The Stupid Little Yogurt Question

A high school teacher has a question, but he wants his skeptical teenage students to answer it. Reporter Garrott Graham rides along as they investigate the motives of an international yogurt brand. Support the show https://www.searchengine.show/ Comment. on this episode https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/the-stupid-little-yogurt-question Best of Search Engine https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5S9VpzSJa8HVGG9H0EmkmJ?si=eeb6813f57ea4218&nd=1&dlsi=2dcc1e31170a48f4

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00PJ Vogt?

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• 1:04PJ Vogt?

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• 2:39PJ Vogt?

  I don't miss much about being a teenager, but one thing I do sometimes miss is just how fun it was to be a teenage zealot. The world, at the turn of the millennium, seemed to my eyes so deserving of skepticism. The war on terror, bullshit. The oil companies, they were bad. My suburb, maybe worse than both of them. George W. Bush was obviously the worst president America was ever going to have, assuming it even survived him. I think I thought then that most of the adults I knew had just been compromised somehow. It almost felt like maybe adulthood itself corrupted you. Something about corporate jobs, or paying taxes, or maybe an actual invisible toxin in the suburban air muddied your vision.

• 3:23PJ Vogt?

  So you lost the x-ray teenage clarity me and my friends all had.

• 3:31PJ Vogt?

  That's how I saw it then. Today, in theory, I think both sides have a piece of the truth, the young and the not-so-young. But when I meet actual teenagers, I will admit I'm kind of astounded by their withering skepticism, their oracular pronouncements about what's bullshit and what's cringe. Was I really like this? Is it possible they see me as out of touch? Corny?

• 3:58PJ Vogt?

  But I think that's why every year I become a little more astonished by high school teachers. These people who stand up in front of a somewhat hostile audience, day after day, and just try to convince them to care about whatever the evolving adult agenda is. This week, reporter Garrett Graham has a story from one of those classrooms about a teacher who had a question and who had the audacity to try to make his students curious about its answer. Garrett was there to watch, to see if such a thing could ever really happen.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Okay, shall we? Mm-hmm.

• 4:32PJ Vogt?

  Where do you want to start the story?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  So, I'm gonna start the story almost two years ago, actually. October 2023. I don't know if you remember this, but you get a tweet from a guy named David.

• 4:42PJ Vogt?

  And what was David saying?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna get you to read that tweet. I'm gonna put it in your Slack.

• 4:46PJ Vogt?

  All right. Sorry, I have a notification from Domino's Pizza saying I have 80 Domino's points.

• 4:52PJ Vogt?

  A currency I never won.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  You live in New York and regularly order Domino's. It's...

• 4:56PJ Vogt?

  It's different. Okay. This is from Dfree86, at PJvote.

• 5:02PJ Vogt?

  "Hi PJ, I'm a high school English teacher and I teach a class called Knowledge of the World that asks students to pose big and small questions for research projects they'll eventually pursue and present on. I've turned them on to search engine and we're currently obsessed with the question, why is La Fermier..."

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Is that how you say it? La fermier?

• 5:21PJ Vogt?

  La fermier, la fermier. "The only yogurt that comes in a clay pot. We're deep in the throes of our investigation. Can you help us?"

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, that was the question we received on Twitter. Small question about a specific yogurt brand and why it came in a clay pot rather than a plastic one. Okay. Check, check, check. And it turned out, the school that this question was coming from was just a few subway stops away from our office, so Shruti and I figured we would investigate their investigation.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  The story we found, I'm gonna tell it to you in chapters. So, chapter one, the school.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  You're gonna tell me where we're going?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are on 75th and New York, and we are headed to L'Isé de New York, too. By this point, I'd already traded some emails with Dfree86. His real name turned out to be David Freeman. And he explained that he was a teacher at this French school in Manhattan. And one of the classes he teaches is basically a French school version of search engine. Like, that's kind of what he seems to be doing here.

• 6:18PJ Vogt?

  Sacre bleu. I'm gonna do that seven more times. I'm so sorry.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  What does that mean, sacre bleu? I have no idea. It could be super rude. It means sacred solving.

• 6:27PJ Vogt?

  Sacred blue.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Sacred blue.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Hey David. Hey Garrett, how you doing? Doing great, how are you? Yeah, nice to see you, thank you for coming. Nice to meet you, thanks for meeting us down. Absolutely, um, I think we got a sign.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  David greets us, and I want you to imagine like the prototypical high school English teacher. Which prototype? Youngish, tasteful glasses, sharp haircut. Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  That way, uh, up the staircase. There's a sort of adjacent building.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  So, the Lycée Français de New York, it's a bilingual school, mostly kids from France and the US, so there are students from all over, and it's an old school, started in 1935.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  This was before my time, um, but it was in these big, sort of old New York City walk-up buildings and...

• 7:07Speaker 01

  David's been at the school for the last 14 years, and he teaches two subjects, English and also the class that we're here to see, a class all about curiosity.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Um, guys, grab a seat.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  What time does the class usually start?

• 7:19Speaker 03

  The class starts at 10:00. And I did recommend that they be on time.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  The students start streaming in, it's about 15 students in total, and as the final stragglers take their seats, David just launches into his lesson for the day.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Alright guys, are you ready? Yes, good, hi, by the way. Hello. Happy Thursday. Alright, so, I want to talk a little bit about the course in general, um, and then the nature of the sort of question asking in it, and then we're gonna make our way to a specific example question, which I hope will stimulate you as much as it stimulates me.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And David, I should say at this point, avid podcast listener, maybe a bit of a podcast producer at heart, and so with a bit of a flair for the dramatic, he begins to recreate the question that brought us here.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  The question that has been obsessing me, the question that I keep finding myself affronted by, uh, is to do with the cafeteria in the school, and walking through the cafeteria line and looking at all the things available for purchase, and every time I walk by, I see the same thing that you see, which is...

• 8:19Speaker 03

  This thing.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  The students start giggling here because David has very theatrically revealed a pot of yogurt.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Alright, what are we looking at? La fermier yogurt. La fermier yogurt, can you...

• 8:30Speaker 01

  La Fermeère is a small artisan French yogurt brand. Have you, do you know this brand?

• 8:35PJ Vogt?

  I really despise yogurt. So I historically have not known it because of this question. And now when I'm in like a fancier corner store, I notice this brand.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  You'll see, yeah. So La Fermeère yogurt stands out from the other brands in the grocery store because instead of the plastic packaging, you typically see yogurt come in. La Fermeère comes in these cutely colored, often lavender clay pots. It's a premium yogurt, definitely more expensive than your Chobani's and your Yoplait's. They have like premium sounding flavors, rose, lavender, orange blossom honey.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  So I walk by this thing and, you know, I'm, I would say I'm a yogurt consumer. I like to eat a yogurt. And every time I walk by it, I ask myself this question. Why is this the only yogurt in the entire world that comes in a clay pot? Now, I get, there's an asterisk. It's not the only yogurt in the whole world. But it's the only one that I see in my everyday life that comes in a clay pot. None of, none of the other ones do.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  So my question is, why?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  David asks his students for theories, like, why would this one company choose to use clay pots when pretty much no other company does?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Anybody have any theories? Come on, be honest. Mario?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Is it good for the environment?

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Anu?

• 9:54Speaker 05

  Is it cheaper to produce than plastic pots?

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Right. Romy?

• 9:59Speaker 06

  Is it some type of marketing thing where it's, oh, I'm not eating yogurt out of a plastic pot. I'm eating it out of a clay pot. You know, it's like comes some type of image.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Good. If this were the small question we were starting with, as a small question to start with, what are some things that we could do to try and figure out the answer to this question? Estha?

• 10:18Speaker 07

  We could contact the brand to see if they had any specific reasons when they first produced the yogurt.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Specific reasons for packaging it the way that they do? Okay.

• 10:28PJ Vogt?

  Is it strange for you at all, like observing a sort of search engine style inquiry unfold in the real world?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  It's weird seeing this teacher do the thing that we do in pitch meetings, which is just to start to wonder at the possible explanations for these strange questions we encounter.

• 10:43PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Other ideas? Anouk?

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Just go on their website and see if they have anything about it.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Go on their website, see if they have anything about it. Here's why we do this thing. Olivia?

• 10:52Speaker 08

  Ask people that buy these yogurts, so like the cafeteria or others, why they want to buy this type of yogurt.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  So in other words, if it sells, if it's popular, if it... Okay. I think we're gonna stop there. Good job, guys.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  So David wraps up the class discussion, and he pulls me and Trithi aside. He had told us earlier that he'd chosen two students for this yogurt question to try to figure out why, like why La Famille was using clay pots for their yogurt.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  And they are my intrepid student volunteers for this particular project.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I don't know if that's good luck or bad luck, but thank you all the same.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  So we're gonna start at cafeteria.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Chapter two. The students. Okay, for the record, can I just get you to say your name?

• 11:35Speaker 06

  My name is Romi.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  My name is Anouk.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Romi and Anouk, both 11th graders at the school.

• 11:40Speaker 06

  Juniors, so juniors, yep.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  All right, and which in French is what it's called?

• 11:43Speaker 06

  Première.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Première.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  I'd get to know Romi and Anouk much better in the many months that would follow. Romi, I would learn, grew up in New York. She's one of those teenagers who almost seems like a fully-formed professional somehow. Yes, yes. Anouk's family is from France, and she's a more laid-back type. Like, she seemed to have the kind of curiosity that chases all sorts of things, just not necessarily the stuff that shows up on a syllabus. Yeah. And of course, anytime we're trying to help somebody answer a question, one thing we want to know is, why do they specifically care about it? Well, first of all, do you guys, do you eat yogurt?

• 12:14Speaker 06

  I mean, you see more yogurt than now, but yeah, I would say some yogurt.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  And yes, on a daily basis, probably.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And what about La Famille?

• 12:23Speaker 05

  No, I don't really eat La Famille yogurt, except when I want yogurt at school, because it's the one they sell, but usually not.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  And what do you usually eat?

• 12:30Speaker 05

  Trader Joe's Greek yogurt. Very good, recommend.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  So Romi and Anouk, a little more blasé about La Famille than their teacher. Okay. Enough so that Trithi and I are beginning to wonder, like, are these two student investigators even interested in this question? Like, is this something they're excited about? Or is this just a homework assignment?

• 12:49Speaker 04

  So I do have one question, though, and everyone has to be honest here. Whose question is this really? Is it your question, David, that you have sent your students off to investigate? Or do you... Does either of you have, like, is this something you're thinking about?

• 13:05Speaker 03

  I'm curious how you would answer this.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  It was, it was your question.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  It was your question, yeah. Both of them sort of say immediately, "It was your question, David, not our question." Mm-hmm. And then David replies in what I can only describe as fluent teacher.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  I would say it was my question in a pedagogical, demonstrative, educationally effective capacity, which was, because when we first had the conversation, it was a couple of months ago, right? And it's a brand-new course, it's a little nebulous to them and to me. And so when we were thinking about how you find a research question, you know, big, small, small, big, I wanted an example that I could be honest and earnest about for how you start with a small question and turn it into something that can be big enough to encompass a research project, right? So where this thing ends up, where it lands, in terms of the various reasons why this thing is, is itself a kind of representative of the sort of process that the kids are going through, right? They themselves have to...

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I will admit, PJ, in this moment, my faith in this yogurt question was getting kind of low. Reasonably. I was like more with the students here and their seeming ambivalence than I was with their teacher. But also, it turned out I was underestimating him because by the time this was all over, this question would become interesting. Actually interesting. Yeah, not in a pedagogical, demonstrative, educationally effective way, like, properly interesting. Okay.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  But on that day, we all just sort of dutifully get into the elevator. We're heading to the school cafeteria, which is the first stop in our investigation. And on our way there, I started talking to Anouk about her relationship to dairy products back when she was growing up in France.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  So I would say just consuming milk and milk-based products is something that's very advertised in France. For example, in my, like, my childhood TV show and everything, they would say at every, like, ad break, "Oh, you have to consume five, like, vegetables a day, also three different milk-based products a day." So it's definitely like a big part of, especially children's lives, because there's this thing of like, you're gonna grow taller if you eat yogurt and all of that.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  I didn't really think about this at the time when I first showed up to the Lise, but one of the reasons this question was coming from this place is just that French people are extraordinarily precious about their dairy products.

• 15:18PJ Vogt?

  Oh, right, they like cheese.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  They take, and just food in general, they take the quality and craft of food far more seriously than we do. It felt unintuitive for me as a kid who grew up on Easy Cheese and Country Crock. I know you don't like yogurt, but if you've ever had a fancy cheese or a traditional French butter and then gone back to the mass-produced American versions.

• 15:41PJ Vogt?

  Oh, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And they just eat way more of it than we do, too. The average French person eats something like 60 pounds of cheese and 45 pounds of yogurt every year.

• 15:49PJ Vogt?

  Wait, sorry, what?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Which is a lot more than Americans consume either.

• 15:53PJ Vogt?

  With 60 pounds of cheese?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And 45 pounds of yogurt every year.

• 15:57PJ Vogt?

  The thing that's so funny about that, besides everything, is it's an average. So, like, there's lactose intolerant people in France and other people are eating enough to make the average go up to that number.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  The upper end of that bell curve is probably very upsetting.

• 16:11PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  But back at the school, our little yogurt investigation squad walked into the cafeteria. Classic high school lunchroom with those long tables with the little attached stools, food serving stations in the back. The cafeteria is empty at this point, except for two adults who were seated at this one table.

• 16:27Speaker 09

  Hello, how are you?

• 16:29Speaker 03

  And this is Romy and Anouk. They are 11th graders who are helping us with this project on yogurt.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  We were here to talk to the head of the cafeteria about La Fermière. He was one of the people responsible for stocking this specific yogurt in the lunchroom. He was another adult, like the teacher, who seemed enchanted by this brand. And so, Romy, one of the students, asks.

• 16:49Speaker 06

  So, how popular is this yogurt? Do you sell out every day? Do a lot of people eat it? Teachers, students?

• 16:57Speaker 09

  It's pretty popular with the staff and with the faculty. The students, unfortunately, I think, are more toward like, oh, I want a cookie or I want chips, but the adults seem to really enjoy it.

• 17:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, why do you think it's the only yogurt, basically the most popular yogurt that comes in a clay pot?

• 17:14Speaker 09

  Well, if you check out the Lethemira website, it's actually a really great website. And they do this whole promotion on reusable and sustainable. And you can take these pots and they give you all these ideas, what you can do with them.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Mark didn't have much of an answer here beyond what the company was already saying on its website. That clay, sometimes they'll say terracotta or ceramic, basically the same thing. But saying it's a premium material with all kinds of reusability and sustainability benefits.

• 17:40Speaker 09

  It's really, you can do a lot of things with a clay pot.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And honestly, we're all just kind of sitting there and nodding along. Romi and Anuk, I wouldn't say they're actively engaged at this point. We're still inside the school building, their teacher's still hovering close by. They're a little reserved. But after the cafeteria, the next stop on our investigation list was just the local cafe next to the school. A spot with what I thought was a slightly over the top French name.

• 18:08Speaker 06

  Okay, so we're just outside of school right now and we're gonna go in a cafe called Chiller Franchise, which is right next to the school, literally next door, the key hangout spot.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  How often do you come here?

• 18:17Speaker 06

  I don't come here that often, but a lot of people do, especially if you don't have time to go get a snack and you only have 15 minutes. And there's just, it's a lot of just French products. So if you want something French, come here.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  It smells like France in here.

• 18:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, it does smell like France.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  PJ, I should tell you something. I know you have teenagers in your life. I don't really like to reveal a prejudice of mine, like high school students kind of make me nervous.

• 18:40PJ Vogt?

  They, because you feel like they're gonna humiliate you maybe?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I have Gen Z friends, I've had Gen Z colleagues. But when you start getting to the younger parts of the generation, or like whatever we're calling the next generation, Gen Alpha, I just, I don't know. I don't know how to hang, I don't know the lingo.

• 18:53PJ Vogt?

  Well, the thing that's hard, actually, just so you know, it's not knowing the lingo, because you're not supposed to use the lingo. And when you say like, no cap on God, it really upsets them, which is a reason to do it. It's actually that there's certain words we use that they really react to, like they're almost allergic to them.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  What's an example?

• 19:13PJ Vogt?

  Sick.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Sick?

• 19:15PJ Vogt?

  Oh, it just feels like millennial cringe, or what? They wouldn't even say millennial cringe, but they're just like, it's like being like, what's up dudes? Like, they hate it, and it made me realize like, oh, right, of course the generic words for cool get generationally cycled.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:30PJ Vogt?

  Because there's other words for something being cool or agreeable that you can use that they won't react to. But like, say that something's sick in front of someone around 13, they will burn you to haze. And it doesn't not feel bad. It feels quite bad.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds bad.

• 19:44PJ Vogt?

  It's really bad. I think it's also just like, I think for some reason, when you become old, you expect that young people will automatically afford you respect, which I never did as a young person.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:57PJ Vogt?

  And they don't do either.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Oh, the thing that you're describing is the thing that made me kind of nervous, walking into a high school with somewhat aloof high school kids.

• 20:03PJ Vogt?

  I understand.

• 20:04Speaker 10

  I don't like to eat American yogurt.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  And I'm feeling that way as we talk to the owner of this cafe, learning once again that adults love this yogurt, the pots are cute, they're reusable.

• 20:14Speaker 10

  My medicine cabinet, I use them in my kitchen. You use them for different things.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  But as the hour winds by, I can slowly feel Romeo and Nuk warming to the assignment a little bit. Or maybe it's just because we're starting to get to the point where they might get to miss their next class, and that's like exciting for them. You guys owe me for letting you miss math class?

• 20:31Speaker 06

  I'm missing philosophy right now.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Ooh, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• 20:34Speaker 06

  It can, sometimes. Okay, depends on the lesson. Yeah, depends on the lesson.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  So, we're making small talk about class. David, the teacher, has to duck out to go teach his next class.

• 20:44PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  And so, for the first time, Shruthi and I get a moment alone with these students.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Which means I finally get to ask them what they really think about this investigation we're on.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Chapter three, the students' point of view.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  We sit down in the school library, and I just ask them to tell me about that first class when their teacher David pitched this yogurt question to them. Can you just briefly, in a few sentences, describe sort of what that class looked like on that day?

• 21:15Speaker 06

  So in the beginning, we were all very surprised with the question and kind of confused. Like, Mr. Freeman was, "Oh, my God, I have this really interesting question." It's, we were like, "That this is your question?"

• 21:26Speaker 05

  I feel like everyone was kind of annoyed at the end of this class because they were like, "Why do we have to spend so much time, like so much of our free time, homework and everything, on a yogurt question that nobody cares about?"

• 21:35Speaker 01

  They're like, "Look, I get it, this is school, but if we're gonna be taking a two-year research class, like, why can't we spend our time researching stuff we actually care about?"

• 21:42Speaker 05

  We have been told that, "Oh, you have to do a project about something you're passionate about." But we have been presented with things we're not passionate about.

• 21:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, especially with this class, it's like when teachers are asking you to do something and to research something you're not interested in, it's hard. But with this question, we all have kind of come up with topics that we are interested in, all of us. But then we're asked to do this about yogurt. We're just like, "Why can't we spend more time researching the things that we're actually interested in?" If that makes sense.

• 22:07PJ Vogt?

  So what do they want to know about?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Not yogurt pots. What do you wish you were spending your time on instead of thinking about yogurt?

• 22:14Speaker 06

  Um, so I have mostly, I've been researching, like, why is America over-medicated? And I really am interested in, like, the 19th century, the Civil War, kind of where that all started with morphine and how that's progressed to where we are now, which is this, like, cataclysmic crisis.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Like, hearing her talk about this, I was like, "Oh, of course this yogurt question sounds stupid to you. Like, of course this feels like a waste of your time."

• 22:37PJ Vogt?

  It's also so funny to hear the difference between, um, the curiosity you're asked to have versus the curiosity that you have.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:44PJ Vogt?

  Like, people, the aliveness with which, when someone talks about a real question, they come alive.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  And that was the feeling I was having in this library. It was like, "Oh, these students are coming alive for the first time because they're talking about stuff that they're excited about."

• 22:54PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And it's not yogurt. And what do you wish you were thinking about in your yogurt-thinking time?

• 22:59Speaker 05

  To be completely honest, I wish I was spending this time to figure out what I want to spend it about. Like, I'm really bad at just finding specific questions or specific things that I'm interested about. So I have some, like, general themes. So I love design, I love architecture. Arts, but I just haven't been able to come up with a specific question.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Anouk doesn't know what she wants her final project to be, but in what I'm learning is like kind of classic Anouk fashion. She was like, I'd rather just be using this time to figure out what I actually am interested in. And so like, again, a clay pot of yogurt, not something that was immediately attention grabbing for her.

• 23:33PJ Vogt?

  Right. Okay. So where do you go from there when you realize your two principals are like, have other designs?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny because this is something that like occasionally comes up for us on our show. Some weeks we spend our time thinking about small and unserious questions.

• 23:48PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Like, we might be trying to track down a Russian rapper and meanwhile, the economy is crashing and the president's trying to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or something. It's like, wait, how sad are the monkeys in the zoo again? And that was coming to mind as I was hearing them talk about their serious research interests bumping up against this silly yogurt question. But this is in some ways the entire point of David's class.

• 24:12PJ Vogt?

  He's trying to teach them the disciplined form of curiosity.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's trying to say, maybe it's a more valuable skill, or at least it's the skill that this class is trying to teach you, that you should be able to chase down answers to questions that you don't care about.

• 24:28PJ Vogt?

  And you might learn in the process that somebody used to say to me about exercising. My friend Lilia was like, "Action precedes motivation."

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36PJ Vogt?

  Start doing it and you might discover something. So you're now on board. You're like, let's force these children to talk yogurt.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I've kind of been like a connaissance de Mandeville, where I'm like, let's just see if this is possible.

• 24:54PJ Vogt?

  We're going to take a short break. And then this week, search engine's Garrett Graham will embed with this pair of teenage detectives as they complete a very involved homework assignment, as accusations are hurled, as a beloved international yogurt brand becomes somewhat unsettled. All that after this publicité.

• 25:35PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Akosia. Think about how many random things you search for in a single afternoon, from recipe ideas to quick trivia. What if every single one of those clicks went towards healing the planet instead of lining the pockets of big tech? By making one simple switch to Akosia, your daily internet habits directly power environmental restoration. Akosia is a search engine and browser that dedicates 100% of its ad profits to climate projects, having already funded over 250 million trees across 40 different countries. They even use satellite tracking and hands-on site visits to ensure every tree thrives for the long haul. Plus, Akosia is legally structured so it can never be sold out to wealthy investors, meaning its mission stays permanent. You do not need to rewrite your lifestyle to make a difference.

• 26:19PJ Vogt?

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• 26:41PJ Vogt?

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• 27:22PJ Vogt?

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• 27:55Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the show. Chapter four, Looking for Treasure.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  So PJ, a couple of months have passed since my first visit to the French school, and we're about to hop on a call to start our investigation for real. And the first thing-

• 28:11PJ Vogt?

  And has the curiosity at this point, is it inside you? Like, are you like, it's not, I feel like it hasn't yet bitten you.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  No, the thing that I think is propelling me and motivating me at this point is the fact that I'm getting to like, investigate this alongside two high schoolers who seem bored by it. Like, the fun part for me is not, can I answer this question? It's-

• 28:30PJ Vogt?

  Can you make them care about it?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Can I get these students interested in this question?

• 28:33PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  So, I get on a Zoom with Romeo and Nuke. Can you both tell me what you had for breakfast this morning, so I can check your levels?

• 28:41Speaker 06

  I had cereal for breakfast.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  I had a child's breakfast. I had carrot cake and chocolate cake for breakfast.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  You had two types of cake for breakfast? That's inspirational, I have to admit. It's funny, everybody we ever interview, we ask what they had for breakfast. And then with an adult, we usually follow that up by saying, can you say your name? And what you do for a living? But for high school students who don't yet do anything for a living, I had a different introductory question that I thought might tell me something about them. So, when you guys were both younger, I'm curious, what did you want to be when you grew up? Like, the earliest answer you can remember for yourself for that question? What did you guys want to be?

• 29:17Speaker 06

  I think I wanted to be like, either a doctor or a scientist.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  I think I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was really obsessed with history and I was a super curious kid and I really wanted, like, I loved treasure hunts, stuff like that. For example, I love thrifting and I think it's the same feeling in a way. It's like, you're trying to find this treasure.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  That feeling that Anuke's teacher is trying to inspire in her, like, curiosity about the small things. She says it's a feeling she often has, just rarely about school.

• 29:49Speaker 05

  So, I don't really like school because it just takes away, like, free time from me. Like, I would much rather just spend my entire days, like, drawing and playing music, stuff like that. So, I usually find school pretty boring.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, there are some classes that I do, like, enjoy. I really like to learn. I think kind of the stress of it sometimes takes away from that. Well, sometimes, a lot of the times takes away from like, the kind of- Pleasure you get from learning or like the drive that you have. Because I think I'm a very driven person when it comes to that. And it's the things I care about. But some of the classes I just cannot, I couldn't care less.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  And that's a little bit how these two students were feeling in their class about curiosity, with that exceptionally eager teacher, David Freeman. Like, some of the early assignments to them just felt pretty dull.

• 30:37Speaker 06

  We had this assignment that was like this research project about your building that you live in.

• 30:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it was still not really clear what the whole thing was about. And everybody's still a little bit confused.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  And then came that day that Mr. Freeman showed up with his pot of yogurt. And you know what happens from there.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  I mean, I feel like when we came in, we were like, oh, come on, like not another stupid project. And this time it's about yogurt too, like the most stupid one in our opinion, like just about a pot of yogurt.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  But then two weeks later, he said, I contacted this podcast team. Then I think that made it more exciting, at least for me, because it made it feel more real.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  David told his class that he had two spots available to be a part of the project. And Romy and Anouk decided to go for it.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  Just had to send him an email with all our arguments to how we would make the best students for the assignment. But I feel like I just have this thing of like fear of missing out. Also, I had seen that MyHawk was on the podcast.

• 31:36Speaker 06

  I think Anouk and I are the only people who applied.

• 31:40Speaker 05

  We're not the best, we're just the, yeah.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  You're the only.

• 31:43Speaker 06

  I mean, I think that's what it was.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  So that all brings us to today on this Zoom call, talking about how we want to tackle this yogurt question. Yeah. And we decided to start someplace easy, LaFermiere's website.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Chapter five, red flags.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  The website, it's very artfully designed, very sleek looking photos of their yogurt. And we just navigate over to the FAQ page.

• 32:09Speaker 06

  Okay, should I just read it?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, go for it. Where, helpfully, maybe a little anticlimactically, one of the questions there is our question.

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Why are you using terracotta in glass pots?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  And the company's answer?

• 32:24Speaker 06

  We believe that our all-natural yogurt deserves an all-natural packaging. Terracotta is a natural material that has been a useful tool in the kitchen for centuries. Pots, plates, platters, etc. And it still is today.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  Already, from the first sentence on, they're trying to use the packaging as a way to say that their yogurts are great because they're calling it an all-natural packaging for all-natural yogurt. And those are very broad words. Like, what does "all-natural" really mean?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  So, finding the American website lacking in detail, we head over to the French website to see if it had any other information we could use.

• 32:58Speaker 06

  Contrairement to other countries, there are unfortunately not today in France, recycling containers for packaging.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  PJ, I'm just gonna translate this for you.

• 33:05PJ Vogt?

  And you've been taking French classes?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I have been taking French classes. The translation's roughly: "These packages remain among the most ecological because they are inert," meaning, "they do not deteriorate the materials they come into contact with in a way that could cause damage to the environment. Unlike plastic, for example, which when decomposed produces byproducts that are potentially dangerous for the environment and health." And so, when the students read the company's appeal to sustainability on this website, it was like they were just naturally wired to think that this company was trying to pull a fast one on them.

• 33:35Speaker 06

  I mean, certain brands have a whole page on their website where they can actually detail to you what exactly they're doing to be sustainable. You know, if you look at La Fermeure, there's only like, two sentences. Is this really giving me a full explanation as to why? Not really. It was like, "Oh, it's because we're eco-friendly." I just had the biggest eyebrow raise, ever. Like, really? I don't know. Big question mark. That's what it feels like. Big question mark.

• 34:08PJ Vogt?

  Oh, so now, it's like, now they're curious because now they're a little paranoid.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  This is the first time that I start to see the flicker of real curiosity in their eyes. It's like, "This company is lying to us."

• 34:19PJ Vogt?

  Oh, you're saying that these youngsters have a more suspicious relationship to capitalism than us oldsters?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny. I wasn't quite sure if it was their generation, or if it was their Frenchness, but they are naturally far more skeptical of corporations than I think I was, at least in high school.

• 34:34PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  But Romy told me this story that helped me understand where this generation is coming from, like, really how the media they've experienced has shaped their worldview.

• 34:41Speaker 06

  If you've ever watched Nickelodeon... In your lifetime, you know that there are a plethora of ads like and they're all so colorful and you know, bright and they have this really obnoxious music. I feel like I always embraced them as a kid. I don't ever have a memory of not. Um, but I don't know. It's interesting. You kind of grow older and you start to be a little skeptical. I think that also kind of just comes with being a teenager. I'm not gonna lie. And then, you know, I think also in quarantine, like we were all on our phones. And so you actually learn a lot, like, you know, people always like, oh, yeah, you just sit in bed and do nothing. But like, you actually learn a lot on a deep dive on some sort of TikTok or Google. Like, you kind

• 35:25Speaker 06

  of learn about fast fashion, what that does to the environment. And you start learning about the detriments of what companies do. I think it was specifically with fashion. I think it really was a turning point for me. You learn about how horrible, you know, the working conditions are. They're barely paid. How much they produce and how much people are buying just to wear the shirt once and never again.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  To me, it was interesting. I've heard parents talk about how much screen time their teenagers were getting during the pandemic, but I'd never actually heard anybody wonder about like what specific rabbit holes they were going down while looking at their screens. Yeah. Uh, and for Romeo and Duke, it seemed to be this kind of anti-consumerist rabbit hole.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  I know that when a brand says that they're doing something fully for their customers and fully for the environment, it's usually hiding something and it's usually they're doing it for their own profit because that's just how everything works. And we wouldn't be facing climate change and we wouldn't be having those issues if every company's first motive was to make earth and the people happy. Like, I know that in our world, everything, most things are for profit and have to be for profit.

• 36:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, because if it was actually the best way to make yogurt more sustainable, why are there only like two other brands here and there that do it?

• 36:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was thinking, I feel like. Maybe ceramics is better for the environment. Like it doesn't like if you discard it in nature, it's not gonna like last as long, whatever than plastic. But it's also a lot heavier. So when for transportation, that means you can't transport as much of it, like more soon to.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  So the students, what they seem to think was going on here was that the company knows sustainability is important to high end consumers. So if a product looks sustainable and can be marketed as sustainable, who cares if the thing is actually sustainable? Like what's important is what the consumer thinks, because what the consumer thinks will determine how much they can sell it for.

• 37:19PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, and like, you know, there's plenty of evidence in our culture for this idea that oftentimes labeling something as ethical is a thin marketing technique. And La Fermier's CEO probably goes to bed every night not wondering if a crack team of high school skeptics is gonna descend on his terracotta plant. Or her terracotta plant.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Well, to be clear, there's no evidence, at least online at this point, that anything actually fishy was going on. This is just some teenage theorizing at this point. But we decided to reach out to the company to see if anyone there was down to talk to us about their clay pods.

• 37:52PJ Vogt?

  Like a bunch of French kids think you're lying. To want to be on our podcast.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I didn't go, that was not my email to the company. And to be clear, we were going in skeptical, but also with an open mind.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Chapter six. The yogurt executive. Can you hear yourself when you talk?

• 38:09Speaker 05

  Um, no. I can't hear anything.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  I can't hear anybody.

• 38:12Speaker 05

  I can hear a nuke. Oh, my God, I can hear my hate peoples. I can hear myself talk. Can you guys hear yourself?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  Is that normal?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  So I meet up with the students and their teacher, David, at Search Engine HQ. It's all very exciting. An executive at La Fermier has very generously agreed to talk to us.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  Okay, so, hi. Could you say maybe your name and what you do?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. My name is Charlotte Marchand, and I've been with La Fermier for five years now. I'm the head of sales and marketing.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  So as the head of sales and marketing in the US, Charlotte would be the first one to admit, like, she's not a sustainability expert, but she does know the company and its products very well. And so Romy asked her.

• 38:51Speaker 06

  Can you just tell me the story of the ceramic pots? And kind of how they came about? And what they mean to the company in general?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  In 19, around 1995, this was the appearance of the terracotta pot, actually. Because at the beginning, we were using a paper cup. But very soon after the creation of the company, a former owner wanted to give to the consumer an elevated experience. But also he wanted something new in the market, something no one did before. So he wanted like the perfect packaging for this. And the perfect packaging for this was ceramic pots.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  So basically, La Fermeur yogurt for many decades had come in wax-coated paper pots. And then in the 90s, Charlotte tells us that the company decided to switch to the terracotta pot, both because they wanted to stand out to their customers, but also because they were thinking about the environment.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  For us, it's very important to propose one of the most sustainable packaging for our product. I don't know if you know, but our ceramic pot is made of 95% of clay, which is a natural material. And then 5% are non-toxic clay. So there is like a minimal environmental impact because it's made from natural materials.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  And as soon as Charlotte is starting to like sing the praises of this terracotta pot for all of its ecological virtues, I can see the students kind of like squirming in their chairs. It's just making them more suspicious. They sort of get this wry smile on their face. You know, because Charlotte is more or less repeating what we found on the website. She keeps saying.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  High-quality ingredients, high-quality packaging.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  High-quality ingredients, high-quality packaging, which is like a good slogan, but doesn't necessarily offer much of a window into how the company is actually thinking about the environmental trade-offs. And she's wandering into a room full of teenage sharpshooters. So Romy tries to press Charlotte on the topic.

• 40:40Speaker 06

  So one thing we've learned actually from our research is that it's really hard to measure sustainability and how something actually impacts the environment. Because there are just so many factors involved. How did La Fermeur decide that ceramics were the most sustainable option?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  So I would not say we will say it's the most sustainable option. I would say it's one of the most sustainable options and one of the best options we could have today. I totally agree with you, it's more complex than that because there is multiple factors. And I will not be able to answer you properly as I'm not a sustainability expert, you know. But for sure, when you take the mix of the consumer experience, the fact there is no impact on the environment if you just throw away your pots, it will not damage the environment. So that means there is no pollution on the air again, no pollution on the ocean, no pollution for animals, etc.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And Charlotte's like, look, terracotta, not the villain here. The villain here is the other kinds of packaging. And the word that nobody's saying is like, plastic's the obvious villain here.

• 41:44PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Like, terracotta is obviously better for the environment than plastic.

• 41:47PJ Vogt?

  But her, this corporate cheer and insistence is not totally playing with the teenage skeptics.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  No, it is not. And they're also asking these kinds of serious hardball questions, like, they're teenagers, but they just seem very well-versed in what I would think of as like adult corporate consultant lingo.

• 42:03Speaker 06

  Can you just describe what you want consumers to think about when they think of the brand La Fermier? Like, what does your brand identity really look like?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  So for us, it's like indulgent and natural. So we want people to have a treat, but a treat with like something that's not harmful to the tooth and health, you know?

• 42:24Speaker 06

  You said you had five ingredients. What are they?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  It was almost like the students had decided to go full prosecutor here.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  So we have milk, cream, culture, of course, on the yogurt, vanilla bean, for example, and cane sugar. So that's the only ingredient we have. So here in the US, we are manufacturing our product upstate New York. So we get our milk and cream upstate New York, like very, very close to our production facility.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  This is actually surprising to me. Like, I'd assumed that the French yogurt came from France, but the ingredients are actually arriving from in-state in New York, which did seem maybe more environmentally sound, although not something La Fermier is particularly bragging about. We started to wrap up the conversation and we say our awkward goodbyes. We thank Charlotte for her time. Les filles, quelque chose à ajouter en français?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Non, je pense que ça va, merci beaucoup.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Charlotte, thank you so much for your time. This is really helpful. We appreciate it. We'll talk soon.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Thank you. Bye-bye.

• 43:17PJ Vogt?

  Bye now.

• 43:17Speaker 06

  Bye, thank you.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Romeo and Anouk are coming off of that call. They're just like... Positively elated. Like, I think, one, I just think they're excited to be in the same podcast studio that Maya Hawke was once inside of.

• 43:28PJ Vogt?

  Well, yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  But I also think that, like, they just played hardball with the company executive, and they kind of won.

• 43:34PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, an adult fling.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:36PJ Vogt?

  There's no thing that makes a teenager happier than like-

• 43:38Speaker 01

  An adult fling. It's not like we got any answers. Like, it's not like we're actually that much closer to the real answer to our question here, which is like, is terracotta more sustainable than plastic? But Romi and Anuk at this point are just increasingly skeptical that the answers the company is giving us are anything more than just marketing speak.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  Like, for premium brands now, it's kind of a given that if they're gonna price it so much higher, they're gonna have to do something about the climate change, because it's like such a big concern. All brands now. Yeah. Even like food, makeup. Anything has to have a claim that, oh, we're doing this to protect the planet. Or ethical, whether it be ethics or sustainability. They're good at, like, making it show, even though it's not really true.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  If they were skeptical just reading LaFremiere's website, Romi and Anuk were much more skeptical, having just spoken to a person at the company.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  But also, like, we're two 11th graders and a podcast producer who majored in literature.

• 44:38PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  We don't actually know what we're talking about.

• 44:40PJ Vogt?

  Well, what we're told about literature and liberal arts in general is that it's not about what it teaches you, it's about how it teaches you how to think.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Well, it taught me to think that we needed to talk to an expert here, and after a break, that's exactly what we're gonna do.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Mint Mobile. Remember back when you were a kid and you'd spot something cool at the store, only for your mom to remind you to just wait until the holidays?

• 45:15PJ Vogt?

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• 46:00PJ Vogt?

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• 46:12PJ Vogt?

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• 46:57PJ Vogt?

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• 47:15PJ Vogt?

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• 48:27Speaker 01

  Hey PJ. Yes. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. Chapter seven, A Surprising Answer. So, May of that year, nearing the end of 11th grade for Romi and Anuk, I went back to the Lise for a second time. And you know that feeling when the end of the school year is around the corner? You can just kind of feel it. Everything's a little looser, Memorial Day's around the corner. Romi's actually busy the day that I show up. She had an exam that not even Search Engine could get her out of. But I do meet up with Anuk.

• 48:55Speaker 05

  Basically, I have this week of school, next week of school, and then two days. And after that, it's just a full week of studying, then a French final, and then another week of studying, then another French exam, and then I'm done.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  So. That sounds like a lot of studying and a lot of exams. The reason Anuk and I were meeting up in the middle of exam season was, of course, we still had some more yogurt homework to do. We knew La Fermier was saying that Terracotta was a sustainable selling point for their brand, but now we wanted to talk to a scientist who could help us understand whether or not that was actually true. And so after doing some research, we landed on who we thought might be the right expert.

• 49:31Speaker 05

  Could you maybe say your name and what you do?

• 49:33Speaker 11

  Sure, I'm Shelley Miller. I'm a professor of environment sustainability at the University of Michigan.

• 49:38Speaker 05

  Okay, great. And how should we refer to you? Do you prefer maybe Dr. Miller?

• 49:42Speaker 11

  Shelley's totally right.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Shelley, all right, perfect.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Shelley's work is fascinating. She does something called lifecycle analysis, which means that she studies the environmental impact of products from the moment the materials are extracted from the ground to when they are manufactured, to when they're transported, to when eventually they're disposed or recycled. And so Anouk explains the class that she's taking and the question that came out of it to Shelley.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  So Connaissance du monde is this course we have at our school that is part of this international baccalaureate, which is this international exam that we take in France. And since we're all French, yogurt and this French brand of yogurt called La Famillie is an important part of our daily life. Especially, we go to the cafeteria and there's this yogurt. And we're all wondering, like, why is it in clay pots instead of plastic pots, like all the others? And so we started asking some other questions, especially related to sustainability, and just maybe trying to find why that was.

• 50:37Speaker 11

  Yeah, so first off, I'll just say this is such a great question. Things like this are a great way of starting to think about sustainability questions and analysis and, you know, really getting into the details of, all right, when we're trying to figure out environmental impacts of something, how do we even start going about doing that, knowing that there's lots of different environmental impacts and, you know, lots of different trade-offs to consider? So, you know, for someone like me, who really studies these things in a very systematic way, the first thing we do is try to figure out, well, what environmental impacts are we talking about?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  The first thing that she says is that to answer a question like this, you need to know what your priorities are. Because she says that there's really no human activity that is good for the environment. Podcasting. Besides podcasting, she said? We only generate hot air. That's warming the climate, Peter. That's not good. But what this means is that this is a conversation about trade-offs. Yeah. Because different things are bad for the environment in different ways. And so we asked her to kind of compare our two materials here, terracotta and plastic. Yeah. She started with plastic and right off the bat, she's like,

• 51:42Speaker 11

  Plastic has terrible for the environment. Plastic causes environmental impacts throughout its entire life cycle. So plastics are made from natural gas byproducts. Making and manufacturing plastic has environmental impacts on air quality and also climate change emissions.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  And then there's plastics afterlife, like it clogs landfills, turtles choke on it, microplastics, et cetera, et cetera.

• 52:06Speaker 11

  And so we know for a fact that plastics cause environmental impact. And sometimes other materials are even worse.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And this is where Shelley started to really surprise me, I think us actually, like, yes, plastic sucks. Yes. But remember, everything's a trade off here. And so like, how does plastic compare to everything else out there?

• 52:28Speaker 11

  We need to take a broader look of saying, all right, well, if not plastics, then what? And are those materials actually better than plastic?

• 52:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. So for example, how do you go about weighing a plastic against another material? Like, how does that work from a like professional standpoint?

• 52:45Speaker 11

  Yeah. So what we do is we really look at the entire supply chain of a material. And so when it comes to plastic, one of the things that, you know, plastic is really good technically, because it has some pretty fantastic technical characteristics that other materials don't have.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Shelley says, for instance, you can use a pretty small amount of plastic to perform the same function as much heavier materials, like metal or glass or terracotta?

• 53:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's super interesting because that's exactly where we started to see kind of the fault in the image of la fermière, where we started thinking, okay, it's so much heavier that during transportation, it probably emits a lot more CO2. And so we're really wondering where does this idea that plastic is bad or is worse maybe than glass or terracotta? What, where do you think that comes from?

• 53:33Speaker 11

  You know, it's, so I will say that there are social scientists who can answer this question far better than I can as far as the psychology of perception and how people understand and perceive risk and impact. I think one of the things that is largely driving the conversation with plastic is that we can really see the impact of plastic in a way that we can't see the environmental impact of other materials. And so if we are able to take a picture of a beach that's strewn in microplastics, if we can take a picture of an animal that's entangled in some sort of plastic, or we see the carcass of a dead seabird whose stomach is filled with plastic, those are all heart-wrenching

• 54:18Speaker 11

  images. And not only that, we can make the direct connection between what we see in those environmental damaging photographs and our lifestyles. We can see our own little consumption in those environmental impacts.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Just to say, Shelley is, of course, focusing on just the environmental impact here. Obviously, there's a whole other conversation to be had about the possible health impacts of plastics or microplastics that we're just not going to get into today. But when it comes to sustainability, Shelley thinks that plastics' reputation as public enemy number one kind of just boils down to how visible its environmental impacts are. Whereas with other materials like glass, metal, terracotta, a lot of these things require a ton of energy to produce and to transport, and much more than plastic, but their impacts are just more abstract and less visual.

• 55:08Speaker 11

  It's really hard to capture climate change in a picture. We have many, many photos of a polar bear on an ice shelf, but that doesn't give us the same connection as the stuff we see in our recycling bin every day.

• 55:21Speaker 05

  Wow, I actually never thought of that, honestly. It kind of goes back to this idea that if you see a yogurt in a clay pot and a yogurt in a plastic pot, you're going to think, oh yeah, plastic is bad, while clay has this idea of like, oh, it's natural, yeah, it's probably better for the environment.

• 55:36Speaker 11

  Yeah, so consumers often think that plastic has the greatest environmental impact of any other material. It turns out that particularly if we're looking at a climate perspective on the amount of carbon emissions that materials have, plastic generally has a lower carbon footprint than other packaging materials.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  And so you, as a very well-informed conscientious consumer, you're at the grocery store, you have a choice between a yogurt that comes in a plastic container and a yogurt that comes in a terracotta container. Which would you feel better about picking up on a random Tuesday?

• 56:18Speaker 11

  So I would say that if we're just talking about yogurt, it would be buying yogurt in bulk that you're going to eat in a plastic container. And so that both reduces the total amount of plastic per serving of yogurt and has a lower packaging impact.

• 56:41PJ Vogt?

  Interesting.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:43PJ Vogt?

  But it's tricky if you're trying to say that your product is valuable and like considered and a delicacy, bulk plastic container is kind of working against your message.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  It doesn't scream up market.

• 56:55PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  But it just turns out that if you get into the nitty gritty of the environmental trade-offs here, like the thing that doesn't look environmentally friendly, it doesn't have the aesthetic of environmentalism oftentimes can be more environmentally friendly. But.

• 57:11PJ Vogt?

  But.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  This is an important but. Shelley goes on to say that this whole conversation we're having about packaging kind of misses the point entirely.

• 57:19Speaker 11

  When we think about things that have the greatest environmental impact, we often focus on packaging. And so that's the stuff we throw out at the end of the day. And we tend to say, oh, look at all this packaging. And that's the biggest environmental impact that I have because I have to throw out all this packaging.

• 57:37Speaker 11

  What people don't realize is it's the thing inside the package that has a much greater environmental impact than the package itself. Certainly in the case of food, the food that we're eating has a much greater environmental impact than the packaging it comes in.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  She says plastics typically less than 10% of the total environmental impact of the food product that you're consuming. The food itself far more important to whether or not you're actually making a sustainable decision.

• 58:02PJ Vogt?

  What's the carbon footprint of yogurt?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  This is a good question, and this invites a whole lot of other questions on the other side of it. But what she's saying is that packaging is kind of a red herring. And also, La Fermier's marketing is kind of encouraging you to follow that red herring. Like, they're not saying, "Look how sustainable our yogurt is." They're saying, "Look how sustainable our packaging is." Which is another reason for me to at least believe that this is primarily a marketing decision.

• 58:25PJ Vogt?

  You're with the teenagers in this one.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  I'm with the teenagers. And also, the funny thing is that La Fermier's yogurt, which is the thing actually driving whether or not it's a more sustainable option than its competitors, seems to be pretty environmentally friendly. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that the company operates on a kind of "make it where you sell it" principle, meaning the company's two biggest markets, France and the US, the dairy is produced and processed locally in both of those countries.

• 58:50PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  You're not adding a bunch of transport miles inside that part of the supply chain.

• 58:55PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Which is going to lower the carbon footprint that's mostly invisible to the consumer. But also, at least in France, where this data is public, La Fermier is sourcing its dairy from small, local farms with an average of only 35 cows. And farms like these, if they're using certain agricultural practices, they could be better for the environment than large-scale dairy farms.

• 59:16PJ Vogt?

  Although, what I've always been told is that if you wanted to put a huge dent in climate change, just like our reliance on cows as a food input, because of the methane they produce is hugely bad for the environment. And so, the fact that they're using cows at all is kind of a problem. Although, it's a yogurt company, they're going to use cows.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could eat non-dairy yogurt. And this is kind of the quality of this sustainability conversation. It's a hall of mirrors. Like, being human is bad for the environment, and all sorts of decisions we make inside of being human are also bad for the environment. So like, yes, you could say, "I no longer eat full-dairy yogurt. I eat oat milk yogurt," or whatever else is out there. And that would be better for the environment, and you wouldn't have to have this conversation at all.

• 59:58PJ Vogt?

  But this is the conversation we've chosen.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  But this is the thing I hadn't understood when the teacher, David, first posed the question. Like, he wasn't just asking about the packaging. He was asking about all the difficult ethical choices involved.

• 1:00:09PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Which is actually something that teenagers like thinking through. And I think as Remy and Anu grasped that, this question had become their question, too.

• 1:00:17Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for your time again. Honestly, you have no idea how far this has taken us from just a stupid little yogurt question. So, thank you so much for your help.

• 1:00:26Speaker 11

  No, it is an absolutely fantastic question, and you guys are asking exactly the right questions.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Okay, skeleton crew. Hello, sorry.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  Alright, so I'm gonna ask for about 10 minutes of your attention.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Again, here's the teacher David Freeman.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  We have something of an answer to the great yogurt question of 2024. Romy and Anuk are gonna tell you a little bit about what we've been up to. You guys wanna come up front? And, yes?

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Oh, applause!

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  We were in the same classroom, Trithi and I visited months prior.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Romy and Anuk seemed, and I'd never actually seen the side of them, a little nervous to speak in front of the class.

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  So, and now we are back to the last CDM class of the year, ever. Not, well, not ever, just next year. And, so yeah, I think this has confirmed a lot of our initial theories, so on how...

• 1:01:22Speaker 06

  It's a brand thing.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  It's a brand thing, it's a brand DNA thing, and also a marketing decision over sustainably, maybe. And, yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  And Romy and Anuk just walked the class through the steps of their reporting, everything we had done along the way.

• 1:01:35Speaker 06

  So, Mr. Freeman brought us this question back in like, November, December.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  They talked about all the people we interviewed.

• 1:01:43Speaker 05

  Head of sales and marketing at FNR US.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  They broke down all the complicated conclusions we had drawn.

• 1:01:48Speaker 05

  But she also mentioned a very important point, which was that what's inside the packaging matters much more than what, than the packaging itself.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  And, of course, they shared their marketing advice for LaFerme Air.

• 1:01:57Speaker 05

  I feel like they're kind of missing the point in a way, because they're really advertising the sustainability aspect of their pots, when really they should be doing the same thing but for the yogurt.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  Yogurt is.

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  Because we just not proved, but we're able to question the fact that clay pots are not maybe sustainable. But we all know that locally-produced food, which is what they do,

• 1:02:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Speaker 05

  is good for the environment, so if they wanted to kind of pitch this climate aspect of it, they should probably focus on the yogurt.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Any, uh, anybody else have any follow-up questions, just while, while we're here? This is your last, last chance to interrogate a dairy product. Good?

• 1:02:32Speaker 06

  Cool.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Alright, excellent.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  And with that, homework assignment complete, the stupid little yogurt question was officially done.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Chapter Eight: Graduation. So I should say, as sometimes happens on the show, months passed while we slowly worked on the story. And months in the life of an adult, not such a big deal, but for these teenagers, it meant that we would meet up occasionally as their life was speeding up pretty quickly, in this case, towards graduation and the life that followed after.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Romi did end up finishing her big research project on morphine addiction. She's about to head to the L'Uns School of Economics in the fall. Anouk's finishing up high school in Paris and is gonna head to a French university in the fall.

• 1:03:24Speaker 06

  The engraving on the side.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  It's very difficult to open.

• 1:03:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  But the last time we got together in person in New York, I brought in a couple pots of La Frumiere for them to taste.

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  I mean, orange blossom. Does that mean orange? I think there's a kind of honey that's orange blossom on it. Oh, shit. Yeah, there's no orange on it. My bad.

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  Still, if this was American, it would be like yellow.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  That was super well.

• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we just opened the yogurt. There is indeed yogurt in there.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  This is the final step in the investigation. Do you guys have anything else to say about yogurt?

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  Nope, just enjoy.

• 1:03:53Speaker 06

  Pretty good.

• 1:03:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Speaker 06

  It's actually, it's good. It's good.

• 1:03:57Speaker 05

  I agree, unfortunately.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  What do you mean unfortunately?

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  I don't know. I want it to be more like, not like, completely convinced. You know, I don't want to be convinced by it, but like...

• 1:04:05Speaker 06

  It's not amazing.

• 1:04:07Speaker 05

  I mean, the texture is amazing.

• 1:04:08Speaker 06

  It's, yeah, I don't think, the flavor's really good. I mean, I'm not a big yogurt person, so maybe that's just me. But for a yogurt enthusiast, it would probably be good.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Garrett Graham, he's Search Engine's senior producer. Big thanks this week to David Freeman and the L'Isée Francaise de New York for inviting us into their classroom.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruti Pennamanani. This episode was fact-checked by Claire Hyman. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Additional production support on this episode from Hazel May Bryan and Sean Merchant. Our intern is Oscar Knoxen. If you'd like to support our show and get ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and some additional audio, please consider signing up for incognito mode. You can learn more about incognito mode at searchengine.show.

• 1:05:12PJ Vogt?

  Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis, and thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hillary Schaaf. Our agent is Orin Rosenbaum at UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

• 1:05:55PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vistaprint. As a small business owner running a podcast, I'm always looking for authentic ways to connect with listeners, which makes Vistaprint such a valued expert partner for us. I was on their site the other day, brainstorming new things we could make for our show, and the creative momentum took over. I ended up designing search engine stickers, and I tried to make a sign for our office. When your physical branding looks this sharp and professional, it immediately communicates credibility and shows your audience that you mean business. Vistaprint truly helps every dollar go further, delivering premium quality and design support that make your company look established without breaking the bank. Whether you need your design tweaked or a total rebrand, Vistaprint has you covered with the expert service small businesses deserve.

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