Banning Food Colorings (Hour 1)

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When the chips are down and democracy's back is up against the wall, two radio veterans step up to the microphone to right the wrongs, standing for truth, justice, and just because.

Hey, are they ready to go yet?

It's John and Gordy on 92.7 WMDX.

Oh yes, broadcasting from the top of the pile of books that my microphone is sitting on.

This is Johnny Gordy in the morning on WMDX.

Good morning.

Now, if we had just a few more books, we could look a little bit more professional, I think.

You think so?

Yeah.

I'll bring some of my diary what would be kid books.

All right.

How about

that?

All right.

All right.

Maybe I could also bring in some of my Berenstain Bear books that I used to read to the kids.

I used to have the world book encyclopedias, you know, they had 20

volumes or

so.

And they had different, they were different thicknesses, you know, depending on what part of the alphabet it

was.

So that way, you know, you have a choice.

And it looks like we're knowledgeable, like we're going through those books.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is really nice.

There's some very important,

we should have a book review club.

John Agoury's book review.

What books are you using today?

So you can see the I could see Bill.

You can see the titles.

I can't.

Yeah, the president is missing is one of the

titles.

That's a that's a Bill Clinton, James Patterson book.

Yes, they've

got a franchise now.

Yeah, they've got I think three books out.

One of them is called the unanswered questions with Ray McGinnis.

I don't know anything about that.

And the one that I brought in, you're using today encyclopedia of word and phrase origins.

That's a good one.

That's a big one.

Yeah.

That really helps out a

lot of pages.

Stimulating read.

I'm going with the classics here.

You are.

Yeah.

The

Milton Burl private joke file, volume one and volume two.

Really old jokes from like the 30s and

40s.

They would go very well.

Oh my God,

they're so

awful.

So

awful.

But Tom, you know, he's got a boom stand.

He actually

has a very

nice

boom

stand.

I feel,

yeah, I feel very bougie.

I feel bad for you guys.

I have a full set up here.

And you guys have half a set up.

But I

understand they're on the way, you know, so.

Wait a minute, you've been saying that for

the last two months.

Well, that's what I understand.

I don't know.

It could be wrong.

We got the fancy new table and all the drill holes in the table.

Everything looks like it's all ready to go.

You know, it's

all it's all good.

You know,

it's all good.

Yeah, maybe somewhere in a harbor someplace

off

the coast of California.

They have a huge, huge container filled with boom stands.

It's the supply chain

issue.

We've had it before.

That's it.

That's it right there.

I'm

sure they're sitting in a crate somewhere, but not anywhere near here, apparently.

Nine minutes past the hour.

It's a cloudy start this morning and still feeling kind of muggy out there.

Don't you

think?

Well, I

think

so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

Let's see, currently the WMDX thermometer right outside our window here on State Street says 64 degrees.

That's with the mercury.

That's really

nice.

What is your WMDX

Samsung watch?

Windows, pretty accurate usually.

It is.

My watch is 63 degrees today, currently, but a high of 84.

84 degrees,

84.

Well, let's see, what should we use today?

How about the bar dice?

I like it.

OK, let's throw the bar dice there, Dom, and see what we can come up with.

OK, slam it down.

OK.

Well, one of them is an eight, one of them is a zero.

How do you get a zero on a piece of die?

Well, we got the special dice.

So 80.

But yours is saying 84.

Yeah, that's

quite a difference right there.

But I'm usually right.

So I hate to say it.

but Samsung

is right on the money.

So it's cloudy this morning, but I do expect we're going to see a lot of sunshine

through

the day.

It's going to be warm and getting even warmer the next few

days.

Yeah.

Really.

The heat is really going to hit us Friday, Saturday, Sunday in the nineties and feeling like it's a hundred.

So we'll check in with Brittany Merleau a little bit later on.

And of course, in about 25 minutes, we'll talk to Tim Slecker from Busted Pensies.

We got

a

whole bunch of questions.

We do.

Yeah, we got a lot of questions.

Yeah, a great podcast on Wednesday dropped.

And there's a lot of good topics in that.

I want to get a little bit deeper into the weeds with Tim about some of the issues that they're talking about.

So we'll certainly get into that.

And also, I hope if we have time to talk about calm.

Corners

in

your in your classrooms.

Yes, okay All right, so I'll give you a little tip there.

They're trying to put in special lighting sound a quiet place where a person can go to chill out in the classroom if they're having difficulty in some way shape or form I don't know what that

would be but

anyway, they're

And the problem I have with it, it doesn't say anything about walls.

It doesn't say anything about a different room.

So how do you have special lighting in a corner of the classroom?

I don't know.

See, anyway, that's how that

works.

We'll see how that

works.

We're also going to welcome in Jim Santel in our seven o'clock hour.

Yeah.

The

attorney-at-law will straighten us out on whatever's going on legally.

Well, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on legally.

And, you know, some of those decisions really are really questionable.

I mean, the banning or allowing a ban.

on transgender care for children is just absolutely outrageous.

Big decision that came down.

And it was a partisan vote on the Supreme Court, which it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be like that.

And now they're making medical decisions.

These are the Republicans that don't want... I have bureaucrats getting in the way of what people, the freedom that people have to make their own decisions.

So they're right in the middle of this thing.

And all the way through, the transgender issue is mentioned the word sex all the way through.

And then their decision says, this has nothing to do with sex.

Wow, transgender, nothing to do with sex.

All right, anyways, six of the conservative Supreme Court justices thought that was true.

I don't know.

Well, we'll talk to Jim Santel and find out his take on all of that in our seven o'clock hour.

So it's 13 minutes past the hour.

Let's check out the national day.

Well, we don't do the national day

anymore.

It's so boring.

Every year, the same day comes up and the same things in the calendar come up.

So we've decided to kind of skip this feature completely, except, you know, we have a curiosity.

Well, except when there's something really important on it, right?

Yeah.

Like

Juneteenth, that's that is a big one

story of Juneteenth controversial.

Yeah.

Juneteenth, you know, the background on that is it began in Texas when that major general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19th in 1865 with the announcement.

They didn't know this for a long time, but slavery had ended.

I mean,

the word took a long time to get to Galveston, Texas.

So so they picked this day to, you know,

Talk about Juneteenth and commemorating the end of slavery in

the US.

We kind of touched on that.

I think yesterday or the day before where, you know, the funding for Juneteenth is depleting.

They're cutting it because DEI is a very bad thing.

In fact, it's illegal, according to Trump.

I don't know.

He can make up laws now.

Well, if we were going to check out the National Day calendar, this would be one that you'd really like.

It's National Watch Day, because I know

you're in love with your Samsung Watch.

Smart watches, that's what they're called.

Regular watch.

Do you like the regular watches?

I like regular watches.

I don't know why it doesn't do much.

It just sits around your wrist with the time.

But it's not big and

clunky

like

the

thing

that your computer that you're wearing on your forearm.

Well, you have to have a computer on your wrist nowadays, don't

you?

Pretty soon they're going to be in your

glasses.

You don't need that.

It gives a dew point and everything, too.

So it's like, what is the dew point?

Yeah, we didn't ask about the dew point.

What is that?

I don't know.

We got it right on your forearm.

Come on.

It takes a while to go a little deeper.

I got to get into the

app.

All right, in the meantime, it's World Sauntering Day.

Who doesn't love

a good saunter?

We love sauntering.

Did we ever cover that before?

I don't

remember having World Sauntering Day before.

I don't know what

the difference is between a slow walk, you know, and a stroll and a saunter.

I'm not sure which is the slowest or which is the quickest.

Yeah, you'd wonder maybe it's a horse thing, you

know, a horse bit of sauntering.

It's also National Garfield the Cat Day.

I know you're a big fan of Garfield the Cat, the cartoon.

No,

I'm

not.

Yeah.

I thought you were.

The dew point is 62 degrees.

Well, anytime it's above 60, it starts to get a little dicey.

And when you have the humidity at 100%, and that's what it's at's unbearable right now.

Yeah, it is.

That's where it's at.

Man,

okay.

The definition of saunter, walk in a slow, relaxed manner without hurry or effort.

There we go.

OK, thank you.

The more you know.

The more you know, that's right.

Yes, that's right.

OK, what do we what do we have in the history book there, Tom?

History

books,

history books.

Let's

check it out.

Well, I mean, you know, birthdays,

anything else you got for your birthday?

All right, so in 1960, the first NASCAR race is actually held at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

1960.

I don't watch a whole lot of NASCAR, so it's not.

Super important to me, but I know a bunch of other people really love NASCAR.

And then in 1951, the invention of Velcro.

So there... 1951?

1951.

They held

off using that for quite a long

time.

They didn't know what to do with

it.

They were like, what is this good for?

We struggled with buttons for years.

Yes, we

did.

All right.

Okay, anything else?

Yes.

And then on this day, James Gandolfini.

dies at age 51 What year was it was just two or three years ago, right?

Yeah, I was I think that was almost I was a long time ago.

It was definitely more than five years ago.

I would have to really.

Yeah.

Oh,

I was gonna look

Don't you have what hey Google on your

We

used to get answers that

way

He died in 2013.

Wow, you're right.

He died.

I didn't realize

it was that long, 12 years ago.

Time

flies, time

flies.

What's, what's your dude?

Well, it hurts when you say hey Google.

So it's

asking me what I want.

12 years ago.

I'm, you know, I'm probably a bigger Sopranos fan.

I

never watched

Sopranos.

I was even

then.

I see a lot of clips on the phone now that pop up.

Yeah.

Anyway, all right.

Anything else there, Dom?

We've got two birthdays

as well.

Two birthdays as well, yes.

1978, former NBA star Dirk Nowiskey was born on this day.

Who?

Dirk Nowiskey.

Oh yeah, Dirk Nowiskey.

From the Mavericks.

And then Ann Wilson, rock singer from the 1950s.

Born in 1950.

She was born in 1950.

She was in the band Hart.

Yeah.

She's

still in the band Hart.

Yeah.

They're

still playing around, right?

Yeah, they finally got, you know, they had some differences.

They did.

And Nancy

and they didn't talk to each other for a few years and now they're back on tour again.

Well, that's great.

And I believe Anne is in a wheelchair.

I'm not certain about that.

Yeah.

I could have that wrong.

OK.

But they had some great songs.

You know, a lot of those older groups played acoustic sets.

Yeah.

And in rock sets.

And that's what I liked about the old, old groups.

They could do both.

Nowadays, it's just kind of, you know, either hard rock or, you know, you're a folk singer.

Right.

But they don't combine the two.

Remember the like 10, 10 years after did Acoustic Things?

Yeah.

Deep Purple did a few.

Yeah.

Those were the days.

Slade.

Slade.

Slade

Remember slayed I

remembered I just remember the name slayed.

I don't remember anything about the band.

It's a big group in England.

Okay, had a few songs here in the US, but

19 minutes past the hour.

We're just getting started on a Thursday morning.

We'll be back with more of John and Gordy in just a few moments.

All right.

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92.7.

John and Gordy in the morning.

It's a bit cloudy out there.

Yeah.

What are we listening to?

This is the Illinois Free Press.

No, Illinois Speed Press.

Speed

Press.

Is it?

Speed, isn't

it?

Yeah, Speed

Press.

Illinois Speed Press, correct.

That's right.

Okay.

Paul Cotton on

the star.

Yeah, you see, you were a big, you're kind of a fan of this.

I saw

them

one time.

Yeah.

I

can't remember where, somewhere in

around Chicago area, but yeah, they were great.

They were

great.

And that song is called Free Ride.

Yeah, I was trying to find a heart song, but I got signed out of YouTube.

So I got a song.

What?

Yeah, it's weird.

Yeah, Illinois Speed Pro.

They were really,

really

good.

And then Paul Catton left the band to join Poco.

after that one of their guys

that's probably the

reason why we never heard back from

them because that song was so good and

yeah

This portion of Johnny Gordy in the morning brought to you by Virlo Mattress.

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Okay.

I saw this headline.

I thought it was really interesting.

What's that?

Nine food brands that won't survive RFK juniors ban on colorants.

Really?

Yes.

Now, I

saw, I heard about this coloring ban.

Food colors.

He's a complete idiot and he is.

He's right about the food coloring situation.

The FDA for some reason has not banned all these food colorants that are banned in Europe.

And they know best.

And the line in this story goes, we never realized that we're eating petroleum-based chemicals banned in much of Europe.

So that's where the food coloring comes from.

Petroleum based.

Yes.

And some of the products that might have a problem with this is Hostess Cupcakes.

Oh no.

That uses dark chocolate and of course strawberry colorings.

That is red 40, red 40.

There's two red 40s.

Blue Lake 2 and Blue 1 Lake.

and yellow five.

Boy, I'm

glad we're getting rid of him because those are really

bad food colorings.

And then, you know, Mars has a problem also with all of these colorings.

So

they're going to have a problem with some of their candies.

They have a slogan, taste the rainbow.

Well, I ain't going to happen anymore.

And what about

M&M's?

Yeah, big thing.

Big thing, yeah, the M&M's are going to be changed.

They're going to have to change the Skittles, M&M's, coloring in that.

They're going to use fruits and vegetable extracts, which is just a little bit more expensive, and those are the extracts for coloring.

in Europe and in other countries that have banned all these petroleum based colorings.

Will we

notice a difference in the colors?

Do you think?

I mean,

they're there.

That's why they don't use it.

Well, it's a little more expensive to use, but also they're not sure how the coloring stand up in their baking and cooking and processing.

Sitting

on the

shelves of convenience stores for

two or three

years.

Hosts is going to have a problem with that.

I raised my kids on Twinkies because I knew what it did.

I became tall, strong, manly.

Wow, that's big news.

Yeah, it's really wild.

They have special colorings.

They're worried about some of these products like runts.

I don't even know what a runt is.

Do you know that, Dom?

Do you know what a runt?

I have no clue

what a runt

is.

It's candy, right?

It is a candy.

Yeah, some sort.

They're worried about Reese's Puffs.

These are cereals now, cinnamon, toasted crunch, honey nut Cheerios, cookie crisps, and of course, tricks.

Tricks are for kids.

I know.

And so are those food collards.

Wow.

You know, my kids stopped eating.

We used to buy tricks.

We

used to buy the off brands, which sometimes tasted even better.

But they stopped eating it.

And the containers stayed in the cabinet and I said, this is it.

We're not eating food colorings anymore.

And they had already made up that decision.

They never told me.

So, so we had to throw them out.

But yeah, you know, it's sad because, you know, I have all those brilliant colors.

The deceiving part about, you know, tricks and all those other fruit loops is that they had the same flavor.

All the colors tasted the same.

There weren't different

flavors mixed

in the cereal.

So red, like cherry, it wasn't cherry at all.

It was just the same flavoring of the lemon.

No difference at all.

It was just ridiculous, right?

And I always thought there was a difference.

I thought, you know.

Wow, the combination of flavors.

What a great cereal.

What do you got, Tom?

Yeah, I saw Runce.

Runce is like the fruit candy.

It's in that little box.

They look exactly like fruit, but just in candy form.

Of course, that's what we want.

Strawberry, apple, banana, grape.

That's what they

got.

OK.

Well, any of this food coloring going to affect the fruit rolls, the roll-ups, or whatever they're called?

I think.

I think.

that will have an effect.

Those have food

coloring, I imagine.

So do sodas.

Sodas?

Yeah.

OK.

Well, of course, you know, different

sodas have

different colorings and stuff

like that.

And some of the cheaper brands, boy, they are really bright.

You can see them across the store.

Glowing.

So we're going to go away.

So those might be a problem.

OK.

Well,

I'll have to

watch our store shelves and see.

How the colors change.

Well, you know, Marie Callender has these frozen pies and they're really good.

A lot of those pies are exceptional.

Yes.

But now they're having a problem because their bottom line is very tight already because they do have to have a competitive price out there.

But these food colorings are if they go with actual natural fruits and vegetable colorings, then it's going to raise the price up by two or three cents and they don't want to do that.

Prices are already going up.

OK.

Well,

thanks for bringing us all down.

It's 29 minutes past the hour.

Pam Yankee, the fabulous farm babe, has the Midwest Agricultural Farm Report.

And then we'll be back with Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils talking education.

Next.

All

right.

WMDX, 92.7 in the morning and it's a kind of a muggy, high humidity, high dew point morning for us.

Yes it is.

And we're overlooking State Street.

The leaf blower guys are not out this morning for some reason.

We haven't seen them for days.

I know what happened.

They were not sure.

They went out and they blew leaves during the rainstorm that we had.

It was fun

to watch.

I don't

know why, but

you know.

Well, they want to keep their jobs.

Yes.

But now they're not out there

when

they should be out there.

I don't know.

635.

It is cloudy.

We'll see a lot of sunshine though and highs in the low 80s right now.

It's 64 degrees.

Maybe the

city hires as supervisors.

Make sure those guys are doing their job.

Sure.

This portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center.

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All right, let's go to our Thursday morning guest, Tim Slacker, doctor, Tim Slacker from Busted Pencils.

And they have podcasts that you can listen to.

And I'm going to refer to the latest podcast from Wednesday, which I thought was very interesting about ditching college.

for tech classes in

your

schools nowadays.

You found this article in USA Today.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Well,

yeah, I mean, well, first of all, good morning.

Good morning.

Yeah, you know.

Yeah.

Thanks for the weather update.

Here in Pennsylvania right now, you know, modes of transportation are canoes.

Wow, raining.

Lots of rain, lots of rain, but no.

Yeah, think about, you know, I saw this article because it's, you know, interesting to think that more and more

students are literally saying, um, you know what college?

No, not for me.

Um, there are opportunities in particularly around, you know, getting trade training and going out and going to work.

The other part of the article though was is that the survey of the parents going, uh, I'm not, I don't want, wait, wait, wait a minute.

You're supposed to go to college, right?

And.

I think that what's really happening there, though, too, is that students might actually have a little bit more of a take on this of saying, but why would I go to college when it doesn't seem like graduating from college gives me anything other than

debt and no job opportunities.

And right now, you know, even without a trade school just coming out of high school, taking a job that has an apprentice type of a program like that, that this they can start earning money and going forward in that direction.

And so the reason I brought this to the busted pencils was to say,

Well, what would that mean currently in a higher education landscape where we already know that enrollments are declining and there is a kind of a cultural

anti kind of like, well, you know, don't go there because, you know, all they do is, is teach you to, you know, overthrow the government.

Well, that's, you know, that's true.

That's what they're thinking.

And the more educated, of course, the more democratic you are, right?

Well, yeah, you know, well, yeah, and install some form of a Marxist authoritarian.

Oh,

yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You

know, and now, and

And I wonder, though, too, when I look at this and say, I don't know that the kids, let's say the kids, I think that they might be onto something and the parents, though, are still kind of trapped in this sense of going,

But we always imagine that you, and if we're really talking about first generation college students here, we really imagine that you were going to go to college.

And so the parents are up against this vision of what they saw college as, meaning this pathway to some form of a middle class job type of security, when the reality is that maybe that is more of a myth.

Than it is an actual truth and maybe the students in high school have more of a grasp on thinking You know what?

I think a future is for me right now Is this to get a good job to get some training and one of the things that I kind of highlighted in this article was one of the the students really pointed out and say That doesn't mean that I've ruled out college.

It just means that I've

I'm thinking about it for now as something that, you know, I can go out, I can make some money, I can get a trade, and then I can go back to college.

And that is a unique potentially cultural shift to think about going, okay, what if college isn't immediately right after you graduate high school?

And, you know, Johnny in that episode was talking about saying that

you know he always did think that you know taking a year off before you go to college really does kind of give a sense of you know

when you actually sign up to go into college then after a year break or going out and doing something you have more of a sense of going you know why you came to college

so yeah yeah that's a really good point yeah but you know I grew up in a time when we thought that if you took a year off or two you're not going to go back right that was the that was the thinking back then yeah

right

And that's what your parents thought too.

Yeah.

Well,

if you take a year off,

you're not, you're not going to go

back.

But you know, you brought this up, you brought this up in your podcast and I looked on, I looked at the, uh, uh, who goes back.

And according to the statistics from last year, I believe, uh, 39 million went back to college.

24% of those who were at college undergrads, uh, were adults.

Okay, and and the in the pathway of course is Doing that going back to college now I'm wondering how many of these had gone to college for a year Dropped out didn't think it was useful then went on to the workplace, but then decided to go back to college So they met they had a year or two of college already and they just you know went back to know that in fact

that

Yeah, that population, we refer to them as some college.

No,

and it's a huge population

of

people that have gone and done a year, did a year and a half.

didn't work out.

They didn't like it.

And now they're out in a job.

And, you know, some of them are saying, Oh, Jesus, I should go back.

But actually, there's a huge population of some college that legitimately had significant problems.

And right now, institutions are saying, How do we get them to come back?

What is it?

And

This is where I think there's a real opportunity for higher education and colleges to point out and say, you know what, we have, and in fact, let's design pathways for this population that is a little bit different than a traditional four-year going, you know, living in the dorms, waking up on Monday morning and going, I'm not going to class and realize that this population, maybe if we change the way we do college, we could get them to

come back and create pathways.

So there's a whole lot of opportunities here for higher education, particularly to kind of say, OK, we have a traditional track.

We know we want those students.

But what about all of these other people?

Because if higher education is truly beneficial, then how we allow people to access it and how we allow them to progress through it, we might need to change those types of modalities to fit

somebody who maybe is working quote full-time and still wants to go to college and so how do we you know allow or encourage them to have the ability to come back to college.

Talking to Dr. Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils.

Tim we've got a

Got a text here from Matt in Middleton.

He says, there's a little different take on this.

Yeah.

Talking

about his

body here.

The thing about college is that it can lead to a career that doesn't destroy your body.

The trades are hard on your body and it's unlikely you can do it for 30 years as opposed to a thinking career.

He says, that's my two cents.

Because he's talking about jobs like welders or plumbers.

That does take a toll.

I guess that comes into consideration when thinking about what you're going to do with your life.

It actually does.

In fact, I was down at the Carpenter's training facility in Pittsburgh yesterday actually talking to that group who is trying to, you know, imagine college as a pathway.

And one of the issues is, is that, you know what, this is hard work.

It's hard on the body.

And, you know, if I had in addition to my, you know, Carpenter's, let's call it a license, if I had maybe a bachelor's

degree in construction management that maybe in 15 years, I can then kind of move into a direction where I'm not on my hands and knees

or

lifting heavy things.

And it's a real issue.

It was interesting because they were particularly flooring installers who are truly on their hands and knees all day long.

After 20 years,

Um, it might feel good to stand up.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

Yeah.

I have a nephew who's a master plumber, you know, and has gone all the way up in the union and, uh, and as a crew manager and goes all over the state doing plumbing, but he's, he's, I think he's about 45 years or so old and, uh, he can't wait to get it.

get retired.

He's like, I'm looking forward to the day that I don't have to do this kind of work.

And he's in charge of it.

And so he does do some hands-on, of course, but

he says

my body is worn

out.

It gets into the side issue of when is the best time for retirement?

You know, the Republicans want to extend it.

They don't want you to retire too early.

And they want to make it even later in life that you can retire.

And that's kind of foolish because of all these

laborious jobs that are destroying your body, right?

Well, yeah, but you know, understand that where they're coming from is, is that they need people in their 80s to come in and fix their toilet.

Well,

I was waiting for something profound and we got it from you on that Okay, I want to bring this up too because we have a Gen Z as our producer Dom and I wonder what do you think on this Dom?

Do you guys like debate whether

you know, there's a feel that you can get into, but it may not be there for long because AI might replace it or robotics might replace it.

Well, what's your feeling on

that?

I actually just talked about this with my roommate, who's about the same age as me.

And yeah, he 22, correct.

22.

And he is very afraid of where AI might go with this whole issue about

Yeah, you know gaining jobs gaining going into the real world I just started going into the real world a couple months ago and Yeah, my roommate was was really nervous.

He does sort of lab testing and already, you know robots are kind of

Going into the forefront there and yeah, and and kind of taking over his job essentially And I know it's gonna be much much more in in about you know five to ten years or that's what that's what we think That's what we think so

that may be a discouragement to go into anything correct And that's why they may be holding themselves up and not going on to college at that point right Tim

Yeah,

it's a real fear.

I think the idea of potentially being replaced by robots isn't necessarily... I mean, if we're talking about the manufacturing process, that's going to continue to be an issue.

But I see Dom... Yeah, I have some thoughts about that that I think might give Dom a little bit more of...

a sense

of ease.

All right.

Okay.

We'll come back.

All right.

We'll be back with Dr. Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils on Johnny Gordy in the morning in just a moment.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,

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92.7 Johnny Gordy in the morning on a somewhat sunny, sunny morning and humid.

I think the haze out there is actually humidity and dew points.

I think you could be right.

Yes,

we'll check in

with Brittany

Merlo

in about a half hour.

Got her take on things.

It is 6.52.

We're back with Dr. Tim Slecker from

busted pencils.

And we're talking about what Gen Z is thinking about doing because of AI and robotics.

And you had something you wanted to add about robotics and AI.

Well, I think the concern that robotics are going to take your jobs is that in one way, I mean, they already are and they already have been, particularly if you're talking about in the manufacturing areas, right?

And

so I'm not sure if that is this idea of, you know,

truly like humanoid robots that are going to take over their jobs.

I don't think we're at that point yet.

What I would say to Gen Z, which is my daughter and my son, is that my best assumption and guess is looking at the AI world, is that the way you

Guard against being quote replaced by AI is to you yourself get involved and understand AI because Again, I'm taking somebody else's quote, but AI isn't going to replace you but Dom if you understand and know how to use AI You're going to replace people who don't know how to use it.

Oh

Like that, you know, and so so it really is on

all of us to really understand how to do it.

But it is, you know, as the AI world comes forward, we don't really know what is going to be, quote, replaced and how it's going to affect.

And so I really look at this and say, this is an opportunity for people to dig into AI.

And particularly, I'm really following and I really see this as a unique thing is that

more artistically inclined liberal arts types of people are actually really, really great users of generative AI because they can think creatively with it where when you're more people are like, I don't want to get into tech.

I don't want to get actually users of this are actually better at it and can come up with much more creatives.

So I think about this, you know,

David Bowie was quoted back in the 60s and 70s when the synthesizer came out.

It could absolutely replicate every instrument there was out there.

And they were like, are you worried, David, about this replacing your musicians?

And his thing was actually,

I don't find the synthesizer interesting because it can replicate.

It's when they, as artists, started mixing it to make unique new sounds that he found this.

And so there was an artistry into the tool that puts this way.

And so I see the same thing with generative AI.

What I'm training myself to be, though, is that I'm going to be an AI counselor because I see that when AIs are

counseling, you know, lots of other people that they, the AIs are going to have to get really tired and they're going to need a human to actually coach them back from the brink because of, you know, you know, you got to think,

you

know, because the AI is going to be, you know, can you imagine all of the crazy people the AI is going to have to experience and they're going to be like, what is going on?

I'll be like, okay, check it out, AI.

Here's the deal.

Okay.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, you

know, so we're going to have to be there to

say

like, look, I know you like you've been working with my, with my aunt.

And I got to

tell you,

you know, she's crazy.

You know, that is, that's great.

It's

really, that's a good way to look at it.

Yeah.

There could be a lot of business there.

I thought maybe a suggestion that

Johnny came up with and I hate to say that we're trying to reinvent the wheel here because the EU has been doing this for many, many decades.

They've been channeling people and creating pathways for them to get into an occupation right from high

school.

But the thing here is that maybe if we just had K through college,

where people could go into college and test it out and see if they like it and stay there.

And maybe if they don't like it, they could leave, but go back in because it's free.

It's paid for by the general public.