It's love apples everywhere this time on ChicagoScope as Leah, Dick and I first dine at The Baked Tomato and then have an excruciatingly detailed conversation about tomatoes while the Mobile Recording Studio sits in a parking lot at Portage Park.

Among the topics we discuss is the age-old question of whether tomato seeds that pass through the human digestive tract are viable enough to produce plants when human sewage is recycled as fertilizer.

The answer is yes, based on a study conducted in India by researchers who fed volunteers fresh tomatoes and then collected their feces. Whether fruit produced will be any good is another matter, since most store-bought and commercial-seed varieties are hybrids whose seeds won't produce the same fruit. But we are, ahem, undeterred in our exploration of this question.

I also bring up the question of whether Milorganite, a longtime human sewage product produced in Wisconsin, ought to be known as "The Stool That Made Milwaukee Famous." Tomato plants do not sprout from Milorganite.

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