La Crosse Talk PM WIZM

UW-La Crosse political science professor, Dr. Anthony Chergosky, in the WIZM studio Friday for La Crosse Talk PM, despite it being Quitters Day. We discuss what that is, along with a slew of other things:

• How businesses use amenities to guilt us into shopping
• The controversies around Facebook/X/TikTok hoarding our data and looming TikTok ban
• Is this newest Kwik Trip in La Crosse the Taj Mahal of KTs?
• The genius of Wisconsin’s GOP on the April ballot

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). Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts here, Spotify here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

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Katie Kotlowski, the two-time National Champion with the No. 1-ranked University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team, joined La Crosse Talk PM on Thursday.

The senior defensive player, who calls La Crosse her hometown, talks about playing on the ice on Wrigley Field last weekend, how she got started in hockey at the Green Island Ice Arena and what she does off the ice through volunteering.

Plus, you know, winning titles in 2021 and 2023, losing in the championship 1-0 last season, and who’s better: Badgers hockey or Wisconsin volleyball?

Kotlowski has started for the Badgers since she was a freshman. The Badgers (20-1-1) are ranked No. 1 in the nation and it’s not even close.

We start out talking about playing that game at Wrigley against No. 2 Ohio State, and also get into how she’s an advocate for mental health and what it’s like playing all five years on a team that always has national championship expectations.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He’s the man behind the eats on Abe’s Raves, Abram Dyke, stopped in the WIZM studio to talk everything food in La Crosse. What the area’s doing well, what it needs to work on and why he started the page.

How he got started is a pretty heart-warming story of helping struggling businesses.

We also hit on what La Crosse does well for dining out, and what it’s missing. 

This conversation was a clash of two pallets. Dyke is a little more — or a lot more — cultured than this WIZM host, but he played along nicely, diving into things like the area’s best burger, pizza and fried chicken.

Since eating food for a living isn’t quite his thing yet, Dyke works full-time as an ICU nurse so, of course, we had to go after hospital food a bit — though he points out that food is made for a lot of people in little time.

Also, if you didn’t get enough of Dyke, he coincidentally will be the guest on Coulee Region Cooks at 10 a.m. Thursday on WIZM.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

UW-La Crosse political science professor, Dr. Anthony Chergosky, in the WIZM studio Friday for La Crosse Talk PM, predicting the Top 2025 stories for both La Crosse and Wisconsin.

This conversation went back and forth, as we did a bit of a dive on each topic, including the La Crosse mayor's race and adding ranked-choice voting, plus school referendums and when to put those on the ballot, and lastly the top story potentially dealing with the Green Bay Packers.

We also got Chergosky's Top 5 storyline predictions for 2025 and the revelation that his 2-year-old daughter likes crusts on her PB&Js.

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Instead of having Pam Starcher stop in at WIZM, we took La Crosse Talk PM to her, and discussed how to make yoga a New Year's resolution, right from her studio at The Yoga Place at Fifth and Main streets, downtown. 

Stacher has been the owner for a decade but The Yoga Place has been there nearly 40 years and was La Crosse's first-ever yoga studio.

For those who want to try and make yoga their thing in 2025, Starcher has a beginner series for eight Monday's from 4-5 p.m. beginning Jan. 6. 

So, we talk about her approach to yoga, how to make that a resolution you can keep and the way she makes yoga inclusive for people of all abilities.

We hit on how how athletes could benefit from yoga, and how a lot of people wish they would have gotten into it sooner. 

We also talked a bit about the studio itself, its location in City Square and how that was the old Herberger's, when all the big box stores used to be downtown.

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WIZM's Brad Williams in studio to recap La Crosse's biggest topics of 2024 from the porn scandal at UW-La Crosse to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns in town and capped off by development in the area.

A week ago, we broke down the Top 25 most viewed stories on the WIZM News website, but this conversation is about Williams Top 3 story categories, which was led off with the UW-La Crosse saga involving fired chancellor Joe Gow and the aftermath of Board of Regents learning he has sex with his wife on camera and with adult film stars that makes its way to the internet.

After that, we talk about all the presidential campaigns that barnstormed through La Crosse right up until the day before the election, plus the local political headlines, like the mayor not seeking reelection or not having enough candidates running for La Crosse School Board.

The last topic to top off 2024 was all the development that happened — or didn't — in La Crosse, including the Macy's getting torn down for more parking, another Starbucks, a Raising Canes, a Panda Express and a carwash. Plus, every Shopko in the area was converted into something, while the old Kmart is still standing and when that might be coming down. And things that didn't happen, like the Kmart getting demolished or Costco going up near downtown.

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The owner of Pearl Street Books, Beth Hartung, and La Crescent’s public library director, Jess Witkins, stopped in the WIZM studio to discuss, what else, books, including the best of 2024, book bans, reading as a New Year’s resolution, and what’s changed in popularity over the year and years.

This is part of a series of La Crosse Talk PMs about New Year’s resolutions, as we discussed a couple of different strategies to help get you reading more — and how to stick with it. 

We also talked about a shift in popular genres over the years — including to fantasy to horror to unsolved murders — plus what’s been most popular in 2024 and what is a must read this year, and ever.

We discussed book bans, how Wisconsin and Minnesota have handled those and making sense of why they happen.

Other things we hit on included buying used and the two instances when you should buy new, plus reading physical books versus a digital copy. 

Hartung has owned Pearl Street Books downtown for three years, and talked about some of the events she’s been holding there to make the store more inclusive and a third space. Witkins has been with the library systems eight years and talks about programs they have and what’s been popular to the public there, lately.

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Claire and Phillip Mitchell kickoff a La Crosse Talk PM series on health, as the new year approaches and we all start thinking about resolutions.

The two own Mitchell Holistic Health in Onalaska, a clinic that tackles health issues in various ways, from physical therapy to functional medicine to life coaching.

The Mitchells are headed into their fifth year at the clinic, and we talked about their origins stories, that hovered around Claire’s health battles, and led to Phillip deep diving into those issues. 

All that sort of sprouted the clinic, where Claire as a nutritionist and Phillip a physical therapist, plus the rest of the team, can address people’s needs in ways that regular clinics won’t look at.

A lot of the conversation hovers around what they describe as functional medicine and how your body can be inflamed — not like the inflammation that comes from a sprained ankle — and the three-tiered way they help people overcome their issues. 

We also discuss the kind of people their clinic is for — whether that’s someone with a sports injury or people with everyday chronic pain — and what it takes to get them healthy and, perhaps just as important, keep them on track in what could be a lifestyle change. Afterall, this is a new year's resolution show, and most of that battle is sticking with the plan.

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Two conversations about homelessness on Monday's La Crosse Talk PM with city council members Chris Woodard and Mac Kiel. 

La Crosse’s two big committees meet next week Thursday, Woodard discusses a resolution he’s authored that — simply put — requests the state and federal government’s help in addressing homelessness.

After that, Kiel joins to talk about the warming shelters being full and how the council’s “camping ban” has affected the homeless. Plus, we discussed the need for a surge shelter and how that should have coincided with something like a camping ban. She also broke down the city’s policy on using the Main Street library as an emergency shelter.

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UW-La Crosse political science professor, Dr. Anthony Chergosky, in the WIZM studio Friday for La Crosse Talk PM, discussing whether Santa is a Democrat or a Republican, how old is too old to believe, is Elon Musk or Donald Trump the president, and will the next two years of the Wisconsin state Legislature be less productive than the last.

Began the show with a caller complaining about alternate-side parking rules, after she received a $0 ticket, and using police to hand out tickets when they have better things to do.

After that, we talk of the news that the US House could only fund the government again for a few months. It kicked the can down the road to now the next Congress to fund the government. One of the funding bills that didn’t pass was the House — whose members make $174,000  a year — giving itself a pay raise. We recap how this Congress has been the least productive in modern history, especially in the House. That debacle began with a historic record 13 votes to make Kevin McCarthy the Speaker, kicking him out, and not ever passing a government funding bill or a farm bill. 

After that, we quickly hit on a new La Crosse mayoral candidate has filed to run, bringing that total to four to replace Mayor Mitch Reynolds.

Then, from an unproductive Congress to just how productive will Wisconsin’s state Legislature be with new voting districts, a state Supreme Court race that could turn that upside down and a governor’s race at the end of the term. 

Part of that conversation was about how the Legislature was unable to do much with a multi-billion-dollar state surplus to pass any meaningful legislation on PFAS, rural hospitals, marijuana legalization, childcare or the state’s 175-year-old abortion ban.

After that, we went back to Congress, and the future of now-Speaker Mike Johnson, and whether Musk or Trump is running the country, after Musk tweeted to kill the first US House government funding bill.

Finally, we discuss a couple of YouGov polls in regards to whether Santa Claus is a Democrat or Republican and how old is too old to believe in the big guy.

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