♪♪ - You may have seen it.

We learn more about this popular trend called jeep ducking.

- Bags of ducks in my car.

I think it's such a fun thing.

- Opera Philadelphia brings us an experience inside the historic Wanamaker's Grand Court.

- I thought we can't let this space go dormant.

- And a local inventor sets his sight on enhancing the quality of life with his mobility device.

- It feels amazing if some of your strength is translated into forward motion.

- Welcome to the show.

Garrett Brown revolutionized filmmaking when he invented the Steadicam, a camera used in films like "Rocky" and "The Shining."

Now this Oscar-winning inventor is turning his focus on a device that helps aid mobility.

♪♪ - I'm Garrett Brown.

I am, I guess, best known for inventing the Steadicam, camera stabilizer, and the Skycam, and so on.

It's a strange job, inventing, because you have your eye on what's missing.

That's the essence of it.

- We've seen some amazing transformations with people in the Zeen, just because there's nothing quite like it out there.

My dad, he and his cohort were struggling with walkers and wheelchairs, and I thought to myself, there has to be something better.

You need protection from falls, and you need the ability to get around, and you need the ability to get up from a chair.

And so we started to make experiments.

I just welded up a drive walker and I thought, "Wow, that's very cool to be able to coast."

Coasting is one of the great human privileges, you know.

So then we made this, and this one goes up and down.

And then this one was better yet.

It did the lifting for you, right?

And this was even slicker.

We showed this one and at the same time we began to think, "Wait a second.

People are going to want to take it with them.

It has got to fold."

And here is the long chain of devices that led us to how you get it to fold.

And that is extremely tricky.

This is the result of all that research and all that refinement.

A seat belt is the key to not falling.

You can hang out and you're safe.

But you're also able to coast.

And coasting is just fantastic.

And then of course from seated height, where you can be at a table.

Get the handlebars out of the way.

And it does the lifting to get you up to full standing height.

Well, this is bar stool mode, which I dearly love, because now you're at a sociable height up near all your pals.

Hey, how are you?

Yeah.

And that is another vastly human thing, because people don't frankly like looking at people's navels from a wheelchair.

And then this is the height where you do lifestyle stuff like cooking and doing woodwork or whatever, right?

And then when you're ready to go, out come the handlebars with brakes, and off you go.

- It is so rewarding to work on a product like this.

This has been a long evolving process.

It's through a big team effort.

We also love helping veterans.

We've recently got on the VA schedule, which allows patients who have interest in it to order the Zeen much easier.

We've been brought to tears many times.

I've had someone who did not have legs that wanted to get up to eye level height and hug his mom.

And literally, those experiences stick with you.

It's a highly rewarding product to work on because of that.

There are two constituencies for this invention.

People that are slowly or rapidly declining, who you want to level out and help them continue to live and even in some cases begin to return.

And then there's a constituency of people that are rehabbing from a wound, an injury, which obviously includes a serious number of veterans.

And this is a way to get them back to normal life.

Rather than preventing a decline, we're allowing them to rise again.

Your attitude toward your capabilities and your life is so hugely important.

Your degree of confidence and optimism is based on how it feels.

It feels surprisingly amazing if some of your strength, whatever you've got left, is translated into forward motion.

That is huge for people.

They're advancing, and I love that.

Jeep drivers have a special way to spread kindness and build community with rubber ducks.

Have you ever seen a Jeep with little rubber ducks lined up on the dash?

I see them everywhere, but what's it all about?

Well, I'm about to get some answers from my friend, Katie Carr.

This little blue guy is my very first duck I got in Sea Isle City New Jersey in 2021.

But I've gotten so many ducks, so now I string them up at the top here.

Give me the backstory on the ducks.

Sure.

So the ducking started in 2020 during COVID.

There was a woman, Alison Parliament, who is a Canadian citizen but has her dual citizenship for the U.S.

She went back to Canada during COVID and had a really bad experience.

In this interview, Alison describes this scary encounter at a gas station, where a man yelled for her to go back to the U.S.

before physically assaulting her.

Swearing at me, telling me to get out, shoving me into my Jeep.

It was kind of scary.

Resolved to do something fun and positive to counteract this traumatic run-in, Katie tells me Alison decided to go buy some rubber ducks to prank her best friend.

She was going to hide them around his house.

And on the way out of the store, she saw a Jeep and she is also a Jeep owner.

And she thought, you know, I'm just going to put it on that person's Jeep.

Like how nice, you know, would it be if I came if they came out?

So she wrote on the bottom of it, nice Jeep.

She puts it on the car.

She gets caught.

The guy comes out and is like, what are you doing to my Jeep?

So she tells him and he's like, oh, do you have like social media for this?

And she's like, this is actually my first time doing this.

So the duck duck Jeep phenomenon, sometimes referred to as Jeep ducking, began in Ontario, Canada and quickly spread through social media.

The trend is now active in nearly 50 countries around the world.

And Allison is now known as the mother ducker.

Do you travel with ducks?

I have bags of ducks in my car.

I think it's such a fun thing and it's such a simple gesture.

If you can do just one little small thing to make someone smile, why not?

These are the ones I received.

Some of them people will write things on the bottom, but I do have ones that I give out myself.

It just makes you happy.

It's like a little, they're so cute and silly.

What's funny is when I first heard about Jeep ducking, that's when I started seeing it everywhere.

I gotta say, I do love the sense of community that these little ducks create.

Kind of makes me want to get a Jeep.

Stay tuned.

Allison Parliament passed away in 2024 at the age of 36, but her legacy lives on.

And to think one little duck started this whole movement.

A partnership that brings art, culture and community together has converged in Center City, Philadelphia.

We step inside the historic Wanamaker Building to experience Opera Philadelphia Pipe Up.

You know, when Macy's closed, I thought, "We can't let this space go dormant."

So I got in touch with the developer, TF Cornerstone, and I said, "Listen, there's such an opportunity here to activate this space with culture before it goes into construction."

And they were incredible and they worked with us, along with the Wyncote Foundation and the Pew Center, to create a whole series for the community and with the community.

One of the statistics we love at Center City District is the fact that outside of Manhattan, no other place has a greater concentration of arts and cultural organizations as Greater Center City Philadelphia.

When we first heard about this partnership with Opera Philadelphia, we were thrilled because we knew that the public would get access to this monumental space sooner rather than later.

And it's so nice that it's a civic cultural use.

I mean, you look around this building and it doesn't really feel like a place where you'd go shopping.

It feels like a temple or it feels like a museum in Italy.

It's this exquisite architecture that everyone in Philadelphia can enjoy.

It is so operatic.

It is a grand, grand space.

And the scale of the pipe organ, 29,000 pipes, the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world, to me, it screams the drama of opera.

And also, opera is interdisciplinary.

It involves theater and dance and all kinds of different art forms.

So I saw it as an umbrella opportunity for us to bring in all these different cultural organizations with the idea of opera as the unifying principles.

This instrument is nothing short of an international icon in the musical world.

It's an international treasure.

It is the largest fully functioning musical instrument in the world.

It represents the sounds of three symphony orchestras.

It is built in the American Symphonic School, which means it really does try to emulate the sounds of an orchestra.

These pipes are all shaped differently to make those different kinds of sounds.

There's tons of incredibly beautiful flutes.

And then the organ has batteries of these incredible tubas and trumpets everywhere.

And a wealth of string tone.

We created a series of performances called "Pipe Up" which is going to extend from September through January.

And it's going to include all kinds of performances.

On September 7th, we had a chorus from the opera, we had soloists from the opera.

[opera singing] But we also had Ballet X.

[music] We have Mural Arts installing a mural in the window, and we're bringing even more collaborators locally and nationally into this incredible space to activate it with music, life, food, and performance.

It's been really exciting.

It's my fervent, fervent hope that the Grand Court can be left intact, unencumbered, and open to the public so that folks can continue to enjoy the over a hundred year tradition of twice daily concerts on this international treasure.

It's the Wanamaker Organ.

When John Wanamaker built this Grand Court, he envisioned it as the intersection of art and commerce.

We want these halls to be resonating with music.

We want to hear the pipe organ.

We want to realize his vision.

Everybody in Philadelphia has a memory here.

They have a feeling when they walk into this space and emotion and art go hand in hand.

So we want to continue channeling that emotion and giving people that experience that they remember in this Wanamaker space but through a whole new lens.

The holidays are almost here so we thought this would be a great time to invite Chaddsford Winery to share some drink ideas.

Sofia Mactough thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Really excited to have you.

I'm excited to be here.

Now Chaddsford releases wine seasonally so we are talking four releases every year.

Correct.

What wines are out right now?

So we are coming right up into the holidays so we have our seasonal wines.

So we have a spiced apple wine and then our red mulled wine which is like a Glühwein.

Oh I love Glühwein.

And Halloween I already know that that is a huge event at Chaddsford Winery.

But what other events are coming up?

So we are actually building right now our winter garden locations so that takes place at Dilworth Plaza in City Hall so that begins November 14th and runs through January 4th.

And that's a big event is that probably your biggest event of the year?

I would say so we see about a million if not more customers.

Oh my goodness.

Wow.

Okay so obviously you have the whites and reds and there are some fruit wines which what are the fruit wines that you offer?

So we at the winery we offer our spiced apple wine which is 100% apple wine and then we have a sparkling apple wine.

Everything else is grape or a varietal based wine.

Okay and I have this spiced apple wine.

It's really good.

It's literally in my refrigerator and you were saying they're mulled.

Yes.

Describe what that means because I know the flavor of mulled but what does that actually mean?

Absolutely.

So mulling is actually adding spices to wine typically in the heating process.

However, what we do is after fermentation is completed we will add the spices to the bottle so it's ready to go pretty much once it's finished bottling.

Okay and so let's talk about what you've brought and what you're gonna make.

Absolutely so we brought a few different things.

We are firm believers in making wine cocktails so we have Bluebird Distilling for Green Bourbon here.

They are a Pennsylvania distillery that we use to make our spiced apple old-fashions.

We're going to make a little bit of a ginger mule with our spiced apple and then we're gonna add the bourbon to our holiday spirit to make a nice little cocktail.

And you know what's crazy is and you want to make one of them well I just don't think to add wine to a cocktail.

Absolutely you should add you should have fun with what you're drinking you should have fun with pretty much everything in your life so this is going to be the ginger mule that I'm doing I'm just gonna add a little bit of ginger beer and spiced apple and then you'll see right off the bat that it is ready to go.

Okay it seems wrong but in the best way.

I feel like it's okay to add wine to hard liquor.

Sure.

Okay why not?

As long as they have the similar flavor profiles it's going to kind of work.

You can also sweeten that up with a little bit of caramel, you can add vodka, you can add pretty much anything along the same lines as the flavor profile in the wine that you're having.

Drinking this one too fast?

Okay, what's next?

Let's do the, I'll do one with holiday spirit, so I'm going to use our little Chadddsford mug here, and then I have my big bottle of holiday spirit because it is ready for the holidays.

My eyes are big.

So we're going to do a little bit of this, and I will warn you, I measure with my heart, so I apologize, Shirley.

Best way to measure, big heart, love it.

And then I'm just going to do a little splash of the bourbon.

OK.

Now, would this be hot, or you can drink it-- You can drink it cold.

You can drink it warm.

OK.

Oh, boy.

I feel like it needs some mixing.

Hit my-- actually, here, we've got a nice little-- Borrow that spoon from you.

I'm scared.

(laughing) Oh my gosh, that's good.

- Is it good?

- I could see this being my jam when it's warm too.

- Yes, absolutely.

You can also do brandy or cognac.

You can add sparkling white wine of your choosing for that.

- Oh my gosh.

- You can make mimosas, you can make spritzers.

You can have a lot of fun with this.

- It's really good.

And I guess one important note is when you are warming it, if you're drinking it warm, don't boil it.

- Correct, yes, you never wanna boil it.

So slow, gentle simmer is going to be the best.

I like to open it up, usually I'm doing this for parties, so I will toss a whole bottle into the crock pot on the lowest setting, which is usually keep warm.

- 'Cause we don't wanna boil off all the alcohol.

- No, that's kinda, that's the point, right?

- Right.

(laughing) - Sofia, these are so delicious.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for measuring with your heart.

(laughing) - And here's how you can learn more about the featured wines and Chaddsford Winery's upcoming events.

♪♪ The table is set for the holidays.

From the main course to the sides, our next guest can help take the stress out of preparing your meal.

So welcome to the show, John Berl from Uncle John's Barbecue Stand in Claymont, Delaware.

John, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you for having me today.

Thank you more importantly for preparing this incredible meal, which we will talk about in just a moment.

But first, you do have a mission that you've amplified through your social media platforms to ensure that no one goes hungry over the holidays.

Talk to me about this mission.

- Absolutely, this is something pretty dear to me.

This is for my community, for my neighborhoods, and all the people who are surrounding our restaurant.

A lot of us are blue collar families and workers.

And some people right now are struggling, so really felt it'd be nice to help out, especially people a little bit less fortunate, with a good hot meal, especially right now.

And you know, you don't want people to have to worry about that at this time of year.

So I love that you're filling that gap.

You've already seen an outpouring of support from the community.

How so?

It's been pretty awesome.

We've had people reach out from all over, to be honest.

It was Indiana, I believe one guy called, and said he used to live in Claymont and wants to donate some money.

We didn't end up taking it.

Right now we're doing okay, and we'll be able to keep up with it.

But some of the local people have been stopping in and dropping like $20, or just people coming in and with extra support of, "Hey, let me come in and buy a bunch of stuff.

"I saw what you did online.

I want to show some love and support here because you're helping others.

So it's just been coming in from all over to be honest.

Let's talk about your cooking because this is incredible.

It smells amazing.

Was cooking always a passion for you?

Not actually.

I mean, it's always been an interesting thing, like growing up and watching my grandma in the kitchen with her has always been some of my inspiration, but I worked in like construction and other businesses and doing stuff like that, but I had a falling out with my company and I went with a, I took a leap and I went with my heart and went with something I was interested in personally versus something that I know I was good at.

And it just rolled and this is where we end up today.

John, I'm really glad you took that leap because this smells incredible.

Let's talk about what you've brought.

I mean, this is the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, kind of amplified, but is everything smoked?

Not everything.

I mean, the meats are smoked, but believe it or not, my turkey is put into a brown paper bag.

I believe it's a little bit unique in a way that I've never seen too many people do it with the citrus underneath the skin as well.

We make a compound butter and I put a little citrus underneath the skin when I'm rubbing it and getting it ready and prepping it to go in the oven.

We slide a couple of slices of orange lemon.

It's like really pushed in there.

That's amazing.

Right up underneath there with the butter and then we put it into a brown paper bag and that's what I believe makes it unique.

I haven't seen anybody else do it this way.

And the hams we cook right on the smoker for about two and a half hours, maybe three.

And then I finish both of them off in the oven to get them to my desired color.

What else do we have?

We have veggies, mac and cheese.

Some green beans and garlic.

We got a little bit of corn stuffing.

This looks amazing.

Oh, the sweet potato casserole.

That's my grandma right there.

That's grandma right there.

It's the iron skillet.

Oh my goodness.

And these little cornbread skillets is so cute.

Yes, I know that's something you've been wanting to dig into.

Absolutely.

A lot of this stuff you can get at my store any day of the week.

Brussels bacon, mixed vegetables, pretty much all these sides minus the stuffing and cranberry.

But the sweet potatoes I only do it the holidays.

So I'm waiting to get into that.

I love it.

Okay, so thank you so much for bringing all of this in.

And, John, if you would like, if we would like to learn more about Uncle John's Barbecue, you are on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram.

All of them.

And they can reach out to you on those platforms.

Absolutely.

Or you can get us on Google, Uncle John's Barbecue Stand, and we should pop up on our Google listing as well.

Okay.

John Berl thank you so much.

And thank you for what you're doing for the community.

No problem.

Least we could do.

Finally, tonight we take you to Calder Gardens.

The family known for their sculptures along the Ben Franklin Parkway are still influencing the way we experience art, architecture and nature.

The reason why Calder Gardens is not a museum is because we're not intending for you to have a specific outcome in your experience.

Here we want you to have this connected experience with Calder's work that's not informed by somebody else's viewpoint.

There's nobody between you and the art.

There's nothing telling you what to think, what to feel, how to approach it.

You approach it on your own terms.

♪♪ - We know Alexander Calder because of the mobiles, but what people don't know is that as a sculptor, he introduced the notion of time.

He really was thinking and inviting us to look at how everything was always changing.

The idea is to activate this space with a vision of what is it that Calder was thinking back then when he was making his work and how that can be connected to our issues and our contemporary moment.

My grandfather grew up in a household where his father was a sculptor and his mom was a painter.

He always had a workshop.

He was always allowed to be creative, in fact, almost insisted that he be creative.

It was really in his genes.

For him and his older sister, art was just essential, just part of daily life.

We just arrived to a very special spot here at Calder Gardens.

Calder was from Philadelphia and so his family also was part of the Philadelphia history.

The grandfather of Calder, Alexander Milne Calder, was also a sculptor and he made one of the most iconic sculptures in Philadelphia.

William Penn that sits on top of the roof of City Hall.

And then his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor as well, who made this one memorial fountain.

This is an homage that we're doing to the ancestors of Calder and celebrating the lineage of the Calder family in Philadelphia.

In the 1920s, Calder realized that he could take a simple wire, a wire used in industry, not a wire that's used in sculpture, and he could bend it in three dimensions and create a portrait of someone.

He thought that a three-dimensional volume could be just as valid as bronze.

But of course you could also hang it and then it could be suspended and it could turn.

Now of course kids in school, they bend wires and they make things and we think of it as just a vocabulary that's existed since ever.

And not really realizing that somebody invented that.

And then later he stopped trying to represent images that were known and he started making work that was more mysterious.

The intersection of spaces, intersecting of planes, like the sculpture behind me.

It looks like four from here, but there's another fifth plane that doesn't touch the ground.

And as you walk around the sculpture, you discover that there are these other kind of interdimensional experiences that are happening.

Calder had a completely innate and intuitive sense of physics, of the natural environment, of the universal forces.

He ends up making a sculpture that's very powerful but yet subtle.

I want to show you one of the very special architectural moments that we have, Calder Gardens.

People have this optical illusion when they get close to this space where they don't feel that there is any bottom.

They all move completely differently.

It depends on the temperature, it depends on how many people are engaging with the space.

And it has this really beautiful invitation to perceive how you are also embedded in this floating space.

The architecture began with a discussion with Jacques Herzog.

We didn't say it has to be this big, it has to be this tall.

We just said it's in Philadelphia, it's probably on this site, and it's the work of Calder.

How do you feel about making spaces that Calder's work can occupy?

And we can change those works, which means sometimes bringing in other works of art.

It means sometimes taking a work that's here and moving it to a different place.

And he was very, very intrigued by that possibility.

This is the entrance of Calder Gardens.

This is where we welcome our visitors.

We're looking at the Parkway here and absolutely stunning garden designed by Pete Adolf.

And Pete was chosen because his gardens are dynamic and they're full of movement.

Even now in the fall, the grasses and their seed heads are blowing in the wind and there's lots of different movements throughout the different perennials.

And just like Calder's work is full of movement and is dynamic, so are the gardens just outside.

And that's our show.

Have a good night, everyone.

♪♪