A weekly exploration of the BIG QUESTIONS, the beautiful, and the nearly interesting with Michael Over There.
Expect curious detours through brains, behavior, consciousness, comedy, cinema, culture, history, science, and the wonderfully unexpected. Every episode follows unlikely connections and asks the kinds of questions that are easy to understand but surprisingly difficult to answer. Sometimes we find answers. Sometimes we discover better questions.
Dedicated to the one and only Anne Hall Levine: a force of nature, the love of my life, and the one person who could make us all laugh.
The hot dog question is a trap in the best way: it lures us into a simple argument, then exposes how much we rely on labels to navigate the world. Sure, the USDA and state rules may treat a hot dog in a bun like a sandwich for regulation and tax purposes. But the pushback isn’t really about bread. It’s about meaning, cultural identity, and why the word “just” can feel like someone is shrinking something you care about.
We pull apart two different questions people mash together: what something is versus what it means. A wedding ring is jewelry and also love, history, and loss. A flag is fabric and also belonging, protest, and sacrifice. The same object can live in multiple valid categories because categories are built for a purpose: prediction, communication, and decision making. Labels compress reality so we can act, but that compression always leaves something out.
Then the conversation turns from food classification to the labels we use for people and for ourselves. “Introvert.” “Failure.” “One of those people.” Sometimes a label helps us find our footing; sometimes it becomes the smallest room we ever live in. We land on a practical, humane takeaway: use labels as invitations to ask the next question, not permission to stop. If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find it.
So let's get right to it, folks. Is the hot dog a sandwich? That's divided the room, I think. Some of you answered yes before I even finished the question. Some of you are wondering why anyone would even ask. And a few of you, and you know who you are, you're already composing an email asking for the manager. So I think if we're to reach sort of any kind of agreement, we need to start with defining what a sandwich is. Of course, that's where we run into our first problem. The USDA food standards and labeling policy book includes closed-face sandwiches or meat between two slices of bread and variations like hot dogs in a bun under the broad sandwich umbrella. In states like New York and California, hot dogs sold from mobile carts are pre-packaged, they're often legally categorized as sandwiches for tax and food regulation purposes. I mean, this debate, you know, even made it to late night TV, where uh the late Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg agreed with Stephen Colbert that under the definition of a split role, that a hot dog meets the criteria of a sandwich. However, not everyone agrees. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council strictly rejects the label. They contend that hot dogs are a unique food category. Of course, you might notice a slight shift in focus that's embedded in their argument. A hot dog is its own category. They argue that calling it just a sandwich diminishes what it has become in American culture. Their famous line is: limiting the hot dog's significance by saying it's just a sandwich is like calling the Dalai Lama just an Asian guy. And hold on to that word just because it's doing an astonishing amount of work right there in that sentence. I mean, names evolve, right? They acknowledge that hot dogs were once commonly called Frankfurter sandwiches or Coney Island sandwiches. But they argue that language changes. Just as, you know, we don't say ice cream Sunday dessert. We just say Sunday. They say hot dog in the same way has become its own thing. They even admit that the USDA guidance and some dictionary style definitions could place a hot dog within the Sandridge family. Their response is essentially that misses the point. The meaning of hot dog in everyday life has outgrown the technical category. Then they have, you know, what amounts to a tongue-in-cheek list of reasons, including things like nobody at a baseball game yells, sandwiches, get your sandwiches here. ESPN doesn't televise sandwich eating contests. When someone is hot dogging, they're showing off. They're not being a sandwich. Did you catch what just happened there? We considered a classification question, and the answer really wasn't about classification at all. It was about meaning. And also, before we continue, I did not make this up. There is a real national hot dog and sausage council. Okay? So what's the difference between what something is and what it means? A wedding ring is a piece of jewelry. It's most often, you know, a small loop of metal, and it may mean love, fidelity, history, loss. It might mean an entire marriage. Calling it jewelry doesn't diminish that meaning. A national flag is dyed fabric. It can represent a country or sacrifice. Identity, protest, belonging. But all of that significance does not make it cease to still be a cloth. A crown is an elaborate hat, often made of pointy things in precious metal. It means sovereignty, succession, authority, legitimacy. Calling it headgear sounds comically inadequate. Yet it's still something you wear on your head. A diploma is a piece of paper upon which very important words have been written. It means years of work, qualification, achievement, maybe even a changed life. Its importance does not alter its physical category at all. Money's paper or metal discs or vaporous numbers stored on a computer. But what it means is food, security, power, possibility. What that means is enormously larger than what it physically is. And the most Mona Lisa is a painting. It's also a cultural icon, an attraction, a historical object, and almost really a celebrity. Saying it's a painting is not insulting it. It's simply answering a different question from what does it mean. Perhaps what something is and what something means aren't really competing answers, though. I mean, so when the hot dog council says a hot dog is too culturally important and distinctive to be called a sandwich, they may be proving that is that it is more than merely a sandwich. Matter of fact, they have not proved that it's not one. In fact, I think they've shown, and what they're trying to show is that a hot dog is so sandwich. It has to be its own thing. A wedding ring can be sacred and still be jewelry. A flag can symbolize a nation and still be fabric. The Mona Lisa can be an icon. And still be a painting. And a hot dog could conceivably be an American cultural institution. And still be a sandwich.
You take drugs, Danny? Every day. Good. So what's the problem? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00
I don't know. Welcome to the Anne Levine Show with Michael over there. I'm Michael over there. Hello. Can can you hear the wind? Man, it is so windy. And uh my my windows are closed. I'm in my office and and it is so windy that even through the windows you can still hear the wind. It's a little crazy. I mean it's beautiful. I love the I love it when it gets windy. It's really kind of cool.
Anyway, okay, so why do we label things? I mean, I think I have an answer. You know, at least I have uh I have a place to start asking other questions. I think I think one of the reasons we label things is because the world would be unmanageable without categories. Right? I mean a label is useful because it ignores certain differences. You know, we call robins or penguins or ostriches birds, because for some purposes the similarities matter more than the differences. You know, but once the broad label exists, well, we immediately begin creating smaller labels underneath it, of course. Songbird, seabird, bird of prey, flightless bird, then species, subspecies, so on, you know, because the broad label eventually becomes too blunt to tell us what we need to know, and categories allow us to use, you know, what they already know about one thing when they encounter another, right? So if you've got a category, and you you've seen it before, when you run into that sort of same sort of thing again, you're kind of prepared. You don't have to inspect every chair before you sit down. I mean, once you recognize a chair, you can make predictions. It probably supports weight, it has a seat, it is intended for sitting. I mean, a category gives you a working set of expectations, right? And we become more specific when the broad category doesn't tell us enough for the decision we need to make. Uh, for example, mushroom. That's enough if you're identifying something in a painting. But it's not nearly enough if you're deciding whether to eat it or not. Dog may be enough when pointing out one across a field. But it's not enough when you need to know whether it's a pet, a service animal, a police dog, or a stray. Vehicle. That's a good word. I love that word. It might be enough for a child learning vocabulary. But it's not enough when an ambulance is behind you and you need to know whether to pull over. Medicine is a category, but the dosage and the purpose and the interactions and whether it's prescription or over the counter or whatever, that all suddenly matters when someone's about to take it, put it in their mouth. So we create categories and subcategories for very practical reasons. Uh to make predictions. What is this thing likely to do? Right? Or to communicate. Uh how can I how can I tell you what I mean without describing the entire object? Or maybe uh for decision making, right? Can I eat it? Can I touch it? Can I drive it? Can I buy it? Can I trust it? You you may have coordination reasons. How do stores shelve it? How do governments regulate this? Do experts study this? And if you're investigating consequences, you know what differences matter in this particular situation? And this is probably the most important part. We become more specific when the differences begin to matter. A broad label is sufficient until it stops being sufficient. Duh. I mean, you don't usually need to distinguish between varieties of salt when someone asks whether there's salt on the table. You might need to distinguish them though if you're cooking, or treating a medical condition, or studying chemistry. Lots of different salts out there. It also explains why a single thing can belong to several legitimate categories at one time. The category depends partly on what question we're trying to answer. A tomato is botanically a fruit. Because of how it develops. In a kitchen, it behaves more like a vegetable because that's how we use it. Neither one of those answers is fraudulent. They serve different purposes. Commercially as a prepared food, culturally as an American institution, conversationally as simply a hot dog. I mean, the disagreement may not be over the object at all, but it might be over which purpose the category is meant to serve. So,
how specific does a label need to be before it becomes useful? And useful for what, really? I think a label is useful when it gives us enough information for the thing we're trying to do. And not when it's perfectly complete. Not when it captures the whole object, just when it's specific enough for the present purpose. Animal is a useful word if you're distinguishing between something living from a rock. Dog is a useful one if someone asks what's barking in the backyard. Terrier might be useful if you're talking about the temperament. Or a 10-pound rat terrier mix with a history of being startled by food dishes becomes useful when you're trying to understand my little yah yah. The required specificity keeps changing because the question keeps changing. You know, you can you can zoom in. Or you can you can even zoom out. I mean, at one level, a hot dog is food. Although some people people might argue that, but I think technically it is. At another uh level, it's prepared meat in a bun. On another level, it's a sandwich. On another level, it's a hot dog. On another level, it's a Chicago dog, or a Coney dog, or a chili dog, or the one bought from the cart outside the ballpark. None of those labels is automatically the correct one. I mean, the useful one depends on what you need to know. If someone asks you, what did you eat? Um, and you said food, that's that's pretty much useless information at that point. Uh, if someone asks, do we need to stop somewhere for lunch? Then saying, I already ate maybe all the information required. If the health department is writing regulations, well, the precise construction and handling of that food matters. If someone is writing a history of American culture, the fact that it's technically meat inside bread may be the least interesting thing about it. So I actually think there might be two questions inside my question. How much information does the label give us? And how much information do we need right now? A label can be too broad. Uh bring me the thing. Or it can be absurdly narrow. Bring me the red ceramic mug with the small chip near the handle that I bought in P Town in 2008. I mean, if there's only one mug on the table, the mug is a perfectly good label. The additional specificity is accurate, but it's not necessary. And that matters because categories are an act of compression. A label lets us avoid reciting everything we know about a thing and essentially says, for the purposes of this conversation, these are the details that matter. And that phrase for the purpose of this conversation may be the key. Because, you know, many classification arguments begin when people are using the same object for different purposes. The USDA may ask, how should this food be regulated? I mean, that's that's what they do, right? A dictionary may ask, how is this word commonly defined? The botanist may say, hey, how did this structure develop? The cook may ask, how is this used in a meal? The hot dog council asks, what cultural identity does this food possess? And the guy in the backyard barbecue wants to know if you want mustard on that. They're all looking at the same hot dog, but they require different levels of specificity. You know, this may I think this leads us kind of to a pretty useful distinction. A good label does not tell us everything. It just tells us what we need to know next. Then why does a sandwich become just a sandwich? The problem isn't that the hot dog council refuses the classification. The problem is that it hears this classification as erasure. It doesn't give the full description. And if you place the hot dog in the sandwich category, you may have failed somehow to recognize its individuality. I mean, come on. I'm gonna
tell you a story. It's like putting a hot dog in the same category as a Toast sandwich. A toast sandwich. That's a real thing. It's a slice of buttered toast seasoned with salt and pepper, placed between two slices of untoasted bread. Isabella Beaton included it in the invalid cookery section of her eighteen sixty-one book of household management. Toast sandwich.
SPEAKER_01
The moment the candy just takes the friend of the red of a nice little thing. So come on, folks, let's join the band as we all have followed it from the body.
SPEAKER_00
Because categories are supposed to help us understand reality better. Sometimes they do. I mean, sometimes people just get irritated because they now have to relearn something. And in the case of Pluto, it seems big. I mean, it's a planet. It's not in the same league as a hot dog or a tomato or even New Jersey. Planets are on a planetary scale. Here's where this gets interesting.
We've been talking about sandwiches for quite a while here. But I have a suspicion that almost no one listening really cares whether a hot dog is a sandwich. We care because we've been practicing. We've been practicing for something much harder. People. We label people all day long. Friendly, quiet, loud, Republican, Democrat, Boomer, Millennial, Rich, Poor, Neurodivergent, Christian, Atheist, Artist, Lawyer, Mother, Father, Widow, Veteran, Introvert, Extrovert. I mean if I tell you someone is left-handed, what have I actually told you? Almost nothing unless we're buying scissors. I've told you something. But I've also left out almost everything. If I tell you someone is a widower, now perhaps I've told you something important. But I've still told you almost nothing about who they are. They're just old, young, conservative, liberal, funny, sad, homeless, disabled, tourist, immigrant, wash ashore, townie, every time we add the word just, I think we shrink a person until they fit inside that one word. It doesn't seem fair to all of the other words that would normally describe them. You remember the hot dog council? They objected to just a sandwich. Not because they disagreed with the classification, but because they felt that the classification erased everything else. We hate it when someone does that to our favorite food. Why do we think it's acceptable to do to people? And then perhaps the strangest part is we do it to ourselves. I'm shy. Are you? Or are you shy in crowded rooms with strangers? I'm bad at math. Always? Or did someone tell you that in fourth grade and you've been carrying it around ever since? I'm not creative. Really? Or have you been comparing yourself to Picasso? I'm an introvert. I'm an extrovert. I'm successful. I'm a failure. I'm broken. I'm normal. I'm old, I'm young. Sometimes a label helps us understand ourselves. Sometimes it becomes the smallest room we ever live in. A label's supposed to help us find our way through reality. Not replace it. I mean maybe labels are like maps. A map's wonderful. I mean, unless you mistake the map for the landscape. A map tells you where the mountains are. It doesn't let you feel the wind. And a map can tell you where the river runs, but it can't tell you what the water sounds like. The label's a little like that, I think. It points toward reality. But it isn't reality. The hot dog council wasn't really defending a hot dog. They were defending the difference between being described and being completely understood. And I suspect that every one of us knows that feeling. And maybe that's why we resist labels so fiercely. Not because they're always wrong. But because we know they're always incomplete. Every one of us has had that moment. Oh, you're one of those people. And suddenly an entire life has been replaced by a category. Then we spend the rest of the conversation trying to become a person again. Maybe getting to know someone is simply the process of decompressing the label.
So is hot dog a sandwich? Depends. What are you trying to find out? I mean, maybe the purpose of a label isn't to end the conversation, but maybe it's simply where the conversation begins. Or better yet, maybe a label is an invitation to ask the next question. Not permission to stop asking questions.
This episode of the Anne Levine Show with Michael over there. Hello? Is going up on Monday, August 3rd. On August 15th, there is a memorial. A service for Anne Levine. At Dennis Union Church in Dennis, Massachusetts. And if you're listening to this and close my eyes. Please do you'll be different. And even if you don't, um that somehow sets me free. I'm sure you've put a light on.
SPEAKER_04
Put a light on. Let it shine through. Put a light on. I'll find you. Put a light.
