From the depths of a digital abyss, where truth drowns in a sea of clickbait and algorithms, a beacon ignites.
From the heart of Badgerland, from our studios on State Street in downtown Madison, Wisconsin, it's John and Gordy on 92.7 WMDX.
Let's see here here.
Shoes, I got those on.
Good shoes.
All right, let's see here.
I've got my tie-dye shirt on again today.
Yeah.
Because they didn't change from yesterday.
Just sleeping your clothes?
Sleeping my clothes.
Again?
Revealed.
Yep.
I admit it.
Well, good morning.
Well, good morning to you.
Happy hump day.
Happy Wednesday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How we doing
so far?
I don't know.
Still waking up?
Still, no.
No, it's just so frustrating, it really is.
You know, I had gone through the whole Scott Walker era, and I created a Wisconsin map that showed a dog peeing on parts of the state.
And you know when a dog pees they're marking their territory sure and that dog represented the Republicans and they'd go around the state and they destroy this and destroy that and they'd mark their territory by destroying things throughout Wisconsin I made that map I put it on my blog demo curmudgeon.blogspot.com Don't try to find it
It seems like YouTube and and it's handling of YouTube channels is really bad You know, is it?
Yeah, they took they took out all my videos the old videos They just took them out, you know that they they created them as private videos Instead of public videos, which everybody could go back and watch and find out what people really said politicians, you know
their point of view.
I want it out there, but they hid it all by making it private.
Now, I could watch it, but no one else can.
Anyway, they're doing that now.
The magas are doing that to the country.
They're marking their territory, and it's going to be very unusual, very hard for us to unmark what they're doing to this country.
And I am specifically focusing in on the national parks, removing historical items that disparage, in quotes, disparage the US.
Today is the day.
It's the deadline day to remove all of the signs, all of the statues and get this, the memorials that dot this country and our parks.
So I.
I haven't heard anything about that.
There's a deadline
for the
removing.
Yeah, they had all this time to have park visitors to go through with the QR code and mark the monuments, statues and signs that they disagreed with.
And, you know, this is, I know it's shocking, doesn't it?
It's just, again, they want positive.
Reinforcement that we're the greatest country in the world and you can't question that and if you do we're coming after you I think Pam Bonnie said something like that
Walking back some of those comments.
Oh, she can't walk back those comments Well, the whole thing here is that you know hate speech is something that Republicans said net doesn't exist
They stuck to that for like 15, 20 years.
And Pan Badi comes out and said, no, we're going after people with hate speech.
Well, what is hate speech?
We don't even know what hate speech is.
And we'd have to probably arrest every one of those neo-Nazis out there marching down the streets of our great cities, right?
But we allow that.
That's the First Amendment right people have.
We detest it.
We find these groups informed.
abhorrent and and and it's just one of those things that you know we have to just live with it was hard for me to accept as a teenager and a kid seeing these really nasty groups out there i thought well how could they how could they allow this but you know i didn't understand the constitution at the time but anyway that's one of those situations where you know she's not going to be able to walk this back the administration is
Full bar going for this they're gonna go after they this is their opportunity to break up every left-wing group that they think is a left-wing group Hmm, and and this is their opportunity.
They see the door open and they're going to rush through it Okay, well, I'm I'm done.
Is that good?
I had
Good morning to Dominic Lee, our producer.
Oh, Dom is here.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing pretty good.
We have an expired session.
Every single time.
Why is
that?
I don't
know.
That's a great question.
It's on a timer or something.
It might be.
But anyway, just something to think about.
We'll cover the parks thing tomorrow.
We'll get to more of those details.
But what they took out, what they thought about it, it's just outrageous.
It is so stupid.
It's mind-numbing.
God.
All right.
Well, a little bit later on, we're also going to be talking to Wolf Repass.
He's a financial tech person.
Going to find out everything you wanted to know about bitcoins and that kind of stuff.
When are we going to talk to him?
Crypto.
Crypto.
When are we talking
to him?
At about $6.50.
OK.
Yeah.
And Mike McCabe will join us in our seven o'clock hour.
He's got a new sub-stack article out.
And weather-wise today, we're at 59 degrees, highs in the mid-80s again.
Mid-80s.
Yeah.
Yeah, warmer than normal.
I think this Bitcoin thing is interesting because now they're offering these Bitcoins to people who make purchases as a bonus.
So they accumulate these Bitcoins as a bonus, which means it's there.
You can't cash it, it's not cash.
I still don't understand any of this.
Well, that's why we're
going to talk to
you.
Yes.
Yes.
And Catherine is the one who instigated this because she is also very curious about Bitcoin.
And we're all kind of curious about it.
If you don't understand it and it just sits out there, you know, Trump is making billions and billions of dollars of Bitcoin investments.
And none of it, of course, is cash, so we can't use it.
But someday it will be cash, and he will be
able to use it, and he'll be a
billionaire.
He doesn't have much time.
A little on the older side.
If we had more time, certainly.
There's a new book out on the onion.
Somebody has written a book about that.
Who is it?
Who wrote the
book?
Let's see.
Maybe I know
who it is.
Scanning through, is it subject to Anthony Zulgadia?
Is that right?
Or no, that's the person who took the picture of the onion.
Doesn't say here.
Does not
say here.
We'll
have to do a little research on this.
The onion, of course, was born in Madison back in 1988.
And we had Scott Dickers on
our
cable access
way back then.
He's the guy who helped create the onion.
And not only that, but Scott Dickers participated in, I think, the very first Onion Radio broadcast.
We had it at WMAD, you and I. We asked him, could you do this?
And he came up with a broadcast news edition of The Onion.
And it was just great.
Their first foray into radio.
That's right.
On the John Peterson show?
Yes, and I'm sure it's in the book.
No one certainly called me and asked me, hey, how did all of this happen?
I feel like I'm lost in time.
Well, we'll
have to buy the book and see.
No one's ever given us credit for the onion, and no one's ever given us credit for triple M, being the triple M station that it is.
Scrum.
I might as well just... That's why I came up with Demo-Kermudin.
I just like to complain.
Okay,
alright.
Is it time for Would You Rather?
Dom, what do you think?
Is it time to change the
subject?
Yeah, let's go to Would You Rather.
From the onion to Would You Rather, let's do it.
Okay, well that's a smooth transition.
Alright.
What?
I could not hear it all that time.
Alright.
Amazing stuff.
First question.
Would you rather live for one whole year eating nothing but prime ribeye steak or crispy fried chicken?
It's kind of based on what you like more.
That's pretty much it.
Well, they're pretty fatty both.
Both items, I don't know.
I would say fried chicken, for me personally.
Fried chicken?
I'm gonna go for
the steak.
Steak, really?
Yeah.
I'm gonna go for the chicken, but I prefer the steak.
I know meat's not the greatest thing for you
Yeah,
and
steaks too.
I don't know it steaks takes forever to finish and it always gets all over my hands And
I could always knock some I can knock some of that breading off if I wanted to oh, yeah true Yeah, yeah, so I could protein the healthy way right thinking smarter not harder
Alright second question would you rather all your french fries stay perfectly fresh which for some reason they never do
all
about food or Your pillow is always perfectly cool
Bizarre
choice Wow,
I like the pillow being cool.
I
would say the same thing.
Yeah.
No no I'm fresh
French fries.
I hate old French fries.
You
know, they really have to be right out of the fryer.
You're right.
For me, I just... I'm kidding.
They get soft.
They get soggy way too easily.
And the problem with French fries is that they don't fry them long enough.
I like them brown.
I don't... I don't... Mushy French fries.
What is that?
What are they trying to do to us?
Just fry the damn thing, make them dark brown and...
and they become crunchy and tasty.
You like ketchup with your fries?
I do not like ketchup.
Really?
I was gonna say, hey, but I don't hate it.
It's just that, yeah.
In fact, if they're mushy, then yeah, ketchup, fine.
Okay.
How about a little salt?
I know.
You know, I'm trying to lighten up the salt intake.
Okay, is that it for would you rather?
Where's the clothes?
I honestly forget that I have a clothes now.
I'm so used to like not having a clothes and Okay,
well that's going out without any clothes.
No, we gotta do it.
We gotta do it
now
Have a good
have a good one every
one
It's very
good.
It
gets
buried in the reverb.
Yeah, lost in the mix.
Okay, in a little while we're going to talk to Wolf Repass, financial tech expert, crypto, bitcoins.
He'll know his stuff.
He's got all that down.
We've got a lot of stuff coming up on the show today.
And
Mike McCabe, too.
We're going to
play a little mind game
with everybody.
A mind game?
Yeah.
What's that?
It's your phone.
It's my phone.
I said something about Bitcoin and
Google picked up on it.
Telling us I gotta tell everybody.
I got it.
I I forgot this story.
What okay?
We got we got enough time.
Yeah, I think so.
We got up.
Yeah, we got I
was standing out
there in the lobby.
Yeah, and I asked I said Hey Google and I asked a question, right?
Yeah, and everybody's phone went off in all of the offices Everybody got the answer.
Yeah, everybody's walking around
like what's what's going
on?
Why is my phone going off?
Why do I want to know this?
That was pretty funny.
Yeah, that was crazy
stuff.
That's
good.
OK.
We're just getting going on this Wednesday.
You can join us.
Give us calls.
6088798255 or jump on the Civic Media app.
Send us a voice note or a text.
Coming back with more of John Peterson, Gordy Young, and Dominic Lee after this.
It's
Wednesday, I'm still not you know, I'm grouchy.
I don't know what it is.
I'm just grouchy tonight.
Not get enough sleep last night.
I got a lot of sleep man.
I've been trying to get a lot
of sleep
the last couple of days.
It's 23 minutes past the hour.
It's 59 degrees highs in the
mid 80s today.
Oh you
bet.
The person wrote the book on the onion and it's called the book is called funny because it's true and Christine Wentz WENC Christine Wentz
wrote that I don't
know that person I don't either But it says discover the real truth behind the original fake news with this in-depth history of beloved humor publication the
onion wonder if she went to
the demochromudgeon site again, demochromudgeon.blogspot.com.
You can go to the John and Gordy media world show.
And then search out in that tab, search out.
the onion, and you'll come up with a couple of programs.
We've got Scott Dickers on there, who came up with the onion, and we've got two reporters from the onion, and we treated each and every one of their important stories as if it were real.
Yeah, so that was a long time ago.
That
was about somewhere around 1990.
Yeah,
somewhere in that area.
Yeah, way back.
Yeah, way back.
I'm thinking now that maybe it was fun.
All right.
All right,
uh, yeah
And we were talking about French fries.
You know,
I do like crispy brown French fries and Lynn out in Golden Valley.
Yes.
She had a little tipper.
She said two years commuting to Idaho for work, saw lots of potato documentaries.
What
do they have on
billboard?
You sit there and watch a billboard, documentary and potatoes.
And she says McDonald's dehydrated their raw fries to make them crispier.
After
a while, that's a great
idea.
If you take the moisture out, a little bit of the moisture out, they do get
much crispier.
Katherine, go a little farther down there.
I'm not bringing Grumpy John to the WBA job fair today.
That's right, the Wisconsin broadcasters are having a big job fair from 10 to noon at, I don't know, what's the hotel over there?
Marry out west.
Thank you.
Yes.
Oh, oh Dom's gonna be there too.
I will be there.
Yes, I'll be you know, I'll be basically
but
you're not invited anymore
It's right next to my house All right, well come on.
I guess I'm I don't know.
Why do I want to go there?
No one wants a Donner like
me
Good idea.
Grumpy John.
All right.
You know, we're obviously, you know, going to get into some heavy topics here.
AI advising kids.
This is an area they're getting into all sorts of things.
And I mentioned yesterday and I wanted to get to it.
It's the Stephen Miller rant.
I just, you know,
It's just something funny about him.
He's just amazing.
He really is.
Where does he come up with this stuff?
It's so wonderful to see somebody just be so creative on the spot.
Well, what's he ranting about?
It's
such a horrific
way.
What's he got going
on?
Oh, he's angry about the left wing and they want to destroy us.
This really got him going, you know.
He was on...
a rant for immigration for a long period of time, but now he's found a new subject and he likes this one.
Okay, he really likes this one.
And then Ilan had a few things to say and Morning Joe, they had something to say about the Civil War that is supposedly coming up here.
And Laura Loomer, what a strange, unusual person.
She wants to lock up the left and then we've got
Confirmation bias everywhere is something like that confirmation bias.
Hmm.
No, it's it's where you Reinforce what people already believe is true even though it isn't true So that you just keep repeating it in other words if you read a lie long enough it becomes the truth But yeah, that's it.
That's what you're doing when you reinforce this stuff It's confirmation bias and I've got a great example of that from Fox News.
It's just wonderful Okay, and you hear that you'll know what?
confirmation biases.
Are we going to play that for our listeners now or are we going to hold that over?
Well, that's all part of idiocracy.
Oh,
idiocracy.
You're just previewing
idiocracy.
Look, I'm just, well, come on, I'm just trying to get everybody up and ready for work today.
Grant people's attentions.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know, just a little taste of what's coming up.
Well, good.
Apologized to anybody that was on the edge of my chair there for a minute.
Bringing them down here, you know, it's, you know, we've got so many things coming up tomorrow too, you know.
The right wing seems to want to put kids on the front line.
Everything they're doing again is for kids.
Now, it was easy to do with CRT in the schools because there wasn't CRT in the schools, but they created that scenario and people bought into it.
And everybody talked about kids and saving the kids.
And they put them on the front lines and all the parents stood behind them because they don't have the courage of their own thoughts and ideas.
So anyway, the kids are out there again now on the front lines and the culture war.
And it's really disgusting.
And we'll get into that tomorrow.
OK.
And coming up in our seven o'clock hour, as he does every Wednesday, Mike McCabe will join us.
And this time around, he's got a new substack article about reverse engineering.
There's a reason it's called doom-scrolling and not hope-scrolling.
So he'll tell us more about that in our next hour.
Yeah, okay, and
I'm sure
he's Mr. Positive, you know.
Well, yes
Somebody's got to be
I gotta say I hope
scroll a lot then
do you hope scroll?
Yeah way too much.
You're hoping for a good story.
I appear amongst the bad stories.
I always hope so.
The doom and gloom stories Yeah,
and coming up in about 20 minutes.
We'll talk to Wolf repass and he's gonna tell us about Bitcoin and crypto Financial stuff will learn all kinds of things everything you wanted to know about Bitcoin.
We were gonna start from the beginning because none of us understand it.
That's right
All right, Midwest Food and Farm Report is coming up, and then we're back with more of John Peterson, Gordy Young, and you, dear listener.
Human evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.
There's no natural predators within the Earth.
Oh my god!
There is a place without boundaries.
A place without limits.
Welcome to Costco.
I love you.
A place that is about to be... violated.
Diagrocy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
WMDX, 92.7, John and Gordy in the morning.
It's true, I haven't really talked about my home away from home, Costco, lately.
Yeah, why is that?
I'm waiting for it to become a city.
It will someday, just like in idiocracy.
Okay,
wow.
Can't wait till that day because you'll be there at the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Ribbon cutting ceremony.
Do you write the front row?
We've got a few clouds this morning.
We should be in for a good deal of sunshine mixed in with some clouds here and there.
59 degrees currently, highs today in the mid 80s.
It's going to be another warm one.
Yeah.
All right.
Just talking about something prior to idiocracy here.
Yeah.
Well, we were kind of talking about idiocracy in a way.
It's just monuments.
Day today, it's a deadline for Monuments in our national parks right to be taken down if they're not positive Okay, and and Mark wrote in surprise Trump hasn't insisted on the statue of Hans Christian Hague Be removed from the Wisconsin State Capitol because he helped steal slaves and helped them escape to Canada into violence of the Fugitive Slave Act
And he was an immigrant from Norway, one of those socialist countries.
So I mean, you know, all
those
reasons, that's,
that's a
negative that should be taken
out.
We know we don't want that kind of stuff around here.
No
sir.
No sir at all.
I don't know where I was going with that accent.
You don't do a lot of accents.
You're right.
That's why.
Okay.
Phone lines are open.
6-0-8-8-7-9-8-2-5-5.
And you can call us or text us on the Civic Media app.
All right.
Free to download, free to use.
This is Idiocracy.
Oh,
let's talk about something, Scott.
brought up here in our text.
See, we get your text and we wanna talk about the subjects you are interested in.
That's the way it works.
And he says, are you fellas gonna talk about Constitution Day?
Monday in the school districts, they're told by the Ed Department, the Federal Ed Department, under secretary to honor Constitution Day in school or lose federal funding.
There you go, forced nationalism.
You love that stuff, huh?
Okay.
really Constitution Day that missed I didn't have that on my radar it's
never it's never been mandated before everybody can you know and participate if they'd like to in their schools but it's it's now being used by this administration to press and force that nationalism on us you know we're the greatest nation in the world even though we have fallen well behind all the other nations at being great
But
they
don't
actually, they haven't read the Constitution.
No, they don't even know what the Constitution is.
And so now it's being mandated or you don't get federal funding.
So that's our first story and thank you Scott
for
contributing to the show.
Yes.
All right.
I've got so much stuff here, right?
You
know, I'm just paging through everything that I have.
Got a big stack of stuff.
I do.
I do.
So why don't we get to AI?
It's helping kids now.
Experts warn that some kids may be confusing chatbots, bots with actual human relationships.
I don't think they're confusing it.
It's just they probably prefer it.
So
this
is cut 60.
Do we have cut 60?
About...
Chatbots, Dom
is shaking his head, no.
I don't see anything about Chatbots on cut 60.
Well, why don't you try last month?
I'll try last month as well.
Give me a sec.
Holding onto this for a while.
It's
not like this one is gonna get old though.
It's like something in your refrigerator.
It's got a little bit of mold on it, but you can knock that mold off.
It's just as good.
It's like
aged cheese, you know.
It
gets better as you store and save it.
Nothing, huh?
Yeah.
Maybe I'm gonna check even previous months prior, okay?
Yeah,
why don't you do that and I'll just go on to the next story I gotta watch myself here.
I saved these stories for a long period of time.
Okay.
It is time once again to get into and enjoy The tonal quality of Stephen Miller's voice.
Oh good.
Yeah, I'm waiting for this
one.
Yeah, okay Stephen Miller vowed that the Trump administration would dismantle and alleged that
domestic terror movement that he linked to the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Now I'm unfamiliar with this movement, just like I'm unfamiliar with all the checks that I'm getting from George Soros.
No one keeps me updated on any of those checks or whether they're being deposited.
This could be a big crime.
Somebody stealing my money.
But and a plus, they don't get a lot of the the memos that the Republicans say we get in order to, you know, come to some.
March the March.
March
or March.
Walk the talk
and talk the walk.
So anyway, he said, Stephen Miller said this, we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.
OK.
We don't know where they are, but okay.
He says, we are going to use every resource.
We have the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, destroy.
Always a positive message.
Where does he come up
with this stuff?
I
know.
He must be a...
Well, the guy you go to at a party.
OK, I'll tell you what, I don't know.
I don't want to steal any of his thunder here.
Why don't we listen to him say this stuff?
This is cut 97.
OK.
Where the left calls people, enemies of the Republic calls them fascists, says they're Nazis, says they're evil, says they have to be removed, and then prints their addresses.
What do you think they're trying to do?
Calm down,
man.
They are trying to inspire someone to murder them.
That is their objective, that is their intent.
And when you see online, Sean, as we've seen for the last few days, tape after tape after tape of federal workers, bureaucrats, staffers in the Pentagon, educators, professors, healthcare workers, nurses.
Celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
These are radicalized people.
There is a domestic terrorism movement in this country.
No,
let me tell you something anybody but the last message that Charlie Kurt gave to me before he joins his creator in heaven Heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence
He knew
that was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us and We are gonna do that under President Trump's leadership.
Yep
I don't care how it could be a Rico charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection, but we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism and that are committing acts of wanton violence.
It has to stop.
And my message is to all of the domestic terrorists in this country spreading this evil hate, you want us to live in fear?
We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile.
Oh, and you'll live in fear.
You know.
What organizations
is he talking about?
That's not
fearful all by itself,
right?
Yeah, I don't know what organizations.
Democrats are the worst organized people in the world.
Good luck going after these organizations that don't exist.
It really is surprising to hear these people talk about all of the people that are out there celebrating Charlie Kirk's death.
You know what?
Leave them alone.
It's none of your damn business.
What they say, what they do.
They're saying this stuff.
If they want to say it on social media, that's their problem.
Why do you have to get involved?
Why is it your business?
That's that's the question I have over all of this.
These are these are the these are the bad neighbors.
The Kravitz's living next door to you and they're all over the country reporting what their neighbors are doing.
I'm going to stop my neighbor from saying this.
Leave of Malone.
It's none of your business.
Do something constructive.
The Kravitz is just for people that don't know what that reference is, talking about the show Bewitched.
Back in the early 60s.
One of my political references.
The Kravitz is where the neighbors of the Bewitched people.
Gladys Kravitz was something else.
She always had the binoculars looking at the neighbors next door and looking at, you know.
Samantha and Darren
I know why do these people feel like they need to say anything about these people so what and then of course you know they talk about it and then it blows the whole thing out of proportion and then it seems like everybody's doing it everybody's celebrating you know the death of Charlie Kirk and they're not it's just a few people here and there leave it alone
do something else with your damn lives holy mackerel yeah all right and you know here just added note here the president uh said he's considering designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization and bringing organized crime charges against those racing funds for alleged
Agitation.
You know, we heard about agitation so much during the Walker administration because everybody in the protests were agitators brought in from out of state.
Oh boy.
Well,
that
never happened.
Anyway, Antifa is short for anti-fascist, which isn't a bad thing.
No.
It's an umbrella term for a diffuse far left number of groups all over the place that form instantaneously to fright right wing.
violence.
Yeah.
Right.
So I mean, that's the whole point.
Antifa isn't an organization.
Now, my mega friend in Milwaukee, so yes, so it's a, it's a global organization.
It's global.
Everything, you know, is bad globally.
Okay.
So anyway, I, again, I'm just so tired of these people making all these villains
off.
Yeah.
Let's go to the phones.
We have Kurt on the line with a comment or a question.
Good morning, Kurt.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
The only thing Stephen Miller was missing was a mustache and slamming his fist on a podium.
Yes.
Yeah.
It wasn't at something.
I mean, he just wouldn't stop.
It's just so energized over something that doesn't exist.
Right?
Time for the Shepherd's Suck.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
I wish that would work in this case.
All right, Kurt, thank you.
I appreciate it.
We got a text here from someone, Matt, in Middleton, actually.
If there were a poll for ugliest politician in American history, would Ted Cruz or Stephen Miller tie?
I think Miller would win when you take into account his voice and his views.
Did you see that?
I saw the video of Ted Cruz with a roller, paint roller.
Oh, yeah.
And he was
rolling
over a spray-painted sign
saying something
about...
Charlie Kirk.
Ah, yeah, and he didn't want that kind of stuff around.
I don't know where he was.
He was outside.
I think he was in
with a
big paint roller.
Yeah Yeah Paint oh, you know rolling paint out the thing here is okay It's it's it's ugly enough just having somebody spray paint something on a sign outside and people get to see it But then you have this guy with a big paint roller
Making a huge mess, dripping paint all over the cement, the sidewalk, everything else.
Yeah.
Well, he probably hasn't handled a paint roller in a while.
Yeah, somebody had to show him what it was.
It's not a good look.
It's nice to know he's, you know, trying to do his part.
Okay, let's see here.
We've got to come back here with, oh, our guest, our financial person, Wolf.
What is it?
Repass.
We'll join us next on John and Gordy in the morning.
We're going to talk financial stuff like Bitcoin and crypto finances.
Find out
all about it.
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Do we have do we have all for this?
Yes, we do.
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We had a little phone problem there.
Very big phone problem.
I don't know
what that was.
But we do have Wolf repass with us this morning.
Good morning, Wolf.
Welcome to
the show.
Good morning, guys.
How we doing?
Good.
Good.
Doing great.
So tell us about your company and what you have to do with Bitcoin.
We're not really
too familiar with crypto.
So help us out a little bit, Wolf.
You're with Fold Howl.
Holdings, right?
Yes.
Yes, we do businesses fold app And good news for you.
We're not one of those crazy complicated crypto companies.
We currently provide traditional banking products for consumers So we have a FDIC insured bank accounts debit card credit card bill pay functionality Peer-to-peer payments gift cards, etc things that you know and love today.
Yeah
uh... but we just put a bitcoin twist on them so instead of uh... earning points or cash back or miles we give you bitcoin rewards we also have a bitcoin exchange if you want to buy or sell it so pretty simple products uh... and we're just approaching it from uh... from from the bitcoin angle instead of the traditional banking angle
now we know that uh... there's not a lot of money involved in all that stuff so how do you exchange the bitcoin for actual products
Yes, our products are very similar to what a bank is today.
We earn interchange every time someone swipes their debit card We earn transaction fees when people buy Bitcoin or by gift cards So yeah, it's a it's a we're not selling a manufactured product ship to the door We're taking we're taking volume
through our platform and taking a little piece of it as we provide the functionality for that to happen.
Well, this sounds like a really good idea.
It kind of introduces people to Bitcoin and it's risk-free, none of the stuff that confuses most people like me and everybody else.
We can just accumulate those points and then do what with those points?
Yeah, so our rewards model is Bitcoin.
the the second you do something you swipe your debit card and you go to the store you go to the restaurant you earn bitcoin it sits there in your account you can see the value on day one as the price of bitcoin changes the value of your rewards change and then you can use that bitcoin to uh to to withdraw it to your own personal bitcoin wallet if you want to save it as an investment um you can cash it out into cash if you want to go then spend it at the coffee shop
Very similar to any other type of reward, but we believe that Bitcoin is a far superior type of loyalty program than some of the traditional ones that exist today.
Well, that sounds like a great idea.
So how do you get started doing something like this?
You open an account and then just goes from there, right?
Yeah, that's right.
You can find our app on iOS or Android.
Download it, sign up, like with any bank account, you do have to go through, know your customer identity checks, so put your information in, make sure you're a real person, and then you have an account, so pretty simple, no difference in opening a bank account anywhere
else.
So how is it tied in with the card that I use?
How do I
add it to the card?
That's a great question.
So you can add our card to Apple Pay, Google Pay, or whatever you're using.
Oh, okay.
Sure.
Sure.
Our platform also allows you to bring your own card.
So if you have debit cards from your local bank, for example, or credit card, you can bring it, add it to our platform, and make purchases through merchants directly through our platform.
Wow.
And so what is the app that you
recommending there, or you're promoting?
So our app is called Fold App, F-O-L-D, that's ours, and you can find us on any of the app stores today.
Okay, and if people want to find out more, do you have another website or a phone number you want to tell us
about?
Yeah, you can find us on foldapp.com, quite a bit of background on our products there.
We're pretty active on socials as well.
Primarily, we're on Twitter.
That's where the majority of the Bitcoin industry space lives.
So pretty loud on there as well.
So, you know, we're not real familiar with this part of the industry, but I think it's pretty innovative that you can add benefits to your cards where normally you're shopping for a card that has benefits.
This way you can add the benefits after you have the card, right?
Yeah, that's right.
So I think
We love it.
I think it's you know, Bitcoin comes off to a lot of people as confusing and intimidating and Approaching it from the rewards angle We view as a much less intimidating way to dip your toes into the industry to understand it see if you like it All right, and so
we we can again advise people to search out the fold that's f. OLD app and at Google
Store or wherever
and and or yeah Apple
right and add it to your list of benefits.
That's great stuff Wolf repass.
Thanks
for joining us.
Yeah, thanks for
the
information
Thanks guys.
Have a good one.
All
right.
Have a good day Okay, coming up in our next hour Mike McCabe will join us talking about his latest sub stack article We've got much more a no risk way to get into Bitcoin.
Yeah, I like that idea coming right back with more of John and Gordy
and turn your radio on scrambled eggs and toast to listen to this song 92.7 is the place to be WMDX with John and
Gordy!
I guess
I spoke to you.
It's John Peterson.
I'm Gordon.
Yeah.
Dominic Lee and
the producer booth and whether today highs in the mid to upper 80s.
Going to be another hot one right now.
60 degrees.
Yeah.
And a little while we'll be talking with Mike McCabe in about a half hour.
Substack blogger and author.
Let's cruise through some of the stuff here.
Elon Musk enjoys anti-immigration leader.
Tommy Robinson of Great Britain.
He read a, he led rather, a anti-immigration rally the other day and interviewed Elon via telephone.
And this is how that conversation went.
I'd like to play this for you.
This is cut 114, 114.
Okay, this is Ilan responding to Tommy Robinson, an anti-immigrant leader in Great Britain.
Let's
listen.
Ilan, none of this could have happened without you giving the British public access to the truth and giving us free speech and fighting for our free speech.
So on behalf of Great Britain and the British public, we're incredibly grateful, Ilan.
You may notice this T-shirt that I'm wearing as great British author, George Orwell.
What would Orwell think?
I think that's generally a good way to look at these things.
No.
He would want freedom of speech.
He would want the people to know what's real.
He want the people to fight against government oppression and fight for the truth and fight for the future of Britain.
Really?
What I see happening is
a destruction of Britain, initially a slow erosion, but a rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration, a failure by the government to protect innocent people, including children, who are getting gang-raped.
It's unreal that government has failed in its duty to protect its citizens, which is a fundamental duty of government.
This has got to stop.
It needs to be massive government reform.
So there you go.
People need to be in charge.
Not some bureaucracy that doesn't care.
You mean like you when you were here destroying our government, you were
unelected.
Who will say that
again?
That's Elon.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Bringing up the kids, of course.
You always bring up the kids.
Oh, God, they're so horrible.
This is what they think about.
I don't know why they're always thinking about raping children.
What is the preoccupation?
Don't get it.
Obviously, you know, it riles families up.
Yeah, it's just
stirring it up again.
But there's one problem with telling the truth all the time on X. It's not necessarily always true.
And here's one of the examples.
I can't believe he actually says, you know, the truth is right there on X. Well, Elon wiped out Grock's entire memory, knowledge base, regarding Charlie Kirk.
The fact that he was shot.
That was wiped out.
Yesterday, or the day before, Grock confirmed shooter Tyler Robinson was a griper.
Now a griper is a group that follows Nick Fuentes, who is a white nationalist.
So I wouldn't exactly say Tyler Robinson is a liberal, okay, and then go after the liberal network and destroy it.
So anyway, that was in Grock.
Grock confirmed that the shooter was Tyler Robinson, okay?
So the next day, he was... Grock was changed.
He... Grock was changed by Ilan.
And Grock claimed the shooting didn't even occur and says Charlie is still alive.
What?
That is Ilan erasing the truth and getting caught at it in the most obvious way possible.
Wow.
So X is whatever Elon wants it to be.
All right, then take it from there.
He's in
control.
Yeah, he is definitely in control.
So anyway, now who's in control of like Charlie Kirk's show, his podcast, JD Vance, he filled in for one day.
And this is what happened in a great dual.
audio clip here.
Somebody put this together.
He put first JD Vance lying about Kirk and a comment he made, okay?
But then he played the actual clip of Charlie Kirk saying what he didn't say, or at least JD Vance said he didn't say.
So listen to this first clip here that JD Vance says is a complete lie.
Listen to this.
The writer accuses Charlie of saying, and I quote,
Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously.
But if you go and watch the clip, the very clip she links to, you realize he never said anything like that.
He never uttered those words.
If we would
have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Katanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called the brrrrrr racist.
But now they're coming out and they're saying it for us.
They're coming out and they're saying I'm only here because affirmative action.
Yeah, we know You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously There you go.
I guess he did say it.
Yeah But if you just go to that link the clips right there, you know, it proves he didn't say it Wow
Let's go to the phones.
Dick is on the line.
608-879-8255.
Good morning, Dick.
What do you
got?
Good morning.
Um, I'm just wondering, it's kind of tied to this.
With this proclamation we got from Bondi, our attorney general, does that mean we won't be hearing from Trump and, uh, you know, most all of his staff, Miller, Bannon.
Yeah, the hate speech.
Oh,
yeah.
Does that mean we're not going to hear a word from these people anymore?
I hope so.
You're reading
my mind.
I do
too.
You're reading my mind.
I have that clip all ready to go.
Why don't we go to cut 115 and listen to what Pam Bondi said on a talk show being interviewed.
Listen.
Here we
go.
There's free speech and then there's hate speech.
And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society.
Do you see
More law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people So we show them that some action is better than no action.
We will absolutely Target you go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech anything and that's across the aisle.
Yeah,
okay
Well when it comes to Trump
Basically, all you get is hate speech or word salad dribble.
Is that what we're going to get instead of the hate speech?
Well, I'm glad to see them all go to the FEMA camps, personally.
They're going to have to go because they're just filled with it.
Well, we just heard Steven Miller.
Now, all of that was a rant.
That was definitely hate speech right there.
All right.
Dick, thanks
for your call.
Yeah, thank you.
Appreciate that.
Thank you.
Hey, got
bad news for everybody about TikTok.
You know, there was a deadline on TikTok too.
Yeah, what happened?
TikTok too.
All right.
Anyway, there was a deadline.
Oh, guess what happened?
The deadline came and went?
No.
Well, this is what happened.
Okay.
Okay.
He managed to get TikTok
purchased by, or part owners of, it's Oracle, Silver Lake, Anderson are going to control TikTok in the U.S., says the Wall Street Journal.
This is kind of a disjointed thing.
The message wasn't exactly clear.
But what happened here is that, and these are the responses to this, okay?
I just want to, this will clarify what has happened here.
So TikTok will become another Trump aligned social media outlet.
Okay.
Because Oracle, Silver Lake, Anderson are all very good friends and billionaire friends of Trump.
Okay.
And, and so therefore they have a tie-in.
It'll be part of the administration.
Here's another response.
And the Biden administration establishment dims fell right into their trap.
Congrats out of touch establishment Dems.
You've played yourself again and in the process further weakened democracy.
They could have done this.
They could have taken up tick tock.
Here's another one selling tick tock us domestic operations to the right wing Ellison family in Oracle who will combine CBS Paramount Time Warner CNN and tick tock to create one of the most effective right wing propaganda machines ever constructed.
So now it that
fine tunes, what the original message was.
So there weren't a lot of stories written about this, but TikTok has been basically taken over by the right wing.
All right.
Unbelievable.
So we'll see
what
happens there.
We'll
see if
it has the same effect that Elon has on Grok.
And everyone around my age uses TikTok all day, every day.
So that's terrible news.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's terrible news.
It might be censored in some way, shape, or form.
At least we don't know yet.
But, you know, TikTok is vast.
You can get, you can doom scroll forever on TikTok and come up with the worst recipes ever.
Mankind has ever seen.
Okay.
Oh boy.
Okay.
Inflation is back.
I'm trying to get through a lot of these stories because they were.
We're running, you know, there are too many stories.
Okay.
Conservative pollster Frank Luntz reported on social media, grocery inflation is back.
It's the highest monthly increase since August of 2022.
Virtually all major grocery categories are now more expensive than they were a year ago.
Are people complaining about that?
We should
be.
Luntz provided a link to the source Axios, article titled, grocery inflation's highest since 2022 as Trump
Tariffs pile up the article site's data, including a 5.6% change in consumer price indexes for meats, poultry, fish, and, oh, eggs.
Eggs may be going back up.
You never know.
Great.
Why was the bird flu that did that?
Okay.
So those prices continue to climb,
you know, just a steady climb.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Isn't it wild?
All right.
How about this now we were talking about Tyler Robinson being part of You know the white nationalist movement basically, but you know, he was all over the place as a gamer He used that as kind of a decoy set it out there But he's he also allegedly Tyler Robinson is seen in a picture squatting low in a black track suit with three white stripes down the sleeves and the pants and a flat cap pulled over his eyes
Tyler Robinson is actually performing a so-called slouch called Slav squat.
Slav Slavic Slav squat meme comes from the Pepe Frog cartoon.
You know Pepe?
Yeah, Pepe.
Yeah, Pepe.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
They use that in a white nationalist movement.
Not all the time.
It's a comic strip.
And it's the same picture as the squatting frog Pepe.
Okay.
So he was just mimicking what Pepe was doing and
then
again it's a white nationalist movement.
So he is again not a liberal and he's not part of the liberal network that now the administration is going out and
destroy.
Yeah.
And I hope we're not part of that network.
We could be
and they
couldn't look at us and say, oh, well, they're part of it too.
Okay.
I mean, it's all in what they say, what they believe.
They're
in charge.
That's it.
Okay.
We will continue in a moment, 19 minutes past the hour.
When we come back, we'll check the weather with Brittany Merlot.
Next on John and Gordy in the morning, WMDX.
Stay street where dreams come alive Everybody's buzzing like bees around
the hive
Stay
street
I really want to go there Lots of happy people And a guy in underwear Stay street
WMDX John and
Gordie in the morning on State Street a block away from the capital in the capital city Madison, Wisconsin and a good morning to everybody out there.
It's a Beautiful sunny day.
Yes, it is and we can find out more about what's happening weather-wise with our WMDX meteorologist, Brittany Merlo.
Good morning,
Brittany.
How
are you?
Good morning guys.
How are you
good?
Okay, how are things wassa?
Um, sunny.
We're sunny.
We're good.
We're warm.
So no complaints here, finally.
What's
on your... Mosquitoes are out.
What's on your
t-shirt there?
Lie on the wild side on an airplane, an aerobatic airplane.
Oh,
yes.
There we go.
Love
it.
Love it.
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
You're
still taking lessons, flying lessons, right?
Oh,
ever so slowly.
Yes.
Okay.
Ever so slowly, but it is a blast up in the air.
Yeah.
I'm telling you, being able to feel that turbulence, feel that wind that I'm forecasting all the time.
Yes.
It's
a good
thing.
Well,
let's
get
it close to it.
Today's not going to be windy though, right?
No.
It's pretty calm.
Not at all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Super calm today, still pretty calm tomorrow too, still feeling like summer, mid-80s.
Dunny, no complaints.
We could see a small shower storm though by tomorrow evening and then of course we've got that low pressure system headed our way this weekend so more rain and maybe some thunder Friday night is possible.
Do slip a little bit in temperatures Friday down to the upper 70s and we hold the upper 70s for the weekend but yeah it's going to be a little bit of a wetter one with that system rolling through Saturday and Sunday.
That could linger into Monday too before we dry out next
week.
Alright.
Is it gonna feel more like fall next week?
Are we back to normal temperatures?
Yeah.
Not as bad as we were, you know, earlier, how we kind of really dipped down.
We'll just kind of be average here, sitting in those mid to upper 70s.
Okay.
All
right.
That sounds like good grilling weather again.
I think so.
It does.
Yeah.
Okay.
Very good.
Thank you, Brittany.
Yeah, Brittany.
You too.
Have a good day, guys.
All
right.
You take care.
See you later.
Okay.
We've got, let's go to the phones, 608-879-8255.
Charles has been waiting here for a while.
Good morning, Charles.
Hey, good morning, guys.
I had a question.
I don't know if I may have missed this, but have they said anything about this young man's social media footprint
yet?
We're talking about the shooter.
Well,
no,
they really haven't.
No.
They're just going by pictures and some of the things.
But of course, he's not saying anything.
They're making it more difficult.
And this space and time where we don't know too much, it creates a lot of speculation on the right wing in order to divide the country some more and then, of course, create these groups.
You suppose liberal groups out there organizing to destroy the country.
No, that's a good question though, Charles.
We know
we
haven't
figured we would have heard something by by now Unless it doesn't sit there near to yeah, it
was yeah
left
wing That's right, right.
Yeah, they're in charge of the information flow.
That's for sure Charles.
Thank
you.
How do you go ahead?
How do we how do we get to this?
Oh, I
don't know I'm sitting and I'm just thinking I'm like
You hear nothing more.
You guys talked about the grocery prices.
So if that's what most people voted for, you hear no complaining about the grocery prices and Palestine.
What's going on over there in Gaza?
You hear nothing about these anymore.
So I'm like, how did we allow ourselves as Americans to get to where we are now?
I mean, they're just trying to just take control over
everything
yeah And and of course distract us, you know with blowing up a little boats Off the coast of Venezuela.
Yeah, you know, it's just We don't know what they're doing exactly just blowing boats up.
We were supposed to take their word for it And I don't think too many people are believing anything the administration is saying at this point so
Yeah, I agree with you Charles.
There's not much going on that we can depend on at this point anymore, including the vaccine issues.
You know, now they've approved the updated COVID vaccine,
but only
for certain groups.
And in other words, that just increases the price for everybody else who wants their children or themselves to get that vaccine and protect themselves.
Haven't heard much about the Epstein files the last few days.
No.
No.
Oh, that's in the back burner.
Charles, thank you for your call.
Yeah.
We appreciate it.
All right.
Let's see.
Hey, we want to remind you that the Wisconsin Book Festival is happening in Madison, October 23rd to the 26th that brings together authors and readers of all ages and interests.
Don't miss out on New York Times bestsellers Jane Hamilton or Mary Roach alongside dozens of others as they gather for readings and conversations around their writing this fall.
You can find out more by going to our website, wmdxradio.com
Well, I'll tell you why.
We've got time for just this little cut here.
This is Trump on a lawsuit.
He's got against NBC and ABC, cut 118.
It's ridiculous as usual.
So let's
listen.
OK.
President Trump, who's won a pair of lawsuits against the three broadcast networks, is now escalating his battle against two of them.
ABC and NBC fake news, two of the worst and most biased networks in history.
give me 97% bad stories.
If that's the case, they are simply an arm of the Democrat Party and should, according to many, have their licenses revoked by the FCC.
I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our democracy.
Thank you.
That was a tweet basically from social media.
So anyway, that's an amazing thing to go after these
major networks, and you know the head of the FCC is definitely in the camp, the Trump camp, so he's, you never know this could actually happen.
It's 29 past the hour, we've got the Midwest Food and Farm Report, and when we return, Mike McCabe will join us, sub-stack blogger and author.
Stay with us, it's John Peterson, Gordy Young, coming right back.
The women
are...
WMDX John and Gordy in the morning.
92.7.
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Voice notice.
We'd love to hear from you and take your calls.
We have CJ on the line before we get to Mike.
Okay, let's just go up there and talk to CJ.
Good morning CJ.
What do you got for us today?
Good morning gentlemen.
You know, it is a sad situation where we're at.
Um, but I I don't know.
There's a survey that has come out.
Have you gentlemen heard of this?
Which one?
Um, from the national, I'm going to try to pronounce it here.
Um, the National Condigent Research Institute.
Hmm.
Okay.
Well, what, what's the
survey?
What was the survey about?
Well, they asked both I Think it was quite a number of people that identify as right or left and You know about political violence.
Yeah, yeah, whether it's justified or okay and The statistics or the the percentages would be graphically different on each side
And I'd like you to read some of the, it's quite a, you know, it's a research center that has a lot of accreditation, but for example, 59% of lefties believe supposedly in the survey of it's okay to destroy Tesla dealerships.
They find it acceptable.
or partially acceptable.
Um, you know, uh, what's the other, um, there's multiple 56% of self identifying liberals that killing president Trump can be partially justified.
56% you guys.
Isn't that scary?
Well, that is scary.
What about the right side?
Have they any opinions about destroying anything or killing anybody?
It's a It is a lot lower.
I think it's in the single digits.
Yeah, or Regardless, yeah, you know, it just scares the hell out of me.
It's not justified.
It shouldn't be 1% on either side, right?
Yeah,
yeah
All right, we're gonna get to our guest, Mike McCabe, but I appreciate your point on that and we'll certainly look that survey up, all right?
All right, well CJ thanks for that call Mike McCabe has joined us and and listening to our conversation So what is your feeling about this the idea that there is a civil war in this country?
And we're going to be fighting each other and killing each other off
What the heck is going on in this country?
Good morning, guys.
Happy to see you again.
Your deposit, we're looking for a positive spin on this.
Help
us.
Well, there's no spin in that question.
I don't know what civil war might look like nowadays because there's no Mason-Dixon line to be drawn.
It's
not
north against
South, right?
I don't know if it's you know, gonna be cities against small towns or I mean, you know, there would be civil wars Waged in every state in the union
because
because there's the political divide Exists in every state in the union.
So I don't know exactly what What would meet the definition of civil war or or how how we would reach that threshold, but there's no question that
The right sees the left as dangerous and sees all of the political violence coming from the left.
The left sees the right as equally dangerous and sees all of the political violence coming from the right.
And I think if you look at it objectively, there have been repeated...
Democratic victims of political violence and there have been repeated Republican victims of political violence.
And so political violence in truth has known no party boundary.
But yet the way the two sides see political violence is completely different.
One side sees the left as being the big threat, the other side sees the right as being the big threat.
But that goes way beyond political violence.
Everything about every public policy dispute in our country, every disagreement we have on public policy, one side sees the other side as being the force that's trying to destroy everything, and the other side sees it in exactly the opposite way.
So I guess in a way, that's civil war.
That might be the modern definition of civil war.
that kind of thinking and that kind of talk gets us precisely nowhere.
It doesn't get us an inch closer to figuring out how to live together peacefully and constructively and actually move our country ahead rather than dragging it down this pit of despair.
And then everybody seems to hate the media.
No matter which side they're on, we can point to the right wing media and the left.
But the thing
is, it's all on the internet.
But the thing is, for all the carping that's been done for decades now about the mainstream media, the traditional media, man, now we're getting a full dose of what it feels like when you don't get information from
trusted and trained journalists.
What we're getting now is nothing but gossip and speculation that is thrown out there on social media.
the real journalists have to then respond to all those reports, and they're basically reporting on all the gossip and speculation.
They're trying to find the truth, but they're sorting through nothing but gossip and speculation.
That's what our information system has devolved to, where it's just people throwing out stuff.
Some of it is deliberate lies.
But some of it is just rampant speculation.
It's the kind of stuff that happens at accident scenes and things where people will all of a sudden say, you know, I thought I saw this and I thought I saw that.
But now it all gets reported.
breathtaking speed, it all goes out there and people consume it, that is a recipe for propaganda.
Propagandists thrive in an environment where there is no truth, there are no facts, there is no reason to judgment about what information should be shared and what shouldn't.
If anything, this moment should reinforce for us that that evil demonized mainstream media
actually played a very important role in our society.
And we are losing, we're losing an information system, a reliable information system, which any society needs, and certainly a democratically governed society desperately needs.
And we're losing it.
And we're losing it fast.
See how much we've already lost.
We're only three quarters of a year into this four year term.
which is shocking.
And I'd like C.J.
But we've all got to take responsibility for pulling back from the brink.
I heard you talking about the accused shooter in the Charlie Kirk murder.
We don't know.
The simple truth is we don't know what his ideology was.
He might have been a liberal.
He might have been a right winger.
He could be fascist.
We don't know.
All we know is that he spent an awful lot of time in the recesses, the deepest recesses of the dark web.
He speaks the language
of the
gamers.
And they use that language to throw people off trails.
They use that language to confuse people.
They use that language to game people and to mock authorities who are trying to figure out what the heck they think and who they are and why they're doing what they're doing.
We don't know what this guy's background really is.
We don't know what his thinking really is.
And that's the truth.
And any responsible journalist would say, we don't have enough facts yet to draw any conclusions.
But the speculation still runs rampant.
And it's irresponsible.
I still think you can kind of draw a conclusion a little bit, because the Greipers, the ones who followed Nick Fuentes, they have
kind of been trolling Charlie Kirk.
See, that's what they have been
trolling.
That's what all the gamers and the people on the dark web do, is they troll
people.
They thought Charlie Kirk was too inclusive.
And so they trolled him for it.
And because of the picture that I saw the picture, it's a picture.
I
saw the picture too.
And
it's exactly like the Pepe the Frog picture, exactly.
I've seen all the pictures, John, and I've heard all the speculation, but there isn't an ounce of verifiable fact.
behind any of it.
It's, you see one image, you speculate about it.
You hear something that somebody says, you gossip about it.
But we don't know for sure what was going on inside the young man's head.
I'm only going by the pictures that I've seen and that is proof enough for me to at least speculate with some confirmation that he is
part of that griper movement.
But you can also look at certain elements of his background.
If you're on the right, you can look at that, you can see it, you can read certain online comments, and you can come to the conclusion that he's a left-wing fanatic.
And so the truth is, maybe he's a left-wing fanatic, maybe he's a right-wing fanatic.
We don't know.
But you know to me the article I just wrote for substack this week I I try to raise a question that I think is a question that nobody's talking about in the midst of all these mass shootings
and all this
in all this violence What what fascinates me not only is this country will not come to terms at all with with the How heavily armed this nation has become but the other thing that fascinates me is that in the
with the advent of new technological innovations.
Our country didn't respond to the digital age, remotely like it responded to...
in when there were past technological investments.
We didn't respond the way we responded to electricity.
We didn't respond the way we responded to the telephone.
We didn't respond to the way we responded to the creation of radio and then television.
In each of those instances, our society chose to either make those things public utilities, electricity and telephones were made public utilities.
Or for public good.
Or
We required radio and television to operate in the public interest.
We made them public goods.
We required that they be used for the benefit of society.
And with the advent of the digital age, we didn't do that.
We allowed this to just become a wild west.
We allowed profiteers to make billions off the use of these technologies that they did not invent.
And then we allow people to use them in the most irresponsible ways imaginable.
And we are paying a huge price.
for us not responding in the way we responded to past technological advancements.
There's no reason why we couldn't have made the internet a public utility.
Why we couldn't have required digital devices to be used in the public interest.
Absolutely.
We chose not to.
That's a huge oversight by our society.
We will continue our conversation with Mike McCabe in just a moment.
It's John and Gordy on WMDX.
WMDX
John and Courtney in the morning.
Mike McCabe, our guest this morning from Substack and Author and we've been chit chatting about some of the things, the movements that are going on in this country and I would like to ask CJ to text us a link.
to that survey so we could take a look at it because Mark brings up a good point in his text to us.
He says, I really have questions about this survey.
Sort of supports the Trump agenda.
It could be push questions on that.
Here's one from Matt in Middleton.
He says about the media.
I was in a house fire in college off Dory Street downtown.
The news interviewed us after the incident and the only bit of information they got right by the time
It was broadcast was my name.
True story.
Okay.
And Gary agrees with you, Mike.
I agree with Mike.
We cannot say this was a political shooting.
All we know is what this guy said and what he did.
And we didn't get much from the transcript from a conversation he had with his roommates in revealing that he had done the shooting.
There's a lot of questions, obviously, to still ask and find out about, but I think one side is trying to create a truth around the fact that it is a liberal...
plan or plot or network that is behind all of this and Devious if anything and you talk about the the dark web you talk about doom scrolling in your latest Substack article tell us a little bit about that
Well, I you know I start out the article by saying there's a reason why it's called doom scrolling and not hope scrolling.
Yeah, because doom
Trump's hope and lies are more powerful than truth and and You know when the algorithm picks up when when it comes to how the algorithms respond information and and I think it's just important for all of us to be aware that that You know social media is driven by algorithms.
It's not driven by journalistic choices or anything like that.
It's it's and the algorithms are designed
to first and foremost capture audiences, to keep them logged in, to keep them scrolling so that they can be delivered to advertisers.
Because the whole purpose of these social media sites is to deliver us to advertisers.
They're selling our information.
They're selling us to advertisers.
So they need to keep us logged in.
And it so happens that the most efficient way to do that is to
be outrageous, to be irresponsible, to be hateful.
Hate is a more powerful motivator than love online.
No question about it.
And there's that old saying that a lie is halfway around the world before truth gets its boots on.
And
I
think Mark Twain is the person who said that.
But of course, it rings true at any age.
And that's what the algorithms pick up on, is that what keeps people logged in, what keeps people motivated is when they're on edge, when they're full of anxiety, when they are full of anger, that keeps them scrolling.
And so they just keep feeding us more and more of that kind of information.
And of course, Charlie Kirk knew the algorithms.
That's something that he understood extremely well.
And the current occupant of the White House knows the algorithms.
He understands the forces that rule this digital world.
And they feed that.
And then these, one of the fascinating things is that these shooters, the Minnesota school shooting, Charlie Kirk's murder, all of these things,
have something in common.
They have shooters who were deeply and perpetually engaged by the deepest recesses of the dark web.
Social media.
Not only social media, but the darkest forms of social media.
An earlier article, I had made the point.
I had shared the fact that the Minnesota school shooter
had the name of the Madison Christian School shooter on his gun.
They had been in touch, they knew each other, and they egg each other on.
And they talk, I think one of the things that we have to come to terms with is maybe, maybe just maybe Charlie Kirk shooter and maybe a lot of these shooters are completely apolitical.
Maybe they don't have an ideology, maybe what they know,
is that doing these mass shootings makes them famous.
Maybe that's their real motivation.
If we want to engage in speculation, that's as valid a speculation as anything.
Maybe they just want fame and they know that committing mass murder will make them famous because they're talking with each other about these kinds of crimes and they're communicating with each other and egging each other on in these places that they hang out in.
And that's what we get when we treat the digital world as something that it's okay for it to just be the Wild West.
We should be thinking about this in the same way that we thought about electricity and the telephone and radio and television and we're not and we're paying a huge price
for it.
We had that discussion and
it
was a great idea to do something about it and then they went the opposite way on AI saying no regulations for 10 years.
Exactly.
Well, we have to leave it there.
Mike
McCabe,
you have an event this weekend.
Yeah, I'm going to be up in Stevens Point, a place called Bound to Happen Books, wonderful independent bookstore.
Going to be up there at one o'clock on Saturday, this Saturday.
Very good.
Thanks for joining us.
We'll see you again next Wednesday.
Tomorrow, Jim Santel will join us, former U.S.
Attorney and also Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils.
And we'll read some of the
texts that you sent us today, tomorrow, and pick up on the topic again.
Yeah, we'll recap
that.
Stephanie Miller's next.
We hope you have a great day so
long.
