"Living the simple cottage life"

If you have a lot of money, living on a farm isn't that bad. 

Cottagecore, and rich people cosplaying as homesteader. 

-o-
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome back to Death by Doctrine. I'm MJ.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

I'm Holly.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

And we're starting with a seemingly innocuous little idea. Cottage core. I should say cottage core is one of the forms that this ideology manifests as. There have been several different terms associated with this concept. But another name for this ideology is homesteading, which I think was also a popular term. How do we land on this topic? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah, you wanted to personally attack me and everything that I stand for. Just kidding. I have worked with MJ before doing our public health as retrograde series. So I mentioned this a lot in those episodes, but I'm a big-time hobby baker. I wouldn't say I'm a gardener, but I like some houseplants.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Really a lot of my lifestyle aligns with the Instagram version of Cottage Core. Right. And we landed on this idea because to me, this is a great entry-level idea to a death by doctrine topic. Because for a lot of people, I would say probably for most people who enjoyed Cottage Core during the pandemic when we were all inside, it's not dangerous, right? Yeah. But there's something underneath it that points to a larger ideology that I think is really worth uncovering.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Because in a lot of ways, it points to reasons why we don't really do homesteading anymore as a society.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Let's get started. Holly, tell us what cottage core is.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yes. So as you mentioned, cottage core is something I think a lot of us think of as like very 2020. I'll get into how that manifested. In a bigger way, it's also very timeless. The core tenets of cottage core have been threaded throughout our society for literal hundreds of years. So basically, for as long as we have people, at least in Western civilizations, I didn't dig as deep into around the world, but I'm sure this exists everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

As long as you have people like starting to live in cities and urbanization happening, you'll also have people going, I don't know if this is all it's cracked up to be.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

I feel like this is one of the manifestation of like the good old days trend that pops up literally every decade. Every generation thinks of a good old days, no matter how far back you go. So I imagine this is something similar.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yes. And I got a lot of the basis for my research. And like when MJ was like, we should dig into the history and philosophy. I did go really hammed and then try to pair myself back. But I got a lot of my idea here from writer Angelica Frey's J-Store article, Cottage Cord, debuted 2300 years ago. And she points to a huge origin of this idea in our popular culture and memory as being as far back as ancient Greece.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Wow, that's very back.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

That's very back.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Are you talking about Homer?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

We're gonna talk about Virgil a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

That's still very back.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Back in ancient Greek times, well off urban people in the lost city of Alexandria. So that's how far back we are. The whole city has literally disappeared into the ashes. These people had collective fantasies about life in isolated Arcadia. Arcadia is a plateau in the south of Greece. It is, due to its geography, super pastoral. It didn't have as much interaction in these early times with other societies. And so it's the perfect place to like projectile your fantasies about cottage living. This is tied to the poems of Theocritus.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Sounds about right.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah. I uh forgot to look up the pronunciation of the Greek names before I started talking. Yeah, we'll roll with him. Theocritus was a writer who would depict idyllic lives of shepherds. So he would write Arcadia as this fantasy where all these working class, simple shepherds were well educated. They love frolicking in the sun, they were peaceful and they were happy. Life was simple. Way simpler than in Alexandria, where you would have, you know, plague and political intrigue and all these other complications of city living.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

I already have questions because I don't know a lot about shepherding, but I'm pretty sure they weren't frolicking. It's their job to shepherd. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

It's so funny because our modern idea of shepherding is absolutely influenced like this. Like that is the first thing I picture. It's like a sunny field with a guy laying down in it in a bunch of sheet.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's not what shepherds are.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, I just watched this is gonna be a bad example due to the what happens in this movie. But I just watched Brokeback Mountain for the first time a few weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

That is a terrible example.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

It is, and it's like, okay, I also don't think shepherds were like finding love necessarily. Right. But when they do show the work, it's extremely brutal. Like not easy. They are working, they're out all day, they're dirty, they're exhausted, they're still hot.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So I guess the whole point of that movie is that that sort of labor served as the backdrop for the romance. That's why the romance worked. If you want to get like media analysis about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

But they're not out there writing love poems on sunny days. They're like, they're struggling. So I think that's a more accurate depiction of hurting. Definitely. Um you could tell I'm out of touch by the way that I had to grasp for an example. But back to Greece.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Ancient Greece.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

So this tradition carried through Ancient Greece, and then the Roman Empire, and then the medieval European period and the Renaissance. So all throughout this time, you have writers like Virgil and Petrarch and Shakespeare in the Lisbethan era, all writing master works that depict court life versus country life, pastoral influences, kind of helping people create this image in their minds.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

This is still hilarious because they're not that advanced. It's not like we have internet now, so there's a huge gap between rural living and urban living. Like, what are they comparing back then?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

What are you comparing?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I need to read more Shakespeare to understand what he was getting at.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

The difference is people. I guess there's less people out there.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yes. People, it's a grass is greener situation, right? It's like I live in London. We have problems here. Would I have problems if I lived in rural England? It's like, yes, actually, you would have quite a lot.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Okay, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

For me, this all really comes to a head with Marie Antoinette, much later in the pre-revolutionary French era. Uh, Marie Antoinette was like today's cottage core influencer on steroids. Smack dab in the middle of her life as the Queen of France in the 1780s. She helped pioneer cottage core as all the rage in French high society. It's quite literally how we think of cottage corps today. Like she popularized wearing simple linen dresses and like broomed hats. That stuff was selling like hotcakes just a few years ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Right, in our time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

And furthermore, she was so extra. She had an entire rustic village built. Like she made a fully operational farm that was really just a place for her to hang out with her entourage. So they would go and they'd pretend to be like farmers and shepherds, and then they enjoy the simple life, but it's all just like this little pageantry that they put together.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yeah, this is cosplay.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Peak cosplay cottage core. It's honestly exactly what we see on Instagram today.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Okay. All right. So the pioneer was none other than Maria Antoinette, Queen of France. Famously did not survive the revolution.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

So uh maybe that's an omen for us, but continue.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

She would have been a great influencer. It's too bad she had to be a queen.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

If she had internet.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

And across all these periods, there are a few common threads that we can pick up today. The main things are that cottage core is aspirational. As I mentioned, it's away from all political conspiracy, it's away from like the noise and messiness of urban society and all of these like new industries and job opportunities that are popping up. Instead, it's simple. People live simple lives, and there's the supposed virtue of their work just because it's traditional. And I think we still see that today. People assign more meaning to the idea of homesteading work because it's close to the land or close to how we feel we were meant to live.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Whatever that means. There's always like the good old days, and you project your fantasy wherever is convenient. So that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah. Another commonality is that urban people are portrayed as critical and judgmental. The urban elites, right? We still have that today.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

I guess that's not exactly wrong.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

We are ashamed of, you know, our supposed elitism, and sure. We see the country folk as the ones who are truly leading happy lives, and the degree to which that's true can vary greatly.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

So why does this give noble savage vibes?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

It does. It's patronizing. I think that's a huge part of my criticism of it and its historical thread is like it's patronizing to for these higher class people, because these stories were popular amongst more educated high-class people who had time to read.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Back then, not everyone knew how to read.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, and knew how to read. So they're projecting all this stuff, their own insecurities about their life, onto people who objectively had it much harder. We'll come back to that thought then. Okay. Um, but that's a criticism I think is very deep.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, of course. Who coined noble savage? In case people don't know what that term is, how would you describe noble savage?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

I hear it most often in the context of like American Indian narratives in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, colonialization.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

It's like the model minority or flip side of what we typically perceive as racism. It's not outright hatred, but what it is, is it's minimizing somebody to a stereotype. So a lot of people, we've fallen into the trap of seeing American Indians as noble savages. There's something wild about them and their lifestyle that's alien to us, but they have a magical connection to the land. And it's like, no, they're people who formed societies and that it's closely related to the land they lived on, but like anybody else, it's a human society. So no, there's no magic innate in an American Indian person's blood, and that is a racist mindset to have toward any other person.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

At the end of the day, it's racism because when they say that, they're not coming from a place of respect. They're coming from a place of like, oh, what's that word when you like gawk at something for an orientalism sort of?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

It's like um, I don't think fetishization is quite the right word for this, but it it's similar to that. It's like holding something apart. Yes. Even if you're like acting like it's admirable, it's still othering what you're seeing, which is dehumanizing.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

So cottage core is like that, but about urban versus rural, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Yes. And the last commonality is that throughout pastoral cultural stories, it's incredibly popular for people to cosplay as country. It's escapism for the higher class, and for whatever reason, both innocent and more complex, it's kind of a longing for this invitation. Maybe there's a community you're hoping to find, or a more peaceful life, or something that feels more straightforward than the work you're doing now. And those aren't always like bad impulses, but for all their complications, they're present in all of these stories in and how we view homesteading and living with nature today.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

And you can see it in cases where in popular media a bunch of rich people will say, Oh, I want to go to the Hamptons, or I want to go to the Martha Vineyards. There's that idea of treating rurality as vacation. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I know what you mean. And it's not even necessarily bad. Like it makes sense that a city is harder to be in when it's really hot.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, you want to go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

But it it's a long-running thing, right? Like, there's a lot of societies where like people have country homes and country vacation homes, country palaces for the royals. It's really popular.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Very tied with class.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

So, for all this, the long-running historical trend does start to go a bit more out of vogue in the I want to say 1800s, but huge asterisk because the Industrial Revolution does bring a lot of this back for obvious reasons, right? You're working in factories, sure. Work is changing dramatically, and you're like, again, this longing for the opposite of modernity can definitely happen. But you start to have prominent writers like Thomas Hardy create popular works that criticize the simplified narrative of pastoralism. And then much later, you have events like World War One, where suddenly the Adillate countryside is carved with horrifying and bloody trenches. And so it's hard to see romantization in the country with all of these like new mental images from more critical writers and from war. So you start to see it a little bit on the back foot.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

That definitely makes sense. I forgot Thomas Hardy was a writer because all I can think of is Tom Hardy, the actor for Venom. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, you know, Tom Hardy's grandpa. Yeah. So that brings us back to modern day. With all that historical context, it's not surprising that Cottage Core surged hard in 2020 and 2021.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

During times of trouble, uh, these sort of ideas tend to make a comeback.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

A side note, while I was writing this, it was so funny to me that Cottage Core is kind of already on the out. This was a centuries-long trend, and then it like went back up in 2020, but it was gone by 2024. Things move so much faster now.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

The internet definitely accelerates a lot of trends, whereas prior to the internet, this resurgence might have lasted for, I don't know, five to ten years. Uh, it was over within six months, I want to say, depending on how you measure it.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

In 2020, cottage core is in our lives in so many ways. People are trying and failing to make sourdough starters.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Harder than it looks.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Do you remember the yeast shortage of 2020? Yes. It rocked my world.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

People actually were freaking out. I get it. Like you want to bake bread, but surely there's other things where you do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

My sister ended up buying like a pound of sale yeast.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Because she couldn't get it anywhere else, probably.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Which my mom had in the house forever. But we all wanted to bake bread, like we craved it. And at this time, I don't know if you'll be as plugged into this, MJ, but at this time, literal like frocks were going viral on TikTok. Like, you remember the strawberry dress?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

I'm not the target audience. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

All right. Well, brands like Hill House Home, which sold frocks, were charging high prices for knee-length linen dresses. And in their pictures, especially the time, models were, you know, on little countryside picnics in their little frocks. Influencers are making cinnamon rolls in the most beautiful sun-soaked kitchens, and they cut them with like twine. It's so low-tech.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Use a knife.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

This is content that was fed to me. Yeah. You know, it's kind of the world we all wished we lived in if we weren't going to leave the house anyway.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Honestly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

I was living in a tiny, tiny apartment and was very COVID cautious. So I was just wistfully looking at Instagram like everybody else. And that's all pretty innocent. I myself didn't buy a frock and I bake with like a stand mixer and stuff. Like I'm not ditching my appliances. But peak COVID cottage core stuff was really calming to me. Animal Crossing was a huge part of my life at the time. And that is a very cottage court-coded. Oh, 100%. That's not new of Animal Crossing, but it could not have chosen a better time to launch. And the game was based on the accurate belief that people longed to live in a little cottage with animal neighbors and plant flowers, and we all fell into it.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

The other game that got really huge was Stardew Valley, which is essentially Animal Crossing, but on PC. Do you know that game or no?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

I do know Stardew Valley.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, of course you do.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Yeah, who are you talking to?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, exactly. Okay, yeah, so all of that makes logical sense. You're stuck at home, and 2020 was a very terrible year for a lot of people. So it doesn't surprise me that people wanted to find a place that they could sort of escape from. And cottage core was resurged.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

And I think I don't have to work hard to point out that cottage core is overwhelmingly a feminine phenomenon. Yeah. But it's also not necessarily like a heteronormative or a conservative phenomenon. A lot of writers I read for this episode discuss the prevalence of cottage core in LGBTQ spaces, more left-wing feminist spaces. And there's a lot of things going on here. Like we're connecting it not only to calm and nature, but to the perceived anti-capitalism of it all. In a time where essential and non-essential labor was constantly under discussion.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Yeah, what a mess.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And we were living with politicians who were willing to sacrifice lives for profit, escapism was appealing for a lot of reasons. If you're like a young lesbian woman and right-wing culture warriors are trying to take away your rights, you don't have to be accepted if you run away to a cottage. Sure. And if work feels really stressful and unstable, it's tempting to be like, what if I paired back what I actually needed to live on?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah, and the other explanation that I saw for this for the more left-wing/slash exclusive version of cottage core was that uh there's a sense of independence, and you can take independence as a right-wing person, like I'm independent from the government, right? Which is what we'll get into. But you can also take independence from like a left-wing perspective of I'm independent of, for example, a man. I'm independent of capitalism, I'm independent of this rat race. This was definitely co-opted by the entire span of the political spectrum.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

There's something appealing to almost all of us in this because it's a reaction to modernity and everything complicated that comes with it.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Life kind of sucked in 2020, so it made sense.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah. There's always something that we want to escape from, and I don't blame anybody.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Not at all.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

And I forgive myself.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

I said, wait, you snug that last line. That last line was not on the script.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

No, the episode is about me coming to terms with how much I played Animal Crossing.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

No one's blaming you for that. Continue.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

But with all that being said, with all the generosity that I absolutely give Cottage Core as a trend, it doesn't mean that it's all literal roses. Because as Cottage Core evolved and perhaps has always been seated in it as a philosophy or a doctrine, there's something underpinning it that you can't deny. And that's that cottage core is softening what is in reality a very hard life.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Cottage core is predicated on living in quote unquote a cottage. And cottages are not in cities, right? By definition. Cottages are somewhere rural, most likely.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Right. When you're envisioning your homestead cottage core, you don't really have neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

It's like a single cabin or a cottage. What is the difference between a cottage and a cabin? Actually, that's not getting into this aesthetics. You're imagining like a solo single room cabin, uh sitting in a field.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Cottages are for women, cabins are for men.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Oh, actually, that makes a lot of sense. There are two genders cottages and cabins. Please continue. This is about softening of what is a very difficult life. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah. So here's the dark side of this doctrine and why we're digging into it with this episode is that the problem with cottage core is that its inherent contradiction is that it's entirely performative.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

100%.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

And to be fair, I think most people know that on some level.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

I would hazard that most people who are got really into sourdough at this time don't think that they can or should model their whole life on substance farming. It's a hobby. And we all are aware of that. When I look at an Instagram reel of the sun-soaked kitchen where you make cinnamon rolls, I don't think that that's necessarily the lifestyle that I should be living. It's a beautiful image that makes me feel nice.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

And this is where I think it's a good time to parse out the difference between cottage core the aesthetics and cottage core the idea. Cottage core the aesthetic is fine. Who am I to tell you how to decorate the inside of your house? Who am I to tell you what sort of frocks to get? And who am I to tell you that you can't bake sourdough as a hobby outside of your day job, right? If you want to do those things, knock yourselves out. Everyone needs a hobby, and if that's your hobby, go for it. But that's sort of not what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about cottage core, the idea, and that's much more rooted in something perhaps not so pleasant.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, because all the narratives about cottage core are about leisure. Yes. It's not about what actually does it take to raise chickens in your yard. You know, if you need to feed your family multiple meals a day, how long can you really spend on the sourdough loaf? It's an aspiration. And the problem is that that aspiration is not based on the reality of what it's ever been like to live on a homestead. Cottage core has never been true. Historically, it's all cosplay, as you said. Yes. It's all about the theater.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Marie Antoinette.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yes, it's Marie Antoinette pretending that she's a shepherdess. It's pretending that shepherds at times you read poetry, just like the high-educated people who enjoy idyllic poems. It's pretending that the simple farmer finds work more meaningful simply because it's harder. Female pioneers in the American West were just vibing with their toddlers out in the cornfield. Like, no, these are not the realities of what any of these people's lives were like.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Not even close. And anyone who's ever lived in a rural setting, I personally know a lot of classmates and friends who came from a relatively rural background, and their lives are not this. Their lives are like, oh yeah, that one time, like the water froze and our pipes burst, and we didn't have running water for like two weeks. Those are the stories that they're telling, not, oh my god, we baked sourdough and it was great. All of that is fictional. It did not exist and probably never will exist.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I think the important part of it as a dangerous ideology is all about ignoring the inherent risks, the risk to stability, the risks to health. But before I jumped over to your segment, MJ, I wanted to find like a really stellar example of where this ideology is going really wrong or where it's being sold to us as something that isn't real.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Is it Instagram?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

It is Instagram. I couldn't let it go. Of course it is. You know, I'm drawn to my vices.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

But vices being Instagram reels.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yep. In Everything is Public Health, we did a public health and retrograde series. And I once brought up the homesteading influencer Ballard. Ballerina Farm. Do you remember that at all?

SPEAKER_00 22:02

I do, and I hope that woman is not there anymore. Because that was sort of the conclusion we landed on.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

That's a little bit of a lofty goal, MJ. She's obviously still there.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

No, uh, get out, woman.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Listener, if you want some background on Ballerina Farm, um, I highly recommend our raw milk episode over Everything Is Public Health. And the thing that I'm going to like speed past with this is that there's a lot going on with the wife and mother of this homesteading family. Their farm is called Ballerina Farm. I'm going to brush past a lot of the stuff because if you're familiar with this influence at all, yeah, you already know. It's wrapped up in a lot. But I'm going to focus on something really specific, and that is the business of homesteading.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

So Ballerina Farm is owned by a family called the Neeleys, and that this family is comprised of Daniel, Hannah, and their eight children.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Oh, I forgot about this. Yes, they have a lot of children.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Yes, so many children. And they own a 328-acre farm in Utah.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Huge.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Which they bought in 2018. And they live a total cottage court lifestyle. If you look at their social media, Hannah is their prime like social media person.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Yeah, she runs the channel.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

She posts videos baking bread from scratch in a linen frock. She posts videos making galettes with hand-picked summer strawberries and stocking their idyllic little farm store. And it's all extremely aesthetic. She looks like she just wakes up in white nightgowns and starts baking bread from scratch every morning. And you don't actually, you would be like, wouldn't it be so chaotic to do that with eight children? You don't even get a sense of that. It looks so peaceful.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

You've seen the videos. Are the children's ever in the shock?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yes. They do feature the children. Okay. And they will ascribe a lot of this to like doing it for the children. Like they want their children to have this lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Oh, that's arguably worse.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah. As I said, there are a lot of narratives at play here. I can't get into it.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

But as some background, they are Mormon. She does live a tread wife lifestyle. But again, we're not touching on that right now. We're touching on the business.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah, future episode.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

So how did the business get started? I am going to read a quote from Hannah on how their homestead came to be. She says, quote, Daniel and I left the city 4.5 years ago. With the ink still dry on the real estate contract we signed for our new little farm, parentheses 328-acre farm.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, not little.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

We drove to the nearest farm goods store to buy muck boots, overalls, gloves, and straw hats. We had zero experience, zero background in farming. Didn't own a shovel or a single animal. Unquote.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Uh, okay. I have a lot to comment on. The first thing you already brought up, like their little farm is quite large. More than 300 acres, so it's not a little farm. Also, I would bet a significant chunk of my whatever fortune, little fortune that I have, that if you have zero background in farming and you tried farming, you would starve within a few months. Right. Farming is not easy.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Your first response might be worry.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Because it's like, are they okay? How are they feeding eight children? Like, are they struggling?

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Farming's a skill.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

And the answer is no. They're not struggling. The answer is no. Because buying a 328-acre piece of land is not achievable for your average family.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

You don't say.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

So there's something else going on here, right? Yeah. And I found a really great breakdown of this in N Helen Peterson's Substack article about Ballerino Farm, which I will point to people to if they're interested.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Highly recommend.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Where she and writer Meg Conley dig into the actual financial reality of an operation like this. So here's the thing Daniel Neely's dad is the founder of Jet Blue.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

There it is.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah. His dad is a multimillionaire. Granted, we don't know the son's net worth, but we do know that his job before being a farmer was being the CEO of a security company that his dad owned.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

So C-suite exact.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

You know, it's all in the family. And then explains how they got the land. They had wealth coming in. They had no farming experience, but they could buy the land. And that's fine. Honestly, I'd rather millionaires bought like huge tracts of rural land than local news stations.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

So yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

And the last time the land was listed before they bought it, it was valued at a couple of million dollars. So it's a significant expense. And in the article I'm referencing, Meg Conley does some mental math. She's familiar with agriculture and farm operations. So Ballerina Farm started as a direct-to-consumer livestock farm, meaning they raised cows and pigs and other animals, they packaged the meat and they sold it direct to consumers. Conley estimates that if their acreage supports about 100 or 150 grazing cattle, and if they sold 100 cattle a year, they would make, with all of the expenses out, like the cost of food, tending to the pasture, vet costs, machinery, processing the meat, like so much that goes into it, they would make about 35k to 60k a year. And she says the 60K figure is like extremely generous. It would have to be a very efficient farm to get that.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

There's a reason why most farms are not direct to consumers, because most farms do not want to take on the processing and packaging side of things because that's like a huge operation. That's a huge expense. Most farms just want to, you know, sell cows. Here's a cow, give me some money. Like I don't want to deal with the processing of the cows. There's a reason why this model is not that popular.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yeah. The model tips off people who know anything about agricultural operations because it's not common for a farm of this size. And it kind of points to what the actual business is. Yeah. But back to my point, with all of this maintenance that would go into it, the profit simply can't exist unless the homestead is making income in some other way.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, I wonder.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

And I think this quote from Conley really sums it up. Uh, she says, another interesting tidbit. It is much, much easier to order merchandise from Ballerina Farm's website than it is to order meat. There's a lot of merchandise, unquote.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Just like how Disneyland makes it most of their money is in their gift shops, right? This is a similar concept.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah. And as I alluded to, it's totally fine if the heir to JetBlue wants to like own a farm and raise some cattle. But the point is, Ballerina Farm is the perfect criticism of the lifestyle they project because their lifestyle is financially impossible. They do not raise kids on their life as farmers. They do farm, like they are raising cattle, they are selling meat, they're doing like various other things, growing fruits, growing vegetables. And Hannah does spend hours baking, but that's because the stuff that they're growing and raising isn't the product. Their performance is the product. And much like everything else, cottage core, that's all fine and good, but we should be honest about the realities of the stories that we're selling and the stories that we're buying.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

You need to recognize that they are essentially making a TV show and you are watching a TV show. Like don't get tricked into thinking that you can do what they say that they're doing. That's the same thing as watching Grey's Anatomy and thinking that, yeah, I could go to med school. It's a similar thing. It's a production.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

And there are people who are trying to do the kind of farm operations that the Neallians do as their life and they're struggling. It is hard, it's physically hard, and it's hard to profit. So it would be hard to raise eight children if that's in fact what you had to raise them on.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Eight children. I keep forgetting about that part.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

And they homeschool.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

So well, that part is understandable.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Online homesteaders tell you a story that goes back centuries. This life is simple. This life is pure. We've escaped the corruption of the city and found the wonder of nature. But the people really in that situation are dealing with a completely separate reality. And MJ, I think you have an idea of what that might be.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

This is the second part of the Death by Doctrine podcast. We're going to discuss the actual implication of this ideology. And we're going to remove all the discourse about the politics and the philosophy. Because frankly, there are countless podcasts, videos, and articles endlessly pontificating about this already. We're going to focus very strictly on the health and public health aspect because I think everyone can get behind the idea that people shouldn't die, that health is a very important thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Increasingly debatable, but I think still a winning message.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Increasingly debatable, right? But I'm hoping as a whole, we can agree that people should be healthy and live relatively long lives. So we're going to focus specifically on that and that alone. On average, believing in this ideology, cottage core, will shorten your lifespan or make your quality of life worse. And we're going to look at some of the examples and mechanisms of that. You brought this up already, Holly. This is an ideal image that is completely fictional and it does not exist. And a very easy way to demonstrate this, kind of like how you did with Ballerina Farm, is by asking the question, what land do you plan to live off of?

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Step one really stops you in their tracks, huh?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, exactly. Because you can't just wander into the field and the forest and start living there for both ethical and legal reasons. Someone would call that squatting. In other words, you would either need to inherit land, which is possible, or you would need to buy land. But the thing is, if you can inherit land or buy land, that means you have a decent amount of wealth. And wealth is a major variable in health. If you have money, a lot of problems go away. So, like Ballerina Farm, this setup does not exist for most people. Most people don't have the money to buy like a 300-plus acre farm or whatever amount of land that you would need to actually survive off of. Keep that in mind, right? Ask the question what land do you plan to live off of?

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah, this isn't manifest destiny anymore. Like we no longer have large tracts of land that the government will give you slash steal from local Native American tribes if you can just Yeah, steal, I think is the key word. Survive the trip to get over there. And I think that ethos really stays with us as a culture, but like it's not how things work anymore. You cannot get land in that way. So I think most people, if they are interested in pursuing homesteading, will hit a hard stop, right? At step one on what land.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Point is if you have a lot of money to say buy land, of course, cottage core is viable to you. You can live that idyllic lifestyle because your money solves all the problems for you. So to say that cottage core lifestyle is viable is very misleading because most Americans do not have that type of money to live that way. We're gonna ignore the billionaires for this conversation because they are the minority and they are the only minority that I don't care for. And I'm gonna analyze the health impact of cottage core ideology as it applies to the typical person. Although many of these still apply even for people with a decent amount of money.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Money can solve a lot of problems, but not all problems.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Yeah. Let's talk about the actual ideals of cottage core or homesteading ideology. Like, what do you need to believe in if this is something that you really want to do? You probably live in a rural area, or at least in areas detached from major city centers or suburbs. Kind of by definition.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Your neighbor has to be kind of far away. Like maybe you can see another house in the distance.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, with a binocular, maybe that kind of ruins your vibe.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

So yeah, they have to be a certain distance away.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah. Another thing is you kind of have to live in close proximity with nature. And nature is just a euphemism for wilderness. Same concept, but one of them is more realistic than the other. And wilderness means animals, wilderness means insects, wilderness means plants that make your skin itchy, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Wilderness means swarms of locusts that may or may not choose to descend upon you.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Yeah. Wilderness means a lot of things, but it's certainly the reality of like living near that space. Like you have to deal with these things. Would you say cottage core is about making things from scratch?

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Absolutely. Yes. I think that is one of the most core tenants to the cottage core core. You're not hopping to the grocery store and getting a lot of your stuff pre-packaged. Like if you need a jam filling for your cake.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

You gotta make the jam.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

You're making the jam. It's part of the Instagram video.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

You gotta make foods from scratch or as much from scratch as possible. And you're farming, you're gardening, and you're doing some form of food production as well because you're living off the land. You're not going to the grocery to buy food. You have to make the food somehow. What is it? Canning is a very popular cottage core aesthetic, uh, jarring.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Food preservation is huge. Collecting eggs from your chickens.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Yeah, raising chicken, collecting eggs from that. You're doing some form of food production because the food is not being purchased. You are making the food. And lastly, I think this is something that a lot of people overlook. You don't have a career outside of the home.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah. If you're actually interested in making all of your own food or like selling food, you probably don't have time for another job. And also at this point in time, having a remote job is increasingly rare privilege. So, yes, I think to be a true homesteader, you do not have a career. This is your lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

If this is what you believe in. Again, cottage core the aesthetic, go wild. Make your sourdough on weekends. Who cares, right? Live your life. But we're talking about cottage core and homesteading the ideology.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah, I like how we're gatekeeping cottage core. We're like, if it's just a hobby to you, get out. We're not talking about you.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

No, we're not saying get out. We're saying if you have to do this, do this as a hobby. That's true. And we have this thing in America where your health insurance is tied to your employment. And if you don't have a job, like a full-time job, you probably are not insured. And you probably need to purchase individual insurance, which is likely much more expensive than employer-based health insurance.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

The ACA marketplace, I don't think, is extremely hot in a place like Utah where there's lots of rural land available.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

So all the red states.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

That is another complication here, too. Is can you find homesteading land in a blue state? Probably. That might at least help you get a better ACA subsidy.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

These are all the things that you believe in. If you want to really buy into the cottage core ideology, so how does that impact your health? How does that shorten your lifespan? If you believe in cottage core, you are constantly working all the time. There is ironically no time for you to rest if you subscribe to the cottage core philosophy because this type of work is manual labor. The chickens are not going to feed themselves, the fields are not going to plow themselves. Is that what you do to a field? You plow a field? Yeah, I think so. You can tell that I'm not a farmer.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Way to sound in touch with the people, MJ.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

I'm not a farmer. There is no rest. The concept that you get to lay around while your sheep sort of bounce around you. We mentioned Brokeback Mountain already. That doesn't exist, right? It's hard labor, it's hard work. And there's actually very little time for resting. Survey data suggests that people who work in manual labor occupations have faster health deterioration with age than people who don't work in manual labor occupations, which makes sense. And this is an important concept that I want to mention. Exercise and physical activity are not the same as manual labor.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Like for an example, I was doing weight training a couple weeks ago and I was working on my shoulders, and I like tweaked a neck muscle. So I took a break from working that specific muscle. I waited for it to recover, chose other forms of exercise. If I tweaked a muscle from doing the daily labor that I had to do to survive and feed my family, then you're not going to get to take a break. It's the wear and tear of doing these repetitive actions and the necessity of doing them without taking breaks.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

As someone who has needed dough before, my delicate wrist was immediately sore after needing a bunch of dough. I can't imagine needing dough all the time. I think I would get carpal donald very quickly. But that's also me. I have a weak wrist.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yeah, I think professional bakers, I can't even imagine how much effort they put in. It's very physical.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Especially a cottage core baker. I don't know whether they can use stand mixer. What do you think? Is that allowed as a cottage core baker?

SPEAKER_01 37:36

If your goal is to like be viral on TikTok, no, because that's not pretty. It's not cute. You can't put it in front of the sun-dappled window. That's the whole point. So a lot of cottage core baking is like a lot more manual than I would personally do things.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Another thing that's related to your health if you buy into this doctrine is there is a well-documented urban and rural health disparity. People living in rural areas are more likely to have diabetes. They're more likely to have obesity, isolation, cancer, heart disease. They're likely to have lower life expectancy, lower birth rate if you are born in this rural areas. They're also more likely to have premature mortality, food insecurity, death due to injury, and a bunch of other health issues.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

You sound like the warnings of a pharma TV ad right now.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

Well, in a way I am.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

You're like, do not attempt the homesteading lifestyle. You may experience.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yeah, here's all the side effects of homesteading and cottage core lifestyle. But you know what? I could hear some of you objecting, right? Some of you might say, no, no, no. The reason why those health disparities are associated with those rural areas is because those are people living in poverty. Not me, who is a responsible cottage core person, like I have money to buy a small piece of land. That's not gonna be me. Fine, let's say you're right. You're not, but let's say you're right. There's also a well-documented urban and rural healthcare resource disparity. People living in rural areas often have fewer hospitals if they have any hospitals at all. There's a lot of articles coming out that says rural hospitals are shutting down because they're not profitable. And in a capitalistic society, if a hospital is not profitable, why bother keeping it open?

SPEAKER_01 39:12

And we're gonna cut Medicaid, so we're gonna just bleed hospitals even more. That'll be great.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

There's also fewer dentists and dental care, which is very important to your health. On one hand, if you have like a tooth abscess, that's like a health issue. But also if you have bad teeth, you probably can't really eat that well. And I think this is something that a lot of people don't think about, like how important our teeth is to our health.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

You can't even bite into your crusty sourdough.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yes, sourdough, notoriously hard to bite into. There are also fewer primary care and screening, if any at all. There's also fewer mental health resources, if any at all. There are higher rates of uninsured, as we mentioned before, lower rates of vaccination, which is also bad because vaccines are good, contrary to what RFK Jr. thinks to protect us from diseases. Uh low rates of vaccination, higher rates of isolation, and this sort of ties into the cancer and the chronic diseases. A lot of times how you deal with those is by catching those issues early. But if you don't have any primary care resources and don't have any screenings, if you have signs of cancer and you live isolated in a cottage, you're probably gonna ignore it until you can't ignore it anymore. And at that point, perhaps it's too late for any actual effective interventions. Holly, have you seen a country road before?

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Yes, I have. Grew up on country roads.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Oh, you did? What do they look like?

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Scary.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Scary, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Well, like maybe not as country as Utah, but nothing stopping you. Actually, I grew up across from an onion farm. So the road that goes over the onion farm, there's like a ditch.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Cottage core is in your blood.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Well, that's a real onion farm. Like, they're not cosplaying, okay? They're out there in the muck.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Right, right, right, right. It's a real farm.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

But there's nothing stopping you from just like getting in a car accident and rolling into the onion farm. Like, it's just the road and the land. None of this fancy safety technology we have.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

No railings. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

These areas are not, you know, pioneering road safety.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

So poor road infrastructure means that you're more likely to suffer accidents in rural areas. There's also worse electrical infrastructure. You might have spotty electricity. And this is something that I don't know if you thought about by you. I don't mean you, Holly, but this imaginary cottage core seeking person. Where are you gonna get your water?

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Are you connected to I almost wanted to answer the question? I don't know what it is. My brain blanked out, and I was like, from the city of Baltimore. Yes, but that is a good point. Yeah. On top of everything else you have to manage, you're doing what? Well water? Where's your water coming from? How is waste being managed? Are those systems operable right now? Like everyone who owns a home has to worry about that, but it's extra intense if you own a home instead.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Speaking about waste, how are you dealing with your waste? Are you just burying it somewhere? Because that could potentially lead to contamination, right? Is there wastewater treatment in your area? Do you have a septic tank? When wastewater isn't treated right, it seeps back into the groundwater, and that's also where the water comes from. And I want to be very clear, these are real issues, and we should try to fix them.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

You're not like pro all of this. No. We would like to fix this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Yes. I'm not saying these are immutable facts of living in a rural area. These are current issues. And there are many researchers, advocates, social workers, government employees working hard to improve the conditions of rural areas. They have made huge stride in the last two decades. However, it would appear that this regime is not keen on fixing anything anymore. So we might see a lot of that progress halted.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

They're not interested even in throwing a bone to core constituencies. Your infrastructure is degrading andor disappearing no matter where you live or whether where you live is largely in support of the administration. So that is depressing. It is getting worse for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Another thing, if you live in nature, it's beautiful, sure, but it's not innocuous. Nature means contact with animals, insects, and therefore potentials for injuries and disease. Uh, you've seen the video of the back of the woman is facing you, and she's wearing like this white linen dress and she's like sprinting barefoot into a field.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Oh yeah, I can even hear the song.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Yeah, very sound of music.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

It's a romantic image.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

But you know, ticks are in the field. Frolicking through the field means that you may get bitten by a tick and contract one of the many tick-borne diseases. And the data on this hasn't been fully explored yet, but ticks tend to prefer environments and conditions that are more commonly found outside of urban centers. Not to say cities don't have tick issues, but animal-transmitted diseases and insect-transmitted diseases, rabies is another one, are more common in rural areas. Last thing, we have to talk about the food because food is an integral part of the cottage core belief.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Yeah, it's so important. I can't believe you're about to come after the food. It's like the main reason you would do it at all.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah, it's all the cinnamon rolls on the sun soaked countertops. The health benefits of making food from scratch is grossly over exaggerated. What we eat is far more influential than how the food is made. If you buy a cookie from a store versus if you make a Cookie, it's still cookie. There's still sugar. There's still butter. The amount of cookie that you eat, perhaps, is probably more influential than where you get it from. A lot of people will think, well, when I started making food at home, I started losing weight. I started becoming healthier. Uh, why do you think that is, Holly?

SPEAKER_01 44:14

I think if you actually do all of this stuff from scratch, one, it takes so much longer.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

So much time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

I kind of found that with myself when I bake frequently, is that I have a big sweet tooth traditionally, but I actually eat less baked goods now that I make more. And I think it's because you put in so much time to make everything. Like it almost undoes my craving because now I'm like, well, the only good way to make a chocolate chip cookie is for it to chill for 48 hours to develop flavor. And it's not really conducive to like me chowing down on chocolate chip cookies whenever I want.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

So yeah, the time I would say is probably a huge factor.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

When you make food at home, you tend to make less food. And when you tend to make less food, you tend to eat less. And making food from scratch is very hard. So you over time will opt for simpler recipes. So that's sort of the main reason why making food from scratch tends to push people on the healthier side, is because it's just very hard to make food from scratch compared to if all you need to do to acquire food is just tapping your credit card. You're gonna eat more. You're gonna eat more food that perhaps you might not have eaten if you had to make it from scratch. So yeah, this whole obsession with ultra-processed food, I think, is mainly fear-mongering.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Yeah, are my chocolate chip cookies not very processed? Because I put a lot of work into them, I gotta tell you.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Actual health implications of these quote unquote ultra-processed food is way outweighed by just how much food are you eating, or what type of food are you eating. Also, we should bring this up if you need to grow your own food, if the weather is bad, or for whatever reason the locust descends on your food or whatever, you have a bad harvest, you don't have food to eat anymore, you know?

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah, I think the variety that like the average American is used to, if you source your food from the grocery store, would really you'd really feel it if you decided to become a homesteader from that environment because very seasonal, which a lot of people enjoy, but not just in like the nice ways where the best vegetables were in the summer or whatever. Very seasonal. Like the reason you're preserving food is because you have to if you want like these vegetables in the winter, and that can be really limiting.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

So, food insecurity probably is gonna happen if you actually try to do this cottage quarter homesteading thing. And food insecurity is a real risk. We know about the correlation between food insecurity and health, both physical and mental health. So think about all these things. All of these are potential reasons why if you believe in this ideology, it may be detrimental to your health and lifespan.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

And even if you are somebody, like if you're a Nealie, you're a jet blue air, even if you're coming into this with a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

So much money.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Okay, they probably have the money where a lot of this isn't even a problem. But if you're coming in with moderately less money, where you can afford the land, you can afford to get started and like learn on the way. The problem with this from a public health perspective is that these things aren't all individual choices. No, they're societal. All the things with health coverage is a huge issue. Even if you're more well off in a rural area, even if you yourself don't use Medicaid, if your hospital closes down because of the Medicaid cuts, because of the lack of providers who want to move to the area.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

You're affected.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

You are affected. It costs money to leave and find another hospital, and it costs time. And time is something that even if you're wealthy, is very hard to get back if you need it. So I think that's really important to point out, too, is even people with privilege, this homesteading kind of dream can have really real effects, even if you can control for some of the individual factors.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Again, it's an illusion, it's fictional. I'm pretty sure they order flour and they don't grow their own wheat. They're engaging in society, they're just not telling you.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Oh, yeah. Milling your own wheat would be like borderline impossible.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

Yeah, so the societal level, if you believe in this, you're essentially setting us back to the agrarian society, which I don't think I need to explain why that's not good for society or public health if everyone engage in agrarian society. Like we have nice things now.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

This is like always a thing that I come back to. When you hear people who kind of lament other things about modern life, like sometimes you get someone who's like, Oh, why did we even invent banks? Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, okay, come with me for a second.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Yeah, walk with me.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

We live in an agrarian society. I produce baked bread and you produce whatever it is you're good at. We're neighbors. Over time, we're like, oh, it would free up a few hours in my day. You don't have to bake bread if I give it to you. So we start trading. Okay, we've invented trade. We've made it that far. Okay, we go on for a little bit. It gets more complicated. We're like, wouldn't it be great if instead of just like moving goods back and forth all day, we had an agreed upon store of value?

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Congratulations. You made money.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

And then we're like, oh man, after a while, wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to carry this around? I feel really unsafe carrying all this cash over to you. Let's just like write this on a ledger. Oh, we've invented credit.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

And it's like, I just feel like we're gonna come back to where we are at some point. I'm not saying that all aspects of especially like capitalism are inevitable. I'm just saying there are basic functions of human society across all economic ideologies and possibilities that I think we're just gonna keep coming back to. And that's I think what you can miss with this uh take us back to an old time kind of mindset.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

That's the whole thing. It's like, well, if we all live nearby each other, we can trade. I was like, you're just reinventing society. Okay, we don't have to do this again.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

This has come up for me before. I don't even remember where, but I always think it's so funny because it's like, I think we're just gonna come back to it, you guys. Let's not pretend we're gonna return back to agrarianism. People solved this. We can move forward and think of new things.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

So that's Cottage Core. And next episode, we're gonna talk about the other manifestation of this very similar concept, but from a different gendered ideology, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Yeah, we already made the two genders joke in this episode, but we have to follow up. Our theory is that we're using cottage core a lot because it's the popular ideology, the aesthetic, but like underneath it all, it's this idea of self-sufficiency, right? I would say the death by doctrine we're talking about is self-sufficiency.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

That's the overarching doctrine.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Yes. And there's another facet of self-sufficiency. This is the feminine ideal, cottage core, marketed to woman, running through the field. And we're gonna talk about the manly one next. The one for guys who don't bake sourdough.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

No, we hunt and we fish.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Yes. So next we'll be doing a related topic, and we'll be digging even deeper into the dangers of a self-sufficiency narrative, but I won't keep talking about it because we have to save some material for that.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Like many things, the male version is so much more damaging.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Yeah, I haven't really filled out my research for it yet, but I can tell you right now, I'm gonna be less kind to it.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

And it will be personal bias, but I will also be less kind to it because cottage core at the end of the day, even though we talked about all the health implications and negative health impacts that you have if you go into this ideology. At the end of the day, though, I can't not omit the vibes are nice. I too would love to make bread.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

I would love to vacation at a cottage and make some bread and chill, and then go home to my white-collar privileged job that is honestly a miracle to people who actually live this lifestyle in ancient Greek times.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

Yeah, and in the next episode, the vibes will not be this nice. Thank you so much for listening to Death by Doctrine. If you like the show, please tell everyone you know about the show. That is the best thing that you can do to help us. I have other podcasts as well, including Everything is Public Health, and public health is for everyone. For more information and all updates, please visit everything ispublichealth.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next time.