Tangle - Reader interview, Part 4: Kristen / Jon

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Kristen (who sometimes goes by Jon) is from Des Moines, Iowa. They are a Christian, raised Catholic in a moderate left household, and say the teachings of the church pushed them "wayyyyy far left." Kristen is non-binary, a lesbian, just graduated college, and moved states to start their first adult job as a software engineer.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and this is our fourth installment of the Tangle Reader interview series, which I still have not named four episodes in, so I don't know what to call it. And today we are sitting down with Kristen from Des Moines, Iowa. Kristen, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this conversation. We've had a really interesting kind of eclectic mix of people coming on this week. And I think you fit the bill and you add something new that we haven't had yet.

That's exciting. Yeah, you are the youngest person we've had so far. I know you're a recent... How old are you? 23. I just graduated college in May. 23. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So you were, I think, far and away the youngest person we had on at our randomly selected readers. So we'll have to grill you about your generation a little bit. So before you jump in, what I've just been doing at the top of these episodes is just reading what you put on your form, just so our listenership has the same information I do going in. Because one of the fun things is like, I don't know you and I don't know any of the people I've interviewed so far, but I have a little bit of information just from the

form that you submitted. So in your form, you said that you were from Des Moines. You said your name was Kristen and you sometimes call yourself John. You said, I am a Christian, raised Catholic in a moderate left household. But what I learned in church pushed me way far left. I'm non-binary, lesbian, and have the best partner. I appreciate that shout out to your partner. And just graduated college, moved states, and started my first adult job as a software engineer. There's like, just in that, there's a couple sentences.

There's a ton of stuff I want to pull that. But yeah, like I mentioned, you are, I mean, you are, you're the, you're the, you're representing the youth in this podcast series. Oh boy. All of the youth. I feel like I'm not connected to the youth. Like I'm not on TikTok. I don't know. Teenagers are wild. And yeah, you get a, you start feeling old really quick. I'm 31 and I am like theyear-olds feel like a totally different world to me all of a sudden. It feels like I was that just not long ago. But look, you're in your early 20s, you're just a recent college graduate coming into the job market post-COVID. How is your generation doing? How's America treating a 23-year-old looking for a job?

How is your generation doing? How's America treating a 23-year-old looking for a job? What's going on in your world right now? Well, I have the benefit of graduating Carnegie Mellon with a computer science degree. So I come from a place where finding a job wasn't very hard, and that's not where my negativity comes from. But I don't know, if I'm here to speak on my generation. We're all really worried about climate change. At least anyone who thinks it's real, that that is the biggest existential threat to humanity. The vibes I get, you know, on the left, because most of what I get from the right is just from Tangle. out leftist spaces with the young, a young, largely queer crowd is largely negative. And I try to be optimistic in the face of that. But a lot of people are worried about climate change, worried about inequality, very, you know, among queer people, like it's, it's frustrating to be at a point where you're like, yes, total acceptance for all of us all the time and realize how unpopular of an opinion that is in America broadly.

I'd also say I'm just genuinely deeply worried about the effects of growing up in the Internet age of all of the algorithms on our brains and what that has done to us. I feel like that's a bad thing. And those corporations should be incredibly regulated, but people don't talk about that as much. I don't know. Just a lot of general pessimism online. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting. So did you, you said you went to Carnegie Mellon. I obviously, I went to the shittier school in Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh. Definitely not as smart as you. CMU is a fantastic school. Are you from the Pittsburgh area? Did you grow up there? No, I'm from Cleveland. I have a bunch of connections to Pittsburgh, though. Most of my family went to Carnegie Mellon. My mom grew up there. My partner grew up in the area. Very cool. Yeah, Cleveland and Pittsburgh are sort of like twins, even though they hate each other, they're also very tied closely to

each other. It's an interesting dynamic. I'm curious. I mean, being in a school like Pittsburgh and Western PA, my experience, at least in Pittsburgh, was that it was like a very politically diverse place. I thought it was a really interesting place to be sort of for my work. What was your experience like there as someone who, I mean, self-described, like you feel like you're way far on the left? So I was pretty depressed in college, which is another, all of the mental health stuff is another thing of my generation. So I didn't go out and interact a ton with people, but my vibe was at least Carnegie Mellon is generally towards the left. There certainly it wasn't hard to find people who are also far left. But at the end of the day,

my experience in the School of Computer Science, you know, it's still inherently profit driven. Conversations were being had, but I don't think there were enough about how computer science is impacting like surveillance state stuff. And you know, how we have like a relationship with the US military, and all of these things that are very, you know, inherently political, but treated as just like, oh, we're just doing business. This is what we're training our computer science majors to do. Sorry, can you repeat the question again? I want to make sure I'm not getting off track. Yeah. I mean, I'm just curious, like what your experience was like as somebody who's sort of self-describes as being far left in an area that

I think I would describe as being pretty politically diverse. I mean, like, you know, there are spaces like Brooklyn that you can be far left and you run into a lot of people who are pretty politically simpatico. But in Western PA and a city like Pittsburgh, maybe you're like existing among people who I think don't always share your politics. Or maybe they did at CMU. I don't know. So I'm sort of curious, like, if you felt like you were in a political bubble in that kind of scenario, you felt like you were running into people whose politics you didn't agree with a lot. Like, how did that look for you? I would say CMU definitely is a more liberal bubble in the city, which I didn't get out of very much. But yeah, like I said, still, I don't know, the politics of the school and the administration and the system are still very, they pay a lot of lip service to things, you know, like you can say, like, aesthetically, you know, certain emails will read as far left,

but what's happening inside is very profit driven. All that stuff I said previously. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. One of the things that kind of stood out to me about your form was that you said that you, you know, grew up in the church with, which drew you, pushed you really far to the left, which I thought was fascinating because that usually goes the other way.

You know, we, I mean, we just talked about this a little bit in Tangle with the marriage equality bill that just passed Congress that President Biden just signed. And some of the polling around that, you know, just like, even today, among people who are regular churchgoers who go to the church, go to church maybe once a week, you see acceptance of something like same-sex marriage plummet. And you're here saying, I was in the church and grew up in the church and it pushed me to the left. I want to flesh that out a bit. Tell me a little bit about how that happened and what your experience was like. Yeah. I think a lot of it comes from my

parents being very cool and chill people who at no point was ever like, yeah, there's a divide between the love of God and queerness. They're always very kind and accepting. So that sort of battle was never there for me. And I think that's a large part of it because, I don't know, once you get past that, it's like, as I look at the gospels and the general love your neighbor you know if you're rich you should you know give a lot of money to the poor to support them and especially i think just the overall message of forgiveness when it comes to uh the prison system it's very strongly shaped my views on like immigration like if people are here seeking a better life, that is something that, you know, we should care for them. Like I said, the prison

system should just be kinder. We should allow people to change and grow and have room for forgiveness, personally and societally. And yeah, generally with social welfare stuff, I think we have a duty to the poor. And yeah, that comes entirely from my religious beliefs is that we should be taking care of our community. And I generally think a socialist approach is best for that. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I guess I'm wondering why you think that perspective for you has molded you into a really strongly left wing position when for so many people in America, it seems like the correlation is between, you know, a strong religious adherence and more conservative politics. What's the disconnect there? What's happening in a different way for you, I guess, that, you know, maybe other people interpret the same scripture and it informs their

politics in a different way? When it comes to all of the social things that tend to divide, you know, left and right, I just, I don't think most of that is inherent to Christianity. Right. I just, I don't think most of that is inherent to Christianity. There are things like the Bible's pretty clear about sex before marriage and the rest. I just, I don't know. It's hard to construct scriptural arguments. Like you can, I've read the scriptural argument that says you can't be gay. And I think it's pretty weak. So I've read counterpoints to that. But I don't know, like trans healthcare, like that's not like, that's such a hard, I don't know. It sounds to me like what you're saying is there are elements of the Bible that are really clear that you think are less divisive, and that there are the elements that are really divisive that

you think are less clear. And I think that makes some sense to me. And it's sort of like a chicken and an egg. Is it the Christianity driving the politics or the politics driving the Christianity, which I think is another interesting convo. I mean, I was going to ask, sort of, I guess, tied to this, being somebody who's out and growing up in the church, I mean, I don't know when you came out, but was that experience, was there tension in that experience for you? Or was it something where, like you said, you had the support of your family and so it made it easy and you were in a Christian space that was welcoming for you to be kind of who you wanted to be. Yeah, I was very lucky. It was very easy. I was just like, I'm gay and don't really care that much. So yeah, I think also not having that tension has impacted things a lot. I will mention, I do go to a progressive church now and they're very cool. So there are more of us out there. Yeah. So it's funny. I mean, I write about politics. I've been writing about politics for, you know, 10 years or something. And in the last couple of years, interestingly,

a lot of the issues that I've found to be like the most, I guess, explosive sort of cultural debates are a lot of things that fall into like the LGBT circle, you know, it's like trans issues and gender ideology. And, you know, and now gay rights stuff is sort of, it's not like really back on the debate, but it's sort of getting roped into everything else. And there's a lot of really passionately political positions that I think are being injected into this debate that is not necessarily political. I really want to hear you talk a little bit about, you know, identifying as non-binary. I know from my experience writing that one of the things that gets the most sort of responses is the like issues related to gender identity. It seems to be something a lot of people feel really strongly about.

What was your experience like exploring your own gender and coming to the position that you were non-binary? And yeah, I'd love to just hear you talk a little bit about that. I think it'd be good for our listeners to hear it too, because I don't know how many people, no folks who identify as non-binary. I'll start by saying, I don't identify as non-binary? I'll start by saying, you know, I don't represent all non-binary people. I certainly don't represent most trans experiences.

Just let Melissa know that. That's a good disclaimer. So in my life, it's never been a huge, like I have not medically transitioned or anything, and I have no intention to do that. And I have my same name. I just do not feel like a woman. The beginning and end of it is feelings. I do not feel like a woman. I'm much more comfortable when people refer to me as they, them, and just like as a person, I don't have a rational argument to go up to someone and be like well you know you should refer to me as they them because of science i just think that you should because it's kind it's the nicer thing to do for people gender dysphoria is a real thing i'm not out at work i I'll say that. I just present female and I just let people just she, her, me all day. And that's fine. And I do that because maybe 10% of people working there

are women. And those are generally bad vibes to, I don't know, come out in. I'm interested in that. I mean, is that hard for you to not to not be asking that of like your colleagues? I mean, what goes into a calculation like that for you? It's just like, it's not worth, you know, quote unquote, making the trouble or having to deal with it. And this is a little bit stupid, but like the feminist in me is like, well, you know, if women apply, you know, I don't want them to feel alone. So there's a bit of that. And there's just I'd say generally, you know, when you suss out the vibes of a place, it feels like it would just be a bit annoying. And again, I don't I don't want to be like, yes, my co-workers are all inherently transphobes and they're terrible people because they're probably not. I mostly don't want to risk just what I said before about if a woman applies, not feeling completely alone and not having a someone just completely override that and get she hurt all day or have people like try to pull me aside and be like what does that mean because i don't want to spend my time at work explaining

that what kind of work are you doing you said you're a software engineer i know from your answer about cmu it sounds like there's some kind of software engineering you probably wouldn't want to be doing. So I'm interested in what your actual work is. I help engineer self-driving farming equipment because I needed a job. And it is something that sits with me a lot about whether this is good for humanity. In terms of things an agricultural company can be doing to help the world, I think that this could be that, helping make self-driving farming equipment. But I worry greatly that this is mostly just going to hurt farmers. I worry a lot about security in my work,

whether, you know, if an actor wanted to disrupt American food supply, if they would be able to hack this farm equipment. Basically, I think inherently the technology that I'm working on is something that could be used to help humanity. And I worry greatly that in this for-profit capitalist system that it just won't. Well, let's talk about that. So the upside is what? That you think it can make farming

more efficient and make food cheaper? Is that the good scenario? Yeah. Farmers have to work less to make the same or greater amounts of food, and everyone's happier. And bad scenario is takes a bunch of jobs away from farmers, makes our system more susceptible to some kind of bad actor attack. Yeah. Also, just general, you know, as someone concerned about climate change generally keeps industrial farming, like keeps a very rigid system of how we grow food in place. Interesting. What's your concern about the way that we're growing food right now? And how do you feel like the automated farming system, autonomous farming vehicles fit into that, I guess? farming system, autonomous farming vehicles fit into that, I guess. I'll say, you know, I, I'm not an agricultural, an agriculturalist. I'm sorry if I'm getting

things wrong. But just in general, these machines work best on monoculture flat, every crop is the same sort of thing. So they're reinforcing this system that is already there. They're designed for like one crop only. They're designed to use just a lot of fertilizer. I'll also mention I'm also vegan. So a lot of this is designed to make food for animals, which I think is ridiculous. Anyway, I think about this a lot, having worked at this job just for a couple months, and what I'm planning to do with my life, which is not something I've decided on. But this is what I spend my time thinking about. Yeah, that seems like you're walking through some tough contradictions, sort of like different pressures about your worldview

and how that comes out. I think if you told me that you were a, you know, super progressive vegan software engineer, I wouldn't guess that the job that you took after college was helping engineer autonomous farm vehicles. So I understand how that could create like some interesting conflicts for you. So what went into taking the job? You're a software engineer from a great school. I'm sure you had other offers. What I

mean, what what made this appealing? It was like the the kinds of work that you'd be doing was it was interesting. Actually, I didn't really have other offers. I mentioned I just got really depressed in college and my grades were actually terrible. So this is what I got. And so you were like, all right, screw it. It's a job. Yeah. I have these issues with it, but I'm interested in, you know, making a living and whatever. And you moved to do this, right?

You left from Pennsylvania to Iowa. Yeah. How's that been? Do you know anybody in Des Moines? Iowa. Yeah. How's that been? Do you know anybody in Des Moines? I've met a couple of people from church and one of my friends or like internet acquaintances happens to live here. Otherwise, it's just me and my partner and we're doing great. Yeah. Are you liking Iowa? That's a big change. I don't know any. I mean, I've been to Iowa twice, but I don't really know, have any like ties there. And I haven't spent enough time there to say I really know what it's like to live in Des Moines. How has that been for you

compared to a place like Pittsburgh? It's very flat. It's very, very flat. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,

which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. The vibes of like the people and the city, I don't go out that much. I don't know how they're different, but it's, I don't know,

it's much sunnier here than it was in Pittsburgh. That's for sure. And most places are like that. Pittsburgh can be pretty gray and gloomy. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, like the stepping into the, that world too. I mean, it's kind of the collision of this really old, this really old industry. That's sort of the bedrock of America, which is the agriculture industry and the ability to build road food. With the future, it's like the software engineering, the autonomous vehicles. That's sort of an interesting collision of eras of American work. I'm curious. I mean, you're helping engineer. What does that actually

look like in a day to day? You're trying to figure out how to make these vehicles function in a farm and in practice, like, you know, the way Elon Musk is trying to figure out how to make or Elon Musk engineers are trying to figure out how to make a Tesla car drive without crashing. Is that like a similar thing? Are you working on a specific part of the project? How does that look? So I'm mostly working on the self-driving capability that we already have. So there's like a separate branch that's working on completely autonomous

farm equipment. What I'm doing is more working on improving what we currently have. And I don't know, right now it's a lot of fixing bugs. The customers will drive our equipment and say, this went wrong and we have to fix it. Like I said, I haven't been in the role for too long, but that's a lot of it. Yeah, that makes sense. That seems to be a big part of engineering in general. I mean, I know a lot of my friends who kind of work in that space are like, yeah, it's a lot of this thing is temporarily broken and we have X amount of time to fix it to keep the ball rolling, basically. You said you're 23, you're fresh out of college.

You seem to be somebody who has some pretty strong political worldviews. When you think about what you want to do long term, do you feel like, you know, just in our conversation, the first thing you brought up was climate change. Do you feel like you want to do work that is sort of more mission oriented? Is that a goal for you? I feel like that's kind of a more recent phenomenon that there are, you know, people who are your age, more the next generation behind millennials are really interested in that are really interested in like kind of mission oriented work. Do you feel like that's a good description of how you, you know, what you want to shake out for yourself? Yes, I think that's what's most likely I'm going to do is hopefully something

environmental. There's also this pipe dream of mine where we managed to somehow dismantle capitalism in my lifetime. And then most work becomes meaningful work. Because most jobs create profit in a way that I think uses resources and doesn't help the world very much when I think most work that's being done could be focused on climate change, medicine, justice, just generally reducing human suffering. But that is, of course, a pipe dream. Yeah, sure. But what does that pipe dream really look like? I mean, you, I remember you mentioned briefly, you said sort of offhandedly, flippantly, I guess, like, that you were a socialist. I don't know what that means to you. But, you know, is your feeling like we should create a system where people are, you know, have to work less

or not at all? Or they get to choose the kind of work they have with like, all their basic needs met? Is that the ideal for you? I because socialism, obviously, it's a term that gets thrown around a lot. And I don't always know what people mean when they say it. Yeah, for me, it's generally and again, I am young and not that well-read and not an economist, but the government provides for food, water, shelter, health care for everyone all the time, no matter what. And then beyond that, society generally just does not have a profit motive. And again, I don't claim to know exactly how this will work. I don't plan that it'll be a thing in my lifetime. But at the end of the day, I think people are inherently good and not being tied to a job. I think people do good things generally. I don't know.

Yeah. But it sounds to me like part of the underpinning of that is that you're you're looking around now and you're feeling like what capitalism is doing has not been good. Is that right? I mean, you're like you're looking at climate change. You're looking at like those kinds of things. And you're saying like it seems like the the real underpinning of the sentiment is the system we have now is broken. real underpinning of the sentiment is the system we have now is broken. Yeah. I mean, that is not a hot take among the people I'm with is that the system is broken and capitalism is broken. But yeah, I don't think that the free market is very good. I think it incentivizes, you know, as I mentioned, like algorithms that are addictive, like the things that you try to combat, like sensationalist news i i think that that's not very cool yeah and you're you know when you talk when

you talk about like your social group or the acceptance of that idea climate change obviously is a big one i yeah i'm curious about that, just sort of like the unbridled profit is polluting everything, basically. I mean, that's sort of the that's the the understanding of the mentality, right? Yeah, I think most resources that we have, like both like human work and our natural resources are being used very wastefully in a way that doesn't improve human life for most people. You said at one point that you feel like you try and put an optimistic face on, I guess, in your social group that is often very pessimistic. What does that actually look like for you in tangible terms? What what do you, what,

what is the optimistic Kristen's optimistic view about the world when you're like, I recognize or believe that a lot of these things are, are this bad, but I mean, what do you say to your friends and your social group when you talk about this stuff? Well, again, I'm a Christian. I think that we all have a lot of capacity for good and to change for the better and that forgiveness is possible also on a personal level on a systemic

level and like this is so frustrating because like i was saying like it's like i don't know trans people like they deserve health care and they deserve free health care. And like, I do think that they deserve that. But if you look at just societal progress, generally, history shows us getting more equal, or at least like the bottom standard of living has definitely gone up. Even like veganism, like I have the ability to not show cruelty to animals anymore. And that's something that for most of human history, you just kind of couldn't do. So I think in general, humanity has done overall a good job. Like capitalism did some good things.

It's time is over, but you know, we got to a good place and I'm proud of us. And also just like science, like technology can be used for such evil, but also like when it's used well and it's distributed justly it's like obvious medical science has come so far in the last like 200 years like that's wonderful and that deserves to be celebrated also change is slow which is very

worrying about like climate change but i think when it comes to a lot of justice, I think we can get there very slowly. Just got to keep fighting. I know we're coming up a little bit on time here, but one of the, I guess, strong identities that I'm pulling out from you that I haven't poked at yet is the veganism. I'm interested in that too. I mean, it sounded like a little bit like you're saying part of that decision is based on, you know, treatment of animals. I know a lot of people choose to be vegan or vegetarian for a wide range of reasons. I'm curious, you know, what comes to mind for you when you think about that choice? And, and also how long have you been vegan? Just like a couple months, like not very long at all. Oh, interesting. It's a new thing for you. Yeah, I was vegetarian for a few years and had always planned to go vegan after

graduating college. So it's not a new idea. Got it. What are the things you're going to miss most going from being vegetarian to vegan? What do you lose that you're like, I wish I still had that maybe? Just convenience. Honestly, okay, Vegan cheese has come so far. I think, I think we're good. It's just, you know, when you're out and about, you know, if you're on a trip, it can be harder to find vegan food, but otherwise it's great. If anyone's thinking of being vegan and you're sad because you're going to miss cheese, don't, don't let that stop you. Okay. So the, the choice to go vegetarian and then vegan what were some of the motivating factors there so in general i try to you know make more environmentally conscious

buying decisions um you know i just moved um and all of my furniture is thrifted uh except for my couch and yeah i try to thrift whenever i can most of my clothes are thrifted, except for my couch. And yeah, I try to thrift whenever I can. Most of my clothes are thrifted. And that's just a very basic math equation of we don't want resources to be wasted. And specifically veganism, it does come from, I do care about the animals. You ever seen a cow? They're beautiful. I could never.

the animals. If you've ever seen a cow, they're beautiful. I could never. But yeah, a lot of it comes from this equation of it just is really inefficient to grow fields for animal feed, and then also have fields for animals where they eat that feed, And then we eat that meat when, you know, just sort of basic thermodynamics, ecology web, it's just easier to eat the plants. Yeah. So it's a also comes back a little bit to the climate change. Yes. It's more the climate change than anything else. Interesting. So just like wanting to have a more efficient food source, less wasteful. Also, plus, you love cows. They're beautiful. Let's not go kill them all the time. Yes. Also chickens. They're so fluffy. That's all.

Did you miss anything when you went from not being vegetarian to being vegetarian? Was that a hard transition? Like I did it gradually. Like I still ate fish for a while and also Chick-fil-A, but no, I don't know. For me, it wasn't hard. Yeah. Oh man. I admire the consistency of your worldview and acting on it. I have a really hard time imagining being vegetarian or vegan, mostly because like from an ethical standpoint, I think I actually, I think I'm like almost on board in terms of the environmental aspect of it. I mean, obviously it depends a little bit how you're getting your, well, it depends a lot how you're getting your food or where you're getting your food from, but yeah, I go to the grocery store

and buy the mass produced stuff that is probably really environmentally impactful in a negative way. But man, I'm a glutton. I'm just a foodie. And that is actually the number one obstacle for me is just like, I just love a steak and I love going out to, I love cheese. I love all this stuff that you can't really enjoy if you're a vegetarian or vegan. And I think that's like, if I were ever to go that route, that would be the hardest thing for me to get over. I know that's like, it's sort of a small brain idea, but it's, it's tough for me. Yeah, no, it's valid. I don't know. It's not something I can personally emphasize with, but I, I, I sympathize. Yeah. If you're not, if you don't know. It's not something I can personally emphasize with, but I sympathize. Yeah. If you don't miss that kind of stuff or that isn't a holdup for you, I could see how it

would be pretty easy to make the jump. But I'll tell you what, I mean, I would be curious. I should look this up. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I would suspect that the number of vegetarians and vegans has skyrocketed in the last 30 or 40 years yes i think that's a trend that's growing pretty strongly in america right now yep and it's cool because now i can get vegan cheese at the grocery store and that's very exciting would have been much harder 10 years ago are a lot of your friends also vegan or vegetarian a lot of people in like your social circle? No, actually, okay. A couple different social circles. I guess like my online friends, that particular community that I'm in is definitely more vegan. Other than that, just, you know, the fact that I make a lot of vegan food has my partner being more vegan as

well, but not that popular. Yeah, it's still growing in popularity, I suppose, in your generation. But that's an interesting thing. We haven't done a ton of food coverage and agriculture stuff in Tangle. I think it's something we probably need to do more of. But the generational divides there are also pretty interesting. All right, listen, we're just about to hit an hour here. I've given this offer to a few people after barraging a stranger with questions for 45 minutes to give them an opportunity at the end of the show if they want to ask me something. You don't have to ask me something, but if you have any questions for me, I feel like it's only fair to allow the tables to be turned, even if just for a few minutes, or, you know, you're going to have the ear of a few thousand people and you can say

whatever you like. So, you know, maybe you have a message for the Tangle audience, but it's up to you. Yeah. Well, I have one quick thing I want to say, which is first of all, hi, dad, he reads Tangle. And secondly, you know, since people are listening, I would just like them to know that I am 23. I don't consider myself very well read. I my beliefs are subject to change. And I apologize if there are, you know, inconsistencies or hypocrisy anywhere that anyone points out. Anyway, I want to word this correctly as my question for you. points out. Anyway, I want to word this correctly. It's my question for you. Sometimes people talk about how politics are really about control. I think a thing I see on the left a lot is the anti-abortion folks. They do not care about the unborn. They just want to control women's bodies.

People on the left will be like, sorry, just, you know, the woke crowd They just want to control women's bodies. People on the left will be like, sorry, just, you know, the woke crowd, they want to control speech. And I think that, at least on the left, I have seen people, or maybe Russian bots, I don't know, who certainly seem to not care that much about the actual politics and more about just having some sort of power over other people. How do you, on a personal level, make sure that that is not your politics? And on a broader level, are you able to tell, you know, as a reporter who's talked to so many people, if that's what's going on with them? And I know it's kind of a bit psychological, but I'm curious what your thoughts are. Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. I mean, look, first of all, I think in my experience, you know, interviewing people,

reading biographies of presidents and members of Congress and people who are politically involved, and, you know, a lot of stuff that we learn about, at least about our lawmakers, about presidents and members of Congress, often comes in the post-present. It's the historical record where the real stories come out. And I would say, probably for most people who are cynical, I would say in a surprising number of cases, I think politicians are really, truly trying to do what they think is right. I think you have to be inherently egotistical and power hungry in some ways to go through what it takes in order to become a national lawmaker, an elected leader, or even a governor of a state, to sacrifice the

things a lot of politicians sacrifice, put yourself through the public scrutiny, invest the money and time, all these things. You have to want some semblance of power, I think. But I think a lot of them view it as a means to an end to do the right thing. That's not to say there aren't politicians who I think are interested in imposing their will on people or imposing their worldview on people. I think that's definitely true. And I think, you know, politics is the way it works right now is that our politicians have a lot of power over us. I think Americans have given up a lot of power over the last, you know, 50, 100, 200 years, in the sense that we have less power to choose our representatives than we did in the beginning in a lot of ways, because there's way more of us. We're being gerrymandered out of

districts that are competitive. We're being bombarded with propaganda and things like that from both sides. So it's not to say that it's a perfectly clean trade-off, but in my experience, a lot of the politicians that I interview are, I think, genuinely decent people who are interested in doing what they're doing because they think they have a good answer for how to solve one or two really big problems. And those are the issues that they run on. So that's, I guess, the politician part of it. About how to think getting power is part of how you see your worldview acted on. So in some sense, people on the right thinking that people on the left, that woke, the woke crowd wants to control their speech. I don't think they're necessarily wrong about that. I think the woke quote-unquote crowd does want to control some forms of speech because that helps them, A, win certain arguments, and B, feel like they're creating a safer space for people?

From their perspective, no. From the right's perspective, yeah. So it's like a, it's a, you know, it's a difficult, it's yes and no. I know it's like I'm talking a little bit on both sides of my mouth, but it's really how I feel from where I'm sitting. So yeah, politics is power and politicians want power and political groups want to be in control. But I also think for the most part, people who really, really care about politics, they care a lot because they think that their worldview is one that if it were implemented would do a lot of good. And I think that's important for people to remember, you know, on both sides of the aisle. That's often the case, you know, not 100% of the time, obviously, but in my experience, a lot. So I don't know, does that answer the question? Yeah, I think, yeah, that's really interesting. All right. Well, I hope it was a somewhat satisfying response. I think you're asking,

I think it's a good question to be asking. And I think it's a good question to be considering for sure. When you think about like the people that you're electing or supporting for office, because there are definitely people out there who are really self-interested and it's worth keeping an eye on. Well, Kristen,

thanks for your time. I appreciate it. I think, you know, the next generation is looking good. You're 23 years old. You're out here in Des Moines, Iowa, building the future of farming, coming forward with humility and kindness and not eating meat so the rest of us can. I don't know if I'm humble but thank you yeah well that even that's humble being uh being able to acknowledge that maybe you're not is a form of humility i wouldn't consider myself very humble so i maybe i'm not the best person to um to gauge it but i appreciate you giving us some of your time i hope we get to do it again sometime soon. And please keep reading and listening to Tangle and thank your dad as well for being a supporter. Thanks, dad.

I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Vekova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the

podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.lucampo.com. It was the season of chaos and all through the house, not one person was stressing. We'll be right back. award-winning book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

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