Episode 14: Kentucky - “United we stand, divided we fall”
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Transcript
One thing that I forgot to mention in Minnesota is that St.
Paul was either the birthplace or the original adult home of Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts.
Yeah.
And so if you walk around St.
Paul, you'll rarely see any humans, but you will see sort of life-size statues of Lucy and Charlie Brown and Linus sitting on benches and stuff
in bronze.
I'm so mad that I didn't go over to St.
Paul because that in and of itself is a very compelling reason for me to go.
It's pretty spooky, to be honest with you.
I'm into it.
I don't buy it.
They're kind of large, like they're larger than normal human children.
And they're bronze, and it kind of looks like the witch of St.
Paul cast a curse on them or something.
Froze them in place.
Hello, I'm Janet Barney.
Hello, I am John Hodgman.
Welcome to ePluribus Motto, the show that that celebrates the official and unofficial United States of American state commonwealth territories and district mottos.
Not only mottos, but also snacks, horses, soils, and sports cars.
That's right, friends, and we have had such a lovely time in state gyms like Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, all states, I might add, that have noteworthy regional accents that we did not do a great job of representing.
No, we're not.
Look, look, I do a little acting, but I can't do accents.
Not even accents from the places that I am from, like Boston.
And is it possible for me to be, to think I'm both good at doing accents and also know I'm not?
Can you
include accents for you?
Okay, good.
Good.
I just know through experience now that I'm an adult.
Yeah.
It's not true, Governor.
But luckily, it might be true for you.
You might actually have a regional accent.
And when I say you, I mean you, listener.
And it's never too late for you, listener, to send us a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash e pluribus motto.
That, once again, without my voice cracking this time, speakpipe.com
when it's time to change.
If you hail from one of those states and would like to share your accent with us, just go to speakpipe.com slash e pluribus motto, press the button and speak into the pipe.
But, Janet, we're also heading to a new Commonwealth today.
Yeah, there are four commonwealths in the United States.
I was going to sing it, but I'm just going to talk about it.
Okay, okay, good.
I'm glad that I, because I thought it sounded like the beginning of a song.
There are four commonwealths in the United States.
It really should be called the
46 United States plus four Commonwealths.
They are Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and which one am I missing?
Well, Hodgman, it sounds like you probably know the answer since you know there are four.
It would be really amazing if you knew there were four.
I don't remember the song.
I'm terrible with song birds.
Well, I'm not going to keep you in suspense a moment longer.
As we mentioned briefly last week, and as our episode title handily indicates, today we are headed south to the bluegrass state, which, as you said, is actually a commonwealth.
I cannot be blamed for its nicknames.
That's not on me.
No, you must be talking about Kentucky.
And I do actually do remember last week we confirmed that Kentucky is yet another state that just could not wait to make milk its state beverage,
even though Kentucky is a very famous beverage.
I bet you're hoping it shows up later.
Very specific, very specific beverage.
I bet it does.
Does it?
I can't wait to let you down.
I can't wait to
let you down.
If you think you know the beverage I'm talking about, stay tuned because we might or might not talk about it.
But do you have any other things for us to know about?
Well,
okay.
My friend, like every part of these United States, Kentucky has a complicated past, present, and almost assuredly future.
But it also has many charming elements I'm excited to discuss.
But before we dive into this state and its many waterways, that's right, Kentucky has the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States.
We may not be near those great lakes, but we're staying wet.
I don't.
That's hard for me to believe, but okay, if you say so.
We're staying wet.
No, no, I agree that we're wet.
All wet.
What do you think of when you think of it?
I certainly don't think of
most
effing navigable waterways.
I mean, we're talking, you're talking about streams and rivers here, right?
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's got some of the, it's got a couple of big rivers that are also in many, many other states.
So I'm going to assume without having created an entire episode centered around why it has so many and has that claim to fame, I guess there's just a lot of river running through it, a lot of streams and stuff.
Well, I guess when I think of Kentucky, and I've not been there but only one time,
Jesse Thorne and I did a live Judge John Hodgman Hodgman show in the fall of 2023 in Lexington, Kentucky,
which is the horse capital of the world, or certainly the horse statue capital of the world.
They're everywhere.
They have these life-size horse statues, and they're all exactly the same, but they're painted differently.
And they're painted in a whimsical pattern kind of.
Kind of like the, there's like the cows and bulls and different.
There are other cities that have like that.
They're animal that's painted whimsically.
And I'll say that that one thing about Lexington is they have a beautiful opera house there
called the Opera House of Lexington, also known as the Lexington Opera House.
I don't remember what it's called.
And
we had a really wonderful crowd.
It was our first night of the tour, but everyone who showed up basically was like, why didn't you come to Louisville?
We all drove here from Louisville.
Uh-oh.
Oh, well.
Which, which I think is the largest city.
I think.
I know.
I know Lexington is the second largest.
But neither of them is the capital.
No.
Because the other thing that I learned learned back when I was a literary agent, my very first
client, a journalist named Jamie McElroy, no, no known relation to the McElroy brothers, maybe, I don't know.
But Jamie wrote a book where he followed a Kentucky high school cheerleading squad to the championships, and it was called We've Got Spirit.
And he referred to Louisville in the book as the capital.
And
as you know, in commercial publishing, there's no fact-checking.
Wait, what?
Oh, yeah, no.
There's no,
no, no.
When you publish an article in a magazine or a newspaper, well, certainly a magazine, there is a research department that checks every fact.
Yeah.
But in book publishing, kind of, they just like take it on.
Take it on your word.
Yeah.
And so, you know, it's the largest city in
Kentucky, but we received many paper letters through the mail because this was the late 90s saying that, no, Frank Fort, Frank Fort, I'm probably pronouncing that incorrectly.
The Fort of Hot Dogs, Frankfort, Kentucky, is actually the capital.
But even though very few people showed up from Lexington proper, we had a wonderful time.
I'm sure there were a lot of Lexingtonians there.
But I'll tell you what, Lexingtonians, famous Lexingtonians were not there.
Mary Todd Lincoln.
Yeah.
Because passed away a long time ago.
Thank you for giving the reason.
I'm sure she would have been there otherwise.
That's the implication.
Famous actor Harry Dean Stanton,
who is who passed away not too very long ago,
but now I like to believe is Mary Todd Lincoln's boyfriend in heaven.
Sure.
Actor Michael Shannon, who is alive,
but too busy touring with his REM cover band to show up at my show.
Correct.
And
another incredible actor who is also no longer alive, but I think you're going to be discussing him later.
So we we will talk about that guy later.
You know what I mean?
Bern?
Hint taken.
Hint taken.
Hints made.
Hints made.
Promises made.
Promises fulfilled.
Promises made.
Promises Frankfort.
That's right.
Anyway.
Oh, and it's the home state of
Adam Sachs.
My old friend and first roommate in New York.
Great.
He and Devin Emke grew up together there.
Did you know that?
I didn't.
Yeah.
Childhood friends.
Well, well, well.
I don't know why I sound like I'm a bully all of a sudden.
Well, well, well, if it isn't the two kids I like picking on living side by side.
Devin Emke and Adam Sachs.
All right, line up for your knuckle sandwiches, you nerds.
Yeah, the steak snack of Kentucky, knuckle sandwiches.
Oh,
well, let's not get, let's hold on that.
I want to find out.
Pressing, hold on that.
I have also never been to Kentucky.
Right now, just having read about Kentucky as much as I did,
there's a lot that I'm interested in.
I have to say, I'm most interested in Mammoth Cave National Park.
It's a national park in the U.S.
in south-central Kentucky.
But Mammoth Cave.
How large is the cave?
It's the longest known cave system in the world.
Would you say that it's a mammoth?
I would.
And of course, it is in the shape of a woolly mammoth.
Sure.
Hence the name.
Much like a mammoth's trunk.
It is a long cave system.
Yeah.
I mean, I just, you know, I, here's the thing.
I can't say for sure that I would comfortably spend a ton of time like touring this cave because I always think that I'm a person who doesn't have claustrophobia until I go into a cave of some sort, however large it may be.
And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm under the ground.
Uh-oh, uh-oh.
Should I?
Yeah,
I wouldn't even call it.
I mean, certainly there are parts of cave systems that are quite claustrophobic.
But then there are often, like, I went into a cave in England, which I believe was called the Devil's Asshole.
True.
I think that's right.
I've heard of it.
And
this was in central,
not far from the peak district, if my memory serves, and it might not.
But
it was a fairly sizable chamber or sizable tunnel that led into the mountain and opened into a vast dark chamber.
Now, that's not claustrophobia.
That's like, there's too much rock above me.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Any moment, this is going to collapse.
It's a fear of
impending crushing is my feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
Thank you.
That, that is, that is true.
That is, if, if you have a very, very good geological reason for being uncomfortable where you are, that's not a phobia.
That's just common sense.
Yeah, maybe, or, or it's a special phobia like speluncophobia.
Oh, speluncophobia.
I don't know.
I did do when I was
a kid, I went to a summer camp up in northern Arizona, and one of the things that we got to do was do a little bit of spelunking.
And I got to tell you, that was one of those experiences that I look back on now, and I'm like, I don't think they should have let us do that.
I'm not sure who sanctioned that.
I am positive my parents and grandparents had no idea that I was doing that.
But we were like, it was, it was northern Arizona in the summer and it was, but so it was chilly.
And then when you go into a cave system, that is older.
And for part of it, we had to like
wade through waist-high water
without being told that we were going to do that.
So everyone was just wearing their kid jeans.
I think I was like 10.
I mean, it was crazy.
It was crazy.
That's crazy.
So yeah, let's roll up our sleeves.
Let's keep that moonshine on the shelf for the time being because we got work to do.
We have not one, but two official bottles of Kentucky to grapple with.
I'm going to promise you, Janet, I made basically zero effort at research this time.
Great, great, great, great.
I'm coming into this as a pure naïve.
Okay, all right.
I like a naif.
And
there are two mottos, you say.
There are two mottos.
What two languages would you think they might be in, knowing that there were two there are two different languages involved?
I'm going to say Latin and English.
That is correct.
That is correct.
Yes, yes.
I did it.
What if I was like Spanish and Portuguese?
I was going to throw out French, but then I remembered.
I think Les Toile du Nord is the only French motto.
Minnesota's motto is what we discovered.
Anyway, okay, so it's not that.
So I just said Latin and English because it seemed easy.
You're so right.
You're so right.
That's exactly what it is.
I have to say, to me, there is something funny about there being two distinct mottos when the one in English is united we stand, divided we fall.
Sure.
Like, nobody could agree on keeping just one motto.
So they went ahead and cleft that honor in twain.
It's also funny considering that the famous Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky was denying entrance to the world's most famous black horse racer in the year 1961.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What I tell you, I said complicated.
I said complicated, past, present, and future.
He has a name, James Winkfield,
who had won two Kentucky Derbies.
That's a famous derby in Kentucky.
And he was denied admittance to the famous old hotel, the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1961 because he was black.
So anyway, I just wanted to say his name.
So that is the English motto.
Any guess on what the Latin motto might be?
Yeah, I do.
Hang on one second while I think of it in my mind.
Is it ut ex hoc diversorium, meaning keep out of this hotel?
Oh, no.
Surprisingly, no?
Okay.
But you've given a good argument for it.
Is it united we stand, but in Latin?
It is not.
And actually, now that you're saying that,
maybe the most positive thing we could say about this is that you could almost think of it as a separation of church and state.
Because the Latin motto is Deo gratium, I might be saying that wrong, habiemus, habiemus,
deo gratium habiemus, mus.
Let me try a reverse translation.
Deo gratium habiemus.
And when we know what deo means, I think I do.
Let us be grateful to God.
Let us be grateful to God.
Hey, good work, Google, this time.
Yeah.
So, yeah,
we have God, we have United, we stand, divided, we fall.
I mean, I don't mind someone giving a shout out to the universe.
I don't mind someone being grateful to God for the things, but like many state models we come across in our journeys, Again, these are two mottos.
You've already talked a little bit about one of them.
It's just hard not to set them against the backdrop of an extremely violent exclusionist history, including, of course, the Beaver Wars, the Cherokee, sorry, a very violent history, including, of course, the Beaver Wars, the Cherokee American Wars, to name Amir II, and really just all else that displaced tribes like the Shawnee, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, and many more.
There's also this persistent myth that indigenous tribes didn't live in Kentucky.
Instead, they only like passed through or hunted there.
Yeah, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, guys, hear me out.
Hear me out.
Hear me out.
This is like a pit stop.
Yeah, Kentucky was just the great hallway of the upper south.
No one was living here.
Yeah, in fact, they were like on their way through.
They were like, just take this land, no one lives here.
Enjoy it.
Yeah, I swear.
There was actually just a note on the door that said, help yourself.
Help yourself.
Yeah.
An unlocked door that was flapping open in the breeze.
With a pie baking on the window, sitting on the windowsill.
Come on in.
It's free land.
Also, own slaves.
Yeah, sorry, Kentucky.
Can't give you that one.
Thanks to that wonderful past today.
There are no federally recognized tribes in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
But you can read more about how Kentucky has attempted to, and in some cases has, addressed rights and needs of Indigenous communities via organizations like the Kentucky Native American Heritage Association.
I spent some time on their website and several others, including
University of Kentucky.
Yeah.
No federally recognized tribes.
Yeah.
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
How odd.
Okay.
Interesting.
So with that in mind, let's just turn our attention back for a moment to Kentucky's nickname.
I would love to.
I'm an idiot.
This has also been very established on this show.
I thought that Kentucky being called the bluegrass state was a reference to bluegrass music.
Like, I thought that's why it was called the bluegrass state.
No, but the grass is blue?
Well, I mean, it's the, the origin of the nickname, yes, comes from the same origin as the, as the music, which is actual Kentucky bluegrass, which, of course, like many things in America, is not actual Kentucky bluegrass in that it was brought over by European settlers and became Kentucky bluegrass.
But that has a whole lot to do.
This verdant grass, which needs the, if I remember correctly, because I didn't put it in here, the Cryder soil, Cryder soil, the official state soil of Kentucky, needs that to flourish.
But it is connected to another thing that Kentucky is famous for, and that's horses and horse racing, my friend.
Well, I want to talk about these horses because I love horsies so much.
All right.
Well, they are known for breeding and racing thoroughbreds.
Well, that's great.
But is bluegrass actually bluegrass?
It's not bluegrass
most of the time, but when it like flowers, like when it's like pop, I don't know, it's pollinating, if you want to think of it that way.
When it has its little flowery buds, those have sort of a purpley blue tint,
which is why they call it bluegrass.
But most of the time, if you're looking for bluegrass, you're not going to find blue grass.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good to know.
So let's get back to horsies.
Okay, let's talk about horsies.
That also kind of leads us to the official slogan of Kentucky, which is Kentucky Unbridled Spirit,
which was apparently inspired by Kentucky's history of breeding thoroughbred horses and making whiskey.
Oh, it's a twofer.
I will pose to you: is there something something ironic about calling your state unbridled when one of the most constrained things I can possibly imagine is breeding a horse for racing on a circular track with a person on it?
You decide.
Yeah, that's interesting.
You decide.
Have you ever, you've never been to Kentucky, right?
I've never been to Kentucky.
Yeah.
Have you ever been to a horsey race?
I have been to a horse race.
I've been to Santa Anita horse track race, which I think after I had been there
some years later became infamous for where the HBO television show Luck was filmed and where horses were just, it seems, dying.
Speaking of irony.
Yeah.
Not very lucky.
Not horses.
Very lucky.
Very lucky.
Do you enjoy a horse race?
I've been to the Saratoga Racetrack in Saratoga Springs, New York, which is a big, beautiful, historic old racetrack.
And I had an okay time there.
I'm just always so worried about the animals.
Like, someone took me to a Greyhound race once, and I was like, oh, I don't feel good about this.
Yeah, I don't think that the, I mean, I'm sure that there are people who,
there are trainers and owners who really, really do care about their
animals beyond them being simply investments.
Yeah, absolutely.
And or breeding slash horse semen producing machines.
But I think that it is hard on the animals.
I also went to a racetrack in Prince Edward Island where they do steeplechase, which is where the horse drags a cart, a two-wheeled cart.
Okay.
It's like the horse is like a pet a petty bike driver in Times Square, and the jockey sits in the back and drives the cart.
And I bet two Canadian dollars.
Yeah.
And I won, and I got 20 Canadian dollars.
That's wonderful.
20 loonies?
20 loonies.
Good work.
I've never been to Prince Edward Island, but like every good Anna Green Gables series reader, I have to assume that only good things happen on Prince Edward Island.
So I guess I'm fine with that horse race.
I will cover that when
we do the provinces and territories of Canada.
Looking forward.
Looking forward.
The bluegrass state has, there's another Kentucky crop that has kind of tried to edge out the bluegrass competitor.
There's another nickname that I'm sure it is responsible for coining for the Commonwealth, and that is the tobacco state.
Yes.
Okay, so what's the crop?
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Yes.
Tobacco.
Tobacco, yes.
Tobacco is a huge crop for Kentucky.
And now that I've mentioned it, why don't we go ahead and ignore it for the rest of the episode?
I feel like we talked about tobacco plenty in other episodes.
There's to be a lot of depressing stuff attached to the tobacco industry.
All due respect to cultures I'm not a part of.
But I don't know if I need to talk about it.
It's interesting that Kentucky is called the tobacco state.
Whereas I really associate North Carolina more with tobacco.
Well, maybe that's why it failed to stick and tobacco's like, damn it, still bluegrass, huh?
Yeah.
I bet if they wanted, they could be the Zinn state,
you know, Zinn, the nicotine pouch.
Oh, that all the young people are into.
I was like, Zinfandel, why?
No, not Zinfandel.
Not Zinfandel.
If they wanted to.
Oh, tobacco pouches.
Yeah.
Well, what about this?
I would like to give a shout out to another important crop of Kentucky, hemp.
Nice.
I'm good with hemp, bro.
Come on, man.
Let's just go.
Let's go for a wand.
Let's go for a hike, man.
And wear some hemp.
I don't know.
Like, is marijuana and hemp the same plant?
I think it's the same plant, but
this is a good question.
And I didn't do my research.
The defining difference between hemp and marijuana is their psychoactive component.
Oh, okay.
THC.
So hemp can be 0.3% or less.
Okay.
That comes from
MSU Today, Michigan State UniversityToday.com.
Yeah.
Don't smoke that beautiful hand-braided, Grateful Dead necklace someone traded with you for a little pinch of Zen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're not going to get the high.
Don't shove that scratchy poncho into your bomb.
It's not going to work.
Listen, hemp gets a bad rap.
I have been personally, I've personally experienced hemp pants that are soft as butter.
They wash great.
You could dye them.
They hold their color.
They don't bleed.
It's a natural, breathable fabric.
There is a wonderful place in Santa Barbara.
Yes.
Wait for it.
Yes, 100%.
Hippie, California.
There's lots of conservatives in Santa Barbara.
But there's a great place.
Wonderful hemp clothing.
Wonderful.
Wait, did you say that hemp gets a bad rap?
I think that you, because you said that, like, that scratchy poncho.
I'm saying, like, hemp is a bad brain.
Wait, did you say something about scratching, like turntable scratching, and you say hemp gets a bad rap?
Kick it.
Oh, no.
you're breathing poorly.
Are you okay?
Is that
boom, boom, boom, boom?
My name is John, and I'm here to say hemp gets a bad rap every day.
It makes good clothes, and it's low on THC.
Hemp is good for you and me.
That's my bad rap about hemp.
Yeah.
Yo, don't smoke your hemp.
It's a different.
Weed, even though it comes from the very same seed.
Whoa, that's actually pretty good.
Well, right off the dome.
You could dye it nice.
Its cloth is treatable.
I wrote mine like three days ago.
I've been working on it for a long time.
And you gotta know your pants are breathable.
Okay.
All right.
I don't like this.
You're freestyle.
You're killing me in this bad rap bag.
I'm so hard.
I've been workshopping mine at
Union Hall five nights the past week.
I'm gonna do you a huge favor.
I'm gonna give you a break.
And I'm gonna give the listeners a break to come up with some of their own hip-hop raps about hemp.
Yeah, if you wanna go to speakpipe.com eplervismato and give us your bad rap about hemp.
We are
soups into it.
Yeah, and I would, but I would just say, like,
try to explore all genres of bad rap, not just the classic college improv, my name is X, and I'm here to say version.
Because I think that we got that covered.
But if you got one for that, too, go ahead.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Well, let's take a break.
Everybody can work on their hip-hop and we'll be right back.
All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.
Let's learn everything.
So let's do a quick progress check.
Have we learned about quantum physics?
Yes, episode 59.
We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?
Yes, we have.
Same episode, actually.
Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?
Episode 64.
So how close are we to learning everything?
Bad news.
We still haven't learned everything yet.
Oh, we're ruined!
No, no, no, it's good news as well.
There is still a lot to learn.
Woo!
I'm Dr.
Ella Hubber.
I'm regular Tom Lum.
I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.
And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.
Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.
Welcome back to E Plurbis Motto.
I'm John Hodgman.
And I'm Janet Varney.
And I think let's talk about three other valuable exports from Kentucky, chosen from among many noteworthy others, some of which you named earlier in the episode.
We want to shout out Abraham Lincoln, Loretta Lynn,
and Jim Varney.
Jim Varney.
Jim Varney.
Of course, known as Slinky Dog in the Toy Story movies, but throughout,
but prior to that, as Ernest P.
Worrell.
Yes.
In the Ernest movies and countless local advertising.
You know, that started as that guy just made his own advertisements for local companies.
Yeah.
And then he basically syndicated himself to any local like HVAC company
or car dealership or anything in whatever area you were going to do it.
And on top of that, Jim Varney, incredibly talented actor.
Yes.
I mean, you can see him performing dramatic work online and he's really good.
Oh, yeah.
No, he's wonderful.
He's like classically trained.
We didn't have, we didn't know about
Ernest when I was living in Arizona as a kid, but my dad's one of my dad's best friends.
Even though he was your father.
Well, we'll get to that.
But we won't get to the fact that he's my father.
That's never going to happen.
He simply isn't.
He simply isn't.
But when I was younger, we would go to visit my dad's, one of my dad's best friends, Jim Janoviak, in Denver, Colorado, and he would have videotaped any earnest commercials, which means I guess he was just standing next to the television with his finger poised on
the record button, waiting for one to come on because he would collect them.
There would always be a handful waiting for us when we came to visit again the following year.
And it was like one of the first things we did.
We would get to Denver and we'd be like, ah, let's sit down on the couch and watch
a medley of
earnest commercials.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I think part part of it was the appeal of somehow, like knowing even then that his name was Jim Varney, because Varney is one of those names that is not like super uncommon, but it's also weirdly uncommon.
Like you just don't meet a lot of Varneys.
I always presumed it was a nickname for Varnish.
And I'm sure in some cases it is.
I'm sure in some cases it is.
But you're not related to Jim Varney as far as you can.
Not that I know of, not that I know of, but it was, but that's something that I continually still get asked.
I get asked that all the time, and I only made it worse on myself by going into show business for sure.
That's a burden I will happily bear because while I did not have the pleasure and honor of meeting or working with Jim, everyone I know who ever knew him says he was just a delight.
And when I was a senior in high school, finally, for some reason, I just decided to say yes when someone asked me if I was related to Jim Farney.
And the person who asked me was my friend Tina.
And
I was like, yeah, no, he is.
That's my, that's my dad's brother.
That's my uncle.
And she was like, and by the way, my dad was her senior English teacher.
So my dad was like a known commodity on campus.
Who was?
My dad's very funny.
But I was like, yeah, that's my dad's brother.
And she was like.
No, it's not.
And I was like, why did you ask me if you knew the answer was going to be no?
And the answer is not no, it's yes.
It's my dad's brother.
And so for many months, every once in a while, I would just drop a little like, oh, yeah, my uncle Jim came over and we had a great time, da-da-da.
And she was like, oh, stop.
He's not your uncle.
And then one day, in
this is not my nature at all.
I am definitely a person who likes starts to play a practical joke before I can even complete the first third of it.
I'm like, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm joking.
But I was like, why don't you come over to my house and I'll show you pictures?
Thinking to myself, how's this going to go?
We went back home.
I found
I was digging deep.
I dug in.
I found a photo album.
All your spaluncophobia had disappeared.
Oh, I was ready.
You wanted to get to the end of this mammoth cave system of your own lot.
When it's my own cave I've built with my own two hands, I'm totally fine down there.
I'm totally fine down there.
Okay.
I pulled out a photo album of my dad's and just like randomly flipped through until I found a photo that, I mean, at that point, I was like, the jig is up.
Like, this is over.
But sort of half-heartedly, I pointed to like a slightly fuzzy picture of like my dad and two other guys, like in the 60s, and was like, see?
The next thing to come out of her mouth was,
oh my God, it is him.
Like, she totally bought it.
And the second she said that, I was like, oh, God, I didn't think that you would.
No, no, no, it's not him.
It's not him.
And then regular Janet came back.
The demon that was inhabiting me went away.
And I immediately felt like, oh, no, I didn't.
I didn't think this would work.
No, no, no.
Oh,
no.
That's the thing.
That's, you know,
that's the thing about lying.
When people want to believe, they will be lied to.
Yeah.
And then I was like, hey, I also
lost my wallet, but if you can,
I'll write you a check.
That's right.
If you can give me cash.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's the famous con where he's like, oh, I found this briefcase full of money.
Will you hold it for me?
I don't remember what it's how it works.
Yeah, I think it's like, if you'll write me, if you'll write me a check for half of what's in this briefcase, you can keep the, I don't know.
I don't know.
I'd be like I said, terrible con artist.
I'd be a terrible terrible con artist.
Loretta Lynn, born 1935, died 2022, born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, an amazing name.
Of course, her song, The Coal Miner's Daughter, which was the number one hit, became them for her best-selling autobiography, film of the same name.
But also, like, she was just, I like the controversy that surrounds the sort of feminist, although, in fairness to her, she would not want.
to be called that.
A lot of songs that are like, yeah, I said it.
You know what I mean?
Like, there was just a lot of that in her music.
Including the song, Yeah, I said it.
I almost can guarantee you there's a song, if unpublished, called, Yeah, I said it.
1966, Dear Uncle Sam, one of the first songs to address the human cost of the Vietnam War.
1975, she got a very famous song called The Pill, written about a woman who's liberated by her ability to control her reproductive rights.
And like I said, I can't say I agree with every opinion that Loretta expressed, particularly towards the end of her life, but she's a really important voice in standing up for the everyday woman.
She really empowered a lot of like blue-collar women and beyond to kind of take matters, you know, take their lives back into their own hands.
And when you say that she probably wouldn't describe herself as a feminist, first of all, I have no choice but to believe you.
Yeah.
Well, she said, I don't, she doesn't, she's one of, you know, she's a product of her time and environment.
And she, for her, that was kind of a bad word, you know.
No, but country music used to be,
while it might not have described itself as sort of activist or protest music or feminist or political, it used to be a lot more pointed in its social critique and its connection to working class white rural America in a way that it is now just kind of spinning a grody fantasy about trucks.
But that's just my, I'm sure, I'm sure there's a lot of great country music out there.
Obviously, I'm not talking about talking about mainstream country music.
Yeah.
Well,
a lot of it is like very pop, a lot of people who are kind of die-hard OG country fans say that
a lot of country has gotten very glitzy and pop-ish and crossover and sort of empty in some kind of of way.
But there is some really great music out there.
Of course.
I dig Loretta.
I feel like we could use more, you know, it's like Dolly Parton.
It's like we could use more people who are like, hey,
can't we all get along?
Like we all have fundamental things that we
have a challenging song to bring out in contemporary country.
Can't we all just get along?
But I feel that that's why Dolly Parton is
a national treasure.
Hey, you said something earlier that gave me a really good idea.
Remember how we were talking about cheerleading, competitive cheerleading, competitive high school cheerleading?
Yeah, Unbridled Spirit.
Yeah, We've Got Spirit by Jamie McElroy in relation to the McElroy brothers, right?
But there was a movie, not based on his book, called Bring It On,
which was all about high school competitive cheerleading.
Yes.
Do you think that there could be a hip movie about competitive high school-level Irish dancing called The Jig is Up?
Because you said the jiggers up earlier.
Well, I just keep thinking about it.
Don't try to cover up the cricket effects that I'm going to ask Julian to put in.
It's okay.
I got a whole cage full of crickets right here.
Great.
I keep around to keep me honest.
Handy.
You mentioned Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, also born in Kentucky.
He was from Hardin County.
I did not know that.
Yeah, Hardin County.
How about that?
Kentucky, which, by the way, used to be part of Virginia.
But he's claimed by Illinois.
He's very much claimed by Illinois, but
that's the tug of war that you want to also.
Folks moved around.
You know what?
Kentucky was just a passing-through place.
No one stayed there for long.
No communities.
And if you wanted, you could stop on the way and get a Caesar salad from the chilies to go.
Caesar, make sure you pick up that Caesar salad, rat Vern.
Get that salad for you.
Do you know what I mean, Vern?
Yeah.
Hodgman, who is the Ernest and who is the Vern in our relationship?
Well, I think it alternates, you know, because we take turns presenting the material to each other, to one another.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, like, you know, typically right now, you're the you're the earnest.
Yeah.
You're telling me all about it.
Yeah.
And I'm the, and I'm the point of view character who's sort of nodding along
as you try to climb into my window or whatever.
Or sneak onto my porch or whatever Ernest is up to and all those things.
Yeah.
they haven't tried to reboot.
They're rebooting, what you're going to call it, the naked gun.
But they haven't tried to, and I'm sure out of respect for the dead, I hope, they haven't tried to reboot Ernest.
I mean, that's like his IP, maybe.
Maybe he actually was able to kind of keep hold of it because it was his invention.
Yeah, I mean, he's
inevitable that the Beverly Hillbillies are going to come back.
You know what I mean?
He definitely
was a part of that reboot.
And
sooner or later, there's going to be another Beverly Hill Billies.
Sooner or later.
I don't see if he had any children of his own.
No, I don't think he did.
I don't think he did.
I think he was married twice and he never had kids.
Varney was an accomplished mountain dulcimer player.
I know.
And played that instrument on the last episode of Chevy Chase's ill-fated talk show, The Chevy Chase Show.
Yeah.
But guess what?
The state official state musical instrument is Appalachian Dulcimer.
Oh,
gorgeous.
I know.
Is that a fretted fretted string instrument in the zither family?
It sure is.
Okay, I got you.
I could use a, you know what?
I could use a pola zither.
Let me just tuck that under my lip here, and it's going to wean me off tobacco eventually.
No, that's called Zinn.
God damn it.
All right.
Well, I'll tell you this.
Whether it's Zin or Zither, we got to move on.
Know what I mean, Hodge?
I do.
No, he doesn't talk.
Shut up.
Oh, sorry.
We'll just have the camera nod.
The camera is nodding.
The camera is nodding.
All right.
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is,
I don't know how to say this without sounding creepy.
It's touching a lot of states around it.
I'm not saying it's handsy necessarily, although a past Kentucky slogan was, it's that friendly.
So you can draw your own conclusions.
Get your paws off me, Kentucky.
To its north, you will find Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio with the Ohio River forming that northern border.
West Virginia is on the northeast side with Virginia to the east, Tennessee underneath it, and Missouri west of it, right across there from the mighty Mississipp.
Yeah.
If you'll join me in looking at the
map right now, look at the map.
Look at the furthest kind of southwestern,
I'm going to call it a blorp.
Look at the furthest southwestern blorp of the state, just right down there on the corner.
You are looking at, that is what's known as the Kentucky Bend.
And I know you like to see little exclaves.
You like to see the little anomalies of states.
So I went ahead and looked this up.
This little blorp is formed by the Mississippi River doing what is called an oxbow meander, which is also, I would hope and assume, a wonderful square dance of some kind.
It's a little exclave surrounded by Tennessee and Missouri.
One of its nicknames is Bubble Land because it kind of looks like a little bubble.
And from Wikipedia, as of the 2020 census, the population of Kentucky Bend was nine people.
Nine people.
That's a big chunk of land for only
nine people.
The mailing address is that.
That's really something because I've always, you know, so I'm looking now at Kentucky.
Yeah.
You see that blorp.
And I've always seen that little blorp and just presumed that it was connected.
You know, like that it was just a little tendril, a little vestigial tail.
But it is actually a completely self-contained exclave, as you say,
of Kentucky in this little oxbow meander.
Wow.
Isn't that cool?
This little island of Kentucky.
There it is.
And Tennessee State Route 22 just ends right at the border.
Yeah,
if you want to write someone there, the mailing address of the area is Tiptonville, Tennessee.
And then New Madrid, Missouri is directly across the river to the north.
But it lacks the connection to the bend by road or ferry.
So I'd love to know if anybody,
this seems like,
this seems like the most unlikely shout out to receive reply of all time on this podcast.
But I want you to reach out, please.
I'm begging you.
If you live in Kentucky Bend and are one of nine to let's say 15 people, we'll give it room for a handful more people to come.
Let us know if you're enjoying your blorp.
Do you love Bubble Land?
If you are, and there are more than nine of you especially, because we definitely need to get that census corrected, that was back in 2020.
Let us know at email pluribusmato at maximumfund.org.
Huh.
Its population in 2020 was nine.
Yeah.
In 2010, it was 18.
Uh-oh.
In 2000, it was 21.
And then I guess that was the first census they had done since 1890.
In 1880, it topped out at 332.
People are leaving.
People are leaving the bumps.
Kentucky Bend.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What a strange thing.
But while we're looking at the shape, while we are looking at that blorp, let's zoom out.
Let's talk about the entire shape of Kentucky for me.
The whole thing.
I'm going to say this came was maybe the most easily of any interpretation that we've made so far.
If you'll go ahead and take a look on the next page, you will see I have paired two images, one atop the other.
I see the full, I see Jabba in his full slimy, slug-shaped glory.
You're right.
There's even room for his like arm and elbow that you see in this very particular image.
I'm sure we'll jog off to the east.
It looks like where he rests his elbow on that tank full of frogs that he snacks on.
Exactly.
Exactly.
That's funny.
I mean, he's got a little more, there's a little more ridge stuff happening up top than the Kentucky bend looks like either the tip of his tail, or now that I know that it's separate, maybe a little jabba poop.
Maybe a little jabba poop.
Maybe a little poop he left behind.
Yeah.
So that's what I see.
I don't see, I can't see anything else.
I know.
I'm so sorry.
I'm going to have to go
and pour
white vinegar in my eyes.
Get this out of there.
There he is.
Yeah, looks like Jabba to me.
Yeah.
So congratulations, Kentucky, for having that.
So that jiggly line at the top obviously is the Ohio River, because that looks like a river to me.
Exactly right.
Whereas the straighter lines at the bottom, that southern
border with Tennessee is one of those arbitrary lines that someone threw.
Totally.
Just like separating America from its 51st state, Canada.
We'll get her back.
Yeah, one of these days.
Ugh.
Okay.
All right.
So let's touch on Kentucky's flag and state seal.
And I just got to say, I am still so in love.
Well, it's just that touchy.
It's just that touchy.
It's just that touchy.
I am still so in love with Minnesota's state flag and seal.
It's just, it would take something very special very special indeed to get me to emotionally move on from them and friends this ain't it okay
the flag is like i got tricked it's like a blue flag with the state seal on it boring
the current state seal is also my opinion pretty dumb just it's a blue circle got commonwealth of kentucky on the top got golden rod the official state flower on the bottom and then united we stand with divided we fall and then there's just two guys one in like a Davy Crockett, like buckskin, and one in like a, you know, whatever, tail,
tailcoat,
standing together at the time.
Okay, so but last week, at last we two white guys can get along.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
They've clasped hands and they're touching each other on the shoulder and being like, brother,
country feller,
even though I am a city feller, I will not kill you.
Yes.
Well, city feller, even though I'm a country feller, I will also take your hand.
That's right.
And we will join together in killing each other with all other people who look different from us.
Correct.
But here's what's interesting.
Okay.
The Kentucky General Assembly passed an act way back in the 1700s establishing the design for the state seal, but they really used that general and general assembly because, as we all know from this podcast, in other state seals and flags that we've covered, dudes get real specific, ne anal, about every iota of describing the design so that, you know, you're ensured that it always is like two clicks to the right for the blah, blah, blah.
And it has to be, you know, union blue of blah, blah, blah.
But in this case, all we know from that original legislation is that the seal is, and I quote, to be engraved with two friends embracing with the name of the state over their heads around and about the following motto, united, we stand, we divided, we fall.
So this design has indeed been interpreted differently through the years.
You got the guy
in a fancy coat.
You got two guys in fancy coats and no guy.
Two guys shaking hands in a weird way that make them look like they were doing a, quote, Irish jig.
Guess what?
That's right.
It's back.
The jig is up.
It was up and now it's back.
The jig is back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But always guys, right?
I don't need to worry about anything.
Any other person here, right?
Always guys.
Until this moment, yes, but this is what I'm saying.
Listen up, Kentucky.
You guys can change the seal to be whatever two friends you want, embracing however you want.
Two women snuggling fiercely wearing tuxedos.
A guy in vegan leather chaps fist bumping a gal wearing a park ranger uniform.
A goat hugging a college student.
Like, get creative with it.
You know what I mean?
So if you live in Kentucky and you want to write us with a suggestion, or, and I strongly encourage this, hand-drawn design, for Kentucky's new state seal, send it to us at email pluribusmotto at maximumfund.org.
If we get even two to three to to five of those and you want to just describe it to me, I will draw them.
If you don't feel you have it in you, because everyone knows I like to draw a state seal after we did our first fundraiser for ePleuribus Motto, I'm excited about this.
I think it's exciting, and I want Kentucky to stand up and create a new seal.
I love this idea.
I mean, first of all, a goat hugging a college student.
What would be more Kentucky after all?
They have colleges.
They do raise coats.
They have goats.
They have goats.
Well, they're the fifth largest producer of goats in the United States.
Yeah.
And they have college students too, because I know in Lexington, Kentucky, they have Transylvania University.
That's among others.
How dare you bury that little factoid?
That's wonderful.
That was the site of the Transylvania book heist.
They stole some rare books from the library and was made into a movie called American Animals, but that's another story.
Oh, yeah, American Animals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so
let's give people some time.
But I mean, look, yes, this is an incredible.
If I were in charge of Kentucky tourism,
absolutely,
I would be curating artists or, you know, inviting artists to.
Absolutely.
If we were in charge of Kentucky tourism, we would be doing just this.
Kentuckian artists should be doing murals and portraits and paintings and photographs of people from Kentucky being friends with one another.
Yeah.
Maybe even some historical Kentucky figures.
And it's probably very likely that you and I will become
consultants to the Kentucky State Tourism Board because,
you know,
everyone's looking for some DEI consultation from two coastal elites.
Some of us weren't born on the coast.
That said, as red a state as Kentucky is, it has a Democratic governor, Andy Bashir,
and these cities, like most cities, have, you know, real enclaves of
bubble town, town
bubble world type progressive enclaves in them yeah and thank you by the way progressive leftist liberal uh even even centrist democratic voters for sticking it out there in kentucky your day will come yeah well Listen, everybody, why don't you all marinate on that idea, nay, order that you received from us to come up with some alternate seals of Kentucky with two different friends?
And when we come back, we will discuss some other official state symbols, or I should say, Commonwealth symbols of Kentucky, and we'll hear from you about the Bluegrass State.
Welcome back to e-Floribus Motto.
I'm Janet Varney, no relation.
And I'm John Varney, no relation, because my name is actually John Hodgman.
Janet, you know me.
Yeah.
I don't care about anything anymore.
Everything is terrible.
Is it possible that Kentucky might have some official Commonwealthian symbols that I might care about?
That's not a good sound.
That's not a good sound to start with.
It sounds like something you would hear
deep in the longest cave system in the United States.
Here's the thing.
I'm not losing my mind about most of the state, the official state or Commonwealth symbols of Kentucky, but
I do appreciate the state butterfly, the Viceroy butterfly,
which I'm sure is named this because it looks a whole lot like a monarch butterfly.
Like, I don't know much about butterflies.
If I saw a viceroy butterfly, I'd be like, hey, look, a monarch butterfly.
And the reason that the viceroy butterfly looks like the monarch is that it is doing this, it's this adaptation where it's mimicking the appearance of a monarch butterfly, hoping to capitalize on the fact that birds and other predators don't eat monarch butterflies because they taste terrible.
Oh, I thought it was because of their royal lineage.
No, we love to eat the rich.
We love to eat the rich.
Do monarch butterflies taste bad?
Apparently, they taste very bad.
Oh.
Well, now we know.
That's that off my bucket list then.
I always wanted to eat a whole bowlful.
Looks over at bucket full of dead butterflies.
What am I going to do with those?
A viceroy, of course.
I mean, I should have known this, but I was like, well, wait a minute.
What is a viceroy?
And indeed, it's exactly as it sounds.
Roy, coming from the French roi, meaning king, which probably comes in the Latin something or other.
Yeah.
And vice as in vice president.
So it's a ruler exercising authority on behalf of a sovereign or a monarch or a king.
This butterfly is exercising the order of a different, better butterfly, not to eat it.
Right.
As viceroy, it also casts the tie-breaking vote in the butterfly senate.
Of course it does.
Of course it does.
I don't know why I didn't bring that up right away.
So with that in mind, if we were talking about a different state, I would say that it approached that a state game animal, we've discussed those in the past, a state game animal could use that same adaptation to avoid being hunted and eaten.
Like I could suggest like that a white-tailed deer, for example, could masquerade as something that I would think tastes terrible, like an eastern gray squirrel.
Except that in this case, the wild game animal is the eastern gray squirrel.
Wait a minute.
Have you ever had any squirrel?
No, I said I can only imagine that it tastes terrible.
I'll be honest with you.
I've never eaten any squirrel either.
Obviously, lots of people eat squirrel all the time.
It's hunted, it is eaten, I'm sure to this day.
I remember one of my favorite books is an old cookbook called Mary Land's Louisiana Cookery.
Mary Land's Louisiana Cookery?
Well,
my favorite thing in it is that, well, I have two favorite things.
One, it has a recipe in their sort of game section.
There's a recipe for squirrel head pot pie.
And then there's also a recipe for owls.
No!
No.
And you know what the recipe basically is?
Pluck and scald the owl, then cook as you would blackbirds.
Sure.
Say no more.
See blackbirds, page 50.
Right, exactly.
Okay, here's the thing.
And
I'm not a person who's going to say I'm not going to why someone's why, because some people really hate that expression.
So I felt like those were both curse words for a second, yuck and yum.
But
I don't mean to judge.
My experience of understanding cooking and eating squirrel, honestly, comes mostly from watching the program alone.
And what I have witnessed people say is that you just don't get very much meat for that tiny squirrel.
And so it just seems like you have to kill so many squirrels.
And I understand subsisting,
feeding your family.
I do.
I really do.
I'm not, I am a very big hypocrite because I am not a vegan and
I have the cute, it's a cute thing for me.
And that's not cool.
It's not cool to be like, I don't think fish are cute, therefore I will eat them.
I think squirrels are cute.
Therefore, I will not eat them.
So I don't have a leg to stand on here, but I just see.
And so, and one of the reasons that I actually enjoy watching Alone is that inevitably there's always someone every season who kills a squirrel and just sobs, sobs over having to kill the squirrel, and then just eat its tiny little meager, pick its little meager bones.
And then like underneath, there's like a Chiron that pops up that's like, the squirrel accounted for 30 calories.
It's like the smallest amount of nourishment.
It just like drills it even more home.
You're like, oh no, that poor little guy, like 30 calories.
Well, that's why you don't usually just eat one squirrel at a time.
You're not making it any better for me.
Squirrel was, I'll say this, squirrel was one of the traditional ingredients along with other game food like venison or
even possum and raccoon in a very traditional western Kentucky stew called burgoo.
Okay.
I've heard of burguo.
B-U-R-G-O-O.
Yeah.
Nowadays, you don't really get it with a lot of squirrel in it.
But Owensboro is one of, I believe, up to three self-proclaimed burgoo capitals of the world.
One of the other ones is in Illinois, but Owensboro is also
very well known for a very specific style of barbecue that is barbecued mutton, smoked mutton, sheep.
That is,
I don't know why they're doing the sheep when they've got
the fifth largest population of goats in the United States, but
there it is.
There it is.
Yeah, anything like a, you know, first of all, we all know I love raccoons.
I love them very much, but also they just eat trash.
So
if it's sort of like the thing you're eating is the thing that ate the thing, that's just a lot of
gross stuff.
A couple of tin cans in there, probably.
I assume that raccoon stomachs are like shark stomachs, and you can have a license plate in there.
When you talk about stomachs, did you know that tripe sandwich is a favored sandwich in the Italian market of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?
I mean, no, but why are we talking about Philly?
What does that have to do with the price of squirrel heads in Frankfurt?
Well, let me tell you.
Tripe sandwich was one of a number of sandwiches, which I'm not going to count, but a long list of regional sandwiches that were featured on a 2002 PBS documentary created by Rick Seaback of WQED.
Which documentary was called, and it doesn't get better than this, sandwiches that you will like, period.
Tell it to me clean, make it simple,
reel me in, you got me.
This included famous regional sandwiches like beef on weck from West Seneca, New York, the French dip at Philippe's in Los Angeles, California, the loose meat sandwich of Marshalltown, Iowa, the cheesesteak of Philadelphia, etc.
But
if you thought that loose meat was the grossest it was going to get in the list of sandwiches that you will like, may I offer you Kentucky's own hot brown.
The hot brown sandwich was invented in the aforementioned Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in or about 1926, created by Fred K.
Schmidt.
It is a riff on a Welsh rabbit.
It's open-faced, turkey breast, bacon, and then covered in a creamy, cheesy mornay sauce and baked or broiled.
The hot brown is not good.
Yeah, you know what?
I'd give the hot brown a try, honestly.
Yeah.
And just don't confuse it with the cold brown, which is not a joke.
You don't see it served very often, which is baked chicken or turkey plus hard-boiled egg, lettuce, tomato on open-faced rye bread, and then covered with Thousand Island dressing.
Actually, I'll give that a try too.
Yeah, would also eat that.
But speaking of things that I wouldn't eat,
in addition to squirrel, no offense, the state horse is the thoroughbred.
No surprise there.
And I also would not eat the state car, which is the Chevy Corvette.
It's manufactured in Bowling Green.
America Sports Car, the Chevrolet Corvette, has been manufactured in Bowling Green since 1981.
I didn't do any research.
This is just something I know.
Okay, great.
Bowling Green is also the home of the Corvette Museum of the World.
And here's something I did research.
I'm lying, of course.
I did look this up.
I didn't notice this.
I found this very interesting.
Corvettes, there are only 750,000 registered Corvette owners in the United States.
That's all makes and models
of all years.
And 47% of them have a college degree, higher than any other car owner.
Isn't that interesting?
Isn't that interesting?
Corvette is definitely a car.
I mean, look, Barbie had one.
It's definitely a car that I, as a small child playing the game MASH, which, of course, I also play on the JV Club, my other podcast.
Some of fun, that was like a car that if you did not give two shits about cars and knew nothing about them at all and were a girl child who was told not to care about cars, you would say you wanted a Corvette, a Porsche, and like a Lamborghini.
Yeah, you might want a Porsche or a Lamborghini, but
if you were
a college-educated person, you would want a Corvette, of course.
And we know that there are a lot of navigable waterways and that we said we were staying wet in Kentucky.
And I'll just let you, if you know the saying, put those two things together because clearly they are about waterways.
That is an expression about the Corvette.
And waterways being wet.
What?
You've never heard the vet get some wet?
Oh.
Goodbye.
Oh, no.
Goodbye.
Oh.
Moving on.
No.
No, I never did.
The jig is up.
The jig is up.
No, in New England, we never had that saying.
In New England, we said the Subaru
means I respect you.
Makes them go woo-woo.
Great.
Both great.
Okay, as you might imagine, the state music genre is bluegrass.
I was just imagining that.
Yeah, yeah, as you might imagine.
And there is some really exquisite bluegrass music out there.
This is not fair of me because I'm turning my attention right back to California, but because we love these people and because we know these people, I want to shout out Nickel Creek, has a big place in my heart, wonderful bluegrass band.
Thanks to Sarah Watkins, a past guest on the JV Club, her brother Sean, and the great Chris Tilley, which connects us back actually to Minnesota in a way because Chris did some hosting of the
program, A Prairie Home Companion.
Prairie Home Companion, until he said, I'm tired of Minnesota.
Let's move this show to New York City.
I was on the Prairie Home Companion with Chris Tilly.
It was one of the great nights of my life.
I would have been aware of that.
What an incredible virtuosic mandolin player, singer, songwriter, and nice person is Chris Tilley.
As Sarah Watkins and her brother Sean, Sean, also equally my heroes.
Yeah.
And Nickel Creek, an example of a navigable waterway.
There you go.
I would imagine if there is such a thing as Nickel Creek, I bet you can navigate it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's probably a Nickel Creek in Kentucky.
Speaking of songs, is there a state song?
There is a state song.
It's fairly well known, my old Kentucky home.
Lots of pretty versions of it out there.
I like one by John Prine.
Oh, the sun shines bright
on old Kentucky home.
Tis summer, the old folks are gay
with the corn tops ripe
and the meadows and the bloom,
while the birds make music all the day.
Weave
no more,
my lady,
oh, weave
no more
today?
We sing one song
for my old Kentucky home,
form
Kentucky home, far away.
I think it might be about life on a plantation.
So
it sounds like it might be.
And finally,
move over milk.
Are your hopes up?
Yes.
Let me ask you this.
I'm going to put this, I'm going to give this back to you.
If I said there was another official state beverage, what would you want it to be?
And what would you expect it to be, John Hodgman?
Well, I would want it to be bourbon whiskey.
Mm-hmm.
Because bourbon whiskey is maybe one of the most famous spirits in the world and is famously made in Kentucky.
Yeah.
In fact, I think for a long time it was almost like champagne.
Any bourbon whiskey, any bourbon-style corn sour mash whiskey not made in Kentucky could only be called sparkling wine.
There you go.
There you go.
But are you here to tell me that it is not bourbon whiskey?
It is not.
Not only is it not one of the most famous libations in the world,
I mean, it's an unbridled spirit.
It's an unbridled spirit.
Instead, there's a state soft drink, not a hard drink like hard liquor, but instead a soft drink.
I mean, it's something I've never heard of.
Otherwise known as one of the worst names, not just in soft drinks, but of all time.
I think that they had this at an okay barbecue place I went to with Jesse Thorne in Lexington, but I don't remember if I tried it.
Yeah.
Well, it's definitely a local,
you know, it's a local pride to Kentucky, or at least it is for whoever decided to make it the state soft drink.
It's sold to brick and mortar places, I think maybe exclusively in Kentucky.
But yeah, maker G.L.
Wainscott created this
ginger citrus drink,
sparkling drink, and sponsored a naming contest for the drink in 1926.
And a late one, like A-L-A-T-E-O-N-E, was chosen as the winning entry.
A late one.
A late one because it was the latest thing in soft drinks.
That's what they liked about it.
And then they took that thing that I don't like
and then they turned it into L81.
Yeah, they turned it into kind of like a little bit of a Rebus puzzle.
I just,
it's not doing it for me.
I'm looking at a Portsmouth Daily Times article from Sunday, July 31st, 1994 in Kentucky.
Great.
Dateline, Winchester, Kentucky, at the Dixie Grill in Washington, the two District of Columbia cops who walk the local beat stop in almost nightly.
Their drink of choice, L81.
You can't get through saying that name without stumbling.
That's its beauty.
Part of the reason is, said Mike Curtin, general manager of the trendy restaurant, I told them how much caffeine is in it.
So it's like Jolt or like Mountain Dew?
I think it's got a reputation for being caffeinated, even though it says here it technically has less caffeine than Pepsi Coke or Mountain Dew.
But I think based on this article that I'm looking at, just scanning right now, it had a rep for being caffeinated.
It's what you would drink after you had been out drinking the night before, that is, say, bourbon whiskey or something.
Like you had a late one.
So that makes sense.
That's a revival.
That makes sense.
Like, if that's how it ended up, if that's colloquially or even like on purposely how it ended up getting marketed, I can accept that in a way that I can't not, I can't accept a late one, like it's the latest in thought soft drinks.
I don't know about that.
No.
But you know, most soft drinks in the early 20th century were sold in drugstores as patent medicines, as sort of
pain relievers or, you know, a little bit of coca-tonic in your Coca-Cola as a soothing tonic.
Maybe this comes from that same thing.
If you know more of the history of the late one, you know where to reach us.
Email Pleuribus Moto at maximumfund.org or speak into a pipe at speakpipe.com slash e pluribusmato.
And speaking of doing just that, we have something to share from one of our listeners who is in Kentucky.
Yes, that's right.
Our listener, Alex M.
hails from Kentucky.
He's also a Max Fun listener who boosted his membership during the Max Fun Drive to support EPLIBUS Matt.
Thank you, Alex.
Thank you, Alex.
Alex writes: I know it sounds like a joke,
but there is a state park in northern Kentucky called Big Bone Lick State Park.
Big Bone Lick State Park.
Alex, we love you.
This is why we do this.
And I'm looking at a photograph, I guess Alex sent in, of the sign announcing you are now entering Big Bone Lick.
And indeed, there are two big woolly mammoths there.
Yeah.
So there must have been a bunch of mammoth activity.
Look, I'm not saying that mammoths lived there, but they were definitely passing through.
And it says here, it's also, Big Bone Lick is the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology.
How about that?
How
about
that?
Big Bone Lick.
Big Bone Lick.
We have some wonderful pictures of Alex and his family.
They got a lot of comfort and enjoyment from going to that park during the pandemic.
Very, very cute family.
If you go to the Kentucky State Parks website and go to Big Bone Lick, it even gives you
a list of top five things to do.
Number one, visit the bison herd.
Number two, tour the museum and diorama pit.
Number three, discover salt springs along the Big Bone Creek Trail.
Number four,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Why don't I have a diorama pit in my home?
I never thought, I've seen plenty of dioramas at museums of natural history or whatever, but I never thought you just put them all in one pit.
Yeah.
It's like in the 70s when you dug into your living room and put your couch like underground somehow, like in a cave system.
And did you say that you can hike a trail along the babbling waters of Big Bone Creek to boot?
That's right.
In fact, there are salt springs along the Big Bone Creek Trail.
Maybe that's why it's a pleasure to lick.
I don't know.
Hang on, Isaiah.
There's got to be a reason.
What is a lick?
I mean, a salt lick.
A lick,
a lick.
But geographically.
Do you know what I mean?
I do, but I thought maybe that meant like there's a, I don't know.
Yeah.
You're right.
It's a salt lick.
Okay.
It's a place, it's a it's a either a
mineral lick or a salt lick, a place where animals gather to lick essential mineral nutrients.
I knew it.
It also can be a small watercourse or ephemeral stream.
That's beautiful.
And by ephemeral, I don't know whether that's navigable or not.
Well, I'm, I, listen, it doesn't have to be because there are so many navigable waterways there that.
I know from reading the book of lists and the people's almanac and other other uh trivia books from way back that there are a lot of licks in kentucky including uh a a pop lick creek which gives name to a very famous uh cryptid in kentucky the popelick monster aka the goat man thank heavens we referred back to the goat man i think we've talked about the goat man before uh we should shout him out in this episode of kentucky what's up goat man hey goat man what's going on there are a lot of goat men.
There are a lot of goat men in the world of cryptids.
Yeah.
But there's only one Poplick monster.
Part man, part goat, and part sheep.
Yes.
Reported to live beneath a railroad trestle over Poplick Creek.
Oh, great.
In the Fisherville neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky.
I'm saying Louisville.
But you can also say Louisville or Louisville.
Yeah.
And it was the subject of a 1988 film by Louisville filmmaker Schild Connect.
Oh, okay.
Called The Legend of the Popelick Monster.
Get him, Ron.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
Wonderful.
Alex, thank you so much for sending in those beautiful pictures.
And in different seasons, might I add, there's a picture with the herd of bison, the famous herd of bison, that you can, that is your top, that's number one recommendation on top five things to do.
Rounding out that list, by the way, for those of you who are completists, is camp overnight and pick up a t-shirt.
But no credit to you, Alex, for sending in a photo of you with the Pope Lick monster because you didn't send one in.
Well, it's he, you know, this guy's evasive.
Yes, he lives in the neighborhood of what sounds like an average neighborhood.
So you were saying Alex was evasive.
You know, Alex does.
Alex is evasive about his pictures of himself with a goat with a goat man.
Thank you, Alex, for all the photos you sent in and letting us know about Big Bone Lake State Park.
And thanks for supporting EPRBS Motor and all of Maximum Fun.
That was a delightful treat that I realized as I was looking up past emails.
I said, wait a minute, that's the same Alex who boosted and supported.
So we wanted to shout you out on that.
Those two things were not connected.
It's not like Alex wrote in and said, hey, you guys owe me big.
Hey, hey, don't make me sick the goat man on you.
Here's my state motto: quid pro quo.
That's right.
Oh, you just reminded me we have to rank those state mottos.
We got to rate them.
We got two of them to rate.
We got two to rate.
Let's do a scale of one to ten Appalachian dulcimers.
That official state musical instrument.
Okay.
English motto: United We Stand, Divided We Fall.
Taking into context or taking out of context may have a great deal to do with how many dulcimers it gets.
Where are you falling?
Divided, I suppose.
That's where I'm falling.
Because I'm of two minds of it.
I mean,
it's hard to escape the irony of the motto, but I do appreciate that the seal specifies it's only a meeting of two friends.
Yeah.
Which is a really nice sentiment in the abstract.
Much like a lot of American history, it's a nice sentiment in the abstract.
Yes, I agree.
To absorb.
I agree.
So I'm going to give it, but it's also a bit of a cliche.
So
out of context, no irony, I'm going to give it a 7.5 Appalachian dulcimers.
Great.
In context, 2.
Yeah.
I don't disagree with any of that.
I will agree wholeheartedly with both of those numbers.
Yeah.
Deo gratium habiemus.
Habiemus.
Let us be grateful to God.
Well, first of all, that violates one of the most important
abstract concepts that's nice to contemplate from time to time here in the United States, which is separation of church and state.
Yeah.
So it's a loser on that term.
And yet I enjoy gratitude.
I do enjoy the concept of gratitude in general, being thankful for what you got.
Hopefully that means you become more generous and share a little bit of it around.
Why not just say be grateful for what you got?
Agree.
Not be grateful for thank you, God.
Be grateful for what you got.
I don't know.
It's got, that's a one.
That's a one for me.
Okay.
I'm going to give it a
four.
I agree that there's some problems there, but
the four comes from, yeah, look around and appreciate and don't feel like you deserve it, be grateful for it.
Rather than being like, yeah, Manifest Destiny, this belongs to me.
Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme.
But don't you think this is going to be expecting, hey, thanks God for giving us this hallway land that no one technically lived in and we killed the ones who did?
Well, that's why it's a four at best and a one at worst.
Oh, I think we did such a good job with those dulcimers.
And that does it for this episode of EPluribus Motto.
This show was hosted by John Hodgman, along with me, Janet Barney.
The show is produced and edited by Julian Burrell.
Senior producer at Maximum Fun is Laura Swisher.
Our theme music was composed by Zach Burba.
Our show art was created by Paul G.
Hammond.
Did we miss anything from Kentucky that we should know about?
I'm sure we did.
You can tell us all about it at emailpluribusmotto at maximumfun.org.
Keep those written messages brief and your voice notes to under a minute, and you've got a better chance of us putting them them on the show.
If you want to leave a voice note, of course, go to speakpipe.com slash epluribusmato.
If you want to email us, it's emailpluribusmoto at maximumbun.org.
You can also find us on TikTok and on Instagram, where you can tell us more about the states and commonwealths we've talked about so far in the comments.
And so for next week, John Hodgman,
what will you be presenting on, my friend?
I'm very excited to find out.
I am also very excited and very excited to have a chance to present this wonderful land of enchantment to you and all, a place that I've visited a few times and really, really love.
And it's honestly, it's got a state flag that's even more beautiful than Minnesota's.
We're talking about New Mexico.
Yes, beautiful, beloved neighbor to my home state of Arizona.
I do love that flag so very much.
I can't wait to talk about it and the state.
But until then, remember our motto, keep your notes and voice video short because we go on forever.
My motto for this week is: diamond in the back, sunrooftop, dig in the seam with a gangsta lean.
Woo, woo, woo, be thankful for what you've got.
You know, the song that's the state song of Kentucky from now on.
I love it.
If you can work in a reference to hemp, we'll have killed two birds with one stone.
That was written, sung, and composed by William Devon, by the way.
Wonderful.
Thanks, everybody.
Talk to you next week.
All right, bye.
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