2024 was a difficult year for me. My beloved dog, Raven, died in February, unsettling much of my day-to-day life and imploding my annual writing plans.

We adopted Raven when she was four years old, while I was finishing my PhD coursework at Brown. Our daily walks and snuggles punctuated and structured every academic milestone over the next nine years. She was my stalwart writing buddy. When I was intensely working on a piece, she was with me, everyday, in my office. She came to office hours and visited most of my classes, becoming a favorite of my students, too. She was loving and loyal, sweet and a bit stubborn. Most days she was our zen queen. We have no children, so she was our baby, even as she aged into grey hair, a more angular face, and bony little hips.

Then she was gone. Lost to us, over the course of a single day.

I cried more than at any other moment in my life, sobs so big and constant that they left my core muscles aching. I had to email my students ahead of class to tell them that they couldn’t talk to me about Raven because I would start to cry and wouldn’t be able to stop. Losing her literally broke me. As an ultrasound would later show, my grief sprouted a benign lump in my left breast, right over my heart.

It would have made sense, as my husband pointed out, to wait to adopt a new dog. It would free us up for travel more easily, especially during my (hopefully upcoming) sabbatical. But I couldn’t hold out. I couldn’t handle the loneliness of daily life without a dog.

And so in May we adopted Ruby, who we adore. If you’ve ever seen Noah and Lincoln on social media, you’ll recognize our transition from an older, calm dog to a younger, more energetic pup. 2024 was the year of Moo Deng, the riotous pygmy hippo. Ruby is very much our “bouncy pork,” with her boundless love and playfulness. After a few months getting settled as a new family, I taught three courses in the fall 2024 semester. It was a busy time of transition, new routines, and much less writing than usual.

The wonderful thing about producing knowledge is that it doesn’t stop when you do. The work you’ve already created and shared continues to circulate. It builds or finds resonance. You get to keep thinking, even if putting new words on the page feels arduous.

And so that was the bulk of my year. I got to engage with journalists and podcast hosts on an array of topics, while I churned out just a few new things.

Health & Fitness

Given the research I’m doing on my next book, Like an Athlete, questions of health, fitness, and diet animated a lot of my writing and thinking in 2024.

The year began with a piece I wrote in late 2023 and published in TIME Made by History, “Your New Year’s Resolution to Carry a Water Bottle Has a History.” I got to discuss it on 1A via WAMU NPR, too. I also published some 2023 Like an Athlete research—“Are We Becoming Ivan Drago? Analyzing Today’s Fitness Tech through Rocky IV”—in Nursing Clio in the spring. (Funnily enough, my husband got me an Apple Watch this Christmas. I’ll see if using it inspires me to change my mind.)

Diet culture is shifting yet again with the rise of new prescription drugs deployed for weight loss. I chatted with both the New York Times and Canvas8 about the so-called era of “Brozempic,” as men take these drugs and navigate gendered notions of dieting and weight loss.

I also was a guest on an episode of Sabrina Magnan’s The Live Unrestricted Podcast discussing how the truth (and lies) of wellness, diet, and fitness culture intersect. I also chatted with The Sporkful senior producer, Andres O’Hara, for the episode, “Super Size Me, 20 Years Later.” I pondered the legacy of this fast food documentary, along with valuable insights from my students’ experiences, too.

Social Media & Pop Culture

I got to think with journalists and podcast producers on an array of global social media and pop culture trends: from kicking off Sam Low and Jean Ten’s new Ate, Ate, Ate podcast out of New Zealand to discussing “girl dinner” and other TikTok “girl” trends with Michelle Linn for Fox23’s On Her Mind here in Tulsa.

I also chatted with Dakshana Bascaramurty about the history of food criticism and the transition to influencers for Canada’s The Globe and Mail, and with Emma Jacobs of the Financial Times about how social media resurfaces and remediates older food trends, like cottage cheese.

I never would’ve guessed that my past research on Instagram and trophy kitchens would perfectly collide to inform 2024 writing on “fridgescaping” by Caitlin PenzeyMoog for Vox and by KC Hysmith and Stephanie Ganz for Eater, but it did!

Drawing from my work on gender and pop culture and the anti-fandom research I did on Guy Fieri for Diners, Dudes & Diets, I got to be part of “Episode 3: Love 2 Hate” of Generation Barney. It’s a podcast from Connecticut Public Media that unpacks the legacy of the 1990s TV show and the broader influence of nostalgia for children’s media. Like when I analyzed Hot Ones through the lens of gender, my comments generated a fair amount of right wing media response, sigh.

The first new words I was able to write after Raven died were for a book review of editors Christina Bartz, Jens Ruchatz, and Eva Wattolik’s Food – Media – Senses: Interdisciplinary Approaches for the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. Over the summer, I also wrote the chapter “Cooking as Popular Culture” on the history and present of cooking television for Cambridge History of American Popular Culture, edited by Lauren Rabinovitz, which is set to come out in 2025. I also wrote and revised a chapter analyzing Lessons in Chemistry for a one-day forthcoming volume on food television.

Soda

Soda had a 2024 moment! I loved chatting with journalists about the rise, fall, and rise again of soda, including their medicalization for Vox, their celebritization for Business Insider, how they became “zero” for The Colin McEnroe Show, and why soda is all the rage in Utah for The Salt Lake Tribune, alongside food studies friend Christy Spackman.

Food, Politics, Gender & Culture

Food and gender is one of the most enduring themes of my research agenda and 2024 was no different. I had a quote or two in NPR’s big climate package, which included discussion about why some men find it hard to reduce their meat consumption. I was also delighted to be a guest on the first season of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp in which we chatted about “Gendered Eating Tropes in Media & Marketing” and how they affect women’s social power.

For my first media mention of the year, I chatted with a student journalist for Spoon University about food as a sex symbol and later with Highsnobiety about gourmand perfume, diet culture, and what smelling sweet means.

Since 2024 was an election year, I got to talk with journalists at NPR, the LA Times, and Mother Jones about the role of food on the political campaign trail.

And I was truly honored to be among the “scores of chefs, recipe writers, historians, and food luminaries” that Dan Kois and J. Bryan Lowder reached out to for Slate‘s “The 25 Most Important Recipes of the Past 100 Years.”

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I’m currently making plans for the 2025 writing I can control. And I’ll look forward to seeing what new thinking and chatting opportunities come my way in the year to come, with Ruby by my side!

To anyone reading, I wish you all the best in life and writing, too.