The Apple Cider (and Johnny Appleseed)

Sarah and The Shrub go a little off topic with the history of apple cider, but the main event is 100% that lanky woodsy wanderer: Johnny Appleseed.

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https://cider.wsu.edu/history-of-cider/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_cider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucQKLWYBgeU

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-origins-apple-cider-180960662/ 

https://www.nationalapplemuseum.com/about/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/real-johnny-appleseed-brought-applesand-booze-american-frontier-180953263/

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ig: @shrubbish_pod
email: shrubbishpodcast@gmail.com

While I want to bring levity to the table, this podcast does contain descriptions of substance abuse. If you or someone you know needs help, the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi! I'm Sarah McAfee. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict, and this is Shrubbish, season two. Welcome back. I'm very excited to be here right now. I was a little nervous about this. It sort of feels like the first day of school, but here we are in the booth and, you know, just having these headphones on and knowing who I'm talking to is a huge delight right now. So thanks for being here. This is episode 15, season two. Here we go. Getting in in there in fall which just screams shrub right i mean like you know crafty kitcheny times with with sweet things and there's like oh i mean the summer fruits were fun and we did that and we went there and that's great but now we have the fall fruits and the fall vegetables we got some root vegetables coming in we got all kinds of good stuff so fun kitchen adventures ahead um you know things are the way they are um i'm standing right now which is weird normally i sit for a I always stand up when I'm doing a voiceover job, but I sit when I'm doing shrubbish because it's, you know, it's casual, it's fun, it's relaxed. But like, to be quite honest, my booth is not really set up to be a sitting space. I definitely need to look into a better way of getting my butt in a chair in here. That's for a different day, though. We're in it and I'm just so thrilled. Here's the thing. Apples are like my favorite fucking thing ever. I fucking love apples. I eat an apple most days. They keep really well, so I really like to have them in my fridge. All the different flavors that come into them, and they're so hard and crisp and good. I can't really bite into them anymore because I have a fake front tooth, so I have to slice them, so it's a little less easy go, but they're still definitely one of my favorite foods of time. Not just favorite fruits, like favorite foods. I have loved apples. I'm I've had 30 plus years on this planet and I've loved apples since the moment I started eating them. They're a staple for me and they were a staple for much of the world. And we're going to talk about that in a second. That was sort of a little segue. But basically, so I wanted, I was like, you know what, what's sort of like, I kind of wanted to do something like spooky, but then I kept Googling like spooky drinks and it just was showing me like cocktails for like Halloween themed cocktails. Cause it's, you know, it's October spooky time. Right. But then I was like, okay, so what else, what's like more fall themes. Like, oh, I wonder if there's anything interesting about apple cider, like the history of apple cider. You never know, right? When I start on one of these little adventures, you don't know what you're going to find. So I started doing some basic research on apple cider and pretty quickly it just turned into like the history and different things about hard cider, right? And this is obviously a sober podcast and I've made it abundantly clear that we're going to talk about things that aren't alcohol-related beverages. And yet here we are talking about an alcohol-related We're going to talk a little bit about cider because that's just where the research led. So we'll touch on a little bit about apples. Are you excited to talk about apples? Because I'm excited to talk about apples. I got really into reading about apples and I ate apples while I was reading about them. It was a nice hyper fixation for me. So we'll talk a little bit about apples as a fruit. And then we'll talk about a little bit of the history of hard cider. And then where the kind of the second tea year of where I wanted to go with this proved to be beyond my wildest dreams. We're going to talk a little bit about Johnny Appleseed, because he's a fascinating character, and I might be in love with him now. We'll see. Okay, so a little bit of background on apples as a fruit. Aren't you so thrilled you signed up for this? You're listening to a podcast about apples. I hope you stick with it, because I think it's fun. Okay, so apples originated in Central Asia, which I had no idea, but very cool. I mean, okay, there's a bunch of different kinds of apples. We'll get to that. But they've been around for a long time, like a long, long, long, long, long, long time. Maybe not so much like the apple you might see today at the grocery store, but they've been around. Ancient Egyptians had apple trees along the Nile, all kinds of stuff. According to Wikipedia, there are more than 7,500 cultivars of apple worldwide today. But that came from a source written in 2008. So I'd assume it would probably be more than 75 Like, I don't know how many more, but that seems like that was almost 20 years ago. So it seems like that would be more. In case you need to refresh this, a cultivar is like a type. So like a Honeycrisp, Fuji, Crimson Crisp, Snapdragon, Golden Delicious, I could go on. Those are all different cultivars of apples. And you get the different cultivars by, generally speaking, grafting the plants. So taking like stems or the trunk part and grafting it. grafting it onto an existing root stock of another plant. You attach them together, then they grow, and that allows for more control over the resulting cultivar versus planting by seed. If you just throw the seeds around, you're not going to have as much of a... The seeds take longer to mature into fruit. If you plant by seeds, obviously you have to grow a whole tree, and then it takes longer to develop, and then the whole process just takes longer, and you don't have as much control over what you're going to get. So most people do cultivars by grafting things which is kind of cool. It's like genetic stuff. And we cultivate apples for different reasons. There's baking apples. There's apples for eating fresh, nom, nom, nom. And then there's cider-making apples, which are generally more tart. The popularity among the cultivars is generally due to what's going to sell best. So the ones that you see most often are selected for because they're crisp and have good flavor, or they store well, they transport well. They're visually appealing. They don't have like weird spots on them and stuff. The size, people generally like larger fruits and things. So the size is the better. Yeah, basically just what's going to be most marketable. But like I said, there's 7,500 different kinds. Apples can be stored for months in climate controlled environments. Three-ish weeks on your counter, pantry, and even longer in the fridge, especially like there's like Fuji apples are super robust. Like you can keep those. in your fridge in like a fruit drawer for like a while like a couple months probably nutritionally I think this is kind of funny so like the whole idea of an apple a day keeps the doctor away and like I do eat an apple most days and I don't have to go to the doctor that often but they basically are just water and sugar and a little fiber so there's not like a huge amount of nutritional value to an apple but they are so fucking good right so who cares so crisp so crisp they are very present in different mythologies There's some stories in Norse mythology that deal with apples and Greek mythology. And of course, they're pictured in Christian texts and art. Although, you know, like Eve, although the word apple back then might have just been used to describe kind of any sort of foreign fruit. So it's not necessarily like the apple that we know today. So obviously, I mean, from my perspective, it's all fake anyway. So even the apple and that could just be a woman with a But if it was real, there might not have been a Fuji or a Honeycrisp in the garden. There might have been, I don't know, a pear. Who knows? A melon. Okay, so picture this. It's the fall. We're at a farm stand. There's a nice little bucket of cold, crisp little jars of cloudy, dark, sweet-smelling liquid. That would be the cider, which is different than the apple juice because cider is unfiltered. You mash up your apples. I mean, an apple mill, apple press thing is super cool. I looked at a video of this guy in Canada doing it um he has this like cool thing called like saving the fruit of Ontario or like oh man I'm gonna mess this up aren't I I'm sorry dude I'll find you later I'll mention you on the next episode but he's he like goes around and like picks up like he saves fruit that's gonna go bad he saves apples that are gonna go bad and he collects them and he makes cider out of them and so he has this like old antique cider press and he um it's really cool you like put the apples in this grinder thingy and it grinds them up and then you you literally press down the mushed apples through cheesecloth and it strains it out and then that's your cider. So it's got all the sediment and every bit of the apple in it. So it's cloudy and it's just got more flavor. And then if you leave that, then the fermentation process, yada, yada, that's how you get your hard cider. So if you're in England and the UK, if you're talking about cider, that's just hard cider. If you say cider in America, like at this point, like if you go to a bar or somewhere and you ask for a cider, obviously it's going to be hard cider. Okay, wait, tangent real quick. you know how like there was seltzer water right we covered that in like what episode two i think and then there was hard seltzer right and now they've gone and they've taken hard seltzer and de-alcoholized it and they're selling that as booze-free hard seltzer just it was already seltzer why do we need to make a booze-free version of the boozy version that you made out of something that was already perfect i don't get it i will never understand but that's that's where we are in America today. Anyway, but in like the fall and, you know, because it's the seasonal thing, if you like find cider at like a farm stand or something like that, it's probably going to be non-alcoholic cider, but it's always good to check. You never know. Sometimes it can be untreated, like at all. It might just be raw. Usually though, when people sell it at this point, you know, everyone is pretty up and up with wanting to not ingest bacteria. So usually things will be pasteurized or treated with UV light so it's safer to sell, but that's something to check on, too. Apple cider might not have as long of a shelf life as apple juice, obviously not as long as something that's fermented, because it is just sort of like a raw, seasonal, delicious treat. Okay, so the history of cider. Generally speaking, cider has been a popular alcoholic drink throughout history, because apples were abundant in different cultures, they ferment easily, and back in the day, fermented drinks were often safer than water because the fermentation would kill off bacteria um washing this is there's a i found all these fun little things washington state university has an entire little corner of a website um designated to cider and they state that the first record of cider and we're talking about the boozy kind dates back to roman times um with a first recorded reference of 55 bc so kind of cool um obviously as things do they spread around the world in various ways usually colonialism uh Slap on the hand. In America, colonists began planting apple trees in the Massachusetts Bay Colony only a few years after the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth in 1620, which I knew that date before I did this research. I remembered that date from school. I did not. But now I'll remember it. Cider was, of course, a very common drink. And even kids had their own diluted version of cider that they called applekin. So apples were very abundant. Many homes had orchards. And as the fruit goes quite easily from juice, like you mash it up and it goes easily to juice and then to hard cider and then to vinegar, there's a lot of use for it. And you can use it to the pulp later after you crush it up and turn it into juice. You can use that pulp for compost or fertilization in your garden. So it was a very stable crop. And the pressing and fermenting of the fresh apples was an easy way to preserve them, along with things like Okay, so here we get into my new boyfriend, Johnny Appleseed. So when you do an original, I don't know how all of our algorithms work, but if you do a quick search for Johnny Appleseed, there's some kind of terrifying looking images. He's kind of intense. He looks very long, and he looks like a large man, and he's got kind of a dopey face. He just looks kind of woodsy. um at best uh so he's kind of terrifying but also like kind of hot in a in a weird way um you know if he was a city dweller or like in modern times you know he's giving kind of bushwick kind of portland um or i was thinking maybe he would sort of he would like have like family in bushwick and like or like a boyfriend in bushwick and a girlfriend in portland and he would walk between the two he would make a pilgrimage each year between his two partners and he wouldn't have an Instagram, but he would become famous on social media because other people would take pictures of him. He'd be like Bigfoot, like when you snap a picture, like you can find him in the wild. That would be like Johnny Appleseed today, maybe. But back in the day, he was just a guy planting apples. And you know what? Great timing for this freaking episode. We just missed his birthday. Happy birthday, Johnny Appleseed. He was born on September 26, 1774. Not as Johnny Appleseed. That would be crazy He was born as John Chapman in Leominster, Massachusetts, where they have a Johnny Appleseed Visitor Center there. And apparently you get a free apple on his birthday or something when you go. I'm definitely misquoting this, but there's some sort of thing about apples there. Of course, it's the Appleseed Visitor Center. There's going to be apples. So much of the lore surrounding John Chapman, including his depiction in the 1948 Disney cartoon Melody Time, which is kind of disturbing. It suggests that he was this sort of like early age hippie, a man of the earth, kind of wandering barefoot and jovially spreading apple seeds and religious messages out of the goodness of his heart for the sake of agriculture, nature, and to help his fellow citizens. He was known to be a lover of animals, including insects. Apparently he once had a campfire going because he slept outside. So he was always probably had campfires. And he saw that it was that mosquitoes were flying into it and catching a light. So he put out the campfire because he didn't want to hurt the little mosquitoes. And if only we could have gotten him to not do that, maybe we would be in better shape today. In the couple articles I read about him, one of my favorite quotes is from author Rosella Rice, who wrote about historical stuff at the time. And she met him at one point. And in 1863, in a book about Ohio, or a section of a book about Ohio, she writes, quote, his personal appearance was as singular as his character. He was a small chunk End quote. So yeah, he wore a That's, like, I think a real thing. It's not just in the pictures of him. Like, I think he actually wore, like, a tin cap. I mean, a tin pot, like, as a hat. I don't know. He sounds like a wild guy. And she says short and chunked, but truly in all the photos, it makes him look huge. Like, he looks like a tall, gangly man, which is, I'm going to say, if I have a type, it's kind of my type. So I think if you know of a modern day Johnny Appleseed, let me know. Okay, so that's all coming from, most of that was coming from like the Wikipedia article of him. But then there's also a Smithsonian Magazine article I read that seems to paint him in as sort of like an agri-capitalist. It points out that at the turn of the 19th century, private companies were purchasing large areas of land in the Northwest Territory, which would be east of the Mississippi River, between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. If you're from the Midwest or the East Coast, I feel like you can picture that. If you're from Arizona, good luck. Private companies were purchasing large areas of land, intending to sell them to settlers as people moved west. A requirement by the Ohio Company of Associates was that, quote, anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on the wilderness beyond Ohio's first permanent settlement would be granted 100 acres of land, end quote. And to prove intent to settle and homestead permanence, settlers would have to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees within a three-year time because it took the trees a long time to mature. So it's like, okay, I promise I'll stay here. We'll sell this to you. But you have to plant these trees. So Johnny was like, hey, I can make a dime off this. And he would go ahead of this westward migration and plant seeds and make little orchards that he would then sell to settlers. So there's a couple different kind of versions of his character, I guess. But I think he sounds like kind of a nice, chill dude either way. It might have just been that he was maybe more interested in money than some people think. But regardless, he did honestly walk around, often barefoot, planting a shit ton of apple seeds, just like putting them out there. And it is important to note that he was seed planting, not grafting like we talked about earlier, because he was a member of the Swedenborgian church, and they believed that grafting caused plants to suffer. So he was a seed man. He planted by seed. And also hearkening back Thank you so much for joining us. The Smithsonian notes that settlers were drinking, quote, a reported 10.52 ounces of hard cider per day. So that's and like, okay, so if you get like the little bottles of cider that you get at like bodegas, that's like, that's like small, small potatoes. When I was in England, when I was doing study abroad in England, we would drink this thing called Old Rosie that was like 9% or something. And it was like, dude, that shit would fuck you up. Like, so So I think probably the people back then were just kind of always a little bit drunk. But it was just like a huge part of, like I said, like it was a beverage that everyone could drink and it was safer, theoretically. I'm sure people liked being tipsy all the time. And people would also even use cider like currency. So it was necessary for business, health, and the way of life. So kind of regardless of his intentions, he did make a huge impact on the agricultural landscape of the Northwest during that time. And he was monetarily successful. He did die with a good amount of wealth to his name. He left an estate of over 1,200 acres of nurseries to his sister. He owned land in Indiana and Ohio at the time of his death, which is we don't know when, kind of. Some papers mark his death as March 18, 1845, as dying in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a little cabin. And the cabin is like really small. He kind of, it's like, it's just this guy. I just love this guy. It's just like a little tiny, a little box, just a little box. And he just said, good night. Other sources, though, claim that his death was either in 1846, 47 or 48. But being in or near Fort Wayne seems to be a pretty much agreed upon location. And it's like the sort of official date of death is March 18th, 1845. The grave site is actually up for debate also. Some people think that he died or that he was buried on a golf course. It wasn't a golf course then, but it's now a golf course. Some people think it's near a park on like a different county. Here's the thing. There's a lot of love for Johnny Appleseed. People feel very protective of their relationship to him in their towns. It's a big deal. People love him. There are multiple Johnny Appleseed festivals. The first recorded one was in Liz been Ohio in 1968. We also have festivals in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Sheffield, Pennsylvania, Apple Creek, Ohio, Crystal Lake, Illinois, and Paradise, California, which seems to be kind of on its own because that's far away from his little trek. There was also a 1980s biographical musical called Johnny Appleseed written by Jill and Michael Galena. And purportedly, an original Johnny Appleseed tree still grows today in Nova, Ohio. And then outside of the Johnny Appleseed, in his birthplace, the little tourism spot, there's like a few trees that are descendants of his trees, I guess. And you can't pick those apples, but those are there. And then an additional fun fact is that I discovered, and I'm going to need to make a pilgrimage here, there is a National Apple Museum in Biglerville, Pennsylvania. I don't know that they have anything about Johnny Appleseed. I would almost guarantee that they do. But I'm going to need to go to the National Apple Museum. Apple Museum in Biglerville, Pennsylvania. A national Apple Museum. Museums of that variety, I think, are a gift that we don't appreciate as much as we should. Next time you have a chance, take a little road trip to a weird little museum and see what you can learn. That's my, that's my, I task, I task that of you. Okay. Wow. This is going to be a long original episode. You want to talk about sobriety a little bit? Because that's what we're here to do, along with our love of Johnny Appleseed, my new boyfriend. Okay.

UNKNOWN: 23:11

Hi.

SPEAKER_00: 23:12

So here's the deal. I'm doing much better today, but I will tell you, it's been a weird couple weeks. So this is being recorded technically in September, but when it comes out, it will be October. So by the time you're listening to this, It will be the month of my sober anniversary. My sober anniversary is October 19th. I feel like I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I had my last drink at like four in the afternoon. It was like the rest of a beer from the night before on October 14th. And then I smoked weed for a few days. So officially, my like, quote unquote, sober date is October October 19th. Um, I really feel like it could be the 15th, but because I, cause we, but since I did smoke the weed and just like to be true to like the AA rules or whatever, it's October 19th. Um, but you can kind of like your sober date is like up to you, like basically. Um, so this interesting thing happens every year around this time. Um, it'll And Dear French Jen mentioned this, is that... And when you come up on your anniversary, it's like you're coming up on a time that you made like a really amazing, amazing choice. Hopefully, you know, not everyone. It was a choice. But for a lot of us, it was it was a conscious choice to to get sober. You you've entered a new chapter of your life. That's amazing. But also you're coming up on the anniversary of your bottom because whatever led you to break free from substance abuse is usually a pretty bad moment. Right. I would consider myself a high bottom. There was no physical, there was no accident or there was no car crash. There was no jail time. But it was not a good day. It was a rough month leading into it. And I was so upset. I was so depressed. I did not feel like myself. I felt far away from my family. I had just had a... I like I think I can't remember if I told this story on this podcast or not but like I'd I wasn't able to do this like really basic thing that I should have been able to do and I you know realized I was just the only way to get back on track and to like have a life because I didn't really feel like I was living a life was to stop drinking I finally had that realization it felt like a very full body realization like holy shit if I I don't stop. I'm A, going to die. B, I'm going to be this shell of a version of a person forever. I can't do both. I can't drink. I can't drink normally. Right. So I had that realization. And, you know, that had come after like various phone calls of me just drunk out of my mind, like screaming at my dad about politics, who like we were both aligned with politics, but it was a very, you know, tumultuous time. Fall of 2020 was a scary time. And so, you know, know me just like screaming about like womanhood and crazy bullshit and like not like not remembering what I said weird like me staying up till five like drawing weird things and just just kind of being out of my mind and so angry and so sad and so bloated and just just feeling god-awful So October always brings kind of a weird duality because it brings up that. The, oh God, those early days were full of anxiety. So it brings up kind of that too. It's very existential. It's way more existential than my birthday. Like Jesus Christ. I mean, when I turned 30, I got a little weird, but like I've had enough birthdays. Like I'm fine. But these sober anniversary times are kind of a trip because, so it brings up those things. But then it also brings up when I first moved to the city, October was when I first started doing cocaine. So there was a little section of time when I when I thought the world was like I thought I couldn't die. Like I thought the world like I thought that I could party, burn the candle at both ends, like have these wild New York adventures, have no consequences. There was a period of time when that seemed like a possibility. And that was like October 2015. So it brings It brings up that kind of weird thing, which I kind of miss in a dark, fucked up way. You know, the energy of being 22. So it brings up that. But then it also brings up when I stopped doing cocaine because I stopped doing cocaine in the fall of 2019. So there's just this time of year has a lot going on in it for me. And this is one of the things that I love about going to meetings and having a sober community is when I use language like the anniversary of my bottom, other people understand what I mean. Like, this is not just something that's unique to me. And it's, you know, it's it is similar to like another trip around the sun with your birthday. But it's it just it holds a different weight for me than my birthday. You know, August, I'm not gonna tell you when my birthday is. My birthday, though, has, you know, a meaning to me. But like October 19th has a very fucking different meaning to me. I will say one thing that always helps is just fucking talking about it. I don't necessarily feel like cured that I that I when I talk about it, but it does feel it does feel better to acknowledge that. There's a lot to it. You know, there's the fun that was had. There's the awfulness that happened to get you out of it. And there's the fact that both of those things will live in my body forever. And also just the fact that I think about it so much, especially during this time, makes me feel not closer to relapse, but like closer to my addiction. Like it makes me feel like it feels like the addiction is very palpable. Throughout my body. And for anyone out there who is, you know, thinking about their anniversary or wants to have an anniversary, you know. There are places you can go. There are people you can talk to. And checking in with yourself and acknowledging how you're feeling and voicing it out loud, I think, is one of the best things that we can do as addicts in recovery or people who are interested in recovery or their relationship with substance abuse is to just take early stock of how you're feeling. Voice it. Share it with people. That'll help it get out of your body. Woof, that got, okay, that got heavier, I think, than I intended it to, but it is what it is. Shall we drink a shrub? Are you ready for a shrub? Because I have one here for you. This is a mix of fall meets summer, end of summer, transitioning into fall, and it is very on theme with what we're doing. I didn't, it's weird, I don't know that I intended to have these two things overlap in its way but they ended up doing it basically i was short on time and ingredients and so what i had in my fridge that was that was uh of organic material was apple and cucumber so that's what we've got an apple cucumber shrub and i have pre-concocted it with um sparkling water so this is oh god did i do a third cup of everything i think i did so it's It's equal parts, a third of a cup of apples and cucumbers chopped up, a third of a cup white vinegar, and a third of a cup of organic cane sugar. So like not sugar in the raw, but not like white bleached tiny granules of sugar. Does that make sense? And it looks sort of like an alcoholic cider. It's a pale, it's pretty. So, okay, it's pale, almost peachy. Because it's got that kind of like apple juice color, the color of apple juice to it, but really, really diluted. Right. But then because of the cucumber, there's almost like a greenish tint. So it's coming off. I don't know. It has a sort of a peachy color, I feel like, to it. It's like a little sense of a little taste of green in there, a little hint of green. And let's do the taste, the smell test. Pardon me. And it smells really good. It smells very cucumber-y and a little sweet. So let's take a sip. That's really good. That's very refreshing. Not a lot of apple, though. I got to say, not a lot of apple. That's mainly cucumber I'm getting, which is interesting. I would feel like it would be, oh, but wait, don't apples do that thing where they suck in the flavors of the other stuff? So maybe this is what happened? I don't know. Now I can't remember. With the apple ginger one, it was super gingery, right? Does anyone else remember that? Can you let me know? Because this is mainly cucumber-y, but I'm pretty sure that if the apple was gone, I would be able to tell. Okay, we got to do another taste. Okay, here's what I'm going to say. The fruit flavor that's coming forward is the cucumber. But it's almost like I used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar, if that makes any sense. So it's not like I'm getting an actual note of apple on my tongue, but there's the sense of apple being present. Does that make sense? It's good. It's good. It's basically cucumber-y, though. So definitely more summery than fall, but refreshing. I'll drink that. I'll drink this one later. Didn't I end on a really gross note last time? But this one, yeah, the like sludgy pineapple mango chili one. Yeah, no, that was bad. And I did throw that right away. I did not continue to drink that like I thought I might. No, that was rough. So that's done. And this one is actually good. And I will actually drink this. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, there we go. We did it. I just sort of don't want to say goodbye, but I think I have to. So I'm going to end the podcast. I'll talk to you in a couple weeks. And in the meantime, don't let the shrubbish get you down. Okay. Take care. Bye-bye. I'm so glad you stuck around for this week's episode of Shrubbish. Of course, I wouldn't be able to do this alone. Research references are available in the show notes, and that spunky show art and design is by the incredibly talented Alex Crawford. And I would absolutely love to hear from you. Do you have topic ideas, flavor ideas, want to offer kind criticisms or thoroughly butcher me with degradation? Please send an email to shrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or visit us on Instagram at shrubbish underscore pod. Also, please rate and subscribe. As all you podcast fans and creators know, it goes a long way.