StirredUp

Four companies control 85% of the beef in this country. One of them has been paying for its own misconduct for thirty years and still produces one in five bites of American meat.
This episode is about Tyson Foods, but it's really about what happens to a food system when the buyers consolidate and nobody with a vote has to live with the consequences.
We get into the actual structure of the American beef supply chain: who raises the cattle, who slaughters them, and why a rancher with a great herd still has almost no leverage. We break down why beef prices keep climbing even as imports hit records, what the New World screwworm has to do with it, and why the cattle herd sitting at a 75-year low means this isn't getting fixed quickly.
Then we go at Tyson specifically. Not because they're uniquely evil, but because they're the clearest window into how the whole system works. Started in 1935 by a guy hauling chickens to Chicago in a borrowed truck. Today it's a $54 billion company that is still controlled by his descendants, through a share structure that gives the family roughly 72% of the voting power. The people who bear the consequences of Tyson's decisions, meaning workers, contract growers and plant towns, have no vote at all. The people with the votes are insulated from the market discipline that would normally apply.
We cover the labor record, and it is grim: a CEO paid 798 times the median employee in a year when median pay went down, nearly 5,000 workers cut in Nebraska and Texas, a town of 11,000 that lost a third of its workforce in a single announcement, OSHA severe injury numbers that put Tyson fifth among all American employers, and a federal child labor investigation into the contractors who clean their plants overnight.
And we work through the lawsuits, because once you line them up, they stop looking like scandals and start looking like a budget line. A federal guilty plea in 1997. A $221.5 million settlement over fixing chicken prices. A $115.5 million settlement over fixing what plant workers earn. A settlement where Tyson agreed to stop calling its beef "climate-smart." In fiscal 2025 alone the company booked $653 million in legal contingency accruals against sales. Whatever else that is, it's planned for.
Grab a drink. This one's a lot.

A Canadian pipeline has been running under the Straits of Mackinac since 1953. In July 2026, the Michigan Supreme Court threw out its key permit and told state regulators they had spent eight years asking the wrong question.
We're doing this will strolling through the grounds of Northwood University during Gus Macker, where we really stir it up about what the culture of Midland, MI is like during the fun Gus Macker games.

When a parasite outbreak made headlines, we decided to look into the company that was originally tied to it all. 
Taylor Farms, the $7 billion company you've seen in the aisles of Kroger. They are the mega supplier of salads and pre-cut produce to every major restaurant and grocery chain in America. 
Literally the day after this was recorded, we learned they weren't responsible for the parasite outbreak. But what we found was looking into.
In this episode, we break down the mega-lettuce-operation: Taylor Farms. We tapped into their history, how they became the invisible middleman of American food, their business model that pushes risk onto workers and buyers, the documented labor abuses and union-busting campaign against 900 workers in Tracy, California, and the gap between their sustainability marketing and what's actually independently verified. We also cover what "convenience" really costs when you trace it back to the farm.
Plus, we're dealing with our own food system crisis at home, an absolutely devastating chicken massacre, and what we're doing to rebuild our flock. Because sometimes you have to see the industrial system fail to understand why you're doing this in the first place.
Topics include food safety, supply chain concentration, labor exploitation, what private companies hide, and why having chickens in your backyard is still worth it despite having to constantly fend off predators.

We're back in the studio after a long break, and we open with the usual stirred up tea: whether we look better now or in our 20's, getting a new puppy in the fall, a hot take on whether Scandal and Yellowstone know how to ruin a character right, and a genuinely unhinged detour into who's really bankrolling the AI boom and what happens to communities when that money comes looking for land, water, and power.
But we're full into our summer obsession: where does our food come from.
The founders of Hooters sold the brand within a year of opening it. Forty years later, private equity nearly ran it into the ground, and the founders bought it back. We dig into the timeline, the numbers, and what it means for founder-led brands.

This is the kickoff of our summer series. New format this year: garden tours, real food talk, and the same "we don't know, we're just having a conversation" energy you already know. In this episode: - A full garden walkthrough (raspberries, tomatoes, dahlias, cucumbers, peas) - Why Burpee Seeds grows fastest during every recession - The Monsanto/GMO seed patent problem, explained - Farmland getting converted to solar development - A teaser on the Driscoll's berry story (full deep dive next episode) - Farm stands, cottage food law, and shopping local this summer Chapters: 0:00 Summer series kickoff 1:13 Garden tour begins 5:50 Tomato cage hacks and pruning tips 8:11 Dahlias and flower care 12:04 What's coming this summer 16:15 Beating the heat (life updates) 27:52 Farmland, solar, and food quality 30:56 Burpee Seeds' 150 year history 37:10 Why farmers can't replant GMO seeds 39:07 Farm stands and cottage food law New posts every week on Substack. Link in bio. Subscribe for the Driscoll's deep dive coming next episode. #Gardening #FoodSystems #SeedSaving #HomesteadLife #SummerSeries

Your local hospital. Your kid's school. Your apartment complex. You might think these are owned by your community but increasingly, they're owned by Wall Street.
Private equity firms are quietly buying up essential services across Michigan and across the country. But it's not just your standard flip. They're loading them with debt, cutting costs, and selling them for profit. And by the time they're done, the community is left holding the bag.
In this episode, Heather and Jessica sit down with Jim Baker, Founder and Executive Director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, to break down exactly how this works. 
We cover:➡️What private equity actually is and how the money loop works➡️Which Michigan industries are already affected — and how to find out if your hospital or apartment is PE-owned➡️The pension fund paradox: how your retirement savings might be funding the very system squeezing your community➡️What transparency reforms could actually fix this➡️And what YOU can do about it today
If you live in Michigan — or anywhere in the Midwest — this one hits close to home.🔗 Read the full PESP report: pestakeholder.org/reports/wall-street-in-the-wolverine-state
Private Equity Stakeholder Project: pestakeholder.orgStirred Up Pod is an independent media company committed to systemic accountability and community impact.

It's the Summer on the Porch series, and we're doing what we do best: starting somewhere random and ending up somewhere real.
This week Jessica's continued hot take that's been sitting with her — that the only people genuinely impressed by AI are men, because women have been running these systems in their heads their whole lives. 
Heather's a little salty about Mother's day and we know she's not alone. 
Jessica, a bit hungover from an Adult Day at the golf course (one breakfast, several fireball-adjacent beverages) followed by a bon fire is THANKFUL for freshsethair.com saving the day. Shameless plug. 
Since the front porch summer series is running off of 2 moms running on fumes, we lightly cover the story of the day -- TikTok Shop — what it actually is, why it's growing at a pace that should embarrass everyone sleeping on it, and whether it's just a platform for junk or a real opportunity for small makers and artisans. Heather's sitting on a business decision about her handmade goods. We think through it out loud. Honestly, she should go for it.
This is where we delve into brand strategy, frankly a reoccurring topic in our conversations, and it gets interesting. Heather's take: consumers are done with purpose-driven brand theater — they just want the product to work and the price not to break them. Jessica pushes back with a nuance: the gap is widening. Commodity products will win on pure price. But identity brands? They're going to matter more, not less. Bush Light paraphernalia in her son's room is load-bearing evidence.
We also get into beauty care ingredients (Heather works adjacent to the science and has thoughts on hyaluronic acid, retinol, and when the drugstore version is genuinely fine), menopause being a full-body experience nobody warned us about, the perfume dupe question, and the case for Olay when the budget is tight.
Plus: Heather's open house prep is in full swing — five yards of mulch, a new deck Mike has been building at night for a month, holes in the walls from the nieces, a $250 print from Australia that may or may not arrive in time. A graduation party origin story involving a sneaky cooler of Bud Light. And a hard earned gardening PSA: do not plant sunflowers in the shade. Learn from us.
Fresh Set makes its bonfire season debut. Because if you know, you know.
Stirred Up is a Midwest podcast for people who want more than the headline. New episodes weekly — find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

We recorded this one while literally hauling the last bits of garage sale pieces to the thrift. 
This week, Jessica and Heather unpack garage sale culture, the surprisingly fascinating people who show up at dawn for your old blender, the people who were fighting over a 25 year old tin canister of crackers and definitely got sideways on topics such as the real return of smoking as a vibe. Heather reveals what her last meal — and last four cartons of cigarettes — would be. 
No studio. No plan. No anxiety.

Joann Fabrics is closing its doors but Hobby Lobby just keeps growing. New stores, bigger profits, a billionaire family quietly getting richer. 
Hobby Lobby is a story about private ownership, religious exemptions, a workforce that keeps showing up, and a customer base that treats Sunday closures like a sign from God. This week on Stirred Up, we're pulling back the curtain on one of America's most quietly powerful retail empires.