Will Carless

It's always great to talk to you, Dana.

Well, the label has definitely changed over the past couple of decades, really.

I mean, back in the day, Crunchy really described a, I say sort of an archetypal liberal, like somebody who was very progressive, your sort of classic, like tree-hugging liberal mom.

These days, what's interesting is that the crunchy label has actually come to represent a very different group, which is a group of conservative moms who tend to have very traditional kind of Christian values.

What's similar about the two groups is that they're all about, as you mentioned, nutrition.

They're all about what their kids eat, about ingredients, about checking health and things like that.

But there's also this kind of anti-vax mentality.

element of crunchy moms as well.

And so today, when you hear crunchy moms, basically you're talking about a conservative mother who is more than likely an anti-vaxxer.

I mean, essentially, you have a distrust in medical science, I think is what it comes down to.

It's a distrust in science in general, but a distrust in medical science particularly.

And one of the things we examine in the episode is this kind of dichotomy between these people.

They trust the science in some ways, but they don't trust the science when it comes to vaccines.

And you have this sort of grassroots crunchy moms movement happening at the same time as you have this very

very organized, very kind of driven political movement that is led by RFK.

It's really hard to describe, but essentially, I mean, I really pushed them hard on this during my interviews, but it's very strange because they trust the sort of established science when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to food, right?

They will sort of say things like, well, heavy metals are very bad for children to ingest.

And the evidence that they point to are sort of National Institute of Health studies and sort of studies by large scientific organizations.

But when it comes to vaccines, the studies that they're pointing at are sort of these niche, not established scientists.

They're pointing at sort of people who are really kind of outliers in the scientific establishment.