The opinions that you may hear us express expressly or otherwise over the public's airways is in no way to represent the opinions expressed or otherwise by our management, producers, sponsors or various members of their staffs or their families or few friends.
Nor should these views express the opinions of the broadcasters, the disc jockeys, the salesmen, the program and music directors and their secretaries and girlfriends and wives.
Unless, of course, we are willing to assume that we can assume the responsibility that their opinions will not influence anyone else's opinions.
Or their
family and friends.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
All right.
We haven't heard that a long time.
WMDX 92.7 on the old-fashioned radio dial that you have.
You can also tune in.
Like, you know, most Gen Zers do online, stream it, and get to our app, listen to the show, text, and voice note us.
I like the voice noting.
We haven't got that in so long.
Just jump on the Civic Media app, go to WMDX, and look for the voice note button, right?
Yeah, that's it.
Just push the button and start, yeah, right in the middle of the screen.
It's easy.
And by the way, if you don't like it, start over.
Yeah.
You can also call us 608-879-8255.
Oh, you could do that, too.
Yeah.
And you could watch us on YouTube and Facebook.
There you go.
There's so many.
We're everywhere.
We're connected.
OK.
We get paid for all these special appearances.
Sure, if we do.
Happy Wednesday.
Yeah, this is it right
here.
Lies and shine.
Shake a
leg.
Midweek.
Up and Adam.
This is our 500th show, and we're really...
Not quite, but we're getting there.
All right.
It's happening in about three weeks, I think.
Three weeks, yeah.
Yeah.
It's been three weeks for the last three weeks.
Come on, guys.
No.
We're turning into Trump here.
Two weeks, two
weeks.
There were a few sprinkles earlier this morning.
Looks like clouds are hanging in there now.
Top of the hour it said it was clear at the airport, but it's all cloudy downtown here.
Yeah, State Street block off the Capitol 69 degrees currently the high today just 75 a little bit cooler fall like air moving in for the next few days What is your Samsung WMDX watch tell us?
Well, you
know, I gotta say that there's a big contradiction here.
Is there the air that you breathe is excellent.
All right
Really?
But the pollen is super high.
So
do you think that's why you've had the sniffles lately?
I have a feeling that's it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I figured it all out though.
I figured it out.
What?
I don't mind.
You know, there are ways to treat it.
They have the steroid nasal sprays, which take care of that.
Right.
And you can also take an antihistamine.
But the antihistamine take
the second level or the second version of antihistamines, there's the first version that is a little more problematic for people who have pre-existing conditions, might interfere with some of the drugs, interact, and also might actually hurt your health.
But the second versions of these antihistamines, I thought, God, what am I doing?
Beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
He's a sub-stack author and blogger and all-round good guy.
He's going to be here.
We haven't seen him for a couple of weeks.
He took a little time off.
He comes in and he talks about a sub-stack article.
But I want to get his impression of what's going on out there.
I want to get his feelings about the situation that we have politically.
I also, and this is the question I want to ask him,
What about the guardrails on AI?
What do you think
we should put up as guardrails for AI?
And my specific question is, should we have age verification?
Should that be the first guardrail?
Age verification, really?
Yeah, because age verification is something that Google is putting in place.
The Democrats are kind of jumping on board with this.
Europe or Britain, I'm not sure who it is out there in Great Britain.
I'm the other side of
the United
Kingdom.
All
I'm thinking is that maybe one of those countries or the European group itself has this new law that will require age verification.
So what would be the age group like 18 and above or 21 and above?
Yes, but it's not it's not really even
where the cutoff point is.
It's
being able to track down people.
Once
you verify your age and you give proof of it, maybe a driver's license or some kind of identification, then you're giving them the ability to track down and follow everything you've ever visited on the internet.
That is very scary.
It's mind
blowing.
It is, it's mind
blowing.
I'm
thinking that
is not a good thing.
And again, the Democrats showing that they really don't know anything about the Internet and why we need Gen Z's in there.
Let's vote younger people into the Congress, please.
Please, please.
We don't want that.
We don't need that.
Things have been going pretty well.
the way it is, as far as age is concerned, okay?
I mean, other than that, I think there should be guardrails, but the age verification thing is really, really not a good
idea.
Well, we'll ask Mike McCabe about that.
Yeah.
See what his take is on it.
Well, yeah.
A little bit later on, he'll be in about 735.
Okay.
It's 12
minutes.
Well, I'll try to condense what I'm seeing here.
Okay.
A little wordy this morning.
It's all good.
It's all good.
Hey, if you...
go to our WMDX radio page.
That's WMDXradio.com.
We have something new there.
It's the events page.
You go to the events page and you can see what kind of events we have coming up like tomorrow night.
We have Madison Night Market.
We didn't have one in July.
They skip July because there are too many other things going on, but we'll be back right across the street from our station in front of the Overture Center.
Tomorrow evening we'll be there from five until...
about nine.
We usually cut out a little early.
We've got to get
up early.
I'm wearing the t-shirt today.
Yeah, you got that
yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah, looks
good.
Yeah,
it
looks excellent.
And to get to that events page,
it's
just right at the top.
It
says local events, just click on it and you'll see everything underneath
after that.
I have a different version of my laptop for
some reason.
Your laptop shows everything differently.
For
some reason, I have the mobile version of our site on
my laptop.
Doesn't make any sense at
all.
None of the other sites show up like this.
It's just dollars.
Yeah.
Of course, you know, the question is the one that I wrote.
this month.
That's right.
The poll question.
And if you'd like to jump in on that, you can just go to wmdxradio.com.
And the question is, if John and Gordy did one thing for their morning show, they should, A, not change a damn thing, keep doing what they're doing.
That's at 38%.
That's 20.
38.5%.
Choice B is include more.
stories in idiocracy at the risk of their own lives and freedom.
That's 30.8%.
We take heroic courage
to keep doing this, right?
That's right.
Yeah, who knows?
Choice C, sound depressed, angry, and lash out at even their closest friends and collars.
Well, you do that anyway.
I did that yesterday.
I closed the show with an angry rant.
Oh, boy.
And then we got called into the principal's office and we had trouble there.
Leave
him on a happy note.
I get dragged into it.
I had nothing to do with
it.
I'm in your yelling.
Well, you didn't stop me.
But here's the thing, you know, she acts like, you know, Stephanie Miller isn't next.
They're never happy.
They're always angry.
Come on.
I'm just leaning into that.
I see.
That's your excuse now.
Well, try not to do that.
Try to sound a little upbeat toward the end of the show.
Like you're ready to go home and end it all.
That'll sound real.
And then choice D immediately be replaced by AI controlled robots.
See, we're talking about AI.
We could be replaced.
So the top two is not change a damn thing or risk your life and freedom by including more stories in idiocracy.
We've got a
few coming up today.
By the way, have you heard this story, and this is not a new story, but it's getting more traction now over on Willy Street?
You know, I was thinking, what are the most famous streets in Madison?
You know, State Street, of course.
East and West Wash.
You can see that as the next question.
No, I don't care about that.
Yeah, well,
I don't
care about that.
Cameron's jotting this one
down.
But Willy Street, all these crashes, you know?
City traffic controllers are grappling with a rash of...
car crashes on Willy Street.
On Willy Street, yeah.
You know, that mother's fool, mother fool's coffee house has been hit a bunch of times.
And there are other stores along Willy Street.
It's just, you know, what happens is they open up on weekdays, the city opens the eastbound lane on Willy Street to accommodate rush hour traffic.
Is it four to five, four to six?
Four to five thirty.
four to five 30 and the majority of the crashes on the street in the last five years have happened during that time period.
Yeah.
So that's a bad
idea.
That's side of the road.
So yeah, it's
a
really, it's a nightmare because John Nolan dumps out on a Willy Street.
Exactly.
And then Willy Street turns into a single lane, but there are two lanes dumping onto it.
Yeah.
And then, and then they have the parking, the
parkings cleared
out for drive time as they're right.
Contemplating here eliminating that yeah, and having those cars parked there.
I think that's the way it should go Keep the cars parked there.
Don't open it up, right?
Yeah,
it's not natural opening up that
way exactly and that's you know That's when the crashes happen between four and five thirty usually you guys
gotta take me I've never been to Willy Street in my
life.
Oh, really?
I've been at what have but I've never been to wait a minute.
Well, you think you can't get that would
What?
You think we should?
You know, let's take the kid out.
Do you think he's old enough to go to Relief?
Check his ID.
They have a lot of shots.
He claims he's 22, but I think he's really like 16.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I always... You could pass.
Do you get... Do you get... They ask for your ID.
Oh, he's just gonna say, yeah, why... They always do.
They always do.
All right.
Well, should we get to, would you rather do one thing or another?
We got a couple minutes.
We have time?
Yeah, let's see if we can make out what
you're saying.
Okay.
Anybody know what he's saying?
Tell us.
Crank
it
up.
Alright, text in to see if you guys can understand what that
meant.
Okay.
Alright.
Alright.
First question, would you rather...
Brush your teeth with mustard, or wash your hair with relish.
These are two
things you've tried
already.
Hey man, don't put this on me.
Where did you come up with this?
Mustard.
I would do the mustard, too.
Yeah,
I
think
I'm in on that, too.
I don't really like the smell of relish.
I love the smell of
mustard.
No, that'd be bad.
All right, um, that was a quick easy one,
right?
We do not relish, that question.
Oh, there we go.
Alright, would you rather have teeth that are unusually pointy or hair that's always wet?
I'll go with the wet hair, I think, I guess.
Yeah, I think that
would hurt my mouth if they
were pointy
teeth.
I'll go with the pointy
teeth.
How do you come up with these questions?
I do it
at 9 p.m.
Every night.
Yeah, I have my set an alarm to do the would you rather questions?
In a stupid days,
I
suppose.
I don't know how you've been drinking all night.
All right, there we go.
That's it.
That's would you rather.
Okay.
Everything's down hill.
It's 19 minutes past the hour.
We are just getting going on this Wednesday morning and we'll be back with trending.
Oh, that's right.
What's trending?
We'll find out after this on John and Gordy in the morning, 92.7 WMDX Madison.
You can ask me what's trending?
What's trending?
You can ask me what's trending?
What's trending?
You can ask me what's trending?
Yes, it is.
It's trendy.
WMDX.
John and Gordy in the morning, 92.7 as you drive into work today.
We're on State Street overlooking this beautiful street.
We haven't seen the leaf blower guy or the street sweeper in many days.
Yeah.
I don't know.
What happened?
Did they
eliminate those jobs?
Because we were talking about it, and the city decided that that is too embarrassing.
We can't have that happen.
Ever since they dropped out of their truck, we haven't seen it since.
That's right.
That's
right.
So dropped the leaf
blower out of the back of the
pickup.
Yeah.
This portion of the show brought to you by the good people at Virlo Mattress in Madison.
You want to start the school year off right with a brand new custom Verlo mattress set for your students, a big during Verlo's back to school sale going on now.
Verlo mattress east and west in Madison.
Go to verlo.com.
All right, all right.
All right, what's trending?
That's the whole point here is looking at the news and what is basically essentially trending, right?
Yeah, what's headlighting news?
What's what's on people's mind?
Well It appears as though on Fox News they were talking to our president the orange Love doll and And he was talking openly about a relationship of one of the Fox hosts with Sean Hannity And he and he wouldn't what he wouldn't let it go and he kept talking about it
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Ainsley Earnhardt.
Okay.
I don't know who she is.
Do you know who?
No.
I've never
heard
of her.
There's a picture of her sitting on the couch with the other hosts and apparently she has a off screen.
Why do they say that?
Off screen relationship with Sean Hannity?
No, they're gonna have a relationship on screen.
What is live reality?
Anyway, uh, Trump called and he just kept talking about it and yabbering about it and they were trying to change the subject on and on.
So, you know, that's the thing that's trending right now.
Well, I'm checking, uh, the Fox page right now.
And yeah, I guess that they have something happening.
Apparently they were left scrambling when Trump who also opened up.
about his fears about his future death and the afterlife.
We'll have that tomorrow.
There's a link to that story.
Well, anyway, Trump made her relationship the main focus of his call in to the show.
It comes after Trump's subtle gesture revealed that he really thinks about Melania after the high stakes meeting.
So, we'll find out what he thinks about Melania later.
But that's what's trending as far as meaningless news is concerned.
So Trump was rambling.
Just rambling on and on, yeah.
Now, Republican Senator is saying that he thinks Obama could be charged.
in regards to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
He thinks he can be charged even though the president has this new immunity thing, the Supreme Court bestowed upon the presidency.
So he thinks he can still go after Obama.
I think they just want to make this an issue.
and just keep it alive and well.
And this is how they do it.
And their outrage machine will keep this going for quite some time.
Really?
Yeah.
They think they can go after Obama.
Obama for investigating Russian influence in an election.
Seriously.
We seriously would not want to know that.
We don't want to check into that.
Yeah, that's pretty serious stuff right there.
You don't want that to happen.
This is kind of interesting.
The traditional nine to five is now being replaced with infinity workday.
Infinity work day.
What does that mean?
Well, you're always working.
Yeah, they work at night in the morning.
We check our emails.
We check our chats.
We check in constantly to see if we've got something new or something for tomorrow.
We're always working.
We're always working.
That's not good.
I don't know.
I'm gonna look at that story.
We might even have that story tomorrow.
Heinz ketchup, by the way, has confirmed
Of course, they've been writing it on their product for a while.
But anyway, that is that you should refrigerate your ketchup.
Well, is that breaking news?
That's breaking news.
Who doesn't?
Well, everybody's debated that.
In fact, I took the ketchup out of my refrigerator.
I now have it in the pantry or, you know, in the cabinet someplace.
I don't refrigerate it anymore because it's got a lot of vinegar in it, and that's a preservative to a degree.
You don't need to do it.
But Heinz is recommending do it.
Heinz says, oh, you've got to capture the flavor and fridgerate it.
And it's just a bunch of bull.
They're just playing us.
OK, and the biggest news, and this is I'm going to look into this.
Apparently, Howard Lutnik.
Lutnik.
Lutnik.
Howard Lutnik.
is proposing that the government buy a little piece of Intel.
They want a piece of Intel because their excuse is that they have been giving grants to Intel.
And Lenick is out there saying, hey, why are we giving them money?
Why don't we get something for it?
This is a transactional.
It's always transactional.
This is pathetic.
Come on.
You do it for the good of mankind, you jerk.
Anyway, they want
a piece of the action.
No, they want a piece of the action.
And I got a little bit of news for them.
That's a very socialist thing to do.
Maybe they don't know that.
The government owning the businesses.
I'm sorry, I think we're leaning into socialism here.
CJ and my mega friend from Milwaukee, you think about it.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So that's Lutnik's idea.
Let's try that.
That's cool.
Okay.
Lutnik!
Lutnik!
Get in here!
29 passed, and we've got the Midwest Food and Farm Report
right
around the corner, and then it's Idiocracy on John and Gordy in the morning, WMDX Madison.
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.
What an idiot.
The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.
What?
What the f*** is going on around
here?
Holy
s***.
Idiocracy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
Alright, uh, idiocracy.
Always fun.
Always fun here on WMDX.
It's the John and Gordy extravaganza, hullabaloo, and shindig.
That's what it is.
635.
It's cloudy this morning.
A few sprinkles here and there.
Highs about 75, right now 69 degrees.
This portion of John and Gordy in the morning brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center.
4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison helping people change their lives by improving their hearing.
They offer fast and flexible appointments with individualized care.
Just go to MadisonHearingAidCenter.com and take a free hearing test online.
They help John Peterson, they help me, and they can help you too.
Call them at 608-249-4077.
Ask for Jim or Sarah.
Don't let hearing loss frustrate you anymore.
Go to MadisonHearingAidCenter.com.
Okay.
The big disappointment is that millions and millions of people who have filtered through the Smithsonian over the many years have been misled.
Absolutely misled.
Just nothing but woke.
And this is what has been, you know,
Well, the trouble with the US is that they have been influenced and exposed to this propaganda at the Smithsonian, and it has changed a lot of people's minds.
They have become Democrats, liberals, progressives, going through the museums as they exit.
We have changed their vote.
I remember going to the Smithsonian a couple of times, once or twice when I was a kid, and then once as an adult with
our kids.
Look what
happened to you.
Well, okay, I guess, but I didn't notice any kind of political bias or anything.
I didn't either.
On any of that.
That
made me more curious.
They have several, it's not just one museum, it's several.
A
lot of museums, yeah.
So I don't know
what the...
I
don't know what the problem
is
here.
The big headline on CNN this morning was, uh, uh, Trump says that the Smithsonian is out of control.
That's news to them.
I'm sure they're, oh my God.
This is every day, every day.
You know, it's, it, this is more like the onion than it is.
Yeah, it is.
It's unbelievable.
Really, it's just
from another world.
Yes.
It's too crazy to even imagine.
And yet here we are.
We're talking about this every damn day.
All right.
Let's move into the territory of our wonderful and beloved postal service.
Oh, boy.
In June, the Senate parliamentarian blocked a Republican proposal
in a major tax and spending bill to sell off the agency's new electric vehicles and infrastructure and revoke remaining federal money.
It sounded really stupid to do that.
We just bought new EVs for the post office, unique vehicles that have the driver on the right side.
But we're gonna sell them off.
I don't know who's gonna buy them All that money wasted and spent they would rather have wasted the money just to make a point
just to
make a mega point and then of course, you know Take all the money federal money back that is going to these companies that are manufacturing these cars for
the post office and a lot of jobs lost there.
Why would they
do that?
That's
crazy.
Just to make a point, it's again, it's a mega thing, you know, they got to own us, right?
Well, the parliamentarian did stop them, but not long enough because now the Republican magas are saying that the postal service should still
Stick to just delivering mail and not driving EVs as a statement a political statement driving those EVs.
That's a political statement.
Hmm.
Yeah.
So anyway, uh, Joni Ernst, Senator Joni Ernst said this.
It didn't make sense for the Postal Service to invest so heavily in an all electric force.
What?
What is she?
What is what?
The whole thing here is these postal trucks the ones that are out there right now were built in 1987 what so if we get the EVs now yeah maybe in 40 or 50 years they'll still be out on the road right why would it be crazy to invest so heavily into all electric vehicles at this point they're gonna be on the roads for a long long time folks my god
So anyway, she thinks it's just mail delivery.
It isn't making a political statement buying an EV and making sure that the, I guess, climate remains environmentally safe for most of us to breathe.
Oshkosh Defense was given the award.
The Grumman Long Life Vehicles, I mentioned, built in 1987, have a fuel efficiency of nine miles per gallon.
Not good.
What?
New trucks are equipped with airbags, blind spot monitoring, collision sensors, 360-degree cameras, and anti-light brakes while they're something new.
Nice.
And air conditioning.
Whoa.
Wow.
Wow.
OK.
Oh, I know.
But the thing is with EVs, and there's a lot of braking going on, you know, delivering mail, that adds to regeneration.
It regenerates the battery.
Sure.
It recharges it every time they stop.
It's perfect for mail delivery.
It's perfect.
Yeah.
And yeah, Johnny Erch can't wrap her head around that.
And the mega Republicans can't wrap their head around it.
And this is... I...
You know, I'm just going to take a break here.
I'm just
going to curl up in the corner, the fetal position, and just, you know, wipe my brain clean for a moment while we listen to Mark.
Let's go to Mark on the phones.
Good morning, Mark.
How you doing?
Yeah, good morning.
Yeah, you just kind of lit a fire under me with this latest.
You just talked about this.
But I've talked to my postman, you know, frequently that, um, that, uh, you know, chatting with the man that, uh, and
saying you see these vehicles stop and go, they stop and go, and they stop and go in town, and that it makes so much sense to have electric vehicles for that.
For the love of God, the first vehicle, some of the first cars we had were electric cars back in the 20th century, back in the early 1900s, and the only problem was that the battery technology
wasn't good enough.
Electric vehicles to some extent are much simpler than internal combustion engines.
It converts the electric motor turns and it doesn't have to go through a transmission like the... Of course there is some kind of transmission, but it's not...
You don't have to create six or eight explosions every time.
Right?
I mean, you know, it was, it was clean.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And these vehicles are getting aged.
They're, they're getting very old now because they're an older vehicle.
And now we've already got these electric vehicles on hand just because Donald Trump, Donald Trump was all excited when he drove the damn Tesla.
For the love of God, it is just idiotic in these people, you know, everything is at work statement, he doesn't, they don't, and it's pure Stalinism now for the whole, attacking the museums.
I can remember seeing, there's a program on PBS about, it was about, I think about dog on dogs and talking about the evolution of dogs and a guy in, a guy in, in the Soviet Union couldn't study science.
the way he wanted to, because the science wasn't in line with Soviet socialist
thought.
So no science has to be in mega, whatever it's thought now, mega-fascist
thought.
It can't be around.
The museum has to match up with mega-fascist thought.
I mean, what we're going to expunge from the historical record, the fact that the Confederacy was based on supportive slavery.
Read Alexander's
Stevens you know cornerstone speech which says the natural place for for the for for the for the black man is as a slave That was the moral truth for the for that time.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, I'm surprised the
Supreme Court doesn't go back to that.
Yeah, I mean
it did say president That was the Tammy decision.
That was dread Scott.
It didn't just say that that Scott didn't have any rights It said that no black person should have any rights in this country because they're not equal to a human being
I mean,
it is
just beyond me that we're, that we have to have this debate once again.
And these people should be ashamed of themselves.
They're all terrified of Donald Trump.
At some point in time, the man is gonna flop over dead like the rest of us flop over dead.
And that Donald Trump will be gone and they'll have to live with the fact that they've been supporting this jackass.
All right, Martin, yeah.
Well, all good points.
I want to bring up something, something I heard on the way in.
And that is that the pediatric society, you know, doctors, physicians for pediatrics, they came out with a statement saying that children, babies to, I think, four years old should be getting a COVID shot because their systems haven't gotten the kind of ability to fight off diseases yet.
Right.
They're not as immune as people have said they are and they have come out with a statement now.
They are trying to make a opposing statement to the government statement.
See now we can't even trust the government websites anymore with giving us the right kind of information that we need to make decisions and for insurance companies to make those decisions because if we're not requiring these shots for babies, infants, then the parents will have to pay for those COVID.
and it's more money out of our pocket.
So it affects our pocketbook and it affects our lives as well.
Okay, and it's 646 and time for us to remind you about our big listener appreciation party that you are invited to.
It's open to the public.
It's free.
It's happening Saturday, September 6th at 3 p.m.
at Downedrens Distilling in Cottage Grove.
We're gonna socialize.
We're gonna bring people together over a few drinks and
We also are offering a VIP invite to the party.
The VIP invite includes a free tour of the distillery and a tasting of some of their spirits and a WMDX swag bag.
Now to enter, just listen to this keyword and text it in and you'll be one of our entries and we'll draw a couple of people who come along with a friend of theirs to our
Listener Appreciation Party.
Key word this time around is Berry.
Okay, Berry.
B-E-R-R-Y.
Berry.
Like, you know, like a berry.
Like a strawberry brandy that they
have.
They have a
strawberry
brandy.
All right, that works.
That sounds
great.
Yeah.
Berry is the key word.
Get on the Civic Media app, text it to us.
Berry at the WMDX part of that app, okay?
All right.
All right.
And we will let you know if you're a
winner.
All right, kind of another story.
Okay.
Ever wonder why a mega comedy is almost non-existent?
Yeah,
you got yeah, who do you have in that world?
No
one.
That
Gutfeld guy, Gutfield, whatever his name is, late night Fox guy.
Yeah, it's not funny.
No,
it's not funny
at all.
It's really awful.
Well, and Dennis Miller tried it for a while.
It did not work.
Didn't happen.
Remember, they had the half hour, one hour, the one hour, half hour comedy show.
Right.
Trying to be funny in the title.
Yeah,
it
was just a miserable failure.
Now, before CBS pulled the plug on the late show with Stephen Colbert, season four of HBO's Hacks.
had already dealt with a similar situation in which that same thing had happened along with the vein, that vein row.
Well, okay.
I'll tell you what.
We'll get into the story.
We'll get into the story.
We'll get into it after.
I mean, everybody's waving their arms around.
I can't focus.
Well, the
incoming airplane.
Time marches on.
We'll be back with that story and much more on John and Gordy in the morning, WMDX.
WMDX,
Johnny Gordy
in the morning.
It's cloudy downtown right now, around Madison 69 degrees, 75 for high today, a mix of clouds and sunshine, but no rain.
Looks like we're done with the rain for a while.
Should be pretty nice.
He cut 97.
All right.
Instead
of me explaining about comedy and how it isn't really something that you can find on the right wing.
Right.
I mean, they're just they're just not very funny over there.
And I guess I would imagine that watching, you know, the five or whatever they call it.
Yeah.
That's funny to some people.
It's pretty sad.
Now, what are comedians doing, though,
to
affect society?
To affect what's going on in society?
And it happens that Mark Merritt...
Now, here's the podcast.
Does he still have that?
He's ending it, isn't he?
He's ending it soon.
I don't know if he's ended it yet, but yeah, he's put on the air.
Great
comedian, great show.
Yeah, the podcast is wonderful.
What was the name of the TV show that he had?
I think it was just called Marin.
Yeah, that was really good.
That was a great
show.
But anyway, he came out swinging it against other comedians who've been making fun of trans individuals.
Oh, really?
Right.
Basically, let's listen to what he says here.
You know, to be in a fucking club where, you know, I walking down the hall at the comedy club, and, you know, in one room, someone's doing their bit about trans people, and then I get down the hall and there's someone on stage going, well, I guess I got to do my bit about trans people.
Like, no, you don't.
You don't.
It's heck now.
I mean, you know, you guys got the freedom you wanted.
You can now say whatever you want.
They're defeated.
The rights have been denied.
The policies that you guys encouraged, which are your stupid material, are now policy.
And now, like, you know, half the people under the umbrella of anti-woke, we've lost a tremendous amount of democratic leaning ideas and movements.
So whether they knew it or not, that's what they were spearheading.
So now it's reality.
And you want to still keep kicking them?
I don't know I don't know that the Comedians have had that much power and I'm
looking out of your mind.
No, I'm
Joe Ray.
I'm not gonna
go ahead
You know, you can't you can't separate like if the movement is like, you know, we're being censored.
No, you're not you're not there's no constitutional
censorship issue with your free speech.
You say things, and in a Democratic shit show of an environment, like Twitter or whatever, there's cultural pushback, but that's a specific issue.
To frame it as some sort of free speech problem was a misdirect.
It wasn't.
It wasn't a free speech problem.
It was that people were getting cultural pushback.
That is not a constitutional issue.
No one was being put in jail for saying anything.
That's a free speech issue.
But my problem is is you're going to start talking about anti-woke and that's going to be your point of view.
That's going to be your ideological, you know, grounding for what you do.
OK, that's fine.
But why does it have to be the same for fucking things?
You know, it's like they talk about the same shit and I don't know a better definition of hack.
I mean, after a certain point, it's like, you know, so what juice is the word hard really had?
How much do you have to give trans people?
You know, what is your big problem with gay people?
What's your big problem with women?
It's like, what is this, the fucking 80s again?
There you go.
Wow.
That's good.
Kind of rehashing a lot of old stuff, right?
I mean,
that's
what they're doing.
They're just beating this thing to death.
It's not funny to
a
lot of people.
And then they act like, well, gee, you're pushing back on me.
You're trying to censor me.
No, that's the feedback you're getting.
You're accountable for what you're saying.
And they've always been that way.
And that's why they're afraid to speak up in college classes now because, well, somebody might actually have an opposing view to their point of view.
Yeah.
Comedians have always been on the
front lines.
You know, it was Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and some of the early guy, Richard Pryor.
They've always been on the front lines of, you know, oh boy, that's controversial.
That's, you know, edgy.
We don't know if that should be allowed.
Should we censor him?
Should we not let him?
I mean, that's the way it's always been.
And if comedy makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable, it's actually a good thing.
It gives you stuff to think about and to, you know, make up your own mind about how you feel about issues.
That's my take on it.
Well,
yeah, I mean, you know, a rich little did impressions.
David Fry did some impressions way, way
back
in the old days.
Yes.
And we played cut here on the show from the Smothers Brothers who laid into Lyndon Baines Johnson an awful lot about the Vietnam War.
Incredible criticism.
But
you know, even Johnson wrote into the show saying that this is this is the humor of our time.
Right.
And we should appreciate that the freedom to have that kind of access.
Thank you for your speech.
That's what it's
all about.
And I think Marin is certainly making a great point that it's not funny stuff anymore.
You can go on and on and maintain this separation between left and right, but it's not funny and it's not making society any better or more comfortable.
We're all kind of at war with each other simply because of comedians going on.
The point was that, well comedians don't have that kind of influence.
They
do, they
always had that kind of influence.
That's it.
We're quoting and playing cuts from a few of the comedians of the past.
Yes.
I mean, we had the Smothers Brothers cut right here.
Let's play.
We have time?
Yeah.
of this great and free nation to be the target of clever chatters.
They have given the gift of laughter to our people.
May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor of our lives.
There you go.
Beautiful.
Well done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was an impersonator.
Yeah, that was reading that Lyndon Baines Johnson letter to the Smothers Brothers.
Yeah.
I know we used to call them just LBJ, but
people don't remember
that.
Right.
Yeah.
For 10
years, we're explaining that.
659 in our next hour.
Mike McCabe will join us.
Substack author.
We're coming back with more of John and Gordy from Madison WMDX.
Transmitted by Wire.
Here is the latest news brought into your own living room.
You'll be hard to satisfy with anything
left.
Let's give them some better talk about.
Talk is cheap.
Keep, keep, keep.
Always gossiping.
It's the John and Gordy show.
This is high-five front.
And that's the way it
is.
We'll do it
live.
On 92.7 FM, WMDX.
Take it away, boys.
WMDX, it's John and Gordy hanging out.
with you in the morning here.
Mm hmm.
Starting to look really nice outside.
Starting to
brighten up a little bit.
Six minutes past the hour.
The clouds should clear for some sunshine.
Highs today about 75, right now 69 degrees.
Coming up in about a half hour.
Mike McCabe will be in here.
Substack blogger and author of a great book, The Miracle.
Miracles Along Coyote Cue.
Terrific book.
He'll be in, uh, he's been off for a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
Good to have them back.
We've got Dick on the line this
morning.
All right, we've got the street.
We're
outside.
We're
cooking this
morning.
We'll monitor what's happening out there.
Dick, good morning to you.
What's on your mind?
Good morning.
I'm off subject, but did I hear right yesterday that they actually floated Moscow as a place for Zelensky and Putin to meet?
Yes.
What?
So he could fall out a six story window and we never hear from him again.
Right?
Poisoned, right?
Poisoned him.
That would have been like, uh, in 1942 Hitler invites, uh, FDR and Churchill to Berlin.
Yeah, it's not going to happen.
Well, you know, the way right now CNN has the headline, Russia strikes Ukraine overnight as White House says Putin Zelensky will meet.
Yeah, it's
not.
Wow.
Okay.
They're not
happy.
No, I think the whole thing's a nothing burger and it's not.
Well,
you
know, when Putin passed out all that red meat to Trump about, you know, him actually winning the election in 2020 and that mail-in ballots made him lose, I think, you know, he owns Trump.
He owns that guy in such a dramatic way.
It is almost hilarious.
if it weren't so sad and dangerous.
Yeah,
sickening, yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
All right, Dick, thank you for that comment.
All
right, Dick.
608-879-8255.
Is
that our number?
Yeah.
And about that Nobel Peace Prize.
Yeah, how's that known?
For six Trump peace deals.
Oh, wait.
I'm sorry.
I mispronounced it.
It's Noble.
The Noble.
Noble.
Noble Peace
Prize.
No.
That's
not... Yeah.
Caroline Levitt.
Oh,
Caroline Levitt.
Leave it.
Leave it.
Leave it.
Why
and leave
it?
Yes, she said.
She said noble peace.
All right, let's listen to Trump in Little Rant.
This is cut 159 and he is the peacemaker.
He says
so.
Again, I say it in the six wars that I've settled.
I haven't had a ceasefire.
We just got into negotiations and they
One of the wars was, as you know, and the Congo was 30 years, 31 years long.
Another one that we settled last week with two great countries was 35 years going on and we had no ceasefire.
So if we can do the ceasefire, great.
All right.
So there it is, right?
So let's fact check.
Let's ask Rock what he thinks.
Yeah, it thinks they them think Grock said this Trump's claim of settling six wars of six months lacks evidence Fact checkers political facts seen in no temporary ceasefires in some conflicts, right?
But no permanent resolutions
of six wars.
India denies its involvement, his involvement, rather.
Your statement is accurate.
He did not end six wars.
This term, Trump contributed to four temporary resolutions, not permanent ends for war.
Temporary resolutions.
Temporary resolutions.
So let's clear that up.
By the way, I think that's what CJ threw at us yesterday when we talked to him.
I believe so.
He's the peace guy.
I don't think so no no evidence of not not happening.
Okay.
Now.
Let's get back to our little golden idol Trump says school boys don't mind having sex with their teachers.
So this is cut 114 What's this one 14?
Yeah in a June 2012 interview with extra
and a Miss USA pageant, Donald Trump, he's the co-owner, was asked about cases of female teachers having sex with underage male students.
So this should destroy MAGA's argument about downplaying Epstein and Trump together.
Let's play this.
Have you heard about all these teachers having sex with their students?
Is this not crazy?
What is going on?
Well, I don't think the male students have been hurt by it.
In fact, they're going around bragging about it, as I understand it.
So I don't see a lot of damage done.
Fair enough.
But it's a very unusual situation.
I would say her husband cannot be happy.
Oh, you are bad.
Wow.
Yes, you are bad.
You are bad.
In a good way, I guess.
I don't understand what she meant at the end there.
Yeah
a little a little confusing to say the least All right, let's get into the big story.
This is when we talked about a little bit of it earlier and that is big tech Verifying your age lawmakers claim new age verification laws are about child safety, but in reality the expand surveillance
and silence, descent.
This is, this is what I'm, this is what I'm saying.
I believe this is correct.
You cannot have age verification.
Sorry.
It's just the way it is.
Hmm.
Anyway, Democratic leaders, centrist political pundits, and the mainstream media falsely claim that removing anonymity from the web and censoring content via age verification is cracking down on big tech.
In reality, it makes it easier to surveil what every American is doing online.
Now,
that's the scariest part.
That
is.
There is no anonymity.
Yeah.
And by the way, couldn't that come back to haunt you someday?
I would think so, yes.
Wouldn't there be a service out there providing that information to employers and then finding out, well, you've been here, there, and everywhere.
Or you've been all over the internet.
So, yeah.
This is one of the most dangerous things, and I can't believe it again, as I mentioned in the story here.
It is something that democratic leaders, centrist politicians,
and the mainstream media are pushing.
They're thinking, this is a great idea.
Let's protect the children.
The Republic, that's a mega thing.
And it's phony.
Let's not fall for the same thing here and go for these ridiculous age verifications.
Google is implementing, and this is the other part, age verification measures to ensure users are old enough to manage their accounts and access certain content, particularly for age restricted services.
This involves many other websites.
And I want to bring this up here because this is Google now.
Okay, and we have no control over this.
It's not something that Congress is going to, you know, put into law.
This is Google and we have no choice in the matter.
If they have age verification at Google,
they
own everything.
I mean, they have access to every piece of information and they already know what we've done.
Now...
This way, this could create a business for those who want to provide that information to employers, to anybody that asks for it, for political opponents, to, you know, fight that out in the political arena.
So all of this stuff is so scary that it just doesn't make any sense for them to even, I think, even try to think that this is a good idea, right?
Yes.
I was waiting for you to be done talking there.
But you know, I think that somewhere along the way, too, I think that this is weird.
This is where I went with this.
I read the story.
Wait a minute.
Is this how we're going to lose the internet for everybody?
because I personally don't believe that I need to verify who I am.
So what happens to my searches on Google?
What happens to my activity on the internet?
I think all of a sudden a lot of people are not going to want to investigate, not want to look information up on the internet.
They'll be afraid to.
Internet is
tracking everything that you do
even a curiosity.
Let's say it has something to do with sex Okay, and you have a child who is talking about sex and was curious about something you would go on the internet Look it up.
It
might look bad for you and your future employee
employer if you made that search.
If he finds out, well, you went here and you checked this out, well, you're actually doing it because you want to find out what your kid is up to, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so suddenly it just turns everybody in.
This is the worst possible idea ever.
Is this the same thing as incognito mode?
There's something called incognito mode on Google.
And it says that it's not tracking anything, but I'm assuming it probably does.
It does.
I don't know how.
I know it saves some of
that information.
It has to.
Yeah.
Yeah, you'd have to get around that somehow.
So I'm wondering how that's going to work for incognito mode.
Incognito mode.
OK.
So anyway, it's just it's a warning shot out there.
We got to we got to keep an eye on this one.
You should not happen.
Hey, want to remind you that you can get your entry in for our listener appreciation party.
It's happening at Doundrens on Saturday, September 6th, 3 p.m.
Everybody is invited.
It's free to come to Doundrens Distilling and Cottage Grove to socialize and build community with the...
the crew here from WMDX, but we're also offering a VIP invite for you and a guest.
And that includes a free tour of the distillery and tasting some of their spirits and a WMDX swag bag.
So if you would like to enter that, the key word to enter, just get on the Civic Media app and enter the word Barry.
Barry, that's B-E-R-R-Y.
Okay.
If you are one of our winners, we will notify you.
A little bit later on, so Berry is the keyword.
And again, it's going to be a great party.
Everybody's invited to come.
But if you want the VIP package, enter the word Berry.
And if you're selected to win it, we will
let you know.
All right, I'm going to get into this really quick here.
It's a rant from Tammy Baldwin last night with Chris Hayes.
I just thought this was an exceptional piece of audio.
So why don't we listen to cut 161?
This is Tammy Baldwin on Chris Hayes last night.
You're in the district of a Republican Congressman, Derek Van Orden, and I want to play for you something he said.
He was very cross-pressured.
He's in a fairly competitive district.
It's also a district where people really do rely on Medicaid and rely also on the health infrastructure that is funded by Medicaid because rural hospital systems depend on that.
This is what he had to say.
This is back in March.
I have very, very few hard lines when it comes to
uh these issues that we talk about uh regularly one of them is that I've been crystal clear with the leadership in the house here if during this budget reconciliation process they're going to try to cut rural health care I am not on board
I
will not be on board with a package that does that if anybody is trying to cut any type of rural health care
It's just not going to happen on my watch.
Do you think he
kept that promise, Senator?
He absolutely did not.
And look, the outcome of the big ugly bill, now law, is that we will see people lose their
private health insurance that they purchased in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
We will see people lose their Medicaid for which they are eligible because of the red tape that they're going to put in front of eligible recipients of Medicaid.
And we will see rural critical access hospitals have to drop services or sometimes there's several in Wisconsin that are in jeopardy of closure.
And I'm not trying to instill
among folks, but we have seen critical access hospital one after another stop providing obstetric and maternity
care.
Quite quite the statement from Baldwin.
He's
been out there constantly and she's out there fighting for Wisconsin and for Americans all over the country She is just one powerhouse.
Yeah, she's amazing Van Orden out there doing this.
No, not
at all not mmm-hmm 19 past the hour when we come back.
We'll check in with Brittany Merleau get the latest on the weather WMDX
We're
gonna change the world.
Yeah man.
Rearrange it.
Well, maybe just
to snuck this on here.
722 on 92.7 WMDX, John and Gordy, John Peterson, Gordy Young, and Don Lee, and joining us now, Brittany Merlot, our WMDX chief meteorologist.
Good morning, Brittany.
Hey guys.
How's it going good?
I imagine
that you have really good news for us when it comes to the weather
Finally actually this is great kick back put your feet up on the desk.
We've got a good day ahead This morning especially if you go north but otherwise temperatures upper 60s right now More clouds to start the day than sunshine But we will see that more and more as we go through the afternoon
as it burns off
Yes.
And the
sun burns off
the
moisture.
Okay.
We're going
to burn off the fog.
We're going to burn off the clouds.
We're going to.
The
fog doesn't burn.
We're going to get the guy here.
Okay.
I always like to use it though, right?
Yeah,
I do.
It's fine.
It'll evaporate.
It'll get out of here.
Thank you.
It'll clear.
It'll, it'll dissipate.
Yeah, it looked better.
Okay.
Blue skies, no wildfire smoke.
Hey, positives here.
Upper 70s today.
Great.
Very, very darn comfortable if you ask me.
What about the next few days?
Looking good through the weekend?
High pressure stays here, mostly sunny tomorrow into Friday.
Highs flirting with about 80 degrees.
Now Friday night, a chance of rain late.
That front pushes through pretty quickly, and then we feel like fall for Saturday and Sunday.
Beautiful, bright blue skies, temperatures in those mid-70s on Saturday, and then the upper 60s on Sunday.
Oh, I love it.
Excellent.
We need some relief.
Well, we've got the Madison Night Market tomorrow night downtown,
right
across the street.
That'll be
comfortable.
Should be wonderful
weather
for that.
Yep, no concerns there.
Oh, that's awesome.
That's so fun.
And we do, I know the extended forecast doesn't go out to September 6th, but for Doundren's Distilling, that's inside-outside there.
And
it
should be a good time.
You want to come to that party?
You're going to
make it?
I
do.
I really, really want to go.
Am I still invited?
I can count.
Of course you are.
Well, we
were thinking about withdrawing that invitation,
but now that you
mention
it,
yeah, sure, you
show up.
Why
not?
It depends on the weather forecast, right?
Yes.
If everyone loves me or hates me.
Right.
It's contingent on you wearing our new WMDX t-shirt.
Yes, we will provide that to you.
On the Civic Media Network.
Yeah.
Right?
Oh, look at that.
Oh.
Well.
OK.
All right.
Yeah.
All right, especially especially in Pat Crichtlow's show.
Okay.
Deal.
Okay.
Very good, Brittany.
Thank
you very much.
We appreciate that report.
Thanks, guys.
It's all right.
Chief
meteorologist Brittany Merleau.
See?
WMDX.
Okay.
All you have to do is ask.
Yeah.
She's going to be there.
I think Todd Alba is planning on being there
and
Zomers.
I think.
Is
Todd going to broadcast live?
You only see how he brings along his broadcasting equipment everywhere he goes.
Everywhere
he goes, he's broadcasting live.
Wow.
He's like Al Franken in the old SNL
where he could
satellite
dish on his head.
Yeah, that's great.
Let's get to Charlie Angus.
He is a former member of parliament in Canada and he's stirring things up, you know, the relationship between the US and Canada.
Yeah.
And
he's taken a shot
at Maine and tourism and all that other kind of stuff.
So this is cut 149.
Let's listen to his little rant here.
Okay.
Good morning, Senator Martin from Maine.
It's Charlie Angus here in Canada.
You know, when I heard that you'd sent out these mimeographed letters to elected legislators across Western Canada, asking them to commit treason, to sell out their nation, to give up their sovereignty, I thought it was a joke, honestly.
I mean, for one, nobody up here has ever heard of you.
So I had to look you up.
And I learned, oh, you represent Maine.
That's that piece of ground that's below the beautiful provinces of New Brunswick in Quebec.
Now, in saying that, I know I'm being a little mean to Maine.
But heck, you guys voted for him.
So I hope you don't mind if I put a little bit of shoulder into your chin.
So I was thinking, OK, who is this guy?
And what's his offer?
And what did you say?
You said, well, the United States has the values of Western civilization.
So is that the same Western civilization that elects a convicted felon?
a sexual predator, a guy who brags about feeding people to alligators.
Is that your Western civilization?
You say that this is a nation under the Constitution, so is that the same Constitution that makes it possible for guys in masks to kidnap people off the streets or the president to send the National Guard against unarmed civilians in American cities?
Is that your Constitution?
Then of course you have to say that you're a nation under Christian values.
You know, I like Jesus.
I sure don't like this American guy called Jesus, because when I was hungry, you fed me.
When I was homeless, you gave me a bed.
When I was in prison, you came and comforted me, and you haven't done any of that.
Have you, Senator?
Because your idea of a Bible is some schlocky gold lame stick sold by your president along with his crypto means That's your values.
Let me just give you a quick lesson in Canada Number one we believe in diversity equity and inclusion because our diversity makes us stronger You talk about a melting pot.
Yeah, well floats and we've seen that you believe in the inalienable right of any moron in the United States To walk into a gun store and come out with an AR-15 in order to shoot up a school of children
to terrorize high school students, to shoot up a church, a synagogue, or a Walmart because you don't happen to like the Latino Americans who shop there.
Well, in Canada, we believe in the inalienable right of a family to go to the emergency ward at the hospital and get their children treated without going bankrupt because that's what a civilized nation does.
We believe in democracy, where it's one person, one vote, where elections are not decided by dark money, by super PACs, and by the oligarchs.
And you know, we don't get a lot of things right here, but we're working on it, because we believe at the end of the day that the economy shouldn't just favour the 1%.
So here's the thing, Senator.
There are a million places that Canadians will go spend their money.
And Maine isn't one of them, because they elected a moron like you.
So we're going to do our part, Senator.
to make sure that nobody spends money in Maine and nobody spends money in the United States of Donald
Trump.
That one.
I thought you guys like to talk after it.
Kind of wrapped it up in a nice way.
But anyway, mic drop and there you go.
Canada.
Not so
nice after all for the U.S.
29 past the hour.
Mike McCabe's right around the corner with John and Gordy on WMDX.
Stay with us.
It's John and Gordy filling in in the morning show.
We're on vacation right now, but these two guys who sound very much like John and Gordy are filling in and doing a damn good job.
I think.
What are you talking
about?
Scared me so much there.
It's us.
It is really.
735 partly cloudy right now.
We should.
be in for some sunshine highs in the mid 70s right now 69 degrees and Mike McCabe is back from being off for a couple of weeks.
In a while.
Good to see you again.
It was only a week.
Okay.
Just last Wednesday.
Yeah.
Well, I'm back.
Time flies with Trump in charge.
Do
you
go anywhere?
Do anything?
Yeah, I
was actually up in the Eagle River area.
Family gathering rent some cottages up there on a lake.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, and spend some time out in Backwoods and nice.
Yeah.
Good deal.
Welcome back.
It's a
nice place
up
there.
Yeah, I'm
actually still up there and this is
not me Right, right,
right,
okay,
so
Oh, it looks like I've started something.
I have wondered it.
You know, we were talking off the air about the Smithsonian and, you know, how negative our US history was.
And you talked about the Black Museum that they have there.
The
African American History Museum in DC is fascinating.
If you haven't been there, it's worth a visit.
before they start closing some of the floors.
The design of the museum is interesting because it's built floor by floor and the bottom floor is extremely dark, no windows.
And it's about slavery and it's sort of designed like a slave ship.
Each floor above it gets brighter.
and you reach the civil rights era and then there are windows and light is pouring in.
And so visually, it sort of gives you this sense of this journey from slavery to Jim Crow, to the civil rights era, to more modern times and powerful exhibits based on your discussion.
I do kind of wonder if they're going to close the bottom floor because it deals with with that history of slavery.
Well, the big thing here on
the screen was how bad slavery was is
something that really makes very angry.
So yeah, so yeah, the African-American Museum is on that target list, by the way.
Is that what it is?
No surprise there.
So
yeah, before before it closes, it is definitely worth a visit for anybody who gets out
in that direction.
Check it out while you can,
I guess.
Look at your latest sub-stack article here.
It's called Rising Above.
And you talk about, I just want to read the first sentence.
We live in a dishonest age and all the lying is giving fiction a bad name.
Pretty good.
So, expand on that.
You
know what we all say, we all say this, factor fiction.
Yeah, right.
The reality is that fiction is based on fact.
When you write fiction, yes, you use imagination, and yes, you blend facts in creative ways, but you do it to get to deeper truth.
You do it to create a broader understanding of what's going on in the world.
That's the
purpose of fiction.
You mentioned this about writing your book.
Absolutely.
This is exactly what you did in your book.
Absolutely.
I chose fiction
to tell that story.
It's basically the story of my late brother, Dan.
But I just felt that given what we're going through right now, given the challenges and the circumstances of life today, Dan passed away over 20 years ago.
And I wanted to write a story that related to the threats and the crises of the current moment.
But it's basically his story, but I didn't write a character named Dan, and I didn't write the story as Dan's exact life story.
But yeah, he was the inspiration for the story, and I wouldn't have that story to tell if he hadn't been my brother.
And so I chose fiction because of its ability to allow the imagination to take us to a place that...
the everyday news accounts will never take us.
And to get us to deeper understanding and to get us to wrestle with challenges that otherwise were inclined to just look the other way and overlook.
Was it Einstein that you quoted?
At the end of the article,
yes.
Imagination is everything.
It's a preview of life's coming attractions.
I love that line.
And, you know, if there's ever been a more logical mind than Einstein's, I don't know what that mind would be or whose mind that would be.
But, you know, he said that, you know, logic will only take you so far.
It'll take you from point A to point B. But imagination can take us everywhere.
And it can even take us to the point where we can see what's being done to us to fully comprehend.
this current moment that we're going through.
And so, yeah, I mean, imagination is our way out of this trap.
We have to be able to imagine the future that we want rather than the reality that we're currently stuck with.
Stuck in,
yeah.
Yeah.
We're in a way, we're trying to protect the reality that we had at one
time.
Right, you know, that's the thing that concerns me the most, is that when you think about what's going on in America right now,
There are forces that are trying to protect what we had, and there are forces trying to take us back before
we had those things.
They want to destroy those things and take us back to the time before those things even existed.
But what we don't have in this country right now is the imagination to think about what we'll be,
or
what
could
be.
And that's what's missing in this, in our politics, it's what's missing in our society in general.
And that's exactly where fiction can take us.
But, you know, people equate fiction with false.
They think that it's a synonym for false.
And they see it, you know, we've all been taught to think that fiction is just fantasy.
But what it really is, is the imagination.
about what we could be, where we could go.
We
need that.
One of the points you made was, it's making us numb to dishonesty.
Well,
that's why all the lying is all about it.
Right, exactly.
And what I'm looking at here is, using my imagination, projecting off into the future by three and a half years, will we have anything left?
Is there anything left really?
You know, I think, you know, if we use our imaginations now, it's dystopian future is what we're looking at.
What we maybe are
going to be involved in.
But you know, John, this kind of takes us back to many past conversations we've had about that great book, The Fourth Turning that I've talked
about
before or the other book that I've mentioned, The Upswing.
And, you know, and periodically we go through these phases where things are
are built and then we go through phases where people get disillusioned with that architecture and they start to tear that down.
And I think we're going through that time where things are being torn down.
But at the end, when everything's been burned to the ground, out of those ashes can spring new growth.
It happens in every forest when there's a forest fire.
What happens right afterwards?
All these new things start bursting from the soil and and you and you see that landscape greened over in a hurry It doesn't stay charred forever.
I don't know,
you know,
but we've got to imagine what we want to see grow
We saw a forest fire up there in Canada and all that resulted from it was the letter from the Republicans
saying
stop sending your smoke down here
Isn't that a great metaphor for what our society is stuck in right now?
It's like all they can see is they can't understand that fire is a part of nature and it happens.
And unfortunately the air currents will sometimes blow that smoke
in our
direction.
But it's not Canada's fault and nor can they stop it.
What we have to think about is, globally, is what we can do to prevent more wildfires in the future.
And we got to, at some point, come to terms with the fact that the climate is changing in this world and that that is producing more severe storms, it's producing more wildfires.
And we got to get to the root of the problem.
And Canada can't do that alone.
And a letter from a few members of Congress can't wave a magic wand over the problem.
It's not gonna solve anything.
We gotta think bigger than that.
Well, they're denying that
there is
climate change.
Absolutely.
They don't want, they want, they just want to blame somebody.
Oh, it's Canada's fault for not managing their forests properly.
Same thing
with California or Wyoming, Montana, wherever there's a forest fire, they didn't maintain their forests up there, they didn't
rake them.
try to do that in Canada it's quite a forestry forested area but anyway you know I just I always think of this as you know a time where we're we're trying to make sense out of
Something that doesn't make any sense at all and that is you know, we're hearing a lot of lies constant line They have taken over the US government's information on the internet and turned that into lying They've done everything possible to make lying just normal.
It's what we expect now now.
We have physicians
associations coming out with their own statistics and recommendations because the government now can't be trusted to provide that information.
And this is not the first time in human history that we've gone through such a phase where they're not telling these lies.
for the sake of just telling lies.
They're telling these lies to desensitize us to dishonesty and then make us more prone to their propaganda.
That's why they tell the lies, is to get us to the point where they can control us.
And that's happened before, many times over the course of human history.
And when, what were the most powerful ways that that was fought in the past?
Think about George Orwell.
Oh,
yes.
With 1984.
And with Animal Farm.
What was he doing?
But using fiction
to tell a story
that cut to the core of what was being done to humanity and took people to a higher place, a better place.
And we need to invoke imagination today to fight this.
And yeah, so I'm just struck by how...
how the dishonesty of our age is
giving
fiction a bad name.
And where
would people have been without Orwell to expose what was being done to them?
Talking with Mike McCabe here, sub-stack author and blogger.
And yeah, so where are the George Orwells of today?
Where are the leaders of today that, you know, we can, I mean, it seems like it's so, we need somebody to break through all these lies and show us a path to the future.
But
Is that the way it's going to happen?
Yeah, I think some of the Orwells are on Comedy Central.
Well, yes.
And then some of the Orwells are on Substack.
You
find them in
different
places, and some of them are humorists, and some of them are satirists, and some of them are powerful fiction writers.
748.
Can you stick around for a couple more minutes?
We have a question about putting up guardrails
on the internet.
All right.
OK, we'll be back with more with Mike McCabe on John and Gordy in the Morning, WMDX.
WMDX.
John and Gordy in the morning and we have a text here from Mark.
He says, ban the movie A Miracle in 34th Street.
The guy playing Santa Claus encouraged a young girl and of course the rest of us to use our imaginations and believe.
Believe.
That's
right.
A very good point,
Mark.
Thank you.
We're back with our resident optimist, Mike McCabe, looking into the future.
And we have a few more minutes here.
So let's see, we were going to talk about AI and setting up some guardrails.
And the story that we had this earlier this morning was age restrictions.
Yeah, I heard you talking about that on
my drive into
the studio.
Yeah, verifying the age Google is trying to put this in place.
I don't know when that's going to happen.
I believe the United Kingdom might be putting this in place or the EU, which is even bigger and more important.
Yeah.
I find this to be unsettling and dangerous, especially in the information age and how AI is being used now to calm all this information and make it very easy to access for those people who want to have access to it.
It'll become a business and those businesses will advise corporations and businesses on employees who are applying at their businesses.
Tell them everything that they've ever done on the internet.
And you know, these people might have just done a search because a friend of theirs had said something about it and they wanted to find out a little bit more or their kid or something like that.
It's so unfair.
It's so wrong.
This is the wrong way to set up a guardrail on the internet.
That's my opinion.
What do you think?
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that kids are really creative creatures.
Yes.
And I'm figuring that even if they try to do this, kids are going to figure out a way around it.
Yeah.
Because they are very creative creatures, and they'll figure out a way to game it.
The other thing that I think is that it's just, what I find unwise is this human impulse.
to try to mechanize the solving of human problems and have some kind of machine, some
kind of
technology solve the problem for us when, in fact, these are human problems.
And we need to deal with that on a human level.
And so it's destined to fail.
But the price we may pay for a solution that will, I think, surely fail is gonna be a high price.
It's going to be a high price in terms of our own privacy.
It's going to be a high price in terms of the extent to which our behavior is surveilled, not perhaps by the government, but by big tech.
I just think it's folly to think that we can
have a machine do our thinking for us.
Speaking, I mentioned Substack before where some great authors can be found.
Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, has a wonderful article out on Substack.
If you haven't seen it, I really encourage you all to check it out.
He talks about the three kinds of jobs that exist.
And he said there are thinking jobs, there are making jobs, and there are caring jobs.
Fits them all into those three categories.
And he said that
the making jobs, you think about manufacturing, making jobs and the thinking jobs, which could be anything from journalism to anything that involves creative thought.
AI will eventually take over those jobs and then all will be left with our caring jobs, whether it's a nurse or a mental health counselor.
But those will be the jobs that will be left because the making jobs and the thinking jobs will be taken over by AI.
And I think,
That is not a good recipe for humanity because human beings, by their nature, want to make things.
And they also are blessed with the ability to think.
And why we would want to take a machine and say, you do our thinking for us.
You do our making for us is beyond me.
And
I think it's a path that takes us nowhere good.
And so to me, the subject you talk about, about guardrails.
for the internet.
I would extend that to guardrails for AI as well.
It's part of a much bigger conversation we have.
Why do we want machines to do our thinking for us?
And why do we want machines to do our making for us?
And why do we want machines to keep track of what we're doing?
Yeah, and you know one of the things that happened to me a while back a long time back was my kid They were playing music and they were downloading music off the internet and we got a warning from the internet Provider that we are illegally downloading music and then our subscription order
connection will be disconnected if it happens again.
Now it's something we were unaware of as parents and we didn't know anything about it.
We had no idea what songs that they downloaded.
They had no idea what they were doing or the songs that they downloaded.
So there was no way for us to fix whatever we had to fix or should look out for.
And what they did on the internet is on our record.
So because we use the same IP.
So the thing here is that this is really a huge, huge problem if they decide to verify ages on the internet.
I can't see any reason why this would be a good idea.
And I'm shocked.
I'm surprised that politicians would jump on board and the EU or United Kingdom would think that this is a good idea.
I don't know how.
Anybody has come to this conclusion that we should do something this crazy.
Yeah, you I mean you've described the downsides really well, but to me if you look for an upside I I'm thinking it won't work
If you think it's going to solve something, it won't work.
It'll ultimately fail, but we will still pay those prices that you described.
Yeah.
We got to leave it there.
Mike McCabe, thanks for joining us.
Check out his sub step.
Thanks for helping me out dealing with this.
Yes, we always appreciate your counseling sessions with John.
Thanks, Mike.
We'll see you next Wednesday.
That's it for us.
Stephanie Miller is next and tomorrow on the show, Tim Slecker will talk education and we'll find out the latest at the Supreme Court with Jim
and Santel.
All right.
We hope you have a great day.
So
long.
