Speaker 7: of people on Earth live, and these books have a

1328
01:10:13,120 --> 01:10:15,559
Speaker 7: global appeal for better and worse. There's a lot wrong

1329
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:19,920
Speaker 7: in these books, a lot of you know, racist, violent,

1330
01:10:20,120 --> 01:10:23,760
Speaker 7: troubling things. And also they're speaking to a way of

1331
01:10:23,800 --> 01:10:26,679
Speaker 7: life that is still being experienced in a lot of places.

1332
01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:30,400
Speaker 7: So it isn't that long ago. Yeah, it's now for

1333
01:10:30,439 --> 01:10:31,040
Speaker 7: a lot of people.

1334
01:10:32,360 --> 01:10:32,960
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

1335
01:10:34,280 --> 01:10:36,479
Speaker 2: Can Can we talk a little bit about some of

1336
01:10:36,560 --> 01:10:39,120
Speaker 2: the racist, troubling, terrible violent things that happened in these

1337
01:10:39,160 --> 01:10:41,920
Speaker 2: books because we we and we touched on this earlier

1338
01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:44,760
Speaker 2: when when we were talking about the just the sheer

1339
01:10:44,800 --> 01:10:48,280
Speaker 2: like manifest destiny colonization aspect of everything that was going on.

1340
01:10:49,080 --> 01:10:52,439
Speaker 2: But uh, but right, you know, like like like the

1341
01:10:52,479 --> 01:10:54,720
Speaker 2: reason that I didn't that that we didn't want to

1342
01:10:54,720 --> 01:10:57,960
Speaker 2: do this episode earlier on Sabor was just there was

1343
01:10:58,040 --> 01:11:03,400
Speaker 2: the whole situation where one of the children's book awards

1344
01:11:03,439 --> 01:11:06,400
Speaker 2: that had previously been named after.

1345
01:11:06,240 --> 01:11:08,479
Speaker 7: Laura Ingles, it's the most prestige, it was the most

1346
01:11:08,560 --> 01:11:11,599
Speaker 7: prestigious children's book award had been named the Laura Ingles

1347
01:11:12,720 --> 01:11:15,160
Speaker 7: Children's Book Award, and now it's changed.

1348
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:16,880
Speaker 6: It's the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

1349
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:21,960
Speaker 7: Yeah, and when it changed, I think you don't We

1350
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:23,840
Speaker 7: talked about this in the podcast and certainly was part

1351
01:11:23,840 --> 01:11:26,960
Speaker 7: of the motivation for this podcast, is like, you don't

1352
01:11:27,000 --> 01:11:29,479
Speaker 7: really love anything quite the way you love it when

1353
01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:33,120
Speaker 7: you're a kid. And the extra layer of Little House

1354
01:11:33,200 --> 01:11:35,599
Speaker 7: is that she was a real person, right like Anne

1355
01:11:35,640 --> 01:11:38,800
Speaker 7: of Green Gables, I also loved, and she's not a

1356
01:11:38,840 --> 01:11:43,320
Speaker 7: real person, and so there is a degree of there's

1357
01:11:43,360 --> 01:11:48,439
Speaker 7: an extra layer of this that comes from her being

1358
01:11:48,600 --> 01:11:51,000
Speaker 7: an actual person in the world where you can say, well,

1359
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:52,839
Speaker 7: she did this, I could do it, or she actually

1360
01:11:52,840 --> 01:11:54,720
Speaker 7: did this. This is in a novel, I'm you know,

1361
01:11:54,760 --> 01:11:57,320
Speaker 7: there's a whole conversation of why it's filed in fiction

1362
01:11:57,560 --> 01:12:00,680
Speaker 7: not nonfiction, And so when that award was changed, I

1363
01:12:00,720 --> 01:12:07,080
Speaker 7: think there was a really intense reaction that was coming

1364
01:12:07,080 --> 01:12:10,840
Speaker 7: from a place of feeling like almost part of your identity,

1365
01:12:10,920 --> 01:12:13,479
Speaker 7: like this thing that you loved so and conditionally as

1366
01:12:13,520 --> 01:12:16,400
Speaker 7: a kid is being called into question whether or not

1367
01:12:16,439 --> 01:12:18,400
Speaker 7: you're a person who had actually re read the book

1368
01:12:18,479 --> 01:12:21,479
Speaker 7: since you were a kid or fully grasped what the

1369
01:12:21,560 --> 01:12:22,479
Speaker 7: issues were.

1370
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:26,160
Speaker 5: That you know, visceral.

1371
01:12:25,800 --> 01:12:29,200
Speaker 7: Response to it is coming from such a deep place

1372
01:12:29,240 --> 01:12:33,160
Speaker 7: that I think, you know, getting into kids heads and

1373
01:12:33,200 --> 01:12:36,799
Speaker 7: hearts is you know, as we all know, pretty intense.

1374
01:12:36,880 --> 01:12:38,840
Speaker 7: I mean, we're watching it play out in different ways

1375
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:40,960
Speaker 7: with Harry Potter and watch it play out with in

1376
01:12:40,960 --> 01:12:42,920
Speaker 7: different ways with a lot of other things.

1377
01:12:42,320 --> 01:12:47,799
Speaker 4: But I think we interviewed the president of the American

1378
01:12:47,840 --> 01:12:51,040
Speaker 4: Library Association who spoke to us about the decision to

1379
01:12:51,120 --> 01:12:54,240
Speaker 4: change the name of the award and pointed out like

1380
01:12:54,360 --> 01:12:56,920
Speaker 4: they like so it was named the lor Ingleswilder Award

1381
01:12:56,920 --> 01:12:59,400
Speaker 4: because she was the first recipient of it, and they

1382
01:12:59,400 --> 01:13:01,920
Speaker 4: haven't taken no way that award. She is still the

1383
01:13:01,960 --> 01:13:05,320
Speaker 4: first recipient of that award, and which is a testament

1384
01:13:05,400 --> 01:13:08,599
Speaker 4: to how influential she was for children's book writing at

1385
01:13:08,600 --> 01:13:11,880
Speaker 4: her time. But you know, taking the name off of

1386
01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:16,640
Speaker 4: that award, I think rightly so just makes room for

1387
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:20,880
Speaker 4: being able to recognize the new strides that are being

1388
01:13:20,920 --> 01:13:24,839
Speaker 4: made in that genre with much much more inclusive stories.

1389
01:13:26,680 --> 01:13:29,639
Speaker 7: If you come out of reading Little House as a kid,

1390
01:13:30,160 --> 01:13:35,160
Speaker 7: that should hopefully influence you to be a person who

1391
01:13:35,200 --> 01:13:38,080
Speaker 7: wants to look at these things honestly. I think, like

1392
01:13:38,560 --> 01:13:41,160
Speaker 7: it's not good enough to say I love this and

1393
01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:45,200
Speaker 7: subsequently it's good it's I think part of what motivated

1394
01:13:45,200 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 7: this podcast was this sense of like, if I love

1395
01:13:47,080 --> 01:13:48,920
Speaker 7: it this much, I have to be honest about the

1396
01:13:48,920 --> 01:13:50,840
Speaker 7: thing that I'm loving, and like, what is actually here?

1397
01:13:50,920 --> 01:13:55,439
Speaker 7: Let's go take a look at this, this idea, this person,

1398
01:13:55,680 --> 01:13:58,200
Speaker 7: who was she really what was actually happening here?

1399
01:13:58,240 --> 01:14:01,519
Speaker 5: And like the answer to that is so complicated and.

1400
01:14:01,560 --> 01:14:05,519
Speaker 7: So it is such a rabbit hole to go down

1401
01:14:06,160 --> 01:14:12,840
Speaker 7: and so fascinating, but like you should be required to

1402
01:14:12,880 --> 01:14:16,040
Speaker 7: interrogate these things that are so formative to you because

1403
01:14:16,920 --> 01:14:22,840
Speaker 7: everything is a problem, literally everything, everything is a problem.

1404
01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:25,240
Speaker 7: America is the problem. I mean, it's amazing thing there's

1405
01:14:25,479 --> 01:14:30,400
Speaker 7: America is a problem too. And when that award was changed,

1406
01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:32,120
Speaker 7: I mean, I understand where that response is coming to you,

1407
01:14:32,160 --> 01:14:33,960
Speaker 7: because to some degree I had to, although I had not.

1408
01:14:34,160 --> 01:14:36,320
Speaker 7: I think for a lot of people in my age, Uh,

1409
01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:38,840
Speaker 7: you grew up on the books in the TV show

1410
01:14:38,880 --> 01:14:40,439
Speaker 7: and maybe you didn't come back to them until you

1411
01:14:40,479 --> 01:14:42,320
Speaker 7: had kids and you're reading them to your kids. And

1412
01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:43,960
Speaker 7: you got to Little House in the Prairie the book,

1413
01:14:43,960 --> 01:14:46,880
Speaker 7: which is where much of I mean, there's problems in

1414
01:14:46,920 --> 01:14:50,320
Speaker 7: all of the books, but that is significant problems. And

1415
01:14:50,400 --> 01:14:54,040
Speaker 7: you got to the chapter and where Ma is extremely racist,

1416
01:14:54,080 --> 01:14:56,800
Speaker 7: and you're like, wait a second, is.

1417
01:14:56,800 --> 01:15:00,280
Speaker 5: This always here? Like, oh my god, what's going going

1418
01:15:00,320 --> 01:15:00,720
Speaker 5: on here?

1419
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:03,400
Speaker 7: I had I knew what was in the book, so

1420
01:15:03,439 --> 01:15:05,200
Speaker 7: I think there was less of a shock to me.

1421
01:15:05,280 --> 01:15:07,040
Speaker 7: But I had plenty of people come to me when

1422
01:15:07,040 --> 01:15:09,160
Speaker 7: their kids were that age, being like, wait a second,

1423
01:15:09,160 --> 01:15:13,320
Speaker 7: what's going on here? Yeah, but then I think that

1424
01:15:13,400 --> 01:15:15,720
Speaker 7: opens the door to like, why didn't that stand out

1425
01:15:15,720 --> 01:15:17,519
Speaker 7: when we were reading it when we were kids in

1426
01:15:17,560 --> 01:15:19,960
Speaker 7: the seventies and eighties, And then why didn't it stand out?

1427
01:15:20,040 --> 01:15:22,680
Speaker 7: Even bigger question is why didn't it stand out in

1428
01:15:22,720 --> 01:15:24,800
Speaker 7: the thirties when it was being public Like, you know, like.

1429
01:15:24,800 --> 01:15:28,639
Speaker 5: There's a lot of there's a lot of questions here.

1430
01:15:28,760 --> 01:15:33,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's it's like like

1431
01:15:33,240 --> 01:15:35,680
Speaker 2: we were saying, like like you were saying, with with

1432
01:15:35,840 --> 01:15:40,280
Speaker 2: the level of basic subsistence that a lot of people

1433
01:15:40,320 --> 01:15:42,680
Speaker 2: are living with day to day. You know, we can

1434
01:15:42,680 --> 01:15:44,559
Speaker 2: look at these books and go like, oh man, those

1435
01:15:44,600 --> 01:15:48,760
Speaker 2: attitudes were super racist and uh and there's oh man,

1436
01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:50,599
Speaker 2: I mean they see a minstrel show at one point,

1437
01:15:50,640 --> 01:15:51,680
Speaker 2: like you know, there's there's a.

1438
01:15:51,600 --> 01:15:53,760
Speaker 7: Lot of that didn't actually happen in real life. By

1439
01:15:53,760 --> 01:15:56,760
Speaker 7: the way, Rose inserted that scene in the book.

1440
01:15:57,120 --> 01:16:00,680
Speaker 5: That is not yeah, which makes it which makes it

1441
01:16:00,880 --> 01:16:01,719
Speaker 5: even better.

1442
01:16:02,120 --> 01:16:04,720
Speaker 7: No, No, that's that's worse. And you know, Mansfield, where

1443
01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:07,080
Speaker 7: they lived, was a sundown town. There's a you know,

1444
01:16:07,560 --> 01:16:11,120
Speaker 7: there is there's a lot of both things happening in

1445
01:16:11,160 --> 01:16:14,719
Speaker 7: these books that minstrel show. As a kid, I didn't

1446
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:16,479
Speaker 7: know what black face was. I was like, oh, it's

1447
01:16:16,479 --> 01:16:17,920
Speaker 7: so cold, they're painting their faces.

1448
01:16:17,920 --> 01:16:21,040
Speaker 5: And as a grown up, it was like, ah ooh yeah,

1449
01:16:21,160 --> 01:16:22,520
Speaker 5: and there's an illustration.

1450
01:16:22,600 --> 01:16:27,559
Speaker 4: The illustration is now horrifying, and that even Garth Williams

1451
01:16:27,600 --> 01:16:30,320
Speaker 4: did those illustrations in the fifties, those were not the

1452
01:16:30,360 --> 01:16:34,519
Speaker 4: original illustrations, which no, no, no, no, yeah, But that's

1453
01:16:34,520 --> 01:16:37,960
Speaker 4: even more you know, we talk of people who defend

1454
01:16:38,040 --> 01:16:40,600
Speaker 4: Laura for writing these things, you know, the classic she

1455
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:42,840
Speaker 4: was a woman of her time, all these things, there's

1456
01:16:42,880 --> 01:16:46,599
Speaker 4: evidence that she knew what was going on, and and.

1457
01:16:46,560 --> 01:16:48,040
Speaker 6: In the fifties even more so.

1458
01:16:48,280 --> 01:16:50,679
Speaker 4: Other people should have known that that was not okay

1459
01:16:50,720 --> 01:16:51,880
Speaker 4: to depict in that way.

1460
01:16:53,000 --> 01:16:55,840
Speaker 7: And when in the Little House on the Prairie the

1461
01:16:55,840 --> 01:16:59,000
Speaker 7: book on the opening pages, the original line when they

1462
01:16:59,240 --> 01:17:02,799
Speaker 7: moved to Indian Territory, it was the Osage Diminished Reserve.

1463
01:17:02,960 --> 01:17:07,280
Speaker 7: The line was there were no people there, just Indians.

1464
01:17:07,320 --> 01:17:09,519
Speaker 7: That was the original line. And it was a decade

1465
01:17:09,600 --> 01:17:11,920
Speaker 7: until a reader wrote in and said their child was

1466
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:14,639
Speaker 7: upset by that line because it suggested Indians weren't people.

1467
01:17:15,320 --> 01:17:18,800
Speaker 7: And Laura's editor wrote to her to tell her this,

1468
01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:22,760
Speaker 7: and Laura's immediate responses, that's a horrible mistake. I never

1469
01:17:22,840 --> 01:17:28,160
Speaker 7: meant to insinuate Indians weren't people. They changed the line

1470
01:17:28,160 --> 01:17:31,880
Speaker 7: subsequently to read there was no settlers, there only Indians,

1471
01:17:32,280 --> 01:17:35,880
Speaker 7: which is somewhat which is true, although there's no more

1472
01:17:35,880 --> 01:17:39,559
Speaker 7: explanation beyond that. But her editor, who's this legendary editor,

1473
01:17:39,600 --> 01:17:41,200
Speaker 7: wrote back to the woman who wrote in and said,

1474
01:17:41,240 --> 01:17:44,120
Speaker 7: I astounded that no one has spotted this in the

1475
01:17:44,240 --> 01:17:46,519
Speaker 7: nearly twenty years that this book, and that to me

1476
01:17:47,040 --> 01:17:51,680
Speaker 7: is the bigger problem than what Laura is writing is.

1477
01:17:52,880 --> 01:17:55,120
Speaker 7: And this is often this is still very true when

1478
01:17:55,160 --> 01:17:57,040
Speaker 7: you open the New York Times or you open a

1479
01:17:57,040 --> 01:17:59,000
Speaker 7: major magazine and you're like, how did this get to print?

1480
01:17:59,520 --> 01:18:03,800
Speaker 7: How to make it through all of these reads? And

1481
01:18:03,840 --> 01:18:06,280
Speaker 7: then how did it last for two decades? And we

1482
01:18:06,320 --> 01:18:08,599
Speaker 7: know the answer to that because it's a culture that

1483
01:18:08,680 --> 01:18:11,760
Speaker 7: accepts this narrative very easily, and that this is one,

1484
01:18:12,240 --> 01:18:13,960
Speaker 7: you know, version of it.

1485
01:18:14,040 --> 01:18:17,160
Speaker 2: But and especially like, oh, it's a sweet old white woman,

1486
01:18:17,439 --> 01:18:19,240
Speaker 2: so like we can give her a pass because she's

1487
01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:21,719
Speaker 2: a she's a product of her time, So we should

1488
01:18:21,760 --> 01:18:25,400
Speaker 2: just print this without any kind of questioning, because it's

1489
01:18:25,439 --> 01:18:29,680
Speaker 2: giving an honest look about how racist we were very recently.

1490
01:18:30,760 --> 01:18:31,400
Speaker 6: Or still are.

1491
01:18:31,520 --> 01:18:32,800
Speaker 5: And also I would say like.

1492
01:18:33,400 --> 01:18:36,200
Speaker 2: Again, this is now, like this is now now for

1493
01:18:36,240 --> 01:18:36,920
Speaker 2: a lot of people.

1494
01:18:37,040 --> 01:18:41,040
Speaker 7: So and yes, And also you know there's a number

1495
01:18:41,040 --> 01:18:43,439
Speaker 7: of people said to us. He said to me, like

1496
01:18:43,439 --> 01:18:45,479
Speaker 7: we're coming from this sometimes from a respect of like

1497
01:18:45,560 --> 01:18:47,840
Speaker 7: everything we're writing now is going to hold up to

1498
01:18:47,880 --> 01:18:49,719
Speaker 7: interrogation fifty years from now.

1499
01:18:49,920 --> 01:18:50,760
Speaker 5: Which is not to.

1500
01:18:50,720 --> 01:18:53,160
Speaker 7: Say we shouldn't be in derogating little house, But there

1501
01:18:53,240 --> 01:18:55,800
Speaker 7: is a puritanical element to some of this criticism where

1502
01:18:55,800 --> 01:18:59,280
Speaker 7: I'm like, sure, I don't know, Like it's not she's

1503
01:18:59,400 --> 01:19:02,320
Speaker 7: not the old only problem, it's just that there's why

1504
01:19:02,720 --> 01:19:04,120
Speaker 7: why is she still around?

1505
01:19:04,360 --> 01:19:06,920
Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, it's.

1506
01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:09,600
Speaker 7: What is it about her that continues to appeal to

1507
01:19:09,680 --> 01:19:13,160
Speaker 7: a degree that we have allowed these other things to

1508
01:19:13,200 --> 01:19:16,040
Speaker 7: bother us less? And that is a question we could

1509
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:20,200
Speaker 7: be asking of, like oh, most of American culture, to

1510
01:19:20,280 --> 01:19:22,800
Speaker 7: be quite honest, And so I find her farm with

1511
01:19:22,840 --> 01:19:25,559
Speaker 7: that that she's a doorway into that question more than

1512
01:19:25,640 --> 01:19:29,840
Speaker 7: like was Laura Ingalls wild or a racist? Is like

1513
01:19:30,200 --> 01:19:33,040
Speaker 7: why is she still here? Like what is it about

1514
01:19:33,080 --> 01:19:35,800
Speaker 7: her that wraps up all of these things in a

1515
01:19:35,840 --> 01:19:40,559
Speaker 7: way that wants makes us want to hold them so

1516
01:19:40,680 --> 01:19:46,400
Speaker 7: dear and and not question them to the degree we

1517
01:19:46,439 --> 01:19:51,519
Speaker 7: should be because she's also it's very safe and cozy.

1518
01:19:51,760 --> 01:19:54,040
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a lot of these things are wrapped

1519
01:19:54,120 --> 01:19:58,559
Speaker 7: up in stuff that we like very much, and we

1520
01:19:58,800 --> 01:20:03,360
Speaker 7: like it enough to take it with the terrible parts.

1521
01:20:06,800 --> 01:20:09,680
Speaker 1: We have even more of this interview for you, but

1522
01:20:09,760 --> 01:20:11,880
Speaker 1: first we have another quick break for word from our sponsor,

1523
01:20:20,920 --> 01:20:26,920
Speaker 1: and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Let's get back into it.

1524
01:20:26,920 --> 01:20:31,120
Speaker 7: It's very complicated in a in a way that I

1525
01:20:31,160 --> 01:20:36,280
Speaker 7: find like invites discussion, Like I don't I don't feel

1526
01:20:36,280 --> 01:20:37,439
Speaker 7: scared to have the discussion.

1527
01:20:37,479 --> 01:20:39,000
Speaker 5: I find it really necessary.

1528
01:20:39,920 --> 01:20:42,800
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know, like I

1529
01:20:42,800 --> 01:20:45,040
Speaker 2: don't I don't have kids, I don't plan on having kids,

1530
01:20:45,560 --> 01:20:50,120
Speaker 2: but the idea of giving a kid it's something that

1531
01:20:50,200 --> 01:20:52,519
Speaker 2: I loved so much as a child. But also being

1532
01:20:52,560 --> 01:20:55,880
Speaker 2: willing to have that discussion with them of like why

1533
01:20:56,000 --> 01:20:57,680
Speaker 2: is this in here? Like why did I give you

1534
01:20:57,720 --> 01:20:59,960
Speaker 2: this book? Like what's what's this all? Can we talk about?

1535
01:21:00,200 --> 01:21:02,719
Speaker 2: Maybe you should be a better human than what's portrayed

1536
01:21:02,760 --> 01:21:04,760
Speaker 2: on this page kind of situation.

1537
01:21:04,560 --> 01:21:06,559
Speaker 7: And also, I mean we're just working on this episode now,

1538
01:21:06,600 --> 01:21:09,080
Speaker 7: but like also what is happening outside the scope of

1539
01:21:09,080 --> 01:21:11,800
Speaker 7: what it's being written, Like what the way that? And

1540
01:21:11,880 --> 01:21:14,160
Speaker 7: this is Rose A lot of Rose too, you realize

1541
01:21:14,160 --> 01:21:16,280
Speaker 7: that this. I think Laura wrote the books, but they

1542
01:21:16,320 --> 01:21:17,720
Speaker 7: were very much a collaboration with.

1543
01:21:17,680 --> 01:21:22,559
Speaker 5: Her daughter, who is really a lot. Rose is a lot.

1544
01:21:24,120 --> 01:21:27,040
Speaker 5: She's just I mean, we had to split her into

1545
01:21:27,080 --> 01:21:29,720
Speaker 5: two episodes. She's there's so much happening with Rose.

1546
01:21:29,800 --> 01:21:32,400
Speaker 7: She was one of the most successful freelance writers in

1547
01:21:32,439 --> 01:21:33,519
Speaker 7: the country in the twenties.

1548
01:21:34,120 --> 01:21:36,880
Speaker 5: She made She once sold.

1549
01:21:36,920 --> 01:21:40,320
Speaker 7: A short story Cereal, to the Saturday Evening Post for

1550
01:21:40,439 --> 01:21:43,240
Speaker 7: thirty thousand dollars in nineteen twenty five, Like.

1551
01:21:43,479 --> 01:21:45,719
Speaker 2: She really in that times money?

1552
01:21:46,000 --> 01:21:47,040
Speaker 5: No, in that time's money.

1553
01:21:47,080 --> 01:21:49,360
Speaker 7: I was like I was in nineteenth Yeah, yes, it

1554
01:21:49,400 --> 01:21:51,240
Speaker 7: was like half a million in today's money.

1555
01:21:51,600 --> 01:21:53,880
Speaker 5: She built her parents a different house.

1556
01:21:53,920 --> 01:21:55,559
Speaker 7: They didn't actually want to live there, but she built

1557
01:21:55,560 --> 01:21:58,240
Speaker 7: it for them and then paid to have this is

1558
01:21:58,240 --> 01:22:00,720
Speaker 7: in the Ozarks in the nineteen twenties, paid to have

1559
01:22:00,800 --> 01:22:02,519
Speaker 7: plumbing and electricity installed.

1560
01:22:02,520 --> 01:22:03,320
Speaker 5: Like she really.

1561
01:22:03,439 --> 01:22:06,920
Speaker 7: Her daughter was so successful and also a hack. As

1562
01:22:06,920 --> 01:22:09,760
Speaker 7: somebody pointed out to us, She's like, she's like a

1563
01:22:09,800 --> 01:22:13,800
Speaker 7: successful yellow journalist hack. So these books are very much

1564
01:22:14,360 --> 01:22:16,520
Speaker 7: a results of their involvement.

1565
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:26,120
Speaker 5: They're very codependent, dysfunctional involvement with each other. But we

1566
01:22:26,280 --> 01:22:27,519
Speaker 5: was just going off tracks. See this is what happens

1567
01:22:27,520 --> 01:22:29,800
Speaker 5: when you talk about the.

1568
01:22:29,760 --> 01:22:34,600
Speaker 4: Air out of the room and your spirit is liberty.

1569
01:22:38,280 --> 01:22:40,679
Speaker 2: Annie and I are just going like, give us more tea.

1570
01:22:40,800 --> 01:22:41,160
Speaker 6: This is.

1571
01:22:43,800 --> 01:22:46,040
Speaker 7: Here's the best. It's not the best, but there's a lot.

1572
01:22:46,080 --> 01:22:48,160
Speaker 7: I mean, she really funded a school that educated the

1573
01:22:48,200 --> 01:22:51,439
Speaker 7: Koch brothers. Like she's very tied into. She left the

1574
01:22:51,560 --> 01:22:55,120
Speaker 7: entire Little House copyright to a man. She didn't have

1575
01:22:55,160 --> 01:23:00,800
Speaker 7: any children, so she like adult adopted this guy who

1576
01:23:00,840 --> 01:23:02,800
Speaker 7: got all of the Little House copyright and then ran

1577
01:23:02,840 --> 01:23:05,479
Speaker 7: for president unto the Libertarian ticket in nineteen seventy six

1578
01:23:05,560 --> 01:23:07,120
Speaker 7: on essentially little House money.

1579
01:23:07,200 --> 01:23:10,240
Speaker 5: There's a lot, like you really cannot not peel back

1580
01:23:10,240 --> 01:23:13,160
Speaker 5: the layers on this. But Rose.

1581
01:23:13,600 --> 01:23:15,920
Speaker 7: When Laura sold Little House in the Big Woods, which

1582
01:23:16,080 --> 01:23:21,160
Speaker 7: Rose helped her with, behind Laura's back, Rose took Laura's

1583
01:23:22,160 --> 01:23:25,760
Speaker 7: story and secretly turned it into a novel for grown ups,

1584
01:23:25,800 --> 01:23:28,639
Speaker 7: which she sold to The Saturday Evening Post without telling Laura,

1585
01:23:28,720 --> 01:23:30,960
Speaker 7: which published it almost the same time as Little House

1586
01:23:30,960 --> 01:23:33,639
Speaker 7: in the Big Woods, which Laura discovered when someone brought

1587
01:23:33,680 --> 01:23:37,320
Speaker 7: over the illustrations for it as it was publishing, Like

1588
01:23:37,400 --> 01:23:41,280
Speaker 7: that's the degree of crazy that is happening behind the

1589
01:23:41,280 --> 01:23:42,240
Speaker 7: scenes in Little House.

1590
01:23:43,000 --> 01:23:44,840
Speaker 5: Wow, yeah, it is right.

1591
01:23:45,760 --> 01:23:50,560
Speaker 7: It's which again I think emphasizes like Laura's ability to

1592
01:23:50,600 --> 01:23:53,280
Speaker 7: turn this into a cozy, magical story when behind the

1593
01:23:53,280 --> 01:23:56,439
Speaker 7: scenes it was just Rose invested all of their money

1594
01:23:56,479 --> 01:23:59,479
Speaker 7: in the stock market and when it crashed, they lost

1595
01:23:59,520 --> 01:24:01,559
Speaker 7: all of it. That's one of the reasons Laura sat

1596
01:24:01,600 --> 01:24:03,800
Speaker 7: down to write what became Little House in the Big Woods,

1597
01:24:03,800 --> 01:24:06,120
Speaker 7: because then Rose had a mental breakdown and was like

1598
01:24:07,160 --> 01:24:09,800
Speaker 7: Rose was also though in the twenties in Paris with

1599
01:24:09,880 --> 01:24:12,400
Speaker 7: all the you know that that whole movement of writers,

1600
01:24:12,439 --> 01:24:14,800
Speaker 7: and like as Joe and I like to say, she

1601
01:24:14,920 --> 01:24:17,400
Speaker 7: once attended an orgy and were like, I hope she

1602
01:24:17,520 --> 01:24:20,120
Speaker 7: participated in this orgy. Like let's hope that Rose was

1603
01:24:20,120 --> 01:24:23,200
Speaker 7: happening some sun, but like there's a whole bunch of

1604
01:24:23,280 --> 01:24:26,160
Speaker 7: crazy that's happening, and.

1605
01:24:27,000 --> 01:24:28,080
Speaker 6: Like true mental illness.

1606
01:24:28,160 --> 01:24:31,920
Speaker 4: Like truly, the records of her journals is she was

1607
01:24:32,040 --> 01:24:34,160
Speaker 4: definitely somehow some form of manage.

1608
01:24:34,240 --> 01:24:37,920
Speaker 7: She really benefited from therapy to a degree that is

1609
01:24:38,000 --> 01:24:42,280
Speaker 7: like hard to quantify, but I bring that up because

1610
01:24:42,320 --> 01:24:46,599
Speaker 7: when we talk about the racism that's happening in Little

1611
01:24:46,600 --> 01:24:48,640
Speaker 7: House in the Prairie and in any number of the

1612
01:24:48,680 --> 01:24:52,720
Speaker 7: books those books, the Ingles family is situated in those

1613
01:24:52,760 --> 01:24:56,120
Speaker 7: books as being like completely alone in this vast landscape

1614
01:24:56,120 --> 01:24:58,840
Speaker 7: with no one around them, which is very far from

1615
01:24:58,880 --> 01:24:59,280
Speaker 7: the truth.

1616
01:24:59,320 --> 01:25:00,960
Speaker 5: There was a lot of people there.

1617
01:25:01,080 --> 01:25:05,240
Speaker 7: There was a lot of African American farmers, African American

1618
01:25:05,240 --> 01:25:07,840
Speaker 7: doctor who's in the book but was actually hugely successful.

1619
01:25:07,880 --> 01:25:10,800
Speaker 7: They were on the Osage Diminished Reserve. And that last

1620
01:25:10,800 --> 01:25:12,479
Speaker 7: seen a Little House in the Prairie where the trail

1621
01:25:12,520 --> 01:25:15,640
Speaker 7: of Native Americans are leaving, and Laura's like coveting a

1622
01:25:15,680 --> 01:25:16,719
Speaker 7: baby Native Americans.

1623
01:25:16,720 --> 01:25:17,840
Speaker 5: She's like, I want a papoose.

1624
01:25:18,400 --> 01:25:22,120
Speaker 7: That those are the Osage Indian tribe who were going

1625
01:25:22,240 --> 01:25:27,479
Speaker 7: to Oklahoma, who get the land that they get in

1626
01:25:27,479 --> 01:25:30,439
Speaker 7: Oklahoma the reservation, and they owned the land rights and

1627
01:25:30,479 --> 01:25:31,240
Speaker 7: they hit oil.

1628
01:25:31,880 --> 01:25:34,080
Speaker 5: Which is the new Scorsese movie that's.

1629
01:25:33,880 --> 01:25:37,679
Speaker 7: Coming out about the Osage Murders is that these Native America,

1630
01:25:37,720 --> 01:25:40,799
Speaker 7: the Osage tribe then becomes some of the wealthiest people

1631
01:25:40,840 --> 01:25:43,679
Speaker 7: in America, and then the white population tries to marry

1632
01:25:43,720 --> 01:25:45,960
Speaker 7: in and starts murdering them to get land rights, and

1633
01:25:46,040 --> 01:25:48,479
Speaker 7: some major ranches in Oklahoma.

1634
01:25:47,920 --> 01:25:50,799
Speaker 5: Are the direct results of this. So there's a lot

1635
01:25:50,880 --> 01:25:54,439
Speaker 5: of There's also Laura never writes about the Dakota US War,

1636
01:25:54,479 --> 01:25:57,760
Speaker 5: which happened in eighteen sixty two or three.

1637
01:25:57,840 --> 01:25:58,840
Speaker 6: Right before she was born.

1638
01:25:58,920 --> 01:26:01,559
Speaker 7: Right before she was born, resulted in the largest mass

1639
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:05,280
Speaker 7: hanging in American history, and had provided America with the

1640
01:26:05,360 --> 01:26:10,960
Speaker 7: narrative of bloodthirsty Indian and vulnerable white settler, which is

1641
01:26:11,040 --> 01:26:15,439
Speaker 7: not borne out in any real reality, but was very

1642
01:26:15,560 --> 01:26:18,360
Speaker 7: much how the media capitalized on it.

1643
01:26:18,400 --> 01:26:21,080
Speaker 5: And so some of Maa's.

1644
01:26:20,680 --> 01:26:26,760
Speaker 7: Behavior of vulnerability in these places is coming from the

1645
01:26:26,880 --> 01:26:30,519
Speaker 7: narrative that's been fed to them. And then also there's

1646
01:26:30,520 --> 01:26:32,959
Speaker 7: that chapter in Little House in the Prairie of called Indians.

1647
01:26:32,960 --> 01:26:35,479
Speaker 7: In the house where the Osage Indians come in and

1648
01:26:35,479 --> 01:26:39,040
Speaker 7: start taking food, but of course they've made treaties, the

1649
01:26:39,080 --> 01:26:40,320
Speaker 7: treaties haven't been fulfilled.

1650
01:26:40,479 --> 01:26:41,240
Speaker 5: They're starving.

1651
01:26:41,800 --> 01:26:45,800
Speaker 7: They see people on their land as having taken their

1652
01:26:45,840 --> 01:26:51,599
Speaker 7: resources that belonged to them. None of this is at

1653
01:26:51,640 --> 01:26:54,639
Speaker 7: all even insinuated in the books. And so I think

1654
01:26:54,760 --> 01:26:56,160
Speaker 7: one of the things we try and do in the

1655
01:26:56,200 --> 01:26:59,720
Speaker 7: podcast is pull back the lens and say what else

1656
01:26:59,840 --> 01:27:03,240
Speaker 7: was happening outside of this story that you're seeing the

1657
01:27:03,360 --> 01:27:06,080
Speaker 7: result of without any explanation.

1658
01:27:06,120 --> 01:27:09,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, without any further context, outside no context is eleven

1659
01:27:09,560 --> 01:27:12,760
Speaker 2: year old girl and her very personal take on it.

1660
01:27:12,920 --> 01:27:18,400
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, which it doesn't necessarily undermine her take.

1661
01:27:18,600 --> 01:27:18,800
Speaker 2: You know.

1662
01:27:18,920 --> 01:27:20,760
Speaker 7: I think something that a lot of people point out,

1663
01:27:20,800 --> 01:27:23,920
Speaker 7: and it's a valid point, is Laura's not saying Laura's

1664
01:27:23,920 --> 01:27:26,880
Speaker 7: reflecting what she's hearing. She's not saying these things she's

1665
01:27:27,479 --> 01:27:31,360
Speaker 7: And as a kid, I recognized, like Ma has problematic

1666
01:27:31,400 --> 01:27:35,040
Speaker 7: views and of course paused the white magical, possibly manic

1667
01:27:35,439 --> 01:27:40,400
Speaker 7: mentally just her around, but like she's like you can

1668
01:27:40,439 --> 01:27:42,880
Speaker 7: love a parent who has problematic views, which like welcome

1669
01:27:42,960 --> 01:27:48,400
Speaker 7: to everyone's Thanksgiving table. But left out of that is

1670
01:27:48,479 --> 01:27:51,480
Speaker 7: any context. And I think as a kid, you recognize

1671
01:27:51,520 --> 01:27:53,040
Speaker 7: that she's repeating stuff she's heard.

1672
01:27:53,160 --> 01:27:54,440
Speaker 5: But at the same time.

1673
01:27:55,640 --> 01:27:59,599
Speaker 7: A scholar, doctor Debi Reese, who has written about this extensively, says,

1674
01:27:59,600 --> 01:28:03,000
Speaker 7: you know, should these books be being taught? Should a

1675
01:28:03,040 --> 01:28:05,200
Speaker 7: Native American child in a classroom have to listen to

1676
01:28:05,200 --> 01:28:07,200
Speaker 7: this language? And I think she's right and that they

1677
01:28:07,240 --> 01:28:09,679
Speaker 7: shouldn't in the manner in which these books are introduced.

1678
01:28:09,840 --> 01:28:13,479
Speaker 7: Is something we is really the conversation like, how do

1679
01:28:13,520 --> 01:28:16,559
Speaker 7: you hand them to children? Would you give them to

1680
01:28:16,920 --> 01:28:19,880
Speaker 7: children in your life? And if so, because I've given

1681
01:28:19,920 --> 01:28:22,320
Speaker 7: them to plenty of children, Like in what context and

1682
01:28:22,360 --> 01:28:26,360
Speaker 7: with what sort of support system do they now come with?

1683
01:28:26,640 --> 01:28:26,840
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1684
01:28:27,040 --> 01:28:30,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, And if you so decide to not give your

1685
01:28:30,800 --> 01:28:34,000
Speaker 4: kids these these books or any kids these books. DeBie

1686
01:28:34,040 --> 01:28:37,519
Speaker 4: Reese also has a blog called American Indians and Children's

1687
01:28:37,520 --> 01:28:42,000
Speaker 4: Literature where she basically rates all these different books and

1688
01:28:42,120 --> 01:28:45,000
Speaker 4: Little House you might expect scores some of the lowest

1689
01:28:45,120 --> 01:28:48,519
Speaker 4: of whether the depictions of Native Americans in those books

1690
01:28:48,600 --> 01:28:52,400
Speaker 4: are are appropriate or just positive depictions at all, and

1691
01:28:52,479 --> 01:28:55,200
Speaker 4: will recommend the books coming out now that do have

1692
01:28:55,280 --> 01:28:59,000
Speaker 4: really great depictions of Native life. And so if you're

1693
01:28:59,040 --> 01:29:02,960
Speaker 4: looking for alternative books to give kids, that's a really

1694
01:29:02,960 --> 01:29:03,639
Speaker 4: good resource.

1695
01:29:04,160 --> 01:29:04,920
Speaker 3: That's super cool.

1696
01:29:06,960 --> 01:29:12,040
Speaker 2: The food topic, Oh no, it's I mean, it genuinely

1697
01:29:12,120 --> 01:29:13,519
Speaker 2: is all tied in. I mean, you know, like like

1698
01:29:13,520 --> 01:29:17,160
Speaker 2: when you're when you're talking, I mean, because all all

1699
01:29:17,160 --> 01:29:19,720
Speaker 2: of these issues were tied into food ways and so

1700
01:29:20,120 --> 01:29:22,840
Speaker 2: and and and into the food ways that would come

1701
01:29:22,840 --> 01:29:24,559
Speaker 2: out of the of this time when you were talking

1702
01:29:24,600 --> 01:29:26,599
Speaker 2: about the dust ball and all of that so yeah,

1703
01:29:26,680 --> 01:29:29,880
Speaker 2: I mean the fact that they gave away the stewardship

1704
01:29:29,960 --> 01:29:32,040
Speaker 2: of the land from people who cared about it to

1705
01:29:32,080 --> 01:29:35,320
Speaker 2: people who just wanted their heck in sixty acres, you know, like,

1706
01:29:35,360 --> 01:29:37,280
Speaker 2: of course you're gonna of course you're gonna get a

1707
01:29:37,360 --> 01:29:38,360
Speaker 2: dust bawl like that.

1708
01:29:39,360 --> 01:29:40,960
Speaker 7: One of the smartest things that was said to us

1709
01:29:41,040 --> 01:29:46,200
Speaker 7: was by an environmental historian who said, we're talking about white, violent,

1710
01:29:46,280 --> 01:29:52,200
Speaker 7: white supremacist systems and people with very few resources trying

1711
01:29:52,240 --> 01:29:55,000
Speaker 7: to survive within them, and that both of these things

1712
01:29:55,040 --> 01:30:00,080
Speaker 7: are true at the same time that you had the

1713
01:30:00,080 --> 01:30:05,280
Speaker 7: the people to whom Freeland was sold to, not in literal.

1714
01:30:04,960 --> 01:30:08,080
Speaker 5: Fact, but as like as.

1715
01:30:07,000 --> 01:30:14,280
Speaker 7: Like a marketing campaign, were extremely poor, had very few options,

1716
01:30:14,800 --> 01:30:18,519
Speaker 7: and this was their option. And it is also, of

1717
01:30:18,640 --> 01:30:24,360
Speaker 7: course obviously true that the system that they are being

1718
01:30:24,360 --> 01:30:28,720
Speaker 7: invited into is a white supremacist, violent system that has

1719
01:30:28,760 --> 01:30:33,040
Speaker 7: eradicated an entire population of people in order to make

1720
01:30:33,080 --> 01:30:37,760
Speaker 7: this possible. And so understanding both those things at the

1721
01:30:37,800 --> 01:30:41,559
Speaker 7: same time, I think is not to put it mildly

1722
01:30:41,600 --> 01:30:45,600
Speaker 7: how we're taught American history, but is also true, you know,

1723
01:30:45,800 --> 01:30:51,040
Speaker 7: like that's it's not everyone was starving. Well, people who

1724
01:30:51,080 --> 01:30:53,840
Speaker 7: on the railroad weren't, the government wasn't. But and this

1725
01:30:54,000 --> 01:30:57,200
Speaker 7: idea too of I mean, we talked about this. I'm

1726
01:30:57,240 --> 01:31:02,360
Speaker 7: losing track of what's our actual podcast now. This whole

1727
01:31:02,400 --> 01:31:04,519
Speaker 7: idea of like the self I think little house, and

1728
01:31:04,560 --> 01:31:06,120
Speaker 7: so much of this ties into the food and the

1729
01:31:06,120 --> 01:31:09,639
Speaker 7: food descriptions is the angles are self sufficient and they

1730
01:31:09,640 --> 01:31:12,080
Speaker 7: live off the land and they get no support, And

1731
01:31:12,120 --> 01:31:16,519
Speaker 7: in reality, they got plenty of government support everyone needed.

1732
01:31:16,600 --> 01:31:19,120
Speaker 7: There was huge grasshopper plagus for the entire seventies that

1733
01:31:19,160 --> 01:31:21,559
Speaker 7: wiped out like whatever the measurements was like, it wiped

1734
01:31:21,560 --> 01:31:24,320
Speaker 7: out entire states, like you can't even conceive of these

1735
01:31:24,439 --> 01:31:27,439
Speaker 7: weaves clouds of grasshoppers that were about hundreds of thousands

1736
01:31:27,479 --> 01:31:30,920
Speaker 7: of miles wide that wiped everything out. But more than that,

1737
01:31:31,000 --> 01:31:35,440
Speaker 7: the biggest government support they got was the absolute eradication

1738
01:31:35,520 --> 01:31:39,360
Speaker 7: of Native Americans. That is a government support, that's support

1739
01:31:39,479 --> 01:31:40,080
Speaker 7: to your.

1740
01:31:39,960 --> 01:31:42,360
Speaker 5: Lifestyle to make this land available to you.

1741
01:31:42,439 --> 01:31:46,920
Speaker 7: And understanding the connection of those two things I think

1742
01:31:47,160 --> 01:31:50,320
Speaker 7: is incredible. It was very powerful to me and I

1743
01:31:50,320 --> 01:31:54,040
Speaker 7: think really necessary when you're coming to these stories that

1744
01:31:54,960 --> 01:31:58,000
Speaker 7: to understand the framework of what's actually happening.

1745
01:31:59,200 --> 01:32:05,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, And I mean and those histories haven't

1746
01:32:05,080 --> 01:32:11,479
Speaker 2: been told for most for I mean, I feel like

1747
01:32:11,479 --> 01:32:17,160
Speaker 2: it's really recent that we're starting to hear anything approaching

1748
01:32:17,240 --> 01:32:20,680
Speaker 2: the actual truth to these stories, to how many times

1749
01:32:21,160 --> 01:32:24,120
Speaker 2: the o sage we're kicked out of different territories whenever

1750
01:32:24,320 --> 01:32:27,400
Speaker 2: anyone realized that the land they were on was something

1751
01:32:27,400 --> 01:32:28,439
Speaker 2: that they wanted again.

1752
01:32:28,560 --> 01:32:30,280
Speaker 7: I mean, I think we don't realize how much little

1753
01:32:30,280 --> 01:32:33,280
Speaker 7: House sucks up the history, Like because she decided to

1754
01:32:33,280 --> 01:32:35,240
Speaker 7: sit down and write her life story in a very

1755
01:32:35,320 --> 01:32:38,400
Speaker 7: like we need money, and I loved my father and

1756
01:32:38,439 --> 01:32:40,640
Speaker 7: I want to have some record of my childhood, and

1757
01:32:40,800 --> 01:32:43,599
Speaker 7: that could have been Like how much we're asking lor

1758
01:32:43,600 --> 01:32:46,720
Speaker 7: Angles Wilder to shoulder in terms of our historical understanding

1759
01:32:46,760 --> 01:32:50,759
Speaker 7: of an entire country feels a bit outsized. But also

1760
01:32:51,560 --> 01:32:54,360
Speaker 7: why are we allowing her to shoulder so much? Right,

1761
01:32:54,479 --> 01:32:58,400
Speaker 7: there's an appeal to the story she's giving us that

1762
01:32:58,520 --> 01:33:02,519
Speaker 7: is obliterating all these other narratives because this is a

1763
01:33:02,640 --> 01:33:08,280
Speaker 7: nicer story and it has like pig splatters and like

1764
01:33:09,120 --> 01:33:16,040
Speaker 7: maple candy in the snow, and like that's a nice story.

1765
01:33:16,680 --> 01:33:20,160
Speaker 7: And also grass You imagine clouds of grasshoppers descending for

1766
01:33:20,280 --> 01:33:23,040
Speaker 7: months at a time and literally eating everything like you

1767
01:33:23,200 --> 01:33:25,479
Speaker 7: lose your mind. I can't even handle a cockroach in

1768
01:33:25,520 --> 01:33:27,200
Speaker 7: the apartment. I just think like.

1769
01:33:27,360 --> 01:33:29,920
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, if Netflix is down, I'm real upset.

1770
01:33:30,040 --> 01:33:35,200
Speaker 6: So like, yeah, well that's the thing. They there's there.

1771
01:33:35,240 --> 01:33:37,600
Speaker 4: The poverty does definitely comes through in the books, but

1772
01:33:37,920 --> 01:33:40,160
Speaker 4: you also realize again as an adult, that she was

1773
01:33:40,240 --> 01:33:43,280
Speaker 4: downplaying that she was upping the food and like the

1774
01:33:43,439 --> 01:33:45,640
Speaker 4: small moments in her life where they were able to

1775
01:33:45,640 --> 01:33:49,080
Speaker 4: have this delicious meal and downplaying the months and months

1776
01:33:49,080 --> 01:33:50,000
Speaker 4: that they were starving.

1777
01:33:50,680 --> 01:33:53,680
Speaker 6: And yeah, there's uh it.

1778
01:33:53,680 --> 01:33:56,680
Speaker 4: Just speaks to her like her sense, her sensory details

1779
01:33:56,840 --> 01:33:59,240
Speaker 4: are just like doing so much of the lift, heavy

1780
01:33:59,280 --> 01:34:02,400
Speaker 4: lifting and the entire series again to just wrap it

1781
01:34:02,400 --> 01:34:03,240
Speaker 4: all in a pretty bow.

1782
01:34:03,439 --> 01:34:06,519
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, her sensory details. That's a great way to

1783
01:34:06,560 --> 01:34:06,920
Speaker 5: put it.

1784
01:34:08,600 --> 01:34:11,479
Speaker 3: Uh Annie, do you do you?

1785
01:34:11,600 --> 01:34:11,720
Speaker 2: How?

1786
01:34:11,960 --> 01:34:14,800
Speaker 5: How this amazing?

1787
01:34:14,880 --> 01:34:16,640
Speaker 7: I wish that we could have like an audio of

1788
01:34:16,680 --> 01:34:18,200
Speaker 7: your face, because every once in a while you're like,

1789
01:34:18,240 --> 01:34:19,080
Speaker 7: oh my.

1790
01:34:19,040 --> 01:34:23,920
Speaker 5: God, what are we talking about? This is crazy?

1791
01:34:26,280 --> 01:34:34,800
Speaker 1: It's been a lot. Wait, I love it.

1792
01:34:35,000 --> 01:34:36,080
Speaker 5: Uh.

1793
01:34:36,600 --> 01:34:39,720
Speaker 1: I feel I feel like we're going long, But I

1794
01:34:39,800 --> 01:34:43,880
Speaker 1: did have I was formulating questions as again someone who

1795
01:34:44,439 --> 01:34:47,760
Speaker 1: has like no experience with this. I've had experience with

1796
01:34:47,800 --> 01:34:51,040
Speaker 1: similar things. When I was trying to sleep last night,

1797
01:34:51,040 --> 01:34:54,679
Speaker 1: and as I've been listening, I feel like I'm picking

1798
01:34:54,760 --> 01:34:59,519
Speaker 1: up threads on it. But it was it's a vague

1799
01:34:59,520 --> 01:35:02,320
Speaker 1: and messy question, so please bear with me. But I

1800
01:35:02,360 --> 01:35:04,320
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of things like this, because we've

1801
01:35:04,360 --> 01:35:08,160
Speaker 1: talked about things like this, Lauren, and other fictional pieces

1802
01:35:08,240 --> 01:35:12,040
Speaker 1: where there's this description of food and the food is

1803
01:35:12,080 --> 01:35:17,280
Speaker 1: so in heavy quotes, basic like but it sounds like

1804
01:35:17,400 --> 01:35:22,120
Speaker 1: the best thing you've ever had, and it usually is

1805
01:35:22,160 --> 01:35:27,320
Speaker 1: in these times of deprivation or you can't get a

1806
01:35:27,439 --> 01:35:31,559
Speaker 1: hold on this food you're so it tastes like the

1807
01:35:31,560 --> 01:35:34,840
Speaker 1: best thing you've ever had. But as we've been talking

1808
01:35:34,840 --> 01:35:36,680
Speaker 1: through this, and what I was thinking about last night

1809
01:35:36,800 --> 01:35:39,599
Speaker 1: was sort of how much of how much of this

1810
01:35:39,640 --> 01:35:48,280
Speaker 1: particular story feels like either and the like kind of

1811
01:35:48,280 --> 01:35:50,960
Speaker 1: manifest usty of America, like pull yourself up by your

1812
01:35:51,000 --> 01:35:53,960
Speaker 1: own bootstops. You should be proud, like you can survive

1813
01:35:54,040 --> 01:35:55,920
Speaker 1: off this little good for you.

1814
01:35:56,920 --> 01:35:57,599
Speaker 3: Plus like.

1815
01:35:59,760 --> 01:36:07,639
Speaker 1: The idea that we've gotten away from in our modern sense.

1816
01:36:07,680 --> 01:36:09,439
Speaker 1: This is a very modern take, but we've gotten away

1817
01:36:09,439 --> 01:36:12,920
Speaker 1: from these quote simple foods again, like it so this

1818
01:36:13,040 --> 01:36:18,680
Speaker 1: is sort of. One of the reasons it resonates is that, Oh,

1819
01:36:18,720 --> 01:36:20,080
Speaker 1: I go to the grocery store and I get this

1820
01:36:20,080 --> 01:36:22,040
Speaker 1: thing and I have no connection to it. There's no

1821
01:36:22,800 --> 01:36:24,479
Speaker 1: connection to me, and I eat it and I don't

1822
01:36:24,479 --> 01:36:26,360
Speaker 1: really care about it, and I don't really think about it.

1823
01:36:26,920 --> 01:36:28,559
Speaker 1: Do you think those things are at play at all?

1824
01:36:28,560 --> 01:36:30,639
Speaker 1: Am I just like reaching wildly for something?

1825
01:36:30,800 --> 01:36:32,080
Speaker 3: No, there definitely.

1826
01:36:32,280 --> 01:36:33,960
Speaker 7: I think the reason we all talk about the pigs

1827
01:36:33,960 --> 01:36:36,200
Speaker 7: Blatter is because right before she gets the pigs Blatter,

1828
01:36:36,280 --> 01:36:38,599
Speaker 7: she has to listen to the pig squeal as it's

1829
01:36:38,640 --> 01:36:42,479
Speaker 7: being slaughtered. Like this is there's a very real direct

1830
01:36:42,560 --> 01:36:47,519
Speaker 7: thread in Little House between the source of the food.

1831
01:36:48,080 --> 01:36:49,840
Speaker 7: Like one of the biggest fights she and Mary has

1832
01:36:49,880 --> 01:36:52,559
Speaker 7: is when Paul goes out hunting and they're fighting over

1833
01:36:52,640 --> 01:36:55,760
Speaker 7: what dressing the goose will get when he returns. Like

1834
01:36:55,800 --> 01:37:02,160
Speaker 7: there's a very clear line between their survey and pausibility

1835
01:37:03,760 --> 01:37:08,760
Speaker 7: to hunt, really and and a lot of salting of

1836
01:37:09,240 --> 01:37:12,840
Speaker 7: venison happens in the Little House, which always sounds delicious

1837
01:37:12,840 --> 01:37:13,040
Speaker 7: to me.

1838
01:37:13,040 --> 01:37:14,479
Speaker 5: They're always salting the venison.

1839
01:37:14,720 --> 01:37:18,240
Speaker 7: They're like she describes it, they're so I think I

1840
01:37:18,240 --> 01:37:20,599
Speaker 7: think there's an appeal to that and I think, I mean,

1841
01:37:20,920 --> 01:37:26,920
Speaker 7: I'm not the cook here, but at all, but the

1842
01:37:26,920 --> 01:37:28,599
Speaker 7: amount of people who said to us that they had

1843
01:37:28,680 --> 01:37:33,760
Speaker 7: learned to can, or to preserve, or they wanted to

1844
01:37:33,840 --> 01:37:35,680
Speaker 7: know how all these things. And I think even this

1845
01:37:35,760 --> 01:37:41,240
Speaker 7: sort of live from the land through line, there's a simplicity,

1846
01:37:41,600 --> 01:37:45,639
Speaker 7: simplicity to it that is appealing, Like there's a purity

1847
01:37:45,640 --> 01:37:49,280
Speaker 7: to it, which I don't actually think it is necessarily

1848
01:37:49,360 --> 01:37:53,080
Speaker 7: true in their real lived existence. And I don't know

1849
01:37:53,400 --> 01:37:58,200
Speaker 7: how if it was, if anybody could really survive individually

1850
01:37:58,400 --> 01:38:00,960
Speaker 7: off the land in real life. But there's a real

1851
01:38:01,000 --> 01:38:04,479
Speaker 7: appeal to the idea that you could that you know,

1852
01:38:04,560 --> 01:38:07,400
Speaker 7: where everything that you've done. This the self sufficiency, like

1853
01:38:07,080 --> 01:38:10,920
Speaker 7: this American idea of self sufficiency that I don't think

1854
01:38:12,360 --> 01:38:15,360
Speaker 7: really exists in other narratives of countries of themselves, right,

1855
01:38:15,400 --> 01:38:18,560
Speaker 7: like in America really loves.

1856
01:38:18,240 --> 01:38:21,559
Speaker 4: The idea of like, yeah, and doing so much with

1857
01:38:21,640 --> 01:38:24,720
Speaker 4: so little. You know, to the extent of your a homesteader,

1858
01:38:24,760 --> 01:38:27,360
Speaker 4: you're going out where there's absolutely nothing, and that's and

1859
01:38:27,400 --> 01:38:29,639
Speaker 4: that means everything to you. That piece of land means

1860
01:38:29,680 --> 01:38:31,599
Speaker 4: everything to you, and you're going to get everything you.

1861
01:38:31,600 --> 01:38:32,320
Speaker 6: Can out of it.

1862
01:38:32,920 --> 01:38:37,720
Speaker 4: And even that again that opening scene of slaughtering the

1863
01:38:37,720 --> 01:38:40,400
Speaker 4: pig and getting the pigs bladder and the tail and

1864
01:38:41,280 --> 01:38:43,880
Speaker 4: almost bragging about how they were able to use every

1865
01:38:43,920 --> 01:38:46,960
Speaker 4: part and have so much fun and chalking that up

1866
01:38:46,960 --> 01:38:50,880
Speaker 4: to their pioneer ways, where back to Native American traditions

1867
01:38:50,920 --> 01:38:54,360
Speaker 4: like that is all like that when you learn about yeah,

1868
01:38:54,720 --> 01:38:58,200
Speaker 4: Native American customs and the traditions around the buffalo hunt,

1869
01:38:58,560 --> 01:39:01,000
Speaker 4: like they are not praise in the same way that

1870
01:39:01,080 --> 01:39:04,160
Speaker 4: this little pioneer family is for like slaughtering their one

1871
01:39:04,240 --> 01:39:08,960
Speaker 4: pig a year. So yeah, it's definitely it's was practical.

1872
01:39:09,000 --> 01:39:11,160
Speaker 4: Obviously they had to do that to cert They had

1873
01:39:11,200 --> 01:39:13,479
Speaker 4: to use everything that they had to survive and make

1874
01:39:13,479 --> 01:39:16,240
Speaker 4: it last as long as they could. But I definitely

1875
01:39:16,240 --> 01:39:19,320
Speaker 4: agree that it is in these books depicted as a

1876
01:39:19,479 --> 01:39:22,080
Speaker 4: very American like new way of life.

1877
01:39:22,200 --> 01:39:25,120
Speaker 5: It's romanticized too. It's really like the.

1878
01:39:26,880 --> 01:39:28,880
Speaker 7: It's in Little House some big wits particularly, but it's

1879
01:39:28,920 --> 01:39:31,120
Speaker 7: really framed as a bit of a fairy tale and

1880
01:39:31,160 --> 01:39:33,719
Speaker 7: there's a romance to it. And I can't emphasize strongly

1881
01:39:33,800 --> 01:39:38,400
Speaker 7: enough that Rose Go Back to Rose has been she,

1882
01:39:38,640 --> 01:39:43,240
Speaker 7: along with Ain Rand, called the mother of the Libertarian Party,

1883
01:39:43,320 --> 01:39:47,400
Speaker 7: and that these books are fused with Rose's libertarian fantasy,

1884
01:39:47,800 --> 01:39:50,240
Speaker 7: which the only reason it didn't go completely off the

1885
01:39:50,320 --> 01:39:52,840
Speaker 7: rails is because Laura was like, I'm not putting that

1886
01:39:52,920 --> 01:39:56,280
Speaker 7: in this book about the long Winter which we barely survived.

1887
01:39:56,439 --> 01:39:58,799
Speaker 7: Rose wanted to include a serial killer, like a fictional

1888
01:39:58,840 --> 01:40:02,640
Speaker 7: serial killer in in Little House in the Pair, Like really, So,

1889
01:40:02,920 --> 01:40:05,960
Speaker 7: once you really understand the source of some of this,

1890
01:40:06,240 --> 01:40:12,799
Speaker 7: I think it mitigates a bit of that self sufficient fantasy.

1891
01:40:12,880 --> 01:40:16,519
Speaker 7: At the same time, it does sound appealing because so

1892
01:40:16,640 --> 01:40:21,920
Speaker 7: much of our food is disconnected from are from life,

1893
01:40:21,960 --> 01:40:24,200
Speaker 7: Like some of our food is disconnected from its source.

1894
01:40:24,240 --> 01:40:28,720
Speaker 7: It's disconnected from life, it's disconnected from and we're seeing that.

1895
01:40:28,920 --> 01:40:31,439
Speaker 7: I mean, we're living in New York three days ago

1896
01:40:31,520 --> 01:40:33,760
Speaker 7: we couldn't see the skyline because of the smoke, Like

1897
01:40:33,800 --> 01:40:36,640
Speaker 7: we're really, we are living in real ramifications of all

1898
01:40:36,640 --> 01:40:40,160
Speaker 7: these decisions, and there is something deeply appealing about this

1899
01:40:41,000 --> 01:40:46,600
Speaker 7: fantasy of sustainability and pure living. And of course the

1900
01:40:46,640 --> 01:40:48,840
Speaker 7: truth at the time was they were in an environmental

1901
01:40:48,880 --> 01:40:53,080
Speaker 7: crisis too. You know, those droughts were not mystical, they

1902
01:40:53,080 --> 01:40:54,759
Speaker 7: were man made in some cases.

1903
01:40:54,800 --> 01:40:55,120
Speaker 2: And so.

1904
01:40:56,680 --> 01:40:59,400
Speaker 7: Again there's a reason we're still talking about these books

1905
01:40:59,439 --> 01:41:04,000
Speaker 7: because we're reliving versions of them in some degree or other. Uh,

1906
01:41:05,280 --> 01:41:08,320
Speaker 7: But yeah, I don't know, it seems nice. My father

1907
01:41:08,360 --> 01:41:10,439
Speaker 7: worked in it. My father was in the management side

1908
01:41:10,479 --> 01:41:12,720
Speaker 7: of Canada's largest meat packing company when I was a kid,

1909
01:41:12,720 --> 01:41:14,800
Speaker 7: and I used to beg him to come in and

1910
01:41:14,880 --> 01:41:15,920
Speaker 7: see the animals get.

1911
01:41:15,880 --> 01:41:18,400
Speaker 5: Slaughtered because I was so consumed with Little House.

1912
01:41:18,600 --> 01:41:20,599
Speaker 7: And he was like, yeah, and you say you didn't

1913
01:41:20,640 --> 01:41:22,880
Speaker 7: like the food in these books, I know, it's so funny.

1914
01:41:22,920 --> 01:41:25,240
Speaker 7: I was like, well, they're slaughter how do you slaughter

1915
01:41:25,360 --> 01:41:27,840
Speaker 7: the pigs? Dad like, what's happening in this meat? And

1916
01:41:27,880 --> 01:41:29,680
Speaker 7: he was like, you have to be thirteen. Like he

1917
01:41:29,680 --> 01:41:30,360
Speaker 7: didn't even.

1918
01:41:30,200 --> 01:41:32,719
Speaker 5: Say, wow, it's weird that my eight year.

1919
01:41:32,560 --> 01:41:34,960
Speaker 7: Old daughter wants to come see a metal bolt put

1920
01:41:35,000 --> 01:41:36,160
Speaker 7: through this animal's head.

1921
01:41:36,320 --> 01:41:38,160
Speaker 5: It was just like, you're not allowed in here.

1922
01:41:38,360 --> 01:41:40,000
Speaker 6: He never brought you back a pigs bladder.

1923
01:41:40,360 --> 01:41:42,479
Speaker 5: He never brought me back a pigs flatter. But man,

1924
01:41:42,520 --> 01:41:43,599
Speaker 5: I'm a waiter, So.

1925
01:41:46,240 --> 01:41:47,840
Speaker 7: I mean, guys, thank you for this. I know this

1926
01:41:47,880 --> 01:41:50,479
Speaker 7: conversation is long and windy, but I do think it

1927
01:41:50,560 --> 01:41:52,960
Speaker 7: is reflective of the subject matter, which is like it

1928
01:41:53,439 --> 01:41:56,639
Speaker 7: is like you really pull one thread and next thing

1929
01:41:56,680 --> 01:41:59,960
Speaker 7: you know you're in like the nineteen seventy six libertarian

1930
01:42:00,080 --> 01:42:00,960
Speaker 7: ticket for president.

1931
01:42:01,040 --> 01:42:06,000
Speaker 8: Like it's just, it's just it's so all over the place,

1932
01:42:06,200 --> 01:42:10,320
Speaker 8: and the fact that so much chaos and mental illness

1933
01:42:10,360 --> 01:42:17,080
Speaker 8: and violence and racism and poverty has resulted in these books, which.

1934
01:42:17,280 --> 01:42:19,280
Speaker 7: On the one hand, I hand think have some truth

1935
01:42:19,600 --> 01:42:22,680
Speaker 7: of familial love and on the other hand are just

1936
01:42:22,920 --> 01:42:26,320
Speaker 7: you know, this very comforting tale is fascinating.

1937
01:42:28,439 --> 01:42:30,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like we always say, you never know where the

1938
01:42:30,320 --> 01:42:31,400
Speaker 1: research will take you.

1939
01:42:31,400 --> 01:42:32,040
Speaker 5: You never know.

1940
01:42:32,320 --> 01:42:35,519
Speaker 7: It's like Laura's decision to sit down and write about

1941
01:42:35,560 --> 01:42:39,160
Speaker 7: the meals her family had together because so much of

1942
01:42:39,200 --> 01:42:44,000
Speaker 7: it is about food is like resulted in in this

1943
01:42:44,280 --> 01:42:47,679
Speaker 7: It's it's really intense to think about.

1944
01:42:50,520 --> 01:42:51,639
Speaker 5: And it's making me hungry.

1945
01:42:51,960 --> 01:42:54,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's about that time.

1946
01:42:55,040 --> 01:42:55,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1947
01:42:55,400 --> 01:42:57,800
Speaker 7: Weirdly, it's making me hungry for sushi though, which Laura

1948
01:42:57,880 --> 01:42:58,400
Speaker 7: never had.

1949
01:43:01,280 --> 01:43:02,800
Speaker 6: She knew Elvis, but she didn't eat sushi.

1950
01:43:04,880 --> 01:43:06,679
Speaker 5: She had a big fat Japanese fan base.

1951
01:43:06,760 --> 01:43:12,559
Speaker 7: But uh, yeah, because of propaganda, because Arthur we put

1952
01:43:12,600 --> 01:43:14,000
Speaker 7: that in the first episode, Right, I've.

1953
01:43:13,800 --> 01:43:17,599
Speaker 5: Lost track, so I did Uh maybe Laura had sushi?

1954
01:43:22,000 --> 01:43:26,640
Speaker 7: Maybe Washes were unable to answer in the podcast.

1955
01:43:27,080 --> 01:43:28,599
Speaker 5: Did Laura ingles eat sushi.

1956
01:43:30,760 --> 01:43:32,000
Speaker 1: You'll get to the bottom of it.

1957
01:43:34,160 --> 01:43:36,680
Speaker 5: History.

1958
01:43:41,400 --> 01:43:44,360
Speaker 1: That brings us to the end of this semi fictional

1959
01:43:44,400 --> 01:43:48,439
Speaker 1: foods about Little House and our our wonderful interview that

1960
01:43:48,479 --> 01:43:50,080
Speaker 1: we got to do. I learned so.

1961
01:43:50,200 --> 01:43:51,280
Speaker 5: Much, Lauren.

1962
01:43:53,000 --> 01:43:55,160
Speaker 1: Changed, we we all did.

1963
01:43:55,360 --> 01:43:59,960
Speaker 2: I this was Oh heck, I I love I love

1964
01:44:00,160 --> 01:44:05,120
Speaker 2: how angry I am right now. It's really and I

1965
01:44:05,680 --> 01:44:07,679
Speaker 2: just just how fascinating.

1966
01:44:07,200 --> 01:44:08,639
Speaker 3: How weird.

1967
01:44:08,840 --> 01:44:12,280
Speaker 2: That's something that I just had this really innate love

1968
01:44:12,320 --> 01:44:15,599
Speaker 2: for as a child. Is so much deeper, so much

1969
01:44:15,840 --> 01:44:18,520
Speaker 2: goes so much deeper than I ever imagined it could.

1970
01:44:18,920 --> 01:44:24,840
Speaker 1: Yes, it really, really really does. But it was really fun.

1971
01:44:24,920 --> 01:44:27,719
Speaker 1: It was fun to learn about. I'm excited to share

1972
01:44:27,760 --> 01:44:35,000
Speaker 1: this with everyone. And yeah, you can check out Wilder. Yeah,

1973
01:44:35,080 --> 01:44:43,760
Speaker 1: we find podcasts for way more. Oh yes, yes, yes,

1974
01:44:43,800 --> 01:44:47,040
Speaker 1: and you should. In the meantime, no listener mail on

1975
01:44:47,040 --> 01:44:49,880
Speaker 1: this one, because it was quite a long interview, a

1976
01:44:49,960 --> 01:44:54,000
Speaker 1: wonderful one. But yeah, this episode could get two hours

1977
01:44:54,000 --> 01:44:57,240
Speaker 1: long easily, so we are. We'll be back with it

1978
01:44:57,280 --> 01:45:00,280
Speaker 1: in our next episode. But if you do, do you

1979
01:45:00,360 --> 01:45:03,120
Speaker 1: have anything you want to send us? You can our

1980
01:45:03,200 --> 01:45:05,160
Speaker 1: emails Hello at savorpod dot com.

1981
01:45:05,280 --> 01:45:07,320
Speaker 2: We are also on social media You can find us

1982
01:45:07,360 --> 01:45:10,280
Speaker 2: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Saver pod and we

1983
01:45:10,320 --> 01:45:13,320
Speaker 2: do hope to hear from you. Save is production of iHeartRadio.

1984
01:45:13,479 --> 01:45:16,719
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app,

1985
01:45:16,840 --> 01:45:19,639
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1986
01:45:20,000 --> 01:45:22,559
Speaker 2: Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and

1987
01:45:22,560 --> 01:45:25,160
Speaker 2: Andrew Howard, with special thanks today to Charles de Montebello

1988
01:45:25,280 --> 01:45:27,960
Speaker 2: for recording up in New York. Thanks to you for listening,

1989
01:45:28,000 --> 01:45:29,439
Speaker 2: and we hope that lots of work at things are

1990
01:45:29,439 --> 01:45:37,440
Speaker 2: coming your way