The Kitchen’s Open Hacks! (Hour 2)

Good morning, Wisconsin. Morning, world. It's a new day. Thanks for kicking it off with us at WFHR. Take it, Marvin.

Got your host, James Biden, Mike. Join by Mel.

Hello.

So good morning and the best listeners in radio. Thanks for being here, everybody. We hope you're all having a great morning out there.

We're going to have some fun and a little bit. Get some entertainment news.

Get a good one a little bit later. We're going to get into as well

and some good news stories that the day are scheduled and all that coming up.

But it's a Monday and the 10 o'clock hour. You know what that means.

Good morning and welcome to the kitchen's open on WFHR.

So last week I got to spend the week at camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with about

70 high schoolers and about 20 other adults. It was a great experience, however, during the week,

two of the part-time cooks walked off the job after lunch and some of us had to jump in to help.

Ooh, that's exciting. Did they know? Did they were like, well, we got to give Beth content.

We got to help her out with this. We got to.

No, but I mean, it wasn't very great. Molly don't condone what they did.

It did give me the opportunity to finally cook a big meal for a large group.

I've always wanted to be one of the cooks. Oh, very cool.

So I got the chance to do that and the meal that we did was tacos.

So one of the jobs I was tasked with was dicing onions for the toppings bar.

Oh my gosh, your eyes must be watering Beth. Are you okay?

Not one bit. Actually, I was able to use a kitchen hack.

I learned to save me the tears.

I placed a wet paper towel by the cutting board and as I diced,

it drew in the oils from the onion.

So I didn't have any tears, at least not from the onion.

But it got me thinking about different tips and tricks that are out there to help in the kitchen.

Because there's no crying in the culinary arts.

Yeah, we're just going to let that one sit down.

Oh, come on. Come on.

Unless Gordon Ramsay is your boss.

Oh, there's lots of crying, right?

Or at least not in front of the head chef.

Yeah, right.

There you go.

Thank you, Chef.

Yeah, so there are other kitchen hacks that I found on the Taste of Home website

that may make cooking and baking a bit easier and possibly even more fun.

So here are a few of them.

Feel free to add as you want.

Pit the cherries with a chopstick.

Yeah.

So you want to pit the cherries without a pitter.

You put the cherry on top of an empty beer bottle or something.

It can be a glass bottle.

It can be a coke bottle or whatever.

Then use a chopstick or a reusable straw to push the pit right into the bottle.

Wow.

That's awesome.

Super handy and effective.

And then all you have to do is dump out the bottle with all the pits in it.

I think they collect the pits there.

Nice.

Exactly.

And Andy, that's awesome.

Keeps things clean and nice.

So I thought that was a great hack.

Very cool.

You can also keep brown sugar soft with marshmallows.

I did not know this one.

So if you're a baker, you know that if you don't use your brown sugar in a certain amount of time,

it gets rock hard and it's hard to separate.

So if you place a few marshmallows into the container of brown sugar and tightly seal it,

it softens the sugar in a day.

A day?

Wow.

But you can keep the marshmallows in the container for up to a few weeks.

Nice.

So you never have to have hard brown sugar again.

It's just one of the genius ways to keep brown sugar soft.

Cool.

So you know, I've always known the trick about putting bread with a cookie container.

So that your cookies don't get hard, because the cookies will then take the moisture out of the bread.

Right?

I never thought about doing that with my sugar.

And I'm wondering if other than marshmallows, if bread could do the same thing.

So it's one of the ways.

That's going to say it's worth the try.

Yeah.

So much to do that and let us know.

That'd be cool.

Absolutely.

You can simmer tomato sauce with a carrot.

Yeah, this is wild to me.

I'm all ears.

All right.

So usually if you look at most marinara sauces and pasta sauces in the grocery store,

they always add sugar, because sugar is what helps to cut the acidity in it.

If you want to go more natural and not add the extra sugar,

carrots take away the acidity and tomato sauce by adding a subtle sweetness.

Oh, wow.

That doesn't make sense.

You're not using the processed sugars.

It makes it a little bit healthier.

If you find your sauce has gotten to acidic,

peel a whole carrot, simmer it with the sauce and remove it before serving.

So you don't even have to keep the carrot in the sauce itself.

That's really what I want to try that.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It sounds amazing.

Wow.

It's amazing the kind of things that you can find out there.

You can cue butter to soften it faster.

I know this has happened to me where I've forgotten to take the butter out of the fridge

or last minute.

I'm like, oh, I want to make banana bread.

But you have to have room temperature, softened butter,

to be able to make the recipe properly.

So if you forget to do that, take it out of the refrigerator like I do.

There are a couple of things you can do.

You can soften butter quickly by cutting the butter into cubes and letting it

sit on the counter for 20 minutes.

Okay.

Oh, right.

And then during that 20 minutes, you can be preheating your oven.

You can be prepping your other ingredients, that kind of thing.

So it doesn't really add too much more.

Or one of the things that I found is you can use a cheese grater and you grate the butter

into the bowl and let it sit for a little while.

Okay, that makes sense, yeah.

So the whole reasoning behind it is the smaller the pieces, the faster it will soften

because it doesn't have to do the whole thing at once.

That's right.

There's more service mass.

So it adds a little bit more opportunity for things to melt.

Science.

Exactly.

Science is different.

You can cut steak fries with an apple slicer.

This one's cool.

I like this one.

Yeah.

I hadn't thought of this.

I have an apple slicer.

We use it at home all the time.

Great for pouring apples.

But if you're creating scratch made potato wedges from your favorite restaurant,

you can use it as well.

All you need to do is cut one end of the potato for stability and then push the apple slicer through.

Oh my gosh.

It makes it.

I'm going to try this.

It makes this perfect sense.

It does.

Yeah.

I'm still going to try this at some point.

And then all you have to do is add your favorite seasonings and you're ready to bake.

And it doesn't just work with white potatoes.

You can use sweet potatoes as well.

Sweet potato fries.

Nice.

Yeah.

And if you have an air fryer, healthy alternative.

Healthy alternative.

Absolutely.

You can use a damp dish towel to keep bowls steady.

Oh my gosh.

Oh sure.

Yeah.

You need that extra hand.

I never thought about it.

I always tried to find the bowls that had the plastic or the rubber on the bottom so that

keeps it in place.

Well, professional chefs will tell you that a damp dish towel under your mixing bowl will

keep it from slipping and sliding on your counter as you mix.

This is one of those most obvious things.

Why didn't I think of this?

Oh my gosh.

I love hacks of all kinds.

I'm really enjoying this, Beth.

You did some great work here.

Everyone's in a while.

They anger you a little like.

It's a hand slap to the forehead kind of thing.

Yep.

And it works with cutting boards too.

So if you don't want those going away while you're trying to cut things,

which is much safer for your fingers.

Yes.

Absolutely.

You can lower egg temperature to room temperature in warm water.

So when you're baking, it's important again to use the room temperature ingredients

like the butters.

Unless the recipe specifically calls.

Like if you're making a pie crust, you want that butter as cold as possible.

But if you're baking with the butter, you want it warm.

It's the same with eggs.

You want to have those at room temperature.

But if you forget to take your eggs out of the fridge in time,

you don't have to worry.

Just place them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes.

Makes sense, totally.

And that will raise that internal temperature of the egg.

Now don't put it in boiling water because then you're going to have

hard boiled eggs and you can't really bake with it.

So make sure it's warm.

Why isn't this working?

I've gone through a whole dozen.

You can store peanut butter jars upside down.

You know, if you get like especially the natural peanut butter

and you know how you have to keep mixing that oil in.

Yep.

And that oil is usually at the top and it becomes a paint

to try to get the bottom stuff up.

Just store it upside down with a lid down.

And then when you're ready to use it,

then you turn it right side up.

And that makes it easier to stir the oil back in.

As a professional peanut butter eater.

I learned this one a while back.

Really?

That's good.

I didn't know all the science behind it or anything.

But I did remember doing this.

We did because of Andrew's peanut allergy.

We use sunflower for him.

And a lot of it comes that way where you have to do it.

So you have to tip that one upside down.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

You can prep your cheese grater with cooking spray.

Oh, nice.

Again, yeah, again, totally makes sense.

Absolutely.

And plus why didn't I think of this before?

So grated cheese really makes the difference.

But it can be a pain to prep.

And you can buy it store-bought,

but you know that they put those additives in it

to make sure that it stays separated.

So for easy cleanup, you can use a quick spritz of your cooking spray

on your cheese grater to keep the cheese from sticking.

Wow.

See, I got to try this one now.

I've been because we've been doing that lately.

If we shred cheese, we just get a block of cheese and shred it.

And yeah, because it can make a mess.

And you leave some of the cheese there.

So you're not really getting the quality of the cheese.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here's totally trying this one.

And then you can use the same hack with measuring spoons.

So if you're measuring something sticky, like honey or molasses.

Of course.

Quick spray of the cooking spray.

It won't stick.

You'll get all of that into your recipe,

rather than some of it sticking there.

That's a good one.

Again.

This makes me want to cook.

Yeah, they're really done.

There can be fun in the kitchen.

There absolutely can be fun in the kitchen.

And if you need extra storage space,

because we all know what it's like to try to store pots and pans

and containers and all of that.

A bigger kitchen.

If you have room in your kitchen, you just moved in.

Exactly.

You have room in your kitchen.

Well, and there's more space than you think about it.

If you open up your cabinet drawer and place hooks on there,

you can either screw them in or you can get like the 3M

that you stick on there with the man center hooks.

And then you can put your spoons or your pot holders,

your measuring spoons, extra gadgets,

right there on the door.

Very cool.

So that adds a little bit more space.

It's true.

It gives me a chance to put up more hooks.

There you go.

You can never have too many hooks.

Like hanging hooks.

I love that like James looking for ways to buy.

I need more hooks up.

I have like hanging things on walls.

There you go.

And these are kind of hidden.

So it's like you can surprise yourself every time you open the cabinet.

Oh, that's where I put it.

Right.

So you can microwave lemons before juicing.

Did you know that?

You haven't juiced many lemons in my life,

but that totally makes sense.

So often it up a little bit.

Or if you're making lemonade, you can get more juice out of it.

So the next time you need that fresh lemon juice,

maybe for one of our one of the lemon recipes,

the taste of home has great recipes.

I highly recommend heading to that website.

But you can try a restaurant tip.

They do this in a restaurant.

So you microwave the lemon for about 7 to 10 seconds.

Then roll it back and forth under your palm on the counter.

That also helps to break down some of the fibers to release the juice.

Gotcha.

Wow.

When you squeeze, you'll get more juice from the lemon

with way easy effort.

You can do it with limes too.

And here's the other thing.

We're going to talk about lemons in just a little bit.

You want to make it even easier?

Cut instead of cutting the lemon in half.

Like most of us see and then you have to deal with the seeds and all of that.

Take a skewer, a nitty-needle, a chopstick or any tool of your choice

and poke a hole through the non-stem end of the lemon.

Oh, yeah.

The totally makes sense.

And then you can just squeeze out that stream of lemon juice.

Oh my gosh.

Wow.

How cool is that?

That's great.

No more of that extra on the counter

or trying to pick out the lemon seeds.

You got it.

I'll take care of that.

Oh, I like that.

That's a good one.

And this last one that I have from the website,

we have a plethora, and I love using that word too,

of pizza cutters in our house.

Oh my gosh.

We have so many.

Right.

And there are a great tool for pizza,

but they can be used for more than that.

You can use them against spray.

And with some cooking spray,

you can use it to cut your pie crusts.

If you need to do that,

if you want to make a lattice or something like that,

you can also use it for cutting herbs in all your directions.

All you have to do is bunch up those herbs

and wheel back and forth

until you breach your desire consistency.

Again, man.

It's been sitting right there in the drawer

the whole time for you.

Like, and I do more than pizza.

I hate when an item takes up a ton of room,

but you barely use it.

Yes, right.

And pizza cutters, you just don't use once a week,

maybe if that.

And so I like the idea of finding other uses for that.

Exactly.

This is the Church of Alton Brown

that you need.

Anything you buy,

needs to have multiple uses in the kitchen.

Oh, that's so me.

You should never buy anything just for one thing.

There's always something you can use for more than that.

Yeah.

So these are just a few.

The Taste of Home article had 57.

Oh, she's.

Kitchen hacks in there.

The edited version.

Yeah, I just picked and choose

chose some of the ones that I shot were very fascinating.

Go check it out.

You can just type into your

whatever search engine you use.

Kitchen hacks.

There are YouTube videos.

I don't know how true they are.

So I would say test it once.

And if it works really well,

we'll keep going with it.

If you find.

Fund to experiment in the kitchen, right?

Yeah.

A video that I saw that they had a contest

on Taste of Home,

they were able to line a loaf pan,

like when you make meat loaf or have banana

bread or something like that.

And it can be hard getting the aluminum foil, right?

Instead of trying to do it inside right away,

wrap it around the outside.

I think I saw.

Then you flip it over and put it inside

and it's already the shape you need it to be.

Oh my god.

That was the winner of their contest.

That's a great idea.

Oh my gosh.

Fantastic.

And we love cooking hacks.

Oh my gosh.

I mean, that's a great list.

In a great article.

Thanks for letting me know about that.

And if you have any, please let us know.

You can email us.

You can text us using the Civic Media app.

Let us know what your favorite ones are.

You can email me.

Beth.

Habhager at civicmedia.us.

Love to hear it.

If you have suggestions about what you want to hear

on the show, I want to know what those are.

So let us know.

You can also find us at the Clover Days.

We're going to be having a booth there.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's July 26th.

July, yep, Saturday, the 26th.

Yep, you got it.

So come find us there and let me know.

So it's been fun sharing tips about the kitchen

and cooking this morning.

But I love the opportunities.

Share more about a business as a sponsor of this segment.

So not only will you be mentioned during the show,

your business will also be highlighted

in our weekly lead newsletter.

And I'll have the link to the article

that I found all these hacks on next week's newsletter.

And there is also an option to be interviewed

or have a broadcast live from your business.

Always a lot of fun.

For more information about these opportunities,

give us a call, 715-424-1300.

And speak with Pam.

She'll put you in touch with our sales team

to work out all the details.

I have to be honest.

I'm a little upset that Seth got to say the line about it.

There's no crying in culinary arts.

I'm powdering.

I've been powdering all my gut fire.

I'm sorry.

I just got to get it off my chest.

You did a great job with it.

He delivered it very good.

That number again is 715-424-1300.

And with that, we'll close the kitchen.

All right.

That was a fun one.

That was a great one.

That was great, Beth.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you being able to get back air with us.

Yeah.

All that we look forward to hanging out with you again next week.

All right.

Sounds good.

We'll have another edition of the kitchen.

So open next Thursday for you.

Everybody stick around.

We got more coming up, more in-store right here

at the morning show.

Welcome back, everybody.

Morning show at WFHR.

Children at your feet.

Wonder how you manage to make ends meet.

Melissa, Seth and James here with you.

Thanks so much for joining us.

And a big thank you to Beth for joining us

with the kitchen's open.

That was fun.

That was a fun episode.

Yeah, it's worked.

Nice work.

We dive right into Dolly Parton news.

And this is a more of a solemn one, I would say.

Dolly Parton is still morning.

The passing of her late husband, Carl Dean, back in March.

And being with someone for 60 years is so incredible.

Cannot imagine how strange it must be after.

Of course, it hasn't stopped any of Dolly's

philanthropic work or business ventures.

She's still been working at that.

And I think not surprising, especially because just like

being with her husband, she's also been working for so long.

And routine can often be a healer, I think,

for many of us work, can be a healer for many of us.

But she said she's having a hard time writing new songs.

She said I have so much going on that I can't afford

the luxury of getting that emotional right now.

She said there's several songs she wants to start,

but she can't do it right now.

And of course, I think we all echo, take your time.

Do what you can with this.

I think that it's noteworthy that an artist of her age

and of her caliber and of legacy is still even

thinking about writing new work.

But anybody who has ever, and I don't mean just professionally,

I mean, if you've ever just enjoyed writing in general

or creating in general, you know how this works.

I'm going to sit down now and come up with a great idea.

Like, okay, good luck with that.

Talk to me at two in the morning when you're trying to fall asleep.

It finally hits you.

Or you're in the shower and you're driving out of car.

Yes, we don't get to pick and choose

necessarily when great ideas or thoughts come in.

So for her, I imagine that she's having the thoughts.

It's not she's not able to follow through on them

because of where that will lead emotionally.

Right. And this is, I want people to really think about this for a minute.

She's treating it like she does a lot of things.

You know, she's touching on it.

But think about someone.

This is songwriting for her is like breathing.

She gets an idea or she feels something.

She writes a song about it.

That's just something she does, right?

A lot of songwriters will tell you that's how it works.

For her not to be able to do that, sounds like something

that's really hard because like she said,

I've got this things I want to get out.

There's things I want to write about,

especially about how she's feeling right now.

But this emotion is so strong that she can't do it.

I actually feel really bad for her because of that.

Man, yeah, I can't imagine.

I cannot imagine.

Yeah, you know, there's another part of this too.

And I am hesitant to say this and even harder.

It's even harder to find the words.

But I feel for anybody that has to go

through these things in public and it was so much.

I mean, you know, say she, a part of the reason she's working

and she's still doing these things,

whether it's the rock albums or it is some of the,

you know, work that she's doing for good causes out there

and everything, she's staying busy and trying to keep working,

trying to keep the heart busy, trying to keep the mind busy.

And then you're sitting down in an interview

and this first person, the first thing they ask you is

how are you doing?

How, you know, with the pet?

No, so it's just, it's constant.

It's always there.

And they don't really get a break from it.

Right.

Nobody better than Dolly Parton knows that this is an agreement

with the public.

You guys make me into Dolly Parton,

a household name, world name and all that.

And I share part of my life with you.

I share some of my interests and my likes

and my fleet, you know, all these things.

Right.

Nobody has done a better and entertainment history

than Dolly Parton.

And I still empathize with her.

I still feel for it.

Right.

I'm not expecting anybody to feel that way,

or I don't even expect her to even look for it.

Commendiously successful, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it just, it does, it's rough.

And I wish her the best.

You can imagine it that, you know,

part of her life that was more private, too.

You're her married life.

That's something she didn't talk about a lot.

You know, that was kind of her private side.

And now that's gone.

So she's having to deal with that, too.

So, yeah, yeah.

And one, now she doesn't do another artistic thing,

the rest of her life, obviously her legacy is set

in multiple mediums.

Right.

But I think just was sharing this story right here

and this last one, and one of the last acts she's got

or would have you, I don't know.

I think she's got a long time left.

But when, here she is even still like giving and teaching.

Like, hey, you artist out there,

you're ever in this situation.

Here's a blueprint of how, you know,

that at least everybody's got to handle these things differently.

But I mean, you know, it's pretty noteworthy.

Yeah.

I wanted to mention a couple of other things as well.

One of them was the weekend box office numbers.

Oh.

Superman is not only lifting up tall, you know,

jumping over tall buildings, lifting heavy things.

He is also bringing in the bucks.

Hmm.

Not surprised.

Superman, the newly rebooted comic book adventure

starring David Cronin Sweat is the man of steel,

flew to 122 million and its first weekend of release.

Those are strong ticket numbers, enough to rank it as the third

largest debut opening of the year.

Not bad at all.

A Minecraft movie and Lilo at Stitch had,

are the only movies that had bigger weekends.

Yeah.

No worthy two things.

One, it is always important to see how a movie does in its second week

and its third week, especially in this scenario when,

given the time of year and Hollywood blockbuster time of year.

When you're not only competing with

Jurassic Park that just came out last week

and a couple of other movies that are big right now.

But also what's coming up next week,

which is the Fantastic Four reboot from Marvel.

Yeah.

I love that they purposely release these movies

a week apart from each other,

that they did not want to compete on opening weekends

with each other,

but still wanted to compete a little bit.

That you're going to see a lot of that going forward.

And I think that movie fans are suited better for it.

Right.

I smell a conspiracy,

no, I'm just kidding.

I got to say, I saw it.

And I enjoyed it.

I like it now.

I didn't think it was,

I didn't think it was the greatest superhero movie I ever saw

or anything like that.

It didn't dishonestly break the, you know,

change the mold of superhero movies

or anything like that.

But I think that I have a problem with Superman

like a lot of people do.

How do you, what is the thing that brings us to characters?

They're flaws.

Not their vulnerability.

Yeah, yeah.

He has none.

Kryptonite.

Well, it's true.

There's Kryptonite, you're fair.

And outside of that, there is no flaws to this man.

And I think his relatability has always been hard.

James Gunn went into this talking about who Superman

being an alien and the importance of that

and trying to somewhat metaphor immigration

and some of those things.

There's some other stuff in it that's a little like that,

but not really.

It's not on the nose, that's for sure.

On the background, yeah.

And the thing that stood out to me about,

first off, the chemistry.

The chemistry was fantastic in the movie.

Nice.

The actors in it were really good.

Kryptonite's wet is just a joy as Superman.

He is really cool.

Really, as a character that we have seen so many times,

I think he brings such a fun light to it in a genuine one.

And there's one thing, and I'm not going to spoil anything

for anybody or anything, but there's one thing about the movie

that I don't see any of the critics talking about.

There's a part in it where Lois and Clark

are having this makeshift interview that's not real.

It's just between them.

And they're talking about punk and punk rock music

and punk in general.

And Lois is sort of more along the lines of, no, punk is this.

And it's raw and it's all these things.

And it's going against society norms.

And Clark is kind of like, well, in this day and age,

where everything is so negative and everything is so dark

and everything is all this and everything

isn't being kind, the new punk, and it is a spin

that is done so masterfully.

And I would love to see that catch on as a trend.

Interesting.

Because I have been saying for a long time

like you may have heard other people

that romantics are the new rebels.

And I'm not just talking about romance and love

and between similar to getting others or anything like that.

I mean, having a kind heart,

treating somebody well, when you get spit in a face,

looking them in the eye and just wiping it away

and moving on, being able to take things,

that all the strongest human beings, the manly men

that I'm known in my life or whatever you want to say,

they were these people.

They could do that.

They didn't just lose it at the drop of a hat.

They didn't just flip out over anything.

And I kind of dug that about the movie.

It wasn't trying too hard.

It wasn't trying to break.

OK, this movie's got to spin off 18 other franchises.

It's just a standalone movie.

It's just an introduction.

And he does a nice job of not trying to overwhelm you

with too much.

Well, also, there's a lot of special effects,

a lot of color to it.

It's a fun movie.

It's good.

I thought it was fun.

I thought it was an interesting take on it.

So maybe this is not a fair question for you, James,

because I think I'm guessing Melissa hasn't seen it.

And of course, I have not seen it either.

And this may not be fair.

I'm just because it's the iconic original Superman movie,

the one we grew up on.

What's your comparison?

Or can you not compare the two?

Oh, I can.

I can, because I think it goes back to that.

I think it goes back to, we don't remember as well.

Those movies had their darkness to them.

Oh, sure.

They sure did.

Well, we didn't have a bald Lex Luthor.

We had Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, which we all just

escaped past all the time.

That's one of the greatest actors in any of us seen

in that role.

And back then, they couldn't go too dark, of course,

but there were moments of it.

And I, there was also hope in those movies.

And how do you write hope?

How do you act hope?

How do you, what special effect can give you hope?

It has to be genuine.

It has to be real.

The cast has to feel the writers, all that.

They had that in the originals.

Yes, they did.

They didn't, even when they went dark.

And they did go dark, especially in Superman too.

Yeah.

I thought they did that really well with this.

All the cast did a really good job,

but a, and Mr. Terrific like stole the show,

the dog stole the show, everybody.

But for me, I haven't gotten to see Rachel Brottishan

enough.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Marvelous Miss Maisel.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Wisconsin's own.

Oh, I think she was from Wisconsin.

Oh, yeah, that's cool.

She is amazing.

God, I love watching her work.

What role does she play?

She is the lowest.

Oh, she's low.

Oh, okay.

The chemistry between those two flawless.

Nice.

No notes.

Incredible.

Just wonderful.

That's really cool.

All that said, I'm more curious to see what the audiences

think, what people out there are going to think

and how it does.

I want to see what it does.

The legs.

See what legs it has.

Yeah.

How it does in comparison, or with Fantastic Four,

and out there, I will say, looking at the Rotten Tomato

Numbers, almost exact, just a couple of points below

Thunderbolts.

So it's right there with you.

They're okay.

All right.

And a congratulations to James Gunn.

Yes.

This is a big...

Good for him.

It's pretty cool.

Seth, when we come back, I want to talk a little bit

about what's that story with you.

Oh, very cool.

And here's how that went.

Sounds good.

Do you want to remind everybody that WRC Theatre has

another Hope Hope production coming up?

They're main Hope Hope production.

I'm sorry.

Another Kid production, but the main Hope Hope production

for all this grim.

Spectacularathon coming up.

We'll touch on that too.

All coming up on The Morning Show at WFHR.

Welcome back, everybody.

Morning Show at WFHR, locally grown radio.

Got Melissa, Seth, and James hanging out with you.

We're going to get into some fun in the moment and get

into our schedule and good stories of the day a little bit

later.

But over the weekend, the 2025 Teen Musical for WRC

Ravis Community Theatre wrapped up West Side Story.

Seth was a part of that.

How did that go, Seth?

It was so great.

I know we had to talk a little bit about on Friday and

everything about Thursday's performance.

But I have to give these kids just a massive shout out.

They don't get a ton of time and they have to learn so much.

And for those people who know musicals, we'll know that

West Side Story is a difficult score.

Meaning that it's written in such a way where the notes,

it's not exactly in a way that you're used to singing

in songs like this.

They have interesting notes, a lot of minor key stuff that

you're not used to singing.

And these kids knocked it out of the park.

I mean, they put so much effort and work into it.

I mean, I cannot tell you their rehearsal schedule was intense

and they stuck through the whole thing.

And the performances they put on were just fantastic.

And I cannot give them enough credit.

Yeah.

The crew, congratulations to all of them involved.

I hope they had fun and enjoy the rest of their summer.

The hope of production of the Brothers Grimm,

Specitataculathon, is coming up August 2nd.

That's about fair.

You can get your tickets at www.wrctheter.org.

We'll talk more about that as we get closer to it.

Did also want to mention our good friends over at Central Wisconsin

Area Community Theatre.

See, whack!

Are up to some fun.

They got a great one coming up that Schmeckley shakes.

And it's going to be not only Romeo and Juliet,

which will premiere July 31st.

That's so funny.

It's a West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet.

It's a real story.

Yeah, really.

It's perfect.

And it also on August 1st feature their 52nd season opening

banquet.

So I want to congratulate them on their very opening their 52nd season.

Very cool.

This all takes place at the Schmeckley Apple Theatre in Stevens Point.

Check that out and find out more at www.cwack.org.

Nothing like Shakespeare in the outdoors.

Yeah.

Maybe where it should be played.

It's amazing.

It's somebody that got to do that.

I would not have realized that until doing it.

And you're 100% right.

That's cool.

Preach it to the suns until the end of time.

I think there's something about it that's so throwback.

And it's just so the way that they always did it back in the day.

Right.

It's really interesting.

Very cool.

I think it's really cool.

Yeah.

Let's talk about being cool.

What is cool.

And how you say cool.

And the fact that cool is still being cool.

Even though it didn't, my father said it the same way.

I'm saying it right now back when he was in high school.

Hey man.

And what's that story?

He has a song called Cool in it.

Seriously.

The whole thing is that.

Ties it together.

It does.

So whether you're cool or not is totally subjective.

And oftentimes the people who don't think they're cool are actually a lot cooler than they realize

and people that they think are cool.

Right.

So what?

Well, a new study looked at what cool means to the average person.

They pulled 6,000 people in a dozen countries around the world.

And it turned out that there were where you live doesn't actually matter much.

Okay.

All right.

Coolness and what makes you cool is fairly universal.

They found it comes down to 6 core traits.

If you score high in all of them, you're definitely cool.

At least to the average person.

Gotcha.

Now keep that in mind.

And of course this is all subjective.

Very subjective.

The 6 traits that make us think someone's cool are,

quote, being extroverted, adventurous, open, autonomous,

hedonistic, and powerful.

Oh, okay.

Now you probably know what the first three mean.

But the other three, auto-tarminous.

You're independent and don't try to fill in or fit in.

You can do your own thing.

Do your own thing and you're proud of it.

Yeah.

A hedonistic means that you can enjoy yourself without feeling guilty about it.

So, you know, time alone or just being you or something along those.

A hedonistic is not a great word for that.

There's actually a very actual meaning of the word hedonism.

Yeah.

And that's not really what it means.

That's not really it.

No.

That's why I was really trying to get to these definitions as fast.

Yeah.

Yeah, good idea.

And powerful means you're confident and don't let people push you around.

Sure.

But they also are quick to point out.

You don't wield that power.

Like in a destructive way, right?

Yes.

Like authoritarian or dictatorship kind of power is not really seen as cool.

Right.

If none of these six traits fit you well, it doesn't mean that you're not a cool person.

It just might not fit the cookie cutter definition of what cool means in 2025.

Right.

They noted that coolness is a social construct.

And everyone pulled had to be familiar with the word cool for their vote to count.

Meaning that movies, TV and social media have taught us what cool means.

So they were kind of just repeating what the definition is.

Not necessarily what they think cool is.

Right.

And that's where the kinks come in.

That's where it gets a little sketchy here because it's like, well, what came first, right?

Right.

Is it the definition or is it the traits, right?

That's the question.

A good example I think of this as long as we're talking about pop culture is what happens a lot of time in successful TV shows.

They will introduce what they think, oh, the ratings are slipping.

We have to introduce a cool character.

And so the producers, the writers, the creatives will get together and they will essentially look at pop culture and say, well, what is cool?

Hey, sunglasses are cool.

Hey, skateboarding is cool.

Hey, hip-hop music is cool.

So we'll just throw a character together.

It has all those.

And then, of course, you get a character everybody hates.

Right.

Because just, you know you want to, James, you just watch the episode about poochie.

Yep.

And the Simpson's episode about poochie.

And that's all you need to do.

That's all right there.

That's right.

It's such a great episode because it's so dead on.

It's so accurate.

And it's something that they've tried to do for a long time.

Happy days did this.

And many TV shows have done it.

And it fails.

And the show really doesn't work.

It usually doesn't work.

By the way, they only have half of the survey here.

Because I saw this.

But there was another part to it.

And the people and the traits for people who are considered good.

And it was a very different list.

I can't think of what they were off the top of my head.

But it's like warmth and congeniality with other people.

That kind of stuff.

It's the stuff you would think of.

What makes you good?

Compassionate to this kind of stuff.

Which I don't know why they didn't include that in this list.

But it was part of the survey, which I thought, oh, that's interesting.

So being cool is different than being good.

Yeah, that's right.

That's the way they framed it.

So I mean, again, it's up to you, I suppose.

Past studies have found that being friendly and competent

are also seen as cool traits.

Yeah.

And authors of the study were also quick to note that being cool,

does it mean you're a good person?

Also, they touch on a little bit there.

A little bit there.

Yeah.

Many of the coolest people in history, maybe even most of them were total jerks.

Yeah.

At least the ones we know about, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, going by cool to this definition, to this, you know.

But I, again, I used, and I set this right.

Whether I realized it or not, I was right away going to a Simpson's episode

and kind of referencing some of that.

But I think of marketing in general almost like this.

How often, for every successful ad, how many fail?

And every one of them are trying to do the same thing.

They're all trying to be cool.

They're all trying to be, give you the newest this, the newest that,

and be consistent with it and create something marketing-wise.

It is going to get people's eyeballs to commercials, to ads.

Maybe the most difficult thing in all of media is trying to get somebody

to care about 30 seconds right now or something like that.

And they try forever.

And for everyone that is successful, they're 100 that aren't.

Yeah, right.

And all of them are trying to do the same thing.

Be cool.

Be, you know.

Be hip.

Be now, right?

Yeah.

I will say all of this being said, and this is an interesting list,

and I've enjoyed the conversation and everything.

I really did this just to say the word coolness more, which is not a bad idea.

Yeah, I really feel like we need that more.

But they like today.

Yeah, right.

It's about cold things.

I love the idea that cool is still so relevant in our language.

For the fact that using it that way, like I said, back in the,

when West Side Story was created, back in the 50s, cool was already a thing.

People already knew what it meant.

You know, it's your cool, yeah.

Which is, I just, I love that idea.

It went on longer than Groovy.

Yeah, yeah.

And any number of other words, cool has stuck, has really stuck.

And like so many things, it came from alternative culture.

Yeah.

Back in the 40s.

But the meaning hasn't changed, which a lot of things have.

You true.

Yeah, very, very true.

I don't know even if, like, trying to put together a list that hasn't.

Right.

Especially for vernacular.

You know, words that you would think would change a lot over the year.

School really stayed the same.

Read some poetry from the late 1800s and the early 1900s.

And you will realize that a lot of those words just don't mean the same thing now that they did then.

It's hilarious.

Yeah.

It's, I think it's funny.

Look at the list of encouraging people to read eight, eight, 19th century poetry.

Good stuff.

Awesome.

Good.

Good stuff.

I love it.

What other morning show is going to do that?

I ask you, buddy.

No, buddy.

Morton Kondraki.

Nah.

We'll be back with more show coming up.

Morning Show, I'd WFHR.

Welcome back, everybody.

To the morning show.

Yeah.

I'm coming home, baby.

Now you need a group.

I'm coming home now right away.

That was great.

That was great.

Thank you, Brittany.

That was awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was thinking of it in a different context.

Stay cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's fantastic.

We got to get to our schedule and some good stories of the day.

Before we do, I have a good story of the day that, well, I'll include that after our schedule.

Let's get to that first and some news and notes of locally here.

And we got a great rapids report lined up for you today, everybody.

Some of it I just found out about.

We have Sally Kissner and Aaron Brick and Ocker joining us from the Arts Council.

I always love talking with them, getting to know them.

I'm getting to hang out with them a little bit.

And we're going to be getting to know the guys, the gang from Yacht Rock Gold Experience.

That's coming up in August.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We got a show right on August 10th that we're looking forward to at the pack.

We'll be talking about that with Sally and Eric.

And Joe Barrack, a band member with the band.

Okay.

Nice.

Well, I'll get to know him a little bit.

Yeah.

That's going to be great.

And in part two, we're going to be talking with our good friend, Kathy McGrath Monarch expert.

Oh, Kathy.

Yes.

She's great.

Love talking with Kathy.

We've done that for many, many years.

And it'll be great to have her back in studio.

We should get her like a bin or something.

So she's doing that.

She's keeping her stuff here.

Right.

She's great.

I love talking with her.

I also want to remind everybody about playmakers going on today from 4 to 5 on 105, WI, all right?

We're going to have a fun show today.

Talk a little MLB draft.

I'll be talking about some other stuff.

And of course, our rafters with them being in their all-star break right now.

Yeah.

We've got a couple of fun players.

Well, people joining us today.

Oh, sort of players.

So joining us today, and I want to send a big shout out to Jake Adams, who sent over this morning,

who would be joining us.

First off, we'll have their intern Ryan.

Ryan's been with us.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

Talk to him a little bit.

He's great talker.

Right.

And then, the next intern turns starting pitcher.

Kenny Schultz is going to be with us as well.

What?

Oh, yeah, this great story.