El Sueño de SPAM

The Experiment

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4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who are the people who make modern-day SPAM possible? You can find clues on the streets of downtown Austin, Minnesota. On weekend nights, across the street from the SPAM Museum, a Latin dance club fills with Spanish-speaking patrons. A taco truck is parked outside the Austin Labor Center. There’s a Sudanese market and an Asian food store. A new generation of workers has flooded the town for the chance to package some of America’s most iconic meat, and for many the town is a model of the American dream. But soon a mysterious disease spreads through the slaughterhouse where SPAM is made, complicating this idyllic picture of new immigrants in the American heartland.

A transcript of this episode is available.

This episode is the last in a new three-part miniseries from The Experiment—“SPAM: How the American Dream Got Canned.”

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by Gabrielle Berbey and Julia Longoria. Editing by Kelly Prime, Emily Botein, and Katherine Wells, with help from Scott Stossel. Special thanks to Alina Kulman.

Fact-check by Will Gordon. Sound design by David Herman with additional engineering by Joe Plourde. Transcription by Caleb Codding.

This episode was produced by Gabrielle Berbey and Julia Longoria. Editing by Kelly Prime, Emily Botein, and Katherine Wells, with help from Scott Stossel. Special thanks to Alina Kulman.

Fact-check by Will Gordon. Sound design by David Herman with additional engineering by Joe Plourde. Transcription by Caleb Codding.

Music by Parish Council (“If of As,” “Socks Before Trousers,” “St. Peter Port/Wiltshire/Cooking Leeks,” and “Mopping”), Keyboard (“Freedom of Movement”), Column (“Quiet Song” and “Sensuela”), Water Feature (“Richard III (Duke of Gloucester)”), Laurie Bird (“Detail Wash”), and H Hunt (“Journeys”), provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Alexander Overington. Additional audio from United Newsreel, PBS, and NBC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the experiment. I'm Julia Lungoria.
0:07.0	This is the third course of a three-course spam feast.
0:12.2	So if you haven't already go back and listen to the first two.
0:17.8	At the start of our journey producer Gabriela Burbe set out to solve a family mystery and
0:23.9	popped open a Pandora's can.
0:25.9	Spam we learned was an invention of the Great Depression of reliable source of protein and hard times.
0:35.8	Then during World War Two, spam traveled overseas in the food rations of American GIs where it was many soldiers dying meal.
0:44.8	But in the Pacific Islands where those GIs landed, spam became a symbol of freedom, an emblem of the American dream.
0:58.9	Then 40 years later, spam sparked a bitter strike that went on to tear its hometown apart.
1:06.8	Some people lost their jobs, others lost their families, everyone lost a way of life.
1:22.5	For the strikers, spam became a painful reminder of a time when their idea of the American dream was lost.
1:31.0	So we wondered, after the strike ended, what became of the workers at the plant where spam is made?
1:42.9	To answer this, we turned to a time around 2006 when the spam saga takes another turn.
1:53.6	Where does the story of this whole thing start for you?
1:56.0	Honestly, the first thing that it's literature that comes to my head, what is at us? What's a foot?
2:05.1	What is that from?
2:10.3	Well, the foot comes from Sherlock Holmes, but it was a mystery.
2:14.7	So that's what came to mind.
2:19.9	We begin with a detective of sorts.
2:23.2	My name is Carolie Dolegle. I work at Austin Medical Center. It's now Mayo Clinic Health System.
2:29.4	I'm a staff interpreter, Liaison.
2:32.0	Carol translates for doctors and patients out of medical clinic in Austin, Minnesota, spam town, USA.
	...

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