Good morning, Wisconsin. Good morning, world. It's a new day, and thanks for kicking
it off with us right here at WFHR. Hope you're having a good start to your day out there.
Get your host James Line, the mic, join by our head of news, our co-host, Melissa K.
We'll figure that out. Right now, we want to introduce our great friend,
Brittany Merlot, talking a little mother nature bread. How you doing?
I'm good. How are you guys doing? We're doing good, all right.
Oh, we're doing all right over here. We're trying to figure out some things
technically in the background here. But while we got you, let's go ahead and
talk a little mother nature, Brittany. How are things looking for it today?
Yeah, not too bad. You know, we're finally going to start to slow
we dry things out, right? No big major rain headed our way. Nothing like that.
High pressure actually moving through by tomorrow. We're just in the transition
of it. So we've got those cloudy skies that's going to be more clouds this
morning and more sunshine later on this afternoon and into the evening. So it
will be brighter as we have through the day. High is flirting with about 80
degrees or so. A calm north-last wind and a few body showers. Could sprinkle in
there later on tonight. I think it's going to hold off till later tonight.
So as we go through the overnight, a little bit of a patchy fog. So tomorrow
morning, patchy fog out there and then back to sunshine, highs at about 80
and that is going to be the case for Thursday and even into our Friday too.
Really calm, comfortable weather. It's going to feel like fall by this weekend.
Wonderful. That's really good to hear. Very, very good to hear, Brittany.
We appreciate that. And sounds good to me. Melissa, how's that sound to you?
It sounds great. Sorry. I got to try to shut off the. No, I just, I was just
trying to mess with you a little bit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I could help
myself before she would do that. I'm terrible. I need sleep.
Brittany, we appreciate you so much. Thanks for updating us there. How is
it? You know, the weather, it sounds like things going to be looking
alright for tomorrow. Yes, you are going to be all good tomorrow.
Which is honestly, it's going to be sunny, calm winds, highs at about 80
degrees, comfortable, not not humidity at all. And nobody in the forecast can
us for better weather. That's perfect. We appreciate you doing that.
Thank you for working with Mother Nature on that. When you were the best,
thank you for that. We appreciate you. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Add it to the list.
Add it to the list. Okay. We have a great morning.
Brittany, we'll talk again tomorrow.
I'm good. Thanks, Brittany. Best in the business right there.
Pretty more low joining us every morning, right in this time slot.
Offly fun to hang out with her and good to hang out with all of you.
Melissa and I are happy to have you with us. We got some fun stuff lined up for
you. We're going to be getting into the L Cafe birthday and anniversary club
in moments from now. Moments. We will also be getting into a, I don't
know how many people have seen this. I just came across it this morning.
So did as much homework as I could. Companies are are doing something
interesting with QR codes as far as recycling and I want to get into that
with you, Melissa, a little bit. It's an interesting. It's a very new story.
So we'll dive into it together and kind of jump at first and see what happens.
I want to talk about PETA and Mario Kart. We got to get into that.
That is coming up and we will have the state of tipping in 2025.
America's average tip. What is it? And what are we doing about it?
All that coming up. We'll have some entertainment news to kick off the 10 o'clock
hour. Looking forward to that. We'll talk some local theater and news letter.
And certainly we will be talking about our parking lot party. All that coming up.
No, why would we talk about that? It's only happening tomorrow.
It may come up. It may come up. Also, I got an interesting one here,
Melissa, canned foods that were popular 50 years ago that nobody's eaten anymore.
We'll see how many people actually are eating them or not. Actually,
I will ask our audience. Okay. All that coming up.
But it is also national potato day. Yeah, I love potatoes.
Yeah. Potatoes are great. Potatoes have a lot of great uses.
And if you are like me and we're looking for an excuse to have french fries from
breakfast, here we go. There we go. Once a year.
Once a year, I can get away with it. Once a year, seriously, James.
I really actually, I could eat french fries from breakfast. I have no problem with that.
A new poll for potatoes looked at the most popular homemade potato dishes.
We will discuss that in a second. I thought this being potato day.
Has anybody does anybody out there know the history of the potato?
Anybody, anybody has show hands? Anybody in class?
History of the potato. Like I know people didn't think it was edible,
because it grew under the ground at one point in time.
That part's really interesting, I think.
Well, it is originated in the Andes Mountains of South America,
where it was domesticated thousands of years ago.
But that's where it initially cultivated by indigenous people.
It later spread to Europe, of course, and so on.
But in the South American Andes Islands is where mountains is where we first discovered potatoes.
That's really cool. Got to cool. Got to be interesting.
The origin of food is just fascinating. Yes. Yes. I can't get enough of it.
And now, as far as dishes go, what are our top dishes,
the most popular homemade potato dishes?
Mashed potatoes are number one by far, of course.
The top four in order are mashed potatoes, potato salad, baked potatoes,
and breakfast potatoes or hash browns.
I'm surprised like potato fries didn't come in there.
Quick side note. If I want to have French fries for breakfast,
how is that different than hash browns?
Come on. Come on. We're nitpicking here.
Come on. I mean potatoes. I mean potatoes, mom.
They weren't they weren't completely submerged in oil.
Oh, okay, you know that that's a good point.
That's I think that's that's probably a very very very fair point.
Okay, but you know what? I think you could consider like like I said potato fries or potato
wedges as a breakfast food because they're typically baked, but they're very similar to French fries.
Yeah, I just usually leave the skins on, which adds nutrition, and they're baked versus fried,
which makes them slightly healthier.
I can handle that. I think I can handle that.
They also looked at regional dishes that are more popular in certain parts of the country.
New England loves shepherds pie.
Mid-Atlantic states like Pennsylvania, New York love, uh, uh, uh, uh, pier, pier-
pier-rogues, uh, pier-rogues, yeah, pier-rogues.
Breakfast potatoes are big along the rest of the east coast,
and potato soup is popular in a lot of the southern states.
Yeah. I love me all of those potatoes.
And everybody with me, the Midwest is, of course, we are rocking what?
Potato casseroles. Oh, no, no, no, I was surprised by that too.
Yeah, I didn't see that coming.
Oh, yeah. I mean, we always put tater tots on top of a casserole, but I guess I really don't
consider that potato.
I wonder what state threw that off because that doesn't seem like something, at least in
Wisconsin and Illinois, where I've spent most of my life in these two states.
I don't know, uh, casseroles are a mainstay.
Sure. But I guess I, I've never thought of any one particular one over the other.
I don't know.
I think that pasta is a more common carbon ingredient in casseroles than potato,
but that's just me.
Oh, I could see.
Yeah, I don't disagree.
Yeah, um, hmm.
As far as, uh, in the Midwest.
Sorry, it says birthday today.
We should say hot dish.
Yeah, hot dish.
Don't say casserole today.
We're going to outlaw that word in order of south.
There you go.
There you go.
There you go.
Yeah, just hot dish.
Yeah, look at, look at this nice gift I gave you.
Look at that, huh?
I don't think you're going to get a better one today.
We want your votes, everybody.
What would you vote as the, uh, the most popular potato dish in the Midwest,
or even just Wisconsin?
What would you say is more popular?
French fries.
Yeah, honestly.
We do French, and people go crazy on the French fries too.
Like with the different combinations, different things, and putting stuff on them and all that.
Texas and surrounding states eat the most potato salad,
and the Rocky Mountain States are keeping it simple with mashed potatoes and baked potatoes.
Okay.
The West Coast loves potato tacos.
Potato tacos.
I'm not 100% of what that is, but I'll say, uh, when I was in, um, uh,
California, I learned real quick that I was going to be eating real tacos.
Not, not the tacos that I get to taco johns and everything.
Although I love them.
It's a big shout out to taco johns.
I love taco johns, but you just really can't go wrong with a taco.
No, and there they put little chunks of potato in there.
Uh, it's, it's like a mainstay.
You're not getting a taco without it in there.
So I just kind of like learned to just work through it.
Uh, I don't know if that's what they're talking about,
or if there's a different type of this or not, like the pita itself has made a potato.
I don't know.
I've definitely seen potatoes or french fries in burritos.
But not really tacos.
Yeah.
And apparently age matters with this.
Gen Z is into potato tacos, but people over 65 don't eat them.
Just 58% of Gen Zers say mashed potatoes are a favorite compared to 73% of boomers.
Well, I think that that was such a mainstay of, you know, the American dinner table.
Yeah.
When I hate the word boomers, but when they were, you know, growing up young,
having young families, potatoes are a mainstay.
Yeah.
I don't, I'm not really actually a big fan of any of these terms.
Gen Z, Gen X, any of that stuff.
I'm with you on that.
And I, and I agree.
I think that that's part of what we're, we're, we're going with the plus because they were cheap.
Yeah.
We also have so many more food options.
And I'm not talking about crazy combinations of food and everything, but even just,
you know, look at how long we've had certain fruits in this country or certain,
you know, vegetables in this country.
We haven't had them forever.
Some of them have been incorporated in the last couple of decades or less, you know,
50, 60 years.
Right.
That may not seem like, that may, that may seem like a lot of time,
but it's actually not that much time when it comes to food.
Food needs time to, for people to work with it and play with it and make things out of it and stuff.
Right.
It didn't happen overnight, most foods that we love today.
Right.
And there are foods that we don't, because they're not native to this continent.
Like you said, they will have only been coming over in recent years and recent memory.
And people are very, very particular about their foods, James.
Yeah.
They don't know anybody like that.
Well played.
Too shy.
I'm looking at potato tacos and I'm not seeing anything really different about them,
other than there's potato wedges in them and stuff.
Potato wedges in them.
Okay.
I would just think that that would take up a lot of space.
Tacos like, you know, actual real tacos aren't very big.
I argue with my father about this, whether we're having tacos or gurus.
He will have one, but it'll be the size of eight.
And I don't know how he, either, whether, I never watch him eat it.
I don't know if he just unhidges his jaw.
I don't know what he does.
If he's part snake, I'm not sure.
But he, uh, he'll do that.
I'm like, do you enjoy it, man?
Do you taste anything out of it?
You put so much stuff on there.
Anything on meat and I want to taste the meat of it.
Or usually the bread or maybe there's a sauce or something with tacos, with gurus.
I want all of them.
I want that combination.
Yeah.
Um, and the fun part for me with tacos is that you can have a variety if you eat more than one,
you know, on one you might add guacamole and on another one you might not put guacamole.
That is a fun idea.
That's what I do.
I have a system that I've had since I was going to East and going over to taco
Johns.
I have a hard shell soft shell than a hard shell.
That's my system in that order.
Yes, yes.
It always has to be in that order.
It always says to me, uh, saying it out loud, I feel foolish.
But I don't, I don't want it.
I don't blame you.
I did.
Sometimes we have those things that we just like to do.
Potato tacos, also known as a tacos de papa,
are a delicious and popular Mexican dish featuring mashed or cube potato stuffed
into tortillas.
Okay.
So is there anything that's in there besides the potato?
Just the potato, I mean, it sounds like they're also, you know,
certainly the normal garnishings to normal things in there.
So like onion cilantro or, okay, yeah, I could eat that.
If it's anything like the ones.
So the potatoes are replacing the meat?
Yeah.
Well, maybe some of them they do.
No, because they give you different options.
There's some that they do do that and some where they have the filling and,
you know, the filling could be steak or chicken or beef.
The ones that I had, I always had beef.
I didn't have one bad taco out in California.
Everywhere I went was just amazing.
Maybe the best one was a, it was a mechanic shop and a taco stand together.
Can you tacos what your cars being fixed?
And I am not kidding you.
There were people that were working in both shops.
There were, there were people that were making food and they, of course,
they would clean their hands and all that.
But it was, I will, it was like you got to try this.
You got to try something.
I don't know, man, you're paying for the doctor visit.
If this doesn't go right and they were amazing.
We went back there like the whole time I was living there.
We'd go back there any time we were in the Geneva area.
Yeah, it was great.
It's great.
You know, I really can't think of any time that I've had a bad taco.
Yeah, yeah.
I will say, you know what though, when the shell breaks,
like I went, I imagine the shell is going to break a little bit.
I'm all right with that.
But I have just picked the taco up and it is already breaking.
And it breaks.
That's heartbreaking.
When I was a kid and mom would make tacos at home,
she would always run the hard shells under water quickly.
Before we'd fill them and then they wouldn't break.
They'd still be crispy, but they'd have a little bit of give to them
so they wouldn't break as quickly.
I'm trying this.
I'm trying this.
I'm trying this.
But to briefly, you run them underwater just like a quick
boot and they're just a little wet.
If only it was a day of the week that would make sense to have
taco, wait a minute.
It's Tuesday, James.
It's taco Tuesday.
Taco Tuesday.
Even though it's a potato, like official potato day after,
it's just eat a taco.
Yeah, we're not going to tell anybody.
We're not going to tell anybody.
Go ahead.
And I can't think of a better place to have a taco
or have breakfast and elcafe.
We will talk more about them when we come back
with the birthday and anniversary club.
On the morning show here at WFHR.
You heard people.
It's time to do some celebrating with our great friends
over at Elcafe and the birthday and anniversary club.
We encourage you to treat yourself.
Get on over to Elcafe today.
They're open.
Mm-hmm.
221 Market Avenue and beautiful ported Edwards head on over there.
Everybody wish them a good morning from us.
Check out some of those amazing specials and great pies
that they have.
The wonderful atmosphere.
You can't go wrong starting your day over at Elcafe.
No, especially if you need lunch
because Ezekiel's famous lasagna is on their specials list.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, man.
That sounds good.
With garlic bread.
God, I love garlic bread.
God, I love garlic bread.
It's the best thing.
Yes, yes, I could eat it with almost anything.
God, I love garlic.
I love garlic.
I love garlic bread.
Great stuff.
Head on over there today.
Let us know how it is.
Everybody feel free to call in and let us know.
We'd love to hear from you.
And we'd love to hear from you
with your birthdays or anniversaries.
You can email us infoatwfhr.com.
You can direct messages on our Facebook pages
or you can call on up.
That's right.
Our phones are working because hilarious is awesome.
Yes, yes.
Our number is 715-424-2600.
And you can call and check with us
about your birthday or anniversary.
We look forward to hanging out with you.
Everybody call up and join the conversation.
Taking a look at our local list.
Mel, I need a one or a two.
I really have to think about this.
One.
All right, there we go.
Got it.
We got ourselves our qualifier.
So we can get right into it.
And first up, we want to wish happy birthday
to civic media's own James Kelly.
Oh, happy birthday, James Kelly.
Enjoy the day, Kelly.
Oh, it's a good one for you, man.
Good day to you.
Good day to you.
And of course, we want to wish a very happy birthday
to our own Seth Habhager.
Happy birthday, Seth.
I'll try to be nice to you today.
See, that's your gift.
That is your gift.
My gift is letting Seth beat me in fantasy baseball
in our World Series.
It's nice.
You didn't do that on purpose, though.
I did not do that on purpose.
No, I picked very bad pictures.
I picked very bad pictures.
But still, it counts.
It still does.
Happy birthday, Seth.
Yeah, every once in a while, you're lucky.
You run into people that you just hit it off immediately.
You realize early on, okay, we share a brain.
And that is Seth and I.
That is for quite some time since basketball,
he's one of the better human beings I have ever met.
He's also got a brain for this business
that is better than mine.
He's built for this.
I really is.
And he's written the right work in the right industry.
We're very fortunate to have him around here
and all the work that he is doing.
And Beth, did I get that right?
Did I just know that one word you wrote there?
Beth is a great writer, by the way.
She really wrote that really well.
Have a happy birthday, Seth.
Enjoy your day, brother.
We get to our local celebs
and we want to wish you a very happy birthday to Marty Van Herne.
Happy birthday, Marty.
Enjoy your day, Marty.
Hope it's a good one for you.
And our qualifiers celebrate in their 53rd anniversary,
John and Sandy Sanger.
John and Sandy, happy anniversary.
Enjoy your day, you two.
Happy 53rd.
That's amazing.
Happy 53rd.
That's awesome.
Enjoy your day.
We take a look at who you share your birthdays with,
taking a look at the list here.
And let's see.
Leanne Womack is 59.
Country singer.
Wonderful, wonderful song.
I hope you dance.
It's a lot of fun.
I like her voice.
Yeah, she's good.
Great actor Kira Sedwick is 60.
The closer she is,
she's married to Kevin Bacon,
but she's been in the handful of stuff over the years.
She's very good.
Yeah, I really like her too.
Something I can't remember what it is that I say,
oh yeah, yeah, yeah, now I see her face and I remember.
She's got a couple of roles where you're like,
oh yeah, she was made for that.
She was really good at that.
John Stamos is 62.
Uncle Jesse on full and fuller house.
I have to admit, I kind of thought
that that was going to be a springboard for John Stamos,
like the full house and he was going to go on
to not be a movie actor maybe,
but he was going to go on to another TV show
or something like that.
He seemed too talented to not keep working.
It really feels like the only thing
that he's really known for is the,
and I'm not saying anything bad about that.
It's better than not being known.
It's just interesting that I really thought.
And he kind of got into music a little bit too.
So there's that.
He's an actor and musician and he just published a book in 2023.
Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Let's see here.
Ian Gillin is 80.
The Purples lead singer and songwriter.
He's also Jesus in the original cast recording
of Jesus Christ Superstar.
A wonderful singer, very strong singer.
And then there's some people no longer with us.
And we have quite a list there with that.
First Matthew Perry would have been 56 today.
But in 1969, it feels like he just passed away.
He passed away in 2023.
I didn't realize it's been that long already.
But yeah, certainly a wonderful actor.
I never saw friends, but I'm sure I know that is one of the most popular
and biggest TV shows of all time.
A lot of credit for that.
The show was not the same without him.
But I loved him in the whole nine yards
and a couple of other movies I saw him in.
I really appreciated it.
I thought he had a very, very old school style of comedy
and comedic timing.
You could put Matthew Perry back in the 50s,
back in the 60s, you know, any of those eras.
And I feel like his comedic timing would have been perfect.
Very funny guy, very, very good actor, very, very good.
And gone way too soon.
And then to this is just fitting on Cess Berthay
that we have some multiple Star Trek notable Berthays.
Diana Mulder is 87, Dr. Polesky
on Star Trek the Next Generation.
Jonathan Fracus is 73, Commander Riker
on Star Trek the Next Generation.
As Laura would note, the Riker move was invented by him, of course.
And certainly Jean Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek.
Born in this day.
So Seth shares the same Berthays as Jean Roddenberry.
And that's perfect.
That is just too perfect.
And also Fred Dalton Thompson.
Born in this day in 1942,
Senator turned actor as a politician, you know, here or there.
But a wonderful actor.
He was in the...
Oh yeah, I know him.
He was in the Die Hard movies or Die Hard 2.
He was in the Hunt for Red October.
But a lot of all of us law and order fans know him as D.A. Arthur Branch.
And I would have never guessed.
I didn't know he was a congressman as a kid.
I didn't know that he was or anything like our Senator.
I'm sorry.
I just knew him as an actor.
And I thought he was fantastic as an actor.
Yeah.
He did a really good job.
You know, I think it's better to have...
I'm not going to say that.
Never mind.
Go on.
And finally Oliver Wright.
Born in this day in 1871,
passed away in 1948.
Certainly one of the Wright brothers would...
You know, the invent...
It's hard to say the inventors of flight.
I feel like we were always going to fly at one point.
We were going to figure it out.
These guys did it sooner than anybody else.
And they deserved not only credit for that,
but we should keep that kind of spirit going,
you know, as far as innovation.
Innovation has been taken over by money and greed.
And I understand that I have nothing
against people making money.
I have nothing against people having a good living
or anything like that.
But too much of our creative world and our innovators
and our great minds out there
are focused on making money over advancing humanity.
The Wright brothers were trying to do this
for a lot of reasons.
It's interesting.
It's cool and all that.
It's also where we needed to go as a society.
We could not live on horseback.
We could not live on carriage alone or car alone
or any of these things.
We were always going to look up.
We were always going to go to the skies.
It was just a matter of who was going to be able to do it
and how we did it.
We don't get to where we are now without them.
And we have normalized flight.
We have normalized this way too much.
We, as far as citizens, we need to act right
when we're, you know, in the skies.
We need to act like we are at our grandparents' house.
We need to act like we are at a friend's house.
Friend's parents' house.
Yes.
I don't care how bad the flight attendant is.
I don't care how bad the flight is.
Act right.
Be better than that.
And as far as the airline industry,
well, we don't have enough time.
You need to look in the mirror too, airline industry.
You know, it's not just us.
Oh, you need to look in the mirror too.
It's a whole thing.
We have normalized flight way too much.
Flying is amazing.
Flying is awesome.
And we need it.
And I think the best way to honor the Wright Brothers
is by doing some of these things.
Yes.
And certainly, I just, I think I just miss flying.
I think that's part of it too.
I just want to get up.
We wish you all a very happy birthday
and anniversary out there.
Enjoy your days.
We will be back with some more fun.
And I want to talk about this.
Companies putting QR codes on products.
Helping out with recycling.
I want to get into that with your mouse.
Coming up on the morning show at WFHR.
Welcome back, everyone.
Morning show here at WFHR.
Locally grown radio.
Melissa and James hanging out with you.
Thanks so much for hanging out with us.
Got good things on the way for you, everybody.
We're going to be getting into
in just a little bit our parking lot party.
And we're going to talk about the state of tipping.
Those two things have nothing to do with each other.
Oh, we're not accepting tips.
Well, we, you know, we do.
But we're not going to tell a guy, I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking, we don't, we don't, we don't.
But we do, we do want your feedback.
We do take that.
We love your feedback.
And I really would love to hear people's feedback on this one.
715-424-2600.
Caller texts us through the Civic Media app.
Companies are increasingly utilizing QR codes on product packaging
to provide consumers with a detailed and localized recycling instruction.
This is something that people, they're addressing that has been a,
I don't want to say a complaint, but a confusion for a long time.
Recycling guidelines can vary significantly between different locations
or in different products.
So this is an opportunity for companies to be able to kind of show,
hey, this is how you do this.
For example, companies like General Mills, like it would make pills very frozen pie crust,
and things like that, and horizon organic are among the early adopters of this technology.
Using a system like the recycling check platform from the recycling partnership
of how to recycle labels.com.
Okay, that was a mouthful.
Yep, you can go to packagingdigest.com to find the complete article if you would like everybody,
but this is an industry first, but it is something that this isn't going anywhere.
This is where a lot of this is going.
Now, this is interesting.
I came across this late last night early this morning,
and I did a deep dive into it and tried to, and I really wanted to get on this and talk about it,
in part because I was just yesterday talking about QR codes
and talking about the idea of using them for advertising,
or not advertising, using them for contests, using them as ways.
Yeah, we're using them for a menu or to take you to a website to sign up for something.
Yeah, there's lots of ways they're using QR codes.
And I think we do this way too much.
And maybe even I was guilty of it yesterday to a degree where we kind of lump things in.
I think QR codes are very, very helpful, and they can go a long ways,
especially if I go into a restaurant, I like to hold the menu.
I like to look at it, but I understand that a lot of places,
especially small restaurants, are going to the QR code.
It makes sense. It saves them on paper.
And they can change the menu that much faster.
And it's just, yeah, it's faster.
It's just easier for them.
I don't begrudge anybody who doesn't like that, because as I said,
I prefer to have a menu on my hand.
I also prefer to have a menu in my hand, because I got to have one finger on this
when I might want to order.
And then I got to be able to look at the other side or the other page and decide,
but I can't do that on my phone.
Can't do it on your phone.
No, so yeah, I'm whole with you on this.
Now, here is a chance to take a technology and do something really smart and good with it.
Here is something now.
I'd not to say that there aren't other uses for QR codes,
but this, to me, could be maybe the greatest use of it,
as we are already a recycling planet.
We're already a recycling country.
We are just looking to fine-tune this.
We are just looking to do this right and do it the best way we can.
But we already have people in the mindset of recycling.
Let's just get it right.
We just need, you know, do you think the next step of, okay,
I recycle, I separate all these things,
adding on to that, I recycle, let's check the QR code.
Do you think this is an added step that people will do or not?
And I'm not just asking you, Mel, I mean, to the audience as well.
Do you think that this is something that we can do we can get used to?
Keep in mind, 20, 30 years ago, people laughed at the idea of seatbelts.
40, 50 years ago, what am I saying?
You know, a long time, I'm old, a long time ago.
And people thought, well, you'll never get everybody to wear seatbelts.
And we got them to do that.
There was a time where people wouldn't, we thought we'd not recycle all the time.
And here we are recycling like crazy.
I don't know, I don't know if this is an extra step that you'll get people to do or not.
I am always going to lean towards the positive of humanity.
And that is not me doing that out of hope or faith or anything like that.
That's my brain and the way it works with reality and facts.
And ISA is a fan of history as somebody who has studied history.
I see humanity do this time and time again.
We make the right call usually.
We, not always, but we oftentimes more times than not make the right calls.
I think that we could do this.
I think I could see people doing this.
Yeah, and I think so too.
Part of the struggle with recycling sometimes is it's different everywhere.
Certain places will accept certain things.
Certain places won't or you need to have it separated this way or that way
or there's single stream recycling.
But what can go into that single stream recycling?
Something that often gets thrown into the recycling bin that shouldn't is
any kind of plastic film, plastic bags and anything that you have packaged in plastic.
Those things aren't okay for single stream recycling.
But if you've got an easy QR code like okay,
can I throw this in my single stream recycling?
And you can just check it right there off the bottle with your phone.
That's so much easier than trying to go on a website.
Find your recycling place.
Look for the list of what's accepted.
What's not.
Find the thing.
I think this is genius.
Yeah, I really think it could be a game changer.
I truly do.
I will wait and see.
Of course, you know, it isn't as if I've been wrong plenty of times.
But I really think that just the simpleness of this and getting used to it,
once people are used to it, could really go a long ways.
And all of this is about making our planet healthier and better for us.
I am all about the planet.
I love the planet.
I feel very connected to the earth.
Don't forget when we're talking about saving the planet.
We're truly talking about saving humanity.
The planet will be here.
The planet's going to survive no matter what we do.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's not lose sight of what this is.
You know, we're saying planet.
We're also talking about people.
And I don't know.
I'm a fan of people.
I kind of like being here.
I kind of like this rock.
I kind of need people.
But here is an idea of taking a technology and doing something smart,
doing something good with it,
doing something that people want.
AI.
And that's easy to use.
Yes.
But it makes me think of AI,
where here's my hope that we can do that with AI eventually.
Instead of having these companies
that spent a ton of money on AI
and now we're paying for it.
Because they made a bad investment.
Here's Gemini down your throat.
Go ahead and use it.
This isn't everything.
Could it be any more annoying
and pop up everywhere?
And I just know.
Stop.
I don't want your summary.
I especially with our jobs and everything.
We need Gmail.
We have to use it.
But I get to the point where.
And I've used it for so many things over the years.
I have so many drafts and so many stories
or writing notes or teaching notes
or anything in different drafts.
I use Gmail a lot.
A lot.
And I am getting to a point, man, where I'm like,
it's Gemini or me.
You've got to make a decision, Google.
Make a decision.
Because I can't handle it much longer.
I'm sick and tired of it and everything.
But here is my thing.
Where I originally, when I saw QR codes
and them being used for some of these silly
contests ideas and things,
I didn't like it.
Here they are using it for something good.
Maybe that is what will happen with AI
that we can find other uses.
There's already good uses for it.
And it is being put to some good use.
Here's something that maybe it'll be a lot better
than just helping people answer silly questions
or cheat on tests or whatever.
Or try to answer my emails for me.
I can write.
I am a human being.
I am an adult.
I don't have to write an email.
Quick telling me this.
And here is something else.
And this isn't a technological thing,
but it is a humanity thing.
And our relationship with animals.
And we are part of a food chain.
And I'm not explaining anything to anybody.
I'm not going to mansplain everything to everybody
about food chains and stuff.
But we are on the top of this food chain.
And with that comes a responsibility, I believe.
I believe that you don't get the top of anything for nothing.
It comes with responsibility.
If you want to be at the top, that's fine.
But it comes with rules.
It comes with responsibilities.
And I think part of that is caring about animals.
And looking out for animals.
Looking out for, especially when we're talking about animals
that are endangered.
Or we're talking about animals that are being mistreated.
That is a black eye on us as humans.
We are bigger.
We are higher on the food chain.
We don't like it when we see a bully beating up somebody smaller.
It is not very different than that.
At the same time, I believe that there is a line in the sand about this.
If I have to choose between saving a human being or a dog,
I'm not going to think twice.
I'm saving the person.
And I'm not saying that to be cruel or anything like that.
I'm being real.
I'm being honest about this.
And I think that's part of how we get to a better place
with our relationship with animals in society and where we,
how we treat them and how we, it just becomes a norm.
You know, the normal thing of treating animals right.
And to the point where we don't need PETA.
I am only staying talking for myself right now,
but I have said for many years on these airwaves,
I have no respect for PETA.
I have all the respect in the world for our humane societies
for so many of the organizations out there
that are truly trying to help animals.
In my opinion, and from the research I have done
for over 20 years on PETA,
it is a company that is built on PETA,
in celebrating PETA, in promoting PETA.
And they have this knack of, I don't know,
comparing the Holocaust to animals.
That is not a comparison.
That is not a comp.
You can't do that.
That makes no sense.
And it's an insult to my people
and to my relatives that I lost during the Holocaust.
It makes no sense.
And now PETA, their latest target, Mario Kart.
Yeah, yeah.
PETA recently wrote a letter to Nintendo
asking them to tweak their depiction
of the Mumu cow from Mumu farms
to remove the cow's nose ring.
They said, we heard there's a new star
in Mario Kart world cow.
She's already winning hearts everywhere, including ours.
But the brass ring in her nose,
would you please show empathy
and remove the nose ring?
In real life, the nose rings can serve multiple purposes,
including wearing young cattle to discourage suckling,
also as a way of controlling cows, usually bulls.
In this case, the rings can be held or pulled by a hand
or connected to a rope or pulled by staff.
That seems to be PETA's big gripe
that the rings may be painful to insert.
And in fact, even more pain and discomfort
when used to control the animal.
Of course, the cow in Mario Kart
is animated and not real.
And it is more of a fashion statement
like having earrings or something like that.
Now, again, I think that, hey, here's an opportunity
for an organization to bring attention to something
that a lot of us don't know about.
As a city boy, I didn't know this about cows.
I knew about the cow ring,
but I haven't seen a cow within cow ring in ages.
But now I know a little bit more about it.
That'd be a great way to share that information.
Instead, what they do is try to promote their company,
try to promote themselves
and get more people to donate to them and help them.
And there are celebrities that are apart.
There be celebrities that are a part of their programs
and everything.
And do this in the wrong way.
You lose people on this.
If you want to get people to care about animals
and care about your cause,
this isn't the right way to do it.
No, not by attacking an animated character
in a video game.
That's just dumb.
Where are you?
How are you?
How?
Think of the money and time
that was spent on this, on this.
And this promotion.
This is a promotion, by the way.
This is not them.
If they were really intentional about this,
we'd never heard about it.
It'd just be behind the scenes.
They'd be trying to do this.
They're putting it out there
because they're trying to get attention for PETA.
Right.
Which it should be about the animals,
not you and not your company
and not your misguided attempt
to save and help animals.
If it was really about that,
PETA, I would not know the faces of their company.
I would not know certain things about them
if it was about the animals.
There's a lot of great animal organizations
out there that deserve your dollars,
that deserve your time,
your effort, your volunteering.
They're here, remain societies.
They're in your neighborhood.
They're near you.
There are plenty of places you can go
to help out animals.
This, this ain't working.
And as a side note too,
you've got a lot of work ahead of you, PETA.
There's a lot of animated characters.
You're going to,
how come they're not helping out porky pig?
How come they're not helping out Donald Duck?
What about that poor roadrunner,
that poor roadrunner?
Think of all the times the roadrunner
has ran into a wall.
I'm thinking of the coyote.
The coyote runs into the wall.
But the coyote is chasing your roadrunner.
Oh, the poor coyote.
I mean, if we're going to start helping out
animated characters and everything,
we've got a lot of lists here.
In life, one of the most important things you can learn
is choosing your battles wisely.
And this is not a battle worth fighting.
This is something that could have been an email
sent to Nintendo behind the scenes.
And you could try to do something about it.
Or I don't know, bring awareness to it.
By like, hey, you knew this new character in Nintendo.
Do you know why cows have a ring and explain why
and let people go from there?
The idea of gilting people into doing things
has never worked unless you're my mother.
Then it works really, really, really well.
We will, yeah, mom's have a way of doing that.
That's very true, very true.
We'll take a quick time out.
We'll come back and we're talking the state of tipping.
State of tipping.
2025, come back.
Melissa and James on the morning show WFHR.
Welcome back, everyone.
Morning show here at WFHR.
Melissa and James hanging out with you.
We'll take you to the top of the hour.
In the 10 o'clock, we'll kick things off
as a entertainment.
We'll talk about some local things going on.
We'll get into and we have an interesting one
about canned foods that were popular 50 years ago
that nobody's eaten anymore.
That's all coming up.
We'll find out if people are eating them or not actually.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd like to hear about this.
A new poll on the state of tipping in the US
looked at why we tip, how much we tip,
and how disgruntled we are about it.
And I think that's a different category almost.
But diving into this one,
did you have some or some Melissa?
Well, I was just thinking like disgruntled about it.
Yeah, there are certain places where it's weird
that they have a tip jar now like subway.
Yeah, and I think that's where the disgruntled part really kicks in.
Yeah.
The average tip is now 18.9%.
Men tip a little bit more at 19.1%, women a little less at 18.6.
Millennials are the biggest tippers and 19.5%.
Gen Z is next at 19.3, Gen X at 18.2, and so on.
The highest tipping state is Delaware at just over 21%.
Only three other states tip more 20% Indiana,
West Virginia, and New Hampshire.
California leaves the worst tips at around 17%.
But in servers in California make 16.50 an hour
compared to 223 in Delaware.
Wow.
Yeah, California understood right away
that hey, the cost of living out here is insane.
We really need to get to this minimum wage.
And just because the cost of living isn't as much as
all I don't know Wisconsin doesn't mean that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised.
For maybe the first time in 20 some years.
It doesn't make any damn sense.
What makes us tip more or less quality of service was the top answer,
followed by how much will it cost me social pressure
and knowing how much the server makes an hour.
Yeah.
That all those are interesting.
And yeah, I think I've tipped for multiple reasons there.
I don't think I've ever done without a social pressure, though.
But that's only because most of the times I've tipped in my life,
it's private.
It's just you know, you and the server or whatever.
Or you're sliding the money under the,
when you paid for the meal or whatever and everything.
Plus I have a stack of IOUs in my pocket.
So I usually just whip one of those out and make sure
everybody sees it.
Huh?
Huh?
Everybody?
It's 79% of us always or usually leave a tip at a sit down places.
63% said the same about fast food joints.
55% usually tip delivery drivers and 23% even tip when picking up takeout.
Yeah, I do that.
I try to tip wherever I can.
But there are certain things like you mentioned,
you know, subway places like that where I don't feel the need.
Now, I also though, I have started doing something and this started during the pandemic.
But it's kind of reminiscent of my grandparents,
my Nana Papa, where they used to, I don't want to say they would tip their mailman.
But they, you know, not just Christmas, but they would leave, you know, things for him and stuff.
And I like doing that.
I like doing, I appreciate our postal workers.
I appreciate our delivery drivers out there.
I like doing things like that.
That delivery driver that drops off a lot of stuff at my parents' house,
he leaves a little bone for Sam.
And you know, he started doing that.
And that's what actually got me thinking about it and everything.
Because I like, I should be doing something for him.
He should be, you know, I like that.
I like that.
So there is a little bit of this, a little gray area there to me that I do kind of enjoy.
And that wasn't social pressure or anything.
That was just, hey, I remember my Nana Papa used to do this.
Yeah, it's more like a humanity thing.
And I, now that I think is something that could happen more if given the opportunity.
Or, you know, not told to do something maybe.
Right.
Or feeling pressured.
Yeah, yeah.
Most people do not react when, you know, pressure to do things or guilted to do things.
So I don't think that goes very far.
Has tipping gotten out of control in the past five years?
71% say yes.
Okay, 72% say yes.
It's expected too often.
And suggested tips are too high.
Only 9% think the current state of tipping is ideal.
I, I do agree with that.
So you can top it up to 73%.
However, it counters with the idea of in certain states.
In Wisconsin, I don't think tipping has gotten insane.
Because I don't think the minimum wage is correct.
And I don't trust businesses to pay their employees correctly.
If I'm, if that sounds a little bit, you know, too harsh to you out there,
I asked, have you ever worked in Wisconsin?
I love this state.
I like a lot about this state.
I think a lot of this state is being run right and done well.
This is not one of those categories.
I have talked to Senator Testin and Representative Krug, Congressman Kind.
Any representative I've had in front of me, I have brought up minimum wage.
And you can go back and listen to what my interview with Representative Krug.
When I confronted him about this.
And I, okay, well, the idea is, well, businesses will take care of this.
Businesses will manage the market.
They will figure this out.
No, they, you're going to trust business.
You're going to trust businesses to look out for people.
That's what we're going to do.
Can I show you OSHA over here that we have a whole organization built for this?
That's what we had to do when we let businesses control things.
Businesses are not dark or evil.
Businesses are in the business of business.
They're there to make money.
I'm not mad at them for what they do.
That's commerce.
That's America.
But I'm not going to expect them to look out for me.
I expect our representatives to do that.
Our government to do that.
That's your job.
Do your job.
Seven percent of Americans never tip.
I had a grandpa who was in that, that seven percent.
And as soon as he would walk away from the table, my grandma would come back and put
a couple bucks on the table.
It's all she could afford out of her saving or out of her allowance, let's say.
I love that.
I love that she did that.
I do too, but it makes me really sad.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's one of those things too, where I don't, I don't know how hard it is to have a little
empathy and have some understanding of what it is like to be in those shoes or anything like that,
especially most of these jobs.
A lot of us couldn't do, you know, just simply could not do.
I know I couldn't.
I could spend plates here at the radio station.
You throw me in any fast food place.
You're not getting your food.
And if you get, you ain't going to like it.
I'll tell you that right now.
It's not going to look like the picture.
In a day, no, no, no.
You may not even know if that ain't food.
We'll be back with more show coming up everybody.
