Roadside Revelations (Hour 1)

You're listening to Civic Media.

You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.

Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.

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.

To say what needs to be said.

It's John and Gordy on 92.7

WMDX.

Mark that

on the calendar.

We'll have to talk to about that.

This is John Peterson, Gorda Young in the morning and WMTX, 92.7 on your radio dial if you're driving in and I got to complain, you know, it's

almost as

though it's, you know, it's a rainy morning.

It's really coming down down there and downtown and it's just crazy.

My son came up from the lower levels of our house.

the base.

Never, never see him.

And he says, John, do you have a look?

Look outside.

It's orange.

It was just orange.

It was really, really cool and scary.

And I'm thinking it's the smoke from Canada that's down here mixing in with this storm.

You think that's why it was

orange?

No.

There's the real reason why it's orange.

Why?

We have every stoplight in this damn city.

is off time, so we're all sitting there, everybody, all of Madison is sitting there at the red lights, waiting to get to the next red light.

I'm telling you, we are gonna have a smock problem in this town, and we've gotta end it.

Now, I am, Mr. Environmentalist right here, I am done with this.

I've had it.

You know, we have mentioned this a dozen times on this show.

They have not changed the city lights.

Please change this.

What is wrong with you people?

You know, we're sitting in a light waiting for you on University Avenue.

It's

just a crosswalk for students.

They're not here and we're waiting in a light at the railroad tracks and nothing's happening.

I don't really mind that.

I can take a little nap, a little cat nap.

Two, three minutes.

Well, I'm

glad to know

that you're really

tired behind the wheel of the car.

And then you go down a little bit further, and there's this one-way street that's still under construction between the student buildings.

Right.

And, you know, they're never going to open the damn thing.

But it's a light, and it's a red light.

Every time it's a red light, we're waiting for nothing to cross.

I have had it with the city.

Please.

Yeah.

Time the damn

lights.

Wow.

Okay.

I'm

speaking for everybody in Madison

that

has to endure this

every morning going to work.

There's nobody on the roads though.

That's the issue.

I mean, they really don't need that.

They just should go with the flashing yellows.

What's wrong with that?

Yes.

Whatever

happened to those

days, right?

Yes.

Oh my God.

Keep the flashing yellows going to at least 630.

630, quarter after 6, something like that.

Why yeah, all right, that would solve it right away.

Why can't they not time the lights out like that?

I'm at least thinking six, you know the flashing yellow lights.

He used to do it in the old

days And and John I know for you there's like 20 lights on your way to work.

It's not just like three or four.

It's so outrageous.

It's so ridiculous.

I'm just done with this Okay, you know if they only had

flying cars.

We were supposed to have flying cars by now.

The

Jetsons said that we should have had flying cars by now, and here we are.

Just battery-operated cars.

We're making

slow progress.

yeah and so we have showers and thunderstorms this morning quite a lot of lightning at the moment and thunder and lightning yeah that was crazy some heavy downpours so watch out for those on the way in I mean it's darker now than it was a half hour ago yeah no kidding wow these are supposed to pass through and then it's going to get brighter by midday and we'll be back to sunshine excellent this afternoon and it's going to heat up to a high around 90

for today's heat alerts.

It's going to feel more like a hundred by late in the day.

We're going out to our pizza lunch today.

That's right.

We've got the Sugar River Pizza Party happening at Sand Hill Pet Clinic this well around noon time.

And congratulations to Sue Berg and the crew there.

And we'll be showing up with the the pizzas right about lunchtime there noon

time.

Yeah,

that'll be good.

And hopefully all the rain thunderstorms will be out of here by then.

and it should be a good afternoon, but hot, hot and humid, 90 for a high, it'll feel more like 100.

You know, it's nice to

know that Catherine's back again, but

this

time she's reminding us that Dominic is sitting in the other room.

Good morning

Dominic.

Oh yeah, good morning guys, good morning.

We forget to, you know, you can chime in any time,

you know.

Well, I'm not having

a

good, I'm having a bad morning.

Why?

Look at the thunderstorm outside, you know.

That's what I got to do.

He chimed in a few times here.

So, you know, I'm not totally shy, you know, you guys scare me sometimes though, you know

Do we scare you?

You guys scare me a lot.

Back off into the corner.

It's because

we're old crotchety men.

Okay.

Oh, sorry.

I wonder what I am afraid of

though.

I'm

afraid our guests today are not going to be able to make you because it's raining so hard, like they're not going to see where we're at.

And you know, we're

right in the

downtown area.

So I'm

hoping

they do, but.

Right on

stage.

They've got GPS, I'm sure.

They'll be fine.

Yeah.

I don't

know.

I don't know.

Maybe not.

Yeah.

Well,

time.

Maybe with the thick smog that hangs over the city because

people are waiting at the lights.

Yeah.

Man.

They've written this book called Historic Wisconsin Roadsides and we should be talking to them about 645 or so.

Looks really good.

We've had a whole bunch of Wisconsin Roadside books and we'll see what they've come up with.

This is the latest one.

This looks really good.

So we hope to be talking to them.

Where you

can find free ice cream.

Free ice cream.

We'll have to ask them about that.

They've got

all these different like pathways that you could take.

Yeah, to explore Wisconsin

and I want to know where Elvis's favorite roller coaster is.

That's one of the things that they've got.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And shipwrecks and all kinds of cool things.

How about the radio station broadcasting only music?

Created on site, so it's

yes only music created on site.

I've not heard of that and I wonder where that is.

No, that's not the answer to that's

not beaming from your

Your house

my house

you have

your dream is to just create a radio station with your music only

my my original music No, no, I'm not Tom Hartman.

No

Nice shot.

Nice shot.

Let's see, it's 6.13.

Oh, let's get to what do you know or what thing is

it that

you don't like out of these three things?

You got us forgetting this right here, you know?

God, I can't get the name of this in my head.

At this point, what would you do?

Check out

the question on our website.

We've got it right there.

Would you rather would you rather

yes, that would be great grand intro for this as well?

All right first first question

You know, maybe every intro should have so much reverb that you really can't understand.

It's getting worse and worse.

That's our new thing, yeah.

I

was good at changing it, but now

it's so iconic.

No, no, don't change it.

Please don't change it.

Okay, all right, first question.

All right.

Would you rather know how to scuba dive or know how to fly a plane?

Which

one would you rather do?

Oh, man, that's a good one.

I know how to do.

Hate

water.

Hate water.

You do hate water?

I hate flying.

So you're running

a lost loss

here.

I know I can't pick.

Oh, you can't pick really?

No, you

really can.

I hate both those things.

I think I'd rather play, uh, do the plane.

Yeah.

I think I would rather know how to

fly a plane,

too.

Yeah.

Especially

at EAA, that would be a crazy experience.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's your life.

Okay.

Is there an age limit for pilots?

I don't think there is.

I don't know.

To get your first license?

I don't know.

But it's expensive.

It is pretty expensive.

Yeah, scuba diving, I think, is probably not quite as expensive as getting a pilot's license.

Have you guys ever scuba dove?

I don't

know if that's the right

word.

No, I did

a little snorkeling.

a long time ago.

It was

fun.

You know, I've seen a lot of James Bond movies where

the

snorkelers are down there, and then here comes the sharks.

They

get the

spirit,

the

spirit by the,

uh, yeah.

What would you rather do, Tommy?

I would rather fly, I would rather know how to fly

in life.

Yeah,

my parents and everything would be great.

Alright, second question, and second and last question, would

you

rather be someone who compulsively laughs during sad moments?

Or someone who cries whenever someone makes a joke

well, we're laughing

The

first

one's an automatic so yeah, I think I would I think I would go with that one I wouldn't want to cry when someone makes a joke.

That would be the worst thing ever

Yeah,

well, I agree.

Yeah

Um, that's it for would you rather, huh?

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Why did you go from three questions to two questions?

You just couldn't come up with enough stuff?

You know what?

We were thinking about doing national day calendar.

You know that

we got the poll

going.

There was a lot of a lot of turnaround, a lot of turmoil.

So we still have that poll question.

A lot

of people are asking about the national day calendar.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So,

you know, I don't think anybody's

asked

about.

No, no one is asked.

Why don't we just go to the

phones?

You know, we've got Troy out in Monhorib.

Okay.

Wait in on the line.

Maybe

he's got it.

It is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, but okay.

Oh, that's it, right?

That's the only one I'm talking about.

Okay.

Good morning, Troy.

What's on your mind?

Hey, guys.

How's it going?

Good.

Good.

You guys get knocked off the radio?

Oh,

no.

Oh, no.

You're not.

Sir,

are you

doing this right now?

Well,

I'm hearing you on the app.

I switched over to the app on the radio.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We're getting a few more messages here.

Yeah, thanks for letting us know.

Sometimes those radio tower sticks out there get struck by lightning.

I saw the lightning.

That might have

actually struck the tower.

Yeah, we're starting to get a bunch of messages in here.

So yeah, I guess that's what's... We'll get our engineering crew on it.

I'm sure they're already jump on her.

All right.

Thanks, Troy.

Thanks for letting us know,

Troy.

All right.

All right.

Dominic, make some phone calls.

I'm going to make some phone calls here, but I'm guessing it's the thunderstorm.

If you want to leave, just climb the tower.

I

had to do that one time out in Sun Prairie.

Did you?

I was working a Sunday evening.

You had to go out in the shack?

Oh, my God.

Yeah, John Duncan called me.

He said,

you got

to go out to this.

I mean, there was continuous lightning

and

thunder.

It was horrible.

And you know, that was only maybe 50 yards away from where the studios were.

That's enough.

But I had to run out there and start pushing buttons and flipping switches.

I did not know that.

Yeah, it was

frightening.

The old days, when we used to take care of the transmitter and take

Meter readings right things like that.

Ah, yes.

Ah, those were the

days.

Yeah meter readings You used to have to have a license for what we do.

Yeah.

Yeah, third

class

and I had to

go down to

Chicago to take the test same here

Yeah, that's where you had to go back in the mid-70s.

I still have that

license somewhere.

Stuffed away someplace.

I lost mine somewhere along the

way.

It's my pride and joy, boy.

That's a big accomplishment for me.

I

went through at least 80 pots of coffee studying for that test.

Yes,

I know.

It wasn't an easy test.

No, it really was not.

It was mainly how to read meters.

Yes, and then, of course, they had impossible math quizzes.

Right.

You had to do the meter readings, and then you had to figure it out and go through some percentages.

It's crazy.

But now you don't need to do that.

Exactly.

You don't have to have any kind of license to be on the air at all.

A little update.

Oh, yeah.

What's happening?

Drew, our engineer, is on it right now.

So we're just hoping for a fix right now.

Yeah.

All right.

Now here we are.

We're warning everybody about driving into work, and no one can hear us on the car radio.

Yikes, but they can still get us on the app.

Civic media app, right?

Yeah.

Oh,

yeah.

Okay.

Good.

All right.

Well, that's the way everybody watches, right?

You

know, even

through their Bluetooth and their car

stereo.

That's it.

So again, we have we have our friends with the historical roadside Wisconsin book coming in a little while.

And then Mike McCabe will join us in our seven o'clock hour.

Doug asked the question

from St.

Francis.

What is radio?

It's all digital now, Doug.

It's all gone digital, mostly.

Yeah.

But a good question, nevertheless.

You know, maybe Catherine can add that to our website, too.

The poll question?

The question for the week, what is radio?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's actually a pretty good question.

Actually, I gave...

Her two questions with great answers.

All she has to do is just post one of them

one of

these days.

It's 19 minutes past the hour.

No changes.

Just get going on a Wednesday morning back with more after this.

All right.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

It's 92.7.

It's John and Gordy in the morning and it is a difficult morning to drive into town because the lights are all off and now our station tower has been taken out by the lightning storm that we have and the dark skies and continued rain.

That's right.

showers and thunderstorms this morning, but it'll clear out around midday highs today around 90 degrees.

It's going to feel even hotter than that.

There's a heat advisory out.

It's going to feel like 100 degrees by late this afternoon.

So be ready for that.

This portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center, 4706 Cottage Grove Road.

Madison, they have fast and flexible appointments.

They're family owned, community focused.

Talk to Jim or Sarah, you can give them a call, 608-249-4077 or check out their website, MadisonHearingAidCenter.com.

Start out with a basic hearing test there and then make an appointment.

Again, it's Madison Hearing Aid Center, 4706 Cottage Grove Road.

in Madison.

All right.

Okay.

That's fantastic.

All right.

Yeah.

I heard the promo that you made there about the adjustable bed frames.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It was good.

It

was good.

A couple weeks ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I forgot all about

that.

And I'm

so glad that Gordy had to straighten out that mess.

What are you talking about?

That I left.

What?

Oh, with the adjustable bed frames?

Yes.

Yes,

I mentioned that all you

have to do is put together those two single beds, extra-long single beds.

Oh, I heard that promo too.

Each person could adjust it

the way they like

it.

Well, yes.

You made it sound like we had them here in the studio or something.

It was weird.

Very

odd.

Well, you know what,

that's not a bad idea either.

We should have them right here in the

studio.

We should have them, yeah.

Just in case, you know, somebody has to stay overnight.

Pete Schwabba, we were thinking of him constantly here on the show.

Well, he's here in Madison all this week.

He is.

Of course, he hasn't invited us to come over.

No,

we've invited him to be a part of.

We're going to be filling it for Maggie Dawn this afternoon.

Right.

We thought of him from four to six.

So we've invited him to be a part of the show during the last half hour.

So we'll see if he shows up.

Yeah.

He's got to be in the building to get ready for his show.

I thought it was a big deal for him.

The

question he had yesterday was, you know, what kind of, what poster did you have up when you were young on the wall of your bedroom?

What poster did you have up there

on the

wall?

Yeah.

So, we'll ask him about that.

Yeah.

Did you have a poster up in your

room?

A few of them.

Yeah.

I don't I don't recall having any posters

typical teenage posters.

Yeah, of the time what Fairfaucet No, the

Fairfaucet not like Fairfaucet very much the hair freaked

me out.

I Didn't like that.

I had a poster.

I do.

I did have one poster of Steve McQueen on the motorcycle and remember great escape.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, and he's jumping over the bar while yeah, I had that poster.

Oh, yeah, it was really cool

I have no poster in my room.

My room is just barren.

It's just a straight white wall.

That's all it is.

Is it still that way?

It is still that way.

Nothing on your walls at all.

Nothing on my walls.

That's sad.

I'll tell you what I had.

I had the Dylan poster.

Really?

Yeah.

Which one?

The Dylan

poster.

It was the colorful one

with his hair.

Oh, OK.

That was

on one of his album covers.

It was.

I think it was an

insert in one of the

albums.

Oh, OK.

And

you put it up on the wall, and it was up there.

Then I painted an actual picture of Mick Jagger.

You painted

a picture.

You know, they had the opaque projectors in school.

Oh, right.

And that's what I did.

I put that picture on the opaque projector,

put

it up on the wall, etched it, and then I painted it in kind of a modern.

Art form that's

interesting and I had that up on the wall kind of like cheating isn't it for artists?

No, no, it's really

great stuff.

I mean I would think I would assume frowned upon by the artistic community.

Yeah with Projector to do your half of the painting for you.

Yeah.

Yeah seems like how

about those Campbell's soup cans did

you think?

You think you just ad lib them or use an opaque projector.

That's what

I don't know what

Warhol would have done.

That's a good question.

Yeah, I don't know.

And I

did have one Playboy pinup.

Oh, did you?

Up on the wall.

Your parents allowed you to do that?

Yes, they did.

They did just one.

And I just never changed it.

It was always up there.

Do you remember the month and the year?

No.

No, I don't.

No.

Remember going into Spencer's?

Remember Spencer's was the thing in all the malls and they had in back in the back, they'd have all the posters on a thing and you could just look through them all on a. Did they

have something like that at Westtown yet?

I think they do.

I think they do.

I

don't know.

I haven't been there in a while.

But yeah, that's a great place to go and a lot of

weird stuff.

All right, we've got Idiocracy coming up in just a few minutes.

Phone lines are open, 608-879-8255.

A little bit later on, Mike McCabe will join us.

and talk about his latest sub-stack offering.

I also had, you know, on my wall, I heard you had more.

I had

a few posters on

my

wall.

What else was on your wall?

I also made a picture of my superhero, the Dark Danger.

This was one that you created?

Yes,

yes.

Dark Danger.

I used to draw comics in my bedroom all night long and looked out at the street light.

Very moody.

I loved it when it rained and I'd do my comic books and I'd slide into the comic book world of Dark Danger.

Do

you still have some of those comic books?

Yeah, I do.

I never threw them out, you know?

I drew them for hours and hours and hours.

Okay.

Yeah, it was fun.

It was fun.

You should bring some of those in.

We'll put them on the website.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Thanks, Gordy.

I'm

here for you, pal.

You know what?

I may do that.

Just to spite you.

You may do that.

I want to see it, too, you know?

All right.

You may do it, but you probably won't.

Okay.

We'll be

back with

the idiocracy as

if

you haven't gotten enough of it so far.

It's all coming up on Johnny Gordy in the morning.

Yeah.

Human evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence with no natural predators to thin the

earth.

There is a place without boundaries, a place without limits.

Welcome to Costco.

I love you.

A place that is about to be violated.

Welcome back to John and Gordy in the morning.

92.7 WMDX.

A rainy start today, thunder and lightning moving through the city.

Right through State Street, we still have some heavy rain downtown here.

90 degrees, the predicted high for this afternoon.

And there's a heat advisory.

It'll feel close to 100 hot and humid today.

This portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.

You can wake up and sleep better on a Verlo mattress.

They've extended that 4th of July sale through the end of the month.

You can check out their adjustable bases on sale at 30 to 50% off.

That's right.

And they also have plenty of accessories too on a buy one, get one free accessory sale.

So check them out.

Verlo, east side and west side in Madison or just go to Verlo.com.

All right.

Idiocracy.

We got plenty of it.

Well,

I guess we do.

Let's start off with John and Middleton, his text

to us.

John, slow down.

The new car and the lights work fine.

You're speeding.

Well,

that's true.

Well, you've always speeded though.

You've always been a

fast driver.

Actually, not so much in the new car.

No, I think it looks like a speedster and I don't want anybody to.

I

think that

I'm a, I'm a hot rider.

Yeah,

but it

does

have amazing amazing.

It's very slick.

Yeah, it's got a lot of get up and go.

It does.

I tried it out the other day.

Man, it was it was really pretty smooth, you know, very smooth.

All right, so thank you John for the tip on

that but

no You can call us 608-879-8255 or Texas on the free civic media app Just go to WMDX on the app and you can also send us a voice note.

Yeah, check that out on the WMDX Civic media app.

All

right,

your neighbors by the way are texting in here.

This should be on the idiocracy I suppose Trump saying

These think tanks they build buildings for people that think and it's really not thinking It's a little bit a combination of thinking but it's something you sort of have or you don't have that's That's a quote from Donald Trump.

I'm glad that you know, yeah, I was thinking of that same quote on the way to work Something you

sort of have or you don't have

working that

that into my life.

What a thought.

It's a thought for the day.

All right, I think tanks.

One of the weird stories that come out now is Elon Musk is hinting that the Trump administration could possibly be breaking the law.

Well, what do you think?

After reports emerged that the government was counting on trying to get Amazon.

to take over the Golden Dome missile defense system

instead

of Elon's SpaceX.

Amazon.

Yes, Amazon.

When were they in defense systems?

Now they are.

Good question.

See, this is what happens when you put the billionaires in charge.

Suddenly, they think they can do everything.

And they are now, apparently.

They're trying

it.

According to Musk, federal acquisition regulations require using the best provider.

At the best price so he thinks he's the lowest bidder.

I don't think so Now there's a name to Amazon's project.

It's quipper or kipper K U I P E R have no idea what that means, but anyway that is their Golden Dome proposal for the Trump administration

Why would you know Amazon have anything that okay?

You know a lot of people

said this is crazy stuff.

It is crazy.

Israel is a little smaller than the United States They have a golden dome, but it's not gonna be as big of course as the United States and it's almost impossible to do and we do have a missile defense system, right?

I'm not quite sure the point.

Yeah, I'm not sure either I don't know

and then we'll have this golden glow over the United States because of the dome I don't know how that works, but

Doesn't sound like we should turn it over to Amazon.

No, I Think our guests have arrived.

Oh, so you know, okay?

Have a seat out there Okay You didn't

you want to talk.

Oh, yeah, I want to mention the you know the capital times idea fest is coming up September 8th through September 12th and

Listen to the lineup.

They have you know, they always get some terrific guests.

They really do this year.

They've They've outdone themselves.

They have they have they're gonna have JB Pritzker governor of Illinois Great guy great speaker Tim Walls from Minnesota.

I mean Pritzker is a billionaire.

Yeah

This

guy

knows how to talk to the average American other

hard work in

America.

Yeah, he'll be excellent So all these speakers of course again from September 8th through September 12th.

They have a number of different venues The Cap Times idea fest tickets.

I believe are already on sale They're gonna have Eugene Robinson And let's see Jennifer Rubin of course award-winning Washington Post columnist Norm Eisen.

I mean the great line of Maureen Dowd

We'll be there, and a few others.

And we're gonna be talking with Paul Fanland, the publisher of the Cap Times.

I think we're trying to line up an interview with him sometime next week, if not next week, the week after.

It's coming up September 8th through September 12th, and I believe Civic Media is also one of the co-sponsors, or we're involved with the IdeaFest as well.

So we'll tell you more about that as we get a little closer.

Well, Maggie had Paul Fandle and I'm yesterday afternoon.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're hoping to get them on hopefully next week.

We'll see.

But we've got tougher

questions

to ask.

Oh,

you think so?

Oh, really?

Definitely.

What?

Well, look, we're having this big

discussion about, you know, ideas, right?

Ideas for Democrats.

Ideas for progressives.

Ideas for pro-democracy individuals running for office.

Sure.

But what are those ideas?

Well, that's what I

do

at a time when we're all panicking just a little bit watching our country disintegrate into a Unitary executive mm-hmm the power of this king that we have in

in the White House right now.

It's just outrageous.

So we'll see what happens, but I'd love to talk to Paul about all of this stuff because it's a tough time.

It's not the normal every day.

Here we are.

We have another one of these events.

We really have to come up with something.

This has to be something where we shoot the idea around the table a

little.

Well, right now, we're still in Epstein files.

We're in that.

Right now.

Yeah.

And that's not going away anytime soon.

It seems like that's, even though they've, the Congress has put off till September trying to deal with it.

They've kicked the can down the road already.

It's crazy.

Mike Johnson.

Right.

Well, I mean, Mike Johnson, what an

ass

kisser.