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Jd Vance and Tim Walsh had their first and only debate on Tuesday. What happened? The NPR politics podcast has you covered with all the news and analysis from the vice presidential debate. Listen to the NPR politics podcast wherever you get your podcast. About 10 years ago, the town of Esbo, Finland, had a problem with thousands of young people gathering on the beaches and committing crimes. Some One of them very serious crimes. Inspector Hanu Vannenen had an idea to stop it. Can you tell us about that? Yes. In Finland, in central Finland, they had used classical music in a shopping mall. They But the youth didn't like the classical music, so they evaded it. And then I'm a little odd in this police station. I suggested to the our superiors that Should we try to play the classical music at the beach? And we played it. Usually, they gather there around 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM until the 1:00 AM, the whole night. And we started the music at 4:00 or 5:00 PM. So there wasn't youth already there. And the youth, they did come in a small groups, but they started to move one by one, one step, two step, three steps away the music.

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It wasn't loud. They could talk there, but I'm not sure what's the problem with the classical music. But they did move. It sounds like you just changed the vibe of the beach to a place Yes. They didn't think was cool anymore. Yes, something like that. Am I right that the vibe there, that the scene at the beach with the classical music would almost make it perfect for a romantic picnic? Well, yeah. If you like Mozart or pan flute music, then it's okay. Some of the older people came and they enjoyed a pizza and wine or something with the classical music. I guess that would be a danger that you would, by playing the classical music, you could be attracting too many old people. Well, they warned us about that. My superiors also warned me about that, but that's not the case yet. In your It's your private personal life, do you listen to classical music? Not much. Sorry about that. So it had the same effect on you, didn't it? Well, it might have. It might have. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Ian. I'm Mike. On today's show, How to Fix the Net at your Basketball Game.

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But first, we got an email from Brian, which he sent from his seat at a Minor League Baseball Game. Said he needed some help. Brian, what can we help you with? Yeah. So right when I was watching a mascot race at the Lehigh Valley Ironpigs baseball game here in Allentown, Pennsylvania, they do a mascot race in the middle of one of their innings. I just thoroughly enjoyed it. And I was like, How can I do this? And how hard are these costumes to run in? What are the mascots that are racing? So it's all pork-based characters. My favorite is Chris Pea Bacon, Pea, period, bacon. That's a slice of bacon. Diggity is a hot dog. Hambone is a place of ham. Hambone always loses. There's Barbecue, that's a pulled pork sandwich. And then they added somebody recently ribby at the rack of ribby. So they're five. Well, that actually raises a question that I have, Brian. So for hambone, what is the shape of hambone? If hambone always loses, Is that an issue because aerodynamically, hambone has more surface area? That's a good point. I mean, hambone is what you would think. It's like a hack of ham.

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Harder to move in that than, say, a vertical hot dog. Although, I mean, you could argue that the hot dog could be hard because it could be very top-heavy. I've always wondered if it's rigged. If somebody at the top of the organization says, Today, it's you, crispy bacon, Really? To what end do you think, though? Is it just to give crispy bacon his due or her due? Yeah. You all think that it's a real fair contest? I think there are occasions when it's fair, but now that you say it, I mean, with the rise in sports gambling, you have to wonder if there's an underbelly here. Well, Brian, I think we have somebody who can help us here. The most treasured of all the mascot races is the Johnsonville famous Racing Sausages Race at Milwaukee Brewers games. Online with us now is their Italian sausage. We've been told, I'm being completely serious, in no uncertain terms, we've been told not to reveal the human identity of this sausage. So Italian sausage. How long have you been doing the sausage race? I've been doing it for close to 15 years, so I've lost track of how many races I've run.

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Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I'm typically the Italian. I'm partial to the Italian. It's the costume I won my first race in, but we switch it up. Sometimes we'll hop into the Bratwurst or the Hot Dog. We also have the Polish and the Cheriso. So it's always you, and is it the same three or four other people in the other sausage costumes? No. So we actually have anywhere from 30 to 50 people that do it. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, it would be crazy to commit to every home game like that. But no, we do mix it up. One of the most common questions we get is, well, is it fixed? Is the race predetermined? And I can tell you that absolutely not. We try. It gets competitive. We are out there racing our butts off, and it's exhausting. I don't know how long it is, but we go from the opposing dugout to all the way past the home dugout in the camera well into the outfield. In the summer months, it is hot, it is sweating, it is a physically demanding experience. What Italian sausage, which of the sauces has an advantage? Generally, we would say the four that are not chorizo because the chorizo has the sombrero.

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Oh, okay. That adds some extra weight and some aerodynamic implications that you have to factor in. Sure. If you had the power to animate... I'm sorry. If you had the power, Italian sausage, to animate all five sausages, you were given a gift, which of the Five Sausages, real Sausages, would win a race? I would have to say Hot Dog because it's the most slender, not a lot of extra weight to it. Now, we Mike, a second ago, accidentally said your name, which we've bleeped out. It was very clear as we were setting up this interview that we were only to refer to you as Italian sausage. We are to protect your identity, which we're happy to do. I am curious why, though, why that's important. Are they afraid that somebody is going to try and influence the sausage race by finding you in your human life? I think it goes back to just mascot code in general. You go to Disney parks, and they're always in character. That's how we look at it. Do you have a rival, either a rival sausage or a rival human inside of the sausage costume? Is there somebody you always want to beat?

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Yeah, there have been some rivalries. I had a run-in with the Chrizo once. So it was the, gosh, 20th anniversary of the sausage race or something. It was a It was a landmark day. It was a big deal. And tried to take an aggressive turn around home, and Chrizo is in the same line. And we bump and I fall and still managed to get back on my feet and finish third. But I happened to make it on SportsCenter's not top 10 for this. How did that feel? It felt like something I wanted to share with everyone. It didn't matter. It's like, And I asked people, Okay, I'm the not top 10. Do I want to be higher? I was number eight. If I'm going to be on the not top 10, don't I want to just go all the way for number one? Additionally, they had me fill out an injury report because I scraved to my knee a little bit. So I had to fill out this injury report for the club policy. And there's this questionnaire. It's like, Was another employee involved in the incident? And I said, Yes. Incidental contact with Chrizo.

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I have to ask, how can Mike and I get in a sausage race? How do we do it? We will be there at the drop of the hat. Yeah. You guys just say the word and we'll get you booked. I got to be honest, I didn't think that last part was going to work, but we are going to Milwaukee to be sausage Sausages. You'll know we're there when we start speaking in hush tones. All right, we're at American Family Field, where the Milwaukee brewers play baseball. We're starting out at the tailgate, and I should say we invited Peter Sagel to join us here in Milwaukee. He is, of course, usually our taste tester. I figure climbing into a sausage costume that has been worn by countless hot, sweaty people running as fast as they can. That counts as a taste test. There will be a flavor within. It's definitely a sensory experience. You're going to sense things and smell things, probably, and maybe even taste things, depending on what you're doing in there. I am extremely excited about this. In fact, I'm so excited about it. It's almost like a weird thing that you invited me to do it because usually my attitude is dread, but I'm very excited.

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You think we're going to trick you at some point? Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, it can't be this great. I mean, there has to be a catch. Okay. We'll find a way to meet your dread, I think. Okay, so we're about to go back there. We've sat through three innings of this game, looking at the field on which we're about to run. What are you all feeling about it? Growing anxiety. You feel nervous? Well, yeah, not just because of the game. There are a lot of people here. You'll note that during every interstitial moment, everybody's paying a lot of attention. They had that find the coin or whatever the ball under the baseball hat animation. Everybody was playing. Everybody was shouting after answering. They're going to be watching us. But here's the thing. If you didn't know this already, they're not going to know it's us. I'm well aware of that. But you still might fall down. That's exactly it. What if I, as whatever sausage ended up being, fall down? People will be telling for years, they'll say, Oh, did you see that night? The Polish fell down. I was there that night. What do you guys think?

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I'm not nervous. I have no expectation. I just want to finish. Nina, how are you feeling? Yeah, growing anxiety. I'm just dancing in my cheer a little bit more than I used to be. There are a ton of people here. The sausages also are everywhere. What sausage do you want to be? Not chorizo. Where's chorizo? Anything but chorizo. What do you want to be? I Anything but chorizo, which probably means I'm going to end up being the chorizo. Peter, would you like to be the chorizo? I would not like to be the chorizo. Well, I'm sorry. We can edit out where he said not. We have some bad news, Peter. I figured. Let me show you a text that I sent to my friends. I was told to avoid the chorizo because you can't see them from under the hat, so I'll probably get the chorizo. I don't want to be the chorizo. Okay, let's get to it. They take Hina, Mike, Peter, and me. They take us all down beneath the stadium to get our costumes on. This guy gives us this big spiel about the rules. A lot of it has to do with the mascot code.

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Yeah, apparently, and I hadn't really thought about this in retrospect, thinking back about my encounters with mascots, it makes a lot of sense. The thing they're most concerned about is breaking the illusion that, in this case, the sausage is in fact a sausage rather than a person in a sausage suit. Well, I think we should reveal... We're about to go out on the field here and actually do this race and see which of us triumphs. It's the four of us and somebody from the Metz who was... He took the role of Hot Dog. I was Italian sausage. Ian, you were Bratwurst. I was Polish. That means there's only one person left to be I'm sorry. Can we let the listeners guess who that was? Just for a moment? Should we do that? All right, fans, time now for the Johnsonville Famous Racing Sausage Race. Wearing number one, it's the Johnsonville Burundwurst. Number two, we have the Johnsonville Polish Sausage. Wearing number three, the Johnsonville Italian Sausage, wearing number four, the Johnsonville Hot Dog, and number five, it's the Johnsonville Chorizo. All right, Sausages, on your mark. Get set, go. They're often racing the hot dog, taking an early lead with the Chorizo to the inside in second.

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It's the Polish in third, the Buratwurst moving up now with the Italian trailing the field. They make that turn They're heading down the stretch. At least the hot dog is. He's all by himself tonight. It's the hot dog all alone at the wire. Obviously, the hot dog, the one of us that was not... The one person who was not one of us, jumped out to a huge lead. If you're watching it on the Jumbotron, after about five seconds, none of us were even visible because he was so far ahead of us. I was like, Is that a false start? Did I miss the start? Because it It just seemed so unlikely. Exactly what I thought. You saw him, too? Oh, yeah. I saw him. I could barely focus on anything. I saw him running so quickly that I was like, There's just simply no way that they actually said go. You know why I don't think I saw anybody? Because I was in last place. I just saw you guys. All I saw was Hina, and I just knew that I had to beat. I couldn't be last. Ultimately, that's where the drama for the crowd was, was who was going to be last between Mike and Hina.

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Because it was neck and neck for the bottom. I think I've seen video, and I do think we tied. The hot dog guy smoked us. Completely. We were smoked sausages. Hey, if you have any questions you want us to answer, you can send them to us at howto@npr. Org. That's our email address. We promise we look every email we receive. If your question is that you are currently stuck inside of a Bratworth's costume, I'll just tell you right now, just bend both of your elbows the other way, unlock your hips, and rotate your head 360 degrees. As Election Day approaches, NPR's Consider This podcast is zooming in on six states that could determine who wins the White House: Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. We'll ask voters in these swing states what matters to them and which way they want the country to go. Follow along with new episodes this week on the Consider This podcast from NPR. Wisconsin's presidential vote has often come down to less than 1% of the state's population. On NPR's Consider This podcast, we'll hear what's keeping Wisconsin voters up at night. We need someone who's going to be dedicated to what's happening for us.

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Wisconsin, where just 20,000 votes could swing a state of nearly 6 million. This week on NPR's Consider This podcast. The Bullseye podcast is, according to one journalist, the, quote, show people listen to in a more perfect world. So make your world more perfect. Every week, Bullseye puts the pop in culture, interviewing brilliant authors, musicians, actors, and novelists to keep you on your pop culture target. Listen to the Bullseye podcast, only from NPR and Maximum Fun. Hey, we got some listener mail, some correspondence from you all that we would like to acknowledge. First up, we got something from Madelyne, or Madelyne, just wanted to report back that I have never seen the movie The Champ, and when I heard the short snippet from the movie you played in the archive episode, I didn't cry. But when I heard Mike start crying, I unexpectedly started crying with full tears. I also have young kids, so maybe that's it. Madelyne, I feel pain. I inspired your pain. You caused. Caused your pain. I caused your pain. I caused your pain with my pain. I have not watched the Champ in the years since we recorded that episode. Have you, Ian?

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Well, no, I haven't. But I'll say listening back to our podcast episode in which I did not cry, in which I was completely stone-hearted. I cried when I heard you cry. I did. I have kids. I didn't have them when we recorded that episode. But you also caused my pain. Oh, well, you're welcome. Here's another one. This is from Oliver. He's responding to our recent episode about things that are world famous. He's writing from Australia. He says, I will preface that I'm from the East Coast of Australia, but here we call the event of a hot dog sale, a sausage sizzle, and we call a hot dog itself a snag. Okay. I don't think I would ever do that. I don't think I'd be comfortable ordering a Chicago-style snag. I can say that I was just moments ago completely humiliated by a very fast snag. Yeah. See, when you said that, I wasn't sure if we needed to mark this episode explicit or not. We also want to point out one of our reviews on Apple podcasts. This is from Hydroflaskwaterbottel who asks, Do you guys actually read these? I think the answer is obviously yes.

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We are currently doing so. Yeah. Hydroflaskwaterbottel. The Coco Beach high school basketball team was playing a game, and the net went up through the hoop and got stuck. The players kept jumping up to try and knock it down, but nothing was working. The game was stopped. The game could not go on. So Bella, Haley, Jetana from the Coco Beach high school cheerleading squad, can you tell us what you did? Well, we were just cheering like we would normally do, and then the game just stops. We were just watching them struggle for a fat minute until we realized, Wait, when we do pep relies and stuff, my head goes past the rim. So we decided to show off one of our skills and solve the problem at the same time. It was easy peasy. For Mike and I, who don't know a lot about cheering, can you describe what you did? There was three of us. We had a back spot and two side bases. Okay, that's fresh vocabulary for us here, backspot, side bases. The girl that is the backspot, she is behind holding it. Okay, so basically what they're describing here, none of the boys on the basketball team could fix the net.

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So the cheerleaders did... We've all seen it, a basic cheerleading pyramid with one of them way up in the air, and she untangled the net. Yeah, it looks awesome. It was actually tangled up in there, but they got me high enough, so I was able to clearly be able to untangle it. How did the crowd react? Because it looks like you're just doing your thing. I think for a second, they didn't... Some of them didn't really realize what was going on. And then you heard one kid from the other side go like, Oh. And then people started laughing and stuff. They were like, Oh, well, this is fun. Did the boys on the team, did you sense that you had bruised any egos when they were unable to help and you were? I mean, they just went back into their game and just let it go. Steep it under the rug like it never happened. Yeah, there you go. A funny piece of information is Bella's brother is actually on the basketball team, so his sister had to come out for the rescue. Pretty interesting. Yeah. He was just standing there helpless. Bella, does your brother feel bad that you can probably dunk better than he can?

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I don't think so. He's pretty close to dunking right now, so I think he's fine with it. How many side bases does it take for him to dunk? Maybe one or two. There you go. Have you all any other time in your life when you're not at the game cheerleading? Have you used your cheerleading skills to help out in other ways? I actually use it sometimes at work. Instead of there being three bases, it's just me and the person that needs to grab something from the top shelf. I just make the same hand motion and just lift them up a little bit. Wow. It still works to help them up. Awesome. Well, this has been so much fun. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys, for having us. Thank you. Well, that What was it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian? I learned that the mascot code is very real, and people take it very seriously. Let me just ask you, was there ever a point when we were on the field, we're giving high fives, or we're doing our best to give high fives? Because the fact is, because we have no peripheral vision and because I didn't feel comfortable turning, I couldn't actually turn to look at the people I was giving high fives in the stand.

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So there were a lot of phantom high fives. All the fans are leaning through the netting that is up to catch foul balls. I was giving every high five I could. I got very nervous that my costume was going to become entangled in the netting. I saw it all happening. That then it would tear the costume from my body as my human self fell to the ground. Children everywhere, the mascot code would be broken. Children would see that there was a man within. There would just be tears. That's not a real Bratwurst. You think that's what people would say? He's not the Bratwurst we thought he was. How to Do Everything is produced by Polish sausage, Hina Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is the Hot Dog that beat us in the sausage race. Congratulations, Hot Dog. Get us your questions at howto@npr. Org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Thanks. Did you watch the sausage race? Yes. What did you think? It was pretty funny. Who was your favorite sausage? The chorizo has always been my favorite. This guy right here was the chorizo. Oh, really? Yeah. You were? I was.

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What happened? What happened? You asked me what happened? I came in third. Look, I won my age group. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Fresh air up first. Npr News Now, Planet Money, Ted Radio Hour, Thru-Line, the NPR politics podcast, Code Switch, Embedded Books We Love, Wild Card, are just some of the podcast, you can enjoy sponsor-free with NPR Plus. Get all sorts of perks across more than 20 podcasts with the bundle option. Learn more at plus. Npr. Org. This is Panic Heritage Month. The Code Switch podcast invites you to listen to a side of the immigration story you don't hear often. One of joy. Listen as we spend a day at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, talking to some of the people that make the park their weakened escape. Listen on the Code Switch podcast from NPR.