the 65 foot hot dog in times square

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_BwE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone 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

(00:22):
in Sweden with an ex boyfriend when you manage to
sneak into the Abba Museum and eat five hundred o
d'ures before an engagement party realizes that they don't know you.
There's the 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,

(00:44):
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 seven am and
receive an email with this subject line.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Be involved in the world's largest sculptural hot dog.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
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

(01:23):
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

(01:44):
year because the fifteen year champion, Joey Chestnut is officially
leaving the contest. We think I wouldn't rule out a
ww E style jump scare appearance putting that on wax Oh,
where is Joey going? I'll tell you to face his
old rival to Karo Kobayashi on Netflix on Labor Day.
And it's just a thrilling time to be a fan

(02:06):
of hot dogs. Anyways, as I'm reading this email, I
learn that the proposed largest sculptural hot dog will be
installed in Times Square, which introduces a lot of questions.
Who got permission to airdrop a giant hot dog in
Times Square? And not to be conspiratorial, but why the

(02:27):
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

(02:47):
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 hotig do, but I
am extremely skeptical of people who hawk hot dog imagery.
An uncritical symbol of America is not something that you

(03:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
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 all become very
well known.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
They were well known.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Anyway, they're big companies, but they're now being treated fairly.
They're thrilled.

Speaker 5 (03:38):
How do you think the workers do in those plants?

Speaker 6 (03:40):
What are you doing.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
Well, we're doing that.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
We're going to have a report on that probably this afternoon.
We're gonna have 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 they are 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.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
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 twenty twenty placing an executive order
towards the beginning of COVID lockdowns in which meat production

(04:26):
was declared as essential in the US. 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

(04:48):
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 exc 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 US. And

(05:11):
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 at seven in the morning,
and I'm staring at my phone where this mysterious email
is begging me to answer it. And what I need

(05:33):
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 Gen Catron and Paul Outlaw, who had been commissioned
to create a sixty five foot long hollow hot dog

(05:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Here's a bit more about us. A project deck is
attached and will also leave you with this inspirational gift
below smiley face.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
The gift giff sounds weird to me. Maybe that's a
generational thing. Maybe I'm old. I don't want to say it.
The gift 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

(06:37):
have to understand. You see this and it sounds fake,
but it wasn't. Jen and Paul went on to describe
the project.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
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 eighteen hundreds, the
wiener has also become inextricably linked to American culture, from

(07:10):
baseball games and the Fourth of July to hot dog
diplomacy as an enduring tactic of US international relations.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
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,

(07:43):
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.

(08:05):
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 an ejaculated confetti.
And so the moment of truth, a sixty five foot

(08:28):
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 confetti hot dog celebration. Yes,
that was all caps, And three months later I was
there in Times Square watching an enormous hot dog come

(08:49):
mustard colored confetti all over the squealing masses. It was horrific,
it was perfect. The hot dog has been a cultural
main character for oh for a century, but every once
in a while, it becomes the Internet's main character.

Speaker 5 (09:05):
To the sixty five foot hot dog in Times Square.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Your sixteenth minute starts now.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Six s six.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
Oh, this is exciting for me.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
It is hot dogs season, and with hot dog season
comes the inevitable and necessary questioning of why and how
a hot dog came to symbolize America.

Speaker 5 (10:16):
I know what you're thinking, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
You just wanted to talk about hot dogs.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yes I did.

Speaker 5 (10:21):
There was a sixty.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Five foot one in Times Square. Are you gonna tell
me I'm wrong? And it's the first episode of sixteen
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 eighty one year old woman in Spain

(10:42):
that looks like, well, you've seen it, not Jesus Monachelabi'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 reimagines famous slaveholder Thomas
Jefferson as a queer furry taking Japanese lessons or works

(11:06):
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,

(11:28):
I was kind of comforted that what makes a piece
of artwork get popular on the Internet is still kind
of a mysterious thing. They 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

(11:50):
and there's nothing that drives engagement like cyberbullying.

Speaker 5 (11:53):
An elderly woman who lives in Spain.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
And sometimes it's because the art in question isn't just
in 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 of the gigantic hot dog? What were you gonna
do not take a picture with it? I find this comforting.
The powers that be who fund public works of art

(12:17):
can't really predict how people will.

Speaker 5 (12:19):
Respond to it.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
And it is from this great tradition of public art
that people grow irrationally attached to and angry at that
we find the sixty five foot hot dog 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

(12:40):
been around since the late nineteenth century, give or take,
following the World's Fair of eighteen ninety three in 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.

Speaker 5 (13:05):
When I say public art in.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
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.

Speaker 5 (13:20):
To everyday people.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
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 selfie with
this Chicago being. For some reason, the kind of public
art that leads to a gorgeous feminine phallic object in
Times Square can be traced back about.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
One hundred years.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
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 US in the nineteen
thirties 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

(14:06):
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 five hundred percent after Top Gun
came out.

Speaker 4 (14:18):
To reach for something bigger, a master, a more challenging
world to feel the confidence and pride of knowing who
you are and what you can do.

Speaker 7 (14:31):
Show the world your US Navy Live the Adventure Paul one,
eight hundred three to seven.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Maybe, but these New Deal programs were net good.

Speaker 5 (14:41):
They ended up nurturing a lot of.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
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.

(15:05):
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

(15:27):
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 n these things in any ways,
and were still provided with the living wage, studio space
and public audience they needed to establish a career. Unfortunately,

(15:51):
this program went away in the early forties when America's
involvement in World War II increased, but the spirit of
it made a short comeback in the nineties seventies under
Richard Nixon.

Speaker 5 (16:02):
Oops did he slay there?

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
No, he was a bad guy regardless. From nineteen seventy
three to nineteen eighty. According to Jody Patterson in an
interview with Fox's Alissa Wilkinson, a Nixon program called the
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act ended up employing about ten
thousand artists during this time. I was not aware of

(16:29):
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

(16:52):
government funded like artists of the late nineteen thirties, 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

(17:15):
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 clothes spin in
front of my government building?

Speaker 5 (17:27):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
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 nineteen eighties. What I learned about
last year was Paul McCarthy's tree, which is advertised as

(17:50):
a gigantic green inflatable tree heavy air quotes that many
correctly saw as a giant inflatable green butt plugs, hygewayways,
good fences, make good neighbors from back in twenty seventeen
that commented on America's growing hostility towards immigrants. And there
was some controversy with hot Dog in the City, But

(18:13):
we'll get there. The sixty five foot hot dog was
funded by Times Square Arts, a public arts fund that
was founded in nineteen ninety two, and they actually sought
out Gen 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

(18:33):
funded by the city, the state, and the National Endowment
for the Arts, and the other part was funded by
drum Roll, Please Meta and Morgan Stanley, and obviously Times
Square is a huge get for a public installation artists.
The square itself has been the hub of American consumerism
and pop culture and Elmo impersonators the costumes ventilated at

(18:58):
the neck for over one hundred year. 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.

Speaker 5 (19:11):
Enter Jen and Paul.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Come with me if you will. Two 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 in event

(19:34):
Israel and the genocide and starvation of Palestinians, and I
have my period today.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
This is the world.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
That the sixty five foot hot Dog takes place within.
Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw were asked to pitch some
ideas to Times Square Arts for the spring of twenty
twenty four, and Gene Cooney at Times Square Arts was
right to ask them because they were uniquely suited a
large scale public project like this. After they met getting

(20:04):
their MFAs at Crankruk Academy of Art in the late
two thousands, Jen and Paul banded together and moved to
New York. They've worked on both huge, fun public projects
and smaller, sometimes more somberly themed gallery pieces for the
better part of fifteen years. Whether they're interactive and outside
or in a gallery, they all share the same visual language.

(20:27):
So I'm no art critic. I literally just told you
I'm a big Manions 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,

(20:50):
but going through their catalog, I especially love their public
and their performance pieces.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
Back in twenty fourteen, there was their double.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
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 and the hopes that
people would notice.

Speaker 6 (21:14):
Hi, I'm Jen Katrine about Paul Outlaw, and you are
here at Gen and Paul's one stop shopping Souvenir City
and Chelsea Bus Tours.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
This is our big bus, Chelsea, New York City.

Speaker 7 (21:24):
This is where all the blue chier galleries gather to play.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
So we're here to give the inside scoop and what.

Speaker 5 (21:29):
Really goes on in these galleries.

Speaker 6 (21:31):
Now, the Chelsea art thing can be very very confusing.
Why does some artists make so much money?

Speaker 4 (21:36):
Why are most artists white?

Speaker 7 (21:37):
Mouse? We don't know, We don't know, but we have
a pretty good guest.

Speaker 5 (21:41):
And it got a reaction.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
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 twenty
ten with Genden Outlaws Fish Fry Truck before the Big
Food Truck Boom, where the two bought a retired food

(22:03):
truck off breakflast, added hydraulics, and then 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.

Speaker 7 (22:22):
And finally Chef Gen Catron and Chef Paul Outlaw, We're
the chefs and owners and chin and Outlaws Fish Frout
Truck and crawfish Boil.

Speaker 5 (22:33):
I heard that southern Illinois.

Speaker 7 (22:34):
I'm from Perio, Balabama, on the Gulf coast, looking to
New York City.

Speaker 4 (22:38):
We'd filled the missing boy in New York for.

Speaker 7 (22:40):
This mud bug from Louisiana.

Speaker 4 (22:43):
When Jane lights up every ring she walks into. The
biggles are good, Paul, I could be the best.

Speaker 6 (22:51):
Everything he does.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
I'm not afraid of losing because I've never done it.
I don't know what it's like. Chin It Outlaws, curl Fees.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
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 Pizzagate, like Alex Jones,
an acknowledgment of colonialism, a sculpture about the violence it

(23:21):
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 were on the bus on
the art tour, you were eating the crawfish. They once
designed a giant mechanical pair of tongs that picked up
a big, fake giant meatball and a big fake giant

(23:43):
plate of spaghetti. They're really creative, and they're all about
messing around with contexts, and this hot dog project was
no different. It wouldn't just be a sixty five foot
long hot dog. It was a hot dog that would
rise and come at noon every day and was all
so hollowed out to host very small events, Which brings

(24:04):
me to the event, 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've programmed a
series of events that either played into or directly contradicted

(24:25):
the jingoistic americanness that we're trained to see in the
hot Dog. They talk about it a little here in
a promo video.

Speaker 6 (24:32):
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
or 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

(24:52):
to blow up at this massive scale.

Speaker 7 (24:56):
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.

Speaker 6 (25:03):
We're hoping that through this wide range of avenge that
we can tell the largest story the hot Dog and
kind of the larger story of ourselves too.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Before the Hot Dog's grand unveiling in Times Square on
April thirtieth, Gen and Paul announced the following programming. The
Hottest Dog, a canine beauty pageant, a hot dog gating
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,

(25:34):
and Chokehole, a New Orleans drag performance group.

Speaker 5 (25:38):
A video series that explored.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
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

(26:01):
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.

Speaker 5 (26:10):
Adams.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
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
thirtieth and June thirteenth, 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

(26:33):
that the delight and confusion of tourists and costumed elmos.
After the announcement, Evil seemed generally pumped, The programming sounded cool,
and the sixty five 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

(26:55):
the big opening because with that opening would come the reviews.
So it's the day of the Times Square unveiling April thirtieth,
The advanced 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

(27:16):
except for a loincloth, 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, Gen
and Paul are partners in life and in art, and
their sixty five foot hot dog is unveiled literal days
before Jen gives birth to their second child. I mean,

(27:38):
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 applice daisies. And to open
the event, they go for a comical amount of American imagery.

(28:00):
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.

(28:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
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 meat packing industry more broadly.
Where Claude Oldenberg meets up to Sinclair.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Times 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.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Not only enhances the entropy of Times Square, but also
dominates the palette entirely. Amid the sensory overload of slow
moving crowds, creepy costumed characters demanding paid selfies, the infamous
naked cowboy, and Retina singing digital billboards.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
The mood was joyful and astounded even the scene. At
all Times Square security guards laughed and Onion pummeled another
character in the corner of the ring pure delight. Chohl
got rounchy howls. The hot Dog ascended skyward.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Times Square's Giant hot Dog is apparently a meat manifesto
about toxic masculinity.

Speaker 5 (29:48):
Wait, we found it now.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
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 for that
last pull as 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.

Speaker 5 (30:11):
On the genocide in Gaza.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
So I'm not meaning to say that any one publication
is better than the other.

Speaker 5 (30:18):
However, it is The.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
New York Post, with the historically right lan 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, I'm square Giant hot Dog is apparently a
meat manifesto about toxic masculinity, was written by columnist and

(30:42):
reviewer Johnny Oliniski, author of important articles like bear Breasts,
Suicides and Floco NYC can't handle public art and the
biggest problem with House of the Dragon, I can't remember
anyone's name.

Speaker 5 (30:57):
Look, no hate.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
I used to write clickbait for a living, too, 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.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Their Titanic sausage is apparently meant to quote examine consumption, capitalism,
class and contemporary culture. Times Squared Arts website amazingly reads
that must be why every day at twelve pm, the
installation lifts off the ground, angles up to sky, and
becomes a confetti cannon. The explosion of euphemism is supposed

(31:34):
to reference the quote hyper masculinity and showmanship often associated
with American culture and patriotism end quote.

Speaker 5 (31:42):
I'm sure it is. And later on there are.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Even events pegged to this best of worsts, which is
in town till June thirteenth. One called the Condiment Wars
will feature the wrestlers of a New Orleans based drag
group known as Choke Cole, who will quote take down masculinity,
corporate America, and capitalism end quote. Yeah, I sense a

(32:08):
trend here. Later on there's a canine beauty pageant one
hundred percent 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.

(32:32):
I have a sneaking suspicion she won't be pro hot dog.

Speaker 5 (32:36):
Loser.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
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 Gen and Paul's hands.
They set a trap and he fell into it. But

(33:05):
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. I wanted to know more about how this
project came together, and we're better to go than the source.
So the day after that hot Dog summit that Johnny
owen Eski hated so much, I took the subway over

(33:27):
to Gen and Paul studio in Brooklyn, where they were
in the process of cooking up the closing ceremony for
June thirteenth. Here's our interview.

Speaker 5 (33:36):
I am Jen.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Catrin and I'm Paul Outlaw, and.

Speaker 6 (33:39):
We are the artists behind Hotdog in the City.

Speaker 5 (33:41):
Hi guys, Hi?

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Was this the room that the hot Dog was conceived
inside of?

Speaker 4 (33:47):
This is where we conceived all our children?

Speaker 1 (33:50):
Wow, including the two real ones.

Speaker 7 (33:53):
Yeah, we've been in this room for We've been in
this building for eleven years, and in this particular room
for eight eight years maybe.

Speaker 5 (34:03):
Yeah. How long have you been sitting on the hot
Dog idea?

Speaker 1 (34:06):
How?

Speaker 5 (34:06):
What was the genesis of it.

Speaker 6 (34:08):
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.

Speaker 5 (34:18):
Like that went over there.

Speaker 7 (34:18):
We should mention food in all its forms, like food sculptures, yeah,
and actually start cooking and serving food. Yeah, food as
the grotesque.

Speaker 6 (34:29):
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 about
times we're going to think of street vending and the
hot dog and just New York City in general, like
asar as like where we should geographically place it.

Speaker 5 (34:51):
It just made sense to put it in Times Square.

Speaker 7 (34:53):
We had a number of proposals with Times Square Arts
as well, but the hot dog kept reappearing as the
that's the favorite of the panel.

Speaker 5 (35:02):
Am I to know what any of the sure? Yeah.

Speaker 6 (35:06):
It was like a massive cake where like you would.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
Go in birthdake, multi tiered Bertha cake.

Speaker 6 (35:12):
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 woke and coffee, but.

Speaker 7 (35:21):
We can serve them a cup of coffee and be
like a coffee shop. But uh, but on top of
a six story birthday cake.

Speaker 6 (35:27):
And then what was the other one we had?

Speaker 7 (35:29):
We had we had several ideas that involved large piles
of trash and rotten food with oh, with flies that
were drones, barrel barrel sized flies that were all whoa.

Speaker 5 (35:41):
Back down, But we can't do drones.

Speaker 7 (35:43):
Sometimes the flies would go up in times square and
do they would do They would be choreographed. Yeah, they
would put on a production and then land back on
the pile of trash.

Speaker 6 (35:52):
But yeah, yeah, we could not do it there. They
are huge restrictions on Yeah, so we have a bunch
of create 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 we just like let loose, like it doesn't
matter if this is actually physically possible or if you know,

(36:14):
we can actually do it.

Speaker 5 (36:15):
We're just going to talk about it.

Speaker 6 (36:17):
But then we commit 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.

Speaker 8 (36:29):
It was Paul.

Speaker 6 (36:29):
Eventually, I believe it came up with the idea to
kind of well, we started from like a missile treck, honestly,
like raising up in the air.

Speaker 7 (36:36):
Yeah, a ballistic hot dog was kind of the origins
of that.

Speaker 6 (36:40):
Yeah, and you know, just like shooting up and then shooting.

Speaker 7 (36:43):
Out confetti North Korea style military parades.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
Yeah, well, making its.

Speaker 7 (36:48):
Way through the New York City and then and then
lifting up towards skyward.

Speaker 6 (36:52):
The sordid parts of the hot Dog make the sordid
parts of America. So as we started like digging and
we're like, well, this actually makes a lot of sense
to put in Times Square.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
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?

Speaker 6 (37:10):
I grew up in southern Illinois. There was no like
art scene obviously, just like a lot of farm farmland,
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 the conclusion that what I
was doing, the only category fit it would be art
and so yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
Such as what oh well, yeah, well, I had.

Speaker 6 (37:33):
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 them to catch crawdads in
the creek and things like that. But then I don't know,
I had like little performance elements that they would do too,

(37:53):
and I was always really interested in like getting these
like weird pets of mine to do like performative things
with me. So like yeah, yeah, like a circustrate exciting.
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.

Speaker 5 (38:12):
Free to come and go. But eventually I had to
like force.

Speaker 6 (38:15):
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 the raccoons, I'm
a person. So I had to like send them out
into the countryside and I had to like take them
in a truck and like release them into a woods

(38:35):
far away so they wouldn't be like so depending 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.

Speaker 5 (38:46):
It's like they were sending them to college.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah exactly, but not just raccoons.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
Gin is progress to other animals.

Speaker 6 (38:53):
Oh yeah, well, well this is going to start feeling
like I'm going to get in trouble.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
So it was just mine, none of much trouble.

Speaker 7 (39:00):
You graduated the mice, yeah you did, chickens, yeah, quail
I did.

Speaker 5 (39:05):
Yeah, but it was all very.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
We're all wearing funny hats.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, but it was all very I know.

Speaker 6 (39:09):
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.

Speaker 5 (39:19):
I did fun things with them.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah you had you had as many circus I did,
Like I had like a little circus anyway, So I
just say that that was art and that I could
be an artist.

Speaker 7 (39:29):
And then I'm from Alabama, small town Alabama, but but
I was always uh doing artwork of some sorts and
ended up 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 and outside of Detroit for graduate school,

(39:53):
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.

Speaker 5 (40:02):
Yeah shocking.

Speaker 7 (40:03):
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 and in 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

(40:24):
of started melting together. When we go 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 in our 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. It is a

(40:47):
sculptural object, but there's also a performative aspect of that.

Speaker 6 (40:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (40:51):
I think that Jen and I both started really really
using performance in our work at grad school.

Speaker 6 (40:55):
And then I think for us, public art needs to
have different level 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.

Speaker 5 (41:10):
It's just the world. It's just the world.

Speaker 7 (41:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (41:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
So that's part of what I love about the approach
to your public work, where like you can enjoy it
if you get it, and you can enjoy it if
you don't get it.

Speaker 5 (41:37):
Yeah, like that is what makes a great piece of
public art.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Could you give me a dumb person an idea of
how you build a sixty five foot long hot talk?

Speaker 7 (41:48):
Well, I mean it is the magic of engineering, I suppose,
but it's like it's it is. It does start on
we start with drawings of what we wanted to look like,
what kind of scale 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. Uh so it gets engineer drawings for something

(42:12):
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 speck
and all the materials have to be SpecEd out and
then get approved by the engineer. That part is basically
a welded steel frame that's connected to a semi trailer

(42:34):
that would have been like a dump trailer for like
dumping dirt rocks up the boat.

Speaker 6 (42:37):
Okay, which is brilliant because when something already exists, it's
like much easier to 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.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
So we took it.

Speaker 7 (42:50):
It's a dump bed, a dump bed trailer, 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 isn't two pieces.
It bolts together on site. Because the length was going
at sixty five feet long, it was too long for
an actual semi trailer, so we did cut it into
two pieces.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
Ok There.

Speaker 7 (43:12):
Once the frames done, then we get back to the
fun art part and we basically clad the whole thing
in Pham that is carved to be shaped like the
hot dog, to look like to look like our drawings
and our pictures and our renderings.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
It seems 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.

Speaker 5 (43:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (43:35):
No, they were surprisingly accommodating, like they were enthusiastic about it.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
They let us do really.

Speaker 6 (43:41):
The wrestling show, and I was like, this is going
to be wild. And I think as they as they
saw the show unfolded're like, oh, this is wilder than
we thought it would be.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
But they still were like, Okay, this is a nice Yeah,
ask for forgiveness later.

Speaker 5 (43:52):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
What are interactions or things you've heard anecdotally about the
public interacting with this hot dog that stick out to you.

Speaker 7 (44:00):
Really remarkable response, like like people absolutely love it. They
show up there just to see it. They come to
Times Square just to see the hot Dog.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
Uh, they want it when we're there doing.

Speaker 7 (44:11):
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?

Speaker 4 (44:17):
And and there's a.

Speaker 7 (44:18):
There's a there's a there's a crowd every every day
of the hot Dog waiting for this little little micro
confetti blast that comes out comes out the end of
this hot dog.

Speaker 4 (44:26):
Uh, they're very pumped up about it.

Speaker 7 (44:29):
The social media reaction has been has been huge. I
think we've heard like a billion impressions around the.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Around the social media.

Speaker 7 (44:39):
One of the things that I've I found I was
super happy with is on its face, it was it
was it's just a hot dog.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
It's just a hot dog.

Speaker 7 (44:46):
We we we have we have reasons for it for
it being a hot dog that we've we've dropped hints
to and and why what we want the sculpture to
speak to. But 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 uh theory behind it, they

(45:10):
they kind of took that and ran with it into
exactly the way that I expected them to, in the
way I kind.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
Of wanted them to walk me through that example.

Speaker 7 (45:19):
Yeah. So so for example, the New York Post, they
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 gonna be so cool, it's gonna be great,
and then like a week later they kind of caught
wind of some of the some of the ideas that
we that we think the hot Dog represents, which are
which are not even that that horrible. It's more of

(45:41):
a reflection on the society, for better or worse. You
kind of take it as it is. It is, it
is who we are, it is where we came from,
it is what we what we look like. They immediately
took sides on it, and they immediately uh, I.

Speaker 6 (45:52):
Think the headline was apparently the hot Dog is about
toxic masculinity or.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
Something like that.

Speaker 6 (45:58):
Right, They were like jumping to some conclusions and getting
their base fired up. And that's when that's when the
hate mail came. Was after that article obviously.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Okay, yeah, had you ever been through like a round
of uh hate mail reaction to stuff before?

Speaker 4 (46:12):
I don't know, so yeah, yeah, well not on this
scale by any means.

Speaker 6 (46:17):
Yeah, but it was it was just calling us morons
and and you know, I mean, nothing too crazy, just
I feel like you've gotten so much worse than we have.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, it's like it's suffer 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.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Yeah, it's remarkable the amount of effort that.

Speaker 6 (46:34):
You have to go mail address to make a big
email address. They find our emails, they like, you know,
just to.

Speaker 7 (46:42):
Say hot dog equals moron because another publications fill right
in line on the other side of the.

Speaker 8 (46:47):
New York Times, you know, which is we're careful.

Speaker 7 (46:50):
We're careful not to not to necessarily criticize too too
hard in our work.

Speaker 4 (46:56):
We do believe that we're.

Speaker 7 (46:58):
A reflection well, I mean what society is. And if
that reflection is bad, that's not that's not our fault.
It's it's society's fault. You don't like the reflection that
you see what I mean, who's wise? Who's probably whose
fault is that? Realizing that the hot dog is a
reflection of of of society, then then they immediately took

(47:18):
sides and immediately went well, and.

Speaker 5 (47:20):
We we said some maybe.

Speaker 6 (47:22):
I mean, anytime you talk about America and you're not
like saying, yeah, America, this is the best, Like I
feel like that's like, yeah, that's like a trigger.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
You're going to get a lot of emails calling you moron.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
Yeah, And we were sabotage. The hot Dog was sabotage.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
Someone at some point in time when went under underneath
the hot Dog and just ripped every hose an electrical
component and and and broke all the kill switches and
the choke candles on the on the both motors that
we have underneath there, and unplugged all the hoses and
messed with the hydraulics. And it was a violent intentionally, Yeah,

(47:58):
it was dismantling of the.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Of the motors that operate the hot dog.

Speaker 7 (48:03):
That's pretty again, like talking about how much work it
takes us in an email, it takes even more work
to go try to physically vandalize hot dog sculpture. Oh,
in the day before that, someone called basically a bomb
threat on the on the hot Dog. They called the
police and said that a suspicious man was underneath the
hot dog. Looks like he's planting C four.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Well, where do you go from sixty five foot hot Dog?
Because is there anything that you're like, what happens post
sixty five foot hot Dog? I trust that you have
crazier ideas. We do have crazy idea yes for sure.

Speaker 5 (48:38):
Yeah, Like I.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
Said, our brainstorming sessions are really like we'll see who
will let us do it.

Speaker 5 (48:45):
I think that's always the question mark, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:47):
I think from here we definitely go into corporate art.

Speaker 8 (48:51):
They're going to love us.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
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, Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm still

(49:20):
not vegan somehow, and today we're talking about the sixty
five 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

(49:42):
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,

(50:05):
first published back in nineteen ninety 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 forty

(50:26):
five 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

(50:48):
come from an 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 tize 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

(51:12):
in this book, and the most famous concept from the
sexual politics of meat is the concept of the absent reference.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
That's defined as behind every meal of meat is an absence,
the death of the animal whose place the meat takes.
The absent reference is that which separates the meat eater
from the animal, and the animal from the end product.
The function of the absent reference is to keep our

(51:43):
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 some one. Once the existence of
meat is disconnected from the existence of an animal who
was killed to become that meat, meat becomes unanchored by

(52:05):
its original reference, the animal, becoming instead a free, floating
image used often to reflect women's status as well as animals.
Animals are the absent reference in the act of meat eating.
They also become the absent reference in images of women bushered, fragmented,
or consumable.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
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, haul Times
Square Arts and the entire audience over to the giant

(52:47):
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.

(53:11):
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 and as a symbol,
but Carol looked at it very optimistically. She looked at
it as a symbol that would be able to grow.

Speaker 5 (53:32):
And change with us.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
She's a fascinating person and it's not shocking that as
a feminist and a vegan activist for the last fifty 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 interests, and then we began

(53:55):
talking about how these harassment techniques from the right have
a volt 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,

(54:17):
there's because I've had a carrot dog before, but not in.

Speaker 7 (54:23):
Well.

Speaker 8 (54:24):
I liked beans and franks growing up, you know, so
I do use regular hot dogs.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
How long have you noticed this like association with American
men and meat?

Speaker 8 (54:36):
Oh my god, you're not going to believe it. Fifty
yearsty 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

(54:57):
Square thinking about all the associations that I thought, Oh
my god, there's a connection between med eating 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.

(55:17):
You have to know what you're trying to shape and say,
and what was my theory about that? So that took
fifteen years, and when the sexual politics of meat came out,
I thought, oh, well, now I'm done with that. What
else am What am I going to do next? But
people started sending me examples, and since nineteen ninety I

(55:38):
have gotten examples from around the world that connect meat
eating and masculinity, photos, quotes, ads, you know, just the
sort of chalk misogyny. If you're walking down in La
Street and there's a restaurant and they're selling you know,
burgers or something, but the burger has very shapely female

(56:00):
legs with high heels underneath it. You know, that's an
example of chalk misogyny. So you know they're here today,
gone tomorrow. But there are 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.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Meat is so often sexualized from this very male gaze perspective,
publicly presenting the experience.

Speaker 5 (56:30):
What was the initial reaction?

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Has the reaction changed over time?

Speaker 8 (56:35):
There. 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.
So with Rush Limbaugh, this was an example of political
correctness gone too far. And now this would be this

(56:58):
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 blowhearts.
But as I discuss in the New Introduction, and as
I discussed at the Hot Dog Summit, this got more

(57:20):
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. It's
so fascinating, is claiming of drinking mam million milk and

(57:42):
meat that. And so you saw this discourse sort of
very non ironic 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 second politics
of meat. They don't want to politicize it. It's just

(58:03):
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,

(58:24):
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

(58:45):
excited because my book made sense of the idea that
caring about animals is part of its social justice agenda.
It put with it a social justice activism framework, the
fact that we can look beyond the human species.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
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?

Speaker 8 (59:12):
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,

(59:33):
which was is a hook that you hook a dead
carcass with to pull it out of the pad 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

(59:55):
be consumed. So all of this started coming to my publisher,
and then that forwarded to me. Once there was Facebook
and Twitter, if they knew I was on there, that
hashtag that at me. But they could also just hashtag
sexual politics of meat. So for like ten to twelve
years on Twitter, all I had to do was search

(01:00:15):
sexual politics of meet 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

(01:00:38):
email me from my website. I participated in an Oxford
Union debate in twenty twenty one. Oxford Union sponsors all
these debates, and this one was this House must move
beyond Meet 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

(01:01:02):
the audience. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian right wing successor to
Rush Limbaugh, you know, from Loudmouth to blow Hard, and
his daughter came up with the Mikayla I should give
her a name, not just associator with her father. Mikayla
Peterson came up with the Lion's diet and it is

(01:01:22):
truly just meat. I mean, it's we all ate together.
We were at the head table and I was on
the other side of the oxygen did 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 could also treat vodka and water, but that's all
they had. They had that had that as their appetizer

(01:01:44):
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 Joe Rogan was also foul that. So when
Jordan Peterson went on Joe Rogan a couple months after

(01:02:06):
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 so excited the Oxford Union,
who they'd videoed our conversations. They immediately released them and

(01:02:28):
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 set all his followlers in motion.
They you know, went to the YouTube website and then
they commented, and then they commented. I think there's probably

(01:02:50):
twelve hundred comments at this point, and I started a
file of it. Where is it hostility?

Speaker 5 (01:02:59):
Hostility.

Speaker 8 (01:03:00):
Wow, it's amazing that you think you are educated. You
either got your diploma from the Internet or you're 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

(01:03:20):
take a nap somewhere subject f 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 fing c.

Speaker 5 (01:03:38):
Oh my god.

Speaker 8 (01:03:40):
I just wanted to let you know I find you
a total and other basque case, a nut job extraordinary.
You medam or 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,

(01:04:01):
and so that's the you know, we know how many
women have been ducked and all the attention that's that
comes on women who 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.

(01:04:25):
And then you.

Speaker 5 (01:04:26):
Get there's something to engage with at that point.

Speaker 8 (01:04:29):
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 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.
I just heard from someone who could not find my

(01:04:50):
Texas sheet cake recipe and you know, begging me please,
I need that Texas Sheetcake 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've just
heard from someone who wants to translate the work into Indonesia.

(01:05:11):
So's it's made contact with like a Serbian women 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

(01:05:33):
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

(01:05:55):
to talk about it non stop like Russia Limpa did
one summer non stop. I mean he could not stand it.
I thought, you've got an issue, Gui, and it is
so great.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Yeah, you're the one living in his head. Rent Free.

Speaker 8 (01:06:11):
I think I'm an optimist. We're not going to achieve everything. God,
I've bet a vegetarian for fifty years at a vegan
for you know, thirty five or something. Just keep marching,
keep making good vegan meals, keep making care of dogs,
keep serving people, keep not calling attention to what they're eating,
and let them incubate it later. It's not impractical.

Speaker 5 (01:06:36):
Thank you so much to Carol J.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Adams, who is quickly becoming a hero of mine, and
please read The Sexual Politics of Meat and follow her
work at Caroljadams dot 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

(01:07:00):
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
buck Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about hot Dogs, or
watch my favorite piece of hot dog media ever, Rick
Seabeck's a hot dog program on PBS, which is celebrating

(01:07:21):
its twenty fifth 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 dogs 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 thirteenth,
after we did a comedy roast of the hot dog

(01:07:43):
in the one hundred degree weather and the confetti came
for one last time, n you.

Speaker 5 (01:08:16):
Yeah Way. L sixteenth Minute is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
A production of pol Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It
is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lostus. Our
executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing
Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
theme song is by Sad Third Teamians and pet Shout
outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper,

(01:09:31):
and my pet Rockbird, who will outlive us all Bye.