January 2, 2026 • 32 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Buffet Day, No New Years Resolutions, the Soccer Boiler Plate, & more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kutbooms.
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 cutter 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.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
And like that, it begins in the air of Rewhere
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Maler and Danny g Radio,
our first podcast of the new year, the first time
I've cracked a microphone in the new year, which sounds
(00:49):
like it's been a long time. But this is the
second day of January twenty twenty six, as we begin
anew another year behind the powerful microphone of the premiere
Networks and iHeart Fox Sports Radio the whole conglomerate. As
we are back at it again here, excited to be back,
(01:11):
and I've got podcasts with you all weekend. Daniel join
us here at some point and then we'll have the
radio show returns on Sunday night into Monday morning after
the final regular season NFL games on Sunday, and then
it's on to the radio show and the playoffs and
(01:32):
the whole mgilla, the full mcgilla. We'll have the whole
thing here on this podcast. We have blast furnace animniacs.
But we're gonna begin with one of those dopey holidays.
Today is National Buffet Day. That's right, National Buffet Day
every January second, an opportunity to enjoy, to indulge, to
(01:58):
pile high a massive plate of food, a tradition that
goes back to the Swedes of the sixteenth century. The
early origins of the buffet, and it carried on the
word buffet actually originated from a type of French siteboard
(02:19):
used to serve food was used back in the seventeenth century,
and the modern buffet actually nineteen thirty nine, there were
some Swedes who entered the New York World's Fair exhibition
back when that was a big thing, and debuted and
(02:39):
displayed a Smorgasborg talking about the great foods of Sweden.
And then eventually that led in the nineteen forties, so
that was nineteen thirty nine. In the early nineteen forties,
the American buffet began in Viva Las Vegas. The first
ever buffet in Vegas, the Bukaroo buffet. That just sounds wonderful,
(03:06):
doesn't The Buckeroo Buffet, And that came from somebody named
HERB McDonald. I don't know much about HERB McDonald, but
you could eat to your heart's content. And so that
was in the mid nineteen forties in the Vegas. By
the nineteen sixties, so it took a little while, but
by the nineteen sixties almost every casino in Vegas had
(03:29):
its own buffet. Now, the thing about this that I love.
If you've heard this podcast at all over the years,
you know, a couple of years back, and I don't
know the exact date. Lucky Tony will likely give you
the exact date, but it was a while ago. I
did a deep dive on how buffets make money because
it seems like they should lose money, right, they should
lose a lot of money. You have low prices, unlimited food,
(03:54):
and yet the business model is designed for high volume,
low margin, and yet they're able to pull it off here.
And the way they do it is trickeration. It's trickeration,
and they do it with inexpensive filler foods and they
(04:17):
crunch the numbers and so that I don't want to
get too much into the minutia of it. But the
buffets keep the costs about thirty to forty percent of revenue.
So they use a lot of rices, pastas, potatoes, breads,
essentially trying to stuff your gut bult purchasing. So they
don't spend as much on food, the price per ounce
(04:40):
is lower. They reuse a lot of the ingredients across
many of the dishes, the same stuffs in the Italian food,
that's in the American food, that's in the Chinese food,
and the Mexican food, and they just use all the
same stuff. And then there's also the mental aspect of it,
where they use psychology to control what one eats. It's
(05:02):
much like when you go into a casino and there's
no clocks in a casino, and they they like the
penny slots. They make more money in veguas via the
penny slots, which are not really a penny, but they
use the mind hack to get in there. So what
do buffets do They place the food they make the
(05:24):
biggest profit off of, meaning it's the cheap filler food,
the rise to pasta potato, the bread, the filling foods
at the very front, the very expensive items, the ones
that you actually would get your money's worth at the buffet,
right the carving station. The expensive seafood, which is not
my thing, you might like it. Those things are at
(05:47):
the very back, and you're going to the buffet. You
want to get started, so you're let me get a
big plate of rice, of the potatoes, of some of those,
of some pasta, and then you eat that. You get
a little full. Yeah, you might go back to the
carving station, but you're not going to load up on
it the way you would if it was right in front.
They also have small plates. They limit the portions they'll
(06:09):
put on the plates. Lately, in the last couple of years,
they've added time limits. A lot of the buffets have
had time limits. And they also make these exotic displays
for food that makes the food look amazing, but it's
really low cost food and they'll put that there. And
so a buffet on average, they any typical standard buffet
(06:35):
will have one hundred and twenty to two hundred customers.
They will generate profit from forty to one hundred and
eighty thousand per month, so it's like five to fifteen
percent net profit margin essentially, so the margins are thin
and all that. I can go on and on, but
there you go. So it's National buffet Day. Celebrate appropriately.
(06:58):
In terms of other stuff, I finally did it. I
opened my email, Big News here on the Fifth Hour podcast.
Opened the email. That does not mean I wrote back
to you. I opened the email. And this is what
happens when you hit the pause button over the holidays,
when the red light goes dark, the microphones cool off,
(07:19):
and the over night the vampire schedule loosens its grip,
and you realize rather suddenly that you have this thing
called time on your hands, something that you don't have
a lot of. It's dangerous time. You have time to think,
you have time to scroll, you have time to click
open your email. And these things have been stacking up
(07:43):
like unopened Christmas cards from distant relatives who still think
that you live in your parents' house and that whole thing. Now,
several of you wrote for some odd reason asking about
New Year's resolutions, today being the second day of January,
which tells me no offense, which means offense. You must
(08:08):
be relatively new to the radio show, because I know,
right now Alf and ferg Dog and some of the
old guard are rolling their eyes right now. They're like,
what is wrong with these people? Yes, so again no offense,
but which means I have offense. You've got to be
near the show. If you're looking to me yours truly
(08:34):
for New Year's resolution inspiration, you have wandered into the
wrong aisle at the grocery store. You might want to
go to another supermarket somewhere. I've never been a resolution's guy.
I've never trusted them, never needed January first to tell
(08:54):
me what to do, like today's January sec. I don't
need that. I don't have a fancy explanation. I'm not
gonna sit here and give you a ten minute ted
talk on that. That's not my deal. This is not
a self help podcast. I don't have any kind of
(09:14):
odd inspirational background music that I'm gonna play, at least
not intentionally. Simply put, I like to follow as much
as I can the code of the West bunch of
old school stuff. Take pride in your work. It's pretty important.
Always finish what you start. That's something that's been lost
over time. Do what has to be done. Another thing
(09:36):
that doesn't really stand the test of time. And when
you make a promise, keep it. You ride for the brand.
And those are not New Year's resolutions, they're not. Those
are load bearing beams, is what those are. If you
need a calendar reminder to start being serious about your life,
(09:58):
you're already behind the chains you buy the chase. Think
of it like the myth. One of the great myths
in sports is halftime adjustments. It's one of these dopey
phrases that sportscasters like to say because it sounds really cool. So, coach,
what adjustments are you going to make at halftime? Said
the meathead or brainless sideline reporter. What halftime adjustments are
(10:24):
you going to make? Coach? It's the great marvel of
the modern NFL and NBA. Of course, it's also poppycock.
I was attracted to the giant metalcock. Many have pointed out,
whether it's Peyton Manning, Bill Belichick, or endless others, if
something is broken in the first quarter, your protection is leaking.
(10:48):
If you're a basketball team, your shot selections thinks. Your
defense if you're an NFL team is like traffic cones
and a windstorm. You're supposed to sit there and wait
until halftime to fix it, because, of course the modern
marble is halftime adjustment. Of course, not you make the
adjustment right then you rip up whatever game plan you had.
(11:11):
You grab the grease board, and you start changing things
around the what you might call it the think of
a jigs the dow hickeyes. You change the things around
before the problem snowballs, and then by the time you
get the halftime it doesn't matter, and then you're just
doing a postgame apology tour. Waiting for some kind of
arbitrary date to address a problem is like noticing your
(11:33):
houses on fire and say, well, let's circle back after
the holidays. I'll get the hose on it, but I'm
gonna wait a little bit after. Well, no, you don't wait.
There'd be nothing to put the hose on at that point.
Smart people don't wait, they act. And that's always been
my approach, not that I'm right, absolutely not smart, but
my approach to radio or life or everything in between.
(11:56):
If something's off, if the out go rhythm is not right,
you don't put it on the vision board. You put
your head down and fix it. Stupid and procrastination. Listen,
we've all been there at one point or another, We've
all done the procrastination thing. Procrastination is like a credit card.
(12:19):
It's a lot of fun, a lot of fun until
you realize that the bill's coming at some point. Now,
on a positive note, procrastination always gives you something to
look forward to. And I have a lot of people
in my circle that are like, hey, I'll get to
it someday. And I looked and like, today's Friday. Right,
(12:42):
we're recording this on a Friday. So you have Friday,
you have Saturday, have Sunday, of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
There is no day called someday that is not it.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Meanwhile, a few.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Of you also asked about the most memory moments from
the radio show during the twenty twenty five campaign. Keep
in mind that none of these messages were from Terry
in England. And am I about to give you a
list of the greatest moments? No, I'm not going to
give you a list of the greatest moments. No matter
(13:19):
how much moving man Matt wants that, I'm not going
to do it. I wish I had a neat answer
with a bow. I don't. I don't have that. And
I've really been the same year after year. When you're
in the middle of it, you don't stop to take inventory.
There's no inventory here.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I know.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
If you work at Costco or Walmart, you have to
do inventory every month. We don't do that. We don't.
We don't stop to take inventory. You're in the forest.
That chains saw is buzzings, there's sawdust flying, no idea
what the trees even look like from a distance. It's
(14:04):
the day to day grind. It's the rat race, the
industrial complex of the hot sports. Take the overnight shift
where the hot takes are forged like steel in a
blast furnace on a nightly basis. It puts hair on
your chest. It's not for everybody, certainly not for the
(14:27):
fan of heart. And still a few moments linger. The
monologues always do. The monologues always do. That's the soul
of this thing, whatever this thing is, that we have
the purest form of radio, just a man, a darkened studio,
a microphone, a thought, and no safety net. And I
(14:52):
say a darkened studio. The show is now recorded, part
of it for YouTube. So that is a lie. That
is a lie. A lot of lights. There's way too
many lights in the studio now The most positive feedback
I have received all year came from a euge. I
can't stand doing eulogies. I despise doing eugees. I want
(15:16):
to do happy goofy, I want to do ripping people.
I don't want to do eulogies. And yet here we
are again looking back over the last five years or so,
the things that are the most popular are the eulogies.
When Kobe Bryant was killed in the helicopter crash, that
was the most listened to show that we did that year.
(15:39):
We've done a number of these over the years. When
people die in sports, A Hulk Hogan this year did
a twenty minute monologue on Hulk Hogan, no gimmicks, no catchphrases,
just a major tip of the headphone person that impacted
my youth growing up as a sports fan. I was
(16:00):
a haulk of maniac and I just a bunch of
respect for a larger than life figure. As I said
in the monologue, it's like a cartoon character on Saturday
Morning came to life. You'd watch he Man and the
Cartoons on Saturday morning, and then after that they had wrestling,
and here's hal Cogan is like, wait a minute. That's
(16:22):
that's he man's it's what the characters coming to life.
And it wasn't just for my generation. Haul Cogan loomed
over multiple generations. It was like a bright sign on
the highway there neon sign and so that one clearly
struck a nerve and you could feel it through the wires.
(16:42):
You know there's something there. The biggest download spike came
from an NBA story a trade, the Luka Doncik situation.
I want to say, I want to say trade. I'm
gonna say a situation. You can't really call it a
trade between the mav Rex and the historians of purple
and gold. It was not. It was a giveaway. It
(17:03):
was a clear and sale. It was a garage sale
when the homeowner doesn't realize they have a picasso and
they're selling the picasso for five bucks and a handshake.
Whether this was incompetence, panic, or interference from the shadowy
cabal that governs basketball, whatever it was, it was radio
(17:26):
catnip is what it was. The phones lit up, everyone
was all fired up social media. We just did a
lot of traffic, had good sales, good sales on that
particular show which happened over the weekend. It happened on
a Saturday, I believe, and then we came in on
Sunday and worked our magic. And then you've got the callers.
(17:49):
Like radio does not belong just to the host overnight
talk radio. During the day, they don't take calls. They're
better than you, they don't like you, they don't want
you on their shows. But at night we take calls.
And radio does not belong just to me. It belongs
to the weirdos, legends like Lucky, Tony, Jed who Fled,
the kind of names that you do not forget, that
(18:10):
you get only on late night radio. They feel like
characters from some kind of dusty paperback novel that you
were forced to read when you were in junior high school.
Weed man, hippie, drifting in and out like static on
the AM radio dial. But it's the human form. The
awkward encounters that we have with e Dog from Long
(18:33):
Island and Steve O in Manhattan, Marcel in Brooklyn, the
gambling conversations with a man who happens to have the
same name as a famous actor, Danny DeVito out of Boston.
Some of this feels like just performance art. You didn't
(18:55):
ask for you can't not listen to. And there's some
regulars that couldn't handle the grind. It happens, they faded
back to the shadows. This year marked the full name guy,
Sir scratch Off in Arkansas. That's the rhythm, the yin
and the yang of the overnight radio. People come, people go.
(19:15):
And I often look at this like graduating classes of
a college. Like if you were a football coach, you think,
remember that team we had in eight that was pretty good.
We had Pete and Pittsburgh, we had Genie and Medford.
That was an all time great team. And then there's
a new recruiting class and they come in and they
(19:35):
make their mark, and so people come, people go. It's
like it is like ships passing in the night, except
the ships are the unhinged, the unstable, many of them
with their Obama phones hollering James, people along those lines,
Blind Scott. And you have the social media gumbas, the
(19:55):
legends like Alf and Fergdog, Late Night Drug Tester, Eke
and Roseville, Minis, Stevie, Meatball's Mister nice Guy, screwged all
the regulars, and I'm leaving out a bunch. I'm leaving
out of Ohio with the music, all these characters that
are part of the show, and through it all, the
show keeps moving on, and we have no time to
sit there and celebrate, and not a lot of time
(20:19):
to mourn. The clock does not stop. It rocks the
Fox box and just another night, another take, another caller
waiting on hold with some kind of theory that'll change
the sporting world forever, or at least at least make
it slightly awkward and uncomfortable for ninety seconds to three
(20:41):
or four minutes. So when you email me and you
ask about resolutions, about reflections, about lists which I loathe,
or accomplishments, you have to understand going into this, that's
not how the sausage gets made. This thing is built,
(21:02):
whatever this is, is built in real time, call by call,
monologue by monologue, mistake by mistake, and there are plenty
of mallad mistakes.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
They happen.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
It's a live radio show, and there's no January reset button.
There's no ceremonial fresh start. We're not going to cut
the ribbon and begin anew. This is not like the
NFL or the NBA where they have seasons. Is none
of that. We are a year round shop. We are
(21:31):
open pretty much all the time, and that's just the work.
And so on Sunday night into Monday morning, the red
light will come back on and the blabbing will commence
once again, and away we go, off to the races,
now turning the page, having been away for a minute,
(21:51):
having been away for a minute, the rare and appropriate
end of year tradition, trying to unpluck, trying to unplug
for one brief moment. Not only did I open the email,
I made the mistake of going on the interweb. And
what did I see? Big bold, self important headline something
(22:15):
dot dot dot us soccer growing the Game, one hundred
million dollars World Cup, windfall Soccer boom times developing hot
dot dot dot. And right there I start laughing, and
I mean like real laughter, like you just told me
(22:38):
that the Jets are one quarterback away from winning in
one coach away. It's my favorite genre.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
It is.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
It's sports propaganda. I can't not notice it once I
see it. I love the yell about it. It's triple
X rated it is. I call it soccer optimism, porn
sop soccer optimism porn, soft lighting, cheesy music, everyone's smiling,
(23:09):
nobody asking hard questions. So, according to the story, thanks
to the upcoming twenty twenty six World Cup, US soccer
is expecting about one hundred million bucks. That's going to
be their share nine figures. So some CEO you've never
heard of, I don't know who this person is comes
(23:32):
out and says, the goal is to make soccer the
most played sport in America. Drop the mic, most played,
not grow participation, not incremental gains, not close the gap
on the other sports. No, no, no, no, right to the moon,
straight to the moon. It's like me saying my goal
(23:54):
is to deliver a hammered dunk by next Tuesday. Well
that's great. I'm tall enough, got some weight on me
and get a little older here. Now, keep in mind
I am closer to dunking than soccer. Is the passing football, basketball,
or baseball buy in terms of popularity in this country.
(24:17):
And let me tell you something. This story gets written
every couple of years, every few years, the same font,
same tone, new names. It's mad libs. Journalism is what
it is. Right insert tournament, insert executive's name, all caps,
insert vague hope about youth participation, global.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Game blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah, publish, repeat. It's the reboote nobody has
for It's like a bad superhero movie that keeps getting
remade because this time they swear they've figured it out.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Now here's the reality they never want to address. They
do not want to address the reality. Soccer in America
has a ceiling, and that ceiling is made reinforced concrete.
It's not made of paper mache. It's made out of
reinforced concrete. That's the ceiling. Now, keep in mind eye
(25:22):
of all people. My fat ass played soccer back in
the Bronze Age, and today I go drive around on
a Saturday morning or a Sunday, kids are out playing soccer.
They've got these club team things. Now, back when I
played it with the Ayso, but they've got these club
team deals and they're off there playing. It's true. I'm
(25:42):
not making it up. Little kids, cute little kids, six
seven eight year old kids, shintguards on orange slices. You
got dad screaming, you got mom yelling right from their
folding chairs off on the side. They got their tent
with the team name on it. And then something happens,
and it happens around the age of twelve or thirteen.
It's called this thing called puberty. And it's a mix
(26:06):
of puberty, video games, social media, highlights on demand, the
allure of nil money, AAU basketball, seven on seven football,
and then you've got soccer. So soccer becomes the sport
that you used to play, capitol you used to play.
(26:28):
It's a graduation ceremony. You don't quit soccer. See that's
the thing.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You do.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Not quit soccer. I didn't quit soccer. I didn't. You
didn't quit soccer. You age out of it. Soccer is
America's training wheels sport. It is You're being made. I'm
not being made. I'm being real. Nobody keeps the training
wheels on forever. You don't. You have them on. They
(26:56):
serve a purpose and that's it. And then you move on.
And here's the part nobody in these glowing think pieces
wants to say out loud. Soccer missed its window. There
was a window of opportunity there and they blew it.
If soccer was ever going to take over America, it
(27:19):
had to happen before the PlayStation, before YouTube, before TikTok
before in endless, endless entertainment options. It's just insane. And
now you're competing. It's not just competition with the NFL
and basketball and baseball. You're competing with kids who can
(27:41):
watch Patrick Mahomes highlights in four K while simultaneously trash
talking their friends on a twitch thing thing of a jig.
Good luck, and you're gonna sell these kids. Hey, listen,
I know you're having a great time playing the video games.
Can you please watch a zero zero draw? It's so entertaining. Yeah,
(28:01):
so you're fighting Fortnite with shin guards. Good luck, good luck.
It's like showing up to a gunfight with a water gun.
Well you've got a gun technically, but it's a water gun.
There's no bullets. And listen, In twenty twenty six, soccer
will be huge. Let me repeat that for those of
you in the back of the room a little slow,
(28:22):
all right. It's the weekend, the beginning for us here
on this Friday. So soccer will be huge. Twenty twenty six.
Bars will be packed, They'll be flags everywhere. People will
be wrapping themselves in the flags. People who can't name
a player suddenly they're experts, right, they're experts in this area.
(28:43):
A genius is patriotism will carry the load like a
rented mule. But that's not gross. See, this is the
that is not growth. That's a pop up shop, is
what that is. Right, that's a pop up shop, is
what that is. It's temporary fandom. It's seasonal interest, like
(29:05):
pumpkin spice. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Soccer is the pumpkin spice of the sporting world. It
comes around people pretend they love it because you're supposed
to love it because it's pumpkin spice, and then it
disappears until next time, and then you do the whole
charade again, Right, the whole charade again. Just go on
and on and on and as far as one hundred
(29:29):
million dollars, that's not a cultural revolution. It's a scratch
off tickets found money. That's a bonus check that makes
you feel good but doesn't change your life. And yeah,
you can build fields, and you can do this act
of charity, and that act of charity. You can fund
programs to try to get more kids involved in soccer.
(29:52):
You can hire some consultants who'll use words like ecosystem
and stakeholders and big, big words. And however, you cannot
force obsession. American culture the way it is does not
obsess over soccer, never has and likely never will in
(30:13):
my lifetime. And without obsession, you can't win. You won't win.
You just don't win. Soccer is a guest at the party,
not the host. It shows up every four years with
a flag. It's got the Cape flag. Thing, stays for
(30:34):
a couple of weeks, then heads back to the margins.
And this isn't anti soccer. Like I don't, I'm neutral.
I'll talk about whatever is popular. I don't care whatever
is popular.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I'll talk.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
I have a talk show to do. I don't care
whatever people are into. It's talk rat it's broadcasting, not
narrow casting. However, this is reality. Soccer isn't failing. It's
exactly where it's always been. It's a niche sport with
spikes of patriotism. It puts it. It's a niche. It's
a sport that lives on the calendar, not in the bloodstream.
(31:10):
The same people telling you this time it's different are
the same ones who said that last time it was
going to be different, and the time before that it
was going to be different, and the time before that,
wash rints repeat. I'm convinced that this is the sports
version of the Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain plotting world
(31:31):
domination every single night, and America just kind of nods
politely and changes the channel to do something else or
puts on YouTube, and God only knows watches Benny versus
the Penny, and that's that and then you move on
and there you go, and there we go. Have a
(31:53):
wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have a brand
spankin new edition of this pot podcast on Saturday, and
then Sunday that I should have the mail bag back.
You can send letters in right now Reel fifth Hour
at gmail dot com. Reel fifth Hour at gmail dot com.
All letters, no numbers, and do that be part of
(32:16):
the fun there on the mail bag which will be
coming up on Sunday. But we'll have another podcast for
you on Saturday as we hang out with you and
for Danny g It's I Big Ben and we'll catch
you next time. Got a murder?
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I gotta go
Kutbooms.
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 cutter 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.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
And like that, it begins in the air of Rewhere
The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Maler and Danny g Radio,
our first podcast of the new year, the first time
I've cracked a microphone in the new year, which sounds
(00:49):
like it's been a long time. But this is the
second day of January twenty twenty six, as we begin
anew another year behind the powerful microphone of the premiere
Networks and iHeart Fox Sports Radio the whole conglomerate. As
we are back at it again here, excited to be back,
(01:11):
and I've got podcasts with you all weekend. Daniel join
us here at some point and then we'll have the
radio show returns on Sunday night into Monday morning after
the final regular season NFL games on Sunday, and then
it's on to the radio show and the playoffs and
(01:32):
the whole mgilla, the full mcgilla. We'll have the whole
thing here on this podcast. We have blast furnace animniacs.
But we're gonna begin with one of those dopey holidays.
Today is National Buffet Day. That's right, National Buffet Day
every January second, an opportunity to enjoy, to indulge, to
(01:58):
pile high a massive plate of food, a tradition that
goes back to the Swedes of the sixteenth century. The
early origins of the buffet, and it carried on the
word buffet actually originated from a type of French siteboard
(02:19):
used to serve food was used back in the seventeenth century,
and the modern buffet actually nineteen thirty nine, there were
some Swedes who entered the New York World's Fair exhibition
back when that was a big thing, and debuted and
(02:39):
displayed a Smorgasborg talking about the great foods of Sweden.
And then eventually that led in the nineteen forties, so
that was nineteen thirty nine. In the early nineteen forties,
the American buffet began in Viva Las Vegas. The first
ever buffet in Vegas, the Bukaroo buffet. That just sounds wonderful,
(03:06):
doesn't The Buckeroo Buffet, And that came from somebody named
HERB McDonald. I don't know much about HERB McDonald, but
you could eat to your heart's content. And so that
was in the mid nineteen forties in the Vegas. By
the nineteen sixties, so it took a little while, but
by the nineteen sixties almost every casino in Vegas had
(03:29):
its own buffet. Now, the thing about this that I love.
If you've heard this podcast at all over the years,
you know, a couple of years back, and I don't
know the exact date. Lucky Tony will likely give you
the exact date, but it was a while ago. I
did a deep dive on how buffets make money because
it seems like they should lose money, right, they should
lose a lot of money. You have low prices, unlimited food,
(03:54):
and yet the business model is designed for high volume,
low margin, and yet they're able to pull it off here.
And the way they do it is trickeration. It's trickeration,
and they do it with inexpensive filler foods and they
(04:17):
crunch the numbers and so that I don't want to
get too much into the minutia of it. But the
buffets keep the costs about thirty to forty percent of revenue.
So they use a lot of rices, pastas, potatoes, breads,
essentially trying to stuff your gut bult purchasing. So they
don't spend as much on food, the price per ounce
(04:40):
is lower. They reuse a lot of the ingredients across
many of the dishes, the same stuffs in the Italian food,
that's in the American food, that's in the Chinese food,
and the Mexican food, and they just use all the
same stuff. And then there's also the mental aspect of it,
where they use psychology to control what one eats. It's
(05:02):
much like when you go into a casino and there's
no clocks in a casino, and they they like the
penny slots. They make more money in veguas via the
penny slots, which are not really a penny, but they
use the mind hack to get in there. So what
do buffets do They place the food they make the
(05:24):
biggest profit off of, meaning it's the cheap filler food,
the rise to pasta potato, the bread, the filling foods
at the very front, the very expensive items, the ones
that you actually would get your money's worth at the buffet,
right the carving station. The expensive seafood, which is not
my thing, you might like it. Those things are at
(05:47):
the very back, and you're going to the buffet. You
want to get started, so you're let me get a
big plate of rice, of the potatoes, of some of those,
of some pasta, and then you eat that. You get
a little full. Yeah, you might go back to the
carving station, but you're not going to load up on
it the way you would if it was right in front.
They also have small plates. They limit the portions they'll
(06:09):
put on the plates. Lately, in the last couple of years,
they've added time limits. A lot of the buffets have
had time limits. And they also make these exotic displays
for food that makes the food look amazing, but it's
really low cost food and they'll put that there. And
so a buffet on average, they any typical standard buffet
(06:35):
will have one hundred and twenty to two hundred customers.
They will generate profit from forty to one hundred and
eighty thousand per month, so it's like five to fifteen
percent net profit margin essentially, so the margins are thin
and all that. I can go on and on, but
there you go. So it's National buffet Day. Celebrate appropriately.
(06:58):
In terms of other stuff, I finally did it. I
opened my email, Big News here on the Fifth Hour podcast.
Opened the email. That does not mean I wrote back
to you. I opened the email. And this is what
happens when you hit the pause button over the holidays,
when the red light goes dark, the microphones cool off,
(07:19):
and the over night the vampire schedule loosens its grip,
and you realize rather suddenly that you have this thing
called time on your hands, something that you don't have
a lot of. It's dangerous time. You have time to think,
you have time to scroll, you have time to click
open your email. And these things have been stacking up
(07:43):
like unopened Christmas cards from distant relatives who still think
that you live in your parents' house and that whole thing. Now,
several of you wrote for some odd reason asking about
New Year's resolutions, today being the second day of January,
which tells me no offense, which means offense. You must
(08:08):
be relatively new to the radio show, because I know,
right now Alf and ferg Dog and some of the
old guard are rolling their eyes right now. They're like,
what is wrong with these people? Yes, so again no offense,
but which means I have offense. You've got to be
near the show. If you're looking to me yours truly
(08:34):
for New Year's resolution inspiration, you have wandered into the
wrong aisle at the grocery store. You might want to
go to another supermarket somewhere. I've never been a resolution's guy.
I've never trusted them, never needed January first to tell
(08:54):
me what to do, like today's January sec. I don't
need that. I don't have a fancy explanation. I'm not
gonna sit here and give you a ten minute ted
talk on that. That's not my deal. This is not
a self help podcast. I don't have any kind of
(09:14):
odd inspirational background music that I'm gonna play, at least
not intentionally. Simply put, I like to follow as much
as I can the code of the West bunch of
old school stuff. Take pride in your work. It's pretty important.
Always finish what you start. That's something that's been lost
over time. Do what has to be done. Another thing
(09:36):
that doesn't really stand the test of time. And when
you make a promise, keep it. You ride for the brand.
And those are not New Year's resolutions, they're not. Those
are load bearing beams, is what those are. If you
need a calendar reminder to start being serious about your life,
(09:58):
you're already behind the chains you buy the chase. Think
of it like the myth. One of the great myths
in sports is halftime adjustments. It's one of these dopey
phrases that sportscasters like to say because it sounds really cool. So, coach,
what adjustments are you going to make at halftime? Said
the meathead or brainless sideline reporter. What halftime adjustments are
(10:24):
you going to make? Coach? It's the great marvel of
the modern NFL and NBA. Of course, it's also poppycock.
I was attracted to the giant metalcock. Many have pointed out,
whether it's Peyton Manning, Bill Belichick, or endless others, if
something is broken in the first quarter, your protection is leaking.
(10:48):
If you're a basketball team, your shot selections thinks. Your
defense if you're an NFL team is like traffic cones
and a windstorm. You're supposed to sit there and wait
until halftime to fix it, because, of course the modern
marble is halftime adjustment. Of course, not you make the
adjustment right then you rip up whatever game plan you had.
(11:11):
You grab the grease board, and you start changing things
around the what you might call it the think of
a jigs the dow hickeyes. You change the things around
before the problem snowballs, and then by the time you
get the halftime it doesn't matter, and then you're just
doing a postgame apology tour. Waiting for some kind of
arbitrary date to address a problem is like noticing your
(11:33):
houses on fire and say, well, let's circle back after
the holidays. I'll get the hose on it, but I'm
gonna wait a little bit after. Well, no, you don't wait.
There'd be nothing to put the hose on at that point.
Smart people don't wait, they act. And that's always been
my approach, not that I'm right, absolutely not smart, but
my approach to radio or life or everything in between.
(11:56):
If something's off, if the out go rhythm is not right,
you don't put it on the vision board. You put
your head down and fix it. Stupid and procrastination. Listen,
we've all been there at one point or another, We've
all done the procrastination thing. Procrastination is like a credit card.
(12:19):
It's a lot of fun, a lot of fun until
you realize that the bill's coming at some point. Now,
on a positive note, procrastination always gives you something to
look forward to. And I have a lot of people
in my circle that are like, hey, I'll get to
it someday. And I looked and like, today's Friday. Right,
(12:42):
we're recording this on a Friday. So you have Friday,
you have Saturday, have Sunday, of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
There is no day called someday that is not it.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Meanwhile, a few.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Of you also asked about the most memory moments from
the radio show during the twenty twenty five campaign. Keep
in mind that none of these messages were from Terry
in England. And am I about to give you a
list of the greatest moments? No, I'm not going to
give you a list of the greatest moments. No matter
(13:19):
how much moving man Matt wants that, I'm not going
to do it. I wish I had a neat answer
with a bow. I don't. I don't have that. And
I've really been the same year after year. When you're
in the middle of it, you don't stop to take inventory.
There's no inventory here.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I know.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
If you work at Costco or Walmart, you have to
do inventory every month. We don't do that. We don't.
We don't stop to take inventory. You're in the forest.
That chains saw is buzzings, there's sawdust flying, no idea
what the trees even look like from a distance. It's
(14:04):
the day to day grind. It's the rat race, the
industrial complex of the hot sports. Take the overnight shift
where the hot takes are forged like steel in a
blast furnace on a nightly basis. It puts hair on
your chest. It's not for everybody, certainly not for the
(14:27):
fan of heart. And still a few moments linger. The
monologues always do. The monologues always do. That's the soul
of this thing, whatever this thing is, that we have
the purest form of radio, just a man, a darkened studio,
a microphone, a thought, and no safety net. And I
(14:52):
say a darkened studio. The show is now recorded, part
of it for YouTube. So that is a lie. That
is a lie. A lot of lights. There's way too
many lights in the studio now The most positive feedback
I have received all year came from a euge. I
can't stand doing eulogies. I despise doing eugees. I want
(15:16):
to do happy goofy, I want to do ripping people.
I don't want to do eulogies. And yet here we
are again looking back over the last five years or so,
the things that are the most popular are the eulogies.
When Kobe Bryant was killed in the helicopter crash, that
was the most listened to show that we did that year.
(15:39):
We've done a number of these over the years. When
people die in sports, A Hulk Hogan this year did
a twenty minute monologue on Hulk Hogan, no gimmicks, no catchphrases,
just a major tip of the headphone person that impacted
my youth growing up as a sports fan. I was
(16:00):
a haulk of maniac and I just a bunch of
respect for a larger than life figure. As I said
in the monologue, it's like a cartoon character on Saturday
Morning came to life. You'd watch he Man and the
Cartoons on Saturday morning, and then after that they had wrestling,
and here's hal Cogan is like, wait a minute. That's
(16:22):
that's he man's it's what the characters coming to life.
And it wasn't just for my generation. Haul Cogan loomed
over multiple generations. It was like a bright sign on
the highway there neon sign and so that one clearly
struck a nerve and you could feel it through the wires.
(16:42):
You know there's something there. The biggest download spike came
from an NBA story a trade, the Luka Doncik situation.
I want to say, I want to say trade. I'm
gonna say a situation. You can't really call it a
trade between the mav Rex and the historians of purple
and gold. It was not. It was a giveaway. It
(17:03):
was a clear and sale. It was a garage sale
when the homeowner doesn't realize they have a picasso and
they're selling the picasso for five bucks and a handshake.
Whether this was incompetence, panic, or interference from the shadowy
cabal that governs basketball, whatever it was, it was radio
(17:26):
catnip is what it was. The phones lit up, everyone
was all fired up social media. We just did a
lot of traffic, had good sales, good sales on that
particular show which happened over the weekend. It happened on
a Saturday, I believe, and then we came in on
Sunday and worked our magic. And then you've got the callers.
(17:49):
Like radio does not belong just to the host overnight
talk radio. During the day, they don't take calls. They're
better than you, they don't like you, they don't want
you on their shows. But at night we take calls.
And radio does not belong just to me. It belongs
to the weirdos, legends like Lucky, Tony, Jed who Fled,
the kind of names that you do not forget, that
(18:10):
you get only on late night radio. They feel like
characters from some kind of dusty paperback novel that you
were forced to read when you were in junior high school.
Weed man, hippie, drifting in and out like static on
the AM radio dial. But it's the human form. The
awkward encounters that we have with e Dog from Long
(18:33):
Island and Steve O in Manhattan, Marcel in Brooklyn, the
gambling conversations with a man who happens to have the
same name as a famous actor, Danny DeVito out of Boston.
Some of this feels like just performance art. You didn't
(18:55):
ask for you can't not listen to. And there's some
regulars that couldn't handle the grind. It happens, they faded
back to the shadows. This year marked the full name guy,
Sir scratch Off in Arkansas. That's the rhythm, the yin
and the yang of the overnight radio. People come, people go.
(19:15):
And I often look at this like graduating classes of
a college. Like if you were a football coach, you think,
remember that team we had in eight that was pretty good.
We had Pete and Pittsburgh, we had Genie and Medford.
That was an all time great team. And then there's
a new recruiting class and they come in and they
(19:35):
make their mark, and so people come, people go. It's
like it is like ships passing in the night, except
the ships are the unhinged, the unstable, many of them
with their Obama phones hollering James, people along those lines,
Blind Scott. And you have the social media gumbas, the
(19:55):
legends like Alf and Fergdog, Late Night Drug Tester, Eke
and Roseville, Minis, Stevie, Meatball's Mister nice Guy, screwged all
the regulars, and I'm leaving out a bunch. I'm leaving
out of Ohio with the music, all these characters that
are part of the show, and through it all, the
show keeps moving on, and we have no time to
sit there and celebrate, and not a lot of time
(20:19):
to mourn. The clock does not stop. It rocks the
Fox box and just another night, another take, another caller
waiting on hold with some kind of theory that'll change
the sporting world forever, or at least at least make
it slightly awkward and uncomfortable for ninety seconds to three
(20:41):
or four minutes. So when you email me and you
ask about resolutions, about reflections, about lists which I loathe,
or accomplishments, you have to understand going into this, that's
not how the sausage gets made. This thing is built,
(21:02):
whatever this is, is built in real time, call by call,
monologue by monologue, mistake by mistake, and there are plenty
of mallad mistakes.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
They happen.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
It's a live radio show, and there's no January reset button.
There's no ceremonial fresh start. We're not going to cut
the ribbon and begin anew. This is not like the
NFL or the NBA where they have seasons. Is none
of that. We are a year round shop. We are
(21:31):
open pretty much all the time, and that's just the work.
And so on Sunday night into Monday morning, the red
light will come back on and the blabbing will commence
once again, and away we go, off to the races,
now turning the page, having been away for a minute,
(21:51):
having been away for a minute, the rare and appropriate
end of year tradition, trying to unpluck, trying to unplug
for one brief moment. Not only did I open the email,
I made the mistake of going on the interweb. And
what did I see? Big bold, self important headline something
(22:15):
dot dot dot us soccer growing the Game, one hundred
million dollars World Cup, windfall Soccer boom times developing hot
dot dot dot. And right there I start laughing, and
I mean like real laughter, like you just told me
(22:38):
that the Jets are one quarterback away from winning in
one coach away. It's my favorite genre.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
It is.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
It's sports propaganda. I can't not notice it once I
see it. I love the yell about it. It's triple
X rated it is. I call it soccer optimism, porn
sop soccer optimism porn, soft lighting, cheesy music, everyone's smiling,
(23:09):
nobody asking hard questions. So, according to the story, thanks
to the upcoming twenty twenty six World Cup, US soccer
is expecting about one hundred million bucks. That's going to
be their share nine figures. So some CEO you've never
heard of, I don't know who this person is comes
(23:32):
out and says, the goal is to make soccer the
most played sport in America. Drop the mic, most played,
not grow participation, not incremental gains, not close the gap
on the other sports. No, no, no, no, right to the moon,
straight to the moon. It's like me saying my goal
(23:54):
is to deliver a hammered dunk by next Tuesday. Well
that's great. I'm tall enough, got some weight on me
and get a little older here. Now, keep in mind
I am closer to dunking than soccer. Is the passing football, basketball,
or baseball buy in terms of popularity in this country.
(24:17):
And let me tell you something. This story gets written
every couple of years, every few years, the same font,
same tone, new names. It's mad libs. Journalism is what
it is. Right insert tournament, insert executive's name, all caps,
insert vague hope about youth participation, global.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Game blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah, publish, repeat. It's the reboote nobody has
for It's like a bad superhero movie that keeps getting
remade because this time they swear they've figured it out.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Now here's the reality they never want to address. They
do not want to address the reality. Soccer in America
has a ceiling, and that ceiling is made reinforced concrete.
It's not made of paper mache. It's made out of
reinforced concrete. That's the ceiling. Now, keep in mind eye
(25:22):
of all people. My fat ass played soccer back in
the Bronze Age, and today I go drive around on
a Saturday morning or a Sunday, kids are out playing soccer.
They've got these club team things. Now, back when I
played it with the Ayso, but they've got these club
team deals and they're off there playing. It's true. I'm
(25:42):
not making it up. Little kids, cute little kids, six
seven eight year old kids, shintguards on orange slices. You
got dad screaming, you got mom yelling right from their
folding chairs off on the side. They got their tent
with the team name on it. And then something happens,
and it happens around the age of twelve or thirteen.
It's called this thing called puberty. And it's a mix
(26:06):
of puberty, video games, social media, highlights on demand, the
allure of nil money, AAU basketball, seven on seven football,
and then you've got soccer. So soccer becomes the sport
that you used to play, capitol you used to play.
(26:28):
It's a graduation ceremony. You don't quit soccer. See that's
the thing.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You do.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Not quit soccer. I didn't quit soccer. I didn't. You
didn't quit soccer. You age out of it. Soccer is
America's training wheels sport. It is You're being made. I'm
not being made. I'm being real. Nobody keeps the training
wheels on forever. You don't. You have them on. They
(26:56):
serve a purpose and that's it. And then you move on.
And here's the part nobody in these glowing think pieces
wants to say out loud. Soccer missed its window. There
was a window of opportunity there and they blew it.
If soccer was ever going to take over America, it
(27:19):
had to happen before the PlayStation, before YouTube, before TikTok
before in endless, endless entertainment options. It's just insane. And
now you're competing. It's not just competition with the NFL
and basketball and baseball. You're competing with kids who can
(27:41):
watch Patrick Mahomes highlights in four K while simultaneously trash
talking their friends on a twitch thing thing of a jig.
Good luck, and you're gonna sell these kids. Hey, listen,
I know you're having a great time playing the video games.
Can you please watch a zero zero draw? It's so entertaining. Yeah,
(28:01):
so you're fighting Fortnite with shin guards. Good luck, good luck.
It's like showing up to a gunfight with a water gun.
Well you've got a gun technically, but it's a water gun.
There's no bullets. And listen, In twenty twenty six, soccer
will be huge. Let me repeat that for those of
you in the back of the room a little slow,
(28:22):
all right. It's the weekend, the beginning for us here
on this Friday. So soccer will be huge. Twenty twenty six.
Bars will be packed, They'll be flags everywhere. People will
be wrapping themselves in the flags. People who can't name
a player suddenly they're experts, right, they're experts in this area.
(28:43):
A genius is patriotism will carry the load like a
rented mule. But that's not gross. See, this is the
that is not growth. That's a pop up shop, is
what that is. Right, that's a pop up shop, is
what that is. It's temporary fandom. It's seasonal interest, like
(29:05):
pumpkin spice. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Soccer is the pumpkin spice of the sporting world. It
comes around people pretend they love it because you're supposed
to love it because it's pumpkin spice, and then it
disappears until next time, and then you do the whole
charade again, Right, the whole charade again. Just go on
and on and on and as far as one hundred
(29:29):
million dollars, that's not a cultural revolution. It's a scratch
off tickets found money. That's a bonus check that makes
you feel good but doesn't change your life. And yeah,
you can build fields, and you can do this act
of charity, and that act of charity. You can fund
programs to try to get more kids involved in soccer.
(29:52):
You can hire some consultants who'll use words like ecosystem
and stakeholders and big, big words. And however, you cannot
force obsession. American culture the way it is does not
obsess over soccer, never has and likely never will in
(30:13):
my lifetime. And without obsession, you can't win. You won't win.
You just don't win. Soccer is a guest at the party,
not the host. It shows up every four years with
a flag. It's got the Cape flag. Thing, stays for
(30:34):
a couple of weeks, then heads back to the margins.
And this isn't anti soccer. Like I don't, I'm neutral.
I'll talk about whatever is popular. I don't care whatever
is popular.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I'll talk.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
I have a talk show to do. I don't care
whatever people are into. It's talk rat it's broadcasting, not
narrow casting. However, this is reality. Soccer isn't failing. It's
exactly where it's always been. It's a niche sport with
spikes of patriotism. It puts it. It's a niche. It's
a sport that lives on the calendar, not in the bloodstream.
(31:10):
The same people telling you this time it's different are
the same ones who said that last time it was
going to be different, and the time before that it
was going to be different, and the time before that,
wash rints repeat. I'm convinced that this is the sports
version of the Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain plotting world
(31:31):
domination every single night, and America just kind of nods
politely and changes the channel to do something else or
puts on YouTube, and God only knows watches Benny versus
the Penny, and that's that and then you move on
and there you go, and there we go. Have a
(31:53):
wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have a brand
spankin new edition of this pot podcast on Saturday, and
then Sunday that I should have the mail bag back.
You can send letters in right now Reel fifth Hour
at gmail dot com. Reel fifth Hour at gmail dot com.
All letters, no numbers, and do that be part of
(32:16):
the fun there on the mail bag which will be
coming up on Sunday. But we'll have another podcast for
you on Saturday as we hang out with you and
for Danny g It's I Big Ben and we'll catch
you next time. Got a murder?
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I gotta go
Host
Ben Maller
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.