With a Scandanavian first name, German surname, Midwestern sensibilities, and Korean background, Meinzer seeks out the multi-hyphenate histories of others wherever her travels take her. She returns to the podcast to chat with Lale about her latest adventures-including hiking the ancient Via Francigena which begins in Chaucer's Cantebury and ends in Rome, beholding the magnificence and prestige of Gilded Age estates, and following dairy princess pageantry at the Minnesota State Fair.
Thorson, a 20-year-old from the town of Waverly, was crowned as the 72nd Princess Kay of the Milky Way on Wednesday night. And her first official duty as the goodwill ambassador for the state's 1,800 dairy farm families was to bundle up and sit in a rotating glassed-in studio at 40 degrees F (4 Celsius) as fairgoers gathered to watch Kulzer turn a 90-pound (41-kilogram) block of salted butter into art.