Tearing down Macy’s for fast food and taking penguin naps with UW-La Crosse political scientists, Chergosky

UW-La Crosse political science professor, Dr. Anthony Chergosky, in studio Friday for La Crosse Talk PM to discuss how penguins nap thousands of times a day, a development plan to tear down the old Macy’s for fast food and parking, and how we’ve already started the 2025 campaign season.

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La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

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Began the show talking about the Valley View Mall, and a proposal discussed Thursday on La Crosse Talk PM to tear down the Macy’s to build a Panda Express, a Raising Cane’s, a carwash and more parking.

After that, an interesting story on demographics, where the city of La Crosse has seen the largest population decrease in Wisconsin. Where are those people going? North. Just a bit north.

Then we had a great call from Karen — not THAT kind of Karen — on WIZM’s Operation Poinsettia and how that brings joy to a lot of seniors like her around this time of year. She also suggested WIZM should bring animal rescues to them, as well. We still need a name for that, though, because “Operation Cat-Dog” doesn’t quite work.

Karen also brought up a funny story on penguins, which we had to get into, in how these animals take thousands of four-second naps a day. We also took a couple of our own “penguin naps.”

After that, we had to ask Chergosky if it’s ridiculous that former Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel has announced he’s running for state Supreme Court … in 2025. So, bypassing that little 2024 election.

That led to a discussion about “The Permanent Campaign,” as the Wisconsin state Legislature — a full-time body — is out of session until mid-January and only working 3.5 months in all of 2024, before they hit the campaign trail.