Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. 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, as people are smarter and harder working than I am teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and right now is when I normally put in some sort of obnoxious thing about something I do know but I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. But we do not have time for that tonight. Whereby tonight I mean this morning because it is the special time of year everybody's favorite time of year, it is time for the 2022 Lake ease. That's right, quite possibly not the least prestigious, Great Lakes related award ceremony that there is podcast division, and I'm excited to be joined on the red carpet while I'm walking down the red carpet right now. Happy to be joined on the red carpet by Carolyn Foley and hope charter. It's Carolyn in person, how are things for you?

Carolyn Foley 1:00
I am doing well. Thank you and my shoes are quiet because I'm wearing running shoes.

Stuart Carlton 1:05
That's right, she's wearing running shoes, I am wearing high heels.

Hope Charters 1:11
Which I'm gonna say that I'm wearing house slippers because they're the comfy is

Stuart Carlton 1:16
a pair of house slippers every year I told myself, I'm gonna get those llbean ones, this is not a recommendation. But then I looked at her like $90. And then every year I'm like I should have

Hope Charters 1:26
got these secondhand be sustainable,

Stuart Carlton 1:28
solid point, second foot in this case. So that aside, this is the linkys award, I want to give a little bit of background on this before we get into it. So the reason that we have the linkys is kind of two or three fold the first fold is because I thought of the name lakeith and all honesty, it's what it was there's like there's gotta be some like ease if there's going to be like ease might as well be are leaky. So that was reason number one. Reason number two is like, you know, we learned about all this cool stuff. But that's only some of the cool stuff that's out there, in terms of Great Lakes Science, outreach, you know, communication, doughnuts, of course, sandwiches or whatever. And so we really want to celebrate that. And then kind of the third fold and this threefold reason a tripartite set of reasons, I suppose, is that award ceremonies are kind of fundamentally silly. And in that they're a little bit arbitrary, a little bit random, there's often behind the scenes politicking going on. And so we thought it would be fun to sort of just, you know, do that live on air, so that people can hear that and so we we

Unknown Speaker 2:31
we have decided that

Stuart Carlton 2:34
and so, so we are going to present the lake ease to you. Now big disappointment, we don't have any special leakiest music ready. So I guess

Carolyn Foley 2:45
dTT dddd, dddd dddd do

Hope Charters 2:49
you have to do the hand moments with it to not quite jazz hands, not quite jazz fingers, but just imagine that.

Stuart Carlton 2:58
Okay, so as a reminder, we've been asking listeners over the last several weeks or months to to nominate different work for the Lakers, and so the listeners have chimed in. And we've brought some of our own things to the to the table as well. And so we're gonna go category by category, looking at the different nominees talking about some of them, and we will choose generally one or two runners up, and we will choose a Leakey award winner. And as a reminder, it's just something we think is notable. We're not of course, the arbiters of quality, although we secretly think we are. And so it's just something wonderful. And we're gonna send them this year we got certificates as soon as they make certificates, we've got swag as soon as we get more swag printed, and we'll be sending all that surely, sometime in the next eight months. To the to the Leakey award winners. Alright, first category, the First Lady's category is Great Lakes news event of the year. So a lot of news in the Great Lakes. So what is the biggest news event in the air? And I've got a couple from the audience. The audience voted for the Great Lakes Water Quality agreement. 50th anniversary, that's big news, isn't it? Carolyn?

Carolyn Foley 4:00
Yes, it absolutely is extremely important.

Stuart Carlton 4:02
So you're a water quality agreement fan, you stay in for the water quality agreement, what what is what is so important about this?

Carolyn Foley 4:09
I mean, I think that what's really incredible about it is that, you know, people sometimes forget that the Great Lakes are an international location, there are two countries that are interested in it. And so the fact that they could come together 50 years ago, and make some plans to try to improve the waterways for everyone who lives around them with some solid movements, and there has been so much work since then. So it's pretty cool. Kind of

Stuart Carlton 4:37
amazing. Yeah, it really is. And I think that didn't rational thing is important. And we did speak in our last episode with Chris Cholesky, the director of Glencoe about the water quality agreement, and it was a nice conversation. And another point he meant is that, you know, part of people are often left out, intentionally or otherwise are the tribal organizations to and that's an important part of that. That's a fair point. Yep. Okay, great. That was one another audio Gibbs nomination is Mike Sherman. Oh, I

Hope Charters 5:02
love this nomination. So he is the first disabled man to cross all the great lakes on a paddleboard this summer. And apparently there's going to be a documentary about it coming out next year.

Stuart Carlton 5:13
Yeah. So we're excited about that. And he was diagnosed with Ramsay hunt syndrome, and paddleboard was part of his sort of return to physical and mental wellness. So I think that, to me is really great because it reminds me of how a resource like the lakes can be whole person wellness, right, I think is part of the part of the dealer. Those are two great audience nominations. My my nomination that I'd like to bring is the Enbridge line five, you know, it's just something new, right? Great Lakes Water Quality agreement is very big, but it's it's, you know, it's 50 years old. So very important. But it's something that's kind of ongoing a live issue right now is the Enbridge line five pipeline. And so if you don't know what that is, that's an oil pipeline from Wisconsin to Ontario. It was built in 1953, supposed to last about 50 years, but it's actually still in use. And so in the last year, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and the DNR, they revoked the easement. So, so that the pipeline would have to get shut down. But the pipeline still operating as this works its way through court. And it's a fairly contentious issue. You know, like it's a binational complex, Great Lakes story. The Canadian government has filed briefs favoring keeping the pipeline open. The US government is preparing an environmental impact statement. You know, but it's a it's a real working pipeline. It's spilled, you know, like a million plus gallons of oil in the Great Lakes over the last 50 years. Right. But

Carolyn Foley 6:28
it's also important for you know, that to have economics and stuff like that, like a whole bunch of Ontario strongly relies on that pipeline, which is why it's such a contentious issue.

Stuart Carlton 6:38
And in that way, I think it's kind of representative of a lot of what the Great Lakes is, right is how do we balance that stuff? And that's why I think that's a that's a very worthy nominee as well.

Carolyn Foley 6:47
Yep. So my, I mean, I am very bad at making decisions. But this is one of the categories I actually felt pretty strongly about that the nomination about mcdorman being a disabled person, cross all the great lakes on a paddleboard, that to me is just, it's a story. It's a new story, but it signifies lakes being accessible as all sorts of different types of people and that people could go around. And just, I was getting that sent that story sent to me by multiple family members and things like that, like, Hey, did you see this so really inspires just the love of the lakes? Right?

Hope Charters 7:24
I think that my vote is for the mike Sherman story. Also, I am also disabled, I have type one diabetes. And so I just like really connected with this on a human level. It just really pulled on my emotions. And so I think that's why I just love the story.

Stuart Carlton 7:39
Well, it sounds like I'm gonna be out voted to two one. So the winner of the Great Lakes news event of the year is the Terry Fox of the Great Lakes himself, Mike Charmin. So congrats to Mike and we will have a runner up. Runner up will be Enbridge, line five, hopefully someone's making a note of this. Okay, moving on category to the Great Lakes research finding of the year. And so a lot of good things were nominated for this. Carolyn, did you have one that you wanted to call out?

Carolyn Foley 8:15
Sure. So there was an article that was sent in by temana. Yasmin, who is a PhD candidate, and has an article in Nature, looking at kind of how sea lamprey like the thing about sea lamprey is that people for as long as they've been around for as much as people have been concerned about their effects on the Great Lakes, people still don't really know necessarily all that much. So any additional information because you know, there are these kinds of key these key species in the Great Lakes that kind of drive. So many different things that happen and sea lamprey is absolutely one of those. So any additional information about that I think is pretty awesome.

Hope Charters 9:00
I like the nomination of Miriam diamond from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, she published an article about children's school uniforms as a source of pee fast. and wastewater systems are not designed to filter out pee fast. So these chemicals will eventually end up in the Great Lakes as its sources are widespread. And I think that really shows how everything that we do in our lives can lead to harming the environment. And so we have to think even about what clothes we wear.

Stuart Carlton 9:28
And that's the you know, they call them so called Forever chemicals, right? And so that is kind of a critical, critical, Great Lakes everywhere issue and seeing the fact that it's in school uniforms, I thought that was really really striking as well. My nomination is actually not one from the audience. It's it's a paper written by I apologize on the name here but it's it's a paper called Six decades of Lake Ontario ecological history, according to benzos and it was published by Lyubov Birla Cova and many other co authors in the In the Journal Great Lakes research, including Ashley Elgin, who we had on talking about that and other papers. And what I like about this one is they look at 50 plus years of data in Lake Ontario. And you can see how the eagle ecosystem is sort of transformed over those times, like with the introduction of tricentis, which are the muscles and, and then how like the zooplankton have almost disappeared, other mollusks have greatly declined and things like that. And what I like about this, this is the importance of long term datasets and government research programs and stuff like that. Because if this stuff isn't being collected over time, it doesn't exist. You can't go back and get 25 year old data or 50 year old data. And so that, to me, is something that's really important part of the Great Lakes story, an important part of what we've talked about. And so then, yeah, so those are three great things we got to choose, right, only one can win a Leakey. So what I would say is hope I agree about the P FOSS stuff, but I think that might come up in just a couple of minutes. So if we can hold the P FOSS story, I think maybe one of these other papers. Does that work for you? Yeah. Okay. So Carolyn, what do you think? And we got? We got Lake Ontario history. 50 years, Lake Ontario, which touches Canada?

Carolyn Foley 11:07
A portion of it? Yeah. So that team does a lot of incredible work with a lot of data sets and things like that. So, again, I'm very bad at I do want to give a shout out to a couple of other nominees to maybe we'll put links to them in the show note that there's a couple of other pretty awesome publications that have come out but yeah, I'm totally fine with the Leakey going to the team from Buffalo State.

Stuart Carlton 11:30
Fantastic. In that case,

Carolyn Foley 11:32
we will have led by a flow state.

Stuart Carlton 11:34
Yeah, that's a very broad team. So the runner up will be

Carolyn Foley 11:37
Yasmine, led by PhD candidate to mana Yasmin about sea

Stuart Carlton 11:42
lamprey. Yeah, very cool. And that was the one that was in I mean, that was in a nature publication. Yeah, that's pretty pretty PhD candidate wants major didn't hear my work, shall we say? Great. But the Leakey you know what, I'm not gonna do a drumroll every time because that would be stupid. But the Leakey goes to, in this case, six decades of Lake Ontario ecological history, according to benthos. And congrats to all there was Katie O'Reilly going Whoo. All right. Next up now is where it starts to get contentious. Now we're really elbow deep into the lake ease Great Lakes animal of the year, Great Lakes animal of the year.

Carolyn Foley 12:16
Sorry, I jumped in

Stuart Carlton 12:19
Cisco. So tell me about Cisco. Do you know what Cisco is? I'm thinking like wireless routers or food delivery, you know, like institutional food. Tell me about the fish called the Cisco and why isn't it called the fish go?

Carolyn Foley 12:31
I I cannot answer that particular question. But Cisco are fish that historically were present in the Great Lakes. And there have been they are extremely important to indigenous people around the Great Lakes. They provide they were an important part of the foodweb. And they sort of tanked for a while and there are efforts to sort of reintroduce them. They're just kind of like I'm not a fish person. And I think Cisco are kind of cool. So but ya know, they are I don't know, they're important. So there's this thing called Cisco Inferno, Cisco and if you look hashtag Cisco Inferno on social media it's like just tons of people who are doing cool research gathering different stuff or people

Hope Charters 13:13
dancing with their Cisco i i don't know a Cisco Inferno people. Can

Carolyn Foley 13:18
you like tweet at Teach Great Lakes? And well, as long as we're still on there, potentially also connect with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant other ways, but yeah, and tell us

Stuart Carlton 13:30
the only Inferno going on right.

Carolyn Foley 13:33
All right. What's your vote hope?

Hope Charters 13:35
Um, I love dogs. I will always be a fan of Goby dogs. Whoever nominated that. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 13:42
Are you with the goofy dog? I'll be honest. My vote is actually it's gonna be a past leaky winter. So last year, the leakage animal the air was the piping clovers. We'd like to think of holding the cotton balls with toothpick legs this year. Monty maybe the most famous piping plover in the world, not necessarily a large group to choose from, especially in Great Lakes. But Monty died and we've had a number of episodes on Monty and Rose has gotten missing. We're not sure what the status with her is. And and grief is the status. Grief is the status. She might have died of a broken heart

It would be weird after two years of late he's already have a repeat winner but if we are going to have a repeat winner, I think it should be Monty and Rose that's specific to piping pullovers rather than the general concept of piping pullovers. That was an animal of the year last year.

Hope Charters 14:36
Do people still say poor went out for my homies

Carolyn Foley 14:43
I am so out of touch.

Stuart Carlton 14:45
I've heard that expression. And so since I've heard it, probably not. Usually it's it's that then they pour one out for that when they heard me saying it. Yeah, so we should. We should at least pour one out for hopes homies. Yep. To be real, so

Carolyn Foley 15:00
I've already expressed my strong opinion for Cisco, but I also defer to either of you, whatever you all think.

Hope Charters 15:06
I mean, I don't know. I guess I'll go with piping clovers. Martine rose. Yeah, just specifically Monty and Rose.

Stuart Carlton 15:13
We can't nominate the podcast network for Leakey all right all right tn bro monsoon rose leaky winter runner up Cisco you know if they want to win they could change their name to fish go just putting that out. Okay, next, the Great Lakes non animal of the year Great Lakes non animal of the year and this is a pretty broad category since it potentially encompasses everything that is not an animal

Carolyn Foley 15:40
so I want to disqualify one of the nominations. I'm about to nominate someone said Dr. Fish Dr. Fish is an animal that was the one that

Stuart Carlton 15:53
I won't call them out on the podcast but I have a feeling that they've appeared on two episodes around Halloween actually might not have been them but regardless regardless yeah someone went into nominated Titus for every category which is fine. Yeah, that one can be this

Hope Charters 16:09
really hope it was Titus

Carolyn Foley 16:13
this guy disqualify for non animal of the year because humans are animals. All right, hope who's your nominee for this non animal?

Hope Charters 16:19
Um, I just really like the description on this one. The majestic white pine

Carolyn Foley 16:24
Justic white pine dreamily important plant? Yes,

Stuart Carlton 16:28
I would assume I don't know a ton about white pine. It's not a Christmas tree. That's what I go about it.

Carolyn Foley 16:32
Yeah, I'm pretty sure and I apologize whoever nominated if I'm incorrect, but I'm pretty sure that they were historically fairly important in like uni ecology and stuff and like shoreline along. And so people have been similar to the Cisco who they have potentially been trying to reintroduce them also through beautiful, all right.

Stuart Carlton 16:50
Fantastic. And my nomination is the sailing vessel inland seas 77 foot tall ship schooner that acts as an educational platform to connect people around the Great Lakes with water. And this is part of the ship school. inland seas is this organization. And we feature them on our social media as a leaky nominee for actually in a different category. But I think that's ship itself because I look at this 77 foot tall schooner and I think to myself, I would like to have a 77 foot tall schooner for Illinois-Indiana, Sea Grant or Gobi dog media or whatever, the SS spill or SV spill house, whatever. And so I see that I'm like, boy, that is a very solid non animal of the year nominee.

Carolyn Foley 17:27
Yeah, and I mean, the, the programming that they're doing is really, really awesome. Um, so I will, I will throw in the nomination because it's cracked me up coontail that's an aquatic macrophytes. So a plant and the description is it's so soft and fun to snorkel through my recollection of coontail when sampling wetlands was that it was really annoying if you had long hair because it potentially got stuck in your hair mud. Perhaps it is fun to snorkel through. But yeah, I'm going to mention that one, though. I think my vote goes toward the inland seas.

Hope Charters 18:03
So when I read that nomination, I actually thought they were talking about a raccoons tail.

Carolyn Foley 18:08
Looks kind of fishy, so I I could see whoever says it's fun, but it also can kind of get stuck but maybe it's anyway, I won't go on about macrophytes

Stuart Carlton 18:22
Thank you for that. We don't want to hear it. No, that's for sure. Great Lakes back to the ER All right. Well, in that case, I think we've got two votes for it. And so the the Great Lakes non animal in the air is going to be the sailing vessel inland seas, so congrats to them. Keep playing Katie. Oh Riley going. Fantastic. All right, the intensity continues. So this one is tough because we haven't traveled much. But this might be the most important among the most important categories and that is Great Lakes sandwich of the air, or as Craig calls it, Sandow OF THE YEAR Great Lakes Sandow of the year. And so we got a lot of good audience votes. Carolyn is our sandwich that you would like to feature.

Carolyn Foley 19:08
Absolutely the falafel pita. There's a lovely, lovely description. Vegetarian, halal, inexpensive, portable, hearty and tasty beloved the world over and available in most Great Lakes cities. It can be enjoyed in by most in the Great Lakes watershed pays homage to immigrants who settled in the Great Lakes cities for economic opportunity, and it connects us to the rest of the world. It's also flippin delicious, so yep, very strong. Yes, for falafel for me.

Stuart Carlton 19:38
I agree. This is a case where a strong nomination really helped. Right? So

Carolyn Foley 19:41
like the sandwich itself?

Stuart Carlton 19:42
Yes, my wife gets. Absolutely, absolutely. My My concern is is that if you wanted to make sort of the if you could really make this a lot better by making a falafel pasty. Like think about that. And then, yeah, it would really be multicultural in that way and it'd be much more lakes oriented because this is a sandwich that doesn't exist outside of the Great Lakes. Right. And so I think that it could be improved upon.

Carolyn Foley 20:07
I'm pretty sure there are people who create pasties that have like chickpea, yeah type,

Stuart Carlton 20:12
but that's not what's nominated I

Carolyn Foley 20:13
understand but you know what? I'm gonna go for falafel

Hope Charters 20:19
My vote is obviously again going to go for go. Also, can I just say that I'm really glad that nobody nominated Titus for this one.

Carolyn Foley 20:29
Oh, yeah, that would be a little bit awkward.

Stuart Carlton 20:31
Yeah, falafel. Pete. I mean, obviously go read. Our question is, is that a sandwich? But that's a debate from several years ago whether or not that would be a sandwich.

Hope Charters 20:39
Yeah, I was just joking. I definitely go with the falafel pita.

Stuart Carlton 20:41
Right. Well, it sounds like our falafel pita is gonna take it. I'm gonna go runner up the white fish sandwich from the Oh, boy. No. culinary school.

Hope Charters 20:51
Stewart does not know French, or can not read it at all.

Stuart Carlton 20:55
storage footprint from first grade through college.

Hope Charters 20:58
Well, how did you why did you pause

Stuart Carlton 21:01
then, because they took Cajun French runner out there. In the falafel pita. It's gonna be hard to send a certificate to a falafel pita. But we'll

Carolyn Foley 21:10
actually just encourage everybody to go if you've never tried one before code, try one. falafels. Really, really awesome.

Stuart Carlton 21:16
It's a check. I mean, you probably had it or audiences, you know. But if you haven't, it's just a it's a chicken.

Carolyn Foley 21:23
Let them go learn.

Stuart Carlton 21:24
Oh, let them go learn.

Hope Charters 21:26
Don't be surprised. You didn't tell them what it is.

Carolyn Foley 21:29
Don't don't?

Stuart Carlton 21:31
Yeah. Oh, this one I actually this one is good. This one is good. We had a couple of audience votes that I think are worth calling out. Before my nomination in the pumpkin donut, Jenny's farmstand and Dexter, Michigan, I love the specificity of this nomination. And second of all, it's seasonal and a farmstand. Right. I mean, this is so great. So one great thing about this area compared to the south is where I'm from is we have we have a fall. And this fall was amazing this year, incidentally. And so when you think about it being decorative gourd season, my friends, that's a lot more meaningful here than it is elsewhere. And so when I see that it's really really nice.

Carolyn Foley 22:04
I honestly was also going to vote for I mean, I wanted to expand it past the pumpkin doughnuts at Jenny's farmstand and Dexter, Michigan to cider and pumpkin donuts around the Great Lakes Basin because they are I mean

Hope Charters 22:18
tasty. They've never had one now you guys are like for real? Yeah. Oh

Carolyn Foley 22:22
my goodness. They are. Yeah. And like they're just nice. Yeah. So

Hope Charters 22:28
all right, writing that on my my wish list for Craig to make me pumpkin. Or next

Carolyn Foley 22:33
fall head up the side of Lake Michigan there and stop somewhere. Yeah. All right. Perfect.

Hope Charters 22:38
I think my vote is for the vegan cake doughnut because I've been trying to eat more vegan stuff. Not because I am vegan. But just to try it out. See

Stuart Carlton 22:49
be a little healthier. So climate that is

Hope Charters 22:51
from Cafe doughnuts on Monroe Street in Toledo. What I

Stuart Carlton 22:54
like about that is a number of the guests that we've had on who have voted for gonna have been vegan and said vegan donut somewhere. So I think it's a big refuge for people. Otherwise, sometimes I have trouble finding things to eat right? Especially. Yeah, so that's really great. And they sort of just glaze over the yeast thing. And that's fine. And

Carolyn Foley 23:11
know that maybe they literally glaze over

Stuart Carlton 23:19
all right, well, y'all can pick what you want. But I do have a vote that I that I want to put out there Medici Long John or cream stick is our friend Jay calls it from Ben Huston's Benson's in Evanston, Illinois. This is a donut that was so good. He got banned from teach me about the Great Lakes. And so it got redacted anyway from teaching you about the Great Lakes. And so I want to call out Benson's cream stick. Yeah, I couldn't be recommended is all exciting. Sounds good.

Hope Charters 23:44
I think my official vote is gonna go for the pumpkin doughnut because now I really, really want to try one.

Stuart Carlton 23:49
Yep, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin cider donuts? Well, we'll say well, if we can combine those two, I'm on board with that. If it's just pumpkin. I can post

Carolyn Foley 23:55
an insider but I think the official certificate should go to Jenny's farmstand extra

Stuart Carlton 24:00
swag. As soon as we get that printed. Cool. Remind me we need to figure out what swag is. Okay. Fantastic. All right, rolling through now that teach me about the Great Lakes fact of the year. And the coolest thing you learned on teach me about the Great Lakes. Now this is a challenging category for me because as you may know, listener, I am completely incompetent. And so actually recording takes up all of my mental ability to make sure that I haven't like deleted something or lost a question or you know, broken my computer. So the dirty little secret of this podcast is that I barely pay any attention to what the guests are saying until I listen. Or I pay attention but I forget to remember it. But I go back through my notes and I do have one but I would love to hear your and this one is the audience nominee actually for me and it's my nominee as well. But what do we got? Anybody got a cool fact from teaching about the

Hope Charters 24:51
Great Lakes? Cats contain high levels of fire retardant?

Stuart Carlton 24:55
Yeah, that is the one that I have as well hope and that that comes from all the pee FOSS. It's in like couches and And, you know, we learned about this on TV three times to write retardants you know anything a lot of things in your house and your cats they snuggle and they lick stuff and they purr and inhale and and all that and they get really filled up with all of these forever chemicals and we learned about this on TV about the Great Lakes episode something with Mirta veneer.

Carolyn Foley 25:19
Yeah, which that was a great episode if you haven't listened to it's so engaging and really good at talking about these things that are to me very difficult to wrap my head around sometimes so

Stuart Carlton 25:29
and you can find that interview at teach me about the release.com/fifty 252 because that was episode 52. Or she talked about all these forever chemicals.

Carolyn Foley 25:37
So the person who nominated this included in their nomination sad but memorable and for me personally, this one is sad a little bit too because the kitty that was there he has passed on. So my Megatron there so anyway, so for another one out from my home. Yep, pour another one out. And but I was so he would like hang out with me all the time while recording this and it was hilarious. So I'm very happy to put my vote toward that one for factor there, though. I do appreciate that. Someone noted that it gets pretty rowdy at live recordings during conferences.

Stuart Carlton 26:14
That is a very good runner up. Yeah. If you haven't been one of our live recordings are super fun. There's beer.

Carolyn Foley 26:19
We're planning on doing another one at either 2023 probably

Stuart Carlton 26:23
gonna have at least three next year. Oh

Carolyn Foley 26:25
goodness gracious.

Stuart Carlton 26:26
I Agler 2023 The Great Lakes secret network meeting. And then we've been invited invited, invited to do a live podcast at the contaminants of emerging concern. Conference.

Hope Charters 26:37
It looks so smug right now.

Stuart Carlton 26:41
We were invited by someone who works for secret.

Carolyn Foley 26:46
Cool, so So contain high levels of

Stuart Carlton 26:50
unusually high levels of flame retardants. There it is. That is your leaky winter. I forgot Katie O'Reilly Hold on. Here she comes. podcast of the year. So this one, we said Science Podcast and you and I actually haven't listened to as many science but I'll be honest, the main podcasts I've been listening to this year, I really got into Judge John Hodgman. Have you heard this? Now? Really, really good. You know, John Hodgman, right. He was on PC and the old Mac and PC commercials. And he used to have a regular thing on The Daily Show. Back when Jon Stewart was on there, back when Iraq and and but but people send in disputes, and he adjudicates disputes and the reason they started the show was because you know, he's really good at sounding pompous. And Mike like he wrote this book before any of this, he wrote this book called something like the areas of my expertise, which was just this really hilarious book in which it's complete BS. But it was really fun, and the audiobook was fun. But this podcast, people send them their really stupid disputes, and he adjudicates them. But he does it in a way that is so empathetic, and like, thoughtful, and it's like a stunning podcast to listen to, which I really, really enjoy. And it really, yeah, make you laugh, make you think, probably not make you cry. I mean, the other podcasts that I've really been enjoying, because all everything is alive. And this one just boggles my mind. It's actually what it is, is it's somebody interviews, inanimate objects, like a lamppost, or a Roomba. And they have they have improvisational comedy people play the inanimate objects. And it also is actually really kind of touching in a weird way. Like, just go listen to the first episode where I think at the interview, I think it's a can of Coke. And um, I won't get there, like 1520 minutes, I won't get away how it ends, but I like gasped, and then, like, anyway, just mind blowing. I absolutely love. It

Hope Charters 28:33
almost reminds me of the teaching about the Great Lakes episode where you interviewed with the buoy. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 28:38
well, we found out about this after. And if we could do a buoy, if the buoys were in that vibe, we would do that. But I think the amount of work frankly, I

Carolyn Foley 28:50
don't know what you're talking about. You talk directly to the police. Right. But what is our Science Podcast, we'd like to bring up one that was nominated for multiple categories. And we spoke with some of the producers of this, the water we swim in, which is a podcast produced by our colleagues at Wisconsin Sea Grant. And it just tells a lot of interesting stories in interviews, like stories that need to be heard, frankly, so yep, so that's the one that I will vote for

Stuart Carlton 29:21
came. Fantastic. And

Hope Charters 29:23
I am also going to vote for that one. And it is currently up for a signal award. So if you'd like to vote for it, check it out and go give him a vote. Yeah. Do you listen? Of course.

Stuart Carlton 29:32
Yeah. Well, no, don't listen, that's not true. Just go get

Carolyn Foley 29:36
it after you listen, right

Stuart Carlton 29:38
after you listen, while you're listening. Not both. But ya know, it's really high quality work. And I talked about this I'll be honest, I haven't finished the season because it's just I don't listen to podcasts as much as I don't commute every day. But it's really high quality work. This is from Bonnie Wilson and and the folks at Wisconsin secret and they want to Leakey last year for introduced and I'll be honest into As a production, I think this is even better than introduce and I think the topic is equally or more important in a different way than invasive species. So every time I see Bonnie, I tell her that I am in awe and I'm very happy for that to be this year's Leakey winner. And one other one that I would like to mention is lakes cat by the Alliance for the Great Lakes. And what I like about that is they're talking about lakes, Great Lakes issues, and there are not a lot of podcasts. In fact, I think there are two that talk about Great Lakes issues broadly. And so I appreciate what they're doing. But no, I think that the easy choice here is the water we swim in. Okay, we're rounding about. We're rounding the corner near the final stretch. I was gonna do a sports metaphor, but maybe that's not our deal. But first,

Carolyn Foley 30:45
I was an athlete, but even though I was an athlete, I was not an athlete. So yeah.

Stuart Carlton 30:51
But first, we're gonna have a wildcard we let people sort of do a wildcard nomination and we take some of those in some of these might become categories in the future. Some of them might just not so who knows. But for the nominee, I think since somebody nominated Titus, for every award, I think it's important. We should have the Great Lakes Titus of the year as a Leakey. And the reason for this is that you know, the work that Titus Tyrell Heimer Dr. Fish SG on Twitter is amazing. He says good at anyone, as anyone to communicating like science, his passion for fish, you know, he'll just send out videos of in the field as far as I can tell, he just goes to beautiful places, takes videos, post them on social media. You know, he

Hope Charters 31:29
gets I'm sure that's all he does.

Stuart Carlton 31:32
As far as I can tell, he points people to you know, like important papers. He's a passionate advocate. I also like that, you know, during the work from home period, you know, early in COVID, I would be on conference calls with him. And if it was at noon, central time, he would like be on the call outside grilling and stuff like that. That's that's pretty admirable. Plus, he's the titular Dr. Fish, right one of the two titular Dr. fishes and as Dr. Fish. So I think all of that's really great, which is why I think Titus is the runner up for Great Lakes Titus of the year, the winner for Great Lakes tighter Titus, Titus, really Winders, a junior at Southern Indiana University, and one of the key members of their indoor track and field team. He is the school record holder for the 3000 meters a sixth time, Great Lakes Valley Conference, indoor track athlete of the week, and truly a deserving Titus of the year. So our Great Lakes Titus of the year goes through Titus winter of southern Indian versity. And the runner up is the mighty time nominated Titus Seidel. Heimer.

Carolyn Foley 32:31
Neither any of this and we are both staring at Stewart like Alright, I'm gonna get away from that another nomination was about Great Lakes art, and there were some really great art. Oh, my goodness. Sorry, story, Titus story. All right. So now another nominee was Bugsy sailor, and the year of the sunrise. Cool, check this out, man this person is is going around, mostly in Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula, but also all sorts of different places. And the photos, they resolved to take a photo a day. And they are stunningly beautiful. And

Stuart Carlton 33:29
yeah, it's really nice. And it's been a moment of serenity. I've started following that. Since I saw the nomination, and it's really nice. And it's a nice way to start. And the other thing is that I don't I don't know how long this will last. It's been a few years already. But it is data in its own way to

Carolyn Foley 33:43
it absolutely is. Yep. And people can yes, that's I won't go off on data either.

Stuart Carlton 33:51
Well, we will have a wild card lake you then for the Great Lakes art of the year. Okay, now these next two are in some ways, the big ones in some ways not right. And so these are always hard for us, because first of all, all the cigarette nominations are done by our friends and colleagues. And, and also it's really hard to compare like a tick tock account to you know, like the Center for Great Lakes literacy, you know, unlike what they're going for, or Yeah, and so that's that you're the Great Lakes aquaculture collaborative to like beach ambassadors. And so we always really struggled with what to do here. And there's so many great, great, great things. And so we're going to start with the Great Lakes Science Communication Product of the Year. And so do you have a nominee that you would like to point out?

Carolyn Foley 34:37
One of the nominees was the glances managing Great Lakes invaders animated video series that was created by Michigan Sea Grant. This is a really cool little kit, kind of of informational videos that are pretty accessible and things like that. So I thought that was a cool nominee.

Hope Charters 34:55
Yeah, and videos are becoming more and more important now that people have you know, all have this information overload all the time. So you really have to grab their attention. And so I like to the nomination, the Erie situation, which is a documentary film by a Great Lakes outreach media. It helps people around the Great Lakes understand kind of Lake Erie is harmful algal blooms, what's at stake, how they affect boating and swimming and all that other stuff. And then also what possible solutions there could be. And so I think it's a really good documentary about an important aspect of Lake Erie that affects lots of people. And oops, I

Carolyn Foley 35:34
forgot one of the nominees I wanted to mention too, was there's coloring sheets,

Stuart Carlton 35:39
this was gonna be my mentioned, go ahead. So and I again apologize for the name but Tasha Tucker has made these really cool coloring sheets and like paper craft things about you know, everything from Round Goby, no hot dog balm, you can probably make your own quagga mussel and things like this. These are really neat, just sort of physical things you can touch, right and printout and that sort of stuff. And so, so a great way to, you know, it's a great way to interact with these different species and things you can do with your whole family and stuff like that. And so I think that's really great, too,

Carolyn Foley 36:08
right. And I'm pretty sure I saw some at the joint aquatic sciences meeting in the booth that was next to our secret booth, and I'm pretty sure hope some of them are really, really cool. They were really, really cool. But as Stuart mentioned, I mean, it's really hard to compare,

Stuart Carlton 36:26
like, how do you compare a color documentary? He's not even apples to apples, like a

Carolyn Foley 36:31
shoe, and an apple

Stuart Carlton 36:36
and an orange? Well,

Hope Charters 36:37
I'm gonna go ahead and take out the URI situation because they have already won a lot of different awards from your home so they don't need a Leakey.

Stuart Carlton 36:47
To puff them up. You know what I think I think I'll be honest, and this, this is always the rub here, right? And this is why we do this because we show the impossibility of it. But I think that our show is as we often say, fundamentally goofy. And so as that we should celebrate the fundamental silliness or not silliness, but the lightheartedness of coloring sheets about quagga mussels and rounder papercrafts. About quagga mussels and Round Goby. Really cool. They are really cool. You should check them out, go print them. It's not like yeah, just go do it. So yeah, I think that is going to be our Leakey winners have worked for you. Yes, it absolutely does. And now, the moment we've all been waiting for the Great Lakes, communications or Outreach Program of the Year, this is different from the communications product. And it's something that's kind of ongoing as opposed to a one off is the idea of though every year I look at the nominations realize maybe that's not that clear, which is fine. But what I would like to call out here, it's from our friends at Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, called Get into your sanctuary. And so this is a survey of students get into a glass bottom boat in Lake Michigan out of Alpena and just hundreds of school aged children into shipwreck alley, they learned about the Great Lakes firsthand. And I love that I had a formative experience at Silver Springs, Florida and class bottom boats. And so this one really strikes home with me it gives people a chance to get out on the Great Lakes and so I love it for that reason.

Carolyn Foley 38:08
Yeah, that's really fantastic. And I mean, we have our our non animal of the year was the vessel that was taking people out right, so that seemed like a pretty cool

Hope Charters 38:19
i really like the nomination of the baby lake sturgeon release events. I have seen Carolyn post on social media about these because she goes with her kids and it looks amazing. Yeah, it's,

Carolyn Foley 38:31
you get to hold a little dinosaur in your

Stuart Carlton 38:35
that's true. No, no, it's true. Much like with Monte and Rosen the baby clovers. You don't get to hold them but little dinosaurs, right.

Carolyn Foley 38:41
And you're also you know, contributing to the restoration of extraordinarily important species that for some reason was not nominated for animal of the year. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 38:50
well, it tells you something about how people feel about searching our Gill Wait, hold on. We got we got Titus two in the let's see. Wha wha wha Leakey runner up Titus style HeartWare going Womp womp womp womp.

Carolyn Foley 39:04
All right. So my nominee came up a couple of different times. And it's really an incredible program. It's the student watershed watch in Northwest Ohio. They it says testing the waters since 1989. So students get to go out and do sampling. So, you know, we talked about the Erie situation a minute ago, Northwest Ohio, is the land where everything happens that then influences what's happening in the western basin of Lake Erie. And so getting students out helping them do all of this information. They're giving presentations, and it's really seems like a fantastic fantastic program.

Stuart Carlton 39:39
Okay, so how do we figure this out? We got three or four really good nominees and like no way to compare them fairly. What what what should we do?

Carolyn Foley 39:47
I don't know. I mean, so I think one of the things that I thought was really cool about the the, the watershed program is one of the nominees was my students and I participated in it for the first time this year. And like, so it's 2022. It's been happening since 1989. And it's still bringing on new people who learn about the issues that we all care about. So

Hope Charters 40:11
and they were so excited about it. Yeah, they nominated it. That's pretty cool. Yeah. For the baby sturgeon events, did they like is there a specific group that put those on? Or is it done by multiple groups,

Stuart Carlton 40:23
mommies and daddies Sergent?

Carolyn Foley 40:26
It's a big coalition of individuals. So Michigan, Michigan Sea Grant is really involved. But there's like the Saginaw Bay watershed initiative, I think. And they are, there's a whole bunch of partners all around. They partner with like local nature centers and things like that, like down in Frankenmuth. If you've ever been there, it's a very weird place, but they do release events.

Stuart Carlton 40:47
Very cool. It sounds like we have two runners up, but I think we should announce the Leakey winner via song because this ties into something we did recently with the importance of certain areas over others. And so I think we will have a couple of wonderful runners up including our good friends at Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and their get into your sanctuary programming which I want to take my kids to. And of course the surgeon releases but for the winner, let's just everybody stepped right up

it is time for the we'll love URI what it will land on his a big mystery. So many issues with Lake Erie. The movie discuss on teach me about the Great Lakes. That's right, the student watershed watch in Northwest Ohio is the Leakey winter for Outreach Program of the Year. The way that they work with students is just magnificent. It's such they do science, they do education. They work on analyzing data, they have a summit. What a fantastic program and a truly worthy Leakey winner. And that is going to wrap it up for the 2022 linkys. This is our last episode of the year probably. And I want to thank you all for listening. You know, this is a silly thing. And this isn't our third year, we just complete our third year we complete our third year of the show, right? Yeah. And in fact, I remember the very first episode we had Sarah on and was hoping I co hosting it. Carolyn was like a guest like a sneaky.

Hope Charters 42:19
Like, you're sneaky.

Carolyn Foley 42:24
Can I bring something up there before we wrap it all up? So something I thought was really, really cool about the Great Lakes Lake ease nominees is that they came from all of the Great Lakes. And that's I don't know, I think that's pretty impressive. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 42:40
I completely, completely agree. But anyway, that's gonna do it for this year. So I will give you the Yeah, so thank you, everybody, for listening. We've got even more stuff planned for next year. The stupidity rolls on and we couldn't be happier than for that to happen. So as to I guess, thank you to our guests. Yes, we had I mean, oh, gosh, we had about 2025 guesses here. I'm just doing amazing work. And that's the reason that we're here that and discourage our friends at work. And so that's all good. Teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and we encourage you to check out the great work that we do at icy grant.org and i Li and secret on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, Meghan Gunn and Remi miles Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer, our senior producer. He's currently our super fun podcast artworks by Joel Davenport. Thank you, Joel. The show was edited by the awesome Quinn rose. Thank you Quinn. Oh my goodness. I cannot imagine how much you hate us. Go check out Quinn's work at aspiring robot.com Hire hire Quinn to do your podcast. If you have a question or comment about the show, send us an email teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message in our hotline at 765496 I SG You can also follow us on Twitter again. NASA teach Great Lakes. Everybody. Thank you so much for listening. It really is a pleasure and an honor and a joy and fun and awesome and entertaining at least to us. Keep greatin' those lakes!