
Transcript
Tapping Syrup And Swiping Through Headlines (Hour 2)
Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Wed Apr 1, 2026
Local voices statewide impact.
It's Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
We are going to get into the headlines in a second.
I need to address this call that we got during the break from Rick in Evansville saying, stop calling him Pistol Pete.
It's an insult to Pete Marovitch.
His name is Whiskey Pete.
I like that, Rick.
We're going to change it.
Whiskey Pete, glug glug.
That's how it's going to be for now.
Whiskey Pete, glug glug.
Call dude at it.
He's got it.
All right.
So it's whiskey Pete.
I'll try Rick.
That was a good call.
We don't want to Pete Marovitch is the original pistol Pete.
So we don't want to we don't want to tarnish his name.
Tonight, the president is going to address the nation, Jamie.
And I'm sure that within another week, we won't have to do headlines from around because the war is over.
And I'm just going to anticipate this because we've got we got it in the head.
We'll talk about it more.
But as I think about it, it's
He's just now he's bored with it.
So anyway, let's focus on some headlines out of the Middle East.
Iran hit an oil tanker off the coast of Qatar and Kuwait's airport on Wednesday while airstrikes battered Tehran in unrelenting tempo hours after Donald Trump said he was ready to wind down the war.
He really believes that his word carries so much weight
I wish someone would now granted his pillowcases do always look like the shroud of terrain every day he wakes up They're just a big orange likeness of his big dome visage on there, but he is not
God, he doesn't get to just make a pronouncement and the whole world has to cout out to
Yes, that's what we have to keep pointing out.
And if you thought that the gas prices were going to come down anytime soon, no, probably not because oil prices did fall and stocks
rose today following the president's comments.
However, prospects for a quick reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, or ordinarily as we've talked, a conduit for a fifth of global oil supply are unclear.
This is proof.
US gas prices jumped past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 yesterday as the Iran War continues to push fuel prices higher worldwide.
Analysts say those high fuel costs
will trickle into groceries as businesses, transportation, and packaging costs pile up.
It's a wake up call in more ways than
Time for some shit you need to know.
All right, well, Senator Tammy Baldwin is in the news now.
She's calling on the U.S.
Defense Health Agency to look into reports that soldiers injured in the Iran war, including some from Wisconsin, are not receiving adequate and timely care after returning from the Middle East.
She sent a letter Tuesday to Vice Admiral Darren Via and shared it with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
in which Baldwin recounted what she's heard from Wisconsin service members in the 103rd sustainment command of the Army Reserve who were injured in a March 1st drone attack on their facility in Kuwait.
The attack killed six service members and seriously injured dozens more.
Some of them suffered traumatic brain injuries, which is one of the leading injuries when these servicemen and women are coming back.
According to the letter, many injured soldiers could not be evacuated for several days due to ongoing
fighting.
They've been at Fort Hood now where they face delays in receiving proper care.
The senator said, quote, I've heard directly from constituents serving in our military who were injured in the war and are now experiencing delays and gaps in medical care at Fort Hood.
At least two service members from Wisconsin have been affected by the delay in care, according to Baldwin's office.
Brain injuries related to blast explosions from improvised
explosive devices have been called, quote, the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Journal of Military and Veterans Health, an estimated 20% of combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were brain injuries.
Where is where's whiskey Pete to get the get these warfighters as he likes to call them the
medical attention that they so rightfully deserved.
If you're willing to send them and you're willing to put them in harm's way for your own little boy look at us play toy soldier fantasies, then you owe them timely
and sustained medical care.
And that's good
It's just wrong.
That should never happen.
Well, it should be, right?
And let's be real, this isn't happening in a vacuum.
I hate to always point it out, but Donald Trump has a track record when it comes to service members and veterans and his treatment of them and words that he has said about them.
So I think with that context, this is just another piece to that, right?
Because this administration obviously doesn't
Thank you very much.
really care about what happens to our service members or our veterans, and this is just an example of that.
We've got Lin chiming in over on the text line this morning.
We were talking a little bit about the president earlier going through those Iran headlines.
She says, yet his word moves the stock market like God.
She's not wrong, because anytime he says things look better than the stock market goes up, if he says we're ending the war, the stock market goes up, this is a heck of a time.
The problem is he believes what Lynn just rightfully said, and he believes that
Yes, I can just say this and look it and people will hear the dial or the stock market and they'll go, oh, he's doing such a great job.
Well, we have some news later
Not the case.
In other headlines for stuff you need to know, an American journalist was kidnapped yesterday in Baghdad and Iraqi security forces are pursuing her captors according to Iraqi officials.
The journalist was identified as freelancer Shelly
Kittleson by one of the outlets she worked for.
Now she's 49 years old and she actually has Wisconsin ties.
She is from Monticello, Wisconsin.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry said in a statement that a foreign journalist had been kidnapped without giving many more details really than that about her identity.
Two Iraqi security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case said that the kidnapped journalist was a woman with U.S.
citizenship.
They also said that two cars were involved in this kidnapping, one of which crashed and was apprehended while being pursued by authorities near the town of El-Hazwa in Babil.
That's a province southwest of Baghdad.
And this journalist was transferred to a second car that fled the scene.
Now, the Interior Ministry said that the security forces had launched this operation to track down the kidnappers, quote, acting on precise intelligence and through intensive
field operations after intercepting a vehicle belonging to the kidnappers that overturned as they tried to flee.
One suspect was arrested.
That might be too soon yet.
And one of those vehicles used to the kidnapping was seized, but others remain on the loose.
Now, Kittleson's mother, whose name is Barbara, said that she had, that Shelley had messaged and sent her photos on Monday night.
And at the time, Kittleson was actually safe.
I mean, this is one
that people are dying and things are getting blown up and it doesn't seem like Iran is backing down.
Uh, remember, Jamie, it seems like forever ago, it may have been, I maybe have been in a coma for a while, but the president, this can't be right.
The president tore down part of the White House.
Is that right?
He
Well, a U.S.
judge yesterday said that the president cannot construct his planned $400 million ballroom on the side of the White House demolished East Wing without approval from Congress.
So that halts the president's most visible efforts to reshape the seat of American power.
I don't know, the gaudy gold stuff that he put up everywhere and the West Wing sign outside.
But all
District Judge Richard Leon granted a request for a preliminary injunction by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is a nonprofit that brought the lawsuit alleging Trump exceeded his authority when he raised the historic East Wing and launched construction of the new building.
Now that Leon was an appointee of Republican former President George Bush.
So that keeps everything on hold for this ballroom.
The judge, oh boy, where does it leave us?
I don't know.
Unfortunately for Democrats,
A lesson until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization.
Construction has to stop.
That was part of Leon's order, referring to the administration.
Trump, oh, you can imagine, he loved it.
He went crazy on True Social, called the National Trust a group of left-wing lunatics, and said his ballroom is under budget ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the taxpayer, and will be the finest building of its kind anywhere
So it's actually a good change of pace.
I'll take it.
All right.
Yes.
We have swipe or stay coming up.
I'm going to read some.
vague pop culture headlines.
Brian and Jamie are gonna have to decide whether to stay and hear more or swipe on to the next one.
Are we ready?
So if you remember Johnny Depp put together a band featuring Aerosmith, guitarist Joe Perry and Alice Cooper.
And now they're getting sued over a 2023 concert that did not happen.
Oh, so this concert promoter in Slovakia claims that they were paid $277,000 upfront to perform and never returned the money after the cancellation.
The concert was canceled because some medical issues with Johnny Depp.
that date was never made up.
I think they just went on their merry wave, returned home.
But now they're getting sued for it.
Hollywood vampires are trying to counteract saying it's very intricate.
You got to go look it up.
Basically that they have no jurisdiction in a Texas courthouse or something.
I didn't
One of our favorite nepo babies in Hollywood, Dakota Johnson came out and said that she lost out on an acting role because during an audition, she went into the room and this was a callback.
She went into the audition room and went up to everybody in the room, shook their hands, introduced herself, asked how they were doing, and then went on, read her lines at the scene.
Afterwards, she got a call from her people saying that there was extreme negative feedback
Sure.
Maybe not a million, but I've been in a lot, and I've been in callbacks.
And usually they're very cold.
Even if the casting director knows you and seen you before, sometimes then they'll call you by name and make you at least feel like a human being rather than just a piece of meat.
But most time you go in, you say hello, they sometimes say hello, sometimes they don't even look up, and then you just do your thing.
But she's an established...
celebrity.
I
Marin Wade is suing Taylor for trademark infringement.
She says she owns the rights to confessions of a show girl and she claims Taylor's album and merch are swallowing up a brand she spent over 12 years cultivating.
Taylor's album was life of a showgirl, not to be confused with confessions of a showgirl.
Local news, community stories, and the conversations that matter most.
Now, more Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
But listen, let's be honest, who doesn't love delicious maple syrup poured over some pancakes, waffles, french toast, if you're buddy the elf, you put it on spaghetti, everybody loves fresh...
maple syrup.
Real maple syrup has become a staple in Wisconsin, but there are fears that climate change could bring an end to it in the next generation, at least in the southern part of the state.
So what can be done to slow that prediction?
How does one make maple syrup?
And can Jamie finally start her own sugar camp?
The answer to all of those questions and more hopefully will come from our guests.
We are joined now by Teresa Barone.
She's from the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association.
Teresa, thank you.
Thank you for being here.
This is music to Jamie's ears to have you with
Well, per nest stats last year, Wisconsin made about
556,000 gallons of maple syrup valued
nearly $15 million.
But if
producer that made maple syrup throughout the state reported to NASA that they made maple syrup, we'd be above and beyond.
We actually beat out Maine in production last year.
So now Wisconsin has become third in the nation in maple syrup production.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Well, really maple syrup, the industry has always been kind of family tradition.
It's brought families together.
So people from, you know, generation to generation have continued that.
that great process of making a maple syrup.
It started out, you know, many years ago with indigenous people and then people kind of followed on that tradition to take that sap from a maple tree and boil it out to a maple syrup.
You see a lot more small hobbyists coming in.
People are tapping one to two trees in their yard.
On average, a tap hole could give you about 10 gallons of sap and make about a quart of syrup.
See,
I do.
I do.
To get
To make one quart of syrup, of course, depending on your sugar content, but it's about 10 gallons of sap.
your
No, it slowly drips a lot depends on the weather.
We need freezing nights above freezing during the day.
It's crazy with this storm we had that week.
I've never seen sap run so fast and continuous run after that.
the storm on Sunday, Monday, by Wednesday, Thursday, our trees were constantly running.
They usually shut off with their free thought cycle.
They did not shut.
They ran overnight for a day, which is crazy.
We had pills running over and a real constant drip.
She's the executive director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association, wismaple.org, if you want to check out some of the information they have.
So let's start there with what you were saying, because we're hearing that the season for maple syrup is starting earlier than it has in years past.
So what's happening exactly on the ground and how different does it look now than it did even 10, 20 years ago, Teresa?
You know, it seems would, of course, with the climate change, yes, it's starting earlier.
Usually Southern Wisconsin starts before Northern Wisconsin.
Southern Wisconsin, most of our producers were done about a week ago.
They usually start tapping, you know, about two weeks.
I'm from the Green Bay area before we start tapping.
Basically, it's just changed the way, you know, with everything has changed throughout everywhere.
So the the focus of this with the climate screwing things up for tapping season is the southern part if if down the road The maple trees in the southern part of the state kind of fade away Get to because correct me if I'm wrong the trees have to be under a certain height They it's the the bigger the trees get the more the tree itself uses the sugar so
If those trees fade away, are there other kind of trees in the state that could be tapped and utilized for some sort of syrup?
You can tap birch, you can tap, but you also can do a lot more planting, replanting your trees.
A tree takes about 25 years to grow before it can be tapped.
It needs to be between 10 and 12 inches in diameter.
So replanting tree growth I think will help and cleaning your forests or cleaning your sugar bush also helps with that.
So those trees aren't fighting against other trees.
I can't foresee that it'll ever completely go away.
I mean it's something that continues and more southern states are starting to tap.
You got Indiana, you got Kentucky, you got
Western states Portland has a different kind of maple and they started tapping out there called the big leaf maple.
Each are producing a sap and what happens as the warmer climate comes or as it gets warm through the season people just have to really cook that sap faster and really listen to mother nature that when the buds start coming out it's time for us to be done taking the sap from those trees so it can go into making the leaves.
The tree we're never we're not hurting the trees.
It's kind of like a bait our veins in our body where we give blood Yeah, and we generate set save as a sap of the maple trees
Well, you hope this maple season, there was a lot of frost in the ground.
So we had ideal conditions.
When I say ideal conditions, it'd be 20s at night, 35 to 40, more like 38 to 40, 42 during the day.
And those are more of your ideal.
What happened is we had a great week where we should have surf running, both the frost was so far on the ground, the sap didn't, or I should say sap running, the sap didn't run.
We had that warm weather.
If we didn't have the frost on the ground where we had those 70 degree days,
that would cause your trees to of course go into thinking it was spring in the budding.
So when we got that second set of snow it kind of insulated that ground and then we had those warm temperatures again saving the season a little bit.
So if it hits a period of a week of warm temperatures or even 80
high temperatures, it'll shut the trees off.
In 2012, many producers throughout the state of Wisconsin had a three-day season.
On average, a season is between 30 and 45 days.
Wow.
So for people like Jamie, who want to do this at home, and we're talking to Teresa Barone, she's from the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association, wis maple.org is their website.
How many trees would you need to plant?
And again, you said the trees took 20 years to grow before they were able to be tapped.
How many trees do you need to get those 10 gallons of sap that you said will give me one quart of syrup?
So how much land is Jamie gonna have to buy to start Jamie's syrup farm, her sugar
camp?
Honestly, you can tap your tree in your yard.
You have a maple in your yard, you can tap that tree.
One tree will give you that.
um that 10 gallons of sap on an average year so um you see more and more people if you go through many towns or anywhere you see bags on the trees people are just tapping that one tap boiling it down on um a propane um some people use a turkey fryer hence no turkey oil has could be used in it because it'll take on um the taste of that that the bigger surface area the faster your sap will cook down the big thing is cooking
it in something that will not take on a taste.
Maple sap and maple syrup, anything you put that in takes on the taste of that container.
So yes, one person in the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Produce Association has an amazing beginner's book that we give for free that talks about getting us, you know, how to start up from, you know, one tap to 10 taps.
so
if like now it's almost too late right even if um because the season the tapping season's about over but if you start planning you could theoretically Jamie you could do this next year you could tap one of your trees and just have it how long how long a process does it take then to boil it down Teresa
depends on the sugar content so yeah it can take
I can't say how long, 10, 12 hours depends on how your surface area is.
It can take 24 hours.
Usually, so like a lawn tree, or a tree not fighting other trees, and if it's a sugar maple, will have higher sugar content.
So hence it'll take less sap to boil down.
You probably hear a lot, 40 to 140 gallons, so a gallon of syrup.
Yeah, the higher the sugar content, the less sap you need to boil that down into syrup.
Interesting.
We've got one of our listeners chiming in saying that a sister of hers has land in northern Minnesota and a neighbor in that area taps her trees, does all the work, and then pays her a dozen courts for a dozen courts of syrup.
So you're right.
Anybody could do this with even just a little amount of tree and land.
Now, you personally, Teresa, you and your husband have been doing this since the 1990s.
You were Maple producer of the year in 2024.
So how was your operation?
personally changed over time from when you first started to what you do today.
So we started when I was little.
We had a few taps.
We cooked out in the woods on an open pan.
So in a few, three years ago, we bought a new evaporator, a little more efficient.
We're all on wood.
fired.
This year we put in an RO, which has helped with efficiency, something new to us.
We have four vacuum systems.
We use a solar vacuum system, an energy or electric vacuum system.
And then we also have a gravity vacuum system.
So we have three vacuum systems.
So our our little sugarbush of 1200.
TAPS has gone to about 2000.
We buy SAP from other neighbors.
We work a lot around one of our neighbors, and we also really value education.
So we bring in lots of tours.
four ages, school groups.
We do a big open house to help educate people about Maple.
That
Teresa Barone is with the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association.
If you want to get in on those tours, if you want to get a beginner book, if you want any information about all things Maple Syrup, wis maple.org is the website.
Teresa, this was fascinating.
I could talk to you about the process all day.
Thank you so much for being here.
That was a lot of fun.
Thank you guys for having me.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Have a great day.
You too.
It is
Wisconsin wakes up here.
Back to Daybreak with Brian and JB.
It is 7.52 right now, and I'm so excited, Brian, that we got to learn a little about maple syrup and the art of maple syrup.
Maple syruping, is that what we call it?
I don't know, but that's what I'm saying this morning.
Mapleing, I think is what trees are called.
Is that what she called it?
Okay, I was just so excited to talk to somebody who actually does it on a daily basis, because I think it's cool.
Well, not that you know
Well, we don't have any good trees.
I'd have to go like find an actual tree.
We have all the little saplings, you know, that probably aren't maple.
I don't know, whatever they put, they decided to plant in our little suburb.
But wismaple.org, again, is that website.
If you want to know more about the act of mapling or you want to get that beginner book, I know John over on our YouTube feed had asked if there was some sort of link to access that, but wismaple.org.
One more time to check that out and get more information if you want to try it on your own.
I'd love to know if people do it.
Oh, I wish
in not an importance Parker don't worry you just in stature used to work for sports stations so this was this is
Frank was very excited about this.
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame has announced this year's class, and there is a Wisconsin connection because Doc Rivers, the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, has been inducted this year.
So will Candace Parker, Ella Deladon, and Amari Stottemire.
They are among this year's class of inductees.
Frank asked this question and I will ask it for him.
Which Wisconsin athlete or coach deserves to be selected to the Hall of Fame next?
awful and he can actually flip a field and do his job well.
And that's the only reason I'd put him in there.
Not because, you know, he's got some long storied career with the Packers, but if you've watched the last couple of years, that's the most storied special teamers the Packers have ever had at this
Here's the question I pose, and I think this is a great way to look at Hall of Fame for any sport or anything in general.
Can you tell the story of the game without saying that person in there?
Let me tell you, I can talk all football without saying Tony Romo's name.
Let me ask you as a Packer fan is Jordy Nelson a Hall of Fame caliber talent.
James Jones is another perfect example.
He bounced around came back to basically help save a season after Jordy Nelson speaking of
for his ACL and he had a better season there, but his age was catching up with him too at that point.
But I don't know if you put any Packers receivers in that category.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.