transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:05] Westwood One presents At Night. Here's your host, McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[00:12] Hey, thanks for joining us. It's a Wednesday night, and do we have a show for you. Conspiracy theorists. There's a lot of people, especially in the MAGA movement, who are now insinuating that the Butler assassination of Donald Trump was somehow staged. We all know about the 9-11 conspiracy theorists. There's also a conspiracy theory out there that NASA engineers are going missing, maybe even abducted by aliens. We're going to talk this first hour about conspiracy theories, but not in the way you think. We're going to talk to a man who wrote a book about conspiracy theories and how to explain to your friends and family that they believe in a conspiracy theory where there is no evidence. So we're going to talk to Mick West, who is a founder of a number of myth-busting conspiracy theory websites. He's also written a book about it as well. Not necessarily the conspiracy in and of itself, but the mindset around the conspiracy. And then, in hour number two, we're going to talk to one of the foremost magazine writers of his day. Do you remember that movie called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood with Tom Hanks? He wrote the article in Esquire that that movie was taken from. He's out with a brand new book, Tom Junod, about his dad. It's a great story, so we got lots to get to tonight. Plus, your phone calls. But this first hour, conspiracy theorists, why are they running rampant and what can we do about it? Stay right there. We are just getting started. At Night with McGraw Milhaven, back in just one moment.

Speaker 1:
[01:51] This is At Night with McGraw Milhaven. Welcome to At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[02:24] Welcome back, At Night. You've heard the conspiracy theories, the Butler assassination attempt on President Trump. There was an inside job. How about the NASA engineers are missing? Is there a giant conspiracy that the government is covering up? Conspiracies have always been here. We're gonna talk to a man who knows quite a bit about conspiracy theorists and those that peddle them. Mick West is the founder of an organization called metabunk.org, also contrailscience.org. And he's written a book called Escaping the Rabbit Hole, Out to the Bunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic and Respect. Mick West, welcome to At Night. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3:
[03:02] Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:
[03:03] You have an interesting career. You started off as a game programmer and then you now sort of fell into this world of dealing with people who have conspiracy theorists. That is quite a journey.

Speaker 3:
[03:17] That's right. Yes. I grew up in England and I moved over to America quite a long time ago, now it's 30 years ago, to work in the video game industry. I eventually find myself founding a video game company called Neversoft. And we did a very well-known video game called Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. And like a few years after we did that, I retired from the industry and moved into writing. And just basically got interested in conspiracy theories because they kind of came up in the things I was interested in. I was learning to fly at the time. And so I got interested in this chemtrail conspiracy theory. I wrote about that. And then that led to other things like Metabunk and writing the book.

Speaker 2:
[03:58] And so normally when you fall into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theorists, you're the ones who propagate the conspiracy. You fell on the other side. You're the one trying to understand how these conspiracy theories get started.

Speaker 3:
[04:13] Yeah, well, conspiracy theories are fascinating. I mean, there's something that you can really dive into one way or the other. You're trying to understand why it's right or why it's wrong. And a lot of people, they get hooked into conspiracy theories via the internet. And usually by looking at a video, a lot of people have a lot of spare time on their hands at one point or another. And they end up surfing the internet and something comes up and they think, oh, that looks real, doesn't it? And then they kind of, once they believe one thing is real, it kind of sucks them in. It's very easy to go from one thing to the next. And you get deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole and it can be very difficult to get out.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] Yeah, no. And conspiracy theories, right? They've been around forever, but because of the internet, they've sort of taken on a new world. I always liked, when I was back in college, I loved to be a conspiracy theorist. And then it got dangerous. And at some point it became not so cute, not so interesting, not so funny to become a conspiracy theorist. We've got the 9-11 conspiracy theorists. You have people who were eating Ivermictin to sort of avoid COVID. It doesn't, does it matter which conspiracy you believe, or are they all similar in its certain belief?

Speaker 3:
[05:30] Well, there's a spectrum. If you believe things like the moon landing is faked, it really doesn't have very much effect on your daily life. It's just more of a world view that you have. But that in itself can be damaging. I think if people have a world view that everything is fake, then it makes it very difficult to them to engage with the real world. If people believe in conspiracy theories, then the person that they vote for is going to be that, that decision is going to be based upon conspiracy theories. And it becomes, we end up with this irrational basis for forming our decisions. And these things can be actually very harmful to the individual. You mentioned Ivermectin. And that was kind of a, in a way, a conspiracy theory. The claim that Ivermectin could treat various ill including COVID, which wasn't really based on science, was kind of based on the conspiracy theory that Big Pharma is covering things up and that they engineered the virus and that the government doesn't have our best interests at heart. That's kind of partly true, but this distrust of everything leads to a rejection of reality. And when it comes to things like health and personal finance, that can be very damaging to the individual.

Speaker 2:
[06:50] It seems like, and you see this a lot in politics, right? Somebody believes X or Y and then they go about finding quote unquote facts to support their opinion, as opposed to letting the facts inform their opinion, their opinion informs their facts.

Speaker 3:
[07:08] Yeah, exactly. That's a selection bias. People go, people like to be right. And so when they form an idea, especially an idea that's kind of contested, you know, you, you, you, if you become, you start to believe in this particular conspiracy theory, you don't actually want to be proven wrong. You want to be proven right. It's a very natural human thing. It's not really a conscious thing, though, people go out there and they look for things and they see something that makes them feel a bit, a bit bad. They get this, what's called cognitive dissonance, where they see something that doesn't agree with what's in their head. Then they kind of move away from that thing and then they move towards something that makes them feel good, something that validates their beliefs, makes them feel like that they are right and that they are special. And so they end up going in the direction of the rabbit hole, because the rabbit hole is very seductive, especially at the start, especially when you're just getting into a conspiracy theory. It feels like you discovered a whole new world. All this new reality has suddenly opened up to you and you see that this deep state or whatever, or that the moon landings aren't real, or that the government is spraying chemtrails, or that 9-11 was an inside job, or any kind of conspiracy theory, it's an amazing new reality and it makes the person who's discovered it feel like they are special and they want more and more of it. It's almost like a drug.

Speaker 2:
[08:30] Yeah, almost like a dopamine hit in a sense.

Speaker 3:
[08:33] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[08:33] There's also something interesting that's happened. We talked about social media and how these things are able to spread, but our foreign adversaries are now flooding the zone with things, so that it's now become in a sense almost a national security issue, where there are foreign entities who can manipulate our social media feeds to feed us things, to believe things detrimental to our national security.

Speaker 3:
[09:00] Yeah, very much so. If you get the population of a country believing a certain set of things, that kind of filters up all the way up to the top. We get people in government now, in local government, passing bills, banning chemtrails, which is just a ridiculous piece of nonsense and it's a big waste of time. They mandate that all airports in Florida and other places have to check for chemtrails, essentially, check to see if there's a weather modification going on. Of course, they don't find anything because the chemtrails conspiracy theory is just a misunderstanding of normal contrails. So you get this gradual degrading of how the government works because it's being influenced so much by conspiracy theories. This is, I think, especially true with our current administration. I think Trump has been someone who encourages conspiracy theories. The big one, I think, is the theory that the elections were rigged, the 2020 elections and other elections, which it's all baseless stuff that has been proven wrong in the courts. Yet, because we got someone in such a high position of authority, pushing it forward with a large number of followers, it becomes the belief of a huge segment of the population. This, I think, almost certainly is something that foreign adversaries want to exploit. They want to have a large segment of the population distrusting the government or either prior government or the deep state. They want people in the population to be against each other. They essentially would like, the ideal situation would be to move towards something like a civil war. If you have a foreign adversary, the best way to defeat an enemy is to defeat them from within, have them fight it themselves. So we have to be very careful about what we read online and what we see online now, especially because it's all AI generated videos. Think about where it came from. Is it actually what it seems to be?

Speaker 2:
[11:10] Yeah. What do you make of some of these current conspiracy theories? Let's take the assassination attempt on President Trump. There are people within the MAGA movement who were now saying and insinuating, hey, wait a minute, maybe he wasn't, maybe this was an inside job, maybe this was staged. It seems bizarre, but the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world, the Tucker Carlson's of the world, they were all in on Donald Trump. Now they're out there promoting conspiracy theories.

Speaker 3:
[11:41] Yeah, it's an interesting switch, I think. I think it's almost like it's become too much. You can do a certain amount of promoting conspiracy theories, but once you've, there's a critical mass, I think. With Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think she's a very independent minded person, who is obviously very conservative, but she was all in with Trump early on, but now I think she's basically, she sees the light in a way. This is something that happens with people who are down the rabbit hole. They're very strong believers and they're very strong supporters of a conspiracy theory. But once they get out, there's a rebound effect, where people who believed in a certain thing become advocates against that thing. That's something I've seen a lot with some of the people I interviewed for my book. There are people who were in the 9-11 conspiracy theory movement for many years. Then when they discover that one thing was wrong, things started to unravel and they became advocates against that theory for many years. With the current administration and the people going against it, like Tucker Carlson, these are people who are very strong believers, and they still are strong believers in a variety of conspiracy theories. But when they see something that they thought was wrong, like going to war, they were very anti-war people and they see Trump going to war in Iran, that one thing starts to allow them to question what's going on, and it starts to allow them to question their initially unquestioning belief, and the whole thing starts to unravel, and they start to see all the different things that they accepted us back before, which now they start to question.

Speaker 2:
[13:39] But I could see somebody being anti-war and breaking with Trump because he went to war. Okay, that's a philosophy or whatever else. But in Marjorie Taylor Greene's case, she went from promoting QAnon conspiracies to now promoting assassination conspiracies. So she just went from one side of the conspiracy aisle to the other.

Speaker 3:
[14:01] Yeah, yeah, that happens too. People have a certain mindset, and there are some people that are kind of on the fringe of the rabbit hole. They just kind of get in, they think, oh, that seems like something, and then they get out again and they kind of return almost to normal life. There are some people who are a very strong conspiratorial belief, and they really believe that there's something going on. They just haven't identified exactly who it is. So with Marjorie Taylor Greene, yes, she's now promoting things like, possibly like assassination conspiracy theories, just because she's a suspicious person, and she's going to go from one thing to another. It may be that she can be dissuaded from this belief. Maybe not, because things like assassination conspiracy theories, they're very difficult to disprove. You think back to JFK, we still have a vast amount of debate about what happened on that day, even though we have these massive and very comprehensive investigations, who very much point to Lee Harvey Oswald being the only shooter, there's still a lot of people who reject that, and that's going to be the case going forward. You become attracted like a butterfly to these theories that will not die.

Speaker 2:
[15:23] Talk real quick about this NASA engineer conspiracy, because the wives of the missing engineers are saying, he wasn't involved in anything, there's no reason why he would have been abducted, there's no reason he needed to be silenced. But things like that, when like common sense comes into place, that the conspiracy theories reject the wives saying, no, he just fell off a cliff, and the conspiracy theorists would rather believe somebody who's not involved as opposed to somebody who is factually involved and who is credible.

Speaker 3:
[15:57] Yeah, they want to go for this complicated theory because it fits their worldview better. The person who went missing, William McCaslin, he was a retired Major General from the US Air Force and he ran secret programs. We don't actually know what they are because they're secret. But the UFO community thinks that he was running secret UFO programs. So when he went missing, they became convinced that he was either abducted by aliens or abducted by the US government or killed by the US government to cover up the secrets of the UFO flying saucers. And this is where this entire list of 10 people came from. It's the UFO community. And these aren't NASA scientists. William McCastlin isn't a NASA scientist. He's not even a scientist. He's someone who was basically administering these programs. And the other people were largely not scientists. I think there's only four of the 10 who were actual scientists. The other people are like administrative assistants. There's one person who is a custodian, a property custodian who just looks after the things that were there. So it's a list of people who worked in the same general area or in the same industry. And most of their deaths have actually been explained. A lot of them people were murdered by people that they knew or people who lived nearby. Some of them died of natural causes and a few of them went missing. A lot of them are suspected of being suicides. So these aren't, it isn't really a suspicious list.

Speaker 2:
[17:33] So don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, in other words. Mick West, our guest, founder of metabunk.org, contrailscience.com and his book Escaping the Rabbit Hole. We're going to come back and talk more about that book. Mick West, At Night, back in a moment.

Speaker 1:
[17:48] You're listening to At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 1:
[19:59] Relax, you're listening to At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[20:04] Conspiracy theories are all the rage, and it seems like there's more and more every day thanks to the internet. Mick West, our guest, has written a book called Escaping the Rabbit Hole, How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect. Mick, talk about that for a second, because you talk to somebody who is peddling a conspiracy theory. Once you confront them, it seems like the more you confront them, the more they dig their heels in. And even though you're trying to explain to them how insane their theory is, they don't want to listen to you, they dig their heels in, and by golly, they're gonna believe this no matter what.

Speaker 3:
[20:46] Absolutely, yeah. And you really don't want to start out saying your theory is insane. That's something that's really not going to work. The problem is that people get very defensive. And if you start criticizing their theory, they know that their theories are a bit out there. They know that the mainstream science and everything is against them. So they're very defensive. In my book, I kind of, I give a three step process. It's more complicated, but there's three basic steps. The first step is to establish effective communication, which is basically just talking to the person without being judgmental. Try to understand where they're coming from and try to get them to understand where you are coming from. And this can be very difficult because your natural inclination is to get angry with the person or to express how you think, just how ridiculous you think their theory is. But you want to avoid that. You want to just ask them about their theory and tell them the things that kind of come to mind in an non-judgmental way. So that's the first step. Once you get them talking and you kind of gain their trust, you can actually kind of move on to doing the next step, which is supplying useful information. And supplying useful information is giving them information that they themselves can use to see that they've made some mistakes or the things that they have been told are incorrect. So if they have a particular claim about, say, chemtrails, like they think that photos of barrels on planes are evidence of spraying or that the persistence of the trails behind planes is evidence of spraying, then you can give them some useful information, some scientific papers or some old photos of these barrels explaining what they are and let them use that information to essentially debunk themselves. But really it's about getting a more well-formed world view, scavelging for them to actually get out of the rabbit hole, which leads to the third thing, which is to give it time. And I think a lot of people, when they start discussing this, they get very frustrated because the other person won't immediately accept this information. But it can take a long time. When someone's deep down the rabbit hole, he rejects information. But if you give it to them in a nice way, unusual way, they take it on board. And eventually, they will have enough that it can have the dam breaks, like with Marjorie Taylor's Green, like the dam broke and she kind of moved to a different rabbit hole perhaps, but out of the one she was in. And that's what happens. But it can take a long time and you have to accept that. It can take weeks, months, sometimes even years.

Speaker 2:
[23:37] Yeah, it's really interesting. I see that a lot with politics, not necessarily conspiracy theorists. But we've seen in the age of Biden and Trump, family members, families have split apart. They're not having Thanksgiving dinner anymore. They're not having Christmas anymore. They don't talk anymore. Brothers and wives have broken up. Brothers don't talk to brothers. Husbands don't talk to wives because of the anger that comes with political conversation. And just the mere fact that you're saying to the person, you're an idiot because you believe X, Y and Z. It might not be a conspiracy theory, but you believe or you like this politician. Once you start going into that anger mode, they shut down completely and you're never going to have a pleasant conversation with them.

Speaker 3:
[24:21] Yeah, exactly. Like, and that's what the people spreading these conspiracy theories want. Yeah. A lot of the people who spread conspiracy theories aren't actually believers in it. They're just trying to sow dissent. They're trying to polarize people. So, if you want to make progress, you've got to kind of, I don't know, swallow your pride a little bit and talk to the person as if they have a reasonable theory, even if you think their theory is ridiculous and try to help them get to the bottom of it by you personally getting to the bottom of it and by you establishing some kind of common ground. Common ground is a very, very important part of the rabbit hole escaping. You need to have a solid foundation. You need to have some kind of common ground. And one thing I recommend is find some common ground that isn't related to the conspiracy theory. Talk to them about sports. If it's just that, if you like your Thanksgiving meal, find something you can talk about and move very, very gradually towards the area of dispute. And if it starts to get heated, back off and talk about something else. Because once it starts to get heated, it's going to get more and more heated. And you really want to tem down that fire.

Speaker 2:
[25:36] The other thing that's interesting about it is facts get into, right? You can bring up a fact, and they just won't believe that fact, right? They only believe the fact. And so you might say, oh, it's in the newspaper. Oh, I reject anything that's in the traditional media because I don't trust anything in the traditional media. So how do you have a conversation with somebody who doesn't believe in where to go to sort of disseminate facts from, right? That's the next problem with all this.

Speaker 3:
[26:08] Well, one thing you can do is try to ask them where they get their facts from, why they believe a certain thing, and figure out what is the basis of their actual belief. And then you can ask them a question, which is what would it take for you to change this belief? And this could be something that is a good question because it makes them be introspective, it makes them try to figure out what they're basing things on for a start and then what information would change that. And that's a very good conversation starter. You can kind of do that in a neutral way. You can say, I see you have very strong belief in this particular thing, but why? Why do you think it's true? Is it because someone told you it? Did you read something somewhere? Why do you trust what you read in this place? Is it something you've personally experienced? If you go through that, you get an understanding of where they're coming from, but it also makes them think about why they believe this. And it's just a great approach.

Speaker 2:
[27:12] I've also noticed Mick West, who wrote the book Escaping the Rabbit Hole, how to debunk conspiracy theories using facts, logic and respect. I see this a lot in talk radio in my own show. If somebody calls up and they've got a theory or whatever, and if I agree with them on something, right, that sort of, you can almost feel their brain open up and saying, oh, well, since he agrees with me that it's Wednesday, well then, okay, maybe I can agree with him that the plane really did come from the Taliban from 9-11, right? It's almost like you have to give them permission to say, I'm friendly with you, I understand where you're coming from, and that then allows them the room to sort of come to the sort of fax themselves. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 3:
[28:08] Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Agreeing with them on some points is a very good thing, and you don't have to fake this agreement. You can say things like, with 9-11, it did look very weird the way the buildings came down. I think everyone can agree that what we saw with the collapse of the World Trade Center looked bizarre, and it's something that we never seen before, that type of building collapsing, so it's going to look bizarre. But you can agree with things like that, and you could say, oh yeah, like when you see building 7 collapse, it kind of looks like a controlled demolition, because it just falls straight down like controlled demolitions do. So you can agree with things like that, what things look like, and then you can kind of like kind of steer them towards the more detailed explanations going before these, beyond these superficial, what things look like, to what the science actually shows. But yes, definitely when you can agree with someone, you can seize that opportunity.

Speaker 2:
[29:07] Mick West with us for a couple more minutes. Tell me about these websites you started, metabunk.org and contrailscience.com. What do they do?

Speaker 3:
[29:16] Well, my first one was contrailscience. I started back that in the early 2000s. And it was basically I wanted to write about the chemtrail conspiracy theory, just like a blog at first. And it grew up quite rapidly and got some interest. I did some fairly high-profile cases. And. I got a lot of media attention for these high-profile cases. And then from that, metabunk.org came. And metabunk.org is a forum. And it's a way of people getting together to discuss these conspiracy theories. And that's been going over 10 years now.

Speaker 2:
[30:01] Is it getting worse? Is it getting harder to debunk some of these conspiracy theorists? Or is it getting easier?

Speaker 3:
[30:09] Both, I think. I think one of the big things now is AI. And AI is spreading conspiracy theories with generative AI, but it also allows us to very quickly do fact checks. And I think this is something that anybody who is interested in kind of rebutting conspiracy theories really needs to embrace the use of AI. Because if you're on, say, something like X, formerly Twitter, you can just do at Grok, which is their built-in AI and get it to fact check something. So you can hop on to where someone's tweeted about something that you know to be wrong and do at Grok, fact check this, and it will give you the actual real fact check. AI is pretty neutral, so the neutral thing tends towards what reality actually is. So there are tools now that we didn't have 10 years ago, but there are also tools that are used for spreading disinformation, and we need to be aware of both.

Speaker 2:
[31:06] Yeah, and I think that the one that's different will end with this. I think the thing that's different today than say 20 years ago, when it was just a parlor game in a dorm room late at night, just a couple of people having a good time talking about stories, the conspiracy theorists have set up so that they can make money on their conspiracy theorists, whether it's clicks, whether it's internet ads or whatever else. They're out there promoting a conspiracy theory to make money. And if you can monetize a conspiracy theory, that adds more people into the conspiracy theory business.

Speaker 3:
[31:43] Yeah, and that's a big problem. In two ways, initially we had a big problem with platforms like YouTube, where the algorithm would just steer people towards conspiracy theory videos, because it made money for YouTube, not just for the people who made those videos. But now we've got people monetizing conspiracy theories in various different ways and making good livings of it, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cases. So you've really got to look at who's promoting this and do they have any vested interest in it. Try to go with neutral sources rather than people who are actually making money if this theory is true. I don't really make much money at all from my investigations and debunking. But there are people who are making vastly more money than me and I have to kind of try to combat that. So consider the source.

Speaker 2:
[32:36] What's the saying that a lie will spread around the world before the truth gets out of bed?

Speaker 3:
[32:43] Yeah, that's a very true thing. I think it's before the truth gets its boots on. And yeah, it's a problem I see all the time. I woke up this morning and there was a tweet about something I said and I think it's already got like 50,000 views. I put a rebuttal tweet out. It gets 5,000 views. And you see this with videos. The initial video of one particular UFO thing gets a million views. And then they retract it and they say, oh, I was wrong about this. And the retraction gets 5,000 views. So it's a very difficult thing. You need to jump on things quickly and you need to be comprehensive and you need to, you know, that it's not going to be a one-sided argument. It's not going to be an even argument. It's distinctly, the odds are stacked against the truth in many regards.

Speaker 2:
[33:32] It is interesting. We all carry around a machine in our pocket that has all the answers to all the questions. And there's more conspiracy theorists today than ever before. It's really an interesting, interesting, ironic dilemma. Mick West, founder of metabunk.org and contrailscience.com. He's written a book, Escaping the Rabbit Hole. Added a bunch of conspiracy theories using facts, logic and respect. With all the conspiracy theories flying around today, we thought we'd have a conversation. Mick, thanks. Good stuff. Good information. Thanks for checking in. Good luck down the road.

Speaker 3:
[34:03] Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:
[34:04] You got it. At Night. Back in a moment.

Speaker 1:
[34:06] From the heart of America, this is At Night with McGraw Milhaven. This is At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[34:34] All right, speaking of conspiracy theories, some news of the day, RFK Jr., Health Secretary, RFK Jr. was testifying in Congress today, and he's been up there quite a while. And of course, he today backed away from his longstanding criticism of the measles, the mumps and rubella vaccine, the MMR. He said, he told the Senate Finance Committee today that, quote, we promote the MMR. He said, we advise every child to get the MMR. That's what we do. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is advising every child out there to get the MMR. That's not what he said in the past. Oftentimes, he called it a personal choice. He's often said to people when asked about getting the vaccine, he said, do your own research, but today, he said, we advise every child to get the MMR. That's what we do. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. backing away from the anti-vax stance. All right. So next hour, we are going to talk to the man. Do you remember that movie with Tom Hanks about Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? That was taken from an Esquire article, and that author, Tom Junod, has written a number of magazine articles, which got a lot of attention. Magazine articles, when magazines were thriving, were great. I loved a good magazine article. Well, magazines went away, and Tom decided to write a memoir, part memoir, part sort of a story about his life and his father. And he went to research his father and found some pretty interesting things and tried to square them with his own life. So, it's a story about a man coming to grips with his past and trying to deal with himself as an adult. And it's very introspective and getting a lot of attention. So, we thought we would invite him on the show. He's a wonderful, wonderful writer and a great storyteller. So, we'll talk about that next hour. And then, of course, open phones in our number three. Hey, did you see where Cauchy, the Prediction Markets, has fined and suspended three congressional candidates for betting on their own races? This comes when somebody out there is making huge profits off of news events, right? Somebody bet that the oil prices would go down. Shockingly, Donald Trump says there's a ceasefire. Oil prices go down. Somebody makes a big bet about oil prices going up. Oddly enough, in just a couple of hours later, Donald Trump says we started bombing Iran. So there's a whole bunch of criticism of insider trading going on in some of these polymarkets and these cal she markets. Well, now, Cal, she said that is fined and suspended three congressional candidates who bet on their own races. Now, I don't know if that's I mean, I'm assuming they bet them to win, right? Would a congressional candidate bet on themselves to lose? That seems odd. But if they can figure out that these congressional candidates bet on their own races, why can't they figure out some of these other bets that have taken place? So a lot more questions this story brings up than answers. But Kalshi says, regulating and making sure these bets are on the up and up political insider trading, they want to stamp out. So we'll see how all that works. We're just getting started. Our executive director tonight is Alex Hinton. Our engineer tonight is Richard Good. I'm McGraw Milhaven. This is At Night on What's With One.

Speaker 1:
[39:11] Westwood One presents At Night. Here's your host, McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[39:18] Thanks for joining us tonight. We got a great author in store for you. He was a magazine writer when magazines were at their zenith. He wrote for GQ Sports Illustrated Life Magazine and Esquire. And while he was at Esquire, he wrote the story that they ultimately turned into the Tom Hanks movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. It was a profile of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Some people have called it one of the best magazine stories ever written. Well, he's out with a memoir about his dad. It's called In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told, What It Means to Be a Man, a Memoir. Tom Junod joins us. Tom, welcome to At Night.

Speaker 6:
[40:01] Thanks for having me, McGraw.

Speaker 2:
[40:03] Let's start all the way back with this Esquire story because I think the beginnings of this book had its beginnings in that Esquire story about Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. When you wrote that, take us through your mindset because in a sense, you get a sense that you were sort of searching for your dad in that Mr. Rogers piece.

Speaker 6:
[40:25] Yeah, I think I was, but I didn't know I was doing any kind of search at the time. We were doing, you know, I was working for Esquire and we were doing a special issue on American heroes. There was a guy on the staff who had grown up with Mr. Rogers and watching Mr. Rogers on TV and was convinced that he was an American hero. But they asked me to do it sort of as a twist because I had moved over from GQ Magazine to Esquire and I had done some stories for Esquire. When I first got there, that had made me a very controversial, even sort of a bad guy in the journalism world, the magazine journalism world. And so they thought it would be a really interesting idea to have the controversial Tom Junod interview the heroic Mr. Rogers.

Speaker 2:
[41:24] And it turned out he ended up schooling you in a sense.

Speaker 6:
[41:29] He did. He was amazing. You know, so I called him from the Esquire office. And, you know, I had gotten his number. And it didn't really hit me exactly where we was until I said, well, you know, can I can I speak to you one day, Fred? He was like, sure, Tom, why don't you just come right over? I'm right around the corner. So he had Esquire. Esquire was on 55th Street. And Fred had an apartment on 56th. So I walk over there and he answers the door, you know, and I knock on his apartment door and he answers the door in in his bathrobe. And he's like, I'm sorry, Tom, I couldn't get dressed in time. So I sat down and I just, you know, I started talking to Fred Rogers and it was like from the very beginning, he had me outflanked and outmaneuvered. He, you know, wouldn't answer any of my questions. He would just ask me more questions. Like I was like talking about his childhood and he would be like, well, Tom, what was the name of your favorite toy when you were a boy? And I said, well, I had this, I had this, this, you know, stuffed animal called old rabbit. Oh, Tom, I bet you knew him when he was a very young rabbit, you know? So and so he gets me talking about, about old rabbit and the time that I, when I was like four years old and I threw old rabbit out the window of the family car. And my whole family had to go back and search for old rabbit. And I'm telling him the story and like, there's almost tears in my eyes. And then all of a sudden I look up and he, and he is, there's a flash. And he, he was taking a picture of me to send to his, to his wife, Joanne, and he puts Joanne on the phone with me. I mean, I've met the man, I don't know, 20 minutes before. He's already got a picture of me. He already has me on the phone to his wife. And that was sort of the beginning of this super, super intense sort of few weeks with Fred Rogers. It was, and he, and he, I was looking for something and he was looking to provide me with something.

Speaker 2:
[44:11] The movie and the article. You know, Hollywood has takes its liberties and it wasn't the same thing. But it turned Fred Rogers into one of those people. It's too good to be true, but it really was, right? It was like everyone was waiting for a scandal or some type of terrible story. But the man really was what you saw on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, which was a insanely nice, caring man.

Speaker 6:
[44:39] Well, that was really one of the reasons that I was interested in doing the story. I wanted to see if anybody could be that in real life. You know, you think that, you know, that maybe when the cameras were off, he would sit there and take a drag off a cigarette and pop a beer. But, you know, he didn't do anything like that. He was a complete vegetarian. You know, he wouldn't eat anything that had a mother. And the effect that he had on people was just remarkable. I mean, I remember the time when I met him over at Madison Square Garden, I'm sorry, at Penn Station for something. And we went up taking a walk out into the street. And people just descended on this man. People of all stripes, all ages, they just lined up so they could talk to him. And he was sort of crouched down. And people would be whispering directly into his ears. And you would just be making these faces of wonder. And he looked at me and he's like, oh, Tom, if you could just know what they're telling me, you know. He was almost like, as I'm sitting here talking to you about it, I mean, he was almost like a religious figure, almost like a holy man.

Speaker 2:
[46:12] Tom Junod, our guest, he wrote the article for Esquire that they turned into the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks. You also have profiles on Frank Sinatra Jr., Tony Curtis. The list goes on and on. And then you decided to write your first book and you decided to do basically a profile of your father. Probably the hardest man to know out of all those famous people.

Speaker 6:
[46:34] Yeah. My father was sort of like the anti-Fred. If there was any person in the world who was more different than Fred Rogers, I couldn't name them. But they did share one thing. They both had like incredible personal magnetism. My father was one of the most charismatic people I ever knew. I think that a lot of people would agree that he was the most charismatic people they ever knew. You couldn't walk into a restaurant with him, without people turning their heads and wondering who it was. My father would come home with stories of his nights in New York City at clubs like Copacabana in El Morocco. The women there couldn't take their eyes off your father. He said that one time when I finally did interview him for a story I wrote about him for GQ, he said there was a time when he couldn't walk down 5th Avenue without being propositioned and the thing that was interesting about all of that is that in my eyes, he was a celebrity. In fact, the first celebrity I had ever met and yet, he lived like all the other dads and all the other families. We lived in a split level in Wanto, Long Island and he was a handbag salesman. He was a traveling salesman.

Speaker 2:
[48:13] Hold that thought, Tom. Tom Junod, our guest, his new book out, it's getting a lot of attention and it is a search, a son for his father to explain his youth. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. It's a memoir, it's out, it's getting rave reviews. The New York Times has called it one of the best books, critics books, one of the best books of the year. We'll come back, take more questions. If you have a question or a phone call, call 28442 McGraw. Text, text in your questions. I'll work them into the conversation as well. At Night, back in a moment.

Speaker 1:
[48:45] At Night with McGraw Milhaven. Relax, you're listening to At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[49:06] There's a lot of talk today about what has happened to the men, what happens to the men, what happens to the boys, what's happening to that man culture. There is a new book out by journalist Tom Junod. It's called In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. Tom, it's a memoir about your father, and you were known as a journalist's journalist. You were a magazine writer, as we said, you would mix it up, you would go there, you would touch the third rail with a lot of these profiles you would write. So when you decided to sort of investigate your own family and your own father, you had to know you were going to find things out you didn't want to know, and you had to sort of, I guess, make a deal with yourself that you were going to write it all good and bad, I guess.

Speaker 6:
[49:57] Yeah, I sort of, I would say, I guess I touched the third rail about my family with this book. But the thing is, I had always been, I guess, suspicious is the word. I had always sort of known by instinct that my father had a very different life away from the life he had with us. And I mean, it started when I was a really, really little kid. My father had an affair when I was three years old with the mother of my first friend. His name was Michael. I mean, there are pictures of Michael and I in swaddling clothes in a crib. And my father worked for his father. He represented it. He represented one of Michael's father's lines and had an affair with Michael's mom. And it was far from the only time that my father stepped out from his marriage. He sort of lived for that. My father had famously an affair, not only with the Zsa Zsa Gabor, but also Ava. And according to him, at the same time. So they, he was, I knew a lot about my dad before I started the book. The thing that I found out about him that I didn't know was his own background. When he was a kid, when he was a teenager, his mother, as it turned out, my grandma, who lived in Levittown, Long Island, and was the solid matriarch of our family, was just as promiscuous as my dad was when he was young. So it was a family tradition. And that was the thing that I found out that I didn't really know going in.

Speaker 2:
[52:20] Why did you want to find out about it? Why did you want to write about it?

Speaker 6:
[52:24] It was just something that always pulled at me since I was a kid. Maybe because I was very aware that the glamour and the charisma and all of that was also something of a front and that he had a, there was a world that he inhabited that was away from us and away from that and I was just, I mean when I was eight years old, I got a cassette player, a cassette recorder and I didn't use it to play music or do any of those things. I use it to record our family dinner conversations so that I could like play it back later and ask myself was my dad really saying what I thought I heard him saying when we were eating dinner? And so I guess it was like the beginning of the journalistic instinct. But it was also something I think that I did because my dad was just in my eyes all powerful and the only power that I really had as a kid was finding out his secrets. And it was, you know, I had never told those secrets to anybody. When I was at GQ in 1996, I wrote a story called My Father's Fashion Tips, which were which was exactly that. My father thought that he had, you know, the secrets of men's sartorial essence. The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. Always wear white to the face. There is nothing like a fresh burn. Show plenty of cuff. He had all these principles and maxims and idea of how a man should be. But when I did that story, I also ran a tape recorder and finally had the chance to ask him, you know, these questions that had been bugging me my whole life. He answered them, but I didn't share them. I didn't write them. I didn't make them public until I wrote this book. And I guess it's as simple as, you know, I knew these things. I didn't want to keep them secret my whole life. I finally decided to tell him.

Speaker 2:
[55:03] Do you still have those tapes? Did you listen to those tapes when you wrote this book then?

Speaker 6:
[55:08] Oh, absolutely, absolutely. That's when he told me that he couldn't walk down 5th Avenue without being propositioned.

Speaker 2:
[55:17] Yeah. Real quick, I got about a minute and I got a break. More to get to with Tom Junod. But is it too cliché to call him a living embodiment of Don Draper, in a sense, from Mad Men?

Speaker 6:
[55:32] When I was first pitching the book, what I said was, this is Bobby Draper's memoir. So I don't think there's any exaggeration or exquisite.

Speaker 7:
[55:41] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[55:41] And it sounds like, I mean, not every man was like that, but it seems like in that era, many men had two different lives. They had the lives in suburbia and they had the lives in Manhattan.

Speaker 7:
[55:54] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[55:56] I've been knocked out by how many people have come up to me and said, either my dad was the same kind of guy as your dad or my dad had an entire second family. Almost every place. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[56:14] Yeah. Hold that thought. We will come back with that because that's a tease, as they say in the business. The book is called In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. It's a memoir. Tom Junod, well-known, well-respected magazine journalist has now turned his focus and his sights and his talents on his own father, and found out things about himself and his family that he knew, but didn't know. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man, considered one of the best books of the year, according to the New York Times Critics' Choice. Back in a moment, At Night.

Speaker 1:
[56:47] This is At Night with McGraw Milhaven. Join the Nightly Conversation, At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[57:53] Our book tonight is a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and the author is a two-time National Magazine Award winner, Tom Junod. And the book is called In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. Tom Junod, our guest. Tom, take us through the reaction since the book has been out. You were telling us so many people came up to you and said that they saw so many similarities with your father, your life, and their childhood.

Speaker 6:
[58:23] Yeah. One of the great things about publishing a book and publishing especially as personal a book as this, is you go out on the road to go to bookstores and talk to people, and then you do book signings and people walk up and they hand you their book and you sign it, and then they tell you why they're there. And a lot of the people that have come up to talk to me afterwards, they'll say, well, my dad was just like your dad. I didn't think that anyone else was like my dad, but your dad is like my dad. One man came up to me in New York City. He had to be well into his 80s and he walked up to me and he goes, I started a letter last night to my father because of your book. And it's just been like that. It's just been a lot of revelations and a lot of connection, you know, to the book that has been, you know, one of the payoffs of doing it and going there, you know, with the book. And before the break, I had said that I have definitely had people come up to me and say, well, you know, my father had a second family or on a couple of occasions, I thought that we were, you know, that my family was my father's primary family. We turned out to be the second family, the family that my father saw on weekends. It's really been a pretty remarkable experience.

Speaker 2:
[60:01] Did your mother know?

Speaker 6:
[60:04] Yeah, she knew. I knew that she knew when I was a kid, because there was a time, I guess I was probably about 19. And my father used to stay all the time when he went to New York City at the Essex House. And there was a time when he said that he had the opportunity to buy a condominium there. And he came home and he explained, you know, I have this great chance to buy this place. And my mother looked at him and said, how stupid do you think I am? Do you think I'm gonna let you have a place just for your affairs? So yeah, so I knew about that when I was a kid. And I also checked it with my aunt Seal, my mother's brother's wife, who my mother had always just had an open line of communication with. And when I was writing the book, I went out to see Aunt Seal. And she told me that my mother was well aware of his affairs and also the possibility that he might have other children from some of these affairs.

Speaker 2:
[61:15] Tell me the story. It's a family radio show, so keep it PG. But at 16 years old, you open up his work briefcase and you find something that a 16-year-old son should never find of his dad's. Take me through that, and then how does that work in your mind as you then sit down for dinner with the family and pretend to be a normal family?

Speaker 6:
[61:45] Well, like I said before, I had always been aware that my father had a life outside of us and apart from us. And one day, he showed up with a briefcase. And he just, you know, he wasn't a briefcase kind of guy. I mean, he took most of the time, the Long Island Railroad into and out of the city. And there were a lot of guys with briefcases on that on that train. And he was not one of them. He had secretaries at work, do all this paperwork. He was sort of famously disorganized. So when he came home with a briefcase, I knew that something was up. And so I took it upon myself to find out the combination and open it. And it was, you know, it was one of those unforgettable moments of my life because I opened it and there were what very euphemistically might be called marital aids. And also, you know, boxes of, you know, very hard pornography, very hardcore pornography. This was about 1974. So it was in eight mil or a super eight millimeter films. But it was, it was shocking. And that question that you ask is a really significant one. What do you do when you have found evidence that your dad, you know, has a life that's completely different from what you've been told it is and what people think it is? What do you do when you've been given or when you've taken upon yourself to find the nuclear codes to your parents' marriage? I never shared that with anybody until this book. And, you know, I, to be honest with you, people have asked me if the book has been cathartic. What has really been cathartic is finally telling those secrets and sharing those secrets, and being able to talk to people about stuff like that on the signing line, being able to talk to you about it right now. Being on the other side of secrecy has been a really strengthening and powerful thing for me.

Speaker 2:
[64:21] Tom Junod, our guest. The book is called In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. Did you rebel from your father? Did you shut him out? Was there a freeze out? Did you, after that, did you go the other way, right? I mean, because a 16 year old son can go any direction. You can want to try and be like him. You can reject him and go the other way. How did you deal with that?

Speaker 6:
[64:49] Well, I think, well, I guess, I mean, the most obvious way is I smoked a ton of weed. I was definitely that guy in high school and in my early days of college. But the strange thing and the sort of the paradoxical thing about my relationship with my dad was that, you know, it wasn't like he was like a negligent father. He was a dishonest father in a lot of ways, but he wasn't negligent. He was, he insisted on being really close to his kids and, you know, being very much our dad. I mean, I never called my father anything but dad. And in a way, in a strange way that I even can't even explain right now, knowing his secrets sort of drew me closer to him rather than driving me away. Because at least, at least I knew him, you know, and it was like he didn't know that I knew, but it was the thing that I knew that we had in common. I was very close to my dad until until he died. He died in 2006. He died at the age of 87. And then, you know, of course, you know, he dies and, you know, the book begins with his funeral. Because at the funeral, there was another revelation. I planned the whole funeral. I orchestrate the funeral. I picked the music. I do the eulogy. And I'm, you know, I'm there at the funeral, thinking I'm getting the last word about, you know, Lou Junod, about my dad. And at the very end of the funeral, this utterly captivating, beautiful, in my father's language, magnificent woman stands up at the lectern. She is not my mother. And she brings down her hands on the lecterns and says, can we all just agree that this was a man?

Speaker 7:
[67:14] I don't mean to laugh, but it's wild, you know, it's sort of those things.

Speaker 6:
[67:22] And that was the thing with my dad, you know, when you think that you have everything settled, when you think that you have found out everything that you have the goods on them, it's always just the beginning.

Speaker 2:
[67:37] You decided originally to become a handbag salesman just like him?

Speaker 6:
[67:44] Yeah, I was, you know, I was a literary guy in college and, you know, I wanted to write the Great American Novel, you know, that whole business. But I didn't, you know, know how to make a living. And so I followed my dad into the handbag business. Yeah, for a year, I traveled the territory consisting of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. That's just four states, but it is a huge hunk of country. So I was on the road, I was on the road six days a week. And I did it until I had a, I had an incident there that changed, that changed everything. I was held up at gunpoint at a hotel room in Los Angeles. On the night of my dad's birthday, we had gone out. He had dropped me off at this hotel. And a guy, you know, followed me into a friend's room, a fellow salesman's room with a hand cannon. I mean, it was a freaking 45. And he, it was not just a hold up. He didn't get in and out. He was there for like 45 minutes. And, you know, I mean, he, he gave a very convincing performance that he was going to execute this. And he changed his mind at the last minute. And when that was done, I decided that if I was going to die, I wasn't going to die a handbag salesman. I was going to die a writer. So I changed.

Speaker 2:
[69:25] In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. Brothers, sisters, aunts, any living family members sat you down, Tom Junod and said, you can't write this story. You, this is my story too. I don't want this getting out into the world.

Speaker 6:
[69:42] Well, it took me nine years to complete the research and the writing that the book entailed. And yeah, I mean, there were some family members that definitely did not want me to write this book. One was my brother-in-law Ronnie, my sister Cathy's husband, whom I had known since I was four years old. My sister and my brother Michael were 10 years older than me. And so Ronnie started dating Cathy when she was 14 and I was four. And so he had been in my life, all my life, and he definitely did not want me to write the book. And one of the great payoffs of writing the book is the call that he gave me after he read it. He called me in tears and said how grateful he was that I had written it. And that was a complete turnabout because Ronnie and I had fought over the book for a few years. And the book itself, I think, convinced him that it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 2:
[70:59] What do you think your father and your mother would think of the book?

Speaker 6:
[71:05] I think my mom would have been... My mom really believed in me as she told my brother, much to my brother Shagrin, Tommy poops gold. My mom really, really supported me. I think that she would have been embarrassed by the level of revelation that's in the book. But I think that she would have also been proud of me. I think my dad would have also been embarrassed by the level of revelation in the book. But one of the strange twists and turns of writing it, is that he always wanted to be a celebrity, like always. He would always come home with stories of not just meeting celebrities, but of meeting celebrities who recognized him as one of them. Like Cary Grant coming up to him and saying, hello Lou. You know, sort of seeing my father as an equal. And it's a strange twist of fate and kind of a funny twist of fate, that my father is sort of getting his celebrity in the book all about his secrets.

Speaker 2:
[72:16] In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. It's a memoir. Tom Junod has been our guest. Last question for you, Tom. Have you forgiven him? Has this long journey, have you been able to put it all into a compartment and you understand him a little better and you forgive him and it makes somewhat sense to you now?

Speaker 6:
[72:35] That's a great question. A lot of people ask if I'm angry at them. Anger is kind of hard, but forgiveness, yeah, I've come to understand them better. When I was 16, I discovered things about my dad that I didn't forget. When my father was 16, he discovered things about his mom that he never forgot and his dad and that he never, that he refused to talk about for the rest of his life. I mean, when I brought it up to him back probably around the year 2000, I told him some of the stuff that I had found out and asked him if he wanted to see a sister that I knew was out there and that he had never met. And he looked at me and he said, never happened. I said, what do you mean? What do you mean dad it never happened? I have proof, I have evidence. He said, listen to me, never happened. So he had to keep that in his whole life. I've been able to have my reckoning with my dad. I don't know if I forgive him exactly, but I do kind of understand him. And the reckoning has not made me love him any less. I always loved him and love him still.

Speaker 2:
[74:04] Tom Junod has been our guest. The memoir is getting all sorts of rave reviews. It's New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice from the two-time National Magazine Award winner, Tom Junod. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man where all books are sold. It's a memoir. Tom, thank you very much for the journey. Good luck with the book tour. Stay out of those hotel rooms. Don't be selling any handbags anytime soon and we'll talk to you down the road.

Speaker 6:
[74:29] I'm not going to go back to selling handbags, man.

Speaker 2:
[74:33] All right, have a good night. Tom Junod, the book is In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. At Night, back in a moment.

Speaker 1:
[74:50] Relax, you're listening to At Night with McGraw Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[75:01] From the text line, I love it when transparency is given from the root of freedom. The heart is heard clearly. I love the interview. Yeah, Tom Junod, man, he went there, talked about all the stories he heard and wrote about his father. An unbelievable tale. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. If you missed any portion of it and you want to hear it or you want to send it to somebody else, remember, we turn all these shows into a podcast. We sprinkle a little pixie dust and instead of radio, it becomes a podcast. It goes from nerdy to cool instantaneously. So how do you get the podcast? You go where all podcasts are found, any one of the major platforms and just search At Night. And like magic, it appears you can subscribe and it'll download to your device. And if you miss any portion of the show, you want to hear another show, you want to hear, re-hear it, it's all right there for you. So get the podcast and sign up At Night. Our executive director is Alex Hinton. Our engineer tonight is Richard Good. I'm McGraw Milhaven. And this is At Night on Westwood One.

Speaker 8:
[76:28] Choice Hotels get you more of what you value.

Speaker 9:
[76:40] Book direct at storieshilttales.com.

Speaker 1:
[76:54] Westwood 1 presents America at Night. Here's your host, McGraw-Milhaven.

Speaker 2:
[77:03] It is open phones. And what does that mean? That means the phones are all yours. We don't screen phone calls, never have, never will. And that's what makes this show different than all the others. We don't screen calls. We take them as they come. Alex is the producer. He's answered the phone for you, and he likes to get a little bit of what you're talking about, but he does that on his own. I tell him, hey, just put him on the phone, and I see how long you're waiting on line, and I do my best to take them in the order. We do love first time callers. We love first time callers. And so if you've been thinking about calling or wanting to call, just tell Alex you're a first time caller, and we'll give you a little extra special treatment. We'll give you some extra swag in the green room as you're waiting to come on. How about that? Phone numbers are as follows, 1-8442-MGRA, 1-8442-6247-29. Does anybody remember TARP? Remember TARP? Yeah. TARP stood for Troubled Asset Relief Program, and it was signed at the request of President George W. Bush at the end of his second term. Congress and him passed it. It was a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, and it was set up to bail out the banks, as well as was Fannie and Freddie Mac. It was AIG, it was Morgan Stanley, it was Goldman Sachs, it was Citigroup, it was General Motors, it was Chrysler. That was during the Great Recession of 2008, where the federal government came to the rescue of all these companies to the tune of $700 billion, TARP. And I'm old enough to remember, that was the beginning of the Tea Party movement, right? The Tea Party was particularly angry, very, very upset, with the bailouts. Hey, you roll the dice, you play fast and loose with your money, why should my tax dollars bail you out? Remember all that? Do you remember how controversial that was? And how the Tea Party movement got started, and focused many of their attacks on that bailout? Why am I talking about that tonight? Because, apparently, Spirit Airlines is close to getting a 500 million dollar bailout from the federal government. TARP was 700 million, and it saved all of them. I know it's, what, 12 years later, what, 10 years later, 12, 26 to 18, what is that, 12 and 6 is 18, so almost 20 years ago, right? But still, TARP was 700 million, and people's heads exploded. That was for all those companies. Spirit is close to getting 500 million dollar bailout from the federal government. The deal is expected to include a federal government taking a stake in the troubled airline, which has struggled to make money since COVID. Now, you say to yourself, Oh, well, you know, we're going to get paid back. Yeah, TARP, TARP actually made money. TARP did a similar deal, right? They got some stock options or whatever else. And so they took a stake in some of those companies. Those companies did pay the money back. And the federal government did make money on TARP. That is true. That is all true. But the people at the time didn't care. They didn't care that it was paid back. They didn't care that the federal government didn't lose money on TARP. They were just so incensed and so outraged. The Tea Party movement was so incensed and so outraged that their tax dollars would go to bail out these corporations. And now Spirit Airlines is about to get a sweetheart deal from the federal government to save them. $500 million bailout from the federal government. Wow. That's a big one. 18442 McGraw, 1844262-4729. Call or text? That's the whole idea. Call or text will take all comers, whatever you want to talk about, something we talked about earlier in the show. Somebody wants to go rogue. We love first-time callers. Let's go with Scott. Scott, you're in St. Louis, and now you're on At Night.

Speaker 10:
[81:50] Yeah. The Southern Poverty Law Center, I read the indictment, and one of the things that they did...

Speaker 2:
[82:02] Wait a minute. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. You read the indictment? You read the indictment?

Speaker 10:
[82:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[82:08] Okay.

Speaker 10:
[82:08] Yeah. You can see it on that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[82:11] I should really send you a good book. We have books on the show all the time. Buy something that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. Go read a book, a different book.

Speaker 10:
[82:20] Yeah. Well, one thing that they did that is supposedly so bad, they paid a neo-Nazi to steal some documents from the neo-Nazis, and then they published them.

Speaker 2:
[82:40] So it was an undercover neo-Nazi? It was a double agent neo-Nazi?

Speaker 10:
[82:45] Well, they paid him, you know, and he was, you know, these...

Speaker 2:
[82:50] I mean, clearly he wasn't, I mean, clearly he wasn't part of the neo-Nazi group if he was taking money to expose them.

Speaker 10:
[82:59] No, no, he was, but he was willing to do it for a buck.

Speaker 2:
[83:04] Okay.

Speaker 10:
[83:04] And they, I mean, they paid him pretty well, but, you know, is that bad to steal neo-Nazi documents and publish them?

Speaker 2:
[83:14] I don't know. I don't know if it's bad or good. Is it against the law? I don't know. I, well, can I, can I pay somebody, can I pay somebody to go steal your documents?

Speaker 10:
[83:28] Well, if I was a neo-Nazi, I would say yes.

Speaker 2:
[83:31] So a neo, a neo-Nazi doesn't have the same rights you have?

Speaker 10:
[83:37] Uh, well, no, they have, they have rights. Yeah, they have the Constitution.

Speaker 2:
[83:43] Yeah, they have the same rights you have. So I don't know. I have no idea.

Speaker 10:
[83:47] But, well, the FBI, you know, the FBI pays informants to do that. And apparently they worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center at one time.

Speaker 2:
[83:59] Yeah.

Speaker 10:
[84:00] Maybe, maybe, you know, they wanted to find out some things about the neo-Nazis. But to me, you know, and then, well, apparently, I guess the government is saying, or Trump's DOJ, which obviously has no credibility, is saying, you know, that they lied to the banks. But it doesn't sound like they really did lie to the banks. They just, they gave certain names. There was, the bank did make, question some things. And then they moved the account to a different part of the bank or something. You know, I, it sounds...

Speaker 2:
[84:41] I don't know, because the Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization that fights for civil rights and goes after some of these groups. But they, they're not prosecutors. They don't, they don't, how, what do they do with this? They bring this evidence to the prosecutors? How do they go about this?

Speaker 10:
[85:00] They publish it.

Speaker 2:
[85:01] So, so they just, so they just publish it. And they publish embarrassing information on these, on these, on these groups. Look, I don't know. I, I'm not smart enough to know. I have, I have no idea. I know it's somewhat-

Speaker 10:
[85:13] The Klan and the Neo Nazis.

Speaker 2:
[85:15] I'm certainly not a fan of the Klan and the Neo Nazis. But they certainly have rights just like the rest of us. And independent rogue groups, I'm sure, have different rules and regulations than prosecutors and the FBI. The FBI uses informants all the time. But, but they're the FBI trying to root out evil. That's what they're hired to do. That's their role by the government. The Southern Poverty Law Center is an independent organization doing this. They're sort of like, for lack of a better word, Hell's Angels type of a deal.

Speaker 10:
[85:50] Newspapers do stuff like that too.

Speaker 2:
[85:54] Well, newspapers don't pay informants per se. They don't pay for interviews and reputable news organizations don't do that. Are they? No. No, they don't. They don't pay.

Speaker 10:
[86:05] I know Wimford Murdoch, they did something. They hacked people's...

Speaker 2:
[86:10] Well, yeah, and he got busted for it. Yeah, he hacked into the...

Speaker 10:
[86:14] I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[86:16] Yeah, messages of Prince Harry, I think, right? He did... Didn't he hack into Princess Diana's...

Speaker 10:
[86:22] They're being charged. Well, I don't know. It sounds like they're being charged with lying to the banks. It doesn't sound like they're being charged with, you know, stealing documents from the neo-Nazis and publishing them.

Speaker 2:
[86:37] Yeah, I don't know. I saw the story. I saw the story. I don't know what to think of it. And you've brought up good points. I think I've brought up good points. We'll just have to wait and see how it all sort of shakes out.

Speaker 10:
[86:49] Yeah. Maybe Trump is trying to distract from Iran.

Speaker 2:
[86:55] Scott, turn off the news, go buy a book, go read something that has nothing to do with the news of the day. Thank you, Scott. Have a good day. Paul in Pennsylvania. Paul, welcome to At Night.

Speaker 9:
[87:06] Hey.

Speaker 2:
[87:08] Hi.

Speaker 9:
[87:08] Good to be on with you.

Speaker 2:
[87:10] Thank you for calling.

Speaker 9:
[87:12] I have a story that you might be interested in. It happened to me in terms of conspiracy theory, UFOs and all of that. This is about 40 or more years ago. We lived in Erie at the time. I was out running in early October. I can actually tell you where I was. Conrad Road and North Cross Road is a favorite about seven-mile running loop I would do. It was a clear day, blue sky. And I was turning on the North Cross Road. There was a gas station at the time. I looked up in the sky and I saw the thing they described. Now look, I'm a skeptic. I'm a pastor, but I'm a skeptic. I think we're supposed to be skeptical. I mean, a lot of conspiracy theories get legs because people don't have the right kind of healthy skepticism. And I looked up and there's this silver orb. And it goes all the way from one end of the sky across the other. I thought, hmm, sure looks like what they talk about relative to UFOs, spaceships or whatever. There's any number of reasons to believe there aren't spaceships from anywhere else visiting us. So I stopped my run, not enough of a purist to keep running. Look the thing is, I'm just going to keep watching this and it keeps going back and forth across the sky from one end to the other. You know, again, in an instant, like snapping your fingers traverses the whole sky. I stopped about 10 minutes watching this. It moved in a different spot and I saw very clearly. It was a milkweed seed. The sun was shining through it and it was caught in the thermals of the rising warm air of the black top of the, you know, the repair station, you know, the garage. And it was, had all the time been no more than about 12, 15 feet in front of me and therefore, you know, caught in a little bit of wind. It looked like it was going from one end of the sky to the other. If it had been today and I had had a cell phone, I could have taken a video, I still would have been a skeptic and could have published it and said, oh, there's proof.

Speaker 2:
[89:25] Oh, so you noticed it wasn't a silver orb, it was milkweed seed.

Speaker 9:
[89:33] Right, but it looked like a silver orb. You put it 15 feet away from you, you've got no frame of reference. Other than sun at the angle in the fall, going through that, the light just shimmering off of it. And because it's only 10, 15 feet away, it doesn't have to move much and there's no other frame of reference. It looks like it's just crossed the whole, well it has crossed the whole sky of my vision in an instant.

Speaker 2:
[89:59] Yeah.

Speaker 9:
[90:01] And the whole point, I said I'm going to stand here and watch until I find out what this thing is. Because I knew it was not a spaceship.

Speaker 2:
[90:10] Right. Your senses told you, your senses told you, your senses said I don't believe what I'm seeing.

Speaker 9:
[90:18] Correct. Well, because I do believe, for instance, we know now space is full of sand. I mean, there's sand grains all over because when supernovas explode they have a lot of oxygen, they have a lot of silicon, silicon dioxide that's sand. To go the speed that it would take to get from any other star system to here, you've got to go relativistic speeds. You've got to be approaching speed of light. You go that distance, you're going to hit a sand grain. That's speed, spaceship's gone.

Speaker 2:
[90:48] That's a good point. Yeah, that was like the movie Gravity, wasn't it? Right? The little piece of space dust, the little something broke the window and there you go off with Gravity. Hey, Paul, I got a break. Paul, I got a break. Call back anytime. Thanks, good stuff. I appreciate it. Sorry, I'm short on time. Tim and Paul, hold on. We'll get to all your phone calls in a second. At Night, back in a moment.

Speaker 1:
[91:11] Join the conversation. Call 844-2-MAGRAW. At Night with McGraw Milhaven. Welcome back to At Night. Call now 844-262-4729. That's 844-2-McGraw.

Speaker 2:
[91:37] All right, let's get to a couple of texts. 18442-McGraw, 1844-262-4729. Here's from 812 Area Code in Indiana. Love the show, thank you. Danny and Rollins says, OMG, no Obama deal. That would be crazy. Actually, President Trump is basically going down the same road Obama did, right? You're going to, if you couldn't trust him in the Obama deal, we're supposed to trust him now. How do you trust him? Well, you got to send in, you got to send in examiners, you got to send in people to make sure that they're abiding by what they're saying they're doing. If you didn't believe him in the Obama deal, why are you trying to believe him now? President Trump floated, he was going to have to give him all sorts of money back to them. That was what Obama was criticized for. So whatever deal Trump makes with Iran, it's going to have some semblance of an Obama deal. So that's the ironic thing about it. Here's another one. If the tariffs were a tax on us raising our prices, who gets the refunds? Not you and not me. You know who gets the refunds? The companies get the $166 billion that were taken in unconstitutional tariffs that were levied by our federal government. So says the Supreme Court. It'd be too ridiculous to try and get them back to us. So the companies are going to get that refund. The following, here's one from 708 in Illinois. The following songwriters were all housed in the Brill Building in New York. The songs dominated the charts in the 60s. Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, Bert Beckerach, Neil Sadaka, and a couple of others that I can't pronounce and or mention. You know, I just learned this when Neil Sadaka died. You know that Neil Sadaka, Barry Manilow, Barbara Streisand, and there was one other. Neil Sadaka, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand. Those four all grew up virtually on the same block in Brooklyn. Neil Sadaka, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow. All in the same block and a half in Brooklyn at the same time. Yeah, and they all got their start somewhere at that Brill Building, which is, I guess, just what would that be? Just outside of Times Square in New York. Listen to this one from New York. You are the best out there. Thank you for what you do. Thank you very much. Raymond in Oregon says marijuana is the devil's lettuce. Oh, yes, it is. Keeve in Montana. Great show. Rapidly becoming in the ranks with your old friend Art Bell. High praise from Montana. At Night. Back in a moment with more phone calls.

Speaker 1:
[94:35] Relax. You're listening to At Night with McGraw Milhaven. The floor is yours. Call or text 844-262-4729. That's 8442 McGraw.

Speaker 2:
[95:24] All right, let's go back to phones here. We've got Paul in Zanesville, Ohio. Paul, welcome to At Night.

Speaker 11:
[95:30] Hey, good evening, McGraw.

Speaker 2:
[95:32] Good evening.

Speaker 11:
[95:33] Since we're talking about spirits, here is in the first hour. I'm on that daggle of loops. I have to call you in the second hour. It brings to mind Nancy Guthrie. I've heard a lot of things about this and that, whatever. But it's my feeling. I watch a lot of Dateline. I like to watch that. Sure, I like that.

Speaker 2:
[95:55] I like a good Dateline.

Speaker 11:
[95:57] Yeah. She had to have a lot of medications, right? And I would like to see if these medications are being filled. You know, because I have a sister who's a real big conspiracy theory type person. And sometimes law enforcement, they'll miss just the most minute thing. And I would like to see if those medications are being filled. If not, it's probably not looking so good. But I haven't heard a whole lot about it lately. But there's been a lot of talk about it. And I just like your take. I mean, I really enjoy your show. And thank you for letting me speak my piece.

Speaker 2:
[96:35] You got it. Paul in Zanesville, you're always welcome to call here. What a nice man. Thanks for checking in. Yeah, I don't know if you are capable of kidnapping a woman from his house, from her house, and then sympathetic enough to say, oh, let me go to the nearby CVS and make sure I fill your prescription. Make sure you call your doctor for a refill. So I'm sure the FBI and whoever else has sort of checked in on that. But I would be shocked if they were still making runs to the pharmacy to update her medication. Look, I even think Savannah Guthrie mentioned in one of her conversations where I thought she said that she's pretty much given up hope of her mom being alive. She just wants the body returned and so she can give her mom a proper burial. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, how long has it been now? It's been three months. How long has it been since Nancy Guthrie was abducted? It's ever going back to February. So I mean, it's been, I don't know, 80 days or some crazy thing, right? February 1st, February, early February. So there's just recently they came out and said there was all sorts of rumors, conspiracy theories that there was new DNA found. They've denied it. There was another purchase person of interest. They've denied that. So the case has gone cold. Nobody knows anything. And the people who are still looking at it have said recently, if we get something, we'll let you know. But until then, there's no reason to, there's nothing to go on. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens. It's still a horrible story. Just horrific. Tyson in, actually, no, I'm sorry. Hold on, Tyson. Let's go to Tim in Washington. Tim, you're next up. Welcome to At Night.

Speaker 12:
[98:26] Hey. Hey. So I meant to call you last night about baseball. I got sidetracked.

Speaker 2:
[98:34] Okay.

Speaker 12:
[98:36] So there was a guy who called up and said he snuck into a stadium and so forth.

Speaker 2:
[98:41] Yeah.

Speaker 12:
[98:42] I used to go to the kingdom. I was a pretty easy trip away. Tickets were cheap. Parking was cheap, like seven bucks a piece. And it was a gizmo place to watch a ball game.

Speaker 2:
[98:58] It looked, it did not look very inviting on TV.

Speaker 12:
[99:02] It was gizmo, to say the least. It was like an unfinished basement with like some AstroTip or whatever. But anyway, and I would, I would go there like twice a month and I would always get some loser pitcher pitching. And they had a decent team actually at that time. And then one night, I got in there and Randy was pitching.

Speaker 2:
[99:31] Randy Johnson.

Speaker 12:
[99:33] Yeah. And up at the plate was Mark McGuire. And he hit the biggest bomb. I had, I did what your other color did. I migrated down and I was like, there was nobody there. And I was like in the third row on the third baseline. Okay. And McGuire hit that ball. And I was paying attention and I had a hot dog and I had a beer.

Speaker 2:
[100:11] Oh boy.

Speaker 12:
[100:12] I paid a lot of attention. That was, and I, and I had a figure that has to be one of the top 10 longest home runs in history. And it is, and it is, but I had to research it to see if it was. And some of the names McGraw that came up, it was like a memory lane deal, you know, when you got Richie Sexton and Justin Fielder.

Speaker 2:
[100:46] I bet you Mel Ott's on that list.

Speaker 12:
[100:49] He's not.

Speaker 2:
[100:50] Oh, because every time there's a home run trivia question, it always seems like Mel Ott is one of the answers. You can't go wrong with Mel Ott being on the list.

Speaker 12:
[101:03] Well, here's a list that I've found. And I am amazed that there are a couple that are left off of there. Adam Dunn, Mo Von, Tommy.

Speaker 2:
[101:15] These are the longest home runs of all time.

Speaker 12:
[101:19] Yeah. Strawberry, Galarraga, Dave Kingman.

Speaker 2:
[101:24] I mean, how many are you talking about? The top 10? Are these the top 10?

Speaker 12:
[101:30] And here's another one for you. It depends on what source you go to.

Speaker 2:
[101:35] Oh, yeah. It was before they were able to sort of figure it out, you know.

Speaker 12:
[101:40] Yeah. And I think I looked around and after some guy who apparently hit in Denver at Milo High Stadium back in 1987, like a 580-some foot.

Speaker 2:
[101:56] Yeah, but that I think was a minor leaguer. They didn't get professional baseball in Denver until 1991 or 92. So yeah, that's a good trivia question to sort of go down, the longest home run of all time. Tim, thanks for the phone call. Appreciate it. We got to go to Tyson in St. Louis. Tyson, welcome to At Night.

Speaker 13:
[102:16] Hey, good evening this evening.

Speaker 2:
[102:18] Good evening this evening.

Speaker 13:
[102:20] On Monday night about how you wouldn't pay hush money or you'd always take the stand if you were innocent. I would like to challenge you a little bit on both aspects, the legal and the court of public opinion.

Speaker 2:
[102:33] Sure.

Speaker 13:
[102:34] Every defense attorney in America will tell you, don't talk to the police, don't take the stand. They don't qualify it.

Speaker 2:
[102:41] Don't talk to the media. Don't talk to the media. Yeah, no. Every single attorney from the lowliest court-appointed attorney to the F. Lee Bailey's of the world would tell you, never talk to the press and never take the stand.

Speaker 13:
[103:00] Correct. But you would defy them and do it anyway.

Speaker 2:
[103:03] Yes, I would. I would like to think I would.

Speaker 13:
[103:08] Okay. Does that include talking to the police or is that a separate issue?

Speaker 2:
[103:14] No, I would talk to the police. Yeah. If I were innocent, absolutely. Yes. If I was guilty, I wouldn't. But if I were innocent, I would. Yes.

Speaker 13:
[103:27] Gotcha. So they don't preface or qualify their statement by saying, don't do it if you're guilty.

Speaker 2:
[103:32] No. I know I'm going against every bit of legal advice anyone would ever give somebody.

Speaker 13:
[103:42] And no matter what you say, they're going to use it against you once they think you're guilty, charge you and want to take you to trial. No matter what you say, they're going to use it against you.

Speaker 2:
[103:50] Correct.

Speaker 13:
[103:52] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[103:56] Look, there's no greater example than the Central Park Five. They were innocent and they spoke to the, their parents were there, their parents told them to do the right thing, they talked to the police and they somehow got them to confess even though they were innocent. It's not like a question anymore. They were really, really innocent and they were sent to jail for years. Absolutely. No, I get it. But the point I was making is, if you are innocent, I don't know, no one has been able to explain to me why it's bad. To go on television or on a radio or TV and say, I'm innocent and ask me any question. Because if you're truly innocent, what do you have to hide?

Speaker 13:
[104:52] I understand your point. I don't even disagree with you. But the reality is no matter what you say, they're going to use it against you. They're going to say you talk too much, they're going to say you didn't talk enough, they're going to say you were too nervous, they're going to say you weren't nervous enough. No matter what you do, once they think you're guilty and they want to take you to trial, it doesn't matter what you do or say, they're going to use it against you.

Speaker 2:
[105:11] They're going to try and use it against me. Right.

Speaker 13:
[105:14] Okay. Sure. So, and if we take that into the realm of public opinion, especially if it's you as a public figure, you're going to be on every news station, every you're going to be on the front page of the news.

Speaker 2:
[105:25] Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Unfortunately, yeah.

Speaker 13:
[105:28] James, you first said, hey, before I go public or go to the police, why don't you give me a dollar, McGraw, and I'll sign an NDA and nobody will ever know anything. Give me a dollar and I'll go away. You wouldn't pay that dollar.

Speaker 2:
[105:42] If I were innocent?

Speaker 13:
[105:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[105:45] No, no, no. If a woman came to me or was about to go public and say, make up some allegation towards me and said, give me a dollar and I'll go away and she was basically blackmailing me. No, I would never do that. Because once you're blackmailed, then you're open for all blackmailing. Never.

Speaker 13:
[106:09] Yeah. I don't know if you can really win, because once it goes to the court of public opinion in your fields, even if you have a friend in the field and says, listen McGraw, I believe you, I'm 99% sure you're innocent McGraw. But there's that 1% chance you're not and I can't take that liability and bring you on to my radio station.

Speaker 2:
[106:28] No, yeah, no, I get it, but like look at David Letterman, right? David Letterman was being blackmailed. He had an affair with somebody in the office, was being blackmailed and called the feds and said, I'm being blackmailed and came clean and said, yeah, this is what I did wrong. I cheated on my wife and it was terrible, but I'm being blackmailed and I have to come clean and tell the whole sort of detail. So, and I think he got credit even though he cheated on his wife, at least he got credit for being honest about what was going on. And I think public opinion clearly forgave him and he was able to move on. Look at Alexander Hamilton, right? Alexander Hamilton cheated on his wife and was being blackmailed and ultimately had to come clean and say, look, here's the deal, I'm being blackmailed. And they tried to use it against him and tried to say he was stealing money from the Treasury. But it turned out he was using his own money and he finally came clean. Being blackmailed is, especially as an elected official, if you're susceptible to blackmail, that's not a good place to be in as an elected official.

Speaker 13:
[107:42] Yeah, no, being blackmailed is definitely not an ideal situation.

Speaker 2:
[107:47] Yeah, and do we want a United States Senator to be in a position to be blackmailed? No. So, I would never give in to somebody blackmailing. And no matter how embarrassing the situation I find myself in, God forbid I cheated on somebody or did rob the bank or did something terrible, the cover-up is worse than the crime because you can't be susceptible to blackmail. And I'll leave you with this, who, God forbid, right, in a terrible, terrible situation, the Mark Kloss, the man who is the husband of Polly Kloss, whose daughter was taken from the bedroom, I think up in San Francisco, one of the nicest men in the world. He started the foundation to sort, and he goes on all these shows talking about child abductions and whatever else. You know what he says? When your child is abducted, right, you can only imagine how horrific it is. But he says, the first suspect is the father. And so he says, talk to the police as soon as possible, give them as much information as possible, so they can rule you out as a suspect, so they can go look for the actual suspect. Yes, God forbid my daughter was ever kidnapped, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but yes, I would tell the police every single thing I know, so they could get off me, because I'm the first suspect, fine, let me tell you I'm not, let me tell you what I'm doing, so you can go find the terrible person who did this.

Speaker 13:
[109:26] Yeah, he's a really good example. I think they actually said to him, you're the suspect until you tell us to prove that you're not. Yeah. Because he's like, why aren't you out looking for my daughter? He said, because you're the suspect. Prove you're not, and then we're gonna look for her.

Speaker 2:
[109:38] Yeah, and that's exactly what he did. And I've had a chance to meet him. Yeah, I've had a chance to meet him a couple of times. I've told him numerous times, anytime you want, anything you want to come on and talk about, you have just call me, let me know. A special place in heaven for that family. So anyway, Tyson, I gotta go. Thanks for the phone call. Appreciate it. Tony in Montreal, I got about two minutes. Take it away, Tony.

Speaker 14:
[110:06] Yeah, how are you doing? Do you hear me well? Because I'm driving my car.

Speaker 2:
[110:09] You are loud and clear. Thanks for checking in.

Speaker 14:
[110:13] Uh, just like, you know, every time I listen to you guys, I'm like an hour behind and it's super annoying, McGraw, because you can't follow, you know, a lot of people talk about things that are happening. But two things real quick, because I got sidetracked from my topic. I just want to ask you, what do you think will make America happy? You know, like when you hear the daily news and you hear the different politicians. And I just want to say one or two things quickly. I think the trade for Randy Johnson was probably the worst trade in Montreal baseball history. We gave Randy Johnson, Brian Holman, and Gene Harris away for Mark Langston, who pitched so-so and then left for free just the next year. That devastated our franchise. Secondly, I'm going to, you know what my profession is, but everything that you just discussed about speaking publicly about charge, you never want to be charged. None of your audience ever wants to be charged, but you should not speak. You should not even make, especially you, as I don't want to say it in this way and I don't want to criticize you, but I know you're a journalist and you're a radio personality, but everything that you just said in the future situation can be used against you, and you should stay away from that kind of stuff. I like you. I don't want you to be into trouble. Just never say any of that stuff. I know it's entertainment, radio. I know it's entertainment, and half the stuff might be said in a ribbing way and in a fun way to entertain us. But you know what? That's a serious topic. I think you should stay away from that because you are a national figure.

Speaker 2:
[111:49] Well, thank you. Thank you, Tony. I appreciate it. I'm short on time. I appreciate it. It was an esoteric question. It was made as a hypothetical. It's just talk. I can't imagine. But again, one, you'd never imagine you'd find yourself in a terrible situation like that where you were accused of a crime you didn't commit. But I would like to think that, you know, I would be able to, you know, clear myself of the crime I was committed for unjustly. So that's just the way I am. All right. At Night. Back in a moment.

Speaker 1:
[112:31] Miss a portion of tonight's show? Not a problem. Go to americaatnightlive.com to find a replay of every show.

Speaker 2:
[112:55] All right, let me finish by saying, I believe what Donald Trump said back in 2006, and I'll quote, if you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? The mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? I believe Donald Trump. Why are you taking the Fifth if you're innocent? That's what I believe, sorry. Hey, thanks for calling, thanks for listening. It was a fun show. We got a whole bunch of texts. We'll get to them tomorrow night. Bill Cleveland, Bill on the road. We'll find out where he is. Fast becoming one of our favorite segments of the week. Don't forget this all turns into a podcast. Download and follow the podcasts where all podcasts are found. Our executive director tonight is Alex Hinton. Our engineer tonight is Richard Good. I'm McGraw Milhaven. This is At Night on Westwood One.

Speaker 15:
[114:01] Hi, I'm Joe Salci, host of the Stacking Benjamins Podcast.

Speaker 8:
[114:03] Most economists agree, small amount of inflation is actually good. 2% is what you're going for. But why is everybody freaking out?

Speaker 15:
[114:10] Oh, because it's the fallout. People don't track their budget. You have this slow slipping that happens every month, until all of a sudden you go, man, I don't have any money. The reason is now two people go to a restaurant, the bill is 60 bucks for two.

Speaker 2:
[114:23] Two guys walk into a restaurant.

Speaker 15:
[114:24] They start screaming. Isn't that hilarious? $60. Stacking Benjamins, follow and listen on your favorite platform.