Defund, Dismiss, Delete: Business Lessons from Forgotten Radicals

Dr. Eleanor Rust and Dr. Tristra Newyear Yeager
Producers, Writers & Hosts of Frances Wright: America's Forgotten Radical

Women have - and do - play significant roles in shaping history, yet their stories are often never recorded in the first place or simply erased.

By answering the question "Frances who?" Eleanor and Tristra provide insights into how some women-owned businesses are also forgotten - if they were acknowledged at all.

Tired of battling algos? Navigating the troubled waters of modern journalism?
Let's redefine success and shed light on women while they're making history. 

Oyez! Oyez! Gather 'round as we discuss how:

• Historical narratives should include contributions from diverse folks
• Erasure doesn't have to happen, if you identify its methods and sources
• Engaging with history can inspire contemporary movements for change
• Frances Wright's legacy serves as a reminder of the ongoing fight for equality
• Storytelling can amplify marginalized voices... NOW

Remember: unlike Vegas, whatever happened in New Harmony shouldn't stay there.

Connect with Eleanor & Tristra:
Eleanor’s 19th-century history writings
Tristra’s author website

Links:
Most of the obscure references made during this episode...

Charon
Cassandra
Orphic dresses
New Harmony, Indiana
Working Men's Institute
First-wave feminism
Downright Gabbler cartoon of Frances Wright
Hegelian process
Broadsides
Kindness Tree Movement
MDWST Fable
Josiah Warren
Modern Times

Credits:
Theme Music by Thorn Haze
Additional music by DirectToDreams

The Dangers of Polka PSA
Written by Joan Kanner
Performed by Michelle Bond and Joan Kanner
Music by Sonican; Alana Jordan

Podcast Cover Art: Lisa Orye
Produced by Joan Kanner and Michelle Bond

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Transcript

Eleanor Tristra (00:00)
Do you use expletives?

Joan Kanner (00:04)
Yes, all the fucking time!

Michelle Bond (00:04)
Yes.

It's so funny,

we're sending you the advanced notes and Joan was like, maybe you should tell them that we do. And I was like, no, we can just, she's like, no, for some reason I feel like they might want to, but yeah, we do. We're pretty.

Eleanor Tristra (00:21)
Eleanor's classy. She swears in a classy way. Thank you. Like someone that would wear black velvet and pearls kind of classy swearing. And mine is like... I just feel like I'm like...

Joan Kanner (00:32)
Look, velvet and pearls and purses.

Eleanor Tristra (00:37)
stealing the butts of like, clove cigarettes from the skatepunks. that's my swearing style. That's in my past, too. It is. It is. is.

Joan Kanner (00:41)
Thanks

Eleanor Tristra (00:45)
I don't mean to like, but you really grown beyond that in a way. mean, like when people first meet me, they're really surprised when I do start to swear like a sailor. I think it's because I look the gray hair, the slight cottagecore grandma look. They think you're gonna either give them the magic key or you're gonna

Michelle Bond (00:59)
Yeah

Eleanor Tristra (01:06)
boil them in a big cauldron. Some days are one, some days are the other. Exactly.

Michelle Bond (01:10)
There's power there either way,

[podcast intro begins]

Michelle Bond
This is Proofing Stage with me, Michelle Bond. 

Joan Kanner
And me, Joan Kanner. We're queer female founders who over a decade ago envisioned and created products and services designed with end users in mind. Go figure.

Michelle Bond
Frustrated in our prior careers, we began to consider what all our energy and passion can do if we use it on our own terms. A company with karma as its driving force, a music app that put users in control, and for the last eight years, a bagel business. 

Joan Kanner
This podcast is about our experiences and the nitty gritty of being an underrepresented small business owner.

Just like we've worked to fill the gap in quality bagels, lox, and schmear, these conversations fill the gap of knowledge, mentorship, and straight talk that are missing from other business pods and success stories. 

Michelle Bond
Together, we have a lot to offer, and we have a lot to learn. 

Joan Kanner
So join us and our brilliant guests in this space between "Atta girl!" and "I told you so."

[podcast intro ends]

Joan Kanner (04:16)
My god, we've already started decompensating. appreciate this is a very about to bring you a very Gen X episode of Proofing Stage. Hold on to your fucking hats.

Eleanor Tristra (04:23)
my gosh, right?

Michelle Bond (04:24)
Yes, let's do it. It's about time.

Eleanor Tristra (04:28)
Yes,

that's right. Yes, practice warm up your eyes. You're going to need to roll.

Michelle Bond (04:33)
You

Joan Kanner (04:34)
Daria,

I met a Daria at a conference over the summer, the XOXO Festival last one they were doing and I met Daria and I was just like, would you please allow me to do this? And she was like, what? And I was just like, Daria.

Eleanor Tristra (04:39)
Well, I

Joan Kanner (04:50)
I felt so special.

Eleanor Tristra (04:51)
We work with a lot of Gen Zs and I have an art project with Millennial and so I'm constantly hearing about my Gen X-ness from them. Yeah, it's like a cast in sharp relief. Even if they don't really know Gen X traits, I just feel like, we're so different. Yeah. We're so different. Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Bond (05:11)
Yeah, we usually get my brother called me a boomer. My younger brother at all for the holidays is like, "okay, boomer." I was like, "what did you just say to me?" But first of all, that was not an "okay boomer-worthy," like thing that I said. And secondly, what? So I feel like, you know, the younger you are, though, you just get all clumped together with.

Eleanor Tristra (05:16)
Yeah.

Cool.

You

Exactly, you just sort of like in the distant past, they're all the same.

Michelle Bond (05:38)
Well, I'm so excited to talk to you all. Thank you so much for saying yes. welcome. And thank you. I you know, I know you guys are busy. So thanks for giving us a little bit of time.

Eleanor Tristra (05:51)
Any excuse to talk about Francis Wright, American history? Like, kind of together in general, like getting on the mic together is always a fun trip. Absolutely. Yeah.

Joan Kanner (06:01)
I think Michelle we should start with how I know these people. Let me take you back to some sort of way back machine to the before times.

Eleanor Tristra (06:06)
Hmm.

Harp music.

Michelle Bond (06:14)
We don't have a budget

for that for those sound effects, Joan, so.

Eleanor Tristra (06:17)
You

Joan Kanner (06:19)
Fair enough, and here we are. So in 2019, I still had my music app, Fugue, and I had the pleasure of meeting up with these folks at Music Tectonics in the now, well, I don't know what's going on with LA, what's gonna happen for you guys. Okay.

Eleanor Tristra (06:34)
It's holding on.

Where we met is as yet un-singed. Yes. Thank goodness. Yeah. Actually, in 2019, we met downtown because- Oh, that's right. it was also- That was a fire here too. God, that was a whole- We were in a fugue. Poor you.

Joan Kanner (06:48)
That's right, yeah.

Michelle Bond (06:49)
Come on.

Joan Kanner (06:53)
You wake up, you're in Arizona. What the hell? A different name.

Michelle Bond (06:54)
Your fugue state, yeah.

Eleanor Tristra (07:03)
What do mean we're married?

Joan Kanner (07:04)
I...

You're welcome. You can now be a citizen. What I wanted

to say also about the experience besides, that's when I actually met a prince, Michelle, before I met a queen. With the bagel business, I met Queen Latifah, but I met Arabian Prince with you guys. So that kind of completed stuff for me. Not quite a full house. Although, guess Dimitri a joker, with those pants. Kind of a wild card.

Michelle Bond (07:18)
That's right.

Eleanor Tristra (07:23)
Yeah? great. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

you do. got like a flush. that what it's called? A royal flush. Yeah. You just need the king.

Joan Kanner (07:38)
and things got

flushed. And one of the things that really was wonderful, but also intimidating about you two, especially you, Tristra, was that like, we were actually making references to Greek mythology. And I talked about how you wrote like a Charon for people like me to meet with the mentors, which was great. But today's episode, we're gonna talk about little bit about Cassandra's too. Oh, look at that. Look at Eleanor's eyes lit up, like all coked up and ready.

Eleanor Tristra (07:50)
Thank

huh.

I'm ready. I

got my Orphic dress on, so we're all in good places here.

Joan Kanner (08:09)
Shit.

Michelle dear, gonna trust you with like all the references in our, our show notes.

Michelle Bond (08:12)
I'll just...

Eleanor Tristra (08:15)
You just feel like asterisk: "no idea of what they're talking about."

Michelle Bond (08:15)
gosh, yeah, there we go.

"Said...

Joan Kanner (08:19)
haha

Michelle Bond (08:20)
... somewhere by someone at some time." Yeah.

Eleanor Tristra (08:23)
you

Should we say something about who Frances Wright is and why we're interested?

Joan Kanner (08:45)
I mean,

and then we'll talk about just the erasure of businesses before our very eyes, because who gets press? But Michelle, I know you wanted to have a really proper lead in for this episode. Right and proper.

Eleanor Tristra (08:48)
Yeah, I love you.

So, oh yeah,

Michelle Bond (08:57)
More but... more.

I was going to prompt you to talk about your discovery of the podcast. That's all about Francis Wright and there it is.

Eleanor Tristra (09:07)
Yay!

Joan Kanner (09:07)
Whoop,

there it is. I was just like, wait, these bitches are talking about the erasure of a woman and her history? Let's have them on. We'll let them curse.

Eleanor Tristra (09:12)
Yeah.

Michelle Bond (09:17)
Yeah,

absolutely. of course, yes, please tell us a little bit about the pod and Francis and what sparked your interest for going deeper. And as you were saying, just playing with some of that blank space and exploring it and particularly these contemporary ties that that's one of the things I love most about what you're doing is, you have the historical piece, which is interesting. And then just

prompting these questions and posing them to some of your guests and posing them to your listeners.

Eleanor Tristra (09:47)
Yeah, so I'm going to kick it off because I was sort of the instigator here, though it would never have happened without Eleanor's brilliant and highly organized mind. I have a confession. I am addicted to the history of New Harmony, Indiana, which is a small utopian community about two hours away from where we are located in Bloomington, Indiana. And there's still quite a bit of traces there of what went before.

But it was world famous, like Lord Byron mocked it in a canto of Don Juan. Mary Shelley had like a lock of Frances Wright's hair, part because of her participation in these communities. So there's this like worldwide resonance that this, at least European resonance that this little town had in the middle of nowhere. And I went there once and I was just like, "this place is insane. And so I got really, really hooked and into it. I did about 10 years of research just kind of off and on while doing all sorts of other stuff.

And eventually like, you know, woo! And eventually all was revealed! All was revealed! All was revealed! Oh my god. No, you could see. then, this is... We had a mishap with our, with our back-up room. We lost the curtain. I know. Pay no attention to the boxes behind the curtain.

Joan Kanner (10:47)
That got caught on camera.

Michelle Bond (10:51)
my goodness!

Joan Kanner (10:55)
not be a race.

Michelle Bond (10:55)
Yes!

We lost the green screen, just fell right off.

Joan Kanner (11:05)
Hahaha!

Eleanor Tristra (11:07)
I was, I was really hooked on this and I was, I...

I began to write a novel that was based on the history of New Harmony, but also has sort of like a sci-fi futurist section, also with a lot of female characters and a female narrator. Anyway, and at some point I saw that there was a feminist research grant being offered by this wonderful institution called the Working Men's Institute. I love that the working men support feminist research. This is the public library in New Harmony, Indiana that also has a huge archive of

Michelle Bond (11:31)
Yeah.

Eleanor Tristra (11:37)
amazing historical materials about people like Frances Wright and the other folks involved in the New Harmony world. So I knew Eleanor had both a deep skill set when it came to historical research and that she was also a 19th century history buff and that this would be a great project for us to work on together. We'd worked on the Music Tectonics podcast together.

And so I was like, "hey, Eleanor, what if I write this grant? Will you do this?" And she's like, "sure." And so one thing led to another, and we got the grant. And then we had to make the podcast. And so it was great to be invited into this because although I knew just a little bit here and there about New Harmony Indiana, this was my first introduction to Frances Wright. And I think both of us had the response of "why didn't we learn about her before?" So she's a woman who was raised in privilege in

the UK in the early 19th century, the sort of between the 1800 and 1850s is kind of the rough range of her life. So she could have had a life like a Jane Austen character or maybe Bridgerton. That was the life she was raised for, but instead she became obsessed with the American ideals of liberty and equality that were still pretty fresh. you know, America had not been around for that long. She was reading about it.

as a laboratory for experimentation. Yeah, exactly. So she became obsessed with that. Traveled there unaccompanied by male relatives. She was really breaking out of that Jane Austen, Bridgerton environment. And although she continued to really appreciate the American experiment, she also began to see its dark side all of the ways it was not granting equality, liberty, and equal justice to

women and especially African American residents of the Americas. And really both of those things became her mission to kind of uncover why America was not living up to its founding ideals. Yeah, she was very much a daughter of the Enlightenment, whether we're talking about the Scottish Enlightenment or the French Enlightenment, she had kind of ties to both. And she truly believed that all people were created equal.

And that there was a reasonable and rational approach to achieving equality. And all of her values kind of flowed from that. So the fact that slavery existed was just an abomination because it contradicted everything about the premise of human rights and equality. Same for laws that limited the ability for women to own property or to have a civic

existence outside of marriage or the family circle. So all of those things for her very logically flowed from her core belief in like sort of fundamental enlightenment principles, which have gotten questioned a lot in the last 200 years, and often misconstrued in certain ways. But, you know, maybe it's time for us to take another look at some of them.

And that's why we were really interested in, and some of the things Frances was talking about are still questions and arguments we're having about the nature of who belongs, who controls their body, lots of stuff that was kind of surprising. It's also amazing how much has changed for the better. So I want to definitely throw that in there. Yeah. Now, she was very famous in her time for

both writing about those beliefs in newspapers and books, but also speaking publicly in front of audiences all over the US. And some of them... they had men in the audience. Not just women, there were men too, and she wasn't talking about religion in front of men. And she also is famous for founding her own intentional community, modeled somewhat after New Harmony's early utopias. One that was really dedicated to attempt to bring about the end of slavery in the US,

Michelle Bond (15:15)
Right.

Eleanor Tristra (15:31)
in the 1820s, you know, whole generation before the Civil War. Now, with all of that fame and all of that commitment to American founding values, that's what made us wonder why she wasn't part of the stories we'd already heard. Like, we're history buffs, right? We're history buffs, and we feel like we know the story of America. Why wasn't she part of that? Yeah, it was a shocker.

Michelle Bond (15:33)
Hmm.

Right, right, yeah.

Mm, yep.

Eleanor Tristra (16:15)
And she was all over the place and was kind of a household name. An infamous household name. But people would have her portrait on their wall or printed on a handkerchief that they would wear or keep. So she was a really big deal in her age and yet was completely kind of dropped off the map. especially once we get into quote unquote "First-wave feminism," that's sort of seen as the founding moment.

When actually there was a whole generation of people before, both black and white, who were advocating for a full entitlement to enjoy human rights as a woman.

Joan Kanner (16:53)
And to be clear, when you mentioned like her speaking publicly, this wasn't for like 10 minutes or 15 minutes. The attention spans were different back then.

Eleanor Tristra (16:58)
no.

Well, it was attention span, but also it was just a really important part of how people formulated their ideas. Just the same way we can watch a movie for two hours, right? They can watch a debate for two hours or a public speech for two hours. That it was a really important form of public entertainment, form of public information. Remember, this is a time when education is not universal for even privileged...

Americans. And so it's part of kind of one's ongoing development and learning to go to public lectures, whether they're political or scientific or historical. lot of the work that Frances Wright did with some of her comrades in New York in the 1830s, for example, was all based on just spreading quote unquote useful information. So science, chemistry, anatomy.

Michelle Bond (17:51)
Hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (17:54)
basic medical information, you know, what we might consider engineering stuff, like really, really interesting basic info. some of the stuff we might get in high school now, right, but that most, even privileged Americans didn't have a lot of access to unless they went into specific fields or the university. Yeah.

Michelle Bond (18:16)
Right. No, I mean, you know, it's been so interesting. And I, know, as you say that too, I think about that particular piece, right? I mean, she's so she's, she's known as a radical. But I mean, that wasn't her sole purpose, right? It was like discovering these inequities, this not living up to the dream, while going about this mission to help educate and to help share information. And then she has that platform. So

Eleanor Tristra (18:40)
Yeah.

Michelle Bond (18:45)
like many people who have a platform and see something that needs to be righted, she's also using that to spread these messages of inclusiveness and equality and bring other people with her. And yet, as you say, waves of feminism, they're not holding her up as a model or somebody that they're trying to unearth.

Eleanor Tristra (19:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, the backlash against Frances Wright's radicalism that you can kind of understand coming from conservatives who really were kind of against a lot of the things she was talking about. Unfortunately, that backlash also struck her from some of the people that she had common cause with. Other feminists, other abolitionists were a little, were put off by how firmly she committed and how publicly she spoke about these things.

and felt like she was making them look bad because her kind of utter public commitment to things like dismantling some of the traditional structures of marriage, that exposed her to scandal. She said, just again to paraphrase, that sexual pleasure is kind of a human right.

Michelle Bond (19:52)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (20:00)
Just saying that at the time was considered super scandalous, especially from a woman, especially publicly. And so by saying that kind of thing, even though it really seems to flow logically from her mission, saying that exposed her to being really ostracized, to be considered unthinkable. One of the guests we had on the podcast,

traces that concept applied to radical beliefs. That if you can say that a concept is unthinkable, it's outside the pale, it's just not even something to talk about. And Frances really represented that.

Michelle Bond (20:40)
No, I think that's one of the things that really struck us and especially, you know, Joan, when, when she came across the, that particular episode about erasure, because, you know, it's different, of course, in that radical quote unquote "radical," speech right now is, is everywhere. And, you know, you're not going to maybe face the same level of complete

alienation. But it is surprising how the risks, particularly for women and obviously minoritized communities of women, but minoritized communities in general, they're still very high. I mean, even, in our experience, and certainly the people that we talked to about, who are making something, who are founding something, who are building something, it's very risky to

seem like you're not just grateful to be where you are, right? And that I'm sure is something that you've seen over history, right? It's like, well, no, you're, we're giving you space to, in this case, like run your business. Like "how dare you criticize the help that we're giving you or the platform that we're giving you." And I wonder if her (i.e. Frances Wright,) you know, allies also felt like they were, they were being jeopardized because she wasn't just like, you know,

Eleanor Tristra (22:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Bond (22:00)
just sitting

down and taking it and enjoying it.

Eleanor Tristra (22:03)
Yeah, I think that could be a quote from some of the other feminist abolitionists at the time who were, I don't know if content is the right word, but they were willing to kind of work within the status quo a little more to work within structures. 'Cause women at the time were developing a public presence around, centered around things like charity. Especially religious charity. Because Francis was a free thinker, aka atheist in our modern terms...

She really alienated all the church ladies who might have actually agreed with her on some topics, but because they're coming from a religious standpoint, they have to put women's freedom or the freedom of African Americans to be full humans under the law in terms of morality. So women can't be fully moral because they're at the whim of perhaps a corrupt husband or father or they cannot.

You know, they're impoverished and therefore have to make these terrible decisions like to pursue sex work, right? Or to enter the public sphere in a way that is un-ladylike. So that was not Frances's argument at all. In some ways, their aims overlapped, but the way they got to their aims was from absolutely diametrically opposed values. One way think about it is that people who are working really hard to walk the tightrope...

kind of hate it when other people fly.

Michelle Bond (23:29)
Ooh.

Eleanor Tristra (23:30)
Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of... They're crabs. Yeah, the long history of crabs. Yeah.

Joan Kanner (23:31)
Crabs in a pot.

Michelle Bond (23:33)
Yeah.

Go ahead Joan, I know you probably are like...

Eleanor Tristra (23:54)
you

Joan Kanner (23:54)
Well, I just wanted to say,

people know me as being a downright gabbler, right? I mean, the illustration of that's pretty incredible of me.

Eleanor Tristra (24:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking of this

cartoon that just because Frances was getting up on stage and also because of the things she was saying that she was being likened to a goose. Like she has a goose's head in that image. She's wearing ladies clothes, but she's got a goose for a head. And that's one of those moves that is like, well, she's not even worth listening to. Like it's a move to try and disarm her, like to try and get people to stop paying attention, to silence her.

Michelle Bond (24:24)
Silence.

Eleanor Tristra (24:27)
And I think it's really important, though, to point out that a lot of this silencing happens in a way that it's tempting sometimes. Like when we went into creating that episode and thinking about it, we really were like, who erased Francis? Who's behind this? And you get this desire to be conspiratorial about it, which is actually very disempowering.

Even though it's kind of hard to confront that there could be this sort of cultural and maybe even commercial mechanism that helps perpetuate narratives that don't allow room for women to just be organic movers and shakers in history or even in the present in business, right? We're often relegated to like...

the special section, like, "oh, it's Women's History Month," or it's African-American History Month, or Latino History Month. All of those histories are American histories. Full stop. And until you're writing a history that is able to, I mean, you don't have to focus on all of those things. I mean, that would be impossible as a history writer. But you have to be aware of those other narratives and how they inform your narrative. And maybe what your...

Michelle Bond (25:25)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (25:41)
what your perspective might leave out. Even if you just hint at, there are people like, it's not just that this was the only way to do it or only men were doing this. Other people were doing this too. We don't have a lot of evidence. I don't have time in this narrative to talk about it for specific reasons. But, and because that, in some ways, the effort to correct the historical record starting in like the mid 20th century in the US,

led to almost like the this sort of separate lanes mentality right that there is... There are certain things that women's history has at certain points and people we need to know about but it's like no if you're gonna study American history you have to know about, about alt people like Frances Wright. You have to know about Harriet Beecher Stowe. You have to you know about you know All sorts of a man.

Joan Kanner (26:29)
But it's the readership that you all talk about in some of your episodes about like people assume that the people who want to know about history are like, you know, someone's like father-in-law, so our age and older.

Eleanor Tristra (26:30)
It's moving!

Right, right.

Yeah, there's all these, there's all these bricks in the system, kind of all these cogs in the system. And some of them are, you know, implicit bias. Some of them are just institute, some of them are institutional, some of them are personal, but they all like the gears are so tightly meshed together, that it just keeps rolling, right?

Michelle Bond (26:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Eleanor Tristra (27:04)
So, well, if the history book buyer is, you know, grandpa-aged men, it's because of what they were reading when they were younger. And so people are writing books for them because they buy it. And just think about how far those gears go back. Right? Yeah. However, this isn't, I don't, I mean, I think neither Eleanor nor I feel like super gloomy about this. Like there is, in some ways, just seeing, I mean, maybe this is all like a big...

Michelle Bond (27:21)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (27:32)
Hegelian process, thesis antithesis, whatever. But like, so we had to bring up all these stories as like, "hey, look, there's a women's history too." And now I think we're ready to really integrate and say, "all of these stories belong together side by side, interwoven." And that is in fact, what makes the narrative truly robust and valuable as just like for us to understand ourselves as a nation or as a community or as a person. So in terms of what happens now,

I think it's really, really important for us women who care about this to support other women and to look for stories in the past that might mirror our own. They're there. They're there. That's something that we should always know is like, if you haven't heard about it, it doesn't mean it's not there. That's one of my like rules of thumb in history. And one thing we've learned is that there is likely at least one scholar out there who is really passionate about that story and really wants to share it with you.

Michelle Bond (28:17)
Right.

Yeah, that's, that's exciting. And I mean, and that that's come through and definitely some of the guests that you've had and also just this. That's one of the reasons we started doing this coming off of our food business was because, you know, I'm sure they exist, but the entrepreneurial, you know, podcasts that we knew about were "How I Built This" and, you know, TED Talks and in places from people who sure they shared that it wasn't always an easy road, but they were already at the top of the mountain when they're telling that story.

Eleanor Tristra (28:50)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle Bond (28:58)
And we

knew for a fact, just because of the ecosystems that we're a part of, that so many people are just going through it right now. And even if it's a, quote unquote, "success," it's still, they're in the middle of it. They don't know how it's going to end up. And that's still a story that's worth telling. It's still worth understanding what that experience is like.

So that was our driving factor. And I think there's just so many parallels from the types of things that you're talking about because it's not all gloom and doom, but we're still so conditioned, I think, to react to these forces that want to keep a tightrope. I mean, I don't know how many times, mean, Joan is much, more free about it than I am, but I, you how many times I'm like, "Ooh, but I want to make sure that it's couched this way so I can be heard," you know? And, you know, and there's, there's, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Eleanor Tristra (29:47)
Tightrope walking.

[fauxmercial begins]

Joan Kanner
And now, a Public Service Announcement (PSA) from Proofing Stage:

Joan: Michelle, I think it's fair to say that this whole podcast is a public service, right?

Michelle: Absolutely. I'm not exactly doing it for the cash.

Joan: Right. And so I think it's on-brand for us to do some Public Service Announcements.

Michelle: Okay, well what you got?

Joan: Since today's guests work in the music industry, and I had a music app, I wanted to talk about a genre that needs to take a deep, long look at what it's perpetuating.

Michelle: Whoa, okay. So we're jumping right in here. Which genre?

Joan: Well, I'll give you some hints. This genre is full of misogyny, anti-fat bias, and scapegoating.
Of course, I would be talking about no other genre of music than... POLKA. 

Michelle: Now that I think of it... 
 
Joan: Right? I mean polka doesn't even try to hide these things! 
Let's talk about the Too Fat Polka with lyrics like:
"I don't want her, you can have her, she's too fat for me?"

Michelle: Fat-shaming AND objectifying. All in one fell swoop. Dang, that is messed up.

Joan: And let's talk about some profiling. In "Who Stole the Kishka," the alleged culprit is - Yousef. 

Michelle: Wait. Yousef? There are definitely some assumptions there. 

Joan: Your catchiness can't save you now, you insensitive, accordion-wielding ne'er-do-wells. If I want to hear someone jamming on the accordion, I shall reach for some tango, or at least one Counting Crows song. 

Michelle: O-ma-haaaaa...

Joan: So clean up your act, polka! We are ON TO YOU...

Michelle: This has been a Public Service Announcement from Proofing Stage.

[fauxmercial ends]

Eleanor Tristra
I think what is also really important for us all to remember all women who want to maybe push the boundaries is, success. The stories of success have been defined historically as well. So we haven't heard about Frances Wright because they're like, "her community failed. You know, she didn't bring about like the end of slavery herself." know, like, we had to fight a huge war over that. Like, that's what no person could have done that. And the thing is, is like, I think as women, we because we don't hear stories that are

Michelle Bond (32:23)
Right.

Right, right.

Eleanor Tristra (32:35)
harmonized with our own, like the shape of our own lives. And sometimes that involves like a huge dose of caretaking or other things that male entrepreneurs aren't always dealing with that we have really totally messed up definitions of success. Like what the map of that mountain that's being laid out is completely erroneous and easy to get lost on. And you can just feel like you just like you like you can't ever, ever measure up or finish. But...

It's really, really easy for people to call something a failure who haven't taken a close look at its story.

Michelle Bond (33:11)
Mm-hmm.

Joan Kanner (33:12)
We're definitely not defined

as winners when it comes to I feel like the Bottoms Up Bagels narrative, which is like interesting and also incredibly fucked up. Frances had like all these different publications about her and like people talking about her and whatnot. And what I found is that like when we were operating the business hardcore and traveling and, you know, reproducing our stuff in 10 different cities, I should have worn like my roadshow shirt, but I did not. That stuff is on the back. Anyway, so we did we did all of that. And yet it's really impossible.

Eleanor Tristra (33:22)
you

I'm sorry.

Joan Kanner (33:40)
at least for us when you're so busy to control the narrative that's being said about you. I remember we were going to be embarking, we had closed the shop down and there's, it's like some really ugly stuff as to why we had to leave the place that we did not own. And we were embarking on a whole, another set of our roadshow, which we were reprising it after 2019 because of obviously we couldn't do it during COVID. So we were starting off again and Michelle and I were having a great meeting with our place in Western Maryland.

Eleanor Tristra (33:44)
Yes.

Joan Kanner (34:07)
And we're in the car, we get a call from a local reporter of the Baltimore Banner. And I found it to be crushing because she was saying, "oh yeah, I'm at a liquor review board meeting. And we heard this restaurant from DC that has a Michelin star is going to be like moving in your space. Like, how do you feel about that?" And I'm thinking like, bitch, I completely started crying and I

Because I was also in that moment, but she must stay on the phone long enough to realize that like when Michelle and I were first looking at the space, we ended up paying to build out, it was an empty building. Like all that like shitty like floor and all that shit, we paid to like renovate all of it. We were talking to our landlord, who just said, "yeah, like I am buddies with this guy in DC who owns this ramen restaurant and here's his boat.

And I can see us having like one of his restaurants in Baltimore one day." And I was just thinking, "cool," because like we're breakfast and lunch and these people (i.e. our former landlords" have so many other vacant properties and like really more is more. And my opinion is it's in no way conflicting. It's not like a bagel shop. So then like my mind was flashing from the excellent meeting that we just had to talking in this woman to breaking down crying and thinking after the fact, wow, I can't believe I cried in front of this woman I don't fucking know. But then also, by phone.

But that she wasn't really like hearing us or being open to like, not just the open and shutness of like how these articles work with journalism locally. So there's that whole piece is missing, which people need to know.

Eleanor Tristra (35:38)
Call, mean, I'm a like 20 years long publicist just as an aside. And I would say if you get a call like that and you're feeling emotional, say, "I'm sorry, I have to call you right back." Get their number. Ball your eyes out and then call them back and be like, and think of your comment, like write it out if you have to practice saying it into a voice memo, listen to yourself and then call her back. You have the right to take a timeout.

All ladies who are talking to the press, give yourself that grace. I don't know, sometimes maybe it's the right thing to do to cry with a reporter, but usually you're not going to feel good about that. Especially if it feels like they are slotting you into a story. Yeah, you can kind of hear where she was leading. It was a leading question in a way. And it's totally cool to listen to your instincts. You can also say, "I don't have any comments right now." And I know it sucks to give up...

a press op, but if it's a shitty press op that makes you look like a loser or whatever, like it doesn't make your business look any better, then fuck it. They can find someone else.

I think another lesson we can learn from history is a little bit about what we want from our role models. good point. Yeah, because one of the things we discovered about Frances is however much we admire her, she really did not get everything right. No one does. Right.

Michelle Bond (37:16)
Mm-hmm. Right, mean,

yeah.

Eleanor Tristra (37:19)
Defining "winning"

as being like a perfect hero, you're never gonna find a worthy role model. But if you can take the lessons from the details of their story and learn something from it and grow because of that, then that's great. You don't have to idolize them. You don't have to align everything about yourself to them to still have like a...

fruitful, like, of, you know, historical relationship, I guess. Yeah, I think this idea of like these sort of like historical heroes is extremely, it's a bad way for us to think about the past. We are looking for what did other humans experience that can enrich my life and my understanding of the present and maybe can help us work toward a future where certain values are embodied.

Michelle Bond (37:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (38:14)
And if we're looking for this kind of perfection, it's super off-putting because, know, I like, I love to write, I write fiction. For me, one of the biggest eye-openers and one the most helpful things I stumbled across when I was just starting to write was all of J.R.R. Tolkien's like old manuscripts and notes. And you're like, my god, this is a terrible.

Michelle Bond (38:36)
Yeah

Eleanor Tristra (38:37)
Yeah, that like Aragorn was originally a hobbit who had like really messed up. had wooden shoes. And his name was Trotter. I mean, like, okay, I also have bad ideas like that. No, I love that. no, doesn't. His PR, you know, he had he was basically like the the first model of like killer publicity. Like if you're looking for like a great historical

Joan Kanner (38:48)
Wait, wait, is this room for like a Lord Byron joke? Is that insensitive? Because of the club, no, because of the club foot. I just think about that. Ladies, man, club foot.

Eleanor Tristra (39:07)
like that was Lord Byron. He, there were other poets that were better. There were other people who were just as crazy and risky, but he knew how to play it. But you don't talk about his foot. And didn't he like send back portraits if you didn't think they were hot enough. He'd be like, "nope, that doesn't make me look good enough." And yeah, he was very particular. It's like, yeah. And I think that that's, understanding of historical heroes is important for the present too, right? Like if you make one person, your role model,

Michelle Bond (39:24)
Right, right. Yeah.

Totally.

Eleanor Tristra (39:36)
for everything, you're going to be disappointed. Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Bond (39:39)
Well, and then, you know, attention economy too. think it's so hard for anybody. I mean, because your everything is out there. And I think to the point about trying to take lessons from values, take lessons from the actions and the lived experience and, and even like, you know, this conversation is really about how do we going forward, try to

shift those gears a little bit? How are we not just going down the well-rung places from like, you know, generations of fathers and father-in-laws buying books that other, you know, because we are, we will, I mean, there's an aging past that factor, right? As generations change and more of these stories are being told, right? The next thing about Frances Wright will maybe be as part of a curriculum or something, you know, but how are we...

I think what we're really interested in collectively is how are we making choices today in the way that we live, in the way that we tell stories, in the way that we seek information that helps to amplify some of these other heroes or protagonists at the very least who maybe are either explicitly or implicitly being left out of

you know, the places where we tend to get our information.

Eleanor Tristra (41:05)
Yeah, that's a, you know, I think you have to, if you know that you're missing something, you can start to look for it, right? And start to be like, wait, you you'll hear maybe a little, a story on NPR or you'll stumble across something on Instagram, you know, and of course check your facts, but there's, mean, there's tons of interesting stuff on Wikipedia. It's everywhere, it's all out there. You just have, I think part of it is, you know, today we have to think about like, what is it I want to stick in my brain?

Michelle Bond (41:11)
Right?

Exactly.

Eleanor Tristra (41:32)
and

be really conscious and, you know, all of us drift into like bullshit territory and like, you know, have a big, you know, big slurp of slop every now and then and whatever. No judgement for scrolling and whatever. But like there is, there, there, there is a time when we have to say, "okay, I'm going to actually think about things that matter to me and, look for stories." If there's, if you are facing, hardship, there are.

lots of inspiring stories. Again, these aren't perfect heroes that check all the boxes, but they are people like Frances who, I mean, she was, even her enemies acknowledged that she was an incredibly skilled speaker. She was eloquent. She was a good, she just knew how to describe topics and keep her audience engaged. She apparently used very elegant hand gestures. She had her own style and she just like...

That's what she did. She kind of just did what she thought was incredibly important and what she was very, very passionate about. And in the end, that's all you got. And if people pay attention or not, well, that's up to the world, not you. But you can think about how you can. We don't all have to go to the level that platforms are suggesting.

Michelle Bond (42:52)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (42:53)
for, you we can buck that trend. There's no reason why. I mean, if you obviously if you're doing advertising, then you have to at some point consider what's going to actually get, you know, click through or whatever or eyeballs or people in your store. But if your goal is beyond just like the basic commerce level, you're I mean, Francis is kind of an interesting model in that she had a weird haircut.

She designed her own clothing. Like she was not just going up there as just like your average like 1820s, 1830s lady and then suddenly being like really eloquent. She had her whole, she had a whole vibe that flowed very organically from her beliefs. But then she also owned her own platforms in a lot of way. Like, you know, we talk about how it's really hard in this attention economy when it seems like your share of voice is so predetermined by those platforms.

When she struggled to get her story told, she edited a newspaper. So get your, you know, that's another thing to think about. We were talking about this before the podcast, you know, that somewhere between the federated internet and like the zine revival. And I think we should revive broadsides, you know, like the huge informational posters people used to just, like they had them in the Soviet Union too. They're called wall newspapers. And like, why don't we just post big

swaths of like giant poster-sized things about like what's going on in our community on walls. Because a lot of that success and reach is defined by the platforms as you were saying. So maybe redefine it for around your community. Yeah, because where your community is, it could be your neighborhood, it could be a group of people who really love, I don't know, sloths online. I don't know what it is, but like...

We usually have an idea like wherever you're going is probably where many other people are going unless you're feeling like really lonely as a slothophile. Yeah. Wherever on 4chan. I don't know. That's probably a 4chan. And maybe you find them first on TikTok because the algorithm is helping you find all the slothophiles. Yeah. The key then is to figure out how to connect in a way that persists in a way that's owned by you in a way that everybody in the community can value.

Here's a weird twist, I got into all of this because of my own just like quirky obsession. No one else cared. I would post stuff online. No one gave a flying rat's ass about stupid fucking 19th century utopias. But all sorts of crazy stuff started happening when I put myself out there. And you know...

... some of it bad, you know, getting some really shitty reviews from someone's like, "this is like a creepy book." You know, like, it's like, dude, you know, go, go whatever. I'm sorry you got creeped out. But like, whatever. This book was free for you. Shut up. Sorry. It's a creepy book. Yeah, I write creepy. Whatever, man. mean, I have to write: "This is creepy on the cover." Like, come on. Anyway, but so much good stuff has happened that was completely unpredictable. And I bet there's a lot of women entrepreneurs out there...

... who could completely relate to this, that the unpredictable chain of events, whether it's the people that you get in contact with, the really meaningful relationships, the amazing connections you make with strangers, just discovering whole other worlds and networks and amazing fellow travelers in this wacky life we live, that is success too.

Michelle Bond (46:21)
100%.

Eleanor Tristra (46:23)
And we are so trained to not pay any attention to that shit and just to completely operationalize and transactionalize our experiences. What really, but in the end, like when you're on your deathbed, you're not thinking like, "I had great revenue in 2026," you like, "wow, made a lot of money on that one." Like, maybe you are. mean, I can think of some people who might be thinking that. most of us are, I had such a beautiful life with amazing friends and I, you know.

I wouldn't, you, you don't have any regrets that way.

Joan Kanner (47:06)
Michelle, you forwarded to me recently a message from the Kindness Tree Movement and Connie, who is a vendor here who ships everywhere, these amazing, she prints these amazing shirts and different textiles. And her most recent, controlling her narrative, her most recent email was about what, Michelle?

Eleanor Tristra (47:16)
Huh. amazing.

Michelle Bond (47:27)
She was just announcing that they were moving off of all Meta-supported platforms and moving to Blue Sky and things like that, both because it's increasingly, Eleanor, to the point you were making, it's increasingly difficult for one of their customers to see their content and to be able to, it's shrinking, just because of all the other ads and the way the algorithms are working. And then secondarily, just because of their changing of their stance on hate speech.

Eleanor Tristra (47:32)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're now household objects.

Michelle Bond (47:55)
or limiting things like that. so, right.

Yeah, I saw a quote from Zuck this morning about these businesses have been too feminized and they need to have more masculinization to them. And that's

Eleanor Tristra (48:10)
Here's where the eye rolls

come in. We practiced the eye rolls earlier on.

Michelle Bond (48:13)
Right,

right. But Joan, yeah. So if people are paying attention, I mean, I think that's one of the things... You're totally right about the way that you define success. And that's something that we've talked so much about for ourselves and with our guests and things like that, because it can't be the same. We're different. It's a different lived experience. And really, it's different for every person, much less persons who've been acculturated certain ways and things like that. But...

You know, when you think about customers or you think about people consuming whatever you put out there, I think there's this interesting balance of, you know, trying to reach people where they're at. But like in this move from Connie also saying like, "this is who we are. This is what we stand for." And we simply can't A) afford. And I think this is a real important piece for your customers to know that you can actually afford to keep up with putting things in front of them because the formula has changed.

Eleanor Tristra (49:03)
Yeah.

Michelle Bond (49:06)
But then secondly, like, yeah, where are your values and what do you want to be supporting when you're doing that? You know, and not all customers care about that, right? Some people just want the thing that they're buying and we get that. But I think that's why these kinds of conversations are important because I think particularly on a local level, when people are trying to support local, they're really intending to uplift those businesses. They recognize that they're an important part of the fabric of the community, but...

They don't know how these forces are at play. And I think sometimes it does become just too hard to say like, "I'm going to vote with my dollar at my own inconvenience."

Eleanor Tristra (49:45)
Yeah,

it's interesting because we work in the music industry and we've seen a real shift in many fans' consciousness when it comes to how much artists are earning from streaming services. It used to be kind of like a weird exotic topic and like only like the guys who are like, "well, you've never heard of them," like the record store dudes would bring it up. But now it's a pretty widely discussed...

Michelle Bond (49:56)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (50:10)
topic that fan communities raise regularly and get incensed about. It's an issue that has become part of how, especially like Gen Z and younger understand their music habits. And for e-commerce, algorithms and "enshittification" I think, are becoming bigger topics. People are aware of how their experience of platforms is getting worse.

Michelle Bond (50:38)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (50:39)
So maybe they're not thinking all the way through to the businesses they're supporting, but that's coming, right? They know that things are bad.

Michelle Bond (50:45)
Yeah.

Joan Kanner (50:48)
Well, talking about the "enshittification" quickly, because I know we're wrapping up,

when it comes to the "enshittification" of journalism. I will say that I am trained as a woman and now a small business owner for like over a decade, that when I try, simply try to tell my own story and my own struggles, I feel like I need a co-signer. Almost like getting a credit card not too long ago. And I feel like...

Eleanor Tristra (51:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Joan Kanner (51:14)
I tried in the past and all of 2024, trying to work with journalists about some issues with some of the "grant-o-sphere" in Baltimore, in Maryland, and how it's not helping small business owners and how there is some fraud. And I could really not get a hold of anyone, even though I'm a former grants and contracts specialist, and I have like great backup. So to me, it's so frustrating that I can just say so-and-so hurt me or whatever. It's almost just like "choose the bear," you know, or...

Eleanor Tristra (51:21)
Mmm.

You

know.

Joan Kanner (51:42)
Like

you go in the forest and if you say that you ran into a man and he did these horrible things to you, no one will believe you. But if you ran into a bear, all of a sudden, like folks believe you.

Eleanor Tristra (51:52)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I mean think that the problem just in journalists' defense is they are overworked. There's been massive cutbacks in most newsrooms, especially on investigative reporting. There are a few outlets like ProPublica would be probably one of the best consistent investigative local reporting outlets.

Michelle Bond (52:05)
Hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (52:16)
But many, what used to be a mainstay of especially a daily or a weekly paper is no longer in budget. So the people who might really want to do investigative reporting are simply not allowed to by their editors. And their editors aren't allowed to by whatever it is, the publisher or whoever's pulling the purse strings. it is a problem. And that's why there's some really great like...

There's some citizen efforts to do stuff. And those are always a little bit like, know, because it's really easy to turn into an angry mob. You're like a citizen journalist or an angry mob. I'm not. Yeah, I'm like thinking angry mobs might sometimes be... Maybe some angry mobs are needed, especially when it comes to corruption. there's so it is it's a really weird time. But the...

The thing that, again, as a PR person, I would recommend to small business owners is it is a marathon. Just keep taking even that same angle. You can take that same angle and slice it 20 different ways and try 20 times. I mean, the worst thing you'll hear from a reporter is, "please don't ever contact me again" or "I'm blocking you" or "here's my cease and desist letter."

No one is going to, usually a journalist won't do that. And sometimes, honestly, it's the 20th try that we discover, finally, they're like, "what a cool story. Yeah, I'm thinking about doing something like that." And it's simply because maybe they have so much on their plate. You know, we've heard from journalists that get 10,000 emails a day. Yeah. So and that's like at a major national outlet, but still.

So bear in mind, the person on the other end is probably having a worse day than you are.

Joan Kanner (54:01)
Good to know. I'm on try 19,

so maybe, Michelle, this is my encouragement for the day.

Michelle Bond (54:05)
That's right. That's

Eleanor Tristra (54:05)
Yeah.

Michelle Bond (54:06)
right. One more john, that might be the one

Eleanor Tristra (54:06)
Keep tweaking that angle too and really look at what that person is writing about and like try to get into their head a little bit. You know, yeah. And because that's one of the ways to help them understand that your story is also in their interest.

Joan Kanner (54:09)
Roll it out.

Michelle Bond (54:25)
Yeah, because it's also, I mean, it's not by any means unique to us, you know, and I think that's part of the reason why, why it needs to be told because I think that we're at a place right now where there are a lot of things that people say that they care about, which I believe they do care about, but they don't realize that there are loopholes or there are ways like in anything where it's things that are supposed to be benefits are being exploited by people who are not meant to get those benefits.

Eleanor Tristra (54:40)
Absolutely.

Michelle Bond (54:51)
and at the detriment of people who don't have those same safety nets. So yeah, but that's great advice. And, Joan, this could be your week.

Joan Kanner (55:02)
It could be my

Eleanor Tristra (55:02)
thoughts.

Joan Kanner (55:18)
Is it time to go a-proofin' with these two?

Michelle Bond (55:21)
It is if you all have like 90 more seconds. I think I

Joan Kanner (55:24)
You can't live without that. Michelle, it's impossible. You do not realize how many run-ons

have gone on. I could just go, I'm about to say something, they just keep on going. They are good. They're like auctioneers.

Eleanor Tristra (55:30)
That's a fast proof time.

Michelle Bond (55:33)
No.

Eleanor Tristra (55:35)
I kind of wish I could proof like yeast dough in 90 seconds. That would be amazing.

Michelle Bond (55:39)
Well, you can try. But no,

we, as you both know, we love to ask our guests about something that they're proofing on, something or things, any way you want to interpret that question. But we just love to hear how the great minds that we get a chance to chat with, like other things that they're thinking about and planning.

Eleanor Tristra (55:59)
Oh my goodness. Well, mine is easy. I'm putting out the third book in my series of 19th utopias and crazy post-climate change future stuff, Starfall 3. And if you're interested in reading about my books and other nonsense, you can go to newyearmedia.com. I'm also here on the local front, and this might be something for people to get excited about if they want to think about things in their community.

Michelle Bond (56:05)
WOOOO

Eleanor Tristra (56:27)
I have a, I run a rhizomal art project with a close friend. We're called MDWST Fable and we put on really strange events. We did a fireside storytelling event this fall in the woods with people from all different walks of life. In this, yeah, this spring we're doing one called the Alternate Dimension Mill. It's a play on the sort of tech incubator here in town. And we're going to be asking the question, "how can we fall in love with the future?" with like talks and performances and the...

Joan Kanner (56:42)
So cool.

Eleanor Tristra (56:55)
crazy visual art and some other fun stuff. That's what I do in my spare time. Yeah. And I feel like maybe I want to manifest our next podcast. Yeah, do it. Okay. This is very much at the the kernel phase, but we are hoping we're going to explore another forgotten radical in American history in order to

Michelle Bond (57:01)
Beautiful.

Yes!

Eleanor Tristra (57:20)
think more about labor history and anarchism and find another flawed role model who can take us down some really interesting rabbit holes for America and how we got to where we are today. The godfather of American anarchism by the name of Josiah Warren, who was also really bad poetry and he wrote music and invented new printing presses. This guy was crazy and his sort of

Michelle Bond (57:38)
Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Tristra (57:48)
biggest achievement was founding a community called Modern Times. He maybe best known for a store that he set up in Cincinnati called the Time Store in which you didn't exchange currency exactly for goods, you exchanged your labor hours. Yeah, so working people could come and be like, "I'm a carpenter, I'll give you two hours" and then someone else would be like, "great, I got five pounds of flour," you know.

Michelle Bond (58:11)
Yeah,

yeah, there's some models. It's funny, I was doing some work with that kind of thing like 20 years ago and looking at alternative communities. So, yeah, and I think given where we are in this moment, know, 2025, these histories are so important, A), because, you know, they deserve to be told, but B), we need that... I don't want to say hope because that sounds contrived, but you know what I mean? I think we need examples of people who were always

seen maybe differently who were doing incredible things and whose story is being told all these years later.

Eleanor Tristra (58:44)
American

history is also the history of progressive weirdos and complete freaks and eccentrics and anyone who tells you any different is poorly informed.

Joan Kanner (58:56)
Did that guy invent Hot Topic? Because I remember, especially in the 90s, like the anarchy symbol. Like, is that his symbol?

Eleanor Tristra (58:59)
Ha

No, he's like, this guy is like 1820s. So I don't know. We'll to ask Hot Topic HQ about their IP. You know what? You're going to send me down a rabbit hole of when that symbol was invented. Yeah, we'll have to get back to you on that one.

Michelle Bond (59:18)
All right, I hope so. All right, well, Eleanor, Tristra, thank you so much for joining us.

Joan Kanner (59:20)
Success!

Eleanor Tristra (59:22)
All right.

Michelle Bond (59:26)
The podcast is Frances Wright: America's Forgotten Radical, and you can get it wherever you get your pods. And we'll have all of these great references or as many as we can find in the show notes. And thank you both so much for your time and your insights. This was a ton of fun.

Eleanor Tristra (59:36)
you

the feeling's mutual. Thanks so much for letting us go crazy with our obsessions. Thank you.

Joan Kanner (59:49)
Thank you so much.


[theme music begins]

Joan Kanner
You've been listening to Proofing Stage. Our theme music, Bagels for the Kraken, was written and performed by Thorn Haze. Additional music from Pixabay. If you're looking for a transcript, show notes, disclaimers, and additional credits, they can be found on our website, proofingstage dot com. Want to join the conversation? Email us at proofingstagepod at gmail dot com. You can also find us on Instagram, threads, and TikTok at Proofing Stage. Visit our Patreon page to support the show and get even more great content. 

I'm your host Joan Kanner. 

Michelle Bond
And I'm your host Michelle Bond. Thanks for listening. 

[theme music ends]


Eleanor Tristra (1:00:36)
yeah. Actually, you know, I'm on that side. I'm on the algorithmic side, too. There was an owl I really related to recently. It was kind of healing.

Joan Kanner (1:00:36)
Medieval depictions of owls.

I'm...

Eleanor Tristra (1:00:46)
... of a Medievel owl, I was like, this is exactly where I am. It's sort of like one of those archetypal symbols. Yeah, yeah, they seem to have the existential dread sort of face. They have those, they really, they wish they had no more fucks to give, but they're just really pissed off, the owls. They cannot take it anymore.

Michelle Bond (1:00:48)
Hahaha