Knowledge Fight - Show Me State Of Mind Begins!

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Hello wonks.  Dan here, swinging in to hijack the feed to drop the first episode of my new podcast Show Me State Of Mind.  I'm posting the debut here, but to catch episodes in the future, you can find them at this link.  I hope you enjoy the show!

Show me stay the mind. Show me. Stay the mind. Show me. Show me. Show me. Stay to mind. Show me.

Show me. Hi. Hey. Hello. I'm Dan. And I have a confession to make. That is that I have a soft spot for stuff that other people. might find stupid. I love roadside attractions and people who claim to have the world's largest whatever. Even if I don't like the thing that is the largest, I don't, I'm not particularly

interested in pecans. I've been to the world's largest pecan multiple times. Driving around the country, you can stumble across these monuments, and they often have signs to lure in the wayward sailors, but I've found that they're kind of the fast food equivalent of things to see. They're awesome, and they're likely to satisfy a base hunger, but they can't feed your heart. I grew up in central Missouri, in a college town called Columbia. There was a lot to enjoy there, and I could show you around all the hot spots, like my favorite bar, Eastside Tavern, or the Missou Campus, or the MKT Trail. I could tell you all about the memories I associate with these places,

but they're also all things that anyone could find pretty easily, and they aren't the thing I would want to show someone if they were visiting Columbia for the first time. Just outside town, there's a big tree that everyone affectionately calls the big tree. And it doesn't disappoint. It is a tree and it is big. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that, objectively speaking, the big tree is kind of a dud. To anyone who didn't grow up in the Columbia area, it probably just looks. looks like a barely notable tree. But for us Show Me Staters, it was mythical. I believe that everyone, in every part of the country, and even the rest of the world, has a big tree. Something that maybe

kind of sucks, but is also awesome. Something that has no roadside sign or visitor center. Something that may not exist for any financial reason. I'm from the Show Me State, so I want people to show me stuff. I want to see it all. I want to see the big trees. And this podcast is my appeal to the world to show me what every area's got. I felt like the only way to start this adventure off right was if I went back to where this all spiritually started, the big tree. But before I got to that, I wanted to take the opportunity of taking a trip to the big tree as a way to visit a place nearby that I've always wanted to go to, but I've never gotten around to checking out. That place is the bizarrely named Humansville, Missouri.

The town's name is Humansville, which is weird, but the simple explanation for why it's called that is that the founder of the town was named James Human. That naturally raises a new question of why his name is human, but this investigation is just going to lead us in circles. For now, let's all just accept that there's a city. called Humansville and see what kind of fun there is to find there. Town Square in Humansville is a lovely place, and being there, I couldn't help but be humbled by how I was standing on the same ground where town residents held their fall festival, celebrating the local produce and farm products that made the community prosperous.

Things picked up for Humansville in the 1920s when a railroad man named H.O. Smith came to town and got everyone excited about strawberries. One of the people who came down with berry fever was a local banker named Homer Wan, who would go on to join Smith in a campaign to get the Humansville Humans to plant berries. This was a majorly profitable decision, which eventually led to an expanding agricultural field and thriving livestock and cheese industries in town. In 1938, A.E. Babcock, the editor of the Humansville Star Leader Press had a show. shocking life change. Like so many Americans, he was worried about the future of bread. Quote, I just got tired of store-bought bread. I wanted to revive interest in baking a loaf of bread at home. You know, folks have almost forgotten that bread was ever baked at home, he said.

Instead of waving the flag of surrender, Babcock decided to announce that at the next year's fall festival, he would hold a homemade bread contest and the winner would be awarded $50. The contest was a huge success and got over 100 entries, but Babcock did not find what he was looking for. A September 18th, 1949 article from the Springfield Newsleader paints the picture for you. Quote, Mr. Babcock was just a bit disappointed with his contest. He didn't find many loaves baked by young housewives. Quote, I'll tell you what I'm going to do next year, he said. I intend to eliminate all women over 25 from the contest.

This sounds to my ears like a bread creep, using a baking contest to network with young women. I was curious about this A.E. Babcock fellow, but probably unsurprisingly, the historical records a little thin when it comes to the editor of a newspaper based in Humansville who was passionate about fresh bread. But I had to know more. After a lot of digging,

I was able to find an obituary for Babcock from 1959, which informed me that he was 83 at the time of his passing. This puts his age of birth at about 1876. The obituary said that in the course of his life, Babcock had worked in many areas around the United States, and various kernels of information put him as having a bit of a nomadic life, editing newspapers and having various careers around the country. This leads me to an August 7, 1907 article I uncovered in the Jefferson City Tribune about a merchant

in St. Louis named A. E. Babcock, who happens to be friends with a ghost. Quote, A strange phenomenon is Amelia Bauer. She's a beautiful girl of the Oriental type that is made the fame of artists, yet her beauty is hidden from all earth dwellers save one. My name on earth was Amelia Bauer. My spirit name is not for mortals to know. I was born in the flesh in the city of Boston on January 10, 1871. An attack of the croup caused my passage into the spirit life when I was five years old. My father's name was Barnes Bauer. He was a carpenter and was killed by a fall from a ladder. My mother's name was Lucy. All of us are now in the Spiritland, even my little dog, which used to play with me.

His name is Victor, and he still romps and plays with me, and is never so happy as when nestling at my feet or dozing under the soft caresses of my hands. Mother and I once visited our old home in Boston, but no one in the house knew we were there. I first visited St. Louis 20 years ago, when I met the dear flesh friend to whom I have attached myself for all. all time. I'm with him while he is on earth. When he enters the spirit land, we shall travel the air together, doing good to mortals when we may. A.E. Babcock is the flesh friend that this ghost was talking about, and he sat down with a reporter from the Tribune to describe what it's like to hang out with a child ghost. Apparently, she can't fly or go through walls, but for some reason she often goes to work with him and helps with business decisions.

The ghost seems to hate the Rockefellers and calls Babcock Pete, even though that's not his name. When she feels like going to the theater, the Babcock's take her, but only buy two tickets because the ghost can just sit on their shoulders. Thankfully, people sitting behind them can see through her, so that doesn't cause any problems with, you know, other people in obstructed views. Also, Babcock's wife can't see the ghost, but says she can hear her, which sounds kind of like a crazy guy's wife in the early 1900s, trying to keep the peace. Humansville is a lovely town, but now I'll never be able to think about it without considering the possibility

that the editor of their local paper was an old man who was dear flesh friends with a child ghost and got mad that all the women who entered his breadmaking competition were too old. Now with that fairly uneventful trip to Humansville out of the way, it's on to my actual destination, The Big Tree. But I thought maybe some people listening to this won't be convinced by me telling you about how wonderful the big tree is. So I enlisted my dear old friend and someone who grew up with me in Columbia, Missouri, Nikki Gifts, to come and join me to talk a little bit about the wonder that is the big tree.

Ah, Nick, so nice to talk to you. I'm heading to the Big Tree. I'm going to go visit the Big Tree. And I know that everyone from Columbia loves the Big Tree. And so I wanted to, like, you know that kind of LeVar Burton. Don't take my word for it. You know, that kind of thing. That's what I wanted to add to the show by talking to you about your love of the Big Tree.

Dan, what the fuck are you talking about? I don't think I've ever, dude, I don't think I've ever been to the Big Tree. What? I really don't think I've ever been. I think every time we got stoned and you guys were all, we're going to the big tree. I was just like, I'm going to stay at home. That doesn't, that's so, that makes no sense to me. Because I don't, well, now that you're saying it, it causes me to have to take a step back and wonder if like, did I go to the big tree that much?

I think I did. And I feel like I went when, you know, there were stone times. And, you know, we were in our 20s. But I also felt like I felt like it was something that I went to as a kid, too. Like, it seemed like a part of the local, like the foundations. I remember talking about it a lot, but I don't have any. So, like, maybe we did go and I just don't have any memory of it because it's probably not that memorable. It's a huge tree.

I mean, there's a lot of big trees, Dan, in better places. There's no way around it. And it looks like I'm just going to have to. that Nick is not as excited about the big tree as I hoped he would be. But I'm not one to be dissuaded by lack of immediate success, so I decided I would commit myself to learning more about the big tree to see if I could persuade Nick to get on my level with the big tree. Right out of the gate, my research paid out huge.

When I learned that the big tree isn't just called that because of a severe lack of creativity on the part of Central Missourians, It turns out that the big tree is called the big tree because it's an official big tree, a champion tree, as designated by the conservationist organization American Forests. In 1940, a man named Joseph Stern set out to build a movement to save America's biggest trees, and a critical first step was calling them champion trees, which is honestly great branding and got everyone on nature's side. Stern saw how efforts were being made to protect the trees,

giant redwoods in California, but that there were massive trees all around the country that were being forgotten and were in danger, mostly because no one really understood how big they are. Stearns wrote an article titled, Let's Find and Save the Biggest Trees, that launched a campaign to measure trees in a fairly competitive way. Standards were set and a point system was built. A tree's score is the result of the following equation. Trunk circumference in inches plus height in feet plus one quarter of the average crown spread in feet. Naturally, this is complicated because the trees are alive and the measurements can change slightly, but because all of the measurements are just added up, one factor changing won't

change the trees overall score too wildly. Of course, this doesn't stop tree enthusiasts from taking these measurements very seriously and arguing over which trees deserve to be called champions and if this year we have new contenders for the crown. The big tree I grew up with is a bur oak, and according to current measurements, it holds a score of 401, making it the biggest of its species in Missouri and the third biggest tree in the state. It's the Missouri Burr Oak champion, but the national title for that goes to a tree in Michigan that scored of 448. A small part of me wants to go see that bigger tree, but it's also located in someone's yard, so that might not be worth a trip.

it just makes no sense to go all the way that see this tree if I'm not allowed to hug it. So, armed with this kind of information, I feel like I'm ready to check back in with Nick and see if any of this changes his tune about the big tree. All right. Okay. So what about this? Don't go to the big tree. Just come to St. Louis.

What about this, though? Okay. Did you know that the big tree is a champion tree? What the fuck are you talking about? So there's a champion, like a, there's this organization that, ranks trees. And they, like, mathematically have figured out how, like, you can compare a tree against another tree. So they got, like, an algorithm?

Oh, yeah, they got a score. So the big tree has a score of 401. Is that good? It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Oh, yeah? Where does it rank all time? So it's a burr oak, right?

That's the kind of tree it is. Did not know that? And the biggest in the country has a score of, like, 440. In that weight glass. Yeah, yeah. It's a heavyweight tree. It's maybe a little bit below this other tree, but it's heavyweight. Like, that's pretty, that's pretty impressive, a 401.

That's a good pound for pound raking right there. The tree in your backyard is probably like an 80. Yeah, maybe a 90. I got a cherry tree. You want to come see that? I'll chop that down, man. Stay away from my cherry tree. I can't tell a lie.

I'll chop down that fucking tree. I get cherries out of it like once every five years and they're delicious. They're not like sour? No, they're very good. My mother-in-law made a fresh cherry pie with it one year, and I think about it all the time. Why is it giving so little fruit? Are you not tended to it? Fruit trees are fickle, man.

And they got to have, like, perfect springs. And you know how Missouri is. You get that weird, like, warms up, and then it frosts again, and that just messes with fruit trees big time. Apparently, I don't know. It's not like I'm some kind of botanist or tree expert or something. Yeah, something tells me if you'd learn a little bit more. Maybe you'd get more cherries. Don't you dare.

Don't you dare try to talk me in to go into that stupid tree with you. Let's go to this tree. Let's see. We can get some fruit out of the big tree. Fruit? I don't know. All right. So I'll come to St. Louis and I'll come see this cherry tree.

I'll give you some tips on how to get more fruit out of it. Don't you lie to it? We've come to a compromise. Okay. I'm not a proud. and I'm willing to admit when I've gone fishing in a dry well. If Nick wasn't going to get enthused about the big tree, then maybe I needed to look in the mirror

and choose a new destination to visit for my first journey. Unfortunately, by the time that I had this sort of realization, I'd already gone to the big tree in Humansville, so here we are. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and get a little fun where we can. But in order to pivot away from the big tree, I decided to enlist my dear friend Adrian,

a.k.a. Angela Lampsbury to tell me about what there was to see in the area where she grew up. And thus, my new destination for today is Niles, Illinois, where I will be taking in the majesty of the leaning tower of Niles. I'm doing this show where I'm going to various places. And I wanted to get some feedback from friends about where I should go, things I should visit. and you are a dear friend of mine. So I asked you, what from your past would you think I should go see? And without missing a beat, you immediately said the leaning tower in Niles. Sure. Yeah, the leaning tower of why?

Oh, well, we could get into that. Okay. Because I don't think it's called that anymore. I don't know that it ever was. I think that's just what everybody in that area knows it as. There is a leaning tower in Niles, Illinois, near, where you grew up. Yeah.

And the Y and it is for the YMCA. Yes. Which does not exist anymore. No. I think maybe when I was a kid, it might still have been like a fitness center or like a YMCA. I don't know what it is now. It's a lot. It's nothing.

It's just a parking lot. There's nothing there. It's just a exact small replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy in the middle of of absolutely nowhere Niles, Illinois. Yep. But I should say, you're saying it's a small replica, and that's not quite true. It's large. It's pretty big.

Yeah, but I think it is smaller than the Tower of Pisa. You bet. I think it's half size. Okay. I think it's half to scale, and, but that's big. That's still big. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't look like it belongs.

No. Because there's like a hot dog shop across the street and a bus stop. Yeah. I think the only thing that was there when I was growing up was maybe like a mile down the road, there was like an antiques car mechanic. Okay. And it was a road that really didn't have anything on it. It was just sort of maybe forest preserve.

It was a long straight road. And I remember, so I grew up in Skokie, which is like the neighboring suburb. And so Niles, I would go to visit my boyfriend in high school. And so I would drive this road. over to Niles and it was this there were two lights and the lights took god damn forever and if you you like always hit them and then you'd have to sit there for like 15 minutes and then you would hit the next one and that was the only thing on that road i have news for you those lights are still there i hit one of them they're the worst and yeah there's just this and the thing that made me

think of you and you're just love of novelty it's the exact kind of weird roadside attraction that you would expect just like for a motel or Route 66 or something like, come see the leaning tower of Pisa, but there's nothing there. No, it's bizarre. And it is up my alley in a very weird way. And I'm embarrassed to say that I had gone to eat lunch at a place that's basically next door to the leaning tower. And I didn't even notice that it was there.

Yeah. The first time that I noticed this place when I was. was leaving the tower and I was like oh I've been here before I didn't see this what how's that possible there's just no reason for it to be there so um you you went past this many times because of these bad lights yeah um between uh Skokie and Niles yeah and did you ever visit it when you were younger I never did so I've spent more time at the tower than you 100% god damn it I don't think there's anything to do there. I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

Nobody ever said that they're like, I went up in that tower and it ruled. I had a blast. No, there isn't anything to do there now, and I think that's a legal thing. Sure. But at some point, you could go up it. Okay.

They did let people up, and you can see where you would, like, where there could be a path. Okay. But yeah, you're not allowed to do that anymore. Sure. It is very much just a closed tower. and a tiny little, like, reflecting pool that is out in front of it.

There's nothing to do, but there's stuff to think about. So much to think about. Like, for instance, how there's a strange dynamic at play here, where the original tower in Italy was not intended to be leaning. They meant to build a straight up and down tower, but the foundation it was built on was weak, and it started to tip over. It's leaned at higher and lower degrees over history, and at times people have had to continue.

instruct counterweights to correct for the lean and make sure that the tower doesn't just fall over. Conversely, the Leaning Tower of Niles was always meant to lean. The guy who designed it saw a structural flaw in a world monument and decided he was going to recreate it for fun. This feels like someone doing a shot-for-shot remake of a classic film and intentionally leaving in a continuity error or an accidental boom mic from the original. It seems mildly insulting to whoever designed the first tower. The good news is that we don't really know who designed the leaning tower of Pisa, so it's unclear who should feel like there's shade being thrown their way from somewhere in the middle of Illinois.

It took 199 years to complete the Pisa Tower, stretching from 1173 to 1372, but the Niles one was built quite a bit quicker. But that's not where the differences between the two end. The Pisa Tower was built to be the bell tower for the cathedral complex in Pisa, whereas the Niles Tower was built to be sneaky. In the early 1930s, Robert Ilg, head of the Ilg Hot Air Electric Ventilating Company of Chicago, wanted to build a recreational park for his employees. Here's an excerpt from the Chicago Tribune from March 20, 1960, discussing how this tower came to be.

Quote, Ilg built the park so his employees would have a place to relax and swim. He built two pools in the property, plus a water tank. dissatisfied with the appearance of the tank, Ilg decided to cloak it with a replica of the leaning tower. And this is a decision that makes perfect sense. I'm curious what you know about the tower. Like, do you know anything about the creation of it or why it exists or... I can't remember if you mentioned it to me or if it was like maybe a used car lot thing to draw attention. You think it's a wacky, inflatable man kind of?

It's a blowy man. No. That would be great if it was like an Italian restaurant. And they were just like, this will get people in here. I think that was the thing that made the most sense to me that it was like it had been an old like used car lot. No, no, no. Okay. So in the 1930s.

Oh my God. Is it that old? Yes. I had no idea. Yeah. There was a guy named Robert Ilg. And he owned the Ilg the Ilg Hot Air Electric Ventilation Company. Okay.

So it was an HVAC, heating and cooling kind of outlet, right? Interesting. And he was like, you know what? My employees need a park. So he built a park for them. All right. And the park that ended up eventually becoming like the YMCA and where this tower is, is Ilg Park. Because it was just supposed to be for the HVAC employees to hang out.

He had a pool there. Oh, my God. Yeah. So this was a recreation park for these like company people. Okay. Is it still like the pool that's like part of the YMCA there? Well, the YMCA isn't there anymore. But I think it was. I think it must have been. Because I feel like that was all indoor. Like it wasn't anything you could see there. Like there was no, as of the 1990s, there was nothing there that would make you think that like it was a park or anything that anybody visited. I wonder if, I think it might have been a case where there was a park and the YMCA was built on the park. Okay.

And then everything just turned into a parking lot? I think so. Okay. Everything has fallen apart since then. But yes. So the tower comes in because he was building this park for the employees, this Robert Ilg character. And then he was like, they should have a pool. So there's a pool.

But you need a water tank for the pool. And he built the water tank and it looked like shit. And so he's like, let's build a leaning tower of pizza. Oh, my gosh. That's clever. It's just to hide a water tank. That's the only reason it exists. Can I ask, is it now like a 5G tower?

Probably. Anti-mask people did attack it during COVID. He was obsessed with Galileo. And so that was part of the reason that it ended up being a leaning tower of Pisa. We're missing our like, fanatical weirdo rich people. Yeah. Why doesn't anybody just have like odd hobbies anymore?

This is a great crazy dude. Yeah. Because he just owned like a heating and ventilation company. He wasn't even like Elon Musk. Yeah. He's not a billionaire. He's just a little too rich. Right.

And he decides I'm going to build a leading tower of Pisa to hide the water tank for my employees park. Yeah. Like there's a universe where Mark Zuckerberg is still obsessed with like the Roman Empire. But he just builds like a mini golf. And everybody enjoys it. Yeah, like just the best one you've ever seen. Oh my God, with that kind of money, you could do so much.

Crazy like little elevators. Oh, my God. Yeah, a couple lions. You know he could do it up. Yeah. If only Mark Zuckerberg would put his money towards a useful goal, like making the world's best putt putt putt course. Knowing him, though, he could never wrap his mind around mini golf. It'd have to be meta-golf or some nonsense.

like that. But getting back to Niles, the ownership of the tower has changed hands a bit over the years. It was owned by the Ilg family as part of Ilg Air Park until 1964, when it was donated along with the land to the YMCA. This was a full 14 years before the village people put out their song and about 60 years before Donald Trump started dancing weirdly to that song all the time, so the Ilgs were well ahead of the curve on that one. The Ilgs gave the tower to the YMCA, but they set some rules, notably that the tower had to stay standing until at least 2059, and they had to put in a minimum level of maintenance.

As time went on, the tower became less of a priority for the Y, and it fell into some disrepair. Then the 1990s came along, and Niles realized that they had a crumbling tourist destination on their hands that was going to fall apart if they didn't step in. The town leased the tower from the Y and started putting money in for repairs. This is paid off wildly, as we see in the following article from the Chicago Tribune from 2013. The town had just approved a study on what they would need to do to restore the building,

and the article about this news features a picture of the leaning tower, along with a pull quote from Doug Kirby, the publisher of Roadsideamerica.com. Quote, what's great about it? If you've never been over to see the real one, the one in Niles looks pretty big. The Chicago Tribune is publishing an article about this local monument, so they reach out to the guy who's the authority on these kinds of monuments. They ask him for comment, and the best they can get out of him is basically saying that the cool part about this tower is that most people going to it don't realize how much smaller it is than the real one so they can still enjoy it. This seems disrespectful, and we're discussing a time. tower that was built to hide a water tank.

I think what kind of captures me about it is that it's just a remnant of a thing that shouldn't be there. It's a monument from another place. It's in the place that has nothing else there. It's not like a busy road that like everybody's like, oh yeah, yeah, like Niles, like that's their big icon for, like the city. Yeah. It's just a thing that's there.

Until you mentioned it, I had never heard of it in my years in Chicago. No one is like, hey, get this. Do you know that just outside town there's a tower leans? I mean, there's no reason to go see it because there is nothing. It doesn't do anything. It's not like you could go picnic. Like there's no reason. You could.

You could. But if you saw it, you'd be like, well, shit. Yeah. I would only take issue. with one thing. And that is, you say it doesn't do anything. And that's not true.

It does do something. It holds water. Yes. It also chimes. Oh, does it? Yeah, they're bells. I sit here, having just arrived at the leaning tower of Niles, and I'm not sure if it'll capture,

but you'll probably hear some traffic in the background. A airplane flying overhead. Oh, there we go. Oh, hell yeah. Listen to that. As luck would have it, I arrived here at 3 p.m. Almost on the dot. And I had a little bit of a hunch that there was going to be,

you know, there's some bells in this thing. But I didn't know if they played on every hour. And who, who, who, what a treat. We captured a little bit of the bells. The bells. honestly sounds sick. They're a little bit underwhelming.

Or maybe they just need to be polished up or something. But wonderful nonetheless, and now you, whoever is listening to this, can say that you have heard the bells of the miniature leaning tower that's in the suburbs of Chicago.

Oh, I spoke way too soon. So there's seven bells. Okay. And get this. One of them was made in 1623. No shit. One of them was made in 1747. Stop it.

And one of them, I can't remember which one, but it was actually from Pisa. Oh, my God. Yeah, like a 16 or 1700s bell is in the tower, and it chimes basically on the hour or maybe on the half hour in Niles. like a 400-year-old bell is just there. I don't know that I've ever heard the bells. It's crazy. Anybody who listens to this episode will hear the bells because I captured them on audio. And so they'll hear that.

Okay. But they don't sound great. But nobody's gone to, like, screw with the bells over the ears or anything? I wonder if it's part of why you can't get in. Maybe. Maybe they're worried that hooligans would come and deface the bell. Well, it's a well-up secret because nobody had ever told me anything about bells. It's on a plaque in front of the, like, the reflecting pool that it has, like, the ages of the bells.

Does somebody go ring? Is there like a quasi-modo of the Tower of Y? I really hope so. But I'm not sure. I don't know. I think it's automated. Okay. And I don't know if any of this is true.

This is just what I was told by a plaque. Okay. Oh my God, if the plaque was just like, just for shits and giggles. There's bells from 200 AD. These assholes. I think it's pretty crazy to think that there's this tower that doesn't care that it's there. No one else cares that it's there. Like I said, there's a bus stop out in front of it and people are just minding their business, not looking at the tower waiting for a bus.

Yeah. And there are two bells in it that are older than the U.S. I had no idea. I've driven by it a million times. It seems like this should be a piece of history. Niles should celebrate this more. It's not even like you think maybe it would be like, they don't have their own license plates,

but like some sort of like Niles themed stuff. Like we've got the big tower or, you know, like it would be in their motto. But I believe it is Niles where people count. You know, I find funny is like everybody goes to Pisa and they do that one photo that everybody does where they're like they stand in front of it and then they hold their hands up

like they're holding the tower up in perspective I don't recall a single person doing that. Are you kidding? No. I was there and I saw someone do it. It was not crowded by any, I was the only person there for most of the time

that I was there. But then a family showed up and one of them did the post. Yeah. I saw them like, all right. Like you can't, you can't resist. All we did in high school was drive around and like, I don't know, stop at a park and sit on the swing set or go to Baha'i Temple and like roll down the hill on the lawn.

We weren't doing anything. It seems like a thing we would do be like, hey, let's go over to that Tower of Pisa and do. But maybe because we didn't have camera phones. It probably is, that's part of it. And then it's also kind of dorky. Oh, it's super dorky. But I think it's good family fun. Yeah.

And I learned this in a Google review that the Niles Tower is very popular in Niles area rappers' music videos. I don't know who any of these Niles area rappers are. How many are there? I don't know. But it's on a Google review. And I assume that they do that in the video, too, you know, like holding up the tower. It's, you can't not. It's a real badass rapper persona.

If I wasn't alone or if I had the nerve to ask this family, Sure. There's a good chance I would have taken a picture with it. You can have to go back. You failed in your mission. I'll go back any time. I'll live at that tower. I'll be the Quasimota.

So the city is taken over this. And I, okay, now the timeline's a little bit fuzzy for me here. But you brought up that Niles' sister cities with Pisa. This happens. after. It happens in 1991. Okay. I did not realize it was that recent. Yeah. It happened 57 years after the tower was built. Okay.

And so in effect, you had a guy who made this tower in order to hide a water tank. And then they got old ass bells and became sister cities with a city in Italy because of that. Uh-huh. His stupid idea ended up changing history. Yeah. Effectively. Yeah. Huh.

That is such a... I don't know what's involved with being a sister city. Um, I think... Nothing. You got to show up at the wedding. You got to babysit. No, I don't know either. I think that, I mean, obviously, I can't imagine there's much trade.

No. I don't think Niles is exporting particularly more to Italy than other cities. No, I don't think of it as a particularly Italian locale. And I think that places are sister cities with multiple cities sometimes. I don't think it's a monogamous thing. No, they're poly. Yeah, ethically multi-siblings. I don't know what goes into that either, but I think it's fun.

It is fun. I think it's, and I think it's a great. great thing for international. Like, when you were a kid, did you have a pen pal in another country? Yeah, I did, actually. It's a good thing. Yeah. Brings us all closer.

It makes a world a little bit smaller. I think that's what sister city dumb is. Okay. I think that's what it is basically as pen pals. I have a feeling Niles doesn't have too many irons of the fire. We're not, Niles, we're not busy. We could use a few more. sister cities.

Can we build a tiny parthenot? You know, I'm shocked that it's that old and it has that much history and was like, I don't know, constructed with that much care. It is. For something that hides a water tank, it's not sparse. You know, like in terms of, like, it's meant to look like the leaning tower. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it's unnecessary.

Yeah. It just blows my mind that it's so ignored. It's true. But see, this is why I think it's such a strange thing that you asked or you suggested that I go to. But it's actually fairly perfect because it's amazing. There's this history to it, but it is kind of, like you said, ignored. and there's no reason for it. Yeah.

Like, I would understand if this was over commercialized. Yeah. Like if they were out there selling Leading Tower of Niles' T-shirts and charging admission or... Yeah. Then I'd be like, eh, this sucks. Yeah. But it's just there. It's there for the public to enjoy.

A thing that's there. It's not even like, you would think it would be like, you know, hang a light right at the big leaning tower. Mm-hmm. But it's not like on the way to anything. So it's not even like a navigation. point. It's just a thing that's there that no one really thinks twice about. It's like a water tower.

Like, I mean, even those I think, you know, they kind of are iconic in certain cities, like they kind of save ferris, you know, like whatever. I think like they can be really iconic in that way. This isn't even that. It's just like an antenna or something. Like, it's just, yeah, there's a big replica of a world monument over there. No reason.

No reason. No reason. And there's also something so wonderful to me about the, like, the idea that it was built for something so dumb as hiding a water tank. Yeah. Because to me, that just speaks, like, I think there's something huge in there. Yeah. That is, okay, there's a lot of water tanks to hide. Yeah.

Do you want to hide them with a block of something? Or do you want to hide it with a leaning tank? I think it speaks to like the lack of whimsy, you know, and I, and Niles is such a whimsyless town. You don't say. I apologize, Niles. It's just not a place that has a lot of whimsy. And it's such an oddity that it's, it is there because it is such a whimsical thing. Yeah.

And I'm, you know, I think, I think that as I, as I go around this, this fine country and see things, some of them are going to be good and some are going to be bad. Sure. And to me, I'm quite happy I went to this. I'm glad I saw it. Yeah. It's, um, I don't, it's hard to derive much meaning. No.

But, I mean, there's 400 year old bells in there and no one cares. No one cares. Those are, those are probably worth millions of dollars. You can't replace them. Yeah. I, yeah. I'm surprised. they haven't been stripped and sold for public funding or something.

But yeah, I don't know. There's that kind of Americana that I really, really love. Like the novelty, you know, like roadside attractions, like the house on a rock. Like I know I've mentioned it to you before, before a deal came and sailed like got canceled. I really like the book of American Gods. And they talk about how like there is a magic in. in places that that accumulates in the sort of whimsy along like almost like laylines. They just sprouts up in certain places that uh things that shouldn't be.

And um, they even talk about places that are so like they try to make popular and are just devoid of magic. And Niles is just one of those things where it's just, it's such a place that is devoid of magic and then there's this impossible thing there. And it's like no one can see it and no one can look at it. This is the right kind of Americana. It's a guy who thought, I know what will bring people joy, a very small version of something in Europe.

And it was just like, that's something very American. Like, we don't have stuff that will impress you, but I know where you could get some of it. And I can only build it at a half scale. Right. It's too big. But I can make a small one. I can make a little one, and I think it'll be perfect.

I think that there's something even more fun. that his motivation was in care for his workers. Yeah. Like that came before the idea to make the tower. Yeah. He only came up, he only ended up making the tower because he needed to hide something. Yeah. Presumably if the water tank could have gone underground or like it just didn't look bad.

Yeah. It might never have happened. But also he just had that passion for, I guess, a certain place. For Galileo. Yeah. So he just wanted to, he just wanted to build something. He's like, I have an opportunity here. I'm going to make something real weird.

I think in a world of like when you have choices, when you could either like fuck people over, do something boring or make a mini-leaning Tower of Pisa, you should always do the third. Everyone is better off. You're better off. I don't know anything about Robert Ilg, and I think he's great.

Yeah. He seems a delight. I tried to find. anything about him in like old newspapers. Yeah. And I kept just finding society pages stuff. Oh, fun. Of like Robert Ilg and his wife are entertaining their in-laws this weekend.

Oh. That used to be in the paper. Yeah. It's crazy. You know, I was, I made the cover of the Skokie's review. You don't say. When I was born. Congratulations.

My birth was on the cover of the Skokie Review. Big Newsday. Yeah. Did they report on all births on the front page? No. It was because I was born at home and I was delivered by the Skokie Fire Department. And so it was a big day for all of them. Was this because it was a home birth gone wrong?

It was just a surprise. Okay, so it wasn't like you were a demon and you set fire when you came out of your mother. No, I think the fire department just got there before the paramedics. Okay, okay. Yeah, that makes it a little bit more interesting than just a birth announcement. Yeah. You know, there's a little bit of a hook here. Yeah, they came back for my, like, first birthday and there was a cake.

That's nice. Local baby we reported on survives a year. Yeah, pretty much. So have you seen that show where children do errands? No, what? I was visiting my parents, and my mom wanted to watch. There's a Japanese show where children get sent on errands. and it's really cute because they kind of don't know how to do things.

Uh-huh. So, like, in this one, a brother and sister had to go into town to go by a clock. Is this a Japanese show? Yeah. Okay. And I think it's pretty old. Okay. I don't, I have no context for this.

It's just something my mom was watching. Okay. Is it like, is it on prime? Probably it's somewhere. I don't know how she was watching it. But it's supposed to be cute. because it's like, oh, these kids, they don't know how to get on a bus. Yeah.

But there's like a hundred people following them with cameras to like make sure everything's safe. And, you know, like, it's very weird. But they're kids and, oh, shucks, it's cute. The one I watched with them, they talked to the like brother years later when he was like 13 or something like that. And he did not want to talk to them. And it was clear that like they had to bribe him with a new pair of shoes. and then he still didn't want to talk to them. That's how I imagine you when you were one, when the news came back.

I will say for... I need new booties if I'm going to talk to you guys. For years. Every family of any time my parents went anywhere, have you heard the story of Adrian's birth? I was like, I need everybody to stop doing this. Do you have a copy of that paper? I don't, but I bet my parents do.

I bet they do. Yeah. You can probably. find it online and some sort of archive. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Newspapers.com has like everything. Yeah. I'm just saying the Skokie review, like those papers, they still don't report on anything

too significant. So I'm not surprised that, uh, I'm surprised that guy doesn't have his name. Maybe he does, but like, I don't remember like an ill, you know, museum or library or anything like that. Well, yeah, I think, I, I think, you know, you make a leaning tower and you're good. You're done. Yeah. You don't want to run the risk of whatever else you make being boring.

Yeah. People will be like, would you like to make a donation to the Niles Library? And he's like, no. Uh-uh. I got my thing. Did you see that? That's mine. Yeah, I made that tower.

You pony up your own money. Yeah. Come on. Get somebody else for the books. Unless you want to make it the Galileo, like playground of... Copernicus Library of Ilg. Yeah. One of the lessons I've learned about myself as a creator is that I like to do things and not necessarily know why I'm doing them.

Sometimes that means making the terrible choice that you know is going to suck, like listening to countless hours of InfoWars content because you're curious where that path leads. Other times it means doing something that has no inherent meaning to see if the act of doing the thing creates a meaning in and of itself. For this new show, I decided to incorporate a segment, that is definitely the latter. There's a lot of time out there driving on the road and your mind gets to thinking and you have these thoughts.

Sometimes it becomes hard to distinguish between the thought that's profound and one that's very dumb. And in some cases, you just have to roll the dice and see as soon as it comes out of your mouth, which is it? So I was driving and I realized that there's 52 weeks

in a year. So if I put out an episode a week, that would be 52 podcasts in a year. and there are 52 cards in a standard deck. As if that wasn't enough, there are 50 states in the United States, which is shockingly close to 52. And just like that, a bit was born. I'm setting out to put out an episode of this show each week, each one featuring a destination in a different U.S. state, plus two international episodes.

Each state will be assigned a card at random from a deck of cards, and we'll see. if at any point there's any sort of meaning that comes out of this. Okay. 50 nifty United States. So I would like for you, since we are sitting in the same room, to take this deck and choose any card, and that will represent for all time, Illinois and the Leaning Tower in Niles of the Y. Okay. And that will be the four of spades. The four of spades.

What does that mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? So there's a fundamental piece of this bit, and that is that it's nothing. Right. I don't know what it means. It's a forgettable card.

The four? For a forgettable. Well, I think that one of the things that I'm going to run into a lot is I've played a lot of poker. Okay. And so I have feelings about cards. Sure. And almost all of them are the same. And that is that, like, well, if I'm looking down at a four of spades, I'm thinking,

maybe I'll maybe if maybe if they're suited I'll keep going maybe if I have another spade in my hand maybe I'll keep going I might fold this for spade's not that good not that powerful of a card no no but I do think that it's symbolic

it's a forgettable card for a forgotten place but this is the whole state this is Illinois oh that's what you chose for the whole state yeah oh boy that's regrettable I should have picked something better well there's next year Illinois could do better next year.

In some ways, that feeling that you're expressing there is a four of spades feeling. Yeah. That like, ooh, Illinois could have done better. Yeah. This is the four of spades of Illinois. Yeah. This leaning tower of why. There's definitely better things than Illinois.

Like what? I would say it's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm sure there's something better in Illinois. Yeah. by most metrics yeah but I do think it's a fun thing and I think it was a not too far from home fun place to head out to and I don't know it just it made me think of you it seemed like a weird novelty thing that shouldn't be there and it seemed like something that would appeal to you see

now here's what I'm feeling I'm feeling you're making excuses for it now which is four of spadesy you're you are trying you're trying to to equivocate yeah and be like ah this isn't so good and i think that the drawing the four of spades has brought a level of insecurity to you yeah no the cards are you fucked it up with the cards i didn't fuck up anything it is just what it is that's what's magical about the deck of cards okay well i didn't realize that there was like one shot oh there's one Shut. And I think I'm, I wonder how long it'll take for me to get very annoyed with this segment not meaning anything.

Oh, the cards? Yeah. I think that there's a really good chance I will get bored with it pretty quick. But I'm going to commit to it. Yeah. Well, I think there's a lot to commit there too because, I mean, my partner is very into taro. Ooh. And I am, I am not.

I'm not a wooy person. But I do respect the practice of it. I think there is something that is really beneficial in reflecting on things, even if they're random. Because I think it makes you reach for things that you wouldn't have thought to reach for. And sometimes patterns and lines of meaning don't emerge until later. So maybe the Four of Spades being Illinois will make sense somewhere down the road and we just don't know it. Yeah. Thank you for sending me to Niles.

Oh, I'm glad. It was a wonderful first jaunt. Yeah, not too far. No. Which is nice. And as I'm starting to do this show, it's good to have something that, first of all, is too far. Yeah.

And second is kind of like there's, it's not too heavy. Yeah. It's something worth exploring, but kind of, there's, there is still a little bit of triviality to it. Yeah. And I think there's something. I think we're all grasping for an American identity that's not sad. Let's steal it from Italy.

Just shrink it down. Half-size Italy. We'll take that for America. I think it's a real hard time to be an American right now, and it doesn't feel good. Yeah. And I think that there is just something nice and exploring the kind of joyful spaces or the things that are, even just kind of ambient that are unique and to appreciate those things. And, you know, even if they're just of the background, I don't know.

I think there's something significant in the insignificance. We are in the shipfire of a country that a lot of things that we don't have control over, but it's still the place that I grew up. And it's the place that people I loved, you know, were and a significant thing. things and wonderful things in my life happened. Yeah. And to remember that there are, you know, in our towns and in our lives, like, something different and unique.

It's not just like the other Walmart. Yeah. You know. I've been driving a whole lot for, you know, preparing for this show and getting some pieces together. And one of the things that I can't help but think constantly is, like, I love this. country. Yeah. I hate that I love it, but I do. Yeah. There's a lot of great stuff. And there's like a lot of great people. Yeah. It's problematic. Phavenor. Exactly. We've been canceled. It sucks. Had it coming.

Should have renamed the show Problematic Fave. It's not too late. Wait, Danarky made a theme song. It is too late. Shit. Yeah. It sucks. to like America, but we can like America if we do better and if we create a new model of what it is. Yeah. If we create a new, I don't want to say this. No. Oh, no.

I don't, as I'm saying these words, it's feeling like I'm saying that I'm going to redefine America. Oh, no, I don't think you're going to do that. No, I want to avoid saying something like that because it seems so great. Yeah, I think it's a good exercise for all of us to look for the value of our community and of our, you know, I don't want to say nation. But the nation's made up of all the communities. It is, but even just on the smaller scales of things and, you know, our towns and our states and our identities as, you know, our. Americans and how that means, but like something that makes me not feel gross about saying I'm

American. I'm an American and we have a mini leaning tower and that's good. That's okay. That's it. That's it. I'm going to just, I'm going to ride with that. Some days that's got to be good enough because they, rest of bad. We got this thing and I'll defend it with some amount of energy that's not, not my life, but I'll defend it. Yeah. I'll maybe throw a couple bucks if they ask me to chip in for the tower.

100%. If they did like a save the tower, I'm there. Yeah. I would do a live show there to save the tower. There you go. Yeah, that's how much I like it. A Muppet movie. I would do a Muppet movie of it.

Yes. I'd do a Muppet movie for any reason. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I don't care. Give me with those Muppets. You know I'm down. You know I love a Muppet. As this trip comes to,

a close, I feel like my visit to the Niles Tower and conversation with Adrian helped me reclaim some of my excitement for the big tree. Maybe it's dumb, and maybe it's okay for me to be pumped up about something that's kind of dumb, but it's maybe also okay to make fun of that excitement. The world is big enough for the cynical and the naive, and on a smaller scale, each of us is big enough to contain both too. Enjoy seeing the world through the wide-eyed wonder of a child, and allow yourself to feel that excitement so long as you don't let it lead you off a cliff chasing a butterfly. Enjoy mocking things and laughing at yourself so long as it doesn't stop you from taking a chance and getting out there and experiencing the world. Your inner cynic and your inner rube depend on each other.

They're not at odds. So celebrate them both, along with all of the other myriad parts of the self that makes us who we are. So that's Illinois in the books. I may have made it to the big Tree and Humansville, but make no mistake about it. This was not the Missouri episode. Missouri is yet to be assigned a card, and that's really official business, and we're going to find the meaning there somewhere. I'd like to wrap this episode up with a big thank you to Adrian and Nick for their contributions, and of course a massive shout out to DJ Dan Arkey for making all the music that you hear on this show. If you have a recommendation for somewhere you think I should visit, please drop me a line on my website, show me state of mind.com. especially if you have an idea for something in Delaware. For the life of me, I cannot get a handle on that state, and I have no idea what's up there.

And with that, I'm off on my next trip. I'll see you next time from who knows where. I could be anywhere, but no matter the geography, I promise I'm going to work to maintain that show me state of mind. I don't know.