September 27, 2025 • 28 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Saturday podcast for you! He talks: College Football, Non-Breakfast Guy, Spanning the Globe, It's the Litte Things in Life, & more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio A Happy Saturday to you.
College Football Saturday on the twenty seventh day of September eight.
College Football Saturday today, and I do have some things
going on, so I'm trying to figure out. Bye. By
(00:49):
the way, Daniel joined me tomorrow. It's you Just Got
Me today, You just got me Hi. I'm my name's Ben.
Today on the podcast, but all day long, starting not
that far from now. With the USC Trojans who complained,
We talked about this the other night on the radio show.
They complained about having to play the early game today
(01:12):
after playing the late game last weekend, and they taken
on Illinois, who's just technically a top twenty five team,
sneaking in. Well. USC's not much higher rank than Illinois,
but USC off to a good start. They haven't played
any real competition, but they're four to zero. They take
on Illinois today. That's the early.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Game on.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Fox. Is that the big noon game of the week.
I know, it starts at noon Eastern time, and we'll
see what's going on with that game. And then later
on you got Alabama tonight Alabama and Georgia. Alabama not
nearly as good as they had been, but we'll see
what they can do against Georgia. And then what else
am I'm looking for? LSU and Old Miss can be
(01:55):
pretty good. And then the game which is also tonight,
going against Alabama, Georgia on what channels you know, NBC
Oregon and Penn State, which is pretty cool on our guy,
LeVar Arrington on that ESPN college football pregame show is
(02:15):
the celebrity picker. He's the big celebrity picker, which is
very very exciting. I know, Yeah, it'd be nice to
see LeVar get a little TV time. He doesn't get
enough TV time there. So in that matchup, it's all
on Penn State. James Franklin. Good teams every year but
against the top ten opponents. I saw the stat seven
(02:38):
times this week. James Franklin's played twenty four games against
top ten opponents since he's been to Penn State, and
they've only won four. They're four and twenty four and
twenty which I didn't play college football, but I'm told
is not good. So that'll that'll be the game at
the very top there. But I'll be flipping my right hand,
will be getting a workout between that and the aforementioned
(03:03):
Alabama Georgia games. So that's what we have to look
forward to to night and today starting here in a
little bit, and it's also National corn Beef Hash Day.
I want to point out I am not a breakfast guy.
I've talked about this from time to time on this podcast,
on the radio show. The wife does enjoy breakfast, so
(03:23):
she will drag me when we Usually we go on vacation,
so we're on vacation, eat breakfast. Got to eat breakfast together,
and corn beef hash has been a salvation for me
when I am dragged into breakfast. I don't hate breakfast food.
I don't I like pancakes. I like a lot of
it's bad for you, but for me. My go to
(03:46):
is corn beef hash, which goes all the way back
to the seventeenth century in England. It was originally rabbit hash,
and then the Ashkenazi Jews brought it to America. The
night teenth century, immigrants from northern Europe brought their food
here and then it became part of America. And then
(04:09):
in World War One, there's stories of soldiers eating corn
beef hash as they were in war. Was served corn
beefash was served in field kitchens the troops during World
War One, and it wasn't until nineteen fifty though, that
Horrmal Foods introduced canned corn beef hash and roast beef hash.
(04:35):
So that's been seventy five years since that happened. So
I will partake next time I have breakfast. I'm not
having breakfast today, but next time I have breakfast, I
will have corn beef hash. So on this podcast, as
we hang out together on a Saturday, the audio sweatshop
does not stop. The audio Sweatshop does not stop. We
(04:59):
have spent the globe and also it's the little things
in life. So I want to start with this. There
is nothing quite like live radio. I realize I'm saying
this as I'm doing a podcast. But I and I
openly admit that I fell in love with radio when
I was a kid and it was just magical to
(05:22):
me as a kid, and even at the age i'm
at now, I still just love radio. I just it's
in my blood. There's nothing quite like live radio. Nothing.
It's the great high wire act of modern media. And
podcasts like the one we're doing right now, these are safe.
Like if I f up this podcast, I just don't
(05:42):
put it out there. I delete it or whatever and
I redo it. It's not live, it's I can do
whatever I want now. Normally what we do is we
do one take. We treat it like radio. We do
it one take. However, if something gets really effed up,
I can just delete it and not send it out
and you'll never hear it, and that's it. Television, I've
been lucky enough to do a little television, highly produced,
major production value. There's editors, there's people with the graphics,
(06:07):
there's producers. Like a lot of people do a television show.
It's good, but it's not radio. Streaming pretty polished, right,
radio though, live overnight in the witching hours, when you've
got truckers in Tennessee and Alabama, insomniacs in Iowa and Illinois,
(06:28):
and Barista's in Boston, all of them tuned in. People
working in factories, baking stuff and whatnot. And that's just different.
That's naked, that's raw, and that's you a microphone and
the ABYSS. And the ABYSS does not wait. There's no
(06:48):
waiting room with the ABYSS. So take you back all
the way till yesterday, Friday morning, inside the bowels of
the Malor Mansion, working from the remote studio, and I
was reminded of this eternal truth picture, if you will,
the scene as I am preparing for the radio show.
(07:10):
I've got my trusted companion, Moxie, beloved mascot of the
mal Or Militia, the English Bulldog, snoring like a freight
train two feet away. I've got three screens going roughly.
I got the baseball game in Chicago. I've got the
football game that's a Thursday night, so Thursday night interprise.
(07:33):
So I've got the football game Seattle and Arizona from Glendale, Arizona.
Got some random nonsense on the other screen. And I've
got my laptop. I'm sitting down I've got my notes
and I'm preparing for the show. I've got mallard monologues.
The way we do it, we do four monologues a night.
(07:54):
Each monologuees anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes, give or take.
And so I've got to get my notes ready, my
bullet points, and I'm polishing them. I'm spit shining the
bullet points like a five star chef prepping, gathering the
ingredients in place before the big dinner service, getting everything
ready to go. Preparation is the key. Am at the
(08:18):
point now where I'm about ready to go. I'm about ready.
You know, I'm good. I've got all the ingredients I need.
I know how much food I have to serve that night.
And it's the end of the week, and you want
to go in feeling pretty good about yourself. Not that
the audio ends. Obviously, we're doing this podcast here, so fine,
(08:38):
that's it. As we like to say, we do broadcasting,
not narrow casting. I had put the baby to bed,
and when you put the baby to bed, everything you
can possibly do to prepare for the show is done,
and you just have to wait for the show to
get going. It's broadcasting, not narrow casting, and our job
is to find story that spin the globe. They constant
(09:03):
variety of sporters. The late great Jim McKay so famously
put it the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat,
the human drama of athletic competition. And if you're completely honest, here,
we spend most of our time marinating in the agony
of defeat. We just do. In news, they say, if
it bleeds, it leads. In sports radio, if you lose,
(09:27):
you're at the very top, because defeat is magical, defeat
is relatable. Defeat makes good talk radio. And I learned
this at a young age when I was like nineteen
and I got assigned to cover professional sports and I
was in the locker room. You'd go into winter's locker
room to be a boombox. Music was playing, people were
(09:47):
having fun, having a good time. And then you go
across the tunnel to the loser's locker room. There was
no music. Everyone was melancholy. Everyone was sad. Oh they
were so depressed because they'd lost the game. And that's
where the drama is. And so there I am doing
the show. Everything's fine. First three hours rat a tat
(10:09):
tat rat a tat tat rat a tat tat. Heading
into the final hour, I take a deep breath. We
finish with lame jokes, and I've got a few minutes
before the next hour begins. Here the recorded update from
Montsie at the top of the hour, and I'm clicking
open my file. Here. It's about five am Eastern time,
(10:29):
two am Pacific Primetime. Believe it or not, it's actually
primetime for us. That is when the commuters on the
Eastern Seaboard start heading out to try to beat the traffic,
and some of them end up stuck in traffic, flipping
through the dial looking for someone to scream about. I
(10:50):
don't know Tua or Aaron Rodgers or something. Anyway, that
is when we have the most ears listening to the
live show. That is when we have the biggest audience.
Is the final hour of the show. And I've got
one more monologue in the chamber, the final monologue of
the week, ready to fire. I've done my copious amounts
(11:13):
of research, I've put my due diligence in. I'm ready
to go. And remember, we got about fifteen to twenty
minutes of carefully assembled bullet points to navigate through and
the way whereas you put the bullet points. Now you
don't use them all, but you kind of sling them
together and you make it work. And it's kind of
(11:35):
like spaghetti and tomato sauce. You can have just the
spaghetti without the sauce. You can have the sauce without
the spaghetti, but it's better together. And so we were
going to talk about Robert Salah accusing the Jaguars of
sign stealing into a tongue of Iiloa and Cam Newton,
and then his story about the Tennessee Times. All that
was teed up. So we're about ninety seconds from the
(11:57):
on air light flashing, and I clicked open the file
and I save everything in my computer and I click
opened the file to get to the bullet points that
I had spent a lot of time preparing with Boxie.
And I see, I see nothing. I see blank. I
(12:17):
see a white screen. I see the Sahara desert. It's
like going to the grocery store during COVID and everything's empty.
My magnum opus reduced to blankness, just a blank stare.
And I kept clicking refreshed. It seemed like it was
(12:39):
half an hour maybe twenty seconds. I just kept clicking, refreshed, nothing.
And then I'm like, well, I mean, this is not good,
and it's what I'm trying to process. What happened. This
has not happened like this in a while, so I'm like,
oh boy. I didn't panic, but I had the realization
(13:01):
that the notes that I had spent so much time
preparing for this monologue were not on the machine. And
I do use a different setup in my remote studio.
I have everything locked in place. I have camera lighting,
extra lighting, I have a special computer that I use
(13:22):
because we have to record the monologues for the Ben
Mather Show YouTube channel. So it's just a lot of
different things. And so the notes were on my laptop downstairs. Now,
normally what happens is I transfer the file to the laptop,
it gets boomed through Wi Fi or or Bluetooth, and
(13:42):
it ends up on the cloud and then I take
it off the cloud and that's that. But it wasn't
on the cloud. It appears I had gotten so tired
I forgot to transfer my bullet points for that monologue.
Everything else was fine for the show, but that one
file I did not transfer over. And this is when
(14:03):
the self deprecation kicks in. I have one job, literally,
I have one job. Talk into a microphone with some
semblance of preparation that you as a consumer. I've said this,
if I've met you at meeting greets over the years,
I've told you this is the deal. Here. You are
(14:24):
giving up the most valuable resource that you have. You're listening.
You're giving your time. That is the most valuable thing
we all have as human amazinging for you to give
your time to listen to a sports radio show, that's
pretty cool. So the least I could do when I
get behind the microphone is have some, as I said,
some semblance of preparation. And so I had completely forgotten
(14:48):
the notes. And it's like a surgeon. You wouldn't want
to go and do to an operation as a surgeon
and leave your scalpel at home. Say well, just hold
off here, I got to I don't have a scalpel.
It's bathroom at home. If you're a pilot you go
down to the airport and you forget the keys to
turn on the plane, you don't want that. Or if
(15:08):
you're a chef and you show up to the restaurant
and you realize that you left all the vegetables and
all the bread in the trunk of your car. That's
not gonna work. Now in the podcast world, what would
you do, Like I'm in a podcast set up right now,
I would just pause. I grab the laptop. I would
(15:30):
Sasha my way back. No problem, edit it out, nobody notices,
nobody knows. But in live radio, we'll do it live,
I'll ride it, We'll do it lot. There is no pause.
But when the on air light is illuminated, the void
is right there, right, the void is right there, and
(15:51):
it's just laughing at you, daring you to stumble. So
I did what any desperate man, desperate talk show host
working from the remote studio would do. Oho I called
for backup. No, I did not call Moxie. I did
not call Moxie. I called my wife, who was somewhere
near the laptop enjoying some nice television, and I said, listen,
(16:15):
you gotta help me out. I need that computer asap. Emergency,
emergency def Con one, deaf con one, or something like that.
And suddenly the wife transformed into wonder woman faster than
Florence Griffith Joinner. If you know who that is, that's
a dated reference covered in red Bull, drinking red Bull.
She hurtled the sofa, cut a corner like secretariat, charged
(16:38):
up the stairs like she was storming Normandy, and about
forty seconds later, forty seconds she was in the remote studio,
laptop in hand, delivered like the passing of the torch
at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Teamwork makes the
dream work pure and simple. And here's the kick. Nobody listening,
(17:02):
nobody listening to you. I didn't get one email. I go.
I was worries. People a going to know that something
happened here, not a soul. The monologue went on. We
talked about Robert Salah and accusing the Jaguars of cheating,
made some Jose Albouve jokes and comments based on bullet points.
We talked about Tua being thin skinned, the Tennessee Titans.
It all played as if it had been planned perfectly.
(17:25):
There were no hiccups at all, and you had the
thrill of victory if you were listening now. Behind the scenes,
I was living the agony of defeat. I was. And
that again is the thing about what you love so
much about live radio. It's jazz, it's improv a little bit.
It's juggling knives on a unicycle wearing clown makeup. Now,
(17:48):
the Gremlins almost always show up. When we work from
the remote studio, they almost always show up. Files go missing,
dogs will bark, power will go out, microphones will start barn. However,
the show must go on. The show must go on.
And if you've got an English bulldog by your side
and the Wonder Woman spreating through the house, maybe, just
(18:13):
maybe you might be able to put off. And that's
the reason I just I love it. I love it.
I love love the gig. I don't like everything about it.
There's some things I would love to change, but there's
no job anyone's ever had at any point that is
completely perfect. But it's another reason it matters to me,
Like it's anyone can do a podcast anywhere and polish
(18:36):
it up and do it live though, because live radio
it is not perfect. It's not meant to be perfect.
It's the human drama of athletic competition, except the competition
often is between me and my own stupidity, and nine
out of ten times I end up losing on a
daily basis, and I keep going back like a glutton
(18:57):
for punishment. But it just happened to be the end
of the week. There. With the help of my lovely wife,
I I won. That is a wwwwwww barely. And that's it.
That is why you span the globe for good talk radio,
because you never know when boom goes the dynamite. Boom
(19:19):
goes the dynamite, just like that. All right, turn the
pitch on that. It's the little things in life. The
little things in life. Now, let's be honest here, all right.
A podcast photo, a radio show photo is usually the
least important thing in the world. Just stick with the podcast.
(19:39):
It's wallpaper, it's a label on a soup can, the
tiny print on the back of your credit card. Nobody
knewbody is listening to a podcast because of a headshot.
Nobody is doing that. Nobody says, I wasn't going to
download that four our audio da Tribe about Micah Parsons,
(20:05):
Jerry Jones and Aaron Rodgers taking a bowel movement. But boy,
look at that handsome man in the square thumbnail. Now
I'm gonna do it. Yeah, it doesn't happen. And yet
this is exactly why I believe it's important, because the
small things the ones you're not supposed to care about,
(20:27):
sometimes screamed the loudest. Now I bring this up. You
may have noticed if you downloaded the Ben Malers Show
podcast for Friday. However, for the first time in I
would say roughly fourteen years, fifteen years, the Ben Malers
Show podcast has a new picture. Not the same old
stock shot of a gas bag who looks like he
(20:49):
had just waddled out of an all you can eat
Vegas buffet, not the bloated character that screamed part sports
rate guy, part job of the hut. No, no, no,
this time, you know, is it a glamour shot? I
don't know if I'll use that word. I'll use the
(21:10):
word where the host actually looks presentable, even debonair. The
face a face for radio, but yet serious intent with
a little comedy flavor mixed in, you know, like someone
that's focused there, like they're about to carve a searing
steak of sports talk goodness and the sizzle right at
(21:34):
your table. And for once, the image does not betray
the content. All Right, we complained about this, I've done
rants about this. You can roll your eyes and say, oh,
here we go again, Here we go again. Yeah, I
can already hear you saying it's just a photo, bit
that schmuck, just Josh or Lucky Tonys, just a photo. No, no,
(21:59):
pump the brakes. This photo will appear millions of times,
literally millions of time. We do it very well on
the downloads, but it's an aggregate thing. You add this
up every day for weeks and months, and it's a
neon golden arches at McDonald's, on every podcast app every podcast,
(22:24):
a bitten Apple logo in every truck cab stopping to
get some dinner at a truck stop, listening on serious
satellite radio. It's every man, woman and child who downloads
the Ben Maler Show. We'll see this thumbnail, that little
bitty square, that eighty bitty square, will carry the weight
(22:47):
of recognition. It's like a brand burnt into the cattle.
It's a cattle mark. It's out there in the dusty
plane somewhere in the sports media world. And that that's
the thing, Especially when you're doing the overnight, you're like
baby steps become avalanches. Like a new photo isn't just
a new photo. It's a reintroduction. It's the mirror finally
(23:12):
catching up and to where you are right now, it's
got kind of like you hate that flattering angle. It's funny.
I was I back in the day when I was dating.
I knew that everyone wanted that photo looking down because
you lose about twenty pounds of fat. When you do
the camera above your head, you know, and you look down,
you don't get the chin fat and all that stuffs
(23:32):
a very flattering angle. It's like your aunt at Thanksgiving saying, oh,
you've lost some weight. What have you been doing? Are
you on that ozepic? And you haven't lost it hours.
It's just perception shifting, and perception is reality. So for
twenty five years of my life, for twenty five years
of my life at Fox Sports Radio, the host has
(23:54):
been portrayed as a slub, just the way it is
at the Overnight Overweight Carnival Barker. And now the image
to me, it looks different, and you can tell me, oh,
you know, you don't look that good. I just took
a little sneaker, a little more sophisticated. Yeah. This is
not an accident, right, This is not vanity, This is branding.
(24:19):
And you don't judge a podcast by its cover, except
of course, you absolutely do. You absolutely do. But such
as life in the audio world, we spent hours and
hours perfecting the content and then you send it out
and you like it, you don't like it. You judge it,
(24:40):
you don't judge it. We use the thumbnail and sometimes
that little tiny square is the biggest billboard you'll ever have.
Of course, we have the mobile moving Matt billboard, or
Matt the mover who's traveled all over there and his
dog Glue. We talked about him yesterday on the Friday podcast.
(25:01):
So we have that, but now we have this as well.
So I thought that was kind of cool. I was
happy about that, And now it's out and so check
it out. Let me know what you think about the image,
and yeah, so it's actually cool. I management reached out
to me and said, hey, we're changing the podcast image
(25:23):
and we've got some options, and I said, okay, what
are the options. And they could continue to use the
one where I look like I am about to die
from obesity. They chose not to do that, So we're
we're happy about that. We are fired up. I think
they did a good job. So it's a nice nice
deal there for sure. All right, it's a fifth hour
(25:45):
podcast and we have the mail bag tomorrow tomorrow, the
mail bag which we are fired up about, and if
you want to send a message in either for this
week's mail bag or a future mail bag, you can
do that care of Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com.
That's Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com, and we
(26:07):
will go through the mail bag tomorrow and read a
bunch of these questions. We don't get it in tomorrow.
If it's evergreen, we could always use it in a
future episode. If it's a dated one, we will not
use it. So resubmit but Real fifth Hour at gmail
dot com. If you want to support the radio program
or actually this podcast, and you can ask about the
(26:29):
radio program or whatever you want. It doesn't really matter.
Danny g should be with me on the mail bag tomorrow.
Hopefully he'll be able to stop by. It's been a crazy, crazy,
crazy weekend. So again, I got a lot of college
football to watch and don't even bother sending me an email. Well,
you don't talk about college football. I don't understand why
(26:50):
you're going to be watching those. Yeah, I don't have
to talk about everything I watch. I don't. Okay, sometimes
I can just be a sports fan. I don't even
have to bet on the game. Now, I do pick.
When I watch a game, I got to pick who
I think is gonna win. I can just take the
edge off and watch a game and that's it. I
(27:10):
don't have to do the whole shebang where I sit
in front of a microphone and spit out monologues and
all that stuff. And quite frankly, some of the stuff
I watched for the radio show I would never watch
if I didn't have the radio show because I have
no interest in it. But I have to work myself
into a lather sometimes for some of the stuff that
we end up talking about because it's broadcasting, not narrow
(27:31):
casting and all that. But I can watch college football
and I'll be out running around, so I'll likely watch
some of it on my phone, depending on what I
have going on today, because I have a lot of
time off, especially doing the podcast on the weekend. So
I'll figure some stuff out as I go through. And
that'll be that. Anyway. Thanks to you for listening, making
(27:52):
it all the way to the end of the podcast.
We'll have again the mail bag tomorrow, Danny G. Hopefully
we'll check in. Have a wonderful rest of your set day, Saturday, Saturday,
and we will catch you next time. Later, Skater Pasta
Pasta We're still waiting for that Eureka moment. Now we
(28:13):
are got a murder. I gotta go.
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 sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio A Happy Saturday to you.
College Football Saturday on the twenty seventh day of September eight.
College Football Saturday today, and I do have some things
going on, so I'm trying to figure out. Bye. By
(00:49):
the way, Daniel joined me tomorrow. It's you Just Got
Me today, You just got me Hi. I'm my name's Ben.
Today on the podcast, but all day long, starting not
that far from now. With the USC Trojans who complained,
We talked about this the other night on the radio show.
They complained about having to play the early game today
(01:12):
after playing the late game last weekend, and they taken
on Illinois, who's just technically a top twenty five team,
sneaking in. Well. USC's not much higher rank than Illinois,
but USC off to a good start. They haven't played
any real competition, but they're four to zero. They take
on Illinois today. That's the early.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Game on.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Fox. Is that the big noon game of the week.
I know, it starts at noon Eastern time, and we'll
see what's going on with that game. And then later
on you got Alabama tonight Alabama and Georgia. Alabama not
nearly as good as they had been, but we'll see
what they can do against Georgia. And then what else
am I'm looking for? LSU and Old Miss can be
(01:55):
pretty good. And then the game which is also tonight,
going against Alabama, Georgia on what channels you know, NBC
Oregon and Penn State, which is pretty cool on our guy,
LeVar Arrington on that ESPN college football pregame show is
(02:15):
the celebrity picker. He's the big celebrity picker, which is
very very exciting. I know, Yeah, it'd be nice to
see LeVar get a little TV time. He doesn't get
enough TV time there. So in that matchup, it's all
on Penn State. James Franklin. Good teams every year but
against the top ten opponents. I saw the stat seven
(02:38):
times this week. James Franklin's played twenty four games against
top ten opponents since he's been to Penn State, and
they've only won four. They're four and twenty four and
twenty which I didn't play college football, but I'm told
is not good. So that'll that'll be the game at
the very top there. But I'll be flipping my right hand,
will be getting a workout between that and the aforementioned
(03:03):
Alabama Georgia games. So that's what we have to look
forward to to night and today starting here in a
little bit, and it's also National corn Beef Hash Day.
I want to point out I am not a breakfast guy.
I've talked about this from time to time on this podcast,
on the radio show. The wife does enjoy breakfast, so
(03:23):
she will drag me when we Usually we go on vacation,
so we're on vacation, eat breakfast. Got to eat breakfast together,
and corn beef hash has been a salvation for me
when I am dragged into breakfast. I don't hate breakfast food.
I don't I like pancakes. I like a lot of
it's bad for you, but for me. My go to
(03:46):
is corn beef hash, which goes all the way back
to the seventeenth century in England. It was originally rabbit hash,
and then the Ashkenazi Jews brought it to America. The
night teenth century, immigrants from northern Europe brought their food
here and then it became part of America. And then
(04:09):
in World War One, there's stories of soldiers eating corn
beef hash as they were in war. Was served corn
beefash was served in field kitchens the troops during World
War One, and it wasn't until nineteen fifty though, that
Horrmal Foods introduced canned corn beef hash and roast beef hash.
(04:35):
So that's been seventy five years since that happened. So
I will partake next time I have breakfast. I'm not
having breakfast today, but next time I have breakfast, I
will have corn beef hash. So on this podcast, as
we hang out together on a Saturday, the audio sweatshop
does not stop. The audio Sweatshop does not stop. We
(04:59):
have spent the globe and also it's the little things
in life. So I want to start with this. There
is nothing quite like live radio. I realize I'm saying
this as I'm doing a podcast. But I and I
openly admit that I fell in love with radio when
I was a kid and it was just magical to
(05:22):
me as a kid, and even at the age i'm
at now, I still just love radio. I just it's
in my blood. There's nothing quite like live radio. Nothing.
It's the great high wire act of modern media. And
podcasts like the one we're doing right now, these are safe.
Like if I f up this podcast, I just don't
(05:42):
put it out there. I delete it or whatever and
I redo it. It's not live, it's I can do
whatever I want now. Normally what we do is we
do one take. We treat it like radio. We do
it one take. However, if something gets really effed up,
I can just delete it and not send it out
and you'll never hear it, and that's it. Television, I've
been lucky enough to do a little television, highly produced,
major production value. There's editors, there's people with the graphics,
(06:07):
there's producers. Like a lot of people do a television show.
It's good, but it's not radio. Streaming pretty polished, right,
radio though, live overnight in the witching hours, when you've
got truckers in Tennessee and Alabama, insomniacs in Iowa and Illinois,
(06:28):
and Barista's in Boston, all of them tuned in. People
working in factories, baking stuff and whatnot. And that's just different.
That's naked, that's raw, and that's you a microphone and
the ABYSS. And the ABYSS does not wait. There's no
(06:48):
waiting room with the ABYSS. So take you back all
the way till yesterday, Friday morning, inside the bowels of
the Malor Mansion, working from the remote studio, and I
was reminded of this eternal truth picture, if you will,
the scene as I am preparing for the radio show.
(07:10):
I've got my trusted companion, Moxie, beloved mascot of the
mal Or Militia, the English Bulldog, snoring like a freight
train two feet away. I've got three screens going roughly.
I got the baseball game in Chicago. I've got the
football game that's a Thursday night, so Thursday night interprise.
(07:33):
So I've got the football game Seattle and Arizona from Glendale, Arizona.
Got some random nonsense on the other screen. And I've
got my laptop. I'm sitting down I've got my notes
and I'm preparing for the show. I've got mallard monologues.
The way we do it, we do four monologues a night.
(07:54):
Each monologuees anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes, give or take.
And so I've got to get my notes ready, my
bullet points, and I'm polishing them. I'm spit shining the
bullet points like a five star chef prepping, gathering the
ingredients in place before the big dinner service, getting everything
ready to go. Preparation is the key. Am at the
(08:18):
point now where I'm about ready to go. I'm about ready.
You know, I'm good. I've got all the ingredients I need.
I know how much food I have to serve that night.
And it's the end of the week, and you want
to go in feeling pretty good about yourself. Not that
the audio ends. Obviously, we're doing this podcast here, so fine,
(08:38):
that's it. As we like to say, we do broadcasting,
not narrow casting. I had put the baby to bed,
and when you put the baby to bed, everything you
can possibly do to prepare for the show is done,
and you just have to wait for the show to
get going. It's broadcasting, not narrow casting, and our job
is to find story that spin the globe. They constant
(09:03):
variety of sporters. The late great Jim McKay so famously
put it the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat,
the human drama of athletic competition. And if you're completely honest, here,
we spend most of our time marinating in the agony
of defeat. We just do. In news, they say, if
it bleeds, it leads. In sports radio, if you lose,
(09:27):
you're at the very top, because defeat is magical, defeat
is relatable. Defeat makes good talk radio. And I learned
this at a young age when I was like nineteen
and I got assigned to cover professional sports and I
was in the locker room. You'd go into winter's locker
room to be a boombox. Music was playing, people were
(09:47):
having fun, having a good time. And then you go
across the tunnel to the loser's locker room. There was
no music. Everyone was melancholy. Everyone was sad. Oh they
were so depressed because they'd lost the game. And that's
where the drama is. And so there I am doing
the show. Everything's fine. First three hours rat a tat
(10:09):
tat rat a tat tat rat a tat tat. Heading
into the final hour, I take a deep breath. We
finish with lame jokes, and I've got a few minutes
before the next hour begins. Here the recorded update from
Montsie at the top of the hour, and I'm clicking
open my file. Here. It's about five am Eastern time,
(10:29):
two am Pacific Primetime. Believe it or not, it's actually
primetime for us. That is when the commuters on the
Eastern Seaboard start heading out to try to beat the traffic,
and some of them end up stuck in traffic, flipping
through the dial looking for someone to scream about. I
(10:50):
don't know Tua or Aaron Rodgers or something. Anyway, that
is when we have the most ears listening to the
live show. That is when we have the biggest audience.
Is the final hour of the show. And I've got
one more monologue in the chamber, the final monologue of
the week, ready to fire. I've done my copious amounts
(11:13):
of research, I've put my due diligence in. I'm ready
to go. And remember, we got about fifteen to twenty
minutes of carefully assembled bullet points to navigate through and
the way whereas you put the bullet points. Now you
don't use them all, but you kind of sling them
together and you make it work. And it's kind of
(11:35):
like spaghetti and tomato sauce. You can have just the
spaghetti without the sauce. You can have the sauce without
the spaghetti, but it's better together. And so we were
going to talk about Robert Salah accusing the Jaguars of
sign stealing into a tongue of Iiloa and Cam Newton,
and then his story about the Tennessee Times. All that
was teed up. So we're about ninety seconds from the
(11:57):
on air light flashing, and I clicked open the file
and I save everything in my computer and I click
opened the file to get to the bullet points that
I had spent a lot of time preparing with Boxie.
And I see, I see nothing. I see blank. I
(12:17):
see a white screen. I see the Sahara desert. It's
like going to the grocery store during COVID and everything's empty.
My magnum opus reduced to blankness, just a blank stare.
And I kept clicking refreshed. It seemed like it was
(12:39):
half an hour maybe twenty seconds. I just kept clicking, refreshed, nothing.
And then I'm like, well, I mean, this is not good,
and it's what I'm trying to process. What happened. This
has not happened like this in a while, so I'm like,
oh boy. I didn't panic, but I had the realization
(13:01):
that the notes that I had spent so much time
preparing for this monologue were not on the machine. And
I do use a different setup in my remote studio.
I have everything locked in place. I have camera lighting,
extra lighting, I have a special computer that I use
(13:22):
because we have to record the monologues for the Ben
Mather Show YouTube channel. So it's just a lot of
different things. And so the notes were on my laptop downstairs. Now,
normally what happens is I transfer the file to the laptop,
it gets boomed through Wi Fi or or Bluetooth, and
(13:42):
it ends up on the cloud and then I take
it off the cloud and that's that. But it wasn't
on the cloud. It appears I had gotten so tired
I forgot to transfer my bullet points for that monologue.
Everything else was fine for the show, but that one
file I did not transfer over. And this is when
(14:03):
the self deprecation kicks in. I have one job, literally,
I have one job. Talk into a microphone with some
semblance of preparation that you as a consumer. I've said this,
if I've met you at meeting greets over the years,
I've told you this is the deal. Here. You are
(14:24):
giving up the most valuable resource that you have. You're listening.
You're giving your time. That is the most valuable thing
we all have as human amazinging for you to give
your time to listen to a sports radio show, that's
pretty cool. So the least I could do when I
get behind the microphone is have some, as I said,
some semblance of preparation. And so I had completely forgotten
(14:48):
the notes. And it's like a surgeon. You wouldn't want
to go and do to an operation as a surgeon
and leave your scalpel at home. Say well, just hold
off here, I got to I don't have a scalpel.
It's bathroom at home. If you're a pilot you go
down to the airport and you forget the keys to
turn on the plane, you don't want that. Or if
(15:08):
you're a chef and you show up to the restaurant
and you realize that you left all the vegetables and
all the bread in the trunk of your car. That's
not gonna work. Now in the podcast world, what would
you do, Like I'm in a podcast set up right now,
I would just pause. I grab the laptop. I would
(15:30):
Sasha my way back. No problem, edit it out, nobody notices,
nobody knows. But in live radio, we'll do it live,
I'll ride it, We'll do it lot. There is no pause.
But when the on air light is illuminated, the void
is right there, right, the void is right there, and
(15:51):
it's just laughing at you, daring you to stumble. So
I did what any desperate man, desperate talk show host
working from the remote studio would do. Oho I called
for backup. No, I did not call Moxie. I did
not call Moxie. I called my wife, who was somewhere
near the laptop enjoying some nice television, and I said, listen,
(16:15):
you gotta help me out. I need that computer asap. Emergency,
emergency def Con one, deaf con one, or something like that.
And suddenly the wife transformed into wonder woman faster than
Florence Griffith Joinner. If you know who that is, that's
a dated reference covered in red Bull, drinking red Bull.
She hurtled the sofa, cut a corner like secretariat, charged
(16:38):
up the stairs like she was storming Normandy, and about
forty seconds later, forty seconds she was in the remote studio,
laptop in hand, delivered like the passing of the torch
at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Teamwork makes the
dream work pure and simple. And here's the kick. Nobody listening,
(17:02):
nobody listening to you. I didn't get one email. I go.
I was worries. People a going to know that something
happened here, not a soul. The monologue went on. We
talked about Robert Salah and accusing the Jaguars of cheating,
made some Jose Albouve jokes and comments based on bullet points.
We talked about Tua being thin skinned, the Tennessee Titans.
It all played as if it had been planned perfectly.
(17:25):
There were no hiccups at all, and you had the
thrill of victory if you were listening now. Behind the scenes,
I was living the agony of defeat. I was. And
that again is the thing about what you love so
much about live radio. It's jazz, it's improv a little bit.
It's juggling knives on a unicycle wearing clown makeup. Now,
(17:48):
the Gremlins almost always show up. When we work from
the remote studio, they almost always show up. Files go missing,
dogs will bark, power will go out, microphones will start barn. However,
the show must go on. The show must go on.
And if you've got an English bulldog by your side
and the Wonder Woman spreating through the house, maybe, just
(18:13):
maybe you might be able to put off. And that's
the reason I just I love it. I love it.
I love love the gig. I don't like everything about it.
There's some things I would love to change, but there's
no job anyone's ever had at any point that is
completely perfect. But it's another reason it matters to me,
Like it's anyone can do a podcast anywhere and polish
(18:36):
it up and do it live though, because live radio
it is not perfect. It's not meant to be perfect.
It's the human drama of athletic competition, except the competition
often is between me and my own stupidity, and nine
out of ten times I end up losing on a
daily basis, and I keep going back like a glutton
(18:57):
for punishment. But it just happened to be the end
of the week. There. With the help of my lovely wife,
I I won. That is a wwwwwww barely. And that's it.
That is why you span the globe for good talk radio,
because you never know when boom goes the dynamite. Boom
(19:19):
goes the dynamite, just like that. All right, turn the
pitch on that. It's the little things in life. The
little things in life. Now, let's be honest here, all right.
A podcast photo, a radio show photo is usually the
least important thing in the world. Just stick with the podcast.
(19:39):
It's wallpaper, it's a label on a soup can, the
tiny print on the back of your credit card. Nobody
knewbody is listening to a podcast because of a headshot.
Nobody is doing that. Nobody says, I wasn't going to
download that four our audio da Tribe about Micah Parsons,
(20:05):
Jerry Jones and Aaron Rodgers taking a bowel movement. But boy,
look at that handsome man in the square thumbnail. Now
I'm gonna do it. Yeah, it doesn't happen. And yet
this is exactly why I believe it's important, because the
small things the ones you're not supposed to care about,
(20:27):
sometimes screamed the loudest. Now I bring this up. You
may have noticed if you downloaded the Ben Malers Show
podcast for Friday. However, for the first time in I
would say roughly fourteen years, fifteen years, the Ben Malers
Show podcast has a new picture. Not the same old
stock shot of a gas bag who looks like he
(20:49):
had just waddled out of an all you can eat
Vegas buffet, not the bloated character that screamed part sports
rate guy, part job of the hut. No, no, no,
this time, you know, is it a glamour shot? I
don't know if I'll use that word. I'll use the
(21:10):
word where the host actually looks presentable, even debonair. The
face a face for radio, but yet serious intent with
a little comedy flavor mixed in, you know, like someone
that's focused there, like they're about to carve a searing
steak of sports talk goodness and the sizzle right at
(21:34):
your table. And for once, the image does not betray
the content. All Right, we complained about this, I've done
rants about this. You can roll your eyes and say, oh,
here we go again, Here we go again. Yeah, I
can already hear you saying it's just a photo, bit
that schmuck, just Josh or Lucky Tonys, just a photo. No, no,
(21:59):
pump the brakes. This photo will appear millions of times,
literally millions of time. We do it very well on
the downloads, but it's an aggregate thing. You add this
up every day for weeks and months, and it's a
neon golden arches at McDonald's, on every podcast app every podcast,
(22:24):
a bitten Apple logo in every truck cab stopping to
get some dinner at a truck stop, listening on serious
satellite radio. It's every man, woman and child who downloads
the Ben Maler Show. We'll see this thumbnail, that little
bitty square, that eighty bitty square, will carry the weight
(22:47):
of recognition. It's like a brand burnt into the cattle.
It's a cattle mark. It's out there in the dusty
plane somewhere in the sports media world. And that that's
the thing, Especially when you're doing the overnight, you're like
baby steps become avalanches. Like a new photo isn't just
a new photo. It's a reintroduction. It's the mirror finally
(23:12):
catching up and to where you are right now, it's
got kind of like you hate that flattering angle. It's funny.
I was I back in the day when I was dating.
I knew that everyone wanted that photo looking down because
you lose about twenty pounds of fat. When you do
the camera above your head, you know, and you look down,
you don't get the chin fat and all that stuffs
(23:32):
a very flattering angle. It's like your aunt at Thanksgiving saying, oh,
you've lost some weight. What have you been doing? Are
you on that ozepic? And you haven't lost it hours.
It's just perception shifting, and perception is reality. So for
twenty five years of my life, for twenty five years
of my life at Fox Sports Radio, the host has
(23:54):
been portrayed as a slub, just the way it is
at the Overnight Overweight Carnival Barker. And now the image
to me, it looks different, and you can tell me, oh,
you know, you don't look that good. I just took
a little sneaker, a little more sophisticated. Yeah. This is
not an accident, right, This is not vanity, This is branding.
(24:19):
And you don't judge a podcast by its cover, except
of course, you absolutely do. You absolutely do. But such
as life in the audio world, we spent hours and
hours perfecting the content and then you send it out
and you like it, you don't like it. You judge it,
(24:40):
you don't judge it. We use the thumbnail and sometimes
that little tiny square is the biggest billboard you'll ever have.
Of course, we have the mobile moving Matt billboard, or
Matt the mover who's traveled all over there and his
dog Glue. We talked about him yesterday on the Friday podcast.
(25:01):
So we have that, but now we have this as well.
So I thought that was kind of cool. I was
happy about that, And now it's out and so check
it out. Let me know what you think about the image,
and yeah, so it's actually cool. I management reached out
to me and said, hey, we're changing the podcast image
(25:23):
and we've got some options, and I said, okay, what
are the options. And they could continue to use the
one where I look like I am about to die
from obesity. They chose not to do that, So we're
we're happy about that. We are fired up. I think
they did a good job. So it's a nice nice
deal there for sure. All right, it's a fifth hour
(25:45):
podcast and we have the mail bag tomorrow tomorrow, the
mail bag which we are fired up about, and if
you want to send a message in either for this
week's mail bag or a future mail bag, you can
do that care of Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com.
That's Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com, and we
(26:07):
will go through the mail bag tomorrow and read a
bunch of these questions. We don't get it in tomorrow.
If it's evergreen, we could always use it in a
future episode. If it's a dated one, we will not
use it. So resubmit but Real fifth Hour at gmail
dot com. If you want to support the radio program
or actually this podcast, and you can ask about the
(26:29):
radio program or whatever you want. It doesn't really matter.
Danny g should be with me on the mail bag tomorrow.
Hopefully he'll be able to stop by. It's been a crazy, crazy,
crazy weekend. So again, I got a lot of college
football to watch and don't even bother sending me an email. Well,
you don't talk about college football. I don't understand why
(26:50):
you're going to be watching those. Yeah, I don't have
to talk about everything I watch. I don't. Okay, sometimes
I can just be a sports fan. I don't even
have to bet on the game. Now, I do pick.
When I watch a game, I got to pick who
I think is gonna win. I can just take the
edge off and watch a game and that's it. I
(27:10):
don't have to do the whole shebang where I sit
in front of a microphone and spit out monologues and
all that stuff. And quite frankly, some of the stuff
I watched for the radio show I would never watch
if I didn't have the radio show because I have
no interest in it. But I have to work myself
into a lather sometimes for some of the stuff that
we end up talking about because it's broadcasting, not narrow
(27:31):
casting and all that. But I can watch college football
and I'll be out running around, so I'll likely watch
some of it on my phone, depending on what I
have going on today, because I have a lot of
time off, especially doing the podcast on the weekend. So
I'll figure some stuff out as I go through. And
that'll be that. Anyway. Thanks to you for listening, making
(27:52):
it all the way to the end of the podcast.
We'll have again the mail bag tomorrow, Danny G. Hopefully
we'll check in. Have a wonderful rest of your set day, Saturday, Saturday,
and we will catch you next time. Later, Skater Pasta
Pasta We're still waiting for that Eureka moment. Now we
(28:13):
are got a murder. I gotta go.
Host
Ben Maller
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