Hi, welcome back to the Personality Hacker podcast. My name is Joel Mark Whitt.

And I'm in Tonya Dodge. I have to tell you up to tell this story. I've heard it before.

You told me little bits and pieces of it when we first met. But I think you really

fill it out the entire thing like you told me the whole story not too long ago. And you have to

recount it here on the podcast because it's just too juicy not too. You're talking about my

zoo story. Yeah, the zoo story. You may not know this listening but I used to work at a zoo

in the marketing department, the associate director of marketing and communications in Baltimore

Maryland for five years. Okay. What was the name of the zoo when you started working there?

Well, the name had just been changed to the Maryland zoo in Baltimore. And since the 1870s,

I think the zoo in Baltimore was the third oldest zoo in the country after Cincinnati and

Philadelphia, I think are the two oldest zoos. So Baltimore is really old and old Victorian

era iron cages for animals from back in the 1800s. I mean, it's like that section's been closed

down. It's got newer sections built, but it's a really old zoo. And it's been called the Baltimore

zoo for as long as anyone can remember. But when I came on to the staff there, I was charged with

changing all the signage in the city and outside the city on the freeways and highways out in the

state of Maryland to reflect this name change. To what? What was the change to? So the change was to

the Maryland zoo in Baltimore. Okay. I'll tell you why. Why? Yeah, say why there was a name change.

So the politics in Maryland are very interesting. The city is I think the only city in the United

States that doesn't reside inside of a county. So it's its own jurisdiction. And there's one

political party that usually controls the city of Baltimore. And typically the state of Maryland,

which surrounds it, is controlled by a different political party. Typically, they're at odds with

each other. And the mayor at the time in the city of Baltimore did not like the state legislature

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