Episode 295: So Millennial with Kate Kennedy
“I just thought, well, what if I verbally man-spread the minutiae of a millennial existence about the experiences of being a girl and being a millennial. Two things that are hard to be proud of sometimes.”
- Kate Kennedy
Kate and Doree talk to Kate Kennedy (Be There in Five Podcast, One in a Millennial) about the significance of Millennials and the generation’s defining pop culture moments, online communities providing a sense of belonging, past and current obsessions that bring us joy and entertainment, and the importance of providing access to maternal and reproductive healthcare.
Mentioned in this Episode
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I am Kate Spencer,
Doree: And I am Doree Shafrir
Kate: And we are not experts.
Doree: No, we're not, but we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: Whoa. Sorry. I didn't mean to make that so weird.
Doree: I loved that sigh
Kate: Graphic.
Doree: It was from your diaphragm. Do you know what I mean?
Kate: I was literally thinking about what serums I put on my face and it just came out. Oh my God. Why did that happen?
Doree: That's amazing.
Kate: Last night I got into bed at eight o'clock and I put on some pixie eye patch thingies and I did one of my little LED light masks.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: And I journaled and read my book and looked at my phone and it was great.
Doree: That is beautiful.
Kate: Meanwhile, my husband was watching a documentary about nuclear war and I was like, you know what? No, this is not what I'm doing tonight. Yeah.
Doree: That's not the energy I'm going for.
Kate: Does anyone want to watch this documentary about nuclear power in the forties? And I was like, what?
Doree: Oh my God.
Kate: No.
Doree: Kate, I'm happy to report that I also, I have been getting in bed earlier.
Kate: Well, this was like an intention you had set for yourself a few weeks ago in our intention zone.
Doree: Yes. I have not always been falling asleep earlier, but I do feel like I have been relaxing earlier and last night I did fall asleep earlier, so it might be working slowly but surely.
Kate: That's great.
Doree: Baby steps, baby steps,
Kate: Baby steps. You do the best you can.
Doree: That is so true in all things. I got mad in all things. All we do the best we can.
Kate: I got very annoyed because have this, I use this app called Opal to block very distracting apps for myself, including Instagram and Facebook and a couple other spots. And last night I really wanted to go down a rabbit hole and the app was too effective and I couldn't, it kind of, it'll let you pause the block for a little bit, so sometimes I'll do that and I couldn't. For whatever reason, it was not working. It was not letting me pause the block and I was like,
Doree: oh my God.
Kate: I Was like, I need my fix. I need to rabbit hole this thing and I couldn't. So I finally gave up and read a book.
Doree: Wow. Yeah. I mean that's what happens.
Kate: I know. This is the reason not to have a phone in the bedroom and I've talked about this for a hundred years. I still can't break that habit, but I do feel like I'm a little better about distracting myself with scrolling at night, but it can be, I was talking to myself where I was like, you don't want to be doing this, and if it's really important to you, you'll remember the thing in the morning and look at, I had two voices. There was an angel and a devil on my shoulder.
Doree: Wow. Okay.
Kate: Because your rational mind can sometimes break through and be like, Hey, you know what you hate when you scroll all night long?
Doree: Totally
Kate: Just put it away.
Doree: Yes, of course. Of course.
Kate: But then the addicted side of the phone.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Part was like, come on, click, eat,
Doree: Click, click. Itty, click.
Kate: Don't you want to click on one person's name and then Google them for an hour and then find something else random and Google that for an hour.
Doree: Oh my God. Yeah,
Kate: You get it. You know how your brain does that,
Doree: Kate? I do get it. I do get it.
Kate: Any hoots?
Doree: Any hoots?
Kate: Should we hop on over to our guest today?
Doree: Let's do that because we had a really great conversation with her
Kate: With I would say like an icon of the podcasts pop culture space. There's really no other way to describe this person.
Doree: It's true. Yeah, It's true.
Kate: One of the coolest, smartest, most thoughtful people speaking on pop culture today. Our guest is the one and only Beth Aaron, five AKA Kate Kennedy, host of the podcast. Be there in five. Kate is amazing. If you have never heard her podcast number one, go tune in right now. It's fantastic. Let me just, we can give you her spiel bio. Kate is a Chicago based entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and pop culture commentator. After spending almost seven years in corporate marketing and advertising, her life changed one day when she decided to turn off your curling iron on her doormat so she wouldn't burn her apartment down. She then started selling those and named the business be there in five after her favorite thing to text when running back inside to see if her curling iron was off. She then wrote a children's book called Twinkle Twinkle Social Media Star. She started doing pop culture commentary that led to her amazing podcast be There in five, which was all about pop culture, influencer culture. It charts weekly in its category. It is dedicated to finding the stories and experiences that lie within easily trivialized elements of the zeitgeist, Which is also what she does so well in her new book, one in a Millennial, which is an exploration of pop culture nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist and the life lessons learned for better and for worse from coming of age as a member of the much maligned generation, Kate is like, I don't know, a wizard, a genius. She's so smart, she's so funny, so inquisitive and thoughtful in the way she approaches all these topics and we had a great conversation with her. It was a thrill to get to talk to her again. So we're just going to bring you our chat with Kate. Before we do though, Doree, I do want to remind folks that you can find everything we talk about on our website, which is Forever35podcast.com. You can also check out Instagram @Forever35podcast to hear more from us. We are busy on Patreon at patreon.com/forever35. There you can hear exclusive weekly casual chats between Doree and me. You can hear our weekly season one recap of the oc, which is a fricking insane show.
Doree: It's insane.
Kate: You basically hear me have meltdowns about this show.
Doree: I do, yeah. I mean, I won't say too much about it, but I'm like, is this how all TV is? And I just don't realize it
Kate: And in 20 years we're going to be watching the Bear on a recap space podcast and be like, what?
Doree: Totally. Anyway.
Kate: Anyway, and we also do product recall once a month over for our Patreon subscribers, which is where we deep dive into iconic products or brands and we just did Clinique, which was so fun and resulted in some people being like, I think I want to try Clinique again.
Doree: I Know.
Kate: And I was like, yeah, me too.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: Me too. You can also shop our favorite products at Shopmy.US/Forever35. Our newsletter is Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. Most importantly, if you want to reach us, which we hope you do, you can leave us a voicemail or a text at (781) 591-0390. You can always email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com. Thank you for listening to that spiel. And now without further ado, here is our wonderful guest, Kate Kennedy. Kate, hi. Welcome to Forever35. Welcome back. You are a repeat guest.
Kate K: I'm so honored, but be there in Forever35. We collabed both on each other's podcasts a few years ago and it's nice to see you again. Yeah, virtually.
Kate: And so much has transpired. You've written a book, which is a real fricking feat, so congratulations. It's really hard and you did it and you did it well.
Kate K: Thank you so much. Yes, it is a lot harder than I would've ever imagined, and it's just the fun part is getting to talk about it with people. The hard part is being utterly consumed by it and not really being able to share it yet, because the nature of podcasting is the second I have a thought, I get to air it to the world, but I wrote a lot of these things like two years ago, so it's fun.
Doree: I always think about Heidi Montage's tweet, congratulations to anyone who has written a book.
Kate K: She's not wrong. You deserve it.
Doree: She's not wrong. Really. Thank you, Heidi.
Kate: Thank you. We all appreciate it. Well, Kate, I think we're very excited to dig into a lot of what you have written about and shared. We always start every episode asking about a self-care practice, and I guess I would love to know maybe how self-care in your mind has changed over the course of the last few years. I mean, I know obviously we always, how is it different now that you've become a parent? But I don't know if that's really what I'm asking. I guess I'm asking in the same way that you kind of talk about your personal evolution in your book. Do you feel like your relationship to taking care of yourself has evolved and what does that look like right now?
Kate K: Oh, that's a good question. I think that what I do like about becoming a mom is that it really drives home the luxury of being selective with your time with what you say yes to. It gives me a bit more of a reason to turn things down that I might not have before. I just simply have the time, but I'm kind of enjoying the forced prioritization as far as self-care, I think all the time about that godawful phrase people use so often with women, with mothers about letting yourself go and kind of turning it on its head and being the best part about motherhood is letting myself fucking go out with wet hair and not caring. I have bigger fish to fry, and I don't mean that in a way of I can't take a shower, this is so awful. It's like, no, I'm choosing not to spend a lot of time blow drying my hair. I just don't really care about that at this juncture. So it's kind of like letting myself go in a positive sense where I think that if I let myself be overwhelmed by my personal maintenance, appearance wise, it overwhelms me, but I've just gone easier on myself in this era of my life and it's been kind of nice just not worrying about a lot of that stuff. So I guess for me, currently self-care is more about just being mindful of what I spend my time doing and who it's serving, I guess.
Kate: Well, and there's a nice release of control that I feel like so often when people talk about this whole, she let herself go. It's like she let go of control, which can be very terrifying and also very freeing and such a positive thing for a lot of us.
Doree: Also, I feel like such a dominant theme in your book is how much you worried about what other people thought about you and letting some of that go is very freeing.
Kate K: Incredibly freeing. Yeah. It's hard to explain. Everyone tells you your life's going to change so much when you become a mom and it has, but I still feel like myself, but I feel less consumed with stuff like that in the best way possible.
Doree: Totally.
Kate K: Yes, I'm busy and there's a lot of ways I could glamorize that turmoil for the misery of motherhood, but I actually would say it's been a positive for me to have other things to focus on, especially in a career like this where you're almost forced to think about your own image a little too much. So yeah, if I could add a chapter to the book, it would be the weirdness of having this personal evolution and how the career I chose kind of forces me back into staring in a mirror. But I'm not ready to write that chapter yet.
Doree: Yeah, I was going to say maybe, right,
Kate: You're still living the chapter. Yeah.
Kate K: For the next book.
Doree: You're taking notes for the next book.
Kate K: Yeah, exactly.
Kate: Can I ask about the lifelong experience of being going to great lengths to fit in and to assimilate and how you started to unravel that conditioning for yourself? This is something I've actually recently been thinking about just for me, and so it was especially poignant to read your learn about you more in this detail. Obviously you've talked touched on this in your podcast, but to really dig into it with your book was really moving for me, and I would love to just hear about your experience unlearning that or pulling or what it was like to start pulling that thread and then feel it all just kind of go.
Kate K: I think where I started to pull the thread was in, it was 2021 around the same time the word chuy was taking off, really thinking about basic and the way we self-deprecate and talk about ourselves and others, and being a person with a platform at the time really wanting to rethink how I talked about past versions of myself because I would hear from so many women who wanted to excavate their millennial memories, but the common thread was shame, embarrassment, self dismissal. And when I had started writing these essays, but I didn't really know what they were for, and then when I had this opportunity to write a book, I was kind of like people write books who are exceptional, who are unique, who do great things, who are these people that kind of operate in this cheer, this tier of being so unique. But what about the normals? What about those of us whose personality is marked by chasing moving targets of trends and beauty standards and who kind of were a bit worn down by the conditioning and programming of needing to be likable and malleable? I think there's a lot of shame around having that lack of distinction as a person and therefore dismissal of your entire existence as if it's not something worth celebrating. So I kind of wanted to take this opportunity. I can't obviously represent 52 million people in my generation and I'm absolutely not everybody, but I feel like my existence is more marked by following trends, by being average, by being super basic. But it doesn't mean that those stories aren't worth telling, and I kind of feel like there's something so insidious about those sorts of insults that make you really, I don't know, want to be smaller. And I just thought, well, what if I verbally man spread the minutia of a millennial existence about the experiences of being a girl and being a millennial? Two things that are hard to be proud of sometimes and just, yeah, let it put it all out there.
Doree: I wrote a memoir and one of the things that I found so disorienting about writing a memoir was having to relive and kind of excavate all of these experiences from my past. And that sounds so obvious. Of course, that's what a memoir is, but I don't think I had fully wrapped my head around what that would be like for me. And so I'm wondering if you had a similar experience and just what the experience of writing this and having revisiting all of these things that weren't always great, some of them were painful, what that was like for you.
Kate K: Yeah, it's interesting because I went into writing this being so dead set. I don't want it to be classified as a memoir. They were kind of written as disjointed, thematic essays, but the way they're set up, it very much reads as and will inevitably be categorized as one and the way instead of picking the most vital, obvious milestone as or traumatic things in my life, I very purposefully picked things that were deep lessons found in the most innocuous or surface level of places. So while there are deep deeper themes that are very personal, I also kind of kept it high level enough because I wanted other people memories to spark and experiences to be felt through it.
Doree: Totally.
Kate K: So I think that I was able to achieve some separation where I didn't have to dig too deep, but because to your point at a point, the personal pathologizing, the mining your life for copy is exhausting and it's hard on your mental health.
Doree: Totally.
Kate K: I don't know, writing a mindfuck of just like, is this important? Does anyone want to read this? Is this stupid? It's so weird to be putting something out into the world when five people have read it. And I think that that's the process that it's like the deeper you get into your own life, the more deeply uninteresting you find yourself, I think is what I was running into. So it was a process of like, okay, let's not do that. The angle is where did you learn lessons that people would never, the places that would've rot your brain, the aim, tv, movies, music, whatever. I kind of got to make it more thematic than memoir, and I think that helped me because yes, I did have that problem too.
Doree: It's real. So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Kate: I almost fell out of my chair reading your essay on Popular Girl handwriting because you put into words something like just a feeling I've carried since I was seven that I've never talked about with anybody, but is such a signifier to me, it represented the ultimate in femininity when I was a kid of just having this very specific handwriting or being able to write in bubble letters. That was another big one, but it was such a signifier of the narrow, the narrowness of what was acceptable and cool of girl culture.
Kate K: Totally.
Kate: Honestly, I've never had this experience of reading something where I was like, oh my God, this memory just came rushing back to me in such a distinct way.
Kate K: I love that.
Kate: And it made me think of my own kids. I have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old, and there's been a lot of talk of girl culture and the current dialogue about Stanley Cups and just kind of the cycle of what are signifiers of what is cool, but then also shiting all over girl culture in a way. To me it was like that feels, I was very depressed to think about how cyclical the conversations around girl culture are. And I think you point that out kind of throughout the book.
Kate K: Yeah, I was just doing an episode last week on teens and Sephora, which I'm sure is something you guys,
Kate: hot topic,
Kate K: you guys talk about a lot. And these things, shapeshift, I mean, it's not all that different from us being obsessed with anti acne and drying the shit out of our skin with astringent. I mean, every generation has their own version of this. And while anti-aging is tough for younger segments, and I think the positioning and obviously use of active chemicals should proceed with caution. I don't know, girls like to explore and have fun, and I think it's very natural to participate in anticipatory things about the life phase you're about to enter into that you don't have access to. And it's like a form of r and d about the teenage world. And I think it just how you talk about it and to your point, the shaming, the immediate instinct to shame I think is something that I hope as millennial women, we catch ourselves doing because we know how it feels or really any woman from any generation knows how it feels to be both policed for and held to these impossible standards is really unfair. And the fact that young girls even are already feeling that pressure to maintain their appearance in that way is kind of the sad thing. But also the thing that I don't always think is fair to hold against people because it's a bigger system that we can't take down with a Stanley Cup or a Drunk Elephant product.
Kate: It was interesting, Kate, especially, there's a mention toward the end of the book kind of where you're talking about gender bias when it comes to pop culture interests. And I had a personal chuckle because you mentioned Phish, and I'm a person who has seen almost a hundred phish shows.
Kate K: You're one of those I'm,
Kate: But as a woman, especially when I was younger, I was more of an anomaly and there was a lot of having to prove yourself, which I think you talk about prove your fan ness, prove your devotion, and I find that still very pervasive.
Kate K: Oh, totally. It's like the stuff that is more feminine coded is invalidated, and then when females participate in male dominated spaces, you have to prove your fandom, like the name five songs of it all, and it's such a weird lose lose. But the common thread is the positioning of male authority when it comes to taste. And even though that's, I didn't know if that was worth writing about at the time, I was trying, the early versions of that chapter had a lot more historical analysis and research, and my editor was like, I dunno if you need to or tease out historically that men tend to think they have authority over taste, I think that's a pretty well understood universal feeling. And I was like, that's so true. And it's one of those things where a lot of interviews I've been doing, they're like, well, don't you think that this is, it's way more prevalent in culture today to celebrate women's interests? And it's like, well, yeah, we had the summer of Barbie, Taylor Swift and Beyonce, but having those cultural conversations in headlines and on Instagram is so different than conversations behind closed doors. And I guarantee you all across America, people are still being made fun of for liking Taylor Swift and going to more than one eras tour or whatever Barbie movie. Just because we perform acceptance doesn't mean that that acceptance translates into our everyday dialogue. And I know for me, I'm constantly still defending my job and my interests and things to uncles and whatever I come into contact with. So yeah, it's interesting having those conversations that are pretty common now, but thinking through if actually people are implementing that in their everyday life, and it's interesting to hear about you being in a male dominated space and experiencing that. I think that makes it just as tough to enjoy sometimes.
Kate: Yes, it been, I mean, not all the time and not all people are like this, but there is a little, I think there is always this assumption that any woman who is interested in a male dominated hobby isn't truly interested, doesn't really know what they're talking about, is only there for some other reason. And I mean, this has been also a point of annoyed pride for me my whole life, which is another thing to dissect later. But yeah, you're right. It's a lose lose. You can't really win either way.
Kate K: It's like I'm not doing a bit even being labeled as a not other girls thing to do with that's so misogynistic. It's like you're acting like my interests are just a function of rejecting the common male gaze. I don't know. It's crazy. But yeah, I feel like that's one thing that reading it back, I was like, I wish I made it more clear. I love it. If you like sports or fish or any of these things, the point is all leisure is valid.
Doree: Kate, you talk about this in your book.
Kate: Oh, not one Kate.
Doree: Sorry. Oh, sorry.
Kate: No, It's okay. This is other Kate
Doree: K, but I want to talk about American girl dolls.
Kate K: Yes.
Doree: Because I just missed them. And so I looked this up and I guess they were first released in May, 1986, which I'm 46, so that was the end of my third grade year. And then I didn't live in the United States in my fourth grade year, and then I was in fifth grade, and then I feel like I was a little too old and they hadn't fully permeated maybe yet or they were starting to, and so I kind of missed them. I think I was two years too old because Kate Spencer, who was two years younger than me says she was into them. But I would like you, and again, I know you talk about this in your book, but can we just discuss the hold that the American Girl Dolls still have on millennial women? I feel like they are such a touchstone, and if you reference them in a cohort of women born between, let's say Kate was born in 79, so 79 to, and obviously girls are still into them today, but 79 to 1992 or whatever, there's this shared experience of them that is really fascinating to me as someone who was not participating in that.
Kate K: Yeah, it was like my first taste of aspirational consumerism and I think was this form of catalog culture where it's a genius business model because I mean, as early as five years old, I think I say in the book, I was flipping through and critiquing, I was Miranda Priestly, I had such hot takes about antique furniture and it's like, why was I so into this? But it was different. Yes, there were Barbies and the Disney Universe and the other things I participated in, but the dolls were beautiful. They were inaccessible and the catalog coming to my home that I could shop through, it was a different experience than other brands were providing. And I try to give credit to Pleasant Roland for all the brand shortcomings. It's like, well, it's cool that a gal playing with a Malibu Barbie and a Jeep Wrangler was also interested in handcuffing a cloth with a muslin border. I mean, Kirsten came with a wooden spoon and I was like, hot damn, this is a hot accessory. And I think that's crazy that I was as girly and shallow as I was, but loved these historical figures and I think that's really empowering when you think about a baby doll and what that represents for women's limitations. And then her excavating women who were left out of a lot of the day-to-day history that we learned about it. It's an interesting brand. But yeah, just speaking to the consumerism piece, it was all so expensive and in my middle class suburb, most people had one doll as a gift probably if they were lucky. But then you just dreamed of having the whole set. It just, yeah, it was really,
Doree: and all the access accessories and all the things,
Kate K: It was like a multiverse kind of.
Doree: Yes. I remember when my sister got one, like you said, it was a big deal. They were expensive. Then getting all the other stuff was very expensive and yeah, aspirational, consumerism for children, you really, I think hit the nail on the head there.
Kate K: It's not like it was cardboard, mini, crappy doll furniture. I mean Felicity's mahogany chest with brass hardware and her canopy. I do have a Canopy bed
Kate: Samanthas Steamer Trunk, Samantha Steamer trunk.
Kate K: Oh my. It's might as well be a Louie. They were gorgeous pieces.
Kate: There was also, for me, I had never heard of them. And then my neighbors up the street who were my best friends, each had one, and that was my introduction and I was like, I've got to get, my mom had no, we had no idea, but it was in the catalog specifically for me, it was the matching outfits and the cost play and the fact that you can do this historical coplay. It's a little bit of fantasizing about, we used to read Watching Little House on the Prairie, Obviously.
Kate K: Yep. Yeah. Early cottage core.
Kate: Yeah. But at the time there was this weird fetishization of history and just what those, the girl models and their nightgowns holding their dolls and the matching nightgowns.
Kate K: Oh, totally.
Kate: Oh, and I never got the clothes that was just so exclusive.
Kate K: It kind of brings up, I don't know if this exists today, but there was a vibe in the eighties, nineties of reading books and being interested in stories of tweenage suffering in the form of American girl dolls or Dear America books, or even loving the secret garden or a little princess, or I think in the book I talk about how I had a fascination with people that died of waterborne illnesses. Why were we playing Oregon Trail so much? There was just so much old timey suffering involved in the pop culture I consumed, and I simply don't know why.
Kate: Did either of you have a Salem Witch trials phase as a kid? Is that specific? I grew up in Boston.
Doree: I had one,
Kate: I had such a Salem Witch trial phase. I was a puritan for Halloween in fourth grade. I was a real weirdo.
Doree: Similarly Along those lines, I went through a big Holocaust phase. So I think kids are, we forget that kids are kind of dark and goth and upset and fascinated and obsessed with death also.
Kate K: Yes, there are. Then you start to understand mortality, whatever you're learning about at that time, I think you kind of harp on
Doree: Totally.
Kate: There are these kids books called I Survived, and they are fictional retelling of historical events. So my younger daughter is, both of my kids have gone through phases of being really into them, and your children presumably will find them at their school library, but my youngest kid is still obsessed with them. And it's like, I survived the river shark attack of 1917, and then you read this fictional retelling, but it provides kids with that outlet. And so it still exists today. I can speak from experience of having to read those books at bedtime.
Kate K: What a cornucopia of new anxieties to explore.
Kate: It never ends is the truth.
Kate K: How as a kid, you don't understand probability, so you just hear something scary and then you think it's going to happen.
Kate: Yes.
Kate K: I was really scared of Venus fly traps because of Mario never come across one in my life.
Doree: Quicksand was a big too. Quicksand was always coming up in the eighties and nineties, always.
Kate: Oh, there was so much quicksand,
Doree: Right.
Kate K: Or face on the milk, carton style, kidnapping. Well face obviously that's a problem, but I really thought I was very scared of kidnapping.
Kate: Oh, me too.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Yeah. And satanic, satanic panic. I mean, all of that is just very
Kate K: Cut times being whimsy, wild children.
Kate: It was a real weird way to grow up. I mean, this is something
Doree: I feel like also, yeah, there's also nuclear war aids. There was just a lot of shit that we all kind of absorbed as we were children.
Kate: I mean, in that vein, you talked about how millennials are kind of always having to prove their worth. I mean, I actually kind of feel sorry for millennials in a lot of ways. You all kind got, and I try to eek my way into Gen X even though I'm one of those cusp people. But in talking about all these events and kind of where the world was when you all came onto the planet, no wonder shit's been real hard for you all. Do you feel like there's a justice for millennials waiting to happen? A little bit.
Kate K: I think the conclusion I kind of come to in the book is like you can kind of assign whatever value you want to a label because it's hard to combat them in their entirety. But I think it's just so much misunderstanding if you're going to call somebody lazy, part of that, if you're called lazy in the workplace as a millennial, is like people wanting more work-life balance and pushing back on being accessible after hours or when you call somebody a job hopper in an accusatory way. A lot of people love to paint millennials as being so disloyal and going from job to job. And it's like, okay, well when you enter the job market in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and you've been laid off a bunch of times and no company's ever shown loyalty to you, why would you be incentivized to show loyalty to a company? Of course, millennials are looking out for themselves in their careers. So I think for me, it's less about combating the naysayers, improving ourselves, and instead telling people within the segment to just kind of rethink the way a lot of these insults are interpreted by us, because I think we're just misunderstood and we have a lot of context for our circumstances, why we are the way we are. And I think being behind and being the first online, there's really good reasons for a lot of our behavior.
Kate: I feel ready, I don't know, ready for millennials to have a little bit of, I don't want to say justice is the wrong word, but validation in a lot of, I don't know. Dunno, you piloted a lot of shit for us that now the younger generation just takes for granted and I feel like we actually owe you a lot for your service.
Kate K: Well, I do appreciate that, but it's funny, I don't know any other generations experience with their branding and they all have their tropes. Of course. I think millennials were just, the distinction for me was them, us being more such a punchline. And that era when we were accused of killing every major economic sector and industry from napkins to diamonds to low-fat yogurt, the American dream in its entirety. And it was a weird era that the media kind of got passed in the mid to late 2010s, but then come 2020 with TikTok, we were the punchline again with younger people and we just kind of got wedged in between these two segments of ridicule. And meanwhile, I don't think anybody is trying to be annoying. We're just kind of a easily lost generation of people that grew up in a world that no longer exists.
Kate: Yeah.
Kate K: So did you guys largely too, I mean coming of age is kind of a broad term, but I do think it's different having an adulthood so marked by technology in a childhood that wasn't
Doree: Totally, truly,
Kate: It's a very strange turning point. I mean, I can remember the first AOL CD that we got and putting it in the computer. It was like in that moment, everything changed
Kate K: Were you guys into aim as much as I was.
Doree: I didn't get email until I went to college.
Kate K: OK
Doree: Think my parents got AIM that year, so I went to college in 1995. I think that was the year that aim kind of came out because I remember going home and seeing my brother and sister. My sister was 11, and I remember seeing them on AIM and being like, what is happening?
Kate: So it was essentially just texting. I was on AOL I was a very active member of the AOL chat room, the fishbowl, which was the fish community in high school. So I was on AOL, I was on AOL all the time.
Kate K: I love this. You've been standing up for your fandom this whole time.
Kate: I love, well, I mean it's very, Phish is a very important part of who I am and my life from high school till now. But also being able to access the community online was pivotal. And I think to Doree's point, if I had been a little older, I probably would've missed a lot of that. And it was an amazing way to actually feel a part of something that I wasn't able to really access in my real life community. So yeah, shout out to the fishbowl.
Kate K: Were you guys burning CDs?
Doree: Yes.
Kate K: In college and after. Okay. I wasn't sure if that was behavior of, because it was so illegal. I'm like, were we doing this? I was a teenager or were people doing that? Because obviously before iPods and stuff, you weren't cool CDs in your car. That's ageless.
Doree: No, we were definitely burning CDs and also CD mixes, mixed CDs.
Kate K: Yeah,
Kate: It's like the cover of your book. It resonates very deeply.
Kate K: Oh, good. I was hopeful that even though the CD burning era wasn't that long before Napster and Limewire was cracked down on, I do feel like having that energy of being the DJ in your car or sending somebody a message with a mixed CD is just something I think of fondly. And what I was going to ask you, Kate, is do you remember the phenomenon slash attribution problem with Limewire Napster where everybody said that gin and juice, there was this cover of Gin and Juice that was a fish song and it wasn't.
Kate: It's not. There's a jam band that does a cover of gin and juice. This is vaguely familiar to me,
Kate K: But everybody I know
Kate: Loved that version,
Kate K: Loved that version, and therefore thought they were like fish fans. So that was our point of entry to converse with fish heads.
Kate: Oh god, that's hilarious. Oh my gosh. Okay.
Kate K: Wow. Yeah, it was a no-name jam band that got coated in the pirating world as Phish. And that's the only Phish song on my IPO that I remember
Kate: That was a strange time too, because we had a year of just ripping music. Everybody I would sit in my college library ripping music off of Napster where the internet was fastest.
Kate K: Kate? Yes, I think there's an age range of people that have a really detailed knowledge of music from that time because of being so immersed in it and curating playlist in a way that just was a little more intentional than it is now. The songs were named so crazy and ripped from different places. Or you get the radio edit of something that was, I think this was popular in the northeast, but there was this version of jewels, like a jewel song with nine 11 voiceovers.
Kate: Oh God,
Kate K: That radio stations would play as a tribute.
Doree: No,
Kate: My god, I don't remember that. So dark. No,
Kate K: But you know how radio stations would voiceover things and songs or do sound effects. You would have one of those weird versions.
Kate: I have one of those from the Gulf War.
Kate K: Yeah,
Kate: There's this song called Get Here that I have this visceral Gulf War memory of where soldiers would say hi to their family as the song played on the radio. And I was explaining this to my husband, he was like, I've never heard this song in my life.
Kate K: I was like, this is, you're like that A fever dream.
Kate: Yes. But I mean, it had to have existed on some local Massachusetts radio station
Kate K: Or some songs would have the movie quotes in it, like The Secret Garden from Jerry Maguire.
Kate: I loved that we would've the talk up of him talking. Yeah.
Kate K: Anyway, sorry,
Doree: Kate Kennedy. Well, this is something that Kate Spencer and I talk about sometimes, which is like we are kind of giving our children this sort of strange record of us and over the course of several years. And I'm just wondering what you think about in terms of your son listening to your podcast or discovering your book or all of those things. What goes through your mind when you think about that?
Kate K: I think keeping my kids as separate as I can from my online identity till they're a little older and recognize me as a whole person is something I'll probably try to do because I do think there's a major turning point where you start to understand your parents better once you're out of the house and a little removed and you just can appreciate them more outside of that role specifically. But obviously I can't prevent that too much. But yeah, I think about that. I think I always have, I almost feel grateful even though sometimes I hate that my parents listen to and participate in things I do. I almost appreciate just having that general filter of never taking it too far in a moment that's disconnected from how I am normally.
Doree: Totally.
Kate K: Yeah. Because not that extreme of a person or that controversial, I'm a cooperative gal. As I wrote about on the book, there are a few things that I would do publicly that I can't stand by, but are they embarrassing and cringey? Yeah. But that's my last acknowledgement. It's to my, at the time, unborn child and who I tell if you're cringe, that means you're doing it right in terms of living your life. I love that kind of delusional investment in who you are at a given moment while you're growing. I think it's part of it, and I think that maybe all create things that we're embarrassed by later.
Doree: Yeah, I do. I love that
Kate K: Nothing is timeless.
Doree: Totally.
Kate K: As much as every blogger wants you to think their capsule wardrobe is, nothing is timeless. We'll always look back and kind of laugh at ourselves. And I think that's okay. This book might not age well, but hopefully the spirit of it will.
Kate: Okay. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. I want to talk about maternal health and you touch on your own experience with pregnancy loss in your book. And this might not even be a question, just more of an observation that I really, really appreciate you making a point to talk about maternal healthcare and access to abortion and what this means just in a time where obviously Roe v Wade has been overturned. And can you talk a little bit about, I guess why that was important for you to include in this book that's not just about your own life experience, but also about the experience of millennial dumb?
Kate K: Yeah, I wasn't sure with that chapter and what was the most important thing to get across because the bigger goal was to stand up for anybody in any circumstance because I think we grow up, and I call it the love marriage baby carriage pipeline where you really are talked to about marriage and babies. One, it's something. Those are things you desire, and two, those are things you can control. And I think so many people are in complicated dating situations or have trouble having kids or may not want kids or there's so many paths you can take and our lives just divert so much when we're all in these different phases. Trying to navigate those two things oftentimes is where a disconnect can happen. And I just wanted everyone to feel validated in their circumstances being a function of their desire and lack of control in ways nobody gives us that agency for almost acting like if we're single, it's like, oh, still single or the way we talk to people about marriage and babies is one piece of it. But then I think that to go along with the theme of the book in terms of all of these things that were felt marked by a level of invisibility throughout my life or I had to shrink, I think it's like there's something so alarming about writing this book during the time Roe v Wade was overturned and feeling like that same invisibility is just still so present on the floor of Congress in medical settings. There were current invisibility that I wanted to speak about from a personal standpoint too, because I think the book is, I didn't want to go off on a political rant, rather kind of make a humanitarian argument when I have people's ears for this is so much bigger than the lightning rod issue it's presented as, and I really think it's powerful to understand it in the context of miscarriages. Not that it, we should need a reason for any of it. It should be your choice, period, the end. But I just don't think people understand what this looks like and how it further traumatizes people in the throes of grief and loss. And so many women think it's an issue that doesn't affect them, but it absolutely does. If one informed miscarriage pregnancies unfortunately, and a miscarriage and many of those miscarriages require medical intervention and that intervention is identical to the procedures for elective abortions. I don't even know if that's the correct term to be using right now, but these conversations are tricky. But I know so many women that have suffered from pregnancy loss and it incenses me to think of people enduring being in that state and also having this nonsensical intervention from legislation that prevents them from lifesaving care. And I just thought maybe it would be an opportunity to provide a different perspective in case anybody thought the issue was not something they should concern themselves with.
Kate: No notes to that Kate. You know what I mean?
Kate K: I think sometimes when people aren't attracted to polarizing arguments, the middle needs to be. I just wanted to clarify, being pro-choice is not extremist. It's not an extremist position.
Kate: Yes.
Doree: Kate, can we talk about what you are obsessed with right now in pop culture?
Kate K: Oh, What am I obsessed with right now in pop culture? There's this video of Jacob Alote picking up his co-stars to go coffee. Have you seen that?
Kate: No. Oh my god, this is so specific. I love it so much. Okay,
Kate K: So the past few months, I feel like there's two videos I keep rewatching. One is David and Victoria Beck. I'm doing the electric slide dance to islands in the Stream, and one is Jacob Elte and what's the guy's name in Saltburn? His co-star
Kate: Barry, I don't know how to say his last name. Kegan Kagan. Kagan
Kate K: Han. And he's really small and Jacob Alote is like six five and there's just this video. And Jacob Alote is so crunched for, they're on director's chairs and Barry's feet don't touch the floor and Jacob's are crunched to the floor and the small CoStar wants his coffee and Jacob's taller and can reach it. And he reaches it for him, gives it to him, kind of pats him on the knee. And it's just like this charming exchange of male comradery that you just don't see often and find it charming. So I watched that video a lot lately and I loved the Beckham documentary, so I was recently obsessed with that otherwise. Oh, welcome to Plathville on TLC. It's my newest show binge that I love because I love religious deconstruction,
Kate: Which you get into in your book, which I thought was fascinating.
Kate K: It's like my true crime. I don't love crime crime, but I think insidious nature of people doing terrible things in the context of something that looks good is really interesting. And I think extremist religion fascinating in that sense of how it's so hard to criticize because it all looks so well-meaning, but you can abuse power there almost better than anywhere because you hang salvation over people's heads and it's unprovable.
Kate: Yeah. That being said, I went through a big Christian rock phase where I really enjoyed Christian rock music.
Kate K: Oh my God. Reliant K jars of clay.
Kate: Yeah, you mentioned them. I mean you talk about them in your book and I was like, yeah, in my early twenties I was unironically into Christian rock.
Kate K: Well, I think that I was a little nervous do that chapter. I knew it wouldn't be relatable to everybody, but I was trying to find pockets of things that are still kind of relevant in terms of think of where Christian nationalism is. I mean, this kind of culture is alive and well. And I wanted people to kind of understand my experience through it, but also to realize that what's distinct about millennials is a lot of these principles trickled into secular spaces through abstinence only sex ed through dress codes. I mean, purity culture was pervasive in ways that don't necessarily involve you being directly involved with the church. That, and I think ww JD culture and sneaky evangelizing through ropes courses and cheese pizza and laser tag lock-ins is something that was just so common in my experience in the nineties.
Kate: Yeah. Kate, before we let you depart, do you have any skincare, faves or products that you want to share with our friends, the listeners of this show?
Kate K: Okay. Right as I got on the phone with you, I was like, oh wait, they're going to ask me for my latest product obsession and I'm going to need to know the name of it
Kate: Could be nothing. You might not be using any products, which is a valid and wonderful answer also.
Kate K: Okay, don't, it's possible I'm late to this and this could be literally burning off my skin. I don't know. I cannot speak to the quality or the ingredients, but I can tell you my experience has been wildly positive with something. It is called Cure natural aqua gel. And it's, have you heard of this? It's an exfoliating face wash that you only put on dry skin.
Kate: What? I've never heard of this.
Kate K: It's a Japanese alternative to a Korean chemical exfoliant, and you put it on completely dry skin and you rub and your skin just comes off. Chunks of it come off chunks, but it's not peeling. It's not like baby feet, but the way it is so satisfying and how much dead skin it pulls off your dry skin is crazy to me. And yeah, it's this Japanese face wash that I got at a favorite thing gift exchange, and I am so obsessed with it. It's $39 on Amazon. It's Toyo gel, gentle exfoliator, and it's outstanding.
Kate: I think. I love that I continue to be awakened to new products.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: I feel like you would think after doing this show for so long, I'd be like, been there, done that. No, this is brand new to me and I love it. Thank you for this.
Kate K: Well, that's what I love about favorite things. Exchanges over white elephant culture is like I loved, we hear a lot about influencer holy grails, but we should be making it a point to hear about the holy grails of the everyday people in our lives.
Doree: Oh, a thousand percent. Yes.
Kate: Yes. I also feel like holy Grail internet, holy grail influencer, holy grail grail culture. It's not, it's like Pat, it's jumped the shark. Right? It's not real anymore. I don't know. I am a bit jaded on it.
Kate K: Oh, it's almost like the more people insist on things, their holy grail online, the less like that I am to participate. I am skeptical of their intentions, but yeah, that's a random product I had never seen in my life that somebody at this exchange swore by.
Doree: Love this.
Kate: That's amazing.
Kate K: Sure enough.
Kate: Okay. That's a great one. That makes me want to do a favorite things gift exchange. That sounds like a lot of fun.
Kate K: Or even with your listeners, just have everybody type, make their case for their one product. They don't think it's enough hype.
Kate: Ooh, love that. Doree, what would be yours? Do you have one?
Doree: I feel like I hype up all of my favorite products.
Kate: I know. I'm trying to think of what is my thing. Okay, we'll, think about this and we'll follow up.
Kate K: Please. I would love to hear
Doree: Kate, where can our listeners find you?
Kate K: You can find me at Kate Kennedy on Instagram, one in a millennial, wherever books are sold. I recorded the whole audio book myself, nine months pregnant, which was a journey, and I'm taking it on tour It bethereinfive.com/liveshows. You can really find everything at bethereinfive.com, which is the name of my pop culture podcast.
Doree: Amazing. Thank you so much.
Kate: Thank you, Kate.
Kate K: Thanks for having me. It was so fun to catch up with you guys.
Doree: This was really fun.
Kate: It was great to talk to you. I hope everybody picks up your book. It was really a fun read. Yes,
Kate K: Thank you.
Kate: Okay.
Doree: I do just want to dig around in her brain. You know what I mean? Is that weird? Is that weird to say?
Kate: No? After a conversation, I was just like, she's so intelligent about this stuff.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Why? I want to be this smart.
Doree: I know. I know.
Kate: Let me be in her. Yes. I also want to be in her brain, but luckily you can be in her brain by reading her book or listening to her podcast.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: Both, which are excellent.
Doree: Totally. Both of those things are options for you.
Kate: Get into Kate's brain,
Doree: get into her brain.
Kate: So Doree, when we started talking at the beginning of the episode, you said you had been getting into bed earlier.
Doree: Yes. And so I would say if you charted the average of when I have been going to sleep, I think you would probably find that I have been going to sleep a little bit earlier and it's like it's pretty textbook. The nights that I go out, I go to bed later, it's duh. But I really do, it's harder for me to wind down when I do my tennis practices. I've been doing nighttime tennis practice on Wednesdays, and I don't get home until 9:30. And so then it's like if I shower and the whole thing, it's like I often don't even get into bed until 10:30, and that's just late. So kind of acknowledging that. But then when the nights when I'm home, I have been like, oh, okay, it's like nine. I'm going to get into bed. My weakness is just sitting down at my computer and poking around.
Kate: Oh, I love poking around.
Doree: And then look at the clock and it's like 10:15, and I'm like, Nope.
Kate: No, you can't poke at 10:15.
Doree: So yeah. So I think I'm doing a little better there. I will say,
Kate: It's funny you talk about going out at night because my friend is going dancing for her birthday tonight. It's a Friday that we're recording this and I really want to go, but I think it's like they're going at 10, which is also kind of when I want to get into bed, and I'm like,
Doree: Wait, they're going at 10?
Kate: I think so. And then I am seeing Jackie Johnson's new one woman show how to get a Second Husband on Sunday night at nine o'clock. So I've got some Girl Nights coming up.
Doree: I just want to know that I saw Jackie Johnson's show how to get a second husband last month, but that show started at 7:30.
Kate: Well, listen,
Doree: You're going to The Late Show.
Kate: I'm going to the Late Show. I'm just having some really big late nights for me this weekend, and I'm excited about it.
Doree: I'm excited. Im excited for you, Kate.
Kate: I am too, and I'm very excited if you are in la I think this iteration, I mean, I don't, I don't know when Jackie's doing the show again, but go see it. I haven't even seen it yet, but I know in of it I loved it.
Doree: She's been doing it roughly monthly, so if you follow her on Instagram, she announces when she's doing it, and I hope she goes on tour with it. Really's really enjoyable. I've been talking since I saw it. I've been talking about it to Kate. I'll be like, well, in Jackie Johnson's show,
Kate: And Doree won't spoil it for me, so she's like, I can't wait. You got to go see it. Well, Doree, what is your intention for this week?
Doree: Okay, Kate, this week is big now. By the time this airs, this will have already happened, but as we're recording, it has not happened. I am taking two nights next week and going to Joshua Tree with a friend. We rented an Airbnb.
Kate: Joshua Tree is a beautiful desert area.
Doree: Beautiful desert area. Sidebar. Have you heard about the bust?
Kate: Is that just like Airbnb market is bad for people who have Airbnbs?
Doree: Yeah, so during the pandemic, all these people bought Airbnbs in Joshua Tree and Big Bear and all these places where you can go from LA within two hours and because during the pandemic, people weren't flying anywhere, but they wanted to get away and they weren't staying in hotels. So all these Airbnbs were always booked, but now the tables have turned, and when I say there is a glut of Airbnbs in Joshua Tree, oh boy, it is. I mean, wow, there are too many Airbnbs in Joshua, but the nice thing for me is I get to book one of them pretty cheaply. So anyway, so we're doing that. We're going to do it as a mini writing retreat.
Kate: Yeah, you are.
Doree: So I'm really excited about this, and it's all part of my push to get a draft of my manuscript done by the end of the month,
Kate: Which Doree has been working hard on this book.
Doree: I have been working hard on this book.
Kate: She's book that I want to read.
Doree: Kate will read it when it's not a total stinking heap of trash. It can be a small heap of trash that doesn't really stink, but
Kate: I know what you mean. It's trash, but it's not the grossest trash.
Doree: Yeah, exactly. You're like, oh, there's some, it's like if you were dumpster diving and instead of it just being a dumpster full of fully rotting food with maggots on it, you find some stuff that just expire that is still edible.
Kate: I have had maggots in my trash can and it is not.
Doree: It's not pretty. No, it's not pretty. And when your book is the equivalent of maggots in your trash can. It's also not pretty stop.
Kate: For a month I was having this, our car smelled so bad and I could not, I was like, why does it smell like rotting yogurt in my car? And then I opened the trunk, weirdly, I don't know why I hadn't opened the trunk in a few weeks and there was just a bag of old Starbucks cups that we hadn't thrown out. Oh, no. It smelled very bad. Oh, yeah.
Doree: It's always satisfying to find the source of the smell.
Kate: Have I ever told you how in college we had, I'm sorry, I'm on a tangent. I'm just going to go on it and if we need to, we can cut this. We had a parents' weekend. My senior year of college, I lived off campus in a house. We had all our parents up there were like five of us in the house, and we had made a salad. And then for months, there was a terrible smell in our kitchen. And in about January we discovered the bowl of the salad on top of our fridge. We had just, no, we had never cleaned it, so we just had a bowl of rotting vegetables that should have been washed.
Doree: No.
Kate: Yes. Our house smelled so bad for months.
Doree: Oh my God. Kate.
Kate: It was so disgusting. It was like a real dry heaving situation for me.
Doree: Oh no.
Kate: Yes, Yes.
Doree: I'm sorry to laugh, but it is kind of funny.
Kate: Bats college roommates. Oh, it was so, it was hilarious. I mean, I still do shit like that now as an adult
Doree: You're like, oh, this is why our house has been smelling for three weeks.
Kate: And it's kind of amazing. Once you get rid of the thing, the smell goes away very fast.
Doree: It does. Now, I can imagine. Kate, how is your plantar fascitis care going?
Kate: I got a nice text from a listener recommending some Dr. S Schuls insoles and another listener had recommended insoles. Basically, if you're a listener and you message us about insoles, I'm going to buy 'em. It's going okay. I should probably go back to physical therapy. It's just been hard to find the time, but I am doing a better job of dealing with it myself. Sleeping in the foot brace and stretching and stuff.
Doree: Oh, good.
Kate: Slow and steady. Doree. Slow and steady.
Doree: Slow and steady.
Kate: This week, my intention is my dumb brain.
Doree: I don't like that negative self-talk. Kate,
Kate: My beautiful Brain.
Doree: Yes, thank you.
Kate: I've had a real flare up of my anxiety and my obsessive compulsive disorder that I am finally tackling, upping my meds a little bit. I talked, had therapy and I saw my psychiatrist yesterday, so it was a real double whammy of mental health care. But I'm just going to try to do the tweaks that my professionals have suggested this week and see if that helps me kind of stabilize if you will.
Doree: Okay, good, good, good.
Kate: My beautiful brain. Beautiful brain.
Doree: Alright. Well, Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doha Freier and Kate Spencer. And produced and edited by Sam Hudio. Wow. Sam.
Kate: Sam and Hudio and the Blowfish. Thats a bad joke.
Doree: Produced, edited by, Sam Junio. Sorry. Sam. Sami Reed is our project manager, and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everybody. Bye.
Kate: Bye.