Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - the 65 foot hot dog in times square

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

What happens when public artwork becomes the main character? For the last two months, a culture war has raged around a gigantic sculpture of a hot dog in Times Square... and playing right into the artists' hands. Jamie goes to New York to talk about the secret agenda of the hot dog with creators Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw. Then, a talk with Carol Adams, the author of 'The Sexual Politics of Meat,' about why the hot dog is still a subversive symbol, why I needed to go vegan a decade ago, and how harassment has evolved from right wing radio into the internet era. (did you seriously think Jamie wasn't going to find an excuse to do a hot dog episode? gzet a grip) follow Jen and Paul: https://www.catronandoutlaw.com/ follow Carol Adams: https://caroljadams.com/ buy Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs: https://bookshop.org/p/books/raw-dog-the-many-histories-of-hot-dogs-jamie-loftus/18785131?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwp4m0BhBAEiwAsdc4aOntkU4kENdIs91XZ-UKCNSxQ8nvIO1kakfzoI7ugVgqAWA1ABNkQBoCTtoQAvD_BwESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If you're looking for another heavy podcast about trauma, the saying it. This is for the ones who had to survive and still show up as brilliant, loud, soft, and whole.

The Unwanted Sorority is where black women, fims, and gender expansive survivors of sexual violence rewrite the rules on healing, support, and what happens after. And I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leah Trettaate. Listen to the Unwanted Sorority, New York. episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CoolZone Media. In this life, you get so few perfect moments, right? There's the day you get your eighth grade school picture back and the most beautiful girl in class who lives down the street from you

and was a fucking hockey player says, nice picture, Jamie. There's a day in Sweden. with an ex-boyfriend when you managed to sneak into the Abba Museum and eat 500 odurves before an engagement party realizes that they don't know you. There's a day last week when you're in line at the overpriced brunch place and a TV actor you were never quite a fan of says, I'll get her bill too and you're like, wow, he's kind of a creep, but I didn't need to pay for my bun. And then there's a day you wake up at 7 a.m. and receive an email with this subject line. Be involved in the world's largest sculptural hot dog.

Oh, oh, oh my God. Listener, there is a strong possibility you know why this email came across my desk. The reason is, I wrote a book about hot dogs last year called Raw Dog the Naked Truth about hot dogs. And while you think, Jamie, surely you're sick to death of talking about hot dogs, something I've learned about myself is that I am in fact inexhaustible when it comes to talking about hot dogs. In fact, if you're listening to this episode the day it comes out, I am on a plane at this very minute to attend the Nathan's hot dog eating contest on Coney Island for the third

time because now I've gotten in at the after party and it's going to be a hell of a year because the 15 year champion Joey Chestnut is officially leaving the contest. We think I would wouldn't rule out a W.W.E. style jumpscare appearance, putting that on wax. Oh, where is Joey going? I'll tell you to face his old rival to Kara Kobayashi on Netflix on Labor Day. And it's just a thrilling time to be a fan of hot dogs. Anyways, as I'm reading this email, I learned that the proposed largest sculptural hot dog will be installed in Times Square, which introduces a lot of questions. Who got permission to air drop a giant hot dog in Times Square. And not to be conspiratorial, but why? The name of the project was Hot Dog in the city. And as much as I love the hot dog, people who strongly associate themselves

with the idea of the hot dog runs the risk of some very sinister American nationalism. So placing a massive hot dog in the middle of Times Square, uncritically, might have been something I was not on board with, which I know might sound weird, but a symbol so closely associated with a very troubled country needs to be understood in context with who is using that symbol, right? So I love hot dogs, but I am extremely skeptical of people who hawk hot dog imagery. An uncritical symbol of America is not something that you want to be rooting for during an election year where one candidate is shrugging his way through funding a genocide of the Palestinian people, and the other candidate is Donald Trump, who said this.

Well, as you know, we just worked with the meat processes, the companies that we're talking about, you know the ones I'm talking about, because they're all, they've all become very well known. They were well known anyway. They're big companies, but they're now being treated fairly. They're thrilled. How do you protect the workers, though, in those plants? What are you doing? Well, we're doing that. We're going to have a report on that probably this afternoon. We're going to have a good form of protection. And through quarantine, when we find somebody that's not, we're going to be very, they're going to be very careful. as to who's going into the plant and the quarantine is going to be very strong and we're going to make people better when they have a problem. We're going to get them better. Hopefully they're going to get better.

Yes, Trump and many presidents before him have a role in one of the more infuriating aspects of what the hot dog has come to represent, the furious and brutal production of meat in America. The clip you just heard is Trump back in 2020, placing an executive order towards the beginning of COVID lockdowns in which meat production was declared as essential in the U.S. As time went on, it became clear that this order gave carte blanche to and, in fact, was drafted by meat processing CEOs at Tyson and Smithfield Farms. This legislation was, first of all, unnecessary.

Meat production is not essential. and because of other factors like decreased union power, tremendous employer intimidation, and employees fear that their government would not provide any other financial relief during lockdown led to lives being lost at extremely high rates within this industry. At one point during lockdown, the only place more dangerous to work at than a hospital was a meat processing plant in the U.S. And that doesn't even start to address the animals. So I mean it when I say,

a symbol, even when as silly as a hot dog, comes with a lot of baggage, even when it's a symbol of the only remaining perfect food on earth. Sorry, the email. It's 7 in the morning and I'm staring at my phone where this mysterious email is begging me to answer it. And what I need to do is make sure that the person on the other side of this email is overthinking the topic as much as I am. Listener, I am thrilled and relieved to report that they were. The message came from art duo Jen Katron and Paul Outlaw, who had been commissioned to create a 65-foot-long hollow hot dog sculpture to put in the middle of Times Square. Even more amazingly, this sort of work was their specialty.

Their previous work was fucking weird. It was incredible. The message said, Here is a bit more about us. A project deck is attached, and we'll also leave you with this inspirational gift below. filey face. The GIF. Jif sounds weird to me. Maybe that's a generational thing. Maybe I'm old. I don't want to say it. The GIF did not disappoint. It showed a massive hot dog on a dump truck bed lifting into the air and shooting confetti in front of a tourist bus and an ad for the Lion

King on Broadway. And you have to understand. You see this and it sounds fake, but it wasn't. Jen and Paul went on to describe the project like this. A symbol and a food found throughout Times Square. The hot dog shares elevated status as a New York City icon alongside the yellow taxi cab, the pretzel, the deli cup, and the playbill. A humble handheld sausage with roots linked to German immigration in the 1800s, the wiener has also become inextricably linked to American culture, from baseball games and the 4th of July to hot dog diplomacy as an enduring tactic of U.S. international relations. Okay, so here was the deal. Jen and Paul weren't just making a gigantic hot dog.

They wanted to say something about the hot dog and wanted to call people in to help craft events that would make that intention clear. Their entire body of work reflected that, finding the darkest corners of American culture to comment on using bright, interactive, occasionally sinister-feeling projects that drew you in visually before you even realized how fucked up the subject matter was. They wanted to examine the hot dog as a symbol by creating a monument of a hot dog. Yeah, by the end of this email, I was in. I was absolutely in, and I hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. Jen and Paul were these puzzle box artists that

disguised, fascinating questions inside of really audacious, freaky, large-scale art. And not for nothing, but this wasn't just going to be a hot dog sculpture. It would be a hot dog sculpture that raised in the air erect and ejaculated confetti. And so, the moment of truth, a 65-foot hot dog is knocking at the door. Will you answer? I replied, Oh my God. Of course I want to be a part of the gigantic confeder.

hot dog celebration? Yes, that was all caps. And three months later, I was there in Times Square watching an enormous hot dog come mustard-colored confetti all over the squealing masses. It was horrific. It was perfect. The hot dog has been a cultural main character for over a century, but every once in a while, it becomes the internet's main character too. The 65-foot hot dog In Times Square, your 16th minute starts now. Oh, 16 minutes of pain, and you take me on my time for you're Oh, this is exciting for me for me. hot dog season. And with hot dog season comes the inevitable and necessary questioning of why and how a hot dog came to symbolize America.

I know what you're thinking, Jamie, you just wanted to talk about hot dogs. Yes, I did. There was a 65-foot-one in Times Square. Are you going to tell me I'm wrong? And it's the first episode of 16th minute to discuss a viral work of art. Kind of an underrated subgenre of main character, I think. But there's a lot of them. Consider that terrifying restored fresco of Jesus by an 81-year-old woman in Spain that looks like, well, you've seen it, not Jesus. Mona Chalabi's data illustrations that make crucial underreported stories pop up right in your Instagram feed. Ooh, here's a deep cut. Those Hamilton Tumblr fan art illustrations that reimagine famous slaveholder Thomas Jefferson as a queer furry taking Japanese lessons. or works of art that come around every so often and are received rapturously. There's a comic I see every once in a while from the incredible artist, Hallie Bateman, that shows people passing each other in a busy city connected by tenuous primary colored lines with the caption.

It's a miracle we ever met. As I was getting ready for this episode, I was kind of comforted that what makes a piece of artwork get popular on the internet is still kind of a mysterious thing. can be digital pieces but they aren't always digital pieces. Sometimes art gets to you through the algorithm, sometimes it's how the artwork itself connects to a cultural moment, and sometimes the artwork is bad and there's nothing that drives engagement like cyberbullying an elderly woman who lives in Spain. And sometimes it's because the art in question isn't just interesting, it pulled you out of looking at your phone in the first place. At least for a second,

before it occurs to you to take a selfie with it. Because it's a gigantic hot dog, what were you going to do? Not take a picture with it? I find this comforting. The powers that be who fund public works of art can't really predict how people will respond to it. And it is from this great tradition of public art that people grow irrationally attached to and angry at

that we find the 65 foot hot dock in Times Square. So let's talk a little bit about what constitutes public art. So public art, the non-founding father monument type, has been around since the late 19th century, give or take, following the World's Fair of 1893 and Chicago. Interestingly, a lot of the false narratives around who invented the hot dog came from this same world's fair, but that's for another day. The point is, publicly funded art comes alongside industrialization and the increase of people living in urban centers. When I say public art in this episode, I mean pieces that were made possible

by at least partially public funding, so not overt advertisements and usually touching on themes that funders think will be relevant to everyday people. Although the way that public art has been funded over the years has changed, but thankfully it's still a part of our landscape today, which is amazing, especially if your mom's mission in life is to get a a selfie with this Chicago bean for some reason. The kind of public art that leads to a gorgeous, feminine, phallic object in Times Square can be traced back about 100 years. The book Modernism for the Masses by Jody Patterson gets into this history in detail. Arts funding, as we know it, really took off in the U.S. in the 1930s during the New Deal era under President Roosevelt

and was meant to keep artists working and developing a more distinct national art style to compete with other countries invested in a similar mission. Because countries love to use art as soft propaganda to demonstrate how awesome it is here, actually. Navy recruitment went up 500% after Top Gun came out. To reach for something bigger. To master a more challenging world. To feel the confidence and pride of knowing who you are, what you can do. Show the world your U.S. Navy.

Live the adventure. Call 1-800-3-2-7 Navy. But these New Deal programs were net good. They ended up nurturing a lot of artists who are a part of American canon today, employed them so that they didn't need to leave their respective creative fields, and expanded the average Americans' access to art by putting it on display for free and using other money to open community centers in underserved cities. And this gave many marginalized Americans access to arts and arts education.

It's the kind of stuff that we don't really invest in today, and it made a big difference. Slight propaganda intent aside, this New Deal program, the Federal Art Project, generally worked for artists. They were, of course, dead broke during the Depression, and while censorship within these grants were about the issue you would expect. There were technically only two rules for a federal art project at this time. They were no nudes and no politics. Best of luck with that, Franklin. Many artists snuck these things in anyways and were still provided with the living wage, studio space, and public audience they needed to establish a career. Unfortunately, this program went away in the early 40s when America's involvement in World War II increased. But the spirit of it made a short comeback in the

1970s under Richard Nixon. Oops, did he slay there? Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got. No, he was a bad guy. Regardless, from 1973 to 1980, according to Jody Patterson, in an interview with Fox's Alyssa Wilkinson, a Nixon program called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act ended up employing about 10,000 artists during this time. I was not aware of most of this information, and I was honestly a little surprised to hear that public art has been around for so short a time in the way we're thinking of it. These full salary government-funded programs have largely dried up. One of the most effective ways of getting funded today are through private public sector collaborations, which is how hot dog in the city gets made. So instead of being

government funded, like artists of the late 1930s, this system has the public partially funding the project and the rest of the money coming from insert corporation name here. Another popular way to get funding is from a still operational New Deal policy called Art in Architecture, which to this day institutes that half a percent of construction costs to all American government buildings be used to commission public American art to go in front of them. So if you've ever asked, why is this gigantic clothespin in front of my government building? There you go. But what I love about public artworks is when they get people mad.

And that happens with pretty great frequency. Some of my favorite examples include the Gorilla Girls billboards. Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum from the 1980s? One I learned about last year was Paul McCarthy's tree, which is advertised as a gigantic green inflatable tree, heavy air quotes, that many correctly saw as a giant inflatable green butt plug. There's Iwayway's Good Fences Make Good Neighbors from back in 2017 that commented on America's growing hostility towards immigrants. And there was some controversy with hot dog in the city, but we'll get there. The 65-foot hot dog was funded by Times Square Arts, a public arts

fund that was founded in 1992. And they actually sought out Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw. At the time of this writing, Times Square Arts is funded in a public private way. So part of the huge hot dog was funded by the city, the state, and the national endowment for the arts. And the other part was funded by Drum Rule Please, Mehta and Morgan Stanley. And obviously, Times Square is a huge get for a public installation artist. The square itself has been B hub of American consumerism and pop culture and Elmo impersonators with costumes ventilated at the neck for over 100 years. About half a million people pass through there every day. And if you're an artist being asked to make something, there's few places on earth where there's more visual noise to cut through. Enter Jen and Paul.

Come with me, if you will, to today. A few weeks. ago, basically today. Inside Out, too, is doing great at the box office, and if it does better than minions, I'll walk into traffic. Record heat is once again sweeping the globe. The American government continues to aid and abet Israel and the genocide and starvation of Palestinians, and I have my period today. This is the world that the 65-foot hot dog takes place within. Jen Katron and Paul Outlaw were asked to pitch some ideas to Times Square Arts for the spring of 2024, and Gene Cooney at Times Square Arts was right to ask them, because they were uniquely suited for a large-scale public project like this. After they met getting their MFA's at Crancruck Academy of Art in the late 2000s,

Jen and Paul banded together and moved to New York. They've worked on both huge, fun, public projects and small, sometimes more somberly themed gallery pieces for the better part of 15 years whether they're interactive and outside or in a gallery they all share the same visual language so I'm no art critic I literally just told you I'm a big minions fan but whether Jen and Paul are making something for fun or using a miniature sculpture to envision what Alex Jones's depression bathroom might look like the work is colorful and it dares you to interact with it physically and intellectually.

I really like what they do. But going through their catalog, I especially love their public and their performance pieces. Back in 2014, there was their double-decker bus tour of Chelsea's art galleries, which included a gift shop that poked fun at the abundance of white men whose work populated those galleries, as well as making up random artists of their own in the hopes that people would notice. Hi, I'm Jen Katrin.

And I'm Paul Outlaw. And you are here at Gin and Paul's One Stop Shopping, Submeneer City and Chelsea Bus Tours. This is our big bus, Chelsea, New York City. This is where all the Blue Chip Galleries gather to play. So we're here to give the inside scoop and what really goes on in these galleries. Now, the Chelsea art team can be very, very confusing. Why do some artists make so much money? Why are most artists white males?

We don't know. We don't know, but we have a pretty good guess. And it got a reaction. Chelsea art galleries were pretty annoyed at this big homemade double-decker gaudy tour bus careening down their fancy little district. Another early amazing project from them was back in 2010 with Jen and Outlaw's fish fry truck before the big food truck boom where the two bought a retired food truck off Craigslist, added hydraulics, and an almost pop-up book fold-out animatronic restaurant where they would serve

fresh crawfish inspired by their rural upbringings. And even after the truck closed, the performance kept going. They were on chopped. And finally, Chef Jen Katron and Chef Paul Outlaw. We're the chefs and owners of Jen and Outlaw's fish frat truck and crawfish boil. I grew up in Southern Illinois. I'm from Fairhope, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. Welcome to New York City! We filled the missing void in New York for this mud, bug from Louisiana. Man, man. Jen lights up every room she walks into.

Pickles are good. Paul likes to be the best, everything he does. I'm not afraid of losing because I've never done it. I don't know what it's like. Jen and outlaw's curlfish. They were not professional chefs, and yet they ended up on chopped. In their gallery work, you get a chance to see Jen and Paul with a little less chaos and a little more overt political messaging.

They created miniatures that referenced right-wing conspiratorial moments like Pizza Gate, like Alex Jones, an acknowledgement of colonialism, a sculpture about the violence it takes for a banana to get into your hands at a local grocery store. But their public projects usually tend to be more interactive. You are on the bus on the art tour. You are eating the crawfish. They once designed a giant mechanical pair of tongs that picked up a big fake, giant meatball on a big fake giant plate of spaghetti. They're really creative and they're all about messing around with context. And this hot dog project was no different. It wouldn't just

be a 65 foot long hot dog. It was a hot dog that would rise and come at noon every day and was also hollowed out to host very small events. Which brings me to the events, which was another crucial part of Jen and Paul's mission with this project. Because while the hot dog itself was meant to draw tourists in in Times Square, the six weeks that the hot dog was there, yes, sorry if you're listening, it's already too late, they programmed a series of events that either played into or directly contradicted the jingoistic Americanness that were trained to see in the hot dog. They talk about it a little here in a promo video. A hot dog being kind of this very deeply entrenched American symbol has permeated our culture. So the hot dog means a lot to who we are. And also the darker, more sinister parts of how the hot dog came to be, I think is also reflective of our larger American culture. So we think it's such a good and fitting symbol to blow up at this massive scale.

Along with the hot dogs, we also have a lot of additional programming that's going to help really shape and formulate the story that we're trying to tell. We're hoping that through this wide range of events that we can tell the largest story of the hot dog and kind of the larger story of ourselves, too. Before the hot dog's grand unveiling in Times Square on April 30th, Jen and Paul announced the following programming. The hottest dog, a canine beauty pageant, a hot dog eating contest with Nathan's hot dogs, just like the Fourth of July show on Coney Island, a condiment wrestling match featuring

the Extreme Wrestling Alliance, which is a local backyard wrestling organization, and chokehole a New Orleans drag performance group, a video series that explored the highs and lows of being a street vendor in New York when street vending laws are more restrictive than ever. And a day-long academic summit on the hot dog, which brag, I spoke and hosted at, which also featured street vendors who were organizing on behalf of their peers, a high school debate team arguing ketchup versus mustard, mustard one, huge upset. There was a professional eaters panel and there was a speech by one of the most famous vegan feminists ever, Carol J. Adams. And this all took place in a Broadway theater on a Sunday afternoon. These events were in addition to massive

opening and closing events for the hot dog on April 30th and June 13th. And while these events were dispersed throughout the run every day at noon, the hot dog would be hoisted onto its side and would shoot confetti to the delight and confusion of tourists and costumed elmos.

After the announcement, people seemed generally pumped. The programming sounded cool and the 65-foot distinction made it officially the largest hot dog sculpture ever made, with apologies to that other guy. And Jen and Paul

were all set for the big opening, because with that opening would come the reviews. So it's the day of the Times Square unveiling, April 30th. The advance promotion for the project has gone over very well. The poster features Paul, who's painted pink and lying in a gigantic hot dog bun, covered in mustard and naked except for a loin cloth, while Jen looms above him and a hot dog metallic bikini like the Venus de Milo. She's about six months pregnant because, did I mention, Jen and Paul are partners in life and in art, and their 65-foot hot dog is unveiled literal days before Jen gives birth to their

second child. I mean, there are two people on Earth living the dream, and it's these two. There's a crowd gathered around the hot dog, looking at its wondrousness, and Jen and Paul are dressed to the nines. He's wearing a suit, she's wearing a sheer dress covered in Applicade Daisies. And to open the event, they go for a comical amount of American imagery. On one side of the hot dog, there was a professional cheerleading squad, and on the other side of the hot dog, there was the late show's gospel choir performing. It felt like the marriage of American religion, pro sports, and religion. A few days later was the condiment wrestling match, which contrasted these scrappy backyard wrestlers with nipple-twisting drag performers,

and it was here where the more polarizing coverage began. So I gathered some initial press reactions to this hot dog, and one of these things is not like the other. Let's see if you can spot it. It's both a celebration of the food item as well as a Marxist critique of the labor conditions so many vendors face, and of the meatpacking industry more broadly, where Claude Oldenberg meets Upton Sinclair. Time Square, the capital of capitalism, amplifies the messages of the artists, who suggested the origins of the hot dog

and what today makes it the almost perfect American capitalism story in good ways and in bad ways. Not only enhances the entropy of Times Square, but also dominates the palate entirely amid the censorer overload of slow-moving crowds. Creepy, costumed characters demanding paid selfies, the infamous naked cowboy, and retina-singing digital billboards. The mood was joyful and astounded.

Even the scene-it-all Times Square security guards laughed. An onion pummeled another character in the corner of the ring. Pure delight. Cholkall got raunchy howls. The hot dog ascended skyward. Times Square's giant hot dog is apparently a meat manifesto about toxic masculinity. Wait, we found it. Now, those other reviews are very art world.

They're very heady. They're using names that you're like, I was supposed to read them in high school, but did I? But that last poll is a headline from the New York Post. So before that, I quoted a lot of liberal art world-friendly publications. The most popular publication I quoted was the New York Times, who still actively failed to report on the genocide in Gaza. So I'm not meaning to say that any one publication is better than the other. However, it is the New York Post with the historically right lean that takes the bait of the giant hot dog's message.

They heard the word masculinity and realized, wait, that's one of the words we put in headlines to make people all mad. This headline, Times Square Giant Hot Dog is apparently a meat manifesto about toxic masculinity, was written by columnist and reviewer Johnny Oleniski, author of important articles like bare breasts, suicides and flaco, NYC can't handle public art. And the biggest problem with House of the Dragon? I can't remember anyone's name. Look, no hate I used to write clickbait for a living too. I'm only making fun of him because this guy seems like an asshole.

Let's hear what he has to say about the concept of masculinity. I'm sure he's very reasonable. Their Titanic sausage is apparently meant to, quote, examine consumption, capitalism, class, and contemporary culture, Times Square, arts website amazingly reads. That must be why every day at 12 p.m., the installation lifts off the ground, angles up to sky, and becomes a confetti cannon. The explosion of euphemism is supposed to reference the, quote,

hyper-masculinity and showmanship, often associated with American culture and patriotism, end quote? Um, sure it is. And later on, there are even events pegged to this best of worst, which is in town until June 13th. One called the Condiment Wars will feature the wrestlers of a New Orleans-based drag group known as chokehole, who will, quote, take down masculinity, corporate America, and capitalism, end quote. Yeah, I sense a trend here. Later on, there's a canine beauty pageant. 100% approve

a hot dog eating contest makes sense and then an on-stage talk at town hall debating the merits of the food. Uh-oh. Among the panelists at that chat will be a feminist vegan writer and

activist. I have a sneaking suspicion she won't be pro hot dog. Loser! Shut up! Bullying is bad except when I do it to this guy right now. Loser! But when you think about it for a second, this guy and the New York Post have played directly into Jen and Paul's hands. They set a trap, and he fell into it.

A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training.

These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him. the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration

on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry,

and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls,

smothering as resistance and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But when you think about it for a second, this guy and the the New York Post have played directly into Jen and Paul's hands. They set a trap and he fell into it. I wanted to know more about how this project came together and where better to go than the source. So the day after that hot dog summit that Johnny Olineski hated so much, I took the subway over to Jen and Paul studio in Brooklyn where they were in the process of cooking up the closing

ceremony for June 13th. Here's our interview. I am Jen Katrin. And I'm Paul Outlaw. And we are the artist behind Hot Dog in the City. Hi, guys. Hi. Was this the room that the hot dog was conceived inside of? This is where we conceived all our children. Wow.

Including the two real ones. Yeah, we've been in this room for, I don't, we've been in this building for 11 years and in this particular room for eight years, maybe. How long had you been sitting on the hot dog idea? What was the genesis of it? We really do like working with food as far as our studio practice goes. So we have actually been making like hot dogs for a little, like pregnant hot dogs for a while, like that one over there. We should mention food in all its forms, like food sculptures. Yeah.

And actually serving food. Cooking and serving food. Yeah. Food is the grotesque. And then we started to think about like Times Square approached us about doing a project. And so we presented several ideas to them. But, you know, the hot dog just kind of started to make the most sense because Times Square, you know, like when people think about Times Square, they think of street vending and the hot dog and just New York City in general. Like, as far as like where we should geographically place it, it just made sense to put it in Times Square.

We had a number of proposals with Times Square arcs as well, but the hot dog kept reappearing as the, as the favorite of the panel. Am I allowed to know what any of the, what hit the cutting room floor? One of them was, like, a massive cake where, like, you would go inside. Birthday cake, multi-tiered birthday cake, where people would have to wear candles on their heads and, like, go inside and their heads would pop out and be, like, the candles for the cake while they had, like, cake and coffee. But, yeah. We'd serve them a cup of coffee. It'd be like a coffee shop, but on top of a six-story birthday cake. And then what was the other one?

We had several ideas that involved large piles of trash and rotten food with, Oh, with flies that were drones With barrel-sized flies That were all drones But we can't do drones in Times Square Well, the flies would go up in Times Square And they would do a day They would be choreographed

Yeah They would put on a production And then land back on the Apollo trash at the end But yeah, we could not do it They're huge restrictions on that Yeah, so we have a bunch of crazy ideas Our brainstorming sessions are honestly Just like really wacko

Like it takes us a while to finally land on something that's both crazy and actually physically possible to do. But for a while, when we're talking about all these things, we just let loose. We're like, it doesn't matter if this is actually physically possible or if we can actually do it. We're just going to talk about it.

But then we came up with the hot dog, and then we knew the hot dog was not enough. Like, we're like, no, it needs to be like, it needs to speak to Times Square to like this corporate, masculine capitalism that's just like overbearing in this area. It was Paul eventually, I believe it came up with the idea to kind of, well, we started from like a missile truck

honestly like it raising up in the air yeah yeah but ballistic hot dog was kind of the origins of that yeah and you know just like shooting up and then shooting out confetti north korea style military parades just in making its way through the new york city and and then and then lifting up towards skyward the sordid parts of the hot dog mimic the sordid parts of america so as we started like digging in we're like well this actually makes a lot of sense to put in time square So. Okay. So I want to take it back a little bit and talk more about your lives specifically. How did you get from where you came from to working together? I grew up in southern Illinois. There was no like art scene, obviously, just like a lot of farm land. But I was always just doing weird shit, performative type things that I didn't know as art. And then eventually I think I came to a conclusion that what I was doing, the only category fit in would be art. And so, yeah. Such as what? Oh, well

Yeah, well I had like a bunch of pet animals But like weird ones Like I had two pet raccoons And like I was always out in the woods Like training them to do things Like like what? Well, I had to train them to like live off the land

Because their mom died So I was like teaching to catch cradads in the creek And things like that But then I don't know I had like little performance elements that they would do too And I was always really interested in like Getting these like weird pets of mine to do like performative things with me so like circus tricks yeah yeah like kind of circus tricks

but I will say like eventually I did like I released they weren't ever in a cage they actually always just lived in a woodpile and they were always free to come and go but eventually I had to like force them to go because they were getting like older and they needed to be like away from me because I'm not a raccoon I can't really teach them like they just can't be with me forever because they raccoons I'm a person so I had to like like send them out into the, the countryside, and I had to, like, take them in a truck and, like, release them into a woods far away, so they wouldn't be, like, so dependent on me. But at that point, I knew that they were, like, okay, like, they would go out for the day

and, like, get their crawdads and, like, eat their food. And then I was like, okay, they're free to go. It's like you were sending them to college. Yeah, exactly. But not just raccoons, Jen. Well, this is progressed to other animals. Oh, yeah. Well, this is going to start feeling like I'm going to get in trouble.

So I, it was just mice. None of those trouble. You graduated to mice. Yeah. You did chickens. Yeah. Quail. I did.

Yeah. But it was all very. They were all wearing funny hats. Yeah. But it was all very, I know. I feel like this sounds so borderline as whether I'm like, like I'm mistreating animals, but I swear I'm not mistreating animals. And yeah, they just, I just had like pets and they just, they hung out with me.

I did fun things with them. Yeah. You had a, you had a mini circus. I did. I had like a little circus. Anyway. So I just said that that was art. and that I could be an artist.

And then... I'm from Alabama, a small town, Alabama. But I was always doing artwork of some sorts and ended up just finding my way into a sculpture program in college and getting serious about it. And then just after that, just moved to New York. After a few years working as studio assistant in New York, I went to Cranbrook outside of Detroit for graduate school,

which is where Jennifer also happened to be going. that's where they recognized her natural talents and ability for training animals and they allowed her to come to Cranbrook also. Yeah, shocking. We actually went to school together for a couple of years in Detroit and then moved back to New York after that. And we've been, we kind of started working together at Cranbrook

helping each other out with projects. I would help Jen rig up her mice, Ferris wheels that operated. And Jen would help me put on game shows at the student gallery. So our work just kind of started melding together When we moved to New York, it just became kind of second nature to be working together all the time. We actually do a lot of performance work in our studio practice as well. We do a lot of sculptures, and we do environments and use a lot of audience participation. And they're all kind of extension of what the idea of performance work is, including the hot dog.

Yeah. It is a sculptural object, but there's also a performative aspect of that. Huge, yeah. I think that Jen and I both started really using performance in our work at grad school. And then I think for us, public art needs to have different levels of approach because you are dealing with public who may not be as they don't have the same like art history understanding. And that's not a criticism. That's just, you know, that's just what it's like. It's just the world.

Yeah. When we make public works to make something that is at least approachable on a certain level. And then, you know, as people dig in and hopefully we hold their attention and keep their attention. and then they can start maybe thinking about the more critical elements that we're trying to bring out to light. That's part of what I love about the approach to your public work where it's like you can enjoy it if you get it and you can enjoy it if you don't get it. And that is what makes a great piece of public art. Could you give me a dumb person an idea of how you build a 65 foot long hot talk? Well, I mean, it is the magic of engineering, I suppose.

but it's like it's it does start on we start with drawings of what we want it to look like what kind of scale it might be taking and what the what the overall shape looks like obviously like any artwork would start and then after that we dive deep into the computer so it gets engineered drawings for something like this that is very much in the public realm and very very large it also has to get engineering stamps and approvals from engineers so we have to have the internal structure all has to be built to spec, and all the materials have to be specked out and then get approved by the engineer. That part is basically a welded still frame that's connected to a semi-trailer that would have been like a dump trailer for like dumping

dirt rocks out of the back. Okay. Which is brilliant because when something already exists, it's like much easier get an engineer to stamp it. That was Paul's idea. Actually, he's like, well, this already exists. So we'll just. So you're just using like a dump truck. So we took it, it's a dump bed, a dump bed trailer, a semi-trailer. We removed the tub, so it's just the trailer frame and the hydraulics. And then we built our own interior frame at a steel for that. It is in two pieces. It bolts together on site because the length was going, at 65 feet long, it was too long for an actual semi-trailer.

So we did cut it into two pieces. Okay. Then once the frame's done, then we get back to the fun art part, and we basically clad the whole thing in foam that is carved. to be shaped like the hot dog to look like to look like our drawings and our pictures and our renderings it seemed like I got away with feels dramatic but it feels like you guys got away with so much in the creation of this hot dog like I'm just in awe of how much you got away with yeah no they were surprisingly accommodating like they were enthusiastic about it they let us do the wrestling show and I was like this is going to be wild and I think as they as they saw the show unfold

they're like oh this is wilder than we thought it would be but they still were like okay That's the best, yeah. Ask for forgiveness later. Yeah, yeah. What are interactions or things you've heard anecdotally about the public interacting with this hot dog that stick out to you? Really remarkable response. Like people absolutely love it. They show up there just to see it.

They come to Times Square just to see the hot dog. They want it when we're there doing, we do the confetti pop off every day at noon. And when we're there, they want to make sure they didn't miss it or is it still on schedule. And there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a crowd every. every day of the hot dog waiting for this little micro confetti blast that comes out, comes out the end of this hot dog. So special. They're very pumped up about it.

The social media reaction has been huge. Yeah. I think we've heard like a billion impressions around the social media. One of the things that I found I was super happy with is on its face, it was just a hot dog. It's just a hot dog. We have reasons for it for it being a hot dog. we've dropped hints to and what we want the sculpture to speak to. But we didn't push that too hard. And on the surface, it was just a hot dog. But as soon as people started thinking that

it's more than a hot dog and then it's really, really has a little more a critical theory behind it, they kind of took that and ran with it into exactly the way that I expected them to and the way I kind of wanted them to. Walk me through that. For example, yeah. Yeah. So, for example, the New York Post, they first announced it. Awesome, here's a big hot dog story.

They announced that once. Here's a giant hot dog in Times Square. It's going to be so cool. It's going to be great. And then like a week later, they kind of caught wind of some of the ideas that we think the hot dog represents, which are not even that horrible. It's more of a reflection on the society. For better or worse, you kind of take it as it is.

It is who we are. It is where we came from. It is what we look like. Right. They immediately took sides on it. They immediately... Well, I think the headline was, apparently the hot dog is about toxic masculinity or something like that.

Right. They were like jumping to some conclusions and getting their base fired up. And that's when the hate mail came was after that article, obviously. Okay. Yeah. Had you ever been through like a round of hate mail reaction to stuff before? I don't think so. Yeah.

Not on this. Yeah. Oh, not on this scale by any means. Yeah. But it was just calling us morons and, you know, I mean, nothing too crazy. Just, I feel like you've gotten so much worse than we have. Yeah, it's like, it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. But every once in a while, you're like, wow, that took a lot of time.

Yeah. It's remarkable the amount of effort that they have to go. They make an email address. They make a fake email address. They find our emails. They like, you know, I'm like, this is a thing. Just to say hot dog equals moron. Because in other publication.

fell right in line on the other side of the like new york times you know because it was we're careful we're careful not to not to necessarily criticize too too hard in our work we we do believe that we're a reflection of what society is and if that reflection is bad that's not that's not our fault it's society's fault you don't like the reflection that you see what i mean who's wise who's problem whose fault is that realizing that the hot dog is a reflection of of of society then then they immediately took sides and immediately went well and we we said some maybe i mean anytime you talk about america and you're not like saying yay america this is the best like i feel like that's like yeah you're going to get a lot of emails calling you a moron yeah yeah and we were sabotaged

the hot dog was sabotaged one yeah oh yeah someone at some point in time when went went under underneath the hot dog and just ripped every hose and electrical component and like cut everything and broke all the kill switches and the choke handles on the on the both motors that we have underneath there and unplugged all the hoses and mess with the hydraulics and yeah it was a violent intentional mismaneling of the motors that operate the the hot dog that's but that's pretty again like talking about how much work it takes to send an email it takes even more work to go try to physically vandalized a hot dog sculpture. Oh, and the day before that, someone called basically a bomb threat on the hot dog.

They called the police and said that a suspicious man was underneath the hot dog. Looks like he's planting C4. Well, where do you go from 65-foot hot dog? Is there anything that you're like, what happens post-65-foot hot dog? I trust that you have crazier ideas. We do have crazier ideas for sure. Like I said, our brainstorming sessions are really like, we'll see who will let us do it. I think that's always the question mark, right?

I think from here we definitely go into corporate art. They're going to love us. I really can't overstate my debt to Jen and Paul. They were so kind to involve me and many other hot dog heads throughout this process. So throw your impossible dogs on the George Foreman, as we'll be back in a second baby. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry,

and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing.

The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space, so let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday, on the IHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life,

impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in the backlog will be identified in our case. our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th Minute. I'm still not vegan somehow. And today, we're talking about the 65-foot hot dog in Times Square. And right now, we're going to talk to someone who's very disappointed

that I'm still not vegan somehow. Earlier in this episode, I mentioned that at the Hot Dog Academic Summit I spoke at, there was a featured talk by a prominent vegan feminist, and for many, the vegan feminist. And I want to tell you more about her, because not only do I find her to be an incredibly cool person, she also has unique insight on the internet. I'm talking about one Carol J. Adams, the author of the now legendary text, the sexual politics of meat a feminist vegetarian critical theory

first published back in 1990 and I know the title sounds a little bit intimidating but I really recommend it and I wish I'd known about it when I was writing my book she talks a lot about the intersection of animal suffering with how people subjugate each other

and when I saw her speak at the hot dog summit in town hall I was truly blown away in 45 minutes this extremely funny woman laid bare how meat is marketed to us in America, how we're trained to view it in relation to us, down to the sexualized images of cartoon pigs and cows smiling, telling us it's not just okay to eat them, it's what they want us to do. And where does that sexual visual language come from in advertising? The way that we're conditioned to see women be objectified. The cartoon of

a sexy pig and a bikini on the side of a food truck, Carol ties the suffering and murder of animals to the idea that Westerners are sold, that animal meat is inherently masculine, that consumption is masculine, and objectification is feminine. She's cooking in this book. And the most famous concept from the sexual politics of meat is the concept of the absent referent. That's defined as, Behind every meal of meat is an absence, the death of the animal whose place. the meat takes. The absent referent is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product. The function of the absent referent is to keep our meat

separated from any idea that she or he was once an animal, to keep the moo or cluck or ba away from the meat, to keep something from being seen as having been someone. Once the existence of meat is disconnected from the existence of an animal who was killed to become that meat. Meat becomes unanchored by its original referent, the animal, becoming instead a free-floating image used often to reflect women's status as well as animals. Animals are the absent referent in the act of meat eating. They also become the absent referent in images of women, bushered, fragmented, or consumable. When I started working on this episode, I knew I needed.

to talk to Carol J. Adams. Because not only was I deeply moved and motivated by her talk, it completely took me off guard, I also then had the pleasure of walking with her, her son, Jen, Paul, Times Square Arts, and the entire audience over to the giant hot dog to watch it explode confetti. And when we arrived, I'll never forget, we got to go into the giant hollow hot dog together. It was just one of those perfect moments. And one of my questions for her was one of the same questions that the New York Post had. Why did you, as a vegan feminist, agreed to talk at a hot dog convention? And her answer was simple. She said that the hot dog in Times Square was a vegan hot dog. And she really enjoyed the vegan hot dogs being served at the event and was just as interested

as myself and Jen and Paul were analyzing the hot dog as a food. food and as a symbol. But Carol looked at it very optimistically. She looked at it as a symbol that would be able to grow and change with us. She's a fascinating person, and it's not shocking that as a feminist and a vegan activist for the last 50 years, she's been the subject a lot of unwarranted harassment. So I wanted to hear about why she agreed to fly from Texas to New York to celebrate a symbol that felt far afield from her interest, and then we began talking about how these harassment techniques from the right have evolved in her experience. From the right-wing radio rush Limbaugh era to Jordan Peterson sending his audience to harass and threaten her in the middle of his,

wait for it, all-meat diet that almost killed him. Carol has seen it all, and I wanted to hear more. Wait, there's because I've had a, I've had a carrot dog before, but I, but not in, Well, I liked beans and Franks growing up, you know, so I do use regular hot dogs. How long have you noticed this like association with American men and meat? Oh, my God. You're not going to believe it. Fifty years. Oh, bummer. 50 years ago, I became a vegetarian. And I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I was studying feminist studies, feminist history. And I started, I remember walking towards Harvard Square

thinking about all the associations. And I thought, oh, my God, there's a connection between mediating and masculinity. And, you know, I sort of felt like I'd levitated. And then I started collecting examples and information. And as you know, writing a book, you can't just have good material. You have to know what you're trying to shape. say. And what was my theory about that? So that took 15 years. And when the sexual politics of meat came out, I thought, oh, well, now I'm done with that. What else am I going to do next? But people started sending me examples. And since 1990, I have gotten examples from around the world that connect meat eating and masculinity, photos, quotes, ads, you know, just these sort of chalk misogyny. If you're

walking down an L.A. street and there's a restaurant and they're selling, you know, burgers or something, but the burger has very shapely female legs with high heels underneath it. You know, that's an example of chalk misogyny. So they're, you know, they're here today, gone tomorrow. But they're examples of how it penetrates throughout our culture, this assumption. And, you know, then you've got vegan men who have to, how do they respond to breaking the stereotype. Meat is so often sexualized from this very male gaze perspective, publicly presenting these theories. What was the initial reaction? Has the reaction changed over time? Perhaps we could say there are three different reactions, predictable reactions. The first reaction

is this is an example of whatever the right wing calls liberal principles at that time. time. So with Rush Limbaugh, this was an example of political correctness gone too far. And now this would be, this is wokeness gone too far. Or this is the radical left going too far. Can you believe that this person is saying there's a connection between meat eating and masculinity like this? I call that category loud mouse and blowhards. But as I discuss in the new introduction and as I discussed at the hot dog summit, this got more intensified after Obama was elected president, that somehow the idea of an African-American man being president just set the right wing into such a tizzy and how do they express it? One way they express it, white supremacy is so fascinating, is

claiming of drinking mammalian milk and meat. And so you saw this discourse sort of very non-Iroical in response. So that's one. The second is, say, vegan men or liberals, well, yeah, there's a connection, but they don't want to call it the sexual politics of meat. They don't want to politicize it. It's just, whatever it is, you can look at recent articles about these sort of carnivore diets. And they're dripping with testosterone in their discussion of these men, but it's all non-politicized. Like, it has no relationship to the fact. that feminists and LGBTQ people have gained a foothold that, you know, you've had an African-American president, there's no recognition that this could be a reaction to a sort of sense of

insecurity that's occurred, especially with white men. So that's the second. And then the third, vegans and animal rights activists, when the book came out, they were just so excited because my book made sense of the idea that caring about animals is part of its social justice agenda. It put within a social justice activism framework, the fact that we can look beyond the human species. I'm curious because, you know, the book came out and you came to prominence, free internet being widely adopted. Has the internet had a meaningful impact on how your work is received? Let me first say the internet had an impact on how I received information from my readers so that when the book came out, my publisher started receiving packages of things, you know, sexist t-shirts about animals. I've got a whole box. It could be a museum exhibit. The turkey hooker, which is a hook that you hook a dead carcass with to pull it out of the pan that you've cooked it in for Thanksgiving. It's like a joke gift, but it's called the turkey hooker.

And it shows a turkey, you know, seductively raising her leg. Again, as I said, you know, the only time animals are supposed to have a desire is after their death when they desire to be consumed. So all of this started coming to my publisher and then that forward it to me. Once there was Facebook and Twitter, if they knew I was on there, then hashtag, that at me. But they could also just hashtag sexual politics of meat. So for like 10 to 12 years on Twitter, all I had to do was search sexual politics of meat, and there were all these examples.

So I never had to go trawling through this sexist apparatus that operates as culture because somebody else saw it. And they always said, we're so thankful we could send it to someone who could make sense of this. So how it affected me. I mean, it also means that people who disagree with me can find me. You can email me from my website. I participated in an Oxford Union debate in 2021. Oxford Union sponsors all these debates.

And this one was, this house must move beyond meat. And there were three of us defending it and three people against that. And one of the people against it was Jordan Peterson's daughter. And Jordan was in the audience. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian right-wing successor to Rush Limbaugh, you know, from loudmouth to blow hard. Yeah. And his daughter came up with the,

Michaela, I should give her a name, not just associate her with her father. Michaela Peterson came up with the lion's diet. And it is truly just meat. I mean, we all ate together. We were at the head table. And I was on the other side of the Oxford Union president. And I watched him.

You know, it was, I understand that they ordered a very specific weight, exactly how it should be cooked. apparently can also drink vodka and water, but that's all they had. They had that as their appetizer, and then they had it as their main course. And they sent half of it back. He sent half of it back. In fact, I took a photo of it because I was so shocked. If you know exactly how much you're eating, why do you order extra? Anyway, Joe Rogan was also following that. So when Jordan Peterson went on Joe Rogan a couple months after the debate, he could not stop talking about my ludicrous ideas from his point of view, you know, that I connected it to white supremacy

and masculinity and how I must not be loved and what a lonely person I was. And this so, I think this is so excited the Oxford Union who had, they'd videoed our conversations. They immediately released them and then they said, as heard about on the Joe Rogan show. So the minute Peterson had that, he posted that to Twitter, you know, the left going too far. And that's all he had to do. That said all his fowlers in motion. They went to the YouTube website and then they commented. And then they commented.

I think there's probably 1,200 comments at this point. And I started a file of it. Where is it? Hostility. A hostility file. Wow. It's amazing that you think you are educated. You either got your diploma from the Internet or you are just stupid.

Wikipedia has more correct. facts and what you presented. Oh, my God. You need a mental health check, ASAP. Your theories are made up and unscientific. Everything you say is designed to draw attention to yourself, et cetera. Please go take a nap somewhere. Subject, F you, you stupid C.

You would not be where you are today if it wasn't for men. Okay, get that. And it's not because we stole power. It's because that's the way things naturally went down. You get that, you stupid effing, effing C? Oh, my God. I just wanted to let you know I find you a total and utter basket case, a nutjob extraordinaire. You, madame, are a cancer upon this world.

The world needs urgent chemo treatment for mentally disturbed people like you. Anyway, you get the idea. Yeah. And the thing is that Peterson knows what he's doing. All he has to do. And so that's the, you know, we know how many women have been doxed and all of the, you know, all the attention that comes on women who challenge conventional ideas. I mean, these aren't even, you just never can predict who they're going to attack.

I kind of wish they could spell and make a syntactical sentence. It would be more interesting. Right. And then you could, there's something to engage with at that point. Yeah. But I don't answer them. So I think also it gives people a chance to find. me get more information if they want to know about the absent reference i've noticed like when the new york

times discusses my ideas now there'll be a link to that section of my website uh i just heard from someone who could not find my texas sheet cake recipe and you know begging me please where i need that texas sheet cake recipe please please so i never know you know what i'll get in my inbox and i love that It's made me available. I just heard from someone who wants to translate the work into Indonesia. So it's made contact with like a Serbian Women's Center that wanted to translate it. It's sped up contact. But I think it also created the possibility that you could be in touch with an author who mattered to you or an author whose work changed your life.

But I also learned that courage is simply stepping forward. And the courage you get from the first step gives you the courage to take the next step. We weren't going to back down. So I just had to find that courage. And you only have to kind of go through that sort of experience once and be on the other side to realize, these people don't like my book. Okay. Don't like it. But you don't like it and you've got to talk about it nonstop like Rush Limbaugh did one summer.

Nonstop. I mean, he could not stand it. I thought, you've got an issue, guy, and it's so great. Yeah, you're the one living in his head rent-free. I think I'm an optimist. We're not going to achieve everything. God, I've been a vegetarian for 50 years and a vegan for, you know, 35 or something. Just keep marching.

Keep making good vegan meals. Keep making carrot dogs. Keep serving people. Keep not calling attention to what they're eating and let them incubate it. later. Gosh, it's not impractical. Thank you so much to Carol J. Adams, who is quickly becoming a hero of mine, and please read the sexual politics of meat and follow her work at Carol J. Adams.com. And so, sweet listeners, wherever you are, I hope you try a plant-based hot dog this season

because a hot dog is a symbol, and a symbol should be consumed very carefully. Hell, even Joey Chestnut is sponsored by Impossible Dogs now, so anyone can make a change. Even me. And if you're interested in more about hot dog lore, you can grab my book Raw Dog, the Naked Truth about Hot Dogs, or watch my favorite piece of hot dog media ever, Rick Seaback's A Hot Dog program on PBS, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. This is my favorite topic in the entire world, and I'm so thrilled that Hot Dog

once more became the main character. And so for a moment of fun today, here's some audio I recorded at the Hot Dog in the City closing ceremony on June 13th, after we did a comedy roast of the hot dog in the 100-degree weather, and the confetti came for one last time. And then, . And... ...and ...and

...and ... ...and ...and ... ... ... ...

We're going to be able to be. 16th Minute is a production of Pool Zone Media and I Heart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Laughness. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson. My cat's Flea and Casper and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all.

Bye. Bye. It's Black Business Month and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in life. Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation.

ever did. Listen to money and wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.