Ben and Erin Napier, air as a parent to Chip and Joanna Keynes. I feel like they probably would maybe be mildly insulted to be like put as air as a parent, but like they're just they're they're the faces of HGTV in a way that Chip and Joanna used to be. Can you describe Ben and Erin? What differentiates them a little bit? Karen looks like a girl I had a crush on in college. She really looks like straight out of like 2001 and I don't mean this is like like this is not negative and she looks like
she goes to my church in 2001. Yeah, she's got a short blonde haircut. I think that's that's what does it. It's not a Karen haircut. It's just a short shorter. It's just like the Bob. It's like a little bit of a dramatic Bob. And what does Ben look like? Ben's just like he's he's he's a roughion. You know, he's like a big dude. Low voice. Like I feel like he played linebackers. I'm sure that he played football. Someone's
going to correct me on this. But but but a beard and a guy who's who's good with his hands. And this is a stark contrast to Chip who as Melody says and she's completely correct. Chip has incredible creepy youth faster energy. They get just like bounces off of him. Yeah. And and that's the culture in which he was raised. So it doesn't surprise me. But there's more there's like a quiet competence to Ben. Yeah. Yeah. And like Joanna is very regimented.
Like this is a lady who makes lists, right? Yeah. And Aaron obviously also very organized. But like the southern accent does something for her too. There's like warmth, a white lady warmth, right? Even the difference between the two of them where Joanna like she shows you a computerized rendering of what she's going to do. And Aaron draws a house that she paints with watercolors or something. You know? Like there's just like a different like
a softness to to their whole thing. Like the magnolia, the fixer up or kind of thing has become so corporate that it's like now a thing that I don't want. You know? I want the like Ben and Aaron feel a little more authentic to me. And their scope is smaller. For sure. So like Chippin Joanna gains is like you could tell from the beginning it's like this is an empire in the making. And part of it is again this evangelical energy of like we
will make them all converts. We will bring them to Jesus and also target. This is the culture study podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Jonathan M. Hevar. I host a podcast called Classy. It's so good. It's one of my faves. Thank you. So usually with this show Melody and I come up with like a topic that we feel like we want to talk about and then we figure out the guest. This time we are like we know we want to have Jonathan as a guest.
Why don't we ask Jonathan what he wants to talk about. And so you wrote us like a really good paragraph about why you wanted to talk about this. So you don't have to talk about verbatim. But like what is your interest in home reno shows broadly. I mean I think I've been interested in them my whole life. So I'm sort of a student of them. You know like my mom and I would watch all day long marathons of this old house when I was growing up.
And this old house. Yes very soothing and very like you know just like I got to watch somebody fix something. You know it's like not too dissimilar. Like recently Instagram fed me a video of a guy renovating a Tonka truck. He took the whole thing of hard and then like like stripped the paint and got new decals and it was all just it was beautiful. It's just like I really value and enjoy watching somebody not go out and buy something new and to fix something
you know. And my house growing up even though we were renters my whole life there really was an understanding of like you've got to know how to fix things really to like keep the landlord happy so that he he doesn't raise the rent. Yeah. It's a good strategy. Yeah. So there's there was just a lot in that show that I think was was really important to me. And then my wife and I bought a house like a little over a decade ago in 2012 and then I just like really really fell
for it and and the show I first fell for was rehab addict. It's just the idea that you could buy a piece of crap and make it look good you know that you could you could polish a turd. You know. Yes. And that it wasn't that hard. I'm not adding rooms. I'm just like stripping things away to like she says to like bring a house back to its former glory. So I have become obsessed with the renovation TikTok but specifically there's this one account of this couple
who bought a former hoarder house in Oregon. It was the you know the classic like by the the worst house on the block right kind of situation and incredible hoarder situation. But a beautiful house underneath and they decided okay we're going to buy that it's in foreclosure. We have to get it into shape and order like they had I don't know exactly how these timelines work if I watch more foreclosers shows I would understand this but like in order for their loan to go they had
to appraise it higher right like their praise or had to come in six months a year later and look at it and be like oh yes it's actually worth what this loan is that were okay yeah yeah yeah yeah and she has detailed everything and she has this incredibly soft asthma voice that's not annoying
but so much of it is just them cleaning cleaning decades of grease off of the cabinets in the kitchen removing the grout all of the tools that they used to do this all of this sort of thing and I think that even though obviously TikTok is monetized in different ways it's a return to
this sort of like very meditative style of renovation that typified shows like this old house right and that only worked on public television right like HTTV is this broided up they're like let's take home renovation we understand that people love this shit
but how do we make a lot of money on it yeah yeah and it has to be fast and bombastic in all of these different ways and led by personalities that are not necessarily the personalities of this old house right yeah yeah yeah so that's my personal interest also owning
a house that is from built in 1904 as like a seashack that somehow is still standing so same thing you're like wow this is incredible what is this plumbing hobbyist man yeah yeah so yeah let's let's jump into the questions because where I think that's going to allow us to talk
about so many different things that we want to talk about okay the first question is about money and I want to hear from crystal here why do home renovation shows almost never reveal where the budget comes from is it a HELOC savings credit cards how do people afford these major changes
I've owned a home for six years and every project I've priced out is beyond my reach even for a two-income household I wish there was more budget transparency showing where the money comes from and a breakdown of where it goes so first of all I want to define something that I didn't know
what it was until very recently which is HELOC is home equity line of credit so that's when people say like I'm gonna take out some money from my home that I art like money that's already the equity that I've already paid into my home and then you use that money to then renovate your home that's
in luck yeah so what do you think why like why does the money have to be invisible for these shows I mean I think it's part of the appeal of these shows to begin with we're no longer in an era so much of like you you had this interview with a great academic named Rebecca Lee Potts who called
an old form of show the theater of suffering you know and like with home renovation shows that like extreme makeover is the one of that's the most typifies that of like where people have to flog themselves publicly with all their suffering in order to prove that they're worthy of a nice place
to live yeah but we're now in an era where like I think even without that there there is this fantasy that someone is gonna swoop in and give you something for nothing you know that you are like they're gonna pull a magic trick on your house they're gonna just like strip away things and like
the ship lap or the original floors are gonna be there oh the myth of the original floors like are you kidding so we're doing like we had a bathroom that was hobbyist plumbed sometime in like the 1960s like there were pipes going no one knows like they took out the toilet and the plumber
looked at it and said like I don't even know how they did that like I've never seen that before yeah you know this is an old plumber and you know what they found underneath the the flooring like lots of vinyl right that's what you normally find that's what you find yeah until you get to
the plywood like yeah yeah um so I think there's some of that going on but also just like we don't talk about how we afford buying houses in the first place you know I and so I think it's just like really a continuation of that um yeah like you'll they the show as they always say like you know
your budget was x amount of dollars but they never they're never talking about like did your mom give that to you um no and it like pops up almost like funny money on the screen do you know what I mean like it never feels like oh this is coming out of their bank account it's just like
like to chain ten thousand dollars like there is a show that I got into for a while that I think was on the Magnolia network maybe it's still on but it's about um camps what they what people in New England sometimes call cabins um on a lot of them were like on in coastal Maine and really
the budgets were like twenty five hundred dollars right right or three thousand dollars right to try to make this three-season cabin livable yeah or insurable in some capacity yeah um and that to me was always realistic because I'm like oh I can see how someone gets three thousand dollars
but the the giant renovations that people are taking out like I think most of the time it is a HELOC it is someone taking taking out some equity from their home and and reinvesting it into their home especially when interest rates were very low that's what I was going to say is like that's
also uh that money doesn't come from anywhere you know like yeah you you got to pay it back right yeah with high interest rates it starts to get dangerous somewhere you have well because you can treat a HELOC like a credit card you can just be like oh there's more here and if the interest
rate was as low as it was let's say five years ago yeah different situation than say yeah the bank actually hands you a credit card and they're like here's your here's your home renovation credit card uh-huh yeah yeah people get offers in the mail saying like college or home renovations or
whatever just like or maybe you know I can't remember if the offers I've seen say like medical expenses but yeah it is it's like a it's not just a home renovation fund it's like I just I need money yeah the other thing is that I there's been a lot of reporting about how some of these
construction jobs are actually that they highlight on HGTV and shows like that like that they're pretty botched right like that they're yeah they're very fast and like they cost money but it's money poorly spent yeah yeah yeah so that's the other thing that they can't talk about it no no I
think uh like extreme makeover was notorious for that you know where they would do it so fast um also like renovations are so expensive oh my god you know like even I like I have a bathroom that was trash when we moved in here and we like hired the cheap contractor because it was just like
uh this is a small job we don't really need to do anything and like the guy who tiled my shower had never tiled a shower before no no it took him like almost a month to do it they're like these big gaps and like the only saving grace I have an old thing it's just that like I wear glasses
and so like I have to take my glasses off when I shower so I don't see it otherwise it would kill me that's the thing like that I mean the the one thing that I think some shows do better than others is show just how much craftsmanship is actually involved in it in a good renovation yeah and I think
home I home that there's another one of those reasons why I like hometown there's like that guy with the mullet who's really good at floors and tiling and you just know like oh that's the dude who's been around forever you're like I want that dude do you think that good dude could I find that
dude how does that how do I get him you know the only way to you get to that dude in your neighborhood is by a really good general contractor who probably costs a lot of money because he has that dude exactly exactly can also be a lady let's be clear yes next question is about a specific show
but I think it's gonna open up a lot of avenues for conversation this is from Clinton my best friend and I watch a lot of renovation shows and our current hate watch is down home fab it's filmed in South Dakota and I think part of my addiction is because it reminds me of the people I grew up with
in high school if I had never left the Midwest all of the decisions they make seem so dated and out of touch with current decorating trends it feels like it's filmed in 2012 is South Dakota in a time warp are we the only ones who don't understand how this is a current renovation show
there's so much avenue in this question yeah yeah first of all I I have I had not watched it but then I watched some clips and Sioux Falls actually my aunt lives in Sioux Falls and it reminds me a lot too of where I grew up in terms of like what is considered a really
incredible renovation and I think that there's something like we we feel this in the question we feel some of the like taste culture coming through in this question mm-hmm for sure so what do you think is going on here I mean I think like we are judging our taste all the time and and judging
like each other's taste and you know our homes it's like other than our clothes that's like the most obvious way in which that stuff is is shown publicly and I think part of like the idea of judging and and class shifting and like making it is about leaving your hometown
yep and it's aesthetics specifically yes yes yes I know I'm guilty of this you know I'm probably like a really nice suburb of LA like there is no reason I needed to look down on that place and I totally did for the longest time you know like I felt like an order to achieve the things I
wanted to achieve and be the person I wanted to be I had to leave all of that behind and I think it's enjoyable and really easy to like look at these kinds of things and judge it you know yeah yeah and also that's like that's what reality TV is for like we're going there to be able to
like have guilt free gossiping and judging and the way that we define our taste is oftentimes not by figuring out what we actually like it's by differentiating ourselves from other people's taste which is not our taste right and especially if that taste in our minds is classed in a different way
right right like what is bourgeois taste it is not what is happening on this show yeah right um what is happening on the show like it's not that these like people in the show are poor like there's money on this show for sure it's not like big money but it's like these like this is middle class money this is middle class South Dakota money mm-hmm and like the house that the host live in that it's it's so interesting the host what became a celebrity through um she was on teen mom too I believe
and then has now become like her or uh is like the girl who wore more makeup than anyone else in your high school class she's a fancy lady yeah yeah um and she wants to be a fancy lady in a smaller town and that is a familiar trope like I know who that person is yeah what are the
renovations look like um they look like so it's very there's a lot of like the um neo farmhouse style mm-hmm do you know what I mean like that um that particular style like their house is in the middle of a field and it's neo farmhouse but it's black like she loves black yeah and you can tell
that like the landscaping is new like there's it feels very a very a very 2020 for a version of new money yeah yeah yeah melody was just rebarking that there's like a ton of gravel going on in the landscaping mm-hmm like this is so this is classic Lewis tonight how like you have a big
piece of land you have a big shop like everyone has a big shop um and then you have like some small bushes that you planted you have a lot of sod you have a lot of grass and then you have lots of gravel because that is a a cheap and cost efficient way to avoid weeds right right and avoid that
labor yeah yeah um I mean melody now we're talking before the show about this idea that like it takes time for trends to trickle down because it seems like everyone is has access to the same trends why would it still take time mm-hmm but I think you still you have people in bigger cities
with more money who are defining themselves in their wealth by access to designers who are doing something different yeah and so you have those people who are pushing ahead into different realms of design but then it takes time for that to become popularized enough so that it's
something that if you feel like I don't know what I like but I like what I've seen on HDTV right like right like it becomes the aesthetic of a sheet TV it's yeah yeah yeah so like moody kitchens feels like it's everywhere right now and different because it's different than ship lap style mid 2010s
yeah but like the designers in Seattle like expensive expensive new homes in Seattle like moody kitchens was 2020 for them right right right yeah yeah I feel like I you know I live in New Jersey half an hour from Manhattan and I feel like even the time it takes things to get from New York City
to this kind of fancy suburb I live in like it's it's a couple years absolutely and then like that's that's normal that's just how like that's fascinating to me that we live in this instant like we have instant access but still it takes time yeah and so much of that too is availability how much time
it takes to actually plan and do a renovation all of those things and where we like where we're getting our tastes from and like what we if we care about being up on stuff and this is a great segue to this idea about like monoculture trends all that sort of thing okay comes from Katie
what impact has the death of a monoculture had on home decor and renovation and the content created and available we still see ubiquitous trends like the much maligned graywood and floors and interior barn doors a la hg tv and the magnolia chokehold as well as the rise of maximalist
interior design tiktok is right with these renovation and DIY creators so our homes a reflection of the content we consume and what channels we choose to consume it on and how do these domestic expressions of subculture and mainstream culture intersect with the expressions and interpretations
of class signals wow this is an essay prompt for the final in in analysis of home design 400 level class at an undergraduate institution I hope we pass what's your initial thought when you think about this I mean one first I just want to shout out
Amanda Moll for her great reporting on gray floors um but yeah I mean of course this is tied to class you know I think there is a certain sort of rich and fancy person who would say like they're not influenced by home renovation shows at all you know yeah that's like a yeah that's not a
classy no no not sure um yeah but there's like an interesting flip of cultural markers on this stuff right where like historically like rich people were sort of ostentatious and over the top like sort of whatever ornate curtains and doubt nabby s shit you you're into you know and now like the
richest aesthetic is it's not quite minimalism but it's like it's Donald Judd furniture you know or like Kim Kardashian's knockoff Donald Judd furniture just like craftsmanship but like say nothing kind of you know and and to be ostentatious at all is to be like tacky you know
yeah the aesthetic that I think certain people want to go for the aesthetic I want to go for is like now like downstairs doubt nabby you know like like I what I watched that show that was the thing I always wanted it was like you know like sort of shaker cabinet like like I did nothing to make this
happen this is just this is just how it is you know it's just like natural it's just like it's just like a space for me to play and cook in you know yeah I think about to how public our private spaces become vis-a-vis various forms of social media like I don't know I'm thinking about like my
grandparents house which once my grandmother decorated it in you know it was a classic post-war suburban house first owner I'm sure bought with this assistance from the GI Bill and mortgage assistance in some way like it did not change the bed spreads did not change right the like the
city which actually looks there's a city on the like cover for your podcast for classy that's bright pink this was not bright pink of maroon but it did not change like I thought it was like grandparents style I was like when I'm old I'm gonna have a grandparents city that's velvet right that like no
one sits in because it's so uncomfortable but it's but it's fancy but the only way that people saw pictures of their home would be like if they took a snapshot and sent it to someone that was the only way that the private space was made public or if some people came for some reason
to the house right and now my clutter is in the backdrop of everything like before I got on this podcast with you which we can see each other's faces because that's how we record I'd like clean my partners underwear from the back of this area I was like Charlie why is your underwear
always in the shot and one of the things I love about tiptock is seeing normal people's houses yeah in the backdrop of them you know doing storytime or doing a dance or whatever yeah but it makes you particularly self-conscious about what your home looks like when
put on film in some way yeah for sure for sure yeah I mean like the way you're talking about the like olden days like there used to be the room that was the room that you allow people to see you know like the I wasn't like you lived in your living room or whatever or which one was it no it's
like your like your sitting room yeah yeah yeah and that's like that's the only room you had to keep clean imagine right yeah and it was like good not you wouldn't no one would see the kitchen are you kidding me and now we're like the kitchen is the central focal point of our lives yeah yeah
yeah so both like social media and then also like the pandemic and zoom you know like yeah it's just like the ways in which I was suddenly like oh there is a very strange class thing happening now where I can see and everybody's house oh talk more about that because I think actually there was like some interesting HR things that I saw happening in the immediate aftermath where it was like people should blur their backgrounds so that you don't see these class signifiers but what do you remember
from them I mean I just I work with a lot of people in in their 20s you know a lot of people who live in New York City sharing apartments with roommates and so like you know just knowing like oh they're sitting in their living room and their roommate is at the other end of the room right now you know because yeah there's that moment where like they turn and look at the camera you know and you just know that's what's happening and I know I certainly like as someone who's older and is managed
by a house like I felt super guilty showing up in meetings right you know especially during the pandemic when you're like everyone just wants a little bit of space yeah yeah yeah and I like I will confess like I did not like move from room to room I live in a three bedroom so it's like I did
not want to show like oh I have like three different options of where I can work you know I don't have to be in my bedroom the privilege of options yeah yeah yeah no I sometimes feel self-conscious when because I take most zooms we don't have like a dedicated office um so I take most zooms from
my bed and I'm like what does it say that I'm taking a zoom from my bed uh-huh when you are comfortable in whatever your position is because I'm a freelancer because like I'm the one who asks someone to do an interview with me or whatever like if you feel confident in that position then I don't feel
uncomfortable but whenever I don't know I'm talking to like a CEO right we're like trying to pitch something I'm like there's just no way and I should learn how to blur my background if I were if I cared more I shouldn't I should learn how to do that yeah yeah does feel like a good fix
okay our next question is from Akiay and Melody's gonna read it what's going on with quote-unquote refined aesthetics as a class signifier particularly since ostentatious eccentric excess has been associated with wealth and status in the past and plenty of people still engage in conspicuous
consumption now I'm thinking of the contrast between saltburn and all that burlap from magnolia what the game says or crazy rich Asians versus the coastal grandma beach houses that are also lake houses on Lake Superior even the beige moms of tiktok are a significant shift from the colors
I expect with early childhood all right so this is also related to quiet luxury which is you know a big tiktok aesthetic trend where it's like oh luxury is like having a baseball cap that costs $5,000 with no logo on it right cashmere polo yes and even that idea that like wearing a logo is
somehow not refined right because it's it's saying the it's saying I'm rich too loudly yeah yeah or I like money too loudly it's saying that and then I think also like there's the ways in which some of that stuff has been adopted by streetwear and like by by lower class cultures you know
like Ralph Lauren used to mean something and then like in the 90s it got taken over by black and and poor people you know and so yeah I think there's some of that going on too or even I always think about the episode that you did about like your gold chain yeah can you
talk a little bit about that about how like because gold used to be you know a signifier of refinement yeah yeah yeah yeah in that episode it's it's sort of about the ways in which race and class intersect and like how for me I came to realize talking to a couple of different people about
their own experiences that I was always chasing white culture as as a signifier of class and like the things I felt like I needed to achieve I grew up working class both my parents are immigrants my dad's from El Salvador my mom's originally from Mexico and there is a way in which that
I have felt like I couldn't want nice things like I got made fun of by my family a lot for like being into clothes you know my mom calls me a yuppie she calls me her little yuppie there's an interview I do in that show where I like I kind of come to learn like oh it's okay for us
immigrant and children of immigrants to want nice things like like you can be poor you can be working class and still have nice things you know like that this sort of like judgment of people of like why are they spending all that money on a big TV in a new car you know so yeah it's a
little corny but in the course of making that episode I ended up pulling out this this old gold chain I'm wearing it right now yes that my dad gave to me for my middle school graduation um and it's uh it's cheap you know I don't even know like what carrot it is it's it's nothing
it's like a rope chain it's but like I was just like yeah I'm gonna put this on and it's both like I am allowed to have nice things and also if I'm honest about it like oh but not nothing too nice like I'm just wearing this old gold chain from that my dad gave me in middle school like that's
part of the story I'm trying to tell too I think right right like you're not trying you're not trying with the gold chain like you don't have any like heirs that like this is really nice yeah no not at all no that's the hard thing though right is that like I think elegance or what what we
ascribe with elegance or class it knows without a doubt that it is the best in some way right like there is no anxiety in its presence right right the mansion is saltburn like never once do they like this isn't nice right like or crazy rechasers they're like everything is top of the line whereas
everything that Donald Trump owns yeah it's like I say it's top of the line but I also like I need to say it so much because I actually know it's not yeah and it's sort of like reaching for those aesthetics like my dad lives in a house in the desert he lives like halfway between LA
and Las Vegas and in California in the high desert totally like working class neighborhood people who were priced out of southern California who moved up and and you know bought houses there and the houses are crazy ostentatious like my dad has pillars inside his house like Roman columns
and he's like he's a working class guy who who worked at Walmart you know like it's it's wild it's really wild does he love his pillars yeah yeah it's great it's a it's a fantastic house it's beautiful you know like he's got a pool like it yeah wow yeah no I mean I think that's the thing is
that oftentimes you know things like mic mansions or mic mansions how like there's the different things that are analyzed on that blog like they are completely like they're they're what we think of as aesthetic monstrosities in part because they are taking this pastiche of all of these different
elements of nice so many signifiers of nice whether that's like gables or columns or brick yeah river rocks like maybe in all all in the same house right right and I think sometimes like like there's an unfair I don't know if unfair is the right word but like this idea that somehow like
someone wanting something to be nice like automatically makes it not nice because wanting it want in any way desire makes it not nice it's like the same thing with clothing where you can never look like you're trying too hard you know or like a cool girl right like the cool
girl's not trying to be cruel like she's just she just is yeah yeah yeah and you're never going to get it I mean that's the other thing too is that like so much of this right is that like it's easy for me to for for not me but like the people with the money with that aesthetic of not
having to try it all of just like I have it and you're never going to achieve it you're going to try you're gonna like you're gonna have your house with pillars you know you're gonna like have your gold toy litter whatever but like you're always going to fail right it has to be exclusionary
in some way right it can't like climbing the class ladder cannot be as simple as getting more money right right you also have to have the taste element in there and that and taste that appearance of effortless taste comes from being born into money usually usually yeah or like a hell of a lot
of studying about it yeah just like you have to be like like mr. Ripley you know like to be like a psychopath about yeah yeah yeah just like totally dedicated that's the only thing you spent your life doing yeah yeah okay so melody wants us to think a little bit about the hinge of like
when wealth had to become subdued and in some ways I actually think that this is like this is not a new phenomenon in any way right like class signifiers and like class not announcing itself like real classiness not announcing itself I think is a very you know even if you go back to like
the way that people talked about Hollywood stars and like the mansions that the Hollywood stars were were building and like a lot of that had to do with the fact that a lot of the early Hollywood stars were from working class backgrounds and suddenly had money were racialized in different ways like
were sexualized in wanton and all of these different things like they didn't know how to have money yeah um even the phrase new money the existence of like dividing people with money into two different classes or even like you know they show the guilded age have you watched that I haven't watched it
but I know of it yeah but like yeah so basically like it's all about new money in Manhattan and how like new money naturalized itself yeah essentially through philanthropy um just just fascinating but I think one of the ways is like you have the expansion of the middle class which makes some of the
like broadens what's accessible in terms of like what you can own and how that communicates something about you postwar and then you also have the massive real estate expansion and the idea that like the houses that we should be building and the credit that was available made something
like big mansions and that like the sheer like expanse of property available right right as we like push out into the excerpts we can build bigger and bigger and and have like the house from Dallas in the 80s you know right yeah and but then there's also I think something to do like like everything
in the United States like there's something to do with whiteness and like differentiating types of money like this is what like wealthy white old money does and this is what like second generation immigrant money does kind of thing yeah yeah I'm trying to figure out like when I would
I would love to find out the real answer to this like when the like recent shifts happens though because I do feel like there is like you know a sort of lifestyles of the rich and famous 80s way of being that was like acceptable and not like totally ostentatious and crazy because I think of
something like the the main character the Leonardo DiCaprio character and wolf of Wall Street tons of money but I think that that was still like all of those real estate and like Wall Street junk traders like was that classy money I still think that there was like all of these wasps
who were like look at those fuckers like I don't know how to keep their money yeah yeah yeah that's like the American psycho guy you know yes and there was like I maybe for us because we don't have real money we internalize those depictions is like that's what money looks like yeah that's what
like Donald Trump is obviously amongst us too sure sure whereas the real money was like trying to think of what like real old money was doing in like the 80s and 90s yeah we don't even know we like it's so inaccessible to like I'm sure someone wrote in but like it wasn't it wasn't you
know being on a real like lifestyles of the rich and famous yeah yeah and some of this I think too gets into the like the Rachel Sherman the sociologist that you and I both talk to about just like what is good and bad richness you know and like good is is like not showing it off yes you
can have moral wealth if you don't show it off except for when you donate to philanthropy right right I also just think there's like and like we live in a capitalist society it which is like okay the system we have and I have certainly benefited from it at times but like
it's inherently unfair you know and like we don't want to acknowledge that and so I think so much of this like quiet luxury trying to hide all this stuff is it's just like about like I just I don't want to have the conversation yeah like I feel bad about class inequity and I also don't
want to do anything yeah exactly exactly well that yeah I think that's a huge part of it it's a contradiction of capitalism which is that everything around us tells us that we should be trying to make more money and spend that money because that's how capitalism persists right but also there are
very there's certain rules about how you should spend that money quote unquote well yeah that like disciplines us and to always mean insecure yeah you should spend all of it so that and make it look like you are not spending it at all yes exactly yeah okay all right last
question just a little bit even more philosophical and it'll be a nice way for us to wrap up okay this comes from Kate what's it like living in a house that looks nothing like your old house or living in towns like Laurel Mississippi that are so inundated with HDTV renovations
and must be really bizarre to have everything change around you so quickly in a style that is reflective of you in your town but not truly yours or your communities I have not had first-hand experience with this but I have spent a significant amount of time in Waco when I was writing about
chip and joy and games and talk to a lot of people about the feeling and you know I think that there's a sense that like Waco is a small town Waco is not a small town like Waco is a pretty big town yeah just because it's not Dallas doesn't mean that it's not a big town so you're not like driving
through Waco and being like there's a house there's a house there's a house like you have to go on a tour yeah to see all the houses yeah the downtown feels magnolia-fied now in part because they have bought so much of it to turn into like their hotel that they made
and like the silos are like they're you know the home space for it and like the other reason why it feels like that is because the downtown was largely raised by a hurricane in the 1950s and they built over most of the raised buildings with parking lots and so like the things that you
can see in town many like the landmarks some of them historical some of them new many of them are magnolia spaces and I think there is a lot of appreciation for the tourism Waco as many people told me was like it was where you went to the bathroom between Austin and Dallas
and now it is absolutely a destination but then also so much of that gentrification so much of that remodeling culture is actually you know the the line is this river and you can see where they were like we're not gonna go there and a lot of that area is places where very few white people
live wow yeah so yeah so that's real yeah but I feel like that like I mean it's it's got to be something that's really interesting to hear how it's happening in this company town but it's happening for for all of us like all the round I mean there's like magnolia is in target for
God's sakes like I have magnolia towels in my kitchen I have like a great like like wicker basket because she loves a wicker basket right right right yeah maybe maybe the basket we keep our toilet paper in as a magnolia basket too but like I don't know I feel like we all see this happening like
in our neighborhoods a lot too you know like the number of yellow doors that started popping up in my suburban town like five years ago you know yeah or like or black houses which like every time I pass a black house I'm like I'm into it but I know it's gonna look terrible like
tomorrow you know I'm not into all of them sometimes it's like there's like a certain style house it's just like no this one's not meant to be black what are you doing so when I was in sixth grade I decided I wanted to have my walls painted black and my mom like talked me down to just one
wall painted black but like the amount of labor to cover over that one black wall bed like and we did a change it until we sold the house but like I'm just like pitting whatever house painters or people have to paint over these like it's gonna be so bad it's gonna be so bad it also like the black
houses here it's so dour here many many months of the year so you're like here I am in my gray sky and my black house yeah yeah but yeah no you're totally right and I think you see it to buying a house decorated a house is really hard uh huh you have to know how big things should be like how space
works how colors work like picking a freaking paint color it's really hard yeah and so it makes sense that people often go to something that they have seen in their their neighborhood or you know what I mean yeah yeah that replication makes sense to me yeah that there's that book filter
world that reporter Kyle Chaco wrote that just like we are all because of algorithms sort of influenced by the same things you know in the way that you can go to a coffee shop in Brooklyn and also go to one in somewhere in the Midwest and they're gonna look exactly the same you know
right in the airspace and all that sort of thing yeah um and I think it has us like wanting things that even like open shelving melody was just bitching about open shelving like open shelving and like rugged open shelving you know where it looks like you just like you just cut down the tree
and and ran it through the planer once and this stuff I wanted I know I wanted 10 years ago and I'm just like I thank god I never had the money to actually do it because because why like spend a lot of money like they would sell those at West Elham for like $500 yeah yeah and I'm sure
that one of the like what workers here on the island would be like I can give you that from my backyard for like 50 bucks yeah if you can hang it yeah yeah if that yeah it's like a scrap piece of lumber and that's how it starts is like someone's kooky style looks cool right and then how do you
replicate it you have to you know it's like rip jeans kind of yeah yeah yeah but this question too of like what it feels like I mean if there were people on this island who started going through and being like hey we want to revive this thing hey this old building that used to be a marina
like what if we put cool art stuff in here um yeah there's going to be some Edison bulbs but also there's going to be some life in the town I think that like who benefits primarily from the stuff is is always important to consider but also there are so many small towns in America that don't have
a resource center anymore and so I think there is often an appreciation you know tourism is the new resource center for a lot of places and so if it's around a couple like this who are like I want people to come to my town and love it the way that I do yeah I don't know yeah yeah yeah the who
benefits question knows is important I think because like who benefits are are like people who own property in that area yeah yeah which leaves out like a whole swath of people and if you remodel and it makes housing prices go up right yes exactly when something becomes more
desirable who is no longer able to live there yeah I mean like bringing it back to some of the home renovations shows I mean that was always like there's so much that's that's going unsaid in a bunch of these shows and it was a thing I was thinking all the time watching rehab addict like
because it was always where she was renovating houses were in neighborhoods that had seen better days you know and outside of Detroit during the Twin Cities and you know she was always claiming like I'm not just flipping houses you know but that's what she was doing and I'm not just flipping houses
right yeah I am flipping house she is flipping I'm like what does it mean for those neighborhoods you know like certainly like those people that deserve to live in nice neighborhoods and like sometimes that they were it was being done for for the people who lived there but I always question and there's no room for an entertainment show to explore the question of like does this mean we're going to start pricing out the people who actually live in this neighborhood you know right what would happen
if an HG TV show like actually grappled with that question like is that possible can it be reconciled with the brand I don't know yeah yeah or like let's let's have a show where they go in and they tear down houses and and built mixed income housing that'd be amazing so I forgot I had
to do my full disclosure at the beginning of the show but better late I did a podcast for HG TV about small towns right and it was about people who moved to small towns and it was produced by an independent podcast company then that was contracted through HG TV and I was actually very
impressed with how much they wanted the show to grapple with some of like the realities like the hard realities yeah yeah of what it means to move to a small town right right what it means for the people who already live there and what it means for the people who are moving there
yeah yeah yeah so maybe it works in a podcast or the granted they did not pick up the show for a second season yeah yeah I mean I wonder the same thing watching hometown which is like looks beautiful like that slow pace of life seems appealing but like who feels welcome in this town
you know I understand that like that town is sort of a newish town that was built around like timber industry in the late 19th century and so like it's not like former slaveholding properties that that people are building on or renovating houses on but it's not that far from places where
that was happening yeah well and I feel like that's part of the reason that they got the show right it's like these people are great very likable white people but we can't grapple with that larger history yeah so let's get it down that was built after the Civil War right right yeah yeah even
though everywhere around it has this history yeah yeah yeah it's imbricated within that yeah so so you get to live in a myth where that history doesn't exist yes yeah well and that gets to you know this question again is I think those towns do feel a little bit like Disneyland but just a look
like those corners where you really are deep in that hg tv eyes space it doesn't feel like a real space yeah but it does feel like I think for I think people like to visit yeah yeah yeah yeah uh yeah also if if uh Ben and Aaron want to come do my house like anytime but like I this is I
I like really part of the joy of watching this is the dream that somehow they're they're gonna knock on my door and and do do me next and there's gonna be no question I'm not gonna have to borrow any money on my house yeah nope and do you think Ben would like teach you how to wood work a little
bit I love it you go to it just go to his workshop yeah yeah yeah that's a dream yeah well that is a perfect perfect place to stop if people want to find more of you on the internet work and they find you the best place these days is on instagram uh I have like a really clunky handle uh it's broken
bulb um I love it I'm always I always remember you yeah uh it should it should be my name uh but also uh the podcast is called classy with Jonathan and hevar it's me and j-i-v-a-r all right thank you so much thank you all right so today's rippling question is one that so many
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