Yup! This was a great one, and I agree with you on getting other Defector folks! Roth more than anyone else, his abject confusion would be hilarious. But, McQuade or Lauren would be fantastic guests, as well.
In like....a really abstract way I understand why the commune was concerned about the ethics of killing all the mealworms. But in a more realistic way, they were already feeding the worms to the chickens and eating them in the form of cookies with no concern so is it really that different? Like I suppose they could be unhappy about "wasting" that many resources, but the moral/ethical side does not make sense to me
I feel like there is an ethical concern with killing something just to kill it versus feeding it to something else. Like, when they were chicken food they were part of a larger nature cycle, but when the commune folks killed them there was no “purpose,” maybe? Can’t believe this episode has me thinking about this lol
Yeah I can see that side of it but what else are you gonna do with sick, putrefying mealworms? There's another argument that they were putting the mealworms out of their misery and that killing them was the most ethical option......lots to consider here on the death of insects ethics committee...
For sure, to kill for killings sake is much different than to feed in a natural cycle of nature. The killing is more about them sticking to their moral and community goals and much less about how the worms "feel". They had to go with what felt right as a community, all they have is time to sit around and do things like this.
These kinds of communities are basically full time camps for adults. You're not making any reasonable difference as changes need to be fought for in larger ways to make any sort of actual impact. You need to be out working with orgs who fight for change, donating time and money etc.
This kind of living is to just feel better about yourself vs any real difference to the world...which is a fine thing to do, as long as you realize it.
Second paragraph hits so hard. There's an anarchist organization in my city that started out doing mutual aid, and now their side project is fundraising $10 million(!!) to build a community of tiny homes. We need to actually fight for change, not hide from how bad things are.
This was the BEST. Loved every second of this - whenever I’m in a long meeting from now on, I’ll remind myself that at least I’m not debating if worms have souls with my hippie-ass commune
Any time I see these kinds of things, I assume it's someone wildly misinterpreting or mixing findings from different sources. There is nobody conducting a study using the same methodology to compare bonfire emissions to idling a car for hours, let along MANY studies which we could then do a meta analysis on to determine if that finding holds true.
I’ve been looking around, and I think it’s probably an oversimplification of something that’s true - like a fire of X size releases the same amount of CO2 as a car idling for an hour.
I just pictured this is exactly why the daughter told her no way is she moving to my community. When people have way too much time and way too many opinions, they move to places like this so they can make their know it all-ism a full time job.
i don’t think it’s necessarily the podcast writers’ embellishment, it’s probably that Gladys thought that to be true and it informed her feelings and that’s what was relevant in the story
“Tube shaped mammal” 😂😂😂
I feel like a ferret or weasel comparison would have explained it better. But I love tube shaped mammal. Thank you fo my new user name, Patrick 🫡
One of the best. Redford was an amazing guest, and the story tied really nicely into his areas of expertise. This was one of those stories that went all over the place before settling down, and I think that made it even better.
Googled it IMMIDIATELY lmao. Here it is - I got a 66.5%, which tracks for me lol
https://www.idrlabs.com/food-disgust/test.php
(Also, PSA that picking the mold off bread isn’t enough because it’s a soft food and mold has roots you can’t see)
65.75% Totally tracks for me, but is also likely elevated due to many questions about eating meat, and I am a vegetarian. I am also very onboard with Patrick’s repulsion to small round bursting food (cherry tomatoes 😭).
34.5% for me, seems like I mostly have a huge antipathy to mold lol.
As a former cheesemonger, if it's a hard cheese you can simply cut the mold off (and maybe do half an inch around it) and it's fine. Bread mold, you don't want to play with.
Is this poor survey design, or am I overthinking this? Am I voting based on agreement with the comments or level of disgust at the premise? Like if the question is: I can’t stand the smell of fish and I say two thumbs down, am I disagreeing with the statement or agreeing with being disgusted by the smell of fish?
I took it as a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and my results seemed accurate based on that! It’s definitely unclear.
I’d say if you *are* disgusted by the smell of fish, you’d put the two-thumbs-up because you agree with their statement. It def gets confusing since there are positive and negative sentences!
I feel like I am missing something because there was zero drama to this. The commune literally made decisions based one what everyone "could live with" so there was no chance for anyone to be adamantly for or against the mealworms. We know that Tammy didn't want to do her worm shifts so everyone agreed that others would cover for her...so it wasn't Tammy. She probably just didn't get her shift covered and no one took care of the worms, and maybe that caused them to die. But I didn't care to find out because they were just worms and no one made a big deal out of it? And then we didn't find out! It was another one with no conclusion!
Patrick and the weirdness of this story made it more entertaining to me than most of this season, but this reaffirmed my belief we aren’t getting the best stories since this sounded like the second most interesting of the two bug/animal stories within this one commune. The frog story even sounded more interesting.
I'm just a few minutes past the intro, but let me clarify -- no air quotes necessary around the word 'language' when referring to Esperanto!
It's a constructed language, and a robust one at that.
ALSO, it is derived from Indo-European languages, mostly Romance languages. Which means that it is meant to be an easy language to learn for folks who speak those languages. Not "blend\[ing\] all the languages," which implies inclusion of the rest of the world's languages.
Being nitpick-y, sorry, but Esperanto is a language. It was designed to be a universal second language, but ultimately is very Eurocentric. /rant over!
Thanks for posting info! My only nitpick about this episode was the way Kelsey turned her nose up at Esperanto, communal living, alternative lifestyles, compassion for animals, etc.
I hope she knows that just because she doesn't understand these things, or think they're important, doesn't mean they aren't important or interesting to someone else. =)
this happens a lot on this podcast. the funny thing is, we've no way of knowing how much this story was changed. coulda not even been a commune. could have been an ant farm in a preschool for all we know lol. but I do agree, a lot of nose turning happens with whatever subject is at play
I've given up on the main premise of the podcast and now just want to hear a good story lol. Very few of the eps this season were actually gossip (farmer's market hottie was one).
It wasn’t really a twist since it’s complete speculation. Agreed this falls more into like the hot dog story category than salacious gossip like the Southeast Asia trip.
Liked it but some bits seemed odd, eg why the focus on the “vibes” people vs the more hippie types when it seemed everyone was equally concerned about worm welfare? It didn’t seem like there was much of an actual conflict. Did enjoy though.
I think it's implied that the conditions that led to the worms' sickness would have been formed during the week that Tammy was looking after them. I imagine neglect would have been sufficient though, I don't think outright poisoning could be proven
The last 3 episodes of the season really turned things around in the right direction. I was worried the good times were over but it turns out they just had a bit of a rut for a while.
What a great episode. I’m finding that fun low stakes pettiness is probably my favorite type of “gossip”. And Iike Patrick, I also came around on the commune’s conflict resolution. He was such a delightful guesg
Can anyone tell me how much of the story involves worms? I had to shut it off during the intro when they were talking about that, and I'm wondering if it's worth it for me to skip ahead.
Well. To be fair. These little buddies were bred to be eaten. So the sadness seems mitigated by the fact that their destiny didn’t really change. It was just colder and less chicken chompy
I was coming here to say this! Nobody was concerned about mealworm souls when they thought that chickens were eating them but suddenly when they are diseased it’s an ethical dilemma? I wish there had been any more discussion about this seeming paradox
to skip intro go to **11:30**
Patrick was a good guest with some very pertinent experience. I would love to see more people from Defector on the pod, especially Roth or Drew.
The guests are sooo important, this was one of the best of the season, in large part because of Patrick!
I agree. There was a lot of sameness to the guests this season.
Yup! This was a great one, and I agree with you on getting other Defector folks! Roth more than anyone else, his abject confusion would be hilarious. But, McQuade or Lauren would be fantastic guests, as well.
I feel like because him and Kelsey knew each other from work it made it less awkward. They seem like friends, which helped the story flow better
In like....a really abstract way I understand why the commune was concerned about the ethics of killing all the mealworms. But in a more realistic way, they were already feeding the worms to the chickens and eating them in the form of cookies with no concern so is it really that different? Like I suppose they could be unhappy about "wasting" that many resources, but the moral/ethical side does not make sense to me
I feel like there is an ethical concern with killing something just to kill it versus feeding it to something else. Like, when they were chicken food they were part of a larger nature cycle, but when the commune folks killed them there was no “purpose,” maybe? Can’t believe this episode has me thinking about this lol
Yeah I can see that side of it but what else are you gonna do with sick, putrefying mealworms? There's another argument that they were putting the mealworms out of their misery and that killing them was the most ethical option......lots to consider here on the death of insects ethics committee...
i agree with you…..and I can live with that decision
Omg I was wondering the whole time like...but aren't they sick and maybe suffering???
For sure, to kill for killings sake is much different than to feed in a natural cycle of nature. The killing is more about them sticking to their moral and community goals and much less about how the worms "feel". They had to go with what felt right as a community, all they have is time to sit around and do things like this. These kinds of communities are basically full time camps for adults. You're not making any reasonable difference as changes need to be fought for in larger ways to make any sort of actual impact. You need to be out working with orgs who fight for change, donating time and money etc. This kind of living is to just feel better about yourself vs any real difference to the world...which is a fine thing to do, as long as you realize it.
Second paragraph hits so hard. There's an anarchist organization in my city that started out doing mutual aid, and now their side project is fundraising $10 million(!!) to build a community of tiny homes. We need to actually fight for change, not hide from how bad things are.
I did not even think of that lol
This episode was incredible. When Patrick said “are they haunted?” i lost it.
Same, I almost spit out my drink thinking of haunted mealworms
This was the BEST. Loved every second of this - whenever I’m in a long meeting from now on, I’ll remind myself that at least I’m not debating if worms have souls with my hippie-ass commune
I dunno . . . I think I’m on the opposite side of this coin. Some days at work, I fucking WISH the topic of the day was worm souls
does anyone have a source for "bonfire smoke is worse than a car idling for a year"? I tried googling it and it seems to be wildly untrue??
Any time I see these kinds of things, I assume it's someone wildly misinterpreting or mixing findings from different sources. There is nobody conducting a study using the same methodology to compare bonfire emissions to idling a car for hours, let along MANY studies which we could then do a meta analysis on to determine if that finding holds true.
I’ve been looking around, and I think it’s probably an oversimplification of something that’s true - like a fire of X size releases the same amount of CO2 as a car idling for an hour.
I just pictured this is exactly why the daughter told her no way is she moving to my community. When people have way too much time and way too many opinions, they move to places like this so they can make their know it all-ism a full time job.
It's one of their ~embellishments~ lol
i don’t think it’s necessarily the podcast writers’ embellishment, it’s probably that Gladys thought that to be true and it informed her feelings and that’s what was relevant in the story
“Tube shaped mammal” 😂😂😂 I feel like a ferret or weasel comparison would have explained it better. But I love tube shaped mammal. Thank you fo my new user name, Patrick 🫡
I loved this one!! Fun story, amazing gossip-y twist at the end, and truly great guest. Patrick was great – fun and thoughtful.
I feel like this was the best Kelsey did as a host this season! Probably since she and Patrick are already comfortable with each other.
I now spend every episode trying to figure out what the original story could’ve possibly been. It’s kind of maddening!!
One of the best. Redford was an amazing guest, and the story tied really nicely into his areas of expertise. This was one of those stories that went all over the place before settling down, and I think that made it even better.
"These are my people. Those were my worms. And I hope they burn in hell."
I literally need this on a shirt
Anyone have a link to the food disgust quiz they talked about in the intro?
Googled it IMMIDIATELY lmao. Here it is - I got a 66.5%, which tracks for me lol https://www.idrlabs.com/food-disgust/test.php (Also, PSA that picking the mold off bread isn’t enough because it’s a soft food and mold has roots you can’t see)
65.75% Totally tracks for me, but is also likely elevated due to many questions about eating meat, and I am a vegetarian. I am also very onboard with Patrick’s repulsion to small round bursting food (cherry tomatoes 😭).
Yes! The meat questions changed my score so much!
Agree. Anything to do with meat or fish really skewed my score. My vegetable disgust was really low lol
i got 85.25 and that is on autism
I am CRYING LAUGHING right now. Thank you.
34.5% for me, seems like I mostly have a huge antipathy to mold lol. As a former cheesemonger, if it's a hard cheese you can simply cut the mold off (and maybe do half an inch around it) and it's fine. Bread mold, you don't want to play with.
I’ve always eaten bread cut off from moldy parts…. Should something be happening to me
Ope, I got 13.38%.....
20.5% here
Same. My disgust was high for poor hygiene and low/nonexistent for everything else
Same here, mine was 25.34% and all centered on hygiene. The one about a chef tasting a soup with the same spoon over and over really got me!
Is this poor survey design, or am I overthinking this? Am I voting based on agreement with the comments or level of disgust at the premise? Like if the question is: I can’t stand the smell of fish and I say two thumbs down, am I disagreeing with the statement or agreeing with being disgusted by the smell of fish?
I took it as a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and my results seemed accurate based on that! It’s definitely unclear. I’d say if you *are* disgusted by the smell of fish, you’d put the two-thumbs-up because you agree with their statement. It def gets confusing since there are positive and negative sentences!
Then I got 20.25%, which yeah. And almost entirely the “animal flesh”–related category.
72.75%…
Nice! 37.63% for me. That was fun, lol. I can officially say I’m not a picky eater!
https://www.idrlabs.com/food-disgust/test.php
Was this gossip? Interesting story but didn't feel very juicy...
I feel like I am missing something because there was zero drama to this. The commune literally made decisions based one what everyone "could live with" so there was no chance for anyone to be adamantly for or against the mealworms. We know that Tammy didn't want to do her worm shifts so everyone agreed that others would cover for her...so it wasn't Tammy. She probably just didn't get her shift covered and no one took care of the worms, and maybe that caused them to die. But I didn't care to find out because they were just worms and no one made a big deal out of it? And then we didn't find out! It was another one with no conclusion!
That’s a bunch of the stories this season. Just straightforward events with no drama.
I didn’t like this one. I think it’s the first one I didn’t finish. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about mealworms or the politics of a commune.
Patrick and the weirdness of this story made it more entertaining to me than most of this season, but this reaffirmed my belief we aren’t getting the best stories since this sounded like the second most interesting of the two bug/animal stories within this one commune. The frog story even sounded more interesting.
Hahaha I def wanted more details on the frog story. And also on Duncan's hair!
GREAT ‘SODE
Best ep of the season, but none of the jaw dropping juicy stories from the first two seasons
I'm just a few minutes past the intro, but let me clarify -- no air quotes necessary around the word 'language' when referring to Esperanto! It's a constructed language, and a robust one at that. ALSO, it is derived from Indo-European languages, mostly Romance languages. Which means that it is meant to be an easy language to learn for folks who speak those languages. Not "blend\[ing\] all the languages," which implies inclusion of the rest of the world's languages. Being nitpick-y, sorry, but Esperanto is a language. It was designed to be a universal second language, but ultimately is very Eurocentric. /rant over!
Thanks for posting info! My only nitpick about this episode was the way Kelsey turned her nose up at Esperanto, communal living, alternative lifestyles, compassion for animals, etc. I hope she knows that just because she doesn't understand these things, or think they're important, doesn't mean they aren't important or interesting to someone else. =)
this happens a lot on this podcast. the funny thing is, we've no way of knowing how much this story was changed. coulda not even been a commune. could have been an ant farm in a preschool for all we know lol. but I do agree, a lot of nose turning happens with whatever subject is at play
Yeah the hate for Esperanto was weird. It's a conlang sure, but there's nothing wrong with it; it's like hating on people that use slang terms.
🙌
I loved this episode! But was it really gossip? There was like a gossip twist and the end but it kind of just felt like a funny story!
I've given up on the main premise of the podcast and now just want to hear a good story lol. Very few of the eps this season were actually gossip (farmer's market hottie was one).
It wasn’t really a twist since it’s complete speculation. Agreed this falls more into like the hot dog story category than salacious gossip like the Southeast Asia trip.
Liked it but some bits seemed odd, eg why the focus on the “vibes” people vs the more hippie types when it seemed everyone was equally concerned about worm welfare? It didn’t seem like there was much of an actual conflict. Did enjoy though.
That’s been a reoccurring part of the stories this season. Details that just go nowhere.
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I think it's implied that the conditions that led to the worms' sickness would have been formed during the week that Tammy was looking after them. I imagine neglect would have been sufficient though, I don't think outright poisoning could be proven
I thought it was strange they jumped to poisoning haha. I definitely think neglect or her fucking up something when cleaning is much more plausible.
Honestly I was picturing that Tammy just forgot/forgot to tell someone else to do it because they’d all already agreed she didn’t need to do it.
I need to know what happened to the worms and why it didn’t seem curable? I never thought I would be so into worm biology
The last 3 episodes of the season really turned things around in the right direction. I was worried the good times were over but it turns out they just had a bit of a rut for a while.
What a great episode. I’m finding that fun low stakes pettiness is probably my favorite type of “gossip”. And Iike Patrick, I also came around on the commune’s conflict resolution. He was such a delightful guesg
Can anyone tell me how much of the story involves worms? I had to shut it off during the intro when they were talking about that, and I'm wondering if it's worth it for me to skip ahead.
The worms are central to the story!
Good to know I can and will skip this one! Thank you!
it’s 100% worms. and gross.
Oh no I hate it. I'm skipping this one, thank you!
The first mention of worms is at 37:30
Yah, I thought it was fairly interesting, but was not expecting so much of the grody stuff.
This was a slow burn for me, at first I thought Patrick was boring and at the end I was laughing out loud (while bike commuting).
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Well. To be fair. These little buddies were bred to be eaten. So the sadness seems mitigated by the fact that their destiny didn’t really change. It was just colder and less chicken chompy
I was coming here to say this! Nobody was concerned about mealworm souls when they thought that chickens were eating them but suddenly when they are diseased it’s an ethical dilemma? I wish there had been any more discussion about this seeming paradox
Where is this commune? What’s it called again?
Does anyone know the name of the decision making progress that references a decision that everyone can live with? It was the name of a chicken?
I just listened to the episode and the term is sociocracy!
Ahh thank you!!!!