Episode 18: Pennsylvania - “Virtue, liberty and independence”

Yo, it's Chris in South Philly, first time long time.

How you doing?

First things first, I want to say the best cheesesteak in the city is the one you're eating.

Second thing is, go birds!

I'm Janet Varney.

I am John Hodgman.

Welcome to the Pluribus Motto, the show, that celebrates the official and unofficial U.S.

state, Commonwealth territories, and district mottos, flags, animals, cryptids, and engines?

Yes, and today,

we continue to wind towards the conclusion of season two, but don't worry, you still got a couple more beauties to go.

John Hodgman, I know you love a good Commonwealth.

I do.

Sometimes I think you love a Commonwealth more than you love a state.

I, look,

I.

That's it.

Past and answered.

All I want to do is.

No one knows what a Commonwealth is.

I've looked it up many a time.

Uh-huh.

You know, I love the place that I'm from, Massachusetts, even though I do not live there and refuse to.

I enjoy thinking about it.

And

I love things that are just a little different.

And I was always like, I like that this is a Commonwealth, not a state.

And of course, there are four Commonwealths.

And by the way, legally, there is no difference.

And we talk about the state of Massachusetts all the time.

But technically, we're talking about the Commonwealth of Kentucky,

the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which which we've already discussed,

and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

But now we're in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Wait a minute.

Have I presented on almost all of the Commonwealths except Massachusetts?

Surely I didn't present on Massachusetts.

I don't know.

I did do that.

We would have to go to the

robust e-pluribus motto Wikipedia page.

I can only assume that five years from once we've recorded this, that will be true.

In which our listener is robustly updating every detail of every

episode.

Well, then this will be an episode that

will be called out in terms of being different because you are sitting in front of a map I've never seen before.

I don't know where you are.

I am in the former Commonwealth of Massachusetts, now known as the state of Maine.

Uh-huh.

Maine, as you may or may not know, was part of Massachusetts, even though it has never been connected to Massachusetts.

It was mass territory until 1820.

Then they decided, hey, we need to admit a new state, Missouri.

Uh-huh.

And I wrote about this in my book, Vacation Land, available now on paperback.

Great book.

But this was, you know, there was a lot of controversy about whether Missouri should be admitted as a slave state or a free state.

And the Missourians, I presume to their eternal shame, wanted to be a slave state.

Yeah.

So to keep things all fair and balanced,

they decided they would also admit a free state.

And I guess that would make the enslaved people of Missouri feel better.

I'm sure it would.

I'm sure it would.

So they were like, what are we going to do?

We're going to call around to all the different states and commonwealths, like ask if they have any junk land they're not using.

Oh, no.

And Massachusetts answered the phone and was like, hello?

Junk land we're not using?

Yes.

A place that we could turn into a state where it wouldn't matter one way or the other whether it was a slave state or a free state?

Sure.

100% white people up there in what we call Maine.

No.

We'll call that the Missouri Compromise.

Great.

If there's one thing you want to compromise on, it's human dignity and liberty.

This is, by the way.

I was going to say, please tell me.

Is that a fish?

Okay, I thought maybe it was like a pickleball paddle or something, but it is a wood carved.

Oh, googly-eyed.

It's a googly-eyed fish

with a key at the bottom of it.

And you can hear this on the podcast, and you can see it maybe somewhere.

Oh, things in Maine.

You know, time moves on.

There was a time when you could go to the basement of the library here in Maine.

Yeah.

And just walk into the Elvira Bass room

and record a podcast.

Don't.

Don't even

gloss over the Elvira Bathroom.

Yeah, I am in the basement of the Blue Hill Public Library in Hancock County, Maine,

which I have reserved using their online booking system

to have a conversation with my friend Janet Varney about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

But I am in the Elvira Bass room, where I will be next time we speak, I imagine.

And this key,

the keychain is a bass.

It's a challenge.

I got to tell you something.

Get it.

I got to tell you something.

I got to tell you something, which is that my experience of a large, cumbersome object being attached to a key could only be a key to a bathroom.

And I thought

that the bathroom at that library was known as the Elvira bass room.

Oh, yeah, no.

I guess a cheeky joke.

No.

And I thought you were going to tell me why the bathroom was called a bass room.

And that none of that, I mean, a little bit of that is right, but but almost all of it is not

and i thought that it was a famous bass that someone had named elvira after elvira cassandra wilson's character mistress of the night i'm going to presume that the elvira bass room was named for elvira falco bass

okay who died 10 years ago 2015 in blue hill maine at the age of 96.

Oh, Elvira.

I didn't mean to think that you were.

She was an active volunteer in a number of organizations in Blue Hill,

including the historical society and the blue hill public library where i am now which is a terrific public library and everyone should check it out online you can go there everything about that is so charming if you wanted to be mischievous as some people say incorrectly

if you wanted to be mischievous You could go to the Blue Hill Public Library website and book the Elvira Bassroom every afternoon for the next 17 weeks.

Don't you dare.

Literally locking me out of my podcasting opportunity with Janet Varney.

But by the time you hear this,

I think we will have already recorded Nevada and Washington, D.C., which are our final two state/slash district for this season.

Yeah, which means if you're listening to this, you still have time to squeeze in a couple of missives and or speakpipes to us about D.C.

and Nevada.

And how would someone even do something like that?

Well, if memory serves, I think you can go to speakpipe.com slash epluribismato, and there's just like a button that you click, and you can speak to your heart's content.

Although, I would keep it short because that increases its chances of coming on the air.

And Pennsylvania is known for some accents, and I believe we're going to hear her at least once.

Yes, right?

Yes, fear not.

And I want to thank you for providing me such a beautiful segue, an unintentional, which is the best kind of segue, the unintentional segue of holding a key right up to me on camera as we discussed where you were, because in fact, it is a segue right into the Keystone State, Pennsylvania.

I'm just, I'm wishing right now I had brought a stone.

Well,

how hard is your heart right now?

Good point.

The Keystone State slash Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Well, I was just thinking before I even got on the phone with you.

Yeah.

This version of the phone.

Uh-huh.

Why is it called the Keystone State?

And what is a Keystone anyway?

Okay, all right.

Well, I can't believe that you're going to task me with explaining what a Keystone is because I still don't understand.

And I went to Wikipedia's Keystone photo page.

It's the stone in the top of an arch, I believe.

It is a stone on the top of an arch.

It is a stone in the top of an arch.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

And

the reason that you don't know why it's called the Keystone State is because no one does.

Oh.

But speculation runs rampant.

It may be because Pennsylvania played a crucial role in the vote to move the original colonial states out of Britain's squeezy grasp and into independence.

Some

think it's because Pennsylvania.

It's a squeezy grasp of the British Empire.

My words?

It's not so much colonial oppression as it is a squeezy grasp.

Like, the ketchup is empty.

Stop squeezing it.

It's empty.

Oh, speaking of ketchup.

Pennsylvania, big ketchup territory.

Well, we'll get into it.

Heinz.

Heinz.

Okay, so something, okay, so that's one reason that it, that it is a crucial role in the vote.

Others believe that because Pennsylvania had six of the original states above it and six below it, and I'm going to go ahead and add to that-ish,

you could think of it as more of a sort of a physical keystone, the piece holding all the pieces together, which takes us back to your definition of a keystone, which I did, indeed, I believe is the correct one, which is if you imagine an arch, that middle piece, no pieces are going to exist without that.

I would say that the piece to the left and the right of that are also very important in keeping an arch together.

Nay, all the pieces are created.

It's a key piece.

It's a key piece.

But it's the keystone is the one at the top of the arch

that is kind of wedge-shaped and I believe physically holds the arch together.

Okay.

All right, so it's a real physics, a real physics of architecture.

I'm not an ancient Roman.

I don't know how they make the arch.

And don't even ask me about an aqueduct.

I won't, I wouldn't.

I continue to think they're a myth.

I think you're probably right.

Or at least a cryptid.

Okay, so we've got the speculation about the vote.

We've got the speculation about the sort of six above, six below key holding it together.

And yet, others believe that the state's founder, Quaker William Penn, found a magical key-shaped stone that allowed him access to the locked door of a hidden cave.

Yes, keep going.

I got to get through this without laughing.

I love it.

I've never heard it.

That allowed him access to the locked door of a hidden cave, which was also a portal into the future.

Keep going.

Say more.

That's all I came up with.

That's the whole of the lie that I came up with as the third possibility.

Did you make that up or is that something that people think?

Oh, you made it up.

I definitely made it up.

Yeah.

You were giving us some real Joseph Smith clothes.

I know.

I know.

I almost said that the key-shaped stone, if you put it in a hat, he could see into the future.

And it was this peeping stone, but that felt a little too on the nose.

I like the idea that there's a locked door in a hidden cave.

That's right.

That's one thing I associate with spelunking is

another locked door.

No, it's like like a mine shaft.

It's like a wooden door that covers the entrance to the magical cave.

Yeah, make sure you lock the mine behind you when you're done mining.

And

don't leave the giant fish paddle with the key attached inside because the door will automatically lock and then no one can see the future.

I almost got locked out of the Elvira bathroom, honestly.

Because I forgot that it locks now.

I was going out there.

You know, I just wanted people to know.

I'm in the bass room, not the bathroom, but the bathroom is on the other side of that that wall.

And you might hear the sound of a macerating toilet at some point during this time.

Depends on who comes down.

But we're not talking about Maine anymore.

We're talking about Maine.

We're not talking about Maine.

We're not talking about Maine.

So Keystone State.

There are other nicknames that have come and gone and stayed, but not been as key as a Keystone nickname.

The Quaker state.

Sure.

I already mentioned William Penn.

Because William Penn was a Quaker.

That's right.

And we'll talk more about that in a minute.

The oil state, the steel state, the coal state, and the chocolate state, those are all pretty literal.

We got the Hershey's is

based in Pennsylvania.

Coal, steel, oil, all depressing things that have kept much of America going and have

harmed the brave and

dedicated workers through the years as they have toiled away.

And my hat is off to those.

It was an early resource extraction

hotbed.

It was.

I didn't know about the oil.

Maybe I should have.

Certainly coal, steel, steel in Pittsburgh, coal, Centralia, Pennsylvania, famous.

Boy,

talking about they should have locked that door.

Guess what?

We have a letter about that.

So don't you say a word more.

Don't you say a word more.

Nope.

Actually, do say a word more about your experiences in this great Commonwealth.

What are three things, three

things that you think of when you think of Pennsylvania?

Well, obviously I think about Scrapple, but not in the erotic sense of Maryland.

Because my mom grew up enjoying Scrapple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and

she was the eldest of a large Catholic family in Mayfair, a northeastern suburb of...

Pennsylvania, urban suburb, row houses,

a Catholic,

Irish Catholic neighborhood, working-class neighborhood.

At the time, I have no idea what it's like now.

If you're out there on Englewood Street, hit me up.

Let me know what Mayfair's like.

Yeah.

She was the older sister of her brother Jim.

Both of them are no longer with us,

and their parents aren't either.

But when they were all alive, When my mom turned about 20 and had left home,

and her brother Jim was maybe three years younger than she was.

Her mom and dad, my nan and pop up,

rediscovered Catholic guilt, stopped using birth control, and swiftly had five daughters.

Oh, okay.

The youngest of whom, the twins, Jane and Judy,

are only 10 years older than I am.

And I love them all so much.

Yeah.

Shout out to my cousin Aaron, who just had a baby, her second baby.

Congratulations, Aaron.

Yeah.

and uh, I won't name the baby because they deserve their privacy.

Yep.

And shout out to her brother Dan, who's getting married in September.

And I'll tell you what, that wedding is going to be off the hook

because my aunts party hard.

Nice.

But, you know, when I would go and visit my grandparents in Philadelphia, my grandfather would always put out a spread of cold cuts,

which he had meticulously unwrapped and would later, after we had eaten our fill, would meticulously re-wrap them.

His

I don't like to use the term anal with cold cuts, but when you think about scrapple, you kind of have to.

Yeah.

But he was very, very meticulous in his cold cut selection, thinness of slicing.

It was obsessive.

And then is he doing the slicing or is he asking?

Is he demanding nothing but the thinnest slicing at the deli?

I think he was demanding, I think he had specific slicing thicknesses, and and that was a time when you had a real full service situation.

Yeah.

And I was just thinking about this the other day.

I would imagine that he, by the time we were visiting, he probably was on a first, middle, and last name basis with the person of the deli.

Yeah.

So we would show up to a variety.

When I think of Philadelphia, I think of cold cuts.

Scrapple is not a cold cut.

That is breakfast food.

Taylor pork roll.

is a breakfast food.

That is a meat product too.

More associated, I think, with Southern Jersey.

Don't hate me, Philadelphia.

But, you know, there would be Lebanon bologna from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, which is a smoked salami, not really a bologna, which is delicious.

And there would be, oftentimes, sauce,

which my mom also loved,

which is a German-American treat, better known as head cheese.

Oh.

I've never heard the word sauce, I don't think, in this context.

It's a corruption of a German word.

And I can't remember what that means, but it was called sap.

When you would get it at the store, it would be spelled S-A-U-S-E.

Okay.

Visible chunks.

Forgive me, vegetarians.

I know.

This is gross.

Even for me, a carnivore.

I've never had it.

Just imagine that every meat-related word that Hodgman is saying, you can replace it in your mind with like tofu.

Yeah, no, imagine it's all impossible sauss.

There you go.

Impossible head cheese

would have been a great band name from the 90s.

But like visible chunks

of

pig head meat in gloriously translucent aspic.

I don't know.

My mom would just eat it by the slice.

God or whatever, bless her.

I think a lot about food in Philadelphia because, of course,

cheese steaks.

pork and broccoli rob sandwiches soft pretzels a lot of iconic foods there in the city of brotherly love.

And I think a lot about South Street, not South Street, South Street,

which in the 80s and 90s, less so now, but that was

the long stretch of counterculture in Philadelphia.

So at the northern end of South Street, it was primarily black-owned businesses.

So that was the first place that I had seen,

you know, traditional herbal remedies in the African-American diaspora, like St.

John's Wart and all these, and like John the Conqueror, like, you know, kind of, I don't want to, I don't want to exoticize this, but they were, they were kind of like, you know, magic stores.

But they were like herbal remedies and folkcraft.

Yeah.

And then in other parts of South Street, on the other end,

it was like white punk rock kids.

That's where you would go to Zipperhead, which is where you would go to buy your Doc Martin's boots.

Zipperhead, the store, immortalized in the great Philadelphia accent song Punk Rock Girl by the Dead Milkmen.

Philadelphia Pizza Company was a place on South Street.

A lot of South Street places in that song.

And by the way, if you haven't listened to that song for a while, listen to it.

Because those dead milkmen, they sure had the number on punk rock.

Punk rock kids in Philadelphia, like their rebellion was

sneaking into the record store and being mad that Mojo Nixon wasn't there.

That's right.

And making life rough for working people by getting on the table and being mad because they didn't have iced tea or they didn't have hot tea.

Yeah, I was going to say, if you

asked for a Mojo Nixon, they said, oh, no, we don't have that.

If you don't have Mojo Nixon, then your store could use some fixing.

The idea that that tune is the punk rock girl song.

I know.

It's just such a beautifully subversive subversive song.

And the video for it was shot in the Eastern State Penitentiary, which is an abandoned prison that you can tour in Philadelphia that is

very spooky.

I bet.

And oh boy, oh boy.

And I'll just mention two other things that I might come back to.

Okay.

Bob and Barbara's, an incredible bar that still exists

on South Street,

famous for the special.

Bob and Barbara's had jazz and Papst blue ribbon paraphernalia on every inch of the walls.

And it was a true dive bar and a rare interracial dive bar.

Mary Richardson Graham introduced me to it at one of the great 215 literary festivals that used to happen there in the 90s.

Mary is the, with her husband owns the great used bookstore in Philadelphia, Brick Bat Books, where you should go and get your used books.

But she took me to Bob and Barber's after an event, and I was introduced to the special.

Now, the special was a tall boy can of Pat's Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jim Beam for $2.

Whoa.

Very dangerous.

Yeah, no kidding.

And the special hit Philadelphia dive bar culture hard when it was introduced.

Yeah.

And there became this like arms race.

of kids getting fucked up because every bar had to have

their version of the special.

I think they probably still have it.

It probably doesn't cost $2 anymore, but it's probably relatively cheap.

But it's like, yeah, it really transformed bar culture.

And my memory of doing events, literary events, in the early 2000s

is it's the only time you could do a McSweeney's reading where you would be drunkenly heckled.

No, no.

Even the twee literary hipsters hipsters of Philadelphia

were drunk beyond belief and packing nine-volt batteries to whip their head.

I was heckled by a guy wearing a Doctor Who scarf.

I'm like, like not fun heckled, like really heckled.

Yeah.

I love Philadelphia so much.

But I also, that's too much.

But I'll also say that I spend time at Little Pete's, the late lamented Little Pete's diner, near Rittenhouse Square, right across from the Ramada.

I used to stay at that Ramada hotel solely so I could go to Little Pete's and eat Scrapple.

Nice.

Sometimes with our friends, with our friend Paul F.

Tompkins, also a Little Pete's fan, no longer there, unfortunately, as so many things aren't as time moves on.

Yeah.

And maybe later I'll tell you about Pittsburgh, too.

That's the only other place I spend any meaningful time, but I feel like I've taken up too much time.

We'll come back around to Pittsburgh.

We can come back.

Well, actually, and I was going to say, that's one of my favorite places in Pennsylvania that I've been.

It's one of the things.

So that's for me, yeah.

For me, what comes up is, and I won't spend too much time on this because I think you're

not.

People don't care about the mottos.

They do.

They care about the children.

I do.

I do.

In Philadelphia, I shot a TV pilot sizzle with our mutual friend, Rhett Miller.

Oh, wow.

When?

Many years ago,

we wanted to, and that's why I can't remember any of the names of the clubs.

I should have called him before we got on, but I didn't have time.

Our idea was

rock club green room makeovers.

So we were going to transform green rooms.

And one of the devices that was going to keep coming up in our episodes was: I'm going to say this in a family-friendly way.

They're just, green rooms are known, especially like rock green rooms at clubs, are known for copious amounts of funny doodles of people's nether regions.

This is true.

So we had like a counter that we would go looking for in particular.

So this was an unscripted sizzle reel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For a reality show where you would have to.

Yeah, for like a, yeah, for like a green room makeover comedy kind of.

Of the hot 97s?

The old 97s.

The old 97s.

Hot 97s.

Very hot.

Still high station.

Still hot.

I'm so sorry, Rhett.

I just can't.

The old 97s.

They are hot.

They are hot.

They're hot.

Rhett Miller is hot.

In all the ways.

I'd like to draw a doodle of his beautiful face.

Uh-oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Very doodleable.

That was an experience, one of the early experiences I had in Philly.

Might have been the first time I was in Philly.

And

it was such a madcap dash to go to all these different clubs and grab footage and make comedy.

And it it was a pleasure.

And then so I just, I want to throw that out as my Philly memory, although I have also very pleasant memories of doing improv with Paul F.

The only place that I could think of that you might have done or been to was the Troncadero.

Yes, that sounds right.

Yeah, that definitely sounds right.

Pittsburgh, I have only been to once.

I was there in 2023.

I fell in love with it instantly.

I was there with Brandon.

We checked into our hotel.

We spent the night there and day there and then drove a rental car to Altoona where I was doing a convention.

Sure.

And from that convention in Altoona, we had a whole series of other adventures that took us through Pennsylvania and West Virginia and over to DC.

But within 45 minutes of having gotten to the hotel and gone for a walk, we were enjoying the adorable goats who had been brought to the side of the river to keep the like invasive weeding and stuff down.

That's a technique that's used.

So grazing by these goats along the riverside as we stared out at the many, many bridges of Pittsburgh.

And I think I looked to the camera that wasn't there and said, I think I'm going to like it here.

And indeed, I did.

I just don't love it.

I really love Pittsburgh.

I can't wait to go back.

It's physically striking.

Physically very beautiful.

Really interesting, rich history.

Both in its national geography.

Right?

Geography is a word, right?

I'm losing my language.

Because it, oh, there's the macerating toilet.

Man, I can't hear it.

I'm not sure if you could hear that.

Zoom filtered it.

At the sound of the macerating toilet, we'll be talking about Pittsburgh.

Both in its national geography.

Right?

Geography is a word, right?

I'm losing my language.

For sure, it is.

Because it's at the confluence of not one, not two, but three rivers:

the Monongahela, the Ohio,

and the third one.

Which you will have to find out for yourself because we can't tell you everything here.

And it's in a valley, so it's but it's also on multiple levels.

It's like a steep city, and there are bridges everywhere, and it's just gorgeous.

And I didn't even know about the goats they were using to

keep the lands

clean.

I'm a hills person, Hodgman.

I'm a hills person.

Give me a hilly town, and you've you've gone 80% of the way to me falling in love with it.

Throw in some rivers and bridges.

I'm a sucker.

You've got my heart.

You want to throw in some great vintage stores and small businesses and delicious food and folksy atmosphere and a great mix of blue collar and white collar and everything in between.

I just fell in love with it.

So I can't wait to go back to Pittsburgh.

Canton Avenue

in Pittsburgh, in the Beachview neighborhood, is the steepest officially recorded public street in the United States.

That makes San Francisco so mad right now.

I can't even tell you how angry that makes San Francisco.

Steep.

I think they think they have it.

I think they think they have it.

It is a 37% grade that is 21 feet long.

I'm in.

How about that?

I'm in.

It's a steep city.

You love a hill.

I love it.

I love it.

And then the third thing I will just mention, even though I just mentioned 17 things in my first two things, is that I had the delightful occasion to, on that trip, from Altoona over to Washington, D.C.,

spend a night in rural Pennsylvania, and then go to Falling Water, which is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, built in the 1930s for the Kauffman family of Pittsburgh.

It was their kind of vacation.

And by the way, Pittsburgh, bless Pittsburgh's heart, some of the worst air quality in the world for a very long time because of all of the industry and manufacturing.

So you really, if you could, and many couldn't, you would want to be able to afford a house very far away from that air.

Oh, well, you had to get away from

that stench of

the stench of the ketchup mills of the Heinz Corporation.

The stench of the ketchup, all those murdered tomatoes.

Yeah, no, big industrial.

So, Folly Water is located in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania.

That's the Laurel Highlands in Mill Run, Fayette County.

So, that's about, I think it's like 65, 75 miles away from Pittsburgh.

And it sits atop, essentially, a waterfall with quarried sandstone, other materials from that local area.

And it is a

UNESCO heritage site officially and is an architectural gem.

And like many things that Frank Lloyd Wright designed, who, by the way, was a very complicated person and a product of his time and was a crazy asshole.

Had a really unique vision for homes and did really...

cool, weird, unique things, some of which have not stood the test of time, which makes it very difficult to own a Frank Lloyd Wright home if you are being tasked with keeping it an architectural gem and historical treasure,

but also livable and not leaking too much, etc.

But if you have the chance to go to Falling Water and you're a fan of interior design or architecture or even just being out in one of the most beautiful forests I've ever seen, do yourself a favor and head over to Falling Water.

It's just beautiful.

There's a picture of me that I included, and I have a giant child's smile on my face standing out in front of it because I had really wanted to go.

That's just a metaphor.

You didn't actually take the face off a child and wear it like some monster.

It's your smile.

Oh, no, I didn't.

Of course, that was a metaphor.

That's right.

Well, look at the photo and you can decide for yourselves, folks.

But yes, look at that beautiful picture of Falling Water with Janet Varney in the foreground.

Now, I've never been.

The first time I ever went to Pittsburgh to do a comedy show at the now no longer extant, I believe, Rex Theater,

I came down to go to sound check.

Actually, it was the morning I was leaving, I guess, because it was in the morning because these two guys had a real day planned ahead of them.

And I'm in the lobby checking out, and these two very broy, frat-looking guys get out of the elevator.

And one turns to the other and goes,

You ready to see falling water, bro?

And the other one goes, I was born ready, bro.

And they fist bump each other.

They did.

That's the best thing I've ever heard.

They had a great day, I'm sure.

I'm sure they did.

You can't not.

You can't not.

It was wonderful.

So that is just,

you've heard us.

We love Pennsylvania.

We've named several things, maybe too many things that we love, and we may name more, no promises, in either direction.

But Pennsylvania is a state.

Aside from our personal enjoyment of it, it is a state that people, many people learn about in U.S.

history, and deservedly so.

But I'm going to say it's because Pennsylvania is kind of ubiquitously discussed in history classes.

And by the way, I'm sure podcasts that rightfully take themselves far more seriously than we could ever or should ever.

I'm not going to spend a ton of time talking about these things because there are other places that you can better learn about them if you have not already.

So I'm just going to say some words here in a big pile of acknowledgement and we'll move on.

Benjamin Franklin, Continental Congress, George Washington, Revolutionary War, U.S.

Constitution, Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln, Liberty Bill.

Okay?

There's more.

Hopefully you get the idea.

In fact, Hodgman, you want to just, anyway,

and don't forget the famous first American macerating toilet at Independence Hall.

Wonderful.

Wonderful.

Do you know, my friend, what the motto of the Keystone State, Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth?

I don't know what the official motto of the Keystone state is, but I do know the unofficial motto of the Keystone State is, the Keystone State, we hold this shit together.

Here you go.

I think.

By the way, possibly also the motto of the macerating toilet.

No, because macerating is the opposite.

Opposite.

Well, I've tried not to think about what the maceration is in the toilet as described.

There's a hatch over here that I could open in order to service the toilet, but I'm not going to.

Let's not.

No, what is the official motto of Pennsylvania?

I do not know.

Well, not unlike the just litany of words I unleashed, it's almost like Pennsylvania agreed with me that all it needs are just a few choice words to call up everything you need to know.

The motto of Pennsylvania is virtue, liberty, and independence.

Oh, all right.

What are you?

I can't argue with any of those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's fine.

Liberty and independence kind of doing the same work.

Yeah.

Virtue is one of those words for me that

my first,

like, my, like some sort of instinctual gut response based on who knows what, I guess I do know what, is that I balk at virtue.

It's the dead milkmen in me, right?

I hear virtue and I feel like sort of patriarchal, like it can, it's a word that sort of concerns me.

But when you just break it down to what it is, it's like, well, of course we should be virtuous.

You know what I mean?

So I think that's what I'm bumping up against is that the like, you know, goth, goth punk teenager in me is like, ew, virtue, liberty, and independence, get interesting, Pennsylvania.

Come on.

I don't know.

I mean,

but there's nothing wrong with it.

No, I understand.

I'm wondering, do you know who chose this motto?

Never mind.

Who cares?

Right.

I mean, it's an or it's a, it's a, it's an old, old state.

Um, and it is, I mean, I definitely saw it.

I read all of that and I was like, yeah, all right.

Do Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes we come across as like, oh, the founding, William Penn.

Yeah.

And if, and, and if it is, if it turns out that it's totally Quaker-oriented, I'm just wondering, then that's fine because I, that's a very, we'll talk more about them.

Um, there's some cool stuff about that, but yeah, okay.

Well,

I don't, I don't, I was just wondering if it, if it emerges at all from a particularly Quaker tradition, but I don't know.

Maybe we'll find out.

Maybe you'll let us know.

Write us a letter at email pluribusmotto at maximumfund.org.

Great.

While we are still bandying about various words, by the way, associated with Pennsylvania, motto notwithstanding, here are some other words that are very key to the history of this Commonwealth: Lenape,

Susquehannock, Iroquois, Shawnee.

These are just some of the indigenous peoples who called, and in many cases, still call home, although there are no federally recognized tribes in Pennsylvania.

But there is something we can all do to help the Lenape nation of Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Lenape have not been recognized, unlike the Lenape nations in places like Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Canada.

But we can, and I have, headed to lenape-nation.org.

You can sign a petition and find out how to further support the Lenape being officially recognized in Pennsylvania.

They're doing amazing work.

If you are local to PA or near, even not near, Easton, Pennsylvania, you can also enjoy their marvelous cultural center and farmers market.

That sounds wonderful.

Yeah, and William Penn, who

was a religious thinker and influential Quaker, and he was the European European dude who negotiated treaties with the Lenape,

who resided in what is now Pennsylvania in order to take it over.

I guess.

I guess he was known for his good relations with the Lenape.

Of course, he also owned humans.

So

complicated fellow.

America, everybody.

Yeah.

But meanwhile, we'll give you a great opportunity to head over to Lenape-Nation.org

during this break.

When we come back, we will seal, flag, and quote.

People herbismato shall return.

John Tinquin Hodgman.

Yes, Jenna Vitelia.

We've got a bulletin board for Pennsylvania.

It's Showcase Comics and Games, the one-stop shop in suburban Philadelphia for comic books, games, and nerdery of all kinds.

I love comic books.

I'm a fan of games so long as they're not mind games.

I am a fan of nerdery of almost all kinds.

So if you want some great new comics to read, Showcase is the place to go.

And not only do they have board games, I can't promise about the mind games, that's each to one person.

I don't think Showcase is in the business of mind games.

I think they're just out there spreading joy and cheer to the nerd and nerd adjacent community.

They're a community hub.

for card games, events like Magic the Gathering, Star Wars Unlimited.

You could go there, grab a book, play a game, make a friend.

And if you want to know where to find them, check this out.

You look for the bat signal past the La Colombe coffee shop.

Come on.

Oh, La Colombe, Philadelphia Deep Cut.

You can also find them, more realistically, at Showcase Bryn Mawr.

That's B-R-Y-N-M-A-W-R on Instagram and Facebook.

Showcase Bryn Mawr.

Bryn Mawr in Welsh means large hill.

Ooh, Showcase?

Thanks so much.

And if you've got a small business you'd like to showcase in one of our upcoming states, visit us at maximumfund.org/slash bulletin board.

The wizards answer eight by eight.

The Cornclave's call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell.

They number 64

until

a conflagration

63

and 62 they soon shall be as one by one the wizards die till one remains to reign on high.

Join us for Taz Royale, an oops all wizards battle royale season of the adventure zone every other Thursday on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, this is Joanna, native Pennsylvanian from Bucks County, PA.

Love your show.

My favorite thing about Pennsylvania in the summer is their water ice.

Some call it water ice.

We call it water ice.

I love driving through the state and coming across the different towns, such as Beaver, Big Beaver, Bird in Hand, Blue Ball, Climax, Intercourse, and even Lititz.

They pronounce it Lititz.

Go birds.

Welcome back.

I promised it would happen, and so e-Plerbus Motto has returned.

My name remains John Hodgman.

My name remains Janet Varney.

And Hodgman, let's briefly seal, flag, and coat.

Seal, flag, and coat.

We got ourselves a rare two-sider seal.

We've stumbled across a couple of two-sided steals.

This is one.

We're adding that to the pile.

The front side is a ship, plow, wheat, Indian corn, olive branch, eagle, seal of the state of Pennsylvania.

I'm not going to get too deeply into it.

These are things we've seen.

We understand symbols.

We understand that they sort of get thrust onto the seal.

This is not the busiest seal in the world.

It could be worse.

And I appreciate that the olive branch and the Indian corn are meant to represent the past and the sort of...

intent, the virtuous intent of the future of Pennsylvania.

But I'm kind of more interested in the counter seal, which is the the reverse side.

We see Lady Liberty dominating Tyranny, which is represented by a lion.

Sorry, lions, you didn't do anything wrong.

And by dominating, she's got her foot up on it.

She's like

her foot on it.

She's got a sword right at its throat, basically.

Yeah.

And she's got one of those Phrygian caps that we've talked about.

She's got the cap on the thing.

Got a cap

on a stick.

Cap on a stick.

Another famous street food of Philadelphia.

And then above that,

surrounding her on the edge of the seal is a warning that can only truly be fit in Alien vs.

Predator movie.

Both can't survive.

Both can't survive.

Yeah.

That,

to paraphrase our friend David Reese, that is tough as hell.

I know.

That's incredible.

Meaning, liberty and tyranny cannot coexist.

That's right.

Only one

can, you know, to

enter one man leaves.

Yeah, I was going to say, is there a Thunderdome equivalent in Pennsylvania?

Two enter the Reading Terminal Market, only one may leave.

Tyranny or Liberty.

That's right.

Or Hoagie.

That's right.

Forgot about Hoagies there for a second.

Don't forget about Hoagies.

Oh, gosh, I'm hungry.

That's pretty tough.

That's a very...

Why isn't that awesome?

That ought to be the motto, I should say.

Pretty tough.

I know.

So that's a seal.

The flag, yeah, it is what it is.

We got the Pennsylvania coat of arms on there, which is basically the state seal.

Once again, ship, plow, wheat.

Ship, plow, wheat, corn, olive branch.

Two rearing, two rearing, bridled horses, which makes me feel like the horses aren't maybe experiencing the same level of liberty as their wild counterpart.

It's important.

These horses look very wild, but they are also like incredibly bridled.

Like every part of them is strapped.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They have

bright red straps all over the place.

But you know how we talk about sometimes their horses breed

They might be, you know what?

They might be having a great time.

They might be having the time of their lives.

I can't shame these horses.

I don't want to.

They do not seem particularly, I mean, they may be virtuous, but they do not seem particularly liberated or independent.

Yeah.

But beautiful, beautiful manes and tails.

And there's that dumb motto on a red ribbon underneath it all.

Yeah.

I'm calling it dumb.

It's not dumb.

It's just.

It's fine.

It feels a little random.

It's fine.

Yeah.

But so sometimes we make fun of those like very

let's use anal again descriptions of like it must be this it has to be this it must be this it has to be this to describe what the imagery is is and all of that so for a long time with this with this coat of arms slash seal there weren't those rigid rules and directions like we see so some people played pretty loosey-goosey with what colors they used and stuff which I think is kind of fun you're talking about how most state seals are meticulously described in official documentation one centimeter apart there must be, you know,

because they didn't have photocopying back then.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But that was a, but for a very long time,

people sort of had more free reign with it.

So I want to believe that there are some really fun, silly versions of that, of the seal or coat of arms out there, Pennsylvania.

So if you know of any, send them to us at emailpluribusmato at maximumfund.org.

Now the blue background has to be the same blue as the blue in the United States flag.

But in 2017, artist Tara Stark designed the Keystone flag, a cool, simple flag utilizing a Keystone symbol and the colors on the coat of arms.

People really liked it, but it has never been officially adopted.

But people, some people fly it.

There are

government leaders who have been known to wear a little Keystone key flag pin, but it's not official.

But there is merch out there if you want to help popularize popularize it further.

And here we have an image I'm showing you, John Hodgman, of the existing flag that's got that coat of arms on it, and then the Keystone flag by Tara Stark, which is kind of cool looking.

Yeah, I like it.

It's minimalist, it's got that Keystone shape in the middle with that blue on the left and the green on the right.

So let's geographically locate Pennsylvania real quick.

You remember how some people think it's called the Keystone State, everybody, because of where it was geographically positioned to the other colonies, to the other 12 colonies.

It's not shaped

like a Keystone.

It's not shaped like a Keystone and it's not bordered with like six above and six below.

So that is also a little loosey-goosey.

But it is pretty touchy with a handful of states.

We have

Delaware, southeast.

We've got Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east, and Canada, not a U.S.

state, to the northwest via Lake Erie.

Now, I gotta say,

as many times as I've stared at a map of Pennsylvania, and I have,

I had forgotten if I ever knew that it has that little stovepipe bit of land going up along the western border to give Erie, Pennsylvania, frontage on Lake Erie itself.

I didn't even think about that.

It's a lake-bordered state.

It's one of the great lake states.

It is.

And I didn't, I thought about getting into that little that little triangular-ish point that's up there in the upper left.

But it is there.

And if anybody has any great stories, please tell them about that little nook.

I mean, they nooked it up, obviously, because they wanted to have that

access to the St.

Lawrence Seaway.

Important.

Yeah, really important in terms of trade.

And by the way, Lake Erie, of all the lakes, it's traditionally the most polluted, very shallow.

And there was a time when the world was colder when you could routinely drive across the frozen lake to Canada from Erie.

But I don't know if you can still do that.

Please don't.

Lake Erie, only three feet deep.

Yeah, it's more of a puddle.

It's three feet deep across.

It's a great puddle.

Across it.

Hodgman, take a look to that state.

I threw the

state shape down in there.

You got anything for me?

I don't expect you to.

Well, okay, so it's, you know, it's got a mostly square disposition like some of the western states we've been talking about, except for its eastern border, which is all wiggly-waggly because that's, I think, the Delaware River.

Yeah.

And then it's got that little stovepipe.

And it's got a little stovepipe jutting up in the west in order to meet Lake Erie.

Yeah.

And I guess it kind of looks like, because that little stovepipe, it kind of looks like a choo-choo train to me.

Oh, well, that's...

Hold that thought.

Okay.

Hold that thought.

I'm getting you.

It's powered by coal, much like Pennsylvania itself.

You know what I'm talking about?

Chugga choo-choo.

You know what I'm talking about?

I like comparison to a train.

I also had a nice time drawing what I've considered to look like a snooty guy with a big Adams apple over in the Wiggly part by the Delaware River.

Yeah, the Wiggly part has a little bit more character.

I'm sure we'll share this masterpiece.

I clipped it out on my phone and used my finger to rudimentarily draw with the very crude device of the drawing in just like Apple photos.

But yeah, I tried to draw and it just looks like I see the Adams apple.

That's the first thing that I thought was like, oh, that looks like an Adams apple.

And then I sort of went from there.

I love your study guy.

And I think that it reminds us that, you know, Philadelphia is, or Pennsylvania, is a connecting state.

So it connects the east to the Midwest.

And it's suitable that the eastern part of the state has that wiggly, strange shape that a lot of the northeastern states have.

Whereas as you move to the west, it gets more regular and placid and predictable the way arguably most Midwestern states are shaped and temperamentally are shaped too.

So I like that about it.

But definitely you're snootier in the East than you are in the West.

Well, or

once I had drawn it and I realized I could only envision this snooty person's eyes being closed as his little upturned nose was there, I suddenly realized maybe it's not a snooty person at all.

Maybe it's a person deep in meditation or prayer or experiencing other spiritual thoughts.

Maybe it is a Quaker.

We talked a little bit about Billy Penn.

The Quaker's formal name is the Religious Society of Friends, which I absolutely love that name, have always was a Christian movement in England where William Penn was born and raised.

Like many people who migrated from that area, they were seeking in part or in large part or in totality religious freedom.

The reason that they were more informally called Quakers is that they were said to, quote, tremble in the way of the Lord.

But over time, for many Quakers, it's become less about Christianity.

But over time, for many Quakers, it's become less about Christianity specifically and kind of more about this broader spiritual perspective, highlighting core values, peace, simplicity, social justice.

In fact, I'll just read this little wiki moment here.

Quakers have been a significant part of the movements for the abolition of slavery to promote equal rights for women and peace.

They have also promoted education and humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill through the founding or reforming of various institutions.

Hodgman, have you ever been to a Quaker church or had any friends who went to like Quaker schools or were raised with Quaker sensibilities?

Well, as it happens, Janet Varney, the answer is yes.

Okay.

My wife, who's a whole human being in her own right,

well, her two uncles who live in Maine full time

are both practicing Quakers and have been for years and years and years.

They grew up that way.

Wonderful.

And their kids were raised amongst friends, as it were.

And

her cousin, Christine,

was married in a Quaker ceremony here in Maine, now 20 years ago.

And I attended.

And you know, in a Quaker meeting, you sit in a circle and you don't say anything until the spirit moves you.

Yeah.

Very intimidating.

Yeah.

And the whole wedding was a circle of silence until every now and then a family member would get up and say,

tell a story about

Christine and her spouse,

or a story about how they met or their connection to the family or what marriage means to them.

And it was profoundly intimidating, but also very moving and kind of the most spiritual improv comedy I've ever witnessed.

Wonderful.

Wonderful.

It was like a big game of spiritual zip-zap zop.

But yeah,

it was very, very interesting.

And, you know,

even though William Penn owned humans,

I'm, you know, I do give credit to

the Quaker movement in terms of its anti-war, anti-slavery, pro-liberty, pro-equal rights stance that it's had throughout its history.

You know, so we're all of us hypocrites, and I don't think it's good that he owned humans, but I think the Society of Friends is really interesting.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, my friend Abe is from, my friend Abe Foreman Greenwald is from Pennsylvania and I believe went to a Quaker school.

And every, yeah, every description I've heard appeals to me greatly.

Maybe I'll have to go sit in silence at a Quaker meeting.

Well, it's like our friend Adam Savage says he does not believe in God.

But he does believe in prayer, prayer being a very deep form of meditation.

Yeah.

And the Society of Friends or the

Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers

are not particularly prescriptive in terms of whether or not you believe in God or whatever.

It is more about

being of service to others, being of service to

your congregation, as it were, and being thoughtful and thinking on a spiritual level.

And probably the most complicated thing for me is enduring silence.

Yeah.

So I'm not going to say anything until the Spirit moved me.

Oh, I'm not worried about that at all.

You're going to be talking in about two seconds.

This is hard.

What about the Pennsylvania Dutch?

I'm so glad you brought them up.

Yeah, Pennsylvania Dutch.

You might know these folks by

the Amish.

You've heard of the Amish.

You've heard of the Mennonites, dear listeners.

I'm going to say I...

I am familiar with the Mennonites and the Amish on a cursory level.

I mean, I would love to say I have delved deeply into the community rites and rituals, so to speak, of these folks.

I have not.

I have seen a couple documentaries.

I have seen a couple of films set in Amish country that are probably totally not representative of what happens.

And I spent my first Joko cruise on a large ship before it was a chartered ship that we do now.

I spent it on a very large Royal Caribbean ship.

I believe you were also on that ship.

And

many of my

floor mates, the people that had rooms right around mine on a certain floor of the ship, were Mennonites.

Yeah, there were many Mennonites on the floor.

There were many, many Mennonites.

And

I believe you could request the Mennonite floor.

Deck.

They call them decks.

Deck.

Thank you.

God, I could not think of that word to save my reputation.

Surely one of the movies you saw featuring the Amish community in Pennsylvania was Witness, starring Harrison Ford and Yelly McGillis,

which in the opening scenes shot in the very beautiful 30th Street station, train station of Pennsylvania.

That and Scrapple are the two things that I know that I, that's the most I know about the Amish, to be honest with you.

And Amish,

you know, Scrapple and head cheese and some of those other sort of like, let's use every part of the pig card salamis and so forth are a Pennsylvania Dutch

cultural thing that got adopted into the cities of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh as well.

And Ohio, too.

Yeah, there's definitely

stretching into Ohio.

What I didn't know until prepping for this episode is that there is a division of the Pennsylvania Dutch known as Fancy Dutch.

Tell me, please tell me more.

Also known as Church Dutch.

While they migrated from the same areas of

Germany, Alsace, Switzerland, over to America in the early days.

The fancy Dutch assimilated more into Anglo-culture rather than living the lifestyles we think of when we think of the Amish and the Mennonites.

And I feel we could do a whole episode on all of these cultural groups.

Oh, yeah.

But

we can't delve into it.

I say that because I continue to be fascinated and

have deep respect, regardless of whether I agree with their theologies.

I'm fascinated by cultural groups who successfully live a life very different from the surrounding culture that is so absorbent and so pernicious that to be a Hasidic Jew or to be a person living in Amish country, just in the United States of America as we know them and as we lament them many times, certainly now being a hard time for me.

I just think it's really,

I find that really impressive and really fascinating, just the idea of, you know, existing, coexisting, but living a very different shaped life.

Do you think that as we move into the future of the United States, the very uncertain future of the United States, where we coastal elites are

demonized more and more, that maybe we could create our own community of

theater hipsters from the 90s?

I'm in.

I'm so in.

Our own closed community of people for whom time stopped at, say, 2014?

no no i want to be around people who don't always agree with me i want to understand better

i want to feel hope so yeah i cannot i cannot box myself away in that particular way and i want them to learn from me and there you go living in a living in a population dense diverse cultural city is great actually

yeah yeah but that said you know that's what i love and look i don't i don't know i don't know a ton about the amish I know that the,

or I understand that Mennonites tend to be more in the world than some of the more hardcore Amish communities.

But even in the Amish communities, it's not as strict as you might imagine in popular imagination.

But I'll tell you one thing that I believe in is that's a rum spring-a.

Rumspringer.

I just the idea is like, yeah,

we live a very separate kind of life.

But we understand you might not be into it, child of mine, my human child.

You need to go out into the world and experience it.

And I think that's just so, that's such a beautiful courtesy that we afford our kids,

whether or not we're Amish or Mennonite.

Like that's why kids go away to college.

They have to go out of the house and live in the world.

And it is a courtesy that a lot of communities that are not Amish or Mennonite, particularly religious communities in the United States that are highly contemporary, don't afford their own kids.

So I think it's a really, really valuable thing.

Let your kids go out there and explore.

Absolutely.

Why don't you meditate on that in whatever form you would like that to take while we take a break?

Yes, that's right.

And when we come back, we must get to all those state symbols.

We have some contributions from our listeners and from a couple of dear friends of the show who have deep, deep roots in the Pennsylvania soil.

All that and nothing more when ePlurbus Moto returns.

Hi, John Hodgman and Janet Varney.

This is Rob Scheimer of the Altoona Shimers.

Anyway, I wanted to tell John that I too have watched that documentary Sandwiches That You Will Like,

and I have seen some of his other works

about pizza and hot dogs and

breakfast special and

return of the breakfast special.

Anyway, I enjoy the show.

Hi, Janet.

Hello, Judge Hodgman and Avatar Cora.

I mean, John and Janet.

My name is Sean Martin.

I am a rural mail carrier in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

And I just wanted to tell you and your listeners that Lancaster is a much larger town city than they are probably aware from the Weird Owl

Amish Paradise music video.

Lancaster is also pronounced with KISS in the middle, as you may hear me saying, as opposed to Lancaster, which is how you pronounce the name Burt Lancaster.

It is famously said wrong everywhere that I hear it mentioned.

So if I can do anything by spreading the good word of the KISS in Lancaster, I hope that I did that.

Love the show.

Thanks.

Hi, John and Janet.

This is Daniel.

And I just wanted to give my two cents about sandwiches in Pennsylvania because I feel like people might be mentioning about cheats and Wawa.

I just wanted to give a little shout out to Rutters in the middle of the state.

Well, I'm personally

from the Wawa side of the state.

I did have the occasion to go work a lot around York, and Rudders is kind of like the third of that gas station touchscreen sandwich

hierarchy, but it is great in its own way, has a lot of variety that is a little different from the other two.

So I just want to make sure they get mentioned.

Thank you.

Welcome back to ePorbus Moto.

I'm Janet Varney.

She's not lying, and neither am I when I say I'm John Hodgman, and we are talking about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania specifically.

We're going to get into some of those state symbols before we share some thoughts from you, our beloved listeners.

Janet, I don't need to know anything else.

I just need to know, is there an official state sandwich of Pennsylvania?

Yay or nay?

I'm not going to give you a clear yay or nay.

I'm just going to ease you into this.

You may need to weigh in on that with the contents of your own heart.

And I do mean that metaphorically.

I'm not not suggesting we make your insides the state sandwich of Pennsylvania by putting them on two slices of bread.

But while some would argue...

Not that much difference between

my innards on a slice of bread and head cheese or scrapple, it's true.

So some would argue that the Philly cheesesteak is the official sandwich of PA, but they would be wrong.

There is no official state sandwich.

Please tell us about Philly cheesesteaks and your experience, whether you think they should become the official signed into state legislation sandwich of Pennsylvania.

And if not, what would you put in its place?

I'm going to wait for the spirit to move me, Quaker style.

Okay.

No!

I don't need you, spirit.

I know in my clogged heart, cheesesteak is an amazing sandwich.

Philadelphia is but a corner of the state of Pennsylvania.

It is a,

I don't, what's the word I want to look for?

Wart growth?

Oh, no, oh no.

It's a wonderful enclave just on the western side of the Delaware.

It has got so much like culturally, ethnically, and culinarily in common with South Jersey, including the cheesesteak, which you can get throughout South Jersey, and it's delicious.

Now, the famous cheesesteak places in Philadelphia, Pat's and Gino's.

I do not go to Gino's.

I will occasionally F with Pat's.

Okay.

I'm a gym steak guy on South Street, but you can get as good or better cheesesteak in any number of a million places.

You do not need to go on a pilgrimage to any of these places unless you're obsessed with, I don't know what, Gai Fieri or something.

Like,

you know, go and find your own cheesesteak and have it whatever way you want.

Now, I like a cheesesteak with American cheese.

I like mayonnaise on it.

And I like what my uncle Jim, who's no longer alive, told me.

He broke it down for me.

You have a cheesesteak, and then you have a hoagie.

Hoagie is like an Italian sub.

You can also get a cheesesteak hoagie,

which is a cheese steak with a lettuce, tomato, an onion, and other sort of green toppings on top.

I feel like I made those the two months that I worked at Subway in Arizona when I was a college student.

Oh, there's no better place.

Look, everyone says go to Jim's,

go to Gina's, go to Pat's, but the best cheesesteak in the United States.

Janet Varney behind the counter at a subway in Phoenix or Tucson.

Oh, how dare you?

Tucson.

Tempe.

Probably neither.

Flagstaff.

Flagstaff.

You say Tempe or Tempe?

Arizona.

I say Tempe.

Tempe is what I remember them saying.

Yeah.

Recently I had to re-watch Raising Arizona for

another podcast.

And they're all saying Tempe in there, Tempe.

And I just remember going to Tempe and being told no.

Yeah.

That's another story.

Yeah,

the other famous sandwich of Philadelphia, besides from the hoagie, and I am, that is one of the things that I can say with some consistency in a Philadelphia accent, which I cannot do.

Even though my mom grew up there and my aunts all have,

you know, deep Philadelphia accents,

I can't do it.

Well, we'll get some, we have some support coming in for that.

We're flying in some support.

But I can say hoagie pretty well.

That's how you would say it.

Yeah, hoagie.

And then there's the pork and broccoli raw sandwich,

which is also a very famous Philadelphia sandwich, which you can get at the Reading Terminal Market as well.

There's some very famous places to get it.

But all of these are like, you know, if you were going to name the official sandwich of Philadelphia, I think you'd have to say the cheesesteak.

Sure.

But the whole of Pennsylvania, my friend.

But for Pennsylvania, no way.

No way.

Yeah.

Because we're already talking about Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

You got Lebanon and Bologna.

You go out to Pittsburgh, you got Promantes,

that famous place where they put French fries on their sandwiches.

It's not for me, but it might be for thee.

I don't know.

So, no, the cheesesteak should not be the official standard.

There should not be.

I feel like that is what I was going to say.

Maybe the state of Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has gotten it right by not assigning one, by not assigning one.

Oh, it would tear the state apart.

It would tear the state apart.

They've made the right choice.

There's so much advanced sandwich culture in Pennsylvania.

They should not dare.

Maybe they should just make the official lunch item a sandwich.

Then it can encompass so many of the great sandwiches.

Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea.

A couple of more quick tidbits before we move on.

The first computer piano and zoo all came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I'm not going to go into that.

We've already talked too much about Philadelphia.

Was that a computer, comma piano or a computer piano?

I hope it's a computer piano and a computer.

There's no way.

No, no, no, no, no.

There's no way the first piano came from Pennsylvania in the world.

To be honest with you,

that's what Julian plugged in for me.

That was the one thing that Julian plugged in for me.

Not because he wouldn't have done more.

We love you, Julian, but because he knew I was working on my own outline.

But he couldn't resist dropping in a few fun facts with some other things that we're going to record today.

And

I dropped it in because I appreciated his time and effort, and I threw that in there.

And I can't really tell you about any of them.

Look, I'm going to say this.

We're talking about the world.

Obviously, there were pianos in Europe before Pennsylvania started getting in the piano game.

Let's say in the United States.

The earliest known,

according to the Philadelphia Encyclopedia.org.

Uh-huh.

Earliest known reference to a piano made in America

appeared in Philadelphia in 1775 when Johann Michael Berent announced that he had just finished for sale, quote, an extraordinary instrument by the name of Pianoforte of Mahogany, in the manner of a harpsichord with hammers.

Now, look, could it be that this was the first piano ever made?

That this guy invented the piano?

First piano commercially made.

Commercially made.

Maybe there were only harpsichords in Europe before, you know, because a harpsichord plucks the strings.

A piano hammers the strings.

Yeah.

But I'm going to say the first in America for for sure.

And then Pittsburgh, of course,

all the bridges, beautiful city, exceeding even Venice, Italy for its amount of there are more bridges in Pittsburgh than in Venice, Italy.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's hard for me to believe, but I'm going to accept it because I was wrong on the piano thing, it turns out.

Hodgman, would you like to guess the state dog?

Yeah.

You know what a great name for a dog is?

What?

Hoagie.

Yeah.

Don't even worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

Hoagie's a great name.

That was also the nickname of my cousin Dan, who's getting married in September when he was a baby.

He was called Hoagie.

Shout out to the girl.

Or Hoags.

Hoags.

Hoags.

I'm just, I got sandwiches on the brain.

Well, I guess you could say that's a good thing.

Not the hot dog.

Wiener Schnitzel, yeah.

I don't know.

What isn't

a name of a dog or a hot dog?

I mean, I guess it's a brand.

No, it's not the Dachshund.

It's the great Dane, the slobberiest dog of them all.

Wow, you're right.

Yeah.

The first state to name a dog breed as the official state dog was Maryland, also from the season of E Pluribus Motto.

Yeah.

The Chesapeake Bay Retriever.

That makes sense.

That was 1964.

Pennsylvania was the second to name it the Great Dane.

And

that didn't happen until later.

And for some details, here's an article from the Toledo Blade of all places.

Dateline

some year because 1964 was first.

Dateline, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, October 14th.

The House staged a dog fight yesterday.

The contest involved a choice between two breeds for the title of official state dog.

And the Great Dane won in a battle with the Beagle.

Aww.

The House first turned down the Beagle 81 to 111

and then endorsed the Great Dane 113 to 117.

Commented,

commented Representative Charles A.

Aucker, Republican, about the debate over the two dogs.

He said, this is ridiculous and asinine.

Such legislation is a waste of time.

Maybe he was just saying, this is my Great Dane, ridiculous.

This is my Beagle, asinine.

Maybe that's it.

Please choose between them.

In this case, ridiculous speed out asinine.

Good for them.

Yeah.

I guess they needed a state dog.

Great Dane.

Seemed a little random.

Yeah, I know.

But allegedly great personalities.

I haven't had a lot of interactions with Great Danes,

but I did love a movie when I was a kid.

Yeah.

They so?

Marmaduke.

Marmaduke.

I was once playing that game heads up, and someone's clue to me was, Scooby-Doo is this kind of dog, and I blurted out, Marmaduke.

I think that's fair.

I would have given you that that point.

Yeah, thank you.

Is that why you love Great Danes?

Because of Scooby-Doo?

Well, first of all, I never said I love Great Danes.

But second of all, there was a movie, a Disney movie from like the 60s or something that we had on video cassette.

What I did there was I made it clear that I'm not that old, but I am old.

And it starred Gene Jones and Suzanne Plachette, and it was called The Ugly Dachshund.

And it was about a Great Dane puppy who's raised with dachshunds, and so he thinks he's the same size as a dachshund and hilarity ensues.

Instead of the ugly duckling.

Yeah, he turns and then he becomes a.

Boy, Animals sure did a lot of acting work in Disney movies in the 60s, couldn't they?

Oh, heavens, yes.

It was an incredible journey for them.

Uh-oh.

Boo.

Isn't that the name of that movie, The Incredible Journey?

100%, yes.

Okay.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay.

Anyway, the state insect is the firefly, which makes me realize

only now I realize retroactively, I'm surprised that we haven't come across the firefly as a state insect.

It's a terrific insect.

You know?

I just was in Kansas City, Missouri.

I saw more fireflies than I've ever seen in my whole life, and it was magical.

I was just

sitting in my kitchen in Maine, and I saw more fireflies than I've ever seen my whole life.

I said to my wife, it was a whole human being in her room, right?

Look there in the yard.

I turned out all the lights.

Yeah.

The yard was like, bling, bling, bling.

It was like a blanket of stars.

Yeah.

I said, that's like Kansas City style fireflies out there.

Thank you for recognizing that.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

And then while we had the the lights off, we also noticed one lone stranger staring at us with a burlap sack over his head.

And we turned the lights back on.

We were like, we didn't see that.

That's Stephen King Country, my friend.

We saw a clown.

Saw a clown with a balloon full of blood.

No, the balloon was full of fireflies.

It was sweet.

It was a summer moment.

And did you grow up calling them fireflies or did you grow up calling them lightning bugs?

I will tell you something.

I grew up calling them nothing with any regularity because I do not come from a place with fireflies and I did not see fireflies that I can remember until I was in Atlanta, Georgia in my like late 20s, early 30s and I was so excited.

So I'm still very, very agog whenever I'm in a place with fireflies.

No fireflies in Flagstaff, they say.

No firefight, not a nary a firefly to see.

Nary a firefly and certainly not in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

I'm going to say it right now.

And I don't care if I get mail at email pluribusmato at maximumfund.org.

They're called fireflies, period.

It's look, I know it's a regionalism.

It's also a better name.

Fireflies.

Sounds good.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love it.

I also have some good news for you.

I love good news.

You know what I say?

Good news is good news.

Good news is good news.

Guess for me what the state beverage of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is.

Obviously, everyone knows mostly most of the time the state beverage is milk.

So it would not be good news to learn that it is also milk.

No, it wouldn't be.

It's something other than milk.

Well, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania was part of the Whiskey Rebellion,

the first armed insurrection against the United States during the term of George Washington.

So it might be whiskey.

It could be birch beer.

Birch beer is a delicious soft drink that tastes basically like root beer, but it's a little different.

Um,

and there's probably a bunch of things that I'm missing.

I don't know.

What is it?

Milk.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

It's milk.

Is the state.

I'm so sorry.

I just wanted you to feel in a good mood for a minute.

Was that the official state bait and switch of Pennsylvania?

It was.

It was.

Milk, once again,

cannot evade that dairy lobby.

Yeah.

Speaking of railroads.

You had some real good news for me.

Speaking of railroads, Pennsylvania is a big locomotive manufacturer state.

Yeah, well, it's shaped a little bit like a choo-choo train.

And you pointed out for us that that's probably it.

That's probably the

thing that instigated the whole thing.

It was incepted into Pennsylvania's mind that they should build trains because they realized that their state was sort of the shape of a choo-choo.

That is why we have not one, but three official state locomotives.

John, I'm sure you know they are, what they are by name and product number.

Please tell us.

Yes, of course, Janet Barty.

The official electric locomotive is Pennsylvania Railroad GG4859.

Oh, great train.

Great locomotive.

Terrific, terrific electric locomotive, choo-choo train.

I guess it's just the front part of the train, guys.

We know.

Don't add us.

Yeah.

The official steam locomotive engine are Pennsylvania Railroad K41361

and also K43750.

Couldn't decide.

Had to have to.

Remember when Hollywood made those two dueling movies?

Yeah.

About

locomotives in Pennsylvania?

And there was like, which one are we going to call it?

K41361 and then K43750 The Widowmaker?

Yeah.

Yeah, it always happens in Hollywood.

There's always two.

right near each other.

And then here's the drawing that I did for Max Fun member Ian Q a few years ago when we were getting people excited about the very concept of ePluribus motto and raising money for maximum fun.

I had volunteered and hand-drawn, and I'm not an artist, a bunch of state stuff.

And Ian Q asked me to draw the state game bird, which is the

roughed grouse.

And then that's all he asked for, but I threw in the banner with the state motto, virtue, liberty, and independence, with a couple of mountain laurel sprigs draping the banner.

And I feel certain we will put this on our.

Is the mountain laurel the state of Pennsylvania?

I think it's just the state flower.

Yeah, state flower.

Jamin, I could just say this project that we call Eplurbus Motto did grow out of Max Fund Drive a couple of years ago when you promised to do state drawings

for people who joined at a certain level.

And can I just say for a second, we weren't raising money for maximumfund.org.

We were encouraging our wonderful listeners to become members.

Well, that's certainly true and better said and pay for the podcast they get for free.

100%.

And we're so grateful to all of you members because if it weren't for you, we wouldn't be making this wonderful podcast.

And we have such a great time doing it.

Absolutely categorically true.

Now, here's the thing: Janet Varney, you're an incredibly talented actor, a voice actor, improviser, podcaster, friend.

You're a talented friend.

Thank you.

You're skilled at friendship.

Thank you.

But one thing I didn't note, you draw a mean grouse.

Thank you.

And I didn't know that either.

I thought everything was going to be poor.

And

like you,

we are kindred spirits in that once I decided I was going to do something, suddenly it became important for me to do it the best I'd ever done anything in my entire life or I would hate myself.

I love this grouse.

You draw a mean grouse.

Not only is this grouse beautifully roughed, it also looks pretty mean

well both cannot survive both can't survive not even cannot both can't survive both can't survive oh that's right both can't survive i forgot about that yeah yeah one of them's a roughed grouse the other one doesn't matter because always the grouse is going to come out on top should pennsylvania's model be whoever wins we lose

roughed grouse wins roughed grouse for the win.

I'm going to skip the rest of the symbols so that you listeners can send in your rebukes for what I omitted.

But one thing we cannot and must not omit is our choice for state cryptid.

And this cryptid was also suggested to us by listener Alex R.

Hodgman.

Would you do us the honor?

I would be so honored to do it.

Look, there are many cryptids in Pennsylvania.

If you go over to our virtual friend Monica Gallagher's page over on Etsy, Lipstick Kiss Press, where she does these cryptids of all the states,

you're going to see some Bigfoots in there.

You know, you're going to see a dog man, giant snake, and the Waterford Sheep sheep man or whatever, but none of them can hold a candle to the squonk.

Yeah.

Here's what our listener, Alex, sent us: quote, squonk.

No, that wasn't a sound effect.

That was the name of what should be Pennsylvania's official Commonwealth cryptid.

Also, it's immortalized in a Genesis song of the same name.

Enjoy.

not fresh up the slow.

The bed bag hangs from an open mouth,

line with old things, but a dead and middle.

A tournament and only

we'll go

all the kings

and love.

The king man would

never put a smile on my face.

Now, I have never heard of the squawk before.

Yeah.

Although it's one of the most, one of the earliest described cryptids in the 1910 book, of which you would think John Hodgman would have heard of this book before.

Yeah.

But also brand new to me is the 1910 book, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods.

I cannot believe you didn't know that book already.

I had no idea.

William T.

Cox's Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, which is

what's described here as a fantasy field guide

by William Thomas Cox, Minnesota's...

Minnesota's first state forester with illustrations by Coert Dubois.

And it is

basically collecting folkloric creatures from the lumbering areas.

This is how William T.

Cox described the squonk in 1910.

The squonk is of a very retiring disposition, generally traveling about at twilight and dusk.

Because of its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles, it is always unhappy.

Hunters who are good at tracking are able to follow the squonk by its tear-stained trail.

Yeah.

But the animal weeps constantly, and when cornered and escape seems impossible, it may even dissolve itself in tears.

I'm realizing that I think I read that description when I did the Cryptids mini-ep

to tie people over while they were waiting for more E.pluribus motto, because I didn't think I had, I thought I just shouted Alex out and shouted out the squonk briefly.

But now that I'm reading and listening to what you're saying, it seems to me that I might have said that I think I found the cryptid with whom I most identify.

The idea of me disappearing by dissolving in tears to the point where I no longer exist feels real good to me.

I mean, not to mention my warts and moles.

That's the squonk's secret, Captain America.

It's always crying.

Yeah.

The squonk's tears are also in a steely dance song, by the way.

Any major dude will tell you.

Yeah,

the squonk got a lot of airplay in the 70s because there is that song by genesis squonk on a trick of the tail

1976 and as you say steely dan any major dude will tell you if you haven't seen we will put it on our social media but the illustration of the squonk by coert dubois in fearsome creatures of the lumberwoods is truly beautiful and heartbreaking and the tears are rolling down its eyes and it's got its misfitting skin covered with warts.

And there's a squonk festival.

And there's a squonk festival every year in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

And it's called the Squonkapalooza.

And it's just a big cryptid festival there in Johnstown.

It's happening.

I don't know when you're going to hear this, but it's happening very soon this summer in August 2025.

And if you missed it, go there in 2026.

Squonk.

Squonk, we salute you.

Love a squonk.

Alex also drew our attention to the veritable ghost town in Pennsylvania that you referenced earlier, John Hodgman.

You and Alex are on parallel tracks because you brought up the squonk without knowing that Alex had suggested it.

And Alex also suggested Centralia.

Alex says the ghost, sorry, the town that has been on fire since 1962, should it be our state disaster site?

Maybe.

We do have Three Mile Island, but Centralia has been at it for over 60 years.

So I think it should be in a running.

John, your thoughts, and can you tell us more about Centralia?

Yeah, the Centralia Mine Fire is a coal seam fire.

It has been burning in the labyrinth of coal mines underneath the town of Centralia or Centralia.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, one way or the other, since 1962.

No one knows how it started,

but it continues to burn to this day.

If you go through this abandoned town, you can find fissures in roads where there's just smoke coming out.

It just burns and burns and burns.

And indeed,

it is basically abandoned.

There were 1,500 residents when it started burning in 1962.

As of 2017, it has five.

I don't know if they're still there.

But yes, it's a fascinating and sad story.

I have never been more sure

that the squonk's tears could extinguish the fires of Centralia or Centralia.

That's right.

All we need to do is find

a creature and shove it down a hole in Centralia.

Maybe it likes burrowing.

You don't know.

It might be a match made made in heaven.

The 2020 census says there were five people with one resident under the age of 18.

Imagine being the only teenager in Centralia, Pennsylvania.

No, thank you.

My heart goes out to you,

all people who live in Centralia or Centralia.

Yeah.

That's a ghost town.

And you know why I'm interested in ghost towns?

Just because there are a handful of people still there.

Because your own father is a ghost.

Because my own father is a ghost and my mother was a town.

Did we hear from anyone else, Janet?

Anyone from Pittsburgh by any chance?

We did.

Would you please read this note from lifelong Pittsburgher and fan of the show, Greg P.

What's up, Jenser, Greg P.

Quote, I could talk a lot about the state of Pennsylvania and especially stuff like Fort Necessity and the Whiskey Rebellion, but I feel I should talk about the pizza.

Okay, here we go.

Pittsburgh mostly is normal pizza, but famously, there are a few locations.

that put cold cheese and cold toppings onto the pizza after it's been cooked.

You make a normal pizza with cheese on it, cook it,

and then add more cold cheese and other toppings.

Afterwards, see photo below.

Okay.

I see a lot of

cold-looking shreds of cheese on a cooked pizza.

Cold shreds.

Cold shreds.

Yeah.

Additionally, my wife is from outside Altoona, which is near the center of the state, and they have become infamous for Altoona-style pizza.

It's really only served in one place, and that place burned down.

Well, you you can see a picture below.

It's infamous because it used slices of American cheese on top of bell peppers and salami.

And now this thing,

that's very American cheese forward.

And then you can see

you can see the tender outline of the slices of bell pepper rising up

in relief

with the American cheese on top of it.

It's quite a sight.

Both of these pizzas, I must say, thank you for sending them in, greg p

they look gross to me but i would eat them i know give them a try you'd give them a try absolutely and i might love them and by the way there is no official state sandwich or pizza or snack yeah philadelphia but you keep saying philadelphia those pennsylvanians are going to be so mad at you we didn't even mention harrisburg which is the capital Oh, no, we just did there.

I mean, we did, I guess, a minute ago when we were talking about the Great Dane, also.

But that

here's the thing I'm trying to say is like, you know,

like a lot of states and commonwealths, sometimes their culture is overshadowed by the bigger cities in those places.

In this case, Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east.

They both have entrenched and interesting food cultures with some good and some disgusting pizzas, whatever.

But, you know, if I were in Pennsylvania and I loved a sandwich that wasn't a cheesesteak, or a pork and broccoli raw, or

a hoagie, or whatever, I'd be so mad.

Email PluribusMotto at maximumfun.org is the email.

Email us some other good sandwiches from Pennsylvania.

Yeah, please.

Good

regional sandwiches.

I would love to hear about them and make them and eat them.

Agreed.

Let's play this speak pipe from Cagney and see if we can get some help on some accent stuff.

Hello, my name is Cagney Brennan.

I'm from the burbs outside of Philly, more broadly referred to as Delco.

In Delco, there are a lot of folks who may talk in this kind of way, this or that, you know.

My parents and most of my extended family are from South Philly, and they might talk a little bit like this, cause a little bit like that, cause no big deal.

G-Yet, you get something?

I love Philly.

I love Pennsylvania.

We gave you Crayola, the only acceptable crayon, Zippo lighters, first Mother's Day, First Thanksgiving parade, little league baseball, the food contributions, innumerable.

Of course, the cheesesteak, the soft pretzel.

The average Pennsylvania needs about 12 pounds a year.

Scrapple, tasty cake, Heinz, the classic bubblegum flavor, Hershey's, Wahwah.

And I don't need to elaborate on our importance in the creation of our once proud nation.

It was birthed here, shaped here, and then once we moved past the original colonies, they fucked it all up.

The Commonwealth of PA is a gem in our country's crown, but more importantly, it's the keystone.

Love the show.

Thanks so much.

Take it easy.

All right.

Take it easy.

Relax.

Kaggy, thank you so much for that.

What a gorgeous expression of action.

So melodious.

So melodious hookies.

I love it.

Thank you for sending that speed by.

This is what we've been looking for.

This is what we've been asking for.

Kagny, Greg, and Alex, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us.

Remember, folks, you too can be part of your state's representation by emailing us at emailpluribusmot at maximumfund.org.

That email address, again, is emailpluribusmotto at maximumfund.org or send us a speakpipe at speakpipe.com slash e pluribus motto.

And we do have one last thing to listen to before we rank the motto of Pennsylvania, correct, Janet?

That's right.

It's coming from two of our favorite folks.

We teased it earlier on the show.

They also happen to be PA natives.

They now abide with me in Los Angeles in a giant house where all my friends live with me.

It's Hal Lovelin and Paul F.

Tompkins.

What if you did live in a house with Hal and Paul and

the whole thrilling adventure gang living

together?

Oh my goodness.

Sidri, we would murder each other instantly.

No, it would be a fun mystery to solve.

I love the fam.

I love the fam.

Okay, let's listen to what they have to say.

Hello, I'm Paul F.

Tompkins.

Pennsylvania, the Keystone state.

A state where you can learn what a Keystone is and then promptly forget it.

Pennsylvania, a land of tasty cakes and Harrisburg.

The great convenience store Wawa and a store for psychopaths Sheets.

It's a place of contradictions that I'm not going to list.

It's a place where you can find a thing called the Schuylkill River.

It's certainly a place where you can find water ice.

Pennsylvania, that was my home.

and a home I returned to probably every year or so.

Pennsylvania, it means Penn's woods.

William Penn, he thought the whole state was some woods.

Ha, how little things we knew back then.

Pennsylvania, I love yous.

Hey, Janet and John, it's your pal Hal Lublin here to talk to you a little bit about the Philadelphia accent, something I grew up with, something I had to work to lose because my mother was was dead set on me not having one, but that I love recalling and coming back to.

And if I get tired enough, it will start to poke through.

And I think that's because it's such a lazy mouth accent, which is crazy because some of the words get longer.

Like we say attitude, attitude.

It gets longer.

And everybody knows Wooder, eggs,

Jeet Yet, John is really popular.

But I just think of it that the easiest way to do it is to just pretend that someone has shot the inside of your mouth full of Novocaine.

So you start talking a little bit like lazier, like this is one version.

I kind of do this more muddy mouth one.

Our mutual friend Paul F.

Tompkins, who I'm sure will give you his take, he does like the more pronounced, like, oh, what are you doing?

What's going on over here?

But the two of us doing it together, even at two different styles, it just works because it is

that is the accent that it is.

Maybe the worst accent in all of our country.

And I know it has stiff competition, but you just can't take anyone speaking with that accent seriously.

And that's why I love it.

Yay.

Thank you, Hal and PFT.

We, uh, we love you both so very much.

And you can listen to Hal Lublin on a couple of different maximum fun podcasts.

Of course, uh, Tits and Fights, and we got this with uh Mark Gagliarti, also of the of the Thrilling Adventure House.

That's right, the giant house

you can listen to on across all of his many projects.

The Neighborhood Listen with Nicole Parker,

Staya Pompkins with the wonderful Janie Haddad Tompkins, guesting on so many different podcasts.

And of course, make sure to go to his website to find out when you too can see a live stage show called Variatopia, one of the great experiences of entertainment that you can ever see or enjoy.

Paul F.

Tompkins, thank you so much.

And Hal Lublin, thank you so much.

We love you.

We love you.

We love you.

Now we have to decide if we love the state motto of Pennsylvania on a scale.

This can't surprise anyone on a scale of one to ten squonks.

Hodgman, how many squonks are you going to give virtue, liberty, and independence?

Hang on.

I have to sit here in the

Quaker circle and wait until the spirit moves.

Understood.

Take your time.

Squonk.

Squonk.

Squonk.

That's it.

Three squonks.

Three squonks.

For a moment there,

I thought the spirit was telling me two squonks only, but I gave it an extra.

Squonks snuck in.

It's squonk for a while.

I gave it squonk.

One squonk for each word.

Yeah.

One squonk for each word.

I mean, that's that's not a lot of squonks.

Yeah, I just, I don't know.

You know, and it's not just because we've done more states.

This is not a cumulative disinterest.

We have, we still have models cropping up that I'm dynamite excited about.

I just can't get there with.

If you want to give me.

Because independence and liberty really, they're doing the same work as we discussed, yeah.

And obviously, independence is a very important part of Anglo history in Pennsylvania for sure.

Yeah.

But virtue, just as you mentioned before, it

seems like virtue signaling to me.

Yeah.

I'm not even sure what it means.

Yeah.

I have a suggestion.

Better than you.

Yeah, I know.

I have a suggestion.

I think one simple addition could turn this motto from a tired

semi-dull motto to a dead milkman style 90s punk rock nerd

motto.

All I need to give it nine to ten squonks is virtue, comma, liberty, comma, independence, comma, squonk.

It makes everything else about it interesting.

You have to go back and revisit all of the other words in context of being joined by squonk.

But both can't survive is that what it was both can't survive that's incredible i have never known that in my life

oh i love that i'm gonna match it i'm gonna match it at uh three squonks with a promise of nine to ten squonks if you just add squonk it's so simple it's just one word one word squonk we're good to go

i don't look i i don't know if it's asinine or if it's Puerile.

What was the other word that that

I think just maybe ridiculous?

Ridiculous.

I don't know whether it's asinine or ridiculous, but let's hold a special state legislature session to add a squonk to the motto.

Until then, that does it for this episode of Eplurbus Motto.

This show that you were just listening to is hosted by Janet Varney.

And the one who's talking right now, that's me, John Hodgman.

Hey, it's me, Janet Varney.

This show was produced and edited by Julian Burrell.

John Hodgman here, reporting that senior producer at Maximum Fun is Laura Swisher.

Our theme music was composed by Zach Berba for Eplurbus Motto.

I'm Janet Varney.

Back to you, John.

Who was just talking then?

I don't know, but now I am, and my name is John Hodgman.

Our show art was created by Paul G.

Hammond.

And Paul, John Hodgman, thanks you.

All right, everybody, did we miss anything from Pennsylvania that we should know about?

I know we did.

You can tell us about it at email, pluribusmoto, maximumphone.org, or send us a speakpike at speakpipe.com slash e pluribusmotto.

Keep those written messages brief and your voice notes to under a minute, and you have a better chance of us putting them on the show.

I'm going to say keep them under 30 seconds.

Whoa.

Hey, I'm John Hodgman.

You can also find us on TikTok and Instagram to tell us more about the states we've talked about so far.

Make sure to follow us there and leave a comment.

And by the way, we didn't talk about ketchup that much.

Heinz.

Heinz.

Is there another ketchup?

Tell us at email for vismato at maximumfo.org.

I'm just saying, I just learned that a neighbor of ours in Maine is descended from the Hunts ketchup fortune.

Oh, yeah.

God, they're

so close.

And I and I vomited.

Oh, no.

That's the person who was staring at you.

That was

staring angrily at you from the outside of your home.

Pittsburgh is Heinz Ketchup, is the town that Ketchup built along with steel and coal or whatever else.

Yeah.

And Heinz Ketchup is just the best.

I'm sorry, it's just the best.

Anyway, if you disagree with me, if you've got a better ketchup, let us know on TikTok, Instagram, or wherever you can leave a comment.

It does help people find the show.

If you comment, like, share, and subscribe.

Yes, indeed.

And if I may, John Hodgman, stop.

It's Janet Varney.

Stop.

I simply must know where we're headed next.

Stop.

I implore you to tell me.

Stop.

My dear wife, Janet Varney, I write to you now

from both the past and the future.

Your influence,

that's not a word, has gone

heard indeed.

We're headed next

to a most mispronounced state,

the state of Nevada.

I will be presenting on

Nevada.

And I realized, and we can save this for the episode, but I do want to let everyone know there is a reason that I keep pronouncing it Nevada, and it's because Sparks Nevada is the reason that I keep pronouncing it Nevada.

So thank you, Mark Agliarty, of We Got This and More and the Thrilling Adventure Hour for ruining my pronunciation.

I'm surprised the Thrilling Adventure Hour house has not received many strongly worded letters from Nevada.

Oh, I'm sure we have.

I'm not allowed to read anything, so I wouldn't know.

Remember our motto: keep your cards and letters going to someone else's house.

And here on Eplurbus Motto, both can survive.

They must survive for this podcast to exist.

I'm Jenna Vorney.

And I'm still John Hodgman.

We'll talk to you next time on Eplur of this Motto.

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