(upbeat music) - Here's what's coming up next on, You Oughta Know.

The rare works of novelist, Charles Dickens takes center stage at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Tis the season for bright lights, creativity, and a holiday tradition that gets better every year for a Wilmington family.

Plus music, lights, rides, and shopping.

Travel with us for a regional favorite Yuletide at Devon.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to You Oughta Know.

I'm Shirley Min.

There's still some time left to take in some of the holiday events happening around the region.

Yuletide at Devon captures the tradition of a European Christmas.

Along with good food and fun family activities, it's becoming a must-see attraction drawing in visitors from the main line and beyond.

(merry melody) - [Rob] Yuletide is really something that my son and I wanted to present to this community because there really wasn't anything like it.

We had an idea to create something that would be family centric, something exciting for young people, parents, grownups, just to enjoy the holiday season.

The Devon Horse Show Foundation manages this space and the horse show that's held in the spring is part of the US equestrian effort.

It is a well-attended classic equestrian event that people really work hard to compete.

And we approached the Horse Show Foundation Board because this place goes dark early October and it doesn't open up again until May.

It's a centrally located spot along Philadelphia's storied mainline.

And we just thought this would be a lot of fun.

- Hi Santa!

- When we went to get our permitting from Easttown Township, they had asked us to protect the integrity of the equestrian component here.

Our first response was, we'll have Santa Claus brought in on a horse drawn carriage every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

- Welcome to Yuletide!

- [Rob] We had an idea that we wanted to combine really good food, really good entertainment and fun shopping, and see if we could pull it off in this venue.

♪ Dashing through the snow in one horse, open Slay.

♪ - This is a pavilion area and here is where the main attraction really is, because this is where people come in at.

So, those two stands over there behind me are, one is called a PST, which is pizza, steak, and tacos.

And the other one is TOB, which is Taste of Bavaria.

We have cheese steaks.

We also have cauliflower cheese steak, which we use Asian cauliflower.

The pizzas are sourdough, and we have these giant pretzel Bavarian pretzels like this big.

The list kind of goes on and on.

And I wanted to separate ourselves from like just regular festival food.

You can get s'mores kits here.

You can get s'mores cookies already done.

We have two bars behind us.

Over here is just wine and beer, and we're also serving hot chocolate.

And then behind me is a full spirits bar.

Everything that we're doing with food and beverage is 100% compostable.

We try to go green.

There's no bottles of soda.

There's no bottles of water.

So, the idea was just to have a more sustainable event, but at the same time have it elevated.

♪ Oh, you better watch out.

♪ You better not cry.

- [Rob] There are three main ovals to the show.

The infrastructure is permanent.

So, we didn't have to bring in all of our market shops.

A lot of them were here already.

We covered every one of the ovals in three quarter inch white turf to make it look like snow.

And then we added a gigantic Ferris wheel, a fun ride for teens, the Himalaya, a carousel for younger people, and that's on one oval.

And then we brought in 900 Christmas trees from Marsh Creek Tree Farm.

And then we began to make an enchanted forest on one of the training ovals.

The Stoltzfus family out in Lancaster built our Santa Chalet.

- Merry Christmas.

Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.

- We converted this room that we're in to become Bergy's Brauhaus, sort of like a German style beer hall.

And then there's another one on the other side of the showgrounds called Kringle's Whiskey Bar with different fine whiskeys.

(ambient music) We built out a North Pole Library.

Mrs. Claus comes in and reads different times on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons.

- And he whistled and shouted and called them by name.

- [Rob] We love the Christmas season, but we love winter and all that it brings.

And so when people say, gosh, it's magical, that's music to my ears because that's what we really wanted to create.

And I think that's what we did.

- Ho, ho, ho.

- Ho, ho, ho!

- That looks like a great place to visit.

Well, you have until December 31st to check out Yuletide at Devon.

To Wilmington, Delaware we go now, where a family there may have been inspired by the movie Christmas Vacation when it comes to decking the halls for the holidays.

Our intern Riley Flanagan introduces us to them.

(merry music) - My name is Kyle - And I'm Stacey.

This started many, many years before for me.

As a child, my family had a really fun tradition.

We constructed our own gingerbread houses from scratch.

We had our second child and we wanted to make the holiday season magical for our kids.

Our oldest child loved the game Candyland.

That's what really started it all.

(cheery music) The first year we made lollipops and we had gummy bears.

- [Kyle] Candy canes were the first year?

- [Stacey] Candy canes.

Yeah.

We had a candy cane forest.

And then, I made Hershey Kisses.

- Compared to this, it was nothing.

(cheerful music) - [Kyle] These ideas come from everywhere.

- [Stacey] Early on, we used our own gingerbread houses that we had made.

That's where like the gummy bears came from.

A lot of it starts with very inexpensive arts and crafts projects, and we kind of imagine how we can take those things and make them into something.

(cheerful music) - [Kyle] I'm not an engineer and I'm not an electrician or anything like that.

So, that's always the fun part of figuring out how to do exactly what we want to do.

- [Stacey] But one of the things about you though is that you have incredibly good spatial reasoning.

- That helps.

- So he can imagine things and if I say something, he can start to begin to think about how that could work.

(cheerful music) - There's a couple of basic rules that we have when we're coming up with a new concept.

It has to be affordable.

It has to last at least two seasons.

That means will it hold up in the weather?

Will it discolor?

Is it gonna fall over?

Is it gonna break?

Will it hold up, snow, rain, freezing?

A lot of times you have to really think about what your materials are.

- [Stacey] I am a very non-artistic person in many ways.

So, I found out that I can sculpt things and that's fun for me.

- She has a better mind for colors and shape.

So, we kind of bounce off of each other with that and figure it out.

I don't know that it would look anywhere near as good as it did if it was just one or the other of us.

(merry tune) And I think it brings us together with our kids much more than than anything else.

- [Stacey] And from the moment that our youngest was crawling, she was trying to look over the window and just seeing her light up when she would see what was outside.

- [Kyle] It's fun to kind of come up with new ideas every year and see what we can make, see what we can salvage and turn into something cool.

- I have a little bit of Clark Griswold in me, and so... - A little bit?

- We're already thinking about what we're doing next year.

And the kids draw plans up of what it's going to look like, and it's something that we can kind of bring to life together.

It's something unique that is our tradition now and that we hope to carry on and that our kids will remember these experiences.

- Yeah.

- It's fun for us.

- Thanks for bringing us that story.

Nicely done Riley.

Videos like what you just saw from one of our interns and podcasts, give young people a way to share their experiences with others.

Take a listen to this podcast from the NPR College Student Podcast Challenge.

- [Aria] Hi, my name is Aria, actually, let me start over.

Hi, my name is (indistinct).

and this is the story of my name.

It all began on the cold winter morning in 2000.

I was born in Shanghai.

My parents struggled to come up with a name for me.

In Chinese culture, names are a big deal and they symbolize the parents' expectations or well wishes for their child.

Health, strength, intelligence.

Parents give their children unique characters that would become their identity for life.

I liked my name and its unique meanings that my parents gifted me.

Only, it's too hard for the English tongue to pronounce.

- Here to tell us more about NPR Student Podcast Challenge are Janet Woojeuong Lee and Steve Drummond.

Janet and Steve, thank you so much for being here.

- Oh, thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- We're gonna talk about the snippet we just heard from Aria Young, but first let's talk about what the student podcast challenge is, Janet.

- Yeah.

The student podcast challenge is our annual contest at NPR where we invite students around the country to make a podcast on any topic they're interested in.

And we do this every year.

And there are two types of contests.

So, we have the student podcast challenge, which is for fifth through twelfth graders, middle and high school.

And then we have our college contests, the college podcast challenge that's open right now through January 5th.

- Okay.

And the student one, you need kind of a teacher to oversee that project?

- Yes.

Yeah, that's the biggest distinction.

So, for the middle and high schooler ones, the teacher has to submit it for them.

The college one, you can truly just submit your own, you can work with a mentor, but that's totally up to the student.

And other than that, the grand prize is really similar.

You get to hear your story on NPR, on our news magazines, on the radio and podcasts.

But for the college one, there's money attached.

So, there's a grand prize, $5,000.

- Which is a lot for a college student.

- [Janet] Which is a lot.

Yeah.

- So, how does it work?

What are the guidelines here?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, there are two main rules I focus on.

Other than that you can make it about anything you want, but one, it has to be between three and eight minutes.

And then two, you cannot use any music with copyright.

So, it has to be rights free.

Or we've also had many entries in the past with students who make their own music or get their friends to make music.

So, one year we called up the winner and the student was like, well, my friend is sitting in the background that made all the music for this podcast.

- [Shirley] Oh wow.

- That's also really nice.

- I love that.

Kids are so creative.

- [Janet] So creative.

- Well, when you launched this challenge, the theme was to revolve kind of around experiences around the pandemic.

- [Steve] Yes, very much so.

And we thought this might be an opportunity for teachers to be able to do group work, even though the students were at home.

And it worked out.

But we began this as an experiment.

We didn't know if we'd get 50 or you know, a hundred podcasts.

We ended up getting 5,500 podcasts from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

We heard from a lot of teachers saying this was a lot of fun.

They really enjoyed it.

So this experiment, we kind of agreed to keep doing it.

And yeah, we've kept it going ever since.

- Because of the response.

Right?

- Very much so.

And it creates good stories that we can put on NPR, which is wonderful, but it also is a lot of teachers and students are having a lot of fun with it.

- And I think what's incredible about it is you get to really understand and get a peek into how young folks are processing the world around them.

- Very much so.

And as journalists, when we interview students, they're talking to a grownup and they tend to respond in a certain way.

These podcasts are young people talking to their peers or in their own voices.

And what we find is, especially in the, in the younger grades, grades five through 12, this is a time when students and children are trying to figure out who they are.

And a lot of our most compelling podcasts are stories about their identity, trying to, trying to figure out who they are.

We've had podcasts from incarcerated students in Milwaukee, or students on a native reservation.

Or we had adult students in Washington, DC.

And again, all these folks are trying to kind of figure out their identities, their place in the world.

And that makes up some really good stories.

- I love that.

So, back to Aria Young's podcast.

Now, she was last year's college winner.

- Mm hmm.

- [Shirley] What was it about her podcast that made that stand out?

- I mean, Shirley, you listen to, it's so good.

- I listened to it.

It is good, but I didn't wanna insert my opinion.

(laughing) - I've been telling students that we kind of look for three things, and I think Aria's podcast kind of really has it all.

And this is also all listed in our rules page as well.

But really story, structure, and sound.

So, Aria's is a deeply personal story about her own journey, kind of like Steve mentioned, tapping into her own identity through one specific thing, her name.

And not only does she tell her own story, she then incorporates sound.

She has her own music.

She interviews her high school teacher and kind of like taps into her younger self that changed her name.

So, all of those components.

I think sometimes we also get really nice personal stories, but it's just one student telling their own story without any other sound.

I feel like those make it slightly harder to be the grand prize, but I think she did a really nice touch here where she focused on one thing that's really personal and then invited others to be a part of the story.

- Well see, I thought the music, I thought you all added it after the fact.

- No, it's so surprising that the students are getting really, really good at the production, at the writing, and at adding their own music.

And we put a lot of supplementary materials online to help teachers and students.

Here are some suggestions for how to put music in your podcast or whatever.

But they're just getting really, really good at this every year.

- Okay.

So how can students apply?

- [Steve] Yeah, Janet?

- Yeah.

So right now, if you're a college student, our contest is open through January 5th, and you can find all this information on our website, which is npr.org/studentpodcastchallenge.

And yeah, there's a quick little form.

You just have to upload your three to eight minute podcast on SoundCloud or any of other podcasting platforms and drop your link with a little bit of description and we will listen to every single one.

We will... - Janet, does that mostly.

(laughing) - Yeah.

Or I will listen to every single one as long as it meets those two requirements, length and copyright music.

So, I'm excited to listen to it all.

So get 'em in.

- Well, Janet and Steve, thank you so much for being here.

I love this.

I wish this was around when I was in college.

(laughing) But wonderful to have you.

Thank you.

- [Steve] Thank you.

- [Janet] Thank you.

- Well, who isn't a fan of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol?

You can find that book and several of his works at Year of Dickens at the Free Library of Philadelphia's rare book department.

(cheery music) - [Joe] The Free Library emerges in 1891.

It's created by a Penn professor.

His name is Dr. Pepper.

And he inherits money.

And he wants to create a public library for Philadelphians.

And so, when we look at special collections, in our case, rare books are fundamental to the origin of the public library.

And also the trustees and the donors were rare book collectors.

So, you can start understanding how that comes about.

(orchestral music) Nothing that we have in the rare book department is purchased with taxpayers money.

That's very, very important to point that out.

And that's because one book that we have can cost thousands of dollars.

So, either the books were donated to us, or money was given to us, that enables us to add to our collections.

These folks were very generous because they could have sold their collections, they could have given their collections to universities or museums, but they purposely gave it to a public library because they realized how important it was.

These collections are available to everybody.

We never turn anybody away.

And that's the reason why these collections were given to us specifically.

So, we can share it with the general public.

(orchestral music) We have many, many blockbuster collections and we have things called treasure cases.

We're always gonna have a case on Beatrix Potter.

Peter Rabbit, original artwork.

We'll pretty much always have a collection of medieval manuscripts and cuneiform tablets, and a very significant Islamic collection.

We'll always have a collection on Edgar Allan Poe.

We have one of the most amazing Poe collections in existence.

So, if you're a Dickens fan, there's always gonna be a case on Charles Dickens.

It comes through two main sources.

William McIntire Elkins gives us a very important collection of Dickens books.

It's important because not only are they first editions, rare, rare copies, but they contain presentation copies.

So, what that is is books that Dickens owned himself and he gave to friends of his.

Charles Dickens, he did one man plays, he called them public readings.

The most popular books he did that from was his Christmas books.

And so, we have a book that he owned and he crosses off the parts so that he can do his one man plays.

We also have the Christmas Carol.

So, when I work with children who come in, many of them are not forced to read Dickens, but they'll know certain characters of his such as Scrooge.

Charles Dickens was very popular while he lived.

Because of that, the letters that he wrote to his friends were preserved.

D. Jacques Benoliel, a Wealthy Industrialist Philadelphian donated to the free library his collection of Charles Dickens' letters.

So, one of the things that makes the rare book department and the special collections unique is that it's free.

We encourage everybody to come and visit us.

This is for the people.

We are here for you.

- Well, the holidays wouldn't be the same around here without a visit from Chris Mullins, our friend and co-owner of McGillin's Olde Ale House.

Chris, I'm so happy to see you.

- I'm thrilled to be here.

Thank you.

- I look forward to this 'cause you help us celebrate the season.

And judging from today's setup, I love the way you've decorated the table.

And what's more fun is you've decorated with things that you can get at a new pop-up shop.

- Yes.

- So tell me about what we see.

I see some coasters.

- [Chris] Well, for the first time ever, we opened up a holiday pop-up shop right around the corner from McGillin's, where we have ornaments and mugs and key chains.

We have sweatshirts, holiday t-shirts, all the items that everybody in a McGillin's family needs.

- I love it.

And the one ornament I really like is love you to McGillin's and back.

And this is 'cause of your crazy ability at the bar to match make.

- It's true.

We did this to honor all the couples that have met here, and it's our plan, hopefully to encourage people to meet at McGillin's in the future.

- I love it.

- Yeah.

- So, if you're single and ready to mingle, go to McGillin's, - Come and jingle.

(laughing) - Okay.

So, what do we have on the table today?

- Well, the first one is the most famous cocktail at McGillin's by far.

It's our eggnog martini.

- [Shirley] Love that.

- [Chris] It's a combination of all the flavors of eggnog, but it's a little lighter than what you'd buy off the shelf in your grocery store.

And we serve that as a martini with our sugar rimmed glass.

- Oh my gosh.

It's so tasty.

- I'll give you a little taste here.

And it's, again, it's vanilla vodka, just a regular Pennsylvania Dutch eggnog.

And here, I'm just gonna give you a little sprinkle of nut meg on top.

- [Shirley] Okay.

I just need to take a minute to take a sip of this.

- And you see it's got all the nice flavors of the holiday.

Cinnamon, nutmeg... - [Shirley] Oh my gosh.

- eggnog, vanilla.

It's a great cocktail to start your meal.

- It's so good.

- Maybe a great dessert.

- Yes!

- It could be good for dessert as well.

- It's dangerous though.

- Yes.

- The poinsettia punch.

Tell me about that.

- Yes, that one is a lot lighter.

Right?

So, it's champagne, triple sec or quantro.

It's very festive.

We serve it in this presentation, so you can mix your own.

But growing up, we would make it as a punch at our house.

So, it's a great item for open houses, Christmas Eve.

Look at the color.

- [Shirley] It's so pretty.

- We garnish it with a little orange, a couple cranberries, and you just... - Oh my gosh it's gorgeous - It's so festive.

- And again, you can mix it at McGillin's and it's just a great interactive cocktail.

- It's refreshing.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So yeah, it's great all the way through New Years.

- Okay.

And then we have finally a mule.

- Yes.

So, we call it our mistletoe mule.

We use Philadelphia's finest stateside vodka.

And if you don't know a mule always has ginger beer in it.

And ginger beer, it's not ginger ale, it's different.

And it's got a nice crisp taste.

So we again, garnish it with cranberry juice.

That gives it the festive feel.

- How do you come up with the drink ideas every year?

- Well, we have an awesome group of people at McGillin's that love to drink and love to come up with drinks.

And every year we try to do different items, but stick to the tradition, stick to the drinks that work, make them approachable.

We serve thousands of people, so we have to do things that are easy to do, but very tasty and iconic.

- Oh my gosh, this is so drinkable.

And I love the eggnog.

I can't actually pick a favorite.

- Well, come to McGillin's.

We have 10 more on the menu, two to choose from.

So, you could go right down the list.

- Oh my gosh, Chris, I love you so much.

- Yeah, well we love being here.

Thank you so much for making our holidays merry and bright with these drinks and your bubbly personality.

And I'm gonna share some of this with the crew.

So guys.

- All right.

Oh boy.

Happy holidays.

- Come join us.

Alright.

Very happy holidays here.

- Yes, we love that.

Yeah.

Do you like a little eggnog martini?

- (indistinct) - Paul.

Paul with this little festive hat.

So, before we go, we wanted to share that our little program won a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for best lifestyle program.

It's an honor that is both humbling and rewarding to all of us here on the team.

- Three, two, one.

My queue Shirley.

- Here's what's coming up next on You Oughta Know.

(upbeat music) A lot has changed since You Oughta Know debuted five years ago.

(upbeat music) - When I look back at the show, it has evolved a lot.

I mean, when we started, we started on this journey where we really weren't sure exactly what we were going to do.

(upbeat music) The best part is that everybody was game to just let's try.

And that has been wonderful because that's how we work.

I'm Andrea Gibbs and I'm the show producer of You Oughta Know.

Over the years, our chemistry has really grown.

I think that's the wonderful thing about working with a crew that is small, because we get to really know one another.

- And our little crew won a big honor.

An Emmy award for best lifestyle program in the Mid-Atlantic region, - [Brian] Bringing home the gold for the show, it's nice.

It's validation for the amount of time we put into the show.

We took this show from a piece of paper to going to air, and now it's five years, and I've been involved with every aspect of that.

So, I think it's really nice that finally somebody says, hey, this is deserving of this.

But the goal isn't to bring home stacks of trophies for me.

The goal is to just do good work and have people learn something when they watch our show.

- It's very exciting that we won the award because it validates all the hard work that we do all year long, every week, every day.

Hi, I am Lisa Gray.

I'm one of the producers for You Oughta Know.

When people are watching my stories, I hope that it touches them in a way that they're gonna go out and try maybe something that they've learned from one of my stories, or, you know, maybe donate to a worthwhile foundation or to WHYY because they want our show to keep going.

- [Shirley] Paul Parmelee and Theron Louis are two of our five photographers.

- Most of our stories are pretty uplifting and just neat, fun things.

Been the best part of working on this show for me.

We're a small knit crew.

It's really like a family.

Everyone gets along well and every day it's fun to come to work.

- I love what I do for You Oughta Know.

I'm blessed and humbled to be part of an amazing team, you know, who's put out so much effort to, you know, make these great amazing stories.

And just to be able to go out and add the Emmy underneath our belt is truly a remarkable achievement.

- So, my vision for You Oughta Know is simple.

And that is, I am just hopeful that our viewers will continue to tune in and tell people.

The reason why we created the show was to tell people about all the wonderful things that are happening in the region that you may not get on your local news.

- [Brian] Five years from now, I'm hoping we're just sort of even further refining what we're doing.

I'm always looking at camera angles and how can we present what we do differently?

How can we edit it differently so the information gets out, but maybe in a more creative way?

So, I'm always trying to play with those sorts of things and look for new ways to tell these stories.

- [Theron] You know, let's see what we can do moving forward.

Sky's the limit.

- We are a small but mighty team and we are thankful to you for choosing to spend time with us each week.

Have a safe and happy holiday everyone.

Goodnight.

(upbeat music)