Coming up on a special edition of One Detroit.

We're taking a look at some o our most viewed stories of 2024, from report on the history of Detroit Coney Dogs and Michigan Eggrolls, to a look at the long anticipated openings of Michigan Central and the area's first Jollibee restaurant.

We'll have highlights of the stories that captured the most views online.

It's all coming up next on one Detroit.

From Delta faucets to bear pain.

Masco Corporation is prou to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experienc and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco servin Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS, among the state's largest foundations.

Committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organization that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTE foundation.com.

Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Just ahead on one Detroit, we've put together a special episode featuring clips from our top ten most viewed stories on YouTube.

Last year.

Let's start the countdown in the number ten spot is a truly Detroit story about a Catholic priest who could become the first American male to attain sainthood.

The Blessed Solanus Casey served Detroiters many decades ago, but his name still resonates among the faithful today.

Here's a portion of the report from one.

Detroit's Bill Kubota.

Detroit's east side, the Island View neighborhood, the Saint Bonaventure Monastery and its Solanus Casey Center, built in the long lasting memory of the Blessed Solanus Casey when he died in 1957 at age 86, 10,000 came.

I feel like people still feel that way today.

They feel his presence, his oneness with people and his desire to to participate in their life.

Somehow here, perhaps you'll feel Father Casey's presence, and you can see where the celebrated Catholic priest is entombed under glass.

If you've heard o Solanus Casey, you probably know he's the closest Detroit's got to a saint.

A real saint recognized by the Catholic Church.

Almost.

The Pope declared Casey venerable in 1995 a step toward sainthood, based on the evidence o miracles attributed to Solanus.

A panel of of expert and doctors have to agree that there is no possible explanation for why this happened, other than.

Through the the intervention.

Of God in somebody's life.

Blessed.

The last step before sainthood.

Proof of another, more recent miracle is needed.

I truly believe it's going to happen, and it'll happen sooner than later.

Next on the list of most viewed stories is a Future of Work report on the use of artificial intelligence on college campuses.

The University of Michigan created its own AI tools, and I learned mor about the rollout and the impact it will have in the classroom and on the future workforce.

Here's part of that story.

In August 2023, the University of Michigan became the first major educational institute to release its own artificial intelligence tools, made specifically for students, faculty, and staff.

VP of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for U of M, doctor Ravi Pensé played a rol in getting the AI tools created.

U-M has essentially developed, partnered with vendor partners and introduced three tools.

One is called the GPT.

GPT functions like OpenAI's ChatGPT, with the major difference bein the data received and produced by GPT is kept private by the university because of the capabilities of the AI tools.

Educators across the country have concerns over potential plagiarism cheating, and abuse by students.

As a university, we're trying to figure out how to get students to engage with this in a productive, collaborative way without sort of losing their, you know, critical thinking skills.

I could be a student, you know, just asking it to give me the answers complete this homework for me.

But you're not learning anything.

Cutting corners will get you nowhere.

Doctor Penn says optimism for the future rests more on people than artificial intelligence.

You know, the young people are so wonderful and are so wanting each one of them to contribut something positive to the world.

So I'm very confident that no matter what field they choose to, pursue, as long as they're passionate about it, the AI tools will be available and they can change the world for better.

Coming in at number eigh is a story about the play titled The Chinese Lady, which was produced at the Tipping Point Theater in Northville.

It tells the story of the first Chinese female to set foot on U.S. soil in 1834.

Her name was often Moy, a 14 year old who was put on public display for half a centur for curious Americans to view.

One Detroit's Bill Kubota reported on this rarely told story in U.S. history.

Place, so that.

The Tipping Point Theater in Northville dress rehearsal.

The play is called The Chinese Lady.

Hello.

My name is often Moin.

It is the year 1834.

I am 14 years old and newly arrived in America.

When I read The Chinese Lady, and when I saw it for the first time, it really was on of the first pieces of theater that I completely identified with and made me feel seen.

My family has sold me for two years of service to Mister Nathaniel and Frederick Karns, traders of Far East Oriental imports to New York.

Well, the Chinese Lady follows the story of Arthur Moyer, who is, we believ may be the first Chinese woman to arrive in the United States in the 1800s.

The Chinese Lady, by playwright Lloyd Suh, first premiered out East in 2018.

I'll Fung moy, famous in he sitting room two centuries ago.

Details of her life are sparse, speculative.

So Suh was unbound.

To give her voice to press accounts back then did not.

Thank you for coming to see me.

Not a lot of people know her story, so it's a take on her life story, but it's also taking creative libertie of what her story means to the present and to the future.

Shrimp and.

Chinese vegetables.

Pot of tea.

I will eat these foods with chopsticks.

It follows her journey from that arrival, all the way to the end of her sort of visible presence in the public.

But it definitely gives us a glimpse of a woman who was brought to the US as an object for exhibition, as an example of exotic Oriental otherness, for the education of the American public.

Our seventh most viewed story last yea was about the highly anticipated opening of the first Jollibee restaurant in Michigan.

The well-known Filipino fast food chain held a grand opening at its new Sterling Heights location, and one Detroit contributor, Dejah Moss, was there to capture the excitement surrounding Jollibee's debut.

Jollibee started in the Philippines in 1978.

We're really known for our world famous fried chicken, our crispy and juicy chicken sandwiches, and our delicious peach mango pie.

The chicken is actually th founding family's family recipe that has actually propelled the brand globally, and we're really excited to be here today.

In order to open the first one in the state of Michigan.

Oh my gosh.

I am so excited about Jelly Bean here in Michigan.

Pretty much ever since that first announcement came out over two years ago, now, just been excited.

And like when I went, when and whenever my family would travel, I would just happen to stumble across it and we would just get it.

We would usually get a lot because there's not really any like Filipino food around us where we live.

We're really excited to be here because of the diversity in Sterling Heights, because it will allow us to bring that experience to more people and bring them together in this special place where sharing a meal together can create even more bonds and and a stronger community for everyone.

I think a lot of people know Filipino food as the party food that you would line up on set.

Yeah.

yeah.

Those ar the things that most people see.

But then you come into a chain like this and you have the Filipino spaghetti, which is completel different than normal spaghetti.

And I know a lot of people ar like me, like what in the world?

Because it's like, but the biggest difference is there's hotdogs.

They got hotdogs at the spaghetti.

And it's a it's a lot sweeter.

What you get here is pretty much the same menu you're going to get in the Philippines, the same menu you're going to get in California.

I can connect with people her that have like the same cultural background of me at that.

There are other people who are also trying that like Filipino based foods, and then it makes me happy.

Number six in our countdown is a story about a local filmmakers documentary focusing on the amazin basketball legacy at River Rouge High School.

The film, titled Rouge, opene last year's Free Film Festival when Detroit's Bill Kubota spoke with the documentary's director, Hamoudi Jafar, about River Rouge High School's historic state championship record.

And.

A documentary about a basketball program with a winning history that goes back 70 years.

The film, it's called Rouge, as in River Rouge, a small town next to that big city of Detroit.

The 14 state champs sits on that wall.

That's what we play for.

Rouge, directed by local filmmaker Hamoudi Jafar.

How did you come.

Across the story?

I grew up in the downriver area, and when I was growing up in the 90s, during that time, River Rouge High School was in the late 90s, was the best basketball program around.

And I was I looked up to Brant Darby, who was their best player at the time.

Brant Darby, we said, is unstoppable.

With the ball.

Brant Darby in the back of Jafar Is Mine.

When in 2019 he was working on a short film hoping to profil Ypsilanti High School sensation Amani Bates, who made the cover of Sports Illustrated.

And we went to go sell them on eBay, and we were denied access to his locker room that night and by default ended up in his opponents locker room.

Who was happened to be River Rouge.

In that moment, I realized that the late Brant Darby that I had looked up to when I was a kid, that his son was there when he died, I just think, and I let me let me do something like, that's going to make him proud or something like that.

And then I was just consumed.

When I got back to.

An interview with actor and playwright Jeff Daniels, landed in the fifth spot of our most viewed stories.

He spoke with one Detroit's Chris Jordan about the creative process behind his holida workplace comedy titled Office Christmas Part Grinch and Fight with Rudolph.

Police called.

The play premiered at Daniels Purple Rose Theater Company in Chelsea.

Having written over over 20 plays now, I mean, just curious about your artistic process, lik how how do you approach writing?

Well, it's the idea, any writer will tell you, you a lot of ideas surface, but do they have legs?

Can you can you construct a a story with a beginning, middle and an end that.

Yeah, even with a comedy says something, and, this one does and it did.

It takes a while to find it.

And that's why you go through, I mean, Gretchen Rudolph has probably gone through easily nine drafts, maybe ten.

We were probably eight b the time we got into rehearsals, just, before Labor Day.

And the actors bring ideas and you just see things that can be made better if you, you know, rewrite i a little bit or cut something or so that's, that's the fun of doing something absolutely original and also setting i in this corner of the country.

You know, I'm writing about here, and everybody who's going to come to see this is going to recognize this is Michigan as as here as people.

They kind of know might know.

It's that's the fun of it too, is kind of writing for this audience, about this audience, to this audience and doing everything I can to make them double over with laughter.

That's my goal with this one.

I want them laughing harde than they have in a long time.

An interview with Grammy Award winning drummer, composer and bandleader Brian Blade is in the number four spot with our YouTube viewers.

Blade was last year's Detroit Jazz Festival artist in residence.

In addition to performin at the festival, blade took part in educational initiative and community outreach programs.

John Penny of 90.9 WRC DJ, sat down with blade to talk about his passion for jazz.

Today you were here at Wayne State University and running a workshop, and they were playing some challenging material.

And.

Creating.

What was it that you were trying to impart to them?

What's that all about?

I was encouraged just to see, to see, you know everyone playing in a band like, you know, the students with their instruments and present and, not not not taking the opportunity for granted.

Mostly today, I wanted to encourage the rhythm section.

And what what I hope is that, in terms of approach is seeing things a different wa that it takes them off the page.

So, like, if they can internalize all that and really be looking not only to tip to Mr. Scott as he's conducting, but, you know, to their bandmates and, and they can express something else, not just the literal part, like your role, your part in the thing.

Yeah.

Like you'r standing in a you're walking in and you're giving i so that everyone else can can, you know, just be that much more, strength.

And, and we've made something greater than what we actually imagined, you know, because we submit it to each other.

And that's, I think, the music, that's when it takes off and it pierces people's hearts, you know, because because you've, you've given something, not taken something.

Our next on our list of most viewed stories is a truly Detroit report about the area's unique take on Eggrolls.

We all know the city is famous for Detroit styl pizza and Coney Island hot dogs.

Now, the Eggroll is poised to take its place in the region's storied culinary history.

When Detroit's Bill Kubota looked at how the traditional Chinese American eggroll has evolved into a deep fried treat with a variety of multicultural fillings.

Checking out sister Rolls Street Eats is the home of an array of oversize egg rolls.

And Allen Park.

The big ol.

Egg rolls on a stick.

Everybody know the taxes they're asking, they know where it come from.

So it was a big marketing thing that's over.

Eat this one for DoorDash.

The evolution of the Detroit style egg roll begins with the spring roll which really is eaten in Asia.

But it's here in the U.S. where the egg roll was created.

Some credit a Chinese restaurant in New York almost a century ago.

But who really knows?

And why are they called egg rolls?

Not shaped like an egg, not a trace of egg inside, just maybe an egg wash to keep the wrapper together?

Who really knows?

We do know this.

In Detroit, Chinese restaurant egg rolls have been known fo containing a lot of beansprouts.

That helps with that satisfying crunch.

Other places use more cabbage.

A more economical option, let's say.

But our Detroit egg roll stor really starts with corned beef.

Corned beef culture, as, somebody once put it to me in Detroit, dates back to, I mean, gosh, 100 years ago there's a big Jewish population in Detroit.

And they, they open all these corned beef shops.

And then the Jewish folks left, African-American folk who moved into the neighborhoods enjoyed corned beef.

So some of the restaurants that were there that it like been around for 60 years, stayed in business.

Then in the late 1970s a woman from Vietnam, Kim White, she put corned beef and cheese in an egg roll wrapper, called it Asian Corned Beef Fusion cuisine before most even heard of that term.

Asian corned beef, I think, was Kim White, the woman who opened that.

And she's generally credited with inventing the dish.

But it really started to pop like about ten years ago.

More and more for me.

Bage purveyors popped up around town.

You know, it's not to the level of Detroit style pizza or a coney dog yet, but it's it's getting there.

It's getting to the territor of almost a regional food dish.

Egg rolls is a Detroit thing.

I can say.

It's part of our culture.

Coming in at number tw is a story about the restoration of Detroit's historic Michigan Central Station, the former hub for train travelers sat vacant for decades.

It reopened last year after undergoing a six year renovation by Ford Motor Company.

Once a symbol of the city's decay, the building now symbolizes the future of mobility and innovation.

One Detroit took a tour.

For three decades, the Michigan Central train station sat vacant in Detroit, falling into deep decay.

Then in 2018, Ford Motor Company purchased the station.

Ford invited One Detroit to Corktown to see the transformation Michigan' central Station has undergone.

The tour was led by Michigan Central CEO Josh Earthman and Head of Place Melissa Dittmar, who leads planning, design, construction and development of place and spaces in Michigan Central.

From.

Everything has been restored to as best possible to.

What its original.

Condition is.

Often talk now about that, that the building is in some way in its most pristine condition.

In some ways ever.

It took Ford Motor Company 3100 construction workers, and many others six years to get the station in its current condition.

We too out 3.5 million gallons of water from the station over the first 18 months.

Has there been thought given to how everything that's going o here is going to be impacting.

The greater area, the businesses.

Around.

Here, the neighborhood around here, the people who've.

Been here.

We have extensive relationships with, communities, around us, on all sides and extensive relationships with the business community.

We are very proud of generating, a robust amount of business, for local businesses.

Part of the goal for Michigan Central Station's revival is to be a global example of what major projects like this can be to the people and places around them.

And now, the number one most watche story last year on one Detroit's YouTube channel was about a truly Detroit culinary troupe, the Coney Island Hot Dog.

There's a lot of history behind the iconic dish, but did you know that it's served differently in cities around the state?

One Detroit's Bill Kubot reported on the Coneys popular in Michigan.

Coney, Tony.

Coney.

Coney.

Coney.

Truly.

Detroit.

Right?

Let's serve up thing Detroiters might not know about the Coney Island hot dog in Michigan.

Detroit style isn't the only one.

I lived in Detroit for eight years.

But Flint counties are the best.

See how delicious that is?

Yeah, I like them, but they don't like me.

The Flint style Coney that Starlite Coney Island since 1966, in Burton, just east of Flint, and Gillies on the northern edge of the city.

Since 1985, eaters here say flint Coney sauce is meatier and Detroit sauce is soupy.

The chili sauce is wetter down there.

Yeah, this is a lot drier.

It's got a lot better flavor.

People from the Detroit market really don't understand our coneys.

I think obviously ours are a lot better in this area.

When I was young there was lots of colonialism.

Flint Coney, some running 24 hours right next to the car plants.

Like the factories, the coneys have dwindled, although a few is still going strong.

The origins of the Flint Coney starts not in Greece.

It's Macedonia.

Immigrants from the same part of Europe.

The Balkan Wars of 1908 1913 decimated the area.

Greeks and Macedonians were leaving in droves, just going wherever they could.

The oak on the other side of the road.

So my husband's uncle George Bellows.

George, ran off, and othe Macedonians, including one named Simeon Bryan came to the US and headed west.

Before he reached Flint he had a hot dog in Rochester, New York.

And then he had another one in the Buffalo area and didn't really like it.

Said it was tasteless, thought he could do better, and based it on a Macedonian stew.

According to Dave Lasky, the Flint style coney appeared in the early 1920s and it seems Macedonians here knew little about the Greeks in their Coney Island's down in Detroit.

Detroit style, Flint style a preference, probably just what you're used to.

Then there's Lansing, a bipartisan approach to these contrasting Coney cultures.

We offer both the Detroit version, Coney and the Flint version.

Dominic McDonald runs Sparta's Coney Island.

You know, being the halfway point, we get people coming from Flint, some from Detroit.

You know, it's really about 5050 between the two.

Honestly.

We got our world famous, Detroit Coney Island sauce and our famous flint meaty sauce.

And even for the customers, they want a mix together.

We call it a Saginaw.

Saginaw.

Lest we forget, Jackson, Michigan and the Jackson styl Coney down by the train station, there's Jackson, Coney Island in Virginia, Coney Island, Jackson, birthplace of the Republican Party, and some might say the birthplace of the Michigan Coney.

A few years before the Cone Island appeared in Detroit, 19.

14 is the year that we officially consider the Virginia Cone Island to come into existence.

Joe Matthews owns Virginia Coney Island where the original owners came from Macedonia to a few stores over the competition.

Three guys come in there Jackson, Coney Island, where Brittany Craig is in charge.

Right.

Thank you.

Long ago, Virginia and Jackso were owned by the same family.

I've hear all kinds of different stories.

I was here in 1914 so I can't confirm any of them.

compare this to Detroit with this iconic Lafayette, an American Coney Island originally owned by Greek brothers turned rivals.

That's the similar story that we had here.

Yes, the Macedonian brothers apparently could not see eye to eye on whatever the issue was.

So the one left and started.

The other.

Hand.

The Jackso Coney tastes a lot like Flint.

According to Coney advocate Dave Linsky, who leaves us with some sage advice.

It's just it's a state of mind.

You have the coney that you like but also enjoy the other ones, just like you would with pizza and hamburgers.

What if we didn't have a sprinkling?

Would in Detroit have a Detroit Coney Barrett in Jackson?

Same thing.

That'll do it for this week's one.

Detroit.

Thanks for watching.

Head to the One Detroit website and our YouTube channel for all the stories we're working on.

This program is made possible in part by Timothy Bogard.

Comprehensive planning strategies from delta faucets to bare paint, Masco Corporation is prou to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experienc and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco servin Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS, among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organization that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTG foundation.com.

Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.