The Stupid Little Yogurt Question

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And right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash engine. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash geo slash engine. Run your business your way with Square. Get started today. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Gusto. I remember back when we were juggling hiring, tracking benefits, and running payroll all by ourselves, and frankly, how much we used to dread payday every single month because of how manual and tedious it was. If I could give my past self a piece of advice, it would be to stop wasting precious hours on administrative work that software can automate in minutes. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. They make everything effortless, from automatic payroll, tax filings, and direct deposits to 401ks and workers' comp. You get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price with zero hidden fees, plus automated offer letters and direct access to certified HR experts whenever tough questions pop up. Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash search and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash search. One more time. Gusto.com slash search. 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. 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. So you lost the x-ray teenage clarity me and my friends all had. That's how I saw it then. Today, in theory, I think both sides have a piece in common. The 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? 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. Okay. Shall we? Where do you want to start the story? So, I'm going to 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. And what was David saying? I'm just going to get you to read that tweet. I'm going to put it in your Slack. All right. Sorry, I have a notification from Domino's Pizza saying I have 80 Domino's points. Currency, I never wanted to. You live in New York and regularly order Domino's. It's different. Okay. This is from DFree86 at PJVote. Hi, PJ. Hey, I'm a high school English teacher. And I teach a class called Knowledge. I'm a professor at the University of New York. And I'm going to be teaching a class called Knowledge. 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? Is that how you say it? La Fermier. 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? 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. The story we found, I'm going to tell it to you in chapters. So, chapter one, the school. Can you tell me where we're going? Yeah, we are on 75th and York. And we are headed to Lycée 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. Sacre bleu. I'm going to do that seven more times. I'm so sorry. What does that mean, sacre bleu? I have no idea. It could be super rude. It means sacred something. Sacred blue. Sacred blue. Good morning. Nice to see you. Hey, David. Hey, Garrett. How are you doing? Doing great. How are you doing? Yeah, nice to see you. Thank you for coming. Thanks for meeting us down. Absolutely. I think we've got a sign in. David greets us. And I want you to imagine, like, the prototypical high school English teacher. Which prototype? Youngish, tasteful glasses, short haircut. Yeah. That way. Okay. Up the staircase. Sort of adjacent building. So, the Lycée Francais de New York, it's a bilingual school. Mostly kids from France and the U.S., although there are students from all over. And it's an old school. Started in 1935. This was before my time. But it was in these big, sort of old New York City walk-ups. 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. Um, guys, grab a seat. What time does the class usually start? And I did recommend that they be on time. 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. All right, guys. Are you ready? Yes? Good? Hi, by the way. Happy Thursday. Happy Thursday. All right. So. I want to talk a little bit about the course in general. And then the nature of the sort of question asking in it. And then we're going to make our way to a specific example question, which I hope will stimulate you as much as it stimulates me. 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. The question that has been obsessing me. The question that I keep finding myself affronted by. 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 this thing. The students start giggling here because David has very theatrically revealed a pot of yogurt. All right. What are we looking at? La Fermiere yogurt. La Fermiere yogurt. La Fermiere is a small artisan French yogurt brand. Do you know this brand? I really. 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 noticed this brand. You'll see them. Yeah. So La Fermiere yogurt stands out from the other brands in the grocery store because instead of the plastic packaging, you typically see yogurt come in. La Fermiere comes in these cutely colored, often lavender clay pots. It's a premium yogurt. Definitely more expensive than your Chobanis and your Yoplas. They have like premium sounding flavors. Rose, lavender, orange blossom honey. So I walk by this thing and, you know, 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, 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 the other ones do. So my question is, why? David asks his students for theories, like, why would this one company choose to use clay pots when pretty much no other company does? Anybody have any theories? Come on, be honest. Mario? Is it good for the environment? Anouk? So is it cheaper to produce than plastic pots? Right. Romy? It's 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 some type of image 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? Estelle? We could contact the brand to see if they had any specific reasons when they first produced the yogurt. Specific reasons for packaging it the way that they do? Okay. Is it strange for you at all, like, observing a sort of search engine-style inquiry unfold in the real world? 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. Yes. Other ideas? Anouk? Just go on their website and see if they have anything about it. Go on their website and see if they have anything about it. Here's why we do this thing. Olivia? Ask people that buy these yogurts, so, like, the cafeteria or others, why they want to buy this type of yogurt. So, in other words, if it sells, if it's popular, if it. Okay. I think we're going to stop there. Good job, guys. So, David wraps up the class discussion and he pulls me and Truthy 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 Fermiere was using clay pots for their yogurt. And they are my intrepid student volunteers for this particular project. I don't know if that's good luck or bad luck, but thank you all the same. So, we're going to start at the cafeteria. Chapter two, the students. Okay, for the record, can I just get you to say your name? My name is Romy. And my name is Anouk. Romy and Anouk, both 11th graders at the school. So, juniors, yep. All right, and which in French is what it's called? Première. Première. I'd get to know Romy and Anouk much better in the many months that would follow. Romy, 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 eat yogurt? I mean, you see more yogurt than now, but, yeah, I would say some yogurt. And, yes, on a daily basis, probably. And what about La Famière? No, I don't really eat La Famière yogurt, except when I want yogurt at school because it's the one they sell, but usually not. And what do you usually eat? Trader Joe's Greek yogurt. Very good. Recommend. So, Romy and Anouk, a little more blasé, about La Famière than their teacher. Okay. Enough so that Shruti 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? 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? I'm curious how you would answer this. It was your question. It was your question, yeah. Both of them sort of say immediately, it was your question, David, not our question. And then David replies in what I can only describe as fluent teacher. 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 researcher, 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 reach out. I will admit, PJ, in this moment, my faith in this yoga question was getting kind of low. Really? I was like more with the students here in 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. 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. So, I would say just consuming milk and milk-based products is something that's very advertised in France. For example, in my childhood TV show and everything, they would say at every ad break, oh, you have to consume five vegetables a day, also three different milk-based products a day. So, it's definitely a big part of, especially children's lives, because there's this thing of you're going to grow taller if you eat yogurt and all of that stuff. All of that. I didn't really think about this at the time when I first showed up to the Lycée, but one of the reasons this question was coming from this place is just that French people are extraordinarily precious about their dairy products. Oh, right. They like cheese. 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 one, you've never had like a fancy cheese or a traditional French butter and then gone back to like the mass-produced American version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they just eat way more of it than we do too. Like the average French person eats something like 60 pounds of cheese and 45 pounds of yogurt every year. Wait, sorry, what? Which is a lot more than Americans consume either. It's 60 pounds of cheese. And 45 pounds of yogurt every year. 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 a lot of yogurt. They're eating enough to make the average go up to that number. The upper end of that bell curve is probably very upsetting. Yes. Yeah. 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. Hello, how are you? Marcus the chef. And this is Romy and Anouk. Hello. They are 11th graders who are helping us with this project on yogurt. We were here to talk to the head of the cafeteria about La Fermiere. 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. So, how popular is this yogurt? Like, do you sell out every day? Do a lot of people eat it? Teachers, students? 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. The adults seem to really enjoy it. Yeah, why do you think it's the only yogurt, basically the most popular yogurt, that comes in a clay pot? Well, if you check out the La Fermiere 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. So, I think it's. 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. It's really, you can do a lot of things with it, with a clay pot. And honestly, we're all just kind of sitting there and nodding along. Romy and Anouk, I wouldn't say they're like, actively engaged at this point. Like, 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. Okay, so we're just outside of school right now, and we're going to go in a cafe called Chez les Frenchies, which is right next to the school, literally next door. The key hangout spot. How often do you come here? 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. It smells like France in here. Yeah, it does smell like France in here. 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. Because you feel like they're going to humiliate you, maybe? 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. 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. But, actually, that there's certain words we use that they really react to, like, they're almost allergic to them. What's an example? Sick. Sick? That's sick. 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. Yeah. Because there's other words for something being cool or agreeable that you can use that they won't react to. But if you say something sick in front of someone around 13, they will burn you to Hades. And it doesn't not feel bad. It feels quite bad. Yeah, it sounds bad. 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. Yeah. And they don't do either. Oh, listen, 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. I understand. - I like to eat American yogurt. - And I'm feeling that way as we talk to the owners of this cafe, learning once again that adults love this yogurt, the pots are cute, they're reusable. My medicine cabinet, I use them in my kitchen. You use them for different things. But as the hour winds by, I can slowly feel Romy and Anouk 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. I'm missing philosophy right now. Ooh, is that a good thing or a bad thing? It can't, sometimes. Okay, it depends on the lesson. Yeah, it depends on the lesson. So, we're making small talk about class. David, the teacher, has to duck out to go teach his next class. And so, for the first time, Shruthi and I get a moment alone with these students. Which means I finally get to ask them what they really think about this investigation we're on. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. Chapter three, the student's point of view. 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? 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. We were like, that this is your question? 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? They were like, look, I get it, this is school, but if we're going to be taking a two-year research class, like, why can't we spend our time researching stuff we actually care about? 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. 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. So what do they want to know about? Like, not yogurt pots. What do you wish you were spending your time on instead of thinking about yogurt? So I've 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. 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. It's also so funny to hear the difference between the curiosity you're asked to have versus the curiosity that you have. Like, people, the aliveness with which when someone talks about a real question, they come alive. And that was the feeling I was having in this library. It's like, oh, these students are coming alive for the first time because they're talking about stuff that they're excited about. Yeah. And it's not yogurt. And what do you wish you were thinking about in your yogurt thinking time? 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. 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. Right. Okay. So where do you go from there when you realize you're too, your principles are, like, have other designs? 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. Yeah. Like, we might be trying to track down a Russian rapper, and meanwhile the economy is crashing and the president's trying to, like, 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. He's trying to teach them the disciplined form of curiosity. 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. And you might learn in the process that somebody used to say to me about exercising, my friend Lilia was like, action precedes motivation. Like, 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. I've kind of been, like, Connoisseur's Demand-pilled, where I'm like, let's just see if this is possible. We're going to take a short break. And then this week, Search Engine's Garrett Graham will embed with his 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 these publicités. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Quince. Whether you're dressing for a busy day at work, a night out, or a cozy weekend at home, having high-quality wardrobe staples makes all the difference. Quince is my top pick this year for refreshing my closet and crossing off every single person on my holiday gift list. I'm obsessed with their lightweight puffer jacket. 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That's why Built created three credit cards designed to offer the richest rewards on rent, mortgage, and everything else you spend on. Whether you rent or own, you can earn up to 1.25x points on every housing payment without the transaction fee, no matter where you live. Points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, lift rides, a future housing payment, and much more. For more information, turn one of the most unavoidable payments in your life into the most rewarding. Find the card that's right for you and apply at joinbuilt.com.search That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com.search Use our link so they know we sent you. Terms apply, subject to approval and eligibility. Built cards are issued by Column N.A., member FDIC, pursuant to license from MasterCard International Incorporated. Welcome back to the show. Chapter four, looking for treasure. 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. I have some curiosity at this point. Is it inside you? Like, are you like. It's not. I feel like it hasn't yet bitten you. 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. Can you make them care about it? Can I get these students interested in this question? Okay. So, I get on a Zoom with Romy and Anouk. Can you both tell me what you had for breakfast this morning so I can check your levels? I had cereal for breakfast. I had a child's breakfast. I had carrot cake and chocolate cake for breakfast. You had two types of cake for breakfast? That's incredible. 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? I think I wanted to be, like, either a doctor or a scientist. 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. That feeling that Anouk'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. So, I don't really like school because it just takes away, like, free time for 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. 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 time 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 if the things I care about but some of the classes since I just cannot, I couldn't care less. 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. We had this assignment that was like this research project about your building that you live in. Yeah, and it was still not really clear what the whole thing was about, and everybody's still a little bit confused. And then came that day that Mr. Freeman showed up with his pot of yogurt, and you know what happens from there. 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? 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. 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. 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 Maya Hawke was on the podcast. I think Anouk and I are the only people who applied. We're not the best, we're just the, yeah. You're the only. I mean, I think that's what it was. So that all brings us to today on this Zoom call, talking about how we want to tackle this yogurt question, and we decided to start someplace easy, La Fermiere's website. Chapter 5, Red Flags. The website, it's very artfully designed, very sleek-looking photos of their yogurt, and we just navigate over to the FAQ page. Okay, should I just read it? Yeah, go for it. Where, helpfully, maybe a little anticlimactically, one of the questions there is our question. Why are you using terracotta in glass pots? And the company's answer? 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, et cetera. And it still is today. 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, but what does all-natural really mean? 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. PJ, I'm just going to translate this for you. And you've been taking French classes. 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. 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 Fermière, 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. Oh, so now, it's like, now they're curious because now they're a little paranoid. This is the first time that I start to see the, like, flicker of real curiosity in their eyes. It's like, this company is lying to us. Oh, you're saying. you're saying that these youngsters have a more suspicious relationship to capitalism than us oldsters? Well, it's funny. I wasn't quite sure if it was their generation or if it was their, like, Frenchness, but they are naturally far more skeptical of corporations than I think I was, at least, in high school. Yeah. 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. 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 going to 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 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. 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. And for Romy and Anouk, it seemed to be this kind of anti-consumerist rabbit hole. 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. 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. 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? 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 going to 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. It's like worse than two. 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. 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 Fermiere's CEO probably goes to bed every night not wondering if a crack team of high school skeptics is going to descend on his terracotta plant or her terracotta plant. 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 read it. We decided to reach out to the company to see if anyone there was down to talk to us about their claypots. Like a bunch of French kids think you're lying. 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. Chapter six, the yogurt executive. Can you hear yourself when you talk? Um, no, I can't hear anything. I can't hear anybody. I can hear a nuke. Oh, my God, I can hear my peoples. I can hear myself talk. Can you guys? Yeah, that's yeah. Is that normal? So I meet up with the students and their teacher, David, at Search Engine HQ. It's all very exciting. An executive at La Fermiere has very generously agreed to talk to us. OK, so hi. Could you say maybe your name and what you do? Yeah, of course. So my name is Charlotte Marchand, and I've been with La Fermiere for five years now. I'm the head of sales and marketing. So as the head of sales and marketing in the U.S., 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. 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? In 19, around 1995, this was the appearance of the terracotta pot, actually, because at the beginning, they 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. So 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. So basically, La Fermiere 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. I think the terracotta pot is 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% of non-toxic clay. So there is like a minimal environmental impact because it's made from natural materials. 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, 'cause Charlotte is more or less repeating what we found on the website. She keeps saying 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 tradeoffs. And she's wandering into a room full of teenage sharpshooters. So Romy tries to press Charlotte on the topic. 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 Fermière decide that ceramics were the most sustainable option? So I will 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. 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. Like terracotta is obviously better for the environment than plastic. But this corporate shared insistence is not totally playing with the teenage skeptics. 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. Can you just describe what you want consumers to think about when they think of the brand La Fermia? Like what is your brand identity really look like? So for us, it's like indulgence and natural. So we want people to have a treat, but a treat with like something that's not. You said you had five ingredients. What are they? It was almost like the students had decided to go full prosecutor here. So we have milk, cream, culture, of course, and the yogurt, vanilla bean, for example, and cane sugar. So that's the only ingredient we have. So here in the U.S., 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. 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 Fermia 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? Non, je pense que ça va. Merci beaucoup. Charlotte, thank you so much for your time. This is really helpful. We appreciate it. We'll talk soon. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye now. Bye. Thank you. Romy and Anouk are coming off of that call. They're just like positively up. They're just 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. Well, yeah. But I also think that like they just played hardball with the company executive and they kind of won. Yeah, an adult flinch. Yeah. There's no thing that makes a teenager happier than like. An adult flinch. 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 Romy and Anouk at this point are just increasingly skeptical that the answers the company is giving us are anything more than just marketing speak. Like for premium brands now, it's kind of a given that if they're going to price it so much higher, they're going to have to do something about climate change. Because it's like such a big concern. All brands now. Yeah. Even like food, makeup, clothing. 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. If they were skeptical just reading La Fermiere's website, Romy and Anouk were much more skeptical having just spoken to a person at the company. But also like, we're two 11th graders and a podcast producer who majored in literature. Yes. We don't actually know what we're talking about. 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. Well, it taught me to think that we needed to talk to an expert here. 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So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at Vanguard.com/audio. That's Vanguard.com/audio. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Hey, PJ. Yes. Thank you. Chapter 7: A Surprising Answer. So May of that year, nearing the end of 11th grade for Romy and Anouk, I went back to the leasee 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 is around the corner. Romy'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 Anouk. 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. That sounds like a lot of studying and a lot of exams. The reason Anouk 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 Fermiere 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. So after doing some research, we landed on who we thought might be the right expert. Could you maybe say your name and what you do? Sure. I'm Shelly Miller. I'm a professor of environment sustainability at the University of Michigan. Okay, great. And how should we refer to you? Do you prefer maybe Dr. Miller or Shelly? Oh, Shelly is totally fine. Shelly, all right, perfect. Shelly's work is fascinating. She does something called life cycle 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 Shelly. So Connaissance du Monde is this course we have at our school that is part of this international baccalaureat, 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 Fermiere is an important part of our daily life, especially we go to the cafeteria and there's this yogurt, and we're We were 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, just maybe trying to find why that was. 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 tradeoffs 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? 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. What this means is that this is a conversation about tradeoffs. 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. Plastic is 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. And then there's plastics afterlife, like it clogs landfills, turtles choke on it, microplastics, et cetera, et cetera. And so we know for a fact that plastics cause environmental impact. And sometimes other materials are even worse. And this is where Shelly 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? We need to take a broader look of saying, all right, well, it's not plastics. Then what are those materials actually better than plastic? Yeah. So, for example, how do you go about weighing plastic against another material? Like, how does that work from a professional standpoint? 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. Shelly 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. Yeah, it's super interesting. That's exactly where we started to see kind of the fault in the image of La Fermiere, where we started thinking, OK, it's so much heavier that during transportation, it probably emits a lot more. And so we're really wondering where there's this idea that plastic is bad or is worse maybe than glass or terracotta. Where do you think that comes from? 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 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. Just to say, Shelley is, of course, focusing on just the environmental impact here. Like, 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 it is. What 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. 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. 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. 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. It has a lower carbon footprint than other packaging materials. 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? So I would say that if we're just talking about yogurt. 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. Interesting. Yeah. But it's tricky if you're trying to say that your product is valuable and considered in a delicacy. Bulk plastic container is kind of working. That's your message. It doesn't scream up market. Yeah. 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. But. 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. When we think about things that have the greatest environmental impact, we often forget. 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. 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. She says plastics typically less than 10%. 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. What's the carbon footprint of yogurt? 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, like, 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. You're with the teenagers at this point. 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 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 U.S. The dairy is produced and processed locally in both of those countries. So you're not adding a bunch of transport miles in there. Inside that part of the supply chain. Yeah. 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. Although, what I've always been told is that if you wanted to put a huge dent in climate change, just like. 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. Yeah, you could eat non-dairy yogurt. Like, and this is kind of the quality of this kind of 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. 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. But this is the conversation we've chosen. 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. Right. Which is actually something that teenagers like thinking through. And I think as Romy and Anouk grasped that, this question had become their question, too. 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. question. So thank you so much for your help. No, it is an absolutely fantastic question. And you guys are asking exactly the right questions. Okay, skeleton crew. All right. So I'm going to ask for about 10 minutes of your attention. Again, here's the teacher, David Freeman. We have something of an answer to the great yoga question of 2024. Romy and Anouk are going to tell you a little bit about what we've been up to. You guys want to come up front? And yes. Oh, applause. We were in the same classroom Shruti and I visited months prior. Romy and Anouk seemed, and I'd never actually seen the sight of them, a little nervous to speak in front of the class. So, and now we are back to the last CDM class of the year ever. Not, well, not ever. There's going to be classes next year. And so, yeah, I think this has confirmed a lot of our initial theories. So on how it's a brand thing. It's a brand thing. It's a brand DNA thing. And also a marketing decision over sustainably, maybe. And yeah. And Romy and Anouk just walked the class through the steps of their reporting, everything we had done along the way. So Mr. Freeman brought us this question back in like November, December. They talked about all the people we interviewed. The head of sales and marketing at FMLUS. They broke down all the complicated conclusions we had drawn. 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. And of course, they shared their marketing advice for La Fermiere. 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. 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, 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. 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? Cool. All right. Excellent. And with that, homework assignment complete, the stupid little yogurt question was officially done. 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. Romy did end up finishing her big research project on morphine addiction. She's about to head to the Lund School of Economics in the fall. Anouk's finishing up high school in Paris and is going to head to a French university in the fall. See the engraving on the side? It's very difficult to open. Yeah, it is. But the last time we got together in person in New York, I brought in a couple pots of La Fermiere for them to taste. I mean, orange blossom. Does that mean orange? I think there's a kind of honey that's orange blossom. Oh, shit. Yeah, there's no orange on it. Still, if this was American, it would be like yellow orange. Yeah, so we just opened the yogurt. There is indeed yogurt in there. This was the final step in the investigation. You guys have anything else to say about yogurt? Nope, just enjoy it. Pretty good. Yeah. It's actually good. It's good. I agree. Unfortunately. What do you mean, unfortunately? I don't know. I want it to be more like not like completely convincing. I didn't want to be convinced by it, but like. It's not amazing. I mean, the texture is amazing. Yeah, I don't think the flavor is 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. Gary Graham, he's Search Engine's senior producer. Big thanks this week to David Freeman and the Lycee Francais de New York for inviting us into their classroom. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruthi Pinnamaneni. This episode was fact-checked by Claire Hyman. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Besant. Additional production support on this episode from Hazel May Bryan and Sean Merchant. Our intern is Oscar Noxon. 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. Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. And thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Collin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schaaf. Our agent is Oren 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. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vistaprint. 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