February 2, 2023 • 43 mins
During the darkest days of the pandemic lots of people read books, played video games, mastered Zoom (sorta) or tried their hand baking sourdough. Peggy Orenstein did those things, too, but she also handmade her very own sweater and then WROTE a book about it. So what, you may be thinking, lots of people knit. No. She really made her own sweater. Like she found a sheep (well, three actually) and learned to shear them for their fleece in order to make her own yarn kind of sweater. But, truly, that was only part of the experience she shares in her book Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater. She also learned a lot about herself, her family, her grief and her grit in the process.
If you have questions or guest suggestions, Ali would love to hear from you. Call or text her at (323) 364-6356. Or email go-ask-ali-podcast-at-gmail.com. (No dashes)
**Go Ask Ali has been nominated for a Webby Award for Best Interview/Talk Show Episode! Please vote for her and the whole team at https://bit.ly/415e8uN by April 20, 2023!
Links of Interest
Videos:
Sheep Shorn With 80 Lbs of Fleece
World’s Fastest Sheep Shearing
Mentioned in this episode:
Good On You (Brand Eco Ratings)
How Thrift Shopping Is Being Kind to the Earth
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Credits:
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Brooke Peterson-Bell
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Go ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. When I have
been with friends and that happened and I paid my pants,
I did lose the room, they did leave. I saw
her light up and I was like, I'm just going
to work, but we are here until one of our
last grips. I was just the one that was meant
(00:21):
to take care of mamma. It's for me to remember
every single day is that I always have a choice.
Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't,
or there's no rules for you, or you have to
look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you.
(00:41):
Welcome to Go ask Alli, or should I say welcome
back to Go ask Alli. We had a quick little
hiatus during the holiday season where I had the flu
for two weeks. But now I'm back and will be
even better. Okay, So I did ask you through social
media to tell me some of the hobbies or interests
or skills you developed during COVID, and throughout this whole show,
(01:06):
we will be blasting some of them out because some
of them are doozies. Mine was clamming and my guest
Today has a Goodie. Peggy Orgstein is a New York
Times bestselling author, award winning journalist, and internationally recognized speaker
on gender issues, especially those related to teen sex and relationships.
Now I'm sure you guys remember Peggy because she joined
(01:28):
me in our first season for an episode called The Talk.
Peggy is a frequent contributor to The New York Times,
and it's written for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post,
The Atlantic, lots more. She's appeared on NPR, PBS, and
all the network morning shows. She's written eight books, including
the new one that brings her here Today, Unraveling what
(01:49):
I learned about life while sharing sheep, dying wool, and
making the World's Ugliest sweater. This is so nice of you.
I'm so glad to talk to you again. I I'm
so happy to talk to you because the last time
I talked to you, we were in the pandemic and
we were talking about girls and sex and boys and
sex and lots of sex. And then I talked to
(02:11):
you later, just on the phone, about adult sex. And
so when I heard you had a new book coming out,
I thought, Oh, this is the adult sex book. Okay,
good we're going to talk about dry vaginas and menopausal
sex and sex after sixty. And then I got this
book in the mail called Unraveling, and I went, that's
an interesting title for a sex book, and was pleasantly
(02:35):
surprised and really dove into this book because I too
had written a COVID book called Allie's Well that ends well.
You discovered the art of sharing a sheep and die
and making a sweater. I discovered clamming. So we found
(02:56):
our purpose in life, both of us. Um So for me,
clamming was the way I didn't just make sour dough
like you say in your book. So let's just dive
into this because I have girlfriends and I've said I
Peggy Orangeine coming on my podcast. We're talking about sharing
sheep and they were like, I'm in. I'm in so um.
(03:19):
And by the way, I want to interweave this age
old art with parental death and parental like everything that
I too am experiencing, because it is something that every
human will experience at some point. And um, I'm interested
to know how, besides your book, how you're dealing with
(03:39):
all of it. But let's start with the clearest question,
how did you decide to shear sheep? How did that
even come about? You live in northern California, plenty of
other things to do? Why that I didn't have plenty
of other things to do. We had this little thing
called luckdown that kicked in. You know, it's it's been
(04:00):
a I say this in the book. I say, my
editor wants me to have a reason for this, and
I don't really have one. I've been a lifelong knitter,
and I think you get when you're a fiber person.
Even as I'm talking to I'm like, I'm like stroking
the sweater that I'm wearing, because you you get very
like tactile, this love of the tactile. And I think
(04:21):
that you just start thinking about garments. You're thinking about
where they come from. And also I'm the granddaughter of
um Jewish homesteaders from North Dakota, which is probably the
topic of a whole different book. Um, I've always had
this fantasy. It's just been like a long held fantasy
of wanting to make the sweater from scratch, starting with
learning to shear sheep, which I thought was going to
(04:42):
be easy. And uh, and I never have time, you know,
I have a life and work and a child and
a husband and all this stuff. And and there's one
sheep shearing class in northern California once a year, and weirdly, um,
if I was going to be home for it, which
I almost never was, it would sell out online within
thirty I don't know who these people are, but there
was a lot of people that wanted to learn how
(05:03):
to shear sheep, which was I mean, really, shearing a
sheep was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
I had no idea. Well, first of all, who knew
that they were slippery? You say, they're like toddlers with
hooves because of the lanolin. I had no idea. Yeah, no,
I don't know. They're they're incredibly LUs you know, they're
way more than you do. And they've got hooves and
they don't want to be there. And the blade that
(05:24):
you're using has no safety and it's just like juttering
thing that's moving really really fast, and you know, and
I just sort of, you know, drawl a lot, like, yeah, sure,
I want to just shear a sheep. Um. It was
just lucrit. It was it was madness, honestly, but it
was also an amazing experience, and so it was really hard.
I mean I sort of thought, yeah, I'll just find
a sheep and share it. It doesn't work that way.
(05:46):
They only are shot in certain times of year. People
do it, they don't, you know. I mean, there's it's
like a whole it's an industry, it's a whole thing.
So tell me, So where do you found the sheep?
So in Sonoma? So I mean all of this the
background of all so we got mac um. Like here,
I was nothing but sort of anxiety and depression. And
the only thing that was calling me down was like knitting,
(06:07):
and I'm talking to my mom, except my mom is dead.
So I'm having these ongoing conversations with my mother in
my head because she and I, you know, always adknit
together and she your mom taught you, taught me in
net and that was so common. Almost everybody that I met,
their mom talked them to knit. It was like a
real it's a real connection or their grandmother, but usually
their mother between mothers and daughters. And so I was
(06:28):
thinking about that. Meanwhile, my dad, his dementia is getting
worse in lockdown. He's in Minneapolis. I'm in Berkeley. Even
if I could get on a plane. I couldn't go
in where he is because we're not allowed, you know.
I mean, like everything is, and my daughter's pulling out
her college applications and I'm thinking about the empty nest.
My husband is retiring, so like all the transitions are
coming at me right at lockdown. So, um, I do
(06:51):
the clover thing. I decided to share a sheep, and uh,
as one would, right, Yeah, I wish I thought of it.
I went clamming, but yeah I should have. I should
have shared a sheet. Clamming would be good. Yeah, I
don't think we have plans, but that sounds good to me.
So so I really wanted to learn. This whole book
is also the story I really concert focused on women
(07:12):
and as teachers for every step of the way, on
sharing and spinning and processing and dying and all of it.
I made sure that all my teachers were women because
I wanted to look at women's work and women's art
and women's connections and sharing is over men. And they
keep talking about how, oh there's so much more women
and sharing. That's because it used to be men. So yeah,
(07:33):
there's a lot more, but there's none. And it's one
of those professions you know like seafaring or you know
hedge funds or that that basically put a no girl's
allowed sign on the door. And because of the tools.
Is that why, I think, you know, not necessarily. I
think it's partly like this cowboy image that it does.
(07:55):
It's this, um I mean, it doesn't have the romance
exactly of cowboys, but it's this sort of lone wolf
and it's hard. It's really physical, super super I mean,
I cannot emphasize I cannot emphasize how physical it is.
And some sheep are huge. Um, so there's a lot
of you know, physical labor involved and it just became
(08:16):
masculine and like a lot of things it wasn't you know,
the other things I'd say, you know, law or medicine.
Women have challenged so they aren't so much no girls
allowed anymore. But this state has stayed that way. I
think because of the physicality and also because you have
to travel a lot to be a sheep share. So
I think a lot of women it just doesn't seem
that appealing. Um. But uh, there used to be in
(08:37):
Australia when a woman approached the shearing shed, they yelled
ducks on the pond. I don't know why, Like it's
such a weird like one of these and then they're
supposed to, like I don't know, put away their porn
and pull up their pants so their ascracks don't show
or something. I don't know, but it was it's such
a misogyny. It was just basically misogyny. Um. So being
(08:57):
a woman sheep share is still really air and and
kind of political. So I found Laura and Kaid who
is a teacher. She is a teacher of sheep sharing
and she is um also manages organic produce farms and
she's thirty and you know, just like you want to
be her. She's so cool. So she she was the
(09:18):
one who taught me. And yeah, like I said, it is,
it's just grueling. Okay, well you tell me. I mean
she could cheer a sheep in three minutes. You have
to shoot. You have to get the sheep out of
the pen right first of all. First of all, they
don't want to you know, I mean, their prey animals,
so they don't want you to beat near them. So
they're all packed in one and then you've got to
back them out of the pen. You gotta flip them
on their backs. You've got to drag them into the pen.
(09:39):
And none of this, by the way, I want to
be clear, none of this hurts the sheep. And the
sheep has to be shorn. It's really important that cheaper.
There's like during one of the things that happened during
the pandemic was that um they in Australia somewhere they
found this sheep that had been it had gone rogue
and it hadn't been shorn, you know, it wasn't out
in the wild, and it was like nine years or something.
(10:00):
It had ninety pounds. I think it was a fleece
on it and it became a TikTok sensation. Of course
it did, of course it did. So the shearing of
the sheep where they took off it maybe seventy nine
pounds I can't remember of wool off the sheep. And
you look at this poor sheep. It couldn't eat. It
was starving. So it's really important that they're shoring. We've
(10:21):
bred them over over millennia. They weren't originally like that,
but we've reread them to be wooly, so they need sharing.
Are they dirty, Yes, they're awful of like pooh, and yeah, muck,
and yeah you're not. You're not shearing off a white
kashmere coat. No, but it's pretty underneath. You can see
pretty clearly the I mean, it's just the top layer
that's all yucky, and then you shear it down. And
(10:43):
but I mean, I was terrible at it, and and
the first one took me an hour and a half
and it was just like a disaster. And I did three,
and the last one was Martha. Martha. She was one
of the only ones I had a name, and she's
the one I ended up whose whose fleece I ended
up using for my sweater. You write in your book
that some man there's like a Guinness Book of World
(11:04):
Record for sharing a sheep, and it was it was
like I wrote it seconds or something. Yeah, it was seconds.
I don't know how he does that. Thirty seven point
nine seconds. Yeah, that's InCred I can see it online.
It's crazy. Yeah, And then you think it took me
an hour and a half, so by comparison, just because
you're because it's terrifying. First of all, it's hard, but
(11:26):
it's also terrified. And I cut myself up and it
looked like a crime scene. And luckily didn't cut the sheep.
But and it's it's hard to see and and if
its senses, like when when Laura, my teacher, would do it,
that sheep just laid there like a rag doll. I
mean she you know, it was perfectly content. But those
sheep knew that I didn't know what I was doing.
And the second they said that it's all open, yeah,
(11:46):
I'd be scared shitless too. Then yes, here's this crazy lady.
The first time she's holding a sheer. It's not gonna
be me. I get it. It's just like a New
Yorker cartoon exactly. Yeah, it was there and there people
are constantly sending me shearing. You'd be surprised how many
sheep New Yorker coaches there, I'm sure. And the sheep
is slippery, right, and the sheep is clippery. That's it's
(12:08):
covered with lannel in which you probably used when you
were nursing your children on my nipples. Yeah, yep, same stuff.
This is like rodeo stuff. When you talk about this,
that's what it's. That's the image that comes to mind.
You know, it's funny that you say that, because, in fact,
my grandfather was a rodeo writer, and I have a
little bit of a rodeo thing. Yeah, obviously you are
(12:31):
taking care of this sheep, but in you know, I'm
seeing you with a lasso with the sheep on its
back and you're roping up the hoofs and everything. I mean,
that's just my image. Nah, okay. And you repeat many
times in your book belly crutch, undermine, topknot neck, cheek, first, shoulder,
short blows, longbows, last side. What is that besides your
(12:51):
mantra for getting through COVID? It would because yeah, No,
there's a very subt order that you share sheep that
is safest for the animal, most ergonomic, sets the animal
up to be able to just walk away when it's done,
and gives you the best place. And it was developed
by this guy in New Zealand who was called the
Neureas of sharing. Yes I love that quote. Yes, um.
(13:12):
But yeah, so there's a very set way that you
do it. Um that you know that starts with the belly,
which is where the teeths are and where the vulva is,
and that that I mean, that's the scary to me.
That was like, oh my god. At one point with
one of my sheep. I just froze. I couldn't do it.
I had to have the teacher to it. Yeah, it's like,
I can't do this. Those are delicate bits with the
(13:34):
you don't want to do anything wrong there. The planning
is fabulous. But I wanted to share that. During COVID
because we have a place in Maine that is on
the coast, we discovered UM doing some oystering. I don't
(13:54):
even know if that's a bird. We'll be right back,
and we're back. I took up painting, particularly portrait painting,
and I found I was actually quite good at it,
(14:16):
and I'm very proud of myself. It got me through
the pandemic and I've actually started to sell a little
bit of my work. I identified the fact that I
do have what it takes to become a published author.
My book is actually coming out in five weeks, and
it's taken twenty years to write because I write about
(14:38):
being an ex stripper in Waikiki, my hometown from seven
and I've just been trying to write this story for
years and years. Took a lot of therapy to go
back to those rough places. All right, so you have
your fluff, and now what's the next step. So next
(14:59):
you have to you I mean, it's it's filthy, yeah,
so you have to clean it, which is the most
tedious part of the process. It's a lot of hauling
of water. I mean, unless you have a dedicated setup,
which of course I don't, a lot of heating water
and hauling it out to the deck. And if you
would get it too hot, the fleece kind of maths.
It's called felting, and then it's useless. Then you've got
(15:20):
to go get a new fleece. And then after you
do that, you have to card it, which you've probably seen,
like when you were a kid and we're learning about
pioneers or something. You take two things look like dog brushes,
and you have to make the fleece all nice and
fluffy and laying in the same direction. And that's also
a really boring process. And I think in the past
women would do this when they were doing other stuff.
(15:41):
But I was so worried about all of it that
I had to focus. But what it did it was
interesting because I really when I was doing this book,
you know, I imagined it was going to bring up
a lot around my mom's death. Of course, my mom
had died a few years earlier, and like and you know,
we had, I mean, like all of it. We had.
I love my mom, and we had a lot of
(16:02):
conflict and there was a lot of issues, but we
could always we could always be fine in a in
a yarn store, you know, we could always look at patterns,
touch the yarn, talk about it. And knitting was the
thing that she I mean, my mom was a very
conventional style housewife. And not that there's anything wrong with that.
(16:25):
It was a fine thing. It worked for her, but
it wasn't who I was, and she was not, maybe
in that sense, the best fit for being sort of, um,
somebody who could guide me as a as a woman,
and that was always sort of a sad thing for me.
But I always could get her advice on a on
a complicated sweater, you know, she was always down for that,
(16:47):
and that was great. So I imagined and I knew,
and it did bring up a lot of um, sadness
and happiness, joyful memories, sad memories of my mom. I
didn't imagine doing this was gonna has bring up so
much with my dad, Um, who you know, had nothing
to do with with knitting or yard or anything. When
(17:07):
I was going up. But he subsequently has died, but
at that point he was in a facility is demensional,
was accelerating. It was the pandemic. We couldn't see him.
It was really hard, but his aid would um, we
would face time, and for him, he thought that I
was um in the room with him. When I was
(17:28):
faced that, he'd asked me, you know, can you hand
me at the water peg. I'd be like, well, that
can't reach it. But I could sit and slow down,
and it was you know, it was I think when
your dad, when your parents has cognitive impairment and you're
far away, it's hard on a lot of levels. But
it's also hard because you can't connect. They can't really
you can't have a conversation with them. You can't talk
(17:50):
to them. Um. I have a father with advanced Alzheimer's
and it's a very it's a difficult thing because when
I see him, I can hold his hand. I don't
even know if he knows it's me. And you start
to feel like this is actually for me, not for them,
you know, because I don't know if he knows who
I am. And and it's also you know, it's a
(18:14):
very surreal experience, because when your parents has faded away
in so many different ways and you're suddenly a parent
to this child, you know, it's a very It does
bring up a lot, I mean a lot. So yes,
I I completely identify with what you're talking about. I
(18:36):
started feeling, you know, as I was saying, because it
could slow me down enough. And he was watching at
that time, the Twins that he's in Minneapolis, the baseball team.
They were showing reruns where they always won, and he
was a little better. I mean, things got, you know,
that progressively worse, but he could enjoy that game. He did.
He thought they were live and he thought they were
winning because of something he was doing with his walker.
(18:56):
He was still on a walker that that could be true.
You wouldn't tell me, well, we don't know, that's not true.
He said it was a trade secret. He wouldn't tell
me what. But but I felt it started feeling to me.
And I don't know if you just felt this way
to you, um, but that that time spent with him,
it felt almost like a spiritual practice to degree, and
(19:18):
like a way to express a kind of unconditional love
that I frankly didn't feel when he was more of himself,
and to just be there, um and and be with
him and witness it. And at one point later I
talked about how we would watch he loved Laurel and Hardy,
which I hated, but I would screen share. And I
(19:43):
started looking at those videos and thinking, you know, these
came out when he was a little boy, and this
was what the world looked like back then, and he
was I could imagine him at like ten or eight
in the movie theater, the magic of that screen and
watching this. And I just sat there and tried to,
(20:03):
you know, love that little boy like you said, um.
And it gave me a lot. And I don't know
if I hadn't been sitting there during the pandemic, carding
fleece of all things, if I would have gotten there
right and look at that, Look at the two different
connections with your parents during this period. I mean, you
had the knitting with your mom and the ability to
(20:25):
be still and connect with your father. Did you ever
show your father what you were doing, because I'm sure
he wouldn't have been able to wrap his head around
what you were doing. On your death, Yeah, he didn't understand.
Sometimes the noise bugged him the carding, They're like, they
like they look like dog brushes. So there's these metal
things and you're kind of brushing them against each other,
(20:47):
so they make a sort of you know, metal on
metal noise, So that kind of bugged him. I have
to ask too, how is your husband and Daisy feeling
about this venture? Did they were they like your crazy
stop at Peggy makes him chilly instead? Or how did
they go through this? They were I mean, they know me.
(21:09):
They weren't shocked. Um yeah, but yeah, I mean different
points they were just like the spinning wheel when I
when I had to buy a spinning wheel to spin
my fleece, and they were like, don't bring one of
those giant spinning wheels in here. We don't have a
very big house. Um And the dying, Yeah, there was
a lot of smells involved. Yeah, so let's let me
(21:30):
ask you about that. Did they really smell like figs
and mildew and all those kinds of things you described?
So I tried to do these different things with it,
um and and and eventually I kind of just didn't
but I and I got very interested in I mean
a lot of this book is also about sort of
lare and history and how these things came to be
and and the sort of um, all these things about color.
(21:55):
I mean, I yeah, that's so fascinated by the nature
of color and by color as a social construct, which
is like blew my mind. And initially I thought, Okay,
I want to do this hyperlocal thing. Um, I want
to die using colors that I can walk to and pluck.
So like I have had a we we've moved DELI
(22:16):
I had down the hill, down the hill. So the
other thing that was going on during the pandemic, there's
a lot going on in this book underneath all the
sheep was I live in northern California and the state
was burning, and I lived in a high risk fire
zone and it was so incredibly stressful and and I
was so very very anxious. And we would get um
(22:37):
told that we had to be ready to avoid. You know,
there were a few really serious times where they said, Okay,
there's gonna be um this like the wind that only
happens once every hundred years, and it's coming and it's hot,
and if something, if there's a spark wor all, we're
all done for and pack your bags, you know. So
we're like packing our stuff and on one end, and
it brought up a couple of things. One was I
(22:57):
noticed my daughter. One of her preciousness that sheep act
was her tallest bag, her Jewish prayer show her about
Mitzvah and her prayer shawl. My husband's Japanese American and
we had made her palace out of a vintage wedding
kimono that that a friend made for us, and then
we tied the knots on it ourselves, and then I
made the bag for it and needle pointed it with
(23:18):
a pattern of pomegranates for fruitful life. Um. And it
made me realize when she grabbed that, and you know,
she doesn't really go to temple anymore anything, but it
was important to her. How you know, textile has such
meaning to us, and that was you know that that
she chose that really meant something to me. And then
I had to go cry for a while. And then um,
(23:40):
I was standing crying and looking out the window. And
we have a fig tree in our front had a
fig tree in our front yard, which was one of
the things that charmed me about our home when we
bought it years ago. So I decided to harvest the
fig leaves and use those to make very Middle Earth
colored um die. And it smells kind of faking, kind
(24:02):
of and kind of like ish and kind of like
rotten Christmas. And so Daisy was just like disgusting. And
Steve and my husband, I first said, oh, it's good
that he was like, m no, actually it is disgusting um.
Not a candle we want to have. Yeah, So I did,
(24:23):
fig I did. I did a bunch of stuff from
my yard in my neighborhood. But you know, all the
colors were basically either yellow or putrid um. And you
say that beats beat dies is actually really hard. No, no, no,
it's just that it fades. So it's called fugitive um,
which sounds like it's um on the lamp, sounds like
it's a prisoner, but it means it's it's gonna it's
(24:44):
gonna flee, right, so you wash it, but it's going
to go away. So people don't use beat die. So
I started getting into all these other colors. I still
use natural diyes, but I sent a wave on the
internet for them because I got tired of the pellett.
I know what, I what I confused it with. You
write that it was so hard to do. Purple purple
is very hard. Purple purple what used to be uh,
(25:06):
you know, royal, obviously we all know that, but why
because it was such a difficult dye to make and
it had to be made from the excretions of a
snail butt that was in what is now Lebanon. That's
not a lot of die. How many snail butts does?
It take? About two fifty for an ounce, And so
it was very, very very expensive. It was worth more
(25:27):
than good. It was rare and the color that they
were really going for was a color that looked like
clotted blood, which is not so attractive to me. So
so what I did use in the end chips from
a logwood tree, which is a Brazilian sustainable tree. But
it is a little fugitive, so you don't want to
be out this on a lot with it. But it
was a beautiful color. I'd show it to you, except um,
(25:49):
I actually sent the sweater to Vogue Knitting to photograph
and they still have it that I hope they didn't
lose it. Now they didn't lose you know, I'm sort
of fascinated by the whole project and the ritual and
it dies and the spinning. All of it is fascinating
to me. But it's an incredibly poignant book because you
(26:10):
discussed so many other things. You do. You discuss aging,
you talk about empty nesting, you talk about your parents. Uh,
there's so many layers and context to it. It's clearly
not just how to share a sheet. Yeah. What was else?
Was weird about it? Was? It really fount me thinking
about um? I mean, you know, environmental anxiety, climate anxiety
was part of this too. But like we are so conscious.
(26:33):
I mean I'm sure you are. I know I am
of like the organic produce and um yep, you know,
making sure that you're driving your hybrid car and recycling
and composting if you are in accomposting place, of doing
all these things. But we never think about fashion. We
don't think about our clothe never. And that was a
whole thing. Yeah, what how are they are made? Who's
(26:55):
making them? No? Synthetic die? Yeah, all of it. It's
fascinating when wrote that in your book, I thought, I
never think about that. I never thought about it. I
think about everything else. I do not think about the
things that I you know, our armor put on your body. Yeah,
but you think about what goes in it goes in
your body, but not what goes on it. And that
was I mean, knowing about it. I went through a
(27:15):
period when I was writing this where first of all,
I just was like, I can't just buy a pair
of pants, just not a pair of fan you know,
but I I I kind of couldn't go into a store.
I mean even once we could go into stores again,
I just would see all those synthetic which is plastic, right,
(27:36):
all the synthetics, so all these plastic clothes and think
about where they were going to end up. And I
was I became like kind of hysterical and uh, and
I would have to leave. I've gotten I mean not
that I'm better and now I don't care anymore, but
I've I've got a grip. Um. Well you can't you
can't un know it. You know, you can't unno it.
(27:57):
And and it really makes me think hard. And I
do think really hard about what I bought. And it's
interesting too, because like when we were young, you went
shopping maybe like twice a year, when you know, would
be like back to school, yeah, back to school and
was spread. But but fast fashion has so changed our
our relationship and our perception of clothing and shopping that
(28:18):
we don't even think about the fact that we're buying
clothing constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly, um, and most of it's
made of plastic and all that just I don't know.
So now my daughter, probably your daughters too, they buy
a lot of thrift. And I think that kids who girls,
girls particularly boys, don't buy as much stuff girls who
are conscious in this way. And I think our daughters
(28:42):
are much more conscious than we are. When I started
talking to my daughter about all of this, she already
knew about all of it. She was sending me websites
like good on You and you know where I could
check things, and she knew it all. And if we
just never discussed it, um, and she buys a lot
more thrift. Yeah. I I started doing that too when
I became conscious of it. And also the idea of
(29:02):
the amount of money I would spend on something that
was quote unquote cool or in where I could go
in the real reel, you know, and get a cocktail dress.
You know. But a friend of mine gave me a
coat a couple of Christmas is ago that was all
made out of recycled bottles, which I know sounds completely bizarre.
It is the most comfortable coat I've ever owned, and
(29:25):
so that was my first little window. What oh god,
Peggy's making a face, Hi, Ali. I learned how to
cook Hungarian food during COVID. My mama taught me all
my grandma's recipes, and I know them all by heart now,
and I'm so grateful because the year later, my mom
(29:47):
passed away, and if we hadn't had COVID, I wouldn't
have these memories to carry with me. Here's and it's
time for a short welcome back to go ask Galley
(30:16):
during COVID. This isn't response to your COVID Instagram. I
became a hiker. I had always loved a hike, and
I decided um that I would start climbing mountains. Um
stead of sitting home and being sad and missing my
husband who had passed away, I took myself outside and
I dragged my fifty eight year old self up mountains
and I never felt prouder or more empowered. What's the face? No,
(30:42):
I shouldn't like that, So it's not. It's kind of brown,
kind of like a kind of like a half dead
lawn First of all, it's gonna end up somewhere. It's
gonna end up in landfull eventually anyway, and there you are.
But also UM, it sheds micro fibers all that, all
those UM recycled bottle things should these tecy tinsy invisible
(31:05):
filaments all over the organic produce and when you wash them,
UM tens of thousands of them go down your your
clothes washer and they go right into the water supply.
And they are the single biggest source of water pollution
right now. So all right, I've stopped buying the platt
You've got that one. So but the plastic bottle stuff
(31:27):
is one of those choices that's not as bad as
buying something that's made of what they call virgin materials.
But it's not great. It's just a bunch of plastic bottles,
that's what you're telling me. Okay, it's a bunch of
plastic and it's and it's degrading and it's and it's
getting into the wall I talk about in UM. How
(31:48):
when I was a little kid, we used to um
on Rosa Shanna on the Jewishary year, you're supposed to
throw your sins into the lake, and we would go
to the lake in Minneapolis as a group our synagogue
and throw our sins in, and I would think of like,
down at the bottom of that lake, there's like this
huge tary mass of generations of sins gathering. Microfibers are
(32:10):
a little bit like okay, all right, good, all right,
I've been educated. So no, no, no. So I love
this quote your husband said to you, You're always trying
to prove something unnecessary that no one cares about, to
nobody in particular. And I love how you write about that.
You are a bit of a perfectionist, right, You like
to win. So this project that you started had to
(32:37):
You had, first of all, had to finish it. There
had to be closure, and you had to finish it well.
And a lot of people would would I mean, just
out on the deck dying the wool, would have given
up and been on j cru dot com. So you
have some grit to you that really pushed you through
to the finish line. Yeah. I mean I would say
a couple of things about that. I mean, that's my
(32:58):
things about the one is Yeah, especially with the sharing.
At one point, I mean, Laura, my cheering teacher, said
to me, you're doing you know you've done really great.
Of course, that's what I want to hear, really great him. Um,
she said, most people are either crying or swearing by now,
and I would have been except I kept thinking, I
have to do this for work, and I can be
a different person when I'm doing something for work than
(33:20):
I can be if I'm not so knowing that I
had to do this, because otherwise I was going to
have to admit that I didn't. UM would push me through.
So there was that, But I think what the real
beauty for me, One of the big takeaways, and one
of the real beauty of doing this project for me
was being an amateur. And I was never going to
be good at it. I was never gonna win. I
(33:40):
was never going to be perfect. And at first, if
you read the book, I'm always going I'm terrible and terrible, terrible.
But by the time I got to the point where
you're talking about, where my husband is saying, you're always
trying to prove something you know to nobody in particular,
I was starting to realize that UM, being able to
be a beginner and finding joy in being a beginner
is so rare at this time in our lives. Because
(34:01):
we really want to be able to do what we
want to be able to do. And I've always had
for years, I've had on my wall this um Linda
Barry cartoon that's about creativity and about the idea of
how we learned shame around creativity and how there's this
moment where you're doing whatever you're doing, you're drawing your stuff,
you know, like you're a little kid. You just draw right,
and then somebody says that sucks, and suddenly you think, wait,
(34:25):
what there's sucks and there's good uh, and then that's it.
It's over and um and you live your life, you know.
I always think about An Lamott when she wrote Bird
by Bird. I don't know if you've ever read that book.
It's one of my favorite books about creativity. She talks
about the radio station k fucked KFKD that plays in
(34:46):
your head and on right and when you're trying to
do something like right or do your you know, your
creative work. That on one hand, it's telling you like
you're the greatest you, you deserve to be on the
New York Times bestsell lists. On the other hand, it's taying,
why did you think you could pick up a pencil,
you completely untalented horror show, and you have to shut
both those things up enough to do your work. And
(35:08):
I've learned how to do that more or less as
a writer, um, but to try to do something new
was was hearing all that all over him and finally
recognizing that it didn't matter if it was good, It
didn't matter if it sucked. The question was what have
I learned here? How how might I do it differently
next time? What joy am I taking? And finding that
(35:30):
I can make blue, that I can share a sheet,
that I can take this fluff and turn it into
into usable yarn um, and just that that was the
I think the most valuable lesson of all for me
was learning how to be um little se creative and
be a beginner and and just enjoy that now at
(35:50):
this age, well you know, as simple as it is.
One of my favorite quotes in life is the art
is in the doing. It's not the finished project, it's
everything you learned along the way, so and you did it.
That's the thing. That's the thing. I think a lot
of things that stop us women, particularly of our age,
is that we go I'm not going to start that now.
(36:11):
Had I started in my twenties. Maybe, but I think
we would be even more extraordinary and fulfilled if we
actually allowed ourselves to be beginners with certain things. Yeah so,
and just that that that idea too. I mean process
of a product, process of our product. If you can't
learn that when you're pursuing something creative, you're never going
(36:32):
to feel good about it, if you're all about the product.
And I couldn't be about the product, and this because
the product was going to be ugly, and and it's not.
It actually isn't. I mean, when you see it, it's
on the back of the book, so you'll be able
to see what it looks like. There's a picture of it.
If you when you see it just lying there on
the floor, you'll think, oh, that's not so bad. Um,
And it's cool that the colors are cool. I ended
(36:53):
up making stripes. It looks fine laying on the ground.
And and it is also, by the way, I don't
know why, it weighs three pounds, which is about three
times with a sweater, which I'll have these sweater would
normally weigh so it is impossible to work. But it
is hideous on my body. It makes me look like
the giant pumpkin. I don't know partly because of I
made it. I got. I ran a monk of my
own body and its issues. Yeah. And when my UM
(37:17):
person who is helping me learn how to design, kept saying,
you need shaping, you should put shaping, and I kept saying, no,
I don't want to. And so it stands out from
my body you need I mean, you shouldn't try to
pretend like you don't exist. Is basically the lesson of that,
which was what I was doing. Well, yes, because by
(37:38):
the way, again, women of our age are like, you
know what, I'll just wear a shmata. You know, we
don't care exactly comfortable, but in fact there are vibr
bodies underneath all this. So we don't need to wear
Charlie Brown sweaters anymore. We can actually wear something that
has some shape. It's okay, Yeah, I can't wait to
see it. Yeah. So, Peggy, I've asked you everything I
(38:01):
could possibly ask you about sharing a sheep, But now
it is your turn to ask me a question and
go ask Ali and you can ask me anything you want.
So what is the question you want to ask me today? Okay?
So I just saw the movie Um, she said, yes,
And I don't know if you saw it the idea,
And I am wondering your theory on why you think
that movie did not do well in the box office.
(38:24):
My theory is that everybody knows the story, so there's
no surprises. Like when I saw Spotlight, for example, I
didn't know the magnitude of abuse in Boston. You know.
With this particular story, I feel like we've all read
about it, We've all we know all the facts about it,
(38:45):
so there wasn't a kind of surprise about it. I
also think that a documentary would be a little stronger
than a scripted movie about it, you know what I mean.
Like when they had the fake Harvey Weinstein, you know,
I just want, oh, that's some guy who kind of
looked they're shooting him from behind. Like there were things
that pulled me out of the story a little bit. Um,
(39:07):
that's why I think it didn't. Why do you well,
I think I thought that an actor that looked like
however you want said, I thought, oh for him, Um,
he didn't even get a line. Um. No, I thought
it was because I actually liked the movie a lot.
But I thought it was because men don't want to
see it. So you got that. And then women I
(39:28):
didn't want to be triggered by it, so they didn't
want to see it either. That's interesting. Yeah, and so
I think it was an audience problem though. I went
with a bunch of girlfriends and I found that we
we kind of cried all the way through it, not
because of the story itself, but because whatever it was
bringing up. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So it was
actually I appreciated that. But that's my theory. Good. I
(39:49):
like your theory. I just think everybody is a theory
about it. Oh, I think you're I think your theory
is right. Actually, now that I think about it, I
was I was looking at it just from a producers standpoint,
you know what I mean. When I was watching it,
I was like, well, we know all this, you know,
I know how it ends. I know this. I know
that I don't like. Again, when I said about the documentary,
(40:10):
I don't like being pulled out of the story and
the back of Harvey Weinstein and then the fake assistant
Gwyneth Paltrow. There were things about it that I'm like, Oh,
you don't need to do that. You need to do that.
I know that's anyway, thank you for the question, pleasure,
thanks for answering. Okay, Peggy Orenstein, I love this book
(40:32):
so much, I really do. I love it because it
took me into a craft I had knew nothing about,
so I got a historical education. It was certainly a
personal journey that I think everybody will be able to
connect to in one way or another. And it's beautifully written.
It's really it's it's a it is a great book,
(40:54):
and thank you for letting me read it, and thank
you for letting me talk to you about it. And
I know it's going to be a huge success. And
if you ever share a sheep again, I would be
very interested in coming along. I was gonna say you
can join me. I'm actually very interested. I think I could.
I think I could put together a group of post
(41:14):
menopausal women that would love to share a sheep. So
thank you, thank you, super fun. I am fifty seven
years old and living with metastatic stage for cancer for
twelve years now. I guess you know. It was my
(41:35):
new thing to be able to write the book and
recrease my tenure at that time, battle with cancer during
the pandemic at a teacher and being married to a coach.
My husband and I were out of school for a while,
so we would drop around. And here's red truck hashtag
(41:57):
red Truck chronicles and eight pictures of the beautiful things
we spotted in Niger. When I turned sixty, I decided
every year I would take up a new hobby, or
learn a new skill, or try something that I had
been afraid to do. So one year I learned how
to play poker, one year I took up pilates, I
(42:20):
starting to play golf, and this year I am going
to try force back riding. So I think it's great
that you want to encourage people to try new skills,
but I'm not ready for claiming thanks. I can't imagine
(42:44):
what my sweater would look like if I even tried
to shear die and make a sweater. Oh my god,
I don't even think my husband could fake liking it.
Thank you for listening to go ask Gali. Peggy's new book,
Unraveling What I Learned about Life while sharing Sheep, Dying Wool,
and Making the World Ugliest Sweater is out now and
you can find her on Instagram at p j Orenstein.
(43:06):
And for more info on what you've heard in this episode.
Check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate
and review. Go ask Alli and follow me on social
media on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and listen
if you'd like to ask me a question or suggested
guest or a topic to dig into. I would love
to hear from you, and there is a bunch of
ways you can do it. You can call or text
me at three to three four six five six, or
(43:29):
you can email a voice memo right from your phone
to Go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. And
if you leave a question, you just might hear it.
I'll go ask Alli. Go ask Alli is a production
of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I heart Radio.
(43:50):
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Go ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. When I have
been with friends and that happened and I paid my pants,
I did lose the room, they did leave. I saw
her light up and I was like, I'm just going
to work, but we are here until one of our
last grips. I was just the one that was meant
(00:21):
to take care of mamma. It's for me to remember
every single day is that I always have a choice.
Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't,
or there's no rules for you, or you have to
look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you.
(00:41):
Welcome to Go ask Alli, or should I say welcome
back to Go ask Alli. We had a quick little
hiatus during the holiday season where I had the flu
for two weeks. But now I'm back and will be
even better. Okay, So I did ask you through social
media to tell me some of the hobbies or interests
or skills you developed during COVID, and throughout this whole show,
(01:06):
we will be blasting some of them out because some
of them are doozies. Mine was clamming and my guest
Today has a Goodie. Peggy Orgstein is a New York
Times bestselling author, award winning journalist, and internationally recognized speaker
on gender issues, especially those related to teen sex and relationships.
Now I'm sure you guys remember Peggy because she joined
(01:28):
me in our first season for an episode called The Talk.
Peggy is a frequent contributor to The New York Times,
and it's written for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post,
The Atlantic, lots more. She's appeared on NPR, PBS, and
all the network morning shows. She's written eight books, including
the new one that brings her here Today, Unraveling what
(01:49):
I learned about life while sharing sheep, dying wool, and
making the World's Ugliest sweater. This is so nice of you.
I'm so glad to talk to you again. I I'm
so happy to talk to you because the last time
I talked to you, we were in the pandemic and
we were talking about girls and sex and boys and
sex and lots of sex. And then I talked to
(02:11):
you later, just on the phone, about adult sex. And
so when I heard you had a new book coming out,
I thought, Oh, this is the adult sex book. Okay,
good we're going to talk about dry vaginas and menopausal
sex and sex after sixty. And then I got this
book in the mail called Unraveling, and I went, that's
an interesting title for a sex book, and was pleasantly
(02:35):
surprised and really dove into this book because I too
had written a COVID book called Allie's Well that ends well.
You discovered the art of sharing a sheep and die
and making a sweater. I discovered clamming. So we found
(02:56):
our purpose in life, both of us. Um So for me,
clamming was the way I didn't just make sour dough
like you say in your book. So let's just dive
into this because I have girlfriends and I've said I
Peggy Orangeine coming on my podcast. We're talking about sharing
sheep and they were like, I'm in. I'm in so um.
(03:19):
And by the way, I want to interweave this age
old art with parental death and parental like everything that
I too am experiencing, because it is something that every
human will experience at some point. And um, I'm interested
to know how, besides your book, how you're dealing with
(03:39):
all of it. But let's start with the clearest question,
how did you decide to shear sheep? How did that
even come about? You live in northern California, plenty of
other things to do? Why that I didn't have plenty
of other things to do. We had this little thing
called luckdown that kicked in. You know, it's it's been
(04:00):
a I say this in the book. I say, my
editor wants me to have a reason for this, and
I don't really have one. I've been a lifelong knitter,
and I think you get when you're a fiber person.
Even as I'm talking to I'm like, I'm like stroking
the sweater that I'm wearing, because you you get very
like tactile, this love of the tactile. And I think
(04:21):
that you just start thinking about garments. You're thinking about
where they come from. And also I'm the granddaughter of
um Jewish homesteaders from North Dakota, which is probably the
topic of a whole different book. Um, I've always had
this fantasy. It's just been like a long held fantasy
of wanting to make the sweater from scratch, starting with
learning to shear sheep, which I thought was going to
(04:42):
be easy. And uh, and I never have time, you know,
I have a life and work and a child and
a husband and all this stuff. And and there's one
sheep shearing class in northern California once a year, and weirdly, um,
if I was going to be home for it, which
I almost never was, it would sell out online within
thirty I don't know who these people are, but there
was a lot of people that wanted to learn how
(05:03):
to shear sheep, which was I mean, really, shearing a
sheep was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
I had no idea. Well, first of all, who knew
that they were slippery? You say, they're like toddlers with
hooves because of the lanolin. I had no idea. Yeah, no,
I don't know. They're they're incredibly LUs you know, they're
way more than you do. And they've got hooves and
they don't want to be there. And the blade that
(05:24):
you're using has no safety and it's just like juttering
thing that's moving really really fast, and you know, and
I just sort of, you know, drawl a lot, like, yeah, sure,
I want to just shear a sheep. Um. It was
just lucrit. It was it was madness, honestly, but it
was also an amazing experience, and so it was really hard.
I mean I sort of thought, yeah, I'll just find
a sheep and share it. It doesn't work that way.
(05:46):
They only are shot in certain times of year. People
do it, they don't, you know. I mean, there's it's
like a whole it's an industry, it's a whole thing.
So tell me, So where do you found the sheep?
So in Sonoma? So I mean all of this the
background of all so we got mac um. Like here,
I was nothing but sort of anxiety and depression. And
the only thing that was calling me down was like knitting,
(06:07):
and I'm talking to my mom, except my mom is dead.
So I'm having these ongoing conversations with my mother in
my head because she and I, you know, always adknit
together and she your mom taught you, taught me in
net and that was so common. Almost everybody that I met,
their mom talked them to knit. It was like a
real it's a real connection or their grandmother, but usually
their mother between mothers and daughters. And so I was
(06:28):
thinking about that. Meanwhile, my dad, his dementia is getting
worse in lockdown. He's in Minneapolis. I'm in Berkeley. Even
if I could get on a plane. I couldn't go
in where he is because we're not allowed, you know.
I mean, like everything is, and my daughter's pulling out
her college applications and I'm thinking about the empty nest.
My husband is retiring, so like all the transitions are
coming at me right at lockdown. So, um, I do
(06:51):
the clover thing. I decided to share a sheep, and uh,
as one would, right, Yeah, I wish I thought of it.
I went clamming, but yeah I should have. I should
have shared a sheet. Clamming would be good. Yeah, I
don't think we have plans, but that sounds good to me.
So so I really wanted to learn. This whole book
is also the story I really concert focused on women
(07:12):
and as teachers for every step of the way, on
sharing and spinning and processing and dying and all of it.
I made sure that all my teachers were women because
I wanted to look at women's work and women's art
and women's connections and sharing is over men. And they
keep talking about how, oh there's so much more women
and sharing. That's because it used to be men. So yeah,
(07:33):
there's a lot more, but there's none. And it's one
of those professions you know like seafaring or you know
hedge funds or that that basically put a no girl's
allowed sign on the door. And because of the tools.
Is that why, I think, you know, not necessarily. I
think it's partly like this cowboy image that it does.
(07:55):
It's this, um I mean, it doesn't have the romance
exactly of cowboys, but it's this sort of lone wolf
and it's hard. It's really physical, super super I mean,
I cannot emphasize I cannot emphasize how physical it is.
And some sheep are huge. Um, so there's a lot
of you know, physical labor involved and it just became
(08:16):
masculine and like a lot of things it wasn't you know,
the other things I'd say, you know, law or medicine.
Women have challenged so they aren't so much no girls
allowed anymore. But this state has stayed that way. I
think because of the physicality and also because you have
to travel a lot to be a sheep share. So
I think a lot of women it just doesn't seem
that appealing. Um. But uh, there used to be in
(08:37):
Australia when a woman approached the shearing shed, they yelled
ducks on the pond. I don't know why, Like it's
such a weird like one of these and then they're
supposed to, like I don't know, put away their porn
and pull up their pants so their ascracks don't show
or something. I don't know, but it was it's such
a misogyny. It was just basically misogyny. Um. So being
(08:57):
a woman sheep share is still really air and and
kind of political. So I found Laura and Kaid who
is a teacher. She is a teacher of sheep sharing
and she is um also manages organic produce farms and
she's thirty and you know, just like you want to
be her. She's so cool. So she she was the
(09:18):
one who taught me. And yeah, like I said, it is,
it's just grueling. Okay, well you tell me. I mean
she could cheer a sheep in three minutes. You have
to shoot. You have to get the sheep out of
the pen right first of all. First of all, they
don't want to you know, I mean, their prey animals,
so they don't want you to beat near them. So
they're all packed in one and then you've got to
back them out of the pen. You gotta flip them
on their backs. You've got to drag them into the pen.
(09:39):
And none of this, by the way, I want to
be clear, none of this hurts the sheep. And the
sheep has to be shorn. It's really important that cheaper.
There's like during one of the things that happened during
the pandemic was that um they in Australia somewhere they
found this sheep that had been it had gone rogue
and it hadn't been shorn, you know, it wasn't out
in the wild, and it was like nine years or something.
(10:00):
It had ninety pounds. I think it was a fleece
on it and it became a TikTok sensation. Of course
it did, of course it did. So the shearing of
the sheep where they took off it maybe seventy nine
pounds I can't remember of wool off the sheep. And
you look at this poor sheep. It couldn't eat. It
was starving. So it's really important that they're shoring. We've
(10:21):
bred them over over millennia. They weren't originally like that,
but we've reread them to be wooly, so they need sharing.
Are they dirty, Yes, they're awful of like pooh, and yeah, muck,
and yeah you're not. You're not shearing off a white
kashmere coat. No, but it's pretty underneath. You can see
pretty clearly the I mean, it's just the top layer
that's all yucky, and then you shear it down. And
(10:43):
but I mean, I was terrible at it, and and
the first one took me an hour and a half
and it was just like a disaster. And I did three,
and the last one was Martha. Martha. She was one
of the only ones I had a name, and she's
the one I ended up whose whose fleece I ended
up using for my sweater. You write in your book
that some man there's like a Guinness Book of World
(11:04):
Record for sharing a sheep, and it was it was
like I wrote it seconds or something. Yeah, it was seconds.
I don't know how he does that. Thirty seven point
nine seconds. Yeah, that's InCred I can see it online.
It's crazy. Yeah, And then you think it took me
an hour and a half, so by comparison, just because
you're because it's terrifying. First of all, it's hard, but
(11:26):
it's also terrified. And I cut myself up and it
looked like a crime scene. And luckily didn't cut the sheep.
But and it's it's hard to see and and if
its senses, like when when Laura, my teacher, would do it,
that sheep just laid there like a rag doll. I
mean she you know, it was perfectly content. But those
sheep knew that I didn't know what I was doing.
And the second they said that it's all open, yeah,
(11:46):
I'd be scared shitless too. Then yes, here's this crazy lady.
The first time she's holding a sheer. It's not gonna
be me. I get it. It's just like a New
Yorker cartoon exactly. Yeah, it was there and there people
are constantly sending me shearing. You'd be surprised how many
sheep New Yorker coaches there, I'm sure. And the sheep
is slippery, right, and the sheep is clippery. That's it's
(12:08):
covered with lannel in which you probably used when you
were nursing your children on my nipples. Yeah, yep, same stuff.
This is like rodeo stuff. When you talk about this,
that's what it's. That's the image that comes to mind.
You know, it's funny that you say that, because, in fact,
my grandfather was a rodeo writer, and I have a
little bit of a rodeo thing. Yeah, obviously you are
(12:31):
taking care of this sheep, but in you know, I'm
seeing you with a lasso with the sheep on its
back and you're roping up the hoofs and everything. I mean,
that's just my image. Nah, okay. And you repeat many
times in your book belly crutch, undermine, topknot neck, cheek, first, shoulder,
short blows, longbows, last side. What is that besides your
(12:51):
mantra for getting through COVID? It would because yeah, No,
there's a very subt order that you share sheep that
is safest for the animal, most ergonomic, sets the animal
up to be able to just walk away when it's done,
and gives you the best place. And it was developed
by this guy in New Zealand who was called the
Neureas of sharing. Yes I love that quote. Yes, um.
(13:12):
But yeah, so there's a very set way that you
do it. Um that you know that starts with the belly,
which is where the teeths are and where the vulva is,
and that that I mean, that's the scary to me.
That was like, oh my god. At one point with
one of my sheep. I just froze. I couldn't do it.
I had to have the teacher to it. Yeah, it's like,
I can't do this. Those are delicate bits with the
(13:34):
you don't want to do anything wrong there. The planning
is fabulous. But I wanted to share that. During COVID
because we have a place in Maine that is on
the coast, we discovered UM doing some oystering. I don't
(13:54):
even know if that's a bird. We'll be right back,
and we're back. I took up painting, particularly portrait painting,
and I found I was actually quite good at it,
(14:16):
and I'm very proud of myself. It got me through
the pandemic and I've actually started to sell a little
bit of my work. I identified the fact that I
do have what it takes to become a published author.
My book is actually coming out in five weeks, and
it's taken twenty years to write because I write about
(14:38):
being an ex stripper in Waikiki, my hometown from seven
and I've just been trying to write this story for
years and years. Took a lot of therapy to go
back to those rough places. All right, so you have
your fluff, and now what's the next step. So next
(14:59):
you have to you I mean, it's it's filthy, yeah,
so you have to clean it, which is the most
tedious part of the process. It's a lot of hauling
of water. I mean, unless you have a dedicated setup,
which of course I don't, a lot of heating water
and hauling it out to the deck. And if you
would get it too hot, the fleece kind of maths.
It's called felting, and then it's useless. Then you've got
(15:20):
to go get a new fleece. And then after you
do that, you have to card it, which you've probably seen,
like when you were a kid and we're learning about
pioneers or something. You take two things look like dog brushes,
and you have to make the fleece all nice and
fluffy and laying in the same direction. And that's also
a really boring process. And I think in the past
women would do this when they were doing other stuff.
(15:41):
But I was so worried about all of it that
I had to focus. But what it did it was
interesting because I really when I was doing this book,
you know, I imagined it was going to bring up
a lot around my mom's death. Of course, my mom
had died a few years earlier, and like and you know,
we had, I mean, like all of it. We had.
I love my mom, and we had a lot of
(16:02):
conflict and there was a lot of issues, but we
could always we could always be fine in a in
a yarn store, you know, we could always look at patterns,
touch the yarn, talk about it. And knitting was the
thing that she I mean, my mom was a very
conventional style housewife. And not that there's anything wrong with that.
(16:25):
It was a fine thing. It worked for her, but
it wasn't who I was, and she was not, maybe
in that sense, the best fit for being sort of, um,
somebody who could guide me as a as a woman,
and that was always sort of a sad thing for me.
But I always could get her advice on a on
a complicated sweater, you know, she was always down for that,
(16:47):
and that was great. So I imagined and I knew,
and it did bring up a lot of um, sadness
and happiness, joyful memories, sad memories of my mom. I
didn't imagine doing this was gonna has bring up so
much with my dad, Um, who you know, had nothing
to do with with knitting or yard or anything. When
(17:07):
I was going up. But he subsequently has died, but
at that point he was in a facility is demensional,
was accelerating. It was the pandemic. We couldn't see him.
It was really hard, but his aid would um, we
would face time, and for him, he thought that I
was um in the room with him. When I was
(17:28):
faced that, he'd asked me, you know, can you hand
me at the water peg. I'd be like, well, that
can't reach it. But I could sit and slow down,
and it was you know, it was I think when
your dad, when your parents has cognitive impairment and you're
far away, it's hard on a lot of levels. But
it's also hard because you can't connect. They can't really
you can't have a conversation with them. You can't talk
(17:50):
to them. Um. I have a father with advanced Alzheimer's
and it's a very it's a difficult thing because when
I see him, I can hold his hand. I don't
even know if he knows it's me. And you start
to feel like this is actually for me, not for them,
you know, because I don't know if he knows who
I am. And and it's also you know, it's a
(18:14):
very surreal experience, because when your parents has faded away
in so many different ways and you're suddenly a parent
to this child, you know, it's a very It does
bring up a lot, I mean a lot. So yes,
I I completely identify with what you're talking about. I
(18:36):
started feeling, you know, as I was saying, because it
could slow me down enough. And he was watching at
that time, the Twins that he's in Minneapolis, the baseball team.
They were showing reruns where they always won, and he
was a little better. I mean, things got, you know,
that progressively worse, but he could enjoy that game. He did.
He thought they were live and he thought they were
winning because of something he was doing with his walker.
(18:56):
He was still on a walker that that could be true.
You wouldn't tell me, well, we don't know, that's not true.
He said it was a trade secret. He wouldn't tell
me what. But but I felt it started feeling to me.
And I don't know if you just felt this way
to you, um, but that that time spent with him,
it felt almost like a spiritual practice to degree, and
(19:18):
like a way to express a kind of unconditional love
that I frankly didn't feel when he was more of himself,
and to just be there, um and and be with
him and witness it. And at one point later I
talked about how we would watch he loved Laurel and Hardy,
which I hated, but I would screen share. And I
(19:43):
started looking at those videos and thinking, you know, these
came out when he was a little boy, and this
was what the world looked like back then, and he
was I could imagine him at like ten or eight
in the movie theater, the magic of that screen and
watching this. And I just sat there and tried to,
(20:03):
you know, love that little boy like you said, um.
And it gave me a lot. And I don't know
if I hadn't been sitting there during the pandemic, carding
fleece of all things, if I would have gotten there
right and look at that, Look at the two different
connections with your parents during this period. I mean, you
had the knitting with your mom and the ability to
(20:25):
be still and connect with your father. Did you ever
show your father what you were doing, because I'm sure
he wouldn't have been able to wrap his head around
what you were doing. On your death, Yeah, he didn't understand.
Sometimes the noise bugged him the carding, They're like, they
like they look like dog brushes. So there's these metal
things and you're kind of brushing them against each other,
(20:47):
so they make a sort of you know, metal on
metal noise, So that kind of bugged him. I have
to ask too, how is your husband and Daisy feeling
about this venture? Did they were they like your crazy
stop at Peggy makes him chilly instead? Or how did
they go through this? They were I mean, they know me.
(21:09):
They weren't shocked. Um yeah, but yeah, I mean different
points they were just like the spinning wheel when I
when I had to buy a spinning wheel to spin
my fleece, and they were like, don't bring one of
those giant spinning wheels in here. We don't have a
very big house. Um And the dying, Yeah, there was
a lot of smells involved. Yeah, so let's let me
(21:30):
ask you about that. Did they really smell like figs
and mildew and all those kinds of things you described?
So I tried to do these different things with it,
um and and and eventually I kind of just didn't
but I and I got very interested in I mean
a lot of this book is also about sort of
lare and history and how these things came to be
and and the sort of um, all these things about color.
(21:55):
I mean, I yeah, that's so fascinated by the nature
of color and by color as a social construct, which
is like blew my mind. And initially I thought, Okay,
I want to do this hyperlocal thing. Um, I want
to die using colors that I can walk to and pluck.
So like I have had a we we've moved DELI
(22:16):
I had down the hill, down the hill. So the
other thing that was going on during the pandemic, there's
a lot going on in this book underneath all the
sheep was I live in northern California and the state
was burning, and I lived in a high risk fire
zone and it was so incredibly stressful and and I
was so very very anxious. And we would get um
(22:37):
told that we had to be ready to avoid. You know,
there were a few really serious times where they said, Okay,
there's gonna be um this like the wind that only
happens once every hundred years, and it's coming and it's hot,
and if something, if there's a spark wor all, we're
all done for and pack your bags, you know. So
we're like packing our stuff and on one end, and
it brought up a couple of things. One was I
(22:57):
noticed my daughter. One of her preciousness that sheep act
was her tallest bag, her Jewish prayer show her about
Mitzvah and her prayer shawl. My husband's Japanese American and
we had made her palace out of a vintage wedding
kimono that that a friend made for us, and then
we tied the knots on it ourselves, and then I
made the bag for it and needle pointed it with
(23:18):
a pattern of pomegranates for fruitful life. Um. And it
made me realize when she grabbed that, and you know,
she doesn't really go to temple anymore anything, but it
was important to her. How you know, textile has such
meaning to us, and that was you know that that
she chose that really meant something to me. And then
I had to go cry for a while. And then um,
(23:40):
I was standing crying and looking out the window. And
we have a fig tree in our front had a
fig tree in our front yard, which was one of
the things that charmed me about our home when we
bought it years ago. So I decided to harvest the
fig leaves and use those to make very Middle Earth
colored um die. And it smells kind of faking, kind
(24:02):
of and kind of like ish and kind of like
rotten Christmas. And so Daisy was just like disgusting. And
Steve and my husband, I first said, oh, it's good
that he was like, m no, actually it is disgusting um.
Not a candle we want to have. Yeah, So I did,
(24:23):
fig I did. I did a bunch of stuff from
my yard in my neighborhood. But you know, all the
colors were basically either yellow or putrid um. And you
say that beats beat dies is actually really hard. No, no, no,
it's just that it fades. So it's called fugitive um,
which sounds like it's um on the lamp, sounds like
it's a prisoner, but it means it's it's gonna it's
(24:44):
gonna flee, right, so you wash it, but it's going
to go away. So people don't use beat die. So
I started getting into all these other colors. I still
use natural diyes, but I sent a wave on the
internet for them because I got tired of the pellett.
I know what, I what I confused it with. You
write that it was so hard to do. Purple purple
is very hard. Purple purple what used to be uh,
(25:06):
you know, royal, obviously we all know that, but why
because it was such a difficult dye to make and
it had to be made from the excretions of a
snail butt that was in what is now Lebanon. That's
not a lot of die. How many snail butts does?
It take? About two fifty for an ounce, And so
it was very, very very expensive. It was worth more
(25:27):
than good. It was rare and the color that they
were really going for was a color that looked like
clotted blood, which is not so attractive to me. So
so what I did use in the end chips from
a logwood tree, which is a Brazilian sustainable tree. But
it is a little fugitive, so you don't want to
be out this on a lot with it. But it
was a beautiful color. I'd show it to you, except um,
(25:49):
I actually sent the sweater to Vogue Knitting to photograph
and they still have it that I hope they didn't
lose it. Now they didn't lose you know, I'm sort
of fascinated by the whole project and the ritual and
it dies and the spinning. All of it is fascinating
to me. But it's an incredibly poignant book because you
(26:10):
discussed so many other things. You do. You discuss aging,
you talk about empty nesting, you talk about your parents. Uh,
there's so many layers and context to it. It's clearly
not just how to share a sheet. Yeah. What was else?
Was weird about it? Was? It really fount me thinking
about um? I mean, you know, environmental anxiety, climate anxiety
was part of this too. But like we are so conscious.
(26:33):
I mean I'm sure you are. I know I am
of like the organic produce and um yep, you know,
making sure that you're driving your hybrid car and recycling
and composting if you are in accomposting place, of doing
all these things. But we never think about fashion. We
don't think about our clothe never. And that was a
whole thing. Yeah, what how are they are made? Who's
(26:55):
making them? No? Synthetic die? Yeah, all of it. It's
fascinating when wrote that in your book, I thought, I
never think about that. I never thought about it. I
think about everything else. I do not think about the
things that I you know, our armor put on your body. Yeah,
but you think about what goes in it goes in
your body, but not what goes on it. And that
was I mean, knowing about it. I went through a
(27:15):
period when I was writing this where first of all,
I just was like, I can't just buy a pair
of pants, just not a pair of fan you know,
but I I I kind of couldn't go into a store.
I mean even once we could go into stores again,
I just would see all those synthetic which is plastic, right,
(27:36):
all the synthetics, so all these plastic clothes and think
about where they were going to end up. And I
was I became like kind of hysterical and uh, and
I would have to leave. I've gotten I mean not
that I'm better and now I don't care anymore, but
I've I've got a grip. Um. Well you can't you
can't un know it. You know, you can't unno it.
(27:57):
And and it really makes me think hard. And I
do think really hard about what I bought. And it's
interesting too, because like when we were young, you went
shopping maybe like twice a year, when you know, would
be like back to school, yeah, back to school and
was spread. But but fast fashion has so changed our
our relationship and our perception of clothing and shopping that
(28:18):
we don't even think about the fact that we're buying
clothing constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly, um, and most of it's
made of plastic and all that just I don't know.
So now my daughter, probably your daughters too, they buy
a lot of thrift. And I think that kids who girls,
girls particularly boys, don't buy as much stuff girls who
are conscious in this way. And I think our daughters
(28:42):
are much more conscious than we are. When I started
talking to my daughter about all of this, she already
knew about all of it. She was sending me websites
like good on You and you know where I could
check things, and she knew it all. And if we
just never discussed it, um, and she buys a lot
more thrift. Yeah. I I started doing that too when
I became conscious of it. And also the idea of
(29:02):
the amount of money I would spend on something that
was quote unquote cool or in where I could go
in the real reel, you know, and get a cocktail dress.
You know. But a friend of mine gave me a
coat a couple of Christmas is ago that was all
made out of recycled bottles, which I know sounds completely bizarre.
It is the most comfortable coat I've ever owned, and
(29:25):
so that was my first little window. What oh god,
Peggy's making a face, Hi, Ali. I learned how to
cook Hungarian food during COVID. My mama taught me all
my grandma's recipes, and I know them all by heart now,
and I'm so grateful because the year later, my mom
(29:47):
passed away, and if we hadn't had COVID, I wouldn't
have these memories to carry with me. Here's and it's
time for a short welcome back to go ask Galley
(30:16):
during COVID. This isn't response to your COVID Instagram. I
became a hiker. I had always loved a hike, and
I decided um that I would start climbing mountains. Um
stead of sitting home and being sad and missing my
husband who had passed away, I took myself outside and
I dragged my fifty eight year old self up mountains
and I never felt prouder or more empowered. What's the face? No,
(30:42):
I shouldn't like that, So it's not. It's kind of brown,
kind of like a kind of like a half dead
lawn First of all, it's gonna end up somewhere. It's
gonna end up in landfull eventually anyway, and there you are.
But also UM, it sheds micro fibers all that, all
those UM recycled bottle things should these tecy tinsy invisible
(31:05):
filaments all over the organic produce and when you wash them,
UM tens of thousands of them go down your your
clothes washer and they go right into the water supply.
And they are the single biggest source of water pollution
right now. So all right, I've stopped buying the platt
You've got that one. So but the plastic bottle stuff
(31:27):
is one of those choices that's not as bad as
buying something that's made of what they call virgin materials.
But it's not great. It's just a bunch of plastic bottles,
that's what you're telling me. Okay, it's a bunch of
plastic and it's and it's degrading and it's and it's
getting into the wall I talk about in UM. How
(31:48):
when I was a little kid, we used to um
on Rosa Shanna on the Jewishary year, you're supposed to
throw your sins into the lake, and we would go
to the lake in Minneapolis as a group our synagogue
and throw our sins in, and I would think of like,
down at the bottom of that lake, there's like this
huge tary mass of generations of sins gathering. Microfibers are
(32:10):
a little bit like okay, all right, good, all right,
I've been educated. So no, no, no. So I love
this quote your husband said to you, You're always trying
to prove something unnecessary that no one cares about, to
nobody in particular. And I love how you write about that.
You are a bit of a perfectionist, right, You like
to win. So this project that you started had to
(32:37):
You had, first of all, had to finish it. There
had to be closure, and you had to finish it well.
And a lot of people would would I mean, just
out on the deck dying the wool, would have given
up and been on j cru dot com. So you
have some grit to you that really pushed you through
to the finish line. Yeah. I mean I would say
a couple of things about that. I mean, that's my
(32:58):
things about the one is Yeah, especially with the sharing.
At one point, I mean, Laura, my cheering teacher, said
to me, you're doing you know you've done really great.
Of course, that's what I want to hear, really great him. Um,
she said, most people are either crying or swearing by now,
and I would have been except I kept thinking, I
have to do this for work, and I can be
a different person when I'm doing something for work than
(33:20):
I can be if I'm not so knowing that I
had to do this, because otherwise I was going to
have to admit that I didn't. UM would push me through.
So there was that, But I think what the real
beauty for me, One of the big takeaways, and one
of the real beauty of doing this project for me
was being an amateur. And I was never going to
be good at it. I was never gonna win. I
(33:40):
was never going to be perfect. And at first, if
you read the book, I'm always going I'm terrible and terrible, terrible.
But by the time I got to the point where
you're talking about, where my husband is saying, you're always
trying to prove something you know to nobody in particular,
I was starting to realize that UM, being able to
be a beginner and finding joy in being a beginner
is so rare at this time in our lives. Because
(34:01):
we really want to be able to do what we
want to be able to do. And I've always had
for years, I've had on my wall this um Linda
Barry cartoon that's about creativity and about the idea of
how we learned shame around creativity and how there's this
moment where you're doing whatever you're doing, you're drawing your stuff,
you know, like you're a little kid. You just draw right,
and then somebody says that sucks, and suddenly you think, wait,
(34:25):
what there's sucks and there's good uh, and then that's it.
It's over and um and you live your life, you know.
I always think about An Lamott when she wrote Bird
by Bird. I don't know if you've ever read that book.
It's one of my favorite books about creativity. She talks
about the radio station k fucked KFKD that plays in
(34:46):
your head and on right and when you're trying to
do something like right or do your you know, your
creative work. That on one hand, it's telling you like
you're the greatest you, you deserve to be on the
New York Times bestsell lists. On the other hand, it's taying,
why did you think you could pick up a pencil,
you completely untalented horror show, and you have to shut
both those things up enough to do your work. And
(35:08):
I've learned how to do that more or less as
a writer, um, but to try to do something new
was was hearing all that all over him and finally
recognizing that it didn't matter if it was good, It
didn't matter if it sucked. The question was what have
I learned here? How how might I do it differently
next time? What joy am I taking? And finding that
(35:30):
I can make blue, that I can share a sheet,
that I can take this fluff and turn it into
into usable yarn um, and just that that was the
I think the most valuable lesson of all for me
was learning how to be um little se creative and
be a beginner and and just enjoy that now at
(35:50):
this age, well you know, as simple as it is.
One of my favorite quotes in life is the art
is in the doing. It's not the finished project, it's
everything you learned along the way, so and you did it.
That's the thing. That's the thing. I think a lot
of things that stop us women, particularly of our age,
is that we go I'm not going to start that now.
(36:11):
Had I started in my twenties. Maybe, but I think
we would be even more extraordinary and fulfilled if we
actually allowed ourselves to be beginners with certain things. Yeah so,
and just that that that idea too. I mean process
of a product, process of our product. If you can't
learn that when you're pursuing something creative, you're never going
(36:32):
to feel good about it, if you're all about the product.
And I couldn't be about the product, and this because
the product was going to be ugly, and and it's not.
It actually isn't. I mean, when you see it, it's
on the back of the book, so you'll be able
to see what it looks like. There's a picture of it.
If you when you see it just lying there on
the floor, you'll think, oh, that's not so bad. Um,
And it's cool that the colors are cool. I ended
(36:53):
up making stripes. It looks fine laying on the ground.
And and it is also, by the way, I don't
know why, it weighs three pounds, which is about three
times with a sweater, which I'll have these sweater would
normally weigh so it is impossible to work. But it
is hideous on my body. It makes me look like
the giant pumpkin. I don't know partly because of I
made it. I got. I ran a monk of my
own body and its issues. Yeah. And when my UM
(37:17):
person who is helping me learn how to design, kept saying,
you need shaping, you should put shaping, and I kept saying, no,
I don't want to. And so it stands out from
my body you need I mean, you shouldn't try to
pretend like you don't exist. Is basically the lesson of that,
which was what I was doing. Well, yes, because by
(37:38):
the way, again, women of our age are like, you
know what, I'll just wear a shmata. You know, we
don't care exactly comfortable, but in fact there are vibr
bodies underneath all this. So we don't need to wear
Charlie Brown sweaters anymore. We can actually wear something that
has some shape. It's okay, Yeah, I can't wait to
see it. Yeah. So, Peggy, I've asked you everything I
(38:01):
could possibly ask you about sharing a sheep, But now
it is your turn to ask me a question and
go ask Ali and you can ask me anything you want.
So what is the question you want to ask me today? Okay?
So I just saw the movie Um, she said, yes,
And I don't know if you saw it the idea,
And I am wondering your theory on why you think
that movie did not do well in the box office.
(38:24):
My theory is that everybody knows the story, so there's
no surprises. Like when I saw Spotlight, for example, I
didn't know the magnitude of abuse in Boston. You know.
With this particular story, I feel like we've all read
about it, We've all we know all the facts about it,
(38:45):
so there wasn't a kind of surprise about it. I
also think that a documentary would be a little stronger
than a scripted movie about it, you know what I mean.
Like when they had the fake Harvey Weinstein, you know,
I just want, oh, that's some guy who kind of
looked they're shooting him from behind. Like there were things
that pulled me out of the story a little bit. Um,
(39:07):
that's why I think it didn't. Why do you well,
I think I thought that an actor that looked like
however you want said, I thought, oh for him, Um,
he didn't even get a line. Um. No, I thought
it was because I actually liked the movie a lot.
But I thought it was because men don't want to
see it. So you got that. And then women I
(39:28):
didn't want to be triggered by it, so they didn't
want to see it either. That's interesting. Yeah, and so
I think it was an audience problem though. I went
with a bunch of girlfriends and I found that we
we kind of cried all the way through it, not
because of the story itself, but because whatever it was
bringing up. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So it was
actually I appreciated that. But that's my theory. Good. I
(39:49):
like your theory. I just think everybody is a theory
about it. Oh, I think you're I think your theory
is right. Actually, now that I think about it, I
was I was looking at it just from a producers standpoint,
you know what I mean. When I was watching it,
I was like, well, we know all this, you know,
I know how it ends. I know this. I know
that I don't like. Again, when I said about the documentary,
(40:10):
I don't like being pulled out of the story and
the back of Harvey Weinstein and then the fake assistant
Gwyneth Paltrow. There were things about it that I'm like, Oh,
you don't need to do that. You need to do that.
I know that's anyway, thank you for the question, pleasure,
thanks for answering. Okay, Peggy Orenstein, I love this book
(40:32):
so much, I really do. I love it because it
took me into a craft I had knew nothing about,
so I got a historical education. It was certainly a
personal journey that I think everybody will be able to
connect to in one way or another. And it's beautifully written.
It's really it's it's a it is a great book,
(40:54):
and thank you for letting me read it, and thank
you for letting me talk to you about it. And
I know it's going to be a huge success. And
if you ever share a sheep again, I would be
very interested in coming along. I was gonna say you
can join me. I'm actually very interested. I think I could.
I think I could put together a group of post
(41:14):
menopausal women that would love to share a sheep. So
thank you, thank you, super fun. I am fifty seven
years old and living with metastatic stage for cancer for
twelve years now. I guess you know. It was my
(41:35):
new thing to be able to write the book and
recrease my tenure at that time, battle with cancer during
the pandemic at a teacher and being married to a coach.
My husband and I were out of school for a while,
so we would drop around. And here's red truck hashtag
(41:57):
red Truck chronicles and eight pictures of the beautiful things
we spotted in Niger. When I turned sixty, I decided
every year I would take up a new hobby, or
learn a new skill, or try something that I had
been afraid to do. So one year I learned how
to play poker, one year I took up pilates, I
(42:20):
starting to play golf, and this year I am going
to try force back riding. So I think it's great
that you want to encourage people to try new skills,
but I'm not ready for claiming thanks. I can't imagine
(42:44):
what my sweater would look like if I even tried
to shear die and make a sweater. Oh my god,
I don't even think my husband could fake liking it.
Thank you for listening to go ask Gali. Peggy's new book,
Unraveling What I Learned about Life while sharing Sheep, Dying Wool,
and Making the World Ugliest Sweater is out now and
you can find her on Instagram at p j Orenstein.
(43:06):
And for more info on what you've heard in this episode.
Check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate
and review. Go ask Alli and follow me on social
media on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and listen
if you'd like to ask me a question or suggested
guest or a topic to dig into. I would love
to hear from you, and there is a bunch of
ways you can do it. You can call or text
me at three to three four six five six, or
(43:29):
you can email a voice memo right from your phone
to Go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. And
if you leave a question, you just might hear it.
I'll go ask Alli. Go ask Alli is a production
of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I heart Radio.
(43:50):
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.