61: The Water We Swim In

Stuart and Carolyn speak with Bonnie Willison and Hali Jama, co-producers of The Water We Swim In, a great new podcast about Wisconsin and Great Lakes advocates working toward equity in a society where environmental injustice, racism, ableism and economic injustice are the waters we swim in. Plus: Great Lakes News with Titus Seilheimer, (one of) our own Dr(s) Fish(es).

Show Notes

Show links:
ChooseCopi.com
If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em: Illinois fisheries rebrand the invasive Asian carp
Titus' tweet with lots of dead fish
Meet the "Frenchsicle"
The Water We Swim In homepage

Introduced Homepage

List of Lakies winners

Mary’s Place, Minneapolis

Wikipeida: Lake Winnebago

Staring Lake in Eden Prairie, MN

Wiki: Viral hemorrhagic septicemia

The Tomatoes of Leamington

Show credits:
Host & Executive Producer: Stuart Carlton
Co-Host: Carolyn Foley

Producers: Hope Charters, Carolyn Foley, Megan Gunn, & Irene Miles

Associate Producer: Ethan Chitty
Edited by: Quinn Rose
Podcast art by: Joel Davenport

Music by: Stuart Carlton

Creators & Guests

Host

Stuart Carlton

Stuart Carlton is the Assistant Director of the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program. He manages the day-to-day operation of IISG and works with the IISG Director and staff to coordinate all aspects of the program. He is also a Research Assistant Professor and head of the Coastal and Great Lakes Social Science Lab in the Department of Forestry & Natural Resources at Purdue, where he and his students research the relationship between knowledge, values, trust, and behavior in complex or controversial environmental systems.

What is Teach Me About the Great Lakes?

A monthly podcast in which Stuart Carlton (a native New Orleanian) asks smart people to teach him about the Great Lakes. Co-hosted by the awesome staff at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant.

Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at [e-mail]. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice forget to speak slower while I asked people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant at Purdue University, and I'm joined today by my friend and co worker, Carolyn Foley Carolyn, what's up?

Carolyn Foley 0:26
Not much. It's Canada Day today. So

Stuart Carlton 0:30
Happy Canada Day what is what is Canada Day,

Carolyn Foley 0:33
Canada Day is? It is essentially the Canadian version of Independence Day, except that Canadians didn't, you know, we didn't have a war to get our independence from Britain, it was sort of Canada became a confederation in 1867. But of course, we have to acknowledge that indigenous indigenous peoples were in Canada long before that. And if there's a very, very complicated and sad history, but trying to do better, and

Titus Seilheimer 1:06
hopefully, Carol, Carolyn, I have a question who was on the Canadian currency, whose whose picture is on there, the Queen,

Carolyn Foley 1:15
a queen, she's still technically

Stuart Carlton 1:18
a queen. She's, oh,

Carolyn Foley 1:20
we have a Governor General, who is sort of her representative. And there have been some problematic of new generals lately as well. But again, they're trying to do better.

Stuart Carlton 1:32
Sounds good. And that's the voice of Titus Seilheimer. Mara, one of our multiple doctors fish. He is joining us today to talk about some great lakes news. Titus, how's it going?

Titus Seilheimer 1:42
It's going great.

Stuart Carlton 1:43
We have kind of an interesting show today. So we have a shorter interview with actually some fellow people at Wisconsin are some some of your co workers Titus at Wisconsin sea grant. So we also wanted, we realized we had a bunch of segments that we hadn't done in a while. So I wanted to blow through a segment or two and including one that's new, and then we'll go into the interview. So that's why we brought Titus here, the first segment that we haven't done in a while that I intended to do more often, but yeah, I've got a big sound board and can't always remember the segments is our Great Lakes. factoids, let's do that one. It's a great lakes factoid, a Great Lakes factoid, it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. Carolyn, I think you have a great lakes factoid today. Is that correct?

Carolyn Foley 2:22
I do. Yes. So my Great Lakes factoid for today is that many people believe that of the five great lakes, sorry, Lake St. Clair, you're just a good Lake according to Ebrahimi. So of the Five Great Lakes, Lake Superior is traditionally considered the most oligo trophic, which is basically you know, kind of not a whole lot of stuff in the water, clear, cold at cetera, et cetera. But within the past four to five years or so, there was a really long term data set collected by the Environmental Protection Agency where I think you've spoken with people on the lake guardian, who helped collect some of these data. And they actually showed that according to like, biotic factors and some water quality measures, Lake Michigan here on and particularly like Michigan is becoming a little bit more oligotrophic. Like historically, it was less liquid trophic. So it had more stuff in it, and like superior, but now it's actually a little bit cleaner. And I think that's probably largely due to like the zebra and quagga mussels. We've heard a lot a lot about cleaning things up and whatever. But it's, it's kind of bonkers, because for my entire life, it was like superior. It's clear. It's cold. You don't want to swim in it. But yeah, me crazy.

Stuart Carlton 3:39
Now it's clear and cold. I want to swim in it, but not the coldest or not. We'll take that Lake Superior. It's got Lake Superior, you should follow. It's an interesting twitter follow. I have a rivalry. A little bit on this show with Lake Superior. It doesn't know about the rivalry. What was it being a lake or whatever. But you know, Lake Superior is a little bit haughty, a little bit full of itself, I think and a little bit. Self overriding, but still an interesting twitter follow. So I encourage you to check that out. All right, well, there's our Great Lakes factoid. And now we have a brand new segment that I want to introduce. And because I have a book chapter due on Wednesday, we're recording this on Friday, Canada Day, as we all know, I made a new theme song because that's better than writing a book chapter. So here we go.

And now it's time for the Great Lakes news. Here's your host, Stuart Carlton. Thank you for that intro. Stuart. All right, we have so Great Lakes News New Segment. We may or may not keep it let's see how it goes. In fact, give us your feedback on Great Lakes news. If you have a great lakes news item you want us to talk about send us a tweet teach Great Lakes or an email teach me about the Great [e-mail] All right, three stories. The first story today is just now it was just a couple days ago, it's announced that they are rebranding the what we used to call the Asian carp or sometimes we call the invasive carp as copii rebranding them as Kopi. Titus, what's behind this rebrand?

Titus Seilheimer 5:07
Well, you know, I think carp, just the name carp. You know, for many consumers, we kind of hear that and it's, you know, bad connotations, especially when you think about things like common carp, which are, you know, sort of benthic species down near the bottom full of contaminants, not something you want to eat, they also destroy habitat. So, you know, these invasive carps have kind of a different ecology, they're actually pretty good to eat. And so rebranding them, you know, just puts out maybe gets a different feel for those people aren't just like automatically saying, carpe, no, thanks. So Kopi that's the new thing.

Stuart Carlton 5:50
And that's interesting decide to rebrand that, you know, in Fisher particular, there's kind of a long history of that, right, the one that comes to mind immediately is the Chilean sea bass, which is the rebranded name of the Patagonian toothfish, you will sometimes see it marketed as that and so this is the Illinois DNR doing doing the rebranding. Right. So is that something that everybody's gonna follow? Or is it who knows? Like, there's no rules on the common this common name rebranding, are there?

Titus Seilheimer 6:15
No, I think, you know, it's really, it's, it's smart. You know, marketing is the real focus here. So, you know, I think on the science side, we're, we're gonna go with, you know, we've got silver carp and big head carp. Those are the, you know, the species that we'd mainly be interested in, and you know, that it's going to still be kind of species specific, but, you know, Illinois, especially, they're taken out millions of pounds of these different species every year and, you know, trying to create some kind of, you know, food market because I have had some Kopi taco meat, you know, ground up. It was delicious. And, you know, if people try it, you know, that's a kind of a nice local, low contaminant load tasty, flaky white fleshed fish. So let's eat those.

Carolyn Foley 7:03
Yeah. And I had one year, like, as a filet, I think yeah, it was, it was really good. There were some bones in it, but that's most fish. Right? Yeah. It's

Stuart Carlton 7:13
a cleaning thing. Right processing thing. That's it's fairly bony. We were actually served it on Capitol Hill, at the NOAA fish fry, a couple years ago, and Thomas hook our director, he brought some back and made a nice dip out of it. He kept calling it a moose, which sounds disgusting officials just horrible. But when you call it a fish dip, it's pretty good. It's a no, I agree. I mean, I don't think we're not going to eat our way out of this problem. I don't think we've ever eaten our way out of an invasive species. But it's, it's still if they're taking these fish out anyway. And what are they making animal feed out of it? I guess? Maybe we can direct some as a nice local protein. That's interesting. That mean

Titus Seilheimer 7:49
for fertilizer as well. You know, there's there's other uses, but yeah, protein fertilizer, there is some food market for it now. But, you know, hopefully the new name makes it a little more palatable to people.

Stuart Carlton 8:01
Yeah. Well, good luck. And Carolyn, this also ties into kind of a bigger thing. This isn't directly related, but, you know, thinking about names, and names that maybe are either offensive or perceived as offensive, right. And so for a long time, we call these Asian carp. And there's a move away from that. Right. What do you know about that, that move?

Carolyn Foley 8:20
So yeah, so there is a general movement, I mean, another organism that's not officious, but it's super problematic in the Midwest and eastern coasts of the United States and Canada, are the spongy mosques, which are species that can defoliate trees and things like that. And so there was a discussion at the joint aquatic sciences meeting where we had our live recording of teach me about the Great Lakes, where elbow were had a really cool session where they were talking about moving away from some of these more problematic names towards something that is a little bit more inclusive of everybody. So there's a really cool conversations happening around that. Yeah, there

Stuart Carlton 9:05
are I was at that session, I was only at the carefully and Lencioni jasm for a couple of days. But that was by far the best session that I attended. And l they did a really great job of adapting because a number of their their panelists couldn't make it because of COVID and flight issues, I believe, and but it ended up we just had breakout groups and small discussions. It was really, really interesting. And it gets into a lot. We won't get into it now. But it's really complicated to rename it bordering on not possible renaming, like the scientific names of species. So sometimes if you find like a eugenicist name something after himself, it's usually him, let's be honest. You know, that's really, really hard to change, but but the common names, there's room for more movement. And so this is one that I think is primarily dedicated to marketing, but I think, you know, potentially, could be the start of a broader way that we look at invasive Karpen and other names as well. So I wish them luck and God and try some copy. Let us know teach me about the great [e-mail] what you thought of it. Alright, Story number two. This one comes directly from our Dr. Fish Titus. There are lots of dead ale wives and gobies on Lake Michigan. What's the deal with that? Titus?

Titus Seilheimer 10:17
Yeah, so this, you know, this is this time of year, dead ill lives is a really typical kind of site for us, especially in Lake Michigan. You know, since the really the explosion of ale wives, mid 19th century 1960s. Our number is like 90% of the fish biomass, and like Michigan was ill wives. So, you know, that was kind of a bad place, and very unbalanced. And what happens is, so Ill wives are native to kind of the North Atlantic, they are anatomist fish, just like salmon, they spawn in freshwater, but then they head out to the saltwater to grow. And so, you know, out out in the, if you go to New England, the L wife runs are kind of an important event, it's, you know, a sign of spring, it's actually a fish that you can actually eat, because they're a lot bigger in their native range. But here in the Great Lakes, so they always were able to kind of work their way into the Great Lakes in the early 1800s, through the canal system, gotten to the Great Lakes, you know, really, were able to establish themselves, because we had kind of altered our food webs so much through a number of factors. So what happens they come in they're, they're near to shore right now, if you're in a lot of places in like Lake Michigan, you can head down to the beach, and you might see whole big schools of your wife right on right next to the shore, where they're spawning. And for whatever reason, and this is, you know, one of those fun, you know, something that's been happening for a long time in the Great Lakes, but we don't have a definitive answer on why Ill wives die. It has been hypothesized that there's, you know, sort of some a temperature, you know, it's the big temperature swings. But then there's some science that said, That's not true. You know, likely it's just, they just came through winter, you know, they're already kind of stressed out. And, you know, it's hard living through our northern winters in the Great Lakes. And then spawning is stressful, and a lot of them die. And what we're seeing, we're seeing a lot more this year than we have in the last, you know, decade or so, which is probably an indicator that there's just more ill wives out there this year. And that's likely because of management decisions, cutting stocking numbers of salmon, which eat LF so, I think that's the the life story.

Stuart Carlton 12:45
Hmm. So again, it's a boy, that same thing is so complicated, and it's treated pretty extensively. Yeah. And I guess there's a book death in life in the Great Lakes. I've heard of it. Yeah. But it's true to treat it pretty extensively that we talked about it a little bit here anytime we have a fish person who would like to, but I mean, it's just, I mean, it is a human story, right? And in terms of just everything about that, okay, so that's, but the real reason we're asking is, and speaking of eating your way out of invasives, there are a lot of gopis Is that normal that they're gobies, so a wives normal. What about the gobies man?

Titus Seilheimer 13:18
Yeah, so gobies, you know, this is just in the last, you know, probably week and a half that people have been seeing a lot of dead gobies washing up the beach. And, you know, it's not unusual to see dead fish on the beach. But this is a really widespread thing. A Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries biologist that I know works in Green Bay, he spotted a bunch in Algoma. And you know, it was noteworthy because, you know, the dead gobies were outnumbering the dead ale wives, which is Yeah, at least you know what he saw in Algoma. At that time, there were you know, so that's a lot of dead gobies. And so I headed down to the beach. I took a look. I you know, started walking and same thing in Manitowoc, a ton of dead gobies on the beach and then yes, a whole range a whole range of sight like some of the you know I I do a lot of kind of shoreline sampling and I'd say two or three inches is typically what I see but we saw some true Goby dogs size like six inch you know really fat and round goby and fairly numerous two which is not typically what I would see. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 14:34
so did you That's the real question. Did you go out there and slap on the button you know,

Titus Seilheimer 14:38
I thought about it but they they just did not look that fresh. Like

Stuart Carlton 14:44
you're gonna be dogs that is that is kind of the downside with the Gobi dog is it needs to be fresh.

Titus Seilheimer 14:49
Yeah, you know, it's once it's, you know, marinated on the beach for a while. That's just not No, I don't know. Maybe they're really good that way. Yeah, so So just, you know, the Gobi story to keep going. So reports from Kenosha down the coast and actually from the Indiana DNR reports or reports a dead dead gobies over in Indiana. And so, you know, lots of fish biologists around the lake are like we're seeing it all over the place. And you know, again what is happening? Who knows? I think that is the question with any of these things. Because you know, another fish kill there's actually a carp and common carp and catfish kill recently in the last couple of weeks out of the Fox River and lower Green Bay you know, another kind of big question like what is happening and unless you can get like I could go pick up a whole bucket full of fish but when I turn up to the fish vet and I say tell me what happened to these you know, they would like slam the door in my face and tell me to never come back because you need you know, you need the sick or you know, nearly dying fish and you know, so how do you find those like we can find them on the beach but you know, I don't know I'm not going to wander out Little Lake Michigan just start plucking gobies from the bottom and you know, hoping hoping that we can learn something from from that but Michigan DNR fisheries biologists they have seen some out sent them to their their fish kind of fish state fish health person in Lansing and maybe we're gonna find something you know, what is going on?

Stuart Carlton 16:30
Keep your Yeah, keep your eye on Titus, his Twitter feed for maybe some more pictures, but also maybe some updates or So would you say Titus that you've never seen that many dead gobies in your life?

Titus Seilheimer 16:39
Yeah, it's, uh, you know, it was I spent a lot of time on the beach. And, you know, it was really this is a year of dead fish. You know, I in my decade here, I have not seen this many detail wives. I have never seen this many dead gobies,

Stuart Carlton 16:55
lord knows I have. So then sort of the short version is so dead our wives. Normal, dead gobies abnormal but TBD if it's something we need to worry about. And it seems to be a year of dying. Maybe they just have been following the news? I don't know.

Titus Seilheimer 17:11
Yeah, it could be, you know, just a lot of extra central dread in the Gobi population right now. And you know, there's actually the, if you follow kind of the bird death of botulism stories, avian botulism is something that, especially kind of Sleeping Bear Dunes area they've seen that had a lot of problems up there. So what happens there's botulism toxin is present in the environment. The quagga mussels will concentrate it just because they're, you know, to kind of go back to your factoid, you know, it's the reason the lake Lake Michigan, Lake Huron are so clear is because of that filtering action for the most part, you know, that's the driving force. And so they, they actually concentrate that gobies swim along, they eat those kind of little nuggets of botulism, they get sick, they start, you know, they're sick, they're kind of rambling around on the bottom, and then the birds are like, Oh, that's an easy fish to eat, you know, swooped down, eat that little, you know, go be dog full of botulism. And then, you know, the birds die. And this is actually back in 2000. You know, again, let's go back to Canada Day. So when I was living in Hamilton, Ontario, went down to Long Point on Lake Erie and walking the beach. And just a ton of like dead birds and dead loons. I mean, that was just blew my mind. Like, you know, I grew up with the Northwoods loons are like this rare thing that, you know, we watch them recover, and then to see all these dead ones, and that was, you know, likely a botulism outbreak. So, you know, that is something that happens, it's a Goby story, but it's, I think it's all it's a later in the summer story, too. So, I don't you know, that's probably not what's happening. But, you know, it does kind of speak to the maybe there's a pathogen, things like VHS or viral hemorrhagic septicemia, which is a virus that kills fish, and gobies are susceptible to that. So, you know, that could also be part of the story here. So let's hope we we learn more and figure out what happened.

Stuart Carlton 19:20
That sounds good. And then so in Great Lakes news, we have three stories always. Story number one Kopi Story number two, dead alive and dead gobies. Story number three, the French is ketchup company's releasing the French cycle, a ketchup flavored popsicle just in time for Canada Day. Carolyn, tell me about ketchup and Canada. What is the deal?

Carolyn Foley 19:43
So I mean, I don't know. I think the Canadians, myself included really like putting ketchup on everything. So like, I dip ketchup. I did grilled cheese and ketchup. Macaroni and cheese. It's delicious with ketchup ketchup chips, right? Yep, ketchup chips. Which ketchup chips are now in the US. When I first started living in the US, I would genuinely like bring back. People who were in my department at Purdue University would ask me to bring back bags of ketchup chips for them. And I would just go to the grocery store and get whatever was on sale. And I would bring back like, I would have like eight bags in the back of my car when I was crossing the border. And it's like, yeah, I'm taking all these ketchup chips to all my fellow student friends,

Titus Seilheimer 20:25
things like that. Well, what was wrong with them?

Carolyn Foley 20:28
Well see, so I personally do not like the ketchup chips. But I live I'll dress chips, which are good too, which are not ketchup. But anyway. Yeah, so I think Canadians have this. Like, there's a lot of us anyway, who really really really like ketchup. So to me the idea and I mean, there's like, you think about like a Bloody Mary or color. Caesar which is made with Komodo. That's kind of a similar type drink. To me like a savory popsicle. That's native ketchup would be absolutely delicious. But I know I freaked out a lot people at work when I shared

Stuart Carlton 21:04
that actually, we actually have a bonus crazy expect toy just for you. Hold on. It's a great lakes factor with a Great Lakes factoid, it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. Canada's annual intake of ketchup is more than 200,000 tonnes equivalent to more than five kilograms per person per year, which is 13 standard 400 gram bottles of ketchup now you can do the math yourself and converting that into American measures. But that is a boatload of ketchup.

Carolyn Foley 21:37
Thank you for backing up my my completely. Just gut feeling with facts. I appreciate ya.

Stuart Carlton 21:45
The only Canada is number one or two in the world and catch up consumption net connect with any guesses

Carolyn Foley 21:52
the United States of America No,

Stuart Carlton 21:54
the answer is Finland that's incredible. That is incredible. Titus we actually have a couple of colleagues of yours from Wisconsin secret on to talk about their new podcasts a watery swimming Have you heard this thing yet?

Titus Seilheimer 22:15
Yeah, I think it's great. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 22:16
it's really great. The work that y'all do podcasting. Second best, I think in the entire secret network. Well, let's uh, we'll go like so. Oh, he's holding up a sign a certificate. Look at this. Oh, and wrap podcast Gold Award. Look at that. Titus, winner of the second most prestigious podcast award in the Great Lakes also one of the most prestigious the Leakey, but regardless, well, let's move on to our interview. Tiger. Thanks for coming on the Great Lakes news. There's no closed closing theme song for it. But I'll just say thank you follow Titus on Twitter for all your fish updates.

Our guest today, we're so excited to talk to Bonnie Willison, who's a video producer with Wisconsin Sea Grant and then Hallie JAMA, who is an intern with Wisconsin Sea Grant somehow, instead of spending her college years to it's like I spent mine, some of which will not be shared on this show. They are co or she is working on this podcast. And so Bonnie and Hallie are the CO producers of the water we swim in, which is a new podcast, put out by our friends at Wisconsin secret and you may remember Bonnie, this is her second second time around on the show. She also did the fantastic introduced podcast, and if I remember correctly, was a judge on our AIS prevention strategy draft. So we're so glad to have you back. Hey, Bonnie. Hey, Holly. How are y'all?

Bonnie Willison 23:58
Good. Thanks for having us. And I also don't think I ever got to tell you all in person that we are so honored to have one Lakey for introduced this podcast, I think and eating out ologies which should definitely not have happened, but very honored about that. Yeah, well, you

Stuart Carlton 24:19
should be I mean Lakey awards not many not many people organizations, win right, that's the thing. Many will enter fuel winners they used to say before contests and cereal boxes when I was a kid,

Carolyn Foley 24:29
I really enjoyed that. You said Well, no, it should not have beat out ologies but I mean it it did beat out ology so it deserved it.

Stuart Carlton 24:36
Yeah. The Lakers are what the Lakers are, and you are a lucky winner. I'll choose not a lucky winner. Sorry, frankly, not likely to win this year either. But we'll see. We'll see. Many will enter. Few will win. What might not be the least prestigious podcast award ceremony about the Great Lakes. Right.

Carolyn Foley 24:53
So Bonnie and Hallie can you tell us a little bit about this new podcast that you've been working on?

Bonnie Willison 24:59
Sure. So, we have been working on this new podcast for Wisconsin Sea Grant. It's called the water we swim in. And it's about the Great Lakes and people working towards equity. So we've got to talk to some of the people around the Great Lakes and in Wisconsin who are doing just great work with their communities, environmental justice topics and talk to some of the people who are funded by Sea Grant who are doing really amazing work in their communities with indigenous rights and wild rice race, accessibility. So some of the stuff like that.

Carolyn Foley 25:37
Cool. And you have a really fantastic preview that I believe Stuart has queued up, Stuart, can we listen to that right now, please?

The Water We Swim In - Theme Song 25:46
We have right in our backyards, the greatest source of accessible freshwater on the entire planet. So that's the happy part. The depressing part is, all of our problems are kind of are of our own making.

Hali Jama 26:02
In Wisconsin Sea Grant, I'm Holly. And I'm Bonnie. And you're listening to the water we swim in stories about the Great Lakes and the people working towards equity.

Bonnie Willison 26:10
Twice a month, we bring you stories from the community organizers, researchers and leaders navigating Wisconsin's waters.

The Water We Swim In - Theme Song 26:16
Water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth than I just want to help take care of things. It kind of felt like I could run again,

if we let those issues be invisible.

They'll never get fixed, huge wave came by and all of a sudden it like sucked two men. Suddenly the world woke up and realized drinking water is an environmental justice issue.

You can see the passion that they have for that fish and like they love it. You know, we heard about

it in the newspaper. And it was this little blurb that said this pool is going to close. Giving access is justice. We're looking at this milky broth. The fish and I are currently making eye contact.

Bonnie Willison 26:52
Subscribe to the water we swim in wherever you get your podcasts.

Carolyn Foley 26:57
So I genuinely love your podcast trailers because they are so professional. Like we're doing this goofy, like I'm playing the organ in the basement. And you guys have that super slick interface. And there's so many interesting even in that snippet right there. It sounds like you have spoken to so many interesting people. Holly, who's whose story is the most memorable for you so far.

Unknown Speaker 27:21
Honestly, they were all pretty great. I mean, they're all people that are like making a difference in different types of issues. But for me, I would say Damian bookmans story, and like his impact was very memorable to me on the episode called Access Is Justice, he shares his story and speaks on issues of how important like accessibility is, especially in the Great Lakes are just outdoors in general. And I, my family and I just struggle with that a lot. Because we have my little brother is disabled. And notice like how much I guess you don't really notice how much access there's, there's a lack of accessibility until like, you have someone in your family like unless, like fully affects you. You don't really pay attention to him much. I think that it was just like, really great to hear his story and see people making a difference. And he even suggested like places in Minnesota that I could take my brother and like where there is access. So yeah, I really liked that episode. And I'm like, I'm excited for everybody to hear that as well.

Carolyn Foley 28:22
Awesome. But Bonnie, what's your most memorable story so far?

Bonnie Willison 28:26
Yeah, there are so many, but one I'll talk about is, so we did an episode about swimming in the Great Lakes. And the racial disparities associated with swimming, black children are five times more likely to drown than white children. And this is a problem across the nation. And we also see it play out in our cities that we know and love, like Milwaukee, communities of color have less access to pools. And we followed some community organizers who the one pool that's left in the north side of Milwaukee, the government wanted to close it a few years ago, we talked to some of those community organizers who immediately started fighting to save their pool. Cheryl Bledsoe and Sally Callen. And even though this was a few years ago, they were just so passionate still, and they were so excited to be able to talk about this. They ended up spoiler alert, being able to save their pool, but these kinds of things are still happening in our communities.

Stuart Carlton 29:31
Yeah, that's an interesting issue because well, so I grew up in the in the south, right, I was born and raised in New Orleans and the poor thing was a big deal there because the South was much more segregated and, and pools were like a line of demarcation. And so listening to that, and thinking about that and helping to talk about that issue, I think is really, really, really good. I appreciate that y'all are bringing that forward.

Carolyn Foley 29:51
I just wanted to acknowledge that I'm kind of in the same boat as Sally. I have a brother who's disabled and it's like, once you start seeing it, you see it everywhere. err, but if you without him so I mean, I, I've told people that we still make kind of decisions about, or I'll take my kids places, and I'll be like, Oh, my parents could come here with my brother, things like that, because there's a paved walkway and stuff like that. So really fantastic that you guys are tackling Well, or featuring stories about so many different issues. That's really, really cool.

Stuart Carlton 30:21
No, it is and giving that up that helping people to see that really does matter. Because you know, what you'll always hear is when there's some sort of huge gender based issue that comes up when you're like everybody else, you know, one group of people say, this is horrible, I have a daughter, and then the pushback will always be well, you should think about you shouldn't need a daughter to be a thoughtful person. Right. And I agree with that pushback. But But once I had daughters, it does change the way you see things. I think that's just natural because it expands your experience. And so one wonderful thing about this show is it helps to expand sort of the sideboards on your experience or what you you know what, yeah, in life and, and so I think that's, that's really, really good. But backing up, I actually so we hear the trailer, what was the impetus to do this? So your first podcast? Why don't fit your first first one that I became aware of so the others don't really matter? was introduced, which was all about aquatic invasive species in Wisconsin. Yes, but But you know, it's a great lakes wide issue, and I recommend anybody to listen to it. And then so you're looking for something else to do. You know, it came introduced came after two great seasons came to an end. And then why this why this very important topic as opposed to a million other very important topics.

Unknown Speaker 31:32
So I think we were looking for other topics to create other podcast series introduced, kind of came to an end just because my co host and previous intern Sydney widow, is moving on to grad school. And so it's also like looking for different topics. My boss, Moira Harrington, suggested the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion. It's something that I'm really interested in. I've been involved in Wisconsin see grants effort around that. And I think, Wisconsin cigarettes effort around DEI has kind of been renewed since the killing of George Floyd. And we've been putting a lot of work into it, we've still got a long way to go. But there were also we put a lot of effort into diversifying, who gets funding from Wisconsin Sea Grant. So putting out a special call for projects that relate to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. And we were really excited to be able to fund like four of these projects, and they're all really cool. And so there's also those opportunities to tell those stories on the podcast with the researchers and the communities that they are working with. So, for example, there's a intertribal group that's looking at Wild Rice and Wisconsin's largest inland lake, which connects to Green Bay and Lake Michigan. And I just went on a water walk with them, they do a ceremony where they walk around the whole lake. It's yeah, so. So yeah, we are able, we're just excited to be able to have all these stories that we can, you know, cover.

Carolyn Foley 33:15
So is that episode, upcoming, if you just went on the water walk with them? Or is it already out?

Bonnie Willison 33:22
Yep, that episode is upcoming.

Carolyn Foley 33:25
So what other episodes are you most looking forward to? And I guess particularly highly since you and what I'm hearing here is that if interns want to create really cool podcasts with Wisconsin Sea Grant, they may have opportunities in the future. But how what are you most looking forward to? Throughout the rest of your internship?

Hali Jama 33:45
Well, something we just started working on an episode about homelessness that I'm really, really excited to start working on me are kind of still in the researching phase. But I had found that when, because my family and I immigrated here in 2010. So when we first came here, we had place we were placed in this place called Mary Mary's Place, and Minneapolis. And while I was doing research, it came up on like the homeland homelessness area. And I've noticed that they don't only like help like people that are new to the country, they help families that are like struggling financially or just like are like, already homeless that have children, and they shelter them until they can, you know, get back into life and start working. And so I thought it would be really interesting to go back and like, I don't want to give like too much away but like to go back and see what it's like and like maybe interview Mary herself. So yeah, I'm really excited for that episode and to just see, like, what it's been how long 12 years now. So just to see how the place has been and I know they make so much impact. So I think it'd be really great for people to even learn about this place in case like there is somebody It needs help. They can always go to Mary's.

Bonnie Willison 35:03
Yeah, I'm really excited for Holly's reporting on that. And, you know, all of the ways that homelessness can tie to environmental justice with extreme weather and the extreme heat that we're seeing, you know, with climate change being an environmental justice issue. So, really excited about that upcoming episode. Yeah, I'll just throw in there. We are doing an episode upcoming as well that we talked to a lot of young people about what they want to see for the future and the future of the Great Lakes. Because we've kind of felt that young people's voices aren't usually heard in political realms, and in my normal day to day life, so I'm really excited about that episode about the next generation.

Carolyn Foley 35:51
That's fantastic. The Next Generation gives me hope. So thanks. I'll look forward to listening to that as well. So let's quickly remind people where they can listen to the water we swim in.

Stuart Carlton 36:04
Yeah, they want to go wherever podcasts are found, you say so you can look at your podcast feed. But is there like a place we should direct people to kind of specifically

Bonnie Willison 36:11
Yeah, we also have a website. So at Sea Grant dot w isc.edu. You can find our podcasts. We've got a few ongoing podcast right now fish dish is really good about fish in the Midwest, Wisconsin water news, you can still listen to introduced. But then under the water, we swim, and you can find each episode, including episode extras with photos, links and stuff like that.

Stuart Carlton 36:39
Here's the thing is I think that the work that you do is really admirable and impressive. And I really like it. I like to hear about it. And I like to help promote it because I think that nobody else frankly, nobody else in the secret network is doing quite what y'all are doing. And so I think that's important. You know, the like, i i The thing that always strikes me the most and all honesty is the amount of work it must be right? That's what I remember. Think about introducers like, oh my god, we just get up there. And you know, I make thinly veiled fart jokes for like an hour and then we send it off to quit and we're done. But y'all are like putting in music pencils. I'm so that's impressive. And it's interesting. How about that trip? But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we invited you on T Shirt off your list has two questions. The first one is this and I'm gonna ask a Hallie, because I think we've heard from Bonnie before. So Hallie, if you could choose to have a great donor for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch? Which one would you choose?

Hali Jama 37:30
Okay, yeah, me nervous because I was like, maybe what?

Stuart Carlton 37:34
You thought the show was not fundamentally stupid? No. Anyway.

Hali Jama 37:39
Okay, wait, so a doughnut or a sandwich?

Stuart Carlton 37:42
Yeah, great. Great. A great donut. Not, you know, not junk. And I'm gonna have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch. Which would you choose?

Hali Jama 37:50
Okay, I honestly would go with just the classic PB and J.

Carolyn Foley 37:57
Great sandwich for lunch. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 37:59
sandwich and a PB and J You already answered the follow up question, which is not the second question.

Carolyn Foley 38:03
But what what type of bread? Yeah, for the PB and J and what type of jam see? Yeah, so. Oh,

Hali Jama 38:08
okay. Okay. Um, bread. I like, I just as long as it's not like the white bread. I'm good. I just don't like those. I like like the brown grain. Yeah, like your bread and for jam, I really could care less. I mainly just eat it because like, it's more protein filled because of like the peanut butter and stuff, but it's good. But yeah, alright. Well,

Stuart Carlton 38:34
hold on. But so so then we got it. But I mean, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. So you have two pieces of bread there on a plate, right spread. Okay. And now your peanut butter first. One side or to

Hali Jama 38:44
one side peanut butter. One side the jam. Okay,

Stuart Carlton 38:47
that's kind of the classic. Do you put it up?

Carolyn Foley 38:49
I don't do you put it on both stores.

Stuart Carlton 38:51
I have but it just depends on what we're going for. But no, I think that's fine. I'm actually not a peanut butter and jelly militant. Some people are though. That's why it's curious. Oh, wait crunchy or crunchy or creamy. That's

Carolyn Foley 39:01
what I was gonna say crunchy or creamy.

Hali Jama 39:03
I like creamy.

Carolyn Foley 39:06
Yeah, there's like fights in my house where it's like you can't bring creamy into the house like, Well, no, that's that can't be a title because I'm not a guest. But I know.

Stuart Carlton 39:16
It could be a title.

Carolyn Foley 39:19
So yeah, so crunchy. Peanut butter isn't no no to me.

Stuart Carlton 39:23
All right. All right. And I'll give you my cigarettes. But here we go while we're doing this. So here's my invented peanut butter. I don't have a good name for it. Maybe I'll call it the teaching about the Great Lakes. Here's what you do. Two pieces of bread right? Toasted if you want. You can tell us you don't have to lightly toe so and they lay down peanut butter on one side. jelly on the other side and you thinly slice Apple to lay that down on the peanut butter side. And then on the jelly side, take pickled jalapeno slices to boom, put it on there cut up on the diagonal and thank me later. Okay, the second question is this. One of the goals of this podcast rather than discussing sandwich recipes, or ask me out the spicy reader sometime, is to kind of build a community around the Great Lakes and help people realize what a special place it is. Right? So I think we'll go both you this time because I think Bonnie, this wasn't our question last time we had. So Bonnie, why don't you lead us? Is there a special place in the Great Lakes? So you'd like to share with our audience? Maybe it's something you learned about during this, you know, producing your show or maybe some other time. But is there a special place you'd like to share? And if so, what makes it special?

Bonnie Willison 40:27
Well, I'm kind of thinking of Lake Winnebago, the lake I talked about earlier, Wisconsin's largest lake because we've got the healthiest lake sturgeon population, I think in the world. And I didn't know about them a few years ago, you know, but now I've gone up to the northern part of the lake in the spring and you can see them spawn and they're, like five feet long and they're just moseying around, like, on the banks, and it draws tourists and yeah, I'm like Winnebago ties into the Great Lakes. So I would say that I love the all the fish tourism I've learned about,

Carolyn Foley 41:04
that's really awesome. My kids are currently at a Nietzsche camp where the tshirt, like has a picture of a lake sturgeon on it, and I was so excited. And it was Yeah. And also, Lake Sturgeon did not win a lake. But in my heart. No, it did well, but I actually called out that if Carolyn was here, she would be arguing.

Stuart Carlton 41:23
Carolyn had the option to appear on that episode shows

Carolyn Foley 41:26
that Lake Winnebago takes bunny. How would you Halle?

Hali Jama 41:31
Okay. So I haven't really explored lakes and like Wisconsin, I'm from Minnesota. So what I used to do a lot growing up was, this is only in Minnesota. So you'd have to go visit Minnesota. But we would always pick up my friends and I would go to Punch Pizza, like towards the last days of school, we'd go to Punch Pizza. And then we would go to this lake called Starling lake in Eden Prairie. And it was just really pretty. We also took a lot of field trips there when we were kids. Sometimes we would just like for science class, they would make us sit in the cold and listen for birds, which wasn't the best memory because I was freezing. But I've always loved that like and just like going back was always really fun.

Stuart Carlton 42:11
That is wonderful. Well, Bonnie Willison, video producer with Wisconsin, Scranton, Halle JAMA, co producer and intern. They're both co producers actually, they're really wonderful the water we swim in. Don't think of this podcast as vegetables, people. I mean, you should listen to it because it's good to listen to. But it's also entertaining. It's unlike this well produced. Their music is alarmingly competent. And so it's really worth to go to check out. So look in the show notes for links, subscribe to the podcast, it's a couple times a month. Super interesting little bit of raging in the but the good kind of emerging. So Bonnie and Hallie, thank you for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Hali Jama 42:51
Thanks so much for having us.

Bonnie Willison 42:53
Thank you for having us. This was really fun.

Stuart Carlton 43:18
It's always great to see the cool work that Barney is up to and what they do at Wisconsin secret. And I think of it it's funny that they mentioned that I think of it as like, in many ways, the moral Sea Grant Program. You know, they really are, they do a lot of heartfelt, great work on issues related to dei and other things. And I'm always so impressed with them.

Carolyn Foley 43:36
Yeah. And they're also just like, really, really nice people. Thank you. I mean, we've featured a number of Wisconsin secret stuff on this show, partly because they've been doing such cool stuff,

Stuart Carlton 43:45
partly because they're also a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to point out though, is, since you mentioned the the hard work that they are doing to try to make their research competitions more inclusive. And I bring this up because I know you would not. And that is I'm also really impressed by the work that our research coordinator Carolyn Foley does on that it's it's really challenging, because academia like life, privileges, a certain type of people who work at a certain type of institution, right? And it's it's very easy to find people on like a major research universities, and who have been really successful in the past. And that's good to do, but it leaves behind potentially some other people. And so Carolyn has worked really hard to make our process more inclusive. And I mean, the results are there to see so I really impressed with the work you do on that Carolyn, and I thank you for it.

Carolyn Foley 44:39
Thank you. And yeah, it's sometimes good to be someone who likes interesting challenges and likes to find yes solutions, if she can.

Teach me about the Great Lakes games brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant you We encourage you to check out the great work we do. I see grants.org And I Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. I also feel the need to really acknowledge Wisconsin Sea Grant helped us out a lot.

Stuart Carlton 45:16
I mean, I agree Carolyn, but the thing is duly acknowledged but they wouldn't want our show anywhere new. They're beautifully professionally produced podcast fill this out of here. About the

Carolyn Foley 45:27
Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, and fully making done and any miles. Ethan is our associate producer and fixer are super fun podcast artwork is edited by the awesome Queen Rose, and I encourage you to check her workout firing robot.com If you have a question or comment about the show, for example, we're okay with your production levels. Please email it to teach me about the great [e-mail] or leave a message on our hotline multiple phone at 765496 I guess you can also follow the show at Twitter, on Twitter and reading those things

Titus Seilheimer 46:27
you're welcome