June 5, 2026 • 34 mins
The Fifth Hour Podcast sails into rough waters as Ben Maller enters the audio dojo to investigate the biggest Maller Militia mystery of the week. Fan favorite Fergdog saw his social media account vanish under suspicious circumstances, and rumors are flying that jealous P1s launched a little not-so-friendly fire. Was it sabotage, coincidence, or another chapter in the never-ending radio soap opera? Benny follows the breadcrumbs. Plus, a trip down memory lane with the origins of saying “cheese” for photos, some classic Foodie Fun, and plenty of sarcastic banter from the pirate ship. Subscribe, follow, and join the voyage!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kabooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler
and you were hanging out together on this Friday. You
can listen whatever you want. There are people that go
back and hear these podcasts days later, but we are
plausibly presenting the podcast on this fifth day of June.
(00:51):
It is the one hundred and fifty sixth day of
the year twenty twenty six, which means my computer like
brain tells me there are two hundred and nine days left.
This is our first Fifth Hour podcast of the month
of June. You always remember your first Fifth Hour podcast.
On this edition, we have the Freedom Fighters, random word
(01:13):
of the Week, and foody fun. Those will all be
things we'll be getting into at some point here as
we celebrate National Fish and Chips Day, which is apparently
today the stereotypical meal of the United Kingdom our buddy
(01:33):
Terry in England, so it is National Fish and Chips Day.
And we've talked about this before. I eat fish and
chips about once a year, usually in the summer, normally
in the summer, and this meal goes back to the
sixteenth century and the fried fish the Sephardic Jews apparently
(02:00):
where the immigrants from Spain and Portugal introduced the custom
of coating fish in flour and frying it in oil
and then became very popular in London and other British
port cities. And now all these years later, that is
what it's known for. So National Fish and Chip's Day,
(02:21):
extra tartar sauce, knock yourself out, why not? But we
begin with this. One of the strangest things about doing
the job that I have the Overnight Show, hosting that
show is that eventually you stop being surprised by regular
human behavior, because there really is nothing regular about human
(02:43):
behavior right now, not completely. You still raise an eyebrow
now and again. However, after enough time behind the microphones,
years wandering the back alleys of in some you know,
talking to the truck driver driving across the back roads
(03:06):
of Nebraska at three in the morning. And my favorite,
the security guards. It's my latest favorite, the guys that
are protecting buildings. Nobody intends to rob. They're ghost buildings.
There's hardly anyone in the buildings. Well, when you talk
to these people your standards for what qualifies as unusual,
(03:28):
they move, they shift, they begin to move in other
areas like this week. For example, one of the biggest
stories in our little universe involved Ferg Dog. Yeah, not
some kind of actual dog, not a movie star, not
a professional athlete, the character known as Ferg Dog. That's right,
(03:53):
from the Winter Wonderland of Fullerton. Enough you did not listen.
Towards the end of the week. Here the Brigadier general,
highly decorated in the Malad militia and his ex account
was given the squad douche treatment. It was suspended, sent
to the digital hues gal put on time out. And
(04:18):
I did not know this. I do not pay much
attention to social media. During the day. A number of
you reached out to me and said, hey, wait a minute,
something's not right with Fergie. What happened to my friend
Ferg Dog? Now if you do listen on a regular basis.
You know who Ferg Doog is. Even on this podcast.
Ferg Dog and Alf, the Alien Opiner and a few
(04:39):
others Reggie and Detroit and whatnot have become staples of
this But Reggie and Detroit rarely, he'll rarely contact us
about the radio show. He's mostly just the podcast gal
who he says he does listen Fergdog and Alf. They're
fully immersive in everything that we do. And Ferg Doog
is harmless, like not harmless in the way people describe
(05:03):
alligators at a wildlife sanctuary right before they lose their
left hand, harmless in the way a sloth is harmless,
a koala, a slightly confused golden retriever, That's what I'm
talking about. So his specialty is showing up with sharp,
goofy over the top observations and then wandering off before
(05:27):
anyone remembers to argue with him. Right, And so that's it.
And so yet somehow, in the vast ecosystem of the
Ben Mathers Show, overnight he has become the center of controversy.
Ferg Dog like who gets upset at a golden retriever?
Who does that? A cartoon character. Now the working theory
(05:49):
from several of the fans of the show that have
told me they believe it was friendly fire, that it
was friendly fire. Not actual friendship, mind you, the kind
of friendship that exists when people send thousands of hours,
spent thousands and thousands of hours listening to the same
(06:09):
radio program, and develop emotional attachments to complete strangers they
have never met. It is interesting to node that while
this was going on, Mom man Alf the alien o
pinter who knew these guys were buddies. They're on the
same wavelength. So Alf the alien opineer was working as
the mouthpiece for Ferg Dog. He was the one that
(06:32):
was the messenger pigeon. He was the one that was
getting the messages out from behind cyber jail, behind cyber
jail where Ferg Doog unfortunately is hanging out in the
prison yard. And so listen, this is a show where
we have a community, and it's less community and more
(06:53):
a village populated entirely by amateur political operatives. If you
ever day we do the show, somebody is campaigning. Someone's
got an agenda, whether it's Mike the Leprechaun, Marcel and
Brooklyn hollering, James, all of these cats, and lately we've
(07:15):
got people leaking information, somebody attempting a coup. The caller
slash social media drama O Ramba resembles WWE Royal Rumble,
in which every participant is convinced that they're the main event.
(07:35):
It's that syndrome. We've talked about it in previous episodes.
It's the main actor syndrome where everyone's got a camera
crew following them around. They're the star of their show.
Which I do believe you're the star of your own
life and you can do what you want with that.
I buy that, like the rest of us, are merely extras.
And I've noticed this phenomena for years, especially with the
(07:59):
radio stuff we're talking about right now. A listener will
call up regularly or become a character on social media.
The audience, the listenership, enjoys the contributions of the social
media person or the caller. The caller begins receiving attention.
It's the same paint by numbers formula, and then another
(08:22):
listener notices, and at first it manifests as a mild irritation,
and soon it becomes this passive, aggressive type thing, and
then suddenly we are operating inside a miniature version of
the Benny Beltway, complete with intrigue whisper campaigns. There's strategic alliances,
(08:50):
the whole ball of Wax, the full Magilla, the whole Mgilla.
The only difference is that our version is inducted by
people that enjoy eating gas station burritos at four in
the morning. So I get messages, and I'm bad at
writing back. I admit that, and I do skim the email,
(09:14):
and I'll say, well, what are the people upset about?
Ben Malors Show at Gmail? By the way, benmallershow at
gmail dot com. If you want the Ben Mahler Show
email address, this is obviously the real, real fifth hour
at gmail dot com. So you start seeing things like, hey,
this guy's getting too much airtime. I liked your show,
but I can't stand this caller, which I love. That's
(09:35):
my favorite. So I like a four hour radio show,
but a caller who's on the air for at the
most three minutes, that's a bridge too far. I can't listen,
so I will forget the other three hours and fifty
seven minutes of content that I like because of the
three minutes I don't like. Okay, that makes sense. Why
(09:57):
not let's do that anyway? The the complaints coming. Hey,
this guy gets too much airtime? Why was he mentioned again?
I don't think he does anything for the show. What
exactly does he contribute? These are questions that I get
that I think are normally reserved for members of Congress.
Yet somehow they're being asked about a man named Ferg
(10:21):
Dog Fergie. The Malard Militia has evolved into the United
Nations of Insomnia. Now we pride ourselves on the show
as being all inclusive, meaning everyone is welcome as long
as you're willing to bust each other's balls. We don't
take ourselves too seriously. Everyone's got a seat. I don't care.
(10:42):
We're all in this battle together. I don't care where
you're from. Be looney Todes. Everybody claims in the Malad
Militia in our little United Nations, the Mala Militia of Insomnia,
you know, we support peace and harmony, and everybody secretly
believes the organization would function much better the Malad Militia
(11:02):
if their rivals were launched into the Sun in a
SpaceX rocket and just kaboom. And I've often thought that
what we do here is basically a neighborhood hoa meeting,
except everyone has a microphone and many unresolved issues. Whether
(11:26):
it's a random caller from Michigan angry at a caller
from Texas, or some dude in Oregon who's going down
the Oregon Trail convinced that a woman from wherever is
receiving preferential treatment. Someone in the Great State of Ohio
who's spent six months constructing a legal brief proving another
(11:50):
caller is overrated. The arguments frequently become so convoluted. It's
so convoluted that I feel like I'm a substitute teacher
on my own program, and that's where I am, and
I walked into the wrong classroom, and here we go.
(12:13):
The thing about the Overnight Show that I think is
one of the key building blocks is the authenticity that
is the product, Like that's really it. Like you don't
want to tune in because the operation is polished. You
don't want that. You definitely don't want it. And nobody
(12:35):
wants corporate to prove focus group content other than programming
people who listens to them. So that's not how we roll.
We're a little rough around the edges, a little rough
around the edges, and we certainly embrace the odd bass.
We love the goofy. We do. Dysfunction, dysfunction, junction, what's
(13:02):
your function? The occasional train derailment, if you will. And
what you don't realize, what you don't realize is that
when you remove rules, you don't create paradise. You create
Dodge city is what you create. Look it up, Google it.
And so the Ben Maler show, the show that we do,
becomes a verbal demolition derby where the only rule is
(13:28):
that there are no rules. It's the wild wild West,
except everyone is armed with smartphones, social media and grudges,
lots and lots of grudges. And you're like, come on, man,
like what are we doing here? Seriously? And as the
(13:50):
man who plausibly is in the catbird seat, I am
constantly tempted to intervene, and I do so, searching like
should I create guidelines? Should I instart install those guardrails
and all that stuff? And I have always rejected it,
(14:11):
like I said, well, I'll put a permit here, do
a background check. You imagine if I did background checks
on some of these guys. Weed man would vanish into
thin air. He's been arrested so many times. If he
even gets near a back ground check, it's all over.
It is all over again. So I go back to
the point, the synopsis, the thesis, what everyone says, it's early.
(14:38):
I remember why people listen. That chaos is the point.
And it's one of the more maddening things that we
we have, as I often point out, like we prepare.
I prepare a lot to try to do a good
show and all that, and then it's the moments when
things don't go right that people like, no one's ever
(15:01):
come up to me at these events that I do say, hey,
let me break down that sports take. It's always the
other stuff. It's when you bring the groceries home and
you drop the milk and explodes and the milk goes everywhere.
That's the stuff that resonates. And so it's always been
that way. I spent a lot of time worried about,
(15:21):
oh yeah, I'm gonna put a monologue together, and that's
not the stuff that people remember. It's not necessary. You
gotta do it. However, there's other things involved, and so
the chaos is the thing, and you can't manufacture that
you can't plan the chaos, you certainly cannot regulate it.
(15:42):
I don't believe in the minute everything becomes orderly the
magic evaporates. Is just every other boring sports talk radio
show that are horrific, and who wants to do that?
There's plenty of that out there. And so every now
and then I find myself again with some ridiculous controversy
(16:03):
like Ferg Dog randomly getting banned from social media, who
never sends anything out that is even more than benign.
And then here we go, right, and so somebody, apparently
if the malad militious correct my investigating arm, decided Ferg
Dog needed to be drugged, handcuffed, gagged and put in
(16:24):
a bag to disappear. Who the hell does that? Who
wakes up and thinks, you know, you know what would
improve my day and improve the world sabotaging a social
media contributor. That's the ticket. That's what we need, Like,
come on, really, that's what we need. The level of
(16:47):
commitment truly fascinates me. I'm amazed, right, I am expand
my horizons here and yet somewhere in audio old Land,
somewhere out there is a person willing to wage a
shadow campaign against a man whose primary offense is being
(17:11):
moderately amusing to the overnight audience. And it's impressive in
a deeply troubling way. We're talking about ferg Doc. What
makes it especially funny is that everyone involved is convinced
that they're fighting for justice. Nobody ever says, hey, I'm jealous.
(17:34):
I yet to have anyone say I'm very insecure. I
don't get those comments. Nobody says I wish people paid
attention to me. Instead, they become freedom fighters, the old
freedom fighters, revolutionaries, protectors of the republic. Now meanwhile, the
(17:56):
rest of us are standing around wondering why there's another
food fight in the cafeteria at the mal Ard Militia Building.
And I've spent enough time around people to know that
attention is a very strange drug. It's just as some
people can take a compliment and move on, others spend
(18:19):
years chasing the next compliment. It's recognition that becomes oxygen.
And you've likely seen it in your world, like if
you don't receive enough of it, you create your own
weather system, right, storm clouds, thunder lightning, anything to make
(18:40):
sure somebody notices. So we circle back around now, to Fergdock,
back back back back back back back back back back
to Fergdock. And I don't know whether he'll ever discover
exactly what happened for all, and I don't know if
I will. And we're trying to get to the bob
(19:01):
of it. And maybe the suspension was random by some
Russian bots or some North Korean things, or a bot
farm in Maldova went on the attack as possible, as malicious,
like we think in some bitter soul launching a digital
spitball that accidentally hit the target. So what I do
(19:25):
know is that the entire episode serves as another reminder
that the Ben Maler Show overnight audience remains one of
the most entertaining collections of knuckleheads humanity has ever assembled.
It's a little bit of a support group where you're
a circus. We've got a seal bouncing a beach ball
(19:45):
on its nose. It's a family reunion. We don't hear
from someone we get upset. For example, we've not heard
from the Power couple from Bradenton, Florida, Jack, the Judge
and Leslie. They went on a European vacation and never
came back. And I don't know what happened. I've tried
to track them down. And that's the part, is like
(20:09):
we miss these people. These are part of our family.
These people are part of our family. And I talked
about Roscoe the parrot and David from Winter Park, Florida,
who we were ninety nine percent sure passed away, and
the characters on the show, and so it does feel
like it's some kind of psychological experiment. Sometimes, as we
(20:30):
said earlier, dysfunction junction, what's your function? And apparently this
week it was reminding us that even among people united
by insomnia and sports opinions, there will always be squabbling.
There will always be another Malard Melo drama right around
the corner. It's like a soap opera. I gotta sell
the soap, as John Sterling said, will there will always
(20:52):
be somebody trying a dirty trick, those dirty tricksters in
the Malad militia, and there will always be a Ferg dog.
We hope it's the Ferg dog we have now, and
if not, there'll be somebody else in that chair, and
hopefully back from time out to not go to time
out again, right, because every neighborhood needs it's harmless sloth.
(21:16):
And that's our guy, ferg dog. It is all right. Meanwhile,
turning the Patriots. The random word of the week. Now,
that is not the normal word of the week, which
we haven't done that much recently, or the phrase of
the week, or the idiom of the week. This is
the the random word of the week, all right, random
(21:37):
word of the week, that's what this is. And the
word is cheese, not breeze cheese, the great Breeze cheese,
a classic staple when Brianna would fill in on the
producer's chair. So the random word of the week is cheese.
That's a standard definition. And I'll tell the story. I
(22:00):
think i'll get to it tomorrow. I ended up at
an amusement park with some family and we took some
photos and the person that took the phone to take
the photo said, everyone say cheese. And it reminded me
of something that I have known for some time, that
(22:21):
the history of the word cheese. Well, I know Provolone,
I know Swiss, I know Cheddar. I know a little
bit about cheese, not as much as Brie. She's the
cheese expert, right, thus the bree cheese. So I was like,
when did this start. Why do we say cheese? Now?
I kind of figured it out when I was a kid.
(22:42):
The main reason we say cheese is it forces a smile.
The word cheese contains a long e sound, which naturally
stretches your big fat mouth into a smile like shape.
Not a full cheshire cat smile, however, a solid It's
simple linguistic. It's a little trick to make people look
(23:05):
happier in photos, which is interesting because for a long
time people did not smile and photographs photographs took a
lot of time and energy to get, and so the
word cheese is arbitrary and funny. And saying something random
and unrelated to photography like cheese, you know, it makes
(23:28):
people loosen up a little.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Bit, laugh.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It's a genuine expression that those camera people use. Now.
The other thing I was like, when did this begin?
Like when did it was Shakespeare saying cheese? Of course,
they didn't really have photos back in those days anyway,
so they as we know them today, and the tradition
of saying cheese, it's not as old as you think.
(23:58):
In fact, the early est known reference to this is
in the nineteen forties there was a US ambassador politician
Joseph E. Davies who suggested saying geeze to create a
smile for photographs. The word caught on because the long
(24:19):
e again, as we said, stretches the mouth. The phrase
became much more popular in the nineteen fifties, so we're
still going back seventies six years or so. In magazines,
television personalities began recommending the social media influencers of the
day recommending doing this, and so by the late sixties,
(24:41):
I guess early sixties, saying cheese had become the standard
in English speaking countries. However, did you know that around
the globe, around the globe, using their own equivalent words,
many countries do the same thing. In Sweden when you
(25:02):
take a photo, I'm told, according to the interweb, you
say omelet. In Germany it's cheesecake or spaghetty. Let's have
some spaghetti, because you mean you think spaghetti, you think Germany,
or marmaset in France, kim chie in Korea, that'll get
(25:22):
you to smile. Raisins from Russia it doesn't smile, you
don't smile much, or in Ja in Denmark, and going on.
In Finland, their word is a small freshwater fish. Vendas
is the name of the fish. So anyway, there you go.
It's all about the smile. You gotta smile. Smile, smile, smile, smile, smiles, smile, smile. Meanwhile,
(25:51):
FOODI fund not a lot of foody fun stories this week.
Bad job by the restaurant industry. I'm not sure. Why
is it summer? Are they done for this sum They're
just waiting for the season to change again and then
they'll be back in stride. I don't know. I did see.
Burger King has introduced the new loaded Jalapeno Whopper. They
(26:12):
also have the Orange Dreamsicle Freeze King that sounds good,
and the Firecracker cookie pie. I give Burger King credit.
I feel it is a feeling. Who knows? It's the
fact Burger King is on the upswing? Who says no?
Does anyone say no? I think that they're trying, that
(26:32):
they're connecting more with people. So I'm going yes on that.
Now these items, let me break this down a little
further here. What do we got. We've got the loaded
Jalapeno whopper that'll sit you back eight hundred and twenty calories,
a lot of fat, protein, sugar, The whole thing, the
(26:54):
Orange Dreamsicle Freeze king medium that's three hundred and forty
calorie and the Firecracker Cookie pie two hundred and fifty calories.
So if you do the math on that, that's what
do we ad? Thirteen fourteen hundred calories. I believe something
like that. That seems let's just go with that. That's good, right,
(27:17):
we'll go with that. What else? Pizza Hut has added
the somewhat recently the new Crispy Palm Pan pizza to
its menu. So if you're into the whole Pizza Hut experience,
the Crispy Palm Pan Pizza starts at a suggested retail
price of ten dollars a medium thirteen or ten ten
(27:40):
dollars for a medium, thirteen dollars for a large, said
the man with the microphone. So one slice of this
will set you back two hundred and seventy calories if
you're counting calories. And how about this for night mirror fuel?
You want night mirror fuel. So I read this story,
I got my attention. I thought, boy, that's really wild,
(28:03):
that's wild and crazy. Let me dig into this a
little more. And I had not heard anything about this.
I don't know anyone that's had this happen. If you've
had it happen, I'd love to have you email me
at real fifth hour at gmail dot com. We do not,
as of this hour, have a celebrity booked for the
mail bags, so I'm not sure I might end up
doing it solo. Who knows? Anyway, get to the point, please,
(28:26):
all right. So I saw this, I thought, boy, this's
a nightmare. So I was reading this story about major
safety issues with oven doors that chatter spontaneously. Let me
repeat that this is not where the oven door is manipulated, fondled,
(28:47):
any of that stuff. That's not it. No, no, no. Between
January of twenty twenty five and March of this year,
so a couple months ago. They according to the US
Consumer Product Safety Commission, that sounds like a fun bunch
almost four hundred reports, almost four hundred reports of spontaneously
(29:11):
exploding oven doors where the glass shatters. Over forty people
were injured, and I hadn't earn anything. Frigid air accounts
for the vast majority, according to the US Consumer Product
Safety Commission, two hundred and sixty three incidents. However, other
(29:32):
brands have had some as well. Ge sixty three. That
seems like too many, Whirlpool thirty five, LG fifteen, Samsung ten,
Samsung ten. So the thing that scares you is these
You say, well, you cooked, the oven got too hot
and kerfluy all of a sudden. No, no, no. From
(29:56):
what I read, these incidences of the the oven door
shattering have happened every so often for a while. However,
they often happen when the oven's off, and there are
examples in this story where sometimes it's days after the
(30:18):
last use, like you're just sitting there as the oven,
You're minding your own business, and then all of a
sudden you commit oven suicide. Why would you do that
as an oven? I don't know why I did that
as an oven, but I did it. And there you go.
That is crazy that your oven glass door can just
explode with enough force to sound like a small bomb.
(30:44):
So why is that happening? Why do you think? The
reason is, well, it's something in the construction of the oven.
The manufacturers, including frigid Air and their parent company, they
have not given a direct root cause. The common theory
is that there are flaws in the tempered glass, meaning
(31:09):
scratches from cookwear improper door closing or just general misuse.
How are most of the incidents involving the ovens going
bad turning into gremlins four to six year old ovens,
which you're supposed to have an oven for more than that.
The oven is supposed to last and last, and so
(31:32):
four to six years. I will tell you Samsung, from
what I read, is offering free door replacements. That's nice,
even outside warranty. So if that happened to you, or
has happened to you recently, there you go. Apparently some
of the other companies that sell ovens, they're telling you
to go cry an ocean. They are not being very
(31:55):
proactive to try to help out the consumer to figure
that out. Yeah, so, which is not not shocking at all.
I'm happy to report that our oven door at the
Malor Mansion is working fine. So that is that. Today
(32:15):
is also I wanted to finish. I mentioned it was
National Fish and Chips Day. It's also Hot Air Balloon Day.
I was last in a hot air balloon at a
marine base in El Toro, at El tore Marine Base,
which is no longer there. It's a shopping mall pretty
much right now. And I was the kid, and they
(32:35):
had open house at the marine base and we would sit.
They had higher balloons and we'd go up and we
were tethered. So I don't know if it counts. I
guess it does count because if the hot air balloon
something goes wrong you fall down to your death, you
can say on the death certificate, well it did actually
come tumbling down and he was in a hot air balloon.
(32:58):
So yeah. It's ot National Donut Day today and World
Thickshake Day, whatever that is, so celebrate appropriately. We'll have
another mail bag audition on Sunday. You want to send
questions in Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. And
again for those of you in the back of the
room that are a little slow, you want to send
(33:21):
email in for the bit that we do on Sunday,
you can do that again. Send it in care of
Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. That's Reeal fifth
Hour at gmail dot com. We will have another episode
on Saturday. No daysah, We've got an NBA Finals game tonight,
(33:41):
Game two between the Spurs and the Knickerbockers. Will Victor
wimb on Nyama wake up from hibernation? Does Jalen Brunson
have another Magicmind Game to play on the Spurs where
he lulled them in sandbag them for the first half
and then took off after that. Inquiring Minds would like
(34:03):
to know. Inquiring minds all like know, So anyway, that'll
be coming up tonight and as far as I know,
the plan as of this morning is to participate to
take in the said NBA game. So if something better
comes along, I don't have to watch it. I love
that I don't have to take notes while I'm watching
(34:25):
the game. That's kind of cool. I can just watch
it and I don't have to pay attention to everything,
and I can just kind of do my own thing,
and I'll check it out and I'll flip around baseball
and nobody will say anything. And that's that. On that note,
have a wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have
again a new episode on Saturday, then the Big mail
(34:46):
Bag on Sunday. And as Dick and Dayton would say,
bye bye, bye bye, I think I got that. I
think I did right. Yeah, Okay,
Kabooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler
and you were hanging out together on this Friday. You
can listen whatever you want. There are people that go
back and hear these podcasts days later, but we are
plausibly presenting the podcast on this fifth day of June.
(00:51):
It is the one hundred and fifty sixth day of
the year twenty twenty six, which means my computer like
brain tells me there are two hundred and nine days left.
This is our first Fifth Hour podcast of the month
of June. You always remember your first Fifth Hour podcast.
On this edition, we have the Freedom Fighters, random word
(01:13):
of the Week, and foody fun. Those will all be
things we'll be getting into at some point here as
we celebrate National Fish and Chips Day, which is apparently
today the stereotypical meal of the United Kingdom our buddy
(01:33):
Terry in England, so it is National Fish and Chips Day.
And we've talked about this before. I eat fish and
chips about once a year, usually in the summer, normally
in the summer, and this meal goes back to the
sixteenth century and the fried fish the Sephardic Jews apparently
(02:00):
where the immigrants from Spain and Portugal introduced the custom
of coating fish in flour and frying it in oil
and then became very popular in London and other British
port cities. And now all these years later, that is
what it's known for. So National Fish and Chip's Day,
(02:21):
extra tartar sauce, knock yourself out, why not? But we
begin with this. One of the strangest things about doing
the job that I have the Overnight Show, hosting that
show is that eventually you stop being surprised by regular
human behavior, because there really is nothing regular about human
(02:43):
behavior right now, not completely. You still raise an eyebrow
now and again. However, after enough time behind the microphones,
years wandering the back alleys of in some you know,
talking to the truck driver driving across the back roads
(03:06):
of Nebraska at three in the morning. And my favorite,
the security guards. It's my latest favorite, the guys that
are protecting buildings. Nobody intends to rob. They're ghost buildings.
There's hardly anyone in the buildings. Well, when you talk
to these people your standards for what qualifies as unusual,
(03:28):
they move, they shift, they begin to move in other
areas like this week. For example, one of the biggest
stories in our little universe involved Ferg Dog. Yeah, not
some kind of actual dog, not a movie star, not
a professional athlete, the character known as Ferg Dog. That's right,
(03:53):
from the Winter Wonderland of Fullerton. Enough you did not listen.
Towards the end of the week. Here the Brigadier general,
highly decorated in the Malad militia and his ex account
was given the squad douche treatment. It was suspended, sent
to the digital hues gal put on time out. And
(04:18):
I did not know this. I do not pay much
attention to social media. During the day. A number of
you reached out to me and said, hey, wait a minute,
something's not right with Fergie. What happened to my friend
Ferg Dog? Now if you do listen on a regular basis.
You know who Ferg Doog is. Even on this podcast.
Ferg Dog and Alf, the Alien Opiner and a few
(04:39):
others Reggie and Detroit and whatnot have become staples of
this But Reggie and Detroit rarely, he'll rarely contact us
about the radio show. He's mostly just the podcast gal
who he says he does listen Fergdog and Alf. They're
fully immersive in everything that we do. And Ferg Doog
is harmless, like not harmless in the way people describe
(05:03):
alligators at a wildlife sanctuary right before they lose their
left hand, harmless in the way a sloth is harmless,
a koala, a slightly confused golden retriever, That's what I'm
talking about. So his specialty is showing up with sharp,
goofy over the top observations and then wandering off before
(05:27):
anyone remembers to argue with him. Right, And so that's it.
And so yet somehow, in the vast ecosystem of the
Ben Mathers Show, overnight he has become the center of controversy.
Ferg Dog like who gets upset at a golden retriever?
Who does that? A cartoon character. Now the working theory
(05:49):
from several of the fans of the show that have
told me they believe it was friendly fire, that it
was friendly fire. Not actual friendship, mind you, the kind
of friendship that exists when people send thousands of hours,
spent thousands and thousands of hours listening to the same
(06:09):
radio program, and develop emotional attachments to complete strangers they
have never met. It is interesting to node that while
this was going on, Mom man Alf the alien o
pinter who knew these guys were buddies. They're on the
same wavelength. So Alf the alien opineer was working as
the mouthpiece for Ferg Dog. He was the one that
(06:32):
was the messenger pigeon. He was the one that was
getting the messages out from behind cyber jail, behind cyber
jail where Ferg Doog unfortunately is hanging out in the
prison yard. And so listen, this is a show where
we have a community, and it's less community and more
(06:53):
a village populated entirely by amateur political operatives. If you
ever day we do the show, somebody is campaigning. Someone's
got an agenda, whether it's Mike the Leprechaun, Marcel and
Brooklyn hollering, James, all of these cats, and lately we've
(07:15):
got people leaking information, somebody attempting a coup. The caller
slash social media drama O Ramba resembles WWE Royal Rumble,
in which every participant is convinced that they're the main event.
(07:35):
It's that syndrome. We've talked about it in previous episodes.
It's the main actor syndrome where everyone's got a camera
crew following them around. They're the star of their show.
Which I do believe you're the star of your own
life and you can do what you want with that.
I buy that, like the rest of us, are merely extras.
And I've noticed this phenomena for years, especially with the
(07:59):
radio stuff we're talking about right now. A listener will
call up regularly or become a character on social media.
The audience, the listenership, enjoys the contributions of the social
media person or the caller. The caller begins receiving attention.
It's the same paint by numbers formula, and then another
(08:22):
listener notices, and at first it manifests as a mild irritation,
and soon it becomes this passive, aggressive type thing, and
then suddenly we are operating inside a miniature version of
the Benny Beltway, complete with intrigue whisper campaigns. There's strategic alliances,
(08:50):
the whole ball of Wax, the full Magilla, the whole Mgilla.
The only difference is that our version is inducted by
people that enjoy eating gas station burritos at four in
the morning. So I get messages, and I'm bad at
writing back. I admit that, and I do skim the email,
(09:14):
and I'll say, well, what are the people upset about?
Ben Malors Show at Gmail? By the way, benmallershow at
gmail dot com. If you want the Ben Mahler Show
email address, this is obviously the real, real fifth hour
at gmail dot com. So you start seeing things like, hey,
this guy's getting too much airtime. I liked your show,
but I can't stand this caller, which I love. That's
(09:35):
my favorite. So I like a four hour radio show,
but a caller who's on the air for at the
most three minutes, that's a bridge too far. I can't listen,
so I will forget the other three hours and fifty
seven minutes of content that I like because of the
three minutes I don't like. Okay, that makes sense. Why
(09:57):
not let's do that anyway? The the complaints coming. Hey,
this guy gets too much airtime? Why was he mentioned again?
I don't think he does anything for the show. What
exactly does he contribute? These are questions that I get
that I think are normally reserved for members of Congress.
Yet somehow they're being asked about a man named Ferg
(10:21):
Dog Fergie. The Malard Militia has evolved into the United
Nations of Insomnia. Now we pride ourselves on the show
as being all inclusive, meaning everyone is welcome as long
as you're willing to bust each other's balls. We don't
take ourselves too seriously. Everyone's got a seat. I don't care.
(10:42):
We're all in this battle together. I don't care where
you're from. Be looney Todes. Everybody claims in the Malad
Militia in our little United Nations, the Mala Militia of Insomnia,
you know, we support peace and harmony, and everybody secretly
believes the organization would function much better the Malad Militia
(11:02):
if their rivals were launched into the Sun in a
SpaceX rocket and just kaboom. And I've often thought that
what we do here is basically a neighborhood hoa meeting,
except everyone has a microphone and many unresolved issues. Whether
(11:26):
it's a random caller from Michigan angry at a caller
from Texas, or some dude in Oregon who's going down
the Oregon Trail convinced that a woman from wherever is
receiving preferential treatment. Someone in the Great State of Ohio
who's spent six months constructing a legal brief proving another
(11:50):
caller is overrated. The arguments frequently become so convoluted. It's
so convoluted that I feel like I'm a substitute teacher
on my own program, and that's where I am, and
I walked into the wrong classroom, and here we go.
(12:13):
The thing about the Overnight Show that I think is
one of the key building blocks is the authenticity that
is the product, Like that's really it. Like you don't
want to tune in because the operation is polished. You
don't want that. You definitely don't want it. And nobody
(12:35):
wants corporate to prove focus group content other than programming
people who listens to them. So that's not how we roll.
We're a little rough around the edges, a little rough
around the edges, and we certainly embrace the odd bass.
We love the goofy. We do. Dysfunction, dysfunction, junction, what's
(13:02):
your function? The occasional train derailment, if you will. And
what you don't realize, what you don't realize is that
when you remove rules, you don't create paradise. You create
Dodge city is what you create. Look it up, Google it.
And so the Ben Maler show, the show that we do,
becomes a verbal demolition derby where the only rule is
(13:28):
that there are no rules. It's the wild wild West,
except everyone is armed with smartphones, social media and grudges,
lots and lots of grudges. And you're like, come on, man,
like what are we doing here? Seriously? And as the
(13:50):
man who plausibly is in the catbird seat, I am
constantly tempted to intervene, and I do so, searching like
should I create guidelines? Should I instart install those guardrails
and all that stuff? And I have always rejected it,
(14:11):
like I said, well, I'll put a permit here, do
a background check. You imagine if I did background checks
on some of these guys. Weed man would vanish into
thin air. He's been arrested so many times. If he
even gets near a back ground check, it's all over.
It is all over again. So I go back to
the point, the synopsis, the thesis, what everyone says, it's early.
(14:38):
I remember why people listen. That chaos is the point.
And it's one of the more maddening things that we
we have, as I often point out, like we prepare.
I prepare a lot to try to do a good
show and all that, and then it's the moments when
things don't go right that people like, no one's ever
(15:01):
come up to me at these events that I do say, hey,
let me break down that sports take. It's always the
other stuff. It's when you bring the groceries home and
you drop the milk and explodes and the milk goes everywhere.
That's the stuff that resonates. And so it's always been
that way. I spent a lot of time worried about,
(15:21):
oh yeah, I'm gonna put a monologue together, and that's
not the stuff that people remember. It's not necessary. You
gotta do it. However, there's other things involved, and so
the chaos is the thing, and you can't manufacture that
you can't plan the chaos, you certainly cannot regulate it.
(15:42):
I don't believe in the minute everything becomes orderly the
magic evaporates. Is just every other boring sports talk radio
show that are horrific, and who wants to do that?
There's plenty of that out there. And so every now
and then I find myself again with some ridiculous controversy
(16:03):
like Ferg Dog randomly getting banned from social media, who
never sends anything out that is even more than benign.
And then here we go, right, and so somebody, apparently
if the malad militious correct my investigating arm, decided Ferg
Dog needed to be drugged, handcuffed, gagged and put in
(16:24):
a bag to disappear. Who the hell does that? Who
wakes up and thinks, you know, you know what would
improve my day and improve the world sabotaging a social
media contributor. That's the ticket. That's what we need, Like,
come on, really, that's what we need. The level of
(16:47):
commitment truly fascinates me. I'm amazed, right, I am expand
my horizons here and yet somewhere in audio old Land,
somewhere out there is a person willing to wage a
shadow campaign against a man whose primary offense is being
(17:11):
moderately amusing to the overnight audience. And it's impressive in
a deeply troubling way. We're talking about ferg Doc. What
makes it especially funny is that everyone involved is convinced
that they're fighting for justice. Nobody ever says, hey, I'm jealous.
(17:34):
I yet to have anyone say I'm very insecure. I
don't get those comments. Nobody says I wish people paid
attention to me. Instead, they become freedom fighters, the old
freedom fighters, revolutionaries, protectors of the republic. Now meanwhile, the
(17:56):
rest of us are standing around wondering why there's another
food fight in the cafeteria at the mal Ard Militia Building.
And I've spent enough time around people to know that
attention is a very strange drug. It's just as some
people can take a compliment and move on, others spend
(18:19):
years chasing the next compliment. It's recognition that becomes oxygen.
And you've likely seen it in your world, like if
you don't receive enough of it, you create your own
weather system, right, storm clouds, thunder lightning, anything to make
(18:40):
sure somebody notices. So we circle back around now, to Fergdock,
back back back back back back back back back back
to Fergdock. And I don't know whether he'll ever discover
exactly what happened for all, and I don't know if
I will. And we're trying to get to the bob
(19:01):
of it. And maybe the suspension was random by some
Russian bots or some North Korean things, or a bot
farm in Maldova went on the attack as possible, as malicious,
like we think in some bitter soul launching a digital
spitball that accidentally hit the target. So what I do
(19:25):
know is that the entire episode serves as another reminder
that the Ben Maler Show overnight audience remains one of
the most entertaining collections of knuckleheads humanity has ever assembled.
It's a little bit of a support group where you're
a circus. We've got a seal bouncing a beach ball
(19:45):
on its nose. It's a family reunion. We don't hear
from someone we get upset. For example, we've not heard
from the Power couple from Bradenton, Florida, Jack, the Judge
and Leslie. They went on a European vacation and never
came back. And I don't know what happened. I've tried
to track them down. And that's the part, is like
(20:09):
we miss these people. These are part of our family.
These people are part of our family. And I talked
about Roscoe the parrot and David from Winter Park, Florida,
who we were ninety nine percent sure passed away, and
the characters on the show, and so it does feel
like it's some kind of psychological experiment. Sometimes, as we
(20:30):
said earlier, dysfunction junction, what's your function? And apparently this
week it was reminding us that even among people united
by insomnia and sports opinions, there will always be squabbling.
There will always be another Malard Melo drama right around
the corner. It's like a soap opera. I gotta sell
the soap, as John Sterling said, will there will always
(20:52):
be somebody trying a dirty trick, those dirty tricksters in
the Malad militia, and there will always be a Ferg dog.
We hope it's the Ferg dog we have now, and
if not, there'll be somebody else in that chair, and
hopefully back from time out to not go to time
out again, right, because every neighborhood needs it's harmless sloth.
(21:16):
And that's our guy, ferg dog. It is all right. Meanwhile,
turning the Patriots. The random word of the week. Now,
that is not the normal word of the week, which
we haven't done that much recently, or the phrase of
the week, or the idiom of the week. This is
the the random word of the week, all right, random
(21:37):
word of the week, that's what this is. And the
word is cheese, not breeze cheese, the great Breeze cheese,
a classic staple when Brianna would fill in on the
producer's chair. So the random word of the week is cheese.
That's a standard definition. And I'll tell the story. I
(22:00):
think i'll get to it tomorrow. I ended up at
an amusement park with some family and we took some
photos and the person that took the phone to take
the photo said, everyone say cheese. And it reminded me
of something that I have known for some time, that
(22:21):
the history of the word cheese. Well, I know Provolone,
I know Swiss, I know Cheddar. I know a little
bit about cheese, not as much as Brie. She's the
cheese expert, right, thus the bree cheese. So I was like,
when did this start. Why do we say cheese? Now?
I kind of figured it out when I was a kid.
(22:42):
The main reason we say cheese is it forces a smile.
The word cheese contains a long e sound, which naturally
stretches your big fat mouth into a smile like shape.
Not a full cheshire cat smile, however, a solid It's
simple linguistic. It's a little trick to make people look
(23:05):
happier in photos, which is interesting because for a long
time people did not smile and photographs photographs took a
lot of time and energy to get, and so the
word cheese is arbitrary and funny. And saying something random
and unrelated to photography like cheese, you know, it makes
(23:28):
people loosen up a little.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Bit, laugh.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It's a genuine expression that those camera people use. Now.
The other thing I was like, when did this begin?
Like when did it was Shakespeare saying cheese? Of course,
they didn't really have photos back in those days anyway,
so they as we know them today, and the tradition
of saying cheese, it's not as old as you think.
(23:58):
In fact, the early est known reference to this is
in the nineteen forties there was a US ambassador politician
Joseph E. Davies who suggested saying geeze to create a
smile for photographs. The word caught on because the long
(24:19):
e again, as we said, stretches the mouth. The phrase
became much more popular in the nineteen fifties, so we're
still going back seventies six years or so. In magazines,
television personalities began recommending the social media influencers of the
day recommending doing this, and so by the late sixties,
(24:41):
I guess early sixties, saying cheese had become the standard
in English speaking countries. However, did you know that around
the globe, around the globe, using their own equivalent words,
many countries do the same thing. In Sweden when you
(25:02):
take a photo, I'm told, according to the interweb, you
say omelet. In Germany it's cheesecake or spaghetty. Let's have
some spaghetti, because you mean you think spaghetti, you think Germany,
or marmaset in France, kim chie in Korea, that'll get
(25:22):
you to smile. Raisins from Russia it doesn't smile, you
don't smile much, or in Ja in Denmark, and going on.
In Finland, their word is a small freshwater fish. Vendas
is the name of the fish. So anyway, there you go.
It's all about the smile. You gotta smile. Smile, smile, smile, smile, smiles, smile, smile. Meanwhile,
(25:51):
FOODI fund not a lot of foody fun stories this week.
Bad job by the restaurant industry. I'm not sure. Why
is it summer? Are they done for this sum They're
just waiting for the season to change again and then
they'll be back in stride. I don't know. I did see.
Burger King has introduced the new loaded Jalapeno Whopper. They
(26:12):
also have the Orange Dreamsicle Freeze King that sounds good,
and the Firecracker cookie pie. I give Burger King credit.
I feel it is a feeling. Who knows? It's the
fact Burger King is on the upswing? Who says no?
Does anyone say no? I think that they're trying, that
(26:32):
they're connecting more with people. So I'm going yes on that.
Now these items, let me break this down a little
further here. What do we got. We've got the loaded
Jalapeno whopper that'll sit you back eight hundred and twenty calories,
a lot of fat, protein, sugar, The whole thing, the
(26:54):
Orange Dreamsicle Freeze king medium that's three hundred and forty
calorie and the Firecracker Cookie pie two hundred and fifty calories.
So if you do the math on that, that's what
do we ad? Thirteen fourteen hundred calories. I believe something
like that. That seems let's just go with that. That's good, right,
(27:17):
we'll go with that. What else? Pizza Hut has added
the somewhat recently the new Crispy Palm Pan pizza to
its menu. So if you're into the whole Pizza Hut experience,
the Crispy Palm Pan Pizza starts at a suggested retail
price of ten dollars a medium thirteen or ten ten
(27:40):
dollars for a medium, thirteen dollars for a large, said
the man with the microphone. So one slice of this
will set you back two hundred and seventy calories if
you're counting calories. And how about this for night mirror fuel?
You want night mirror fuel. So I read this story,
I got my attention. I thought, boy, that's really wild,
(28:03):
that's wild and crazy. Let me dig into this a
little more. And I had not heard anything about this.
I don't know anyone that's had this happen. If you've
had it happen, I'd love to have you email me
at real fifth hour at gmail dot com. We do not,
as of this hour, have a celebrity booked for the
mail bags, so I'm not sure I might end up
doing it solo. Who knows? Anyway, get to the point, please,
(28:26):
all right. So I saw this, I thought, boy, this's
a nightmare. So I was reading this story about major
safety issues with oven doors that chatter spontaneously. Let me
repeat that this is not where the oven door is manipulated, fondled,
(28:47):
any of that stuff. That's not it. No, no, no. Between
January of twenty twenty five and March of this year,
so a couple months ago. They according to the US
Consumer Product Safety Commission, that sounds like a fun bunch
almost four hundred reports, almost four hundred reports of spontaneously
(29:11):
exploding oven doors where the glass shatters. Over forty people
were injured, and I hadn't earn anything. Frigid air accounts
for the vast majority, according to the US Consumer Product
Safety Commission, two hundred and sixty three incidents. However, other
(29:32):
brands have had some as well. Ge sixty three. That
seems like too many, Whirlpool thirty five, LG fifteen, Samsung ten,
Samsung ten. So the thing that scares you is these
You say, well, you cooked, the oven got too hot
and kerfluy all of a sudden. No, no, no. From
(29:56):
what I read, these incidences of the the oven door
shattering have happened every so often for a while. However,
they often happen when the oven's off, and there are
examples in this story where sometimes it's days after the
(30:18):
last use, like you're just sitting there as the oven,
You're minding your own business, and then all of a
sudden you commit oven suicide. Why would you do that
as an oven? I don't know why I did that
as an oven, but I did it. And there you go.
That is crazy that your oven glass door can just
explode with enough force to sound like a small bomb.
(30:44):
So why is that happening? Why do you think? The
reason is, well, it's something in the construction of the oven.
The manufacturers, including frigid Air and their parent company, they
have not given a direct root cause. The common theory
is that there are flaws in the tempered glass, meaning
(31:09):
scratches from cookwear improper door closing or just general misuse.
How are most of the incidents involving the ovens going
bad turning into gremlins four to six year old ovens,
which you're supposed to have an oven for more than that.
The oven is supposed to last and last, and so
(31:32):
four to six years. I will tell you Samsung, from
what I read, is offering free door replacements. That's nice,
even outside warranty. So if that happened to you, or
has happened to you recently, there you go. Apparently some
of the other companies that sell ovens, they're telling you
to go cry an ocean. They are not being very
(31:55):
proactive to try to help out the consumer to figure
that out. Yeah, so, which is not not shocking at all.
I'm happy to report that our oven door at the
Malor Mansion is working fine. So that is that. Today
(32:15):
is also I wanted to finish. I mentioned it was
National Fish and Chips Day. It's also Hot Air Balloon Day.
I was last in a hot air balloon at a
marine base in El Toro, at El tore Marine Base,
which is no longer there. It's a shopping mall pretty
much right now. And I was the kid, and they
(32:35):
had open house at the marine base and we would sit.
They had higher balloons and we'd go up and we
were tethered. So I don't know if it counts. I
guess it does count because if the hot air balloon
something goes wrong you fall down to your death, you
can say on the death certificate, well it did actually
come tumbling down and he was in a hot air balloon.
(32:58):
So yeah. It's ot National Donut Day today and World
Thickshake Day, whatever that is, so celebrate appropriately. We'll have
another mail bag audition on Sunday. You want to send
questions in Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. And
again for those of you in the back of the
room that are a little slow, you want to send
(33:21):
email in for the bit that we do on Sunday,
you can do that again. Send it in care of
Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. That's Reeal fifth
Hour at gmail dot com. We will have another episode
on Saturday. No daysah, We've got an NBA Finals game tonight,
(33:41):
Game two between the Spurs and the Knickerbockers. Will Victor
wimb on Nyama wake up from hibernation? Does Jalen Brunson
have another Magicmind Game to play on the Spurs where
he lulled them in sandbag them for the first half
and then took off after that. Inquiring Minds would like
(34:03):
to know. Inquiring minds all like know, So anyway, that'll
be coming up tonight and as far as I know,
the plan as of this morning is to participate to
take in the said NBA game. So if something better
comes along, I don't have to watch it. I love
that I don't have to take notes while I'm watching
(34:25):
the game. That's kind of cool. I can just watch
it and I don't have to pay attention to everything,
and I can just kind of do my own thing,
and I'll check it out and I'll flip around baseball
and nobody will say anything. And that's that. On that note,
have a wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have
again a new episode on Saturday, then the Big mail
(34:46):
Bag on Sunday. And as Dick and Dayton would say,
bye bye, bye bye, I think I got that. I
think I did right. Yeah, Okay,
Host
Ben Maller
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