JJHO Presents: E Pluribus Motto!

Hi everyone, it's your Judge Sean Hodgman, sneaking into your feed with a special surprise called E Pluribus Motto.

It's a brand new Maximum Fun podcast that I've been recording in secret with your friend, the wonderful Janet Varney of the JV Club.

In it, Janet and I go state to state, Commonwealth to Commonwealth, District of Columbia to District of Columbia, talking about all of the United Statesian state mottos, starting this time with Connecticut, whose motto is quai transuit sustainet.

What does it mean?

You're about to find out.

And if the Latin motto of Connecticut sounds boring to you, well, you're wrong.

Because the stories behind this and every motto, plus every state bird, beverage, slogan, song, and muffin, are wild, wonderful, fascinating, and sometimes even personal.

I'm so happy to share this with you, and I hope you'll join us for the whole audio road trip from coast to coast.

Just go to wherever you get your podcasts and search for ePleuribus motto, which is the name of the the podcast.

ePluribus Motto, follow, subscribe, listen.

But now, settle into the back seat as your mom and dad, Janet and John, drive the family car to our first stop, the nutmeg state itself, Connecticut, home of the first hamburger, arguably, and the first submarine, definitely, and the seat of the secret world government, Yale, in this first episode of ePluribus Motto.

I'm Janet Varney.

And I'm John Hodgman.

Welcome to ePleuribus Motto, the show dedicated to celebrating the official mottos, birds, snacks, and symbols of every state in the Union, no matter how strange or boring.

Janet, this is our first episode and we begin our journey across this country of ours in Connecticut.

We'll learn all about the state's grape-filled seal, its legendary rich sandy loam, and its many failed attempts to come up with an official state slogan that sticks.

Plus, Mystic Pizza screenwriter Amy Holden Jones tells us how she fell in love with Connecticut.

What if it were a different state?

No, it's Connecticut.

Let's go.

Hey, Janet Varney, we're recording.

We certainly are, John Hodgman.

And that means sometime in the future, someone might be listening.

It's possible, if not likely.

Hey, if you are one of these predicted listeners, this is E.

Pluribus Motto.

What is this podcast, Janet?

Well, this is a podcast that has been born of a couple of different things, both Max Fun related.

You know, you and I had a wonderful, possibly three-hour conversation a couple years ago.

When you did my podcast, The JV Club, it was during your podcast.

Let me just say that again.

The JV Club is a wonderful podcast hosted by you, Janet Varney and the Maximum Fun Network, and everyone should go subscribe to it now.

Well, thank you for that.

I almost said side eye, but side eye is bad.

No side eye.

Don't give me that side eye.

I'm looking you right in your eyes and saying it's a terrific podcast and you do a great job hosting it.

Well, thank you.

And we had a wonderful conversation a couple of years ago on it.

We did.

And we talked not only about your experience as a high school, teenage era John Hodgman, but a lot of other stuff came up in the process.

And one of the things that we were talking about, and I wish I could tell you the context, but that's the beauty of two people who love to go off on tangents.

We were talking about state mottos and the fact that it would seem that many states have mottos.

I realized I knew next to none.

And

we just both had sort of a lively curiosity for, you know, what we might find if we started to kind of dig into that.

But that was it.

We set it on a shelf along with five other fake podcasts that we talked about when you were online.

And what it did is it came back around

for Max Fun Drive.

We figured, you know what?

What if we did it and we offered it up as a sort of a reward, a thank you to the Max Fun listeners for supporting the network?

Now it's happening.

We are here

talking about mottos.

And that's why we picked the cleverest name of a podcast you could possibly imagine, e pluribus motto.

E pluribus motto, sub-motto, hawk est circa turgum.

What does that mean?

It comes back around.

I just use the internet to find that.

What I remember, Janet, is talking with you Lothies some years ago.

Yes.

And saying to myself, I really liked talking to Janet about anything.

I feel the same.

about you.

We should do it again within four years.

Yes.

I think I had that same goal.

I think four years from then.

And record it.

And during the maximum fun drive, maximum fun, of course, being your favorite podcast network.

Yes.

Where I also happened to host a podcast called Judge John Hodgman.

I would have gotten there, but apparently I was taking, I mean, I really took my sweet time to get to Judge John Hodgman.

I had to go to the next stage.

Yeah, you took a little time side-eyeing, side-eye, and doing the reciprocal side-eye there.

Miss me with that side-eye, Janet Varney.

You could have said.

If I were 500 years younger, maybe.

But you were like, do you want to do that state mottos thing that we talked about?

And I said, yes.

And here we are to do them.

Because do I love mottos in particular?

No.

I don't care that much.

To be honest with you, I had no idea what you were going to say just then.

It could have got either way.

I absolutely was ready for you to say, of course I do.

I'm John Hodgman.

This is the benefit of not talking to each other regularly for a couple of years.

You don't know me that well.

You may not know that mottos mean nothing to me, but I love weird facts.

Do I think that it's amusing that every state and U.S.

territory, except for maybe one, has a motto?

Yeah, I think it's hilarious.

I think it's like, why, why, why are we doing this?

Why do we have a state bird?

Why do we have a state muffin?

Why do we have a state anything?

Couldn't agree more.

And that feeling of like, we need to identify ourselves.

We need to have a personality.

We're a state.

Of course we need a motto.

It's just so dumb and alternately charming and irritating that it felt like we had to explore it.

It's very affected, isn't it?

It's like young high school John Hodgman growing his hair long and wearing a fedora and a Doctor Who scarf and walking around with a satchel.

My motto is, I'm interesting.

I have a personality.

Especially since so many of these

states are kind of, who cares?

But anyway, we all care about, we all care about our hometowns.

We all care about the places that we live.

And the mottos and the state things reflect to a degree the pride of place that people have, even in boring places like

state name redacted, because I don't want to offend any listeners.

We're going to do this in an interesting order.

Isn't that right, Janet?

Yeah, we figured instead of doing it by, you know, you could do it alphabetically.

Sure.

You could do it, sure, you could do it alphabetically.

Some people might expect, well, of course, you would do it in the order of states as they were admitted into the Union of these United States.

The arbitrary date line by which we created imaginary borders around lands that had been the homes of millions of people for thousands of years until we took them.

You can't be saying we did horrible things.

You can't be saying that the early settlers of the United States who came in unbidden did terrible things.

We'll call them settlers.

The early gentleman.

The gentle passers-by who were invited to stay by themselves.

Obviously, the arbitrary admission of the states to the Union is insulting to humanity.

Correct.

But you came up with a wonderful rubric, which is very specific to our show.

Yeah, let's lean into this sort of weird fragility of it's important for us to have a motto and find out which states felt like they had to do it first.

Because as I began to discover when I was looking to see, if you could sort of expect, well, when this state became part of the Union, it, of course, named itself and gave itself this motto and et cetera.

That's not the case.

From what I am seeing, there may be some parallels there.

But I was also surprised to see some early states take a real long time to decide they too need to be part of the motto club.

So I don't know how that's going to unfold because I did a cursory glance and then I thought, no, I want us to be as surprised as possible all along the way.

So we're going to go state by state, Commonwealth by Commonwealth, in the order in which the state mottos that are currently in use were adopted or written or inscribed on a seal or whatever you would would say about them.

It's kind of a suspenseful grab bag, I would say.

I would agree.

And I would say, you know, obviously because we're talking about something as sacred as a state and its motto, should I assume that we're going to treat each motto with honor, dignity, and non-judgmentally?

I would say no.

That's correct.

No.

A lot of them are stupid.

Some of them are offensive.

I think maybe.

Some of them are impossible to parse.

Some of them are terrific.

Yes.

Some states have more than one.

Well, when we get to those states, those will be special five-hour-long episodes, I'm sure.

But the point is, it's going to be a surprise every time because no one has memorized the order in which the state mottos were adopted.

So imagine, if you will, the set of a 1979 game show with a big analog randomizer on it.

And Janet, will you pull this lever to reveal which state is coming up first?

You bet I will, John.

Here we go.

Sound effect of a lever pulling.

Connecticut.

Connecticut.

And right out of the gate, John, and I am going to drop this character now that I'm stopping with the lever.

Okay, why, and I don't expect you to know this, but I am curious, why don't we pronounce that little second C in there?

I mean, it looks like the word connect.

Why don't we say Connecticut?

Well, because it's not the word connect.

It's a corruption of the Mohegan word Quinnitucket and the Nimpuck people's words Quinnetec, both meaning beside the long tidal river, aka the Connecticut River, aka known to the original people as the Great River.

Hey, have you ever been to Connecticut?

I went to a very small town in Connecticut by a lake.

My understanding is that there are several lakes in Connecticut.

Could not remember or tell you which town or which one it was.

I went and stayed with a friend.

And the thing that I remember about it that I was so charmed by being from the West and not a charming little area that has lots of vegetation and fruit growing, what I remember is driving down a country road and seeing that someone had put out a bunch of, oh, let's say berries, and a little jar that was like an honor jar that said, take a basket of berries.

Please leave us a dollar.

There was no one to be seen.

And I just thought that was very sweet and charming.

So that's a very specific memory I have of Connecticut.

I've also done a Comic-Con or two two there.

And I hate to say it, but because I'm not from the Northeast, it's one of the states that I sort of tangle up with other Northeastern states and may even get confused about which place is where.

Well, in fact, there are one, two, three, four, five states that it is historically tangled up with.

a region called New England.

And that is my home region.

As you know, I'm from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Indeed.

Even I have forgotten in the past that Connecticut is part of New England because it is so associated with the tri-state area of New York and New Jersey.

And it is especially associated as being an affluent white bedroom community of New York City, right there on the Metro North train.

And it is that, and it is also other things.

So let's get into it.

The region, of course, known as Connecticut was first inhabited by a number of different Native American peoples before their lands were invaded and occupied by English colonizers.

Among them were and still are the Nimpuk people, the Tunxies, the Shaktikoke, the Podunk, the Wongung, the Mahonasset, the Quinnipiac, the Matabesic, the Niantic, and the Pequots and the Mohegan, among others that I may have forgotten.

I look forward to your letters and let me know.

These are their lands.

Connecticut, we are starting with, because it is first in mottodom,

having established the first motto in the colonies.

This was before there were even, it was before the Revolutionary War, in the year of our God or whatever, 1639.

Okay.

Qui trans

tulit sustenant was first inscribed upon an illustration of a ribbon decorating the first seal of Connecticut.

Who chose this motto?

Who knows?

Someone who spoke Latin.

What Wikipedia says is that seal was quote unquote brought from England.

I don't know, physically brought from, I don't know.

The person bringing it over from England was Colonel George Fenwick in 1639.

And along with this motto, that first seal featured an illustration of 15 transplanted grapevines.

So many grapes.

Do you think it's because Connecticut has a thriving wine industry?

I don't know that it does.

It doesn't.

Probably has some wines there.

Probably someone's making wine in Connecticut.

You can send me those letters too.

Right now, I have to tell you something, which is that I'm haunted by not having taken Latin in high school.

It was not an option for me at my public high school in Tucson, Arizona.

Will you read it again, and I will try, again,

not seeking Latin.

I will try to translate my guesses to what it might be.

Okay, Janet Varney, for a bonus, spin of the wheel.

Can you translate?

Qui trans-tulit sustenant.

Let us cross and survive on tulips.

So, not even close.

So, okay, all right.

I thought maybe you were going to let me think maybe I was right for a while, but no, you want me to know right away that I'm wrong and you want me to sit in despair until I find out.

No, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to be so mean.

Listen, to be very clear, we flipped a Connecticut state quarter and I got the job of presenting Connecticut to you this time.

Yeah.

Next time, you're going to present a state or territory to me.

Yes.

And then we're going to vice versa it all the way until it's done.

But yes, you're going to have to just hold tight on the translation of the motto for just a teeny tiny bit.

Okay.

Because this seal was brought over with the motto on it by George Fenwick in 1639.

It featured 15 different transplanted grapevines as an illustration.

And having completed this illustrious chore of bringing over a seal and co-founding the Saybrook Colony on the mouth of the Connecticut River, George Fenwick sold the Saybrook colony and the seal to the Connecticut colony.

different place and then Fenwicked off right back to England in 1645 and died.

But the seal lived on.

It was revised in 1711 when the Connecticut Colony Council ordered that a new stamp shall be made and cut of the seal of this colony, suitable for sealing upon wafers.

Okay, that's what they said.

I need to say something.

I'm so sorry.

And I listen, it's our first episode.

So this is, we're really learning what our, you know, we have our vibe as friends.

We have our vibe as one being the guest on the other's podcast.

We don't have a co-hosting a podcast together, rhythm yet?

Am I doing a bad job?

You're doing a wonderful job, but when you say things like, the seal lived on, and I'm already imagining a marine life seal,

you keep getting my hopes up.

I have to keep reminding myself that the seal that was brought over across the seas was some sort of plaque or something.

It wasn't.

Not a seal going

and clapping.

It wasn't an actual seal.

So I just needed to say that out loud.

I needed to hear myself say that.

Connecticut is a maritime place for sure.

I don't know if there are seals in that Long Island sound.

I have to assume that at some point we will hit a state that not only has a state seal, but also has a state seal.

Whatever will we do then, John?

I think we're going to have a lot of fun.

What will become of us then?

The Connecticut colony in 1711 revised the seal,

made two major changes.

First, the seal would become more oval in shape.

It was round.

After days of debate, after days of debate and skipped meals, it was finally decided it would be more oval.

That's right.

Second, less grapes.

Gone were 12 of those grapevines, leaving only three, largely interpreted to represent the three original English invader colonies of the Connecticut region.

The Saybrook colony, as I mentioned, down at the mouth of the Connecticut River on the Long Island Sound.

The Connecticut Colony headquartered up north in Hartford, which is now Connecticut's capital.

And the New Haven Colony, back down on the Long Island Sound, a little bit west of Saybrook, and headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut, birthplace of Yale University, my alma mater, and the hamburger.

Did you know that?

I don't believe I did.

A lot of people don't believe it, and maybe it's not true, but we'll talk about it later.

Okay.

Why so much grape love in the nutmeg state?

Perhaps a clue comes from that motto.

Qui trans tulit sustenet is from the Latin, meaning he who transplanted sustains,

or he who transplanted still sustains,

or he who transplanted continues to sustain.

This is why they don't teach Latin, because it's very ambiguous.

Okay, so when I guessed, I feel like I guessed well, other than that I was trying to be adorable, and I translated

tulip to tulip.

But in other ways, I wasn't that far off.

He,

capital He,

sustains, he who transplanted sustains.

And in 1889, state librarian Charles J.

Hoadley, H-O-A-D-L-Y.

Yes, the judgment was thick when you said it the first time.

Who was born aspiring to become the state librarian of Connecticut?

Hoadley wrote, quote, the vines symbolized the colony brought over and planted here in the wilderness.

We read in the 80th Psalm, thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt, thou hast cast out the heathen, boo,

and planted it, such that he who brought over the vine continues to take care of it, qui trans tulit sustenet.

Yeah, I'm all ready to rank this motto.

I've got a ranking in mind.

I like it.

No, I also, I too am struggling, struggling with this.

Can you picture Connecticut in your mind?

I shouldn't say, I shouldn't admit what shape I think any state is unless it's one that involves the four corners, because I feel very confident I know what shape those states are, and perhaps Florida and California.

But I'm going to guess that it's sort of a

rectangle, a horizontal rectangle.

It is?

You are absolutely right.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

I'm not going to hear that ding sound sound very often during this podcast, so I need to savor it.

It's a squary state.

Okay.

Right?

And it's more squary than any other state of New England, which is part of the, I think, in this weird way, part of the reason why it has a reputation for being boring.

Oh, really?

Yeah, because it's full of squares.

Yeah.

No, I know.

You didn't have to.

Connecticut has a reputation for being boring, but it's actually quite rural.

It's actually quite maritime.

It's got a fair amount going on.

And here's something that you need to know about Connecticut.

So on the west, you've got New york on the north massachusetts on the east little roadie rhode island

and then its whole southern border pretty much is coastline long island sound

and bisecting connecticut almost right down the middle is that long tidal river for which the state is named the connecticut river which runs from Quebec up in Canada down through Vermont, sort of dividing Vermont and New Hampshire, and then down through western Massachusetts, and then cutting Connecticut in half till it spits out into Long Island Sound.

And the Connecticut River Valley, you're going to like this.

The Connecticut River Valley is notoriously fertile land.

It has a rich, sandy loam.

I love a sandy loam.

Would you say the words rich, sandy loam?

Rich, sandy loam.

Rich, sandy loam.

You're absolutely right, Janet.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

They're three great words that go great together.

And this is my next door neighbor, Rich Sandy Loam.

It's rich in Sandy Loam.

It goes by Sandy.

They live in Old Saybrook.

In this tigress of New England, this fertile crescent of New England grew two of Connecticut's great industries.

One literally growing, one not so literally growing.

You know what those two early great industries were?

I know neither of them involved wineries or grapes.

Tobacco and guns.

Oh.

Connecticut was the South.

Connecticut.

Was the original the South.

It sure was.

Because that rich sandy loam grows some of the finest tobacco in the world.

And Connecticut, particularly around Windsor, Connecticut, was a prime growing area for shade tobacco, known as Connecticut shade tobacco, which is prized for cigar wrappers.

And then along the Connecticut River in Hartford, Samuel Colt built the first Colt firearms factory, the Colt Armory, as well as his historic mansion called Armsmere.

Armsmere was the name of his house.

Let's not talk any more about that.

What I want to talk to you about is this rich sandy loam,

which is known as Windsor Soil.

Okay.

Windsor Soil.

And wherever you search Windsor Soil on the internet, because it's named for Windsor, Connecticut, the town in Connecticut where it was first, I guess, noted for its richness and sandiness

and its loamitude.

Anytime you put in, and I challenge our listeners to do it now, go type in in quotation marks, Windsor Soil, and you will be told that Windsor Soil is

the unofficial state soil of Connecticut.

I

am so pleased that it's not official.

As far as I can tell, no official state soil, which is a real disappointment.

And I don't know why they don't just go ahead and make it official.

We don't know that much about what it takes to enact the law

stating.

I mean, all the steps that go in, all the debates.

We know how long it took for them to decide to make the seal more oval, okay?

They probably learned their lesson from that.

They lost weeks to that.

And maybe they just thought we can all agree, hmm, it's not official, but.

But there are a bunch of official state things

in Connecticut, and let's talk about them.

I'm going to read out some of the official state things.

Okay.

This is some official business.

Okay.

This segment shall be called Official State Shit.

Great.

OSS.

OSS.

The OSS.

State motto we know is qui translutit sustenant.

He who transplanted sill sustains.

State slogan doesn't have one.

Don't believe what you read in Wikipedia.

Hodgman did the real research.

Okay.

Is there an unofficial state slogan?

There was an official state slogan until 2019,

which was still revolutionary.

Still revolutionary.

No one loved that one.

Really?

The square people living in the square state didn't love still revolutionary?

Yeah, yeah.

No one really associates.

I mean, like, even if you loved the Revolutionary War, it's not like, oh yeah, Connecticut.

They're still at it.

Most recently, most people remember

what was introduced in 2001, Connecticut Full of Surprises.

Okay, I have heard that.

I have heard that.

You've heard full of surprises, really?

Somehow I've heard full of surprises and had not heard still revolutionary.

That didn't last for very long.

And then there was also, that was 2001 Connect in Connecticut, which kind of is hard to do because you're emphasizing the silent sea.

No.

If you're going to do that, you got to connect in Connecticut.

Real fun is closer than you think.

Weird.

Yeah.

That's a weird pickup line in a bar.

Hey, John, is it?

Yeah.

Real fun is closer than you think.

I know.

It just basically, yeah, it really feels like you ready to settle for me?

I'm Connecticut.

No, we're not Maine.

Maybe you don't even realize that I'm in New England, but I'm Connecticut.

It's closer than you think.

I feel like that is only directed at Manhattan.

I feel like that is a slogan designed to lure people into Connecticut to buy houses, reminding them that they're just a couple of stops away on the train.

Yeah, real fun.

Hey, you love living in the most cosmopolitan city in the United States, specifically the borough borough of Manhattan, having all that fake, phony fun.

Well, you get a taste of some real fun.

It's closer than you think.

We have a combination subway and Dunkin' Donuts on the Merriot Parkway.

You ready for this?

Don't try to make it about Dunkin' Donuts when you're going to be talking about Massachusetts.

I think the same motive was behind Connecticut so much, so near.

I do not believe there will be this many other failed slogans in other states.

This feels like a lot to it's hard to put a finger on Connecticut.

Yeah, I couldn't.

That could be the motto right there.

How about instead of still revolutionary, you keep the still and make it still deciding?

Connecticut, a state of ambiguity.

Come join an unconscious state.

And then my favorite one was better yet, Connecticut, which almost rhymes.

That's definitely my favorite because that is the worst.

It might as well be lost a bet, Connecticut.

Poor Connecticut.

Poor wealthy Connecticut.

We know that the most southern part of it is almost all water.

How about getting wet, Connecticut?

Getting wet in Connecticut.

How could that be misconstrued?

It couldn't be.

Yeah, get wet in Connecticut.

Yeah.

Maybe some combination of put a finger on Connecticut, get wet now, it's starting to sound bad.

Only just now is starting to sound bad.

Just

then.

Just in that moment.

Let me tell you some other state stuff.

Great.

What they call the living insignia, the state bird, fish flower, et cetera.

Dullesville.

American robin as the state bird.

Who cares?

Yeah.

Unless you love robins.

Yeah.

I don't think of that being particularly special.

State fish, the American shad.

Are all of these animals going to be picked because they have the word American in them?

The American Shad has been described, according to this, as the fish that fed the American nation's founders.

Boo.

Boo.

Nation was here before you guys ate shadow.

Stole stuff.

State flower, the mountain laurel.

It's a pretty flower, but it is quite a range.

There may be some repetition in some of these down the line.

Also, it's not a flat state, but it's not considered a mountainous state.

Yeah.

The insect is the European mantis.

That makes no sense.

But it's cool.

Praying mantis, basically, I guess.

Is there an American mantis?

European mantis.

mantis religiosa means praying mantis it's uh an insect in the mantid family but you really you really caught me up short with that question i'm sorry i do i think that's going to happen a lot on the other on the flip side i do love a praying mantis i find them eerie and wonderful and i see a fair amount of them uh in my own backyard and it's fascinating like i there is a moment when a praying mantis you're looking at the praying mantis and it's staring straight ahead and it decides to turn and look at you and it's extremely unsettling.

I'm all for praying mantis as well, but as I'm quickly scouring the praying mantis Wikipedia page to answer your question, it is confirmed.

It is the official state insect of Connecticut, even though it is an introduced species.

What does ct.gov, Connecticut's official state website, have to say about this?

European mantis is not native to Connecticut.

Harmless to humans.

What gave it away?

Probably not a significant factor in biological control.

Mantis are beneficial insects for farmers.

Reproduced.

It doesn't say why they chose it.

It became the state insect on October the 1st, 1977.

Probably some Ben Lorch's younger sister of Connecticut

just was nuts for a mantis

and pushed for it.

European mantis.

I love that bug.

I don't get why it's Connecticut.

Yeah.

You ready for the living insignia?

The state mammal of Connecticut?

State.

State mammal.

Should I guess?

You can guess.

Remember how you were talking about Get Wet Connecticut?

Yes.

Okay.

Remember how we were talking about Connecticut has a maritime history?

Yes.

It was a boat.

It was an early boat building capital.

Yes.

Because of its long shoreline along Long Island Sound.

Yes.

State mammal.

Why were they building ships?

Wayling.

What?

You're right.

I am.

Yeah.

Ding ding.

Here it is.

It's a whale.

It's a whale.

Well, I'll tell you what.

There's not, I mean, there are a lot of mammals in the ocean, but I feel like I had it okay.

They're all whales, though.

That's why I'm talking about porpoises.

Well, I mean, seals are mammals.

Seals.

Yeah, but

I'm real strong chance it was going to be a whale.

The hints that I gave you were state mammal, long coastline.

What were they building ships for in the 18th century?

Whaling.

So we're talking about which whale.

Let me give you a hint.

In my opinion, the best whale.

Because, you know why?

Because it looks like a whale.

Oh, okay.

Unlike a lot of whales,

which will look like barnacle-encrusted deformities.

This one, if you ask a child to draw a whale, they're going to draw this whale.

Is it the blue whale?

No.

No, no.

I forget which whale is it whale.

I'm not talking about a baleen whale that has a filter.

See, that's what I'm trying.

Okay.

I'm talking about a whale that's got a big mouth and goes, um,

no, I know what you're, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know what you are

describing.

It's got big teeth.

Because that's what Pinocchio goes into.

Right, Monstro the Whale and Pinocchio.

And I think that Monstro the Whale and Pinocchio, I think, is an amalgam of different kinds of whales because the whale I'm thinking of

has a very specific coloring to it.

Okay.

It's very, very identifiable and particularly linked to a very classic piece of American literature called

East of Eden.

East of Eden was set in Connecticut, actually, on the tobacco farm.

But you were going to guess what?

It almost sounded like you said Beast of Eden, which

Mo Better

Blues, the movie by Spike Lee.

Yes.

No, that's not it, but you're closer.

Moby Dick.

Moby Dick, ding, ding, ding, ding ding dick.

That whale was white, but that's what was unusual about it.

Eh, they're white and pale and gray in color.

Sperm whales.

Come on.

Best whale.

God, I could think of so many whale names, and sperm whale, arguably the one I would remember best,

I couldn't remember.

I love a beluga.

Give me a beluga whale.

Beluga whales are incredible.

I have one closing question about the sperm whale.

Is it so named because it looks like sperm?

No.

It is named for the waxy substance in a cavity in its head called spermaceti.

One of my favorite pastas.

One of my favorite pastas.

Absolutely.

No one to this day day really knows what the spermaceti is doing up in that head of that whale.

They don't know for sure.

It is believed that it might be a resonating substance

aiding in echolocation.

Wow.

And they also believe that it might work as a kind of ballast, that the whale can affect the temperature of the spermaceti depending on how much water it takes in through its blowhole.

And, you know, another thing that uses ballast to move up and down in the water is a man-made object called a submarine.

A submarine,

which includes one of Connecticut's two state ships, the USS Nautilus, which was the first nuclear-powered submarine.

Connecticut builds a lot of military craft.

Okay.

including submarines.

This one was built in Groton,

including helicopters, which is what I used to call helicopters when I was a little kid.

Igor Sikorsky of Connecticut built the first practical helicopters in Stratford, Connecticut.

And Pratt ⁇ Whitney makes airplane engines there, primarily starting around World War II.

The other state ship of Connecticut is the Freedom Schooner Amistad, which is a replica of the ship La Amistad.

which was the slave ship that was taken over by its captives who were put on trial by the owners of the ship, trying to get them back as slaves in New Haven, Connecticut.

And eventually the Supreme Court acknowledged that they were human beings.

It was one of the catalyzing factors in the abolition movement in the Northeast.

So there's that as well.

But I also wanted to point out that two of the oldest large wooden ships that are still seaworthy

are in New England.

One of them is in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

We'll see who gets to talk about that fun fact.

The second oldest is the Charles W.

Morgan, which was built in 1841.

And it's an American whaling ship that may have gone after some of these sperm whales.

And it is still seaworthy, and it is available for your visiting pleasure in Mystic Connecticut at the Mystic Seaport.

Mystic Connecticut is the home of a big, big sort of living museum, including a replica.

old-timey shipping town that you can go and visit.

You can get on this boat or whatever.

But I'm mainly bringing bringing up mystic because of mystic pizza i'm glad you brought that up because earlier on i was actually going to ask if the rich sandy loam is what made the pizza taste so good

no it's it's the breakout performance of julia roberts i was going to say annabeth gish thanks

with matt damon as the younger brother or something do not remember him at all in that movie i've never seen mystic pizza but it is still there in mystic connecticut and people still go there.

But is it the most famous pizza in Connecticut?

Is it?

Maybe because of the movie, but does it deserve to be?

Possibly not.

No.

Well, it might be the most famous pizza from Connecticut, but it is certainly not the most famous Abits in Connecticut.

Abits being the traditional Italian-American Southern Connecticut community way of pronouncing pizza.

Did not know this.

Feel like I should have.

Two of the most famous pizza places in the pizza world world community are in New Haven, Connecticut.

Frank Pepe's and Sally's.

Two rivals,

basically next door to each other in the Worcester Square area of New Haven, Connecticut.

Very thin crust, cooked in super hot ovens.

And Connecticut, you know, look, I had an advantage in this one, Janet, because I do have a lot of familiarity with Connecticut.

Being a New Englander, Connecticut was a place where I lived when I went to college.

Yes.

in New Haven at Yale University.

And it's the place where I first cast a presidential vote for Bill Clinton in 1992.

Ah, that was the first place I was registered to vote.

And yet, for all that time, the time that I was going to college, I never went to Frank Pepe's or Sally's because it was a little far away from campus.

I was a Yorkside pizza guy, and I stand by that today.

I still prefer that Yorkside pizza.

I think there's something to be said, though, for those two rivals living side by side with only a thin crust separating them.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I tip my hat to Frank Pepe's and Sally's.

They're fine.

You know what?

The pizza's really good, but it's fine.

It's pizza.

All pizza's fine.

Louie's lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, on Crown Street.

It's been at that location at least since 1900.

It was opened as a, well, actually, it moved.

They had to move it down the block at some point.

It's about the size of a garden shed.

Okay.

It's like a brick garden shed that is plopped now in the middle of a parking lot.

originally established 1895.

They claim to have invented the hamburger sandwich

in the United States.

Have they backed up

why it's called the hamburger sandwich?

So, you know, that's really an interesting question.

I don't know, traditionally within the food writing world,

it's kind of received wisdom that it's named for hamburger Germany,

but that it may have been a German-American invention.

The Lassen family that has owned and operated Louise Lunch from the beginning may have some German ancestry.

They claim to have made what they call their hamburger in 1900 before anyone else, indeed 20 years before the hamburger bun was invented.

The United States Library of Congress, though, recognizes Louise Lunch as the inventor of the hamburger in the United States.

That's largely due to lobbying by Connecticut's U.S.

Representative Rosa DeLoro, whom I voted for when I lived there.

So, you know, it's corrupt.

That was what I was going to say.

That was highly disputed.

At the top of her list of things to do, the top of her priorities.

It's highly disputed.

There are a lot of people who don't like Louise Lunch saying they invented the hamburger.

But if you were wondering, how could they invent the hamburger before there was a hamburger bun invented?

It's because it's served on toast.

And to burnish the bona fides that this thing was, they were the first to invent it.

It's hard to recognize it as a hamburger.

Again, we don't understand the complexities of laws and states and how they get enacted, but I will say this.

No.

If you had told me, and that's all very interesting, but if you had told me that the hamburger bun had preceded the hamburger, now that's something I'm interested in.

They anticipated the hamburger by years,

and it was just sitting on the shelf waiting.

for someone to invent the hamburger.

It's still there, and it's still a very good hamburger.

It's probably the best hamburger you can have in a Connecticut parking lot, I would say.

Okay.

And you can get a little Fox on Park birch beer, which is very delicious.

And remember how I told you about submarines?

Submarines?

Yeah.

I'm excited to hear more about submarines.

Another very famous submarine to come out of Connecticut was called the Turtle.

It was the first confirmed combat submarine in the United States.

You remember that slogan about Connecticut still revolutionary?

Well, let me take you back to September 6th, 1776.

Oh, shoot.

Well, earlier, actually, 1775, a young Yale graduate named David Bushnell from Westbrook, Connecticut, comes up with an idea of a submersible boat.

Why?

Well, his main interest is underwater explosions.

A pretty hot hobby to have, particularly in the 1770s.

Absolutely.

How can I make gunpowder explode underwater?

Sure enough, David Bushnell figured out a way to do it.

And he realized if you could attach an underwater bomb to the hull of let's just say randomly one of the British ships that were forming a blockade of

the whole eastern seaboard at that point, gosh, you'd really have something there.

But what you would need is a submersional boat to sneak up on it.

So he created a little capsule.

I presume made of bronze and heavy wood.

In many ways, now that I think of it, it looks like a nutmeg,

which is the official spice of Connecticut.

That doesn't sound like it's on a list.

That sounds like it's an assistant.

We'll circle back to the nutmeg and then I'm really going to leave it alone.

But the turtle looked like a giant nutmeg.

It looked like a big old nut.

A big old brown nutmeg.

It did not look like a turtle.

He thought that the top, the small amount of this thing that was floating above the surface to let in natural light because it had windows in it.

That was pretty.

That might be confused for a turtle and therefore they wouldn't come and shoot at it or musket fire at it or whatever.

Big turtle.

Because a human being, specifically not David Bushnell, but a Continental Army infantryman named Ezra Lee, was put into this thing.

And it was propelled by propellers that were a big innovation, underwater propellers that were powered by both his feet and his hands pedaling.

Stop making this so cute.

It's a violent,

ugly thing, war.

It was the original tiny home in a lot of ways.

It was the original tiny home.

If you had to madly scramble all your limbs just to stay alive, then yes, it's the original tiny home.

The idea that that was happening in 1776, I feel comfortable being surprised by.

It didn't go very well.

Wait, talking about the turtle?

It took Ezra Lee.

The turtle?

Yeah, piloting the turtle about two hours

to get over to the Eagle, which was the British ship that he wanted to attach a bomb to.

It took him two hours to get over there.

It was rated to have air for 30 minutes

by the time he survived, but by the time he got there, he was so groggy

with CO2 poisoning, he couldn't get that thing attached and had to bail out.

And then the turtle was being transported somewhere and the ship it was being transported on was sunk and we don't know where it is today.

The turtle.

Search for the turtle.

The turtle.

It's what you deserve.

The turtle is what you deserve and then nutmeg of course then connecticut is the nutmeg state no one really knows why connecticut is associated with nutmeg it had not it did not have a particularly major part of the spice trade it's not like people went nuts for nutmeg in connecticut uh they were not all you know huffing nutmeg because nutmeg has psychoactive yeah i know

yeah you got to be careful

you got to be careful when you're huffing your nutmeg yeah you might hallucinate instead of it having the normal effect you're looking for when you're huffing it.

According to my research, the official nickname for Connecticut is the Constitution state, but the nutmeg state is the unofficial.

It's almost like the rich Sandy Loam of nicknames.

And no one knows why.

Other than the speculation that so-called Yankee traders, T-R-A-D-E-R-S, people who

Yankee peddlers were going around selling fake nutmeg to people who didn't know what nutmeg was.

A popular newspaper column in the 1830s, and you're going to enjoy this.

This is a Nova Scotian satirical newspaper column making fun of the maritime provinces of Canada and also New England.

Two regions that have a lot to do with that the existence of that at all is wonderful.

The satirical newspaper column was called The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville.

Wow.

The original story, according to the sayings and doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville, was, quote, that eternal scoundrel, Captain John Allspice of Nahant, used to trade to Charleston and carried a cargo there once of 50 barrels of nutmegs.

Well, he put half a bushel of good ones into each end of the barrel, and the rest were filled up with wooden nutmegs.

These are big seeds.

You know what I mean?

These are big seed pods.

So, like the real thing, no one could tell the difference until you bit down on one with your teeth.

And John Allspice never thought of doing that until he was first bit himself.

Does that explain anything?

Absolutely not.

But Connecticut is known as the Constitution state.

It's also known as the nutmeg state.

It's also known as the state with, in my opinion, so far in this series, the worst motto of the United States and territories.

It's not great.

It's not great.

Are you ready to rank it?

I'm ready to rank it.

A scale of one

to ten

fake nutmegs.

10 being the best.

10 being the most suitable, the most inspiring, like genuinely like, I love this motto.

I wish I would make this the motto for my life.

I wish I could name my child this motto.

I wish I could name my child Excelsior.

It's a pretty hot name for me.

I was going to say you picked one that's

pretty good.

Yeah.

I don't want to spoil which one that is.

Uh-huh.

And one nutmeg being

offensive and awful and uninspiring.

Unforgivable.

Do you have a number of nutmegs in your mind?

Oh, I definitely do.

It's setting the bar.

So let's say it together.

I'm going to count to three.

Yeah.

And then after three, we're both going to say

X

nutmegs.

Yes.

One, two, three.

One

nutmeg.

Fake or real, it's a bad nutmeg.

You have a terrible motto, Connecticut, though I enjoy you as a state quite a bit.

And I like going there and eating your pizza and your lobster rolls.

And

I love the legacy of the Hartford Whalers, The only professional sports team, even though I hate sports, I love extinct hockey teams, and they're the best.

They're the best in the league of extinct hockey teams.

But

you got a one-nut megmato.

One-nut megmato.

Is there anything we could offer up to the state of Connecticut?

The seal lived on is one of them.

The seal

isn't a seal would be another one.

The seal lived on.

I guess we already nixed Get Wet in Connecticut.

Since they got rid of Still Revolutionary

in 2019, Connecticut, as far as I can tell, is still on the hunt.

Yeah.

Still on the hunt for a new slogan.

So we have actually an opportunity to give it a new slogan.

Yeah.

If we want to work on it.

Okay.

All right.

Connecticut.

This waxy substance is not sperm.

That's the motto or the slogan?

I'm thinking of an alternate motto.

Because what's the difference between a motto and a slogan?

A motto has to be on the official state seal, right?

Yeah.

But they're usually in Latin.

Yes.

They're usually part of this neo-Hellenic, neoclassical attempt to try to connect United States history with the democracy of Athens and sort of an older tradition of democracy.

And so they try to make it sound,

it's all aspirational.

It's trying to make the United States seem sort of older and founded in high ideals instead of simply being a rapacious capitalist experiment.

Right.

It can't be funny

per se.

It's got to be stuffy.

It's got to be sober and stuffy

and crummy.

Okay.

Whereas a slogan can be fun and it's impermanent, right?

You can change it.

Like better yet, Connecticut.

Apparently, you can change it a lot.

Hec substantia sete non est sperma.

This substance in the whale is not sperm.

A lot of words for a seal, Hodgman.

A lot of words for a seal.

Well, what do you got, Farney?

I've told you all about Connecticut.

What have you learned that you think could be inspiring?

Any of these stories are feel-good stories?

I mean, it makes weapons of war.

Yeah, no,

listen,

I want it to be something about the rich sandy loam.

Rich, I feel like

the earth, we could still find something sort of with, if you'll forgive me gravitas because it's about the very ground upon which we walk it's fertile

so something

recognizing that the land gives birth and sustenance to the people yeah like thanks to the fertile valley is better than the current motto which is being like thank me for coming here

destroying everyone and and and planting my vines where people used to live yeah

dives Haranosum.

Rich Sandy Loam.

That's what Google Translate says.

That's lovely.

That's a lovely motto.

All right.

There you go.

Real nice.

Your alternate motto is Divus Haranosum.

And your new slogan, well, we got to come up with it.

Connecticut.

Still deciding.

Settled yet?

Connecticut.

I love a question mark and a slogan.

Love a a question mark.

After a break, Janet Varney speaks with the screenwriter who put Mystic Connecticut on the map for the very first time.

E.

Pluribus motto is back after this.

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Hey, Janet.

Hey, John.

This is Tyler calling from the almost New England estate of Connecticut.

I'm a Latin teacher, and I know it's hard to believe that there's a Latin teacher in Connecticut who listens to a Max Fun podcast, but I want to talk about our great state motto.

For one thing, it's nice to have a state motto in Latin.

I love seeing it when I'm getting on the train into the city, when I'm going to see a Broadway show or a live podcast at the Bellhouse.

But yeah, he who transplanted still sustains.

There's some interesting grammar going on in the Latin.

We got that relative clause acting as the subject of the sentence, qui trans tulit.

Qui is a masculine nominative singular relative pronoun.

Transtulit is the third person singular perfect form of the verb transpharo, literally meaning to bring across.

Then that last word sestinet is the main verb of the clause.

That's in the third person singular present tense.

And that comes from the verb teneo to hold.

And that prefix on it, su, comes from sub, meaning under.

So if you hold something from under, you are holding it up.

In the original connotation, it's got this sort of God meaning, meaning, you know, the guy who brought people to Connecticut from Europe is going to sustain them for the future.

But I do like the sort of more active version of the motto that I've interpreted in my head.

He who has been able to move and travel efficiently is able to keep up a liveliness and an economy.

I think that that sort of less religious, less colonial interpretation of the phrase provides us industrial New Englander types a sort of hopeful message.

I hope you enjoyed listening to this entire message that I left you.

Goodbye.

Welcome back to E-Blurbus Motto.

Janet Barney, who do we have?

To give us the final word on the Nutmeg State, aka Connecticut.

Well, John Hodgman, I'm so glad you asked because earlier in the show, you brought up one of the movies I absolutely loved growing up, Mystic Pizza.

And I wondered if the state's lonely soil had anything to do with the quality of its pizza.

You were clearly in the tank for Yorkside pizza.

Obviously, you cannot be trusted.

So the ePluribus Motto team reached out to screenwriter Amy Holton-Jones to see if she would be kind enough to chat with me.

And luckily, she agreed.

So here is the screenwriter on her 1988 film that was named after the Mystic Pizza Eatery.

And she told me about how she first came across the restaurant.

It was the early 80s, and I was traveling with my husband, Michael Chapman, and he was a New Englander, and we were headed from New York City to Maine to visit his parents who lived in Ellsworth.

And we were charting our route with the help of a book called Road Food, which still exists, which is

a guide to local take-out, drive-in,

you know,

food for the people

all over the United States.

And we were not looking for pizza, actually.

We were looking for fried clams.

And the book waxed on repisodically about clams at the sea swirl in Mystic, which still exists, by the way.

And as we were headed past it, we passed down Main Street and I saw the sign Mystic Pizza.

And I thought, wow, that's a great title.

What's the film?

And

that's how it sort of started.

And Mystic Pizza is a lot about a moment in your life where you either make your own life or you you join with a guy and absorb his life.

And I was trying to say, don't do that, you know, be yourself, among other things.

So it was born from the title and I fussed around with it for several years after that and

wrote the screenplay.

Do you feel, as many people argue, that

there is something very special happening with the pizza in Connecticut, not just in New York?

And do you have a theory as to what it might be that makes a pizza so good, if you do feel that way?

I don't feel that way.

In fact,

I kind of feel the opposite

about the mystic pizza.

I know that

you guys feel that the thin crust pizza, the New Haven thing, that that's

way better.

And I would say that that's highbrow pizza, thin crust pizza, and that it's more truly Italian.

And the mystic pizza is all-American and it's less pure, it's less demure, if you will.

It's carbo and fat-loaded and kind of an everyman pizza, more like America itself in some ways than the thin crust pizza is.

It's got to stick to your ribs if you're going to go out there on the open sea and fish and battle the elements.

So here we have

this sort of revolution.

I think of it as being this revolutionary type of screenwriting that you're doing.

Very feminist,

wonderful.

We have the state of Connecticut who had the slogan that they immediately had to toss aside at some point, still revolutionary.

Just reminding everybody, we're still revolutionary.

It is a state that has tried on a lot of different slogans.

Now, a slogan being a little more commercial than the official state motto, the official state motto, key, translucent, sustenant.

He who transplanted still sustains.

John and I are not a huge fan of that motto,

especially when we bumped up against some really beautiful, very

just calm ones like Unity.

You know,

it's hard to turn your nose up at Unity, but this Latin one's a little clunky.

Do you, in your experience of

living in Connecticut and your experiences there and interacting with the people, do you have any pitches for a good slogan for Connecticut?

Well, cheaper than New York, less stuck up than Massachusetts.

I mean,

that comes to mind.

I guess birthplace of Lyme isn't probably a good idea.

You know what?

Sometimes you got to lean in.

Isn't there a town called asbestos?

I mean, you don't choose, you don't necessarily choose your partner at the dance.

Don't blame us for ticks.

I mean, I.

Exactly.

Where the ocean meets the sky would probably be my choice, but that might be somebody else's already.

What if it is?

What?

It's odd, but he who transplanted still sustains.

Oddly works for me because I was a transplant to Mystic Pizza, and it continues to sustain me.

And then, do you have a sense of what the shape is?

Now, the shape, you can describe it as, you know, the literal kind of shape.

Sometimes when we have a really fun shape of a state, you can say something like, this looks like Goofy's profile.

I don't know that we can get there with the state of Connecticut, but does the shape call up anything for you?

Yes, it looks to me like half of a grilled cheese sandwich with one side nibbled off.

Yes.

Who nibbled off that side?

And did it happen in the kitchen before it came out to the table or did it happen at the table?

I don't know, but it's also stolid and then it's got this stuff going on on the edges.

Yeah, it's nibbled.

It's nibbled.

Connecticut.

It's been nibbled.

Amy Holden-Jones has had a storied career in film and television since Mystic Pizza came out.

Most recently, she created and wrote the Fox show The Resident, which you can now watch on Netflix.

And you can find her on Instagram and Twitter at AholdenJ.

And my full chat with Amy is available now for Max Fun members.

Just go check your bonus feed.

And if you're not a member yet, go to maximumfund.org slash join to get started.

E Pluribus Moto is hosted by Janet Varney, along with me, John Hodgman, and is a production of Maximum Fun.

The show was edited and produced by Julian Burrell, along with senior producer Laura Swisher.

I call her Lala Swishtime.

Our music was created by Zach Burba and ePleuribusmato artwork was provided by the great Paul G.

Hammond.

We'd love to hear from you.

You can find the show on TikTok and Instagram at ePleuribusmato and via email at emailpluribusmato at maximumfun.org.

That's email pluribusmato, one word at maximumfun.org.

Tune in next week as we head to Rhode Island and I stumble upon a bit of New England history John never learned about at his fancy New England school.

I don't know about the New England vampire panic.

We'll also hear from one of my idols, Julian Fellows, creator of HBO's The Gilded Age, and a little show called Downton Abbey.

I mean, it interests me that the most successful people in America at that time chose an island with the motto Hope.

Until next time, remember our motto: when you're choosing loam, make sure it's rich sandy loam, won't you?

Won't you?

you?

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