
Producer Dom in the hot box.
We have showers and thunderstorms in Madison working their way through the downtown area here, state streets.
Got a little bit of flash flooding going on.
Probably downpours.
But this should all clear out.
We'll see a high near 90 this afternoon with a lot of sunshine expected later.
Right now, it's in the mid-70s.
And we've asked Tom and Christie Manis to stick around for a few more minutes.
We were talking with them just before the break about this book, the historic Wisconsin roadside.
There's just so much in this book and so much that you've traveled all over the state.
You know, you
We couldn't just let you go.
I mean, all the things that you could still tell us.
You know, you know, Historic Wisconsin, you're telling people, you know, hey, try this out, try that out.
But you've also got another book and that is Secret Wisconsin.
Yeah, right.
This is different.
Look at Wisconsin,
in Wisconsin?
The biggest secret?
Well, we have so many secrets in Wisconsin.
I know.
There's so many more that
can't really
maybe we should just sit quietly.
Yeah.
So in Durand, which is where we live now, near us in Eau Claire.
about 20 minutes away in downtown.
There's hundreds, maybe thousands of people go past downtown, have no idea what's there.
In the Corral Bar, the owners bought the building next door and to create an event space.
And so they started turning into it and they found this big colorful buffalo behind the, you know, the boards and stuff that are turned out.
And they're like, okay, what's going on?
he carefully tore it away.
And what happened was there is a 55 foot long by nine foot tall temporary circus poster from the 1880s.
It was only supposed to last about two to two and a half months.
And one of the curators at Circus World said that it's the biggest and most preserved circus poster of its kind he's ever seen.
And so circus performers, they would travel ahead.
and do the advertisements, and they use lithograph paper, and they would stamp them as, you know, advertising, obviously.
And so they wouldn't have to come back and take them down.
Now I lived in Baraboo for eight or nine years, and I've been to Circus World a number of times, and they have such a huge collection of that kind of memorabilia, these old
Gorgeous posters and of course the circus wagons in there any other historic finds like that in your in your secrets of Wisconsin book
a little different But one thing that I think is really cool is down in cut a hay.
I think I'm saying that yeah Yeah, there's an old department store.
It's called dread skis
Wow,
and it is you it's still is still open mm-hmm, and you walk in and it's like walking back in time They're still selling old stock
Stuff yeah, you can buy if you need a leisure suit
from 70s, you can go buy one.
the original owner still works behind the counter.
At least she did as of like six months ago.
And they don't buy any new stock.
It is literally a department store filled with old, old stuff.
I apparently they've
and no, no, this
original stuff.
Yeah.
It is.
And
it's big.
It's a
big store.
But one of the things with that that fascinates me is they still have the old cash pay system where the
you know, a person at the counter, they take their money and put it in a cup and they send it to the people upstairs in this old metal railway.
No.
And then they make change.
The accounting department makes change and they
send it
back.
You're kidding.
You have to drive down there and just go in this department.
This is in Cudahy?
Yeah.
right on, like, the main street.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we had heard about this and thought we had to check it out.
That's one thing we do.
don't look it up online or,
know, right
that way.
We actually go to everything.
Wow.
I mean, to the point where we heard about the Marfa lights not too long ago, a couple of years ago and decided Marfa lights down in Texas,
So we had to drive all the way down there and check it out.
It was.
is and I walked away thinking that it's got to be extraterrestrial
something I mean it's been disputed.
We did a story on it and we researched it and researched it and even
PhDs say there's no explanation for it.
So
people have tried to disprove and they can't but but lights different color lights they hover in the air right above the horizon and sometimes they'll split and
they kind
of slowly dance and then they'll disappear and then they'll reappear again and at one point we counted 11 at the most and you know we're skeptics so we're like we kept going back we went back early in the morning like four o'clock in the morning we went back you know the next night and they were still there and we found out we were so lucky because most people don't see them
This
is the kind of stuff we do though.
We love to get out and see what we can find and find out the answers and figure out the why.
know about Gravity Hill?
no,
Wonderspot.
They have like six places in the country.
Okay, out in Schultzburg, not too far from Madison.
yeah, yeah.
On a country road, you park your car on the country road, and Gravity pulls it uphill.
no.
Like there's little elves pushing you.
No, seriously.
Yeah.
And so there's a blue sign that gives you instructions, and it's right outside the city limits.
It's right there.
And so you put a neutral, and we're not talking about just slowly rolling.
I mean,
we were up to like five miles an hour rolling.
I mean.
In skeptics that we are, we went back like.
two or three times and spent time there doing all different angles.
so cool.
thing to take a carload of kids to, you know,
and freak them out.
Yeah.
Yes.
Not explain
it.
One time we were there and we had to wait in line because people were over on the side of the road waiting.
cornfield.
so this is a place you really have to check it out.
You have to see this in person.
Okay, so 1936, isn't 30's a blue's 36?
Solly's Grill in Glendale.
So they say they have the original Butterburger.
So obviously skeptics, you know, we have
check out.
So they have the butter is actually cooking on the grill.
put the burgers on and then they steam it with onions and then they take the bun.
Now, before they take the bun, they take, they have just, you know, stacks and stacks of one pound blocks of butter.
Of course, it's Wisconsin, you know, thank goodness.
Yeah.
And so what they do is they put it room temperature, then they put an old fashioned milkshake machine with the metal cup and they whip it really good, you know.
Oh, beautiful.
then.
Then they take it when the, right before the burger is done, they take it and it's just like icing.
They have a like an icing spreader.
They dip it in and they put it in.
It must be like three inches thick on the top.
They spread it on the top of the bun.
And so then they put the burger on, they put the top on and then the butter melts on top and it's just like the burger and they have these special plates that fit it just right.
So, but the butter melts and it's like the burger is sitting in them.
a moat of butter.
It's like this deep.
I was going to say, it seems like a wet burger.
It's healthy.
They couldn't have to help you though.
Yeah.
It's amazing the amount of people that are there for it.
Oh,
Here's another cool thing.
Up in the northwest corner in a town called Luck, they used to make the Dunkin' Yoyos.
And there's a museum there.
I mean, there's nothing else, really, but there's a
museum?
Yeah, the world's largest yo-yo is
pink one?
Yeah.
Yeah,
love
OK.
No.
We used to, we do a lot of international trips, so we pick up a little thing here or there.
We just picked up something new on an international trip, actually.
We did.
We were in... Is a total surprise.
Yeah, total surprise.
We got a bill in the mail last week.
We drove where we shouldn't have in Italy.
We had rented a car and we went to a town called Luca and...
We didn't know that you weren't supposed to drive cars in the central square, which a lot of towns over there do that.
Without a permit.
They had a little parking area with about 10 cars, and we were looking for a place to park.
So
we got a ticket in the mail.
We've been telling everyone to be careful.
It was $58 euro.
We
thought it was a scam at first because on our WhatsApp, we don't use WhatsApp, but when you're in Europe, you do.
So we got this notification, this charge on your credit card.
I'm like, whatever.
A scam.
The next morning, she said, hey, our credit card was charged.
I'm like, what?
So I started looking into it.
And it's all in Italian, you know.
And so I had to copy it, put it in translator, and then it said the location.
And I said, were we ever at this place?
So we're all looking at Google Maps.
Skeptics that we are.
Our son pulls it up on Street View, and we're like.
Oh yeah, we were there and there's the big X. Huge sign.
Huge sign with X's and we thought, well maybe it means don't park.
Yeah, you can buy
permit.
Live
right?
far
so much.
Oh, yeah.
The state is so full.
I mean, we
list of over 500 things for a second edition of
Secret
Wisconsin.
Yeah.
And it's always, I mean, I keep lists all the time.
And we find something, I'll add it.
Yeah.
So it's...
You know, right here, right in your backyard, the Capitol.
Okay.
I think it's fun to go there and look for the fossils.
lot of people don't know about that, but there's fossils in the marble, in the granite,
yeah.
Yeah, and if you go in on the main floor, you can talk to the desk, and they'll give you a list of where they're at and
like, and then go around the Capitol and find them.
Great thing for kids, free.
Yeah.
to do.
And they're kinda, I mean, we enjoyed looking for them.
It was something different.
And she mentioned free.
Our secret Wisconsin you can experience everything in the book for sixty four dollars and eighty cents.
We like free stuff
four dollars and eighty cents Okay,
this this
on the cover
this little boy with the boot.
is in Steven's point and there's kind of a neat story about that.
It's been there since 1800s
and it's in front of a fire department, the main fire department, and people drive by all the time and never ever see it.
Because they put it away in the summer, or they put it away in the winter when the students are there.
Yeah, okay.
Because
steal it.
it.
It gets vandalized.
Yeah.
Amazon.
Little luxuries.
Thanks
But it's back and running just fine now.
This portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.
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All right.
OK, weather today, showers and storms this morning, sunshine this afternoon, highs near 90.
It's going to feel very hot and humid.
There's a heat advisory.
Oh, my.
got that shelf cloud rolling in that's the views this morning we got that text saying hey heads up showers and storms for the next three hours so people were up trying to pull in their tents you know get the awnings down and stuff like that and the older you know there's a yodeler here no there's a yodeler
at 7 a.m.
every morning to wake all the campers up and EAA volunteers.
It is hysterical.
That is hysterical.
But he was yodeling.
Yeah.
Everybody was crawling out of their tents trying to get ready for the rain, but you guys got hit pretty hard.
Yes.
Blood advisory.
Well.
It came straight to this.
What?
Yeah.
I didn't know
Yeah, we want to hear what he has to, what he's got.
His chops.
He's good.
OK, chops.
Well, you have to build up to yodel.
You know, it's something you can't just roll out of bed and yodel.
That's true.
OK.
Weather today.
OK, so once we get through the showers and storms, it's going to really heat up today and for the next few days, right?
Yes, so the rain is pretty much done for you and it's gonna be gone for the rest of the day So that's heat screening creep in 92 degrees for highs.
It's gonna feel like 103 or so nasty humidity a little bit of a south breeze Maybe about 15 miles per hour might help things.
Yeah, but stay in the AC the shade drink a lot of water
Um, we are looking at some storms though tomorrow, maybe tomorrow morning around 4am, another round possible around noon or so, and then it really cranks up from about three to six.
Some of those could be on the stronger side, maybe some high winds possible, but nothing too, too crazy.
Like up north later today, they're going to have the chances for tornadoes.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, um, Ryan Lander Eau Claire.
Oh
It's wealthy.
It's wealthy Tucker Carlson talking about kids not being able to buy houses.
Look, I'm just trying to find a shortcut here because we don't have that much time and all the news, you know, I mean,
Trump going after his opponents and everything.
We didn't have time for that.
But I tell you what, finding out about Wisconsin and all the secrets here and the great places to go, I am just chomping at the bit now to go on vacation.
I'm sorry.
I know.
I want to go.
Yes.
Right.
We need to do that.
And it's especially bad the young people can't afford homes.
Let me just put a very precise point on this.
Well, I've got a bunch of kids.
Can they afford houses with full-time jobs at like 27, 28?
And the answer is no way.
And the answer is that 35-year-olds with really good jobs can't afford a house unless they stretch and go deep into debt.
It's really hard to have a family without a house.
It is.
It's like super fun to live in an apartment if, you know, there's like a bar downstairs, you're in a cool neighborhood.
I'm in East Village.
It's so cool.
Try to have three kids.
You're not going to have three kids there.
You can't.
Nobody wants to raise their kids in that neighborhood.
Nobody wants to raise their kids in an apartment.
People do it because they have to.
Nobody wants to.
People want a little house, not some McMansion, just a little normal house.
That is the actual American dream.
I'm afraid of this kind of weather.
Are you?
Don't be scared.
It'll be okay.
Okay.
This portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center.
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Check out their excellent website, MadisonHearingAidCenter.com.
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We've got
A scared.
See, that means it's a word, because kids everywhere were saying it.
They were saying
And you're really not afraid of the weather, John.
You were just setting up our
Exactly.
Are
you afraid?
I
Oh, gosh, I've gotten that question so many times.
yes, when I left the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, I just thought it was time to pass the baton and bring in some new blood.
I don't think it's healthy for an organization to be led by the same person forever.
You know, that kind of churn and turnover is really healthy.
And so I
you know I made the decision to
to step aside and I had a whole bunch of people.
First of all, worried whether the organization would even survive and it has and it's thrived.
You helped to start it, right?
Yeah, I was involved at the very beginning and then ended up becoming executive director and served in that role for 15
But I could have easily done that work for another 15 years and loved it.
I enjoyed the work.
and was passionate about the cause.
But I really felt that it was time.
It just felt like the organization could become stale if it just kept going along the same direction.
So I decided to step aside and I had all kinds of people say, aren't you afraid you're gonna lose your purpose in life or you're gonna be bored or all these kinds of things.
And you know, now more than ever, today more than then,
It just seems like there are more Americans who are more afraid of more things Then at any time in my lifetime any time that I can recall and I think that has a whole lot to do with what's gone so haywire with our politics There's just so people are being fed fear all the time
And that fear is stoked and it becomes anger and it becomes rage and it becomes a really warped kind of politics.
And the reason I wrote this article this week for Substack was that a clip of Edward R. Murrow on the air talking about Joe McCarthy and the fear of that era.
And he spoke so powerfully on television, looking directly into the camera, speaking to Americans about the fearmongers who had seized our government.
And it just seems so appropriate to the current moment.
And so that's what got me thinking about this in the first place.
as I was writing,
I couldn't help but think of that movie, Bridgespies, and I understand you've got
How did we do in there?
Not too good.
Apparently you're not an American citizen.
That's true.
And according to your boss, you're not a Soviet citizen either.
Well, the boss isn't always right.
Thought is always the boss.
Do you never worry?
Would it help?
That's it, right there.
That, of course, was Tom Hanks playing the lawyer of Rudolph Abel, who was the accused Soviet spy in that movie, Bridge of Spies.
And Hanks character asks Rudolph Abel,
numerous times over the course of the movie.
Aren't you worried?
every time you would say, would it help?
And that's kind of what I was thinking, you know, we're so angst-ridden and so afraid of so many things, scared.
And I'm thinking, does it help?
Is it getting us anywhere good?
It could be therapeutic in some ways, but it doesn't matter because we're all deep into this hot water.
We're frogs in this water waiting for it to boil.
So yeah, the thing is with this fear that we all feel now, it's on both sides, by the way.
We fear what...
you know, Trump is gonna do and what the magas are going to do and what they've already done to the country.
They fear us.
And in our ideology, they fear socialism.
They fear this.
Or at least
they say it's socialism
And I think that is at the very bottom of why our politics has grown so dysfunctional.
It really boils down to, we're afraid of each other.
We're afraid of talking with each other.
We're afraid to speak up.
Think about all the family gatherings.
And people are afraid to talk about what's going on in the country.
They're afraid to talk about politics because they're afraid of where that might lead and the relationships that might be...
Yeah.
Damaged irreparably.
And so, you know, even at that basic level, there's all kinds of fear at a Thanksgiving dinner, which is really tragic.
It's
That's what happened in our Christmas get-together.
My brothers, you know, said, well, wait and see, wait and see.
And I thought maybe they both voted for Trump.
I know one did.
But the other one only said this just to placate everyone at the table.
So...
He knew his brother was getting very upset and this brother across the TV didn't care about But he he just said wait and see wait and see just calm everybody down except for me I was panicking But yeah, I think you know for us to be afraid of our own family in and the great relationships We have between family members and have something like this to crop up and divide the entire family.
Yeah, it's it's it's
Boy, this is really unhealthy.
Yep.
And I was just up in my old stomping grounds over the weekend.
On Saturday, I went to the heart of Trump country,
where I grew up.
And I was doing a book event at the public library in Owen.
And a whole bunch of my former high school classmates came.
cool.
And
to
position?
And you know, we had a wonderful time together and we talked for hours.
Even after the event, we talked for hours.
But you could tell people were also walking on eggshells about the condition of our country and about politics and all of that.
And I actually yesterday had a follow-up phone call with one of my former classmates who was really quiet.
at the event and the conversation afterwards.
And I didn't really get a chance to catch up with him properly.
So I called him, and we talked for two hours yesterday.
Oh,
wow.
And he said, yeah, I can feel free to speak freely with you, but I couldn't speak freely with them.
And he proceeded to share some of his thoughts about politics and about the way of the world right now.
Was
he didn't feel comfortable
share any of those thoughts in the presence of our other
Former classmates
is an awful lot of people are afraid to speak up and and you know and I I wrote a book that that isn't political right, but but it talks about
Sort of the matters of the heart that we have to struggle with in our country right now and it does speak to to the current moment in our country and and it and it brings ups It has some themes that I think some people in Trump country would tend to cringe at but the interesting thing is is that you know the classmates I talked to who had read the book Yeah Seemed enchanted by it
so it kind of got them beyond.
The
And they all know.
They all know.
They know that I ran for governor and they know that I ran the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign for a long time.
And so they kind of have an idea of my politics, but they kind of want to conceal or cloak theirs.
But the book kind of helped them get
past all that and we had some really good
The book is Miracles Along County Q, in case folks out there have not read it yet or are curious about it.
Thank you for making it.
It's an excellent book.
746, we're talking to Mike McCabe, a sub-stack blogger and author.
So, all right, so we have all this fear out there.
We all agree on that.
What's the antidote?
Well, that's where, you know, I go back to what Edward R. Murrow said to the American people in the
said?
said
we did not descend from from men full of fear.
people that.
that, you know, there have been dark times before throughout American history, and he was telling people, we're living in a very dark moment here, and he described just how vile Joe McCarthy was, and he said it right on the air.
He didn't pull any punches.
He described just how vile this man is, but we can't be afraid of him, and we can't live in fear.
One of the fascinating things, and I mentioned it in passing in my article this week,
When I got back from, we did this trip to Tanzania
I can't tell you how many people said, weren't you afraid they might not let you back in the country?
And it's like, we can't be afraid to travel, we can't be afraid to speak up, and we can't be afraid to live our lives, even though some ugly stuff is going on around us.
course,
course, which, you know, everybody's got their own perspective of who's getting harmed the most, you know, right?
And then, but we end up, we end up just sort of seeing each other as enemies.
don't recall a time when more Americans saw each other as enemies
right now.
fear.
That's great stuff.
753.
This portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.
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Their 4th of July sale continues for a few more days.
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All right, a few more minutes here with
Good morning, gentlemen.
Thank you for taking my call.
You know, the list of accomplishments
are amazing already by this president we now have a secure border you know how many legals came across no order last month
zero
now
right we listen to mayorkas we listen to president biden and our borders are yep vp harris who lied to us for three three and a half years
average
6,000 a day for four years.
Isn't that an amazing zero
The thing is, we welcome
the immigrant.
We're a nation of immigrants and what we needed was, we needed immigration reform and the Republicans did not want to have any kind of reform, not just that one last proposal that Trump said we need as a campaign thing, but we've been trying to reform immigration for years and years and the Republicans want to keep it as something
that they could use in their elections, and they also wanted to be a white nation.
You know that, right?
ahead.
What you guys call secure, this is the secure border.
So we want legal immigration guys.
So how's your
because
improved?
How
you want to deflect?
You guys want to deflect from it, but we're gonna find out the truth.
The truth is that we don't have a labor wanted comprehensive They want they want they want they were selling the material for the border wall Biden was they didn't want
security they wanted a comprehensive how much how much
how many billions of dollars do you want to keep putting into that border wall and to deportation yeah and deportation and prison in the troops you want troops in all the cities by by the way homeland security homeland security spending more money on these prisons now than we actually spend on our federal prisons in the country that's how that's how big this
is
Do you know how much we've spent on illegal so far a hundred and fifty five billion?
Dollars,
Four years of Trump.
It's gonna be amazing.
Yeah, we got three
It's wonderful,
CJ, thanks for the questions.
Mike McCabe, what do you think?
Well, that was fun.
What do you think?
You know, here we have a labor shortage in this country and we're getting rid of the labor, the labor that contributes to social security and Medicare, but to get no benefits for it.
I don't understand any of this and these people
All I can say is that I, to quote,
Edward R. Murrow, I did not descend from men and women full of fear, but I did descend from men and women who were immigrants.
Yeah, we're a nation of immigrants.
Yeah, correct.
Yeah.
And did you check out any of the Mehdi Hassan debate that he had with fascists?
He was surrounded by 20 fascist young kids, you know, Gen Z fascists, and he debated them.
Have you seen this at all?
I did not.
You know, it's a, it's a great.
Great
things.
Yeah, full of anxiety, full of, you know,
We kind of walk around with this sort of risk-averse
something.
Yeah, and so there have been so many times when I've decided to leave jobs for something else, people think, aren't you afraid that this is going to be a bad turn
the thing is, is that every time you turn over a new leaf, there are these wonderful new possibilities.
And I don't think we should ever be afraid of new possibilities.
That's why we shouldn't be afraid of immigrants, by the way.
We shouldn't be afraid of what America has the potential to become.
We shouldn't think that
have to hold on to some version of America that we knew in the past.
We should not be afraid to let America evolve and become something brand new.
you.
We got to leave it there.
Mike McCabe, thanks
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