Illinois - State Sovereignty, National Union
Listen and follow along
Transcript
Hey John, hey Janet, this is Alex Schmidt from Secretly Incredibly Fascinating and originally from Illinois, Glen Allen, Illinois, DuPage County, near Chicago.
And I'm so excited to learn from you what the state motto of Illinois might be.
It never came up in my entire childhood life at all.
I do remember there was a state song.
The only lyric I remember is 1818 Saw Your Founding Illinois, Illinois.
That's all I've got.
There was also a metal metal bust of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, the capital.
And on a class trip, we all took turns rubbing it for good luck.
And clearly, other kids had done it because the nose was a totally different color from the rest of the metal.
The rest of the time living in Illinois, you just sit in pensive appreciation of Abraham Lincoln as some kind of American saint.
So it's usually very serious, but I really treasure rubbing that nose on that bust in the state capitol.
Hi, this is Greg Mattola, director of Confessed Fletch, starring John Hamm.
You are listening to ePluribus Motto with John Hodgman and Janet Varney.
And now here's Janet and John.
Thank you for your penultimate introduction, Greg Mottola.
I'm John Hodgman.
And I'm Janet Varney.
Welcome to ePluribus Motto, the podcast all about celebrating the official mottos, symbols, snacks, and sandwiches of every state in the union.
This time we visit Illinois.
Make some noise for Illinois.
Okay, how do you decide what food and critters deserve to represent your state?
Ask the children, of course.
After a democratic process involving the middling opinions of elementary school kids, the land of Lincoln has a lot of state symbols to sort through.
Just as for the 13-line ground squirrel, just as for the 13-line ground squirrel.
But before we can get to that, we have a lot of city nicknames to highlight as well.
So let us delay no further.
And we're back.
It's e pluribus matteau.
Welcome back.
A little new emphasis that turned it into, if I'm not mistaken, it almost sounded like you said the French word for coat.
It almost sounded like you said monteau.
Monteau.
You said matteau.
A little port motteau.
I took two French pronunciations and turned it into the name of one B plus podcast.
E pluribus motteau motto is the name of the show.
And you know that it's about state mottos and state nicknames and state trivia.
State by state, Commonwealth by Commonwealth, Janet Varney and I are traveling the United States districts and territories.
And today, well,
today we're talking about Illinois.
But before we get to that.
Welcome to the show.
Last time we were together, Janet Varney told me all about the motto of, was it Georgia?
Yes.
Okay, here's what I remember about it.
The state song, Georgia on My Mind, was written by a non-Georgian, Hoagie Carmichael.
Hoagie.
Who's actually in Indianan
and also is named for a Philadelphian sandwich, the Hoagie.
Yeah.
And I also remember that the state bird of Georgia, Brown Thrasher.
Oh, the Thrasher.
I remember that because the most recent Atlanta National Hockey League team was called the Atlanta Thrashers.
Yeah.
I have bad news for you.
Uh-oh.
Thrashers?
Yeah.
Now extinct.
Not the bird.
Oh.
You're doing fine as far as I know.
What about the skate magazine?
Is it okay?
I need to know it's okay.
The hockey team has flown the Georgian coop.
As I may have mentioned last time, they are now the Winnipeg, the reconstituted Winnipeg Jets, which had been an extinct hockey team for a long time.
I don't think anybody wants to feel like they're reconstituted anything, but it is what it is.
I think the Manitobans are very happy to have their Jets back.
Yeah, take those Jets.
The Thrasher, I'm sure we covered this, but that is a cute bird that has definitely, Thrasher has now become a thing that does sound indeed very tough and is a great name for a team.
But at the end of the day,
but not a great hockey team.
Not a great hockey team.
They went away.
They became the Winnipeg Jets.
The Winnipeg Jets
had been extinct for some time because they had moved to Arizona.
I think they're the Coyotes.
I'm not a fan of sports.
I am a fan of extinct hockey.
That's why I know that Georgia
is the only, and I may have mentioned this last time, and I apologize if I did, and don't edit it out because people need to know.
Georgia is the only state to have two extinct hockey teams that moved to Canada.
The Thrashers moved to Winnipeg and became the new Winnipeg Jets.
And the Atlanta Flames, Flames who had a very hot logo, literally and figuratively.
No, just figuratively.
No, they engineered it so that just touching the logo would give you a slight burn.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They became the Calgary Flames.
They still play hockey under that name.
And the Georgia state motto is wisdom, justice, moderation.
I had to look it up again because it was so boring.
And you know what?
I learned never officially adopted as the official state motto.
Just showed up on the seal, which is similar to to the state motto that we're going to talk about today because it is my turn to share with you, Janet, and the whole class that land of Lincoln, the prairie state, state of the prairies, also known as the sucker state, Illinois.
Janet Varney, John Hodgman here.
When you think of...
Thank you.
If you could continue to check in with me by name about every five minutes or so, I need to have a sense of place.
Oh, trust me.
Janet Varney,
when you think of the state of Illinois, what do you think of?
What's the first thing that comes to mind?
Ever take a trip there?
I have been.
I was trying to think about whether I had been to any area kind of outside the greater Chicago area
in Illinois, and I don't think I have.
I just don't think I have.
I gotta say something, and I think the Illinoisians.
You know what the demonym of Illinois is?
The people who are from Illinois?
I actually don't.
What is it?
The Soufiones.
Oh, the Soufion Stevens.
The Sufion Stevenses.
The Sufion Stevens.
Of course, Sufion Stevens is an elfin singer-songwriter who promised to make record album based on every state in the union starting with Illinois.
Come on, Field the Illinois.
To date, he has not done it.
He put a lot of pressure on himself.
More even than maybe George R.R.
Martin to write a new dragon dance.
Maybe more even than John Hodgman and Janet Varney, who heuristically decided to take on all of the state mottos.
Yeah.
Did we learn nothing from Sufjan Stevens?
We did not heed his warning.
No.
The actual demonym is Illinoisan.
Illinoisan.
And the Illinoisans are going to be mad because I don't think I've been to anywhere in Illinois besides Chicagoland myself, but we'll talk about Chicago.
But it's fine.
Chicago's the biggest city in Illinois.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a big part of it.
And what do you think of when you think of Illinois or Chicago?
I think of my dad having been born and raised until he was high school age in
Evanston and Wilmette on the north side of Chicago.
On the north side of Chicago.
Until his family moved to the Arizona Flames.
Arizona.
I guess it wasn't.
I guess the Arizona Flames weren't there at the time.
No, no, the Arizona Coyotes.
The Arizona Coyotes.
There you go.
There you go.
The Flames are in, we're in Atlanta now or in Calgary.
To be honest, I'm still in a deep shock that my home state has a hockey team at all because that was not on the table, so to speak, when I was younger.
I'm just sure that it wasn't.
No one talked about hockey ever, ever, ever, ever in Arizona for obvious reasons.
You know what I just realized that I'm going to do?
What are you going to do?
It's my whole new career, a whole new chapter in my life.
Yeah?
I'm going to open an extinct hockey bar.
And it's only going to feature paraphernalia from extinct hockey teams.
And it's going to have huge TVs that will only play old hockey games from the 70s.
You will be a success.
You will be a success at least for a year.
At least for a year.
I'm going to mop up the ice.
I'm going to mop up.
They're going to call me the human, the cash Zamboni.
I'm going to be cleaning up.
I'm going to be cleaning up so hard.
Cash Zamboni,
you have succeeded just in terming cash Zamboni, by the way, because that resonates with me and it resonates with people all over the world.
I promise you that.
Look at this Cash Zamboni over here.
Clean it up at the tables.
You can use that.
Everyone, use it in Vegas.
Use it wherever you do your gambling.
Should that be the name of the bar, Cash Zamboni?
Or is that a little bit too
smug?
Money.
Yeah, a little smug.
I'll come up with it.
No one must steal this idea.
Yeah.
Though if you are an experienced entrepreneur who knows how to do addition and subtraction, you already got a leg up.
Business stuff, you might want to contact me.
I'd be willing to.
And obviously, Janet Varney, you'll be my partner.
Obviously.
Join me, won't you, in this partnership as we go forward into the land of Lincoln itself?
But first, I've got to find my notes because I must ask you, do you know the motto of Illinois?
I feel.
Well, I do.
You know what?
I missed the rhetorical flashing button that was happening in your eyes when you asked me.
Did you want to to take a guess at it before I reveal it?
I have heard it.
I don't think it's Latin.
Without remembering what it is, I feel like it's just very
plain spoken.
My fond remembrance of it, without knowing what it is, is I remember thinking, like, well,
yeah, okay, that seems American.
Like, you know what I mean?
But I don't remember why I thought that.
It does seem American in that it expresses
an anxiety over whether we should even even be a country or not.
Okay.
An appropriate anxiety.
Yeah.
It predates a historical conflict over just one of our many, many foundational sins in that the state motto of Illinois is state sovereignty, national union.
The tension
between whether we're going to be an inclusive civilization or whether we're going to have slaves.
I mean,
state sovereignty.
Yeah.
It was adopted in 1819, which is one year after Illinois became a state.
And if you look up the state seal, you might notice something striking about it.
So don't yell it out.
Don't yell it out.
But you will see the state motto flapping on a banner from the beak of a bald eagle sitting on a rock.
Yeah.
By the way, that eagle does not look that bald.
It looks like it's wearing a white toupee.
I'm just saying.
Let's be honest.
A toupeed eagle.
That is not bald.
But okay.
Yeah, it does look like, yeah, and he's sitting on a rock.
I mean, this thing really looks like a child's scrawl.
Yeah, this can't be.
I think Captain America's shield is also on here.
Captain America's earlier shield before it was round.
Copy.
It's got that shieldy, pointy bottom shield shape.
Yeah.
He's standing on a rock, and on the rock are the dates 1818, which we have established was when Illinois became a state.
And what do you think 1868 is?
Would you guess?
I can guess because I know.
Help me.
Help.
It's got to be a really important date in the history of Illinois, right?
I mean, it's on the seal.
Are you going to tell me it's not important?
It's the year that the seal was redesigned
by Illinois
Secretary of State Sharon Tyndale, a man named Sharon, by the way.
Okay.
I'd like to add that those dates...
Some would argue the second date, which is on top.
Yeah.
For some, 1868 is on top of 1818, which defies numerical logic to me.
Right.
Very bubbly letters.
I don't know if I'm just looking at one specific seal.
Those are like, I think that contributes to the A trial drew this.
Very bubbly letters for 1868 and 1818.
Sharon Tyndale did a really dorkyish redesign, but he was charged by the legislature to redesign the seal for two reasons.
One, the original seal, which was basically the same conceit, but it looked too much like the state seal of the United States of America for their taste.
It does.
I could see that.
I could see why.
Illinois it up.
And also, in 1868, something had happened, which was the Civil War.
And in the previous state seal, for reasons of order of words, state sovereignty, national union, state sovereignty came first.
It was on top.
This is a lot about what's on top.
Okay.
The legislature of Illinois is like, look, we just fought this war.
Maybe, maybe let's not put states' rights at the top of our state seal anymore.
States' rights, do your research.
the storm is coming, or whatever.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
They're like, please redesign it, Sharon, and put National Union on top where it belongs.
And he kind of did, but he twisted the banner around a little so that it
because it's like
the motto is state sovereignty, national union, not national union, state sovereignty.
And when he was twisting the banner around, what do you notice about the word sovereignty on the state seal?
I will say it's upside down and it feels like it's a juicy fruit ready to be plucked for conspiracy theorists.
Sovereignty is upside down.
You should be like, but why is sovereignty upside down?
You see, the reason for that is probably a litany of reasons.
That's right.
All the states' rights people are doing their own research right now to figure that out.
Yeah.
But in the meantime, Sharon Tyndale also is like, and by the way, most important thing that happened in Illinois so far, I redesigned this seal.
I'm putting the date 1868 on it.
I put myself, as MC Hammer once said, they put me in the mix.
And then
two years later, he was assassinated.
Not MC Hammer.
MC Hammer was not assassinated, just in case anybody was confused.
Still alive, I'm so glad to say.
MC Hammer, age 62,
has nothing to do with Illinois.
Of course, a proud son of Oakland, California.
Cue that meme that used to be on Twitter all the time of
Denzel Washington taking a deep breath of relief that people would put on
when they were, when someone would just
say
some celebrity's name, and everyone would think, oh, they died.
Hem C.
Hammer's alive.
Sharon Tyndale was murdered in 1871, assassinated, and it remains unsolved.
Who killed Sharon Tyndale?
I have two last notes about the seal before we move on.
Number one, please.
I feel very confident we're going to solve this murder just in the course of this episode.
Yeah, well, if you know.
I'm sure all of the clues are in the seal.
Starting with 17 clubs, I know.
Oh, Mr.
Policeman, I gave you all the clues.
You're saying that he knew he was going to be killed and he left the trail of clues on the seal?
And I will tell you that the person who is going to murder him has a scuba set, and they are sending little bubbles up from the water.
They're about to crawl out of the water.
And you could see all their little oxygen bubbles floating in the water because otherwise, I don't know what those are or why they're there.
You're talking about the water in the background of the seal?
The water in the background of the seal in the version I'm looking at has a bunch of little bubbly nubbins.
Little bubs.
That are slightly darker blue and white that for some reason, I mean, are those waves?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Surely that water,
I would imagine that that water is supposed to depict Lake Michigan.
Yeah.
You're saying that Sharon Tyndale was murdered by a bunch of Lake Michigan scuba assassins, came to shore.
You got anything better?
I presume that someone put a button on him because he turned sovereignty upside down.
I'm willing to believe that.
To be honest, this was a puzzle to solve because the old state seal also has an eagle on it and he's got the motto in his mouth.
But on this ribbon, basically, if you were to read it, it would be sovereignty, state, union, national.
It's all a mess.
State seals a mess.
As for the origin of the phrase, I could not find anything on it.
If you know who first proposed this as the motto, if you're an Illinoisan or anybody, let us know at ePleuribus, no, excuse me, email pluribus motto at maximumfund.org.
That's our email address, right?
Email pluribusmato at maximumfund.org.
Illinoisans make some Illinois.
Tell us,
I'm done.
You want to take a break?
Let's take a little break.
Well, for one thing, I don't know who's talking to me or who I am because you have not checked in with your name and my name in well over five minutes.
Janet Varney is me, John Hodgman.
This is e pluribus motto.
Let's take a little break.
Insert Denzel Gif Jif right here.
Hey there, my name is Lexi Henning, and I am from Chicago, Illinois.
Chicago's nickname is the windy city, and everyone thinks that it is called that because of our wind and our weather.
It is called the Windy City because of our bad track record with politics.
So unfortunately, my home state has a reputation for being the quote-unquote most corrupt state in the nation when it was back in the 1800s.
And so politicians were always consistently telling big windies, which is a fun little expression meaning big lies.
So technically, it's the city of lies, so the windy city.
And I wanted to recommend my favorite or one of my favorite local restaurants so i grew up in the historic old town neighborhood on the north side right next to lincoln park and there is a fabulous sort of barbecue rib joint it is called twin anchors and it has been there i believe since like 1881 or something like that and it's one of the oldest restaurants in chicago and man its barbecue is delicious it could really give kansas city a run for its money so So I highly recommend everyone go there.
And as a bonus little trivia fact,
they shot the bar scene in the Dark Knight movie where Harvey Dent goes in and like shoots a guy in the face.
Like when you watch the movie, if you know the place, you'll recognize it instantly.
And so it's pretty cool.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these fun facts about my home state.
The Flop House is a a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.
Robert Shaw in Jaws, and they're trying to figure out how to get rid of the ghoulies.
He scratches his nails and goes, I'll get you a ghoulie.
He's just standing above the toilet with a heart.
No, I'm just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which Wild Wild West is historically inaccurate.
Do you know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popped corn and your bagel bites and your cheese critters?
You can't go wrong with Henry Cavill Mustache.
Here at Henry Cavill Mustache is the only supplier.
New episodes every Saturday.
Find it at maximumfun.org.
And we're back, Janet Varme.
Varme.
I got to take another break.
Let's take another break.
We'll be right back.
No, no, no, we can't.
We got to move on.
We've got a lot to cover here.
Not a lot of time to do it.
Janet Varme here with John Hodgman.
A lot of history, a lot of trivia, a lot of things, a lot of nicknames, a lot of state stuff.
We're going to get to all of it here on EPLIBIS Moto.
Now we're talking about the state of Illinois, but of course, a state is an arbitrary distinction in time based on colonization and invasion.
Prior to becoming a state, of course, Illinois did exist.
The land was there, and the people who lived on it, most
many, many different Native peoples lived there.
But one notable grouping would be the Illinois Confederation, comprising primarily the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa tribes, among others.
Illinois, indeed, is a French corruption of the Ojibwa pronunciation Ilinwe or Ilinwe
of the native word Irenwewa.
I don't know which language group that belongs to, but the Ojibwa pronounced it Ilinwe,
and that's how the French heard it, and they turned it into Illinois.
It is translated as he speaks in the...
ordinary way or in other words the people who speak like us and here's something i didn't know prior to that the region that we now know as primarily southern Illinois was home to the Mississippian culture, who thrived around the beginning of the 12th century and built large, massive urban centers to live in.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know that either.
Yeah.
The Cahokia Mounds Complex was, I believe, the largest or one of the more prominent ones.
They built these large cities based around these massive earthen platform mounds, very, very tall earthen platform mounds.
And the Cahokia Mounds Complex was home to
guess how many people lived in this one city?
Thousands?
15,000 to 20,000 people.
That's it.
Major urban area
in 1100 common era.
And the largest mound is now known as Monk's Mound, and it is the largest pyramidal construct north of Mexico.
So there you go.
I'd like to see that.
Yeah, seems pretty cool to me.
I'd like to see that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was just, I'll just quickly say, because I, I, I, I mean, yeah, I knew that was a French word, but also that it felt like maybe some sort of bastardization of something that was not.
I feel like they called it New France, which just reminds me that, like, there's just nothing more kind of sad and uncomfortable to me than moving from a place and then being like, Anyway, this is that place, but different.
Like, I'm not going to name it something new.
This is Amsterdam, but it's new Amsterdam.
There's something about that that feels very like, we got to get away from this place.
We're going to move forward and do new things and be different people.
And
what should we name it?
You want to just name it the city we just came from.
Let's just name it the city we came from, but we'll put new on it.
Does that feel comfortable to you?
I feel safer now.
Do you know when I moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn?
I planted my flag in Prospect Park and named it New Upper West Side because that's where there you go.
And I was not wrong.
I was not wrong.
It's just another community of sort of bookish,
you know, affluent white people with strollers and very, very B-minus restaurants.
Sorry, Park Slope.
Get it together.
Park Slope.
But let's get away from Park Slope.
Let's get back to Illinois and we'll talk about the shape of the state.
Now, before you tell me what you think this state looks like,
state of Illinois, Janet Varney, we're talking about.
It's me, John Hodgkin.
Yes.
Thank you.
Let me draw a picture for the cartographers.
Where are my map heads at?
Make some Illinois.
Yes.
Did it again.
Why?
So, because it's fun.
It's funny.
Okay.
You can understand why Sufian Stevens had that dumb idea.
Its borders are the Mississippi River to the west, thus keeping Missouri and Iowa at bay.
And on the east, the Wabash and then the Ohio rivers protect Illinois from Indiana to the east and Kentucky to the southeast.
And to the north where there is no river, there is the totally phony made-up line called latitude, specifically 42 degrees, 30 minutes, which was conjured to protect Illinois from its northern neighbor, Wisconsin.
Now, why is 4230 so important?
Why did an Illinois early resident and delegation to the state forming committee or whatever, Nathaniel Pope, fight to have 4230 be the northern border?
The answer is very simple, and it brings us right back to that seal and those scuba divers lake access.
Indiana had just become a state, and originally both Indiana and Illinois'
northern border was going to end at the very southern tip of Lake Michigan.
You know how Lake Michigan kind of is like this big lobe of water that just kind of runs from north to south, more or less.
And Indiana's like, wait a minute, we want a piece of that lake.
Yeah.
Because we want to put boats on it and do stuff.
Sure.
And when Nathaniel Pope heard that, he's like, we also, we want a bigger piece.
And in fact, he got 51 miles more lakefront than Indiana got.
That's why they just have this crummy little dune area.
And Illinois has Chicago.
Yeah, that's kind of a big distinction.
Yeah.
Turned out to be pretty important.
We'll do Indiana eventually and give it its due.
So, Indianans,
I like to call Indianans Hoagie Carmichaels.
Don't fret.
We will give you your due in time.
But we got to talk about Chicago for just a second here.
I mean, Chicago.
Well, we haven't even talked about the shape of the state.
Okay, what do you think it looks like?
In full.
Let me take a look at it.
I would submit to you a person in profile,
looking to the left, looking upwards with some sort of like they have a flat top haircut.
There's some sort of little skin tag on their chin.
And then they got a very bulging Adam's apple.
And then they're wearing a frilly collar, and that's why it's so sort of frilly at the bottom, kind of at the base of their neck.
Now that I see it, but they're looking upwards, a little bit upwards, curiously and pudgily.
Yeah.
And then I, again, cannot account for what that little flap is that's between their chin and their Adam's apple.
That little bulbous nose and that that jutting chin, it kind of looks like Peter Griffin from Family Guy Got a Flat Top Haircut.
There you go.
See what you're saying.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, that looks about right.
And that skin tag you mentioned might just be the village of Kaskaskia.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
Kaskoskia, that's a tease.
We mentioned that that was one of the original peoples who formed the Illinois Confederation.
It's also the name of a very small, skin taggy village.
I apologize to Kaskaskia because I, A, love your name, and B, sometimes I don't realize the heavy responsibility that I take on when I describe a part of a state as a skin tag.
And I deserve your ire.
And I apologize.
Let me tell you something.
You don't need to worry about it too much because the population of Kaskaskia, according to the 2020 census, is 21 people.
I can apologize personally
to each one.
Yeah, that is much smaller than the Cahokia Mounds complex.
Yeah, like much, much.
And much, much smaller than the current top city in Illinois by population and by beef sandwiches as well, which is Chicago.
So Chicago is on Lake Michigan
and it's in the middle of the country and it's connected to the whole country by railroads and it's connected to
much of Canada and the eastern United States by the Great Lakes.
And as of 1959, to the world Atlantic, the Atlantic Ocean, thanks to the opening of the St.
Lawrence Seaway in 1959, which surprised me that it was that recent.
Yeah.
You can take a boat, go at Chicago on Lake Michigan, but you can get to frickin' Duluth and Lake Superior, Minnesota.
You can take it all the way, all the way.
And that's what allowed Chicago to become such a major city because it was a major, major center of trade as well as culture and commerce.
And it allowed Chicago to go on and import and export many, many goods, primarily, though, its most famous export being long-form improvisational comedy.
Correct.
In the Delclos style, all around the globe.
And it also exported a concept called murder.
Because among many things.
In 1883, Chicago held the World Columbian Exposition.
basically putting itself on the map.
And what's his name?
Frederick Law Olmsted of Brookline, Massachusetts, designed the grounds with one of his partners.
I can't remember.
Olmsted also had a hand in Los Angeles.
Olmsted had a hand in Los Angeles.
Olmstead.
That guy was a regular cash Zamboni.
He was cleaning up.
The Emerald Necklace in Boston, Central Park, Prospect Park, what I like to call New Upper West Side, some parts of Los Angeles.
There's a part of Atlanta indeed.
The guy designed a bunch of parks, really, really important landscape architect of the late 19th, early 20th century.
And also, what he didn't plan for was that someone named H.
H.
Holmes
would build a boarding house on the outskirts of the World Columbian Exposition to do what?
Just kill so many people in his maze of death.
You've read A Devil in the White City by Eric Larson?
I have.
It's a fascinating, horrifying book.
Yeah.
But I also love the picture it paints of World Fairs.
I am so sad that not to have gotten to see some of those World Fairs.
I mean,
extraordinary, strange, wonderful architecture, like true forward thinking in technology.
Kind of magical, like very magical to me.
Yeah, a whole fake, paradisical city, the white city as they called it, built there in Chicago to sort of announce that Chicago is a world city.
And it was, and deservedly so.
So let's not let, let's not let serial murder, arguably the first serial killer, to overshadow
the many, many glories of Chicago.
Now, Chicago itself has a motto.
Did you know that?
I didn't.
Here's the motto.
It's in Latin.
This one is.
Okay.
Herbs in horto.
Herbs in horto.
Which means don't bring a knife to a gunfight.
That can't be true.
No.
That's a quote.
That's a quote from the untouchables.
A movie set in Chicago.
Speaking of strollers, a little bit of inside baseball there.
Yeah, wowie.
You know what I'm talking about.
Strollers, famous, Famous stroller rolling down the train station step scene, which itself was a reference to Battleship Potemkin.
Uh-oh.
A famous silent film from the Soviet era.
Did not know that.
Anyway, yeah.
I mean, you know, Al Capone lived in Chicago, too.
Yeah, we know.
The Chicago mafia is
a known thing.
That's a thing.
That's a thing.
That's a thing.
Herbs in Horto.
Well, Horto reminds me of horticulture.
Right.
Herbs reminds me of hoibs.
Hoibs.
Which you can pick and put in stuff.
You could season your food with your hoibs.
Well, no, it's herbs, U-R-B-S.
You're very close.
Oh,
U-R-B-S, like urban.
U-R-B-S, like, you are bullshit.
What?
I understood.
And I agree.
Urban.
Urbanity amid.
Hang on a second.
Janet Farney.
John Hodgman.
Oh, thanks.
Yeah, it's me.
Your friend, John Hodgman.
You are not BS.
Thank you.
You are R.D., the real deal.
Oh, I'm T-R-D.
I-R-C-Z, I-R-C-Z, Cash Samboni.
IRCZ.
IR Cash Samboni.
Yep.
That's going to be the name of my shell company.
Herb.
Herb.
Herbs and herbs.
The urbanity existing amid the beautiful nature and plants and flowers.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
You got it right.
The city in a garden.
The city in a garden.
That's lovely.
One of the many nicknames.
And yet, no mention of the giant body of water.
Also,
quite close to the city.
One of the many nicknames of Chicago, the city in a garden, the other nicknames, of course, being Chi-Town.
Captain Deep Dish.
Captain Deep Dish.
City of Big Shoulders.
The Second City, the Windy City.
Now, hold on, the Second City, that sounds familiar.
And it sounds like it's connected to something you just said.
Yeah, it's because they started started importing Canadians and training them to export them to Saturday Night Live.
That's what the second city theater is.
And what about Toronto?
Isn't Toronto the second city?
It really is.
That's a really interesting question.
The second city I always took to be Chicago, but you're trying to tell me it's Toronto.
Well, I thought maybe it started in Toronto or Toronto and then sort of crossed the lake and settled all, improv settled into Chicago as well.
Here's what I have to tell you first.
Shannon Varney, this is not a podcast where we know everything going in.
It's a journey of discovery.
Like any great road trip, we learn stuff as we go along.
Second City chose its self-mocking name from the title of a series of articles about Chicago by A.J.
Liebling, published in The New Yorker in 1952.
Okay.
And it started in 1959.
and I'm sure they founded it in honor of the St.
Lawrence Seaway finalist.
I was about to say.
Paul Sills, Bernie Solins, and Howard Alk started it in 1959 in Chicago.
And it has training programs and live theaters in Toronto and now in New York.
So I believe that Toronto is the third city.
Okay.
And they trained Del Close, who was the creator of Long Form Improv, which you may consider to be a wonderful art form or a scourge upon your eyes.
Whichever it is,
I like it.
Whichever it is, you're both right.
I hope you have the opportunity to experience both versions.
I have never found a Wikipedia page listing as many nicknames for towns in a state as the list of city nicknames in Illinois.
So I'm going to list a couple of nicknames, and you tell me if you can figure out.
Knowing that I've never been to any other place except for Chicago, I'm figuring out other non-Chicago town nicknames.
That's right.
Okay, Okay, this is going to be good.
Here's one.
Chucktown.
Charlestown.
Correct.
Charleston.
Charleston, Illinois.
Baby, where was I?
The city is home to Eastern Illinois University.
It has close ties with its neighbor, Mattoon.
Oh, wait.
I do know another city in Illinois.
I just realized.
Yeah.
Nauvoo.
Nauvoo.
That's a real tangent.
That is an interesting city in Illinois because that, of course,
is where the Latter-day Saints, in their journey of constantly getting kicked out of places
in the 19th century, they got kicked out of Missouri for being a new religious movement, particularly one that practiced plural marriage.
They settled and created the city of Nau, which is a corruption of a Hebrew word.
It is,
they are beautiful.
It is a corruption of the Hebrew word, which I can't pronounce because it's in Hebrew letters, which I can't read.
So there you go.
Probably someone knows.
Well, you tried.
And this is where Joseph Smith, they weren't particularly well liked in Illinois either.
And this is where Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was hounded by a mob and then tried to escape from a second-story building and died because he was escaping without a ladder, jumped and fell and died.
His friend, Brigham Young, then led the LDS church out of Illinois and all the way to what they call Deseret and what we call Utah.
That's right.
Did you ever read Under the Banner of Heaven?
That's another one.
I did.
John Crackauer.
Two really good non-fiction book wrecks, I think.
Yes.
From us.
I strongly agree.
All right, but Navu is not one of the ones that has a nickname, as far as I can tell.
Chucktown.
Check.
P-Town.
Peoria.
Peoria.
Absolutely right.
Ah, this is easy.
I know, right?
So easy, right?
What about...
I got this.
What about Gem of the Fox River Valley?
Uh-oh.
I'll give it to you.
It's Algonquin, a village in McHenry and Kane County, a suburb of Chicago.
The gem
of the Fox River Valley.
How about Blono?
Blow-know?
Yeah.
You're not going to get this one.
Blowno.
Blomquist
town.
It's the two cities of Bloomington and its close neighbor.
It's Twin City.
Normal.
Normal, Illinois.
Blono.
Blow-no.
Blono.
I like it.
Champaign, Urbana, is also known as the Twin Cities, or also Shambana.
Shambana.
Chester, Illinois, is known as the home of Popeye.
Is that because the person who created Popeye was from there, or is that because canonically, Popeye hails from Chester?
L.
C.
Seeger, also known as E.C.
Seeger, he wrote, created Popeye and says here that
he was born in Chester, Illinois.
And that, in fact, several of Seeger's characters were created from his experiences with the people of Chester.
There's a 900-pound bronze statue of Popeye
in LZC Seeger Memorial Park.
And new statues honoring the other Thimble Theater characters are added every year.
Oh.
I'd like to go see that.
I would, too.
I guess I never realized that Popeye's accent,
if you could call it that.
Yeah.
Is it Illinois?
Yeah, that's right.
It's a classic Illinois accent.
When training for the movie Popeye, Robin Williams spent a year living
inside a 900-pound bronze statue of Popeye.
Surviving, one assumes, only on spinach that was piped in from some sort of hole in the statue.
All right, I'm going to give you one more,
leading us to another topic here.
But I will come back.
We're going to have a great Illinois town nickname quiz at the end of the episode.
Oh, can't wait.
Not for you, but for our fine, wonderful listeners.
Even better.
But the nickname is Flower City, also known as Spring Patch.
And I'm talking about
Springfield, correct?
It's a safe guess because I feel like every state has a Springfield.
Isn't that kind of what people say?
That's what they say.
That's why they say that the Simpsons chose Springfield because every state has a Springfield.
And I know there's a Springfield, Massachusetts.
There you go.
The Paris of Western Mass.
Aww.
Well, I would say more the Bloomington normal of Western Massachusetts, the blow-no of Western Mass.
Oh, the blow-no?
Got it.
But Illinois is the land of Lincoln, and Springfield is the capital, because a young rail splitter named Abraham Lincoln was like, let's make the capital here, please, the town where I live and am an attorney.
Great.
Here we are over on the Wikipedia page of Springfield, Illinois, where we learn that Abraham Lincoln lived in Springfield from 1837 until 1861 when he became president.
the United States.
And largely on the efforts of Lincoln and other area lawmakers, as well as the fact that it was very centrally located, was made the state capital in 1839.
So that's the story of Springfield.
Well, just a small sliver of the story of Springfield.
Sure.
Quick reference: the first capital of the territory of Illinois and then the state of Illinois was the aforementioned Kaskoskia, when it had more than 21 people.
But Kaskoskia is a tiny little village now.
But it's right at the edge.
It's the western edge.
In fact, it is one of the few places in Illinois that is an exclave, which is to say, it's on the other side of the Mississippi River.
It's surrounded by its state to the west.
Missouri.
The reason that it is so small, and the reason it's on the wrong side of the river, is that it used to be on the Illinois side of the river until there was a massive, massive flooding situation.
The entire town was wiped out.
The course of the river changed.
Oh, my.
And the resettled Kaskaskia is just a tiny little village now, population 21.
And all that happened in 1881.
The Mississippi River shifted eastward to a new channel, taking over the lower 10 miles of the Kaskaskia River, and it just really messed stuff up for Kaskaskia.
Shout out to Kaskaskia.
I hope you're doing okay.
As long as it's okay with everyone that everything to me in Illinois was either before or after the redesign of the SEAL, as long as that can be my landmark through which to navigate all of this information, I know that's what Sharon would want.
Springfield, Illinois is home to many famous Springfielders who were born there or lived there, including Abraham Lincoln, including Mary Todd Lincoln,
commemorated in the play O Mary.
Adrian Ballou from King Crimson is a Springfielder.
Cecily Strong, Springfielder.
Bobby McFerrin, don't worry, I'm from Springfield.
That was his song.
Great list so far.
Great list so far.
And a guy who appeared in a bunch of Three Stooges movies named Theodore Lorch.
I only mention because he shares the last name of Kate Lorch, who made that friend of the show.
Friend of the show, who made that corn muffin happen in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
And the birthplace of the horseshoe sandwich,
which we'll talk about in a minute.
Let's take a little break.
Oh, the horseshoe sandwich.
Hi, my name is Helen and I'm from Illinois.
I've lived in Illinois for 57 of my 58 years.
I'm kind of an expert.
I'm also a school librarian and every year our fourth graders do this cool project where they design and build a 3D printed representation of a state symbol of their choice.
I've seen lots of white-tailed deer in real life.
I've seen violets.
I've seen pumpkin pies and popcorn, and I've seen 3D prints of those.
The one thing I've never seen in real life, but I've seen lots of 3D representations of, is our state fossil, the tully monster.
I don't know what a tully monster is, but I've seen lots of plastic blobs that look sort of like a pill hook.
So that's our state fossil.
Very exciting.
On the other hand, our state motto is state sovereignty, national union, which is boring.
Boring, boring, boring, boring.
Just like driving through Illinois.
So that's Illinois for you.
From a true Illinoisan.
Most of the plants humans eat are technically grass.
Most of the asphalt we drive on is almost a liquid.
The formula of WD-40 is San Diego's greatest secret.
Zippers were invented by a Swedish immigrant love story.
On the podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, we explore this type of amazing stuff.
Stuff about ordinary topics like cabbage and batteries and socks.
Topics you'd never expect to be, the title of the podcast, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating.
Find us by searching for the word secretly in your podcast app.
And at maximumfun.org.
And we're back at Z Pluribus Motto.
Janet Varney.
John Hodgman.
It's me, John.
I was going to tell you about the horseshoe sandwich, but first,
no, what's coming up?
State stuff.
Okay.
What do you want to know about?
Well,
here are some options.
Here's some options.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We got a state tree.
We got a state flower.
We got a state prairie grass.
We got a state fossil and a state mineral.
I'd like to start with the state prairie grass because
we haven't talked much about prairies in Illinois, but prairies.
The state prairie grass,
and it's the only grass that is part of the Illinois state symbol family.
Okay.
Specifically, Adropogon Gerardi,
aka big blue stem.
Big
blue stem.
It grows between height,
it grows to a height of between
three and ten feet.
I'm sorry, what?
Yes, it's a 10-foot grass.
Oh, my.
Is it used for anything?
I bet you it is.
It's Halloween.
Let's go down to that big blue stem maze they put together every Halloween.
10 feet high.
That's pretty great.
Honestly, I did not know that you were going to pick, I did not preview prairie grass.
Three and ten feet.
It has deep roots and strong rhizomes.
Thus, Thus, it forms very strong sod.
It stabilizes the very land of Lincoln itself, the earth itself.
By the way, the soil of the state soil of the land of Lincoln is a drummer's silty clay loam.
But I won't talk to you about that.
Right now, I'm going to tell you
those strong rhizomes and roots dig deep into the drummer's silty clay loam.
forming very strong sod.
It's also excellent forage.
If you're, you know, if you've got, it's the prairies.
Well, cattle will probably eat it, and animals will.
Okay.
It yields two to four tons of hay per acre, and it's also known as turkey foot.
Turkeyfoot?
Is that because of its little rhizomes?
The seed heads usually have three spike-like projections and resemble a bird's foot.
And
on August 31, 1989, then Governor Thompson signed into law a bill designated the big blue stem as Illinois' official prairie grass, and it passed the General Assembly after the big blue stem was chosen in a poll of students conducted by the Department of Conservation.
Students, once again.
Always gets back to students.
There's your conspiracy.
There's your conspiracy.
By the way, that state tree is the white oak.
It's been the state tree since 1907.
So gerontocracy is rule by
old people, which is what we've been suffering in this country legislatively for a long time.
But what is rule by young people?
Juventocracy?
Juventocracy.
You want to say that?
I bet there's a real word for it.
I can't wait to get your emails.
School children voted for the state tree and state flower in 1907.
Get them, kids.
They selected the oak as the state tree, and here's how the votes broke down.
Oh, no.
White oak, 21,897 votes.
Okay.
Coming in second with 16,517 votes.
Maple.
Maple, not that far behind.
Presumably because people love the little helicopters
that come down from a Maple, right?
Yeah.
I don't think of, I don't think, I mean, when I think Maple, I'm thinking Vermont.
I'm thinking Maine.
I'm thinking Quebec.
I'm thinking Seattle.
Well, I guess those kids knew what was right.
And they were the same.
Coming in with 5,082 votes, the Jill Stein of the state tree.
Oh, no.
Grace.
Elm.
Elm.
Elm.
So that's what happened there.
All right.
So we talked about the prairie grass, the tree.
Tell me about the flower.
Oh, the flower is the violet.
Cute.
Oh, and there's a vote count here, too.
16,583 votes.
A real landslide for the violet.
The violet's someone else's state flower, too.
Is it Connecticut or Rhode Island?
It's an early one.
Rhode Island, I think.
There we go.
New thinking of that.
Illinois, New Jersey.
Uh-oh, preview.
And preview of
Illinois' mortal enemy to the north, Wisconsin.
Okay.
How about that?
I look forward to finding more about the violet.
12,628 young people in Illinois of 1907 voted for Wild Rose.
Yeah.
And then 4,315 wild card here, Goldenrod.
Oh, I like that.
I probably would have voted Goldenrod.
Spans of the paper or folder color.
Yeah.
The state mammal, or actually it's listed here as the state animal.
Okay.
Odocoilius Virginianus,
which is the white-tailed deer.
Now, see,
that comes up, too, I'm sure, the white-tailed deer.
I just don't know.
I mean,
the state animal was selected by a vote of Illinois school children again, this time in 1980.
And, you know, why would you pick an animal that's got Virginia in the name?
Yeah, I don't know.
Right?
It just seems a little generic.
Were they given infinite possibilities or were they given like, you can choose from these three guys, these three.
These were the runners up, it turns out.
Raccoon, love it.
Pick it!
Fox squirrel.
Cute.
Opossum.
Cute in its own way.
Red fox.
Also very cute and interesting and smart.
Honestly, this one was robbed of the crown.
I've never heard of this animal before.
The 13-lined ground squirrel.
The baker's dozen ground squirrel, as I'm sure it's it's nicknamed.
Also known as the striped gopher, the leopard ground squirrel, and the leopard ground squirrel.
And the squinny.
It's a ground squirrel that is widely distributed over the grasslands and prairies of North America.
And indeed, Illinois is the prairie state.
Gimme that squirrel.
It is brownish with 13 alternating brown and whitish longitudinal lines.
Baker's does.
Creating rows of whitish spots within dark lines.
It's a strictly diurnal animal.
It means daytime only.
It's nice to know it's so disciplined.
And especially active on warm days.
Give me that squinny.
It eats grass and weed seeds.
Maybe some of that big blue stem gets into its belly.
Caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets.
It will viciously, hold on, it'll viciously attack and consume cicadas if able to catch them.
Oh, well, you have to be vicious with cicadas because they're tough.
And as far as I can tell, it is not the state animal of any state Commonwealth district or territory in the United States.
Come on.
Got to give the 13-line ground squirrel its due.
I would love to hear any anecdotes, thoughts, or feelings from people who have experienced this Baker's Does Squinney for themselves.
Tell us more.
Does it look like a tiny, cute, vicious leopard?
It looks streaking across the field.
This is the prairie.
This is a great and very distinctive distinctive-looking
animal.
Look it up so we can catch your reaction.
13 hyphen-lined L-I-N-E-D ground squirrel.
Oh, I'm looking up Leopard Squirrel because I would like to see that it lives up to its name and it can be also associated as such.
I'm looking up squirrel.
13-lined ground squirrel.
I looked up leopard squirrel immediately, it was shown.
Oh, they're so cute.
It looks like a very fancy chipmunk.
Yeah.
It looks like a chipmunk.
Chipmunk that's wearing a doily.
It almost looks like you could read Morse code in its fur.
Baker's dozen.
Apparently they're commonly called squinnies in Des Moines, Iowa.
Well, I didn't see any, and I was in Des Moines, so we'll have to save that for Iowa.
Right.
Squinnies.
My instant rage at not having ever seen a squinny while I was there.
Okay, well, the white-tailed deer won.
I don't know what to say.
I love deer.
I love their sweet faces and their big eyes, but that was a very robust list of very cool animals, and I'm a little surprised.
Well, the bird, the bird, Illinois, you could have had the Oriole.
You could have had the meadowlark.
You could have had the quail.
And instead, those school children gave it to the cardinal,
which is also the state bird of Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Telling you, you can't put kids in charge of this stuff.
You got a 13-line ground squirrel here.
This juvitocracy.
Kids these days, right?
Or kids that day that they voted.
Insect, again,
very on the nose.
Monarch butterfly.
Love a monarch butterfly.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
But I mean, all right.
Fish, the bluegill.
What is the bluegill?
I mean, is it.
They mainly eat aquatic insects and insect larvae.
They also eat smaller fish, crayfish, and snails, but they're really important to the ecosystem because they are prey fish for other larger fish.
And so they're prized by sports fisher people for, A,
feeding bigger fish, and B, they're common panfish.
Do you know what that means?
What a panfish is?
Like, you can fry them up in a pan.
You can fry them up in a pan.
That's exactly right.
It is kind of pan-shaped.
It is pan-shaped and boring.
But you know what?
I will say this is an example, not unlike the possum, which did not make it as the state animal.
It is both ugly and cute at once.
The reptile is the eastern painted turtle, which is a very cute turtle.
Beat out the eastern eastern box turtle and the common garter snake.
And the amphibian, now this isn't boring.
We're talking about the eastern tiger salamander.
It's a very large salamander.
They range in length from five to ten feet.
Five to ten feet.
That's like half a stalk of blue, big, big tough blue, whatever it's called.
I've already found it.
Not true.
They can get as big as eight inches, though.
Tiger salamanders.
Look at you.
Students once again voted.
And they voted down the gray tree frog and the American toad.
Sorry.
And in this case, I think
today.
The kids of 2005 did the right thing.
Yeah.
The tiger salamander is the largest of the Illinois salamanders, up to 33 centimeters in length.
It is black and brightly marked with large yellow spots, occurring throughout Illinois.
It is locally common in areas near fishless ponds that are undisturbed by urban.
Good for you, tiger salamander.
But let's get to it.
We're going to do the fossil, then we're going to do the snack, and then we're going to get out of here.
Great.
Illinois State Fossil, Tullimonstrum gregarium,
commonly known as as the Tully Monster.
Oh?
Oh,
hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
First of all,
what's the name of the monster in Monsters Inc., like the main monster?
Sully.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
The Tully Monster is a fossil of an extinct creature that looked like a kind of
fat worm with the spots of a tiger salamander.
Uh-oh.
No.
Arranged in a line like a 13-line ground squirrel, but unlike those wonderful animals,
no legs, a flat, flappy head, and a long probiscus.
Oh, how long a lot of people.
At the end of which had a jaw with eight small, sharp teeth.
Whoa, no, no, no, thank you.
I'm okay without.
The Tully Monster was first found by Mr.
Francis Tully in 1958.
He took the specimens to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where I have done a book event before.
It's a wonderful museum with some great old bones in it.
Oh, I have to give the Art Institute of Chicago and the wonderful tiny thorn rooms, miniature rooms, a big shout out.
I'll cast a wave at the bean, which is also neat.
But the thorn rooms are wonderful miniature rooms that were all commissioned by the same wealthy woman.
Oh, I've seen those.
They're spectacular.
They're incredible.
The way that they are maintained and lit, if you just take a picture with your camera, no one will believe you when you tell them that they're miniatures.
But they're miniatures.
They're astonishing.
Oh, wow.
Yes, I've seen those.
Those are incredible.
Yeah, magic.
That's a wonderful thing.
And you can go see the original telemonster fossil at the Illinois State Museum, apparently.
This is fascinating.
It sort of looks like.
Yeah, it looks kind of dinosaur-y.
Looks also like plant life, kind of.
Its little mouth almost seems like it's just a
carnivorous plant.
Lived about 300 million years ago.
I'm seeing pictures of it, and it's creepy.
I mean, you know, renderings of what they imagined it looked like.
I'm fascinated by some of these renderings have like a bar of eyes or something.
There's like this sort of horizontal bar that's sitting on the top before you get to the weird gills.
Well, and it looks like those are two little eyes peeking out.
Do you see that too?
Oh my god, this thing is so strange looking.
Yes, it is.
This, I mean, look,
we we don't really know because when you look at the actual fossil that was found by Mr.
Francis Tully in 1958, one year before the St.
Lawrence Seaway opened Chicago to the world, you know, it just looks like a weird lump, but I see the artist illustration now.
If you do a Google search,
that's what I was looking at.
It's a pretty funny looking thing.
It's got two weird eyes and two long eye stalks.
Are you looking at this one where it's got like its probiscus, has a hinge in it, and then it's got that little beaky mouth where it looks like it wants to to.
Yeah, this is very funny looking.
It looks very Star Wars-y to me.
Oh, very Star Wars-y.
Good call.
Good call.
Looks like Cy Snoodles, if you know who I'm talking about.
I hope, boy, I hope I'm not getting that one wrong.
You better look that up.
Yeah, Cy Snoodles.
It looks, I would bet you Cy Snoodles, who is the singer in the Max Rebo band at Job of the Huts Palace.
Yeah.
Do a side-by-side or a sigh-by-snoot comparison.
A side-by-side.
Look up side.
S-Y-Snoodles.
You see what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Same.
I'm going to agree.
Samesies.
Huh.
So that's the Tully Monster.
Now let's get into it.
Let's get into it and close it out because we've been talking about this horseshoe sandwich for a long time.
We don't have a state food.
We have a state snack.
Okay.
And obviously, the state snack is that sexy guy on the bear, Jeremy Allen White.
No, he's from Brooklyn.
Sorry, everybody.
Snack.
I'm so glad.
And I'm.
You're telling me that a snack is a sandwich?
No, because I'm.
Thank you, because that feels like a meal.
I misled you there.
The horseshoe sandwich is not the state snack.
The horseshoe sandwich.
What have we even been doing here, John?
Well, I wanted to tell you about the horseshoe sandwich anyway.
Dangled the horseshoe sandwich out what feels like years ago.
They say it was invented by a chef named Joe Schweska at the Leland Hotel in Springfield in the late 1920s.
It is an open-faced sandwich
consisting of two slices of toast topped with two meat patties or slices of ham, then on top of that, French fries, and then on top of that cheese sauce.
No.
It's like a Welsh rare bit plus fries.
Why would it be called a horseshoe?
sandwich?
It says here on tasteatlas.com, if I'll be straightforward,
reveal my sources, it was served on a hot metal plate known as an anvil with the ham and fries representing the horseshoe nails.
That doesn't, that doesn't.
I'm not following that.
That doesn't.
That doesn't.
All due respect to the horseshoe sandwich.
I'm sure it's delicious.
You lost me at open face.
I mean, I'll eat some avocado toast like a good white woman from California.
But in general, an open face sandwich, I like the taste of a sandwich, like with the two pieces of bread keeping the stuff in between, not laid bare for the elements to come and corrupt it before I've put it in my mouth.
Well, let's talk about it because Chicago is, and Illinois, and Chicago in particular, is the home of many famous sandwiches.
It is, of course, also the home of many, what my grandmother would have called when referring to my Uncle Joe, nice-sized eaters.
Nice-sized eaters, healthy appetites in the land of Lincoln.
So some other famous Illinoisan slash Chicagoan sandwiches are the Bonin pork chop sandwich, the mother-in-law sandwich, which is a tamale topped with chili, usually served in a hot dog bun, popular in Chicago's south side.
Oh, I mean, I love tamales.
Putting it in a hot dog bun, this is new information for me.
And then topping it with chili.
All right.
Sometimes it's called tamale boat or a tamale sundae.
And then there's the humdinger,
which is a mother-in-law sandwich with melted cheese on top.
The gym shoe sandwich
is a hoagie roll filled with gyro meat
and roast beef and corned beef and lettuce and tomatoes and tzziki and sometimes mayonnaise and mustard followed by onions, swiss cheese, sweet bell peppers and jardonier.
Well, that might as well be a, you might as well have a hot dog run through the garden.
That's how.
Which, of course,
the Chicago hot dog that is run through the garden means that you get celery salt.
See if I can remember.
This
fluorescent green pickle relish.
I think tomatoes too, maybe chopped tomatoes.
Hold the tomatoes.
That's too much acid for all the other stuff you've described, which I prefer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like the other stuff better.
Chopped white onions, I forgot.
Pass.
And a dill pickle spear.
And the little spicy peppers are called sport peppers.
And it's a
poppy seed bun.
That's a shit.
Is that different from like banana, like, you know, little banana peppers?
I don't know what they are other than sport peppers.
They're like little peperoncinis.
I like a peperoncini.
Maybe the length of a a tiger salamander.
Okay.
Maybe about half of one.
Chop a tiger salamander in half and you'll get a sense.
Okay.
All right.
I don't want to do that, but yeah.
So all of this to say we don't know.
We still don't know what the steak's state salamanders.
I haven't revealed it to you yet, but it's none of these, it's none of these iconic Illinoisian foods.
And it's not the Italian beef sandwich, which is...
the inspiration for that incredibly funny comedy called The Bear.
It is not the deep dish pizza.
It is not.
Captain Deep Dish.
It is not the Chicago tavern-style pizza, which is not deep dish but thin and crispy and cut in squares, nor is it the pan pizza, which is not a deep dish pizza, but pretty close to it, I guess.
Served primarily at Pequod's, a bar in Chicago that I went to and I had the pizza.
I'm hungry, is what I'm discovering about this portion of the podcast.
If you've built up an appetite,
you're going to love
Illinois state snack.
Hit me.
Popcorn.
I mean, it's not, they don't put it here, but I'm just saying like dry,
air-popped popcorn.
No.
And I like popcorn from time to time.
What do you ever talk about Chicago-style popcorn or Springfield-style popcorn or blow-nose-style popcorn?
Yeah, give me one of those gymshoe popcorns.
Give me a mother-in-law popcorn.
I'm already getting letters because my memory just flashed back to the fact.
Okay.
All right.
That in Chicago, they do a combo of caramel popcorn and cheesy popcorn that people really love.
I would love it.
I would love it.
I love sweet and salty.
I would get on board.
I've been made fun of many times for combining sweet and salty snacks.
Cretor's handcrafted small batch popcorn call it the mix.
I call it the Cretor Fitor.
The cretor double feature and i guess
i guess other companies in chicago make it as well so there is that but here's here's the thing
this juventocracy we gotta we gotta get we gotta get out from under this juventocracy
who do you think what age group do you think is best suited to come up with state symbols vote on them and get them passed i'll tell you what not the second and third grade students of elementary school teacher fran Hollister at Cunningham Elementary School in Joliet, Illinois in 2003.
Yeah.
Because they're the ones who voted in popcorn.
They don't even say what the runners-up were.
And I can only imagine it's because
even in Chicago, second and third graders are not allowed in bars.
Because if they had been allowed in bars, they would have had some access to some real snacks.
Yes.
But instead, they're just getting, they're lucky if they get a little stale popcorn at the end of the school day, 2003.
And it's because, ostensibly,
Illinois is the third most popcorn-producing state in the Union.
Third.
Well, yeah, I know they make a lot of corn and like biofuel corn.
Yeah, I know they do a lot of corn products.
So, okay, but all right.
You know what the second is?
Second most popcorn-producing state?
Nebraska.
That makes sense.
Number one, Indiana.
You know what their state snack is?
Popcorn.
Good.
That makes sense.
Luckily, the Hodgevarntocracy is taking everything over by storm.
Vis-a-vis, state symbols.
We're coming in.
We're going to set things right.
We might tinker with a motto or two.
We certainly have to rate the motto.
And I know you don't want to rate it in popcorns.
Illinois and all of its wonderful cities.
has so much history, so much food, so much interesting stuff.
We could barely cover any of it.
If there's something you need us to know about Illinois, won't you let us know at e
mailpluribus motto at maximumfund.org.
If you're living in Kiwani, the hog capital of the world, or Lombard, the lilac village, or Lyle, the Arboretum Village, or Marion, hub city of the universe.
Here's the quiz.
Here's the quiz for listeners.
I'm going to
throw this to you right now.
Don't look it up.
Don't look it up.
Tell us, me and Janet Varney, which cities in Illinois correspond to,
and these are all in alphabetical order, starting in the M's, bagel capital of the world, village of eternal light, corporate king of the suburbs, the home of Superman, plow capital of the world,
the Maple City, Pumpkin Capital of the World, the world, Naper Thrill, and the home of the white squirrels.
That's your challenge.
Send that in and anything else we messed up.
Super thrill sounds like a freebie to me.
Everybody's going to get that one right.
Well,
everyone gets one right.
I'm realizing right now that we're going to have to have like an 11th episode of this season.
That's like the cleanup episode, the Cash Zamboni episode, where we're cleaning up the ice,
bringing in
feedback from people that we've received
post-episodes.
Maybe so.
Maybe so.
And I look forward to that.
Well, I don't know when we're going to, I don't know when or how we're going to fit your emails in, but we want them.
Email pluribus motto at maximumfun.org.
But now it's time to rate this motto
out of 10
tally monsters.
Oh, 10 tally monsters.
Okay.
What do you think?
I'm really stuck on the things that aren't official, so I guess I can't say that I want it to be a 13-lined
20.
squinny.
Okay.
With one being the lowest and 13 lines being the best.
Great.
Out of the number of lines on the back of a squinny,
how many lines
does the motto state sovereignty national union rank?
State of Down.
Upside-down sovereignty, national
union.
Yeah.
I mean, look,
I get it.
It's accurate.
It is straightforward.
That's why I had a sense of it being as such before I could remember what it was, before I had to be reminded what it was.
It's not like unpleasantly conquery.
I feel we've seen worse.
And yet, it doesn't sing to me.
And it doesn't help that you gave us the Latin motto for Chicago, which was lovely.
So unfortunately, now I have that swimming in my head just like a just like a telemonster.
Right.
Herbs on Provence or whatever that one was.
Yeah, herbs on Provence.
And so I know what I'm going to give it.
Do you know what you're going to give it?
We have to say it at the same time.
From on the scale is 1 to 13 lines on the back of a 13-line ground squirrel.
Yeah.
I'm going to count down 3-2-1 and then we'll give the ranking.
Okay.
3, 2, 1, 3.
Six and a half.
Wow.
I was willing to cut it right down the middle and say, I don't.
But I guess that's not, you know what I mean?
It's like, I don't, I get it.
It's true.
That's, it's, it's relevant today.
It's something that many people are talking about.
Right.
The great American experiment.
How does the union work?
How much sovereignty does a state have?
But it feels like I'm in class.
I think you're right.
And I'm going to amend mine to six and a half as well because it does, it raises questions.
It's a conversation piece.
And obviously, even Sharon Tyndale didn't exactly know what to do with sovereignty.
Hey, here's another challenge to you listeners.
If you know how to pronounce sovereignty upside down,
interpret that as you will.
Yes, please.
Make a voice membo and send it into email pluribusmato at maximumfun.org.
And if we are to adjust the 13-lined ground squirrel system to standard decimal, I guess that would put us both at five.
Yeah, right down.
It's a five.
It's a five.
Thus ends this episode of E Pluribus Motto.
Sick semper this podcast.
The show is hosted by Janet Varney along with myself, John Hodgman, and it is a production of maximum fun.
The show was edited and produced by Julian Burrell, along with our senior producer, Laura Swisher.
Our music was created, I guess we would say, composed, by Zach Berba, and E.
Pluribus Motto Artwork was created, I guess I should say, artisted, by Paul G.
Hammond.
I've given you the email plenty of times so you know what to do if there's stuff that we missed, if you want to pronounce sovereignty upside down, if you want to
name those towns that I named by their nicknames, just send us an email or mention anything you want us to cover in any of the upcoming states, districts, territories, and Commonwealths.
If you're in one of them or you have a little piece of trivia that you think we should be covering as we go ahead, that'll make our research a little bit easier.
The email, of course, is emailpluribusmato at maximumfund.org.
That email is also where you can send pictures of the states we have coming up so so we can include them in our episode art.
Not pictures of the whole states like from an airplane or a satellite, but pictures from within the state.
Pictures of souvenir shops or airports or train stations or family friends or anything you saw when you were in the states recovering.
You might see your photo show up in your podcatcher when that state's episode airs.
And Janet Varney, next time we meet, I believe you are presenting to me
the state of.
are we guessing or doing this is no well this is the issue is that we're out of order now so this would be the last episode of the 10 episode season Janet Varney and I would have and I would have presented you're out of order objection objection I would have presented if we're doing it in full honorable order I will have ended up presenting Georgia and Tennessee back to back and then you would end by presenting Illinois we were told by our wonderful editor and producer Julian Burrell Burrell, that we had to do Illinois this time.
So we did it.
I mean, we weren't.
We weren't told that.
That was my
mistake.
I was told
specifically.
Do it.
Do it or die.
The motto.
I thought we had already, because we had to do Georgia twice, I thought we had already done nine episodes.
And I thought we only had one left.
And I thought that episode must be Illinois because I saw the announcement.
Someone else had to tell me, oh, by the way, Illinois is going to be the last one.
But we hadn't gotten to it yet.
Save it for our other podcast the overthinkers instead
next time janet varney will be presenting appropriately enough our 10th episode will be the only 10 we see wait for it tennessee
tennessee i'm sorry that's coming up on the season finale of e pluribus motto but Fear not, we shall be covering all of the state's territories and districts in time.
But next time will be our season finale and until that next time, remember our motto, Remember Baker.
Remember Baker is not a motto.
Remember Baker is the name of a person who was a member of the Green Mountain Boys and a cousin of Ethan Allen and Ira Allen and described in his Wikipedia page as a tough red-headed freckle-faced young giant who indeed accompanied Ethan Allen on the raid of Fort Ticonderoga, or the capture, I should say, and then died in Canada.
The end.
Remember, Baker.
A squirrel ain't fine till it's got 13 lines.
I'm Dallas Trinkle.
I'm Devin Haig.
And I'm DJ Trinkle Haig from Urbana, Illinois.
Our state insect is the monarch butterfly.
I think that they're very pretty.
They're also my school's mascot, but they are an endangered species.
The lawnmower lawnmower people are cutting down the field outside my school, but we are trying to help them not cut down the fields so there are more milkweeds.
The caterpillars rely on milkweed for food and hatching.
Abraham Lincoln grew up in Springfield, Illinois, and I think that's really cool that a president grew up in my home state.
Also, he's in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.
