POP Archives Highlights: Shawn Grows and the Insane Archive

Sometimes I'm really thankful for my algorithm because sometimes - not all the time, but sometimes - I get recommended a channel or a feed or a short that makes me so happy to be an archivist and historian. In this case, it was finding Shawn Grows on Instagram and the Insane Archive.

On the surface, the content is relatively simple. In his videos on Instagram and TikTok, Shawn takes us through the history of the food we eat from fruits and vegetables to spices and condiments and even the crops we've used to build this country, like cotton. But the underlying theme of Shawn's work is to educate his viewers and followers that these staples of the food industry and production are intrinsically tied to colonialism, propaganda, and all manner of other sordid events that have shaped our cultural attachment to what we eat and how it got to our kitchens in the first place.

The Insane Archive provides even more context to the videos Shawn creates. For every crop and spice and plant covered, the Insane Archive website goes into much fuller detail on food history with supplemental records, resources, and citations to strengthen Shawn's argument. It's in these articles that Shawn truly makes himself an archivist as he recontextualizes the history surrounding everything from jackfruit to peanuts to indigo, etc. It's a staggering amount of work and I'm so glad it exists.

Nothing ever springs fully formed. It is the work of centuries of cultivation and the labor of people - African slaves, Indigenous tribes, and migrant workers - often forgotten by the historical record. Or sometimes a fruit smells so bad it never crosses the ocean. Life's crazy like that.

So, if you're a food history buff or you just like to learn about things because why not, please go check out Shawn's videos and articles and his merch.