Possum for Supper and Other Memories from the Great Depression
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, during the Great Depression, Joy Neal Kidney’s family didn’t eat strange food for fun. They ate what they could find. Sometimes that meant possum. Other times, it meant even less. But in the middle of the hardship, they found ways to stay connected, to laugh when they could, and to keep going. Joy reflects on the meals that got them through and what they taught her.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:04.5 | Adventure should never come with a pause button. |
| 0:07.1 | Remember Movie Pass? |
| 0:08.4 | All the movies you wanted for just nine bucks? |
| 0:11.1 | I'm Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet. |
| 0:13.9 | And this season, I'm digging into the tech stories we weren't told. |
| 0:17.4 | Starting with Stacey Spikes, the black founder of movie pass who got pushed out of the company |
| 0:21.6 | he built. |
| 0:22.8 | Everybody's trying to knock you down and it's not going to work and no one's going to like it. |
| 0:27.3 | And then boom, it's everywhere. |
| 0:29.3 | And that was that moment. |
| 0:30.7 | Listen to there are no girls on the internet on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:44.6 | Music or wherever you get your podcast. This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, the show where America is the star |
| 0:50.3 | and the American people. |
| 0:52.5 | Up next, a story from our regular contributor out of Iowa, a |
| 0:56.0 | listener, Joy Neal Kidney, and she listens on W.HO. in Des Moines, a great IHeart station. Joy is the author |
| 1:03.9 | of Lyora's Dexter letters, the scarcity years of the Great Depression. And today she shares the story |
| 1:10.7 | of a unique meal, her family ate during those tough financial |
| 1:15.0 | times. |
| 1:16.3 | Take it away, Joy. |
| 1:17.8 | When I heard about someone having to eat raccoon or possum, I thought of poor folks in the deep south. |
| 1:29.3 | Dad wasn't a hunter. |
... |
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