They combed through the Brave Little State archive — thousands of your questions — and picked out some favorites that they’ve never answered.
Like, what is the most visited tourist destination in Vermont? Why is Burlington nicknamed the “Queen City”? And what is the history of the Gibou, the cryptid that inhabits Montgomery in Franklin County?
Some of the answers they found were truly unbelievebable.
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Josh Crane: From Vermont Public and the NPR Network, this is Brave Little State. I'm Josh Crane.
Burgess Brown: I'm Burgess Brown.
Sabine Poux: I'm Sabine Poux.
Camila Van Order González: And I’m Camila Van Order González — AKA, Mimi.
Josh Crane: And we are the BLS team, and we are gathered here for a very special milestone: It's our 200th episode as a show. Congrats to us.
Burgess Brown: We made it.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) That's pretty nuts.
Josh Crane: In honor of this very special episode, we are going to do something a little bit different.
Normally on the show, we answer one listener question per episode. And today, we are endeavoring to answer 20 listener questions, all in the same episode.
How are you guys feeling about it?
Burgess Brown: I'm tired already.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) It's gonna be fun.
Josh Crane: We went through our entire archive — that’s, like, thousands of questions — and collectively, we selected some of our favorites that we've never answered on the show before.
So, we divvied all the questions up, went off and did reporting and research, and found answers. And we've pretty much been keeping all of that close to the vest. We have not shared what we found with each other until now. That's why we're gathered today — to share our findings with each other for the first time. You guys ready?
Sabine Poux: Oh yeah.
Burgess Brown: I'm so excited.
Camila Van Order González: Yeah!
Sabine Poux: I can't wait to hear what all of you have been working on for the last couple. weeks.
Josh Crane: I know. What are you up to?
Burgess Brown: Mysteries.
Sabine Poux: We don’t normally keep it this secret!
_
Historical & legal oddities
"VT has a law that says apple pie must be served with cheese. What is the story behind it? Has anyone ever been charged with its violation?" – Brooke Angell Andrews
Josh Crane: Question asker Brooke Angell grew up in Randolph. She lives in Chicago now. And she actually came across this topic at a trivia night north of Chicago.
The final question of the night was this: “A Vermont law states that when serving apple pie in Vermont, a good faith effort must be made to serve it along with the following: a glass of cold milk, a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a half ounce of — blank.”
(Laughter)
Josh Crane: Now, Brooke had never heard of this law, but having grown up in Vermont, she knew intuitively that the answer must be, of course, cheddar cheese.
Have any of you heard of this?
Burgess Brown: No.
Sabine Poux: Absolutely not.
Josh Crane: So, Brooke was a, you know, a hero for her trivia team, ’cause she got the answer right. But she went home afterwards and kept thinking about this, because it seems so weird and funny — and unusually funny for, you know, like, the law.
So, she submitted her question to us, and here is what I've learned: The bill was passed in 1999. Now, Burgess, I've sent you the text of the important part of the bill in question, and I'm wondering if you could channel your inner Vermont lawmaker and read sections one and two for us.
Burgess Brown: I should have known this was coming.
Sabine Poux: Let's hear it, Burgess
Burgess Brown: “An act relating to designating the state pie and the state fruit.
It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont: Section one … the state pie shall be apple pie. Section two” — the subheading here is “Serving apple pie” — “When serving apple pie in Vermont, a ‘good faith’ effort shall be made to meet one or more of the following conditions: (a) with a glass of cold milk, (b) with a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of a half ounce, (c) with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
And then it goes onto section three, which is the “state fruit.” And “the state fruit shall be the apple.”
Josh Crane: Well done, Burgess truly.
Burgess Brown: Thank you.
Josh Crane: And here is the extra fun part. It turns out that our question asker Brooke actually has personal connections to the Vermont State House. Her grandfather is Phil Angell, who was a state representative for a decade here. And this law about apple pie and cheddar cheese passed during Brooke's grandfather's time in the Vermont legislature.
Sabine Poux: What!
Josh Crane: So, of course, Brooke sent her grandfather an email to ask about what he remembers from when this law was passed. And here is Phil Angell’s response to Brooke: “I don't remember this law passing the House. It really has no force or effect other than something to talk about or even brag about.”
Burgess Brown: Well, that is what we are doing.
Camila Van Order González: They got us.
Josh Crane: And I want to just say — so Phil, Brooke's grandfather, also added, quote, “Not everything that happens in the legislature is entirely serious.”
Burgess Brown: (Laughter) Wow.
Josh Crane: So, the sponsor of this bill back in 1999 was a well-known Vermont lawmaker and activist, Ed Paquin. And he explained his motivations for creating this bill in the first place.
Ed Paquin: I was contacted by an instructor of, I think it was a grade two, three class that they were going through the effort of teaching the kids about how laws are made. And I'm pretty sure they generated the idea of making apple pie, the state pie.
Josh Crane: So, the students came up with the idea and he helped them run it through the whole process — including lobbying for it at the Statehouse.
Ed Paquin: And this was the cutest thing. They came around the room, and I had told them how they’d be asked to testify. And the little kid got up there and started talking about the apples
Camila Van Order González: That is so sweet.
Josh Crane: I know. So the elementary school students succeeded in making apple pie the state pie — but Ed says it was actually other lawmakers who had some more fun with it, adding the notable section for our purposes about milk and ice cream and cheddar cheese.
Camila Van Order González: Just feels like a lot of dairy to me. I’m not sure.
"About 50 years ago I learned that Vermont was in serious negotiation with the Island of Nantucket to join the Green Mountain State, true?" – Tim Purinton
Sabine Poux: So I thought, surely this could not be true. Nantucket is an island off the coast of Massachusetts. It's like 300 miles away. And Vermont doesn't even have a seacoast. So like, what would that even be like?
Well, this is actually true.
Josh Crane: What?
Sabine Poux: Maybe not the “serious negotiations” part, but Vermont did try to basically adopt Nantucket and its neighboring island, Martha's Vineyard, about 50 years ago.
Josh Crane: This sounds like, almost like a kidnapping scenario.
Sabine Poux: (Laughing) Well, let me tell you the story, because it's a juicy one.
Basically, what happened was: In the 1970s, the state of Massachusetts redistricted and basically merged the legislative district that Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were in with the district representing parts of neighboring Cape Cod — which means that the islands lost their individual representatives to the state legislature.
Large majorities of residents on both islands actually voted to secede from Massachusetts. They formed a secession committee, and they even created a new flag for their cause. It's actually a very cool flag — it’s a white seagull against a bright orange sun with a blue backdrop. It's like, very striking.
Josh Crane: We do love flags here on Brave Little State.
More from Brave Little State: Other states are redesigning their flags. Is it Vermont's turn?
Sabine Poux: We love flags. A lot of vexologists out there. Anyway.
Josh Crane: Vexillologist.
Sabine Poux: Vexillologist. Right. My bad.
And here's where Vermont comes in. The secession committee decided it wanted to join another state instead of forming its own. And ever the opportunist, Vermont stepped up to the plate.
Both the Vermont Senate and House passed resolutions encouraging the islands’ secession from Massachusetts. The Senate Resolution outlines the “sundry similarities” between the islands and Vermont, and says both are “almost solitary bastions in preserving a way of life alien to the encroaching eastern megalopolis.”
Camila Van Order González: Huh.
Josh Crane: Wow.
Sabine Poux: Just let that sink in for a second.
Burgess Brown: Yeah.
Sabine Poux: Then-Governor Richard Snelling also tried to court the islands. He promised Nantucket one seat in the house and two for Martha's Vineyard if they became part of Vermont. And according to a local Martha's Vineyard magazine, Snelling sent one selectman there a half gallon of maple syrup, and said he'd love for Vermont to have a seacoast.
And, you know, I don't know how serious this offer from Vermont actually was. While it seems like officials here really did try to woo the islands, the resolution that the House passed kind of reads as a joke. It referred to the residents there as “salty castoffs,” which I thought was really funny. (Laughter)
Also, Vermont was not the only state to extend a hand out toward the islands. Here's an excerpt from the Nantucket Gam, a podcast from the Nantucket Historical Association.
Thomas Perich: New Hampshire was the leading candidate in a large part because it’s a small state guaranteeing greater proportional representation, and, the most American reason of all: low taxes.
Josh Crane: Oh my God. New Hampshire.
Sabine Poux: So, New Hampshire was more of a leading candidate than Vermont here, low taxes being a big factor. And perhaps most importantly, the secession would have needed the green light from Congress and the Massachusetts state government too, which seemed really unlikely.
I called up the question asker. He's a guy named Tim Purinton, and he lives in Warren, Vermont.
Tim also used to live in Massachusetts. And so I basically asked him to make the case for Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard joining Vermont. And this is what he said:
Tim Purinton: I think those islands had a real kind of Yankee sensibility. Just like Vermont has a pretty, you know, strong independence and Yankee sensibility.
Sabine Poux: Tim says in the 1970s, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were more working class and blue collar than the rest of their state. And he says, in that way, maybe the lobster men of the islands were more like the dairy farmers of rural Vermont than the city folk of Boston.
By the way, the islands, of course, did not actually secede or join Vermont or New Hampshire. About a year after the secession movement started, it petered out. It seems like there were just too many logistics to sort through, and people sort of gave up.
But there are apparently still people who fly the secession flag in Nantucket. And it's fun to think that maybe we could have had a seacoast here, even if it does seem a little bit far fetched.
Josh Crane: Man.
Burgess Brown: Wow.
Josh Crane: What could have been.
Sabine Poux: And this was only in 1977, you guys. Doesn't that seem very recent for something like this?
Josh Crane: Yes. Yes. Sorry. I'm stuck on the fact that New Hampshire was ahead of Vermont in the race to, you know, acquire these islands.
Camila Van Order González: It's closer.
Josh Crane: It's like, they were offering lower taxes. And it sounds like Vermont was offering, what was it, a half gallon of maple syrup? (Laughter) Close call.
Burgess Brown: And vibes.
Josh Crane: Close call. Good vibes, too. Yeah.
"How did VT come to have and sustain public nudity allowances? Didn't Sen. Leahy have something to do with this before he was in Congress?" – Kelsy Allan
Camila Van Order González: Could one of you explain the Vermont nudity laws to me?
Burgess Brown: Here's what I've heard. And I don't know if it's true, but I feel like what I've heard is that in Vermont you can be naked in public, but you can't strip down in public. Meaning, if you leave the house naked, you're in the clear. But if you're like, on the street and take off all your clothes, that's illegal.
Josh Crane: That's what I've heard, too.
Sabine Poux: This is like, something I learned on, like a college tour. I agree with Burgess. Yeah.
Camila Van Order González: Yeah. So you guys would not be alone. A ton of people that I talked to for this thought the same thing, and I did too for my entire life growing up. That's what I thought it was.
That is actually entirely just Vermont folklore.
Sabine: What!
Camila Van Order González: It's not true.
Josh Crane: It's not true?
Camila Van Order González It's not true. There is nothing supporting that in the actual laws.
Josh Crane: Mimi, you're just crumbling like my entire Vermont mythology in my head.
Burgess Brown: Sabine's college tour was a lie.
Sabine Poux: I know, what?
Camila Van Order González: The Vermont “Lewd and indecent conduct statute,” says, “No person shall participate in open and gross lewdness.”
So, there's been a long history of Vermont court cases that have to do with the ambiguity of the words “open” and “gross.” At this point, what people have interpreted is that “gross” has to do with intent, and “open” has to do with consent. So if you're being gross, it means that you're thinking about something sexual, and if you're being open, it means that someone witnessed it and they did not want to be witnessing it.
Josh Crane: But what if you're in public and you're naked and there's just like, you could encounter random people who don't want to see naked people in public, right?
Camila Van Order González: So, yeah, there's a changing culture around that right now. Notably, Burlington, a couple weeks ago, changed their nudity ordinances to make it illegal to be naked in public there.
Josh Crane: Woah.
Camila Van Order González: But another key moment in the history of the Vermont nudity laws is that in 1971, Patrick Leahy, as the state's attorney for Chittenden County wrote this really sassy open letter to the police. He talked about how public nudity and skinny dipping is like a key part of Vermont culture. What he said in the letter was, “If no member of the public present is offended, no disorderly conduct has taken place.”
Sabine Poux: So why does this— why is there this rumor that the law is this other way? If it's really not?
Camila Van Order González: I have talked to so many lawyers about this and nobody knows.
Sabine Poux: Just a game of telephone or something.
Josh Crane: How do you guys feel about public nudity?
Camila Van Order González: No comment.
(Laughter)
"Why doesn't Vermont have happy hour?" – Olivia Taylor
Sabine Poux: Happy hour is actually illegal in Vermont. We're one of seven states in which that's the case. The others are Massachusetts, Alaska, Rhode Island, Utah, North Carolina and Oklahoma. Some surprises on that list, some not-so surprises.
Burgess Brown: Yeah, big spread.
Sabine Poux: Yeah, big spread. And these bans all seem to date back to the 1980s, when the advocacy group Mothers Against Drunk Driving was really pushing for tighter alcohol laws. And the rationale for getting rid of happy hour, in particular, is that if you give people a window of time in which alcohol is cheaper, say, 3-5 p.m., they're going to drink as much as they can in that window and then they're going to drive drunk home.
Josh Crane: Ooh.
Burgess Brown: This is really good logic, actually,
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) Yeah. Ultimately, yes.
Some states that have had, some states that had happy hour laws in the books have since repealed them, like Indiana, which did so just last year. And in Vermont, it seems like there's an attempt every couple years to change the law, but nothing has really gained momentum or stuck.
So while bars in Vermont are allowed to reduce drink prices for an entire day, like a daily drink special, they're not allowed to do it for a limited time, like a happy hour.
Josh Crane: So Vermont used to have happy hours?
Sabine Poux: Before the 1980s, it was legal. And now we're happy hour-less. Just sad hours from here on out.
Josh Crane: Just unhappy hours.
Sabine Poux: Unhappy hours.
Creatures
"What is the history of the Gibou, the cryptid that inhabits Montgomery in Franklin County?" — Lucy Zendzian
Burgess Brown: So, our next question comes from Lucy Zendzian in Hardwick. And it concerns a very spooky interaction that she had with a co-worker.
So, one day, Lucy was preparing to go to Montgomery, up in Franklin County, for a work trip. And her co-worker pulled her aside to say this:
Lucy Zendzian: “Oh, you be careful up there. They got this thing.” And I was like, “What are you talking about? What thing?” And she goes, “They call it a Gibou.” And I was like, “What's a Gibou?” And she goes, “I don't know.” And I never learned much, past that very vague introduction.
(Laughter)
Sabine Poux: Wow.
Camila Van Order González: It’s so good.
Burgess Brown: I know. so ominous and so vague,
Sabine Poux: Yes.
Burgess Brown“I don't know.”
Josh Crane: It’s So fun to say also “Gibou.”
Burgess Brown: (In a menacing voice) “The Gibou.”
Burgess Brown: I know, you have to say it in that way.
Sabine Poux: Yeah, that’s a nice thing.
So Lucy wants us to get the scoop on what the heck the Gibou is, which she calls in her question, “The cryptid that inhabits Montgomery in Franklin County.”
Josh Crane: (Laughter) Of course.
Burgess Brown: So. In the spirit of this Halloween season, I have spent a lot of time digging through Vermont monsters forums, local cryptid lists — and there is nothing about a creature called a Gibou.
(Laughter)
Josh: What?
Burgess: I know. So, I called in back-up.
Joe Citro: I’m Joe Citro. I've been collecting stories about Vermont’s cryptids and hauntings and treasures and mysteries and mad men for for years.
Burgess Brown: So this is Joe Citro, friend of the show. Some of you might recognize him from our episode about the Bennington triangle.
But Joe is the guy for local cryptids. He wrote The Vermont Monster Guide, The Vermont Ghost Guide — the list goes on. And so I asked Joe if he knew about the Gibou.
Joe Citro: The first time I've ever heard of it was from you.
Burgess Brown: Ouch. So, if Joe has not heard of it, we've either got a, like, very fresh cryptid, a very new cryptid, or some wires have gotten crossed somewhere.
Here's my theory. There is a famous cryptid in Franklin County, and it's this winged beast that kind of looks like a griffin, and it's called “The Awful.”
Sabine Poux: Oh.
Camila Van Order González: Oh.
Burgess Brown: I know. And so in a 2006 newspaper article, a local claims to have seen this creature in “The Gibou area of Montgomery.” So there's a Deep Gibou Road in Montgomery. Deep Gibou Falls.
All: Oooh.
Burgess Brown: So, who knows. But maybe that association with Gibou became shorthand for The Awful, or maybe Lucy's co-worker mixed up the name. Or, you know, maybe Lucy's misremembering, who knows. But this, I think, is sort of how folklore develops and changes.
Also, for the record, Joe tells me he’s not buying the story of “The Awful.” He thinks a local journalist made the whole thing up 20 years ago. But that’s a spooky story for another day.
Sabine Poux: When you said “The Awful,” I got like a chill down my spine.
Camila Van Order González: Yeah.
Burgess Brown: I know. Gibou is kind of like— you kind of want to run into the Gibou. The Gibou. But The Awful?
Sabine Poux: Gibou’s like a Muppet, one of the Muppets
Burgess Brown: Totally.
Sabine Poux: And The Awful —
Burgess Brown: And the awful is to be avoided.
Sabine Poux: The Awful is to be avoided.
Camila Van Order González: If you need a really, really last minute Halloween costume.
All: Ooh.
Camila Van Order González: We got you with The Awful.
"Who in Vermont can teach me how to call a moose?"
Josh Crane: So, before we get into the “who,” we're gonna go rapid fire.
Without thinking too hard, make the noise that you think would most successfully call a moose.
All: (Moose sound attempts)
Josh: Okay. Now, let's listen to a hunting and wildlife guide in Island pond call a moose.
(Moose call)
Sabine Poux: Sounds sad.
Camila Van Order González: Is that a human making that sound?
Josh Crane: Great question. So, that that was a guy named Pete Rodin in a story our esteemed colleague Jane Lindholm reported way back in 2013. This story was about, of course, how to call a moose. And that noise you heard Pete make was not his voice. It was a regular-sized coffee can with a hole in the bottom of it and a damp shoe lace threaded through the hole. And then Pete was just tugging on the shoelace a little to make that noise. Super high-tech.
Sabine Poux: Oh.
Burgess Brown: Whoa.
Josh Crane: Can you picture that?
Sabine Poux: Yes
Josh Crane: Here's more from Pete talking about his coffee can contraption.
Pete Rodin: You can tip it a little bit to the side, make a little different sound like that. (Coffee can moose call) They got good ears so they can hear this from a long ways away. It works. A lot of people use it.
Josh Crane: And that is one way you can call a moose.
Sabine Poux: Wow, I would never have guessed a coffee can and a shoelace. A wet shoelace!
"When you sell a home in Vermont, you have to disclose whether it's haunted. What's the backstory of this spooky disclosure requirement?" – Alex Keefe
Camila Van Order González: Real estate agent Lindsey Martin of Maple Leaf Vermont was able to give me a couple leads for this question. She also used to be a podcaster herself. She had a spooky podcast called Death Walks Into a Bar about all things death-related.
This is what she had to say.
Lindsey Martin: In Vermont, you are required to disclose anything that can affect the overall value of a property. So, for example, in the case of a death, if someone dies peacefully in their sleep, you don't necessarily have to disclose that. If, however, it was a violent triple homicide, that would affect the value of the property and therefore require disclosure.
Hauntings would fall under that category, especially if they were haunted by a particularly unfriendly apparition.
Sabine Poux Like The Awful. (Laughter)
Camila Van Order González: Yeah.
Sabine Poux: So, there's other, there's lots of other things that you might have to disclose as part of this requirement, but a haunted house is maybe one of those things.
Camila Van Order González: Yes, yes.
"What's the story behind the whale tails sculpture on I-89?" — Kate McKernan
Josh Crane: Our next question is a pretty momentous one. This is actually the very first question that Brave Little State ever received.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) What!
Josh Crane: Surprise! From someone named Kate McKernan, way back in May of 2016. So, I guess we're better late than never.
Sabine Poux: First-ever question. Hope she hasn't been waiting by the computer for this one.
Josh Crane: We've also received a bunch of versions of the same question since then, and they all go something like this: “What's the story of the whale tail sculptures on i-89?”
Can all of you picture those sculptures?
All: Mhm.
Josh Crane: They're pretty iconic. They sit next to the northbound lane of the highway between the Shelburne and Williston exits, and they're kind of hard to miss. They're these two huge black granite whale tails, and they've sort of become this, like, Vermont roadside attraction.
And it's notable, in part, because Vermont is a landlocked state, so on the surface, it seems sort of weird — especially since we did not succeed in acquiring Nantucket.
Sabine Poux: That's right.
Burgess Brown: Yeah.
Josh Crane: So here's the tale behind the tails.
(Pause)
No reaction, okay.
Burgess Brown: Did you have pause for laughter written in your script?
Sabine Poux: Yeah it says pause.
(Laughter)
Josh Crane: Once upon a time, many thousands of years ago, the Champlain Valley was the Champlain Sea — as in, connected to the ocean. Ocean. Whales. Railroad workers in the Champlain Valley even discovered the fossil of a whale in 1849.
Fast forward more than 100 years — a Vermont artist named Jim Sardonis was reportedly commissioned to make a sculpture for a conference center in Randolph. Which he did, and the official name of it is “Reverence.” And it was installed in Randolph in 1989.
But here's the catch. The conference center fell through, so eventually the sculpture was relocated to a business park outside Burlington, which is where it's been ever since.
Now, you might be thinking — aren’t there whale tale sculptures today by the Randolph exit? There are. Because in the 2010s, the Preservation Trust of Vermont and the Vermont Community Foundation commissioned the same sculptor to erect another whale tail sculpture at the original location in Randolph. That sculpture was installed in 2019 and it's called “Whale Dance.” It's near the southbound side of the highway, right at the Randolph exit.
It's similar to the original sculpture, but there are a few key differences: It's cast in bronze instead of granite. Jim Sardonis said he could capture the movement of the whales better that way, in bronze. It's also about three feet taller, for what it's worth, than the original sculpture.
I sent you guys photos of the whale tail sculptures, because you never really see them in the same place.
Sabine Poux: You really can see, like, the movement of the tails.
Josh Crane: Yeah.
Burgess Brown: Oh, wow. It's nice to see them not from a car going 70 miles an hour.
Sabine Poux: Speed limit’s 65, Burgess
Burgess Brown: It's nice to see them from a car not going 65 miles an hour.
(Laughter)
"If you flush a tick down the toilet, how soon will it die?" – Katherine Boyk
Josh Crane: Ah, man. So gross.
Sabine Poux: Yeah. does this evoke any feelings from anyone?
Burgess Brown: Disgusting.
Josh Crane: I got goosebumps already.
Sabine Poux: Yeah. You guys get a lot of ticks in your life?
Burgess Brown: Yeah.
Josh Crane: So many. Dogs with a lot of fur do not help the matter.
Sabine Poux: No, they don't.
This question came from Katherine Boyk in South Burlington, and she works at an organization that works with public drinking and wastewater. So she was really wondering, like, at what point in the flushing process does the tick die?
I thought about flushing a real tick down the toilet for this one. I even asked Josh to save me a tick if he found one. But I realized—
Josh Crane: Which I did!
Sabine Poux: Which you did. Thank you so much for doing that. But I realized, unless I could mount a tiny GoPro onto a tick, I wouldn't actually know when in the process it perished. So instead—
Burgess Brown: We don’t have the budget for that.
Sabine Poux: We don’t have the budget for that.
Josh Crane: Yeah, how could you have predicted that.
Sabine Poux: How could I have predicted that. Yeah, that’s right.
So instead, I called the state, and I got routed to Patti Casey at the Agency of Agriculture. She so kindly humored my request and wrote over email that, “As you can imagine, it's a bit of a ‘non-question’ for us (no offense intended).” Which, like, totally fair and no offense taken.
Anyway, Patti said, once a tick is flushed down the toilet, it's basically dead right away, because it won't survive the sewer and wastewater treatment or septic tank. But I thought we could get a bit more specific here. So I made a call to someone named Brad Roy.
Brad Roy: Yeah. So if you had a tick on you and you flushed it down the toilet and you were on a municipal system, a wastewater system, it's going to go through a long journey through the pipes, first.
Sabine Poux: A long journey through the pipes, indeed. Brad is a water specialist with the Vermont Rural Water Association. And he says, assuming a tick can survive three or so days underwater, which is what he read online—
Josh Crane: What.
Sabine Poux: There are still lots of steps the tick needs to go through to get to the other side.
For example: There are pumps that are designed to grind up material that comes through. A settling system that could trap a tick at the bottom with all the other solids. And there are chemical treatments and, finally, disinfectants, like chlorine or UV light.
Brad Roy: I don't think a tick is going to make it through a wastewater treatment system by that stage, and if it does, which I'd be pretty surprised, I guess it would make it back out to the environment with the clean water that the wastewater treatment produced.
Sabine Poux: Wow. So you're saying there's basically like a whole obstacle course that this tick would need to pass through to get to the other side?
Brad Roy: Yes, exactly. It would have to be a pretty miraculous tick to be able to get through the other side. They should make a movie about it, if it ever happens.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) Yeah, that's a really good idea.
Burgess Brown: Radioactive tick. This is exactly what I was thinking. This is the beginning of a really C-list horror movie.
Sabine Poux: I think, I think where this question hit home for me is, whenever I flush a tick, I wonder, is it going to crawl back up? Uh, it seems like the answer is no.
Josh Crane: Yeah, except I know ticks.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) Okay.
Josh Crane: And I feel, I feel confident that ticks — there are, there are ticks out there that could make it through that obstacle course. And there are probably, like, plenty of super ticks among us, and we have no idea.
Camila Van Order González: Maybe there's really strong ticks that have really strong legs, and they cling to the sides of the pipes and they've built societies.
Burgess Brown: Oh no.
Josh Crane: This is the real Halloween, like, adjacent question.
Burgess Brown: Yeah, forget the Gibou. We got ticks.
Wait, so ticks can survive underwater for three days?
Sabine Poux: That’s according to the University of Rhode Island Tick Encounter blog.
Burgess Brown: Sounds trustworthy.
Sabine Poux: Yeah, I know. (Laughter)
Josh Crane: How do you even study that? That seems—
Sabine Poux: Well, ultimately, I think this might be a good time for a break.
Josh Crane: We got to take a break. We'll be right back.
Culture and geography
"What is the pinpoint center of Vermont?"
Sabine Poux: I feel like there's some common wisdom about this. Do any of you know what the pinpoint center of Vermont is?
Josh Crane: I would guess Randolph. I feel like that's very central Vermont.
Sabine Poux: Randolph. That is also what I thought, and that's actually what I tell people when they ask me where I live. I'm like, I live in the middle.
Not quite. Randolph is actually not the pinpoint center of Vermont According to John Adams at the Vermont Center for Geographic Information, the pinpoint center of Vermont is a spot in, of all places, East Roxbury.
Roxbury is a small town northwest of Randolph, kind of closer to Northfield. Its population is a little over 600 people. And the best way to understand why this random spot in East Roxbury is the pinpoint center of Vermont is to imagine a pin. If you were to balance the entire state on the point of that pin — including, by the way (I asked) the Champlain Islands and the Vermont parts of Lake Champlain — it would balance perfectly from this point in East Roxbury. Which is, I guess, why they call it the pinpoint center.
Camila Van Order González: Cool.
Sabine Poux: Anyway, I decided to visit this point to see if I could feel its centeredness.
Sabine Poux: I'm driving up Drown Road. It's really beautiful.
Sabine Poux: And I got to this bend in the road, and there was a field where the pinpoint center was, and there were tons of posted signs.
Sabine Poux: You can really see the mountains, like layers and layers of mountains.
Sabine Poux: So this is me sitting in my car pretty close to the point on the map that John sent me. I'm kind of a chicken about posted signs, so I didn't test my luck. But for what it's worth, the spot I was sitting in was pretty darn close to the pinpoint center — not that you could even tell. There was no sign or plaque or anything like that.
And it’s just, like, classic Vermont. It’s like hills, trees, fields — you know, hits all the notes.
Sabine Poux: I don't know what I expected from the pinpoint center of Vermont, but this seems to be perfect. Here we are at the middle. Almost.
Sabine Poux: So, that's the real pinpoint center of Vermont — some field in East Roxbury.
John, with the Center for Geographic Information, he did have a very important qualifier — that technically what qualifies as the pinpoint center is always in flux. Do you guys know why that might be?
Josh Crane: Gravity? Just a wild guess.
Camila Van Order González: Maybe the mountains get bigger? Or smaller, I mean.
Sabine Poux: Well, it's because, and I'm quoting John here, “The entire North American tectonic plate is slowly drifting. So the absolute position of Vermont and its center is constantly minutely changing.”
"What is the most visited tourist destination in Vermont?" – Chrystal Houston
Camila Van Order González: As it turns out, the Vermont tourism department is funding a study to answer this very question, where the researchers are surveying tourists to see where they plan to go and where they end up going. And what they found so far is that Ben and Jerry's are the winners, with between a quarter and a fifth of all tourists that visit Vermont.
Sabine Poux: Wow.
Burgess Brown: That is such a crazy stat
Sabine Poux: That's a big chunk of people.
Camila Van Order González: Lake Champlain and Church Street tie for second place.
To be clear, the study is specifically focusing on tourists, not overall visitors. If it was going to be looking at overall visitors, Church Street would win by a landslide. But Ben & Jerry’s factory has more tourists.
Josh Crane: Wow. Ben and Jerry's man.
"How did Subarus become so popular in Vermont? Is Vermont the state with the highest number of Subarus per capita?" – Kayla Loving
Sabine Poux: Yes, Vermont does have the highest number of Subarus per capita, at least according to a website called iseecars.com
Josh Crane: (Laughter) Okay.
Sabine Poux: They did a study about a decade ago, and they analyzed more than 2 million used cars that were sold. They found that more than 11% of the cars sold here in Vermont were Subarus. For context, Subaru makes up 1.6 percent of the total auto market.
Josh and Burgess: Wow.
Sabine Poux: And online, people speculate their popularity’s because of two main reasons. One, practicality. Subarus are known for doing really well in more rugged environments like that of Vermont. They are this, like, sort of rare breed, affordable, more affordable all-wheel drive vehicle. Which is probably why the second closest state to Vermont is Maine, even though they’re leagues below us at just 6.5%
In fact, all the states on that list are states in New England, the Pacific Northwest, the Mountain West and, of course, Alaska.
But another factor might be culture, because Subaru markets itself as the car for people who are outdoorsy and environmentally conscious. And you might have also heard that Subaru started subtly marketing their cars toward lesbian drivers in the 1990s. There's a really great episode of NPR's Planet Money about this.
Stacey Vanek Smith: They kind of settled into a plan where they would use references that were obvious to gay and lesbian consumers, but not really to anybody else.
Sabine Poux: And Vermont is famously one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly states.
For example, the podcast talks about a Subaru advertisement that showed a car with a license plate that said, “XENA LVR.” Xena Warrior Princess, for the uninitiated, is kind of a lesbian icon. So the marketing was kind of under the radar, so not to alienate other audiences, especially in a time when the attitude toward queer folks in mainstream culture was a lot less accepting than it is now. Basically, it was like an “if you know, you know” situation.
The kicker here is that one of the people who worked on that campaign and who was quoted in an article about the campaign that I read was my Uncle Paul Poux.
Josh Crane: Oh my God.
Sabine Poux: So shoutout to my Uncle Paul for the cutting edge marketing genius here. Love you.
"Why does the weather report end with 'an eeeeye on the sky'?" – Jason Cork
Burgess Brown: Okay, so this is another question that hits pretty close to home for us here in this room, because it is about someone's radio voice. And I'm going to let our question-asker, Jason Cork, read his own question for us.
Jason Cork: Why do the weather forecasters sign off with such an odd inflection? Why is it, “I'm Lawrence Hayes with an eeeye on the sky.”
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) Wow, he did well there.
Josh Crane: That’s a good impression.
Burgess: Yeah, I know, this is actually a pretty solid impression of our friend, Lawrence Hayes's distinctive sign-off. For those unaware, Lawrence is a meteorologist at the Fairbanks Museum and a member of the Eye on the Sky team. Eye on the Sky weather forecasts have been on our airwaves here at Vermont Public for more than four decades.
So there was obviously only one way to get to the bottom of this question. And so I called up Lawrence to ask him about it, and he says that he remembers exactly when he came up with his signature sign-off.
Sabine Poux: What!
Burgess Brown: It was about 15 years ago. He had just started with the Eye on the Sky team. And he was wanting to sort of set himself apart stylistically from his colleagues.
Lawrence Hayes: So what I endeavored to do initially was I wanted, wanted to end with, with, with some gravitas, you know. So — “I'm Lawrence Hayes with an eye on the skyyy.” Right, like, take it, take it down inflectionally at the end.
Burgess Brown: So, he was at his home office, and he was just repeating this outro over and over again, and getting more and more frustrated because he wasn't achieving this weight that he wanted, this gravitas. And eventually his wife came to check on him because he'd just been saying the same thing over and over again for so long.
And Lawrence said that this interruption sparked an epiphany: that instead of going down at the end of his sign off, he should add an upward flourish. And that has given us this gift:
Lawrence Hayes: I'm meteorologist Lawrence Hayes with an eeeye on the sky.
Burgess Brown: Just iconic.
Sabine Poux: Gravitas indeed.
Burgess Brown: So there you go.
Camila Van Order González: This is important to me. I would do that as a kid.
Burgess Brown: You would do an impression?
Camila Van Order González: Yeah.
Sabine Poux: Can we hear it?
Camila Van Order González: No.
"Does our geography affect the weather? On multiple occasions I have entered/exited a very distinct weather system sitting over Bolton. Why?" – Erica Fuller
Burgess Brown: Okay, this is so true. When I first moved here, I lived in Montpelier and would drive to Colchester for work, and passing through the Bolton area is like where I learned to check the weather there, not just here and my destination. I would always check there, too, Because it's, it's always like totally different.
Camila Van Order González: I'm actually just gonna let our state climatologist take this one away. This is Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux.
Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux: So, the Bolton area is in the Winooski valley, as you're heading between Montpelier and Richmond. And if you ever drove through that part of the state, you realize how complex the topography is. I mean, we have complex topography in many, many areas across the state. But if you, if you think about the Bolton area, that's where you see some really constrained valleys.
Sometimes what happens in the constrained valleys is, if systems either developed or trapped in a constrained valley, you tend to get different amounts of precipitation than even just a few miles to the east or the west.
Josh Crane: Wow. A constrained valley.
Camila Van Order González: Yeah. Oh my God, this completely changed the way I look at every single cloud when I'm driving. If you ever go through the mountains, look at the clouds, because you might literally be able to see them get stuck.
_
Politics
"Has there ever been a move to make Burlington the capital of Vermont?" – Chris Pitt
Burgess Brown: The answer, Chris, is yes. There have been several campaigns over the years. But one of them really stands out from the rest. And Burlington really tried to hit Montpelier while they were down.
The year was 1857 and the Statehouse had just burned to the ground.
Sabine Poux: Oh!
Josh Crane: Ooh. Really down.
Burgess Brown: Really down. And a bunch of cities saw this unfortunate event as their opportunity to swoop in and snag the Capitol away from Montpelier.
Sabine Poux: That's wrong.
Burgess Brown: It’s just brutal, I know. So, Burlington, Rutland, Middlebury and Northfield all came forward with big-money offers to rebuild a new state house in their own backyards.
Fighting ensued, and Burlington nearly succeeded. The decision went to a vote, and in the end, the Senate voted 13 for keeping the capitol in Montpelier, 11 for Burlington, four for Rutland and one for Middlebury. So, basically, the debate came down to this long-standing antagonism between rural towns and the bigger towns of the day that had been playing out for decades already. And it was sort of like, let's just keep the status quo. Montpelier was the middle ground and was able to retain the Capitol and rebuild the state house that we have today.
Sabine Poux: Oh my gosh.
Josh Crane: How different Vermont would be if Burlington or Rutland or Middlebury were the capital.
Sabine Poux: Or Northfield. Don't forget Northfield.
Josh Crane: They didn't get any votes.
Sabine Poux: They didn’t get any votes. I would vote for Northfield. I love Northfield.
"How many more people does Vermont have to add to its population in order to have a second congressman?" — Ellen Kurrelmeyer
Josh Crane: Just as a refresher, there are 435 total seats in the United States House of Representatives, and there’s a whole complicated formula for how they're divided up, but it’s based roughly on the proportion of the country's population found in each state.
Now, Vermont's lone representative is currently Becca Balint. And Vermont is one of six states with just one house representative, along with North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Delaware.
So, how many more people does Vermont need to get off that list? This is a prime question for Vermont Public Senior Reporter Bob Kinzel.
Burgess Brown: Bob.
Josh Crane: My favorite fun fact about Bob is that he has been covering the Vermont State House since 1981, which is longer than any continuously serving member of the legislature. So he is truly a Vermont institution, and we love him.
Of course, Bob had the answer, and he laid it out over email. The average population of a congressional district is roughly 780,000 people. That's the national population of about 340 million divided by 435, the number of House districts. Any state with a population lower than this number still gets one seat, and Vermont falls in that bucket, since our state population is around 640,000.
So realistically, we would probably need to get close to doubling our population just to even get in the conversation for picking up a second seat.
Something I learned while looking into this is that before the 1930s, Vermont did actually have more than one House rep. In the early days of the country, we had a bunch of them, and then that number slowly decreased over time, until the 1930s, after the Census, when it went down to one, seemingly for good.
So, my trivia question for you: What is the highest number of congresspeople Vermont ever had at one time?
Sabine Poux: 10
Camila Van Order González: 30
Burgess Brown: 7
Josh: Burgess wins. We had six.
Sabine Poux: Wow.
Josh Crane: From 1813 to 1823. There were only about like 18 states in the country, so Vermont made up a much larger percentage of the population.
"Why do Vermont land owners have the burden of posting their land during hunting season?" – Margie Larson
Burgess Brown: Okay, this is a prickly one. The right to hunt, fish and trap in Vermont has been protected by the state's constitution since it was ratified in 1793.
And the constitution does this by saying that, by default, private lands are open to hunt. So, if a landowner does not want to allow hunting on their land, it falls to them to post their property. And in Vermont, that means putting up posted signs along property lines expressly stating that hunting or fishing, et cetera, is forbidden.
Depending on how much land you own. It can be a super involved process. Here are the requirements for legally posting land in Vermont: One, place posted signs at all corners of your property and every 400 feet along boundaries. Record the posting with your town clerk and pay $5, and then — here's the kicker — repeat this process every year. So you have to update your signs with the current year, replace damaged ones and then register again with the town clerk annually. They have a registry of all private land that is posted.
Now, if you have an acre, this might not be a huge hassle. But let's say you have 80 or 100 acres of dense forest or on rocky terrain. You can imagine how time consuming this would be to do every year. And those who are frustrated with our posting laws point out that it's dangerous or completely impossible for older Vermonters or Vermonters with disabilities to get to every border of their property and post these signs.
Hunters point to Vermont's rich history of open land access as a cornerstone of our hunting traditions. And it's true that it's getting harder to hunt, particularly for trackers in the state. More than 85% of Vermont's land is privately owned at this point, and the amount of that private land that is posted has more than doubled since the 1960s.
So there's a ton of debate kind of about where the burden should lie for determining if land is huntable. But generally, there's this consensus that the best thing you can do is talk to your neighbor. If you want to hunt, ask.
Name origin stories
"Why is Burlington nicknamed the Queen City?" — Pia C. Yarnell
Burgess Brown: I want to talk to you all about internet beef for a minute.
Josh Crane: Yes, bring it.
Burgess Brown: There are a lot of people online, especially on Reddit, fighting over which city gets to claim the nickname, Queen City. In one corner: Charlotte, North Carolina, named for Queen Charlotte, wife of King Henry III. And in the other corner: Cincinnati, Ohio, dubbed “the Queen of the West” by a local newspaper in the early 1800s and a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem a few decades later. So these two really duke it out.
But there's also Denver, “the Queen City of the Plains.” Selma, “the Queen City of the Blackbelt.” Buffalo, “the Queen City of the Great Lakes.” Not often mentioned in these debates: Burlington, Vermont.
(Laughter)
Burgess Brown: So, one listener wants to know: Why is Burlington called the Queen City?
Well, it turns out that most queen cities, aside from Charlotte, don't have anything to do with a particular queen. But the term is used as kind of a classification. Queen cities are the most significant, usually economically significant, in their region. And then, also, some people say that it's the largest city in the state that's not the capital. And a lot of these monikers were adopted in the early lives of growing cities as a way to try to attract new residents and businesses.
Burlington's dubbing as the Queen City was, indeed, pretty aspirational. The root of the nickname is traced back to Burlington's first mayor, Albert Catlin, soon after the city incorporated in the 1860s. He said, “We represent a young city which may, in time, be known and distinguished as ‘the Queen City of New England.’”
Sabine Poux: He was manifesting!
Burgess Brown: He was manifesting.
And I think Burlington can definitely lay claim to being the Queen City of Vermont, but claiming the crown as the Queen City of New England might start some more internet beef.
"Why is it UVM and not UVT?"
Burgess Brown: All right, class, I have a handout for this question.
Does anyone recognize this image?
All: No.
Burgess Brown: Oh! You're all getting a failing grade. This is the seal of the University of Vermont.
Alright, Josh, can you read the text across the top of the seal for me?
Josh Crane: “Universitas V. Montis.”
Sabine Poux: Nice.
Burgess Brown: So the “v” here stands for “viridis.” Viridis? Viridis. “Universitas Viridis Montis,” which is Latin for the “University of the Green Mountains.” The university's first president, Rev. Daniel Clark Sanders, was a big classicist, and so he pushed for the Latin translation to be on the seal. And then, over the next few decades, the abbreviation of that Latin translation, U-V-M, would become the preferred abbreviation, rather than the English one.
Sabine Poux: Wow, that's a great answer.
Josh Crane: Really interesting.
Burgess Brown: And isn't “University of the Green Mountains” such a good— like, I wish that that's what it was called. It's so evocative.
"If you haven’t already, please discuss the origin of the moniker, Brave Little State." — Martha A. Penzer
Josh Crane: Now, as far as I know, we've never fully explained this in the podcast. And I know we've never shared the name that this show was almost called, because I literally just learned about this the other day.
Burgess Brown: Oh, I am so excited.
Josh Crane: I'm gonna save that for the end. Tease.
But first, to help us tell the origin story of our actual show name, I interviewed a Brave Little State VIP.
Josh Crane: Who are you again?
Angela Evancie: I'm Angela Evancie. It's been a minute since I've been on the show. But I created Brave Little State with Alex Keefe in 2016
Josh Crane: So, Alex Keefe left then-VPR a bunch of years ago. Angela, of course, is still very much in our everyday orbit at work. She now runs the Vermont Public content department.
But back in 2016, she and Alex were just trying to get this thing off the ground. And they needed a name.
Angela Evancie: So, we had a bunch of names and we didn't really like any of them. And then one day, Alex texted me a link to the Calvin Coolidge speech, the “brave little state of Vermont” speech.
Josh Crane: In 1927, Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States, and there was a devastating flood in his home state of Vermont. The following year, in 1928, Coolidge traveled to Vermont to survey the damage and the reconstruction effort. And at some point, he delivered a speech in Bennington. I'm guessing it became notable, in part, because this guy was not exactly known for his speeches. His nickname was “Silent Cal.”
Sabine Poux: Oh, no.
Josh Crane: But anyways. The end of his speech is really the important part for our purposes.
Now, Burgess, you did so well reading the apple pie and cheese bill. Can you now channel your inner Calvin Coolidge and read this to us?
Burgess Brown: Okay.
(Clears throat)
“If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”
Josh Crane: Since he gave that speech in 1928, the phrase “brave little state” has become a nickname for Vermont — and, of course, in 2016 it became the name of our show. Angela told me she's actually heard pushback from people over the years.
Angela Evancie: We used to get criticism from listeners like, “Why did you choose this? It's really infantilizing. It, it's too cutesy.” But I do not see it that way. I feel like it is a great shorthand for the really unique type of a spirit, the Vermont spirit, right? We are a small state. There are not a lot of people here. And we can do really powerful things together.
Josh Crane: And now, do you want to know what this show would have been called had it not been Brave Little State?
All: Yes.
Angela Evancie: Then I remember, at the time, I was really pushing for the name — and I'm so glad we didn't choose this — “Homeplace.”
Josh Crane: ‘Homeplace”?
Angela Evancie: “Homeplace,” yeah. Which, you know, sounds like a home goods store.
Sabine Poux“Homeplace.” That's like looking into an alternate universe.
Josh Crane: I think we landed in the right place.
Sabine Poux: In the right Homeplace.
Josh Crane: We landed in the right Homeplace.
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Credits
This episode was reported and edited by Burgess Brown, Sabine Poux, Camila Van Order González and Josh Crane. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Phil Edfors, Frank Alwine, Zoe McDonald, Catherine Hurley, Pete Hirschfeld, Thomas Mather, Judy Rosovsky, Steven Picazio, Pamela Cartier, Hazel Brewster, Brian Vaughan, Justine Curry and Arthur Ruben.
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Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.
