Episode 13: Wisconsin - “Forward”

Hey Janet!

Hi John!

It's Drea Clark, Minnesota girl with enough love in her heart to take on the position of unofficial ambassador to Wisconsin.

Alright, you're driving down I-90 and you're wondering which of the many big beer or cheese or fireworks signs should lure you over, but instead you're gonna hold off.

You're gonna exit Wisconsin 13, which will take you to your dream vacation in the Wisconsin Dells.

The water park capital of the world.

It's the highest concentration of indoor and outdoor water parks globally.

What?

You don't care about water parks?

I don't get that.

Get a boat.

Go captain something scooted around Lake Dalton.

It's right there.

You put a team together.

You can hit up Wizard Quest, play interactive games in a 30,000 square foot fantasy-themed labyrinth.

Take a horse-drawn wagon tour through the Lost Canyon.

Take an afterdark boat ride where they're going to pump you full of ghost stories and then drop you off in Coldwater Canyon.

Hit up a deer park.

The deer are gonna literally come and eat out of your hands.

I know you want that.

Sneaky Peaks Wild West dinner show.

Is it as cheesy as it sounds?

It sure is.

It's worth it.

We're making memories here.

Hike one of the gorgeous multiple-steak parks nearby.

Swing by the Root Beer Museum.

Yes, I said Root Beer Museum.

The Dells has everything, and it's gorgeous and packed with wonderful people.

So save up and enjoy and you'll thank me.

Hello, my name is John Hodgman and I'm Janet Varney.

Welcome to ePluribus Motto, the show that celebrates all of the official U.S.

mottos, animals, beverages of every state, district, and commonwealth in the Union.

Even if that beverage is milk.

Yes, for those who remember, I did some digging around and I learned that a full 20 of the 33 states that bothered to have a state beverage.

No.

No.

They ate.

Yes.

20 out of 33 chose milk.

You know what?

I shouldn't be surprised.

And yet I am every time.

And by surprised, I mean disappointed.

Big Dairy is a very powerful lobby.

It is.

It is.

20 of 33.

And those include these folks who are in the pockets of Big Cow, Arkansas, Delaware.

Season 2 spoiler alert, the Commonwealth of Kentucky,

Louisiana, Season two nostalgia alert, Maryland, which we already did,

Minnesota, which we also already did, Mississippi, Nebraska, NCNDNY, that's North Carolina, North Dakota, and North York,

Oklahoma, Oregon, spoiler again, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, good old Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and today's state Wisconsin.

But Wisconsin is very special, Janet, because it's a very special kind of milk they have in Wisconsin.

You know what kind of milk they got?

Goat milk.

Sheep's milk.

Badger milk, of course.

Oh, they milk the badgers.

That's true.

That's right.

No, it's not true.

It's regular old cow's milk.

But Wisconsin is the Badger State, the old BS.

And also America's Dairyland.

Yeah,

I'm not going to fall.

I'm just going to say it right now.

I accept that milk milk is the state beverage of Wisconsin, maybe more than I've ever accepted it before.

It makes sense.

It's America's Dairyland.

That is one of its many or two nicknames for that state.

And America's Dairyland being those.

They might have other nicknames, of course, but you'll let us know at email pluribusmoto at maximumfun.org.

But today we are in Wisconsin.

Yes, we have danced across the slithery spine of Pepi, the lake Pepin lake monster, a cryptid that is shared between Minnesota and Wisconsin, as is the border between those two states, which border is mostly the Mississippi River, of which Pepin Lake is a part.

Okay.

We're traversing the lake from Lake City, Minnesota, which of course is the birthplace of water skiing, to Pepin Village, Wisconsin, birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, to talk about Wisconsin.

Now, Janet, what do you think of

or remember, if you've ever been when you think of or remember Wisconsin?

Okay, I have a couple of things, but before I do that, I just want to give a soft pitch to everyone.

Now,

this is sort of predicated on you having a basic familiarity with the television show that has been iterated, I think maybe three times at this point, if not two.

The show The Bridge,

I believe it started in, I think it maybe was like Norway and Sweden or a couple of scandy countries.

The conceit of this crime drama thriller is that a person has been killed.

Their body is placed on a bridge, and

it's a half and half, so that these two countries have to work together to try to solve this jurisdictional nightmare.

And it did so well in the scandy countries that it was then adapted for US television.

And

for that one, I believe it was Texas and Mexico.

So United States and Mexico, a person's body is on the bridge.

So these two countries have to work side by side.

Now, and I don't want anything bad to happen to Pepe,

but.

No, I want nothing bad to happen to Pepe as well.

I want Pepe to be found and studied.

I'm just saying I'd love to see the tension between

Wisconsin and Minnesota if Pepe's body was placed half on one side and half on the other of their shared border to work together to find out who did this.

Yes, that sounds like a great show.

Sold in the room.

Okay, good.

Okay, good.

Your soft pitch has been received and sold in the room.

Oh, thank you.

I have a few other ideas.

You're always supposed to have a few more ideas.

No, that's great.

We don't have to do it.

But okay, great.

We don't have to do them.

That's great.

I sold it in the room.

Okay.

Although you already acknowledge that this is basically a plagiarism of an existing television property called the Bridge, but.

Yeah, but with monsters.

IP sells.

Yeah, that changes.

As soon as I brought in a monster, it was a totally different IP.

Okay, what I think of when I think of Wisconsin, I have only been to Wisconsin, to my memory, one time.

I thought I was going to be doing a convention in Madison, Wisconsin, a place, like many other places we've discussed on this podcast, that I've always wanted to go, yet I was too lazy to go on my own and was waiting for an invitation to arrive.

And I felt that that invitation had come when I was told I'd be flown into Madison, Wisconsin.

What I did not realize, because

I think I just was dealing with whatever was right in front of me.

And it was, and as soon as the time came for me to get on that plane, I think it was on the plane to Wisconsin that I looked at my itinerary for the convention I was scheduled to do and realized that I was not going to be in Madison at all.

In fact, I was flying into Madison, but was going to be driven to the Dells.

The Wisconsin Dells.

Yes, which was a very different experience than I imagine the wonderful time I would have had in Madison would have been.

It was, I was at an indoor water park.

I was going to say.

In the middle of winter.

If you're in the Wisconsin Dells, you're probably in an indoor water park.

Rest assured, I think it was February and I got out of the car and froze and chattered my way into the hotel and got into the elevator ready to get to my room and two children in only bathing suits reeking of chlorine got into the elevator with me and I thought, what is happening?

And that's when I realized that I was at an indoor water park.

That's what it it took me.

Now, the Wisconsin Dells are some beautiful area of rolling countryside in Wisconsin, including many dells, dales, valleys.

And it is a vacation destination for the state.

And I've only ever driven through it

because I have been to Madison and not to brag, Milwaukee.

All right, well.

And I've done driving tours through Wisconsin for comedy back in the day.

And all I remember from the Wisconsin Dells is: I wish I could stop at those indoor water parks because there are so many of them.

Yes, there are.

There are.

I would love to do a convention in an indoor water park with you and the Wisconsin Dells.

I feel sure we could make that happen.

I did not bring a bathing suit.

Again, did not realize where I was going to be until I was in the air.

What I can tell you is that I got a look at some of the water park.

It looked very fun.

But no matter whether you were in the water park proper or just anywhere in the vague vicinity of it, chlorine, chlorine, chlorine, chlorine.

Strong and powerful smell.

I do remember going outside.

Again, it was very cold, and I remember getting up early one morning.

Of course, it was very dark, but I was like, I will go outside and I will walk around.

And so I got outside and walked.

I want to say I just sort of walked around the edge of a field that was covered in snow.

Everything was covered in snow.

There were no leaves on the trees.

It was very stark and beautiful.

But I did not have an outdoor experience that I would like to go back.

I would very much like like to go back to the badge.

You're not supposed to.

That's why they have the inner warmth.

I'm an outdoorsy gal.

Kind of.

I understand.

I like to walk in the outdoors.

And then the other thing that I can speak to is, and I hadn't thought about this until you just asked me, but my mom's kind of best friend when I was a kid was a woman named Ellen.

And she had two kids, Kai and Malia, and they were both, they were all from Wisconsin.

And they were, they had very strong Wisconsin accents.

So I spent a lot of time with that family, and

I found their accent to be very charming.

Now, as of this moment, I do not believe that we have received a voicemail featuring a Wisconsin regional accent.

Yeah.

But we do want you all to know that our lines are open.

Yes, they are.

We now have a way for you to send us a voicemail very easily.

Yes.

And it's called speakpipe.

Go to speakpipe.com/slash e pluribus motto and you'll be taken.

You can do those on your phone.

You can do it on your web browser, wherever you might do it.

Don't do it at the yellow pages, you won't find it.

Press a button, and you speak into the pipe, and you just record a message.

It goes directly to us.

And we would love it if you have a Wisconsin regional accent or any regional accent, even the place that we're not necessarily covering.

We would love to hear your authentic regional accent or anything you might want to share with us vocally at speakpipe.com/slash ePluribus Motto.

Now, Janet, I'm sorry you've never been to Madison because it's a great, great city.

I know.

Capital of Wisconsin.

The Capitol Dome is by law the largest, or excuse me, I should say the tallest building in all of Madison.

Nothing is allowed to be taller than the Capitol Dome.

So it's a relatively medium-height city.

So it's a Capitol Dome version of Paul Reiser saying he always had to be paid $1 more than Helen Hunt on Mad About You.

It's actually inscribed in the rotunda.

Great.

It's also home to one of my favorite restaurants in the the world, the Tornado Steakhouse.

Oh.

I may have mentioned that I'm friendly with the cartoonist John Kovalik of the Dork Tower comic.

Yeah.

He lives in Madison, along with his wife, who's a whole human being in her own right.

She used to work for the very famous Madison-based NPR quiz show, What Do You Know?, starring Michael Feldman.

Yeah.

Anyway, when we were, I was performing there with

Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett at the beautiful, majestic theater, the only theater in which the actual auditorium turns a corner.

Like, oh, half the auditorium is invisible from the stage because it goes around the corner.

It's incredible.

And he said, I'm like, where can I go late at night?

He said, go to the tornado room.

And so I would go.

Okay.

And then I would go.

I went there a couple of times and it's really nice, very old school kind of Wisconsin supper club that is, unlike most places in the Midwest, open after 5 p.m.

In fact, it stays open quite late.

And I went there and then, you know, I stopped performing on the road, road, as we all did for a while due to traumatic world events.

Yes.

And it was probably eight years before I returned to Madison last year.

And sure enough, Jesse Thorne and I and Jennifer Marmer, we were doing Judge John Hodgman there.

And we went to the tornado room after.

And this guy came up and he said, Plymouth Gin Martini up with a lemon twist stir?

No.

Yeah.

What?

Remembered.

And I was like, you're absolutely right, but I am not drinking tonight because I can't

do it.

I can't perform night after night and then also have a drink after every show.

So instead I ate five steaks.

I was very happy.

Do you know why it's got for again?

Huge shout out to that person who had that memory.

I think his name was Tom Tornado.

Tom Tornado.

Well, I'm glad because that absolutely was my next question.

Very delightful.

I was very curious as to whether you knew the origin of the name, and now I know it's because of the tornado family.

Don't know and don't care to find out.

Okay.

All I know is that they take care of you there.

Lovely.

Unlike real tornadoes,

they care about you.

I also, but I did go drinking with Eugene Merman in Milwaukee once.

And he took me to a really wild place called the Safe House.

Okay.

Which is like, oh,

it is a weird dad's

fantasy come to life.

It was established in the late 60s as a Cold War-themed

secret club.

Oh.

And to get into it, and it is like James Bondi kind of Cold War spy place, right?

Okay.

And it's very

man-cave-y.

Mm-hmm.

And to get into it, there are a couple of secret doors.

It's not unmarked, right?

Okay.

So there's like one place in the back of a regular bar.

You can sit in a particular booth and the booth turns around and all of a sudden you're in this other secret bar.

Oh, that's so satisfying.

You can go down an alley and there's an unmarked door.

And if you know about it, you can go in there and they ask you for the password and no one ever knows the password.

So then they make you do a humiliating dance and then they open a secret door.

So weird, dad, dream.

So weird.

I went there and I said, I can't believe this place is true.

And Eugene Mermaid is like, no, it's true.

And he took me there and Kristen Shaw as well.

We were doing a show together.

Love them.

At the Paps Theater.

You'll be hearing more about the Paps Theater

And we go, we do the rotating booth thing, and the place is so, like, as corny as it is,

it's so packed and lively and fun.

Great.

And Eugene hooked me up with a thing.

He's like, here, you know what you should do?

Go into this basement room alone.

I'm like, okay.

And I did.

And they made me sit in a chair and they strapped me to a chair to quote unquote interrogate me.

And then they started showing me weird 1960s stag films.

And then the chairs started to lift up, a trapdoor opened above me, and I was lifted into the middle of the barn.

No, no,

where everyone had already been watching me on closed-circuit television, and now I opened up.

Great.

It was the, it was a wild night.

And I was so excited that on that very same tour, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy and I were performing down the road at the Turner Hall Ballroom, one of the great performance places in Milwaukee.

And I said, we have to go to Safe House.

We must.

Eugene Merman pranked me there.

It was so fun.

Yeah.

So I took these guys and they're old dads too, right?

Sure.

Love them.

So we're going to have the greatest time.

Uh-oh.

We go in there, we do the humiliating dance.

We go inside.

It's a Saturday night.

Okay.

Place is empty.

Oh, no.

Completely.

Oh, no.

Empty.

And this place is large.

It's got many, many chambers.

Oh.

Many different themed rooms or whatever.

And finally, like we go through it and finally we find this one bar that's open.

And there's a very sort of weird dude in his early 30s who's doing, who's got like a satin cummerbund on.

He's doing some close-up magic tricks

for no one.

And I noticed that his wife or girlfriend or something is over on the banquet nearby, sound asleep, lying down, sound asleep.

And I'm like, where is everybody?

And the only other customer said, oh, yeah, Pearl Jam is playing

the stadium down the street.

Wow.

I was like, that's where all the tags are.

Okay.

All right.

That's where all the tats are.

Yeah, they should have just been closed.

That's so humiliating.

Eugene got me again.

Eugene, to get you again.

I was hoping that you were going to say that it turned out that both the sleeping woman and the

invisible audience were part of the magician's tricks and he was just a lot better than you thought he was.

I think it's all Eugene's tricks, honestly.

Oh, he's so good.

He's so good at that.

I realized that I had one other thing.

I know you have a lot of Wisconsin materials, but I have a destination, a dream destination that I was reminded of when you brought up.

So, this is your fault.

When you brought up this bar, when you brought up the safe house, I realized that I must, and I mean must get myself to House on the Rock.

Do you know what House on the Rock is?

I do know, and I've never been, I think,

been able to go.

Let's go.

But let me tell you what I know about it and you can tell me whether I'm right and wrong.

Yeah.

It is a house built on a cliffside or something.

Yes.

In Wisconsin.

Yes.

And it was owned by an eccentric millionaire

who also created multiple, multiple, multiple different rooms and wings to showcase.

a wide variety of very eclectic possessions and I believe a huge giant carousel.

And that's all I remember.

Well, now, can you?

I mean, obviously, just from your description, you understand why I was prompted to think of this when you were bringing up the safe house, because it feels very much of a time.

And I believe that the house on the rock was also a 1960s.

I mean, whether or not the safe house actually stemmed from the 60s, this was founded, created, erected for better or for worse in the 60s, maybe even 1960.

And yeah.

I mean, Wisconsin, they call it the Badger State, the Big BS, America's Dairyland, and

the land of multiple rooms.

Yeah.

The land of many chambers.

I'm going to, I just quickly went to the website.

I'm not, I don't want to get too into it because I know we have a lot to cover, but I just want you to know that there are a couple of different categories that you can look at if you are interested in the house itself.

So, whatever I just clicked on,

there are a couple of different options.

You can look, yeah, visit and tour info, regular season, Christmas season, or you can click on the third thing,

the dark side.

So, of course, I have just immediately clicked on the dark side, and I'm just going to quickly read from thehouseontherock.com.

We really love the dark side.

That's why they call you Janet Varney, the world, the galaxy's most surprising Sith.

That's right.

No one ever thinks.

That's how I get you.

Come see the dark side of the house.

If you have ever wondered if the dolls come alive at night, or if you find the displays troubling during the day, wait until you see them in the dark.

Your nightmares will become real.

Oh boy.

Yeah, they have, he's got a lot of dolls in there.

Oh, here you go.

Here's your carousel.

You will stroll down the walkway of the macabre and see the carousel in a whole new light.

You will travel through the devil's throat and wander through the mysterious maze before escaping to be greeted by the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Yeah.

I got to get there.

I got to get there.

We got to get to the house on the rock.

I'm going to see if we can perform on, I'm going to see if we can do Eplurbus Motto from the the carousel.

We should definitely

go to Safe House and we'll have a good time and we'll go see Pearl Jam and everything else.

But look, I mentioned that we'll talk about Pap's Theater, obviously, Pap's Beer, Milwaukee's Beer Town, Dairyland.

Everyone's thinking about milk and cheese.

We're going to talk about beer and we're going to talk about cheese.

Don't worry about it.

But first, we got to talk about this motto.

Janet Varney, do you know the motto of Wisconsin?

I do not.

Okay.

Last time we had our first French-language motto of the season, Le Toile du Nord.

And this time, we have our first English language motto of the season, and it's boring.

It's one word.

Oh, it's not, but it's not the word boring.

No, no.

No.

No, Wisconsin is anything but boring.

Agree.

But I find the motto to be fairly boring because it is simply one word, forward.

Forward.

What do you think about forward?

I mean...

F-O-R-W-A-R-D, not forward like the beginning of a book.

Yeah, which would be fascinating.

It would be interesting.

Yeah, that would definitely be interesting and strange and maybe great.

I mean, look, it could be worse.

I'm sure we'll talk about this more.

It's no hope, as I was saying.

It's no, it's no little roadie.

But it's also not like, it's not like the word is like conquer.

Well, here's the thing.

I find it a little bit hard.

I couldn't find any documentation about how they chose this motto.

Okay.

So I may be off here.

But allow me to be off for a moment because it was, and my initial impression was, it sounds a little manifest destiny.

Yeah.

Manifest destiny in the sense of it's the middle of the 19th century and we haven't killed or displaced enough Native Americans

or sufficiently expanded the practice of human slavery.

So let's move forward and expand the United States and the idea of U.S.

nationalism, exceptionalism all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Manifest Destiny, a very, very

problematic philosophy of

American polity of the 19th century.

The original inhabitants of this land of Wisconsin between the river and the lake and the other lake and the upper peninsula, of course, were many and varied, including the Iowa people and the Ho-Chunk and the Ojibwe and the Sauk and the Kickapoo and the Pottawatomi, among others.

Indeed, the name Wisconsin derives from the word mescusing,

which is most likely a corruption of a Miami native language term, meaning river running through a red place.

That river specifically being the Wisconsin River, Wisconsin's largest and longest river bisecting the state.

And that river was first put on the Anglo map by Jesuit explorer Jacques Marquette in 1673.

But to be

but to be fair, I guess, to Wisconsin,

forward maybe doesn't mean

what I worry about.

Okay.

And to be fair, quote unquote, most of the native inhabitants had been killed or displaced long before the mid-19th century when the territory became a state in 1848.

And indeed, from its beginning, Wisconsin was not merely a free state, but an active hotbed of anti-slavery activism.

Its first governor, Nelson Dewey, was an active abolitionist.

Okay.

And in 1852, just a few years after the state was established, Joshua Glover, a whole human being who had been enslaved in Missouri, escaped to Racine, Wisconsin.

Birthplace, by the way, of the state pastry, a pretzel-shaped Danish from

Denmark called the Kringle.

But let's get back to Joshua Glover,

the escaped enslaved person

who escaped to Racine, to the free state of Wisconsin.

But there, Glover was captured off the streets and held prisoner by federal agents until a mob of 5,000 Wisconsin abolitionists stormed the Milwaukee jail, allowing him to escape.

Food for thought.

Wow.

Food for thought about what activism can do.

Oh, my goodness.

When people are being snatched off the streets by federal agents.

Just food for thought.

Yeah, and I would add that usually a story about someone being held in a jail and an angry mob coming to the jail does not end as positively as this story.

So my hat is tipped to those abolitionists.

That's very cool.

In any case, Joshua Glover was able to escape back to Racine, where I presume he picked up a Kringle.

on his way to Toronto, where he lived out his life in freedom, which is good.

Yes, indeed.

So Glover's escape made huge news and spread the abolitionist word throughout the Midwest and the whole country.

Not long after his escape, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the fugitive slave law as unconstitutional, the only state to ever do that before the Civil War.

And nine days after Joshua Glover's escape in Ripon, Wisconsin, a major milestone occurred in progressive politics.

Do you know what that was, Janet?

I don't know.

You're absolutely right.

The formation of the Republican Party.

In Ripon, Wisconsin, nine days after Glover's escape, 1852, the GOP was founded, which at the time was the Anti-Slavery Party and would be the party for most of the political career of the populist progressive Robert La Follette, aka fightin' Bob, the 20th governor of Wisconsin from 1901 to 1906, and then senator of Wisconsin till 1925.

Robert La Follette, incredibly important figure, not only in Wisconsin history, but in the history of progressive politics.

Under this era, when he was the governor, we saw the birth of what was called the Wisconsin idea, starting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and informed by the political experience of the state's large German-American population.

Basically, they experienced workers' rights in Germany and they wanted them in the United States.

Wisconsin became hugely influential among leftist politics throughout the Midwest, outlining and achieving huge progressive reforms in American life.

The Wisconsin idea included expanding public university education, making sure that the university did work beyond the campus boundaries to help the entire community.

Concepts like workers' compensation, the direct election of senators, and progressive taxation.

Indeed, the very idea of the income tax not only came out of the Wisconsin idea, but became law because of Robert La Follette and the other progressive politicians and activists in Wisconsin.

So maybe that is a better definition of the term forward.

Well, you can use it.

Wisconsin.

Yeah.

I mean, you can use it.

That is an ambiguous enough word that it is maybe a neither ethically good nor ethically bad word.

It's what you do with it and how you define it by your actions.

Absolutely.

That said, the University of Wisconsin itself occupies ancestral lands of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Something they're trying to reckon with at this point, but

no imperial colonization movement movement is perfect.

Well, forward,

forward,

obviously, the GOP is a little bit different now.

By 1924, even the GOP had already begun a rightward shift that you might argue maybe continues to this day.

La Follette, Fighting Bob, left the party to run for president in 1924 under his own third party, the Progressive Party, which garnered 16% of the vote, which is great.

But ultimately, Fighting Bob lost to Silent Cal,

the former governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge, who, as you know, Janet, never, ever spoke, not once, never.

I don't know why people don't talk about that more, but I guess they're just keeping mum because, you know, silent.

In honor.

In honor of Silent Cal.

Sure, sure.

He had been the silent mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, but that's another story.

And that, and he is also what Silent Bob from Jay and Silent Bob is based on.

He's the inspiration for Silent Bob.

You're absolutely right.

Great, great.

I'm just going to quit a couple of other applications here because my computer is slowing down.

It's

so much history.

So much history that my computer is starting to slow down.

I hear that.

So let me just close a couple of applications.

Here we are back on track

because it's time to talk about the shape of this state.

Janet.

We got a little picture of Wisconsin for you here in the document.

Yes, I do see that.

What does it look like to you?

This is an interesting one because there's just a lot going on and it's almost like if you were looking at a cloud and you can see, depending on which side you're looking at, you can sort of see different things.

So it's hard for me to pick just one thing.

I mean, on the left, on the sort of upper left side, I feel like I see a face.

I mean, I feel like I see a sort of hooked nose.

Yeah, that's the border.

That's the border with Minnesota.

With Minnesota.

With Minnesota.

I see that.

And then on the right, of course, we have this little finger extending out.

And something about it, this is again classic Varney over-interpreting and pushing hard on a shape.

But I feel that it is a small child pointing towards something, maybe forward, maybe pointing towards the future.

But specifically, something about this reminds me of the little prince.

Antoine de Saint-Exuperis,

classic hero.

Le Petit Prince, somehow I see the side of his little blonde, shaggy head, and it's his little arm in my mind that's sort of pointing towards les étoile, even though it is pointing in the opposite direction from Les Toile de Nord.

That is what I see.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, that eastern border where that big peninsula points upward into Lake Michigan is actually pointing at an area that you would might think would be Wisconsin, but is in fact the upper peninsula of Michigan.

That is the UP.

Yeah.

That is land that is contiguous with Wisconsin, although there is a river running between

the UP and Wisconsin proper.

But, you know, you would think that that would be part of Wisconsin.

But before statehood, that land had already been ceded to Michigan.

Michigan got it as a consolation prize in return for giving up Toledo to Ohio.

Michigan and Toledo had been fighting over it.

It was called the Toledo War.

Wow.

That's why Toledo is in Ohio, and that's why the UP is not part of Wisconsin.

But what do you think this looks like?

So to me, I'm also looking at that spit of land that's poking upward into Lake Michigan and that sort of describes the bay that is, I believe, Green Bay, home of the Green Bay Packers.

And I look, to me, that looks like a pronounced under, no, overbite.

What are you talking about when

you're an underbite?

When the bottom

sort of

like a bulldog has an underbite, right?

Oh, yeah, I see that.

Or in this case, like the underbite of those Muppets from Sesame Street, those aliens who go, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip,

yip, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Yeah.

Doesn't look like maybe a sidebite.

It does.

That's a good profile.

That's a really good profile view of yippip yip.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

All right.

After the break, we will be discussing the state symbols of Wisconsin, including beer and cheese.

That's coming up when E.

Pluribus Motto returns.

Wisconsinites and cheese heads, this bulletin board is for you.

And it's from the Republic of Letters, a wonderful independent community bookstore in the historic arts community of Mineral Point in southwest Wisconsin.

The Republic of Letters is open six days a week and full of all the books you can handle.

Plus, they regularly showcase dogs on their social media, so how can you not want to visit?

Go to republicoflettersbooks.com and learn more about how you can purchase books, e-books, and audiobooks.

Plus, you'll see their events page with everything to look forward to right there in store.

Which includes the book Kitchen, and that offers hands-on culinary classes, dinners, and food tastings right in the store.

Go visit the Republic of Letters today.

If you've got a local small business that you want to showcase, go to maximumfund.org slash bulletin board.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, Me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back.

It goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, John and Janet.

This is Jolene from Wisconsin.

While I grew up in the Fox Valley region, what we call the northeastern Wisconsin, I now live in Milwaukee or the greater Milwaukee area.

And even though I think my accent has, I've tried to correct my accent over time, while so it's not super strong, I no longer say things like, get your bag and put that American flag off the ground so it doesn't drag with the long A sounds.

However, I do sometimes find myself saying something that my family also uses, which is putting yet at the end of affirmative sentences.

So if you haven't done something, you still need to do an activity.

We'll put yet at the end, like I need to go to the store yet, or I have to do my homework yet.

Have you called someone yet?

Now, normally that's appropriate for questions and in negative sentences.

As an ESL teacher for adult immigrant populations, this is something that I've learned is something that is not normal, but apparently, some of us in Wisconsin still do these things.

One other piece of linguistical intricacy that I realized that I had was I had the word bottom as far as like a past participle for to buy something, buy, bought, bottom.

That's not a real word, but apparently I have used it before.

Love the show.

Thanks, guys.

Oh,

welcome back to E-Plurus Moto.

Oh, oh, podcast.

Oh,

yippip.

Oh, that's the third thing.

Yeah.

I was trying to remember.

Yip, yep, yep, yep.

Uh-uh, uh-huh.

Phone, phone, yippee.

Oh, you're doing a good sort of loose jaw, which very well represents those guys.

That being said, welcome back to E-Plurvis Motto.

I'm Janet Barney.

And I'm John Hodgman.

You know, earlier we talked about Toledo.

You know, the Toledo War was fought because both Michigan and Ohio wanted access to the mouth of the Maumee River for inland shipping from Lake Erie.

Obviously, everyone knows that.

And it wasn't much of a war.

It was mainly a staring contest.

But speaking of Lake Erie, I did not know this, but the Erie Canal runs from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

through upstate New York.

And that Erie Canal became the fuel pump that gassed up the whole Midwest with waves of Eastern migrants from the Yankee country of New England, as well as German-American, Danish-Americans, Scandinavian Americans, other European settlers.

They all followed that canal to the Great Lakes and then to Wisconsin.

And what did they do when they got there, Janet?

First, they trapped fur, but what did they do after the fur boom and before the beer and cheese boom?

So there's a middle thing that is, is it like mining?

Yes, they mined lead.

Oh, lead.

Exciting, right?

Yeah, I guess, yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's important.

Lead.

It's also poisonous.

It sure is.

Yeah.

It sure is.

Yeah.

And it was very lucrative.

The lead rush in southwest Wisconsin was so lucrative and hurried that some miners didn't even have time to build permanent winter structures to live in.

So, according to the internet and Wisconsin folklore, these miners dug and lived in holes, just like what animal, Janet.

Uh-oh, I know the answer to this.

Yeah.

Badgers.

Badgers.

That's right.

That is why Wisconsin is the badger state, they say.

And that is why the American badger is the state animal.

Now,

according to a beautiful sentence that I found in Wikipedia, the American badger is, quote, born blind, furred, and helpless.

And quote.

Blind, furred, F-U-R-R-E-D.

In other words, they're not nude and helpless.

But as helpless as they may be as baby badges, they soon grow into fierce predators hunting squirrels, marmots, moles, and rattlesnakes, Janet.

Yes.

Rattlesnakes.

You know, American Badger doesn't give a shit.

They're going to hunt a rattlesnake.

I do know that.

And I will say it, I just want to give a quick shout out to a verse that I'm very proud to be a part of, Avatar the Last Airbender, because the badger is in the Avatar Verse lore, almost all of the animals are hybrid animals.

So they are one type of animal mixed with another type of animal.

And the original Earthbenders, these creatures that can create essentially with without actually having to touch anything, can move Earth,

are badger moles.

So they're these giant creatures.

In this case, they are gigantic.

Not sure where they get their size, but they're these blind badger moles, and they are the original earthbenders.

And they end up kind of teaching human beings to earthbend.

But there you go with the badger being born blind.

And I don't think I realized that the badger was born blind until right now, and you just told me that.

So I've just put a lot of more things together than I had previously.

Blind, furred, and helpless is no way to go through life, son.

That's a quote from Animal House.

I mean, I think, well, that, yes, it is.

I would also also say i think many animals are born blind and helpless maybe the distinction being that many of them don't have fur yet but the badger's like i'm good on that front yeah i don't know i don't know why anyone wrote that sentence but i love it it's great it's a great one speaking of hunting badgers have been known and observed to hunt collaboratively with coyotes i did not know that that is awesome official state animal of south dakota by the way the coyote this is what i learned and i'm and i'm quoting from the internet here Typically, this pairing is one badger to one coyote.

However, one study found about 9% of sightings included two coyotes to one badger, while 1% had one badger to three coyotes.

Researchers have found that the coyote benefits by an increased catch rate of about 33%,

while it is difficult to see precisely how the badger benefits.

So, the badger isn't getting a piece of whatever is killed, which, by the way, I'm sure is not.

I would guess that farmers and ranchers are not fans of this hunting technique.

Well, look, here's how it works.

Basically, they both like to eat ground squirrels

and prairie dogs.

And when a prairie dog or a ground squirrel sees a coyote, they'll run into a hole.

And guess who's waiting for them?

The American badger doesn't give a shit.

I'm going to eat that ground squirrel.

That's what he says.

Other version of it is.

If the badger misses the ground squirrel and it runs out again, like, I'm going to get out of here.

There's a badger in here.

The coyote's like, too late, dummy.

Me and these other two coyotes who teamed up to eat you.

Well, if all they're eating is little critters that's not going to put them in danger of being shot by humans, I guess

I'm definitely fine with that.

That's just nature.

Nature's way.

Nature isn't looking for your approval, Janet.

It's just the way it is.

Really?

Nope.

Hold on.

Sorry.

Really?

Yeah.

Let me make a call.

The state has other state animals.

The state wild animal is the white-tailed deer.

I don't know.

It's not like the badger is a pet.

I don't know what it is.

Maybe that's the state game animal.

The state fish is the muskellunge, which is the largest of the pikes.

And there is another big and important state mammal to discuss, but I'm going to save that for later because I have a question about the badger for you, Janet.

Yeah.

When the badger is digging, it's got to dig into something, right?

What is it digging into?

The state soil?

The state soil.

Antigo silt loam.

Antigo silt loam.

A-N-T-I-G-O.

This state loam is hot to go.

Just made that up.

But in terms of educating through song,

this is actually germane.

to the Antigo Silt Loam because Antigo Silt Loam, first of all, is named for Antigo, Wisconsin, the county seat of Langclade County in the northern half of Wisconsin.

Hello, I'm aware of that.

It is a productive, it is described as a productive, level, silty soil of glacial origin,

subsequently enriched by organic matter from prehistoric forests.

Good job.

It's a very versatile soil.

It supports both farming and timbering, the growing of lumber trees, and timber is a big concern up there in Antigo, which is known historically for its production of lumber, chairs, furniture, sashes, doors, and blinds, plus

your favorite and mine, Hubs and Spokes.

Okay.

Antigo silt loam was adopted as the state soil in 1983 after extensive lobbying by a University of Wisconsin soil scientist.

Bet you can't name this guy.

Bill Singleton.

Okay,

I'm thinking about dirt.

I'm thinking about soil.

No.

Francis D.

Hole, H-O-L-E.

What?

Was the University of Madison soil scientist who championed the adoption of antigo silt loam.

Francis Hole was an Indiana native, state beverage water.

But Francis Hull began his campaign for a state soil when he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin.

And this guy believed in dirt.

He once said, soil is the hidden secret friend,

which is the root domain of lively darkness and silence.

Oh my, that's lovely.

This guy is incredible.

When he was trying to popularize not just antigo-silt loam, but also just get people to pay attention to the importance of soil.

I mean, the incredible agricultural and cultural importance of soil that is so often overlooked, he had some very distinct pedagogical practices.

He was a trained violinist, so he would go around to schools and play violin in imitation of the soil.

What?

Yeah.

Hold on.

Say that.

I need you to say that again, which means our listeners also need it.

By the way, I may have earlier said University of Madison when I meant University of Wisconsin at Madison.

So don't write me a letter.

Not even an email prolobusmato at maximumfund.org.

I'm not going to go and retake it.

You know what I was talking about.

All right.

Francis Hole was the soil scientist at the University of Wisconsin.

He was also a trained violinist, and he would go around to elementary schools to educate the kids about soil by playing the violin in imitation

of the sound of soil.

Francis Hull.

Oh, you have no idea.

Professor Hull explained, quote,

you can make a harsh, gritty sound for sand with your violin.

People are very amused that I can make such a disagreeable sound, but that's what sand is, gritty and scratchy.

Clay is always a trill, and silt a smooth sound.

The point, though, is to get people to think about these various components of soil.

I love him.

When violin couldn't speak clearly enough about the soil,

Francis Hull used words, writing new lyrics to old standards to produce such legendary dirt bangers as, Oh, give me a home on a deep mellow loam.

and old mcdonald had a pit

please tell me what the rest of the lyrics are to old mcdonald had a pit not available but i do have lyrics for a song that i'm going to sing a little later oh my god do you now pit is not so dissimilar from a hole did he was he worried that if he did old mcdonald had a hole?

Well, there are a number of reasons why maybe you wouldn't want a song called that.

Yeah.

But one of the things that's one of those questions that answers.

One of them.

Yep.

No way.

I mean, look, Francis Hall, Francis D.

Hole was a dreamer.

He was an educator.

He was a soil enthusiast, but he was no dummy.

He certainly knew that he could not go to an elementary school and start singing Old McDonald Had a Hole.

But apparently Old McDonald had a pit.

I mean, wow, what a gem.

Okay.

Passed away at the age of 88 in 2002 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Known as the ambassador.

He was known as the Ambassador of Soils and the Poet Laureate of Soil Science.

Wait, do you think that he was cremated, or do you think he was buried, but just like buried not in a coffin?

I mean, why would he want anything separating him from the soil?

What an incredible question that I don't know the answer to.

Let's let me just see here.

Okay.

I mean, he died in Madison, but I don't know if it was.

I don't see here

any details about how his body was disposed of.

Okay.

I mean,

I don't know.

If I were the poet laureate of soil science, if I love dirt as much as this guy,

I think I'd want to be buried in a hole with no

coffin.

I think that you would say, oh, give me a home on a deep mellow loam.

Yeah, exactly.

As your instructions.

Those would be your burial.

I would want my natural materials to

unburned, uncremated, but to actually naturally decay into the earth.

Com-mingle.

Yeah.

Me personally.

But I don't know.

I hope that's what happens.

If anyone knows where Francis Hole's death pit is, Jenna and I will go lay some flowers there when we perform at the House in the Rock.

But listen, maybe one of his relatives will reach out.

Like, I'm his granddaughter.

Yeah.

If your granddaddy was Francis Hull, won't you let us know at email pluribusmoto at maximumbun.org?

Francis Hole, before he died, of course, had one of his great missions in life was to get there to be a state soil.

He argued that all life pays debt to the soil, and so he joined again with school children, as well as a series of educational puppets.

I love him so much.

In 1980,

to visit the Wisconsin state legislature.

and to lobby on behalf of Antigo Silt Loam as the official state soil, I presume with some puppet sketches.

Now, Antigo Silt Loam was not the first state soil.

Nebraska had the first state soil back in the late 70s, I think 76.

But Hole's efforts were highly influential in getting a lot more attention towards the idea of a state soil.

So

there was kind of, dare I say, an avalanche of

state soils being named across the country after his puppet show at the Wisconsin state legislature.

The puppets, by the way,

I don't know how many he had.

The ones that I found names for were a puppet named Terra Forma,

a different puppet who was apparently a cranky puppet named Erosion.

His Oscar the Grouse.

Yeah.

And

of course,

Bucky Badger,

which Hole did not invent.

That character is the mascot of the University of Wisconsin, the very famous marching turtlenecked badger.

Bucky Badger.

But he was a puppet as well.

And he did write a song specifically about Antigo State Loan.

And after the break, I'm going to sing it for you.

Oh, thank goodness.

Phew, what a relief.

Let's take a break.

All right, friends, it's time once again for a bulletin board.

This time, we are talking about our friends at the Time Community Theater.

The Time Community Theater is a volunteer-based non-profit venue that provides an affordable showcase for the arts and has helped helped revitalize downtown Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The building itself was built in 1907 and hosts live music, comedy, and weekly movies.

It's also hosted max funsters like Jackie Cashin and Lori Kilmartin.

They're available for private events.

Maybe you want to screen Pitch Perfect 2 and just watch the part with the star John Odgman.

The Time Community Theater is the place to host that or the event of your choice on any given Saturday.

And again, it's all volunteer run, affordable, it's cash only.

To learn more, go to timecommunitytheater.com.

That's timecommunitytheater.com.

And if you have a small business that you want to share on Iplarbus Moto, just go to maximumfund.org slash bulletin board.

I'm a transplant to Minnesota from the Milwaukee area.

Notice it's Milwaukee, not Milwaukee, Milwaukee.

And people up here get very upset by the exaggerated accents used in Fargo, but they're much more apt than people up here want to admit.

They're exaggerated in the sense that it's not necessarily that sentences start with an elongated yaw.

It's more like the clipped, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that is what I hear.

Also, I'm hearing people are rounding out the edges of their regional accents more generally in younger generations.

So a lot of my friends' moms sound like Edie McClure.

and my friends do not unless they are very excited or they're very drunk.

Then, all of a sudden, the regional accent really reveals itself.

All right, that's it.

Are you ready for the Antigo silk loan song written by F.D.

Hull?

Honestly, I don't think I've ever been more ready for anything in my entire life.

Antigo, a soil to know, Wisconsin's crops and livestock grow, and forests too on Antigo, and forests too on Antigo.

Great Lake Region, fertile land, glaciers spread both clay and sand, winds blew silt, then forests grew, giving soils their brownish hue.

A wait.

Great lakes region, fertile land.

You strengthen us in heart and hand.

Each slope, each flower, each...

Sorry, I fucked it up.

Wait, plant a seed and pull a weed.

The soil will give us all we need.

And plenty more, so birds may feed, and plenty more, so birds may feed.

Alright, ready?

Of all the crops, true peace is tops.

Its soil is love that never stops.

It blesses sand and water drops.

It blesses sand and water drops.

The Andigo Silt Loam song.

Now, Wisconsin has a state song, which is the University of Wisconsin fight song.

It is called On Wisconsin, but I think this is

a better state song.

Yeah.

Because it is really something, and On Wisconsin was actually written with different lyrics, which started Minnesota, Minnesota was the name of that song originally.

Goodbye.

Wisconsin State Fight Song.

Andigo Silt Loam, F.D.

Hole, I love you so.

And even though we could probably end the episode right there and I should probably retire from public life after that performance,

there's something else that Antigo Silt Loam is good for, and that is

pasturing.

Okay, here we go.

Nice segue.

It's probably.

It's true.

It's true.

It's good for pasturing.

You got to have pasture if you want to raise what?

What ruminant are we talking about?

Seeing of the state of many many chambers,

this ruminant has many stomachs.

I'm really giving it to you, Janet.

Come on.

I'm going to have to guess a dairy cow.

That's right.

Wisconsin's other state mammal, the dairy cow.

And without the dairy cow, we would not have the state dairy product, which is cheese.

Janet, have you ever had a cheese curd?

I have.

I feel like I've had cheese curd in several forms.

Is that possible?

It is.

According to our listener, Killy, by the way, the unofficial state motto of Wisconsin is try the fried cheese curds.

I think you have one of the ways that you have cheese curds.

I have had fried cheese curds.

I also feel like I've definitely had them dry.

I'm pretty sure I've had them wet.

Yeah, you don't want to have them dry, ideally.

I mean, like, but like fried, you know, not.

Yeah.

Right.

So, all right.

So a cheese curd, right, is.

So the way you make cheese, you know, I used to be a cheese monger.

I did not know.

No, I monged.

I monged cheese in the early 90s in London.

Okay.

I never made it.

I just monged.

I just sold it.

Okay.

But I knew and I learned enough to know that what you do is you take fresh milk, right, and then you add a culture to it, a micro, like a

bacterial culture

and or an enzyme like rennet from a calf's stomach.

That's why some cheeses are not vegetarian because they're made with rennet.

They're made from an animal product, aside from milk.

Anyway,

those elements cause the milk to separate, to curdle, right, into hui,

which is that watery, gross stuff that they use for buttermilk, and curds, which are the solid milk solids, right?

And you then take those curds and you can press them and you can form them and you can age them, you can flavor them.

They turn in all different kinds of cheese.

Or if you do nothing to them, they're just fresh cheese curds.

And in their fresh state, they should be wet and they should squeak when you eat them.

You go, wee,

we, weep, wee.

It's the sound of eating cheese curds.

Uh-huh.

And baby pigs, but go on.

Oh, well, now wait a minute.

What did I eat?

No, it was cheese curds.

Okay, good.

Phew.

It was cheese curds.

I remember now.

Okay, good.

Now, when you had a fried cheese curd,

was it breaded or battered?

Do you remember?

I think it was battered.

So that would be a Minnesota-style fried cheese curd.

Oh.

As far as I know.

Okay.

I guess

the Wisconsin-style fried cheese curds are breaded.

I'm sure they know how to do it at the Tornado Steakhouse.

I'm sure you're right.

And then it's served like with a marinara sauce or some, or you know, like everything, a ranch dipping sauce.

But sometimes you can just get ranch-flavored cheese curds.

In Wisconsin, in particular, there are many, many houses of cheese, these huge roadside palaces that are filled with different kinds of cheese.

Wisconsin is the number one producer of cheese in the United States.

The last known data I have is from over a decade ago.

In 2014, Wisconsin produced 2.9 billion pounds of cheese.

That's a lot of cheese.

Which accounts for about a quarter of all cheese produced in the whole United States.

It's amazing.

And they got to sell that cheese.

So they're selling it in these cheese palaces along the side of the road.

And one of them is shaped like a castle.

Never went to that one.

I just drove by it.

I wanted to go.

But even if you go into a random gas station,

you are going to see a cooler full of different cheese curds fresh in all different flavors.

Garlic dill, ranch, Cajun, Bloody Mary, Buffalo Wing.

They're really, really good.

Wisconsin doesn't just make curds, though.

It also makes many, many different cheeses.

Artisanal cheddars.

It's the only state that makes Limburger in the United States.

Montfort Blue is an award-winning blue cheese from Montfort, Wisconsin.

And guess what kind of cheese they invented in a town called Colby, Wisconsin?

Colby cheese?

Wisconsin cheese, that's right.

No, Colby was correct.

Colby cheese.

Colby is one of the less stinky cheeses of the cheeses that you just named.

It's a very iconic, mild orange loaf.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

what Kraft Foods figured out was that if you take Colby cheese, and melt it and add an emulsifier called sodium citrate and then you reform it.

You process that into what is called American cheese.

Oh, I didn't know that American cheese was sort of cold-baked cheese.

It's real cheese.

A lot of people call it plastic cheese.

It's not.

It's real cheese.

And I learned this from Kenji Lopez-Alt, that the main difference is that it has sodium citrate, this emulsifier in there, and that allows it to melt evenly.

The cheese doesn't break into solids and oils.

Then I'm going to assume that's also the quality of this cheese, that sodium citrate is what makes it, when you peel it open and let it get a little sweaty.

TikTok taught me that that is also the best cheese to toss onto a baby's face and that it sticks there.

I did not know that.

I am not on TikTok often at all, but someone turned me on to a trend where people were

lightly tossing a piece of cheese at a toddler or baby.

And the expression on their face.

I don't know about that.

Someone's going to write in.

Someone's going to write in and say this is torturing children.

And I, and I, and maybe.

You know what?

I'm going to write in and say it.

But you know what?

This is what I did.

I felt like if I'm going to giggle at this,

I, the co-ops.

Oh, no.

What a loud, angry tapping.

I thought if I'm laughing at this, I should have it done to me.

So I had Brandon throw a piece of cheese onto my face.

And it was all right.

Where can we find that?

It was all right.

On your Instagram JV Club?

I think it might be on my almost never visited TikTok.

I think there is a piece.

There is a thing of me complaining.

Because a lot of of the time it's fussy kids, and then you slap a piece of cheese on them, and they're so shocked at what's happening.

And it doesn't hurt, but they're so shocked that they just stop everything and just have this dazed look on their face.

And then I think they end up eating the cheese, and it's very cute.

But David Rees once taught me and demonstrated in front of me an incredible technique for de-escalating conflict.

In this case, we were on the subway, and

two women were having a big fight that was getting out of hand, a yelling fight.

And David just

went up to one of them and just said, excuse me, do you know what time it is?

And

one of them said, oh, sorry, it's yeah, it's 3 p.m.

or whatever.

And then the fight ended.

I'm like, what did you just do?

He said, my ex-wife, who's a social worker, taught me this de-escalation technique.

That if you, if you intervene and ask a simple question like,

what time is it?

Yeah.

People kind of reset a little bit.

Yeah.

That sounds like what's going on with these bad babies.

A similar technique that I've been told has since been debunked, but that I was told to get two dogs to stop fighting

was to interrupt and ask what time it is.

But the other thing I heard that also doesn't work is...

That you're supposed to stick your finger in one of their butts.

Now, I understand that this is not going to be an episode where people like me.

I'm not saying I would do it or that I have done it or that, and I just took great care to say I've been told that that doesn't work, but that was something that was told to me.

Like, if you need to break up a dog fight, keep

in what world am I going to get towards like a pit bull's bum?

Well, that's the thing.

You never would do it.

No.

And I bet it wouldn't work because I think...

I mean, I don't know.

It's not happened to me, but if I were in the midst of a conflict and someone put their finger in my butt, I would be enervated.

I mean, I would not be confused.

Well, I also tried that.

I'm glad you brought that up.

I am going to ride the subway subway with a pack of American cheese from now on.

Yeah.

Think about it.

Yeah.

Instead of asking people what time it is, if someone's having a fight, I'm just going to throw a piece of cheese at their face.

A light fling.

Calm them down like a baby.

I had to take that, you big baby.

Yeah, exactly.

Hey, there's another form the cheese takes in Wisconsin.

Okay.

The head of cheese or the cheese head.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cheese.

This is a little hat thing.

It is a hat.

That's right.

It is a foam hat

that looks like a wedge of Swiss cheese.

I love it.

Love it.

It doesn't look like a wedge of Swiss cheese because it's bright orange, which Swiss cheese generally isn't.

They do make Swiss cheese in Wisconsin, but it has the whole texture, you know.

Yeah.

And you wear it on your head.

In particular, if you're a fan of sports, particularly if you're a fan of the Green Bay Packers of Green Bay, Wisconsin, I don't want to get into sports, but there is something I've always thought was interesting about Green Bay Packers.

Green Bay is the smallest sports market in the United States, but the Packers thrive there because the Packers are the only community-owned team in major sports in the United States.

I didn't know that.

That's really cool.

It's a little co-op.

It's a co-op.

It's owned.

Anyone is entitled to buy shares.

There are more than 500,000 shares in circulation, but no one is allowed, no individual is allowed to hold more than 200,000 shares.

Oh, my gosh.

This is so cool.

Also, it's hard to, sometimes sports gets a little, can be a little rowdy, and sometimes it even gets a little bit um

uh

confrontational and sometimes in rare cases it gets violent i will say that when you gotta start throwing american slices of american cheese you throw the american cheese but even before that happens i think if you're wearing a cheese head hat it's just maybe already going to de-escalate a situation it's just hard to imagine someone coming at you yeah in a cheese hat and it as a cheese head going like you want a piece of this come on like that feels like oh we're all we can all have a laugh about this, right?

We're just cheese heads.

We're friends.

Let's, let's be friends.

Now, when I went on this, when I went on this tour with Bill and Kevin of Riff Tracks, I did stop in a grocery store, or I should say a gas station, and they had a lot of cheese hats for sale.

They have different shapes of them, you know.

They're not all just a wedge.

Okay.

I'm dropping now into the script, and we'll put this up, a picture of me wearing my cheese hat.

Wonder if you can see this.

This is exciting.

There you are.

Oh, it's like a top hat.

That's right.

I mean, I guess it's a top hat.

It's a very elegant foam top hat styled to look like cheese.

It is, it has, I mean, this is a shape.

This is a thoughtful, molded shape.

Yeah.

Molded, I guess, pun intended.

It's very handsome.

Very handsome.

We'll make this available on our ePluribus Motto.

Socials, of course.

I don't have this hat anymore.

I threw it into the audience of the Barrymore Theater that night at the show.

So sorry about that.

I'm sure someone.

If you are listening to this podcast and you own that cheese hat, please send us a picture of yourself wearing that re-gifted cheese hat.

I guess it's not re-well, it's a gift to yourself.

Would love to see where it is currently being housed and enjoyed.

Ralph Bruno is credited with creating the first foam cheese hat.

And then it was made popular when it was worn by center fielder Rick Manning,

who saw the hat in the audience while playing.

The cheese head trademark is owned by Foamation Incorporated of St.

Francis, Wisconsin, which began manufacture of the wearable foam cheese heads in 1987.

But now the copyright is owned by the Green Bay Packers.

They acquired it from the Bruno family, and they're the ones who sell officially licensed foam cheese heads now.

Which means that it belongs to the community.

It belongs to the community indeed.

I love it.

Progressive politics again.

Forward on word to the state beverage.

Now, we talked about the state beverage.

The state beverage is milk.

Okay.

But can you guess what the state alcoholic beverage is?

Let me say this.

If the state alcoholic beverage of Wisconsin is not beer, I'm going to leave this conversation.

I'm going to leave the Zoom.

I'm going to leave our document.

I'm going to leave the state of California.

Well, welcome to e Plurbus Motto, hosted only by John Hodgman.

No!

Because the state cocktail of Wisconsin is the brandy old-fashioned.

That's an old-fashioned named made with brandy instead of rye, whiskey, or bourbon.

I'm sure it's delicious.

I'm sure

it's the kind of thing that they would

offer over the bar at the tornado room.

But

nowhere...

in the state things rule book is ever mentioned what should be the state beverage, which is beer.

A large number of German-Americans settled in Wisconsin.

We talked about this already, particularly in Milwaukee during the German revolutions of the mid-19th century.

So in Germany, there are these political upheaval.

A lot of Germans left, settled in Milwaukee, and with this wave of immigration came skilled beer makers, specifically of the German lager-style beer, what we in America now simply call beer.

They made it up in Milwaukee.

We're talking Jacob Best, Valentin Blatts, Franz Falk, and August Krug.

By the early 20th century, Milwaukee was home to the four largest breweries in the world, Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz, and Miller, making Wisconsin the undisputed beer capital of the globe, or as anti-alcohol activist Carrie Nation put it, quote, if there is any place that is hell on earth, it is Milwaukee.

It probably should be written in the rotunda there.

Obviously, toward the end of the century, corporateism-changing tastes changed the landscape quite a bit.

Schlitz was once marketed with the tagline, when you run out of schlitz, you've run out of beer.

Pretty much self-explanatory.

But that company is now owned, along with Pabst, which had acquired it.

They're both now owned by a private equity firm in San Francisco.

Milwaukee's still home to the Miller Brewery.

There's a large craft beer and brew pub movement there.

And the legacy of the industry obviously continues in the Milwaukee Brewers Bases Ball Team and the aforementioned Pabst Theater.

I performed there with Eugene and Kristen Schall before they took me to the safe house and strapped me into that chair.

And it is obviously named for the Pabst family.

And I will say this: you should get a chance to go and perform there

in

that great temple of performing arts and shrine to beer,

because the green room is maybe the nicest green room I've ever been in.

And that's including...

the National Theater in Richmond, Virginia, where they have a hot tub in the green room.

But the green room

at the Pabst is like,

it's a beautiful space to hang around in and get comfortable in before a show.

And here's a fun story.

Speaking of beer, the folks who had just come through the Papst before us, a little band called Hanson.

You ever hear of them?

Hansen.

Oh, yeah.

And they had left behind a six-pack of their then-new signature beer.

Oh.

It was called Mmhops.

Oh, boy.

Were any of them old enough to drink?

Yes.

In my mind, they are eight, nine, and ten years.

They're now in their 60s.

Okay.

All right.

Sounds good.

Now that we've gotten that out of our system, and maybe you'll take us through to the letters.

I will.

We definitely have some messages from listeners that we would very much like to share.

I just also want to quickly say, Papst, it's not too late for you to put a water slide in that green room.

That feels very Wisconsin to me.

Go ahead and think about it.

Put a water slide inside that green room.

We'll talk.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a driving idea.

By the way, Anson Brothers Beer Company, still going.

Mm hop, 6.3

alcohol by volume, pays homage to Hansen's most iconic song, Mbop.

Really?

Oh, I didn't put that together.

I'd love to say that I'm about to go out and buy a six-pack, but I could promise you I'm not.

But before we get into our letters, while Wisconsin may or may not still be the beer capital of the world, I can tell you that Sheboygan, Wisconsin is known as the Bratwurst capital of the world.

Feels like it's saying a lot because Bratwurst.

Monroe, Wisconsin is known as the Swiss cheese capital.

Oh.

And Eagle River known as

the snow cheese capital of the world.

No, the snowmobile capital of the world.

The snow cheese capital of the world.

Yeah.

Snowmobile capital of the world.

Yeah.

There's a lot going on in Wisconsin.

I'm sure we missed a lot.

Did we get any letters?

We did.

We received a couple of letters at emailpluribusmoto.atmaximumfund.org.

One from listener Brendan S and another from listener CJ, both suggesting a state cryptid from Wisconsin.

I'm talking about the Hodag.

Whoa.

I see a picture of a.

Now look.

They sent a picture.

Right.

This is a picture of a replica of the Hodag

in front of.

It's not the actual Hodag.

No.

This is a statue.

Yes.

It's not the actual thing.

This is a creature described as large, green, and fearsome,

which you might imagine would mean it would have a frog-like head, one of the fiercest creatures in the world,

tusks and spikes down its back.

And it is often found and celebrated in Rhinelander,

Wisconsin.

Frog-like head, tusks, spikes down its back.

Fearsome.

Yeah, I did a little research into the hodag.

And if you're trying to picture it, I mean, the photo will be on our socials, obviously, but if you're trying to picture it in your mind's eye, it's got a little bantha to it if you watch Star Wars at all.

It's like it's kind of got this, like, this low-slung head and this big sort of like

bison-style body.

I don't know.

It almost has like its, the upper half of its face has some jabba going on as well.

Yeah, it's got a little jabba as well.

The first articles about the hodag described it in 1893 as, quote, the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant i don't think of elephants grinning that much thick short legs uh the back of a dinosaur and a long tail with spears at the end it was also said that it eat its diet was uh exclusively it ate white bulldogs but only on sunday

okay so someone out there had a neighbor and they didn't like their bulldog yeah so they came up with something if this sounds a little fanciful to you that is because this is one of those cryptids that is it really should be called the hoax dag or whatever, because it was acknowledged almost from the start as being bogus.

Okay.

It was created by a local, it was created in Rhinelander

by a local timberer and I guess famous prankster named Eugene Shepard.

Famous white bulldog hater.

Yeah.

Rhinelander was kind of failing.

Its fortunes had begun to turn as the stock of hemlock and pine trees were running low.

So he hoped to sort sort of drum up interest in the town by creating this

myth.

And he even staged a photo, Eugene Shepard, with a pile of old ox pelts and old horns claiming to have killed the beast with dynamite.

He got a whole gang together in this photo.

And then later he claimed to have caught a different hodag and he drugged it with chloroform and he displayed it at the Oneida County Fair and later in a shack on his own property.

And people would come around and supposedly it was like alive but drugged.

And he would would, every now and then, speaking of puppet, speaking of puppeteering, every now and then he had wires connected to it.

He would move it a little bit.

And this got so much, this hodag shack got so much attention that the Smithsonians like, we're going to send some representatives to look into this animal.

And that's about the time Eugene Shepard fessed up and said, no, no, no, it's just fake.

It's just a prank.

Man, I hope that before he passed, and rest in peace in soil, Francis Hole considered, just as like a hobby, because I know his true passion was soil.

Yeah.

But he was still alive and could have written new lyrics to the song Love Shack by the B52s called Hodag Shack.

I don't know.

That could be us, or that could be you.

It sure could, friend.

If you have new lyrics

to Love Shack

that feature and honor the Hodag Shack of Eugene Shepard,

you can go over to speakpipe.com/slash e pluribus motto, press record and speak into that speakpipe and sing it for us.

You've never looked more worried as you asked for something from people.

I doubt with every word in that sentence, but

I'll say this.

Even though this is not encrypted insofar as it was debunked before it even got started,

it did put Hodag on the map.

The Hodag Country Music Festival honors the Hodag.

The Hodag is all over the place.

I think the Little League team is called the Hodags.

This statue of a hodag that we see, I think, is right outside of town hall in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

It's all a bunch of hodags.

And I love the hodag.

You can't spell Hodgman without hodag.

I'll tell you that.

Whoa.

But there are other cryptids that you can get into in Wisconsin.

And while it's no hodag, I do have to give a shout out.

to the rock throwing gnomes of Fitfield, Wisconsin.

Whoa, also cool.

I'm not going to tell you what they're all about.

Don't throw rocks at me, guys.

Rock throwing gnomes of Fiffield, Wisconsin.

But now we don't have time to get into them because now it's time to rate the state motto on a scale of one to ten rock throwing gnomes.

Okay.

Janet, how do you rate the Wisconsin state motto forward?

This is tough.

I can't believe that we're using an item that we barely touched upon, but I'll begrudgingly accept it.

I'm going to give forward,

I guess I'll give it like a seven and and a half

because it's a little too ambiguous and could be used for ill.

Yeah.

But in terms of the deeds, not words that much of what you have told me about Wisconsin has proven, I feel that it is being used for good for the most part.

And so I'm going to, I'm going to throw seven and a half guys.

I don't know whether I'm talking about the top half or the bottom half of one of the rock throwing gnomes.

I'm sorry I bisected you, guy.

I wish you well.

Because

I don't want to get hit by any rocks that gnomes are throwing at me.

I'm not going to cut any of them in half.

I'm going to round it up to eight.

Okay.

I agree with you.

And I just, you know,

I am so inspired revisiting the progressive political history of Wisconsin and so

sad that, you know, Wisconsin has slid rightward over the years.

Obviously, it is no longer a safe brick in the blue wall in presidential elections.

I'm so sad that the progressive politics that Wisconsin ushered in, including so many of the labor protections and

other great social protections that the Wisconsin idea promulgated, have been demonized in these United States right now, that I do wish to honor that heritage

and imagine that forward in that state motto represents a chance, represents not only that heritage, but a chance to move forward to a new progressive movement in politics.

And I will say there are people who are working hard in Wisconsin to maintain and reclaim and move forward to a new progressive majority in that wonderful state.

And I'm really with them.

Here's to you, Ben Wickler.

Let's move forward together, eight gnome-throwing rocks.

No, rock-throwing gnomes, excuse me.

I'd like to see a gnome throwing rock.

Gnome throwing rocks.

Rock throwing gnomes.

See what it feels like, you.

I guess that's.

The problem with that is that could be the voice of a gnome or a rock.

So I need to work on that.

I'm going to work on that.

I'm going to move forward in my plan.

Maybe you should do a puppet show.

I'm thinking about it.

Like Francisco.

It's a great way to educate people.

Or Shepherd the hoaxter.

In any case, that's it for Wisconsin.

Obviously, we couldn't cover everything.

If there's something we missed out on, I am sure you will let us know via email, pluribusmoto at maximumfund.org.

Or

I would also suggest that you should let us know something about a state that's coming up.

For example, we have Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C.

coming up, among others.

So please, won't you drop us a line at email pluribusmoto at maximumfund.org?

Or send us a voicemail if you've got a memory or a song or a regional accent.

Or what you think a rock throwing gnome sounds like.

Yeah.

We've tried to make it easy for you.

Just go to speakpipe.com slash ePleuribus Motto.

That's speakpipe.com slash ePluribus Motto.

Press that record button.

Start speaking into that pipe.

That does it for this episode of ePluribus Moto.

The show was hosted by Janet Varney along with me, John Hodgman.

The show was produced and edited by Julian Burrell.

Senior producer at Maximum Fun is Laura Swisher.

Our theme music was composed by Zach Berba.

Our show art was created by Paul G.

Hammond, and you can also find us on TikTok and Instagram to tell us more about the states that we've talked about so far and the states we've got coming up.

Janet, where are we headed next time?

On ePluribus Motto.

John Hodgman, it is the return of the Commonwealth.

We are headed back down south to the bluegrass state of Kentucky.

Oh.

I thought it was going to be Massachusetts again.

Oh, well.

Well,

we got to talk about this.

I'm curious about that horsey bluegrass place called Kentucky.

Yeah.

Well, no, I'm excited to get down there to Kentucky, to Louisville, to Lexington, to Frankfort,

and to all the places in between.

Can't wait to hear all about it.

Until we reach Kentucky, though, remember our motto: you can't spell Hodgman without Hodag.

Boy, you sure can't.

I mean, that really blew my mind.

Yeah, absolutely.

See you next time.

Bye.

Bye, everybody.

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