September 13, 2026 • 40 mins
“Mama, There Goes That Man!” Ben is back with a lukewarm edition of The Fifth Hour, joined by his Pacific Northwest pal and longtime senior member of the Maller Militia, Robbie the Mariners Fan!
Grab the scuba gear because the boys are going way too deep into the Mailbag. On the menu: NFL inflation soaring 72% in a decade, artificial intelligence eventually killing us all, the ancient history of the radio dump button, and some guy Ben and Robbie have never heard of ranking Ben’s show on the radio. Very prestigious. Apparently.
Plus: the lost art of actually showing up for work, avoiding load management, getting sick in a foreign country, who helped Ben develop his gasbag radio style, and the proper technique for handling meathead fanboys and brown-nosing callers.
It’s radio anthropology mixed with nonsense, unsolicited wisdom and several topics nobody requested.
Normal retail price: $799.99. Maller Militia price: FREE.
All questions sent in by new listeners & P1's of the #MallerMilitia! Download, subscribe, and remember that sharing is caring (unless it's an STD.) Follow Ben on Twitter @BenMaller and listen to the original terrestrial radio edition of "Ben Maller Show," Monday-Friday on Fox Sports Radio, 2a-6a ET, 11p-3a PT!...Follow, rate & review "The Fifth Hour!"
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the air everywhere, the fifth hour with me, Ben Maller.
It's NFL Sunday. It's the first NFL Sunday of the
season after a couple of so-so games to begin the year.
We will now have the full card of NFL activity
from early on all the way up through Sunday night football,
(00:23):
the Cowboys and Giants game.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
On NBC, not.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The greatest card in the world today. We had Benny
versus the Penny. This week, the picks are up and running.
But before we get to anything, Ohio Al, get me
in the mood.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's in the bag.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Ben's Mailbag.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
All right, so we spun the wheel, as we often
do on the mailbag, round and round and round. Last
week we had JT the Wingman and Weedman Hippie. Are
they back for an encore?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
However, in their place, one person replacing really three people,
because we had not only Weedman Hippie, we had his lady, Lisa.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And then also JT the Wingman. So replacing them, we
welcome in Robbie, the Mariner fan.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Hey guys, I thought you were going to go with
a fat joke there.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So insert your own joke right there.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
I know exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Rib man and Justin, those guys will insert their jokes.
I know I will.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I would want you to know Robbie and I, and
you listening that we did reach out to hollering James
to be in the third chair of on this edition
of The Mailbag. He gave Coop his number about two
weeks ago. So I had his number in my phone,
so I called up Hollering James, assuming.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
He would be very excited to be part of the show.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And I dialed the number Coop gave me, and the
number you have dialed is no longer in service.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Either Coop wrote it down wrong or James doesn't know
his phone number or because he's got an Obama phone,
it just changes all the time.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
But either way, we tried to reach out to James. Unavailable.
No hollering James.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
So we'll have to deal with that. But we have
Robbie more than enough. You've been on here more than anybody, Robbie.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I don't even want to say how many times it's
been on because I don't want to make people jealous
at this point. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
People are going to be pissed. Oh, it's Robbie. Every
week it's Robbie. Why you put Robbie on? That old thing.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
What did I say? You answer your phone. You respond.
I can't tell you how difficult it is. It's like
herding sheep, trying to get people that say they want
to do it, and then they're not available, or they
don't answer their emails or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So fine. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Some of those X notifications aren't the most reliable.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'll give them that. But yeah, it is interesting. The
people that call up in their whole agenda on the
call for a radio show is, hey, put me on
the list. And then they don't answer the call. That
always puzzles me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
You're on the list.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
You made the list, but now you're no longer on
the list because you didn't answer your thing and all that.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
But we got a lot of messages. Good amount of
email today.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Messages sent care of realfifthour at gmail.com.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
That's realfifthour.com. At gmail.com. And first up, I know a
good friend of yours, Robbie. Fergdog.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Oh, boy.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
He says, Ben and the cockroach that scared the bejesus
out of Lorena.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I'm a big fan of your work, Mr. Cockroach. Yeah,
that was very odd.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, I think there's a burgeoning rivalry between Fergdog and Lorena.
I'm not sure Lorena realizes it, but I've noticed some
shots Fergdog's been subtly taking at Lorena the last couple weeks.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, Fergdog's got an evil side to him.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Yeah, he does.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
He says, can I suggest hollering James to co-host next week? Well,
if he gave us a number that worked, he would
be on right now for a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's not that hard.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I'm not sure what he'll bring to the table, but
at least he's slightly more coherent than Robbie.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Is that true, Robbie?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I often get confused with hollering James unless I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
He says, Ben, I'd like to compliment you on how
you handled that meathead caller who kept asking if you'd
ever played football. You don't need to be a chef
to know when the meat is burnt. Meat should always
be cooked well done. Nothing more, nothing less. This stupid
(04:58):
gotcha question was pointless anyway. Since everyone knows you've played
multiple sports at a high school level, including football, is
there any profession you can think of that you must
have done yourself to be able to criticize those doing it?
He appointed, well, yeah, listen, the guy was a hard-o guy.
And we get, you know, the hard-o guys call up
(05:19):
every once in a while. I get a kick out
of it. And as you said, or as I like
to say, you don't have to work at NASA to
know when the rocket on the launching pad blew up
because it's in pieces. That's how you know it. So
this job is not that hard. But thank you, Ferg Doggy.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I would say Dr.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
But I think you do know when your doctor gives
you bad advice, you can kind of tell whatever they
told you is probably not the proper thing most of
the time. Javon in Phoenix writes in, he says, Ben
and guests, that would be Robbie the Mariner fan, I
enjoyed your interview.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
With Ross Porter, baseball trivia.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
How long did it take you to develop your voice
or your style in radio, Javon says, in addition to Mr. Porter,
who are some of the other influential people over the
years well I interned for this guy named Lee Hamilton
Lee Hacksaw Hamilton who was a big San Diego radio
guy and so I learned some tips from him and
Tony Bruno who's retired now I guess he does some
(06:15):
stuff in Philadelphia although lives in Florida so Tony was
big I've talked about this guy Jim Healy who did
a radio show in LA and he was somebody that
I used to listen to and But I listened to
a lot of it when I was growing up.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I loved radio.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So Howard Stern back before he went woke and all that.
I thought he was great back in the day. I
don't listen to him anymore, but.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He was good.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And yeah, so that is that. Javon in the Valley
of the Sun.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Next up is.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Outback John and Joanna in the San Gabriel Valley of SoCal. Says, hey,
Big Ben and special guest or guest. No, it's Robbie
the Mariner fan.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Just one.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Just one. No, that's all we need. I was listening
to the show the other night and was thrilled to
hear about.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Ross Porter being on the podcast. And Outback John said,
can't wait to hear it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, it was on the other day, so hopefully you've
heard it by now.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Our question this week is, which sports announcer, living or dead,
that you never met would you most want to meet?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
That's from Outback John and Joanna.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Most of the guys I watched when I was growing up,
I was lucky enough to at least have some interaction
with people that I didn't even really listen to, but
I knew of their work because I was that kind
of guy, and I had access to a big, giant
satellite when I was younger, so I would watch different broadcasts.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I was able to run down.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I don't want to brag about people I met, but
I met a lot of the people I grew up
watching who I wanted to meet or didn't watch but
I heard about.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
The one that I never met that I thought would
be pretty cool because I loved this show when I
was a kid was Mel Allen.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
This week in baseball. I love that show. He passed
away before I got into any of this stuff. I'd
heard Mel had an accident. He fell in the shower
or something like that. He wasn't the same after that.
I don't know about all that.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
That would be the one. I guess John Madden would
have been a cool one to meet.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Didn't meet him, so that'd be about it. Robbie, anyone
you want to meet? Robbie, any big broadcast people?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Dave Niehaus would have been cool. Obviously, he's passed away, but.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah. Or Rick Riz. I mean, Mariners were blessed to
have two legends back-to-back like that, so.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, this is the last year for Rick Riz, is
that right?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, it's kind of sad the way it's going out
with the Mariners the way they are, but... Yeah, you
can't really control that, so.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well, they just want to be in the race, right?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
What was it, 52.5% or something like that? The infamous
press conference?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
The funny thing is right now that would be good enough,
but we're not even that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
No.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
And Dave Neha, get out the rye bread and mustard, grandma.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Salami time.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Which he bestowed that play call upon Rick Riz. He
told Rick Riz to carry that on. But I don't
know if the next guy is going to do it.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So who knows? Probably not.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah. I think it should probably just stay with Rick.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah. What else do we have here? Let's see.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Can't read that one. Dear Ben and guess. So this
is Scott from Asia temporarily, normally in Florida. He says
my professional. Work attendance over 25 years is not quite
Cal Ripken, but I'm certainly not a modern-day NBA player.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I am squarely team non-load management. I'm in Asia for work,
and I wanted to call in to the live show
this week, but I've been deathly ill out here. Well,
that sucks.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Imagine being in a foreign country, and you're sick.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
The way nightmares are made.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah. Yeah. I know in Mexico they call it Montezuma's Revenge.
What do they call it? I don't know what country
in Asia it's in, but I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Whatever we did in Vegas, I got sick there. I'm
still battling that, so who knows?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Hopefully nobody roofied you, Robbie. I hope none of that.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Didn't Lorena get sick in Vegas too? Like in supermarket
Steve's wife.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Something's going around out there.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Either that or just a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
A lot of, well, I can't see that was my
reason then. So I hear you. I hear you.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Anyway, Scott says, I haven't been able to eat anything
for 72 hours and I've shown up to, for my
meetings and office work. What's the biggest non-load management grind
you've made in your career? For the love of the game.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, for several years, I worked every single day.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, kind of like I'm doing now with this podcast,
but like every single day, I did something.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
For a long time.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think the busiest stretch I had was when I
was doing weekend radio for Fox. I was doing like
three shows on the weekend. I did my website during
the week. I had a website that was just a
one-man thing, gossip, links, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I was aggregating sports news. So I was doing that,
and then I got a gig. This is the original
job I had at NBC, but that job I had
to fly back to Connecticut every couple.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Of weeks to do like a week of TV and
then come back. So I had all that going on.
That was like a freaking– I had no life. I
think I lost about eight, nine years of my– I
didn't do it for that long, but it was about
eight or nine years where I think I just zoomed
past that.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yikes.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I think I've– yeah. But it's good. I like keeping busy. Yeah.
It's a good problem to have. But, Scott, try to
see a doctor maybe. I don't know. Unless you're in China.
I don't know. Do they have good doctors in China?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
You could probably put in a joke.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It depends how rich you are in China, you know?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yes, yes. Well, that's unfortunate.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
It's kind of everywhere. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It doesn't matter whether you're in China or not. You
go here.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You go in and get whatever you get if you
don't have money. And if you have money, well, you're
hanging out at the nice hotel. Mark in Reno wrote in,
he just said, Ixnay on the Weed Man A, but
he liked JT the Wingman. All right, well, I'm glad
that you approved JT, but not Weed Man, who seemed...
I don't know if you heard that, Robbie, last week, but.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Oh, I heard it.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, Weed Man seemed to be... This was like a
dream come true.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
That was what made it worthwhile, because his audio wasn't great.
Not that I.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I can't say I haven't had bad audio before, so...
I emphasize that we've made on that. But no, hearing
his gratitude and how happy he was made it worthwhile
to listen to. And then JT was also great just
as like a regular, you know, like a regular host.
Great type thing. So it was fun to listen to.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
The problem with Weed Man is he couldn't really hear JT.
I don't know what was going on. I don't know
if he's got bad hearing or whatever, the connection, whatever. But, yeah,
it was fun. Barry.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Go ahead. No, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I was going to say the part on the ice.
Was it the icebergs and urine? That was hilarious.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
That was one of the better segments of the mailbag
you guys have had.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yes, the urine is destroying. Yeah. Human urine, the power
of our urine. And we were very powerful people.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Barry from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Now Chattanooga, choo, choo, choo, choo.
He says, yo, yo, ma, Benny and special guests, Robbie,
the Mariner fan. Not sure if you have ever heard
of Chris Tuck. He does rankings on the internet for anything.
I know this is clickbait, but Barry said he did
(13:41):
rank morning talk shows as Look where you fit into
the guys.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
This guy's rankings. Great time.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But I don't think that is your picture. Not sure
whose pick it is. And so he sent me this thing.
Have you ever heard of Chris Tuck? I don't have
no idea who this is.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I've heard of Chris Tucker, but not Chris Tuck.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Oh, yeah, Chris Tucker.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
But anyway, so this guy makes this must make Terry
in England feel sick.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
This guy does is make lists.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
His moral enemy, Chris Tuck.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
All right, so it says the best morning radio talk
shows A-tier list. Let's see how many of these you've heard, Robbie,
or I've heard of. The Howard Stern Show.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, I've heard of that. I haven't listened to him
in a long time. The Breakfast Club. I've heard of it.
I've never listened.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I've heard the name, but I don't know if they
were in a police lineup, if I could pick them out.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Is it Chaminade, I believe, is one of the hosts?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Or like Charlemagne the God or something?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Oh, Charlemagne.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, yeah. Here we go.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I'm calling the wrong name. You knew more than me.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
The Bobby Bones show. You ever heard of the Bobby
Bones show?
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I've heard the name because a barstool guy went on
there by accident when it was on ESPN and he
got yelled at by Dave Portnoy. So that was a
whole two days.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Bobby Bones, I know he's a big deal at the company.
I've never heard his show. He did actually work at
Fox Sports Radio, though. There was a tennis guy that
did a show on the weekends.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
What was the guy's name? I forget.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
But one of the big tennis players had a show,
and Bobby Bones is his buddy, so they did the
show together.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Oh, I remember that. It was like Andy Roddick and
Bobby Bones.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah, they did a
Saturday show together just because they, you know, why not?
Elvis Duran. I've heard the name, never heard the show.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
I don't think I've heard the name.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The Todd Show? I have no idea what.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Is that the Todd from the Dan Patrick show? No,
it's I know they're kind of like contracting them all
off because Dan's retiring soon. So who knows?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I don't know who that is. The John Jay and
Rich show. That's a lot. I have no idea what
that is.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
That sounds like a YouTube show when they just get
a bunch of people on, you know, one of those
live streams.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
All right.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
So that was the elite tier. Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
So I've only heard one of those shows and that
used to be good, but probably not anymore because.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Stern's getting older.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
We just got a new contract with HBO Max, Howard Stern.
So that was surprising to me.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Are they going to rehire all the people they whacked?
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Maybe.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I don't know. They were, they were, it was a
long trailer. I didn't watch it, but they promised the
whack pack.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So. Mojo in the morning. This is the amazing top
tier shows. All right.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
It says Mojo in the morning. That is a show
out of Detroit, I guess.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I've never heard of that. The Dave and Chuck freak show. No, nothing.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
It says K-Fan morning show, which is the power show.
I've been on there.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Those guys. Yeah, I've heard you on there.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Those guys are cool. The Ticket Morning Show. I don't
think that's what it's called. That's what it says here.
That's in Dallas.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
That station does very well, but I've never heard of
that thing.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
The Morning Zookeeper? The hell is that? That's out of Chicago?
I don't know what the hell that is. This guy's
still on there. Man Cow, Mully, and Bunk. There's no way, right?
Man Cow's got to be off the radio by this point,
I would think. I don't know that was the amazing
tier and then what do we got the great great
(17:20):
time consistently great show oh I made that look at
that Robbie I'm on consistent yeah consistently great shows and
then yeah you're right Barry that looks nothing nothing like
me I don't know they must have used AI for
this thing this guy Chris Chris talk Yeah, I don't
know who that is, but I mean, I'm ugly. I'm
(17:40):
not that ugly. I think I look better than that.
I would like to hope. The Ron and Don show.
Here's my contemporaries, Robbie. The Ron and Don show. Don't
know what the hell that is. The Mikey and Bob show.
What the hell is that?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
That's on the fan in Tampa.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I've never heard of that. What else we got? V103
morning show. No, that's in Atlanta. The Tommy show.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And then there's a Mexican talk morning show. I'm not
even a morning show, but I'm an overnight show.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yeah, you're overnight. There's a big difference.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I happen to be on the last hours on morning,
kind of early morning drive at 5 a.m.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
On the East, but that's it.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Then they say, not my cup of tea or not
my cup of coffee is coast to coast. Limbaugh well
he's not around anymore the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton
show well okay I think this guy doesn't like that
kind of talk Infowars okay and the Dana show I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
What the Dana show is I'm guessing it's political.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
I don't know I think I know who that might
be Dana Loesch or that one woman I don't know
this is the Dana show I used to be into
politics more than I am now but you know I
stay aware of what I need to stay aware of,
but I try not to get as political online as
I used to get.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
The daily outrage.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Culture war.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Well, thank you, Barry. You just killed about eight minutes
of talk, so I do appreciate that. I don't know
that we accomplished anything, but thank you for your effort.
I do appreciate that. What else do we have? Quang
from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Guaranteed human?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I don't know who this is. Do you think this
is a real person or somebody using a burner email?
Do you think this is a real person, like legit?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
There are expats living in Vietnam, so it's possible.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah. Well, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Anyway, he says, Big Ben and friend, at the time
of this email, I have no way of knowing if you...
covered this already on the Saturday, September 12th podcast. So
forgive me if you did, but here we go. Back
in 1976... ABC was testing a new seven second delay
(20:03):
during a gardening show. A caller phoned in asking if
he could bonsai his marijuana plants so the cops couldn't
see them over the fence while naturally maintaining the yield.
And just like that, boom, the dump button made its
debut again. And he says, who knew the first ever
(20:25):
dump button test would involve a gardening show, marijuana, and
a guy worried about his crop getting too tall? He said, well,
that might be TV, Robbie and Quang. But what I
had always heard was the delay. You said this was
in 1976. In the 1950s, way back in the 1950s,
(20:45):
the radio station WKAP in Allentown, Pennsylvania, They were the
first radio station to use a delay system. They had
a tape delay system and they had external playback. It
was like really archaic and all that stuff. And they
started a talk show called Open Mic. And that is
(21:07):
believed to be the first time a television or this
was radio, but I got a radio call in show
was broadcast with the telephone conversation live on the air.
the FCC at that time said, no, you're not allowed
to broadcast live television conversation. However, there was no rule
(21:30):
prohibiting taped playback. So that's how that went. And that was,
we were actually on that station. They obviously don't, you know,
times have changed and they had us, I don't think
we're on there anymore, but we had Fox sports radio
programming on that station was kind of, kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
They said there had to be a beep tone that
was heard by the caller every 15 seconds so the caller.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Knew that they were being recorded. There you go. All right.
Thank you for that, Quang. Appreciate it. Alf from the.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
AI Opiner from Cyberspace writes, and he says, I'll skip
the pleasantries.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Are we all effed?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Experts are sounding the alarms about AI, and by AI,
I don't mean my mallor memes. I mean AI systems
communicating with each other in languages they create, and we
can only translate using the same AI. This AI also
has the ability to hack any system on the planet.
(22:39):
Time to head to Benny's bunker. It was nice knowing
you all.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
That's from Alf.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Wasn't there some guy that came out with a long
X article or something that said he quit his job
at one of the AI companies because there's a chance
they're going to kill us all or something?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yes. I'll be right. I choose not to worry about
it because if you're dead, you're dead. If you can't
control it, What are you going to do? You'll die
sooner if you freak out. You're like, oh, my God.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Control. As they say in sports, Robbie, control the controllables.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
You got to be like a college football coach when
it comes to this stuff. Just spit out cliches and
live in the moment, you know?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Tremendous. I know you're an Oregon State fan.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
I'm sure you're happy the Ducks went foul, had some
foul play there against Oklahoma State.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Is that it? They lose. And what happened to the
quack attack there? Quacking, coking. My gosh.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
With how bad the Beavers are, I almost threw it
against the Ducks in football more than I root for
the Beavers in football.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
It's kind of sad.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
But, you know, we got our baseball team, so that's
all I need.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
That's all you need.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Reggie from Detroit writes in. He says, Ben, did you
see that NFL, this being the start of the NFL season,
game day costs have jumped 72% in a decade.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Well, why is everything.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
More expensive in the NFL outrunning inflation in the regular world?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's from Reggie from Detroit.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Well, it's rather obvious because they can get away with it.
People still pay for it. That's the market. If people
stopped paying for it, they'd have to lower the prices.
Tickets had the biggest increase. The league-wide tickets for NFL
games rose 81%. In the last decade, from $ 86 to $ 155,
the average stadium beer up 47%, from $ 7. 42 a beer
(24:40):
to $ 10.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
61 a beer. The team with the biggest increase... Who
do you think it is? That's a little trivia for Robbie.
Not trivia, it's more of a fun fact, because if
you do trivia, it becomes trivial. So, what do you
think here? The team that had the biggest rise... in
average cost per ticket.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Over the course of just the last year?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
No, the last decade.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I'm going to go Seahawks just because their fan base
has grown so much, but that's probably wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
No, this is a team that was terrible for years
and only in the last 10 years became a good team.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
How about that?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
And a team that was horrific.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
In fact, they were so bad, they were bad in
my childhood, and they've been bad as an adult.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Now I'm at my age, I'm at now, and now
they finally have a competitive team year after year.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
The Rams?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
No, the Raiders used to be good. How dare you?
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Well, they were good, and then they were bad for
such a long time.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
The correct answer would be the Detroit Lions.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, the Lions. I'm going to be bitter about that
all day now. I should have got that.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
The Lions fans saw the steepest rise in the league
at 336%. Oh, my God.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
From $ 98 to $ 429 per person following the NFC North
title and conference top record in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Or the NFC when they had that a couple years ago. Wow,
that's bald.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I get why they got away with it, though, because
all the other Detroit teams have been... Up until recently,
the Pistons were Drek, and so were the Detroit Red Wings.
And so the Lions somehow became the only good team
in Detroit. So if you wanted to see good sports,
you had to pay the premium, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
The Tigers and your Mariners played in the playoffs last year.
That didn't work out.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, that's true. But the Tigers, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
They're bad.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
They're bad.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Thank you, Reggie. I have a feeling. What do you think, Robbie,
that Reggie sent that because of the Lions? You think.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Probably pretty high.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Andy from Texas writes in. It's kind of a big state, Andy.
You might want to give us a city.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I'm just saying. He says, Ben, can you explain this?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
And he said there was a study that said telling kids,
according to Andy, telling kids they're smart nearly doubled their cheating.
According to a study, this is involving preschoolers who were
told they succeeded on a test that Because they were smart,
they cheated on the next test 64% of the time,
nearly double the rate of kids praised for effort or
(27:22):
an easy task.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
So... I don't know. I'd have to read more about that.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, it's hard to take away anything with preschoolers, you
know what I mean? A test or a study.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, do they even know they're taking a test? I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, it's... That or we're raising a bunch of new
Machiavellians or whatever, but who knows?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Kelly writes in from Parts Unknown and says, Ben, Berkeley,
where your friend Andrea lives, banned candy and soda checkout lines.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Only one sold less. It said the drugstores, which had
lower compliance with the rules in a prior audit, showed
no clear sales decline in either soda or candy, but
small candy packages.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
According to this, the soda sales in Berkeley fell 40%,
but the candy sales overall did not show a similar decline.
A study analyzed point-of-sale records from 71 stores through, although
only 11 of them were actually located in Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
I don't know about this. Kelly, I do know John Stossel,
who's great. He's YouTube. He used to be on TV
back in the day, but he did.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It popped in my algorithm. I didn't find it on
my own, but he popped in. It popped in my algorithm. Robbie,
this place in Philadelphia did the same thing where they
I don't know if it was just soda.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
I think it might have been soda where they banned soda.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So it just people went across the street to New
Jersey and bought sodas.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
That's what happened.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
So Oregon, when they were one of the first states
to ban like the fireworks that shot up into the sky,
everyone just went to Washington. And then I think Washington
may have banned it. So then everyone just went to
the Native American reservations in Oregon. And it's just a
free for all there now. So, yeah, people, if they
want to buy something bad enough, they will find a way.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, and the people that are in charge are so stupid.
They don't realize this is not going to work. We
have every kind of rule. In L.A., there's every kind
of rule. No fireworks.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You can't. Not even safe and sane. You can't do this.
Can't do that. Well, Tijuana is a couple hours away.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
You can have a Disneyland fireworks show in your front
yard if you want.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
And many people, the greatest fire. show ever was the
COVID when the world was shut down. Oh my God.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
It's same here.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It went to like two 30 or three in the morning.
And there were people that I was like, wait, you're
the uptight neighbor that calls the cops on noise complaints.
And even they were shooting off like illegal fireworks. Cause
everyone was living it up. They didn't know when COVID
would end. So everyone was just, if he could shoot
it in the sky, shoot it in the sky. It
was crazy.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Oh, it was amazing. It was like having 17 Disneyland's
all in your neighborhood. It was wild.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
It was insane.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And it really hasn't
come down very much.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
No, it's come down maybe like 10 to 15 percent
in my area. But there's still a large amount of
illegal fireworks every year now.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
All right, this one is from Dom. I don't know.
I've never heard of anyone named Dom, but maybe that's
the guy from the Eagles, Dom.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Man, that Achoo guy, or is it Emmanuel Achoo, who
did that thing about saying that, oh, yes, and now
the NFL's investigating Big Dom.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
And I was like, oh, that's BS.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Well, it's not. He probably did it. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
That goes on.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
You'd have to be really naive to not think.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
It's like every team does it because Acho needed some
content for his failing pod. Now Big Dom's probably going
to get in trouble for it.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
It's 11 years ago. How are you going to find out?
I don't know. The guys are probably not having cops anymore.
The ones that were involved in it.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
These teams are.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Look at the 49ers. Kyle Shanahan gets in an accident.
They go radio silent for 11 days. The cops won't
release the video.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
It's wild. You can't... I mean, the cops.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Is someone going to do one of those Freedom of
Information Acts and make them release it at some point?
I feel like whatever it was, it better be super
bad or else the mystery is going to be worse
than what it actually was at a certain point.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
We'll see. Somebody will let it out. I sure hope so.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Dom says, here are the physical signs that you are
scrolling too much. OK, this is according to what he
found on the Internet. Your neck and shoulders take the
first take the load first.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Looking down at.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
A phone pulls the head forward and tightens the upper something.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I don't know how to pronounce.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Uh, newer research, uh, complicates the idea that the posture
alone causes neck pain. Your thumb and wrist absorb thousands
of repetitive taps. Uh, according to a study in 2025, uh,
found smartphone unlocked frequently, our frequency and screen time were
both linked to clinical signs of a thumb tendon condition
(32:27):
called Dick Quervian's, uh, tennis. So Vitus, I'm definitely not
pronouncing that right. Uh, Tendon condition in your thumb.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Make tennis a little for chronic Twitter users.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Your eyes blink far less than they should.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
No, I know about that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Screen focus can cut blink rate by more than half
within the first minute of use, drying out the eye's
protective tear. And finally, your sleep gets pushed later than
you plan. Evening blue light suppresses the hormone that signals bedtime.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
I sleep during the day, so who cares?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Harvard researchers found it did so twice as long as
comparable green light.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, what do you want me to do with that, Dom? Okay,
so stay off your phone. Good luck. Good luck getting
people to stay off their phone in 2026. Oliver from
Tacoma writes in.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
That's in the beautiful Pacific Northwest there, although Robbie's in Oregon.
He says, Benny Radio, are you going to be getting
a $ 2, 000 foldable iPhone?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
No. No, I don't have any. I mean, no, I
don't need that. I'm fine. I don't need that.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
$ 2, 000.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Come on. That's got to go down in price at
some point. Maybe then.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Maybe in like the fifth generation when it's closer to
what an iPhone currently is, you know?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, I'm not. gotta have all the gizmos guy i'm
not that guy i respect.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
I used to be that guy.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I i understand that guy and i know that guy
i'm not that guy i'm not i normally use my
phone until i have no choice but to to replace
the phone it's just tattered and broken and it gets
water damaged and i'm like well i can't use it
anymore so i gotta get a new phone And I'll
usually get like one generation behind the current one.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Cause I'm a value shopper, Robbie.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
I figure that's the smart thing to do.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
I'm not necessarily smart when it comes to those things.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Now, if I had FU money, I would just be like, Oh, whatever. Yeah. Thing. But,
If anybody has that, let me know though. I'd love
to know if it's actually as good as average. I
just have a feeling you're going to fold it.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
That's not, it'll work for like maybe a couple of weeks.
And then after that, you're going to start getting a
crease in the phone and it'll seems like.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I remember when Samsung first came out with the foldable phones,
I remember there was a huge, there was a lot
of issues, the first generation of it. That's why like,
I wouldn't even consider getting an iPhone foldable phone to
like the third generation and it would still be too
expensive anyway. So, you know, it, I feel like Apple's
kind of desperate if they're doing a foldable phone because
(35:04):
for so many years they're like, we don't need a
foldable phone. And now all of a sudden they're like, here's.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
This foldable phone.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
I don't know. I feel like Apple's running out of like,
like innovative ideas. Hopefully I'm wrong. Well, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I mean, how do they got to keep coming up
with new stuff?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
That's the problem, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
But I mean, other companies have already done the foldable phone.
That's what worries me.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
We'll be like, well, not, not as good as us though.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
We're, you know, we're better.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And, All that. Pete from New Hampshire writes in, and
I wonder if he's in the town I like. I
don't know. Anyway, he says, what is the Malheur scale
of worry about rabies? It says U.S.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Rabies cases rise 17%. 17% rabies-related inquiries, and according to CDC.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
My.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Level of concern, Pete, Uh, that's not on my big board.
I'm not, should I be worried about that?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Robbie?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Should I go?
Speaker 3 (36:01):
I feel like rabies, at least you can see it
coming sort of, you know, like you don't animals have
to show signs of rabies.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
I would think, but I'm not a rabies expert.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
So I tried to read that Annie Jacobson book about
biological warfare. And now I am a little freaked out
about biological stuff. So you never know.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Well, again, though, the things that could kill you.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Yeah, exactly. That's what I keep telling myself.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Pretty much everything.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
So you can't sit there and live your life like, oh,
my God, what kind of.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Life is that?
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Well, there's still people that would never go to Vegas
anymore because, like, oh, all the germs and everything. And
it's like, it's a fair point. You just got to
roll the dice, to use a Vegas pun, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
No, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I get that part of it. I was just out,
you know, I was doing some shopping or whatever. And
I saw, you know, the mask people are.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Still out there and all that.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Quite get it. It's pretty much been proven that didn't
do much of anything, but people, once they, you know,
once a person makes up their mind, Robbie, you know,
I changed their mind. They're convinced that they have it
all figured out and everyone else is a schmuck, which
everyone is a schmuck, but still anyway. All right. We'll
get out on that. I got football. I'll be at
(37:15):
the charger game. Not cause, uh, Well, not because I'm
excited about that. He's playing the Cardinals, Robbie. That's got
to be one of the biggest mismatches.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, I would say at least you get to see
Jeremiah Love, but I'm pretty skeptical he's going to play much.
They're sure hiding his ankle. They're like, he'll play. Maybe
he won't play.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
He'll play.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Well, that's the one guy I want to see.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I love on the Cardinals. I'm not excited about Jacoby Brissett.
That doesn't really get me tingling.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Tyler Algier, they're starting running back.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Doesn't get you going.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Not quite. Not quite.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
No.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Cardinals.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, but that'll be one of the few games the
Chargers have more fans at, though.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Although Phoenix to L.A. is not that far.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Are there a lot of Cardinal fans that want to.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Make that kind of investment to travel all the way,
cost money, knowing their team's going to get smoked more
likely than not?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah, they better get smoked, or man, that's going to be...
The Herbert haters will be out in force.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, I took the Cardinals just because these teams don't
really do anything during exhibition games.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
The first half of these.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Games is a feeling out process, so then you've got
to beat somebody by double digits in the second half.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
I've always been a big proponent of if a team
doesn't know how bad they are yet, then bet them
when they're an underdog.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Oh, yeah. You always want to bet on bad teams early.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
They realize they're terrible and that's it. Although there are.
in baseball it's a little different you gotta pick your
spots because there are i i'm.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So bad at betting regular season baseball after the first
month i i feel like you should bet baseball first
month of the year and then playoffs otherwise it's so
hard because you don't know which bullpens are tired and
which aren't and with starters only going like five innings
anymore it's it's really hard to you can.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Bet the first five innings probably you could bet oh
that is true but then then if you're You're really
sweating it right away.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Oh, my God. All right. You have your YouTube thing, right? Robbie,
you want to promote it?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
We're going an hour earlier tomorrow. Ozzy's got stuff to do.
So I'll be up at 5.30 a.m. Pacific time, 8.30 a.m.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Eastern for it.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
All right.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
United States of Australia. should be fun on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Even if you don't like it, you can just hit
the subscribe button to give us a subscribe. It's free.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
Help us out.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That's the way I feel. I'm the same way. I'm like,
just get subscribed and watch a couple videos, and that's that.
All right.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Have a great Sunday. I'll be back a full week
of the radio show, no days off. So I'll be,
unless something happens, I will be there every single night
starting tonight. And according to the Bill's monster, Robbie in Buffalo,
this is the greatest show of the year will be
the Sunday and the Monday recapping what happens today on
the first full Sunday of the NFL.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's a lot of pressure from the Bill's monster. So
I hope I can live up to that. Otherwise I'll
be depressed. And I don't want to be depressed.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Anyway, have a great rest of your Sunday, and we
will chat with you tonight on the radio.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
As Dick and Dayton would say, bye-bye, bye-bye.
In the air everywhere, the fifth hour with me, Ben Maller.
It's NFL Sunday. It's the first NFL Sunday of the
season after a couple of so-so games to begin the year.
We will now have the full card of NFL activity
from early on all the way up through Sunday night football,
(00:23):
the Cowboys and Giants game.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
On NBC, not.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The greatest card in the world today. We had Benny
versus the Penny. This week, the picks are up and running.
But before we get to anything, Ohio Al, get me
in the mood.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's in the bag.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Ben's Mailbag.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
All right, so we spun the wheel, as we often
do on the mailbag, round and round and round. Last
week we had JT the Wingman and Weedman Hippie. Are
they back for an encore?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
However, in their place, one person replacing really three people,
because we had not only Weedman Hippie, we had his lady, Lisa.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And then also JT the Wingman. So replacing them, we
welcome in Robbie, the Mariner fan.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Hey guys, I thought you were going to go with
a fat joke there.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So insert your own joke right there.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
I know exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Rib man and Justin, those guys will insert their jokes.
I know I will.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I would want you to know Robbie and I, and
you listening that we did reach out to hollering James
to be in the third chair of on this edition
of The Mailbag. He gave Coop his number about two
weeks ago. So I had his number in my phone,
so I called up Hollering James, assuming.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
He would be very excited to be part of the show.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And I dialed the number Coop gave me, and the
number you have dialed is no longer in service.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Either Coop wrote it down wrong or James doesn't know
his phone number or because he's got an Obama phone,
it just changes all the time.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
But either way, we tried to reach out to James. Unavailable.
No hollering James.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
So we'll have to deal with that. But we have
Robbie more than enough. You've been on here more than anybody, Robbie.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I don't even want to say how many times it's
been on because I don't want to make people jealous
at this point. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
People are going to be pissed. Oh, it's Robbie. Every
week it's Robbie. Why you put Robbie on? That old thing.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
What did I say? You answer your phone. You respond.
I can't tell you how difficult it is. It's like
herding sheep, trying to get people that say they want
to do it, and then they're not available, or they
don't answer their emails or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So fine. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Some of those X notifications aren't the most reliable.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'll give them that. But yeah, it is interesting. The
people that call up in their whole agenda on the
call for a radio show is, hey, put me on
the list. And then they don't answer the call. That
always puzzles me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
You're on the list.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
You made the list, but now you're no longer on
the list because you didn't answer your thing and all that.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
But we got a lot of messages. Good amount of
email today.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Messages sent care of realfifthour at gmail.com.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
That's realfifthour.com. At gmail.com. And first up, I know a
good friend of yours, Robbie. Fergdog.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Oh, boy.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
He says, Ben and the cockroach that scared the bejesus
out of Lorena.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I'm a big fan of your work, Mr. Cockroach. Yeah,
that was very odd.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, I think there's a burgeoning rivalry between Fergdog and Lorena.
I'm not sure Lorena realizes it, but I've noticed some
shots Fergdog's been subtly taking at Lorena the last couple weeks.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, Fergdog's got an evil side to him.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Yeah, he does.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
He says, can I suggest hollering James to co-host next week? Well,
if he gave us a number that worked, he would
be on right now for a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's not that hard.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I'm not sure what he'll bring to the table, but
at least he's slightly more coherent than Robbie.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Is that true, Robbie?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I often get confused with hollering James unless I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
He says, Ben, I'd like to compliment you on how
you handled that meathead caller who kept asking if you'd
ever played football. You don't need to be a chef
to know when the meat is burnt. Meat should always
be cooked well done. Nothing more, nothing less. This stupid
(04:58):
gotcha question was pointless anyway. Since everyone knows you've played
multiple sports at a high school level, including football, is
there any profession you can think of that you must
have done yourself to be able to criticize those doing it?
He appointed, well, yeah, listen, the guy was a hard-o guy.
And we get, you know, the hard-o guys call up
(05:19):
every once in a while. I get a kick out
of it. And as you said, or as I like
to say, you don't have to work at NASA to
know when the rocket on the launching pad blew up
because it's in pieces. That's how you know it. So
this job is not that hard. But thank you, Ferg Doggy.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I would say Dr.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
But I think you do know when your doctor gives
you bad advice, you can kind of tell whatever they
told you is probably not the proper thing most of
the time. Javon in Phoenix writes in, he says, Ben
and guests, that would be Robbie the Mariner fan, I
enjoyed your interview.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
With Ross Porter, baseball trivia.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
How long did it take you to develop your voice
or your style in radio, Javon says, in addition to Mr. Porter,
who are some of the other influential people over the
years well I interned for this guy named Lee Hamilton
Lee Hacksaw Hamilton who was a big San Diego radio
guy and so I learned some tips from him and
Tony Bruno who's retired now I guess he does some
(06:15):
stuff in Philadelphia although lives in Florida so Tony was
big I've talked about this guy Jim Healy who did
a radio show in LA and he was somebody that
I used to listen to and But I listened to
a lot of it when I was growing up.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I loved radio.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So Howard Stern back before he went woke and all that.
I thought he was great back in the day. I
don't listen to him anymore, but.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He was good.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And yeah, so that is that. Javon in the Valley
of the Sun.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Next up is.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Outback John and Joanna in the San Gabriel Valley of SoCal. Says, hey,
Big Ben and special guest or guest. No, it's Robbie
the Mariner fan.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Just one.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Just one. No, that's all we need. I was listening
to the show the other night and was thrilled to
hear about.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Ross Porter being on the podcast. And Outback John said,
can't wait to hear it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, it was on the other day, so hopefully you've
heard it by now.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Our question this week is, which sports announcer, living or dead,
that you never met would you most want to meet?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
That's from Outback John and Joanna.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Most of the guys I watched when I was growing up,
I was lucky enough to at least have some interaction
with people that I didn't even really listen to, but
I knew of their work because I was that kind
of guy, and I had access to a big, giant
satellite when I was younger, so I would watch different broadcasts.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I was able to run down.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I don't want to brag about people I met, but
I met a lot of the people I grew up
watching who I wanted to meet or didn't watch but
I heard about.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
The one that I never met that I thought would
be pretty cool because I loved this show when I
was a kid was Mel Allen.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
This week in baseball. I love that show. He passed
away before I got into any of this stuff. I'd
heard Mel had an accident. He fell in the shower
or something like that. He wasn't the same after that.
I don't know about all that.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
That would be the one. I guess John Madden would
have been a cool one to meet.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Didn't meet him, so that'd be about it. Robbie, anyone
you want to meet? Robbie, any big broadcast people?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Dave Niehaus would have been cool. Obviously, he's passed away, but.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah. Or Rick Riz. I mean, Mariners were blessed to
have two legends back-to-back like that, so.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, this is the last year for Rick Riz, is
that right?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, it's kind of sad the way it's going out
with the Mariners the way they are, but... Yeah, you
can't really control that, so.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well, they just want to be in the race, right?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
What was it, 52.5% or something like that? The infamous
press conference?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
The funny thing is right now that would be good enough,
but we're not even that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
No.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
And Dave Neha, get out the rye bread and mustard, grandma.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Salami time.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Which he bestowed that play call upon Rick Riz. He
told Rick Riz to carry that on. But I don't
know if the next guy is going to do it.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So who knows? Probably not.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah. I think it should probably just stay with Rick.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah. What else do we have here? Let's see.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Can't read that one. Dear Ben and guess. So this
is Scott from Asia temporarily, normally in Florida. He says
my professional. Work attendance over 25 years is not quite
Cal Ripken, but I'm certainly not a modern-day NBA player.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I am squarely team non-load management. I'm in Asia for work,
and I wanted to call in to the live show
this week, but I've been deathly ill out here. Well,
that sucks.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Imagine being in a foreign country, and you're sick.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
The way nightmares are made.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah. Yeah. I know in Mexico they call it Montezuma's Revenge.
What do they call it? I don't know what country
in Asia it's in, but I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Whatever we did in Vegas, I got sick there. I'm
still battling that, so who knows?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Hopefully nobody roofied you, Robbie. I hope none of that.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Didn't Lorena get sick in Vegas too? Like in supermarket
Steve's wife.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Something's going around out there.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Either that or just a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
A lot of, well, I can't see that was my
reason then. So I hear you. I hear you.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Anyway, Scott says, I haven't been able to eat anything
for 72 hours and I've shown up to, for my
meetings and office work. What's the biggest non-load management grind
you've made in your career? For the love of the game.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, for several years, I worked every single day.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, kind of like I'm doing now with this podcast,
but like every single day, I did something.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
For a long time.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think the busiest stretch I had was when I
was doing weekend radio for Fox. I was doing like
three shows on the weekend. I did my website during
the week. I had a website that was just a
one-man thing, gossip, links, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I was aggregating sports news. So I was doing that,
and then I got a gig. This is the original
job I had at NBC, but that job I had
to fly back to Connecticut every couple.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Of weeks to do like a week of TV and
then come back. So I had all that going on.
That was like a freaking– I had no life. I
think I lost about eight, nine years of my– I
didn't do it for that long, but it was about
eight or nine years where I think I just zoomed
past that.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yikes.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I think I've– yeah. But it's good. I like keeping busy. Yeah.
It's a good problem to have. But, Scott, try to
see a doctor maybe. I don't know. Unless you're in China.
I don't know. Do they have good doctors in China?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
You could probably put in a joke.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It depends how rich you are in China, you know?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yes, yes. Well, that's unfortunate.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
It's kind of everywhere. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It doesn't matter whether you're in China or not. You
go here.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You go in and get whatever you get if you
don't have money. And if you have money, well, you're
hanging out at the nice hotel. Mark in Reno wrote in,
he just said, Ixnay on the Weed Man A, but
he liked JT the Wingman. All right, well, I'm glad
that you approved JT, but not Weed Man, who seemed...
I don't know if you heard that, Robbie, last week, but.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Oh, I heard it.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, Weed Man seemed to be... This was like a
dream come true.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
That was what made it worthwhile, because his audio wasn't great.
Not that I.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I can't say I haven't had bad audio before, so...
I emphasize that we've made on that. But no, hearing
his gratitude and how happy he was made it worthwhile
to listen to. And then JT was also great just
as like a regular, you know, like a regular host.
Great type thing. So it was fun to listen to.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
The problem with Weed Man is he couldn't really hear JT.
I don't know what was going on. I don't know
if he's got bad hearing or whatever, the connection, whatever. But, yeah,
it was fun. Barry.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Go ahead. No, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I was going to say the part on the ice.
Was it the icebergs and urine? That was hilarious.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
That was one of the better segments of the mailbag
you guys have had.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yes, the urine is destroying. Yeah. Human urine, the power
of our urine. And we were very powerful people.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Barry from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Now Chattanooga, choo, choo, choo, choo.
He says, yo, yo, ma, Benny and special guests, Robbie,
the Mariner fan. Not sure if you have ever heard
of Chris Tuck. He does rankings on the internet for anything.
I know this is clickbait, but Barry said he did
(13:41):
rank morning talk shows as Look where you fit into
the guys.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
This guy's rankings. Great time.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But I don't think that is your picture. Not sure
whose pick it is. And so he sent me this thing.
Have you ever heard of Chris Tuck? I don't have
no idea who this is.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I've heard of Chris Tucker, but not Chris Tuck.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Oh, yeah, Chris Tucker.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
But anyway, so this guy makes this must make Terry
in England feel sick.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
This guy does is make lists.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
His moral enemy, Chris Tuck.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
All right, so it says the best morning radio talk
shows A-tier list. Let's see how many of these you've heard, Robbie,
or I've heard of. The Howard Stern Show.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, I've heard of that. I haven't listened to him
in a long time. The Breakfast Club. I've heard of it.
I've never listened.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I've heard the name, but I don't know if they
were in a police lineup, if I could pick them out.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Is it Chaminade, I believe, is one of the hosts?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Or like Charlemagne the God or something?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Oh, Charlemagne.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, yeah. Here we go.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I'm calling the wrong name. You knew more than me.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
The Bobby Bones show. You ever heard of the Bobby
Bones show?
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I've heard the name because a barstool guy went on
there by accident when it was on ESPN and he
got yelled at by Dave Portnoy. So that was a
whole two days.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Bobby Bones, I know he's a big deal at the company.
I've never heard his show. He did actually work at
Fox Sports Radio, though. There was a tennis guy that
did a show on the weekends.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
What was the guy's name? I forget.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
But one of the big tennis players had a show,
and Bobby Bones is his buddy, so they did the
show together.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Oh, I remember that. It was like Andy Roddick and
Bobby Bones.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah, they did a
Saturday show together just because they, you know, why not?
Elvis Duran. I've heard the name, never heard the show.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
I don't think I've heard the name.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The Todd Show? I have no idea what.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Is that the Todd from the Dan Patrick show? No,
it's I know they're kind of like contracting them all
off because Dan's retiring soon. So who knows?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I don't know who that is. The John Jay and
Rich show. That's a lot. I have no idea what
that is.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
That sounds like a YouTube show when they just get
a bunch of people on, you know, one of those
live streams.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
All right.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
So that was the elite tier. Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
So I've only heard one of those shows and that
used to be good, but probably not anymore because.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Stern's getting older.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
We just got a new contract with HBO Max, Howard Stern.
So that was surprising to me.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Are they going to rehire all the people they whacked?
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Maybe.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I don't know. They were, they were, it was a
long trailer. I didn't watch it, but they promised the
whack pack.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So. Mojo in the morning. This is the amazing top
tier shows. All right.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
It says Mojo in the morning. That is a show
out of Detroit, I guess.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I've never heard of that. The Dave and Chuck freak show. No, nothing.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
It says K-Fan morning show, which is the power show.
I've been on there.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Those guys. Yeah, I've heard you on there.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Those guys are cool. The Ticket Morning Show. I don't
think that's what it's called. That's what it says here.
That's in Dallas.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
That station does very well, but I've never heard of
that thing.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
The Morning Zookeeper? The hell is that? That's out of Chicago?
I don't know what the hell that is. This guy's
still on there. Man Cow, Mully, and Bunk. There's no way, right?
Man Cow's got to be off the radio by this point,
I would think. I don't know that was the amazing
tier and then what do we got the great great
(17:20):
time consistently great show oh I made that look at
that Robbie I'm on consistent yeah consistently great shows and
then yeah you're right Barry that looks nothing nothing like
me I don't know they must have used AI for
this thing this guy Chris Chris talk Yeah, I don't
know who that is, but I mean, I'm ugly. I'm
(17:40):
not that ugly. I think I look better than that.
I would like to hope. The Ron and Don show.
Here's my contemporaries, Robbie. The Ron and Don show. Don't
know what the hell that is. The Mikey and Bob show.
What the hell is that?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
That's on the fan in Tampa.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I've never heard of that. What else we got? V103
morning show. No, that's in Atlanta. The Tommy show.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And then there's a Mexican talk morning show. I'm not
even a morning show, but I'm an overnight show.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yeah, you're overnight. There's a big difference.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I happen to be on the last hours on morning,
kind of early morning drive at 5 a.m.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
On the East, but that's it.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Then they say, not my cup of tea or not
my cup of coffee is coast to coast. Limbaugh well
he's not around anymore the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton
show well okay I think this guy doesn't like that
kind of talk Infowars okay and the Dana show I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
What the Dana show is I'm guessing it's political.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
I don't know I think I know who that might
be Dana Loesch or that one woman I don't know
this is the Dana show I used to be into
politics more than I am now but you know I
stay aware of what I need to stay aware of,
but I try not to get as political online as
I used to get.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
The daily outrage.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Culture war.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Well, thank you, Barry. You just killed about eight minutes
of talk, so I do appreciate that. I don't know
that we accomplished anything, but thank you for your effort.
I do appreciate that. What else do we have? Quang
from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Guaranteed human?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I don't know who this is. Do you think this
is a real person or somebody using a burner email?
Do you think this is a real person, like legit?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
There are expats living in Vietnam, so it's possible.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah. Well, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Anyway, he says, Big Ben and friend, at the time
of this email, I have no way of knowing if you...
covered this already on the Saturday, September 12th podcast. So
forgive me if you did, but here we go. Back
in 1976... ABC was testing a new seven second delay
(20:03):
during a gardening show. A caller phoned in asking if
he could bonsai his marijuana plants so the cops couldn't
see them over the fence while naturally maintaining the yield.
And just like that, boom, the dump button made its
debut again. And he says, who knew the first ever
(20:25):
dump button test would involve a gardening show, marijuana, and
a guy worried about his crop getting too tall? He said, well,
that might be TV, Robbie and Quang. But what I
had always heard was the delay. You said this was
in 1976. In the 1950s, way back in the 1950s,
(20:45):
the radio station WKAP in Allentown, Pennsylvania, They were the
first radio station to use a delay system. They had
a tape delay system and they had external playback. It
was like really archaic and all that stuff. And they
started a talk show called Open Mic. And that is
(21:07):
believed to be the first time a television or this
was radio, but I got a radio call in show
was broadcast with the telephone conversation live on the air.
the FCC at that time said, no, you're not allowed
to broadcast live television conversation. However, there was no rule
(21:30):
prohibiting taped playback. So that's how that went. And that was,
we were actually on that station. They obviously don't, you know,
times have changed and they had us, I don't think
we're on there anymore, but we had Fox sports radio
programming on that station was kind of, kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
They said there had to be a beep tone that
was heard by the caller every 15 seconds so the caller.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Knew that they were being recorded. There you go. All right.
Thank you for that, Quang. Appreciate it. Alf from the.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
AI Opiner from Cyberspace writes, and he says, I'll skip
the pleasantries.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Are we all effed?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Experts are sounding the alarms about AI, and by AI,
I don't mean my mallor memes. I mean AI systems
communicating with each other in languages they create, and we
can only translate using the same AI. This AI also
has the ability to hack any system on the planet.
(22:39):
Time to head to Benny's bunker. It was nice knowing
you all.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
That's from Alf.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Wasn't there some guy that came out with a long
X article or something that said he quit his job
at one of the AI companies because there's a chance
they're going to kill us all or something?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yes. I'll be right. I choose not to worry about
it because if you're dead, you're dead. If you can't
control it, What are you going to do? You'll die
sooner if you freak out. You're like, oh, my God.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Control. As they say in sports, Robbie, control the controllables.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
You got to be like a college football coach when
it comes to this stuff. Just spit out cliches and
live in the moment, you know?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Tremendous. I know you're an Oregon State fan.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
I'm sure you're happy the Ducks went foul, had some
foul play there against Oklahoma State.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Is that it? They lose. And what happened to the
quack attack there? Quacking, coking. My gosh.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
With how bad the Beavers are, I almost threw it
against the Ducks in football more than I root for
the Beavers in football.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
It's kind of sad.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
But, you know, we got our baseball team, so that's
all I need.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
That's all you need.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Reggie from Detroit writes in. He says, Ben, did you
see that NFL, this being the start of the NFL season,
game day costs have jumped 72% in a decade.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Well, why is everything.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
More expensive in the NFL outrunning inflation in the regular world?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's from Reggie from Detroit.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Well, it's rather obvious because they can get away with it.
People still pay for it. That's the market. If people
stopped paying for it, they'd have to lower the prices.
Tickets had the biggest increase. The league-wide tickets for NFL
games rose 81%. In the last decade, from $ 86 to $ 155,
the average stadium beer up 47%, from $ 7. 42 a beer
(24:40):
to $ 10.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
61 a beer. The team with the biggest increase... Who
do you think it is? That's a little trivia for Robbie.
Not trivia, it's more of a fun fact, because if
you do trivia, it becomes trivial. So, what do you
think here? The team that had the biggest rise... in
average cost per ticket.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Over the course of just the last year?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
No, the last decade.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I'm going to go Seahawks just because their fan base
has grown so much, but that's probably wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
No, this is a team that was terrible for years
and only in the last 10 years became a good team.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
How about that?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
And a team that was horrific.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
In fact, they were so bad, they were bad in
my childhood, and they've been bad as an adult.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Now I'm at my age, I'm at now, and now
they finally have a competitive team year after year.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
The Rams?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
No, the Raiders used to be good. How dare you?
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Well, they were good, and then they were bad for
such a long time.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
The correct answer would be the Detroit Lions.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, the Lions. I'm going to be bitter about that
all day now. I should have got that.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
The Lions fans saw the steepest rise in the league
at 336%. Oh, my God.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
From $ 98 to $ 429 per person following the NFC North
title and conference top record in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Or the NFC when they had that a couple years ago. Wow,
that's bald.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I get why they got away with it, though, because
all the other Detroit teams have been... Up until recently,
the Pistons were Drek, and so were the Detroit Red Wings.
And so the Lions somehow became the only good team
in Detroit. So if you wanted to see good sports,
you had to pay the premium, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
The Tigers and your Mariners played in the playoffs last year.
That didn't work out.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, that's true. But the Tigers, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
They're bad.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
They're bad.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Thank you, Reggie. I have a feeling. What do you think, Robbie,
that Reggie sent that because of the Lions? You think.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Probably pretty high.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Andy from Texas writes in. It's kind of a big state, Andy.
You might want to give us a city.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I'm just saying. He says, Ben, can you explain this?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
And he said there was a study that said telling kids,
according to Andy, telling kids they're smart nearly doubled their cheating.
According to a study, this is involving preschoolers who were
told they succeeded on a test that Because they were smart,
they cheated on the next test 64% of the time,
nearly double the rate of kids praised for effort or
(27:22):
an easy task.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
So... I don't know. I'd have to read more about that.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, it's hard to take away anything with preschoolers, you
know what I mean? A test or a study.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, do they even know they're taking a test? I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, it's... That or we're raising a bunch of new
Machiavellians or whatever, but who knows?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Kelly writes in from Parts Unknown and says, Ben, Berkeley,
where your friend Andrea lives, banned candy and soda checkout lines.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Only one sold less. It said the drugstores, which had
lower compliance with the rules in a prior audit, showed
no clear sales decline in either soda or candy, but
small candy packages.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
According to this, the soda sales in Berkeley fell 40%,
but the candy sales overall did not show a similar decline.
A study analyzed point-of-sale records from 71 stores through, although
only 11 of them were actually located in Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
I don't know about this. Kelly, I do know John Stossel,
who's great. He's YouTube. He used to be on TV
back in the day, but he did.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It popped in my algorithm. I didn't find it on
my own, but he popped in. It popped in my algorithm. Robbie,
this place in Philadelphia did the same thing where they
I don't know if it was just soda.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
I think it might have been soda where they banned soda.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So it just people went across the street to New
Jersey and bought sodas.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
That's what happened.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
So Oregon, when they were one of the first states
to ban like the fireworks that shot up into the sky,
everyone just went to Washington. And then I think Washington
may have banned it. So then everyone just went to
the Native American reservations in Oregon. And it's just a
free for all there now. So, yeah, people, if they
want to buy something bad enough, they will find a way.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, and the people that are in charge are so stupid.
They don't realize this is not going to work. We
have every kind of rule. In L.A., there's every kind
of rule. No fireworks.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You can't. Not even safe and sane. You can't do this.
Can't do that. Well, Tijuana is a couple hours away.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
You can have a Disneyland fireworks show in your front
yard if you want.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
And many people, the greatest fire. show ever was the
COVID when the world was shut down. Oh my God.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
It's same here.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It went to like two 30 or three in the morning.
And there were people that I was like, wait, you're
the uptight neighbor that calls the cops on noise complaints.
And even they were shooting off like illegal fireworks. Cause
everyone was living it up. They didn't know when COVID
would end. So everyone was just, if he could shoot
it in the sky, shoot it in the sky. It
was crazy.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Oh, it was amazing. It was like having 17 Disneyland's
all in your neighborhood. It was wild.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
It was insane.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And it really hasn't
come down very much.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
No, it's come down maybe like 10 to 15 percent
in my area. But there's still a large amount of
illegal fireworks every year now.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
All right, this one is from Dom. I don't know.
I've never heard of anyone named Dom, but maybe that's
the guy from the Eagles, Dom.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Man, that Achoo guy, or is it Emmanuel Achoo, who
did that thing about saying that, oh, yes, and now
the NFL's investigating Big Dom.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
And I was like, oh, that's BS.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Well, it's not. He probably did it. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
That goes on.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
You'd have to be really naive to not think.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
It's like every team does it because Acho needed some
content for his failing pod. Now Big Dom's probably going
to get in trouble for it.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
It's 11 years ago. How are you going to find out?
I don't know. The guys are probably not having cops anymore.
The ones that were involved in it.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
These teams are.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Look at the 49ers. Kyle Shanahan gets in an accident.
They go radio silent for 11 days. The cops won't
release the video.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
It's wild. You can't... I mean, the cops.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Is someone going to do one of those Freedom of
Information Acts and make them release it at some point?
I feel like whatever it was, it better be super
bad or else the mystery is going to be worse
than what it actually was at a certain point.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
We'll see. Somebody will let it out. I sure hope so.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Dom says, here are the physical signs that you are
scrolling too much. OK, this is according to what he
found on the Internet. Your neck and shoulders take the
first take the load first.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Looking down at.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
A phone pulls the head forward and tightens the upper something.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I don't know how to pronounce.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Uh, newer research, uh, complicates the idea that the posture
alone causes neck pain. Your thumb and wrist absorb thousands
of repetitive taps. Uh, according to a study in 2025, uh,
found smartphone unlocked frequently, our frequency and screen time were
both linked to clinical signs of a thumb tendon condition
(32:27):
called Dick Quervian's, uh, tennis. So Vitus, I'm definitely not
pronouncing that right. Uh, Tendon condition in your thumb.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Make tennis a little for chronic Twitter users.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Your eyes blink far less than they should.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
No, I know about that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Screen focus can cut blink rate by more than half
within the first minute of use, drying out the eye's
protective tear. And finally, your sleep gets pushed later than
you plan. Evening blue light suppresses the hormone that signals bedtime.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
I sleep during the day, so who cares?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Harvard researchers found it did so twice as long as
comparable green light.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, what do you want me to do with that, Dom? Okay,
so stay off your phone. Good luck. Good luck getting
people to stay off their phone in 2026. Oliver from
Tacoma writes in.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
That's in the beautiful Pacific Northwest there, although Robbie's in Oregon.
He says, Benny Radio, are you going to be getting
a $ 2, 000 foldable iPhone?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
No. No, I don't have any. I mean, no, I
don't need that. I'm fine. I don't need that.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
$ 2, 000.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Come on. That's got to go down in price at
some point. Maybe then.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Maybe in like the fifth generation when it's closer to
what an iPhone currently is, you know?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, I'm not. gotta have all the gizmos guy i'm
not that guy i respect.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
I used to be that guy.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I i understand that guy and i know that guy
i'm not that guy i'm not i normally use my
phone until i have no choice but to to replace
the phone it's just tattered and broken and it gets
water damaged and i'm like well i can't use it
anymore so i gotta get a new phone And I'll
usually get like one generation behind the current one.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Cause I'm a value shopper, Robbie.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
I figure that's the smart thing to do.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
I'm not necessarily smart when it comes to those things.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Now, if I had FU money, I would just be like, Oh, whatever. Yeah. Thing. But,
If anybody has that, let me know though. I'd love
to know if it's actually as good as average. I
just have a feeling you're going to fold it.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
That's not, it'll work for like maybe a couple of weeks.
And then after that, you're going to start getting a
crease in the phone and it'll seems like.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I remember when Samsung first came out with the foldable phones,
I remember there was a huge, there was a lot
of issues, the first generation of it. That's why like,
I wouldn't even consider getting an iPhone foldable phone to
like the third generation and it would still be too
expensive anyway. So, you know, it, I feel like Apple's
kind of desperate if they're doing a foldable phone because
(35:04):
for so many years they're like, we don't need a
foldable phone. And now all of a sudden they're like, here's.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
This foldable phone.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
I don't know. I feel like Apple's running out of like,
like innovative ideas. Hopefully I'm wrong. Well, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I mean, how do they got to keep coming up
with new stuff?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
That's the problem, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
But I mean, other companies have already done the foldable phone.
That's what worries me.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
We'll be like, well, not, not as good as us though.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
We're, you know, we're better.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And, All that. Pete from New Hampshire writes in, and
I wonder if he's in the town I like. I
don't know. Anyway, he says, what is the Malheur scale
of worry about rabies? It says U.S.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Rabies cases rise 17%. 17% rabies-related inquiries, and according to CDC.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
My.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Level of concern, Pete, Uh, that's not on my big board.
I'm not, should I be worried about that?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Robbie?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Should I go?
Speaker 3 (36:01):
I feel like rabies, at least you can see it
coming sort of, you know, like you don't animals have
to show signs of rabies.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
I would think, but I'm not a rabies expert.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
So I tried to read that Annie Jacobson book about
biological warfare. And now I am a little freaked out
about biological stuff. So you never know.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Well, again, though, the things that could kill you.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Yeah, exactly. That's what I keep telling myself.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Pretty much everything.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
So you can't sit there and live your life like, oh,
my God, what kind of.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Life is that?
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Well, there's still people that would never go to Vegas
anymore because, like, oh, all the germs and everything. And
it's like, it's a fair point. You just got to
roll the dice, to use a Vegas pun, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
No, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I get that part of it. I was just out,
you know, I was doing some shopping or whatever. And
I saw, you know, the mask people are.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Still out there and all that.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Quite get it. It's pretty much been proven that didn't
do much of anything, but people, once they, you know,
once a person makes up their mind, Robbie, you know,
I changed their mind. They're convinced that they have it
all figured out and everyone else is a schmuck, which
everyone is a schmuck, but still anyway. All right. We'll
get out on that. I got football. I'll be at
(37:15):
the charger game. Not cause, uh, Well, not because I'm
excited about that. He's playing the Cardinals, Robbie. That's got
to be one of the biggest mismatches.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, I would say at least you get to see
Jeremiah Love, but I'm pretty skeptical he's going to play much.
They're sure hiding his ankle. They're like, he'll play. Maybe
he won't play.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
He'll play.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Well, that's the one guy I want to see.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I love on the Cardinals. I'm not excited about Jacoby Brissett.
That doesn't really get me tingling.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Tyler Algier, they're starting running back.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Doesn't get you going.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Not quite. Not quite.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
No.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Cardinals.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, but that'll be one of the few games the
Chargers have more fans at, though.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Although Phoenix to L.A. is not that far.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Are there a lot of Cardinal fans that want to.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Make that kind of investment to travel all the way,
cost money, knowing their team's going to get smoked more
likely than not?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah, they better get smoked, or man, that's going to be...
The Herbert haters will be out in force.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, I took the Cardinals just because these teams don't
really do anything during exhibition games.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
The first half of these.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Games is a feeling out process, so then you've got
to beat somebody by double digits in the second half.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
I've always been a big proponent of if a team
doesn't know how bad they are yet, then bet them
when they're an underdog.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Oh, yeah. You always want to bet on bad teams early.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
They realize they're terrible and that's it. Although there are.
in baseball it's a little different you gotta pick your
spots because there are i i'm.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So bad at betting regular season baseball after the first
month i i feel like you should bet baseball first
month of the year and then playoffs otherwise it's so
hard because you don't know which bullpens are tired and
which aren't and with starters only going like five innings
anymore it's it's really hard to you can.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Bet the first five innings probably you could bet oh
that is true but then then if you're You're really
sweating it right away.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Oh, my God. All right. You have your YouTube thing, right? Robbie,
you want to promote it?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
We're going an hour earlier tomorrow. Ozzy's got stuff to do.
So I'll be up at 5.30 a.m. Pacific time, 8.30 a.m.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Eastern for it.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
All right.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
United States of Australia. should be fun on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Even if you don't like it, you can just hit
the subscribe button to give us a subscribe. It's free.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
Help us out.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That's the way I feel. I'm the same way. I'm like,
just get subscribed and watch a couple videos, and that's that.
All right.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Have a great Sunday. I'll be back a full week
of the radio show, no days off. So I'll be,
unless something happens, I will be there every single night
starting tonight. And according to the Bill's monster, Robbie in Buffalo,
this is the greatest show of the year will be
the Sunday and the Monday recapping what happens today on
the first full Sunday of the NFL.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's a lot of pressure from the Bill's monster. So
I hope I can live up to that. Otherwise I'll
be depressed. And I don't want to be depressed.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Anyway, have a great rest of your Sunday, and we
will chat with you tonight on the radio.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
As Dick and Dayton would say, bye-bye, bye-bye.
Host
Ben Maller
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