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Welcome to the chain, we are your hosts Sarah Schauer and Kendahl Landreth! From mommy vloggers run amok to boomers breaking down on camera to the people who believe they’re allergic to wifi, you’re not going to want to miss this. Join us on the thread as we take a deep dive into the internet, discuss new titillating topics every week, and maybe even CC in some special guests for their opinions on the action!
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Many are pointing out additional facts and issues that paint the situation as being more serious, but while we can parasocially analyze things from a distance and show concern, I think one of the sentiments in this episode is still very valid in that until something "happens" or until Madam Farm advocates for herself and acts in some way, it just is what it is. We can't claim her victim status for her, regardless of the red flags. Yes, manipulation happens, but part of the whole adulthood thing is accountability and intent. You can't save someone who truly does not want to be saved, regardless of why they don't want to be. Some people are masochists in a sense, even if it'll be their own demise, and we have to accept that. They have to internally want a change, and when they do, they'll eventually take an opening to let people help, or help themselves. We also need to be very careful regarding what we assert about someone else's mental state, choices and desires, because there's a fine line between deceptive gaslighting and trying to make someone see the "truth" that you think is correct.
On priory of an orange tree: kendall reading 600 pages in 1-2 weeks is super impressive!!! I have not been able to get far through that book at all, you should be proud of yourself!
There are no "college admissions essays" out side of america. Your record is what matters to the universities. A "college admission essay" is a directive from a university for you to beg/plead for admission. It has no other reason to exist. A society that is healthy has enough universities to teach everyone.
reading through the comments, honestly a little worried to watch through but i’m glad i’m not alone in thinking how badly the internet has dealt with this topic, especially when you hear from ex mormons…
I feel like whoever put together the research for them this episode didn’t put as many key details in there that should’ve been included… normally Sarah and Kendall are so well informed on a topic before speaking on it but this one was kind of a miss. Kendall went really heavy on the hater speak about how “she would never be a famous ballerina. That just would never happen” and seemed to just really miss the ENTIRE point of why there’s a massive concern surrounding the safety of ballerina farms and not concerns for her career… I’m glad Sarah called attention to their differing ideals on what to make of the topic but it seems like it went right over Kendall’s head and she just stomped on with her hyper fixation on ballerina farms tentative career path had she not met her husband.
Love the energy this episode. I love it when y'all are giddy to talk to each other, but friendly reminder that not ever sapphic relationship is a lesbian one and not every sapphic woman/person is a lesbian by default. I know you mean no harm I just wanted to pitch that in if it means anything. Thanks for this week's episode! Oh and I enjoy hearing you guys share your book recommendations, because I really want to get back into reading too!
Think it goes without saying you guys missed some major points with this topic. I wish y'all did better research before you spoke on topics, you have a platform and are willfully spreading half truths and falsities when I was excited to hear Sarah's take on this through a religious lens. Kendall especially, all peace and love friend, but you just really talk off the cuff sometimes and say stuff that is simply not true 😂 from a fellow neurodivergent queer, just asking yall to read up on topics so you're well informed, dont spread misinformation, and make grasping opinions on situations you dont even know the full details on, especially when they may involve the potential psychological abuse/manipulation of someone at the hand of their partner. Makes it feel like you just pick topics cause they're trendy, and not cause youre actually interested in having discussion about them. Sorry for the hot take 😅
I think another reason people focused so heavily on her future as a ballerina is because she originally wanted to convert the barn on their property into a dance studio so she would have a place to continue doing what she loved. Her husband vetoed the idea to turn it into a school house for their children instead. It makes it feel more like she was forced to give up her passion in life.
17:02 ngl i was the same where i didn’t really care for Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz but i recently revisited it and it’s actually a great album would highly recommend
Why do they no longer make Olympic villages into nice appartments that can be turned into high quality but low cost of entry or sliding scale housing? I dated a guy for a bit who lived in the athlete village from the 1976 Olympics in montreal he absolutely loved it. Hes an acrobat so being near a lot of public sporting facilities in a building with a good gym is great for him, its clean, has a huge patio and the stadium is now a big event center and nice park. Lot of his neighbors are elderly, small families or disabled because the building has a lot of amenities you dont see within their price range making it a very pleasant place to live. But now its like terrible buildings that in some places are so had its not even good emergency housing. I cant see a building with no AC and internationally known as bad housing will be easy to convince people to move into without spending even more money retrofitting
I feel like Kendall was so hyper focused on the talent aspect and how unlikely it was she would be a "famous" ballerina. Ballet is soooo different that other entertainment industries. She very well could have landed a spot in a prestigious company and risen through the ranks. And even if she didn't become famous, she still could have become a principal dancer. The point is that is weird and creepy how willingly she gave up the chance to do so because of the religion in which she was raised. I got the impression she was totally taken off guard by her husband and he swept her off her feet before she really had a chance to figure out what she wanted. Was it ultimately her choice to lead this life? Absolutely. But the context of her being raised in mormonism and probably being pressured to marry and have kids asap is also a factor. Also, comparing how hard being a ballerina and being a mother might be felt SO disrespectful to both roles in life.
I'm 20 mins in and Kendahl, I had a very similar bday experience in 2022, It was my birthday and I got Covid for the first time and my partner had SEVERE and untreated OCD so they basically walled me into the bedroom and I was basically only allowed out to pee (I know, this is an ex partner now because they refused to get help) anyway so it ruined my bday and I got my period too so I was in pain even worse, and then like literally on my bday my partner finally goes to get the mail (after much convincing) and we get an EVICTION letter saying that if we didnt pay by today, we would be required to be out within 24 hrs so I had a full on breakdown and my partner just watched me sob thru the open bedroom door while they stood like way back in the kitchen. Turns out the notice was just a scare tactic and I was fine bc my bday is in January and our auto-pay stopped at the beginning of the year and I didn't know bc I couldn't check the mail.
One really cool re-watch pod is the Supernatural one. It's hosted by two side actors from the show, and the majority of their guests have been crew that were there in the beginning when the show started in 2005. They ask them all about how their jobs changed over the decade, how they did specific effects or stunts. They also go into the lore behind the episode's monster. It's been a fun listen!
I don’t think Kendall read the article. The quotes from the article point to a sketchy situation. I don’t want to infantilize her but you could say that about any adult in an abusive situation. Making fun of religious indoctrination without any empathy (especially in front of someone who was brought up very Christian) is a little tone deaf. It’s not that they aren’t infallible and can’t be criticized but to ignore the red flags because she is religious is how these things get perpetuated.
I know Kendall got stuck on her talent aspect but it comes across so insensitive and honestly rude. Honestly so annoying and its so clear that Sarah was trying hard to deal with it
Love y’all but you don’t need to talk about a topic if you don’t know about it or care enough about it to research it thoroughly. This feels like it’s a consistent problem that is never addressed.
The fact that they didn’t even read the article beforehand is wild. I love their stuff and don’t mind the light heartedness the majority of the time but this seemed like an inappropriate one to not at least know the bare minimum about before hand.
Yes, people shouldn’t infantilize her. She’s a grown woman, that made multiple choices to be there, and she has resources to not be indoctrinated. She agrees with these harmful values too, not just her husband. I understand that people want to save people from lives like this, but they WANTED to be this way and agreed with the harmful values too. She’s not a kid. Being mean is not going to help. Being nice is not going to help. People that have these religious lives want them or will choose to leave.
And for the record folks, SHE is not the one with the family tie to JetBlue HE IS. HE is the one with that level of wealth which he used to trick her into their first date, it’s also widely believed he is the sole owner of the ballerina farms brand meaning the TikTok and any money from the farm would all also be going to him. Don’t even get me started on the obviously terrifying potential forced birth situation that gets pieced together throughout the article… but yeah kendahl go off about how she just wasn’t that good of a dancer I guess lol. I really thought with Sarah’s religious background she would have a much more nuanced take as well. Just kinda disappointing
I’ve been so patiently waiting for this episode and I’m so disappointed lol I’ve loved this podcast literally since episode one so I’m not trying to be a hater but WOW I wish they had read the article instead of an article about the article …… this was genuinely a hard one to sit through
Okay I love you two and I think you’re missing some key perspective here. I’m gonna ramble because this is my special interest and research area. From a psychological perspective, we need to keep in mind the concept of undue influence. An adult can appear consenting, but that might be because they are manipulated to act against their own best interest and self protection, by an abusive partner or system. To me, the week long exhaustion her husband mentioned indicates she is bearing a load beyond her capacity, probably both emotionally and physically. From a sociological POV, ballerina farms is a representative of a very specific social movement in the US that has done tangible harm. Not only are they Mormon, which is a cult in every sense of the word, they are White conservatives, the type who lobby and vote for damaging policies that further harm women, children, racial, ethnic, gender, ability and sexual minorities. Her content is essentially propaganda for their ideology, that functions to consolidate more power into the hands of the already powerful. There is a concerted effort to push “trad wife” values, or conservative evangelical fundamentalist Christian “biblical womanhood” onto the masses. Check out project 2025 (I’m sure you have). The groups they represent actively do their best to recruit others into their ideology, spending upwards of millions of dollars, more in some cases. The Mormon church is EXTREMELY wealthy and I believe culturally we need to acknowledge their immense capacity for harm. The church pays big money to creators who discuss Mormonism (check out Alyssa Grenfell’s video “why are there so many Mormon influencers” to learn more). Their underlying belief system requires appearance and attitude/emotional control at all times, so these creators have a set of guidelines they have to abide by at all times which requires them to appear happy and content. Theres a lot of factors at play in this story that we can learn from, and I think empathy is an essential part of the learning process.
WOW. This comment was so well written. You said almost everything I came here to say, and with such love and clarity, too. Thanks for your data driven, empathetic, and nuanced approach! I grew up in a cult (it was a small local cult, not mormonism but there were a lot of very similar systemic, systematic, and individual control aspects that my former cult and mormonism have in common) and I had an inner conflict around the concept of "no body crime" with regards to this topic. I definitely felt like I was staring -metaphorically- directly AT a body, and I stepped back for a second to remember that what is obvious context to me, might not be for others, especially with my combination of casually studying cults for a long time, as well as living in one myself until I was in my teens. Here are some thoughts as someone who lived through it, and saw many forms of abuse occur in my cult, particularly within marriages. The combination of several highly concerning red flags came up for me when evaluating this article, and Ballerina Farm's content in general with a more critical lens. I haven't followed their content before this, so it took me a bit to really dig into their other stuff, and I honestly have still only really scratched the surface, so grain of salt to some extent since I don't have tonnnns of context for their marriage as presented online, just what I've dug up so far. When you understand the systemic power that mormonism has, and how much individual and systemic power this man himself has at his disposal via both his religious status, cult backing, and also billionaire status, and then you add in some personal perspective and some data that attempts to represent or track what types of controlling behaviors are often cited in religious abuse (controlling of partner's birth plans, forced birth agendas, patriarchal gender roles, transphobic and bio-essentialist rhetoric, adultification of children, particularly females, and infantilization of female spouses or partners, citing scripture and religious structures to reinforce your reasons for being abusive or controlling, etc etc) the veneer of "she doesn't seem to mind though, she's also probably weird" starts to disintegrate and you see the much more insidious roots. It seems, just from my own experience anecdotally so another grain of salt here, that mormonism isn't quite being seen socially as a cult by the majority just yet, and in progressive spaces and educated spaces like I consider this generally to be, the memo still hasn't quite arrived. I think people think of it like Christianity which is not inherently a cult (though we could argue all day about the massive systemic harm that certain sects of christianity have had and continue to have on the world, and especially in the USA the revocation of so many human rights but that's a topic for another day) as if mormonism is just another type or sect of christian. Correct me if I'm wrong in how I'm describing this, but it's wholly it's own system and group. The cultures of mormonism will, of course, intersect greatly with other fundamentalist religious structures, but it's not a sub group of christianity, and there ARE sects of christianity that experience and practice autonomy, encourage agency and consent, are more inclusive of marginalized groups and attempt to create more accessible spaces, etc. This is not to say that an individual person who is in mormonism is all of the bad things that are mormonism, to be clear. I was in a cult, so I wouldn't want to hypocritically victim blame. Both those of us born into a cult, and who did not chose to join into it, and for those who might have been tricked or manipulated into it against their judgement, citing your comment above, regarding undue influence, or coercive influence. At the same time, because of the environment I was in, I DID espouse some heinous, dehumanizing beliefs and behaviors, and I learned those mostly from the abusive systems and representatives within our community OF those systems of abuse, and I repeated those values onto others until my late teens and early 20's. This is a common story for those of us in/from many different cults. Her husband and herself participate in massive propaganda, also as you cited above, and I worry simultaneously for her safety since I see some of the top concerning red flags for martial and spousal abuse, with religious tones to the abuse as well. From what I've heard from medical professionals who work in L&D and the few OB/GYN or licensed midwives I've found content from or know personally, the spousal control during birth of pain medication or birth plan structures can be one of the most dangerous and concerning red flags for domestic violence occurring, or being escalated to eventually. Not to mention the many ways a pregnancy or birth can correlate with an increase in abusive behaviors in a partnership based on several sets of data I've found. The statistics of miscarriage during abuse are staggering, and deeply upsetting. Those are some raw thoughts, you sparked quite a brain train with your comment, thanks so much for that. I've been having really similar and awesome convos with my roommate too, who watched this episode today and it was their FIRST time watching BCC Club. What an episode to start on, we had SO much to discuss and are still going on and off today lol Sarah and Kendahl, if you're reading this, I adore you both and really respect your work. Hopefully this input adds some perspective that you find valuable or at least just interesting! Anyone feel free to come in with opinions or corrections if I'm off on anything here, or you have context or perspective that I might be missing! Sorry Lennon for the mile long response. You made me think lol <3
Yes thank you for this!! I really appreciate this comment as it clearly states my thoughts on this matter as well. I think you hit the nail on the head. The butterfly effect of ballerina farm should not be understated
Kendahl I love you sm but sometimes you completely miss the point 😅. People aren’t worried about her safety bc she was “going to be on Broadway”. They’re worried bc her husband LITERALLY stalked her, then isolated her, and the whole thing feels fishy and weird. Her dancing career is a small piece of the puzzle. I feel like so much nuance was missed in this episode.
THANK YOU. I love Kendahl but this was a frustrating listen. It’s odd because I feel like normally they are really good at catching the underlying/unsaid weirdness with situations similar to ballerina farm but for this one they’re just like “everything is fine I don’t know why everyone is tripping!!”
Ex-ballerina here, I took classes for 14 years. I will say she is definitely very good. Juilliard only accepts 12 female dancers each year, so she definitely could’ve gone to dance with some major companies in America, such as the New York ballet or the San Francisco ballet, which are some of the best in North America. I definitely could’ve seen her becoming a name in the ballet community. But there are definitely other strong competitors to her. There are ballerinas out there who are like so incredible it’s insane. If I ever saw my favorite ballerina for example, Natalia Osipova, on the street I would be star struck. But I don’t think she would be quite at that level. Just a little perspective from someone in the ballet community. Also a note about ballet auditions and casting, which usually goes a little different than acting. Usually professional dancers will join audition for a company and perform through them and when the company puts on a show the dancers audition again for roles and the choreographers assign the roles. It can be different with different dance companies but ballet is usually rigid like that.
famous ballerinas: misty copeland baryshnikov maria tallchief anna pavlova balanchine famous dancers: fred astaire ginger rogers josephine baker alvin ailey gene kelly jojo siwa
glad you're reading priory of the orange tree! one of my fav fantasy novels <3 it is very long but i appreciate the time taken to do world building, like you said it makes you feel like you're part of the world.
I will say 26:33 Hannah's father is not the owner of jet blue. Her husbands father is the one who owns it or whatever, and he continuously asked out and put himself on her flight NEXT TO HER to force her to spend time with him.
NOT TO MENTION he didn’t tell her at the time his father owned the airline and so she thought they ended up on a five hour flight next to each other by FATE after months of denying this guy a date why? JULLIARD
And I’m not saying the girl needs to be saved I agree like there’s nothing anyone can do, but I can’t imagine being told my entire life my only purpose as a human is to be subservient to a man and then thinking god himself planted him next to me on a flight like idk I think there’s an element of loss of free will in that it makes me sad for her. I wonder if he told her about the plane lie before or after they got married like two months later …
I love this podcast sm. I agree that people are infantilizing her but also I feel yall missed some key things about what we know about Hannah. A) julliard only selects 12 dancers a year B) her husband basically played his hand at following her on a flight and sitting next to her after continuously asking her out C) there were times they lived in Brazil and I believe she said in old blog posts there were times she wanted to run away and was going through turmoil. D) Mormon indoctrination plays a huge role, I mean to a point where I will say “if she’s doomed now, she was doomed from the start” because there was little chance she’d leave Mormonism instead of becoming a trad Mormon wife that bows to her husbands influence and judgement. E) she wanted to continue ballet- she built a barn or compound meant to be a studio and it was very quickly turned into a kids playroom I think there’s more that alludes “red flags” from her backstory but it’s been awhile since I watched an in depth vid. People are a lot more involved in random peoples lives than they should be. But for the sake of this convo I figured I’d add more context.
100% this! These more insidious details are necessary to paint the picture of the story. I think if they had this context, the conversation here would be much different.
@@venusworship yeah I normally like their podcasts but unfortunately this one didn’t seem as well researched. It was hard to listen to without getting frustrated bc they were wrong about stuff involving Ballerina Farm
@@michellexbeauty9832yeah I mean they literally started the episode by revealing that Sarah had no idea what they were about to talk about, which feels especially irresponsible with a situation/topic like this 😬
Your takes are always so refreshing and levelheaded. Thank you for always grounding me and reminding me to come back down to earth from the social media bubble
Kendahl wont see this prob but A Restless** Truth by Freya Marske has really good british lesbians in it, though it is sandwiched in a trilogy between two books that focus on two gay men pairings. A great trilogy all around with a unique magic system and worldbuilding, and a satisfying ending. The first few chapters of each book can be a little slow but the rest is usually great.
