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- [00:00]
Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human.
- [00:05]
Martine Hackett
Living with an autoimmune condition isn't easy and every journey is different. That's why Season five of Untold Life with the severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenics shares powerful firsthand stories from people with conditions like MG and cidp. Hosted by Martine Hackett, these conversations dive into what resilience really looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and finding strength in community. Listen on the iHeartRadio app for Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:33]
Commercial Narrator
Experience the beloved Harry Potter stories like you've never heard them before on Audible. Harry Potter the full cast Audio editions presents the iconic series as a truly spellbinding listening event for the whole family, with a spectacular A list cast including Hugh Laurie as albus Dumbledore, Matthew McFadden as Voldemort, and many more. The first story in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is available now, with new audiobooks in the series releasing every month thereafter. It's Harry Potter like you've never heard it before. Listen on audible. Go to audible.com HP1 and start listening today. Hey folks, it's that time of year to connect with the people you love, even if they live a few states away. And here's a fun stuff you should know. Style fact Hearing someone's voice can trigger a similar emotional response as a hug. Brains are wild. But for the older folks who live far away, staying connected through tech isn't always easy. Someone you know may have that older relative like that the the I still have a flip phone and it works fine. Type it's all relatable. That's why what AT&T is doing is actually pretty great. They offer digital literacy workshops to help older adults learn tech skills many tend to take for granted. Video conferencing, sharing photos, all that good stuff, and it genuinely changes lives. Take Nancy Shawn, who joined one of these workshops and learned a video chat for the first time this year. Instead of hearing about family gatherings after the fact, she'll be there virtually. So this holiday season. Call your people. Reach out. Stay connected. No matter the distance. Connecting changes everything. AT&T welcome to Stuff youf Should Know.
- [02:05]
Announcer
A production of iHeartradio.
- [02:12]
Josh Clark
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And it's us today. We've got our aprons on, we have our spatulas in hand, we've been spanking each other with them, and it's time.
- [02:22]
Chuck Bryant
To go to class with stuff you should know Everybody. Just so you know, there was construction happening next door. So if you hear a saw or a hammer banging. It's not me.
- [02:34]
Josh Clark
No, it's not, Chuck.
- [02:36]
Chuck Bryant
Sometimes you just gotta live with the sounds of life.
- [02:39]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I mean, we recorded for a while, and every time we recorded, a fire truck would go by like clockwork. Do you remember?
- [02:47]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [02:47]
Commercial Narrator
Yeah.
- [02:48]
Chuck Bryant
In the old Buckhead office, there was. I think we were near a fire station.
- [02:51]
Josh Clark
Yeah. But it was like the exact same time. It was really bizarre.
- [02:56]
Chuck Bryant
It was the radio lab guys pulling fire alarms all over Atlanta.
- [03:01]
Josh Clark
So, Chuck, we're talking about Home EC today. Did you ever take a Home EC class?
- [03:05]
Martine Hackett
I sure did, buddy. How about you?
- [03:07]
Josh Clark
I did. I have very vague recollections of it. I remember the room and everything, but I don't remember anything I did. It's also possible I'm conflating it with an episode of Saved by the Bell.
- [03:19]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I took it. You know, we had the full kitchen situation in our high school back then. And I took it because. I don't know why. I think I needed an elective. And, you know, I knew there'd be cute girls in there and maybe I had a friend or two that took it was probably my reasoning.
- [03:38]
Josh Clark
I could see that. I think both of us are the types of dudes who would not have been like, I can't take home Echo. I'm a boy.
- [03:44]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, no, of course not. And there were plenty of dudes in the class.
- [03:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Yeah. Because Gen X is enlightened.
- [03:50]
Chuck Bryant
That's right.
- [03:52]
Josh Clark
The thing is, is we were really in the minority, though. All the dudes in your class were in the minority. From what I read, that was pretty uncommon, even. Even at that time. And we were among, like, the last age group who could elect for Home EC pretty much across the country. Like, this was a time. This was about the end of the time where you could find a Home EC classroom. And most high schools are middle schools. But that is not the case anymore. Although it's still around. It's just not everywhere like it used to be.
- [04:21]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And in fact, I can confirm when I went back to my high school a couple of years ago, when they had me back to talk to students, as a, you know, interesting professional, I remember that. Yeah, it was fun. I took a walk around and I even remember going by where the Home EC room was, and it was definitely not my kitchen anymore.
- [04:40]
Josh Clark
No. I remember you told me they filled in all the sinks with cement.
- [04:43]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. It was called the cement glass.
- [04:47]
Josh Clark
So class would get really boring really fast.
- [04:51]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, we should probably say Home EC stands for home economics, just in case that's foreign to your tongue.
- [04:56]
Josh Clark
True, true. I understand that it's called home or home economics in Australia, and I think maybe Canada and in the UK they call it food sciences. I think. Yeah, it's all the same thing. And essentially what it is for those of you who don't know, it was a class in high school where you would learn basic life skills that had a lot to do with being at home. You would learn sewing, you would learn to bake a cake. As time wore on, you would learn to take care of a child, maybe learn to balance a checkbook. Just basic life skills as a class in high school or middle school. And that is. It turns out I didn't quite realize the extent of Home ec. One little slice of the whole home EC pie, which is delicious because it was made by home economists.
- [05:45]
Chuck Bryant
That's right.
- [05:47]
Josh Clark
And there's a whole history to it. And it's actually pretty feminist in nature too.
- [05:51]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. You know, as we'll see, there was a bit of a push pull at a certain time. And which wave of feminism would that have been?
- [05:59]
Josh Clark
The dose.
- [06:00]
Chuck Bryant
The dose, yeah. Where, you know, there were certain people saying, like, no, this is, you know, you shouldn't be teaching women to stay at home and stay in the kitchen. And other people were like, we're not teaching them saying, you have to do that, but we're saying, you know, there are viable careers that you can gain in, you know, industrial engineering and statistics. And as we'll see, you know, plenty of science careers came out of home economics and food science, because it is a science. Right.
- [06:29]
Josh Clark
And that was actually one of the initial points of it. But if you were a home EC proponent and you were arguing with a feminist, you might start by saying, let me give you a little picture of what life used to be like for the average woman in the United States before we came along. And you would start in about the 19th century, they were on the turn of it, so they were still wearing tri cornered hats, but they were looking forward to trains. And if you were a farm woman at this time, you worked yourself to the bone.
- [07:02]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I mean, what we know as homec was not early home ec because early home EC was like you might have seven or eight kids that all worked on the farm and you might have farm hands that you also have to kind of care for and feed. So you're feeding these huge families from stuff that you're growing probably on your land and processing and canning and churning Butter, and you're hand making clothes and doing laundry by hand. And it's a lot.
- [07:30]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And like you would say, that's not even home economics. That's just home terribleness. Right?
- [07:36]
Martine Hackett
Yeah.
- [07:36]
Josh Clark
When home economics came along, it was based on this idea that, okay, all of these people are working really hard. There has to be ways to improve this, to make it more efficient. Yeah. I suspect, and I'm pretty sure we talked about it, that this all grew out of Taylorism, that obsession with getting things as efficient as possible. And I think that that kind of grew out of that same vein. And there were actually a few things that kind of came together to make the fertile soil that home EC grew from. One of them, the big one was literacy, started to spread in the. The mid 19th century. And so when litter literacy spread, you got more books. And home, like, Domestic Tips in Householding was a whole genre of books. So were cookbooks. And then part and parcel of that was this kind of the very beginnings of this idea that maybe women can be educated too, but just in women's stuff.
- [08:32]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the books were important because previous to that, it was. Everything was sort of handed down from, you know, parent to child, as far as any kind of wisdom goes about how to do anything.
- [08:44]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [08:45]
Chuck Bryant
So if you had books and you had classes, you didn't depend on, like, your grandmother necessarily being good at, you know, baking a cake or something like that.
- [08:55]
Josh Clark
Like, what if your grandmother was a dipstick? Right.
- [08:58]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, exactly.
- [08:59]
Josh Clark
So cooking schools also emerged, and this is important because your grandmother might also, in addition to being a dipstick, might not have been that great of a cook. Now there's a place you can go to learn to cook well and nutritiously. That was a big one, too. And then also this was a new career path that a woman could take to become a cook in, like, say, a wealthy household. So they were training now people to work outside of the house doing domestic stuff.
- [09:25]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. And then one of the biggest ones was the Morrill act of 1862. And that's when land grant colleges were established. And all of a sudden there were schools that said, hey, maybe we should offer. You know, it was kind of the beginnings of trade schools, like, you know, teach people how to work in agriculture and industry and things like that and not necessarily just sit around with your nose in the air reading the classics.
- [09:53]
Josh Clark
Exactly. And women were open, or these colleges were open to women as well, too. So these three things come together. And one of the other reasons that really made Homec kind of come to life, start sprouting from that fertile soil. Was the transition that America was going through with industrialization. All of a sudden you weren't on the farm with your mother and grandmother who were telling you how to do things. Like you were in the city now surrounded by people you've not really ever met before, with a husband who now works in the factory rather than the farm. And you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing. And so Homec kind of came in to fill that break that had happened, that intergenerational passage of knowledge from mother to daughter. Homec said, hey, forget mothers. We're going to tell you how to do this and we're going to tell you how to do it better. They didn't really say forget mothers. That wasn't the sentiment, that was me being a smart alec.
- [10:48]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And you know, initially it was not in high school, it was a college level thing. And There is a PhD named Nancy Darling who kind of backs up this idea that it was a feminist movement to begin with with this quote. She said it developed home EC that is from something radical. The idea that the traditional work of women is important, meaningful. And here's the key for me, economically significant. And it was economics. They didn't just call it that to make it seem fancy. The, the running of a household is, is big time economics. And if you're not good at that, as we'll see with, you know, younger generations, it can spell trouble for sure.
- [11:28]
Josh Clark
Yeah, yeah. For, yeah, there's a whole, a whole washout that's happened that we'll cover for sure. But one of the people that you have to tip your top hat to is Ellen Swallow Richards, who's probably the most important person in the history, or the early history at least of home economics. No, let's just say it, the entire history of home economics, she was a pretty impressive sort. She studied chemistry, she got a bachelor's and a master's from Vassar and then became the first woman to get a degree from MIT and then became the first woman instructor at MIT and set up a sanitary chemistry lab that was for women only. And this was not really domestic work. It was figuring out water quality and air quality tests like, like essentially the foundations of environmental protection and consumer protection too. That's what this lab was doing. And the reason why you associate it with home EC is because one of the reasons home EC existed also you said that it started at the college level was as a way for women, almost a backdoor, a Workaround, a loophole for women to become scientists. It was okay as long as there was enough of a whiff of woman's work, like clean water, that's woman's work, that academia could put up with it. That was one of the big ways HOMEC started funneling women into education and into the sciences.
- [12:51]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, she was trying to improve the United States and she thought. And she was right on the money. She was like, if I'm going to try to improve the United States and civilization, then I have to start at what she considered, and I think most people agree is the basic unit, which is a family, the family unit. And if I can get each household one at a time to practice more efficient practices, more sanitary practices, safer practices where you're not burning kitchens down and things like that, then all boats will rise. And it started to become a movement. And this is like the late 1800s, early 1900s.
- [13:34]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And remember also there was a big emphasis on this work is important. This is unpaid labor, but it produces a lot of dividends for any family and hence building upward for civilization, for a nation. Civilization, all that. So like you said, this is starting to become a movement. And they had a series of conferences called the Lake Placid Conferences, starting right at the turn of the century. And at one of these meetings, they chose the term home economics, like you said, to basically point out, not to kind of latch their field on economics, to point out that domestic work was a huge part of economics. And up to this point, economists had basically just been looking at production. They weren't looking at the demand side. And one of the things HOMEC introduced was the idea of consumer sciences, like studying consumption as well as part of the larger economy, which is. You can't do economics without that now. But that's one of the things HOMEC introduced.
- [14:34]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And they came up with the name homec at one of those conferences after debating domestic science. And they said, no, that doesn't sound like it's studying consumerism. That's a big part of this, I think household arts was put forward and they said, no, that sounds too artsy, fartsy and not academic enough. So they landed on home economics and an ironic twist that kind of takes it back home because the word economics or economics comes from. I love this word. Oikonoimia. Oikonomia. I inserted an extra I there, which.
- [15:11]
Martine Hackett
Is ancient Greek for household management.
- [15:13]
Chuck Bryant
So there you have it.
- [15:14]
Josh Clark
Yeah. They dropped the old timey mic at this point.
- [15:18]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. And then in 1908, at that same conference, the Lake Placid Conference, they founded the American Home Economics association, really got the ball rolling. And then Shortly after, in 1917, the Hughes act started funding vocational education like shop class and home ec and it was off to the races.
- [15:38]
Josh Clark
Yep. So you want to take a break and come back and talk about how, like you said, homex starts to take off?
- [15:46]
Chuck Bryant
Let's do it.
- [15:59]
Sponsor Voice
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures.
- [16:59]
Announcer
You know, AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why people love a good podcast or save voicemails from loved ones cause everyone appreciates the sound of a familiar voice. And when you need a recharge or want some comfort, you call a family member or friend. AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail, call someone cause that convo is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting Changes everything.
- [17:33]
Josh Clark
Hey everybody, we want to talk to you about Squarespace. And in particular, if you have a great idea that you want to sell on the web, well Squarespace makes it easy to sell access to content on your websites.
- [17:43]
Martine Hackett
That's right. You can do online courses, you can do blogs, videos, memberships. You can even earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall. Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one time fee or a subscription for access.
- [17:55]
Josh Clark
That's Right. And you can get your content discovered fast with integrated SEO tools. Every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, an auto generated sitemap, and more. So you show up more often to more people in global search engine results.
- [18:11]
Martine Hackett
Just go to squarespace.com stuff and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use our offer code stuff s t u f f to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
- [18:25]
Jerry
Want to learn about a pterosaur and call a pterodactyl how to take a perfect boop and all about fractals can't get scan Attila the Hun, the Lizzie Borden Murders, and the Cannonball Runs Gonna explain everything to your brain Explosions, Chuck and Jaws that's stuff you should know. Word up, Jerry.
- [18:41]
Josh Clark
Okay, so when we left off, Home Ec was starting to take off. And by the 1920s, the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, had created the Bureau of Home Economics. And when you create a bureau dedicated to a new field, that's when the field has arrived. If you're a band and Weird Al has done a cover of your song, that's how you know you've arrived. If you're a field of study and someone opens a bureau dedicated to it, that's how you know your field's arrived. But it became the country's biggest employer of women scientists, which is pretty significant at the time.
- [19:16]
Chuck Bryant
That's right. Their mission, of course, was education. And it wasn't just how to cook, obviously. It was meal planning, it was budgeting. There was a lot of science behind it because they got into nutritional values. Any nutritional tag that you read, and in fact, any clothing tag that you read. I'll go ahead and get ahead of that one. That all was born out of the science of this new bureau that was founded. They were testing mildew proofing for fabrics. They were servicing military service members like, you know, trying to come up with better things for the US military to eat. And of course, school lunch programs all over the country were dependent on this science.
- [19:59]
Josh Clark
Yeah, this is where the square pizza was invented.
- [20:02]
Chuck Bryant
I suspect they should have a monument to that.
- [20:06]
Josh Clark
Well, one of the. I agree. One of the other things about that, though, in addition to the square pizza. The square pizza is actually an excellent example of this. The pizza. It comes from Italy, and if you've ever seen an actual, like, Neapolitan pizza, it does not resemble the square pizza. The square pizza at lunch is the Midwestern, Americanized, much blander version of it. Although I agree with you, it's quite good. And this is where American food as we think of it today was founded. All the ethnic food got pushed out as the immigrants were kind of brought into the home EC world and that bland Midwestern American food took over. That's where that came from.
- [20:44]
Chuck Bryant
And this also coincided with the birth of radio that we've. Seems like we've talked a lot about that lately. But because of that, of course you're gonna have shows on the radio about this kind of thing. The Bureau of Home economics in the 20s had a show called Housekeeper's Chat that ran for a couple of decades. Started in 1926. Not Uncle Sam, but Aunt Sammy was the host of that one, or I guess not the host, but it featured her. And she would have, like, household tips and recipes and stuff like that. A lot of the brands got in the game. General Mills and Betty Crocker. Cooking School of the Air. You know, it's another radio show sponsored by General Mills. And again, the Bureau is like helping to get all of these things launched on the airwaves.
- [21:28]
Josh Clark
One of the other examples of what the Bureau of Home Economics was doing that had a huge sweeping impact, in addition to founding, like the. The mass produced food movement was they came up with the poverty line. In fact, Molly Orshansky did. She was a statistician who studied how much a house spent to come up with a basic nutritious diet that could keep you alive. They multiplied that by three, and they came up with the federal poverty line that's still in use today.
- [21:59]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And if you've ever seen, you know, astronauts eating lasagna out of what looks like a toothpaste tube or something like that, you can thank home economics and science for that. Because a woman named Bea Finkelstein, great name, she was getting food together for the very first astronauts in the Mercury Project, which is pretty great.
- [22:20]
Josh Clark
That's right. And then one of the other things that struck me, too, that I didn't realize was that a lot of those recipes that you find on, like, a food label, one of the more famous ones is Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. Labels have a green bean casserole recipe, and that was created by a home economist who worked for Campbell's, Dorcas Riley. And she's a good example of what was happening at this time. Starting in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and continuing on, these companies like General Mills and Campbell's were setting up home economics departments. And one of the things that these home economists were being paid to do was to figure out new uses for the products made by the companies they worked for so that people would buy more of that stuff. And then they put those recipes on the label.
- [23:09]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, if you love Rice Krispie treats, you can thank the home economics program and Matilda Jensen and Mildred Day at Kellogg's there for that. And Chex Mix, this wasn't sort of an internal team, but Chex Mix was actually a contest. And it was in, I believe, the 1950s when they just had a contest like, what can you do with Chex cereal? And someone submitted Chex Mix and like, it's the same recipe, basically, that everyone enjoys today. Like, all of these are.
- [23:41]
Josh Clark
Did your family make Chex Mix around the holidays back then?
- [23:45]
Chuck Bryant
Not a ton. Emily's family really did, though, so she still makes that same recipe, that Chex Mix recipe.
- [23:51]
Josh Clark
It must be so high o then, because my family did as well. Yeah, but that's a good example of how, like, these companies farmed out the task of coming up with stuff. Because home EC had become so widespread. The average homemaker out there could do the same thing in a lot of ways that some of the home EC workers working for the company could do, too. I think that's pretty neat.
- [24:12]
Chuck Bryant
Talk about efficiencies. Like, if you're baking a cake from scratch or making pancakes or something like that, or a gravy from scratch. There were women in home EC departments at companies saying, like, hey, we can make this. You know, there's a lot to do. So what if it. What if this stuff was all kind of premixed in a box and you could sell them like. Well, I was about to say, like hotcakes. And they did. And, you know, these were things that were real time savers in the kitchen for sure.
- [24:41]
Josh Clark
And that was the point, remember, of home EC is saving time being more efficient. And then as food companies were concerned, making tons of money off of this stuff, too. So that's kind of going on in the corporate world, the government world, simultaneously. There's that whole thread of homec being taught in high school and middle school. And there was a time in the 20th century, up into the 80s and 90s, and I'm sure beyond, again, these classes are still out there, but nothing like they used to be, where you could go into a high school or middle school, and there was a simulated kitchen in one of the rooms with a bunch of different stoves and ovens and refrigerators, and people would be in there cooking and learning to sew and maybe taking care of a fake baby. And in some cases taking care of a real baby too, because this stuff got intense sometimes.
- [25:34]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that baby thing, I don't remember our high school class ever delving into that. I do remember the egg babies, like where you would. I never had to take part, but I saw other kids in school carrying around the egg and sort of in the 70s and 80s, they would give you a raw egg, you know, in the shell and. Cause some people would be like, what the heck is he even talking about? They would give you an egg. And the whole idea was you have to care for that egg without breaking it for a couple of weeks. You got to carry this thing around. It sounds easy just to not get that egg broken, but it's really not, you know, you have to really think ahead about everything. And that's the whole idea, is that when you have a baby, you can't just make decisions on the spur of the moment. You have to kind of pre plan everything. And the egg came along after. They use real babies from orphanages.
- [26:26]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Apparently at some of the colleges that were teaching home ec, they would borrow babies from orphanages for the, the students to just basically practice on. And apparently there's a writer, a historian named Danielle Drelinger, who wrote a book, the Secret History of Home Economics. And she said that for adoptive parents who would go to a foster home, they'd show up and be like, you got any one of them babies that's been in the home economic classes?
- [26:50]
Chuck Bryant
Heck yeah, man.
- [26:51]
Josh Clark
Because the reasoning is these babies spent some of their earliest days being cared for, just with complete attention and care by women who were working in like the cutting edge of child rearing. So they were much more desirable than the non homec babies, it turns out.
- [27:09]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. I mean, before I even read that part of this, I was thinking in my head like, oh man, you want that baby?
- [27:15]
Josh Clark
For sure, for sure. Apparently those eggs would get on custodians nerves enough that they switch to flour or sugar, which also had the added benefit of heft. And I saw in a, like a, some educational magazine, I can't remember, but they would put pantyhose of different colors to simulate multicultural skin tones over the flour sugar. And that sometimes if you forgot like your kid, whether it was an egg or a sack of flour or something in your locker, you might be forced to like write a paper on child abuse or something like that. So the whole point was to just teach high school kids. You don't want to have a baby at this period in your life, maybe ever. Like if the class was hard enough. Maybe they're like, I'm never having a kid, but certainly not through my teen years. That was the point.
- [28:05]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. It's kind of funny. I think they kind of sold it to you as like, here, it'll, it'll teach you like how to kind of care for a baby and how much goes into that. But what they were really saying is please don't have sex kind of. Well, I mean, one of them, in the 90s, they came along with more of a, like a baby simulator. It was called Baby Think it Over. I mean they, they flat out said it at that point.
- [28:29]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [28:30]
Chuck Bryant
Like, I think we all know what think it over means.
- [28:33]
Josh Clark
Sure. And I, I don't know if it worked or not, but it was a great attempt at the very least for sure. So by the middle of the 20th century, I think 1959, half of all American girls, half of all the girls in America were taking home EC courses in school. And then just suddenly it just dried up. It wasn't like a faucet got turned off or a light switch was turned.
- [28:55]
Sponsor Voice
But it Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures.
- [29:57]
Announcer
You know AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why people love a good podcast or save voicemails from loved ones because everyone appreciates the sound of a familiar voice. And when you need a recharge or want some comfort, you call a family member or friend, AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail, Call someone. Because that convo is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything.
- [30:31]
Martine Hackett
On ebay, Every find has a story. Like if you're looking for a vintage band tee. Not just a tee. The band tee from the last show your favorite band ever played. You wore it everywhere. Then your girlfriend started wearing it, which was cute until she dumped you and took it with her, which was not so cute.
- [30:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah, well, anyway, now you're on ebay, and there it is, Same tee from the same tour, still living in your memory, rent free forever.
- [30:55]
Martine Hackett
See, the things you love have a.
- [30:56]
Chuck Bryant
Way of finding their way back to you.
- [30:58]
Martine Hackett
But ebay isn't just for getting whatever your ex, boyfriend, or girlfriend stole back, right?
- [31:03]
Josh Clark
No. It's also for that rare championship foul ball you caught, then heroically gave to the kid next to you. And where else are you going to find your first car, the one you wish you'd never sold, but now finally get the chance to take it back home for good this time.
- [31:16]
Martine Hackett
So shop ebay for millions of finds, each with a story. Ebay, things people love.
- [31:26]
Josh Clark
Started to go downhill pretty fast in about the early 60s. And let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk about where HomeC went after. Well, the break.
- [31:48]
Jerry
Want to learn about a pterosaur and call a pterodactyl how to take a perfect boob, and all about fractals, can't get scan, Attila the Hun, the Lizzie Borden murders, and the cannonball runs. Gonna explain everything to your brain explodes. Chuck and Jaw. That's something you should know.
- [32:03]
Chuck Bryant
Word up, Jerry. All right, so HomeC is on the decline. And there's a bunch of reasons for this that kind of all kind of steamrolled together at a certain point. But one of the biggest ones was when the United States really got into standardized testing, which came along mostly with the no Child Left behind act because all of a sudden, a school's funding was tied to test scores. And if there aren't any home EC questions on these tests and the testing is tied to funding, then what's the point of even teaching that stuff? I don't agree with that, obviously, but that was sort of the thought. And so a lot of those classes started to just slowly go away.
- [32:42]
Josh Clark
Yeah, and there was an article on fatherly written by a guy named Cameron LeBlanc, and he traced it back even Further, he traced the origin of where the emphasis on STEM came From to the 80s in the vocational and Technical Education act that Ronald Reagan signed, where it said, educators, colleges, you're no longer responsible for figuring out what we want to teach our kids. We're going to hand this over to business and industry so they can tell us what they want us to teach so that we can basically train workers. That was the point. From that point on for school, train workers as much as you can. And then eventually universities got in on the act and they're like, let's also make these, like, pipelines to colleges. So, like, that's the point of high school is to get into college and. And we're going to charge them out the yin yang. So standardization of testing was a huge part of it. But that was not the only part. Like you kind of touched on earlier, Betty Friedan's feminist mystique, which kicked off the second wave of feminism, is very often cited as a huge chilling effect or having a huge chilling effect on home EC classes being taught in high school.
- [33:47]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. A lot of people started dropping those classes, saying it was, you know, sort of symbolic of a woman's confinement to the home in the kitchen. The Vocational Education act of 1963 all of a sudden gutted or at least reduced funding that that Smith Hughes act had brought about. So it was, you know, shop class suffered kind of the same fate around the same time for the same reasons. We didn't have shop at my school. We had industrial arts, which I took. And I bet you anything those have kind of lessened over the years as well. Now that I think about it.
- [34:22]
Josh Clark
Isn't industrial arts the same as shop? Is it different?
- [34:25]
Chuck Bryant
No, shop is like. Like auto shop class.
- [34:29]
Josh Clark
Oh, no, I think that's different. I think shop is like drill presses and lathes and stuff like that.
- [34:34]
Chuck Bryant
Well, it depends on your school. A lot of schools had auto shop class.
- [34:37]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [34:38]
Chuck Bryant
Like where they taught you how to change oil and work on your carburetor.
- [34:42]
Josh Clark
For sure. My high school had that. My middle school had shop class in home ec.
- [34:47]
Chuck Bryant
What'd they call the auto shop class?
- [34:49]
Josh Clark
I don't remember. I don't remember. But I saw it written somewhere as, like, automotive arts or something like that.
- [34:57]
Commercial Narrator
Really?
- [34:58]
Josh Clark
Yeah, somewhere. That's funny. Somebody said it, so I get to repeat it.
- [35:02]
Chuck Bryant
The Art of Changing oil.
- [35:04]
Josh Clark
Exactly. But no, I knew a couple of kids who were like, I'm going to be a mechanic. That's what I want to do after, after school. I'm not going to go to college. So it's great. I'm getting this education starting now in high school. Like it would give them a huge leg up to either becoming apprentices or going and taking like classes at a technical trade school. Right. That went away. Vocational education just really took a huge hit. And again, high school became a pipeline for college. Homex still kind of stayed around. It saw the writing on the wall, but it rebranded itself as Family and Consumer Sciences. I think because homec just had such a folksy old timey name that seemed to reinforce gendered stereotypes. Family and Consumer Sciences is new, it's fresh, it's 90s. Right. And they had a bigger emphasis on careers, helping people start careers outside the home like interior design, nutrition, elder care, culinary arts. Like you could become a chef or get a huge leg up taking high school classes about that. So that's still around today. But one of the biggest problems that family and consumer science classes still have that started around this time is finding qualified teachers to actually teach the family and consumer science classes that are still around in the U.S. yeah, for sure.
- [36:30]
Chuck Bryant
I mean if you didn't have, you know, if these classes started to go away, then kids aren't going to be interested in that. They're not going to, you know, develop those skills and take those classes in college. And so without universities training these teachers, you're just going to have a shortage of professionals teaching it at the high school level. And that, you know, that's still going on.
- [36:50]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And apparently the like enrollment rates are very difficult to find. Livia helped us with this and she dug up a 2013 report that said about three and a half million high school kids took family and consumer science classes classes in the 2011-2012 school year. And that still sounds kind of impressive to me. That was a 40% drop from just the decade earlier, the aughts, the 2000s, and that they were still pretty much divided among gender lines. 65% girls and 35% boys. They're still out there, they're still around. They just taken such a massive hit. And yet there's a lot of people who are like, okay, I get why HomeC, you know, took a massive hit. It needed to regroup. It's regrouped now. And we're also seeing the fallout from what happens when you don't teach middle and high school kids basic life skills. They grow up to be adults who, who don't know how to do basic life skills. And that seems to be happening before our very eyes.
- [37:56]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, especially when it comes to Any kind of home finance passing basic sort of home financial literacy or even financial literacy, it's really declining. I think There was a study from the World economic forum in 2024 that found that the majority of Americans can't pass a test of financial literacy. So if you ask your average, you know, recent high school graduate and even college graduate, sometimes like, you know, tell me about interest rates, what do you know about inflation or investing or compound interest or home loans, you might get that Gen Z stare back in your face and, you know, this is the stuff that homec was teaching. You know, I don't remember so much learning sort of the nitty gritty of that stuff, but I certainly learned about, you know, banks and how to get a bank loan and how to balance your checkbook and how to kind of keep up with personal finances.
- [38:52]
Josh Clark
Exactly. Or maybe even learn how to do basic taxes, like a simple 1040 form. Again, life stuff. And in addition to finance stuff, they would learn things like, you know, how to tell if a chicken breast was underdone or maybe a few recipes to cook. And if you don't teach people even basic stuff like how to cook, you can't really blame them for eating takeout constantly or eating nothing but prepackaged foods. Right. So some people say that this has led to the obesity epidemic that the United States is facing, at least in part. It's probably a little full blown to say, yep, that's what happened. We did away with home ec and now that's the problem. The biggest problem is that's the food that's out there. But some people are saying, like, we're not. These people don't have any idea how to cook at all. The parents didn't take up the slack when the home EC classes went away. And so that's part of the problem that came from doing away with home mec.
- [39:48]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. And there are people saying that we now have generations coming up that don't know how to adult properly. Just sort of basic chores and, you know, ironing and doing laundry and just sort of the things that you need to do to survive on your own. They found that younger generations just, you know, they weren't taught that stuff as much, partially from home ec, partially because they weren't made to do chores like we were. There was a study from 2014 from Braun Research that said 82% of parents did chores as children, but only 28% have their children doing chores. And I think a lot of that is just, I don't know, we had to do A lot of chores. And I think, like, I don't make Ruby do as many chores as I should just because I remember what a drag chores were.
- [40:37]
Josh Clark
Okay.
- [40:38]
Chuck Bryant
But I'm also trying to think ahead of like, no, I need to teach her these life skills as well. So maybe try and mix some more of that stuff in would be a good idea.
- [40:46]
Josh Clark
I was wondering what the cause was of that disconnect. Yeah. So is that it's as simple as that. You just don't want to make your kid unhappy.
- [40:57]
Chuck Bryant
I mean, not that we're perfectly fine with unhappiness. So, yeah, it's definitely not that.
- [41:03]
Josh Clark
But that's what I'm saying. And I'm not asking you to just speak for yourself, but speak for parents.
- [41:08]
Chuck Bryant
Today I'm speaking for myself. No, it's very important that kids experience all the full range of emotions. So that's definitely not it. It's just. I don't know. For me, I think it's just like, chores were such a drag and, you know, and she's like, you know, 9 and now 10 years old. So I think chores will get a little more ramped up here in the tween and teen years.
- [41:31]
Josh Clark
You should buy her a straw hat and some overalls for Christmas and be like, this is the year you get started. So one of the other things you might be saying is, like, there's an app for everything. Like, if you can't cook, it doesn't matter. Get doordash or somebody's going to make food for you and we'll bring it to you. You just have to give them money. And it's that you just have to give them money thing that's kind of a problem right now because wages haven't kept up and debt has just continued to increase. In the second quarter of 2025, America had $1.21 trillion of credit card debt. The average American had almost $6,500 of credit card debt on their card at the time. So it's not like there's just some easy solution. Like maybe there will be as stuff like that becomes cheaper. But right now there's just a whole grab bag of problems that you can trace back to. If not coming from home ec, not being taught home ec being taught could have solved them or could solve or prevent them in the future.
- [42:37]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I mean, I guess the good thing about these days is, you know, there's a YouTube tutorial. There's a thousand of them for every single task you could ever want to accomplish in life.
- [42:45]
Josh Clark
Yep.
- [42:46]
Chuck Bryant
So in that case, it's good to have an app for that because I don't think necessarily younger generations who are like, I don't know how to plug in an iron. So you know, I think they'd look that stuff up on YouTube and teach themselves. But you know, it's, it's also good to learn that in a classroom setting, you know.
- [43:03]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I'm really glad you said that because this could so easily slide into. Well, when we were in school we learned all this stuff and look at how great we turned out. It could just be people who are proponents of home EC not understanding where the country is going, where the culture is going, and it's going away from home EC in a different direction that will take care of itself. It's not like home EC is the solution to every problem. So that's a really good argument against it. There's others too. Like, do we, if we bring back like vocational education, does the US need jobs like that? And you can make an argument against that argument and that, yeah, we do. Especially hands on jobs like trade skills like plumbing and electricians. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, said the next generation of millionaires are going to be plumbers and electricians because it's so hard to replace that with AI. So there's like arguments one way or another, but you just have to be really careful not to slip into the back of my day, things were better kind of mentality.
- [44:07]
Chuck Bryant
Oh yeah. I mean, because that will and rightfully get smacked backed in your face if you're like, well, how'd you learn to steam a shirt? You didn't take home egg and this was like TikTok bruh, like get out of my face. Yeah, we do things differently now and we don't have to do it the way you did it.
- [44:24]
Josh Clark
That's right. Like I can't set a table properly in like the, the exact way it's supposed to be. But our parents generation probably learned how to do that. It doesn't matter because the culture evolved in a way that didn't need that anymore.
- [44:37]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, just put the soup bowl down, cup your hands and go to town.
- [44:41]
Josh Clark
There you go. Yeah, I don't think we can do any better than ending on that, Chuck.
- [44:48]
Chuck Bryant
Thank you.
- [44:49]
Josh Clark
So if you want to learn more about HomeC, go find a Home EC class and take it and then let us know what you think about it. If you take home E.C. now, get in touch and tell us what's going on there because we want to hear if you got your finger on the Pulse at home ec. And since I mentioned pulse, that means it's time for listener mail.
- [45:08]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. We're like, what are you using for babies these days? And they're like, we're just using the babies that we've had bring them into school.
- [45:15]
Josh Clark
They didn't get to us in time.
- [45:18]
Chuck Bryant
This is a Rockettes thing. I think we ran our Rockettes episode as a select recently because tis the season and we heard from Santa Claus. You guys. Hey. Just wanted. I didn't know Santa was a listener, but it turns out he is. Just listen to the selects on the Rockettes. You did a wonderful job. I heard you say you hope a Rockette writes in. Which, by the way, did happen back when we first released it. I may not be a Rockette, but I'm lucky enough to work very closely with these ladies six days a week. I've been Santa Claus in the Christmas Spectacular for the past four years.
- [45:49]
Josh Clark
Neat.
- [45:50]
Chuck Bryant
To say these women are the greatest stage athletes would be an understatement. Not only are they the best in.
- [45:55]
Martine Hackett
Their field, but even offstage, they are gracious, intelligent individuals.
- [46:00]
Chuck Bryant
And many have other unique passions outside of dance. This year is quite special, as it marks the 100th anniversary of the Rockettes, not the Christmas Spectacular. That'll be in 2033. But if you guys want to come see a show, let me know. I'll give you my Santa schedule and get you some tickets. My wife and I, Mrs. Claus, adore stuff you should know. And we're at your last New York City live show. Thanks for everything. And that is from Santa Claus, Adam.
- [46:27]
Josh Clark
That's sweet. Thank you, Santa. Adam, that was a really great one. And thanks for the offer, too. We're going to have to take him up on it, Chuck.
- [46:33]
Chuck Bryant
I've always wanted to see that show, so maybe. Maybe we'll do that one day.
- [46:37]
Josh Clark
That's pretty great. Thanks again, Santa. And before we sign off, Chuck, this episode comes out on Yumi's birthday, so I want to say happy birthday, Yumi.
- [46:47]
Chuck Bryant
When's your birthday?
- [46:48]
Josh Clark
The 30th.
- [46:49]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, I thought it was the 31st.
- [46:51]
Josh Clark
No.
- [46:51]
Chuck Bryant
No wonder I'm always a day late.
- [46:54]
Josh Clark
But you're not a dollar short, Chuck. You always come through.
- [46:57]
Chuck Bryant
All right, well, happy birthday.
- [46:58]
Josh Clark
Yummy. Thanks. And if you want to get in touch with us like Santa did, you can send us an email, too, @stuffpodcastheartradio.com.
- [47:09]
Sponsor Voice
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit.
- [47:14]
Josh Clark
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts are wherever.
- [47:17]
Announcer
You listen to your favorite show.
- [47:20]
Chuck Bryant
Foreign.
- [47:25]
Sponsor Voice
For the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S P500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast pay for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures living.
- [48:26]
Martine Hackett
With an autoimmune condition isn't easy, and every journey is different. That's why Season five of Untold Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenics shares powerful firsthand stories from people with conditions like MG and cidp. Hosted by Martine Hackett, these conversations dive into what resilience really looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs and finding strength in community. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts here.
- [48:54]
Josh Clark
With one last reminder to keep you off the naughty list this holiday season. Stuff your stockings, your pantry, your gift closet, anywhere you can with Duracell batteries. Because there's nothing worse than opening a gift on Christmas morning and realizing you don't have batteries for it. Duracell batteries are the only battery brand with PowerBoost ingredients, which are a unique blend of nickel and lithium designed for long lasting power. So stock up on your AA's and your AAA's so you'll be a okay for the holidays. Choose the only battery brand with PowerBoost ingredients. Choose Duracell.
- [49:26]
Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.