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December 27, 2019 • 17 mins

A podcast exclusive episode of The Buck Sexton Show to celebrate Buck's Birthday on 12/28. Hear some fun insights from Buck and stories he's never told before!

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're in the Freedom hud. This is The Buck Sexton
Show podcast. Hey, what's up, Team Buck. I hope you've
had a fantastic holiday so far, a wonderful, joyous Christmas
with loved ones, And I'm just sending this out to
you as a little extra over the holidays. You know,

(00:23):
we've been off for a few days. I hope you're
enjoying some of the best stuffs, catching up on old
podcasts you missed as well, and passing the Buck because guys,
it's my birthday and you know what Buck wants for
his birthday. More people on Team Bucks. So please tell
loved ones, friends, co workers, anybody that you're spending time
with over this holiday season. You got to check out

(00:43):
this guy, Buck Sexton's podcast. You've got to start downloading it,
subscribe to it on the iheartapp or on iTunes. Just
The Buck Sexton Show easy to find, even easier to
listen to once you find it. But I also want
to take a moment to say thank you to all
of you for continue to listen to the show. We
are growing every month, We're growing year after year, and

(01:05):
in a very hyper competitive media environment these days, it
is the folks that tune in day in and day out,
that just make me want to do this more than
anything else. I mean, I love this job. I love
getting a chance to speak to all of you every day.
And it's my birthday. And I even thought about just
showing up today to do a live show all my
birthday because I wanted to spend it with all of you.

(01:26):
But I didn't want to drag producer Mark away from
his wife and his life and things like that. So
I thought that today we might as well just put
out a special birthday message, and that's what we're doing.
It's also an opportunity for me to tell you a
couple of fun facts about me. Yes, I was born
on December twenty eighth. My head was so big as

(01:47):
and I mean literally so big as a baby that
my mother had to bring me in And if she's
listening to this, she'll she'll probably be laughing. She had
to bring me into the doctor's office for a while
because they want to measure my head to make sure
that it wasn't getting even bigger because there could be
some They were worried that there might be some fluid
or something. And so I had such a big head

(02:09):
that I had to go in for head measurements for
like the first three months that I was a baby.
Turned out I was within the norm. I was within
the normal range, but at the very very top of normal,
which I think is true about me in a variety
of context, but certainly that my cranium size is one
of them. It's like sputnick it's edge. It was a

(02:30):
big head for sure. I also walked with so much
difficulty as a kid. I had such bowed legs that
they thought for a while that I would need to
get surgery, corrective surgery so that I'd be able to
walk properly. And there was one doctor who objected to
my name buck or Buckaroo because he thought that it

(02:52):
was mocking me. This is true, mocking me because I
had really really bowed legs as a kid. But the
best a little anecdote from young because it's my birthdays,
I was telling you random stories. The best addict that
let I have for you is that despite the fact
that I'm now a naturally syndicated radio host and that
I believe I'm still the only person who've ever filled
in for Glennbeck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limball on radio

(03:16):
and that I filled in for Rush Limball the first time.
I had been doing radio for just about two years,
So that's a pretty fast to have your first recordings aired.
Or I'd rather have your first studio sessions out on.
It was the Internet. I actually started an internet radio
and then built my way onto or found my way

(03:37):
fault my way into terrestrial radio. But I had a
speech impediment when I was a kid. I mentioned this
to producer Mark before the break and the impediment. People
always ask what it was specifically. I just had trouble speaking.
I was not I didn't speak clearly. I mispronounced words.
There was not much of a diagnosis other than I

(03:58):
just needed a lot of work on the way that
I said things. But the most difficult part of it
as a young kid, and this is when I was
in the first or second grade of grammar school. As
you know, my first name is James, but everyone calls
me Buck because my middle name is Buckman. It's a
family name, and I would tell people that my name.

(04:19):
I would mispronounce things like cookie. I would call it
a tookie. And I also would tell people my name
was butt. So I went around for quite some time
as a young person introducing myself as but Sexton, which
you can imagine caused its fair share of difficulties early
in life, and so I had to go to a
speech therapist for a few years. And around the same time,

(04:43):
I was also taken out of school for additional tutoring
because I was falling behind in class. I was considered
a class clown. So I guess in some ways that
was an early indicator of things to come in my
career later on. But I was considered a class clown.
I was falling behind and working out a speech impediment,
and my mother, who was the greatest mom in the world,

(05:04):
to her unending and enduring credit, said no, no, we're
going to keep him in. They wanted to put me
in a special school, and so they kept me in
normal school by giving me this additional tutoring. They would
pull me out of some classes to have one on
one tutoring. I was very lucky that the resources were
available for me to do this, and I had speech

(05:24):
speech therapist and I'll never forget actually not only well,
I'll get to that in a moment. I caught up.
My speech improved, and I also academically. By the time
I was in this was in the second grade. By
the time I was in the fourth grade of the
fifth grade, I was far and away the best student
in my class. In fact, by the time I was
in the sixth grade, they started creating special curriculum for

(05:48):
me in history because the teachers thought it just wasn't
challenging enough for me and I knew too much and
I was boarding class, so they gave me additional assignments
and I didn't have to do the normal work. So
things turned around. And I guess I tell you that
story in one part because I have a tremendous sympathy
from my own experiences for people that ever always have

(06:09):
to overcome, whether it's a health issue, learning disabilities, and
that the key is to just never, never, never give up,
and also to have parents who stay along with you
every step of the way and encourage you people need.
When people always talk about support, support means encouragement. Support
means being present for somebody when they need help, when
they need assistance. One of the most important things really is,

(06:31):
in a lot of ways, the most important thing you
can do for someone that you love, that you care about.
So I for those of you who are parents are
particular if your kids are having a little bit of
trouble in school, or if they have any kind of
a speech impediment, or if they walk with difficulty as
I did, and if their head is so big that
there were concerns that their neck musculature as a baby
wouldn't be able to hold it up, which was also true.

(06:54):
It can all be, It can all work out, you know,
stay stay in and stay in the fight. As we say,
shields high. So I do remember later on I told
you that I had been on the speech and debate
team in high school, and I actually went to a
tournament and I won my first tournament. And it was
so fun because I went up to a girl who

(07:16):
was a year or two older than me. I guess
she was a sophomore high school. I was a freshman
in high school at a party, and she was the
I found out when I started talking to her. She
was the daughter of my speech therapist. I'd never met
her before. I didn't even know about her, and you know,
her mother. It just came up in conversation as we
were talking, and I got to tell her that I

(07:37):
had just won my first speech and debate tournament and
that she needed to pass that on to her mom.
So I thought that was quite a quite an endorsement
of her ability as a as a speech therapist and
a speech coach. So and then later on there was
the I guess I also because this is my birthday
and I'll tell random stories if I want to. Then

(07:57):
there's the first time ever filling in for Rush Limball,
which I believe I may have told some of you
before in the audience, but this is just another This
is a reminder of a few things Murphy's laws. Moms
are amazing and can save you when you really need it.
So it was a couple of days before I was
filling in for Rush Limbaughs. So now we've gone from
me talking about baby Buck all the way up to

(08:18):
I think this was twenty fourteen, maybe something like that,
twenty twenty fifteen, and I had a little bit of
a cold and I cannot remember any time in my
life ever being completely without without my voice, and I
get the call from Russia Limball's team. I'll never forget.

(08:41):
It's the only phone call I've ever received that I
thought was fake, that was real. And it was from
Kit Carson May who rest in peace, who was one
of Russia Limball's most trusted and beloved team members for
the EIB network kit. Carson called me up and said,
how'd you like to fill in for Rush Limball? And
I practically yeah, I practically fainted. I mean I was like, wait,

(09:01):
what And because your Rush has always been for me
on radio, I mean, Rush is the ultimate, and so
I said, yeah, of course, I mean this is amazing.
I had maybe about a month lead in before I
knew I was going to get to do it, and
it's a couple of days away from the actual filling day,
and I can feel I had a coal but it

(09:21):
mostly had passed. And then I had a weird tickle
in my throat. And it's forty eight hours from my
first ever time filling in for Rush Lombaugh. The Blaze,
where I was working at the time had already been
advertising this a little bit, you know, all Buck Exon's
gonna fill in for Rush Lamball, so there was some
excitement around that. It was, you know, I was really
looking forward to it. And I wake up and I have,

(09:42):
for the first time, I think in my life, complete laryngitis.
I have no voice whatsoever, gone, I'm darking like this,
two days before I'm supposed to do the biggest radio
show in the country, my debut, and I have no voice. Now,
I know enough about this business to know that me
pulling out of this because it doesn't matter if I

(10:03):
even got to talk to people, and it just would
seem to the people who knew that I was somehow
being whimpy or and I one thing I will say
about this business, I do not get nervous. I do
not back out, and I do not back down. There
is no fear. I've never had fear doing this. I
never will have fear doing this. This is how I roll.
But I also need a voice if I'm going to
talk on radio. At some point, you know it just

(10:26):
you can't do what you can't do. I mean, I
remember being so scared that I wasn't going to be
able to find my way to do the show, and
my girlfriend at the time kept trying to calm me down,
and I was I was not working. And we got
to the day before the show and my voice was
still gone, and I'm just drinking all this throatcoat tea

(10:46):
and all this stuff, and I tell I call my mom,
I call mom. The rescue on this one. It's my birthday.
So I'm telling mom stories and I said, Mom, I
don't know what I'm gonna do. I can't And she
could hear my voice. I could barely speak. I mean
she I could just kind of whisper what I was
trying to say. And she's feeling really bad for me.
She managed to convince a She just kept reading. We're

(11:06):
doing all this research on the internet. You know, how
do you make your voice heard when you have really
bad laryngitis? And there's a lot of you know, urban legends,
but home remedies, urban legends. I guess whatever. And we
found a doctor who specialized in vocal performance in New
York City, and my mother convinced her to open her practice.
She was on her way to the Hampton's of course,

(11:27):
consider open her practice at nine am the day of
the fill in just for me and I go to
this doctor's office. We're there when she opens the door
to open her practice in New York City and I
walk in and she's our, let's see what we have.
She looks in my throat and she says, you have
no there's no way you will be able to do

(11:47):
a show. You will have no and in fact, you
could do permanent damage. Your vocal cords are so swollen,
there's so much inflammation that you could do permanent damage
to your voice if you try to do a three
hour radio show to day. And she goes, but there
is only one way this can work. But there's a
time sensitivity. She says, I can give you a steroid

(12:10):
shot for your throat. This remember this is the day
of the first Russia lumba filling. I can give you
a steroid shot for your throat, but it only lasts
about three to four hours. When is the show? And
I was like, well, it just turns out maybe Now
it's nine thirty, ten o'clock in the morning. I said,
it shows at noon, So let's do it, you know,

(12:30):
gette up, let's see what we got. So and everyone
always asked this, Yes, she gave me a very large
booster shot in the bum. You don't actually get in
the throat, So she gave me a shot in the butt,
and I could feel my voice kind of coming. It
wasn't perfect, by the life that it was coming back.
And then I could sort of speak and everything else.
And I did that show and I told Russia's team

(12:51):
they knew that I had been sick and this was
not my normal voice, and to their credit, they had
me back and we had a bunch of great shows
after that. I just, I think was probably good enough,
competent enough that first time that I got a call back,
and I ended up filling in for Rush I don't
know a dozen times over the next couple of years.
But by the end of that show, I'll never forget this,

(13:12):
my voice started to go. And I'm telling you, within
thirty minutes of my last words, the first time I
filled in from Russa Lamball, I was back to because
it had worn off. I was back to no voice whatsoever.
I mean, we just and I remember walking around sixth
Avenue in Manhattan. That's right outside where Russia's studio was,
right next to Radio City a Rockefeller Center, and I

(13:34):
was just like shaking with things with just nerves. Afterwards,
not because I wasn't nervous about doing the show. I
was nervous that I was going to lose my voice
in the middle of the show. And there was definitely
some tequila consumed that night, I could tell you that much.
So that's another one of my favorite radio stories. I'll
think if there's anything else that comes up, I'll share
it with you. And oh yeah, just one more thing,

(13:57):
where do we get Shieldside? This is a fun one
to throw in the mix. So when we used to
do a show on Saturdays, which is when I started this,
When we started the Freedom Hunt was on Saturday's twelve
to three, I remember, and that was fun because I
spent all week. I was so excited to get to
do a three hour show every week. That's been all
week prepping and reading and researching, and by the time
I got up there, the three hours was never enough
and it always flew by, and it was really just

(14:19):
it was fun. And the people that are OSS, which
we say is obviously it could be the Office of
Strategic Services in World War Two, but it's actually for
us original Saturday Squad people that have been with me
now since twenty twelve. So we're going on. It'll be
our eighth year as of February, I believe of this
year will be will be eight years on the year

(14:40):
the Original Saturday Squad and also Shields High comes from
those early days when I sometimes would just talk about
some parts of ancient history that I had been I
think ancient warfare is really interesting, and we would do
just discussions occasionally of that. I would bring it into
the conversation and the ancient Artins, as we know Leonidas

(15:02):
the three hundred, the ancient Spartans would say, come back
with your shield or on it, because if you were
on your shield, you're obviously been killed in battle. They
would carry you like a litter, use the shield as
a litter. And if you held your shield, it was
because you won. If you didn't have a shield, it
was because you were a shield tosser because of the
very large, heavy shields that Philenx warfare required. If you're

(15:25):
going to run away, the first thing you do is
throw your shield down and sprint so that nobody can
catch you. So you weren't allowed to do that. That
would have been cowardice. But also when you're in the Philenx,
you would have to be able to hold your shield
high enough to protect the flank of the people to
your left and to protect yourself to the right. And
so we started to say that we were shoulder to

(15:45):
shoulder in the Freedom Hut, shields high. That is how
that came up, That's where it comes from. That's how
we get to the end of the show. Anyway, all
my birthday, like I said, my only present I ask
from all of you is to continue to listen to
the show, tell people about the show, help me spread
the world. It matters to me a whole lot, and
I really do appreciate it. It is the greatest honor
of my professional career to have all of you listening

(16:06):
and to have built the show from nothing. I mean,
we had no listeners when we started into what it
is today on over one hundred and twenty stations by
some counts up to one hundred and forty, I think
hundreds of thousands of people listening, huge download audience in
the podcast every day, and that's all a testament to
all of you. So I'm going to go enjoy some

(16:27):
birthday drinks with some friends, and you know that'll be
That's my plan for the day, see some family. I
hope you have a wonderful New Year's and I am
so excited to join you all for twenty twenty. We
are going to have one hell of a ride together,
my friends. Twenty twenty is going to be the best
year yet in the Freedom Hood. I can assure you
of that. So have a safe, fun joyous New Year,

(16:50):
Happy birthday to me and Shields High team. Thanks for
listening to the Bus Sesson Show podcast. Remember to subscribe
on Apple podcast, at the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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Host

Buck Sexton

Buck Sexton

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