07-03-24 FULL SHOW - Can We Fix Our Political Discourse

Episode Transcript

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The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored byBelle and Pollock Accident and injury Lawyers.
No, it's Mandy Connell and Donon KOAM ninety four one FM. Got
to the stay and the noisy Manyconnell sad thing. Welcome, Welcome,

(00:27):
Welcome to a Wednesday feels like Fridayedition of The Mandy Connell Show. I'm
just gonna throw it in because Iwon't be here on Friday altogether. Now,
woooooo that wooho you heard was MichaelCoover in for Anthony Rodriguez. We're
gonna be playing, as I understand, a coover a little bit of producer,
uh switch through for the next fewweeks while you guys are variously taking

(00:50):
vacations and going places and whatnot.So we'll I think we'll be seeing quite
a bit of you. It doesappear that way. Excellent, excellent.
Well, here's what you know whatwe do. First thing we do is
talk about the blog, and youcan find the blog by going to mandy'sblog
dot com. No apostrophe in Mandy'sblog. I know it's not grammatically correct,

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but the interwebs does not do grammaticalcorrectness in a URL. So mandy'sblog
dot com. Then look for thelatest posts part of the page and look
for the headline that says seven threetwenty four blog can we fix our political
discourse? Click on that and hereare the headlines you will find within anything
with Office South America, all withships and clipments, a scene that's going

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to press plass Today on the blogHappy Independence Day, everybody, It's an
ask me anything sort of day.Can we fix our political riffs? Weather?
Wednesday at twelve thirty, Nick Fergusonis getting kids to read. Democrat
rage is rising at Biden. Trumpraised over three hundred and thirty million bucks

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in the last quarter. Democrat AdamFrish calls on Biden to step down.
When do you need to arrive fromyour flight? For your flight at DIA?
Do you know the story of thestar spangled banner? Central City debate?
Strippers? Do you make something cool? In Colorado? Denver bought a
hotel for the homeless that sits empty. The Repti twenty five south from Broadway
is permanently closed. Don't drink anddrive this weekend. Mike Rosen does not

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like ranked choice voting. Our monthlybills are hella expensive, more money to
clean up the messages of homelessness.Stop getting the vapors over the Trump community
case. The Democrats await their Gorbachev. Someone is always there to poo poo.
You British kids discover biscuits and gravy, but we eat fish Midwest fourth
of July. Finally, John Stosselreminds us what to think about this fourth

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of July. Those are the headlineson the blog mandy'sblog dot com. And
I have some great videos on theblog. I mean really, really,
really great videos on the blog.I have a video that I don't know
when I first saw this. It'sold, it's not new, and I
don't want you to bring it upthere, Couver. I want you to

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just not do anything. I'm justtrying to get back to the normal page.
So it came out ten years agoand it is the story of our
national anthem, and it has beenit's been viewed and listened to twenty two
million times. And when I firstheard this, it was so impactful for
me. It has forever changed theway I listened to the Star Spangled banner.

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And just to be clear, thereare a few historical inaccuracies, nothing
glaring, you know, they didn'trewrite history or anything like that. There
was just some historical inaccurations and somepeople have kind of nitpicked this because of
those historical inaccuracies, but honestly,they don't change the story in any significant
way. That's the reality is very, very close. And I feel really

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good sharing this with you guys,and I might actually play it later in
the show. It's like it's like, you know, almost eleven minutes long,
but it's so good. It's sogood. And our Anthem was actually
a poem written by Francis Scott Keyduring the War of eighteen twelve. It
did not happen during the Revolution,So it's just a wonderful story, and

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it explains all of the lines inthe anthem in a way that really animates
it and brings it to life.And now since I watched this, I
cannot hear someone seeing the national Anthemwithout getting goosebumps. I just can't.
It just affects me. It hitsdifferent when you know the meaning of the
song. So I thought that wouldbe good to share on our Independence pre

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Independence Day show. And I happento love the fourth of July. It
does bother me when we just kindof refer to it shorthandedly as the fourth
of July. It is Independence Day, and it is called Independence Day because
it is the day when a groupof extremely brave men risked everything they had,

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their treasure, their lives, sacredhonor, in order to free us
from the tyranny of a king whodid not allow us to represent ourselves or
be heard. And they created anation that was predicated on the notion,
which was insane at this point intime, that all people, all men,
should be allowed to self determined,They should be allowed to be involved
in their government, They should beallowed to work with their fellow neighbors and

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create a system that protects the rightsof the minorities and moves us forward.
And though you know, we werenot a perfect country, and they failed
in reaching those ideals initially because ofslavery and because of you know, not
giving women the same rights that menhad. They failed in living up to
those ideals. But think about howfar we've come in that respect. I

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mean, you guys, I'm awoman and I have a job, and
I sit on the radio and talkfor three hours a day and they pay
me to do it. That thatwould not have been a thing that happened
any place in the world. Bythe way, this is what makes us
so unique and so incredible. AndI hope that as you celebrate Independence Day.
And I'm guessing just from the trafficreport I heard when I was coming

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in that many of you are alreadyblazing a trail for the mountains. As
a matter of fact, if youwant to give us a call, I'm
going to unlock the phones just forthis. If you're on seventy headed West
and you're just sitting in traffic,I'd love to know if you'd like to
be a cub traffic reporter, We'dlove to hear from you about what the
traffic is like right now, Floyd'sHill, that whole area. If you're

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just driving free and clear, youcan just text us five six six nine.
Oh. But if you want togive us a traffic report in real
time, you can call three ZHOthree seven one three eighty five eighty five.
So go to the blog, andif you do nothing else, just
watch the video about the Star Spangledbanner, because it's so good. It's
just so good bringing it all fullcircle here people. Now today on the

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show, we have a few guests. We've got weather Wednesday coming up here
at twelve thirty five with our manDave Frasier, So get your weather questions
ready. We then have a womanwho has written a book called Remaking the
Space between Us, How citizens canwork together to build a better future for
all, And Diana McClain Smith's goingto join me at one and I'm really
interested. First of all, Ijust got her book, which I hate

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doing an interview about a book thatI have not read. I hate it
because then when I read it,I have a million more questions and I
don't have the chance to ask them. That being said, she's coming on
today, and I think it's reallyinteresting to think about back in seventeen seventy
six, when the Founding Fathers weretrying to create the Constitution, there was
just so much infighting and backbiting,and you just cannot even imagine how difficult

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it was to just get that done. And yet because they got it done,
it wasn't perfect in its execution,but they did an amazing job and
that has sustained us for so manyyears. And now we find ourselves in
a situation where we the citizenry ofthe United States of America, have two
choices for president that no one issuper crazy about. I mean, don't

(07:55):
get me wrong. I realized thatDonald Trump has people who adore with him
with everything in their fiber. Iget it. But after the debate,
everybody's walking around going, this isit, this is what we've got.
The solutions to our problems are notgoing to come from the politicians who are
very invested in dividing us. It'snot there's no upside to them. It

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erodes their power. So I'm interestedto see what she has to say at
one o'clock. And then I'm perusingon Instagram and I see a post by
the jeff Co School District of abunch of kids that have read three hundred
books. They've read three hundred books. And then I read a little further
and one mister Nick Ferguson, promisedthem a pizza party if they read three

(08:39):
hundred books, and they did,and I just thought that was super super
cool. So we're going to talkto Nick at about two thirty for a
few minutes about that. Now.I also want to do this. It's
the day before the holiday. Manymany of you are if you are at
work, can we okay? Thisis just like this is just between me
and you. Okay, no oneelse is. People that are not at

(09:01):
work are not listening. But ifyou're at work right now, we all
know mentally we've checked out, right, you know. I mean, we're
just going through the motions. We'rejust whatever it is you do. Like
if you have a desk job whereyou're at a computer all day, let's
just be real, you're looking upthings like what makes a firework explode and
things that make you look busy whileyou're not actually doing work. So let's

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do this today. Let's just let'sjust lean in to that because I have
all these stories on the blog andI can sit here and we can talk
about we are going to talk aboutthe absolute drama that is happening right now
as Democrats are gearing up to gangup on an elderly man with a bad

(09:45):
memory and they are gonna beat himlike they are jumping him into a gang,
and they're gonna get this man out. I didn't think it was possible,
but the way that the tide hasshifted on that so quickly, Holy
smoke, folks. Now you've gotlists of Democratic lawmakers that are getting together
to ask him to step aside.You've got people absolutely coming out and saying,

(10:09):
no, he can't do this.More and more stories are being leaked
about his infirmities and how everybody's known. No, everybody around the White House
is known for years years. Soit's like, it is so frustrating,
so so so frustrating that this isthese are our choices to me. Somebody

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said, Trump is literally loved bythe Republican Party. Trump is absolutely loved
by many in the Republican Party.But there are a lot of Republicans who
have decided that just because of theridiculousness of the charges in New York,
the way that Trump has been persecuted, they're just gonna stick with him because
they don't like that. They don'tlike that whole Banana Republic thing. Other

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people who don't like the man atall, who loved his policies and what
they did for the country, andthey're voting on that and they're just choosing
to ignore every other thing. Andthen there are Republicans who wish they had
somebody else to vote for, butknow that another four years of Joe Biden
or whoever. Because you're not votingfor Joe Biden, you're voting for somebody

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we'll call him the puppet master.We can't afford another four years of Joe
Biden on so many different levels policywise, he is an unmitigated disaster.
Oh and by the way, bythe way, have you noticed what's happening
around the Biden discussion. I sawthis this morning and is super super well
played Democratic Party. So you've gotall these stories kind of coming out in

(11:41):
a big wave about Democrat members ofthe House Guard that are going to write
this letter and ask the president tostep down. You've got Aids saying he's
only good between ten am and fourpm in the afternoon. You've got all
these people coming out to say,oh, everybody's known this. You've got
other Democrats coming out to say,oh, it's been really slow until it
was sudden. And then on theother side, you have this entire group

(12:01):
of Democrats over here saying, youknow what, he has been the most
effective president in history. He's beenso incredibly effective, so effective. He's
just been so great, so effective, we can't even believe how effective he's
been. And so you got thepeople on that side, the effective side,

(12:26):
they're buttering up the president. Sonow the people who are coming for
him with their knives out can say, mister president, it's clear that you've
been the most effective president ever,but it's time to step aside. It's
all, it's all very calculated.I still believe, I believe now more
than ever, though, that Democratsdon't care if they lose this election.
They really don't care, because Ithink that there are already people who are

(12:50):
figuring out ways in a new Trumpadministration to consistently throw monkey wrench after monkey
wrench after monkey wrench after monkey wrenchat Don Trump so he can't get anything
done policy wise. I think thatthey have war gamed out all scenarios,
and I'm talking about upper level leadershipin the Democratic Party. I think they've

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war gamed a bunch of different scenariosand figured out a way to manage all
of them, because that's how theyplay the game of politics. Republicans play
the game of who can be themost pure, who can be the most
consistent with the hardest right positions,who can demonstrate their slavish devotion to one
man instead of the principles that haveled the Republican Party for hundreds of years.

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I mean, this is why theywin this is exactly why they win.
Yesterday, the Democratic Central Committee herein Colorado, instead of making exactly
the same kind of mistake Republicans wouldmake if it was them, instead of
voting on an incredibly divisive and incrediblyuseless resolute about a ceasefire in Israel,

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the people of the Democratic Central Committeesaid we're not doing this and voted it
down. And that's why they win. And I don't say this because I'm
somehow going to switch my party affiliationand become a Democrat, because policy wise,
I think they're wrong about everything.But this is why they win.

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This is why Republicans lose. Youknow, John Caldera had to call him
a couple of days ago about justthis thing. He was explaining why you
guys need to understand. The IndependenceInstitute has been instrumental in running so many
ballot initiatives that have slowly but surelydone things like lower the income tax rate

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twice. The governor, who lovesto make it seem like he had anything
to do with that, he didn'tdo that. The Independence Institute did it.
They run ballot initiatives that chip awayat the size of government, that
put money back in your pocket,and that try again and again to rein
in government in Colorado. And thisyear they had seven ballot initiatives that they

(15:05):
had sort of gotten titled approval forand John said, we're not doing any
of them because right leaning donors havestopped donating because they're tired of losing.
But their problem is is that theylove to donate to a shiny cause,
a shiny candidate, a shiny whatever, instead of doing exactly what the Democrats

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have already shown us works, whichis create an infrastructure. And that's boring
and that's not sexy, and ityou know, nobody loves to talk about
creating the right kind of infrastructure tobuild a political movement, but that's how
you do it. They're trying to, you know, basically back the right
horse, when the right horse isjust one tiny part of a much bigger

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game. If you haven't read theBlueprint, which is the book about how
Democrats took over Colorado, it isa masterful, masterful, just stroke of
genius plan that was executed perfectly bybig money donors and they flipped this state
in short order. And I wouldargue that the state is not in a

(16:15):
great place because of it. Imean, I have a story on the
blog today that Denver is the ninthmost expensive place for monthly bills in the
country, Denver, and they can. They included things like housing, energy
costs, transportation, car insurance,and let me just link a couple of

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those to the policies that have takenhold since Democrats flipped the state we had.
Now, this was bipartisan disastrous constructiondefects legislation that shut down the entry
level market right for entry level homes, which is condos. And they have
been unable to fix that so thatbuilders can afford the insurance that is required
to build a project like a condo. They can't get it now, it's

(17:03):
too expensive. So think the Democratsfor not being able to fix that because
they are listening to the trial lawyerswho work in that sphere. And let's
talk for a moment about your autoinsurance. There was the most idiotic crime
reform bill I've ever seen, andin it it lowered lowered car theft.

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If you stole a cheap car,you just got a ticket. And we
all know what happened. Car theftwent through the roof and eventually they went
back and fixed it. And it'son its way down now, but insurance
companies are still not cutting anybody abreak because of that energy costs. They
have created a green Dream that hasgiven Excel a straight line to continue every
chance they can to raise your ratesin order to comply with the edicts by

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the Democrats via the Green Dream planthat they have passed here that require Excel
to replace everything that is effective andefficient with an unreliable renewable energy. I
mean, they've done nothing but makethis place more expensive. The name of
the book where Democrats flip Colorado,that is the blueprint, the blueprint.

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I got a lot of text messagescoming in five, six, six,
n I, oh, you cantext us there, Mandy. The New
York Times had an article a weekor two ago about how the Dems are
already preparing to oppose and block alot of what Trump's planning. They aren't
even trying to hide it anymore.That from gamer Golf, that's the plan.
That's the plan gamer. They figurethat they can just hurl you know,

(18:36):
accusation, investigation whatever. It alreadyworked in twenty sixteen, it worked
perfectly. Now. I would hope, I would hope that the Republicans would
have more spine this go round,and when things get thrown up, just
go No, we're not investigating that. No, we're not looking into it
because we don't believe you. Becauseyou lied too much in the first term.

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We don't believe you. Now youcried wolf too often, and now
we just think you're big, fatlying liars who lie. What's the name
of that book? Oh? Gotthat one already. Not all Republicans love
Donald Trump. I cannot stand theman says this Texter. I'm only going
to vote for him because I feellike I have to this year. I've
never voted for him before. Iam a Republican. That from Dan Mandy.

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If Trump wins, he's only therefor four years. The scary part
is how many more right wing judgeswill he install for lifetime appointments. You
guys, in all of the decisionsthat have come down, in all of
them, you can clearly if yougo back and read the decisions, you
can see where the judges went backin an originalist fashion and said, what

(19:45):
does the Constitution actually mean on thisissue? I have no problem with that
at all. That's their job notto inject their ideology, whether it's right
or left. And just because thesejudges are undoing a lot of the business
of activist judges in the last seventyfive years. Your team has lost,
now, I guess just like myteam lost for a long time. In

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the grand scheme of the stretch oftime, it'll all leaven out. But
right now it's not evening out theway you want it to. But it
doesn't mean that they're doing it wrong. Consider for a moment your guys did
it wrong? All right? Weare here with our favorite meteorologists, not

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just a meteorologist, but a chiefmeteorologist. And although he's not thrifty,
he is Dave Frasier. Hey,Dave, how you do it? Happy
Independence Day? Yeah, same toyou. Happy fourth Manny, How you
doing. I'm doing just fine.Looking forward to a long weekend with my
grandkids. Oh, good for you, Good for you. Enjoy it.
Yeah. It seems like most peopleare either a long weekend or they made

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it a whole week because traffic hasbeen a little lighter. Although it sounds
like your guys are reporting the volumesheavy going to the mountains. Yep,
no surprise there. So let meask what are people expecting for Colorado over
the holiday weekend. Yeah, let'sget that forecast in play. It's actually
looking pretty good. So tomorrow theentire state, oh, let me say

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this, ninety nine point nine percentof the state looks fantastic sunshine. The
computer models the last twenty four tothirty six hours are hinting at near the
northern border from about four to six, and by that I mean near Wyoming
and Nebraska running the northern border,there might be one or two little showers,
maybe an isolated thunderstorm. And there'salso a very low chance of the

(21:52):
same thing south of Castle Rock nearyou know where Greenland is, Yeah,
and south of Larkspur kind of nearMonument Hill. So those two little small
corridors from four to six may getone or two showers or storms to come
up. The air is going tobe very dry, so it's a very
low chance. Our forecast for Denverand the vast majority of the front range
continues to be dry. It's goingto be a beautiful fourth for joy last

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year. No. Eighty one eightytwo is our forecast time. By the
way, I looked last year toget an idea till last year on the
fourth it was seventy eight, butit poured. We had thunderstorms all over
the place. The airport got likea three quarters of an inch of rain
or other places that got more thanan inch of rain. So last year
was not a great fourth. Thisyear will be great. Friday, low
eighties again, dry condition. Saturday, upper eighties the advertised eighty nine will

(22:41):
be right there with sunshine. Andthen Sunday we do have a cold front
coming in. We'll be back downto about eighty degrees and there will be
a few scattered showers and thunderstorms onSunday. So make your plans ac quarterly
and enjoy all Right. Now,I have a question from one of our
Texters for Dave the weather Guy.I have heard a theory that wind tell
our farms are affecting the weather.Your comments please. I don't see any

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anything about that. I don't There'sgoing to be all sorts of little things
out and about on social media andstuff like that, but I think in
the grand scheme of things, thatis not something that I would worry about
at this point. I just thinkthat's somebody through that out there and it
is what it is. I don'thave any research to back up anything to
support that that is an issue.Well, how do how do urban heat
islands? How does because we knowthat they raise the temperature, but do

(23:30):
they also affect the actual weather above? Like you know, we'll use Dnver's
Denver's urban heat centers as an example. Does that the rising heat from that,
does that affect the weather or doesit just affect the temperatures? Because
how do those not? How arethose not connected? It does affect the
temperature, and you know, wehave all sorts of micro climates across the

(23:52):
area. Our topography creates some ofthat, our elevation creates some of that.
But yeah, so the heat island. The fact is that you have
you know, you look at thecity of Denver and the footprint that it
is, and you look at allthe concrete and the tar and the buildings
and the materials and everything, andso during the days, especially on a
hot summer day like today, allof that is being absorbed in the buildings.
So at night as it cools,like you know, you're away from

(24:15):
downtown Denver and you've got greener pastures, or you're in the foothills and the
breeze is stern and you get inthe cool air coming down, the heat
from the buildings is slowly released backin and around the city, so it
holds the temperature up. And becauseyou're dealing with heat, you're dealing with
rising air, and so it cancause the wind to stir it a little
bit. It's not going to behurricane force or anything, but it may
be a little breezier at times.And of course the buildings act, as

(24:37):
you know, barriers to wind flowand wind direction and stuff. So yes,
it does have an impact on it, There's no question about it.
And especially on those hot, hotdays when you get past ninety to ninety
five or one hundred degrees, it'sgoing to be hotter in the city,
then it will be in the surrounding, you know, outlying areas. Every
time someone says it's going to behotter in the city, this goes through
my mind. Hot damn summary inthe city. Back of mind, dirty,

(25:00):
I'm ready. I think of itevery time, and it just went
through my head when you said that. So let me ask you totally unrelated
any of this stuff. We've gota massive hurricane hurricane barrel that is going
to flatten Jamaica to a certain extent. We'll have to wait and see how
bad. Hopefully it's supposed to weakend. But is that storm because of its
magnitude, is that going to createany problems for us or change the jet

(25:22):
stream? Or how does the stormthat big affect the overall weather around it
north and south or yeah, northand south does it does affect it,
and it can play, It canget in the way sometimes I like to
refer to as a traffic jam.So for instance, if that storm was
turning east of Florida and running upthe east coast, something of that magnitude,

(25:45):
if we were tracking incoming cold frontsor storm system from the west coast
and we think, oh, thatstorm will be here in two days,
and all of a sudden, thishurricane now comes into the equation and it
runs up the east coast. Nowyou've got a traffic jam where everything tries
to move east to west as beingblocked. So in this case, that
storm to the south, there's nothingreally in its way. It's going to

(26:06):
encounter a little cooler water and that'llbring the intensity down. Remember, warm
waters is what fuels these That's whyit had such rapid intensification, jumped so
quickly to a Cat five, earliestever on record. It'll start to come
down a little bit, then it'llhit the Yucatan Fininsul, then it'll head
into Mexico. The question is,and we're beyond Sunday Mandy, So it's
beyond Sunday that was Where does itgo? Where the moisture, Well,

(26:29):
it'll be remnants of it, itwon't be a stream anymore at that point.
But where does the extra moisture fromthat kind of curl? Does it
curl up the west side of Texas? Could there be flooding issues there?
Could some of it being trained intoDenver's forecast with an incoming cold front,
maybe it increases the rain chances.Those are things that we'll have to see
play out. But we've got towatch it. Remember, this is a
spinning top, so as it losesspeeds, it's going to wabble a little

(26:52):
bit, so its track is goingto change. So we've got to kind
of wait for that to all happenbefore we make final decisions on what might
occur beyond. I realized that I'vedriven My life has dramatically changed in many
ways since I moved here, buttwo of the most dramatic are I finally
stopped looking for alligators in the bodiesof water here in Colorado, because when
you're from Florida, every single bodyof water has an alligator in it,

(27:17):
and you just want to know howmany, right, you want to know
what you're dealing with before you getin. And the other one is I've
stopped paying attention to hurricane season becauseit dictates your life when you live on
the coast. And I'm not evenexaggerating. It is something you cannot ever
not think about. And I realizedI wasn't really paying attention to this storm
until a friend of mine posted onFacebook that they were in Barbados, and

(27:40):
I was like, wait, what, there's there's a hurricane coming, and
they were They got through it withno problem, so but it was like,
what, I'm that's two of thegreatest changes. No more alligators in
water, and I don't have topay attention closely to hurricane season. And
that's the one thing about living wherewe do. I mean, we get
every other kind of weather on theplanet. We certainly have to deal with
hail more than most places in thecountry. But you know, look,

(28:03):
we talked about it before. They'recool to look at, they're sexy to
watch them spin, they're beautiful,but we don't have to worry about it,
and that's a great thing. Sowe track them from here just in
case. Like you said, peoplehere may have friends there and want to
know what's going on, or maybeyou have relatives in that part of the
country. If it was making astrike towards the US mainland whige, this
one is not so Hey, Igot to quick. You said, it's

(28:25):
anything. You can ask you anything. I got a question. Okay,
go ahead. What's what's for yourstep in on my territory? You got
your own open now. One ofmy listeners made that for me. Isn't
it awesome? It is. Iheard it like three days or late last
week. I heard it and Iwent, hey, she's cutting into my
tet. Okay, you're in thebusiness, so I can share this with
you. And we've kind of talkedabout this with our listeners. You know,

(28:47):
we have iHeartMedia has licenses to useall kinds of music on the radio,
but for streaming and podcasting that's awhole different license. So we wanted
to get out our licensed music,get it out so we could podcast the
whole show. And the song thatwas the theme song for a long time
was licensed for the radio, butnot licensed for the podcast. So and

(29:08):
then this listener made this song andit was so good and I loved it
so much that we made it thetheme song so we can out put The
whole podcast, including of the Day, is now being podcasted because we took
out all of the no no musicand put in okay music. So there
you go. Yeah, yeah,we have to be careful. We run
into the same thing on the televisionside. We have to be careful about
which music we choose, we payand license exactly because we can use.

(29:33):
Yeah, we all want to workin the rules, right, we all
we all want to follow the rules, and the rules are really changing a
lot, and so we're trying tostay on top of it. Yeah,
we're trying to stay on top ofit. But that's why. And I
love the whole song, so I'msuper happy about that. Hey, just
quickly, I know you run intight on time. Just a couple of
things for your listeners out there.One, it's that time of the year.
We've been hearing stories out it likeChatfield and some of the reservoirs of

(29:55):
the people being knocked off with paddleboards. I own a paddleboard listen any building
cloud across the I just want peopleto be knowledgeable. When you see a
towering cloud, even if it's notmaking any noise, it's probably going to
gust the wind, So pay attentionto that. We don't want anybody to
certainly get knocked over. And we'vealready seen the problems with drownings here early
on in the season. And alwayswear a life jacket if you're going to

(30:15):
be out on a paddleboard, evenif you're the best of swimmers. And
then fire danger is not extremely highgoing into the fourth of July. Colorado,
you know has the laws about whatyou can and can't fight. I
would just caution everybody that we didhave a very dry June. July is
starting off dry, and so whileit may look green where you live,
it doesn't mean that you can't haveproblems. Always have a bucket of water

(30:36):
or a hose close by. Andthen lastly, you had a caller two
weeks ago on the app Mandy.He was saying he couldn't see rain.
I went to the app, andthere is a transparency feature on the app.
It's hidden, but it's probably adjustedup where you can't see the smaller
showers. And so if you goto the app, there's three little dots
on the bottom right hand side.Click on that you'll see the transparency bar

(30:57):
and slide it all the way downto your that you can see everything,
and then you will be able tosee the smallest tiniest of showers in your
neighborhood. All right, that's saveFraser, Dave. Happy Independence Day to
you, my friend. Enjoy yourtime off with the granted. All right,
thank you, and we will talkto you next time. All right,

(31:18):
we're back. I want to talkabout something very very quickly. I
have too. I have one thingon the blog and oh, this person,
the Channel thirty one weather app onlyallows fifty percent transparency on my phone.
Then that is a you thing becauseI just put my transparency to zero
so you can do it. Idon't know why you can't do it.
Sorry about that. Not bad.I want to respond to a texture because

(31:42):
we were talking in the segment beforeDave about everything that's going on around Joe
Biden and oh it might have alreadyfallen off the old thing here, and
it essentially says something like Mandy,if Trump wins, he's oh no,
that's that's not the right thing.It already fell off. But the essence

(32:04):
of the question was something to theeffect of, so you're okay with the
Supreme Court giving presidents absolute immunity.That's not at all what happened, not
at all. I want to sharesomething. There's a website. If you
ever want to follow along in realtime the analysis of a Supreme Court decision
by people who are smart, thengo to Scotis blog. It's the Supreme

(32:27):
Court scotus blog dot com and theyhave super smart people that write about this
stuff all the time. This isby a woman named Amy Howe. In
a historic decision, a divided SupremeCourt on Monday ruled that former presidents can
never be prosecuted for actions relating tothe core powers of their office, and
that there is at least a presumptionthat they have immunity for their official acts.

(32:50):
More broadly, the decision left openthe possibility that the charges brought against
former President Donald Trump by special counselJack Smith alleging that Trump can buyered to
overturn the results of the twenty twentyelection, can still go forward to the
extent that the charges are based onhis private conduct rather than his official acts.
The case now returns to the lowercourts for them to determine whether the

(33:15):
conduct at the center of the chargesagainst Trump was official or unofficial, an
inquiry that, even if it leadsto the conclusion that the charges can precede,
will almost certainly further delay any trialin the case, which had originally
been scheduled to begin March fourth,twenty twenty four, but is currently on
hold. Writing for the majority,Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that the president

(33:37):
quote is not above the law,but Justice Sonya Sotomayor, in a discent
joined by Justices Elena Kagan and toKatanji Brown, Jackson countered that if a
future president misuses official power for personalgain, the criminal law that the rest
of us must abide will not providea backstop. So this is not absence

(34:00):
immunity. It is not, nomatter how many talking heads are trying to
spin it that way. What hasto happen now, And I said this
the other day. Think of theSupreme Court decision as the bones of this
right, and then the lower courtsput the meat on the bones, and
there will you know, we're obviouslygoing to have to deal with this with
Trump. But then I would say, in future cases, this is going

(34:23):
to be very important to put themeat on the bones. What's an official
or unofficial act? And that isgoing to be really, really hard to
parse, you guys, I wouldn'twant to be the judge trying to decide
that. You know, the presidentcan argue that he was trying to ensure
that massive election fraud had not takenhold. Now, whether or not you

(34:44):
believe that, and whether or not, there are people that will testify they
told him over and over again therewasn't massive election fraud. That aside,
you don't get to question his motives. You just have to question what he
did. So it'll be interesting tosee all of this fleshed out. But
no, there was not absolute immunitygain. There was not. But in
the column that I have by JonathanTurley, who I very much respect Jonathan

(35:06):
Turley's writing on stuff like this,he makes the point that if after President
Obama left office, some zealous,some over zealous prosecutor had decided to prosecute
him for the extra judicious killing ofan American citizen with a drone strike,
because he killed an American citizen withouta trial, without anything, because he
was a terrorist, but he killedan American citizen. You could go back

(35:30):
and argue that was clearly against thelaw. Presidents can't operate like that,
they really can't. And it's unfortunatethat you have to give a degree of
latitude to someone who is a humanbeing and is eminently corruptible. But that's
that's the only way this thing works, right, sad but true when we
get back, is there a waythat we can bring ourselves back together?

(35:53):
My next guest says yes, andshe's got the pathway forward in her new
book. We'll talk to her rightafter this. The Mandy Connell Show is
sponsored by Belle and Pollock Accident andInjury Lawyers. No, it's Mandy connellyn

(36:17):
on KOLA ninety four one, mGod to the Stay and the Noisy Crayconnell
is sad base, my friends.You know, we spent a lot of
time on the show. Me includedtalking about what the other side did or

(36:38):
the other side didn't do, andthe discourse in our country, nobody would
argue, is in a good placeright now. And my next guest isn't
just talking about it, she istalking about ways to fix it. Diana
McClain Smith has worked on organizational conflictfor years, turning conflict into a force
for good and change within a business, until she decided to find out could

(37:01):
I apply these principles to our politicalprocess her new book, Remaking the Space
between Us, How Citizens can worktogether to build a better future for All.
Diana McClain Smith, Welcome to theshow. Thank you so much for
having me, Mandy, delighted tobe here. Well, you know,
you and I were just chatting offthe air, and I think one of
the reasons that makes your book sotimely is that we are in the midst

(37:24):
of what feels like the prickliest electioncycle I can remember. And that's the
word, because it doesn't matter whatside you're on, someone on the other
side hates you for something, andit just feels very visceral in this election
cycle. And so when I seea pitch for a book called Remaking the

(37:45):
Space between Us, How citizens canwork together to build a better future for
all, I'm like, Okay,I'm in. What do I need to
know here? So tell me alittle bit about that. How did this
come about? Well, you know, during the pandemic, I know,
the deterioration of the political discourse,and the conflict was getting increasingly intense and

(38:06):
most remarkable, very personal. Itwas no longer just a conflict about ideas
or policies. It was a conflictabout people's motives, people's character. People
were stupid. I mean, thevitriol became increasingly intense, and I came
across a study by More in Common, which I highly recommend people check out.

(38:28):
And what was fascinating about it isthat they discovered that eighty seven percent
of Americans feel the country is moredivided than at any other point in their
lifetime. And that's not surprising,but sixty seven percent find the resulting polarization
exhausting and are fed up with thetribalism, feel forgotten by the political process

(38:49):
because those on the extreme ends aredominating the discourse and think it's necessary to
find common ground. Seventy seven percentbelieve our differences are not so great that
we cannot come together. In anotherstudy, they found out that people overestimated
how extreme the other side is bytwice as much, and the more news

(39:10):
people read, the more distorted theywere about their political opponents. That got
my attention, and I said,this is something that is not just a
problem. It's an opportunity for usto understand one another better and to turn
this conflict into a country that canlive with multiple groups rather than just fight.

(39:35):
Well, and I agree wholeheartedly.And one of the things that you
know, we talk about on thisshow a lot is the dehumanization of the
other and how easy it is todeclare the other side evil and assume that
they only wish bad for the world. But at the same time, when
you ask people, I mean,I have friends on both sides of the

(39:58):
aisle. When you ask people outtheir own personal experiences, they have warm
relationships with people that are not onehundred percent like them. And you think
to yourself, where's all this comingfrom? You know, and you address
that at all in the book,like how did we get here? Well?
Yeah, I mean, well twothings. One is, I think
we've gotten pretty insular. All theresearch that I've done suggests that under threat,

(40:22):
under uncertainty and anxiety, and godknows, there's been enough changes globally,
the pandemic everything, there's been enoughthreats so that people tend to resort
back to their own kind, theirown ilk, and they become increasingly insular,
and they start recircling their beliefs,their ideas, their data, they
watch their own TV shows. Themore insular groups come become within, the

(40:45):
more distant and fearful they've become across. So one of the things we're seeing
is an escalation. It more insular, more distant, more distant, more
insular, and you get this selfreinforcing escalating cycle. So when I saw
that that happening, I asked myselfthe question, who's most likely to change
that? Is it the media?No? Is it social media? I

(41:07):
doubt it. Is it extremists onthe left of the right unlikely? Politicians
don't think so. So then Ibegan to think, it's we the people.
So I started to look to seeare we the people doing anything?
And when I started out, Iuncovered some organizations that were actually working very
hard to open up what I callthe mental space within groups so they could

(41:30):
introduce to themselves new ideas, newways of thinking, and to close the
distance across so they don't dehumanize theother side. And I began to find
there was a few organizations, andI found out there hundreds. Then I
found out there are thousands. ThenI found out they're literally hundreds of thousands
and millions of people across the countrydoing this and the media is not reporting

(41:51):
it. So I said, Igot to write this book because people need
to understand that we have the power. We do not wait till a president
selected, or a governor or asenator. We ourselves have to take control
of this and make the difference.Now, in this book, do you
offer ideas, concrete things that peoplecan act on to be part of the

(42:12):
solution. Yes. First of all, I outlined some of the organizations that
are doing this work that I thinkpeople could join or get to know.
And like Braver Angels, which youmay have heard of, it's probably the
best known, where they structure debates, but they do more than structured debates

(42:32):
across sides. They train people howto understand the other side. There's an
organization called Not in Our Town whichtalks about how do you create communities of
belonging so that you don't isolate peopleand you don't engender more hatred in your
community. One of the most promisingdevelopments I've seen is an organization called Starts

(42:53):
with Us, which was informed bywork done by Peter Coleman on what's called
contact theory, which is the lesscontact you have, the more you're likely
to dehumanize okay, and get distance. And so they have a series you
go and Starts with Us look itup on the internet. They have a
series of exercises every day that youcan do to open up your own thoughts

(43:14):
and then reach across to others whofeel differently than you. One of the
things I say in the book iswe have to stop building cases and we
have to start building relationships. Sowe don't need to just talk with people
about our differences. We can connectwith people, build a relationship, find
common ground and then dig into howcome we have difference in view and not

(43:37):
just listen, but ask questions sothat we understand. Organizations like Starts with
Us help us to develop the skillsto do that. Well, what's interesting,
and I've talked to someone from BraverAngels and Starts with Us on the
show previously, so what is alwaysinteresting to me is that there is a
certain segment. We have a textline and people can send us text messages

(44:00):
six to sixth nine out and generallyspeaking it hasn't happened yet. I started
to get these text messages that areessentially a version of yeah, but and
they are, Yeah, I reallywant to elevate the dialogue, but my
neighbor across the way is just agodless heathen and they don't want to engage
in any How am I supposed tofix the problem If nobody wants to play

(44:21):
my game, great, that's agreat problem. Great problem. I've seen
that for forty years in organizations,okay, and I call it the waiting
game. And it used to bethat people would say, you know,
the waiting game is just everybody beingsmall people and defensive and blaming other people
rather than taking responsibility themselves. Whatpeople don't see is that we've developed a

(44:45):
pattern of relating across divides, andit goes like this. I put out
my point of view, and youcounter it, and then I counter your
counter, and then you counter theother counter and then and what we're acutely
away aware of is what the otherperson is doing to contribute to the pattern.
What we are unaware of is whatwe are doing. And this is

(45:07):
well documented cognitive biases and blindnesses.We do not see what we're doing to
contribute. Now, if we continueto only focus on the other, not
only are we missing what we're doing, this is where conflict becomes a constructive
force for change, because if westart looking at ourselves, you know what,
you start to become a better person, okay, a better citizen.

(45:30):
And I think we're all invested.I hope we're all invested in doing that.
And so this is an opportunity forus to say, do I want
to blame the other person? Ordo I want to have power? Do
I want to have control? DoI want to be a better person?
If you don't find blame the otherperson, but if you do, then
start to look at how you maybe contributing to the pattern. And one

(45:51):
thing I often do when I getin a pattern like that, even with
my husband, and if I canmake my marriage work, we can make
America work. Okay, so I'llsay, I don't say, honey,
you just did something awful. Igo. We have this pattern, I
get upset, you withdraw, Iget upset that you withdrew. You withdraw
more I get. And so thenwe work together on the pattern and we

(46:15):
become partners in transforming the pattern.And that's where conflict can become a constructive
force for change. One of thequotes on your website, remaking thespace dot
org is we forget that our poweras citizens lies not just in our rights
as individuals, but in our responsibilitiesas a people for working together to build

(46:36):
a better future. That sentiment theone that with you know, and I
always reference. I believe it wasSpider Man's uncle who said, with great
power comes great responsibility, and itis with these rights there is a set
of responsibilities. Is that something youaddressed in the book And what are those
things if you could share them withmy audience? Yes, you know.
Well, I think one thing thatwe need to understand is that we are

(46:59):
all product of our history. Andour country was founded by people who are
breaking away from England and establishing theirrights as an independent people, but also
as a democracy. And so rightswas the most salient thing in people's minds
and it continues to be and Ithink that's absolutely fair enough and should always

(47:19):
be very present. I think itnow needs to be tempered because we're no
longer a uni group democracy. We'rea multi group democracy. And that means,
you know what, that's not amoral statement. We are a multi
group democracy. So we got toget along with each other. So who
is responsible for that? The politicians? I don't think so it's us we

(47:40):
are responsible for getting along with otherpeople in our political body. I love
this entire concept, and you havean entire website Remaking the Space. Tell
me about that, because obviously thebook is connected to that. But is
there a way? I mean,you have a joined the movement, you
have take action. What kind ofthings are you what kind of snowballs are
you trying to start? And howcan people get involved if they want to?

(48:06):
Well, it's a great question.I'm glad you asked it. I
think there's a coalition. Listen.First project is worth getting in touch with
on the internet. They've brought togethera coalition of hundreds of organizations like mine,
all of whom are working and tillingthe same soil, which is,
how can we empower citizens to takecontrol of the fate of our country by

(48:30):
working actively together to remake the spacebetween us, which means opening up the
space within our groups and closing thedistance across them, and so everything that
I'm talking about on the website,I also have a substack newsletter called Remaking
the Space. Everything I'm talking aboutis how can we begin to break down

(48:52):
our own biases within our groups andreach across and We have hundreds of organizations
working on that problem right now,and it is very, very promising.
This election is a very disturbing election, and we're going to have to figure
out what we're going to be seeingon the other side. But whatever we're
seeing, it's going to be upto us to deal with it. Well,

(49:15):
it's to the point that I madeearlier. Here's the text message,
Mandy. What she's talking about isnegotiating. The problem is that any more
Democrats don't give an inch when negotiating. So this is that's kind of the
entrenched, you know mentality, AndI understand why this Texter feels that way,
but I'm sure that there are peopleon the left who say the same

(49:35):
thing about Republicans. Well, Imean this, I'll go back to the
more in common data, you know, everybody. One of the questions in
my mind is how does she knowthat she knows that through the news the
media filters between us and reality.There's reality out there, actual people who

(49:59):
do or do not take an inch, okay, and then you have the
media filtering that. And what doesthe media do. It's in a business,
and it leads with what bleeds oras Roger isles said to Judy Woodruff.
Once you get two people on thestage, one politician's talking about a
Middle East plan, the other onefalls in the orchestra pit. Who does
the press cover? They cover theorchestra pit. Okay, that is how

(50:22):
we are getting our impressions of oneanother. We have to cut through that
mediator, either the extremist, thepoliticians and the media. We have to
put them aside and start seeing oneanother face to face. If after you
do that you say they don't givean inch, fair enough. But right

(50:43):
now our perspective of each other isbeing distorted by these players. Can I
have one more moose? Yeah?Go ahead, because I just dropped my
drop my my mouth, so I'llhave to find that on the break.
Anyway, Just go right ahead,make your point. I love this,
okay. James Fishkin and Larry Diamondat the Stanford School, Well, it's

(51:06):
a laboratory and deliberative democracy got togetherthree groups, one with six hundred,
nine hundred and five hundred on threeseparate occasions to talk about very very controversial
issues. The first one was fiveissues, immigration and the economy, climate
change well, well, the secondone was just climate change lest with voting
rights, they got rid of themedia, they got rid of extremists.

(51:28):
They briefed everybody with bipartisan experts.They polled people on their views at time
t one. They then put themin small groups to talk to one another
in groups of twelve, and thenthey pulled them at the end, and
the most extreme proposals lost support towardsthe more moderate ones. The proposals on

(51:49):
the left were the Democrats changed morethan the Republicans. The ones on the
right, the Republicans changed more thanthe Democrats. Okay, that is great
data that we are influenceable. Wewill move if we get to know one
another. We're in a room,and we get rid of the people who
are mediating this conversation for us.I think this is fantastic. You can

(52:09):
find Diana's book. I can't scrollup to where your book is. I
put your link to your website,remaking thespace dot org if you want more
information. Obviously, now I've gotthat linked on my blog as well at
mandy'sblog dot com. Today. I'vegot your book now, so I'm going
to be reading it on the flighttonight to go see my grandkids. So

(52:30):
I'm interested to see this and youknow. I'm glad, and we were
talking about this before you came onthe air. I'm getting more and more
people that are pitching the show withthings along these lines, because more and
more people are saying, this isnot okay, this is not it's not
all right to continue the way we'regoing. It's not constructive. It only
hurts us. And nobody likes it. That's the thing. No normal people

(52:53):
like this. Only the hardcore politicoswho view the entire world and did I
win or did I lose like this, and and the rest of us are
just kind of being swept along.Yeah. Uh, Diana McLean, I
appreciate your time and appreciate your book. Go buy it. I'll be reading
it. And thank you so muchfor your time today. I appreciate you,

(53:15):
Mandy, all right, thank you. Happy Independence Day as well.
I cannot make that go all rightin just a moment, we got a
lot see this is uh, thisis Let me just read some of the
text messages. And I'm not knockingyou guys for sending these text messages.
Says that works for anything but abortion. I would argue that you might be

(53:37):
right about that, but could wehave fewer accusations at the other side that
they want more murders, or thatthey are, you know, don't care
about babies after they're born. Sothis isn't necessarily about getting everybody to hold
hands and say kumbay y'ah and beingon example exactly the same page. That's
not a reasonable assumption or outcome.It's never going to happen. You're never

(54:00):
going to have a completely homogeneous groupof people. So what we're trying to
do is get to a point wherewe can have a conversation where you can
understand the other side, the otherside can understand you, and maybe we
can come to some agreement. Nowon abortion, abortion absolutist would say,
the only agreement is no abortions whatsoever. Maybe we're never going to come to

(54:23):
that, but at least we canhave a civil conversation and a better understanding
of why we feel the way wedo. This. One is these problems
would be exponentially more solvable without anysocial media. Social media and not just
social media. Guys, back whenI was a kid, you had three
channels. We only had two PBSand CBS and ABC. We didn't have

(54:45):
NBC because we had an antenna andeverybody watched one of the three news programs,
right national news programs, so theyall covered pretty much the same story.
So we were all getting our newsfrom our local newspaper that were primarily
local with some ap stuff put inthere, and then our national news all

(55:07):
came from three sources, so everybodygot the same information. It's not social
media that is totally the problem.Although social media has really given into our
most base instincts, right. Imean, if you think that making the
nasty comment is going to get youmore retweets and that's why you do it,
that doesn't exactly improve the discourse.But that being said, the siloed

(55:31):
nature of how we get news nowis exacerbated by the algorithms that feed us
what we like, and news outletslike news Nation is a good example of
this. News Nation has tried veryhard. I think I think they do

(55:52):
a really good product. They're tryingreally hard to be down the middle and
you know, like beat journalists aboutthings. Obviously Chris Cuomo and even Dan
Abrams are to the left of me, but they're trying to do it right,
and their viewership is not what itshould be. If all these people
are saying I want unbiased news.Everybody finds a way to nitpick everything.

(56:15):
So Mandy, I appreciate your guestinsight says this text. I'm not knocking
them. However, there's been abook around for hundreds of years that addresses
all of what she's talking about.It's called the Bible, the Word of
God. If people read that andtook it to heart, this would be
a much better place. I enjoyyour show. Keep up the good work.
That is a great idea, butnot reasonable. We are no longer,

(56:38):
you know, the Christian nation thatwe used to be. Unfortunately,
you're not wrong. I'm just sayingpragmatically. Gideon tried that a long time
ago by putting one in every hotelroom and it didn't help. All Right,

(57:00):
we are back, and a couplethings political things, and then I
got a few more stories that Iwant to share today that are not political.
Democrat Adam Frish, who is currentlyrunning for the third congressional district,
that is the district that was ditchedby Lauren Bobert so she could carpet bag
over to the fourth and win theprimary, as she just did. And

(57:22):
Adam Frish, who almost beat herlast time, does recognize that that district
does lean Republican. That is theonly explanation that I could find for him
feeling the need to come out andask President Joe Biden to step aside.
And he did this on Twitter andthe response, you guys, he is

(57:43):
getting absolutely flamed by his supporters.But this is how it goes. I
can't believe he did this to thepresident. You're sich a scumbag. I
mean, I'm going to vote foryou, but terrible. I mean,
I'm still gonna go vote for you. I want my donation back, but
I'm going to vote for you.It's just kind of funny. So that

(58:07):
is what a Democratic politician in aright leaning district scraping some other politician office
shoe looks like. That is whatthat looks like. And you can see
more of that on the blog.Update on the Central City strippers situation,
A Rod, did you know thatthere was a stripper kerfuffle happening right now

(58:27):
in Central City? I do not. Yeah, they're trying to find a
way to bring people further down theroad from Blackhawk, and the way they
might do this is by partnering upwith a very large stripper conglomerate. Well,
it's not stripper conglomerate. It's astrip club conglomerate. And they want
to put one right on main Street. They're in Central City and residents.
Residents are not happy and they're notquite sure if they're going to accept this.

(58:52):
I mean, you know, andso there's a big fight. I
said, wouldn't you want to beknown as? And then I used another
word for a female boob instead ofcity? See central get I said it
the other day. I'm not feelingas sparky today as I was the other
day when I said it. Butapparently there was a big meeting and now
there's going to be a study andwhatnot. We'll see what happens. It

(59:13):
was not going to be a fullnude club. Then it's going to be
just a I don't know the waythe regulations are written, and this is
what is. So they passed thisregulation in nineteen ninety one that would have
allowed these sorts of businesses, andone of it is and a sexual encounter
space. It was like, waita minute, so what are we talking

(59:35):
about there? Like, what isthat? That's the thing I'm kinda hung
up on that. That an extralap dance. I don't know. That
is a lap dance with a happyending. Maybe I have no clue,
but it's in this ordinance. Butthe ordinance from nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety
or nineteen ninety one prohibited these businesseswithin fifteen hundred feet of a childcare center,
a church. You know, you'rebasic, like keep the kids away

(59:57):
kind of places. Except in atown the size of the Central City,
that's everywhere, right, I mean, no place is is not within fifteen
hundred feet. So they just droppedit to one point fifty and now people
are like, wait what. Soit's going to be very interesting to see
how Central City struggles through with this. You know, small towns are struggling
to survive, and here in Coloradoit's it's even more challenging because it's just

(01:00:22):
so dang expensive to live there,right, I mean, to live in
these little mountain towns is just expensiveand there's not a lot in the economy.
And don't get me wrong, it'snot like I think Central City is
full of women who are dying tobecome strippers. But the money that they
bring to the town to see thestrippers is now going to be dropped at
the casinos and in other places aroundthe city. So I don't know this

(01:00:46):
is I had the same issue inKentucky. Kentucky is very much a part
of the Bible Belt. But thecity of Louisville especially was absolutely built on
three things tobacco, bourbon, andhorse racing. Like you basically built the
empire on three sins, right,according to those who are religious. And

(01:01:09):
yet when they were talking about bringingin the lottery or or allowing an expansion
of gaming, everybody was like,oh my god, we can't do that.
I'm like, wait a minute.You basically got rich by giving everyone
cancer or taking their livelihoods or oryou know, get having them drink too

(01:01:29):
much alcohol. And now now you'regoing to get moral. Now you're going
to be like, oh do Andconsidering that, I would imagine that central
city of vast part of its economynow is gambling. It's kind of hard
to draw the line. I mean, I don't get me wrong, I
understand why I would not want tolive by a strip club. Strip clubs

(01:01:50):
are never really in the best partof town, are they? No,
unless they get grandfathered in somehow.But the other part about this is Colorado
has a law history of the kindof wild West stuff. Do you have
any idea any historic buildings downtown usedto be bordellos more than one of them.
I'm the person who reads the plaques, you know, Like when you
walk by a building and there's aplaque, do you ever read those coover?

(01:02:13):
I read them every time. Idon't know why, I just stop.
I read them. Now. Myhusband, bless him, is just
conditioned. When he sees me seea plaque, it's like it's like ooh,
shiny, and I have to stopand read it. More than one
of our historic buildings downtown was abordello. And I'm not don't get me
wrong. I'm not saying there's gonnabe a bordello in the Central City.
That's not what I'm saying. Butit's always funny to me when people get

(01:02:35):
get somehow, you know, Idon't know, all of a sudden,
they're gonna stand on their you know, bibles and tell you what you can
and can't do. This person makesa great point. Perhaps black Hawk will
also approve strip joints if Central Citydoes allow them. I don't think that
behooves black Hawk. And here's why, because you don't have to deal with
it. And you don't, you'restill gonna get enough gambling business, although

(01:02:57):
they would tell you there's never reallyenough. You're gonna get enough business because
you're closer to I seventy even withCentral City Parkway, and then people can
just take a little a jaunt overto go see the strippers and then come
back and state your hotels. Oneof the issues Central City has is that
they don't have the monarch casino,you know what I mean, they don't
have the beautiful hotels with all ofthe amenities. They're definitely a more historical

(01:03:21):
vibe. So they got a lotof issues. And I think it's interesting
that they're sort of throwing stuff againstthe wall and see if it sticks.
You know what they really need,They need to team up with Chuck E
Cheese. You got real gambling onthe right, you got kid gambling on
the left. Have you been toChuck E Cheese lately? It's all gambling
games. There's no like video games. There's no you know, it's all

(01:03:45):
games of chance. Give us somemoney and maybe you'll push a whole bunch
of quarters over the ledge, pullthis thing and maybe you'll win big on
the way. I mean, you'rejust training kids to gamble anyway, So
you put Chuck E Cheese on theleft and parents can gamble on the right,
You're gonna make a billion dollars.Thank you so much. You can
use that idea if you'd like to. Got some text messages at five six
six nine, Oh, Mandy.Glendale depends on booby bars and has forever

(01:04:09):
not a bad part of town either. No, well, Glendale, it's
mostly shotgun Willies, though. Arethere any other strip clubs in Glendale?
I don't think there is just shotgunWillies, right, not sure. I
haven't been to Glendell in a longtime. I haven't been to any I
can honestly say I've never been toa strip club in the Denver metro area.
So I don't know the answer tothat question. But I think it

(01:04:30):
is just shotgun Willies. The clienteleof casinos and strip clubs are not that
different, correct, And that's therub right there. You're talking about bachelor
parties who guys want to go playblackjack, then they want to go see
some boobies. That's what Central Cityis trying to provide for them if they
want the historic feel to the place. I'm sure every second building used to

(01:04:53):
be a brothel. Maybe maybe thereis, I don't know, like a
meat market. Oh no, Ican't say that. What are you doing?
Why don't send me stuff? Idon't have time to read all these
before I read them on the air. Stop it, just stop it,
Mandy, you just called coover arod. Guess you're checking out for the

(01:05:14):
day. No, Texter, Ichecked out at about an hour and a
half ago, So right now thisis called coasting. Coasting, Mandy.
Speaking of conflict resolution, Missouri AGis suing New York and Federal Supreme Court
for election interference per their illegal prosecutionof Trump Boy. That's going to be
good? Is the conglomerate large orthe strippers? Well, if the strippers

(01:05:39):
are large, they're not going tobe in business all that long. Talk
about an industry with strict standards.Although although I did meet a chunky stripper
one time who was extremely successful.She was the only chunky stripper in the
strip club and guys loved her.And I don't mean like you know,
I don't mean like super big,I mean chunky. No, Mandy,

(01:06:03):
please do not send kids up toblack Hawk with them dangerous highways and they
don't need to see drunk adults insideChuck E Cheese restaurant act in a fool.
We've got to love our children morethan that, lol, I was
just kidding. To be clear,that was a joke. We used to
refer to Glendale as the Glendale Balletsay. We always refer to the Strip

(01:06:24):
Club as the Shoe Show, youknow, because the ladies they just wear
the shoes. All right, weare back. It is Independence Day weekend
and on the fourth of July thereis an event that happens every single year.
It is the Nathan's Hot Dog EatingContest. Michael Cooper and Very Ron,

(01:06:45):
Are you a fan of the competitiveeating contests? Is this something that
you consume pun intended? M hm. I used to watch them. I
found them entertaining, but not somuch anymore, especially now that they kicked
what's his name out of the Nathan'sJoey Chestnut. We're bringing Joey Chestnuts story.

(01:07:05):
That's why I'm doing the story rightnow. So Joey Chestnut is a
like a five or six time champion, Oh no, I'm sorry, Oh
my goodness, sixteen time champion ofthe Nathan's famous Fourth of July Hot Dog
Eating contest this year, he wasbanned by the two brothers who run Major

(01:07:25):
League Eating. And he just satdown with Sports Illustrated to do a story
about what happened. And he hasa contract. He has an endorsement contract
with Impossible Foods, and Impossible Foodsis one of those bioengineered plant products that
are supposed to taste like hot dogsbut are actually not hot dogs. And

(01:07:48):
Major League Eating, he says,change the terms of their contract with him
after he had already signed the contract, which would have been fine before they
changed the terms with Impossible Foods,and he went on to say, it's
not the first time they've changed somethings, but it's the first time they've
really changed things after the fact,and I had to say, hey,

(01:08:11):
it's too late. I've already startedworking with this brand. This was never
an issue in the past, andthey tried to dance around it. They
changed a lot of terms, andthen they escalated things to a degree they
didn't imagine when they started leaking informationand telling people I was banned and that
I had turned vegan, which clearlyisn't the case. Who knew about the
drama in Major League Eating. Nobodyuntil this story came across. I don't

(01:08:39):
know. It makes me uncomfortable towatch people like shovel food down their pie
hole like that. It makes mystomach hurt and it they cried it.
Oh no, well no, okay. So I was invited to do the
slopper contest at the State Fair acouple of years ago, and I didn't
realize it was like shovel a wholeburger into your pie hole covered with green
chili. And I was like,I am not a fast eater. This

(01:09:00):
is not And one of the guysthat was competing for one of the television
stations, I think in the Springs, dude knock that thing out in like
twenty seconds. Oh my god,it was. And all I could think
of is how bad my heartburn wouldbe just eating at that fast. I
think the older you get, yourealize the negative consequences for that kind of
debauchery, and eating like seventy hotdogs in five minutes is debauchery or whatever

(01:09:23):
it was. I mean, it'sjust uncomfortable. And now there's a competitive
eater who has come out and saidhe has to retire because he no longer
has any signals that he is fulland he no longer is ever hungry.
Ever, those hormones in his bodyhave been so thrown off by training for
because they trained for competitive eating.Yeah, we used to have a board

(01:09:45):
op that worked here that was acompetitive eater. I just don't see that
ending well, you know what Imean. I don't see these guys living
to be like ninety. I justI don't see it happening. I don't
know. That's all. How longyou live is so much genetic. Yeah,
you know, because I was watchinga story and I was Maryanne Faithful,

(01:10:05):
right, who was one of MickJagger's girlfriends, and she's like in
her seventies or eighties now, Idon't know how old she is, but
she was talking about how sex wasbetter in the sixties because the drugs were
better and it was more free orwhatever she was talking about. But I
thought to myself, all these peoplethat did all these drugs, like the
Rolling Stones. Keith Richards is basicallylike a walking bong hit at this point,

(01:10:27):
and dude was addicted to heroin foryears and yet he's on tour right
now and he's almost eighty. Didyou go see him? I didn't see
him this time. I saw himthe last time. I've decided I'm I'm
done with stadium shows. I justdon't enjoy them. They're too big,
they're too many people. Usually youdon't have great seats right, no matter
where you are, you're looking attiny, tiny little people. Yeah,

(01:10:50):
actually I still like him. Ticketsto go see Kenny Chesney in July twenty
seventh, I think it's a Saturdaycoming up, and we actually bought the
sandbar tickets, which are the generaladmission tickets right in front of the stage.
Oh that's cool. See now,that would be fun, But like
sitting in a stadium seat, Idon't. It's not for me. And
then you have to worry about theweather. Ed Sheeran broke me when we

(01:11:14):
sat at the Ed Sheeran show andwaited and waited and walked under the corner
and then back out and then underthe corner and back out, and I
was like, I'm done with outdoor. I'm done with anything this big.
But mate, you know what,young people, you can all go.
I've had my time. I've seenmy share of stadium shows. I've seen
some. I've seen the Rolling Stonesin a stadium like three times. The

(01:11:34):
Who, I've seen Russia in astadium, trying to think of who else.
I've seen a lot of stadium shows. I'm just saying I don't like
them. Red Rocks is I didand I was too big. It's again,
you know, don't get me wrong. I'm super glad I go and
my daughter still references that all thetime. So I'm so glad that happened.

(01:11:55):
But yeah, man, give me, you know what, Why can't
Why won't bands start doing matinees Thatwould be the best for everyone. Don't
you think like a two o'clock showin the afternoon in the summer, not
outside, inside inside with air conditioningand padded seats. That's where I am
in my life right now. Said? But true, The Mandy Connell Show

(01:12:24):
is sponsored by Bell and Pollock accidentand injury lawyers. No, it's Mandy
Connell on Kola AM ninety four oneFM, god stating and the Nicey Mann

(01:12:46):
sad thing. I need to goto. Too many warris ramid fire stories
of the day that we don't havemore time for play. This will take
longer more than two minutes up here'smany coddle. All right, my friends,
We've got a column by one misterMike Rose, and you may have

(01:13:09):
heard of him before. Let's justsay that Mike and I appear to be
on the opposit side of the rankedchoice voting issue. The more partisan someone
is, the less they like thethought that they will be able to well
other people will be able to weighin on the primary system. He's written
a column about it, and hedoes make some good points. Accept I
do not like that he went toother states to tell you what is wrong

(01:13:31):
when that is not what is beingproposed here in Colorado. He does so
clearly, so you know what isfrom other states. But you can read
about the other side of the issuewhy it may not be a good idea
in that column from Mike Rosen Thetwo minute drill it too. Guess what,
my friends, if you were thinkingabout going out and tying one on
and then driving yourself home, donot do it. The Colorado Department of

(01:13:54):
Transportation and the Colorado State Patrol havekicked off. They're enhanced DUI and enforcement
period and of course they do notwant you to drive under the influence of
alcohol or drugs. SET will supportthe State Patrol in sixty six other law
enforcement agencies for the heat is On, which has saturation patrols, sobriety checkpoints,

(01:14:15):
and an increased presence of law enforcementofficers dedicated to arresting impaired drivers.
Now with all the options like Uberand lyft, I can assure you that
no matter what that Uber costs atsurge pricing and all, it is far
far cheaper than a DUI. Sogo ahead and do that instead too.
Gonna drill it too. I alwaysuse Broadway as one of my escape routes

(01:14:40):
to get out of downtown. Andif you are like me, beware the
Department of the Office of Transportation andInfrastructure is now permanently closing the south bound
entrance ramp from Broadway at Kentucky Avenue. So it will be closed by the
department on Monday, and there willbe a long term detour while they are

(01:15:02):
working on a new elevated ramp andit's going to be in Ohio. It's
going to be finished at the endof the year. So all of that
stuff down there Broadway I twenty five, it's it's going to be a mess.
You've been warned the two men todrill it too. So during the
Michael Hancock administration, do you rememberthat the City of Denver spent millions of

(01:15:24):
dollars nine million to be exact,to purchase a ninety six unit hotel called
this Stay in Hotel, and itwas going to be converted into housing for
the homeless. And fifteen months laterit still sits empty. Why is this,
Well, it's all government, andit's government in the form of zoning

(01:15:45):
issues. It's government in the formof not getting the contracts in for renovations.
It's excuse and finger pointing. Andfifteen months later, how many other
hotels have we bought? That's thequestion I have because I think we bought
several more hotels before we took oreof care of this hotel. More money
spent on homelessness in Denver. Drillit too. If you are flying out

(01:16:10):
of DIA, got a big shoutout to our friends at Fox thirty one
KDVR. They have done a greatarticle on when to leave for the airport.
Now coover. You just got backfrom an international flight. How soon
did you get to the airport beforeyour flight? We got there about two
and a half hours prior to theflight, because internationally they say three hours

(01:16:30):
because international boarding closes like a halfhour before you actually take off. So
you have to be on the planeearlier, and your luggage has to be
checked in. All of that stufffor an international flight, but even for
a domestic flight, you are stilllooking at a two hour window. They
want you to get there ahead oftime. Did you find security at DIA
to be easy? Breezy? Leonsqueeze, I'll say this DIA was a

(01:16:50):
breeze to get through. Didn't hethrow in our fight back there? Dude?
Oh my god, that was adisaster. We got flagged for three
bags and we had to wind upshipping a bunch of stuff that we didn't
want to what it was all Mywife went crazy shopping at the pharmacies in
Paris. Ah, yes, allright, so you had to ship it

(01:17:11):
home. Yeah, oh that wasprobably cheap. They gave us. They
gave us four little small like bags, oh clear bags. Oh she was
trying to okay, she was tryingto bring in liquid stuff. Yeah,
yep, yeah, you gotta.You gotta trying to bring in butter.
And they wouldn't let us bring inbutter either. Really, Yeah, I've
brought in butter before. Yeah,they they there was was it from Paris?

(01:17:32):
Yeah? I brought Parisian butter backmultiple times. Yeah, they we
actually had to throw that away.No, because hurt that would have hurt
my heart doing that well. Inany case, I got distracted by hearing
about Couver's Great European vacation. Here'sthe deal. The checkpoints are the busiest
between four a m. To noonand one pm to three pm. The

(01:17:54):
single busiest hour at TSA on mostdays three p m. Because of people
with flight times in the late afternoonand early evening. So if you're headed
out to Dia to travel, thisweekend is going to be kind of crazy,
So get ready and plan your timeaccordingly, and do not miss your
flight because you got there late.The two drill it too. And finally,

(01:18:14):
you want to know that Trump campaignis doing in the second quarter after
he was convicted of multiple felonies.Donald Trump has raised three hundred and thirty
one million dollars in the second quarter. This leaves him with more cash on
hand than President Joe Biden right now. Biden has two hundred and sixty four

(01:18:36):
million that with the DNC raised inthe quarter. The campaign now it says,
says it has two hundred and eightyfive million cash on hand and oh
I'm sorry, I did that completelybackwards. That amount raised by Trump and
the RNC surpasses the two hundred andsixty four million Biden and the DNC has
The campaign says it has Trump toeighty five million. The Biden campaign has

(01:19:01):
two forty on hand right now.So there you go. So uh,
if you wondered how Trump's convictions werebeing received, people put their money where
their mouth is. They truly do. Uh. Northbound four seventy is stopped
between South Kipling and West and Bowls. That's unfortunate. Maybe our traffic guys

(01:19:24):
can give us an idea of what'sgoing on there. Mandy, here's a
question. I want to answer this, and when I get back, I'm
gonna do some ask me anything questions, including a question about straight women going
to strip clubs. We'll get intothat next. Mandy. Uh am I
the first one to realize we've gonefrom a pandemic to a dem panic.

(01:19:45):
Well done, Wordsmith, Well done, Mandy. What do the promos about
the Olympics being on KOA mean you'llbe off the air for three months or
however long the game's last. No, it is the iHeartMedia app that is
being advertised the iHeartMedia app will havefull coverage of the Olympic Games in crystal
clear digital audio on the free iHeartRadioapp. So we will be here.

(01:20:06):
We're not preempted at all. Noway, military bases are at level Charlie
right now, no uniforms off base. Wonder what the airports are doing now?
No butter taken by military soldiers.Did you offer them the butter?
Because I would have been liked,dude, just I don't want to throw
it away. Take it, Takethe butter, Take the butter, don't

(01:20:27):
waste the butter. Did not?Oh, you shut up? Then you
may have gotten upgraded first class,just saying we'll be right back. All
right. We got a few minuteshere. And I said earlier I wanted
to do ask me anything because that'seasy for me because then you guys can
decide what we talk about. Youcan send an ask me Anything question to

(01:20:50):
five six six nine oh via textour Common Spirit Health text line, or
you can call I don't care,I'll talk to you three oh three seven
one three eighty five eighty five.Now, somebody asked this question earlier when
I was talking about strip clubs.Apparently there's multiple strip clubs in Glendale,
by the way from Based on thetext messages, this person said, Mandy,

(01:21:13):
hearing you talk about strip clubs isvery entertaining. To be clear,
people, I have done my timein strip clubs. My first job in
radio was at a hot talk station. We used to broadcast from an all
nude strip club. Okay, thatwas like HR was fine with it.
It was good. It did notmatter. So I've been there, I've
seen what goes on. One ofmy special talents, one of my utterly

(01:21:38):
useless special talents, is that Ican tell you the exact moment that a
guy goes from looking at a stripper'sface to where he drops his eyes.
I can count it down three,two, one, boom. I know
when it's coming. I can seethe signs and goud could be across the
room. It's it's remarkable. I'mprobably out of out of you know,

(01:21:58):
out of practice now. But somebodyasked, what's the deal with let me
see here? I can't find itis with straight women going to strip clubs?
Is that weird? Now? I'vebeen to strip clubs in Atlanta where
everybody went men and women, andit was bizarre because it was like a

(01:22:18):
normal bar where people were just stayingaround having drinks, and except there were
strippers on the stage, and therewas male strippers on one side and there
was female strippers on the other side. And I am not one of those
women who is ever gonna go seemale strippers. It is not a thing
I am going to pay money tosee, because it's all pretty ridiculous,

(01:22:39):
guys, because male strippers act anddance much differently than female strippers. It's
just not it's not my jam.But a lot of straight women go to
strip clubs. There's a couple ofreasons. One it could be with their
sweetheart. Maybe that's, you know, get some going. Maybe they're just
going with a group of guys.That was my situation on more than one
occasion. And guys will do thatto you too. Guys, you're with

(01:23:00):
a group of guys hanging out andthey'll be like, hey, let let's
go to the strip club. Andthey're looking at you to see how you're
going to react, right, andyou've got a couple options. You're like,
no, I'm not going to dothat, or you're like, I'm
a gamer, let's go. Idon't care. I have all those same
parts you know what's funny is whenguys will then buy a female a dance

(01:23:23):
so they can see a woman dancefor another woman. And then I would
start a conversation with the stripper andbe like, hey, what's always that
freeze lotion you're wearing right now?Just to ruin the entire thing by talking
through the entire thing, Mandy,who the hell looks at their face?
Every guy starts out looking at theirface every single because that allows guy.
This is my theory I've had foryears, and guys please feel free to

(01:23:45):
correct me. If you just startout steering at their body, you're then
one of those creepy guys. Butif you at least make some show of
looking into her face, you've notdehumanized her, as you were going to
watch her take her clothes off infront of you. So it's just a
way of proving that you're a niceguy. Hey, look, I'm a
nice guy to strip club. I'mlooking at your face anyway, Mandy,

(01:24:10):
who won the bingo game during thedebate. Ross's bingo card was almost completely
full, like the whole thing,But I don't know if he actually got
a bingo. Mandy, where areyou watching fireworks. Well, I am
going to Ohio to see my kidsand grandkids, or as Chuck and I
like to say, to see mygrandkids and those people they live with.

(01:24:30):
And I'm sure we're going to goto see fireworks somewhere, but I'm gonna
be I'm gonna be truthful, youguys. I do not love fireworks.
I think they're stupid. And Irealize that's blasphemy this time of year,
but I've never been one to lovefireworks. I don't. If I want
to see something explode, I wantto see it explode because I shot it,

(01:24:51):
you know, like that's shooting sportingclays. You go out there with
your shotgun, you shoot a claypigeon and explodes into a million pieces.
I would much rather do that thanstand around craning my neck like, ew
oh, ain't they party? Whichis actually a quote from the Beverly Hillbillies.

(01:25:12):
Okay, go back in time withme, listeners. Do you remember
the Beverly Hillbillies episode where Jethro decidedhe wanted to go to space, so
he attached a rocket to his backand we find out later that it was
actually a firework that Jethro attached tohis back, and Granny and Grandpa are
out by the pool or jed orout by the cement pond, and they're
staring up as he's taken off intothe sky and Granny looks ut there and

(01:25:34):
he's like, ew aw ain't theyparty? And that's what I say at
fireworks because I don't love them.Do not love them? Mandy, what
type of music do you? Andthe cue overlap? My kids can't stand
anything from the eighties and nineties,but they love classic rock. My little
gen X heart is so happy whenI hear them singing along with the Eagles.

(01:25:58):
I will say my daughter has inreritible like a massive broad bass of
music, mostly from Chuck So onher playlist, she'll have anything from Kiss
to Taylor Swift. She's actually introducedme to a lot of music that I
really like. Now. Some ofthese young pop stars that are out,
I really like them. I loveOlivia Rodrigo like I'm a fangirl for Olivia

(01:26:19):
Rodrigo. So she's introduced me tomusic. And this is one thing I
would say to parents, if youwant to get to know your children,
try to like their music, becauseremember how we were at the same age.
Music is everything. It is life. So the more you try to
connect with your kids through music,that's a really nice bridge to build.

(01:26:41):
And I will tell you she stillreferences going to the Taylor Swift concert with
me on a regular basis, andI'm so glad we have that together.
It was just really, really good. When we get back, Nick Ferguson
is going to join us for afew minutes and talk about how he got
kids to read three hundred books.We'll do that next. All right,

(01:27:09):
my friends, we are working ourway towards Independence Day tomorrow. Please please
please go to the blog. Idon't normally beg you, but on the
blog, I have one of myfavorite videos I've ever seen, and it
just has changed the way that Ilistened to the National anthem. And there
are some slight historical inaccuracies in thistelling of this story. A pastor recorded

(01:27:31):
this like ten years ago, butnone of them are significant enough for me
to not say, listen to this. They're really minor. They're just minor
mistakes. They don't change anything,and it is it explains to you how
during the War of eighteen twelve,Francis Scott Key actually watched part of the
battle, and all of this stuffhas now become part of that poem,

(01:27:53):
which has become our national anthem.Watching this video change the way I hear
the anthem. I cannot hear itwithout getting tears in my eyes now,
So please go to the blog todayat mandy'sblog dot com and check that out.
Now you'll also see a fun Instagrampost from Jeffcoe County Schools and it
involved my friend Nick Ferguson, SoI just wanted to bring him on to

(01:28:14):
give him a pat on the back, well rhetorically anyway, for getting kids
to read. Hello, mister Ferguson, how are you? Hello, Miss
Mandy Connell, how you doing today? Now I'm going to out you a
little bit on our text message exchange. We just had about strip clubs in
Atlanta, because because you had youplayed in Atlanta and you know you have

(01:28:36):
spent some time there. I textedmy brother to ask him the name of
the club specifically I was trying tothink of. It was the Cheetah,
do you remember? I mean,because here's the thing in Atlanta, like
people would go to a regular barand then somebody would go like, let's
go to the Cheetah. So allthese people would just go to the Cheetah
and you'd be hanging out in astrip club. It was just normal.

(01:28:57):
I can't explain it, but yeah, it was the Cheetah, not the
Pink Poe me. Okay. Soso really quickly with du Cheetah, I
went to Georgia Tech. So duCheetah wasn't too far from Georgia Tech,
and truth be told, it wasright behind my agent's office. So I've
been there before. But here's here'swhat we talk about in Atlanta. We
don't call them strip clubs, Mandy. The correct term is shoe model.

(01:29:21):
I see, we call them theshoe show. That's what I said earlier
in the show. I'm like,we call it the shoe show because the
ladies are wearing their beautiful shoes andnot much else. So it's just the
shoe show. So yeah, no, I know the lingo deck, I
know the lingo. Let's let's getto a more wholesome part of the Nick
Ferguson story right now, because youinspired a bunch of kids and tell me

(01:29:43):
about how all this came about.How did you go to Governor's Ranch Elementary?
How did you get in this inthis circle? It was wild because
Lorie Eliver is a teacher who reachedout to me because she reached out to
me in DM on Twitter acts ofcourse, so I responded like, hey,
you know, what are you doing? How can I help? She

(01:30:04):
didn't know that I lived here inColorado, so she was telling me about
this ritathon that they were doing,and I was like, yeah, I
would love to help out. Andshe said, well, what could you
and some of your alumni guys doI said, well, I can be
there Friday. Now. We hadthis conversation on a Tuesday and I told
her I could be the Friday.Now. She was shocked when I showed

(01:30:25):
up because she thought my response wasn'treal. She thought it was a I.
Oh no, yes, she thoughtit was AI. So when I
actually got out of the car andshe still out in front of the school
and she saw me, she's like, oh, you were actually real.
I didn't know that you were realand you were actually responding. So it
was a complete shock and surprize forher and the kids themselves. And what

(01:30:48):
I did was I went and readsome of my kids' favorite books and once
again, they were doing this ritathroon and I said, look, I'm
going to challenge you guys, butI'm a validate you at the same time.
If your teacher said, well,how many books you need to read
to validate you guys, piece ofparty on me. And they they did

(01:31:08):
the heavy lifting, they read thebooks. I was so happy with the
teachers and the efforts, and thekids and the parents were so happy.
So I rewarded them because I feelas though validating people don't happen that much
in our society. But I alsoknow growing up in the inner city and
seeing it firsthand, how important readingis, and I just wanted to validate
the teachers in the student Now whatgrade are we talking about here, Nick?

(01:31:30):
So this is elementary, right?So was it a bunch of different
grades or one grade? Well,you had a combination of different grades that
were kind of mixed in. Butman, you know, they were so
excited, one for me being thereand being a former Bronco player, but
just the fact of how enthusiastic Iwas about reading and why I thought it

(01:31:50):
was so vital and so important toproduce more productive members of our society.
So I'm hoping that someone in thegovernment here in Denver they get involved with
this campaign. And it's not justthe Governor's Rant school. Let's just do
this throughout the Denver, Colorado areas, couraging kids and validating them for what
they're doing far as reading is concern. I love this. This is part

(01:32:13):
of jeff co Reads, which isan intensive summer literacy program for students entering
first, second and third grades duringthe twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five
school year. The focus is ondeveloping phonomic awareness. Phonomic skills and services
are available at nine schools. Classsizes generally ranged from eight to twelve.
Students and teachers are all trained onthe Orton Gillingham approach that incorporates a multisensory

(01:32:36):
approach to learning to read. Idon't care about that part, but I'm
with you because and I say thisall the time to younger people like in
my life, and I realize thatnow everybody has the World's library on their
phone. Right, But when Iwas a kid, nick, we were
allowed to go to the library oncea week in my hometown, Okay,
and we were allowed to check outas many books as we wanted, but

(01:33:00):
we had to return them all thefollowing week, Right, So there was
this pressure you got like seven books, and I would read seven books in
seven days. And it's one ofthe reasons I'm such a fast reader now
is because that pressure was there.But in my mind, like you look
at the library, that is amassive box of knowledge. And if you
can read, you can do anything. You can accomplish anything if you can

(01:33:21):
read, and if you can't read, you can probably still accomplish a lot.
But boy, howdy, is ita whole lot harder. So hats
off to you, man. Ithink that's wonderful. And if anybody wants
me to come to read to studentsor host a pizza party, I would
love to do it absolutely. Andonce again, look, I have individuals
of my family who went to college, and we have a number of people

(01:33:41):
who did not, and some ofthose individuals don't know how to read.
And I look at them in theirlives and how their lives had not reached
the point that they needed to becausethey could not read. So reading is
so viotar is so important. WhenI was growing up in the city,
right outside of our school, thereused to be every Thursday, this book
will be And I was so excitedabout going to this book mobile just checking

(01:34:03):
out books because I knew how importantit is, and I just want to
care for that message. This ismy way of giving back to any community
that I'm a part of. Sosince I lived here in Denver, why
not give back in this way?You know, Nick talking about adults who
can't read, I have a familymember who became an adult literacy tutor,

(01:34:24):
and so she would teach adults howto read. And the oldest person she
ever taught how to read was likeseventy eight when he started. Wow,
And he was a man who hadworked like hard labor jobs his whole life.
You know, never wasn't living inpoverty because he was a hard worker,
but he worked really hard for everydollar he ever made. And he

(01:34:46):
wanted to read the Bible before hedied, and so she started to I've
got goosebumps right now telling the story. But she taught him how to read
over a period of like three years, and then he read the Bible when
he was like eighty two years oldbecause he wanted to have that for himself.
And so I always say, whenwhen you find out that someone you
love can't read, it's like it'snever too late. It's hard, but

(01:35:10):
it's never too late, and thereare programs out there specifically designed to help
adults who cannot read. But let'sprevent that from happening by intervening in these
early grades and getting these kids tobe super readers from the very get go
really quickly. I know we don'thave that much time, but my grandfather
because he had to he was pulledout of school and he had to work

(01:35:30):
in the time that he was ayoung man, and he did not know
how to read that well, Some being able to say that I got
a master's degree, I went,I graduated from Georgia Tech, and I'm
now pushing kids to kind of readmore. For me, this is a
way to pay homage to my grandfather, to say, Okay, well here's
the things that you would not allowedto do due to the circumstances that you

(01:35:51):
were faced with. But now Ican kind of flip that script and kind
of change things for a lot ofkids. I love that. And you
know, one of the things thatpeople outside of the state of Florida I
don't know is that when Jeb Bush, when Jeb Bush was governor there,
and this is twenty something years agonow, Florida kids couldn't read they were
not performing at a high level,right, They just were not They were

(01:36:13):
not doing well on national tests.And as Governor Jeb Bush said, we
are going to make sure that everysingle kid can read. And Florida schools
adopted really intensive reading interventions and theycalled it deer drop everything and read,
and it was really a huge movementwithin the schools. But when you raise
reading levels, everything else comes uptoo, like math scores come up.

(01:36:36):
Everything comes up. So I'm hopingthat this is and I don't know a
lot about this program in jeff Co. But I'm going to find out find
out more about it. But Ihope this is happening in every school district,
right. I hope this is thefocus on reading is happening everywhere because
we're not making sure that every kidcan read right now. And you see
that in the test scores, andyou see that about how we're performing nationwide.

(01:36:59):
We're just not getting it done,and we're leaving these kids with a
less bright future because they can't readand comprehend and do the basic things that
we all learned how to do.So, Nick, I appreciate you.
And somebody just asked this on thetext line speed walking and Nick is open.
And now I'm gonna tell you,Nick, I'm having a really weird

(01:37:20):
knee thing right now. I gotto go back to Regen Revolution. Although
I don't think I think it's onthe I think it's in my tendons in
my left knee. But once I'mover that, I'm ready. I'm ready
because I speed walk practically every day, so you know, but I think
I need a good distance. Ineed at least a mile. So we
got to find a track and geton there and see we could do this.

(01:37:42):
We should do yes, a mile? Excuse me? No? Four
laps? Is how many? Whatis that? What is it? How
many? Is too? Is sixhundred yards of a track? Six hundred?
We need at least that. Ineed at least four laps? Can
you do that? Or you sprint? God? Because I'm a distance walker,
Nick, I'm a distance walk.No, no, Mandy, you
are throwing too many things into thequestion. It was a speed walking But

(01:38:04):
how far were we going to go? We never we never settled on the
distance, like are you Oh,we didn't, but I didn't think it
was going to be a mile.You will beat me in a fifty yard
dash because you're just more athletic.I need. I need to be because
you see these women. I don'tknow if you see these women that are
that are in the have you beenwatching the track and field Olympic trials?
Have you been watching any of that? Okay, so these women that run

(01:38:27):
the ten thousand meters. Did yousee the end of the ten thousand meter
race where this road comes out ofnowhere and just turns the guns on the
last like one hundred yards after runningten thousand meters, And I was like
that Dame is a badass. Imean that they have anything left. And
I'm thinking, if I got ashot, it's got to be some distance.
I knew it. I told aRod, I said, Mandy was

(01:38:49):
going to come up with some kindof diabolical way to win. And keep
this in mind, I've had twoknee surgeries too, and my knee swelled.
So okay, well then we'll bothwe'll just brace up, we'll get
our rock tape, we'll all beyou know, ball micas. Here's the
weird thing, and I don't know, this is when I got to go
back to region. In all ofmy knee pain experience, you know,

(01:39:09):
over the last fifteen years, I'venever had pain that got better when I
was weight bearing. Isn't that weird? But I mean, that's weird.
That's not normal, and it's notin the middle of my knee. It's
on the sides of my knees.So something weird's happening right now. Getting
old sucks. Nick Ferguson, youdon't have to tell me. It's hard
for me to sleep at night afterplaying over a decade in the NFL.

(01:39:30):
I bet, I bet well,Nick. I just wanted to bring you
on and give you kudos for yourgood work and kind of shine a light
on this because I think you're right. If more people stepped up to really
impress upon kids that reading is justso critical and so liberating because if you
know how to read, you cando anything, and you can find out
anything, and you can learn anythingyou want to learn. So it truly

(01:39:53):
is the path to freedom. Well, thank you, Manny forgiving me some
of your time. You're a beautifulperson. One more texts Nick has done
wonders tutoring Ben. It's been greatto watch his growth. So there you
go. All right, I'll talkto you later. Nick Ferguson, Thank
you, all right, Thank youthank you, my friend Mandy. I
do six miles in eighty two minutes, ten eighty steps every day. It

(01:40:17):
sucked the first ten times, butI love it since you and Ross are
invited. I do two miles withthe dog, so you have the requisite
dog has to stop you then haveto clean up after the dog. That
slows you down a little bit.But I do like a mostly like a
sixteen seventeen minute mile just walking thedog, which I think is pretty fast.

(01:40:44):
So I don't know. Yeah,I can't beat Nick in a short
like fifty yard dash, forget aboutit. He would crush me. Got
to even it out somehow, butI still think I could take him at
a distance. Ryan Edwards walking intothe program right now, you're you're not
wearing flannel? Got on a golfshirt today? It is warm outside.

(01:41:05):
Yeah, it was a little toowarm for me, even my summer flannel.
I couldn't quite do it today,So summer, I know. I'm
just I'm not married to you,so I can't tell you what to wear.
Yeah, I can't tell my husbandwhat to wear either. I just
said that I think you should movefrom flannel to searsucker, Like just move
right into the summer weight seersucker.Yeah, you could be rocking like a

(01:41:28):
seersucker plaid every day and then maybeborrow a string tie from Grant on occasion.
You know he's got bolo tie Thursday. Listen, jump right in with
that. Don't give me a wholelook. Don't threaten me with a good
times to Kentucky Derby. You needto have a seer obviously, obviously.
No. I mean you know,I looked at the flannel. There was
the flannel, and there was thegolf shirt, and I just all right,

(01:41:49):
you look like just tea off,like right off the off the thing
there. I appreciate it, rightoff the tea box. I would still
wear flannel to golf, by theway, that really would not slow me
down. No, do you havestretchy flannel, because my flannel does not
have good like you know, Ihave a very That's why I tell you
guys, at varying levels of flannel. It's not just the thick winter coat

(01:42:12):
right right, not just the tradingcompany flannel that's your like industrial that's flannels.
It's a freaking it's planet hot outside, right, and I gotta wear
a very thick flannel that I havethose but I also have lighter flannels,
like thinner material flannels. No Ideahad no clue. When we were in
Norway, I looked at these absolutelybeautiful Norwegian woolf sweaters with like kind of

(01:42:38):
the kind of the Norwegian look patterns. I looked at it. I picked
it up. Weigh like six pounds. When am I going to wear this?
It's so heavy now in Norway that'slike Tuesday and in November, but
here the weather's too like you cango to work when it's twenty degrees and
then it's like seventy five. Bythe time you leave, you're dying in
your Norwegian sweater. And they were, you know, there were two hundred

(01:42:59):
bucks. So I was like,I can live without. They were beautiful.
I just could not see. It'slike, I just don't see me
wearing that. And then of coursei'd wear it and somebody would be like,
what are you gonna yodel? Becauseit really did look like that kind
of sweater. So I thought Iwould just take the jokes off the table.
Take the jokes off the table.So there you go, and now

(01:43:20):
it's time for the most exciting segmenton the radio of its guy the World
of the day. All right,goober, what is our dad joke of
the day. Our dad joke ofthe day is did you hear about the
restaurant on the moon? No?It was out of this world? No

(01:43:42):
great food, no atmosphere. Ohthe old no atmosphere joke. I do
not have a limerick of the day. After bragging about my limerick ability,
I just I haven't done them.I keep forgetting anyway. What is our
word of the day? Please?Insuper Bowl? In sup in super What
the opposite of N S I Ns U p E R A b l

(01:44:08):
E in super Bowl? In superBowl, I'm gonna say something that cannot
be defeated? Ooh, and theycannot be it just like, oh I'm
in super Bowl. Yeah, I'mvery popular. I don't know something described
as in super Bowl is impossible togain control of solve or overcapage? Yes,
yeah, okay, I'm giving myselfcredit for that. What is the
official motto of the Olympic Games?I don't know all for one. I

(01:44:33):
feel like it should be something likethat, like all together or competing against
each other or something. Let's seehere, Oh, well, faster,
higher, stronger together except their individualsports. Yeah, oh oh oh wait,
you guys listen to this. Theword together was added in twenty twenty

(01:44:56):
one to emphasize the important unity andsolidarity sporting. I'm bringing booing back to
the workplace. It's the thing I'mgonna do now. Yeah, Okay,
go ahead, Coober. What's ourjeopardy category? All right? Our jeopardy
category is going to be an easyone for you guys. Okay, here
we go, because it's gonna beinsect, arachnid or gastropod? What what?

(01:45:18):
What are you? Okay? Goahead? Three chances insect, a
raknid, gastropod Okay, a raknidokay, or gastro I don't even know
what a gastropod is. What we'regonna find out. We're gonna find out.
He doesn't know you're asking him likehe's entomologist over there. Okay,
go ahead, right. Question numberone, the scorpion, Ryan, wasn't

(01:45:40):
arachnid? Yes? Ryan one?All right? The daddy long legs Manny?
What is an iraknid? Yes?Yes, that was a trick.
The aphid money, Ryan? Yeah? What's a gastropod? No, Mandy,
what's an insect? Yes? Letme go for it, Ryan the

(01:46:04):
ear wig, what's a gastropod?No, I'm walking out of the minus
one. I'm sitting on my twoto minus one lead because I have no
idea, Okay. And then finallythe limping manby, what is a gastropod?

(01:46:24):
There's like somebody out there that knowsexactly what those are is screaming in
the car. What is a gastropod? What is it? Did we know
that alright knows everything and he's inmaster control right now? Is a gastropodd?
We don't know? Yeah, wehave we have a limericks sent in
by a listener. There once wasa host named Mandy whose radio show was

(01:46:45):
quite handy from strip clubs. Shetell of tales she knew well. Her
stories are always just Andy, Thankyou listener. All right, there's what
a gastropod is, probably known asslugs and text comic class of invertebrates within
the phyla mollusca called gastro I'm gladwe made you look that up so he'd

(01:47:09):
have to say all this, butI didn't know. He's like, I
knew that liar. He did notsay he did not say to not say
it. Yeah, tell us yeah, good, Yeah, throw him under
the bus. I knew you.Anyway, what's coming up on sports?
By the way, when you dothe boo reminds me of Princess Brian,
correct, and that is where thatparticular boo is in homage to Princess brought

(01:47:38):
quit anyways, So anyway, yeah, so holiday weekend, Yeah, it
should be. It should be alot of fun. Did you hear me
ask Dave the question by the way, and I told you there's a there's
a generational divide there and he said, yeah, absolutely, have done that.
I still don't know if i'l Idon't know if I have to when

(01:48:00):
you can check it out. Soyeah, so today we have a lot
of Broncos conversations. We can checkin with the NBA Free agency. It's
it should be fun Die Forth themedshow. I will be back on Monday.
Everyone have a very safe and happyholiday. Please don't blow your fingers
or face off with illegal fireworks,and don't drink and drive all right,
Other than that, have a greattime. KOA Sports coming up next