Help us, please.
Please, please, please.
Help us on
the way.
We're doomed.
This
country is doomed.
Good morning to you, too.
Four
years is not... Not
gonna make it?
We're not gonna make that four years.
You know, this country is sinking slowly, slowly, slowly into the West.
We are done.
We are done.
Did you get
up on the wrong side of the bed or what?
You know, come on man, it's not that bad.
The truth is gone, history, we don't have the truth anymore, we just get out there and we just say whatever we want to say, lies, lies, lies, and that's the administration.
But here on this show, you hear the truth constantly.
All the time, it never stops.
Okay, this is what, what?
This is WMDX.
92.7
Out of the gate you're just like just spewing.
I am
crazy.
I am not gonna sleep last night or
Well, you know, we're making a little adjustment here on the show.
You know, we are, we are getting rid of the calendar, the national date calendar, which we will take a look at.
But, you know, I'm looking over the news headlines and stuff like that, and I get super depressed every time I do that.
And now I'm kind of angry about the latest story and that is the Kennedy Center.
It's gonna have a big celebration.
All the power people are gonna be at the Kennedy Center.
As you know, Trump has taken...
over the Kennedy Center.
He has grasped it.
He has taken it.
It is his own now.
It's his palace.
And this is where he has his plays and his power play where he invites all his friends to walk down the red carpet into the Kennedy Center.
He's going to bring the Kennedy Center back.
Oh, yeah.
I'm surprised he hasn't renamed it the Trump Center.
Well, entertainment zone.
Yeah.
How
could he keep at the Kennedy Center, right?
I know.
So here's the thing, you know, the first big play for him is one of his favorite plays, Les Miserables.
Oh, really?
OK, so Les Miserables.
Yeah,
I'm just like, Les Miserables, I don't remember that.
What's a story of Les Miserables, right?
Okay,
so do you know?
I don't know.
Yeah,
it
is.
You said lame is Rob?
What?
What did you say?
Lame is Rob?
Yeah, yeah.
Lame is
Rob.
Lame
is Rob.
And this is the big play and he's talking it up.
He loves the music in it and apparently he's played some of the music from Lame is Rob.
at his rallies, okay, but what is it about?
This is the big, he loves this play.
All right, so anyway, it's about inequality and social class issues.
It's a set in France, a five volume novel, explores the struggles of people in the lower class and how they grapple with unfair treatment.
So this is his favorite play.
Talking about the...
the lower class and their struggles.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
So it's just like a tip on how to make them more miserable.
I don't know.
Maybe so.
You know,
it just seemed like the wrong
play and I'm just, I'm done, you know.
It's a French epic historical novel by Victor Hugo, you know, the plays based on
that.
Right, right.
Published in 1862.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe we can talk to Julie Belschner about this in a little while.
She's in the theater, you know, from the Redbud Players Community Theater group.
I bet she knows.
We'll
talk to her.
Here's another description.
Offers a profound meditation on the power of kindness, not just as an individual virtue, but as a catalyst for change, both personal and societal.
So there you go.
That must be what Trump is actually doing with our country.
I'm sure.
What?
It's a
catalyst for change.
Good morning.
That's John Peterson.
I'm Gordy Young.
Lee is in the producer's chair.
It's
kind of draining, drizzly.
You know, we need
to mention the weather is kind of crummy.
I call
it mist.
It's mist.
It's misting out there.
Misty drizzle.
Yeah.
Remember her?
She was great in Vegas.
She had an actress.
Misty drizzle was fantastic.
She killed.
Great pole dancing.
Yeah.
Fabulous.
And it's playing Misty for you this morning.
Oh, remember that movie?
Did you see play Misty for me?
I did, yes.
Clint Eastwood and Jessica Walters.
Oh my God.
Have you ever heard of that movie now?
I have heard of it, but I've never watched it.
But I do love Clint Eastwood.
Yeah, well, he plays a jazz DJ
at
a
station in...
In a
maniacal fan who goes after him, right?
Yes.
It's almost... It's scary.
It reminds me a lot of Catherine who pursued us to do this morning show.
Oh my god.
She's gonna call in soon.
Yeah, just watch.
You can take that one.
I'm
always trying to find a way to get her to respond to the
show.
Oh, she's gonna respond now.
You think so?
All right, there we go.
All right.
This portion of John and Gordy in the morning.
Put her on the spot, I'm sorry.
Is brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center.
Madison Hearing Aid Center.
They're at 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison and they offer fast and flexible appointments.
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Their number one goal isn't just selling hearing aids, it's improving the quality of life through better hearing.
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Jim and Sarah will help you out.
Get you in for an appointment and set you all up.
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Whatever you need.
Very easy to talk to and they'll definitely help you out as they have helped us.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Lynn out in Golden Valley says the miserables.
Let me guess.
That's the way you would say it in English.
Okay.
Thank
you for
that.
We should ask Julian.
Oh,
Julian.
Well, it's a French play.
Yeah.
So,
you know, you're right.
Right.
We.
I don't think we have him available at the moment, but we'll try.
It's 57 degrees currently.
What is your WMDX watch, say, the Samsung
watch?
Let me just tell you right away.
Sunset tonight is 833.
It's getting later and later and later.
Here
it
is.
Currently, 58 degrees.
High of 78 today.
Really, 78.
And a low of
51.
But I can tell you one thing, I feel the dew points, and they're up
there.
It's very humid out there.
Yeah.
Do we have the bar dice available there, Dom?
Do you have those standing behind you?
I think
we do.
It's right next to the beer.
It's right next
to the beer.
Let me go check it
out real quick.
OK.
Go ahead and roll them and slam them.
Let's go.
Where'd the crown come from?
Oh, I don't know.
I don't remember the crown.
It's a seven and a three.
Our dice have a seven and a three.
Well, they just opened a window.
Take the bar dice
out.
We hear the crowd in the background.
Close
the window
again.
That's good.
Done.
Yeah.
And, um, you know, we'll, uh, as we go along, we'll check.
I guess Brittany is not going to be with us again.
Yeah.
Must be really into the weather.
Yep.
Well, there you go.
And that's, that's a hard, it's a hard thing to be when you're a weather person.
Yeah.
Okay, shall we check the Let's find out what happened on this date in history Tom.
Do you have anything for us here?
There we go.
All right.
In 1974, beer was sold for actually 10 cents during beer night.
1974.
Yeah, 1974.
The Cleveland Indians.
It was intended to kind of boost attendance, but instead it just became a riot.
Yeah.
And people were intoxicated, and the game ended up being forfeited.
That's clean.
That's why we
don't see too many of those 10-cent beer nights.
I think it ended there.
And then in 1896, we're going way back, Henry Ford drives his first Ford through the streets of Detroit.
Pretty plain and
simple there.
That must have been a great day.
It must have
been.
It
must have been.
And then in 1919, Congress approved the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed the women in the right.
vote mm-hmm 1919
yeah that seems incredible you know that they didn't have the right to vote I mean when I when I first found that I just wow
yeah well it's
incredible
they still haven't passed the equal rights amendment well yeah that's incredible you know you pay for some
reason they're holding back on that night
They say it passed.
I mean, Biden had said it passed and he was going to put it in place, but I don't remember.
No one knows.
No one knows why it's still not enforced.
Okay.
Any birthdays for today there?
Birthdays.
Yes,
birthdays.
I got two birthdays here.
We got Russell Brand.
He was an actor in Despicable Me, which I
really like that move.
Anybody a fan of...
Russell Brand anymore.
Boy, he's noxious.
Okay, let's go on to Angelina Jolie.
It was fantastic.
Yep, Angelina Jolie as well.
She's a great actress.
What a
great
actress.
I was just sort of this little thing and you talked about Henry Ford drives the first Ford through the streets of Detroit.
Right.
It's Henry Ford who put us on this wrong path.
with gasoline
engines, yeah.
They were going with electric there.
They
started off
that way, but he was convinced by the lobby from the energy industry.
I don't know how much power they had at that time, but yeah, he went with gasoline.
And
here we
are today,
controlled by big oil.
And nothing's really happening on the National Day calendar today.
It's National Hug Your Cat Day,
you know, for all you cat people.
It's actually National Cheese Day today.
So that, you know... Well, that's big here in Wisconsin.
That's really big.
That's a big deal.
It's National Cognac Day and National Old Maid's Day.
Wow, that still
exists.
Go back to National Cheese Day
for a moment.
I feel
like we've been talking about cheese for the past three days.
I
know.
Vita cheese, and then, you know,
cheese today.
Oh,
yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
We're in a cheese roll.
A cheese roll.
There you go.
Oh, God.
I'll be here all week.
17 minutes past the hour, and this portion of the show.
is being brought to you by Virlo Mattress of Madison.
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They don't just have mattresses.
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You mean the adjustable bed frames that you love.
The adjustable bed frames.
You're just a fan of bed frames that adjust a lot.
You know a lot of people
up down
sideways.
They don't
think about it and they think of hospital beds and that irritates me to no end.
So that's why I get on my horse about the adjustable beds, because it's just fantastic.
All you have to do is raise it up maybe one or two inches, and that's not very much, but you feel better.
You can sleep better.
You can read better.
You can watch TV better from your bed.
It's just... Did you used to work it furlough or something?
You know all about these.
I was stunned that I actually wanted one, and then finally got one, and I was so happy with it.
You know, it's just a revelation.
That's why you just discover something.
Should have a remote control.
It does.
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
Yeah, we've got two remotes because we put two single extra long beds together and it creates
a king
size, king size bed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you find it, you're doing it in your synchronous?
No, no, no, we have
to, we have to separate them just a little bit because when I raise my side, it doesn't start raising just the edge of her.
Gotcha.
So yeah, yeah, gotta be careful there.
Well, you really
have
to be
careful.
Yes,
indeed.
Nineteen passed the hour.
It's a rumble in the bed.
Just getting started on a Wednesday morning when we come back we'll talk to Julie Belschner from the Redbud Players Community Theater Group in Columbus.
Coming up on John and
Gordy.
WMDX 92.7.
It's John Peterson, Gordy Young in the morning in that song.
Great song.
No, not really.
Sir Robert.
It is, but, you know, we don't play the lyrical version of it because it's a, well, you know, it's kind of dated.
music to watch girls.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, that's not something to do anymore.
It's called harassment now.
Six twenty three.
It's cloudy.
It's a little rainy out there this morning and 57 degrees highs in the seventies.
And we welcome Julie Belschner in from the Redbud players of community.
community theater group that's in Columbus.
Julie, thanks for coming in this morning.
You're welcome.
Hello, John.
Good morning, Gordy.
Hello.
We love Columbus.
It's a great little town, you know, great history and historic buildings there.
It's just wonderful.
I was only there once, but I was there when they had a brewery.
still
have, it has a long history of breweries actually.
And there's still, you know, there's still the brewery buildings there.
There's just a lot of, you know, really cool things, awesome parks.
So it's a great place to live.
So tell us a little bit about your Redbud Players Community Theater Group and what you've got coming up here.
Well, unbelievably, this is our 26th.
year.
Amazing.
I know.
I have not been with it that long, but it's been around for quite a while.
Kind of sunk down a little like everybody did during COVID.
So we're kind of in a rebuilding phase.
So we've got coming up auditions for Charlotte's Web, and that's going to be from 6 to, let me make sure I said that right, yep, 6 to 8 p.m.
June 16th and 17th.
And that's gonna be at the Columbus, yeah, Columbus Middle School.
So these
are open auditions?
Open auditions.
Yeah, we're looking for adults, teenagers, kids, eight and over.
No, I
know you had these before.
What kind of
people turn out for these auditions?
You know, it's amazing.
And we had like, last year, a young kid came in, he's like a junior in high school.
Never.
been in a play before in his life had no idea what he was doing.
He ended up being the star.
We did.
Yeah.
Yeah, we did the play last year and he was Aslan, which is the lion, right?
And these kids just bloom.
I mean, they start out being nervous and scared.
And by the end of it, they're just amazing, full of confidence.
And that's
pretty much what the group is aiming at is helping kids.
Did he go on to an acting career?
Well, he's just, he's just a senior this year.
So he's, yeah.
But we have a couple of, there was one who he was so funny, a young kid and just gets into every role he's in.
And yeah, he, his goal is to be an actor.
So we've got some great actors in our group.
Pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did they come from all over the
area?
They do.
We get them from, you know, even from down by Madison.
Because it's you know, it's only 20 miles to Columbus, but still you know It seems like a ways but all the little towns around we pull in actors and both adults kids
now it sounds like kids I mean what what what age do you think most of the cast members will be around?
Well, and I spoke to the director Carlos director.
She has a lot of years experience being a director.
She's a teacher and she said she's looking for
probably six to eight adults.
unlimited pretty much a number of kids because you can always put, they call it a choir.
It's not really, they don't sing, but they have like a bunch of kids on the side doing extra things.
And so, yeah, we're looking for a lot of people, but yeah, six to eight PM, June 16th and 17th.
So I understand you also have a summer camp for kids.
We do.
And this has been going on again for many, many years.
It's held in Fireman's Park, which is the big park in Columbus.
And it's a week long.
They spend
of the fourth through the eighth.
And that last day, then they put on a play for friends, family, whoever'd like to come.
So you should have a really good attendance at that.
And you're
not only looking for actors, you're looking for people behind the scenes,
right?
Yeah.
Production people, I mean,
they don't have to help build things.
And I'm kind of the vice president, but I'm also the marketing person.
And so the first thing I'd say is I could use a marketing assistant.
There
you go.
I have one.
I could use more.
But no, we need people to build sets.
We need people to do makeup, to do hair, or even just come help with the little kids.
You know, they need somebody to kind of, you know.
heard them around the corral.
Um,
we try not to go below eight years old.
Occasionally we do, but, um, you know, and it's not that you can't find a good actor, but we aren't really babysitters.
So, you know, it's kind of hard to have little kids running around.
So.
So the auditions for the fall production, Charlotte's web or June 16th and 17th.
Yes.
And then the actual production is in the fall.
Yeah.
So the actual production is always at the internet always, but we've been doing at the end of September.
Um, so we're doing Friday, Saturdays and Sundays and Sundays we do a matinee that we open up at $5 each for anybody who wants to come just to give more people an opportunity to see the play.
So Charlotte's web is about what?
Um, share this with me.
It's, it's based on that classic book by E.B.
White where, you know, Charlotte is the, is like, I'm going to get this backwards.
Charlotte is the spider and they have what we're the pig.
And so they have this whole thing going on at the farm and it's just, it's a really great kids play, but it's also one that adults enjoy.
So, um, we try to get something that, you know, will resonate with a large number of people and it does.
So it's going to be fun.
So, Julie, you just have a minute left here.
If people want to find out more or maybe get some tickets or get more information about what you're up to there in Columbus with the Redbud Players Theater Group, how do they do that?
Best thing is to go on Facebook and just search for Redbud Players.
It's Facebook slash Columbus Redbud Players.
Do you need
a couple of old guys in the play?
We desperately do.
Really?
Yes.
Do we get costumes and stuff
to put on?
Oh, you get costumes.
You bet.
You know, we'll make you look really good.
We'll
talk.
I want to be a wizard.
Do they have that in Charlotte's web?
Oh, yeah.
You know what?
We can put one in.
Julie, thanks for coming in.
Oh, you're
welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Sure.
And break a leg
with
the Red Buds Players Community Theater Group.
We will be back with Idiocracy.
It's coming up next on John and Gordy in the
Morning.
you
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point, a dumbing down, until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you
go and do something like this.
We can duck and cover.
There's a fallout shelter right there.
There's no way to survive this, you idiot!
Idiocracy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
All
the time.
All the time we prove it over and over and over again, John and Gordy in the morning.
This is WMDX 92.7, also on your Civic Media app.
Choose us as your favorite station tune
in
each and every morning six to eight o'clock and you can also text us Tell us what you're thinking.
We want to
hear it.
We want to know what you're up to Cloudy skies this morning some drizzle out there some sprinkles and then it gets a little better later on Up to a high in the mid 70s right now.
It's 57 degrees here
All
right, before we get to any of the idiocracy, let's go with the current idiocracy that's going on right now.
This I thought was, and it is just headlines, the White House is approving disaster funds for those states that are requesting it, but they're not telling FEMA.
Well, wait a minute.
They're not telling
them.
No, they're not telling them.
Well, that's the way that goes.
I know
there's a story in there simply.
They're not talking.
Just use
your imagination.
All right.
And you know, and here's the thing.
Trump thought he had this whole Ukraine Russia thing solved and done peace.
was on its way.
He was
gonna solve it in one day.
And then he kind of admits that Putin is a little hard to work with.
Right.
And he's not cooperating, right?
Yeah.
And it's almost like an epiphany for him.
Like a discovery.
He thought they were buddies.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
They could work it all out.
So now, you know, the headline is, Trump complains President Xi
is hard to work with.
No, China?
You know, I'm just like, did you not know this?
What did he think that the power of his personality would convince these people to work with us and kowtow to Trump's line?
It's not like
he didn't work with them before in the first term.
I mean, he had some communications with them.
He must have known how they are.
But he's
discovering that Putin's hard to work with, and now she is hard to work with.
Well, maybe it's you.
Maybe people don't like working with you, Mr. Trump.
OK.
Because he's flip-flopping like a pancake on a Sunday morning with these tariffs.
That's right.
They bunse the tariffs off again on steel, right?
Oh, yeah.
From 25% to 50%.
So that'll raise
prices on just about everything you can think of out there.
So that's going to happen.
All right.
All right.
Well, you know, uh, they're making a lot of changes, you know, with social security and Medicaid and Medicare.
They're doing a lot of little, uh, little twi- I don't know, little twi- uh,
what do you call
it?
Tweaks?
Tweaks.
That's it.
Tweakies.
Tweaks.
Tweaks.
And
they're
making those little tweaks here and there.
And, uh, everybody knows, uh, Chris Sanunu.
He's a politician and...
uh... he has a comment about uh... you know kids accepting what
The Republicans are thinking of doing right now, and I just want to play this cut 131 and and and and Kristen had this to say and I'm wondering how many young people are going to agree with this comment You said 131 daily show Trump debate Hillary, okay?
No, perhaps not.
Yeah, hang on April Going back to the April file April
file you have to give me a second.
All right.
We'll get you going here in a moment.
I have to differentiate that
because I was kind of going over some of the stories that I thought were really, really interesting and last a long time.
And when you have Republicans saying that, oh, the kids will like this, that stays with you.
So are you fine in it?
Searching for...
Yep,
we're trying to find it
right now.
Okay.
Tsununu.
Coming up, by the way, after 7 o'clock, we'll reveal the next keyword in our Scani summer text-to-win contest that's coming up.
What is it?
What's that word for?
Well, I can't tell you until after 7 o'clock.
Just a hint.
I do have to explain this to you
every day.
All I'm
asking for is just a hint.
I'm not telling you.
I'm not giving you a hint.
The spelling or
anything like that?
Actually, it's sealed in an envelope.
I don't open the envelope.
I can't open the envelope until after seven o'clock.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Get the...
Well, you
know, I'll just, I'll let you go with that one.
That doesn't set right with me, but okay.
Okay.
Dom, did you have any luck
finding that yet or no?
I ended up
finding it.
I didn't end up finding
it in
the April file.
Sorry about that.
All right.
No, that's fine.
It's all
good.
I'll tell you that next time.
But actually, I can make a copy of it and put in our current folder.
So, you
don't have to do this, but I did not do this this
time.
So,
just to give you a hard time, you're new.
Make you panic and sweat a
little bit back there, okay?
So, refresh us.
What are we about to hear again?
Oh, I don't know.
Oh,
okay, fine.
to say that people, the kids especially, are gonna really love the Republican plans for Medicaid and Social Security and Medicare.
Ah, they'll just love everything that's being changed.
Let's listen.
You can't do what Elon is saying he's doing without touching the programs that American people don't want to get touched and yet Congress doesn't want him to get touched Americans will accept it.
I like to think I'm young.
Wow.
Touched off
a firestorm.
It really
did.
Here's the thing, you know, they always, magas seem to always know what the public wants.
And they always say that, you know, the public wants this, you know, people are asking for this, you
know,
I'm so tired of that ploy.
Yeah.
No.
It doesn't
work that way.
They haven't really asked for any of that stuff.
I mean, with it's Kristen Nunu, thinking that the young people, the Gen Zers, will just kind of go along with everything that's going on right now.
Sure.
You know, they are so rebellious.
My kids are so angry about all of this, you know?
Yes.
I have to prevent them from going out to get firearms and bombs.
No, God, no.
Oh, no, don't go that way.
Yeah, that's what
I'm saying.
And I, you know...
It's not good.
We've got basement full of fertilizer now.
I'm just oh, no, no, no Okay, let's get into this story.
Okay It's very possible that doge may end up costing the federal government now I I mentioned this to you the other day and I found this story Because I couldn't find it.
I thought where
is that?
Where did I see that caught all these programs and let go of all these people?
How could it cost?
More than well doge
claims don't you heard the clips, but doge claims that they've saved about a hundred and sixty billion dollars It's a lot less than the two trillion that he said he was going to find right so anyway, but that effort may have come at the cost of taxpayers With analysis from the nonpartisan research group estimating that doge's actions will cost about a hundred and thirty five billion dollars this year
So we're looking at what Elon is telling us, $160 billion savings.
We can't really verify that, but it's going to at least cost the government $135 billion just to pay for all of this nonsense.
Absolute, complete nonsense.
And it's cost to Elon, a lot of stock at Tesla.
Oh, yeah.
They've had a lot of problems since he wasn't around.
So maybe he can get back on track with there and help out his own company.
Well, that's what I'm thinking,
right?
Because, you know, we're worried about him.
How much money he's lost personally.
Well, you know, in Europe, again, Tesla is having a really difficult time.
And having him back at the head of Tesla.
I don't think that's a good idea, but he thinks, well, you know, people will just love him
for who he is in
charge, right?
He's got the money.
So maybe you can do his Nazi salute for everybody
to see how
that goes over again.
They'll like that.
Or how about this?
This is again, this is idiocracy.
The mega minority is canceling out what the voters are deciding they want.
as government.
Despite Missouri, this is Missouri's problem over there, despite Missouri voters overwhelmingly approving a ballot measure guaranteeing paid sick leave and minimum wage increases last November, the state Republican Party passed a law repealing the provisions just days before it went into effect.
So there you go.
Anybody want to vote for these guys who are countering what the public actually voted in and want?
All right now the Missouri GOP passed a similar bill that will repeal reproductive rights in the state which voters also decided to protect via a ballot measure last November.
Missouri Republicans have blatantly criticized direct democracy
in the state.
What?
They don't want the people having control.
They want the control.
Wow.
They got a control problem.
Just saying it out loud, huh?
Yeah.
Just go ahead.
That's happened everywhere.
You know, we had, we have a similar thing about sick leave in Milwaukee.
They had a referendum there and they passed it in Milwaukee head.
Paid sick leave.
Hmm.
And then the state legislature filled up with gerrymandered Republicans decided that, you know, it's not good having a patchwork of laws over the state.
You know, let's
have just one big one, although they do like local control.
Do
they?
Anyway, so then they passed a law banning any community from passing these kinds of referendums.
No kidding.
Yeah.
So you really can't do this anymore.
They have controls.
GOP.
They love local control, though.
All right.
That's what it's all
about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
How about this?
Mexican security chief confirms a cartel family entered the US in a deal with Trump.
Oh, wait a minute.
Yeah.
Cartel family.
Yes.
Trump signed off on this.
Guzman Lopez is one of the brothers left running a faction of the cartel.
After notorious El Chapo.
Remember him?
El Chapo.
Guzman was in prison in the US.
So, you know, to keep the family together.
Right.
They brought him into the US
with a
special deal with the Trump administration.
I thought he was
against these cartels.
Seemed like he was, yeah.
And drugs going over the border and fentanyl and all this other stuff and El Chapo.
is in the country, so hey, let's bring up the family so they have an easy visit.
So anyway, yeah, it's crazy.
They went through Tawana, and now they're in the country, and they're living here happily, thanks to Donald Trump.
Well, Chompo's still in jail, though, right?
Yes.
Okay.
But they just brought the family up.
They brought them up.
So they could make visitations or something.
Exactly.
They weren't that considerate
in this state.
Remember, you know, the
What?
What?
I was going to say a
child, no, child prison.
It's the
youth prison.
That's it.
The youth prison,
remember?
It was way, it was really distant from Milwaukee and a lot of the youth that were in there were from Milwaukee and it was really so far away and they didn't want to move a closer prison near Milwaukee so the families could see their kids.
So, I don't know.
So the Republicans don't want the families to be together.
But Trump does.
And it's nice to know that he's working this magic deal with the cartel family from Mexico.
I'm just glad to hear that El Chapo is
back in the headlines because I like to say El Chapo.
Yes, OK.
It is 6.48.
Sounds like a machete movie, doesn't it?
Have you watched machetes?
No.
Oh, you haven't?
Oh, no.
Really?
OK.
OK.
Coming up in just about 15 minutes, we'll reveal the next key word in our Scotty Summer Text-to-Win Contest.
Oh, yeah.
Stay with us for more of John and Gordy in the morning.
They've already been chosen as a winner.
Vote for John and Gordy for Best of Madison.
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All right, WMBX 92.7, John and Gordy in Z-morning.
That's right, we're up for Best of Madison.
Yeah, we are.
And their voting has
already begun.
Here for the month of June, we made it into the finals.
Six nominations for
best radio team, so you can go to Madison Magazine, Best of Madison Awards and check it out there.
We'll have some more information on that coming up.
It is 653, this portion of the show being brought to you by MadisonHearingAidCenter.com, 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison.
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All right, we've got a text here from Sam.
Sam.
Sam is communicating with us at this point.
He said, the show is better than I remember.
Sam's latest adventure, driving to Chicago to buy a pinball machine for camp.
Green idea, Sam.
He's kind of like, how are you going to get a pinball machine in that vehicle of yours?
How do you fit that in a Volkswagen bug?
Yeah, I don't know.
By the way, you can get all the kinds of information on the best of Madison award that we're up for right on our website, WMDXradio.com.
Okay, that's right.
Okay, now I got to mention
that.
I mentioned machete.
Okay.
And I don't know if anybody saw the Machete series of movies.
Well, is this Machete or is it Machete?
Well, a lot of people said Machete in the movies that he wasn't originally in.
It was Spy Kids, if everybody watches Spy Kids movies.
He was a really lovable character.
He made up gadgets and gizmos in that movie.
And it's played by Danny Trail.
Oh, great actors.
Yeah, he's fun to watch, you know.
Yeah.
And lovable and huggable and, you know, and mean looking as well.
Yes.
But anyway, so he played Machete.
That's how he said his
name in the
movie.
All
right.
And I'm just, I'm just playing on that.
Okay.
And you got... Machete.
Machete movies are okay.
The first one was okay, but the second one, the follow-up, the sequel, Machete Kills.
is good.
It's really
good.
Where can you see that?
It's all made by the same guy who did Spy Kids, which my kids loved.
And those are really creative, imaginative movies, really fantastic.
There's one about gaming.
Mm-hmm.
I also love spike game over.
Yep.
It was game over.
Yeah.
Yep, and that was just really surreal.
I
just love that movie.
Are you into gaming too?
I'm pretty into gaming.
Yes, I'm pretty I'm into the recent gaming I like the multiplayer stuff.
Yeah, I'm with friends.
Yeah,
that's what my sons do.
Yeah, I stay up until like 4 a.m.
Though I don't sleep at all, so
Okay,
really?
There you go.
My guys don't go to Ben and Tilibat.
I think maybe seven or eight in the morning.
Well, you
guys should link up.
Wow.
Yeah.
Get your son.
Well, maybe.
I'm gonna need an email.
Together with Don.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Good, good.
The machete movies or something else.
And we're talking about that because Trump imported the cartel family into the US because they want to be close to El Chapo.
You know, keeping the family together is important to him.
Oh, he's all about family.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
Stealing the kids away from their moms
or moms
away from their kids.
Always always a really good thing to do.
All right.
Coming up shortly, right after the break, we'll be announcing the next keyword in our text-to-win contest, our Scotty Summer text-to-win contest.
You got something briefly here?
We've got a couple of minutes.
Yeah,
we've
got something here.
Derek Van Orden.
and
Tom
Tiffany are using healthcare to exact punishment on their voters, which is a really nice thing to do to the voters to satisfy their own imagined waste and fraud paranoia, which I've talked about here in the program, ad nauseam.
Tom Tiffany's district has 130,000 plus people on Medicaid and could lose $1.7 billion if Republicans carry out their plan for his
138,000-plus people on Medicaid.
Van Orden's district has 140,000-plus people on Medicaid and could lose $1.75 billion.
You know, this Medicaid thing, it just shows how much we really need a universal healthcare plan in this country.
People are on Medicaid
or
Medicare.
Those are government programs.
Why not just have universal health care coverage so we don't have all these different departments and waste a lot of money on administration?
Over time, it would save us money.
Universal health care
now did their constituents by the way who rely in Medicaid to pay for essential prescriptions checkups for their children and Medicaid emergencies vote for this Is this what they wanted when they voted for the Republicans?
I don't think so almost one third of rural kids in Wisconsin rely on Medicaid and I thought of this the other day Medicaid is something a very important program for farmers because some years they don't make a lot of money in fact they are They
lose
money.
Yes
Because you can't count on the weather or the crops?
So they depend on Medicaid.
And so if
they have a cash crop, and during the winter months, how do they pay for all of this health care?
How do they?
They get Medicaid.
So if they make Medicaid harder to get, and they require 80 hours a month work, I'm just wondering how a farmer is going to be able to get Medicaid at that point.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's definitely a problem.
Yeah, yeah, they can't deal with it.
It's very tough.
Hey, coming up here, again, we've got news right around the corner.
And then we'll be back with the keyword of the day for our keyword for the seven o'clock hour in our Scotty summer.
Uh, text-to-win contest.
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You'll be hard to satisfy with anything left.
Let's give them something to talk about.
The talk is cheap.
Cab, cab, cab.
Always gossiping.
It's the John and Gordy show.
This is high five plus.
And that's the way it is.
We'll do it live.
On 92.7 FM, WMDX.
Take it away, boy.
So much to talk about.
Oh, man.
A little time.
I know.
I know.
Misting outside.
Yes.
It's drizzly and temperatures in the upper fifties getting into the mid seventies a little bit later on today the rain should clear out the drizzle should go away and we'll see a mix of clouds and some sunshine
currently about 58 and if you're thinking
about
well do I wear a jacket or
raincoat to a
carrying umbrella
should I
check my windshield wipers what should I do what should I do well we don't have any help we
can't help you that's right
OK, OK, but we can help you maybe win some prizes here.
How about a pair of brewers tickets this time around?
All right, all right, get ready to announce the key word.
Do you have any key?
Do you have any contest?
We don't see.
Do we have any music available?
Let me just see
here.
Let's
play that
something because it makes it sound more exciting, right?
If we have a music better.
Let's put this music as we all right.
Here we go.
It's time for our text-to-win contest, our Scotty Summer text-to-win contest.
Ready?
The keyword this time around, this is for a pair of Brewer tickets.
Grill is the keyword.
Grill, a G-R-I-L-L.
Grill.
Have you seen girl or grill?
No, grill.
Like a, you know, you put a hamburger on the grill, right?
I mean, grill out like a... Yeah, grill.
like
a tailgate party grill?
Yes.
You have to show you a picture.
It's a grill.
Okay, grill.
You're grilling me about a grill.
Stretch that out a little.
So here's what you do.
Okay.
This is your chance to win a pair of Milwaukee Brewer club level tickets.
These are great seats.
And every entry puts you into our grand prize drawing of a Wisconsin Dell's getaway or a Door County getaway.
It's your choice if you're the grand prize winner.
As I mentioned, the keyword is grill.
Download the Civic Media app.
It's easy to do.
Get it on your Apple or Google stores and then click on the WMDX area there.
Use the text button to send that keyword grill in for your chance to win in this statewide contest.
We will notify
you in
a couple of days if you are the winner.
All right, the word is grill.
All right, text us
and print that out.
You know, there's a new feature on our app, by the way.
This thing that is right in the middle right in the middle voice note.
Yeah, like you can send us a voice note.
Well,
don't do it now because, you know, you want to text in the
grill.
People are used to doing this.
This isn't something brand new or late breaking.
But it's on our app now.
Now it is.
Yes.
So you could let me test it out here.
OK.
Just go push the button.
Try it.
Really?
Yeah.
And see what happens.
We can check it later here.
OK.
Send us a voice message.
Tap to record it says.
OK.
Tell that Peterson fellow to shut his piehole.
OK.
I've had enough.
Okay, so I'm gonna submit that.
All right.
And, oh.
Oh, it must be really busy right now because of the text.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
It says an error occurred while sending your voicemail.
So it's probably busy.
There's too many texts coming in.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're coming in fast and furious.
We'll try it again later.
But no, it's a really cool thing.
It is testing it out.
It's very
neat.
All right.
Over to you, John.
All right.
I want to just give a heads up to everybody out there.
We talked about Palantir.
yesterday and this is a story my son gave me about a week ago.
I finally got to it yesterday and then all of a sudden all day long that story blew up.
Everybody was talking about it, and now I have a few Palantir stories, and what is Palantir?
It's a data
mining
system, software that is being implanted in every one of the departments of the Trump administration so they can data mine our information and know more about us, how we vote, our medical records, what we spend money on.
That
doesn't seem like a good idea.
This is Big Brother.
It is.
That's what I'm thinking.
That's completely like Animal Farm.
Yeah, so we've got three cuts here.
We've got one that we're going to feature today from Truth Matters.
They had a really nice piece on it, and it kind of adds to the information that you need to know about Palantir, okay?
And then we've got a couple of web wisdoms on it as well.
So today, and we'll start off the seven o'clock hour with a cut.
For the rest of the week here, but
we'll
start off with truth matters.
They found some background on Palantir This is really insane.
It's a you know, it's a musk power grab that he and Peter teal
The co-founder of Palantir have put in place, and that's why he was going in each one of the departments that Elon was, and they were actually implanting this and putting this in place in many of the departments so they could coordinate this information from department to department.
It doesn't centralize it, but it allows each of the departments to be accessible to the other department if they want to know something about you and me.
All right, so let's get to cut 36 here and listen to Truth Matters.
version of Palantir.
Last year,
Palantir CTO Shamsankar put out a presentation and white paper called The Defense Reformation.
He cites the last supper, which was a secretive 1993 meeting between defense industry executives and the deputy secretary of defense.
Over a dozen companies walked in, and only a few walked out.
That dinner is often cited as the origin of our consolidated military industrial complex.
And to me, I think this was the definitive moment that kicked off the financialization.
of defense.
From that point forward, it became all about buybacks and dividends and leverage ratios.
Criticizing the financialization of the defense industry, calling out stock buybacks, that doesn't sound like a defense executive.
That sounds more like the exact argument about the defense industry that we
have made before.
I think what's interesting to me about Palantir is how they co-opt the language of revolution.
But
Sankar's argument did work on somebody, Uncle Sam.
The Defense Innovation Board, an advisory group within the Department of Defense, cited Sankara's presentation multiple times in their 2024 report on why the DOD needs to divert more of their budget to emerging technology.
That's giving money to Palantir.
There's a reason Palantir just replaced Ford Motors in the S&P 100 in the months after Trump was elected.
The Trump administration is an ideal customer for what Palantir is selling.
First, there are many former Palantir employees sprinkled across the Trump administration, from inside Doge to foreign policy advisors to high-level technology appointees.
And Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, heavily invested in the company, is also heavily invested in President Trump and Vice President Vance.
He was a major campaign donor to both.
Then the stated goal of DOGE is to streamline and combine government data, which is exactly what Palantir does.
But the ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other.
And
obviously, Karp is loving it.
Disruption in the end of the day exposes things that aren't working.
There'll be ups and downs.
There's a revolution.
Some people can get their heads cut off.
Like, you know, it's like we're expecting to see really unexpected things and to win.
And what is winning according to Palantir?
This is CTO Shamsankar in 2021.
Turning to government,
we continue to advance our mission of becoming the US government's central operating system as we extend our footprint across defense, healthcare and civilian agencies.
The
government's operating system, they want everything to funnel through Palantir.
Palantir already has contracts with the IRS going through taxpayer data to save auditors time by finding the easiest audits to pursue.
Now, Wired reports, Doge will likely hire Palantir to create unified software for the entire IRS, a mega API that would allow anyone with access to view and possibly alter all IRS data in one place.
Wow.
That's all of your financial information.
And they have multiple contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services, including nearly $100 million to support HHS's core administrative data and applications, to manage, ingest, and access data securely across business domains.
HHS's core responsibility is Medicare and Medicaid.
That's control over millions of Americans' health records.
and their access to healthcare.
So what does it mean for one contractor to have all that power, data, and taxpayer money as profit, especially as AI gets involved?
As we kind of increasingly live in a simulated world, we lose touch with reality and the human decisions that matter, and we move closer towards governance by algorithm.
Not only made by decisions,
of automated artificial intelligence systems, which is a problem, but more importantly, subject to decisions made by the people who are influencing these AI systems and creating them in order to fill an agenda for whatever their profit seeking or control seeking objectives are.
And when I see Doge kind of going into every agency and addressing the IT department first, I see it as an opportunity to try to change reality itself.
OK, well, what could
go
wrong?
Seems like they figured it all
out.
It just seems like it's going to be a real problem.
And it's scary as heck.
I mean, the music certainly did add to it.
But Palantir, we've
got another cut
coming up a little bit shorter cuts in the next couple of days here.
We'll start off each.
in every seven o'clock hour with another segment of Palantir because this, I think, is really going to change how things are dealt with in every one of the departments that are so important to the American public.
Why do they have to have the need to do all this, collect it all and have it all?
They're saying, well, small government.
They believe in small government, Gordon.
Small government.
It seems like even bigger government
takeover stuff.
Okay, look on a lighter note.
I have another story to counter.
I could counter the depressing Palantir
story.
You're lighting the load, huh?
I
am going to lighten everything up here and investigation has revealed that the Florida State funded school vouchers were used for over 8,400 Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld tickets.
Wait, what?
Yes.
We'll bring this up with
Tim Slacker tomorrow.
Okay.
Yeah.
Unbusted pencils when he's in here at 635.
Anyway, this is WESH TV2 Investigates recently took a closer look at the guidelines for how Florida's school choice scholarship money was spent in addition to items like TVs up to 55 inches, the Nintendo Wii, and in-home internet.
tickets to some of Florida's central theme parks can also be reimbursed with your school voucher.
That doesn't seem right, does it?
No.
Is that what
school vouchers are all about?
This is the law down there in Florida.
One theme park ticket or pass per student can be reimbursed for up to $299 plus tax.
To receive the reimbursement, get this, families must fill out a form answering this question.
What is the educational benefit of this item?
So there I'm going to tomorrow and I'm gonna find out of what the future holds.
I don't
know.
Sure that would be
a good way to do it.
There's always a questionnaire to everything.
There is.
8,400 students had theme park ticket reimbursements.
That's quite a few.
But get
this.
6,000 of those 8,400 were homeschooling kids.
As opposed to scholarships for private schools, these are homeschoolers and the
parents
thought, let's take another theme part.
Why not?
It's a field trip.
Yes,
that's what it is.
Maybe that's what it is.
Right here.
It's
a field
trip.
It's choosing vouchers for field
trips.
Makes sense to me.
Okay.
Well, coming up in about 15 minutes, Mike McCabe will be joining us as he does every Wednesday.
I want to remind you the key word this hour in the seven o'clock hour for the Scotty Summer Text-to-Win Contest.
The key word is grill.
You can text us on the Civic Media app.
Grill is the word.
And up for grabs this time around, Brewer's Tickets.
We'll be back with more of John and Gordy in the morning right around the corner.
Stay with us.
WMDX.
92.7.
John and Gordy on a kind of a drizzly morning here.
Kind of, yeah.
Of 58 degrees or so.
Yeah, but it feels warmer than that because high dew points.
Well, you and your dew point thing.
I hate you.
I'm going to make everybody hate dew points for this program.
High today of 77.
Okay.
All right.
Well, we can deal with that.
But yeah, it's cloudy.
It's overcast.
It's a little drizzle out there this morning.
We have to apologize.
You know, we don't have Brittany.
She's a little under the weather.
So that's why I gave the weather forecast this time around.
Thank you for doing that.
But now let's go to the phone lines and talk to Dick, who's been waiting an awful long time.
Sorry about that, Dick.
We had so many other things to get to.
You know that.
Now they're going to know that I buy cheap beer.
That's the worst thing about all that intelligence are gathering.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The situation in the war that's going on overnight.
Now we learn that they take out a bridge in Crimea.
Yeah.
And on this nonsense about not having the cards, I think Trump would be an easy.
peg in a poker game because if I was really looking at Zelensky, you know, I would maybe think he's playing with a stacked deck, not no cards.
Right.
He seems to have all the cards.
Yeah.
And he never told Trump that he had this, this trick
up his
sleeve.
And we're not going to be privy to much of the information inside.
The you know game any more going forward.
I don't think
yeah That's the that's the reason why we shouldn't have a president like this
Exactly, but no, I would if anything I'd accuse them of having a stack deck that in this case I'm glad he does
Yeah, absolutely good point.
All right deck.
Thank you for that call 608-879-8255 is our number eight seven nine talk,
you know
A lot of people out there want to be doctors, you know, like RFK Junior wants to be a doctor, researcher, and medical expert, okay?
Now Ron Johnson is getting in on it, and this is truly stunning stuff.
Please do not re-elect this guy.
My God.
Okay, Ron Johnson, call for the state.
Our state, Wisconsin, to lift its vaccine requirements for kids attending schools.
Oh boy.
Really?
Yes.
Johnson took the position, same position basically of RFK Junior, saying illnesses in kids can be attended to with better hygiene and sanitation.
There you go.
There is a solution to all the problems.
You
know, measles.
By the way, on the measles thing, that's really now an up outbreak.
There's
more than a thousand
cases of measles in the US, and it's continuing to grow.
Well, apparently they're not taking their vitamin C. Oh, sure.
Well,
it's not just in kids.
It's not just kids that get measles,
by the way.
That's true.
Anyway, yeah, it's growing.
But thank goodness in this state, you know, children are required.
to get their vaccines, but it's a state law.
Ron Johnson knows better.
He wants to get rid of that mandate because I don't know why.
By
the
way, a little while ago, we were testing the voice note thing.
Did
we
get another voice
note
there?
Just to see if it works for us.
I think we did, but I don't think it was your original voice note, John.
I think we got it from... It was mine, actually, but go ahead.
from Troy.
Okay,
let's hear it.
Can we hear it?
Yeah, let's see how it worked out.
Okay.
Troy from Mount Horrib.
Tell that bittersing guy to shut his gap.
Okay, thank you for that.
So
you can go to the Civic Media app.
It's clear as a bell.
And yeah, can we hear that
again?
I'd like to hear that again.
No,
no.
Yes, let's hear it again.
Go ahead.
Troy from Mount Horrib.
Tell that bittersing guy to shut his gap.
Okay.
All right.
So
if
you'd like to
see the point, I'm thinking that's going to be a drop in here on the show.
You're right.
A regular
thing.
We can make that
happen.
Yeah.
So that's on the Civic Media app.
Just look for the voice note button on our WMDX site.
I don't
think this is a good addition to our website.
Oh, I think
it's
perfect work on
this.
Okay.
All right.
And you can find that on the Civic Media app along with the text.
You can text us as well.
You don't have to use the, in fact, don't use the voice.
No, I think it's, you know, collect them and start using them against me.
I'm feeling persecuted now.
Oh,
sorry.
Yeah, I know you're a very sensitive guy.
Can't take the criticism, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
28 past the hour.
I want to remind you our keyword this hour is grill.
This you can text to us on the Civic Media app.
We have
Brewer's tickets up for grabs club level seats and of course every entry that you make puts you into the grand prize drawing of Wisconsin Dell's getaway or a door County getaway again the keyword this hour is Grill and there'll be other keywords at 11 a.m.
That hour in the 2 p.m.
Hour and 4 p.m.
Hour you can get complete rules at civicmedia.us Everybody's familiar with this contest already.
Okay.
All right Let's let's move on to something here a mega trick is just a minute or speaker Mike Johnson
pose this bit of deception he said they've congressional budget office always is off on their estimates by by way of example They were off on the projections of the tax cuts in job sacks and the first Trump administration by one trillion dollars The problem is they do not use what we call dynamic scoring now dynamic score now the thing here that Mike Johnson isn't telling you that he's included The the pandemic
which skews that and kind of ruins any predictions that the CBO had because that, of course, devastated the economy at that point.
And dynamic scoring is using the numbers of the budget, but it also includes other things that may improve the economy, they say.
So it's not used often, but Republicans love to use it because it makes their numbers look so much better.
Well, we'll keep an eye on that story.
Everybody
keep in track of this.
Okay.
Yes, we are.
29 past the hour coming up right around the corner.
Mike McCabe will join us as he does every Wednesday morning on John and Gordy in the
morning.
Hey, this is Pam Yankee, the fabulous farm babe.
Listen, when you vote for John and Gordy for best of Madison, it's like voting for brats, the packers, the badgers, or cheese.
Yeah, that's John and Gordy, cheesy.
Yeah, cheesy.
We
talked
about it an awful lot, too.
Thank you, man.
Well, today is National Cheese Day,
so it all
makes perfect sense.
Yeah.
735 cloudy, a little bit of drizzle out there, but it looks like that's ending.
We'll see some sunshine peeking through the clouds a little bit later on today.
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Okay, and Mike McCabe joins us.
Yeah,
he
does every Wednesday.
Good morning, Mike.
Good morning.
Good to have you here.
Good to be here.
Substack author and you have a couple of recent posts here that we're going to certainly talk about and your latest one is a short little span of attention.
Tell us, tell us about that title, specifically about the topic as well, what you're dealing with here.
Well, the title comes from a Paul Simon song.
You can call me Al.
But the article is really about how we digest information, how information is presented to us, how our attention spans have gotten.
shorter and shorter and shorter over the course of time.
You're looking at me on that one.
I'm sorry, what did you say?
I have a short
attention
span.
That's why we cover so many topics on this show.
I really just can't focus.
Yeah.
Well, I got a birthday gift from some friends.
They gave me this book that was made by the New York Times.
It's a bound, a bound.
collection of the front page of the New York Times on my birthday from the year of my birth to the present time.
And there was this voyage through history, the front page in the New York Times on that particular day for all the years that I've been alive.
But the first 30 pages or so of the book was really history of the times.
And I saw this caption.
This photo caption in this section of the book that said that in September of 1987, the heaviest newspaper ever was printed.
It was, it was,
it was
the, according to the... Paper boys had a tough time.
It was a rough day for the paper boys.
Yeah, a lot of hernias.
Because the New York Times, on that day in September of 1987, was 1,612 pages.
And weighed 12 pounds.
A single day's newspaper was 1,612 pages.
And
I
thought that cannot be true.
But it was in a publication that was by the New York Times itself.
I started looking into this.
I found a Washington Post article by a media critic of the Washington Post who also cited this one edition of the New York Times.
1,612 pages and 12 pounds.
And I found other sources.
looked at the Guinness Book of World Records, and there it was, the New York Times.
Wow.
And it was 1,612 pages.
Well, what was their intention with it?
I mean, what was in that paper?
The thing is, I looked it up, and it wasn't a particularly...
noteworthy news day.
It was a Monday, right?
And, and you know, I think, I think that's where it was wrong.
The Guinness Book of World Records said it was September 13th, which was a Sunday.
But the Times and the Post article and everything else, it's September 14th of 1987, which would have been a Monday, which is crazy, which is crazy because the Sunday papers always bigger than the Monday papers.
So even right there, it just goes to show that in the news business, you always have got to be
You've always got to be clarifying and you've always got to be revising and you've always got to be correcting when mistakes have been made.
And I think right there, probably there was a mistake.
I'm guessing it was September 13th of 1987.
There was this ginormous Sunday paper.
Well, let me just kind of clarify too.
I mean, for the listeners to just imagine this, three of those newspapers would weigh about what a bag of dog food.
It's
like carrying a bag
of dog
food, three newspapers.
Yeah, can you imagine the poor kid on a bicycle?
No, no.
Lugging those things around?
Yeah.
And so one of the things I did is I looked up, I found this article about how often you would have to send out tweets on Twitter to provide a comparable amount of information.
And I did some math because they were looking at another more recent edition of The Times when they did this calculation.
So I did the math for that.
for that September 1987 edition of The Times.
And what I found is that you could send out a tweet every hour around the clock, never stop.
Just send a tweet every hour, seven days a week, every day of the year for three quarters of a century, and not tweet out as much information as was in that single day's edition of The New York Times.
which says a lot about how we've changed, how the news gathering and news reporting has changed.
And just what incredible detail the news was described in, as recently as 1987.
And
some good sales ads too, I am sure that people
have shavled a little bit.
But here was the thing that really blew me away, is that as I was researching this,
Really thinking that I was gonna find evidence that that was a an urban myth.
Yeah
There I ran into a little artifact online from the New York Times archives that a shop foreman somebody who was actually in the room assembling that day's paper Said he said again.
It was sixteen hundred and twelve pages.
It was twelve pounds
but also said there were over two million lines of type in that day's paper.
Two million, thirty thousand lines of type in a single day's paper.
And is that similar to today?
That is way bigger than war and peace.
Way, way, way bigger than war and peace in a single day's newspaper.
So the level of detail, you know, yeah, there must have been a whole.
bunch of ads in that day's Sunday paper.
But, but yeah, if there were really two millions line, two million lines a type, that that's, you know, in that, in that format, six column paper, that's, you know,
five to six words per line of type.
We're talking 10 million words.
How did they set the type at that?
I was just
gonna
say,
they weren't still doing it by hand type setting.
I mean, they were
using computers.
Not by 1987.
That was already been digitized.
But you know, you go back in the New York Times history and yeah, they were setting type and pouring molten metal to it.
to create the, you know, the ability to print the paper on it.
Well, how much paper did they use?
I mean, how many, what was their circulation?
I was gonna say,
the papers in those days were huge.
Right,
bigger than that.
Yes, much bigger for me.
And one of the things they said is how the paper has shrunk over the years.
How wide, why the paper was.
Yeah, the paper was wider, it was, there were more pages, bigger pages.
Heavier paper, I think, too.
And yeah, and there were people who would sit for the whole week and just devour the site.
New York Times.
There was so much information shared.
And now Twitter became a big deal because it was 140 characters, not 140 words, but 140 characters per message.
And so it really goes to show in the...
course of a single lifetime, how much journalism has changed, how
much the
news gathering and consumption habits of Americans have changed.
Yeah.
And how much harsh our attention spans have shrunk.
Talking to Mike McCabe here, substack
author and blogger.
And also in your recent blog here, you're talking about the Washington Post publisher, Phil Graham.
with just a few items of interest here about, for example, Henry Ford didn't really build the first automobile, right?
There are a few others.
People thought these, all these things were true.
Like Galileo didn't
invent the telescope.
You got a few others.
Well, Christopher Columbus didn't discover America.
Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb.
Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball.
But there was a time where all of those things were believed to be true.
And I mentioned it because Phil Graham, who the former publisher of The Washington Post, has always been credited with being the very first to call news the first rough draft of history.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yes.
And it was a famous Phil Graham quote.
He apparently said it in a speech, I think, in 1963.
Later it's been found that he got that line from somebody else and
it had been said
for years
and years.
He took the line from somebody else and made something out of it.
And said it in a speech and then got credited for this.
And they actually engraved this saying in cement in media museums around the country that Phil Graham had said this.
And it turns out that as with Edison and as with Henry Ford and as with Christopher Columbus, he wasn't actually the first to say it, which again goes to show that we always have to be questioning.
We always have to then be challenging things and making sure that it actually is true.
And we have to, we have to correct mistakes when those mistakes are made.
That's, that's a central principle of journalism.
Was that like the first example of patriotic indoctrination?
Do you think?
I mean, in the fifties and sixties, come on, you know, the buckled shoes, you know, the Thanksgiving, you know, with the, you know, all of this stuff.
Now you just mentioned all these things, these truisms, but, you know, we were told those things.
It was a
patriotic thing to celebrate.
Americans in all of this and see how wrong they were.
And if we go back to patriotic education, this is the kind of stuff we'll probably get more of.
And
to me, it's very really pertinent.
to think about the importance of treating today's news as only the first rough draft of history.
Because as we look at faithfully telling the story of this country and reporting history, there is an awful lot of clarification and correction that needs to be done.
And
we can't get to this point where we simply again indoctrinate people in myth.
in mythology when it comes to American history.
We need to teach the actual story.
And teaching the actual story means continuing to explore the truthfulness
of that story
and making corrections as we go along.
Well, especially in the age of social media and social, I mean, how can you keep up with correcting
this
story when everybody's
pitching in their
own.
Making up stuff.
Making up their own
stuff.
just tossing it into the
internet.
Now, now Tom in Jackson lived my life as a paper boy.
He said, I delivered the Milwaukee Journal back in the seventies.
I did it in the sixties.
And on Sundays, the paper could be an inch thick and heavy.
I
wrote a
bicycle with baskets in the back.
And when fully loaded, the front tire would come off the ground.
That's a hard way to ride a bicycle.
And I had like bags, a paper bag.
that I had over each shoulder
on each side
of my body and the baskets filled.
And
think of the wear and tear on your body if it had been the New York Times that you were delivering.
All right.
It
is
748.
We'll come back with more with Mike McCabe in just a moment on John and Gordy in the morning.
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Thanks for being there.
Thanks for
paying attention.
That's a good idea.
We're talking about attention spans.
We'll be talking about more of that in just a moment
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OK?
All right, Mike, you brought up in your column and substack the idea that Trump may need a television show.
in the White House in order to give him his daily briefing.
A little video briefing.
Yeah.
Because he
can't read.
What an idea.
You know, he's got
his entire staff,
his entire administration is from television.
You know, they could actually just create a White House TV show for us daily and have, you know, Caroline Levitt out there with her own talk show, talking to the press.
These are the intelligence briefings, though.
This is what's going on in the world every day.
Once a week, right?
Well, it's every day.
Traditionally, they were thought to be every day, but Trump doesn't take them any
more
than once a week, sometimes less than
once
a week.
And so Tulsi Gabbard, the intelligence director, thought that maybe they needed to...
present the intelligence briefing, which usually comes in a binder with top secret documents and written descriptions of these challenges around the world.
But maybe they need to put it in a format that looks like a Fox News broadcast.
Of
course they do.
To
get his attention.
Not to stress your attention span, guys, but this does tie in to what I was just writing about and where we've gone from the New York Times being 1,612 pages on a single day to the point where the president of the United States doesn't want to pay attention to intelligence briefings.
And the intelligence chief for our nation thinks that maybe we should make them look like...
Fox News broadcasts.
To get his
attention.
To get his attention and help him digest this information.
And when I saw that story, I thought, this is so America 2025.
It
really is,
yeah.
We've gotten to the point where, you know, and here I am writing on sub-stack, writing these articles, and maybe I should just turn them into something that looks like a Fox News broadcast.
Right,
exactly.
To get more people's attention.
But the, you know, the written word is important.
And we do need people who are willing to sweat the details and to make sure those details are right.
And then people need to, we need to read and we need to write.
You know, I'm just sitting there thinking who would be the best person to...
you know, provide the message.
You know, Jesse Waters, maybe he sounds panicky most of the time.
So that might be a good choice or Judge Jeanine, you know, you never know.
She's pretty boisterous when she's had a few.
So
how about Maria Bartoloma?
Oh,
yeah.
That'll get us attention.
She believes everything she's told.
She comes in with the
right idea.
And then, you know, somebody tells her something and she's instantly changes their mind.
It's fun to watch.
It's just sad that it's come to this.
I mean, really, I mean, this is the guy in charge.
This is the leader of the free world.
This is the guy... What?
Yeah, we all have bad attention spans.
It is reflective of our culture as a whole.
We can pretend like it's just the president of the United States who's like this, but it's a reflection of our culture as a whole.
And not that long ago, we had people who were waiting anxiously for the Sunday New York Times to land on their doorstep, and they would spend the whole week just devouring the thing from beginning to end.
That's right.
Well, I don't know.
I guess we've been accused of having a short attention span.
True.
By Catherine, who...
has made that point over and over and over again.
I
hope you guys don't think that I wrote this article with you
in
mind.
Well, now that you're bringing up, I wasn't really trying to send you a message or anything.
Well, Mike, we'll have to talk about your next appearance if you're on a show, and maybe we'll reconsider
that.
But,
you know, this is what
happens because, you know, this is the cell phone generation now, right?
And that's what it's all about.
It's always distracting us.
We're constantly looking at these phones.
And now, you know, the high tech guys are saying that the phones are on their way out and we're going to be wearing glasses now with all the information and be able to take phone calls and everything.
Everybody be wearing glasses
or having
brain
chips
installed.
Yeah, no, that's a crazy one from a lot.
You know,
he
thinks that's how it's going to happen.
But you know, that that's going to be tough for upgrading.
All part of our world.
Mike, thank you for being with us.
We'll see you again next Wednesday.
Really?
I think we'll have a little discussion after the show.
See if that's true.
Coming up tomorrow, Jim Santel, attorney at law will straighten us out legally.
And Tim Slecker will be discussing the latest of education.
Busted pencils.
Right.
And Stephanie Miller's coming up next.
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John, have a great day.
Gordy, same to you.
And many more.
Thank
you.
