The Waves: Prepping for Doomsday, Feminist Edition.
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate staff writers Rebecca Onion and Lili Loofbourow are talking about the prepper community. Is it all toxic masculinity? Is there already a space for women in the community, or do they have to carve their own space? They dig into Lili’s piece on the schism in the prepper reddit community and explore the gender dynamics of a culture that ranges from coupon clipping to hoarding guns. They also discuss Rebecca Onion’s 2016 piece on what prepper fiction reveals about American virtues.
In Slate Plus: Martha Stewart was in the news for an Instagram post about her dead cat. Is her empire feminist?
Recommendations:
Rebecca: The PBS series Sanditon.
Lili: Wearing men’s sweatpants.
Thanks Avast.com!
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. |
| 0:12.9 | Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and keeping enough food and |
| 0:18.2 | bandages around for everyone. Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we |
| 0:23.0 | can't get off our minds. Today you've got me, Rebecca Onion, a staff writer for Sleet. |
| 0:27.5 | And me, Lily Lucpara, also a staff writer for Sleet. Today we're going to talk about prepping, |
| 0:32.7 | which I loosely define in my mind as the practice of thinking ahead to possible catastrophe, |
| 0:38.6 | whether that be in the nation, in the world, or in your household, and trying to have the right |
| 0:44.4 | stuff around to face it, whether that be physical objects or education, mindset, what have you. |
| 0:51.6 | Now the occasion for this episode is a wonderful piece that Lily wrote for Sleet on a schism on a |
| 0:58.8 | proper Reddit board. Now the stereotypical preppers probably still may be an arm to the teeth white man, |
| 1:05.0 | whose private property you would not want to stumble upon by mistake. But in 2022, the idea of |
| 1:12.0 | being prepared is not confined to that demographic. I got into thinking about prepping through my |
| 1:17.6 | science fiction fandom. I read a lot of science fiction as relaxation, and for a while I really liked |
| 1:23.2 | the post-apocalyptic subgenre. My child was born on Trump's inauguration day in early 2017, |
| 1:29.9 | and right around that time I lost any taste I had for post-apocalyptic fiction, which suddenly |
| 1:34.7 | felt way too real. I still keep a lot of food and emergency supplies around, and it's very present |
| 1:41.2 | in my mind. Now for all these reasons, I was so interested to read Lily's new piece on Sleet, |
| 1:46.4 | which is about a major split between people who use Reddit's R-Preppers board. But Lily, |
| 1:52.6 | first before we talk about that, I want to know why you're interested in this topic to begin with. |
| 1:56.4 | Now why were you looking at R-Preppers, and how does the topic relate to your life? |
| 2:01.3 | I reported a story back in 2019 about, I guess I'm going to call them provisional evacuees during |
| 2:08.2 | fire season here in California. So this is people who were forced to evacuate, and we're living |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.