From the Civic Media World Headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, it's the Todd Alba Show.
And now, pursuing truth wherever it may lead, here's your host, Todd Alba.
and streaming worldwide on the Civic Media app.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm Todd Albault.
Along with Mr. Aaron Zommer is our producer and engineer on the board.
It is a TGIF edition, June 6th, 2025.
It is a great day to be in Wisconsinite.
And no, Zommer and I have not broken up as host and producer, but yes, it's a special Musk Trump edition of the first half hour of the show today.
Zommer, how are you?
Doing well, doing a lot better than either Donald Trump or Elon Musk, that's for sure.
Yes.
The front page of the New York Post, I believe, had a heart with Trump on one side, Musk on the other, divided like a broken heart.
And something, the headline was something like, I'm not getting back with my ex.
Or on AP.
Pretty
good.
On AP News, they said that the Trump-Musk relationship was much like a SpaceX rocket.
Yes.
It took off with lots of force and then it blew up.
as they call it, a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
The lead of the year.
We're going to get into that.
Take a look at why maybe this rift all started right here in the state of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin voters might be responsible for this big breakup out in DC.
There's a serious side to this as well.
We'll explore that.
But a huge show today.
Hope you stick around.
Really fun show.
Take a look at these headlines also on the serious side.
Today is D-Day.
Marks the the invasion or the the military operation onto the beaches of Normandy by our great boys as they were known back then our great men that that many of whom Gave their lives so that they could begin to end World War two we'll take a look at back at that with iconic 60 minutes commentator Andy Rudy
Really, really hope you stick around for that.
At the bottom of the hour, Brady Ewing, three-time Big Ten champion for the Wisconsin Badger football team, spent three years in the NFL.
Great guy.
Goes around speaking to youth.
Reach out to him.
He's going to tell us about that.
Going to talk a little bit about character.
Character today and how it relates to the men's basketball team, the Badger basketball team, John Blackwell, for going the NBA and not.
Not going to the transfer portal coming back to Wisconsin as he promised.
I always have a great time with Brady our to What's worse hamburger edition edition today?
What's worse whoppers or Big Macs?
We'll we'll discuss that at length.
You already know you already know what's better a butter burger from Culver's but we'll talk about what's worse talk about what's worse Also the Peter Rapine at 335 managing editor of E palms world
with a humorous look at the Wild and Wacky, the Week in Review.
Huge, huge show today.
I have my Brewer's gear on my Euker jersey today.
If you're watching on the stream, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, X, going to the game on Sunday, Sunday afternoon game against the Padres.
They kick off that series tonight.
You can hear it across.
Many stations on civic media, including Richland Center, Oshkosh, Bagosh, Racine, Kenosha, Park Falls, and now in Hayward, Wisconsin.
Broadcast time at 6.35.
First pitch sometime after seven o'clock.
The Padres at the Brewers have to listen to it over your car or kitchen radio because we cannot stream it on the civic media app.
The Padres at the Milwaukee Brewers.
As I said, I'm going on Sunday.
Looking forward to that.
If you're not.
If you're going to be watching it, I got a deal for you.
How about this?
The game on Sunday is a 4 p.m.
game or I'm sorry, the game starts there.
Let me check your notes, Todd.
That would help.
The game starts at 11.35 or 11.30.
This is broadcast.
So probably a noon, 12.05 or so start time.
It's going to be seen on the Roku Sports Channel.
You can watch the game of the Roku Sports Channel this Sunday, the Brewers, and immediately following the game.
4 p.m.
Eastern, 3 o'clock Central, Maso Manos, more or less.
You can see the great film just a bit outside the story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.
Great film.
Our friends Kelly Call, Sean Hannish, the producers and director respectively of this film, they've been on this program.
We always appreciate their time.
And I know there are people that have not seen it yet for various reasons and that's fine.
But what better of a doubleheader than watching the Brewers on the Roku Sports Channel?
You can listen to them on the radio at the same time, and then immediately after, you can listen or watch just a bit outside for free.
For free.
No subscription needed.
By the way, um,
and Eve, I will say, even if you're not a sports person, I highly recommend it because it's as, as Kelly called one of the producers has said, as Sean Hannish, the director and producer has also said, it's a love story between a team and a city.
It's, it's very compelling.
It's fantastic.
And if you don't want to watch it on the, if you got a streamer for whatever reason, you can still order the film on DVD.
I have it right here.
My hot little hands.
Look at that.
Look at that graphic artwork there.
It's fantastic.
You can get it on DVD at your Amazon store or wherever you get your DVDs just about size.
It's a really great film, as Summer said, regardless if you're a sports fan or not.
All right.
It's a big show today, as we said.
It's 12 minutes past the hour of two o'clock before we get into the news headlines.
It is summertime time to do a little text to win summer sizzler thing.
Let's go.
Kenny Chasley rolled down the window to wish we could just play that entire song.
But for our podcasters, then all they hear is silence.
You remember, you can still hear all the music, all the audio music.
Just listen to us on the YouTube channel, on the Civic Media YouTube channel, or on the Tonal Ball Show Facebook page.
Plus,
then you get to point at us radio folks and laugh at what we
look like.
Sometimes you can, absolutely.
All right, here we go.
The Scotty Summer Text to Win Contest, the lawyers tell me, I have to remind you, it is a statewide contest.
Up for grabs this hour, speaking of the Brewers, a pair of Brewer tickets, not for tonight, but for a future game in our beautiful club level seats at Amfam Field.
So, up for grabs, two tickets to a Brewer's game this hour.
Download the Civic Media app if you don't have it at your Apple or Android device.
Open it up.
It's free, by the way.
Open it up.
The first 11 stations are the ones we're on.
Click on one of those lower right hand corner.
You'll see a little icon that says text.
Click on that.
Now you're set to go.
I'm going to give you the word for this hour.
The word is north.
The word is North.
N-O-R-T-H.
North.
N-O-R-T-H.
As in, the direction you're headed is North.
North.
N-O-R-T-H.
North.
That's the word.
So up for grabs, a set of Brewer tickets.
Other days, we give you 100 bucks.
Today, it's a pair of Brewer tickets.
Don't forget everybody who enters this hour will be entered in for one of our two grand prizes.
We're going to give away by random drawing computer next Friday, either a pair or pardon me, either a vacation to the Baraboo Dells area getaway or a Door County getaway.
And we're going to give you a gas card for gas to get you there and back.
If you want to know the specific locations of these beautiful grand prizes, go to civicmedia.us.
They are listed on our website.
They want you to go click on that and check it out.
There's a lot of great things there.
The word is North N-O-R-T-H North texted in right now To be eligible to win a pair of tickets in eligible for our grand prize of those great Wisconsin getaways.
All right last night our friends at the Lincoln Project Did a great this the call the breakdown with Miami and Rick Wilson at the Lincoln Project and they walk through all of these tweets back and forth the war
that is happening between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
And at one point, Rick Wilson, a former Republican like myself, but much higher ranking, still has Republican context.
And at one point during the breakdown, Rick kind of does a quick breaking news from personal texts he's getting.
It was extraordinary.
Here is part of the breakdown on the Lincoln project last night.
So
now, OK, guys, just to
just to interrupt for a second.
I have a.
Let me say this, a Trump world source who said, the meeting is out of control.
Oh, my God.
More.
And he takes a second to
read
and catch up with the information.
Let's put it this way.
I joked earlier that Kristi Noem should send Elon Musk to Seacot.
They're thinking about
it.
OK, let's.
Let's talk about this
for a second.
He's a national security risk at this point.
They're going to deport Elon.
He's threatening to like stop rockets and things that are already in process.
He's a national security threat.
No due process.
You can tell Rick Wilson is enjoying this very much.
And this is information that he's getting from people that still talked with him inside the White House.
A J. Peterman, the fictitional character from Seinfeld, of course, put it best years ago on Seinfeld.
Here's what J. Peterman want to call this.
Well, I see what's going
on here.
I am smack dab in the middle of a good old fashioned cat fight.
That's right.
A good old fashioned cat fight.
The girls are fighting again.
Between Elon and the Trumpster.
Now, if you think that Rick Wilson was just making this stuff up,
Here almost simultaneously.
Here's what Steve Bannon The guy that you weigh all those Steve Bannon the Trumps are insider.
Here's what he was saying online at the same time last night SpaceX
president Trump tonight should sign an executive order Calling for the defense to production act to be called in SpaceX and seize SpaceX tonight before midnight The US government should seize it if a guy's gonna sit there and start making the quotes also
As we Stuart Stevens talked back in January, I don't know why we haven't had a full investigation.
Look, if you're going to deport illegal aliens, you got to deport illegal aliens.
The good go with the goose and the gander.
They got to go back to this, as Stuart Stevens talked about, and go through everything about his immigration status.
I happen to believe, given the facts that I've been shown, that he's an illegal alien, and illegal aliens got to be deported.
You see how quickly the worm turns there?
Long-time advisor Steve Bannon to Donald Trump helped get him out of jail and with by the way Stuart Stevens over our friends were the founding members of the Lincoln Project along with Rick Wilson a former Republican and When Stuart Stevens brought this up along a few months ago Steve Bannon everybody else in Trump world was was bagging on Stuart Stevens when Stuart brought up and say hey if Trump's really gonna be serious about deporting illegals quote-unquote
Then you better look at Elon Musk and they trash Stuart Stevens And all it took was a couple of three weeks and now they're quoting Stuart Stevens saying yeah, yeah Stuart was absolutely right There's a great article in in the Wall Street Journal by John McCormick Headlined Wisconsin was beginning of the end for the Trump-Musk relationship
Says a key political event that started the process that led to this week's ugly public breakup between President Trump and Elon Musk took place just more than two months ago Musk was the largest 2024 election cycle donor contributing close to 300 million To help Trump and other Republicans.
It was a high-profile supporter of the trial But the president slowly slowly began to distance himself
from Musk after the world's richest man proved to be a political alibi or a liability brother on April 1st when he lost the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
Welcome back.
Tell you the serious side of this.
Don't go anywhere.
Also a tribute to D-Day.
It's the All Balls show for a Friday on Civic
Media.
So long farewell, I'll be your same good night.
I hate to go and leave this pretty side.
Welcome back to the Tahoe Ball Show, the Civic Media Radio Network, 22 now past the hour of two o'clock on a Friday, TGIF June 6th coming up at the bottom of the hour just thereafter.
Brady Ewing, three-time Big Ten Champion, spent three years in the NFL, gonna talk a little sports, and also about character.
Not just in sports, but character in general, always a great conversation.
Pardon me with Brady, still getting over these allergies, although I feel like they're better.
The smoke outside from the Canadian wildfires just keeps hanging on.
Now they're saying perhaps through the weekend, but gonna be a fairly nice weekend.
Before the break, I played you a couple of clips here, talking about this Elon Musk, Donald Trump breakup.
I think there's a humorous element to it, right?
It's always...
interesting and kind of fun to see powerful people.
They're doing bad things, not get along with each other.
You know, the old John Stuart meme of eating popcorn.
You just like, oh, look at this.
But two things.
A, on the breakdown last night on Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson had a great point.
And he said, look, part of what fueled the MAGA movement, there are two things.
So media wise, Fox News.
and also Twitter, which became X, because Elon Musk changed the algorithms, i.e.
the inner workings of Twitter, to push some of the more conspiratorial things, the untruths, the lies of Maga World, and throttled back on the truth, on sites like The New York Times, other places that tell the truth.
And so he said, the point Wilson was making, and I think he's right, is that if
If Alon decides to flip that, that's gonna be trouble for Mogg world politically.
Number two, Trig V. Olson, our friend that comes on every Wednesday, also the Lincoln Project who has worked against authoritarian leaders around the world, has said, look, remember the Stalin rule.
Everybody knew during World War II that Stalin was a terrible person, but he was the second worst.
The worst was Adolf Hitler.
So in any fight, look at it this way.
Look, I don't think Elon Musk is some great guy now.
But if he makes people in Moga world kind of rethink where they're at, hey, that's a, I think that's a, I think that's a good thing.
So anyway, we'll continue to follow this and take more of your phone calls maybe a little bit later in the, in the show.
I want to get to this.
It's D-Day, by the way, 81 years ago today.
The German Chancellor Mertz was in the White House talking to Donald Trump.
He kind of, Trump has always tried to talk down to Mertz.
Here's what German Chancellor Mertz had to say about D-Day to Donald Trump.
June 6th tomorrow, this is D-Day anniversary, when the Americans once ended a war in Europe.
And I think this is in your hand, in specific, in ours.
That was not a pleasant day for you?
No, that was not a pleasant... Well, in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorships.
That's true.
And we know what we owe you.
But this is the reason why I'm saying that America is, again, in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war.
So let's talk about what we can do jointly.
and we are ready to do what we can.
And you know that we gave support to Ukraine and that we are looking for more pressure on Russia, the European Union did.
And we should talk about that.
I thought that was just, I mean, if you watched the whole thing yesterday in the White House, Trump tried to be trite, try to be funny, basically try to make fun of World War Two and D-Day.
You know, he saved you.
It was a pretty bad day for you Germans.
And Mertz wasn't going to play it.
By the way, he came with a gift.
A birth certificate from Trump's grandfather, who was born in Germany, had it framed for him.
And he said, look, yeah, we're appreciative, but hey, remember what this day is really about?
Many of us might remember Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes.
Nobody puts it better than Andy Rooney.
Want to play this clip for you here is Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes from 2004 on
D-Day.
Because it was part of my life, I'd like to say something about D-Day.
I don't know how to say it any differently.
I didn't know the book I wrote called My War.
If you are young and not really clear what D-Day was, let me tell you, it was a day unlike any other.
There have only been a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed for the better in one 24-hour period by an active man.
June 6, 1944 was one of them.
What the Americans, the British, and the Canadians were trying to do was get back a whole continent that had been taken from its rightful owners by Adolf Hitler's German army.
It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people ever did for another.
We all have days of our lives that stand out from the blur of days that have gone by and the day I came ashore on Utah Beach four days after the initial invasion is one of mine.
As we approached the French coast, there were small clouds of smoke and sudden eruptions as German artillery blindly lobbed shells over the hills behind the beach.
They were hoping to hit US troops or some of the massive amount of equipment piled up on the shore there.
Row on row of dead American soldiers were laid out on the beach just above the high tide mark where it turned into weedy clumps of grass.
They were covered with olive drab blankets, just their feet sticking out at the bottom, their GI boots sticking out.
I remember their boots, all the same on boys, all so different.
No one can tell the whole story of D-Day because no one knows it.
Each of the 60,000 men who waited ashore that day knew a little part of the story too well.
To them, the landing looked like a catastrophe.
Each knew a friend shot through the throat, shot through a knee.
Each knew names of five hanging dead on the barbed wire in the water 20 yards offshore.
Three who lay unattended on the Stony Beach as the blood drained from holes in their bodies.
They saw whole tank crews drowned when the tanks rumbled off the ramps of their landing craft and dropped into 20 feet of water.
There were heroes here no one will ever know because they're dead.
The heroism of others is known only to themselves.
Across the channel, in Allied headquarters in England, the war directors, remote from the details of death, were exultant.
They saw no blood, no dead, no dying.
From the statistician's point of view, the invasion was a success.
Statisticians were right.
They always are.
That's the damn thing about it.
On each visit to the beaches over the years, I've wept.
It's impossible to keep back the tears as you look across the rows of markers and think of the boys under them who died that day.
Even if you didn't know anyone who died, your heart knows something that your brain does not.
You weep.
If you think the world is selfish and rotten, go to the cemetery at Colville, Sir Mayor, overlooking Omaha Beach.
See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Andy Rooney, back with more after this.
To this day, when I hear that song, I see you standing there on that lawn.
Discount shades, store-bought tank, flip-flops, and cut-off
jeans.
Welcome back to the
Taobao Show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
35 minutes now past the hour of 2 o'clock on a TGIF June 6, 2025.
It is D-Day.
Todd ran that right up to the very end, but we got it in, if you weren't with us, you can listen to it on the podcast or however.
Andy Rooney, iconic voice at CBS in 60 Minutes for so many, very many years.
Who was that D-Day?
Who served?
And I just think it's appropriate that we pause and reflect and remember that today and never forget Steve listening to Mount Horrib on WMDX says, I am an Army veteran.
And that was a great segment about D-Day.
They gave the ultimate sacrifice.
for freedom absolutely so important that we pause reflect and remember that and always somebody I like to go down down memory road with our friend he's a three-time big 10 champion with Wisconsin football spent three years in the NFL and an all-around great guy and a fantastic turkey hunter as well mr Brady Ewing joins us from the old hometown of the RC Brady how are
you doing good that
Maybe the turkey hunter, that's my real claim to fame, I think.
Champion turkey hunter.
But they don't give you a ring for that, right?
They don't.
But what I'm hopeful, the people that are watching online and the ones that were listening on the radio really missed a display between the commercial break there where you were doing some kickboxing, some punching on the air, showing your moves over
there in the studio.
Well, Brady asked me what I was doing this weekend and so.
I'm going to the brewery game on Sunday.
as I said at the top of the show.
And by the way, once again, the game is going to be shown on the Roku Sports Channel.
And stay tuned after the game because they're going to do a free showing of just a bit outside the story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.
So watch the Brewers game, listen on the radio, turn down the volume on the Roku Channel, listen to the Brewers radio network on select stations and civic media, and then stick around the Roku Sports Channel for just a bit outside afterwards.
But so I'm going to the game.
with my buddy Rob Daggett his lovely wife and their either young daughter and We're going down and Rob used to be one of my trainers back in the day and what I used to have a personal trainer and we did the not
legit boxing, but where they'd wrap my hands and Rob would have like oversized mitts and they call out numbers one through six.
And you had to, you know, you're doing footwork and you're punching, you do that two, two minute rounds, three of those with a minute or two in between, you're exhausted.
Oh, no
doubt.
Actually, at the University of Wisconsin, our strength coach, Coach Herbert and Brian Bott, we would do
We wouldn't get wrapped up, so it wasn't as serious as you, Todd, but we just used our hands and worked with those mitts.
So we'd partner up and work on quick hands, different sequences, which from a football perspective, it was good conditioning, but also a way just to train your mind hand coordination and having quick hands as you're either fighting off a block or you're trying to establish your hands on a block when you're blocking a defender.
Great training.
It really is.
It was the best workout of my life.
So Robert, I've kept in contact.
And so we got to figure out a date to take you and Rachel, the boys down to another burger game, but like to do something nice.
And so Rob, we're taking his daughter down there and we'll have a good time on on on Sunday.
Brady, I wanted to talk a little bit about character.
today, something I know you and I have talked about before.
But what brought it up was Jonathan Blackwell, one of the big standout players for Greg Guard's team at the University of Wisconsin men's basketball team, put his
name
in to explore the NBA and said what he did.
So if I decide not to go into the NBA draft, I'm coming back to Wisconsin.
And some people kind of thought, well, yeah, sure, right, whatever.
This last week, he did just that.
He said, I tested the waters, had a lot of great workout and input, but I'm gonna wait a year, and I'm coming back to Wisconsin.
And I read an article, I think it was Badger Blitz.
I credit it, but I just don't have it in front of me right now.
And when they, in the story, it said that Jonathan Blackwell, somebody in his circle, heard from one of the other big teams out there.
And they said to Jonathan Blackwell's people, you know, we're really disappointed that Jonathan didn't go into the transfer portal.
And I guess Blackwell's response was, hey, you can tell them that we were really disappointed that you didn't recruit me at a high school.
Boom.
I thought that was great.
I love that.
And I think...
That's when I, when I think of, I guess college sports of old, that's, that's what it was all about, right?
You're recruiting kids out of high school.
They have that in that character, that integrity, especially at a place like Wisconsin.
I feel like we've always tried to hang our head on recruiting young athletes like that.
And so to hear him say that, to hear you tell that story during the, during the break and then here now again, it just, it gives me goosebumps actually because.
Yeah, it just makes you feel like there's still hope a little bit.
And
in Blackwell, I mean, great player, but I think a better leader.
And I think that story is a testament to the type of person he is.
I couldn't agree more.
And I think it's a, you know, Greg Gardner a couple of years ago when the NIL really jinged up, he said to the press, look.
I gotta kinda start dividing myself from the old school of, look, these guys are like our sons and we bring them up, it's becoming a business.
But I think this just proves there's still a part of the old school in Greg Guard, the fact that he's bringing back Blackwell, Winter is coming back, Janicki, three guys that probably could have gotten bigger NIDL deals elsewhere, but they're coming back to the Badgers.
Yeah, I think that is it speaks to the way that great guards been able to adjust his approach, but yet still keep some of what Wisconsin and makes him special.
And he's he's been able to evolve both on the court and off the court in recruiting.
And yeah, you look at what they did this past year and some of those key players coming back.
I think high expectations, but of those top tier programs like Wisconsin is feeling to be.
I feel like that is the expectation now in the transfer portal.
So to have that consistency is going to be huge and it's only going to snowball in my mind because the more you can keep some of those core parts of your team together and not have that large amount of turnover to the transfer portal.
uh, due to whatever reason that may be, I think that's going to just differentiate you that much more as the years progress to where you have that culture, you have that team built and people, there's still going to be athletes like Blackwell and others that want to be a part of that type of a program versus this very transient, transitional type of a program.
Yeah.
I mean, no disrespect to, uh,
Chucky Hepburn, who went to Louisville.
But I think if you would look at the seasons of Hepburn at Louisville last year after leaving for a reported million dollar deal at Louisville, and John Tanji, who transferred in and you look at where they're at now, positioned in the draft, I think that Tanji got the better year.
Yeah, 100%.
And money, money's awesome.
Money's great, right?
I mean, Chucky chasing that deal at Nebraska.
Good for him.
Yeah,
like that's awesome, but But at the end of the day, I'm sure there was days he was sitting there Looking on his phone or watching on TV seeing how the Badgers did and the camaraderie they had out on the court Yeah, and and you have to believe that he missed that a little bit.
I have no idea
But you played in the division one on the football side.
So you know what it's like to be on a team.
Talk to us a little bit about that.
If you'd like to have Brady speak to your young people, whether it's a sports group or otherwise, you can reach him on the socials, as they say, particularly on Instagram.
It's Brady, B-R-A-D-I-E Ewing.
And you can reach him there.
It's a B Ewing 34, right?
That's your handle or whatever you want to
call it.
Yup.
On X, B Ewing 34.
And then Instagram Brady dot Ewing.
All right, very good job.
Because when you go around talking to youth and you talk about character, you know, the old adage that character is what you do when people aren't looking.
When you're following behind someone and they drop their wallet and no one's around, do you put it in your pocket or do you catch up with the person and say, hey, you dropped this?
And to me, high school athletics, regardless of the person's ability, those are lessons.
If you have the right coach, the right team, those are lessons we can learn.
100%.
Yeah, it's super cliche, but athletics gives you a great way to expose people to different types of situations.
That could be success.
That could be failure.
That could be sitting behind somebody that's better than them.
That could be being the star person on the team.
And I think those situations are great microcosms for life in the fact that when you get into the working world or just
Even life as a as a student athlete in high school or in a family setting, like adversity is going to come.
Like we all face adversity of some sort.
So to have experiences with how to navigate that, how to come together as a team, how to use your resources of your family or your teammates.
You know how to respond when bad things happen.
You know, you get injured, you miss a game winning shot.
Like how are you going to bounce back?
Are you going to go sulk in the corner of the locker room or are you going to come back the next day, show up a little bit early, get the extra shots up and try to learn from those challenges or those mistakes?
And I think, you know, we all have times where we do that.
We all have times where we revert to feeling sorry for ourselves.
So I think at least being mindful of that and having accountability not only to yourself, but also those around you.
That's what makes teams special because everybody's going to fall.
Everybody's going to stumble.
Really, how are you going to try to motivate yourself to get out of that?
And then how are you going to help your teammates when they're in that position?
Because everybody goes through those moments.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I just think, look, I've never met John Blackwell.
But just the little I read and see.
And I guess I'm a big believer in people's actions over their words.
And here's a guy who said he was going to do something probably most likely at the opportunity to cash in bigger somewhere else.
but he kept his word and is coming back out of loyalty.
And that's something in my life that's tremendously important to me is I really try to be a loyal friend.
I try to be loyal to the people who take care of me.
And so, you know, I just really admire what Blackwell is doing as others on the team as well.
Yes, it's special.
Blackwell, we know what he can do on the court, but to see that.
He lives that out in his day-to-day basis on a day-to-day basis is pretty special.
Yeah, it really is.
We're talking to Brady Ewing, three-time Big Ten champion with Wisconsin football.
Spent three years in the NFL and a Brewers fan as well.
And by the way, Brady, if, well, not you, but well, you can actually, you're eligible.
Get your kids on the Rachel text in right now.
We are right smack dab in the middle of our big Scani summer text win contest.
You can be eligible for the next, well, about 14 minutes here.
Go to the Civic Media app, download it, open it up and text the word North, N-O-R-T-H North right now on the Civic Media app because we're giving away this hour a pair.
That's two, a deuce to a future Brewer game at Amfam Field in these beautiful club states that Brady U Benden, it's a pretty good view.
Oh, it's awesome.
Yeah, you get to go inside, get the air conditioning if you need it, great.
We
need it.
Concession
stands were
close.
Yeah, we needed it
today.
We were.
Concession stands were close.
That was needed for the kids, too, to keep them cooled down and fueled up.
So, no, it was a great game.
It's always fun to be at... I still want to call it Miller
Park.
I know, I know.
Ampamp Field.
Ampamp Field.
I know.
Taken in the Brewers.
Text the word.
It's North.
N-O-R-T-H.
North.
Text it right now to be eligible for the Brewer tickets and also...
eligible for here Brady you want to take your lovely wife on a vacation uh two two grand prizes uh wisconsin vacation to either the baribou dels area or a door county getaway with a gas card so north n or th uh about a minute here left Brady let's uh dive into this we'll uh pick it up on the other side
Aaron Rodgers.
Now, this is interesting because you played with Russell Wilson at Wisconsin, the one year he was there, you guys went to the Rose Bowl and won the Big Ten.
And so now Russell Wilson's going from the Steelers to the Jets, and Arod going from the Jets to the Steelers.
Well, Giants, Russell's
at the Giants.
Oh, that's right, that's right, that's right.
Same stadium, same stadium, same stadium.
There you go.
All right, see, I messed up this segment because I didn't know my teams.
You never try to challenge a former NFL player when you're talking about teams.
That's the lesson from the end of this segment.
All right, I'll regroup.
We'll come back.
We'll get Brady's thoughts on Aaron Rodgers and his son is a NBA fan.
The Pacers game last night was incredible.
It's the all-post show for a Friday with Brady Ewing on the Civic Media.
We're ready to network.
When I think about...
You cannot believe that June 6 Friday, TGIF 2025.
Now, eight minutes before the hour of three o'clock.
These allergies, Brady.
I think Todd needs some hot water.
Lemon and honey.
Yeah, I'm going to sit in a pool of hot water or something this weekend and try to de-congress.
Brady Ewing, three-time Big Ten champion, Wisconsin Badger football team, also a former player in.
The League, as they say, the NFL joins us every other Friday.
Always appreciative of that.
By the way, Brady, it is National Donut Day.
Ooh.
So I'm trying
to.
Did you
partake?
Look at this.
Luke Mathers brought in a box of Greenbush Bakery Donuts today.
Yep.
I had one earlier too.
Right.
Oh,
man.
Did you spend a lot of
time?
Did you spend a lot of time there when you went to Wisconsin?
Love Greenbush.
Even after when we lived in Madison.
When our kids were younger, that would be a Saturday morning tradition.
And I don't know, uh, uh, is it popping?
Johns was the original center.
Yeah.
Pop
was doing it before
that.
Hey, that was the spot.
I missed those and crave those.
I know, absolutely.
Me too.
Good times.
So Brady, I could sit around talking about donuts, original center for all day.
But before the by the way, text the word north N-O-R-T-H right now to the Civic Media app to be eligible to win a pair of Milwaukee Brewers tickets as well as fabulous grand prizes, which will whisk you away to destinations untold across Wisconsin.
North N-O-R-T-H is the word.
to text right now.
Brady, before the break, Aaron Rodgers for Packer for Merget now to the Steelers.
I know it's sensational, but what do you make of it?
It's fascinating.
You know, I'm interested to see how him and Tomlin kind of mesh together and their personalities and, you know, what we've seen from Aaron Rodgers through the years as far as his personality and just there's some baggage that comes there.
I mean, he can play on the field, but.
comes with some off the field stuff and just a pretty extravagant personality.
So it's going to be interesting to see how he meshes in yet another program.
And I have a ton of respect for the way that the Sealer's program has been run.
And it'll be interesting to see.
I mean, that's where I think coaches can really come into the equation to see how they mesh that type of a talent, that type of personality with the culture that they've built historically.
and gonna be very, very different than I think the Russell personality that they had had in at least last
year.
Very, very different indeed.
Yeah, very different indeed.
Brady, you were breaking up during the break.
This is a really interesting point.
Talk to us about what these quarterbacks that were in the NFL draft, these college quarterbacks, some of them coming out early and what they left and what they're going towards.
Yeah, I just thought it was interesting and I almost brought it up during the Blackwell conversation.
Just you look at the draft and everybody obviously saw your Sanders and how he dropped in the draft, but there was other higher quarterback draft picks and that position is easy to call out just because everybody recognizes them.
And it was still interesting that a lot of these quarterbacks that declared early and could have stayed in college gave up.
you know, big NIL deals in college to pursue what would be a smaller annual salary at the NFL level.
But, you know, I guess I just think back to guys I played with in some of my time and guys are still chasing that dream and
they
still have, again, money is important.
Obviously, they'll make great money either way, but they're still out pursuing that dream and wanting to be a part of something that they've likely looked forward to since they were, you know, kids.
So,
It's just interesting to see how that money goal achievement, you know, can go back and forth and weigh on people and how they make their decisions.
And still people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, their goals, their dreams, and or maybe it's a certain program like Blackwell where he wants to.
be a part of Wisconsin and uphold his word.
So just interesting how that plays into
it.
It's super interesting.
I think I read where Shadour, he was making well over a million and a half in NIL at Colorado and he dropped to the fifth round.
I know the minimum was changed a lot because you were in the fifth round, right?
Correct.
But it's changed a lot in the years since you were first drafted.
But you got to believe that Shadour is making a lot less
They went to Cleveland, right?
As an NFL quarterback, a fifth rounder, he was making as the starter at Colorado.
Yeah, it's it's fascinating.
But again, he wants to be a part of competition at its highest level.
And no doubt he had more he could have accomplished at Colorado, other than getting his name inducted or his number inducted in the Hall of Fame.
I think that already happened.
I know.
I know.
I
know.
He tired
his churned number when he's still a senior or whatever, last year playing.
kind
of crazy.
Isn't there usually a time window to get that done?
Right?
I thought.
And as long as you brought that up, why is 34 not retired at Camp Randall?
That's mine.
Oh, gosh, come on.
No,
come on.
Hey, on a side note, though, did you see the recent Hall of Fame class?
It's at Wisconsin for the W. Club Hall of Fame and helped if I was able to talk.
But James White is going in Travis Frederick.
and, you know, a bunch of others.
Frank Kaminsky, just really cool to see, I guess, people that I either played with or, you know, looked up to during, you know, my high school days, getting inducted now.
It's really cool and happy for those guys.
It's super cool.
And congratulations to all who were inducted.
Very quickly, Brady.
NBA Finals are on.
The Pacers against the Thunder of Oklahoma.
Halliburton, the Wisconsin guy, does it again for the Pacers in the last second.
Yeah, it was pretty special.
You said Bennett's an NBA guy.
Rachel was out at her parents with a couple of our boys last night.
So Bennett and I watched the first half and what started off as a pretty lopsided game became pretty competitive to the end.
So I got to catch the highlights from the second half.
But man, that guy has ice water running through his veins and just an impressive athlete to make a shot of that caliber in that game with all the hype.
It's kind of bad for me.
It does it all the time now.
Why
is it that Wisconsin teams always lose to the eventual eventual champion?
It's like we always draw the wrong team.
We never have a we never have a bad draw anytime Brady enjoys this Brady.
Thank you so very much.
We appreciate your time my friend.
I might say I'm coming up for the Betty Hayes dance recital on Saturday.
Maybe I'll see you around.
All right.
Take care.
Yep.
Bye bye.
Back after this.
From the Civic Media World Headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, it's the Todd Alba Show.
And now, pursuing truth wherever it may lead, here's your host, Todd
Alba.
and streaming worldwide on the Civic Media app.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm Todd Albaugh, along with Mr. Aaron Zommers on the board, our producer and engineer.
It is Friday, T-G-I-F, June 6th, 2025.
And it's a great day to be Wisconsinite.
A little sun out.
A couple of clouds here and there's still a little bit of smoke in the air.
Our meteorology team says that's going to linger.
First, it was like all would be done by Tuesday.
It just keeps hanging on.
Like a like a bad girlfriend or part or a boyfriend like Trump and moth just keeps the Trump said that Elon was wearing thin by the way That's what that's one of this text.
I appreciate that but no the smoke is gonna be I they're saying now Hopefully by the end of the weekend, but all the temperatures in the 70s more or less Be nice weekend to to get out and get around by the way many thanks to Brady Ewing
for being on the show here in the last hour.
Always a great time with Brady.
One of those guys, one of those people that just make you feel better for sitting down and chatting with him.
So many thanks for Brady for being here with us.
Coming up a little bit later, we're gonna try to get in a couple more news headlines yet this hour.
One from Milwaukee, open records laws.
Where a reporter for WTM J for television in Milwaukee was not allowed to go into a public school board meeting ramifications of that and Things are getting bananas out in DC We'll
uh, they are Todd will
explain a little later at the bottom of the hour just after our news update our friend an ongoing contributor
the managing editor of eBombs World, Mr. Peter Rapun directly from Brooklyn, New York with a look at the wild, the wacky, the weak and review, stupid human things at the bottom of the hour.
But right now it's eight minutes past the hour of three o'clock time once again for what's worse.
Let's
go.
Time once again for what's worse, nothing give away, no prize money involved, just your chance to have your voice heard.
And what more do you want than that?
You can be heard all across Wisconsin, all 11 news talk sports stations in the Civic Media Ready Network.
No better place to have your product, your business advertised than on our network.
We would appreciate you.
We would love to partner with you.
Check us out at civicmedia.us.
Civic media dot us.
All right category today Fast food ish I Don't know about you, but give me on the road a little bit.
I might although I'm supposed to have less fast food now now that I have a fatty liver.
I Think you should hate that advice.
Yes
I'm holding off on a dramatic diet change until I'm seeing my doctor a couple of weeks
Okay,
that's fair.
That's completely
fair.
And the nutritionist.
So yeah.
I'm good to get some advice.
Yeah.
Before I
completely change everything.
Anyway, we're not going to go into that right now.
Fast food.
Burgers.
What's worse?
The Whopper or a Big Mac?
Whopper.
or a Big Mac, what's worse, 855-752-4842, 855-752-4842, or you can text us on the aforementioned Civic Media app.
Download it on your Apple or Android device.
Simply go to your app store, little search bar, type in Civic CIVIC Media, pops up, download it, it's free, takes less than a minute, it's what Gale King at CBS calls.
Deal wouldn't be great What are these days you go out to New York?
Try to see Gail King and I all I take Gail all I want you to do is say it's a deal Think she'd do that Probably not maybe she's Oprah's friend.
What is she gonna talk to me for?
What's worse anyway a download the civic media app and you can text us the answer as well
or call 855-752-4842.
855-752-4842.
What's worse, the Whopper or the Big Mac.
Off the text line right now, let's go back up Summer's first couple of ones of those.
We got Robert in McFarland on WMDX.
Oh my God, the Big Mac is a giant pile of crap.
had to clean it up a little bit for a radio there.
Where was he?
He disappeared.
Where was he?
The whopper is considered quality and fast food world.
All right.
Big Mac.
Oh, that was Robert.
So Robert's saying that the Big Mac is worse.
Oscar in Madison Listing on WMDX says the Big Mac is worse because you get more bread than you do meat.
All right.
Uh, let's see here.
Uh, Robert, we're not gonna, don't be mean on McFarlane.
We read your, your text.
All right.
Roger.
Uh, oh, oh, I see what you say.
I'm, see, I, I get it now.
I'm sorry, Robert.
I apologize.
He says Culver's is not fast food.
Your apps see as quality because you used to have to wait a little bit longer.
So yes, I'm sorry, Robert.
I absolutely 100% agree with you.
I said in the first hour, uh, we know it's better.
What's better is Culver's, but what's worse, the Whopper or the Big Mac, 8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2, 8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
Roger, in Steven's point, listening in, says the Big Mac is worse.
The special sauce is gross.
What else here, Cam and Appleton?
as an ex-professional.
The whopper is the worst flavor-wise, but you can get six whoppers for $15 if you have coupons, including six fries.
I did not know
that.
All right, let's go to the phone lines.
855-752-4842.
855-752-4842.
Ollie, listening in the beautiful Northwoods.
Ollie, whopper or Big Mac?
What's worse?
Oh, the Big Mac is much worse.
Not enough meat and I am like the gentleman before the sauce stinks.
Not
a
fan of the sauce.
Although I have to admit that I always loved the Whopper when they were actually flame broiled.
Oh yes.
Right.
They're not the same anymore as they used to be, but they're still much better than a Big Mac.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, all right.
Very good.
Very good, Ollie.
I appreciate it.
Could I just take a minute to remind everybody about the March for Veterans that is being held in Appleton this evening.
If you're in the area, get on down there and support our vets.
They deserve
it.
Absolutely.
What time does that start?
You know, Ollie and Appleton?
It starts, I believe, at six o'clock and runs till 7.30, and it's a bipartisan, peaceful
protest.
That's great.
We always appreciate honoring our veterans and absolutely on this D-Day, Ollie.
Thank you very much for that reminder.
Appleton tonight.
Thanks, Ollie, for that reminder.
Dana and LaCrosse participating there, what's worse, the Whopper or the Big Mac says actually they're both pretty terrible.
But I can enjoy either one as well, either one as well, depending on my appetite and how well it's prepared that day.
All right.
Chris listening in Jamesville, Wisconsin, by the way, the city of the bridge or the city of parks, city of parks, as I learned on Pete Schwab's show says Chris and Jamesville says, hands down, the big Mac is worse, but.
Now that McDonald's lawyers are trying to distance themselves from Trump, maybe I'll change.
I did not know that, Chris.
I did not know that.
Steve, listening on WMDX in Milwaukee, says the Big Mac is definitely worse.
Wow, this is really trending one way here.
Judy, listening in Lodi, says the Big Mac is worse because it has too much bread.
I prefer more meat versus the extra bread.
Judy from Lodi, I'm with you there.
I'm with you there, Judy.
Ryan in Green Bay, listening on WMDX, but he's in Green Bay, a home of WGBW.
We're gonna be up there broadcasting next Friday from GBW.
Cannot wait for that.
Says both sandwiches.
Give me the bathroom.
I'll just say that.
Need to use the restroom after that.
Mike, there we go.
Mike, listening on WGBW in Green Bay says, I don't eat burgers, but I certainly enjoy a Whopper from time to time.
This is pretty good.
What's worse the Whopper or or the Big Mac?
Greg and Genesee Depot Big Mac Whopper is much better.
So the Big Mac is worse Whopper is much better Really, I can't afford either one right now.
The isn't that the truth They keep jacking up the prices.
I think I may be told this story a while back But I don't know long story super short when I was at EW Richland
Our soccer coach there, Tracy Krieger, God rest his soul.
He loved Burger King.
And we would go to, and I would usually go like a Whopper Jr.
And so I hadn't been in a Burger King in years.
And I don't know why, a few months back, it's the smell.
That's what it was.
I was in the neighborhood and that smell got me.
I'm like, I'm gonna, so I got a Whopper Jr., a fry and either a small or medium drink.
And it was like over $10.
Yeah,
it's expensive now.
And I thought I can go to Culver's and get a single Butterburger fries and a soda for like $7, $7.50, something like that.
And it's way better.
And it's way better.
Yeah.
I can't believe how much Burger King McDonald's those places have really jacked up the prices.
Yeah, if you want to go there to either of those places, you have to use coupons or the app that they have to make it.
It's more reasonably priced.
Otherwise, it's just insane.
See, that's another reason like Culver's better is because you get real live, awesome human beings taking your order.
And now occasionally I go to McDonald's because I love their breakfast, bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit.
They are good.
Those are
good.
And so at about two times a year, I have a filet of fish.
I get a hankering for a McDonald's filet of fish.
But now you go into most McDonald's, there's like one live person and three or four touchscreen kiosks you have to order through.
And I'm like, it was my understanding that AI technology was not going to be required to place my order.
Culver's, by the way, if you want to, you can place an order through their app now.
I've not done it.
You can see a real human or that.
What's worse, the Whopper or the Big Mac, 8-5-5-7-5-2, 4-8-4-2, 8-5-5-7-5-2, 4-8-4-2.
Cameron Appleton says Culver's also has a great shrimp basket.
Yes, they certainly do.
Robert McFarlane, I'll occasionally order Culver's online when the line outside is ungodly long.
Sometimes I'll even order online when I'm in line.
You can do that
too.
All right, Somers, what's worse, Whopper or Big Mac?
I think I'm gonna have to go with the Whopper because Burger King does not agree with me.
I'll leave it at that.
Not that I like Big Macs.
I've only had one.
And yeah, I agree with what people are saying.
I would prefer to have a better meat ratio there than mostly bread.
Michael, in Tosell, the big Mac is worse.
It is abundant lettuce with a tiny meat patty.
The whopper has the meat.
No, you can't say that.
Arby's owns that.
Arby's, we have the meat.
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I would disagree with yours on this one.
I'm going to say, I'm going to agree with most of our listeners today.
I'm going to say the Big Mac is worse for the aforementioned reasons.
Maybe I would agree if I could, but I'm not going to try.
I, like I say, the, and I agree with Ollie, when they used to do the whole char broil thing, they, they have like a conveyor belt over flames.
They were better than.
But like I said before that the prices on the whoppers have just gone crazy and also they don't do the whole I I miss like the crown and the actual Burger King It used to be a thing that you know they used to have a king that was Burger King Just like you you don't see Ronald McDonald anymore.
You don't see a
grimace grimace
Do you see Grimace?
Yeah, they recently did a thing on social media where they said they were going to have a Grimace burger, but you could at least get the Grimace meal.
The Hamburglar.
Yeah, they're bringing those back a little bit.
Are they
really?
Well, good for them.
All right, thanks for playing along.
We'll come back with some news headlines after this.
It's the All Balls Show for a Friday, T-G-I-F on the Civic Media.
Radio Network.
Whopper whopper whopper whopper junior double triple whopper impossible or bacon whopper I rule this day I Haven't heard that in a long time.
Welcome back to the tunnel ball show on the civic media radio network 22 now past the hour of three o'clock are what's worse today whopper Versus Big Mac
it
wasn't even close.
Yeah Big Mac
is worse,
according to all of you.
According to our
listeners, yeah.
Yeah, so well done, Zomers.
Welcome back to the show.
Some breaking news across the wires at this hour, according to many news sources.
This was from CNN.
Kilmar Umbrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the United States only to face federal
criminal charges, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi this afternoon.
For months, the Trump administration has been locked into an intense standoff with federal judiciary over court orders for the government to quote unquote facilitate Umbrella Garcia's return from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in mid-March in a situation that one federal judge warned could present a quote incipient crisis, unquote.
between the two branches.
And Braco Garcia has been now indicted on two criminal charges in the Middle District of Tennessee.
Conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.
I'm going to step away from the story.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Maggie Dawn may go into this more in her show.
She's certainly an attorney.
and Jim Santel on Amicus a law review will most certainly be talking about this tomorrow on Saturday at nine o'clock.
But this what what it appears now and pun intended that the administration has trumped up federal charges against embryo Garcia over something that he was already found essentially innocent of in the local courts.
So
Now Trump has complied, the administration has complied with the judicial order to bring, bring Garcia back to the US from El Salvador, but now they've just created new charges for him on the federal level to send him right back to El Salvador.
So disturbing to say the least, we'll, as I said,
maintain and continue to watch this and have more updates.
But that is the breaking news at this hour.
Kilmar Umbrego Garcia has been returned to two United States from El Salvador, but now faces at least two criminal charges in the federal level.
Want to get to this, tariffs, the Trump tariffs that was happening in DC.
And we, a lot of times these are, are, are tough to understand.
But once in a while, somebody in Congress gets it right.
And as, uh, as our former, a long time judge down in the speed of Tennessee, Judge Weissman, the late great Judge Weissman, like to say it, put it down there where the chickens can get at it.
What a play to this clip now from representative Madeleine Dean of Michigan.
Who is no of Pennsylvania?
I'm sorry.
That's right.
Thank you for the correction of Pennsylvania who is questioning secretary Howard Lucknick on the tariffs and over she has some bananas in front of her and This is simple to understand and against the point across here is this testimony in Congress
What's the tariff on bananas Americans by the way love bananas we buy billions of them a year.
I love bananas.
What's the tariff on bananas?
The tariff on bananas would be representative of the countries that produce them.
And what's that tariff?
Generally 10%.
Correct, 10%.
Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas by 8%.
But as
countries do deals with us, that will go to zero.
As countries do deals
with us, that will go to zero.
But the cost is on the American consumer now and on the businesses with the confusion now.
Mr. Secretary, I believe you know better.
I believe you recognize that a trade deficit is not something to fear.
I believe you know that predictability, stability is essential for businesses.
I wish you would show that truth to this administration.
And I yield back.
The time of the general ladies expired.
Would you mind, Mr. Chairman, if I make one quick comment to the end?
Would that be okay?
I'm sorry?
Would you mind if I make one quick comment to the representative?
Please.
There is no uncertainty if you build in America.
and you produce your product in America, it will be no tariff.
We can't produce bananas in America.
So the concept of
building in America and paying no tariff
is
very, very clear.
We
cannot build
bananas in America.
Secretary Lutnik, I guess just peace.
I don't know.
I mean, I mean, he could not have dug himself a deeper hole when Congresswoman Dean makes her a point, we can't build or grow bananas in the United States.
And so, when Wisconsinites are going to the store, and you're paying more for bananas or avocados or whatever it might be, just remember, it all goes back to the Trump tariff.
Let's go to the phone lines quickly, 855-752-4842.
Gene, listening up on beautiful Eau Claire, I learned Gene this week.
Did you know this?
The Eau Claire's nickname is City of Bridges.
Gene?
Gene is here.
Gene is not here.
855.
Apparently Gene, I hope she hasn't fallen off a bridge.
I was on Schwab's show.
We had this contest, this quiz between Schwab and I on Night Light, the Conrad put together.
I won it by the slimmest of margins.
I won it by one answer.
But Schwab beat me on that one that I did not know that Eau Claire is nicknamed the city.
Bridges maybe we can sneak this in quick.
Let's go to mark and per the sack mark about 30 seconds.
It's yours.
What's a you?
Yeah, well listen, you know Lick nut or whatever nut lick, you know, he's just a fool anyway, but for Donald Trump, let's get let's get back to Donald Trump and for for the D his D-Day Acknowledgement he didn't acknowledge that there was anybody else other than the the Americans
British and the Canadians and the forces on D-Day.
And that we have to acknowledge that the Poles were there, the French were there, that all the Nazi-occupied countries that were part of the Alliance were there.
And he could have actually included them.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Mark.
Up against the clock.
Sorry, my friends.
Stay tuned.
Wild and wacky news for our friend Peter Rapine from Evob's World Next on the All Balls Show.
Don't go anywhere on Civic Media.
you
Welcome
back to the Taliban show on the civic media radio network and it's 35 minutes past the hour of three o'clock on a beautiful teach EIF Friday afternoon June 6th after a long week of a fire hose of information as they say which can get depressing.
and overwhelming.
What we want to end the show on is something we can laugh, we can relax, hang out with somebody we like.
There's no better person to do that than our ongoing contributor, our friend.
He's the managing editor of eBombs World with the biweekly week in review, Mr. Peter Rapine, live from New York.
How are you, Peter?
Doing great Todd.
It's Friday, so I think you're playing about now long crazy We can use so we should have a great show
now before we get into this because you've been open about this We appreciate that people have asked because they say we hope Peter's happy and and you've a while back you met a wonderful young woman on a vacation in Mexico and when you came on for those watching on YouTube Facebook Twitter the like a very handsome groomed Peter Rapine, what's all this about?
I'm meeting her in Zurich on Sunday, so I had to get a clean haircut.
As
one does,
I'm meeting my new girlfriend in Zurich.
Which, yes, to be clear, me playing Justin Timberlake's Cry Me a River is nothing to do with that.
It's about a difference.
It's about a breakup.
That, uh, the president is not there.
No, no, no.
Peter's fine.
He's not going to be.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I just, I just think you look happy.
And me, along with my audience, we want you to be happy because we love hanging out with you.
Thanks, son.
I appreciate that.
Well, have a great trip.
Yeah, well, it'll be nice to get away unplugged for a week or so.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's been crazy out there, as you probably know.
It's been absolutely crazy.
So let's get into it, Peter.
All these headlines can be found at ebombs, e-b-a-u-m-s world dot com.
And again, this is not fiction.
This is not made up stuff.
This is writers in a room.
This is actual wacky behavior of actual wacky humans.
Yes, I like to say that we're funny, but we're not this funny.
And clearly the biggest story of the week is something you guys have probably already talked about.
Elon and Trump are having their breakup, their fallout.
And I think maybe the last couple minutes of the show will read some of our favorite tweets.
I don't
know how much
you guys have said yet.
Basically, Elon called Trump a pedophile.
Then word is going out.
around that Steve Bannon is going to try to convince Trump to deport him.
We played the cut at the top of the show from Bannon on his show last night, calling exactly for that.
It's gotten real.
Yeah.
Let them fight.
Just let them fight.
We don't have to.
We don't have to be part of it.
But one of my favorite stories this week comes from TikTok, like some of our favorite stories always do.
And Gen Z.
you know we like we talk with them from time to time they don't drink as much they kind of do things their own way they're blazing new trails uh but there's a new trend going on so headline reads tiktokers are calling bars before going there to quote check the vibe
tiktokers are calling bars before going there to quote unquote check the vibe
And for those who might not know, that's kind of the new Gen Z phrase for vibing and checking.
Kind of like, you know, what's the feeling?
What's the, what's going on?
Like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's the energy like?
Yeah.
The energy.
That's a good word.
Yeah.
And, and in one of the videos, a 21 year old, I think she's British lady calls the bar and she asks, are there any handsome men there worth coming down to see?
A warning has gone out among bars, so be prepared for Gen Z kids to call you and ask you what the vibe is like.
And do we have
audio with this one?
Is there audio for this one?
No.
Yes, there is.
All right.
All right.
Here we go.
So here's some audio now.
Gen Zers checking out the vibe.
Hello.
I was just wondering, like, is it any, like, good crack in the pub tonight?
Like, is there any, like, hot ones?
Like, is there any worth coming down to see?
Now they're having fun with this, but the cool thing is a person on the other end of the phone is having fun too.
Exactly.
Yeah, loads of them.
Come on down, right?
What's she going to say?
No, don't come to my bar.
Right.
And if they get there, there is nobody that's hot.
She's going to say, well, you just missed them.
You just missed him exactly, but it's kind of like a tongue-in-cheek trend.
Who knows how serious the kids are about it, but Give a shot.
You never know it might work out for you.
Call a bar that you've never been to before and ask, hey, what's the vibe like?
What's the vibe?
What's going on there?
Hey, see if I were on the bar and say what vibe are you looking for?
And then I
just say
yeah, that's the vibe.
That was great.
All right, very good.
Next
headline.
videos about a week old and it was shot on a on a delta flight that was delayed and they're sitting there on the tarmac waiting to take off and someone had the bright idea of allowing a young girl to sing into the PA system so headline reads people are livid that a child sang disney songs over a plain intercom
people are livid
that a child sang Disney songs over a plane
intercom.
And the audio for this one speaks for itself.
All right, here we go.
Every turn I take, every trail I track, every path I make, every road leads back to the place I know, where I cannot go, where I long to.
see the line where the sky needs to sink
it calls
me and no
one
knows how far it goes in the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind
I
think if I'm on a plane and the thing is delayed and I'm ticked off because now I'm going to miss my connecting flight.
The
last thing I need is a nine year old singing Disney songs.
Yes, specifically Moana songs.
Not that I think that makes it worse or better.
That's just a little detail.
But yeah, if you're delayed, it's the last thing you want to hear.
I think the woman who filmed the video and posted it on TikTok was not upset.
And clearly, no one in the plane is yelling at your screen when you're telling her to stop.
But when the video went on to Twitter, that's where people got their pitchforks and were ready to burn down this Delta flight.
Yeah, Zauber, do you have something?
I think one of my favorite parts of the video is there's somebody sitting.
in the row right behind her who puts on headphones at the beginning and then at the end it's just like this is I give up and take him back off.
Nothing against the young girl I mean she's she has a fine voice but and I think it would have been fine to sing like hey do you want to sing one line or one stands up but it just keeps going
it keeps going it keeps going and yeah you can't yell over a young girl singing into a you know into anything you can't do that
You're not going to get any points from anyone doing that, so you're going to have to sit down and take it.
There's part of you saying, will she say, let it go?
Don't worry about the
front, let it go, let
it go.
Now, that would have been kind of funny, just the chorus.
All right, next headline.
We're talking with Peter Rapai, managing editor of E-Palm's World with our biweekly look at the wild and wacky week review.
Next headline, Peter.
And this one comes to us from France.
France's budget minister caught eating.
caught eating her boogers on TV.
France's budget minister got caught eating her boogers on TV.
Explain me, but.
The audio for this isn't too great, so I'm going to have to do my best to paint you the picture.
She puts her finger up her nose and then puts that finger in her mouth directly.
Oh,
my.
And she's like, she's like, it's not like in a quarter.
She's like up in front, addressing Parliament or whatever they have over there.
Yeah, yeah, she's a Yeah, I assume that's what it is.
It's a it's a hearing of some kind.
Yeah, and She clearly was a little hungry I'm not sure what if that's a French delicacy, you know, they like snail things over there
as cargo I
Mean,
I mean, I've been in public a lot and it worked in government and especially when you're in a hearing like that Be aware be self.
I mean, it's just in my opinion.
It's a disgusting
I don't want to call it a habit, but some people do this and I think it's just gross.
I think I remember the last time I ate a booger.
You've done that?
As a kid, sure.
Yeah.
Oh, I think maybe like seven or eight or nine and I did it and I was like, oh, yeah, I've lost the taste for this.
Yeah, I'm yeah.
It's just I don't know why it's just disgusting.
All right.
Thanks for I do need to lose weight, Peter.
So thank you with that.
Oh, I
will not
be eating anything else this afternoon.
All right.
Next headline.
Next headline, two secret service agents beat the crap out of each other outside Obama's house
to
now so these are two secret service agents beating the crap out of each other outside of obama's house explain what's going on here
so the the woman or person who was supposed to relieve um uh secret service agent of her duty was late for her shift and there's a audio here of one of the secret service agents calling into
the Secret Service dispatch saying you better tell her to get down here immediately or I'm going to whoop her ASS and have the audio for it.
All
right, now
here we go.
And there's video of the two agents fighting when one agent does show up.
Oh my gosh, I'm looking at these apps.
They're not just fighting, they're pushing each other up against a Secret Service car.
What was that?
What's going on here?
Because, I mean, former presidents get secret service for their entire life.
But but these folks, I mean, it's not like the Obama is the current city president.
Things should be pretty calm.
But clearly the one agent was very late for
her shift.
She must have had a date or was just getting tired and grumpy and wanted to go home and go to bed.
But yeah, not what you'd expect from the Secret Service for them to meet each other up.
No, she had to catch
a plane to Zurich.
I'm not sure what
she was doing.
That's a little disturbing.
I mean, if I'm Obama, if I'm President Obama, maybe we should get a couple of new Secret Service people.
Yeah, you'd imagine that if you're a Secret Service, you'd have a level head.
She must have really, really been late.
I don't know how long I would have had to wait.
It would have been like three hours plus some young girl in the backseat singing Moana for me to get that man.
All right, next headline, Peter Rapun.
Next headline.
There is a pigeon loose in a cabin of a Delta flight last week.
There is a pigeon loose in the cabin of a Delta flight.
You know how much we love a
good animal story here.
The audio on this one is fun.
It's just a bunch of people screaming because they're afraid of the pigeon flying around.
And there's one good Samaritan who has stood up in the center aisle and he has his jacket out.
And it appears like he catches it, though it's kind of hard to tell because the video is not the best quality.
All right, listen.
But if you want to hear the screams of all these passengers.
We got nothing else to do on a Friday until there are some screams on a Delta flight as a loose pigeon is snuck its way on board.
Here we go.
You think it was
a snake on a plane?
You think it was a bomb or something?
It's a pigeon.
But it probably got on through, like, the food service.
There's
no
way it got through the airport.
No.
When they load on the hot meals or whatever.
Right, right.
But also imagine wherever that pigeon is going, it gets off the plane.
He's like, I don't know where the hell I am.
Right, there you go.
Where am I?
Thank you,
exactly.
I'm in Zurich.
What am I doing
here?
Thank you for bringing that up.
Because what about the poor pigeon, who now has no idea where it's at?
It hasn't
got
a nest, a partner, it doesn't want to get food.
It's
in a
foreign land.
Well, yeah, you hear that woman screaming.
Imagine how the pigeon feels.
Imagine what the pigeon is thinking, like, oh, shoot.
Yeah, that's
exactly.
All right, next headline.
Here we go.
Oh, no, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Got to take a break.
Come back.
We're going to do a little break.
Come back.
More headlines with Peter Rapine after this.
It's the all ball show on the Civic Media radio network.
Welcome back to the title ball show on the civic media radio that working is eight minutes before the hour of four o'clock at the top of the hour ABC and CBS News followed by check of weather sport with a great sports reporter Mike Clemens and then another edition of the Maggie Dawn show from four until six followed by a great friend Pete Schwabba and Conrad and night light.
from six until eight.
Native Roots radio with Robert Pilots and then Rick Smith across America.
Don't forget the Brewers at home against the Padres tonight across several stations on the Civic Media Ready Network.
I'm going to go in down on Sunday.
And don't forget to be shown on the Roku Sports Channel.
And if you stick around after the Roku Sports Channel, you can see for free.
Just a bit outside the story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.
So a little plug for them for their for their great movie right now.
We have the great Peter Rapine.
He is the managing editor of Epom's world with his bi-weekly look at the week in review before he jets off to Tony Switzerland with a pigeon on board.
All right, Peter Rapine, next headline.
Well, I think a couple weeks ago we talked about how people were trolling AI drive-thrus with like insane orders.
Well, this one comes to us from Australia.
KFC installed AI drive-thrus in Australia, but they can't understand Australian accents.
KFC
installed AI drive-thrus in Australia, but they can't understand the Aussie accents.
Explain.
This one was cooked up in a lab specifically for me.
There's a bunch of videos on TikTok of Australians getting very upset as they're trying to order their KFC.
specifically trying to order barbecue seems to be a phrase that the AI assistant doesn't really register coming from them.
And we have a great audio for this one.
All right, before
I play it, before I play it, just to be clear, this is not people trying to intentionally punk like those other videos trying to mess it up.
These are just actual Australians just trying to put in a regular old order at KFC in Australia.
Exactly.
All right, here we go.
Here's the audio.
Can I please get a slide off?
Which rider would you like?
Barbecue.
Okay.
Delete the barbecue sauces.
Got it.
No.
Delete the add-on of sauces.
And by the way, I love a great Australian accent from a true Aussie like that.
But what was...
What's KFC thinking?
Don't they don't they test this out with real Australians before they put it into actual function?
I mean you would assume so, but that doesn't mean they actually did that.
Honestly, no idea.
I just it's just funny watching Australians and hearing Australians go no.
No.
No.
Uh, you would assume that they would have tested it out, but probably not.
It probably was just like a model that they put an Aussie accent on and it was just trained off of Americans.
Just another example, forget AI, have real humans.
That's what I want.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, exactly.
By the way, what's worse, uh, uh, Big Macs or, uh, Woppers?
What's worse, Wopper?
Really?
Any particular reason?
I've had more Big Macs in my life than Woppers.
Really?
All right, those are those are questions
earlier today are what's worse question written by CP by the way.
All
right
next
headline Dude hits dance moves in school parking lot before stealing $5,000 worth of laptops
a dude hits dance moves in a school parking lot before stealing $5,000 worth of laptops what up?
So this story also comes to us from Australia specifically Melbourne where and
The man has not been caught.
A burglar broke into a school and sold a bunch of laptops from the school.
But before he broke in and sold the laptops, he was caught on CCTV camera busting some moves in the parking lot.
These robbers are just not smart.
Okay, here we go.
Police in Victoria are seeking assistance identifying a burglar who had a temporary dance party in a school car park.
The man arrived at a Sunbury school about 10 past one in the morning before being captured on CCTV busting a
move.
His face is uncovered.
His headlights are on so everybody could clearly see who it is.
And he's doing.
Yes, I'm kind of bad ballet versus, I don't know, hip hop and with a flashlight.
I mean, it's like, when did the guy take a gummy before he decided to do a robbery?
I don't
know.
The brave is robbery.
You only do that when you know there's zero chance you're going to get caught.
Right.
And the guy
is still in the loose.
All right.
Next headline minute left.
Next headline.
All right.
All the best reactions to the Trump Elon fallout.
All right.
What a glorious week it was guys.
I thought you yesterday was one of the best days on the internet since 2016.
I'm just going to rapid fire a couple of these please from Josh Sorby.
This messy Trump must break up is truly the gayest thing about pride.
Very good.
Yes.
Go ahead.
Next one.
And this was the Elon bomb that Elon tweeted that really sent it all over the edge.
Elon tweets, time to drop the really big bomb.
Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
This is the real reason they have not been made public.
Then he ends it with, have a nice day, DJT.
And
that's
really when things blew up.
When Elon basically confirms that Trump's in the Epstein files, that's when, okay,
this is serious now.
And then from Franklin Leonard, the funniest possible outcome is definitely Trump deporting him.
And that's real too.
They're looking at that.
They're thinking of it.
They're actually trying to do it.
And then from cat turd, everyone's favorite cat turd.
Everyone needs to calm the F down.
It's out of control.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Peter Rapide always proves that with wacky human behavior.
That's the weekend review at E-Pomps World.
Peter, thank you very much.
Safe travels, my friend.
Over to Europe.
We'll see you when you get back.
Thanks, Todd.
All right.
Thank you very
much.
Appreciate it.
Also, appreciate Brady Hewing being here as well.
Zomers is always in all of you for listening.
Whatever you're fighting for, whatever you believe in, do not give up.
Keep banging your drum.
We'll see you next week.
From the Civic Media World Headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, it's the Todd Alba Show.
And now, pursuing truth wherever it may lead, here's your host, Todd Alba.
Across Wisconsin on the Civic Media radio network and streaming worldwide on the Civic Media app,
Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm Todd Albault, one of the producers and engineer, Mr. Aaron Rodgers.
This is Aaron Zommers, Todd's producer.
Thanks for joining us this weekend for the best of the Todd Albaugh show.
As always, if you want to hear any of this week's shows, you can head to civicmedia.us slash shows or anywhere you get your podcasts and take a look at what we talked about this week.
If you take a look through this week's podcast, you'll find discussions about the joint finance committee's stalemate over our state's budget, Wisconsin's massively declined childhood vaccination rate,
a story about a guy who ran a marathon and a roundabout, an explanation of what name-image and likeness deals look like in high school, and a lot more.
We're going to kick things off today with a conversation from Thursday's show with Emily Mills, a local journalist in the Madison area, who is currently working with Stan Shaffer of the Reconvobulation area, also Civic Media's political editor.
They wrote a pretty interesting article about AI and how the dangers we imagine AI poses may not be the reality, and there are a lot of ways it's already hurting us right now.
If you want to read this article, you can head on over to www.therecombobulationarea.news.
Or you can just Google the Recombobulation Area and you should be able to find it.
You can also read more of Emily's work at their own blog, Grist from the Mills, which is located at grist-from-the-mills.ghost.io.
A bit of a difficult one, but you can also just Google Grist from the Mills and you should be able to find it.
Anyway, take a listen to Todd's discussion with Emily Mills about the impacts AI
is already having on Wisconsin's
environment.
IE AI here to in studio and we are very pleased to have them here with us today.
Emily Mills of the Fantastic Recombobulation Area Civic Media's political editor and founder of the Recombobulation Area.
Dan Schaefer, of course, is responsible for putting all that together.
You can find Emily's work and others at www.therecombobulationarea.news.
They have to use the W-W-W.
So that's very, very important.
Emily, thank you very much for being here.
We appreciate you.
Thanks so much for having me on.
It's good to be here.
It is an absolute pleasure.
We always love it when people take the time to stop by here.
Tell folks a little bit about yourself.
You're an independent writer and journalist right now.
That is correct.
And I have been for, oh gosh, many, many years.
But I have a newsletter called Gris from the Mills, which is on the Ghost platform, a little different than Substack, that I've been writing for some time.
And Dan was kind enough to give me a spot as a regular columnist on the recom-
population area.
We've known each other professionally for quite some years, but I used to have an opinion column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and I was their token leftist.
among other things.
I got some pretty fabulous feedback on that.
I'm the token centrist here.
Yeah, everybody, you know, we've all got token roles to play.
And I used to be the editor of Our Lives, which is the still soul remaining LGBTQ media outlet in Wisconsin.
Fantastic.
But yeah, I've been here there and everywhere.
Yeah, it's great to have you here.
We always love when journalists, because I'm a big fan of coming up an independent radio out in Southwest Wisconsin.
I'm a huge fan.
of journalists who are not part of the corporate America.
I've voiced frustration on this program before, because I think there are intimidation factors going on in the current administration, but that's not why you're here.
The point is, as an independent journalist, you can suss these things out, and with platforms like the Recapobulation Area, and hopefully civic media helping out as well, we can get this information out.
Absolutely.
I think having independent, robust independent and nonprofit media in particular is a really essential part of a healthy democracy, frankly.
Yeah, I could not agree more.
So the headline on this story, how AI is harming Wisconsin's path to renewable energy.
Tell us first of all, how you came to write this story.
Is this a passion of yours or what made you say, hey, there's something here to report?
Oh, good question.
Yeah, I do really care about the environment because as other smarter people have said, hey, that's where I live.
So anything that impacts it is important to me.
And the intersection with
All these companies, utilities have these very important renewable energy goals, net zero goals, things like that, as we're facing down this very serious climate crisis.
We're already seeing impacts of it.
We're breathing in smoke from out-of-control wildfires right now.
All of it is very connected.
And they're walking back these goals now because there's this huge push to build these gigantic data centers.
And the data centers are largely being driven by the enormous amount of energy consumption that is the result of this huge boom and push for, and I'm going to use scare quotes, AI.
which is essentially a nebulous term for a bunch of marketing propaganda and not a single coherent
technology.
People regular listeners of the show know that I'm petrified.
I'm going to end my life by being attacked by AI robotic dog.
They scare the crap out of me.
But more seriously, I guess for goofballs like me or who might not be
up to speed on technology there is a really serious side to AI because it learns from itself and it gathers data and all of that can either either kind of be used for good or not so good as my my understanding.
Well, here's where it gets complicated.
So, again, learning from much smarter people than I am, I'm going to shout out a book that just came out called The AI Con by Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender.
It's a really great, very approachable, very, it's funny, and it's smart, and it's not overly academic.
Look at all of the hype around AI, and very clearly defines what it is, what it is not, and so much of what we're hearing is not
true about what it can do.
There's this really concerted push and propaganda marketing to make people think that it's smarter and more human-like than it is.
Anything that has quote-unquote language, we are prone to thinking, well, that's got to be some human quality to it, or it's going to take over, it's going to be Terminator 2, or it's going to be Hell 9000, or anything like that.
What they point out, and I really appreciate it, is they call them
Doomers and boosters.
So people who think, you know, AI is so, it's going to get so complex and so smart that it's going to destroy us.
Or people who think that, you know, that's not going to happen.
It's going to save us.
It's going to do all these things.
And the doomers and the boosters are essentially the same side of one, the same coin, two sides of the same coin, excuse me, where it's like they're both still claiming incorrect things about what AI can and can't do.
It's a lot of it is just marketing flim flam.
Like it is a spicy autocorrect.
It is stochastic parrots is one of the things they call it.
It's not it's not actually performing a lot of what we wanted to do.
And it's really essential that we ask like what are the inputs?
What are the outputs?
What is the purpose of this thing?
Is it saving us time in the end?
Is it actually doing what we wanted to do?
Is it just offshoring jobs to people who are being paid a lot less to work behind the scene and these ghost jobs to actually run what it's doing?
And also the fact that
back to the point of this column and the reason I wrote it is it takes up a ton of energy to run these data centers that power these
these tools like chat GPT and co-pilot and all these other things.
So Microsoft, for instance, wants to build this huge data center, is planning to build this huge data center in Wisconsin.
And in order to power that data center, we energies was like, shoot, we need more power.
We need bigger plants.
So as they're getting ready to shutter some of these coal power plants, they want to build these natural gas plants, which yes, technically pollute a little bit less than coal plants do, but they aren't in line with the renewable energy goals that we've set that are so crucial to.
save ourselves from the actual threat of climate change.
Yeah, exactly.
We're talking with Emily Mills, who is an independent journalist and writing for the Recombobulation area.
This very intriguing story on how AI is harming Wisconsin's path to renewable energy.
So specifically in your reporting, what did you find?
Is it that the power used to create these data centers or is it
something independent where AI is going to suss out weather forecasting or something like that.
I wish.
It's just a data aggregator and it requires existing information from human beings to do its job.
And oftentimes it's stealing that information without abiding by copyright or intellectual property laws.
But you still need human beings to actually gather and interpret this data and to use it in a way that's effective and important.
If you can't just rely on AI to do it all, it makes so many mistakes, it makes things up.
And we're seeing the impacts now.
I know the National Weather Service faced a bunch of cuts under Doge.
And there was a forecaster in Florida the other day who said, look, I'm not going to be able to tell you much about the hurricane season because these massive cuts to the jobs and the funding for these essential roles, AI can't replace that.
I mean, they're trying to sell it that it can.
And so of course, these...
corporate leaders who want to save a ton of money and lay off a bunch of people and just have some computers doing it, like, great, let's do that.
But in the end, it doesn't actually work.
We hold up proof that it doesn't work.
And a lot of people pay the price for that.
in the end.
So we need we need good forecasting among many other things.
Here's I've had a lot of people don't have a much resume as I call it about eight, nine years ago.
I was a between jobs.
I drove Uber for about a year.
I think everybody should do that.
I think it's very, very interesting.
But I picked up a guy the far west side of Madison and a beautiful, beautiful, palatial home hideaway like he was coming downtown.
And we just got talking.
And he was very talkative.
It was it was fine.
The long and the short of it is he made all this money because he worked at eight years ago and AI.
technology and computer and forecasting and he was getting paid for from major insurance companies because what they wanted to know is where with climate change which they acknowledged where are the storms gonna go so that we don't sign people up for insurance
yeah I mean if you live in the Gulf Coast and parts of Florida it's already getting almost impossible to get
flood insurance, hurricane insurance, things like that, places that have been really struck by wildfires out west.
It's like impossible to get
fire
insurance because, yeah, it's too expensive for them and their business model to ensure you.
It really is.
So back to your story here.
You bring up some of the PSC, let's define that public service commission and their role in this.
So yeah, the Public Service Commission, Wisconsin entity that had to recently voted to approve these two power new power plants that we energies one wants to put in.
And it's their job to sort of review these applications and see if they're in line with whatever state policy is and also to take public input.
And for both of the power plants, one in Kenosha County, one in Milwaukee County, there was 94 and 95% opposition to those plants registered with the PSC.
And that's between
You know, residents in the community, it's organizations that have banded together to kind of create a coalition to oppose it.
It's also some businesses.
It's a wide variety of people who registered opposition.
Despite that overwhelming opposition, the PSC still approved those two plants to go in.
Help me out here, because I used to work in the Capitol, but I've lost track.
still dominate or controlled by Walker appointees, or is time elapsed enough where there is an equal number, or is it Evers employees, do you know?
Or are not that employees appointees?
I'm gonna have to say I don't know.
I'm not actually sure.
I'd have to get up
to date on that myself, but
that is always a
consideration.
I'm always intrigued by this.
And I think a lot of people for the outside think, oh, it always comes down to Republican versus Democrats.
Right.
I
don't think that's the case
here.
I don't think it is.
I think this issue in particular is complex.
And I want to give a little bit of grace to people who are dealing with something that is really tricky.
We do need power.
I don't know what the political leanings or makeup of the current PSE is.
I'd have to look into
that.
I
haven't seen a lot of
explanation for the decision yet.
I'm just sort of reacting to this initially.
Why
do we do this?
But I think it's an interesting question and I also think the broader question of
This is a really complex issue.
It's not a Democrats versus Republican thing.
It is like we do need energy to power our homes and our businesses.
But the thing is, in my many lives that I live, I get to see that the solutions exist.
We do have the technology to do renewables and to really scale them up and to do it in a thoughtful way that takes into consideration viable farmland and conservation and everything else, but still have enough to power what we need.
What I'm seeing is that we don't need gigantic data centers to power
AI that is doing us net harm, in my opinion.
I'm fascinated by your reporting on this, the fact there was so much local opposition, and yet the Public Service Commission, which is supposed to serve the people of Wisconsin, still passes it unanimously.
I saw this stuff.
I was in the Capitol when Scott Walker was governor, and my former party was big on local control all the time, local control.
I don't recall a bigger ignoring of local control than under the Walker administration when it came to things like high capacity wells or rewriting mining legislation in northern Wisconsin, fracking.
And now here we seem to be seeing this again when it comes to energy in Wisconsin.
So, all right, we'll come on back, talk a little bit more with Emily Mills, independent journalist.
A great story here for the recombination area on AI and the Wisconsin environment.
Stay tuned.
you
Thanks for sticking around with us on the best of the Todd Alba show.
Here's the rest of Todd's conversation with independent journalist Emily Mills.
back to the Taliban show on the civil war.
23 minutes down past the hour of three o'clock, a lot to have you along Zabers.
Very dramatic of the bumper music.
Well, I know we said that AI is not like Terminator 2 or Hal 9000, but I couldn't resist.
I
caught the reference.
I like that.
I like it.
He's always listening.
You know, he's always on top of it.
Yeah, it was nice.
Appreciate that, Zabers.
Along here beside me at the World Headquarters at the desk is Emily Mills and is with recombobulation area.
They are a
independent journalist here, and you're writing now, you've written for other places, like you say, Journal Sentinel, other places along the way, but now here, feel a bit more freedom working for the recapitulation area versus other places you've worked or not?
No, actually, I have been really fortunate in my career to have very rarely run into issues of kind of censorship being reigned, and even when I was at the Journal Sentinel, the editor there was like,
write about whatever you wanna write about.
I don't
think it was ever rained in.
I mean, I
do try to be thoughtful at least.
I'm not just popping off about random things, but no, it is really nice to have the platform regardless though, because I can't help myself on it.
I have opinions about things, but I also really like to do a lot of research to make sure I'm not talking out of my rear.
So I
really appreciate the platform.
I ask it because again, in our discussions on this show and other shows at Civic Media, I think oftentimes there's this,
perception out there that, oh my gosh, everybody is being told what to do by editors or publishers or whatever.
I do think that in Wisconsin at least, you tell me if you think I'm wrong, you're much more of a journalist than I am, but I think in Wisconsin, less of that when it comes to places like our state newspapers.
that sort of thing.
My role?
Well, I think it's probably more nuanced.
So
if
I have never actually been just a regular beat reporter, news reporter,
and
I think there are a lot of more, you know, there's that constant debate about, do you present both sides of everything?
Well, what if one of the sides is actually...
just a lie or harmful.
But yeah, I think I have never actually held a job as a journalist that was that kind.
And I know people who have a lot of wonderful reporters who've worked in those fields and currently work in those fields for public radio or for some of the newspapers.
And there is a lot more that you have to be considering as you do it.
And there is a little bit more, I wouldn't say censorship, but a lot.
pickier editing and what will get picked up and what won't.
That's also just because they're woefully underfunded and understaffed these days.
You've got one person trying to do a million things at any given newspaper now.
the editor is gonna want you to do or not.
Didn't mean to go off on a tangent.
No, no.
I like what we have journalists here just to ask because I think it's good for our audience to hear from people who actually worked in the field interact.
Absolutely.
It is
an important conversation.
It really is.
Emily wrote this fantastic piece, Reconbobulation Area, entitled How AI Is Harvard, Wisconsin's Path to Renewable Energies.
I have a question here for you, Emily, if I get back to it here, says Laurie, listening all the way up in beautiful Hayward, Wisconsin.
Oh, I love Hayward.
Yeah, absolutely.
WBZH.
Buzz of the North says, Todd, can you ask Emily if they have heard anything about the state in the South that has a lot of issues with huge green?
In their state is what it was supposed to say
because of AI
centers built there from Worry and Hayward.
Well, this ties in because we were talking over the break, whether it's quote unquote, mining Bitcoin, where they put up these great big huge, what do you call it, energy generators?
I don't know.
It's the big servers, yeah,
the data mining centers,
which also require.
A lot of energy.
Compare that to what's happening potentially with what the PSC just passed here in Wisconsin.
Yeah, and sort of to the point too that there's other states that are dealing with the same issue.
So when I was researching this, the numbers right now, it's a little tricky because these large corporations that are building data centers to support AI tools and things like that aren't being very transparent about.
how much energy is actually going into it.
They're not giving any reports they used to, but they've conveniently stopped doing that in recent years.
But a lot of the best estimates and just looking at what's happening and adding that up is data centers and the energy that's going toward powering these
quote unquote, AI tools, is about to outpace how much energy consumption it takes to do Bitcoin mining, which is quite a lot.
So we're talking orders of magnitude, like enough power for multiple small countries, basically, to power themselves that are going into these data centers for these technologies.
And I think what's important, you correct me if I'm wrong, for Wisconsinites, and maybe this is why people were still opposed to it, the PSC,
These are not like quiet little things.
They have this annoying buzz in some of these things that can really just drive.
humans and wildlife, whatever, crazy.
Yeah, there's the noise factor and there's also just the air pollution factor.
These are a lot of these are the, you know, they call them natural gas, but we're talking about like methane and things like that.
And there are controls in place to kind of knock down how much pollution is going out, but they're not without pollution.
And there's a lot of precedent for these plants being problematic, especially for their neighbors breeding in the air.
And I think an interesting case is where, you know, I'm not, this is, we energies will probably have to follow.
the law in Wisconsin, at least when they build these places, so better than not.
But I think the larger issue is that a good example is in Tennessee, Elon Musk's XAI built a giant data center in a historically black neighborhood outside of Memphis, I want to say, and didn't apply for any clean air permits, didn't apply for any permits for their generators.
And because the local utilities are not able to provide enough power to run this place, but Elon really wanted to get up and running to meet some arbitrary deadline to roll out whatever his
AI chatbot thing
is,
they installed a whole bunch of these methane generators just like running 24-7 and they're just dumping.
pollution into the air around this place in a neighborhood that has already historically high visits to the emergency center for asthma.
You know, they're saying like, I can't breathe.
I can't go outside and breathe because it's just gas.
It's just the smell of gas everywhere.
So
this is the
kind of thing that's happening in service of this technology.
And what we know, based on our health care system in America, chances are that people in that neighborhood that might be people of color, probably less likely to have great health care coverage.
Yep.
Or, you know, great access to medical care generally or the incomes for it.
It's, it's a, yeah, I think the median income.
in that particular neighborhood was about $25,000 a year.
So not great.
Less than a minute.
It's been great.
What can people do to fight back across Wisconsin on this?
Well, I'd like to say you could write into the Public Service
Commission.
But as it
turns out.
I mean, obviously, I think it is important to keep calling your representatives and asking questions and telling them what you're concerned about and telling what you're opposed to.
Calling makes a difference.
Yes.
Do the research.
Make calls.
Talk to your friends.
Confine the story at www.therecobobulationarea.news.
Emily Mills, thanks so much.
Come back soon.
Thank you so much.
Our
pleasure.
Stay tuned.
Up next, Todd's conversation from Friday with Brady Ewing.
Stick around on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thanks for sticking around for the best of the Todd Albao show.
Here is Todd's conversation from Friday with Brady
Ewing.
Todd ran that right up to the very end, but we got it in, if you weren't with us, you can listen to it on the podcast or however.
Andy Rooney, iconic voice at CBS in 60 minutes for so many, very many years.
Who was that D-Day?
Who served?
And I just think it's appropriate that we pause and reflect and remember that today and never forget Steve listening to Mount Horrib on WMDX says, I am an army veteran and that was a great segment about D-Day.
They gave the ultimate sacrifice.
for freedom.
Absolutely.
So important that we pause, reflect and remember that.
And always somebody I like to go down down memory road with our friend.
He's a three time big 10 champion with Wisconsin football.
Spent three years in the NFL and an all around great guy and a fantastic turkey hunter as well.
Mr Brady Ewing joins us from the old hometown of the RC Brady.
How are
you doing?
Good.
Maybe the turkey hunter, that's my real claim to fame, I think.
The champion turkey hunter.
But they don't give you a ring for that, right?
They don't.
But what I'm hopeful of the people that are watching online and the ones that were listening on the radio really missed a display between the commercial break there where you were doing some kickboxing, some punching on the air, showing your moves over there in the studio.
Well, Brady asked me what I was doing this weekend and so.
I'm going to the brewery game on Sunday.
as I said at the top of the show.
And by the way, once again, the game is going to be shown on the Roku Sports Channel.
And stay tuned after the game because they're going to do a free showing of just a bit outside the story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.
So watch the Brewers game, listen on the radio, turn down the volume on the Roku Channel, listen to the Brewers radio network on select stations and civic media, and then stick around the Roku Sports Channel for just a bit outside afterwards.
But so I'm going to the game.
with my buddy Rob Daggett, his lovely wife and their young daughter, and we're going down, and Rob used to be one of my trainers back in the day, and I used to have a personal trainer, and we did the...
legit boxing, but where they'd wrap my hands and Rob would have like oversized mitts and they call out numbers one through six.
And you had to, you know, you're doing footwork and you're punching, you do that two, two minute rounds, three of those with a minute or two in between, you're exhausted.
Oh, no doubt.
Actually, at the University of Wisconsin, our strength coach, Coach Herbert and Brian Bott, we would do
We wouldn't get wrapped up, so it wasn't as serious as you, Todd, but we just used our hands and worked with those mitts.
So we'd partner up and work on quick hands, different sequences, which from a football perspective, it was good conditioning, but also a way just to train your mind hand coordination and having quick hands as you're either fighting off a block or you're trying to establish your hands on a block when you're blocking a defender.
Great training.
It really
is.
It was the best workout of my life.
So Robert, I've kept in contact.
And so we got to figure out a date to take you and Rachel and the boys down to another burger game.
But I like to do something nice.
And so Rob, we're taking his daughter down there and we'll have a good time on Sunday.
Brady, I wanted to talk a little bit about character.
today, something I know you and I have talked about before.
But what brought it up was Jonathan Blackwell, one of the big standout players for Greg Gard's team at the University of Wisconsin men's basketball team, put his
name
in to explore the NBA and said what he did.
So if I decide not to go into the NBA draft, I'm coming back to Wisconsin.
And some people kind of thought, well, yeah, sure, right, whatever.
This last week, he did just that.
He said I tested the waters, had a lot of great workout and input, but I'm gonna wait a year, and I'm coming back to Wisconsin.
And I read an article, I think it was Badger Blitz, I credit it, but I just don't have it in front of me right now.
And when they, in the story, it said that Jonathan Blackwell, somebody in his circle, heard from one of the other big teams out there.
And they said to Jonathan Blackwell's people, you know, we're really disappointed that Jonathan didn't go into the transfer portal.
And I guess Blackwell's response was, hey, you can tell them that we were really disappointed that you didn't recruit me at a high school.
Boom.
I thought that
was great.
I love that.
And I think...
That's when I when I think of, I guess, college sports of old.
That's that's what it was all about, right?
You're recruiting kids out of high school.
They have that in that character, that integrity, especially at a place like Wisconsin.
I feel like we've always tried to hang our head on recruiting young young athletes like that.
And so to hear him say that, to hear you tell that story during the during the break and then here now again, it just gives me goosebumps actually because.
Yeah, it just makes you feel like there's still hope a little bit.
And in Blackwell, I mean, great player, but I think a better leader.
And I think that story is a testament to the type of person he is.
I
couldn't
agree more.
And I think it's a, you know, Greg Gardner, a couple of years ago, when the NIL really ginned up, he said to the press, look.
I gotta kinda start dividing myself from the old school of, look, these guys are like our sons, and we bring them up, it's becoming a business.
But I think this just proves there's still a part of the old school in Greg Guard, the fact that he's bringing back Blackwell, Winter is coming back, Janicki, three guys that probably could have gotten bigger NIDL deals elsewhere, but they're coming back to the Badgers.
Yeah, I think that is it speaks to the way that great guards been able to adjust his approach, but yet still keep Some of what Wisconsin and makes him special and he's he's been able to evolve both on the court and off the record in recruiting and Yeah, you look at what they did this past year and some of those key players coming back.
I think high expectations, but
of those top tier programs like Wisconsin is failing to be, I feel like that is the expectation now in the transfer portal.
So to have that consistency is going to be huge and it's only going to snowball in my mind because the more you can keep some of those core parts of your team together and not have that large amount of turnover to the transfer portal,
uh, due to whatever reason that may be, I think that's going to just differentiate you that much more as the years progress to where you have that culture, you have that team built and people, there's still going to be athletes like Blackwell and others that want to be a part of that type of a program versus this very transient, transitional type of a program.
Yeah.
I mean, no disrespect to, uh,
Chuck E. Hepburn, who went to Louisville.
But I think if you would look at the seasons of Hepburn at Louisville last year after leaving for a reported million dollar deal at Louisville, and John Tanji, who transferred in, and you look at where they're at now, positioned in the draft, I think that Tanji got the better year.
Yeah, 100%.
And money, money's awesome.
Money's
great, right?
I mean, Chuck E. Chase in that deal at Nebraska.
Good for him.
Like that's awesome.
But at the end of the day, I'm sure there was days he was sitting there looking on his phone or watching on TV, seeing how the Badgers did and the camaraderie they had out on the court.
And you have to believe that he missed that a little bit.
I have no idea.
But you played in the division one on the football side.
So you know what it's like to be on a team.
Talk to us a little bit about that.
If you'd like to have Brady speak to your young people, whether it's a sports group or otherwise, you can reach him on the socials, as they say, particularly on Instagram.
It's Brady, B-R-A-D-I-E Ewing.
You can reach him there.
It's a B Ewing 34, right?
That's your handle.
or whatever you want
to call it.
Yep, on xbuing34 and then instagrambrady.un.
Yep.
All right, very good job.
Because when you go around talking to youth and you talk about character, you know, the old adage that character is what you do when people aren't looking.
When you're following behind someone and they drop their wallet and no one's around, do you put it in your pocket or do you catch up with a person and say, hey, you dropped this?
And to me, high school athletics,
Regardless of the person's ability, those are lessons.
If you have the right coach, the right team, those are lessons we can learn
100%.
Yeah, it's it's super cliche, but athletics gives you a great way to expose people to different types of situations that could be success.
That could be failure.
That could be, you know, sitting behind somebody that's better than them.
That could be being the star person on the team.
And I think.
Those situations are great microcosms for life in the fact that you know when you get into the working world or just even life as a as a student athlete in high school or in a family setting like adversity is going to come like we all face adversity of some sort.
So to have experiences with how to navigate that how to come together as a team how to use your resources of your family or your teammates.
You know how to respond when bad things happen.
You get injured.
You miss a game-winning shot.
Like how are you going to bounce back?
Are you going to go sulk in the corner of the locker room or are you going to come back the next day, show up a little bit early, get the extra shots up and try to learn from those challenges or those mistakes?
And I think we all have times where we do that.
We all have times where we revert to feeling sorry for ourselves.
So I think at least being mindful of that.
Having accountability not only to yourself, but also those around you.
That's what makes teams special because everybody's going to fall.
Everybody's going to stumble.
It's really how are you going to try to motivate yourself to get out of that and then how are you going to help your teammates when they're in that position because everybody goes through those moments.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I just think, look, I've never met John Blackwell, but just the little I read and see, and I guess I'm a big believer in people's actions over their words.
And here's a guy who said he was gonna do something probably most likely at the opportunity to cash in bigger somewhere else, but he kept his word and is coming back out of loyalty.
And that's something in my life that's tremendously important to me.
is I really try to be a loyal friend.
I try to be loyal to the people who take care of me.
And so I just really admire what Blackwell is doing as others on the team as well.
Yes, it's special.
Blackwell, we know what you can do on the court, but to see that.
he lives that out in his day-to-day basis, on a day-to-day basis is pretty special.
Yeah, it really is.
We're talking to Brady Ewing, three-time Big Ten champion with Wisconsin football, spent three years in the NFL, and a Brewers fan as well.
And by the way, Brady, if, well, not you, but, well, you can't actually, you're eligible.
Get your kids on the, on Rachel texting in right now.
We are right smack dab in the middle of our big Scotty summer text-to-win contest.
You can be eligible for the next, well, about 14 minutes here.
Go to the Civic Media app, download it, open it up and text the word North, N-O-R-T-H North right now on the Civic Media app because we're giving away, this hour, a pair.
That's two, a deuce to a future Brewer game at Amfam Field in these beautiful club states that Brady you've been in.
It's a pretty
good view.
Oh, it's awesome.
Yeah, you get to go inside, get the air conditioning if you need it, great.
We
need it.
Concession
stands were close.
Yeah, we needed it today.
We were.
Concession stands were close.
That was needed for the kids, too, to keep them cooled down and fueled up.
So, no, it was a great game.
It's always fun to be at.
I still want to call it Miller Park.
I know, I know.
Ampamp Field.
Ampamp Field.
I know.
Taken in the Brewers.
Text the words.
North.
N-O-R-T-H.
North.
Text it right now to be eligible for the Brewer Tickets.
And also...
Eligible for here, Brady.
You want to take your lovely wife on a vacation?
Two grand prizes, Wisconsin vacation to either the Baraboo Dells area or a Door County getaway with a gas card.
So North, N-O-R-T-H.
About a minute here left, Brady.
Let's dive into this.
We'll pick it up on the other side.
Arod, Aaron Rodgers.
Now, this is interesting because you played with Russell Wilson at Wisconsin.
The one year he was there, you guys went to the Rose Bowl.
and won the Big Ten.
And so now Russell Wilson's going from the Steelers to the Jets, and A-Rod going from the Jets to the Steelers.
Giant, giants.
Russell's at the Giant.
Oh, that's right, that's right, that's right.
Same stadium, same stadium, same stadium.
Same
stadium.
There you go.
All right, see, I messed up this segment because I didn't know my teams.
You never try to challenge a former NFL player when you're talking about teams.
That's the lesson from the end of this segment.
All right, I'll regroup.
We'll come back.
We'll get Brady's thoughts on Aaron Rodgers and his son is a NBA fan.
The Pacers game last night was incredible.
It's the all-post show for a Friday with Brady Ewing on the Civic Media.
We're ready to work.
Thanks
for sticking with us on the best of the Todd Alba show for this week.
Right here, we're going to listen to the rest of Todd's conversation with Brady Ewing that he had on Friday.
Enjoy.
Look at this Luke Mathers brought in a box of a Greenbush bakery donuts today.
Yep.
I had one earlier too, right?
Oh,
did you spend a lot of time
do you spend a lot of time there when you went to Wisconsin?
Love Greenbush even after when we lived in Madison When our kids were younger that would be a Saturday morning tradition and I don't know
Is it Papa John's?
Was the original center?
Papa's
doughnuts, yeah.
Papa's doughnuts.
Spudnuts, man.
Spudnuts before
that.
Hey, that was the spot.
I missed those and craved those.
I know, absolutely.
Me too.
Brady, I could sit around and talk about Donut, Submission Center for all day, but by the way, text the word North N-O-R-T-H right now to the Civic Media app to be eligible to win a pair of Milwaukee Brewers tickets as well as fabulous grand prizes, which will whisk you away to destinations untold across Wisconsin.
North N-O-R-T-H is the word.
to text right now.
Brady, before the break, Aaron Rodgers for Packer, for Merget, now to the Steelers.
I know it's sensational, but what do you make of it?
It's fascinating.
I'm interested to see how him and Tomlin mesh together and their personalities and what we've seen from Aaron Rodgers through the years as far as his personality.
There's some baggage that comes there.
I mean, he can play on the field, but...
comes with, you know, some off the field stuff and, you know, just a pretty extravagant personality.
So it's going to be interesting to see how he meshes in yet another program.
And, you know, I have a ton of respect for the way that the sealers program has been run.
And it just, it'll be interesting to see, I mean, that's where I think coaches can really come into the equation to see how they mesh that type of a talent, that type of personality with the culture that they've built historically.
and gonna be very, very different than I think the Russell personality that they had had in at least
last year.
Very, very different indeed.
Yeah, very different indeed.
Brady, you were breaking up during the break.
This is a really interesting point.
Talk to us about what these quarterbacks that were in the NFL draft, these college quarterbacks, some of them coming out early, and what they left and what they're going towards.
Yeah, I just thought it was interesting and I almost brought it up during the Blackwell conversation.
Just, you look at the draft and everybody obviously saw shooter Sanders and how he dropped in the draft, but there was other higher quarterback draft picks and that position is easy to call out just because everybody recognizes them.
And it was still interesting that a lot of these quarterbacks that declared early and could have stayed in college gave up.
you know, big NIL deals in college to pursue what would be a smaller annual salary at the NFL level.
But, you know, I guess I just think back to guys I played with in some of my time and guys are still chasing that dream and
they
still have, again, money is important.
Obviously, they'll make great money either way, but they're still out pursuing that dream and wanting to be a part of something that they've likely looked forward to since they were
you know kids so it's just interesting to see how that money uh goal achievement you know can go back and forth and and weigh on people and how they make their decisions and uh still people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves their goals their dreams and or maybe it's a certain program like blackwell where he wants to
be a part of Wisconsin and uphold his word.
So just interesting how that plays into
it.
It's super interesting.
I think I read where Shadour, he was making well over a million and a half in NIL at Colorado and he dropped to the fifth round.
I know the minimum was changed a lot because you were in the fifth round, right?
Correct.
But it's changed a lot in the years since you were first drafted.
But you got to believe that Shadour is making a lot less
They went to Cleveland, right?
As an NFL quarterback, a fifth rounder, he was making his the starter at Colorado.
Yeah, it's it's fascinating.
But again, he wants to be a part of competition at its highest level.
And no doubt he had more he could have accomplished at Colorado, other than getting his name inducted or his number inducted in the Hall of Fame.
I think that already happened.
I know,
I know.
He retired
his current number when he's still a senior.
I mean, whatever, last year playing.
Yeah, isn't there usually a time window to get that done?
Right, I thought.
And as long as you brought that up, why is 34 not retired at Camp Randall?
That's mine.
Oh, gosh.
Come
on.
No, come on.
Hey, on a side note, though, did you see the recent Hall of Fame class?
It's at Wisconsin for the W Club Hall of Fame.
It helped if I was able to talk.
But James White is going in.
Travis Frederick.
and a bunch of others.
Frank Kaminsky, just really cool to see, I guess, people that I either played with or looked up to during my high school days getting inducted.
Now, it's really cool and happy for those
guys.
It's super cool.
And congratulations to all who were inducted.
Very quickly, Brady.
NBA Finals are on.
The Pacers against the Thunder of Oklahoma.
Halliburton, the Wisconsin guy, does it again for the Pacers in the last second.
Yeah, it was pretty special.
You said Bennett's an NBA guy.
Rachel was out at her parents with a couple of our boys last night.
So Bennett and I watched the first half and what started off as a pretty lopsided game became pretty competitive to the end.
So I got to catch the highlights from the second half.
But man, that guy has ice water running through his veins and just an impressive athlete to make a shot of that caliber in that game with all the hype.
It's kind of bad
for me, does it all the time now?
Why is it that Wisconsin teams always lose to the eventual, eventual champion?
That's all for this week's Best of the Todd Alba show.
As always, if you want to hear the rest of the week's shows, you can go to civicmedia.us slash shows or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
And as Todd always says, whatever you believe in, whatever you're fighting for, do not give up.
Keep banging your drum.
We'll see you on
Monday.
