0:01

Whole Zone Media.

0:04

Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool

0:06

Stuff, the only podcast I am currently

0:08

recording. I tried multitasking

0:10

this and it turns out I

0:13

can't, and I'm

0:15

ashamed of myself, but I'm

0:18

not ashamed to have as my guest

0:21

catbou Hi. Hey, Margaret,

0:23

how are you? Kataboo is known from

0:25

the Internet. That's what

0:27

I currently have written down because everything

0:29

is always in transition.

0:31

Yeah, I

0:34

am known from the Internet. I would say that I

0:36

have a job, but as of today, I don't.

0:39

The streamer should appear behind you on zoom

0:41

every time you say that.

0:43

Just like confetti pops out everywhere. But

0:46

I'm really you know, it's a great time to hear about

0:48

cool people who did cool stuff?

0:51

Well are you in luck?

0:54

But partly because our producer is

0:56

Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi.

0:58

It's me Sophie.

1:00

And our audio

1:03

engineers Daniel.

1:04

Hi, Daniel Hi, Danel Hi,

1:06

Danel Our.

1:07

Theme musical was written forced by unwoman. Okay,

1:09

so I just finished more than a month, like

1:12

five weeks of episodes, ten episodes

1:14

about the fucking Russian Civil War. And don't

1:17

worry, this has nothing to do with that, because

1:21

that one ended really tragically, right, the

1:24

bad people took over in the end of that one.

1:26

And.

1:28

Doing all that research like kind of fucked me

1:30

up. It colored my daily interactions,

1:33

having spent so long immersed in that particular

1:35

time and place in history, and I wanted

1:37

a break. I wanted to do

1:40

something where people win a

1:42

little bit, uh or

1:45

at least hold out a little bit

1:47

longer, because there's always it's

1:49

always an ebb and a flow between good

1:52

guys in back. Obviously, we shouldn't paint the world in blacka

1:54

white morality, but we do sometimes on this

1:56

show. And

1:58

I thought about two things that have

2:00

come up recently on this show. At

2:03

one point, well, Robert

2:06

was a guest. We were talking about

2:08

how feeding people is generally speaking

2:10

like just good. Like

2:13

if you're like, I don't know what else good

2:15

to do, you could probably just feed

2:18

people. Although the more

2:20

you dig into any particular topic you'll find

2:22

ways people doing it badly but

2:25

overall good. I

2:28

like this because you still have no idea what we're going to be talking

2:30

about. The Other thing is I usually like match

2:32

my I usually like look specifically

2:35

at my guests interests, and then I'm like pick

2:37

something that vaguely ties into that.

2:39

I didn't do that this time. I just really

2:41

wanted to cover this particular topic.

2:44

I'm like, let's do it. Yeah, I think I

2:46

think you'll like it. I think it

2:48

would take a person

2:51

with no heart, like

2:53

the Grinch.

2:54

Somebody we wouldn't book as a guest on this podcast.

2:57

That's true. Yeah, okay. So the other

2:59

thing that led me to what

3:01

this topic is about or whatever.

3:05

The hero of one of our recent episodes was this

3:07

anarchist military commander woman named Maria

3:09

Niki Farova. In the middle of this pitched

3:11

war, She's waiting to go on trial, and

3:14

she told a bunch of the other anarchists in Russia basically

3:16

like, Hey, what we should do

3:19

is set up a system of community gardens

3:21

and just feed people, and that's how we'll like

3:23

defeat authoritarian propaganda.

3:26

And I'm going to talk about

3:29

that. I'm not gonna talk about in Russia much. I'm

3:31

gonna talk about community gardens.

3:33

I love that. I'm so excited.

3:36

Hell yeah, I'm gonna talk about the

3:38

hundreds that still exist in New York City today. I'm

3:40

gonna talk about where they came from and what people have done to

3:42

defend them. I have to be clear,

3:44

I have never community gardened. I've

3:47

only regularly gardened, and

3:49

not very well. But I'm wondering if this is a thing

3:52

you experience or not.

3:54

Yeah, Like I grew up, my mom

3:57

has like the greenest thumb, Like

4:01

she has this cute little herb garden on

4:03

her balcony right now. She's always

4:05

been like so big on sustainable

4:08

stuff and like local produce. Like

4:10

I don't know how to use a can

4:12

opener because she insisted on

4:14

only fresh produce.

4:16

So to be fair, apparently

4:18

all of us use a can opener. Wrong. I saw some

4:20

video on TikTok and I was.

4:22

Like, oh, well, do you remember being dad. I

4:24

felt so bad for the little girl because I was

4:26

like, I am, you know, twenty five, and

4:29

I'm not to use a can opener.

4:31

Well, apparently nobody does.

4:33

So nobody does except that one person

4:35

on TikTok.

4:35

Yeah, okay, see, but before

4:38

we started recording, I was telling a story

4:40

that involved me being technically a hobo

4:42

and that I was riding a freight train and

4:44

there's this style of can opener that hoboes

4:47

have that no one excepts soldiers and hoboes, and how

4:49

to use called a P thirty eight. It's

4:51

the size of like two thumbnails

4:54

like not like icons, but it's like as big

4:56

as like it's it's

4:58

the size of the top joint.

4:59

Of my okay, and

5:01

it can open a can like a penny.

5:04

Yeah, a penny and a half's

5:07

how does it work? It

5:10

hinges out and there's a tiny little blade

5:12

on it, and then there's a tiny little notch

5:14

cut into the metal of the handle, which

5:17

is like an inch and a half long or something like that. And

5:20

it weighs nothing, it costs

5:22

nothing. I put them in all the like

5:24

first aid kits and emergency kits that they give

5:26

out to people. But then people have no idea how to use

5:28

it. But you just put

5:31

it on the can and then slowly move it around

5:33

and cut it open.

5:34

No, that makes sense.

5:36

Yeah, so I probably am using

5:38

the regular ones wrong.

5:39

I'd like to use that one. That sounds more

5:41

fun. Actually, the can openers

5:43

were all thinking of they look difficult,

5:46

like there's nothing intuitive about them.

5:48

No, two weird spinny discs and then like

5:50

three things that spin over there and right,

5:53

do.

5:53

You want me to slice a pizza with this?

5:54

Like?

5:55

What are you?

5:56

What are you doing? Yeah?

6:00

It does kind of look like a both a pizza

6:02

cutter and then also the stuff you use to cut fabric

6:05

when you do a lot of sewing, the full circle cutters,

6:07

you know, ye, yeah, I

6:09

wouldn't want to use a P thirty eight to

6:11

cut fabric.

6:13

I'm actually working on a quilt that relates to community

6:16

gardening.

6:16

Wait, really tell me about that.

6:18

I saw at the Union

6:21

Square farmers Market in New York like

6:24

two weeks ago, there was this really cool graphic.

6:26

It was like a banner and it was their harvest calendar

6:29

and I'd like, you know, January

6:31

and like all the crops that they

6:33

bring, And I was like, how fun would that be

6:36

to do that as a quilt. I've never made a quilt,

6:39

but I think it would be a very fun quilt to have.

6:41

But like all of the crops that I like and all of the

6:43

produce that I like, and then embroider

6:46

like the different ones on different squares and

6:49

cool have that. And so that's

6:52

my long term project.

6:54

Awesome, I love it. This is a combination

6:57

of many of my interests. I haven't

6:59

started quil and yet I see it like further

7:01

down the line of where

7:03

I'm going. At one point, I got really into. When I first

7:06

started getting really into crafts, my friend was like, just

7:08

don't end up candle making. But I'm really

7:10

oppositional. So I started making candles

7:12

like a month later.

7:14

Well, when you no longer have vands to fix,

7:16

Magpie, you can move on to quilting.

7:18

That's true. I started making

7:21

the candles as soon as I moved out of my van and was living in

7:23

a barn. And it was great because I could

7:25

always tell people I may not have been raised

7:27

in a barn, but I live in one. And then people

7:29

were like, why did we invite you? You keep making

7:32

the same joke.

7:33

A barn must have smelled amazing, though it

7:35

did.

7:35

I made many candles

7:38

there and sold them on Etsy. That was my

7:40

job for a while. By pad weird

7:43

anyway. Community gardens

7:45

yay, community gardens. At

7:47

that barn, I was by far the worst at growing

7:49

things. I was like, I'm gonna start growing mushrooms because I don't

7:52

know how to grow things in the ground. I have to do like darkness

7:54

farming. I

7:56

didn't do a very good job of that either, but now

8:00

I have many buckets of potatoes growing

8:02

on my porch. So community

8:05

gardens the first community

8:08

gardens, I would argue, were gardening

8:11

before the state and private properties stuck their

8:13

fucking nose in our business. We've

8:16

talked about this a ton on our show.

8:18

The way that communities all

8:20

over the world fed themselves was

8:22

through something that looks a lot like modern

8:24

community garden. We've

8:27

talked about, for example, how across

8:29

Ireland, folks used to use a land occupation

8:31

system called rundale, in which

8:33

land was divided so everyone had equal access

8:36

to both good and bad land, and so everyone had

8:38

You didn't split the food at the end, You

8:41

split access to the land to grow

8:43

the food across the entire town or

8:45

community. This

8:47

system was destroyed by colonization

8:50

and by early capitalism. Peasants

8:52

held onto it for centuries throughout

8:54

those incursions, often which meant

8:56

that often they would basically have a little bit

8:59

of land from the landlord, and then they would still all

9:01

get together and pull it and run dale it out.

9:04

People fought like hell to defend this system.

9:06

In Ireland. They formed secret societies where

9:08

they threw on dresses and killed landlords and

9:10

shit. I think that was cool, So

9:13

I did a whole episode about that. Is this

9:15

is gonna be a little bit We're gonna start off with like one of those

9:17

you know when you watch Saved by the Bell and it's the end of the season

9:19

and they don't feel like making anything new, so they do

9:22

the clips episodes. Yeah,

9:24

this is not a clips episode, but I'm going to

9:26

go but this is a thing that has come

9:28

up a lot, and so I'm going to use my own research's

9:31

context. The

9:33

most famous of these groups of cross

9:36

dressing landlord killers defending primitive

9:38

communism, which is an economic

9:40

turn. I'm not trying to actually call them primitive. It's

9:43

some bullshit marks was on, but whatever.

9:45

The most famous of these groups is called the Molly Maguires

9:48

if you want to look them up. We

9:51

also talked about across

9:53

Europe you had the common field system

9:56

or the open field system. This

9:58

is the commons that if you ever here people

10:00

talk about the enclosure of the commons. This

10:02

is what they're talking about. And

10:06

this wasn't always people who lived super

10:08

free. Often these communes were people

10:10

who lived as first serfs who were owned

10:13

and attached to the property

10:15

right, and then later as peasants

10:17

on land that they still didn't owned by

10:20

a landlord. The

10:22

origin of that term is very literal

10:24

in English, usually

10:27

this is royalty to the church amongst

10:29

themselves. They split the land into

10:31

strips so everyone had access to different shit

10:34

like you had a and then a lot of the woods

10:36

and pastures were the commons that no

10:39

one had any ownership at all over except

10:42

the landlords who owned it all. But this

10:44

was famously enclosed in what's called

10:46

the enclosure of the commons, where fences and hedges

10:49

and shit were put up so it couldn't be used

10:51

for the common good. I

10:53

more or less trace the origin of capitalism

10:56

to the enclosure of the commons in England and

10:59

the resistance that grew up out of it, as

11:01

the first anti capitalist like resistance

11:04

movements. Whole ass peasant

11:06

wars were fought over this stuff, and it is related

11:09

to the origin of the labor movement as well. Most

11:12

famously, this enclosure was fought by a

11:14

group called the Diggers, who were like, yeah,

11:17

what if we just illegally plant food anyway? And

11:20

they're really fun. They actually if

11:22

you've ever been part of a squatted garden

11:24

or a community garden and you actually get any

11:26

food out of the ground, you have succeeded

11:29

better than the famous Diggers of history

11:31

because they they got their asses

11:34

kicked before they pulled this so

11:36

much as a single potato out of

11:38

the ground. You also

11:40

have various indigenous groups, and specifically

11:43

the ones that I've covered on this show

11:45

is how you have in both Siberia and North

11:47

America you have different groups who are practicing

11:49

communal agriculture, who inspired

11:51

a bunch of different later socialists

11:54

and things like that. I am

11:56

sure they have been practiced

11:58

elsewhere around the world. Those are just the ones

12:00

that have come up in my own research for this show. I

12:04

get really like I started writing

12:06

it out in the script where I was like, look, this is pretty much

12:08

what humans evolved to do. But I hate

12:10

writing that because whenever people say that,

12:13

they're lying or they're like picking

12:15

some specific version of humans in

12:17

order to say, like, you know,

12:20

whenever like people are like, oh, humans

12:22

just fight and war and that's

12:24

all humans do, or

12:27

the opposite where people are like humans

12:30

just all get along. I don't like when

12:32

people do that. I think that humans

12:34

are capable of doing a lot of different things.

12:36

It feel it's kind of like there are multiple things

12:38

that humans are

12:41

capable of doing to each other and thinking

12:43

of weird, maybe that's a

12:45

bit small. That's

12:47

small minded, you.

12:48

Know, yeah, no I And

12:51

that's that's it. That is the like. But

12:54

among all of the different systems of economy

12:57

and land use and things like that that people have tried,

13:00

an awful lot of them

13:03

were not capitalism, and

13:05

we're something closer to what it's called primitive

13:08

communism, the idea

13:10

that people share things

13:12

without Mars having told them how to do it

13:14

to begin with. But it's

13:16

not community gardening

13:19

this stuff because I'm going to argue

13:22

that community gardening is something that exists

13:24

in opposition to food and land

13:26

scarcity put upon us by economic and

13:28

governmental systems. Because

13:32

when we try to then like get this

13:34

stuff back, we are creating something

13:36

that is like more oppositional. Like you didn't have to be

13:39

in opposition anything to have a Rundale system

13:41

because no one was telling you couldn't. I'm

13:44

going to compare it to squatting, another

13:47

thing we've covered a lot on this show. Squatting

13:49

is when people take on used property and then use

13:51

it regardless of the property owners

13:54

wishes. Squatting is

13:56

an affront to the very foundation of capitalist society,

13:58

in which property rights trump human rights, and that

14:00

is why squatting is so cool and

14:03

you can also see like really easily. And

14:05

we're gonna get into this later with community gardens.

14:07

How there's this tension, like squatters in the US

14:09

are largely presented as people who show

14:12

up like vermin and destroy things.

14:15

You know, that is the like, and so it

14:18

is like cleaning out a homeless

14:20

encampment is like seen as this like

14:23

cleaning this like improvement. I'm

14:25

totally off script. I'm just really angry when I

14:27

think about that.

14:28

After months of listening to Fox

14:31

talk about this, that's like one

14:33

of their favorite issues for twenty twenty four is

14:36

not even like discussing why squatting is

14:38

happening, but also pretending that it's people

14:41

coming into your apartment that you rent

14:43

and staying there and there's now an

14:46

epidemic. This is happening all the time. Everyone

14:48

knows about how you

14:50

know, people are coming into your apartment and saying

14:53

that you know they're going to vote for Joe Biden and they're

14:55

going to make you do it too, And

14:57

it's like, wow, you're just sick

15:00

words so you can just say things now, that's

15:02

that's crazy.

15:03

I think that would be called house piracy. I

15:05

love that and I'm not sure I'm opposed to it.

15:08

I probably am opposed to it.

15:10

I mean, like the way I say it is like you know, Jesse

15:13

water is his favorite thing, and he's said this not

15:16

once but twice

15:20

several years apart, is that if there is

15:22

a squatter in your house, you should just set the house on fire

15:24

and burn them alive and then get the insurance money

15:26

and blame the fire on the squatter.

15:28

Oh my god.

15:29

And you know my

15:31

position is, you know, even if

15:33

you own the place, don't

15:35

burn people alive, like

15:37

for any reason.

15:38

That's a bold take.

15:40

I know, I know I'm really brave for saying that. But

15:42

second, I don't think this situation

15:45

it's like, you know, these conservative men that dream about

15:47

like being able to shoot an intruder, It's

15:50

just not happening that much.

15:51

Sorry.

15:52

I've had to hear a lot about squatting through

15:54

my job that I you know, no,

15:56

no, don't have to hear about it as much.

15:58

It makes sense to me because it's like overall,

16:02

where squatting is a little bit more

16:04

legalized and protected, where

16:07

the like private property rights don't

16:10

trump the human

16:12

rights or whatever, squatting

16:14

often has a very different vibe where

16:17

like you know, squatting in the Netherlands,

16:19

like no matter how short a time we were there,

16:22

there was a lot of pride taken in, like we will improve

16:25

the spaces that we're in.

16:26

You know, correct me if I'm wrong. A lot of times

16:28

they're like vacant, like it's not going into

16:31

Yeah, it's not to be an piracy like you

16:33

said.

16:34

Yeah, no it is. I have never

16:36

in my life, and I spend a lot of time

16:38

squatting in my younger life.

16:42

I've never in my life like seen someone

16:44

try to live in a place that someone already lives.

16:47

You know, it is absolutely about unused space,

16:49

and often it is a space where like people don't even

16:52

know who owns it. Because that's the sweet spot of squatting

16:54

is you find the thing where like they

16:56

can't kick you out because no one knows who's supposed

16:58

to kick you out, because no one knows who building it is.

17:00

Because the actual thing that causes

17:03

urban decay is not squatters,

17:06

it's real estate prospecting and people

17:08

leaving properties vacant and then preventing

17:11

people from making use of the property. I'm

17:14

getting ahead of myself. This is what we're going to talk about today,

17:18

and when we talk about it for housing, people

17:20

like, no, it's bad, Like squatting's

17:23

bad when you want to live somewhere, when you want

17:25

to sleep somewhere, right, when

17:28

you do it for food and like

17:30

growing food and gardens and flowers

17:32

and trees and things, people have a much

17:34

harder time demonizing you. And

17:38

plenty of societies, even capitalist societies,

17:40

have realized that overall squatting is

17:42

a social good. We've talked extensively

17:45

on the show before about squatters in the Netherlands who righte

17:47

revitalized city centers because

17:50

squatters kept property owners from leaving

17:52

places vacant. Because once squatting was

17:54

legalized, if you left your place empty

17:56

for a year, someone could move in. And

17:58

we actually had like we had moments. I

18:01

think I can tell the story, like at one

18:03

point the squatters moved in. We

18:06

people were trying to get into a building that

18:08

they were convinced was vacant. They would do a lot

18:10

of work to try and figure out if spaces were vacant. You do

18:13

like you'd put like a toothpick in the door,

18:15

and then you'd come back a week later and see if the toothpick

18:17

is still in the door, because if it isn't, then it's fallen

18:19

out because someone's opened the door. And you spent

18:22

a lot of time in the in city hall looking at property

18:24

records and things. At one point, some squatters

18:26

a long time ago broke into

18:28

a building and there was like an apartment and

18:31

there was just like a couple watching TV, and

18:33

they were like, oh

18:36

sorry, and then they all ran away. And

18:39

then the next day a lot of these squatters are like

18:41

locksmiths and things, right because there's a

18:43

synchronicity of interests. And so then

18:45

they showed back up and like we're like, I have

18:47

no idea why your door's broken. I'm just here

18:50

to fix your door. I have no relationship to

18:52

anyone who has committed a crime. And

18:55

the squatters like came back and cleaned up their mess,

18:57

which is still like, look, don't break into people's

18:59

houses while they're there. I get it, But

19:01

like if you do, come back the next day

19:03

and clean up the.

19:04

Door, you know this is the future

19:06

the left wants.

19:07

Yeah, exactly. And

19:11

so the

19:14

community garden, i would argue, is fundamentally

19:17

a pro social squatting of vacant land, generally

19:20

in city centers. It's lineage

19:22

I would argue has far more to do with the diggers

19:24

or even the molly maguires than it does

19:27

like suburban fake homesteading

19:29

or whatever, which is how it gets spun

19:31

a lot. Now, at the very end we'll talk about some of them

19:34

ways in which tech millionaires get

19:36

to exploit all of this. But

19:41

in the US, it is easier for us to imagine

19:43

that people have a right to grow food on vacant and

19:45

unimproved land than it is for us to imagine that people

19:47

have a right to sleep there. So

19:50

vacant lot gardening is generally smiled

19:53

upon, while squatting and homeless encampments

19:55

are generally frowned upon. I'm actually curious in all

19:57

of their stuff, watching all this stuff

19:59

about s squatting, do they ever do a thing where

20:01

they're like good homeless encampment,

20:03

bad homeless encampment, or like these people tried to build

20:06

a garden and so they're good or anything like

20:08

that.

20:08

So that's really interesting that you ask that, because,

20:10

like, you know, Tucker when

20:13

he was on the air, he

20:16

you know, hates homeless people, not as much as Jesse.

20:18

Jesse was like deep Jesse Waters the

20:20

most aggressive person on Fox about that, like

20:22

I could, there's probably over

20:26

ten hours of just

20:28

like quotes like that. But

20:31

like the amount of work that goes

20:33

into demonizing encampments

20:36

is like fucking nuts.

20:39

You would have cameramen go in and

20:41

like no one's doing anything. I mean

20:43

even like not in terms of

20:45

squatting bl Like even like the you know GW encampment

20:48

down here in DC, you had like cameramen all over

20:50

and it's like you know, college kids being

20:52

like do you need any sunscreen? Like, you

20:54

know, here's some food if you need it, Take whatever

20:56

you need. And so that's what they'd that's what

20:59

they always do. There's never really any

21:02

they don't even try to be like in some cases

21:04

and then like show I don't know, like some white

21:06

homeless person and then compare it to like, you

21:08

know, a migrant, right. Yeah,

21:11

it's the effort that goes into it is honestly

21:13

astonishing.

21:15

They need to do a lot

21:17

of work to try and convince us to forget

21:20

our class interests and like side

21:22

with the billionaires. But you

21:25

know what is in your class

21:27

interest is being advertised

21:30

to buy goods

21:32

and services.

21:34

I've heard the class interests of that.

21:36

Yeah, here's dad's

21:47

and we're back. Hopefully

21:50

you just press the forward fifteen seconds button until

21:52

you heard the bumper music again. So

21:56

many many modern societies have access

21:59

to land for people and cities as part of their social

22:01

structure, where people don't even have

22:03

to squat land in

22:05

order to grow food. Around Europe,

22:08

for example, with the UK being the example that I've run

22:10

across the most, I'm going to focus on it, you've

22:12

got what's called the allotments system. It's

22:15

this little scrap of freedom that's

22:17

left over from the

22:20

enclosure of the commons. And it started

22:22

in eighteen forty five with the General Enclosure

22:24

Act, which was like, look, we've

22:26

enclosed almost everything, but here's a little crumb

22:29

for the pores. I guess. Even

22:32

then, it wasn't too much

22:34

of anything until at the end of World

22:36

War One, when returning soldiers were

22:38

given allotments and the laws were solidified

22:40

to protect the allotment system.

22:43

And basically what this is is like you're like,

22:46

if you enter a waiting list and you get chosen

22:48

by the allotment lottery or whatever, you

22:51

get to go pay a small amount

22:53

of rent to a different landlord, but a small

22:55

amount of rent, and you get access to a community

22:58

garden, basically a

23:00

little plot of land that you can grow

23:02

some vegetables in, which

23:05

it turns out that they can do in the UK. So

23:08

I'm not I always assume that they left

23:10

their country to invade everywhere because there was no sun

23:12

there and so they had to invade other places

23:14

for food. But it turns out you can grow

23:16

food there, So I'm not sure why they

23:20

invented colonization.

23:22

I mean, I really like how they were like, Wow,

23:25

this one thing, this potato, so

23:28

amazing. We're gonna build our entire culture

23:31

about that and other cultures

23:33

around that, and then pretend we invented it.

23:36

I know.

23:36

I it's really fun to imagine

23:39

Europe before the discovery of like the

23:42

New World and potatoes and tomatoes.

23:44

You know.

23:45

I constantly think about like the indigenous

23:47

like scientists who created

23:50

all like crossbread, all of these different types

23:52

of you know, fruits and vegetables

23:55

and you know shit like that

23:58

that like we're just claimed and

24:00

no one ever gives them credit. I mean I saw something

24:03

a couple of weeks ago that was like you don't see any Michelin

24:06

star you know, tribal

24:08

restaurants.

24:10

Yeah, and then you're like and I would love to

24:12

see that, which is interesting correct because

24:14

they probably mean it as like, oh, there's no indigenous

24:16

food culture. They probably mean

24:18

it as like a these

24:20

people.

24:21

So it was like it was an Indo person saying,

24:23

like, you know, we provided all this food

24:25

and we have all these cultures and like you know, every

24:28

food that you love or like, you

24:30

know, ninety percent of them at

24:32

least in America, like come from

24:35

here, and yet you have no

24:37

idea how they were originally treated.

24:40

Yeah you know, Okay,

24:42

I see. I thought you were doing the like because there's

24:44

that thing where right wing people are Zionist

24:47

or whatever, will be like Palestinians never invented

24:49

anything or whatever, which is another

24:51

incorrect statement that people can make.

24:54

No way, it's nuts.

24:56

You haven't seen that one.

24:57

No, I've seen that. Oh okay, I'm

24:59

just shocked that Palestinians are.

25:01

People, yeah, and never invented

25:03

anything actually, which is also how

25:05

you judge people's access to life.

25:08

And also it's just wrong on every level.

25:10

It's like turtles all the way down, but it's wrong

25:13

anyway.

25:14

Yeahstly, No,

25:17

it's just I love like the

25:20

amount of assumptions that people have about Palestinians,

25:22

and I see a lot like, yeah, yeah,

25:24

they're dirty, blah blah blah. And then someone was

25:26

like, they can't have blue eyes. But I literally just was

25:29

like, I I have

25:31

blue eyes.

25:32

Yeah.

25:33

There are literally so many.

25:35

Yeah, Like they.

25:37

Can't invent anything, they don't have blue eyes, they

25:40

can't look at a Jew without killing them. That's

25:42

These are all things that we all know about Palestinians.

25:46

In the USSR and other Soviet Bloc countries,

25:48

there was also something comparable in pre

25:50

Soviet times, like with tzars and shit. Nobles

25:52

were given datchas, basically little

25:55

country homes just outside the city with like a

25:57

cottage and a place to garden, and

25:59

so in the us ARE you'd think they'd

26:01

be like, oh, now they've all been communized and

26:03

everyone gets access to them. No, they went

26:05

to the new nobles, the Bolshevik party

26:07

members. They got the dachas. But

26:12

in some of them, like every now and then, some of them are

26:14

given to some regular workers or whatever,

26:16

but an awful lot of them were

26:19

left more or less unused, and

26:21

so squatters in the USSR just

26:23

started taking them over. And

26:26

I think this was less like people came out and lived

26:28

in them, although I think that happened a little bit too, and

26:30

it was more like people who lived in the city

26:33

just started coming out and using them and growing

26:35

vegetables because this

26:37

was the only way that you could eat vegetables. Because

26:40

this one isn't the Bolshevik's fault. World

26:42

War II was a fuck, and

26:45

people didn't have any vegetables, and so they were

26:47

like, we want to not die, so they went out and

26:49

squatted the dachas. In

26:52

a pattern we see over and over again, the

26:54

people rushed to do something, and the government had

26:56

to rush to keep up once it realized it wasn't able

26:59

to stop people from doing the thing. By

27:01

nineteen fifty five, the USSR legalized

27:04

what people were already doing. Soon

27:06

datches were all the rage, and modern Russia

27:08

apparently has the largest percentage of people who

27:10

own a summer home of anywhere in the world. The

27:13

US, of course, doesn't like giving people

27:15

things for free, unless, of course,

27:17

you're a rich farmer or another capitalist

27:19

who's entitled to privatize public

27:21

property. So we tend not to have

27:23

a system by which city dwellers can access land

27:26

to grow food, So

27:28

people tend to do it anyway.

27:31

Community gardens EBB and flow. War

27:33

or recession will drive everyone to organize them.

27:35

Then basically waves of gentrification will shut

27:37

them down. And

27:40

I'm going to run through their history in the US. This

27:42

took a different turn than I expected it to,

27:45

not like a wild turn,

27:47

but like there's a politician

27:49

who's a Republican who I like. Now I

27:51

know that republican meant the opposite thing in

27:54

the nineteen hundreds, eighteen hundreds,

27:56

whatever, nineteenth century. I still was kind

27:58

of surprised by this.

28:00

Sophia, have you read the script? Like do you know

28:02

what's happening?

28:03

Okay?

28:04

Because I was like, I think it'd be fun

28:06

to have, you know, establish our

28:08

thoughts on community gardens ahead of time. But I'm the only

28:10

one that's out of it, out of the

28:12

loop, and I don't want to sound dumb when my assumptions

28:16

are wrong.

28:16

Well, what's your something now? And you could do it?

28:18

I mean, I just I'm really interested

28:21

to see like where this started and now this started.

28:23

And I think personally, like I've

28:26

heard the argument that like, you

28:28

know, gentrified community gardens

28:31

are like a bad thing and you know, none

28:33

of us. But also I think that having access

28:35

to produce in anywhere is

28:37

a good thing, and so I'm

28:40

really interested for that notion specifically

28:43

to see if that will be a

28:45

thing that I am wrong about, which I

28:47

am about many things.

28:49

I think that overall we're

28:51

going to talk about a little bit later about how

28:54

but gentrification is the

28:56

death of community gardens over and

28:58

over again, and in some ways

29:01

they are creating their own death right

29:03

because they improve an area and then people

29:06

want to move in and live there. But

29:08

they are not started by gentrifying

29:10

forces. Again and again,

29:13

they are started by people

29:15

who want decent standards of living, who

29:18

want to beautify the areas that they live in.

29:20

And it is complicated, but that the

29:23

thing that gentrifies the neighborhood is not

29:25

people wanting to grow food. It

29:27

is the landlords

29:30

who come up and buy property and raise rents.

29:32

See.

29:32

I was thinking of like after the fact, like especially

29:34

during COVID, where it was kind of trendy to

29:37

like start apply or

29:39

like grow a bunch of herbs. And then

29:42

like I know so many buildings in like

29:44

DC where like here's some dirt,

29:46

everyone can be a part of it. And then everyone was like

29:48

doing Instagram picture and planting and stuff

29:51

like that, and then everyone just kind

29:53

of forgot and there were a bunch of like un harvested

29:55

crops. But

29:57

at the same time, some people came in and just

29:59

took even if they weren't theirs, and net

30:02

good, I guess. But now it's just concept

30:04

dirt.

30:05

Yeah.

30:05

No, it's it's this thing where like some

30:08

of the stuff that rich people like is like nice stuff

30:10

that we should all get to have, you

30:12

know. So I'm

30:14

going to start this story in Detroit. There's

30:18

a city. It's called Detroit. It's in Michigan. It's

30:20

most famous for being pretty abandoned.

30:23

It's most famous for being the homeland of my parents.

30:26

Oh well that too.

30:28

It's up for were you born in Detroit?

30:30

No?

30:30

Born in la Oh

30:33

yeah, like an American

30:36

superstar story.

30:39

One of the few people actually born and raised

30:41

in Los Angeles.

30:43

Yeah, so my parents are from the d.

30:47

It is the city

30:49

that is most interesting to me too. In North America

30:51

or in the US.

30:52

It's really cool now.

30:53

The only one I know it

30:56

is like when I was Ye, I've been to all fifty

30:59

of the states. No, sorry, I haven't been to

31:01

all forty of the forty eight of the lower States,

31:04

And I've been to every city that interests

31:06

me back when I was like a full time traveler except

31:09

Detroit.

31:09

Have you never been to Michigan? Where'd

31:11

you go?

31:12

Yeah? Yeah? I spent

31:15

a month living in the bushes outside

31:17

of college and Lansing, Michigan, while

31:20

waiting for my friend to get out of jail and

31:24

trying to organize with activisty

31:26

people to go to some demonstrations

31:29

in DC. And then I left to

31:31

go hop freight trains to get to the West coast, got

31:33

my heartbroken and turned around and drove to

31:35

DC and then got mass arrested the IMF

31:37

demonstrations in two thousand and

31:40

two or three, So

31:42

I spent I spent a while in Lansing, and

31:44

then I have like memories of getting yelled

31:46

at by cops in Battle Creek, Michigan, appropriately

31:50

named I know.

31:52

I love how everything you say it's like a person's

31:55

entire lifetime, but it's like a new one

31:57

every time you open your mouth, and it's aletely

32:00

different person that's had like a

32:02

completely different path. Yeah, but they're all

32:04

you. Margaret.

32:06

Margaret's every character in a TV show.

32:09

It's amazing. She

32:11

is fifty pulp novels in

32:14

one person.

32:16

Thanks. I think yeah,

32:20

yeah, no, I I yeah,

32:22

I have enjoyed my life

32:24

and I am glad to.

32:25

Continue to a're you gonna tell me something good or

32:27

about it happened in Michigan.

32:29

Good, this is a good story about

32:31

Detroit.

32:32

We love that.

32:33

So Detroit was founded

32:35

by French colonists in seventeen oh one on hodnah

32:38

Land, sometimes called the Iroquois

32:40

Federation.

32:41

I'll tell you something good starts off bad,

32:44

She's like, yeah.

32:47

The ended up being a major

32:50

inspiration for Western democratic practices

32:52

and also heavily influenced a bunch of communists thought.

32:54

But Detroit started off as a fort actually

32:57

to drive out the British colonists. The

33:01

Americans eventually stole it or conquered

33:03

it or whatever, and it became one of

33:05

the more important Western cities. It was

33:07

the Paris of the West for a little while.

33:09

This is even before the auto industry kicks in.

33:12

Later, the auto industry is going to make it this huge

33:14

thing, and it's going to be one of the biggest industrial centers

33:16

in the country. But we're going to start this garden

33:18

story before it.

33:19

Very excited to go see my

33:22

relatives who are still met, going to go, you

33:24

know, Detroit

33:27

used to be the Paris of the West. You know, yeah,

33:31

it still is, baby, and then they'll be like,

33:33

oh geez, yeah,

33:35

and then they offer you.

33:38

Yogurt and jello.

33:41

I don't know anything about Midwest culture anymore,

33:43

especially because also Destroit it's like different from the rest

33:45

of Midwest culture. There's food cheese

33:48

that's Wisconsin. Okay. So

33:51

the eighteen seventies and the eighteen eighties were like the

33:54

Gilded Age in America, which

33:56

is important for people to wrap their heads around because

33:58

we're basically in another one right now. The

34:01

Gilded Age was when you had a booming economy

34:03

that only helps the rich and you've got

34:05

big materialistic and also, okay, to be

34:07

fair, the eighteen seventies also helped some of

34:09

the middle class workers. It kind of created

34:12

the American middle class. And you've

34:14

got big materialistic excesses. People are

34:16

like run around and they're I was gonna say Rolls

34:18

Royces, but we're fifty years too early

34:20

for that. It's a time of political corruption

34:22

and rich assholes. Basically, it's

34:24

the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Period.

34:27

Westward expansion and immigration are fueling

34:29

the whole thing, with like access

34:32

to land and then also access to cheap labor,

34:35

exploitable labor. People

34:37

start getting mad about that and they start doing stuff

34:39

about it, and we've covered that a lot on this show.

34:43

By the eighteen nineties, a bunch

34:45

of things are happening. First of

34:47

all, the labor movement is kicking some ass, and

34:50

both major parties are now seen as

34:52

pretty boring and conservative. Totally

34:54

no reflection to the modern era is

34:56

happening right now. And so

34:58

you've got what's called the People's Party

35:00

or sometimes it's called the Populist Party, and

35:03

it was formed in eighteen ninety two. These are the

35:05

populists. They

35:08

wanted some basic progressive shit. They

35:10

wanted workers' rights to collective bargaining,

35:12

they wanted federal regulation of capitalism.

35:14

They wanted a shorter work week. They

35:17

also wanted something I didn't

35:19

realize we didn't already have back then. Did

35:22

you know that until nineteen thirteen,

35:24

people who lived in a state didn't vote in

35:27

their senators in DC. Were

35:30

they like appointed, They were elected

35:32

by the state legislature instead.

35:34

Oh, so it's like how Donald Trump tried

35:37

to overthrow the election.

35:39

Yeah, kind of probably because it's like you have

35:41

like this, they can technically just ignore everything

35:44

in a point whoever.

35:45

Yeah, yeah,

35:47

And so that's how those state senators were decided.

35:52

And the Populist Party was like, we

35:54

don't like that. We prefer democracy.

35:57

And it wasn't until the Seventeenth Amendment in nineteen

35:59

thirty that people started

36:02

voting for their senators. The

36:04

Populist Party did not win any major

36:07

elections, but they were popular enough.

36:09

Get it, They're popular because they're populists.

36:12

Thank you, I appreciate it. Forced the Republican

36:14

Party, which was the vaguely left of the two parties

36:17

at the time, the modern the equivalent of

36:19

the modern Democrats. It

36:21

forced them to shift further to the left in

36:23

order to keep up because the

36:25

Populist Party was doing really well and

36:27

they were like, fuck, we want some of that good

36:29

old fashioned votes. One

36:33

of these progressive Republicans was

36:35

a man named Hazen Pingree, and

36:38

he was the mayor of Detroit. Later he becomes Michigan's

36:40

mayor. I thought I was

36:42

gonna hate him. When

36:44

you read a like one, I just hate politicians.

36:47

I'm an asshole and an anarchist. When you

36:49

read like a one sentence

36:51

version of the history of community gardens they

36:53

were like, and then they were invented by this Republican

36:56

named Hazen Pingree, who was the mayor

36:58

of Detroit. And I'm like, the

37:00

fuck he did. He probably just was mayor

37:02

while some other people did some shit, because that's

37:05

almost always how it goes. This

37:09

guy seems legit until

37:11

I find other evidence. He

37:14

was a businessman

37:16

whose political life was spent trying to

37:18

stop monopolies and increase public

37:20

ownership of utilities and railroads and shit.

37:24

He was also self made. He

37:26

grew up a worker, like he started at fourteen

37:28

in a cotton factory, I think in Maine, and

37:31

he worked for years as a cutter in the shoe factory.

37:35

Then when the Civil War broke

37:37

out, he fought on the front lines of the Civil

37:39

War. He got captured, taken prisoner

37:41

by the Confederates, so he

37:43

broke out. And how to be clear,

37:46

when I imagined me being like, I'm a good noble

37:48

fighting against slavery. Once

37:51

I've broken out of prison, I could kind of see myself

37:53

being like, I have done my work here,

37:55

I'm going to go home.

37:57

No.

37:57

He he broke out of prison, rejoined

37:59

his redgment, and fought in even more battles.

38:03

He then started

38:05

a shoe business. He moved

38:07

to Detroit because heard it was a good place to go booming.

38:11

And he starts just as like a

38:13

shoe guy and a factory. And then

38:15

the shoe guy factory that was like

38:17

shoe guy guy, Yeah,

38:20

it goes out of business, and so him and his friend pull

38:22

up their money and buy the machinery

38:24

and start their own shoe business

38:27

and it becomes the second biggest shoe business in

38:30

the country. He

38:32

becomes the mayor. He takes the city from

38:34

the right leaning Democrats, and

38:36

he gets into fights with all the other businessmen,

38:39

including all of the other Republicans,

38:42

because he wants to keep street car fares

38:44

accessible in shit and like forces

38:46

like fair hikes to not go up.

38:48

Is this eighteen seventies, Jesse Ventura.

38:51

I know more about eighteen nineties.

38:54

Is we're in the eighteen nineties now.

38:55

But ohey, no, no, it's okay.

38:57

I know more about the eighteen nineties

39:00

in the modern era.

39:01

You're spot on, kat you thank you.

39:02

Here we go. Yeah, I'm here to translate.

39:05

I'm here to translate.

39:06

No, I appreciate it. No, I live

39:08

in history books right now. This is the

39:10

very end of my life where I know only the things that

39:12

happened hundred years so.

39:13

The parallels are like incredible.

39:15

One of my favorite.

39:16

Things to do is to tell both

39:18

you and Sarah Marshall things that are happening

39:20

in real time, because both of your historians,

39:23

and then I get to tell you things and then you're

39:25

like whow and

39:29

sometimes you have the exact same reaction, and

39:31

it's beautiful. It's very beautiful to me.

39:33

Hell yeah.

39:35

And so he fought corruption, He fought

39:38

his own political party. He wrote a

39:40

book in eighteen ninety five about how

39:42

people suffer under monopoly and corruption. And

39:45

now, like, the one thing he's not a radical,

39:47

right his book about like people suffering is

39:49

like, but don't go and do anything

39:51

violent or destructive. That's bad and

39:54

it makes us look bad. Right, But

39:56

he took his His eighteen ninety five book is

39:58

dedicated to the people of Detroit, and

40:00

the dedication is like handwritten

40:03

on a photo of a potato or

40:05

like an it's a weird image.

40:08

That's how we should do every dedication.

40:09

Now I agree,

40:11

Otherwise you got one upped by a Republican

40:14

in eighteen ninety five. Is

40:16

that really what you want to go down being remembered

40:18

as he tried to unify

40:20

urban workers and farmers. His book

40:23

had like political cartoons showing them in the same

40:25

boat rowing against monopoly. If

40:28

there is a nineteenth century rich asshole

40:31

politician who I don't hate, it's this

40:33

guy Pingree. When he dies at

40:35

sixty, the Detroit News wrote about him.

40:38

Other men had opinions, He had convictions.

40:41

That's a good way to be remembered.

40:42

Holy shit, right. He

40:45

was in charge of Detroit when the Panic

40:47

of eighteen ninety three hit. It

40:50

is never a good time to live through a year that

40:52

is remembered as the Panic of Basically,

40:56

this was yet again a great depression.

40:58

Before the Great Depression, a

41:00

bunch of complicated economic stuff happened where

41:02

the rich assholes created a bubble, and then the bubble

41:04

burst. People ran on the banks. Five

41:06

hundred banks closed. Michigan had a forty

41:09

three percent unemployment rate at this time. Everyone

41:13

is starving and out of work, and

41:15

they wanted to grow their own food, and

41:17

they wanted potatoes.

41:20

The sponsor of today's show the concept

41:22

of the potato.

41:23

Oh we're back, baby, I love this.

41:27

If any other ads sneak in, they are

41:29

a mistake.

41:30

Hahaha.

41:31

Potatoes for everyone unless

41:33

you're allergic than I'm so sorry.

41:35

Yeah, no, can you potatoes?

41:37

You can. And it's one of the common

41:40

things on like a like an hour and

41:42

like a food HOLLURGI just test someone try

41:44

and you know, take this with a grit salt. But one time I

41:46

tested positive for a

41:49

potato allergy and I was like, I'm

41:52

irish as fuck and

41:57

no I'm not, and then they like readid it three

41:59

times? And I was like total, told

42:01

you, I.

42:04

Mean, look at your face. Com on, I know.

42:08

You're absolutely correct, like

42:11

really really.

42:14

Like I don't know how to describe Sophie's face except

42:16

like irish yeaeah,

42:19

not allergic to potatoes.

42:21

Not allergic potatoes, and

42:32

we're back.

42:34

People wanted their potatoes, and Pingree wanted

42:37

to give them potatoes, or rather, he wanted to help

42:39

them grow their own potatoes because he's a potato

42:41

guy. Panic kits and

42:44

he starts I love an alliteration.

42:46

Ping Gree's potato patch plan.

42:49

That's a whimsical.

42:51

I know. Four hundred and thirty

42:53

three acres of vacant city land were set aside

42:55

for people to grow food as part of funding

42:57

it. He sold his favorite horse, and.

43:01

We know the horses name.

43:02

I don't. I don't. I read a

43:04

fair amount about this man, but not as much as there

43:06

could be known about him.

43:09

I think I saw a photo of it, though, but he was

43:11

like, I mean, he's still a politician, right, so he's like posing.

43:13

I saw a lot of photos of him like posing with Like here

43:15

I am at the plow and he's like pushing the plow.

43:18

That's following ping Grea's Potato

43:20

patch plan or whatever. I

43:22

would totally watch a movie about this man. And

43:24

there's not a lot of elected officials. I always

43:26

say that about instructions

43:30

for gardening were printed up in three languages

43:32

my guess is English, Polish, and German. Based

43:35

on the immigrant makeup of the city at the time. People

43:38

were given lots seeds and tools

43:40

and basically helped to

43:43

feed themselves. This

43:46

which was called Pingrea's Potato patch

43:48

Plan, but it was also called the Detroit Plan by people who

43:50

hate fun a sorry,

43:53

yeah, thank you. It's

43:55

spread around the country. Boston,

43:57

San Francisco, and Philly started similar pro

44:01

probably more places than that, but those are the ones

44:03

that I found specifically named. The

44:05

depression was over by the turn of the twentieth century,

44:08

and for the most part, the gardens stopped.

44:10

It's kind of like what you're saying about the COVID gardens.

44:12

Everyone ran out and COVID gardened,

44:14

and then they were like, just kidding, I can go to the

44:16

store. Fuck that, you know, fuck

44:18

my tomato plant.

44:21

Philly's Vacant Lots Cultivation

44:23

Association the fun

44:26

named PVLCA. It

44:29

kept going until the nineteen twenties. At

44:31

the turn of the twentieth century, social reformers started

44:34

pushing for school gardens, especially

44:36

in schools for working class and immigrant kids.

44:39

A social reformer named Fanny Parsons

44:41

was a big part of this in New York City. And

44:43

so these are the first New York City gardens

44:46

that I read about. I'm sure there was more, but

44:49

you know, whatever the ones I read about. She

44:51

worked with the National Plant, Flower

44:53

and Fruit Guild, which I

44:56

hope was Venture Brothers themed,

44:58

and they all were just weird

45:00

villains dressed as tomatoes. In

45:03

nineteen oh two, she founded the Children's School

45:06

Farm in Hell's Kitchen in New York. They

45:08

converted a trashed lot into four hundred

45:11

and fifty plots that three thousand different kids

45:13

ended up like using in

45:15

proper social reformer style. It

45:17

was all very like, I'm not

45:19

doing this so kids have food. I'm doing it so kids

45:22

can be good and regimented and disciplined,

45:24

because like in

45:26

the country kids are naturally good,

45:28

and the cities they're like sketchy

45:30

and bad because they'd not in touch with nature

45:33

or whatever.

45:33

We all know that this is true. It's like real America,

45:36

real children. They're fake children in the same.

45:39

Yeah, exactly. And she wanted to help

45:41

the fake children become real children like

45:43

Pinocchio.

45:44

Oh, Pinocchio.

45:45

Yeah. She said that she didn't

45:47

do it so kids could grow some veggies, but instead that

45:49

the garden could be quote used

45:52

as a means to show how willing and anxious children

45:54

are to work, and to teach them in their work

45:56

some necessary civic virtues, private

45:59

care of public, proper economy,

46:01

honesty, application, concentration,

46:04

self government, civic pride, justice,

46:06

the dignity of labor, and the love of nature.

46:09

By opening to their minds, the little we

46:11

know of her mysteries more wonderful

46:13

than any fairy tale. So

46:16

the kids long for work. I like,

46:18

don't hate everything in that, but

46:21

it's just so fucking Protestant.

46:23

My god, it's the most Protestant thing

46:25

I've ever heard.

46:26

Yeah, the dignity of labor. This

46:29

idea spread and by nineteen oh six

46:31

there were seven five hundred

46:33

school farms across the country. Hers

46:36

lasted until nineteen thirty one. US

46:39

interesting gardening kept on the up and up

46:41

for the next several decades. First, because of

46:43

World War One, Europe was for

46:45

some weird reason not exporting much food,

46:48

and by the time the US got involved in nineteen seventeen,

46:50

there was a campaign to recruit soldiers

46:53

of the soil and planned liberty

46:55

gardens, which were also called patriotic gardens

46:57

and war gardens. Victory gardens comes

46:59

later World War Two.

47:00

I immediately when he said soldiers of the soil,

47:02

I went earthworms.

47:06

When you said soldiers of the soil, I thought it was like a Nazi

47:09

group. For like a second, because my brain is just soup

47:11

and I like Sophie's way

47:14

better.

47:14

I was like, either way, worms, you

47:17

know, I would I would love.

47:19

Don't insult earthworms like that.

47:21

Holy shit.

47:22

Sorry, I

47:25

like earthworms as the real soldiers of the soil, and

47:27

they will eventually eat all of

47:29

the dead Nazis. So this

47:32

is true, they're anti fascist.

47:35

Three point five million gardens produced

47:38

three hundred and fifty million pounds of crops

47:40

during World War One. After

47:42

the war, black folks kept the garden

47:44

movement going as a way to beautify parts of

47:47

the city that the government was neglecting because of racism.

47:49

And I want to find out more about this part of history,

47:52

but I wasn't able to yet, and I'm annoyed.

47:56

Then you've got another big old oppression,

47:59

the the Great one. I

48:01

think that each time. It's like when World War one

48:03

hit comes, they didn't call it World War One, it was the Great War,

48:05

and then World War two is like, yeah, fuck you.

48:08

It's like one of my favorite like historical sketch

48:10

bits is like people

48:12

in World War One say in world War one, and

48:14

then I wait, what do you mean,

48:17

Like I never get sick of that joke.

48:19

Yeah, no, I mean too honestly. So

48:23

then you have a big old depression. And

48:25

these subsistence gardens, which were called thrift

48:27

gardens, were created in partnership between

48:29

local governments and community organizations.

48:32

And the thrift gardens were like a highly planned

48:34

for efficiency and maximum yield. There's all

48:36

these like charts that they would hand out about like exactly,

48:39

plant three of this at such and

48:42

such date and whatever. World

48:45

War two, you've got victory gardens. And

48:47

actually, at first the US government

48:50

didn't want to do it. They were

48:52

like, no, we're going to centralize all food production

48:54

and highly regimen it. Fuck all this decentralization

48:57

shit. This is like the period of you

48:59

know, how how efficient can we fucking be? And

49:02

then they realized that the like I'm doing my

49:05

part vibe was really good for the

49:07

overall morale of the country during a time

49:09

in which Americans were being drafted

49:11

to go die overseas. To be clear, one

49:14

of the only good things that US has ever done, despite

49:17

the Nazis. But I see

49:19

why it was. They had to work to make

49:21

it popular. Eighteen

49:25

to twenty million families with victory

49:27

gardens produced forty percent of the US vegetables

49:30

in nineteen forty four. Wow,

49:33

I know, but hear

49:35

me out. I love vegetables.

49:38

But the thing that's worth understanding about all these

49:40

gardens, Americans

49:43

don't get their caloric needs from gardens,

49:46

and we get our caloric needs

49:48

from grain or for the meat eaters, grain

49:50

that's fed to livestock and an environmentally

49:52

expensive and inefficient transfer. I

49:55

remember once I asked a friend of mine who's environmental

49:57

land use engineer who specializes in the embedded

50:00

goological impact of various methods of feeding

50:02

populations. I asked her story

50:04

to write. This is like post apocalypse books.

50:06

Post apocalypse books at New York City is a long

50:08

time ago. I was like, how much

50:10

land for gardens would you need to feed

50:13

all of New York City? And

50:15

she gave me an answer with like spreadsheets

50:17

and shit, and the answer

50:20

was if you gardened basically

50:22

every rooftop and then turned the entire

50:24

bronx into fields of grain, and then

50:26

expanded it north of the bronx, you

50:29

might have a chance. Look,

50:32

I love urban gardening and vertical farming

50:34

and all that shit as much as

50:37

the next weird eco person.

50:40

It is not how people feed themselves currently, and

50:43

we would have to change the American diet dramatically

50:46

to accommodate a different way of living.

50:49

So Victory Gardens produced forty

50:51

percent of yous vegetables in nineteen forty four. That

50:54

is not forty percent of the food needs. It

50:56

is way way less than that. Still

50:58

cool, it's still impressive thing for people

51:01

to do, and diet

51:03

variety is good and I am

51:05

very pro garden. There's

51:08

this whole thing where people are like, oh,

51:10

I'm just going to homestead and then I'll meet all

51:12

of my needs in my

51:14

homestead. And it's just like, honey,

51:18

that is not I hate. I hate the like how humans

51:20

evolved is not how humans involved. We

51:22

we like complex societies.

51:25

They don't have to be centralized. They can be weird as shit,

51:27

they can be all kinds of different things. But we like

51:31

aren't going to homestead or a way out of any

51:34

particular problem.

51:35

And I mean, like it's you know, it's

51:39

just there are a lot of things

51:41

that people don't want to give up, or if they do, they

51:44

pretend that they I'm thinking

51:46

of a lot of like these fucking Republicans

51:49

that or conservatives that act like

51:51

they live off the land and it's their wife doing all

51:53

the work and then actually they're buying

51:55

all their mrs online.

51:57

Yeah, totally no it. And

52:01

then like, eating meat is a

52:03

ridiculously complicated endeavor

52:05

in the United States. If you like hunt, it's a completely

52:08

different thing. But we cannot

52:10

sustain anything anywhere close to the population

52:12

that we have through hunting. But

52:15

yeah, no, it one

52:17

day, Oh, I do a podcast about good people. I

52:19

was like, one day, I'll do a whole thing about how and

52:22

agriculture is a trap. But on

52:24

the other hand, one of the things that I would have to give up if I wanted

52:27

to homesteads, I probably have to give a veganism. Like

52:29

if I wanted to meet all my caloric needs where

52:31

I live, I would be keeping chickens and eating their eggs,

52:34

you know, and

52:36

like because whatever,

52:40

okay, anyway, in Britain,

52:42

now I'm gonna have a whole bunch of omnivores and

52:44

vegans mad at me, and I'm really excited about

52:46

that.

52:48

So weird, reality is more complicated than

52:50

you would think.

52:51

Who I know who. I

52:54

always wanted to get a little pin that said I don't

52:56

care your opinions about veganism, and

52:58

it was like just as much to the v bigans as the non

53:00

vegans. I was like, no, I just don't want to So

53:04

anyhow, in Britain they had dig

53:06

for Victory, which is a very It's

53:08

the British way of saying victory gardens and I like it,

53:10

in which people use the allotment system to grow

53:13

one point three million tons of

53:15

food which is even more tons

53:17

there than it is here because their

53:19

tons has more letters in it and

53:21

is bigger.

53:23

Wait how much bigger are their tons?

53:25

American ton I think is two thousand

53:27

pounds and a British ton is like

53:30

twenty two It's like twenty two hundred something

53:32

pounds.

53:33

Look, I know I need like metric is obviously

53:35

more efficient, but like, come

53:38

on.

53:38

British ton is forty

53:42

pounds.

53:43

Yeah.

53:45

Cool.

53:47

After the war, all the middle class white

53:49

people were like, man, fuck gardening anyhow, and

53:51

they all moved to the suburbs and started growing the

53:54

truly decentralized crop that defines America.

53:56

The manicured lawn and

53:59

commune gardening. Seem to have disappeared for a

54:01

while, but it will come back and

54:03

be even cooler on Wednesday

54:06

or in the nineteen seventies, one

54:09

or the other.

54:10

Yay.

54:11

But before we go to break, do

54:13

you have anything that you want to tell people about

54:16

you and the things that you do and where

54:18

people can see like your YouTube video?

54:20

Well, I guess people YouTube would be the

54:22

place to see YouTube videos, but you

54:25

any clucks?

54:26

Yeah, I have a YouTube channel

54:28

and a TikTok account. They're both kat and a boo.

54:30

I have all the other social accounts

54:33

because there are way too many now you can just

54:35

look me up my link trees on all of them.

54:38

I do long form

54:41

videos and short form about conservative

54:43

media. I was recently laid

54:45

off, so I'm working on getting my resources

54:47

together to be able to continue that. Yeah,

54:51

and follow me and stay in

54:53

the loop.

54:54

And not just you, but

54:56

a bunch of your colleagues will also let go from

54:59

recently. Is there a way that people can

55:02

see how to support them? Is there anything that you

55:04

can direct people to.

55:06

Yeah, So a bunch

55:08

of my other media matters colleagues were laid

55:11

off today as well. I have a

55:13

running thread that's continually updated,

55:15

especially if there are any more layoffs on

55:19

Twitter or x. It's

55:22

unfortunate that we have to use that, but

55:24

you know, that's where a lot of job

55:27

offers will be. If

55:29

we come up with a fund or anything, I will absolutely

55:32

advertise that on there.

55:33

Awesome, awesome, All

55:36

right, Well, we will see you all

55:38

Wednesday when we talk more about community

55:40

gardens and people are going to start stealing

55:43

stuff from the government. But it's good,

55:45

well, it's usually a good way unless it's whatever. Wait

55:48

till Wednesday. I'll tell you about it.

55:56

Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production

55:58

of cool Zone Media. More podcasts

56:00

from cool Zone Media, visit our website

56:02

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56:07

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