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Hello, you're listening to a preview of a premium episode of Blocked Imported. This one is about raw milk, not pasteurized milk. That's a different episode. Raw milk. We're talking about Mormon influencers and raw milk. And accusations they are poisoning the public at large. There's a woman who keeps having babies, and it doesn't. I don't want to sound creepy, but it doesn't change her body at all somehow. I don't know how that works. A lot of stuff in this one. You're going to hear a preview of it. If you want to hear the whole thing, go to blocktoreimporter.org and become a premium subscriber. Thank you, and enjoy the preview. Katie, your favorite question. How's it going
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every time? Jesse? No, I'm fine. I did hear something kind of fun today. So Jana is volunteering at an animal rescue. I don't want to hear about it. Yes, we all know she's a better person than I am. And one of the rescue animals is an emo. Is a male emo. But she told me today when she got back that she was unable to meet him because he's a male and horny.
A
Is he too horny?
B
He's not too horny. Well, he's too maternal. So there's no other. There's no female emos at this place, but he has been spent the last few weeks in a field sitting on boulders. Oh, wait, like male emos? Apparently, they incubate eggs. Is incubate the right word for sitting on an egg?
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Yeah.
B
Yeah.
A
Wait, but he's male. But does he. Is he confused about his gender identity? What's he.
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No, he's. No. This is. No.
A
Or do the males do that?
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The males do this, but he doesn't have actual eggs to sit on, so he goes out into this field by himself, and he sits on rocks.
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Wow. That's dark.
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It's. Well, I think it's sort of sweet, but also very dumb.
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I mean, it's. It's dark and it's dumb. It's a dark form of dumbness. That poor emu.
B
Yeah, he sounds lonely, but it reminded me of millennials who treat their dogs as their children. And that's the first thing I want to talk about today.
A
Wow. So that was an intro mixed with a segue into the actual one of the subjects of the show. I don't know if we've ever done that before. Yeah, congratulations.
B
Our first segue. Our first intro.
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Let's just roll with it. We don't need to Comment on it. Let's just keep up the momentum, okay?
B
Before we get to that. Oh, I'm going to ruin it now.
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I thought the whole point was. So I, I pointed. Sorry, I pointed out how smoothly your transition was.
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I'm still in the transition. Don't ruin it.
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You're mid transition.
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Okay, before we get to that, I want to tell you that the. We're doing some foreshadowing now. So the meat of the show today is going to be about raw milk and an influencer farm that is having a raw milk scandal. And yes, I want to talk about dogs, but before we get to any of that, we got a lot of feedback on our last free episode about our frenemies to the north up in Canada. And I think some people thought that we downplayed how much progressive ideology, a gay wokeness has been institutionalized in Canada. And that wasn't my intention. I just wanted to fact check some of the incorrect claims and generalizations about a specific claim that went viral of this one particular Canadian mp, because I don't think that MP is representative of Canadians in general or even the Canadian government. But I think to some folks, it seemed like we were minimizing the institutional capture of, you know, the government, the courts, universities, et cetera. And I do want to talk about this more. We just have other stuff on the docket today. But if listeners have specific examples of this sort of thing in Canada, please send them. Or any, like, cultural issues in Canada. There were some good links in the comments. Like there was a. Someone posted a link to a story about a commercial trucker who drank nine beers and wrecked her truck, and a labor arbitrator ordered her. Yes, that's how woke they are in Canada. They let women drive. The arbitrator ordered her employer to rehire her because alcoholism is a disability and therefore a protected category, which I really could have used that a few years ago. The company appealed the decision and won. So sad news for my people. But send us stories like that and we'll look into them.
A
Fair enough.
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Okay. Ready to talk about dogs?
A
Yeah, let's do it.
B
Okay, so there was a piece published in Curbed, that's New York magazine's City and Real Estate vertical. It was about dogs. And this led to a fair amount of debate online. Did you see this?
A
I saw some of the debate around it, but not the piece itself.
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Dog discourse is insane. Truly nuts. I recommend no one ever weigh in on anything remotely related to dogs on social media. But since this is a safe space, I wanted to have My say where no one besides you can yell at me. So this article was called where does a Dog Belong? In restaurants or grocery stores. Tensions between canine lovers and other New Yorkers are boiling over. It was by Rachel Sugar. Great name. And it starts with the problem of dog shit. So Jesse, you live in New York. Have you noticed a dog problem there or a human problem there?
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No. People. No. If anything, people are too diligent.
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So you want more dog?
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The other thing I. The other thing I. The other thing I wish we had was rats and trash.
B
Yeah.
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No.
B
Okay, so wait, so you're being sarcastic? There is a dog shit problem there.
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How could you tell?
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Yeah, stuff.
A
Tough dog. I mean, it's not as bad as some places or also, I mean the big difference here I think is like other countries where they have different norms on this. But yes, there's a dog shit problem. It's New York.
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So we do have some numbers on this. So Rachel Sugar wrote in this piece, quote, at the end of February 2025, there had been 650 calls to 311 about dog poop. the same time this year, the number of calls had already hit 1541. I am curious about who calls 311 about dog poop. Is it you?
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Probably me.
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Yeah, I did. Look, I'm like judging, but I did call 911 about the cold horses that time. You were that cold Wet horses.
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Cold wet. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, the cold wet horses.
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Yeah.
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Good band name.
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Yeah, I called multiple times. So Rachel Sugar says that the uptick in calls is probably likely in part due to New York having a particularly brutal winter. There's lots of snow there or there has been lots of snow there. And apparently people can't pick up dog shit in the snow for some reason. Or maybe they think it will melt with the snow, I'm not sure. But the dog shit is emblematic of larger tensions over dogs being everywhere. So let's read a passage that I think sums this article up and this debate up nicely. So Jesse, will you read this?
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And it wasn't just the shit. In the past two years, calls about animals in restaurants have more than doubled. And in the years since the pandemic, complaints about off leash dogs have more than doubled too. In early February, a chow chow named Meatball. Oh God. Broke free from his owner at Bowling Green, fell onto the subway tracks, hit the third rail and died. If you witnessed that, Katie, that would be it for you. If you saw dead, you would follow.
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I would follow into the subway tracks
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even if it was someone else's dog.
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And I don't even like chows. They're mean.
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This set off yet another wave of dog discourse, which had less to do with the specific circumstances of Meatball's obviously tragic death, the details of which were not publicly disclosed. Then, with the general alleged entitlement of dog owners who are apparently tearing apart the already fragile fabric of the city by putting dogs in places dogs do not belong. Pet culture, one extreme Gothamist commenter declared, promotes disordered living. Around this time, inside a Park Slope market, I watched a woman cradle a teacup Pomeranian and tried to determine whether it was nibbling on tiny samples of artisanal cheese.
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Have you seen things like this? Like dogs on the subway, dogs in the cheese shop?
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Oh, the little dogs that people wear. It's. It's endemic.
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Like a necklace. You put it. You put a rope around it, and you just. Dang here.
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Or you put, like, a. You wear it like earrings. The dog's tooth goes through your ear. You have, like, one dog on each ear.
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Yeah, it's a thing. So what it comes down to is dogs are everywhere, including places where they cannot be legally. And some people don't like this, and they don't like the people who engage in this behavior. So here's a tweet by Josh Barrett that I think sums this up nicely. Josh said, the worst is people who claim they take their dogs everywhere because the dogs can't handle being alone. It's like, congratulations, in addition to being rude, you're also bad at training a dog. Josh also said something very impolite about how people treat dogs like children because they are insecure and the dog can't reject them. Clearly, Josh has never met Moose. He rejects me every time Andy walks into a room. But more to his point, I mean, what do you think, Jesse, about people who take their dogs everywhere? I mean, there's a company excluded.
A
There's just, like, something. Look, New York. My friend visited once with his dog. I mean, not staying with me, but, like, we couldn't even find a patch of grass for the poor animal to, like, go to the bathroom. So it's like a rough city for dogs in a lot of ways. But, yeah, you should think of that before you get a dog. It's a rough city for dogs. And I think part of the reason some people bring their dogs everywhere is just like, you would leave it cooped up in a tiny apartment, right?
B
And because if you're out walking your dog in New York and you want to get a cup of Coffee or whatever. If you leave your dog outside, I assume it's going to get stolen. It probably trafficked.
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I don't think there's. I could. I don't. I don't think that many people will steal the dog. What.
B
What's more like a really cute one.
A
What happens more often is people take. Its.
B
Like, someone would steal Moose.
A
People, Someone would steal moose. But more often what happens is someone takes its legs and replaces them with cinder blocks. So you come back and your dog just can't.
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Can't walk anymore. That was a good one. You know, I did take Moose to New York. You were there. You saw him.
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I was there. Moose had the benefit of a very large apartment to run around it.
B
Well.
A
Well, with everybody.
B
I mean, we were the one.
A
We know, the one where we have the event.
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Right. But we. We did stay in a small hotel.
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Yeah.
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And we did take it. We'd, like, drove him up there because we're psychotic dog people. And Moose has always wanted to see New York. And we were there for two days, which is the perfect amount of time to be in New York. And so we did go to. We went to a couple of dog parks. And I've never experienced New York dog culture. I got yelled at. I think it almost came to fisticuffs. There's like these very. These various protocols about closing the gates. And I like, was such as close the gate, close the gate. So I was stand. So there's. There's a gate into the dog park, and then there's a second gate into the dog park. So that there's like a staging ground. And I was standing in the first gate to leave the dog park, and then someone opened the first gate, and all these dogs went rushing out. And then. So it wasn't really my fault. It was the woman who opened the gate coming in. She should have waited for me, but all these women started just screaming at each other, and they were using profanity, too.
A
Well, that sounds like a New York story.
B
Yeah, we. We got out of there as quickly as we could. We're like, let's go upstate. This is not for us. And I'm actually. I'm more torn on the question of taking dogs everywhere than you may assume, just because of my own behavior. Moose does go everywhere with me, but he. He usually stays in the car. So if we're going to a restaurant in our town, which is like 20 minutes away, we will take him, but he doesn't actually come into the restaurant with us, you know, unless we're sitting Outside, in which case, yeah, maybe. And I do think people in cities who expect their dogs to just like to be able to go into cafes and grocery stores, even though it's against the law, should be publicly shamed for doing this. Like, nothing that sheds should be allowed in a restaurant. Lots of people are allergic to dogs. And it's just, it's very entitled to break the rules because you think that your baby is different. Your baby is the exception. Your baby is not the exception. My baby is the exception. He's hypoallergenic.
A
Yeah. Your baby, your baby's special. That's what it comes down to.
B
Thank you. And like, I know everybody thinks their baby is special, but my baby actually,
A
I mean, you agree he's actually special.
B
He actually is. Like, he's, he's a very exceptional dog. What I think Josh is wrong about is that dogs really actually shouldn't be left alone for that long. Like, even if they're well trained, because for one, dogs need to pee. And changing their, their diapers is a real bitch. The recommendations vary by age and size and individual and breed. But I wouldn't leave Moose home alone for eight hours without at the very least arranging for someone to come let him out and give my attention. And it's not like he would pee inside. He wouldn't. Like he sleeps through the night. He doesn't need a pee break. But I just think for my dog, like, he wouldn't thrive being home alone. And lucky for him, I'm psychotic. And I will do basically whatever possible to make sure that he's a happy, healthy, thriving animal. And I'm not saying that's normal. It's not. But I am saying that if reincarnation is real, you want to come back as the only dog of two childless middle aged lesbians.
A
I think that's. Yeah, it's like just a really good situation.
B
Yeah. So I think my, my controversial dog take is that I don't actually think dogs, particularly big dogs, belong in cities unless those cities have ample green space for the dogs to run off leash and the dog isn't staying home parked in an apartment all day. And some cities have that, obviously, and some dog owners make the effort to get their dog lots of exercise. But if all your dog is getting is like a 30 minute walk on concrete every day, you maybe just shouldn't have a dog. You know, same if you live in the suburbs or in the country. Being a responsible dog owner can be really onerous. Like, I have driven across this country, I think eight times since I got Moose just because he can't fly and he loves to stick his head out the window. I miss out on events and travel and other opportunities all the time because I'm not going to leave him home alone. And our dog sitter very rudely started a podcast company. I think the sacrifice is worth it, but it is a sacrifice. And if you willingly get a dog or almost any pet, I think you have a responsibility to optimize his or her life the best you can. The dog is basically a prisoner. It has no bodily autonomy. Its quality of life is 100 in the owner's hand. And I'm. I'm not saying you need to cook for it, although Janet does cook for moose. But I am saying that dogs need a lot of mental and physical stimulation. And if you can't provide that, you should get a cat or a fish.
A
I mean, it's tricky. People love their dogs, they don't want to give them up. And sometimes they move to New York from elsewhere. But I. The general principle. I agree with you. It's just like a rough city to have a dog in.
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Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying that if you move to New. That if you have a dog and you move to New York, you should put the dog down or give the dog away. Like that also is going to be traumatic.
A
Well, but also it's easy because while you're driving over the GW Bridge, you just toss the dog into the river and it'll wash up somewhere.
B
What they used to do. So New York City used to have a huge feral dog problem. And what they. My dad wrote about this in his book. What they used to do is they would drown dogs en masse in the East River. They called it the canine bathtub.
A
Jesus.
B
They could kill 750 dogs before early afternoon.
A
Can I, can I say something? You have to promise not to get mad.
B
No, go ahead and say it.
A
That doesn't.
B
Okay. That sounds right.
A
No, no, no, no, no. I was gonna say, like, I don't. I'm. I'm mad that this program existed.
B
Uh huh.
A
Given the resources at New York's disposal and our technological prowess as a species. 750. It's not that. That's. That's not that impressive.
B
That's every day. That's every day. So let me.
A
Every more. I thought you said every. The whole day. They could only kill 750.
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Well, okay, let me just. I'm going to read you direct from my dad's book. I have the quote right here. 48 dogs at a time were jammed into the heavy cage. It was then lifted up by a crane, swung over the east river and submerged 10 minutes later.
A
I can't even joke about this. This is too horrific.
B
Ten minutes later, the cage was hauled to the surface, the carcass is removed, and the cage reloaded with another batch of strays.
A
Why can't they just do what mobsters were doing at that time in New York and just shoot them in the back of the head when they're not looking?
B
I mean, didn't mobsters also drown people in the East River? Yeah, the cement blocks.
A
What do you think?
B
Therefore?
A
Yeah, I think it depends on how bad your infraction was, whether the mob would torture you before killing you. But anyway, this is dark.
B
All right, let's move on. Would you like to talk about raw milk, Jesse?
A
Only if this involves dogs dying. Otherwise I'm not interested. But yes, go ahead. Tell me about raw milk.
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Okay, so now we are going to take a look at one of my favorite corners of the Internet. This is the world of Utah's Mormon tradwives. Now this is a surprisingly diverse corner of the Internet. Not racially, no. The Mormon church is quite global. They really do be sending teenagers to Krabati. Is that how you say it? Peru. The online Mormon traves do tend to fit a certain profile. So when I say Mormon tradwife content is diverse, I mean that they wear different outfits. So like, my favorite Mormon trads are the ones who go to BYU. Hawaii. They start having kids at like 22. They wear bikinis. Other Mormon tradwives do not wear bikinis. And it is the most prominent member of the non bikini wearing Mormon tradwives. We will be discussing today, Hannah Nealman of Ballerina Farm. Jesse, have you heard of Ballerina Farm?
A
It hasn't come up on this show before.
B
It has, yes.
A
Yeah, that must be.
B
But that doesn't mean that you've heard of it.
A
No, I haven't. I just assume it sounds like the kind of thing that would have come up on the show.
B
We briefly talked about Ballerina Farm when we talked about Nyah Smith with Helen. She's the. She's not really a Mormon trad wife. Like her husband is Mormon. She's a model and she's the one who does the incredibly elaborate food videos. Well, she has this like very husky voice and she'll be like, my kids were craving Fruit Loops, so I made them by scratch. Not even like that. My kids were craving Fruit Loops.
A
You're slipping into your RFK voice.
B
Hannah Newman came up during that. And Ballerina Farm has had its share of minor scandals. We will get to the latest one shortly. But first, let's do the backstory. So, both Hannah and her husband Daniel, come from large Mormon families in Utah. She's one of nine kids, he's one of 10. Hannah was and is a talented ballet dancer, good enough to get into Juilliard and make the move to New York City at the age of 17. But she did not succumb to the corrupt temptations of the Big Apple. And the summer before her senior year in college, she met Daniel back in Utah, fell in love, got married. Two months later, Daniel moved to New York with her as she finished her studies. Mormons move faster, like lesbians that way. And when Hannah graduated, she had a baby in one hand and a diploma in the other. And she describes herself as the first undergraduate ballerina to be a mother, which does seem like one of the more obscure Guinness categories. But after. After finishing Juilliard, she moved on from dance. And at first, she spent her time juggling motherhood with beauty pageants. So she was once Miss Springville, New York. She was also Miss New York City, Mrs. Utah, and later Mrs. American. Not to be confused with Miss America. Mrs. Americans wear one piece bathing suits. Miss America's do not.
A
So this is like the less salacious version of these beauty contests?
B
Yes, it's like the married version.
A
Gotcha.
B
She actually won Mrs. Americans less than two weeks after giving birth to her eighth child. So have you ever done that, Jesse?
A
I haven't done either of those things, actually.
B
All right, so read this quote from a Sunday Times article about her from 2024.
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On the seventh day, she rose from bed doing her bar exercises in the bathroom. A former ballerina, she trained at the Juilliard School in New York. By day nine, she was trying on outfits, zipping herself into a pair of leather trousers and skin tight white ball gown. Day 10, spray tan. Day 11, a two hour flight with a newborn to Las Vegas. Her husband and seven children following behind, along with other members of her family. And by day 12, she was on stage. Luckily, she says, she had stopped bleeding. Jesus.
B
It's a good sentence.
A
Yeah.
B
So in addition to her love of pageants, Hannah has a day job. Or a few day jobs, really. So she and Daniel own a working forum in the mountains of northeastern Utah, and she started social media accounts to chrono their adventures. Daniel has 660,000 followers on Instagram. Very respectable. But Hannah has well over 10 million.
A
That's it. That's all you get. If you want to hear the end of this truly unpasteurized tale, go to blocktourimported.org and become a premium subscriber. Thank you and hope you enjoyed the preview.
Hosts: Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal
Date: April 16, 2026
In this premium preview, Katie and Jesse tackle two of the internet's most contentious and bizarre corners: the everyday chaos of urban dog ownership and a wild scandal involving raw milk and Mormon "tradwife" influencers. The duo brings their trademark irreverence and sharp commentary to both topics, blending personal anecdote, cultural critique, and online weirdness.
Starts at 00:45
03:00 – 04:07
04:10 – 13:29
15:25 – 19:12
Katie and Jesse blend personal warmth, gallows humor, and biting observation, switching seamlessly between playful banter and pointed cultural critique. The episode is candid, irreverent, and packed with memorable asides, making even topics like urban dog poop feel vital and hilarious.
To hear the rest of the exposé on Ballerina Farm's raw milk drama, listeners are directed to subscribe via the podcast’s website.