Episode 17: Iowa- “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”

Hi, Janet and John.

It's Julian.

You may know me as the producer of this podcast.

Well, last week, I was on vacation and I decided to re-listen to our episode All About Oregon.

And it was actually a lot of fun because I was traveling on the Amtrak Starlight Coastline train that goes between Seattle and LA, which of course includes Oregon.

And I took the train all the way from Seattle, Kings Row Station, to downtown L.A.'s Union Station.

And the really great part of the train train is that you have the observation deck.

And on the observation deck, while we were traveling through Oregon, was a really, really great tour guide who was telling us all sorts of fun stories about Oregon as we passed through the forests and everything, including the story about the Portland penny and how Portland, Oregon is in fact named after Portland, Maine.

And it was great to listen to that right after I'd gotten done listening to ePluribus Motto.

Thanks so much, guys.

I'm looking forward to making the rest of the season with you.

This is John Darnell from The Mountain Goats.

Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.

As I used to say when I lived in Northeast Story County, specifically in cola, you're listening to Epluribus Motto.

I worked a grain elevator in Iowa for exactly one harvest.

I wasn't good for two.

Over to you, Janet and John.

Hello, listeners.

My name is John Hodgman.

And I'm Janet Varney, and welcome once again to EPLuribus Motto, in which we celebrate and investigate.

Celebrate if you will.

No, thank you.

I will not.

In which we discuss all of the official state mottos of the supposedly United States.

But it's not only mottos that we are investibrating.

No, that's also not going to work.

But also official state mammals, monsters, rocks, songs, rock songs, and state seals.

Hey, Jan and Varney, did you know that the official state seal of Rhode Island is actually a seal?

I mean,

this is is just another reason.

Another reason to love Rhode Island.

Our seal is the official state marine mammal of Rhode Island.

I don't know if we covered that last season.

It makes me sad that there isn't a seal called a state seal.

Look out there.

I think I see a state seal.

There's a state seal.

Sealy, the state seal of Rhode Island.

Well, there you go.

I don't know.

We'll call him that anyway.

But

nothing so interesting this time.

Because

we are going to

a beautiful meditative state, the Hawkeye State, that jewel of the prairie, the short story writer's mecca there at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, the birthplace and eventual, we think, deathplace of the nation's current oldest U.S.

Senator, Chuck Grassley, king of gerontocracy, the arguable ice cream capital of the world, and the non-arguable home of the world's largest Cheeto.

That's right, Iowa.

I cannot believe I was in Iowa and did not see the world's largest Cheeto.

I have to assume you can take a little nibble out of it while you're there.

I mean,

maybe that's why it's no longer available for public viewing, it seems.

It's a little bit of a mystery.

We'll get into it a little bit later on, whether you can actually see or nibble the Cheeto.

And to be honest with you, I am not sure whether we're talking about a crunchy Cheeto or a puffed Cheeto.

Which do you have have a preference?

Oh, I like a wet Cheetos.

Like a soft

boiled Cheeto.

Yeah, like a southern

hot-boiled Cheeto.

I want it to seem like a dog has picked it up from the ground, held it in its mouth, decided it didn't want it, put it back down, and then I've picked it up hot and sloppery.

That's what I'm looking for.

A simple dog's breath Cheeto.

I'll let everyone sort of recover their gag reflexes for a moment, and we can continue.

Janet Varney, have you ever been to Iowa and or?

To reference a famous Star War, and/or.

Oh,

yuck.

I'm going to have to invest a little bit that.

Well, okay.

Look, I'm a dad.

But, you know, Janet Varney, I was thinking about this this morning while I was thinking about this.

I was thinking about it while I was thinking about it.

Well, that makes sense.

You've told me information over the past two episodes, the same piece of information, and it has never really quite sunk in because it's always been of the moment.

Yeah.

You have a dad that writes books about ghost towns?

Correct.

Is there anything more daddish than that?

No.

It's the, it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty daddish.

Pretty daddish.

It's great.

There are a lot of ghost towns in Iowa, but I'm not going to talk about any of them because they're just like.

And I don't know thing one about any of them.

Yeah, I have been to Iowa.

I had not been to Iowa until about a year ago.

Okay.

I had not been there.

I have now taken my photo at the state capitol building so we can put that on social media because you and I were at that time already doing the podcast.

I think I even maybe, I tried to snap a couple of different pictures.

I was in Des Moines for a convention, indeed.

That's the state capitol.

The largest metropolis of about 70,000 people.

It's

being a big snob.

I come from tiny stateland, USA, New England.

Well, let me ask you this.

Have you been to Des Moines?

I've flown into Des Moines on my way to Iowa City

because you know, you got to know the territory.

I'm a traveling salesperson.

So glad you brought that up.

It's going to come up.

Let's not get into it.

That is okay.

All right.

I will not answer that, but it certainly is something I think.

It really does come up later on.

And was kind of the only thing other than the writer's workshop that I would have ever thought of until I had been to Iowa.

I went to Iowa to

go sell band instruments and band uniforms.

Okay, well.

No, I went to go peddle my imitation of stand-up comedy at the Englert Theater in Iowa City, and I did that twice.

I think I did it in 2015 for sure, and maybe 2012 or 2013.

And the Englert Theater, I've said, and I will say it again right now, that is the theater that most reminds me of every theater that I've ever been in, and I've been in a handful.

Most reminds me of the Muppet Show Theater.

Ah, that's wonderful.

That's the total vibe of that theater.

That's great.

I really expected to see a bunch of fuzzy heads out there in the audience and a couple of old felt men yelling at me up in the balcony or whatever.

Did you feel like they knew that?

They aimed towards it?

Because that makes me, that would make me so happy.

It's a beautiful old historic theater.

And I would say to, and I know that our friend Paul F.

Tompkins just took Variatopia there.

Nice.

And I would encourage anyone to go.

Look, I've been to Iowa City and then I did a little comedy in Ames, Iowa at the Iowa State University.

Don't get those confused.

Please don't.

University of Iowa and Iowa State are not the same.

And

when you're in Ames, Iowa, don't say looking forward to seeing all the Buckeye, excuse me, the Hawkeyes tonight.

Certainly don't say the Buckeyes either, because that's the University of Ohio or Ohio State University.

Sorry.

Yeah.

There are a lot of these Midwestern colleges.

I was going to say that.

I was going to say that because it's far too late now, but I do feel like every state has one set of colleges, if not more, where it's easy for an outsider to make that mistake.

And it is a real bone of contention between whatever these, you know, the two schools are.

So don't say state of Iowa, say Iowa State.

I just presume they do that on purpose to lay a trap.

Oh, they may.

You know what I mean?

They may.

What else have they got going on?

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

I really like Des Moines.

Yeah.

I like Des Moines.

That being said, I love Says Capitol when I was there.

No, I really loved it.

And the state Capitol building has some really wonderful, thoughtful memorials.

And wonderful, there's a wonderful little gay community that is just off of the state Capitol building.

It felt very progressive, but it also felt like a good state of, and people I spoke to, because I do really like when I travel to places I wouldn't normally go, talking to people who, of course, self-selection, have come to a sort of weirdo gathering of Comic-Con attendees.

But

I asked, you know, what, what's your experience as

a citizen of this city or as a citizen of this state?

And people were quick to say, you know, it is both, you know, again, with it with the sort of

university and city side of things can be very progressive and very kind.

And then also very rural.

And we disagree on a lot, but also very charitable in similar ways.

And so I've heard, I have a sense of compromise in Iowa that I felt, I just felt it and I felt it in the representation of the city around me.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, politically, most statewide office holders, it's pretty red now.

Yeah.

You know, but it's got a long history of political progressivism.

And

long before that, that got, you know, in the Midwestern tradition, frankly.

Like,

and, you know, that stuff doesn't just go away.

You You know, Iowa always is also known, of course, for being first in the nation, Iowa caucuses.

Yes.

Like, these are people who are very, very politically engaged compared to a lot of other places.

They're going to go to someone's living room to stand in a particular corner for their candidate.

I got to respect that.

I had a great time in Iowa.

Yeah.

I loved it.

I had

great, great food.

I met lovely, lovely people, and I wandered around in one of the emptiest downtowns I've ever been in.

I know we've talked about this before, but it's just one of those downtowns where I don't know what's going on, but I guess, you know, probably just on a weekend,

I was staying near the convention center, which is downtown, but it's not downtown.

Always a treat.

Everybody loves the convention center.

In the convention center neighborhood, I know that I'm going to have access to a Chili's.

That's right.

That's right.

But on the weekends, it's one of those downtowns where I felt like I was the only person left on earth.

But then I would like wander into a restaurant and it would be teeming with people and their food would be great.

And it would be, yeah, I mean, it would be.

What food did you get into there?

I had twice

some really, really delicious sort of central Oaxaca and Mexican food.

I had to go twice because it was so good.

I had wonderful Italian food.

I had some wonderful Asian food.

There's

sort of thriving Asian communities in

certainly Des Moines again.

I haven't been elsewhere, but like I know Governor Robert Ray welcomed in

Southeast Asian refugees during after the Vietnam War or during the Vietnam War.

Yeah.

And there's a there's sort of a memorial and a yeah

about that in the uh near the state capital as well, kind of down actually near the river.

They have a beautiful river that you can jog across, you know, along.

And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, there's also a lot of really beautiful, surprising architecture along the river that I think, and I could be wrong about this, but I think it was sort of French.

It had a sort of, I I think, I almost want to say someone said Des Moines, yeah, pascu de moi, des moi,

it means of the monks.

It was of the monks, and I didn't see a single monk.

Did not see a single month.

I think that they're from a monk.

So that's my only complaint.

There's a lot of French names.

There's Le Mars, there's Dubouc,

meaning of the book.

Yeah, there's a lot.

Well, you know, there are reasons that those French names are there.

We're going to get into it.

Colonialism.

But

always.

When you ate the food there, there, did you have a made-right sandwich?

I never did.

I never heard about a made-right sandwich until very recently when you sent me a letter from Chad that we're going to read later in this episode.

And I would just like to reiterate to people listening: I love to hear about regional sandwiches and specialty dishes and so forth.

And if you know of one, we've got Nevada and Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

coming up to round out our season.

Those are all three

great and varied food cities.

If you've got a traditional local sandwich or regional food that you want to recommend, won't you write us as you always do at email, pleuribusmoto at maximumfund.org

or speak it into speakpipe at speakpike.com slash epluribus motto.

But Janon, I have a question for you.

Very good.

I hope you have more than one, or this will be a very short episode.

Well, I have three questions.

All right.

Well, let's stretch them out.

Question number one:

Do you know what is the motto of Iowa?

Looked for it when I was outside the state capitol building.

Did not see it.

Do not know it.

Didn't check out the great seal or the flag, did you?

I thought I did, but I don't remember seeing it.

Didn't want spoilers for this wonderful episode of Explorer of Mismotto.

Oh, that's right.

I had my memory erased.

I forgot I hired one of those companies.

Yeah, yeah.

Is your convention a severance convention?

No, it's an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind convention.

Fair enough.

Similar.

The motto is in English, a rare, only English motto.

And yet we know all this French stuff happened there.

Interesting.

Saivré.

Okay.

Saivré.

Enter a song.

Saix curieuse.

This is the motto.

Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.

What do you think of that, Janet?

It sounds like a part of a pledge to a flag that children would be forced to say.

Sure.

It feels like someone anticipated it slipping into a state song, although I also don't know anything about an Iowa state song.

You're going to find out.

You're going to find out.

You're going to hear it.

It feels slightly musical while at the same time being

a little prim and very sort of like, and we said we would do this and we will do this.

I

decided that it was pretty wordy.

It's, oh, it's, it's definitely wordy.

Like, you've got two complete phrases there.

Our liberties, we will will probably, honestly, two mottos.

And if you were to guess, was this created by a committee?

The answer is yes.

Okay.

Well, there you go.

Iowa became a state in December 1846, thanks to the penstroke of one President James K.

Polk.

All right.

It was admitted to the Union as a state in 1846.

One of the first acts of the General Assembly of the state of Iowa was to form a committee to commission a motto.

And this

committee of mottoing,

it was actually the committee for the Great Seal, but they had to deal with the motto too.

It was composed of three state senators.

And my guess is that one of them was like, I have a great motto.

It's our liberties we prize.

And the other one was like, I've got a better motto, our rights will maintain.

And the third member wanted to,

had a third idea, which was to borrow the title of a song by the famous Des Boin band Slipknot

and make the motto People Equal Shit

off Slipknot's second and arguably hardest album, which is entitled Iowa.

Nobody's going to listen to that time-traveling fool.

But People Equal Shit was judged to be an anachronism.

True story

because it came out, I think, in 2001.

And this was 1847 at this point.

Right.

So they had to compromise and they smashed those two other mottos together to form Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain.

And they wrote them on a ribbon and they put that ribbon on the state seal.

And let's take a look at the state seal.

Oh, there it is.

Boy, it just looks like so many state seals.

Whole bunch of junk, right?

Yeah.

What do you see?

Describe it.

Well,

the first thing I saw that I don't know why my eye went right to it because, again, it is very clunky.

There's a lot going on.

But the first thing I actually saw was over in the sort of far right of center, which is like, I guess, a little steamboat.

Like a steamboat out there on the water?

Yes, that is the

steamship Iowa, actually.

Okay.

Making its way along the Mississippi River, which is the eastern border of Iowa, across the river.

What's funny is that if that's the Mississippi River, all those hills in the background, that's a different state.

That's Illinois.

And also, is Illinois that hilly?

Just on the other side of the street?

Yeah,

I don't know about that.

They were like,

we need something that shows a perspective of distance.

Throw some hills at us.

You shuzz it up in the background.

You shuzz it up.

But the steamship Iowa was a very fast steamship.

It was reported to be the fastest steamship on the Mississippi.

Oh, did it go like three miles per hour?

Yeah, exactly.

Why am I shitting on steamships?

I don't know anything about them.

I think we're steamships.

Look, I can tell you this.

It weighed 112 tons.

Okay.

It could pull 10 keelboats, which is many more than I can pull.

Man, well, and it set the speed record from Galena, Illinois to St.

Louis, Missouri in 1843,

making the trip in a scant 44 hours.

Okay, I don't even know.

Is that good?

Is that bad?

It was pretty fast.

It was pretty fast.

Okay.

But the steamer,

but the steamship Iowa was here for a good time, not for a long time.

Okay.

And it sank.

Oh, buddy.

In 1847, like months after it was put on the seal.

And after 1847, it was considerably slower.

Okay.

All right.

I would imagine so.

I also see that just

in front of that on land is what appears to be a factory spuming a plume

of what I can only assume is deadly pollution.

Deadly pollution.

There is...

There's a guy with a flag.

He's holding his gun.

I guess you hold your gun like that.

I don't know.

Whenever I see someone with the actual butt of the gun pointed right into their face it makes me nervous but i guess no one's finger is on he's referred to in the in the official description of the seal as a citizen soldier which sounds a little sounds a little q and on now but whatever yeah he's got a on top of that flag is a red phrygian cap that is i think one of olive oil's shoes actually

no it's a red phrygian cap it's a cap of liberty

uh you see you see this in uh a number of seals

in the United States,

particularly of states that were admitted after the French Revolution, because that was the symbol of the French Revolution, was that red cap.

The commoners who manned those guillotines would wear these Phrygian caps.

And they became a symbol of French.

the French Revolution and

was adopted, back adopted by a lot of these seals in the United States as a symbol of democratic revolutions around the world.

Well, and that's why I was confused because I think of the beret as being a sort of symbol of commoner France, which is why people always say, you know, like, did you get a beret when you were in France?

Right.

But then when you stick a red beret on the top of a flag,

it calls to mind, to me, it calls to mind a head on a stick.

So

that also is confusing to me because then it seems like you're sort of, you know, you're sticking a thing on top of a thing to say like, screw you, thing on top of our thing.

No.

I don't know.

It's confusing.

This was just to make the flag look a little French and jaunty.

Yeah.

I like that there's a, there's a scythe down to the left

and a bundle of, I guess, wheat.

And wheat, I like the rake says, yes, we cut down crops, but we're tidy.

We keep our, we keep our, our yards tidy.

By the way, wheat is not particularly what Iowa is known for.

One of its and nor does that look like wheat.

It looks like a bundle of asparagus or grape.

One of its nicknames is the corn state, right?

But corn did not become synonymous with Iowa until a couple of years after this seal was made.

Again,

the seal was permanent for about seven minutes.

Okay.

Because in the 1850s, when the railroad came in, they started growing corn.

And that...

That factory that you see there is a lead factory because there was a lot of lead being mined in Dubuque.

Okay.

All right.

And I thought for a moment, do you see right in front, sort of

on our right, the citizen soldier's left, there's a pile of something there?

Yeah, it looks like, I thought it looks like a little toy or, I don't know, maybe some books.

I thought it might be some books, but it's a pile of lead.

It's what's called a lead pig, which is one of the ways they stack up lead.

So it's like,

it's a celebration of a deadly poison.

Oh, my goodness.

And then at the top, you have, oh, gosh, the bird is confusing.

It looks like a bird has lost its head, and then someone tried to glue a different bird head onto it, but it's sideways.

That's a mess.

I mean, it's an eagle, but is it?

And then...

Below it, you have a banner where they are, you know, it's that thing.

I think we've seen this at least once before, where they did something that makes it look like the motto is, we prize and our rights, our liberties we will maintain.

Yeah.

It can only be read that way.

It's very hard to read the motto on these blue ribbons of streamers being held by the eagle in its mouth.

But look directly behind the soldier.

What do you see on the ground right behind?

Is that like a plow?

Yeah, it's a plow.

Okay.

But I draw your attention to it because

the seal was, when it was commissioned, was then officially described in detail.

There are many versions of the seal, right?

Because they didn't have mechanical reproduction.

So as we've talked about before in the Secretary of State's office, one of the things is they keep a very detailed description of the seal so anyone can make it and it'll look the same.

But I'm sure it won't really look the same.

Yeah.

And in this portion of the seal was officially described in detail in IOA code A1.1.

Excuse me, 1A.1.

I apologize.

Oh, thank you.

I'm so offended.

Do not write us letters.

It email Plurobus Moto at Maximo.

Don't worry about that.

It describes, it includes the description of a citizen soldier supporting the American flag and liberty cap with his right hand, his gun with his left, and, quote, with a plow in his rear.

Which is unfortunate phrasing.

It's official.

In 2010, state rep Ray Zirkelbach.

suggested changing the phrase to the citizen soldier standing in front of a plow,

which is not only less innuendo-ish

when did he when did he call him just this 2010

but the general assembly never took up that resolution due to time constraints

all in i guess you could say that opportunity is behind them

all in all it's a real misfire of a seal and i'm I'm not saying anything that wasn't said all the way back in 1864 by T.

Parvin in his Annals of Iowa when he wrote Governor Governor Lowe, then Governor Lowe,

quote, Governor Lowe, who with every other gentleman refinement, cannot but regret the bad taste that conceived and adopted the conglomerate devices of our present, quote-unquote, great seal, end quote.

You know what I'm going to say before we move on from the seal?

Yeah.

I've decided I love this seal in a similar way as I love Ed Woods' Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Fantastic.

It's so bad and so funny.

Yeah.

I've kind of fallen in love with it.

I think I love it.

Well, I mean, it's such a mess.

You can't even, you can only go, oh, bless.

This is fun.

I mean, this is just fun.

It truly looks like something that was made arbitrarily by a committee.

Yeah.

And, you know, they, they just had to come up with something because they had become this state.

But you've done a great job noticing what's in the seal.

But speaking of bad taste and historic crimes, what is not on the seal?

Oh, boy.

I mean,

I don't know.

You certainly don't have any indigenous people represented.

You don't.

And it's not uncommon for a lot of these seals to have at least one usually inaccurate or fairly stereotypical portrayal of a Native American.

Right.

But here there's nothing.

You're absolutely right.

What's missing from the Great Seal of Iowa is Iowans.

The Iowan people, of course, the name of the state and the territory before it came from the Iowa, who, along with the Ho-Chunk and the Dakota, and the Oto peoples, had been settled farmers in the region for three millennia before Joliet and Marquette of France first claimed the territory for France, claimed, quote unquote, in 1763.

And the Native American population only grew and was joined by thriving communities of Meskwaki, Omaha, and Sauk people, among other

groupings.

By the 19th century, the so-called Indian removal ethnic cleansing policy of the U.S.

forced Native Americans to sell their lands and leave the state.

Although under an unusual Iowan-only policy, I learned, the Meskwaki were allowed to come back and repurchase their own lands.

And that formed the Meskwaki settlement in Tama

County.

which I'm saying Tama, it could be Tama, I don't know.

But that settlement exists to this day.

It's part of the Sac and Fox tribe of the Mississippian Iowa, which is one of the four federally recognized tribes in Iowa, including the Omaha tribe and the Ponca tribe, and the Winnebago tribe.

Although they spread over into Nebraska, you know, because

these borderlines were always arbitrary.

Before we move on, I should note Black Hawk,

who was the famous Sauk leader who went to war against the United States government, crossing over the Mississippi River from Iowa into mountainous Illinois in April 1832 because they had been exiled initially to Iowa.

The Illinois had been Sauk ancestral lands and Blackhawk went to war in order to retake them.

These lands were lost during the 1804 Treaty of St.

Louis as part of the Louisiana Purchase when all this territory went to the United States.

And the Black Hawk War that was led by Blackhawk and included natives from a number of different tribes.

This was the last major war and resistance movement of Indigenous peoples on the American continent against the USA in the West.

It was a huge deal.

And after his defeat at the Battle of Bad Axe later that year, Black Hawk was captured.

And then it was treated fairly well, as these things go, because they wanted,

the U.S.

government wanted to show the leaders of the United States big cities to demoralize them, basically, to be like,

this thing called the U.S.

is too big to fight.

And it was also part of a mythologizing tour where Blackhawk and his son and

members of his war party were treated as celebrities and trotted around, mythologizing this sort of noble savage myth that the U.S.

wanted.

And frankly, most white people in the United States wanted to think about rather than think about ethnic cleansing, genocide, and land grabbing.

And

so he became a huge celebrity.

He was the first, I believe, Indigenous person in the United States to write his own memoir.

And later, we honored

this tragic figure of Black Hawk by naming helicopters and a hockey team after him.

So good job, us.

That is...

Just put that story in a time capsule and shoot it out into space.

And that just sums up the United States.

Oh, I thought you were saying that's where history belongs.

We're moving forward.

Why are you always dredging this garbage up?

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

We'll be living in outer space.

Don't worry.

We've got, we're going to colonize the hell out of it.

Hey,

not only was the helicopter and the Chicago hockey team named after Blackhawk, but in a way, Iowa was itself, because just a few years after the conclusion of the Blackhawk War, a newspaper man in Fort Madison, Iowa, named James G.

Edwards, proposed in the newspaper that the nickname of Iowa be the Hawkeye State, and that people in Iowa should be named Hawkeyes specifically to honor, in his words, Black Hawk.

And along with the help of the popularity of the novel The Last of the Mohicans, which featured an ironically white character named Hawkeye, that nickname became very popular very quickly.

And of course, the Hawkeyes are not only how you refer to people around Iowa City, don't call people names Hawkeyes.

I learned that the hard way.

Okay.

But because the Hawkeyes are the sports teams of the University of Iowa.

And their mascot, of course, is Herky the Hawk,

which is a guy in a fiberglass hawk head, which honestly isn't bad because they might have honored Black Hawk by having a guy in a fiberglass Native American head, which would be a bad.

Yeah.

But Herky the Hawk is a hawk, and I want to tell you a story about Herky.

But I think we should take a break first.

Okay, well, I'm a little hungry, so I'm going to grab some Herky jerky real quick.

Whoa, no, don't eat that Herky the Hawk.

Trust me, you don't want to come for Herky.

When you hear this story, you're gonna know.

Stay away.

Okay, okay.

When we come back, I'm gonna tell you, Janet Varney, more about Herky the Hawk, and I'll spill the

beans on that enormous Cheeto,

and that'll be an interesting snack.

But first, let's take a break, and we'll be back in a moment with more E.

Floribus Motto.

Hey, Janet and John.

My name is Jeff.

I am born and raised in the town of Atlantic, Iowa.

And I thought I'd tell you a little story about how my hometown got its name

and also give you a little bit of an example of the Iowa accent, as boring as it is.

It is told that way back in, quote, old timey days,

the founders of the town of Atlantic were trying to decide on what the name would be, and they had determined that it was geographically in the center of the United States going east to west and so

equal distance from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

And so they decided to hold a big ceremony and they flipped a coin to determine if it would be Atlantic or Pacific and it turned out Pacific.

And then they talked to each other and thought about it and said that sounds like a stupid name for a town and they named it Atlantic anyway.

This story is almost certainly not true in any way, shape, or form.

And my history degree is offended by even telling it but it has passed on from generation to generation and I've heard it from multiple people in my town growing up so there you go

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Welcome, Rock Replora Bush Model.

Oh no, I'm Janet Varney.

Is that Hercule Jerky or Beans on Cheetos?

It's Beans on Cheetos.

Okay.

Beans on Cheetoast.

Beans on Cheetos.

Cheetoast.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

I'm John Hodgman, by the way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's get back to Hercule.

All right.

I may have oversold the story of Hercule the Hawk a little bit.

And again, I just want to be very clear.

We're talking about Hercule the Hawk, the big head mascot of the University of Iowa, not to be confused with Iowa State University, whose mascot is Cy the Cardinal.

I mean, look at this absolute unit.

Do you see Cy the Cardinal in here?

Oh my.

He is P.O.'d.

Of all the top-heavy anthropomorphized animals that are walking with their fists clenched in the history of football mascotism, including that badger from Wisconsin, I just don't like the idea of seeing a...

a cardinal, a wonderful songbird that is monogamous throughout his life coming, walking fast to me to beat me up.

Here's the thing.

I'm going to say it's going to be hard for Cy the Cardinal to sing anything because the thing he's about to put into his clenched teeth is a cigar.

This is the only thing missing.

It looks like he should be chewing on a cigar out of the side of his mouth.

One tough Cardinal.

Oh, Cy.

Herky the Hawk is broken.

Whoa, whoa.

I just went down to Herky the Hawk.

Herky the Hawk is broken.

What is happening?

Herky the Hawk is a different vibe.

What is going on?

Is this like a Hello Kitty thing where you think Hello Kitty is a a kitty and then it turns out to be a little girl in a kitty outfit?

Because this looks like a guy with a bad toupee who has a face mask on over the bottom half of his face and some of his eyes that is like a weird two-mouthed.

I understand it's supposed to be a beak with a set of white sparkling teeth.

Yeah.

But it also looks like he has two mouths.

Hawks.

Last time I checked, hawks don't have teeth to gnash against one another in anger.

What about hair pieces?

I know.

He's got really slick down hair.

Like, okay, so, you know, Cy the Cardinal looks tough.

Herky looks like weedy, like strong, but skinny.

And most of his strength comes from his like anger and fury and resentment, like a substitute teacher who's had it, you know?

I was going to say, like, if you wanted a, you know, 25-year-old Crispin Glover to play

Herky.

You're golden.

You got your guy.

Yeah, yeah.

Crispin Glover can play Herky, but Herky himself don't play because listen to this.

And I'm just going to quote this from the Wikipedia because why I rephrase it.

On November 22nd, 1997, during a below-freezing Iowa 31-0 football victory over Minnesota,

a golden gopher drummer, so the golden gophers are the, that's the, that's the, uh, the, the marching band that goes along with the uh Minnesota Gophers, right?

It's marching band.

All right.

A golden gopher drummer had a cup of water thrown on his face by Herky

after the drummer used his drumstick simply to tap Herky on his shoulder pad.

Herky then skipped away, and as he skipped away, he was

in success, in delight.

Hercule was tackled from behind by the drummer

and thrown to the ground.

Rather than accept the hand offered to help Herky to his feet, Herky got up and broke the drummer's glasses with a punch to the face.

God.

The drummer clearly retaliated.

The result of Herky's assault on the drummer was the breaking of what was then a 40-year-old fiberglass head.

You know, that head that the person is wearing in the Herki costume is made of fiberglass and it was 40 years old.

It says it was.

The result of Herky's assault was the breaking of the historic 40-year-old cheerbird's head.

Cheerbird.

Members of the Minnesota band

took small pieces of the broken head back to Minnesota.

I'm crying.

I'm crying.

Janet,

I don't love sports particularly, but

if there was some competition league that just pitted sports mascots against marching bands in brawls.

Oh my God.

I mean, I don't care.

I would sign up for Fubo $100 a month to see that live streaming.

Hell.

ESPN mascots

wars.

I'm going to subscribe.

Oh, my God.

Oh, he broke the drummer's glasses with a punch to the face.

That's a perfect story right there.

Yeah, I couldn't find a video of that.

I hope it's true.

I would love, if you've got a video of it, please send it to us.

Email Plurbis Monument.

Oh, beautiful.

MaximumFund.org.

That's wonderful.

Well,

I guess I'm okay.

I mean, listen, if they're both equal parts to blame, which I'm not sure they are,

my sympathy tends to lean more towards the bespectacled drummer.

But

both of them sustained some damage.

The thing that that makes me worry about is I don't want any harm to come to that famous Cheeto.

Please tell me the Cheeto was safe.

It's too important.

It's too important.

It's a mystery.

Okay.

So here's the thing about the Cheeto.

Iowa is the Hawkeye state.

Some of these states have multiple different nicknames.

And I guess some people call it the corn state.

For the most part, it's right like all the state stuff that we're going to talk about later.

It's really right down the middle, non-controversial, not, frankly, boring.

You know what I mean?

Okay.

Yeah.

But as far as the town nicknames of Iowa, they are much less dull.

The towns of Iowa have some great nicknames.

Grinnell, I mentioned before, is the jewel of the prairie, which is very beautiful.

Dubuque, or Dubuque, I guess is what you would want to say, formerly known for its lead mining, now known as the Masterpiece on the Mississippi.

Love that.

Great.

Des Moines, delightfully, is Hartford of the West.

Due to it, I presume because there's a lot of insurance companies there in Hartford.

I heard it was Connecticut.

I heard Des Moines was like Paris of the West, or sorry, I swear there was Paris.

Yeah, I swear there was a Paris thing that got thrown around.

I don't remember here.

It could be.

I mean, you know, obviously I'm going off of a list that I found on the internet.

Yeah.

I mentioned before about ice cream.

Lamars is the ice cream capital of the world because it is home to Wells Industries, which apparently is the world's largest producer of ice cream in one location.

But you have to give credit to this unnamed Wikipedia hairsplitter who pointed out it would probably be more accurate to claim it as the ice cream novelties capital of the world.

Okay.

So I guess it's like popsicles and stuff.

Okay.

I don't know how to pronounce the name of this town.

It might be Villisica, V-I-L-L-I-S-I-C-A.

Vilisica, Vilisica.

I don't know how to pronounce it, which is appropriate because its motto is living with a mystery.

Living

with a mystery.

I

love that lifetime movie.

I know.

Well, it's not a lifetime movie so much as a shudder original because

it derives apparently from a family being mysteriously axe murdered in 1912.

Living with a mystery.

And no one knows.

The mystery has never been solved.

And apparently, the accusations that flew back and forth within the community of who was the axe murderer really tore the community apart for a while.

I guess it would.

I guess it would.

But that brings us to our final mystery, which is the mystery of the world's largest Cheeto in Algona, Iowa, known according to the internet as the home of the world's largest Cheeto.

Now, I figured, oh, there must be a Cheeto Cheeto plant in Algona.

Right.

There's got to be like a roadside Cheeto that you can walk around in

and exit through the guests, the gift shop.

Yeah.

But it's not true.

We're just talking about a big Cheetos that a dude found in a bag.

He wasn't even in Iowa.

2003 was the year, Janet Varney.

No.

When Navy Petty Officer Mike Evans bought himself a bag of Cheetos and found him holding in his orange-dusted hand the largest Cheeto he had ever seen.

About the size.

Now, look, when you hear the world's largest Cheeto, you're going to presume that it's going to be like as big as a Stradivarius violin or a bass or a bass saxophone or something.

We all know that where I went is that I thought it was going to be the size of like a redwood tree.

It's not.

It's about the size of a silver dollar.

What?

I know.

It's dumb.

You need to look it up online because he put it up on eBay because he was a big eBay guy and he was going to sell the world's largest Cheeto.

And then it became an early internet thing.

And a bunch of pranksters started bidding it up till it was like up to a million dollars before eBay was like, this is a joke.

Let's shut it down.

But Navy Petty Officer Mike Evans did a lot of morning DJ talk radio about this Cheeto.

Got a lot of attention.

And that's when the town of Algona, Iowa caught wind of it and was like, maybe we should have that Cheeto.

This is so random.

And it's totally random.

And they asked him for the Cheeto and he donated the Cheeto to Algona.

And per a CNN report in 2003, quote, the folks in Algona, Iowa, a one movie theater town with 5,970 residents, can hardly wait to get their hands on the giant Cheeto.

They plan to shellac it,

lay it on plush velvet, and put it under glass.

That's what you do.

Yeah.

Quote, the giant Cheeto could be a boon to our local economy, said Tom Straub, owner of Algona's sisters, Sarah's bar.

Anything we can do to attract visitors to our town would be good.

And per the website Roadside America, which I used to love that website so much.

I don't know how well how frequently it's updated these days.

It's still pretty geo-cities in its vibe.

But as of 2010, the original location of the giant Cheeto was closed.

But then someone named Tom Kookford took a photo and sent in a report in 2010 saying that restaurant had reopened as Emeralds and the Cheeto was available upon request.

I hope you have to put on like hazmat gear.

You're going to need to put these booties on your shoes.

And sure enough, here is the Cheeto.

It looks like a pretty large chicken nugget.

Well, no.

And it's on a, it's on.

Look, there's, I mean, I don't have a silver dollar for comparison here, but they definitely did put it on a plush purple velvet pillow.

Yeah.

This Cheeto's being treated right.

And purple, is not purple the like opposite of on the color wheel?

Isn't it close to being, if not the opposite of

purple?

It's like they put a lot of thought into this.

I'm sure that's what was going through Algonquin.

The velvet, the purple velvet.

I'm sure it is.

The purple velvet pillow, the color of royalty,

is sitting on top of what I guess is like an orange glass dish or something.

This is a disturbing, it sort of looks like,

yeah, like it's something that got, maybe went into a vat of acid that the Joker created.

It was like a normal something, and then you pulled it out, and it had bubbles and sores.

Well, I mean, bubbles and sores.

It's not just Velissica.

We're all living with a mystery because we don't know where

this Cheeto is now.

This last update was from 15 years ago.

So if you're in Iowa or have been through Algona or you've been following this story at all, or you're the one, Tom Koopfer, who took this photo or whatever, and you've got an update for us, please send it in.

Because otherwise, I'm going to call this the state cryptid, and nobody wants that.

Nobody wants Iowa to be the state crypt.

I don't know if you have another one to offer up, but right now, this is Frontrunner.

I have half of one pretty much, but

that's coming up.

First, we got to get through this state stuff.

Now, I told you, Janet,

I got to be blunt about this.

I got to be blunt with you, Janet, and I got to frankly be blunt with you, Iowa.

Your official state stuff is boring.

Yeah.

Normally, like I'll look at the list on Wikipedia of state symbols, and there's not much there.

But if we go, and I think you ticked me off to this, if you go to the webpage of the Secretary of State for that state or Commonwealth,

usually they have a much more robust list of flora and fauna and snacks and beverages.

There's no state beverage for Iowa, as far as I can tell.

It's probably milk.

Could be corn syrup.

I don't know.

I might say, please have it be milk instead of corn syrup.

I went to the Secretary of State website and there was nothing about any state symbology at all.

It was just a picture.

I mean, it's just the splash page is a big old picture of Secco State Paul Pate.

And he's posing next to completely incomprehensibly a Captain America Shield.

He's in a suit in his office and he's got a big old Captain America Shield right next to him in the photo, which is weird, right?

Because I know you're not a MCU Marvel comic books person,

but if you're the Secretary of State of Iowa and you're going to pick one Avenger to rep in your website, let it be Hawkeye.

Yeah.

Not Captain America.

I don't get it.

I looked and looked and looked for some explanation as to why this guy, Paul Pate, Secretary of State,

who sounds sounds like Paul Blart mall cop or whatever.

Which Craig Kukowski just calls Paul Blart maul Blart.

Exactly.

It's what it should be called.

Look, if anyone knows why Paul Pate's got a Captain America shield, let me know.

You know how to get here.

Captain America was not from Iowa.

I just want to be, yeah.

No, it's not from Iowa.

Not from Iowa.

Can I just go back for one quick thing?

Of course, please.

I just want, and I know you're going to talk about this.

I know we're going to talk about this.

But if you're going to start a sentence and say, I'm going to be blunt with you, Jan, I'm going to be perfect.

You essentially said, I'm going to be perfectly frank.

You essentially said that.

I cannot believe you didn't say, now I know all you folks are the right kind of listeners.

I'm going to be perfectly frank.

Iowa, your official state stuff is boring.

Anyway, I just couldn't let that go.

You almost sang a song.

No, I don't think I did.

Well, I made that up off the top of my head.

What are you talking about?

Right.

There is a state song.

We're going to get into it.

All right.

But the rest of the state stuff that I found on the internet is really boring.

The state bird is the goldfinch, just like New Jersey and Washington.

Hey, look, I have this great novel, The Goldfinch.

Yeah.

What are we talking about?

Iowa shares a state flower with North Dakota.

The wild prairie rose.

Pretty rose.

No problem, sure.

State flag is boring.

Yeah.

It's essentially a French flag.

Like, you know, the red, white, and blue tricolour.

Yeah.

I presume to honor the French

invasion.

I'm looking at it now.

Yeah.

But again, it just takes that weird eagle and that infernal motto and plops it in the middle.

Yeah.

It says Iowa in it.

It doesn't look that bad.

Yeah.

The American Vexillological Society, I think, ranked it like 37th.

Okay, well, that's not great.

I don't even remember it.

I don't even want to look it up because I don't want to get more bored.

State Rock is a geode.

There's an unofficial state soil, Tama or Tama.

I don't know, name for Tama or Tama County, probably for Tama or Tama people.

It's a silty clay loam that's great for, guess what, growing things, corn in particular.

Sure.

Yeah.

Iowa's beautiful.

You drive through those rolling plains as I did.

I drove from Chicago to Iowa City.

Oh, okay.

Once you cross over into Iowa, it's not just flat.

There is a rolling landscape.

And it's hypnotically beautiful.

Yeah.

Parts of Wyoming are like that too, where you see some grain swaying on these sort of small same-sized hills.

And you're like, oh, I like, I like driving.

I like roads.

It reminds me of a painting by that amazing Iowan painter, Grant Wood, who did American Gothic.

Oh.

American Gothic is a very specific image, but he did a lot of landscapes, Midwestern landscapes that have this rolling hypnotic beauty to them.

And it's like, it's, you know, it makes you want to cry, but it's, but it is, it's meditative, meditative, right?

Like, Iowa is not a land of big gestures.

It's just consistency, right?

And dullness, I got to say in this case, including its official state song, which is boringly named the Song of Iowa.

Get in front of it.

Jan Eric.

With your permission,

I'm going to sing a portion of the song of Iowa to you.

Happily granted.

But first, I need you to ask me a question, a very specific question.

Okay.

What land do I love the best?

Okay.

John Hodgman, what land do you love the best?

You asked what land I love the best.

Tis Iowa, oh, Iowa.

Oh, no, okay.

Fairest state of all the West.

It's Iowa, oh, Iowa.

Hold it.

From yonder Mississippi stream

to where Missouri's waters gleam,

Mo fair it is as poet's dream

Iowa in Iowa.

Oh Iowa in Iowa?

Yeah, they switched it up at the end.

Oh, because from yonder Mississippi Stream to where its waters gleam.

Fair it is as a poet's dream in Iowa.

And this is,

didn't we just have an Oh Christmas tree, My Christmas tree?

Yeah, I was going to say, does this sound familiar to you?

I mean, it is to the tune of O Tannenbaum.

Is the idea behind that, like, hey, here's a thing everyone already knows.

This will make it easier for them to learn the state song?

or what's happening there?

I think that poems were set to music in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Yeah.

And they were often sent to common tunes that were not obviously copyrighted.

Right.

You know,

the national anthem of the United States

is.

I'm having a star-spangled banner.

Excuse me.

It took me a moment to remember.

It's quite all right.

The tune is borrowed.

Francis Scott Key wrote those words, but they borrowed an English drinking song called To Anacreon in Heaven.

Oh, I didn't, I don't think I've ever known this ever.

So that's not uncommon.

But you may also remember not only O'Tannonbaum, but the song that goes, I hear the distant thunder hum.

Oh, Maryland, my Maryland.

There you go.

She breathes, she burns.

Sorry.

This is good to know.

She spurns the northern scum.

Oh, Maryland, my Maryland.

That's right.

Maryland used the same tune for its incredibly martial and incredibly one-sided in the Civil War

song, Maryland, My Maryland, which was an anti-union song and by...

extension a pro-slavery song.

This is not.

Iowa's is not because Iowa was always a free slave.

It's lovely.

It's a very innocuous song.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, because I'm so glad to know this, I don't know how I'm sure I would remember if someone had told me that the Star Spangled Banner was based on an English drinking song.

It makes me like that infernal

freaking song so much more to imagine a bunch of people.

And it makes sense.

Now it makes sense because it's hard to sing, but if you're just a drunk person in a pub, all of a sudden, you know, the whole like, oh, heh,

hey,

hey, hey, hey, hey.

Like, that's how it's meant to be sung.

Have you ever sung the national anthem at a baseball game or anything?

I mean, oh, like, have I been asked to?

I mean, you might now.

I hope I'm asked to do it inside of a pub in that exact style.

No, well, I think I have some.

I think I, no, I don't know.

I want to say maybe I sang it in high school at one point, but it also seems like something I wouldn't say yes to, so I don't know.

Not that I'm too good for it, just that I would be too uncomfortable.

Right.

Yeah, no, I don't think that they'll ever ask me either, but you should do it.

Iowa is a free state.

The poem,

not the tune, obviously, the tune was stolen, but the poem to the Iowa song.

Is it the Iowa song?

No, sorry.

The song of Iowa.

was written by a Union soldier named Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers.

He first,

SHM Byers,

first conceived of it when he was being held prisoner, having been captured in Virginia by the Confederate Army.

And he heard Maryland soldiers singing it outside.

He's like, I've got an idea.

I'm going to steal that song again, but I'll give it different words.

He's the original weirdo Yankovic.

Exactly right.

Oh my God.

Weird SHM Byers.

Yeah, by the way, I would only ever call him HMS.

I wouldn't mean to, but I would inevitably say the HMS Byers.

He also,

he got imprisoned a few times and he was always coming up with poems.

And he was imprisoned in Fort Sorghum in South Carolina.

He wrote a famous poem about Sherman's march to the sea.

Oh.

And of course, in Fort Sorghum, no one knew that that was happening because the Confederacy was not letting you know that they were losing.

Right.

As Sherman devastatingly marched his army, destroying Atlanta and many other towns along the way in the final throes of the Civil War.

I think final.

I don't remember.

Point is, he only learned about it because an enslaved person smuggled a newspaper

into the prison camp.

Hidden, the newspaper was hidden inside a loaf of bread.

And then he read about it.

He's like, oh, I'm going to write a great poem about this.

And when he wrote it, he wrote the poem down, and then it got smuggled out

of the

prison camp.

But I don't think that there was a loaf of bread available.

It was smuggled out in a giant Cheeto.

It was smuggled out in a giant Cheeto.

It was actually smuggled out in a prisoner's wooden leg.

Okay.

It was hard to get messages.

People didn't have email at the time.

You know what I mean?

There was no band camp.

Oh, no, for sure.

And so many of the soldiers had plows in their butts that they wouldn't be able to stick it in.

Anyway, he loved Iowa, but as soon as he could, he moved out to Los Angeles for the same reason everyone does.

to write poetry for the L.A.

Times.

It was a different time.

That's amazing.

That was the one industry town at the time.

Wow.

That's amazing.

But okay, so it's a ripped-off song that shares a tune with a terrible statement.

Minimum of two, minimum of three other songs.

Minimum of three other songs.

But that's not even why I don't like this song.

I bet you could figure out why I don't.

Because Janet,

in your opinion, every song should have a number of trombones.

What number of trombones do you think is sufficient for any one song?

I can't say I'm going to say trombone, first of all.

I might say trombone.

What did I say?

But I know.

It sounds like you're saying, I mean, you're saying it in a way that sounds smarter.

It sounds like you're saying trombones and I'm saying trombone, trombone, like with the same emphasis, like trombone.

Well, that's a little messy.

Maybe that's a New England way of saying trombone.

I like your

essaying the trombone tonight.

Yeah.

And I hope everyone listening, I truly do.

I hope everyone knows that there is only one right number.

There is only one right number of trombones.

What is the number?

The number is 76.

Yes, that's right.

76 trombones, which is a song from what?

The Music Man.

The Music Man, the famous musical

set in Iowa.

River City, which is a fictional city.

It's based on Mason City, which is the hometown of the creator of the music man, the

very, very famous celebrity of his time, Meredith Wilson,

who very unusually wrote the lyrics, the music, and the book, The Music Man.

Yeah.

Now, I'm getting the impression that you may have some familiarity with The Music Man.

I love it.

I think it might be my favorite musical.

Yeah.

I just, I just love, I mean, I grew up with it, so that's one thing.

I know it's very stayed.

It's, it's an old musical, but it's one of those things, like, I remember when I first saw Singin' in the Rain, I was not a child.

I think I was a young adult when I first saw Singin' in the Rain.

And I, I had an assumption about that movie that I just thought, oh, it's, it's just some Hollywood piece of Hollywood fluff.

It's just some silly, like, oh, literally about Hollywood.

Well, but that I, but I didn't, I just didn't know that it was so acerbic.

Do you know what I mean?

Yes.

I just didn't.

I thought, because when you, if you're a person who's never seen any moment of Singin' in the Rain, you've still heard Gene Kelly singing in the rain, and you've probably seen the clip of him singing in the rain.

And you just, so you just don't know anything about, if you try to

extrapolate from that song what that musical is about you will not get there because it's such a smart it's such a smart musical And I think the music man if you don't know it you have this idea of it just being this sort of dorky corn-fed you know and it is a very white white musical as many to most old musicals are

but it but it is I feel that it was so ahead of its time I just had that feeling even as a kid I was like wow they're just doing such interesting stuff with rhythm and this sort of spoken word thing.

And then taking two songs.

It was the first time I had ever noticed like two songs becoming the same song that I thought of as different songs.

But then when you put them together, they work and all of that kind of stuff.

And it just kind of blew my mind.

And it's also very funny.

And then in the film version, Robert Preston.

You're talking about the 2003 television movie version with Matthew Broderick.

I absolutely promise you I'm not.

I promise you I'm not.

Interesting.

Starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones.

And I also grew up with Robert Preston because of Victor Victoria.

And I just love him with all my heart.

So I just have a very

love, a big love of it.

And Paula F.

Tompkins and I share a dream of putting on the Music Man together.

And I feel someday we will because we've been talking about for like a decade, or maybe that's more of an indication that we won't.

But I feel like we will.

So here's the thing.

I did not grow up with the music man.

I did grow up with Singing in the Rain.

Maybe that's why I'm so coastal and acerbic.

Whereas The Music Man is a real love letter to Iowa, right?

These should be the songs.

Like there's a song, Iowa Stubborn is all about Iowa.

That's a great song.

And it's satirical, but it's loving.

And it's portraying this, you know, this conservative and sort of naive, but also wholesome and wonderful community that gets taken in by this acidified con man.

I'd never seen it before until, guess what?

Paul F.

Tompkins invited me to watch really with him and Matt Gorley and Mark McConville.

Oh, that's so funny!

I was coming into town.

Yeah, I did not know that.

I was coming into town, and you know, I understood that this was an important piece of culture for him, but I'm not sure I understood how important it was.

Yeah, because when I saw it and afterward, he's like, So, what'd you think?

And I'm like,

Yeah, it's it was good, like it was pretty corny, but I liked it, which was the wrong answer.

i'll never i'll never forget

the light going out of his eyes

turning that's my darkest fury i honestly and i'll say this with great confidence that paul will never listen to this podcast but oh i i would say it i don't know that that's true at all i would say it to his face i fear our friendship has never been the same since i failed to appreciate the music man since then paul and janet i've really come to love it it's got it's great i love it of course i love it it's amazing and the whole history of meredith wilson being this sort of like multi-hyphenate huge star

um and uh wrote some really really iconic songs there are a lot of great songs about iowa in this musical and throughout iowa so you know obviously we mentioned people equal shit by Slipknot.

Yeah.

Des Moines own Slipknot.

And when I say Des Moines' own, Slipknot really loves Des Moines.

Like they are really of Des Moines.

Okay.

In the way Prince is of Minneapolis.

But they're more iconic pop musicians with ties to Iowa than I would have thought.

Andy Williams should have done a cover of People's Evil shit, but I don't think he did.

Tion T.

Baz Watkins from TLC.

Tiny Tim.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

And of course, our friend John Darnell, the Mountain Goats,

while not from Iowa, spent a lot of time living and loving Iowa.

His book, Universal Harvester, is set in Iowa.

It's a great scary novel,

and more than just a scary novel, but it is a scary novel.

And I asked John if there was any songs within the Mountain Goats repertoire that were particularly Iowan.

And he offered a song called Million off the 1996 album called Nothing But Juice.

So this is an oldie.

Yep.

And Janet, if if you take us to break right after we go to the break, we'll listen to a little bit of that song before we come back.

Wonderful.

All right, well, when we come back, a letter from Chad and your Iowa State Crypted.

Coming up soon on ePluribus Motto, when we return.

When I came back from Finland,

the taxi took me down the street.

Saw the red flowers growing like they used to by the roadside

in the smothering summer heat

You were standing out in front of the house

In your floral print dress

And you had had questions only a masochus would ask

Written all over your big brown eyes The moon is high

Over eye and wide

The moon is high

Over I am one

night I brought you a blanket

Hand woven

hand dyed

as high

over eye wide and night.

Welcome back to EPLURBIS Model.

I'm John Hodgman.

And I'm Janet Varney.

Janet, I promised you at least half a cryptid.

Yeah, I know.

I'm worried about this cryptid.

Well, the funny thing is, like, Iowa, they've looked they've got a lake monster.

Thank goodness.

They got a lake monster, the Okaboji lake monster.

They have got the monster turtle of Big Blue.

They have got a dog man, of course.

They got some big cats, of course.

They got the Lock Ridge monster, which is your

Bigfoot-style monster.

You got your skunk river monster.

They all kind of fall into the same category.

And of course, I'm pulling all of these from

the Cryptids of Iowa poster designed by our stranger friend, not a person we've ever met before, but whose wonderful posters of Cryptids of the States I've been enjoying very much.

Yeah.

Their name is Monica, and their Etsy store is called Lipstick Kiss Press.

And you can find them by looking looking up Lipstick Kiss Press

on Etsy and get all of the cryptids of the states.

But there are a couple here, but the reason that they're all kind of run of the mill, I think, to a certain degree, is that I'm not sure that Iowa is a cryptid country.

You know, remember how I was talking about like driving through.

Oh, yeah.

Where do they go?

Where are they concealed to be living in this history, living through history with very few sightings?

Where would that be?

I mean, Iowa has a very mixed economy now in the sense that it has a lot of high-tech there.

It's got, it was the, the, the first electronic computer was built there in the 1930s.

Uh, it's got a lot of manufacturing, it's got a lot of service industry, it's got a lot of stuff going on in it.

But for the beginning of its history, it was just a farm, like one massive farm.

And the wheat, obviously, that was on the steel, and then corn.

And something like 99% of the tall grasslands and and what forests were there went away to create these cornfields.

So there's not a lot of places to hide.

You know what I mean?

Unless you're children of the corn.

This is what I'm thinking.

Well, that's what I was going to ask you.

I was trying to figure out, you know what?

That's said in Nebraska.

I just looked it up because

I was going to suggest that you could have, you could create your own little cryptid that's when you, that you could say, oh, we have the children of the corn.

Everyone will be like, oh, ha ha, the movie.

But you'd be like, no, they're tiny little people.

Tiny people who can hide among the wheat stalks.

Stalks.

Is that right?

The sheafs.

That's what you would need.

You need a tiny cryptid that is known to live and hide in the wheat fields.

Did you have one in the corner?

I'm sorry, cornfields or wheat fields.

No, but I mean, if it was just a tiny little guy or the tiny little, the tiny little creature,

that's what I would like to see happen.

Well, the alternative to a tiny little hiding kangaroo rat or whatever

is a cryptid of the sky.

And in fact, the two interesting Iowa cryptids that I found are the dragons.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah, the Iowa dragons.

So, of course, I'm going to

cryptids with a z dot fandom.com slash cookie slash Iowa underscore dragons.

Of course, you are.

Of course, you are.

Quote a number of Burlington, Iowa residents reported seeing several dragons flying over their city.

Several dragons.

In recent years, if those years were 1887, the Bedford Times Independent of Bedford, Iowa, August 11, 1887, reported that a man named Lee Quarter encountered a flying serpent, quote, writhing and twisting with protruding eyes and forked tongues, great scales, which glistened in the sunlight, covered its huge body, and appeared to be flat and nearly a foot in width, the scales, not the dragon.

That sounds like a kite.

Perhaps it was an early kite, and perhaps that's an explanation as well for the Van Meter Visitor.

For several nights in 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa was terrorized by a giant bat-like creature that emerged from an old abandoned mine.

Ooh, one of those red mines.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's what you need.

Oh, no, yeah, you need a creature in a mine.

You need a mine creature, something that flies out of it.

Descriptions of the Van Meter Visitor suggested it had large bat-like wings,

it fired beams of bright light from its forehead

and left a terrible stench wherever it went.

I don't feel like I noticed any

cryptid sightings that emerged meaningfully out of Iowa during the high post

Bigfoot 1970s period where a lot of these folkloric stories got ginned up.

But if you've ever seen the Van Meter Visitor or a dragon or any of the other Iowan cryptids that we mentioned from the poster or from your own experience, I implore you, let us know, email pluribusmato at maximumfund.org or send us a speakpipe, speakpipe.com slash eplorobusmotto.

That's where you can tell us all about the things that you've seen and done and eaten as Chad did.

Yeah, well, Chad wrote about a couple of different things, but

I pulled out this tidbit about Iowa because I knew it was something that was very important to you.

So Chad, thank you so much for helping fulfill John Hodgman's desire to know more about official or unofficial state sandwiches, such as they are.

Chad says, I'm sure when you talk about Iowa, you will mention the perhaps unofficial state sandwich.

Chad, this is wonderful because this is one of those inception moments where you're sure we're going to do something that we heretofore would not have done, except you wrote us then assuring us that yes, we will mention the state sandwich, the made-right.

That is M-A-I-D-R-I-T-E, M-A-I-D-R-I-T-E, the Made Right.

Let me tell you, says Chad, it's not that great.

So before we get Chad's review, let me tell you what I could find out about a Made Right sandwich.

Okay.

The Made Right sandwich, also known as a loose meat sandwich.

Oh, well, loose meat, we know.

Typically includes ground beef, onions, and a bun.

with optional toppings like mustard, pickles, and ketchup.

And it just looks like loose hamburger.

Well, he's

fun.

And I don't know where the term made right comes from.

I'm looking it up right now.

It sounds like M-A-I-D space, R-I-T-E.

It sounds like it might have been a like a Woolworth or something, like a Woolworth

lunch counter.

Yeah.

I'm sorry that I couldn't find the

inspiration for it or the etymology.

So if you know, let Nora know.

Let us know.

So what does Chad say about this loose meat sandwich?

Well, he said what you said.

He says it's not that great.

Imagine a sloppy joe, but no sauce.

It's just seasonless, crumbled ground beef on a hamburger bun.

That is sad, Chad.

Sad, Chad.

I feel you, my friend, on this, Chad.

That is not what you want to be the unofficial or official.

state sandwich, although I guess what you read off of wherever you read that from, John Hodgman, suggested that there were, you know, it was like, it's very like, hey, hey, our motto is we

prize the fact that we get to make our choice about what topping we want to put on our official state sandwich.

We're not going to give you all of the necessary ingredients and charge you with the responsibility of that.

We know that you want to exercise your rights to choose what topping you want on your otherwise boring,

dry,

unofficial state sandwich chad it's all about your freedom you want to put sauerkraut and mustard on there you're an iowan you can i'm not even sure you still live in iowa or but you can if you want to put you know barbecue sauce and uh

something herky jerky on there

you can go ahead and throw that on there.

It's all about exercising your rights because I know you prize those liberties.

And by the way, I hear, I can hear it right now.

All of you P-Dance, tippy-tapping on your keyboards, sending us letters at email pluribus motto at maximumfun.org.

And I encourage you to send them, but first delete them because I looked it up.

I figured it out.

I knew you're going to yell at me.

Made Right is an American casual dining franchise restaurant chain.

It is a lunch, a fast food restaurant.

in Iowa, founded in 1926 by Fred Angel in Urbandale, Iowa, Fred Angel being a butcher who also

created the Made Right sandwich, also known as the loose meat sandwich.

Okay, well, when when you and I were both in Iowa, it sounds to me like, speaking for myself at least, no one told me about this sandwich and no one told me to go to Made Right.

So no one was excited enough about this unofficial state sandwich to even tell me about it.

Therefore, I feel it does not have a lot of groundswell support.

Yeah.

Look, I don't think of Iowa as a state of complainers.

Maybe that's why Chad had to leave, perhaps.

Why don't you give me a recipe so I can try it for myself, Chad, rather than just tell me it's made wrong?

Chad, I'm on your side.

All right, Chad, I'm on your side too.

I'm on everybody's side.

But it's time to rank that state motto.

Do you remember what it was?

10,000 things happen and then

I thought

I brought us back to that motto through my very clever comparison with this official unofficial state sandwich.

We prize these liberties.

I'm too busy making up made right.

We prize these liberties and our rights we will maintain or something like that.

Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.

I can't believe

my whole motto sandwich rant.

If you're going to rank that on a scale of one to 10 jacked up cardinals.

Okay.

Or do you know what?

A rank of one to ten marching band drummers punched in the

glasses.

Pick whatever.

One to ten, where does it stand on yours?

10 being good, one being not good.

I mean, I guess I'll just kind of put, you know, I'm sorry.

I'm going to stick it right in the middle.

Stick it in the middle.

Five.

It's a five, which is like the most boring score.

It's just like, I

understand it.

It's too, yet it's too long,

yet it's not offensive, yet it's not exciting.

It feels like something you just are forced to recite.

Well, except for that last part, it feels like Iowa.

You know, it's beautiful, hypnotic rolling hills.

It's a steady pace of life.

Yeah.

I hope some peace and quiet for people who need it these days.

I'm sure there's spice.

I'm sure it gets spicy in Des Moines.

Sure it gets spicy in Iowa City.

Sure it gets spicy in Ames.

But I think it's sort of like just an unseasoned loose meat sandwich of Amata.

Yeah.

Five.

Yeah.

Give it a five.

All right.

All right.

And that does it for this episode of e Pluribus Motto.

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

The show is produced and 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 next time,

Janet Varney, it says here that you are going to take me on a tour of the town of Pennsylvania.

Probably a whole Commonwealth, now that I think of it.

Okay, this is good to know.

I'm going to reach out for some help on this one.

You and I both have some mutual friends who hail from Pennsylvania.

I have spent time in Pennsylvania, but I suspect that this is going to be a situation where I'm going to want some personal anecdotes and thoughts and recommendations from some of our mutual friends.

So I'm going to do a little homework before we hit Pennsylvania together, but I would love, you know what?

Please send us an accent if you can on speakpipe.com slash epluribus motto.

But if you don't, I want to tell you right now we've got it covered because I can think of someone right right now.

Talk about a place full of regional sandwiches.

Yeah.

You got your Promanti brothers in Pittsburgh.

You got your

Jim's famous steaks on South Street in Philadelphia.

You got your,

I can't remember the name of the place, the pork and the broccoli Rob sandwich.

All right.

But if there's any of those sandwiches that I haven't heard of, please let me know.

Email pluribusmot at maximumfund.org or say it in speakpike, speakpike.com/slash e pluribus motto, and then speak into the pipe as janet says we'll love to hear your accents both pittsburgh and philadelphian and anywhere in between there's a whole lot of pennsylvania that i've never been and i'm looking forward to exploring it with you janet on the next episode of e pluribus motto until then remember our motto

do not tap her he's shoulder pad don't do it that's how you live or lose that's how you get your glasses broken All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Hey there.

It's ePluribus Moto producer Julian here once again.

This time speaking to you, ePluribus Moto listener, not to Janet and John.

I'm not even sure they know that I'm doing this right now.

And I wanted to give a special shout out to listener Joseph who sent us some videos of his wonderful polka band playing at the Iowa State Fair.

What better way to close us out on the Hawkeye State?

Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.