Wisconsin Life

07/25/2025

Frog Bay Tribal National Park has hiking trails, shoreline and wetlands. The nearly 200-acre park on Lake Superior is a great place to go for a run or to look out on the Apostle Islands. For members of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the land also holds a special meaning. WPR's Trevor Hook brings us this story on the park's history and its significance.

Frog Bay Tribal National Park opened in 2012 to restore reservation lands back to tribal ownership and ensure tribal members and outsiders alike can access the area for generations.

07/24/2025

Minerva Montooth is 101 years old, but the most surprising thing about her isn’t her age, it’s her address. “I think I lucked out,” she said. Montooth lives at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Preservation in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Watch this story and more full episodes of Wisconsin Life online and on the free PBS app now!

Minerva Montooth, 101, worked alongside Frank Lloyd Wright and wife Olgivanna.

07/23/2025

I’ve added geocaching to my list of things to do when I miss my sister. This was one of her favorite hobbies with the kids in her life, and though she’d ask me to tag along, I never did. There was something about needing to go off trail at times or searching aimlessly while strangers walked by that made me feel uneasy. My sister wasn’t shy though. She was all about finding the treasure." - Writer Yia Lor of Eau Claire, talking about her sister, Jer Lor who was a "epic geocacher."
Hear Lor share her story on on .
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07/23/2025

"Before I knew it, she was holding a canister that somehow magically appeared from the pines. The kids dug through for which trinket they wanted to keep while I scanned the logbook," wrote author Yia Lor of Eau Claire. "Then my eyes landed on my sister’s name. Jer."

Have you ever picked up a hobby because a friend or relative was really into it? Did you try to see if they’re truly onto something? Writer Yia Lor of Eau Claire did this with geocaching, an outdoor activity her late sister, Jer Lor, loved to do with her kids....

07/18/2025

Orioles, pelicans and snowy owls are a few of the hundreds of species that birdwatchers are on the lookout for in Wisconsin this year. Many will travel the state and roam their neighborhoods crossing birds off their life lists -- people like Dexter Patterson, co-founder of the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin.

Instead of hiking through the woods to find and identify birds, the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin set up lawn chairs and blankets and waited for the birds to come to them.

07/16/2025

"Closer inspection revealed that (the quarter) was minted in 1979 in Denver. One of a class of almost 490 million, I could only imagine all the journeys and adventures it had been on over the past 45 years. It may have accompanied an executive on a business trip to Europe, the Far East or Australia. Maybe it was present in New Orleans on an evening in January 1997 when the Packers returned the Lombardi trophy to its rightful place in Titletown. Or perhaps it resided in Kevin Costner’s pocket as he stopped for a coffee on his way to the set of 'Dances with Wolves.'"

When’s the last time you stopped to look at your spare change? For writer Ron Weber, one ordinary find leads him on an unexpected American odyssey.

07/15/2025

Ron Weber once plucked a quarter out of a Wisconsin lake. Instead of simply shoving it in his pocket, he started to imagine all the places the 1979 quarter had been:

🏆 New Orleans when the Packers won the Super Bowl?
🎥 On the set of “Dances With Wolves,” in exchange for a cup of coffee?
🛋️ In the depths of a sofa’s cushions, like many of its minted comrades?

Take the journey with Weber and see where he ultimately decides to send the quarter off on its next big adventure.

07/15/2025

You’ll want to riff along with this Wisconsin Life story!

Pulaski teen Ian Vanveen taught himself how to build electric guitars and is now planning to study electrical engineering to dig even deeper into the circuitry.

Continue the jam session with more full episodes of Wisconsin Life online and on the free PBS app now!

Pulaski teen Ian Vanveen taught himself how to build electric guitars.

07/11/2025

For some people in Wisconsin, baseball is a summer staple. And for Kenosha Kingfish fans, there's a baton twirling usher who is an icon at the team's Northwoods League games. WPR's Evan Casey has more from the ballpark as part of our Wisconsin Road Trip series.

To fans of Northwoods League baseball, Jane Snediker is “Twirling Jane,” a fixture at Kenosha Kingfish games.

07/10/2025

The Milkweed has been churning out monthly dairy economic reports since 1979.

Find out what keeps founder, editor and publisher Pete Hardin going as he visits Wisconsin dairy farms and cheese plants while maintaining personal relationships with hundreds of industry sources in this story from Wisconsin Life.

Watch this story and more full episodes of Wisconsin Life online and on the free PBS app now!

Pete Hardin is one of the last true originals in the world of agricultural journalism.

07/09/2025

"I consider myself one of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life. It’s not because I made a ton of money working in the music business or anything like that. I’m not rich with dollars, I’m rich in my heart. I have my family and I have so many friends. I quit drinking and drugging and doing all that stuff and turned my whole life around and ended up living the greatest life a guy could ever have. I got to hang out with David Bowie, I got hang out Chet Atkins. I’ve got to be part of that industry." - Marty “Meatman” Sosnowski of Green Bay. He talked with his sister about his nontraditional journey as a rock n' roll photographer at a Mobile Tour Stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Hear the story on on .
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07/09/2025

"If you can just understand that it can be anything you want it to be. You don’t have to go down that road. You don’t have to do that. You can totally change it around and you can do whatever you wanna do. That was worth it to me." - Marty “Meatman” Sosnowski of Green Bay

"The reason I went to college is because I had picked up a camera and started taking pictures of rock 'n' roll bands. I wanted to work in the music industry and I did it," said Marty Sosnowski.