October 9, 2024 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Arry Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We pick off where we left off, we pick up,
we pick up where we left off yesterday. And that
is the desperate attempt by the Democrats to claw back
from the hole they've dug themselves in. You see, they
had to have Joe Biden because the people who actually
(00:49):
run the country, he's manageable. They've broken him and he's
just happy to be president and let them govern. But
it was getting so bad that through the summer it
looked like he might die before November, or fall out, collapse,
(01:12):
fall asleep. It was looking bad. On his hundredth birthday,
Jimmy Carter was wheeled out in his hospital bed that
he lives in and he was wheeled out.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They did a flyover.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
For President Carter on his hundredth birthday, and it was
like a corpse. You just laid there, his mouth a gog,
a gape, his eyes don't move. He's translucent and he's
just feather light and you don't actually know if he
(01:47):
is alive or not. It's kind of a weekend at
Bernie's Deal and you can't recognize that that was ever
Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I don't just so y'all know, I don't want to
live that long. I don't want to live that point.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's a corpse with the pulse, and that's terrible. And
I saw that on the screen and I thought, man,
Biden's even worse than the last time I saw him.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
But it turned out it wasn't Biden. It was Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So then they got to get him out and Biden,
bless his heart.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
This is like a movie character, you know, it's kind.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Of a forty eight Hours, the old Eddie Murphy what's
the guy's name.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
That was in there with him?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
No, okay, trading places. He's in the position now and
so he's kind of enjoying it, and Jill's really enjoying it.
So then they go with then they go with Kamala. Well,
that was a mistake. That was a real mistake. Your
favorite baseball team ever drafted the guy or traded for
(02:56):
a guy.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And they get to.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Town and you realize, oh my goodness, we had this guy,
I bray you, who I'm told is a nice guy.
The Astros brought him in and spent a bunch of
money on him, and it was an absolute bust. Or
for that matter, Deshaun Watson, and he was a bust
on a whole different level.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
He may go to prison for it.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But so here you got Kamala Harris and she's in
trouble and Tim Watz was supposed to help. But I
think he's worse than she is. I really do. So
they're trying to get her on TV shows and get
some interviews, and she is more unlikable than even Hillary Clinton,
and that's a fact. So they put her on the
Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Well, this is going to
(03:37):
be it. He so desperately wants to impress the Democrats
what a good little.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Minion he is.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And she rolled out a new accent, She rolled out
a new give this a listen.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Have you know empathy, man? You know for the suffering
of other people? Have you no sense of purpose?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Is that.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
A tinge of Jamaican? Or what is it again, Ramond?
Have you no empathy?
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Man? You know.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
The suffering of other people? Have you no sense of purpose?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Oddly enough, the things she says are exactly the thing
you think about her. She said that, she said over
the weekend, I'm not a pathological liar, like Trump. Odd
you would say that who announces they're not a pathological
(04:45):
liar except a pathological liar. That's what's so damn creepy
about this woman. You think about all the accents, and
it's in keeping. It's in keeping with everything about her.
Everything is fake. She's just trying it on. Tomorrow's all
prominal SiO, I'm from o liar, and the next day
(05:08):
it's a valley girl. There's no there there. That's just it.
There's no there there. She's just trying to be something
so that she can be elected whatever it is you
need her to be. Here's a little montage to take
us to the break of the phony accents she's tried
out over just the last few years.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Shank a union number for sick leave.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
You better thank a union member for paid leave. You
better thank a union member for vacation time. Let us
get to the next sixty four days.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And you all helped us win.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
In twenty twenty, and we're gonna do it again in
twenty twenty four, Yes we will. You know, the one
thing about all of us is we like hard work.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Hard work is good work. Hard work is good work.
The thing that we like about.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
Hard work is we have fun doing hard work.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Can I get a warness?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
All my life? I had to fight? It ain't over.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
With us.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
In government, we campaign with the plan uppercase t uppercase
p D plan, and then the environment is such that
we're expected to defend the plan, even when the first
time we roll it out there may be some glitches
and it's time to reevaluate and then do it again.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
It's just reasonable.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I support the Second Amendment, but it is reasonable to
say we need an assault weapons ban. It's reasonable to
say we need you versa background Jackson.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, we need red flag laws.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
And I will tell you when we get this done together,
my friend, and when I am president, I.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
Will take on the bad actors.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Who exploit a crisis.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Is at sake?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Leading up to January fifth, look at what's happening right
now in this state. We're looking across the country at
so much devastation, people who have lost family members, lost
time being able to go to work, lost time in
(07:37):
terms of our children's education, in the days of their
education they have missed. There's been so much loss these years,
and in particular this year, we're looking here in George
at the fact that one in seven families is describing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Their household is being hungry.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
We're in the midst of a hunger crisis in America
and it's hitting George hard. One in seven describing hunger
in their households. One in six Georgian families are describing
an aditability or difficulty to pay rent. One in four
(08:19):
small businesses in Georgia.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
To be able to afford a nice meal with Michael
Berry that's gotten harder because of Kamala Harris's policies.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
I become friends with school shooters.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
When you stop and think about how horrendously awful that
sounds to the parents of children murdered by school shooters,
you know, it's one thing. If you forgive the person
(08:56):
who takes your loved one's life, that is yours to
withhold or give that forgiveness. But for someone else to
forgive when they're not suffering. If we don't stand up
to this sort of nonsense. When the Boston massacre occurred,
(09:22):
I'm not going to say their name. I'm not going
to honor them by saying their name.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
The two brothers who were involved, the two Muslims who
had come here from I think Chechnya that.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Planned that all out. They maimed people.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
We had that beautiful woman on, Rebecca Gregory, what was
her name, Rebecca?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
She'd written a book. She ended up having.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Dozens and dozens of surgeries and finally she just decided
to take the leg off. It really really affected her life,
but she's so positive.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
She went on. People's lives were ruined and lost. It
was horrible.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Stone put them on the cover of the Rolling Stone
to quote doctor hook a great honor. And the picture
was taken I think it was Annie Leebwood's. It was
taken as if you know this was some sex symbol.
This guy massacred people and then killed the cops.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
This monster.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
There's there's a perversion on the left of making awful
people into misunderstood artists and wonderful people, and the rest
of us who feel authentic emotions are made out to
be awful.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, f you if it happens to you, how would
you feel? That's what I want to tell these people.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
That's what I want to tell these people on behalf
of the families who suffer in silence. Somebody pisses me off,
I can go on the air the next day and
rip them to open My son had a coach named
David Crook. He's an absolute monster of a human being.
(11:08):
He coached little League so that he could get his
kid every bit of time on the field and try
to get him a college scholarship to the school he
wanted to go to. And it's legend the kinds of
things he did, screaming at other kids. He screwed my
kid over, and I've got receipts. It's a pretty nasty story.
(11:31):
But I decided that I would make him regret that
for the rest of his life, and maybe, just maybe
he won't screw anyone else over as a result of it.
I have a platform. I am vindictive, I am outspoken.
I like conflict. Conflict resolve things. It's resolves things. It's
(11:51):
the crucible. But so many of these families that suffer
from what the Tim Waltz is and the Kamala Harris
is all do, so many of them are just quiet,
often Christian folks, Catholic Hispanics like Joscelyn Nunger's parents or
(12:13):
mother when she was raped and.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Murdered, tortured and murdered here in Houston.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
These aren't people who like me, can get in front
of a camera, and tell their story. They just suffer
and it makes me crazy. So when I hear Tim
Wallace say that, it makes me crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So I've become friends with school shooters. That's a non starter.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
He cannot be allowed to win this election now because
of that. But you think of all the things, Think
about our servicemen who were killed in Afghanistan because of
Biden's botched withdrawal, Think about the inflation, think about all
(13:01):
the horrible things that have happened on the Biden Harris
watch because of their policies. So yesterday on The View,
Kamala Harris is asked, would you do anything different?
Speaker 8 (13:17):
If anything, would you have done something differently than President
Biden during the past four years.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
There is not a thing that comes to mind in
terms of and I've been a part of most of
the decisions that have had impact.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
See, this is the delicate balance.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Does she say Biden's awful, elect me, I'll change everything,
or does she say I've really been running the country
for four years.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I'm ready, Because you can't have both.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Molly Ball is a senior political correspondent for The Wall
Street Journal. She was on CNN and she was asked
about that answer during the day yesterday on the view
and this is what she said.
Speaker 8 (14:00):
Done something differently than President Biden during the past four years.
Speaker 6 (14:05):
There is done a thing that comes to mind. Now,
what do you make of that?
Speaker 9 (14:11):
I'm surprised, frankly, that she doesn't have more to say
about this, given that she and her campaign know that
this is one of the main questions that voters have
about her, and one of the main things she's been
trying to establish as part of her candidacy is the
idea that she would represent a break from the past
four years and to not be able to come up
with something to say in that moment. She continues to
(14:35):
not be particularly nimble on her feet in a lot
of these interviews, and this is a very obvious question
that gave her an opportunity, frankly, to differentiate herself in
a way that would have made news, that would have
answered I think the curiosity of a lot of voters
who want to know how she would lead differently, and
she's not very specific in laying that out, and she
(14:56):
can't point to a decision she would have made differently,
which you know in an electorate that thinks that that
doesn't like the way this administration has led and that
doesn't like the track that the country is on. That
may not be a very satisfactory answer.
Speaker 6 (15:08):
I mean it's a delicate damp.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I mean, this isn't such a big thing to say normally,
but to have the media have CNN pointing out, hey lady,
if you say there are no regrets, that's a non starter.
Speaker 8 (15:26):
Governor, you previously opposed an assault weapons ban, but it
only later in your political career did you change your position.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Wise, Michael Barry had become friends with school shooters.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I really saw in Pa.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I saw the Cajun Navy, my kuon as friends come
in to save us, and then we help them after that.
These moments inspire me and we shouldn't let this moment pass.
For all the sadness we see in North Carolina and
now with what's going on in Florida, we should take
a moment when we see real heroism. This is why
you build monuments, because then people want to do the
(16:00):
things that person did that the monument is built for.
I'd like to build a monument right here, right now
to w w n C in Asheville, North Carolina. We
have Mark Starling, who is the Grand puba of all
programming there. There's a wonderful story in the Citizen Times.
I've posted it to Facebook and to our page about
these guys. They they got shut in at the station.
(16:23):
They didn't complain. They said, we got a job to do.
We gotta we got to help the people. We got
to connect the people, we got to comfort the people.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And they did it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Mark Starling, do you have a sounder you can use
for Mark Starley, a propers Hold on, Mark, We've got it.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
We've got to do this properly.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Maybe a walk up song, something to pay tribute to
this man and his team and what they've done. It
really is incredible. We're working on your walk up. So
we didn't think about this ahead of time. You got
it all right? Here we go bring that down. This
is This is the article in the Citizen Times in Ashville,
North Carolina, where they broadcast trapped in the station by
(16:59):
falling trees, offline, no power, no water, negligible cell phone reception.
A team of local broadcasters stayed on air as Tropical Storm.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Helene brought flooding.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
And devastation to western North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
A week and a half later, they're still there.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Fielding NonStop phone calls from community members and trying to
connect those with needs to those with the skills and
resources to fill them. It began September twenty seventh, as
news director and morning show host Mark Starling rode out
tropical Storm Halane in iHeartRadio's West Asheville studio miles away.
His wife, Brandy, was braced in an suv with their
(17:43):
son and four dogs at the Sidingo station in Black Mountain,
watching waves come over the top of the I forty
five overpass. She'd been trying to get to the studio. Man,
I'm sorry, I get choked up because my wife and kids.
I was giving a speech in Baton Rouge when Harvey
hit and I couldn't get back into town and they
(18:04):
had to walk through the water chest high and dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Oh my goodness, Mark Starling.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I thought that if I made enough jokes at the beginning,
I'd keep from crying.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Brother, I'm not even kidding. You are a badass.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You guys on behalf of all the people of Asheville,
North Carolina. Thank you for what you guys have done.
This really is amazing, This really is amazing. I had
radio people from across the country reaching out to me
with this story is have you seen these guys and
see what they did? I mean, not every hero wears capes.
I hope you will.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I'm going to send you this audio.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I want you to share this conversation with everybody at
your station and tell them that this is truly inspirational.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
I really appreciate you seeing that. Mike. It's it's peter
hell of a time. But you know, Western North Carolina
is one of the most determined places I have ever lived.
These people here in the mountains are amazing, and as
much as I wish I could say that it was
(19:06):
it was me. I have a team that is the
most top notch radio professionals I have ever been blessed
to work with. And they're all music people. They're all
music radio people, and they stepped into a role that
was one of the most difficult, heart wrenching stories to
cover and they did it like total pros. They are
(19:28):
simply amazing. It's you know, fourteen days living in a
conference room has taught me an awful lot. I'll be
honest with you. Number One, make sure that you have
more to eat than just chili. If a hurricane is coming.
In radio, stations before you lock. The two guys in
the station with nothing to eat but chili, that seemed
(19:50):
like a cool, cruel trick from God. But you know,
we moved a hunt and we conquered that one. You know,
the way this took place was just really amazing. You know,
we had no water, no power, no cell phone, no internet,
and a buddy of mine had heard he was listening
when we actually we were on the air when when
the internet went out. It was I can tell you
it was two thirty nine and thirty six seconds when
(20:12):
the internet went out, and he heard me say that
over the air, and he immediately jumped into action. He
grabbed his hand rate handheld Ham radio. He got it
to the radio station. Somehow or another handed me that
hand radio and said, Mark, the Ham Radio Operators Network
is up and running. They're waiting for you. They're at
your disposal. They've got everything you need. And so from
(20:35):
that point on, my producer, Tank Spencer, who is yeah,
Window Tank, He's amazing. He's absolutely amazing. He is one
of the most incredible people I have ever met and
been blessed to work with. We sat and we listened
to the Ham radio. We drotted down the information that
we were getting. We would we were in regular programming,
that we would not regular programming off and we would
(20:57):
go back and do two or three hours of just
the information that we had gotten, live rescues that were happening.
You know, where was you know, where did you need
to stay away from? Where was the who was at
next risk for being wiped out by a flood? That
type of thing. Once that, once we got through that,
we spent about twelve to fourteen hours that way kind
of getting information out to the people. That was until
(21:17):
our fantastic engineering team at the iHeartRadio Emergency Engineering Crew
out of Atlanta, we saw them appear like apparitions in
the hallway with a Starlink satellite dish strapped to their back,
and I knew we were going to be okay. They
had us back on the air line no time, Amen,
brother Amen, Like we were on the air the whole time.
(21:39):
The only thing, the only medium that people could rely
on in this storm was AM and FM radio. And
if there was ever a story that could light a
fire under the butts of Congress and get them to
sign this AM bill, AM radio and cars, this should
be the story right here. It was. Once we were
(22:01):
back online, everything took a turn, Michael. Everything changed because
we had made it through the storm and now it
was time to survive. And that's exactly what we helped
our listeners do not necessarily survival life and death, surviving
by sanity. We gave people a place to call in
and tell us they were scared, to tell us that
(22:22):
they had lost everything, to tell us that they didn't
know what they were going to do, and we were
able to be a calming voice for them to tell them, look,
we are going to get through this together.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Mark, for just a moment to be okay, can you
spare just a few more moments. I want to talk
to you about what's going on in your community.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The station is ww INN. See his name is Mark Starling.
He is the program director there. They got they got
flooded in, they couldn't get out of the studio. They
made the most of it. I love these stories incredibly inspire.
Speaker 5 (22:52):
Everybody needs to be woke.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I just.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
We're talking to Mark Starling. He is the program director.
That means he runs.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
A program director is the person who decides who.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Goes on the air and the news that it's a
news talk station there in Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's called ww NC.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And with everything you've seen, body bags, a loss of life, devastation,
homes just being knocked down. Look, there are a lot
of heroes in the middle of all this. Elon Musk
is one of them. And Starling and bringing it in
the folks who've you know, from kid Rock to the
(23:38):
folks who've donated.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So many of you who may not be famous.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Have driven, have donated, have have sent It's incredible what
you've done. And it's at moments like this that you
see the best of the human spirit. Mark Starling is
our guest.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Let's talk about exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Where is your community in under I mean, I hate
to ask this question, but we've had a significant loss
of life and we've had a significant recovery effort. I
wouldn't wish this on the worst places in the world.
Talk a little bit about put your journalism hat on
and tell us where we are.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
So obviously, the recovery operation is ongoing, and it will
probably be ongoing for the better part of a year,
if not longer. There is power back in a lot
of places. There are still a lot of places that
do not have power. All of the city of Ashville
is out of Our water system was destroyed by eighty
five percent, so essentially it was demolished. The self service
(24:44):
is back. It still remains spotty in some places, but
folks are getting by right, folks, Folks are rallying together,
and they're taking care of each other. And you know,
one of the things that I've when I've been talking
to people, they said to me, they said, you know,
I've been I've never checked on my neighbors as much
as I've checked on my neighbors now. And the first
(25:04):
time I did it, I didn't even bother to ask
who they voted for before I cared if they were
all right. And I thought that was kind of funny,
because when you look at pre storm and poststorm, none
of that stuff that was ongoing pre storm matters, nothing
outside of western North Carolina matters right now to us now,
we are very much worried about our friends in Florida
with the hurricane that's coming in down there, but we
(25:28):
are concentrated here on really getting the infrastructure back online,
getting our people taken care of, getting them sheltered, getting
them fed, getting making sure they've got the supplies that
they need and most importantly, you know, getting our kids
back in school. We can't afford another COVID type situation
where our kids are out of school for this long
is the Has the federal response been lackluster? I would
(25:51):
say it has. As someone who would consider themselves a
victim of this storm, I can't be in my house
right now. Matter of fact, I was on my way
to my house when I got the call that to
come on the show. And look, FEMA doesn't necessarily do
things easily, but it's the federal government, and I don't
know why anybody would expect the federal government to make
anything easy or uncomplicated. You know, we are of course,
(26:15):
we have the stories of people not getting you know,
their aid or getting denied. And what we are finding
is is that if people are using the telephones who
apply for FEMA disaster assistance, or they're using the app,
they're almost getting denied immediately every time. And so we
have said go to the tent in person, take your
paperwork with you, and talk to a person. Nine times
(26:36):
out of ten, Michael, that decision is reversed and those
people are approved to get their disaster assistance so that
they can go on to the next step of applying
for a FEMA loan. There is a lot of misinformation
out there. There is a lot of half information out there.
Would I would ask that people just question everything they
read when it comes down to the response in Western
(26:59):
North Carolina. Again, do I think they relate to the game.
Considering the fact that we had eighty five to ninety
private helicopter pilots in the air before FEMA could even
blink their eyes and rescuing people and delivering starlink units.
Greg Biffle, Nascar driver, he picked somehow he got a
load of starlink unit and started flying around in his
(27:22):
own helicopter giving them to people so that they could
be connected again and they could get information. The response
from the private sector is what we'll save Western North Carolina.
He will have nothing to do with FEMA. Now, I
don't want to knock the people with FEMA on the ground.
These are not the bureaucrats that make this system so
damn confusing and so ridiculous to try to navigate. Some
(27:45):
of these people actually lost homes and lost lost family,
lost They were victims of this storm as well, you know.
So I've been asking people please try to walk with
some grace through this. I know it's difficult, and I'll
tell you, Michael, I've had several phone calls from people
that said, Mark, I took your advice and I just
tried to take my grace with me and really keep
(28:07):
a stiff upper lip and just deal with this at
a at a as rationally as I could. And you
know it worked out for them. Again, do I think
the federal response has been lackluster. I do, but we
are getting our people taken care of, and I do
believe that it will be the private sector that rebuild
western North Carolina and turns this place into the crown
(28:30):
jewel of the Blue Ridge Mountains as it once was.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
A man, I'm not gonna lie to you this.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
This chokes me up. Mark. You're you're I can tell
you're so tired.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
You've got the sand in the back of your eyes,
kind of tired, You've got the grit in your throat,
you've got the kind of foggy brain. But you also
know that this is a moment that you've been called
to and that you've got You've got to do what
you've got to do. This is when a man becomes
a man. This is when you put away your childish
(29:10):
things and do what your duty is to do. And
it's a it's a beautiful thing to hear. I'm going
to put you on the spot. And this is why
at awards ceremonies you never thank one person because you'll
forget someone. But I want you to tell me some
of the folks just just give their names so they
get a national audience. At ww NC radio that got
(29:35):
flooded in, stayed there, stayed on the air, served the
community despite it all in the in the radio world, folks,
I'll tell y'all, in our industry, the people who do
what we do, these guys are the heroes of the
moment because of what they've done. We're all talking about it.
Mention some of those names so that their families get
to hear them bragged on.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
So first and foremost, I have to say Tank Spencer.
Tank Spencer and I were at the station starting on
Thursday and we kind of rode this. We had asked
our other air staff and our sales staff. You know
the best thing that you can do for us during
the storm is you can be at home, because we're
going to need to reach out to you to find
out what's going on in your section of town. Tell
(30:17):
me what's happening in your section of town. So Tank
and I were there through the duration of the storm
at the radio station, trapped in there by trees that
had fallen. As soon as those trees got out, as
soon as they got those trees moved, our team came
in like the cavalry. Eddie Fox, Amanda Fox, Jeremy Green,
Josh Michael, Ariel Rhymer, Brian Hall, I mean, John hewittt
(30:42):
our engineer, you know the names are. It's just these
folks here. This air staff has been incredible. They were
given the impossible task of keeping people calm and being
a gentle voice when people were at their worst, when
(31:03):
when the when the worst time in a person's life.
They could have lost loved ones, they could have lost
their homes, and they were on edge. That staff, our
staff was able to provide these people with comfort. We've
cried with them on the air, We've laughed with them
on the air. We've we've met them in the front
(31:24):
parking lot of the radio station when they came by
and they just needed a hug, and they came by
with cookies, or they came by with a cast role
because in the South, yes we feel better. Everybody bring
me a cast roles, esta cast roles, or they answer
to anything. These people are just amazing, Michael. I mean
they just I can't say no good things about them.
(31:46):
They they have changed my view of humanity.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Mark Starling, hang tight right there, Program director w w
NC Asheville, North Carolina, hit so hard by the storm.
It's that time time time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Arry Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We pick off where we left off, we pick up,
we pick up where we left off yesterday. And that
is the desperate attempt by the Democrats to claw back
from the hole they've dug themselves in. You see, they
had to have Joe Biden because the people who actually
(00:49):
run the country, he's manageable. They've broken him and he's
just happy to be president and let them govern. But
it was getting so bad that through the summer it
looked like he might die before November, or fall out, collapse,
(01:12):
fall asleep. It was looking bad. On his hundredth birthday,
Jimmy Carter was wheeled out in his hospital bed that
he lives in and he was wheeled out.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They did a flyover.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
For President Carter on his hundredth birthday, and it was
like a corpse. You just laid there, his mouth a gog,
a gape, his eyes don't move. He's translucent and he's
just feather light and you don't actually know if he
(01:47):
is alive or not. It's kind of a weekend at
Bernie's Deal and you can't recognize that that was ever
Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I don't just so y'all know, I don't want to
live that long. I don't want to live that point.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's a corpse with the pulse, and that's terrible. And
I saw that on the screen and I thought, man,
Biden's even worse than the last time I saw him.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
But it turned out it wasn't Biden. It was Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So then they got to get him out and Biden,
bless his heart.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
This is like a movie character, you know, it's kind.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Of a forty eight Hours, the old Eddie Murphy what's
the guy's name.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
That was in there with him?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
No, okay, trading places. He's in the position now and
so he's kind of enjoying it, and Jill's really enjoying it.
So then they go with then they go with Kamala. Well,
that was a mistake. That was a real mistake. Your
favorite baseball team ever drafted the guy or traded for
(02:56):
a guy.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And they get to.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Town and you realize, oh my goodness, we had this guy,
I bray you, who I'm told is a nice guy.
The Astros brought him in and spent a bunch of
money on him, and it was an absolute bust. Or
for that matter, Deshaun Watson, and he was a bust
on a whole different level.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
He may go to prison for it.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But so here you got Kamala Harris and she's in
trouble and Tim Watz was supposed to help. But I
think he's worse than she is. I really do. So
they're trying to get her on TV shows and get
some interviews, and she is more unlikable than even Hillary Clinton,
and that's a fact. So they put her on the
Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Well, this is going to
(03:37):
be it. He so desperately wants to impress the Democrats
what a good little.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Minion he is.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And she rolled out a new accent, She rolled out
a new give this a listen.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Have you know empathy, man? You know for the suffering
of other people? Have you no sense of purpose?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Is that.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
A tinge of Jamaican? Or what is it again, Ramond?
Have you no empathy?
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Man? You know.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
The suffering of other people? Have you no sense of purpose?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Oddly enough, the things she says are exactly the thing
you think about her. She said that, she said over
the weekend, I'm not a pathological liar, like Trump. Odd
you would say that who announces they're not a pathological
(04:45):
liar except a pathological liar. That's what's so damn creepy
about this woman. You think about all the accents, and
it's in keeping. It's in keeping with everything about her.
Everything is fake. She's just trying it on. Tomorrow's all
prominal SiO, I'm from o liar, and the next day
(05:08):
it's a valley girl. There's no there there. That's just it.
There's no there there. She's just trying to be something
so that she can be elected whatever it is you
need her to be. Here's a little montage to take
us to the break of the phony accents she's tried
out over just the last few years.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Shank a union number for sick leave.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
You better thank a union member for paid leave. You
better thank a union member for vacation time. Let us
get to the next sixty four days.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And you all helped us win.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
In twenty twenty, and we're gonna do it again in
twenty twenty four, Yes we will. You know, the one
thing about all of us is we like hard work.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Hard work is good work. Hard work is good work.
The thing that we like about.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
Hard work is we have fun doing hard work.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Can I get a warness?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
All my life? I had to fight? It ain't over.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
With us.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
In government, we campaign with the plan uppercase t uppercase
p D plan, and then the environment is such that
we're expected to defend the plan, even when the first
time we roll it out there may be some glitches
and it's time to reevaluate and then do it again.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
It's just reasonable.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I support the Second Amendment, but it is reasonable to
say we need an assault weapons ban. It's reasonable to
say we need you versa background Jackson.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, we need red flag laws.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
And I will tell you when we get this done together,
my friend, and when I am president, I.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
Will take on the bad actors.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Who exploit a crisis.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Is at sake?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Leading up to January fifth, look at what's happening right
now in this state. We're looking across the country at
so much devastation, people who have lost family members, lost
time being able to go to work, lost time in
(07:37):
terms of our children's education, in the days of their
education they have missed. There's been so much loss these years,
and in particular this year, we're looking here in George
at the fact that one in seven families is describing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Their household is being hungry.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
We're in the midst of a hunger crisis in America
and it's hitting George hard. One in seven describing hunger
in their households. One in six Georgian families are describing
an aditability or difficulty to pay rent. One in four
(08:19):
small businesses in Georgia.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
To be able to afford a nice meal with Michael
Berry that's gotten harder because of Kamala Harris's policies.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
I become friends with school shooters.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
When you stop and think about how horrendously awful that
sounds to the parents of children murdered by school shooters,
you know, it's one thing. If you forgive the person
(08:56):
who takes your loved one's life, that is yours to
withhold or give that forgiveness. But for someone else to
forgive when they're not suffering. If we don't stand up
to this sort of nonsense. When the Boston massacre occurred,
(09:22):
I'm not going to say their name. I'm not going
to honor them by saying their name.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
The two brothers who were involved, the two Muslims who
had come here from I think Chechnya that.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Planned that all out. They maimed people.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
We had that beautiful woman on, Rebecca Gregory, what was
her name, Rebecca?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
She'd written a book. She ended up having.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Dozens and dozens of surgeries and finally she just decided
to take the leg off. It really really affected her life,
but she's so positive.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
She went on. People's lives were ruined and lost. It
was horrible.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Stone put them on the cover of the Rolling Stone
to quote doctor hook a great honor. And the picture
was taken I think it was Annie Leebwood's. It was
taken as if you know this was some sex symbol.
This guy massacred people and then killed the cops.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
This monster.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
There's there's a perversion on the left of making awful
people into misunderstood artists and wonderful people, and the rest
of us who feel authentic emotions are made out to
be awful.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, f you if it happens to you, how would
you feel? That's what I want to tell these people.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
That's what I want to tell these people on behalf
of the families who suffer in silence. Somebody pisses me off,
I can go on the air the next day and
rip them to open My son had a coach named
David Crook. He's an absolute monster of a human being.
(11:08):
He coached little League so that he could get his
kid every bit of time on the field and try
to get him a college scholarship to the school he
wanted to go to. And it's legend the kinds of
things he did, screaming at other kids. He screwed my
kid over, and I've got receipts. It's a pretty nasty story.
(11:31):
But I decided that I would make him regret that
for the rest of his life, and maybe, just maybe
he won't screw anyone else over as a result of it.
I have a platform. I am vindictive, I am outspoken.
I like conflict. Conflict resolve things. It's resolves things. It's
(11:51):
the crucible. But so many of these families that suffer
from what the Tim Waltz is and the Kamala Harris
is all do, so many of them are just quiet,
often Christian folks, Catholic Hispanics like Joscelyn Nunger's parents or
(12:13):
mother when she was raped and.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Murdered, tortured and murdered here in Houston.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
These aren't people who like me, can get in front
of a camera, and tell their story. They just suffer
and it makes me crazy. So when I hear Tim
Wallace say that, it makes me crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So I've become friends with school shooters. That's a non starter.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
He cannot be allowed to win this election now because
of that. But you think of all the things, Think
about our servicemen who were killed in Afghanistan because of
Biden's botched withdrawal, Think about the inflation, think about all
(13:01):
the horrible things that have happened on the Biden Harris
watch because of their policies. So yesterday on The View,
Kamala Harris is asked, would you do anything different?
Speaker 8 (13:17):
If anything, would you have done something differently than President
Biden during the past four years.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
There is not a thing that comes to mind in
terms of and I've been a part of most of
the decisions that have had impact.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
See, this is the delicate balance.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Does she say Biden's awful, elect me, I'll change everything,
or does she say I've really been running the country
for four years.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I'm ready, Because you can't have both.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Molly Ball is a senior political correspondent for The Wall
Street Journal. She was on CNN and she was asked
about that answer during the day yesterday on the view
and this is what she said.
Speaker 8 (14:00):
Done something differently than President Biden during the past four years.
Speaker 6 (14:05):
There is done a thing that comes to mind. Now,
what do you make of that?
Speaker 9 (14:11):
I'm surprised, frankly, that she doesn't have more to say
about this, given that she and her campaign know that
this is one of the main questions that voters have
about her, and one of the main things she's been
trying to establish as part of her candidacy is the
idea that she would represent a break from the past
four years and to not be able to come up
with something to say in that moment. She continues to
(14:35):
not be particularly nimble on her feet in a lot
of these interviews, and this is a very obvious question
that gave her an opportunity, frankly, to differentiate herself in
a way that would have made news, that would have
answered I think the curiosity of a lot of voters
who want to know how she would lead differently, and
she's not very specific in laying that out, and she
(14:56):
can't point to a decision she would have made differently,
which you know in an electorate that thinks that that
doesn't like the way this administration has led and that
doesn't like the track that the country is on. That
may not be a very satisfactory answer.
Speaker 6 (15:08):
I mean it's a delicate damp.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I mean, this isn't such a big thing to say normally,
but to have the media have CNN pointing out, hey lady,
if you say there are no regrets, that's a non starter.
Speaker 8 (15:26):
Governor, you previously opposed an assault weapons ban, but it
only later in your political career did you change your position.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Wise, Michael Barry had become friends with school shooters.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I really saw in Pa.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I saw the Cajun Navy, my kuon as friends come
in to save us, and then we help them after that.
These moments inspire me and we shouldn't let this moment pass.
For all the sadness we see in North Carolina and
now with what's going on in Florida, we should take
a moment when we see real heroism. This is why
you build monuments, because then people want to do the
(16:00):
things that person did that the monument is built for.
I'd like to build a monument right here, right now
to w w n C in Asheville, North Carolina. We
have Mark Starling, who is the Grand puba of all
programming there. There's a wonderful story in the Citizen Times.
I've posted it to Facebook and to our page about
these guys. They they got shut in at the station.
(16:23):
They didn't complain. They said, we got a job to do.
We gotta we got to help the people. We got
to connect the people, we got to comfort the people.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And they did it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Mark Starling, do you have a sounder you can use
for Mark Starley, a propers Hold on, Mark, We've got it.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
We've got to do this properly.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Maybe a walk up song, something to pay tribute to
this man and his team and what they've done. It
really is incredible. We're working on your walk up. So
we didn't think about this ahead of time. You got
it all right? Here we go bring that down. This
is This is the article in the Citizen Times in Ashville,
North Carolina, where they broadcast trapped in the station by
(16:59):
falling trees, offline, no power, no water, negligible cell phone reception.
A team of local broadcasters stayed on air as Tropical Storm.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Helene brought flooding.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
And devastation to western North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
A week and a half later, they're still there.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Fielding NonStop phone calls from community members and trying to
connect those with needs to those with the skills and
resources to fill them. It began September twenty seventh, as
news director and morning show host Mark Starling rode out
tropical Storm Halane in iHeartRadio's West Asheville studio miles away.
His wife, Brandy, was braced in an suv with their
(17:43):
son and four dogs at the Sidingo station in Black Mountain,
watching waves come over the top of the I forty
five overpass. She'd been trying to get to the studio. Man,
I'm sorry, I get choked up because my wife and kids.
I was giving a speech in Baton Rouge when Harvey
hit and I couldn't get back into town and they
(18:04):
had to walk through the water chest high and dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Oh my goodness, Mark Starling.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I thought that if I made enough jokes at the beginning,
I'd keep from crying.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Brother, I'm not even kidding. You are a badass.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You guys on behalf of all the people of Asheville,
North Carolina. Thank you for what you guys have done.
This really is amazing, This really is amazing. I had
radio people from across the country reaching out to me
with this story is have you seen these guys and
see what they did? I mean, not every hero wears capes.
I hope you will.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I'm going to send you this audio.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I want you to share this conversation with everybody at
your station and tell them that this is truly inspirational.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
I really appreciate you seeing that. Mike. It's it's peter
hell of a time. But you know, Western North Carolina
is one of the most determined places I have ever lived.
These people here in the mountains are amazing, and as
much as I wish I could say that it was
(19:06):
it was me. I have a team that is the
most top notch radio professionals I have ever been blessed
to work with. And they're all music people. They're all
music radio people, and they stepped into a role that
was one of the most difficult, heart wrenching stories to
cover and they did it like total pros. They are
(19:28):
simply amazing. It's you know, fourteen days living in a
conference room has taught me an awful lot. I'll be
honest with you. Number One, make sure that you have
more to eat than just chili. If a hurricane is coming.
In radio, stations before you lock. The two guys in
the station with nothing to eat but chili, that seemed
(19:50):
like a cool, cruel trick from God. But you know,
we moved a hunt and we conquered that one. You know,
the way this took place was just really amazing. You know,
we had no water, no power, no cell phone, no internet,
and a buddy of mine had heard he was listening
when we actually we were on the air when when
the internet went out. It was I can tell you
it was two thirty nine and thirty six seconds when
(20:12):
the internet went out, and he heard me say that
over the air, and he immediately jumped into action. He
grabbed his hand rate handheld Ham radio. He got it
to the radio station. Somehow or another handed me that
hand radio and said, Mark, the Ham Radio Operators Network
is up and running. They're waiting for you. They're at
your disposal. They've got everything you need. And so from
(20:35):
that point on, my producer, Tank Spencer, who is yeah,
Window Tank, He's amazing. He's absolutely amazing. He is one
of the most incredible people I have ever met and
been blessed to work with. We sat and we listened
to the Ham radio. We drotted down the information that
we were getting. We would we were in regular programming,
that we would not regular programming off and we would
(20:57):
go back and do two or three hours of just
the information that we had gotten, live rescues that were happening.
You know, where was you know, where did you need
to stay away from? Where was the who was at
next risk for being wiped out by a flood? That
type of thing. Once that, once we got through that,
we spent about twelve to fourteen hours that way kind
of getting information out to the people. That was until
(21:17):
our fantastic engineering team at the iHeartRadio Emergency Engineering Crew
out of Atlanta, we saw them appear like apparitions in
the hallway with a Starlink satellite dish strapped to their back,
and I knew we were going to be okay. They
had us back on the air line no time, Amen,
brother Amen, Like we were on the air the whole time.
(21:39):
The only thing, the only medium that people could rely
on in this storm was AM and FM radio. And
if there was ever a story that could light a
fire under the butts of Congress and get them to
sign this AM bill, AM radio and cars, this should
be the story right here. It was. Once we were
(22:01):
back online, everything took a turn, Michael. Everything changed because
we had made it through the storm and now it
was time to survive. And that's exactly what we helped
our listeners do not necessarily survival life and death, surviving
by sanity. We gave people a place to call in
and tell us they were scared, to tell us that
(22:22):
they had lost everything, to tell us that they didn't
know what they were going to do, and we were
able to be a calming voice for them to tell them, look,
we are going to get through this together.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Mark, for just a moment to be okay, can you
spare just a few more moments. I want to talk
to you about what's going on in your community.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The station is ww INN. See his name is Mark Starling.
He is the program director there. They got they got
flooded in, they couldn't get out of the studio. They
made the most of it. I love these stories incredibly inspire.
Speaker 5 (22:52):
Everybody needs to be woke.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I just.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
We're talking to Mark Starling. He is the program director.
That means he runs.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
A program director is the person who decides who.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Goes on the air and the news that it's a
news talk station there in Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's called ww NC.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And with everything you've seen, body bags, a loss of life, devastation,
homes just being knocked down. Look, there are a lot
of heroes in the middle of all this. Elon Musk
is one of them. And Starling and bringing it in
the folks who've you know, from kid Rock to the
(23:38):
folks who've donated.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So many of you who may not be famous.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Have driven, have donated, have have sent It's incredible what
you've done. And it's at moments like this that you
see the best of the human spirit. Mark Starling is
our guest.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Let's talk about exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Where is your community in under I mean, I hate
to ask this question, but we've had a significant loss
of life and we've had a significant recovery effort. I
wouldn't wish this on the worst places in the world.
Talk a little bit about put your journalism hat on
and tell us where we are.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
So obviously, the recovery operation is ongoing, and it will
probably be ongoing for the better part of a year,
if not longer. There is power back in a lot
of places. There are still a lot of places that
do not have power. All of the city of Ashville
is out of Our water system was destroyed by eighty
five percent, so essentially it was demolished. The self service
(24:44):
is back. It still remains spotty in some places, but
folks are getting by right, folks, Folks are rallying together,
and they're taking care of each other. And you know,
one of the things that I've when I've been talking
to people, they said to me, they said, you know,
I've been I've never checked on my neighbors as much
as I've checked on my neighbors now. And the first
(25:04):
time I did it, I didn't even bother to ask
who they voted for before I cared if they were
all right. And I thought that was kind of funny,
because when you look at pre storm and poststorm, none
of that stuff that was ongoing pre storm matters, nothing
outside of western North Carolina matters right now to us now,
we are very much worried about our friends in Florida
with the hurricane that's coming in down there, but we
(25:28):
are concentrated here on really getting the infrastructure back online,
getting our people taken care of, getting them sheltered, getting
them fed, getting making sure they've got the supplies that
they need and most importantly, you know, getting our kids
back in school. We can't afford another COVID type situation
where our kids are out of school for this long
is the Has the federal response been lackluster? I would
(25:51):
say it has. As someone who would consider themselves a
victim of this storm, I can't be in my house
right now. Matter of fact, I was on my way
to my house when I got the call that to
come on the show. And look, FEMA doesn't necessarily do
things easily, but it's the federal government, and I don't
know why anybody would expect the federal government to make
anything easy or uncomplicated. You know, we are of course,
(26:15):
we have the stories of people not getting you know,
their aid or getting denied. And what we are finding
is is that if people are using the telephones who
apply for FEMA disaster assistance, or they're using the app,
they're almost getting denied immediately every time. And so we
have said go to the tent in person, take your
paperwork with you, and talk to a person. Nine times
(26:36):
out of ten, Michael, that decision is reversed and those
people are approved to get their disaster assistance so that
they can go on to the next step of applying
for a FEMA loan. There is a lot of misinformation
out there. There is a lot of half information out there.
Would I would ask that people just question everything they
read when it comes down to the response in Western
(26:59):
North Carolina. Again, do I think they relate to the game.
Considering the fact that we had eighty five to ninety
private helicopter pilots in the air before FEMA could even
blink their eyes and rescuing people and delivering starlink units.
Greg Biffle, Nascar driver, he picked somehow he got a
load of starlink unit and started flying around in his
(27:22):
own helicopter giving them to people so that they could
be connected again and they could get information. The response
from the private sector is what we'll save Western North Carolina.
He will have nothing to do with FEMA. Now, I
don't want to knock the people with FEMA on the ground.
These are not the bureaucrats that make this system so
damn confusing and so ridiculous to try to navigate. Some
(27:45):
of these people actually lost homes and lost lost family,
lost They were victims of this storm as well, you know.
So I've been asking people please try to walk with
some grace through this. I know it's difficult, and I'll
tell you, Michael, I've had several phone calls from people
that said, Mark, I took your advice and I just
tried to take my grace with me and really keep
(28:07):
a stiff upper lip and just deal with this at
a at a as rationally as I could. And you
know it worked out for them. Again, do I think
the federal response has been lackluster. I do, but we
are getting our people taken care of, and I do
believe that it will be the private sector that rebuild
western North Carolina and turns this place into the crown
(28:30):
jewel of the Blue Ridge Mountains as it once was.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
A man, I'm not gonna lie to you this.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
This chokes me up. Mark. You're you're I can tell
you're so tired.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
You've got the sand in the back of your eyes,
kind of tired, You've got the grit in your throat,
you've got the kind of foggy brain. But you also
know that this is a moment that you've been called
to and that you've got You've got to do what
you've got to do. This is when a man becomes
a man. This is when you put away your childish
(29:10):
things and do what your duty is to do. And
it's a it's a beautiful thing to hear. I'm going
to put you on the spot. And this is why
at awards ceremonies you never thank one person because you'll
forget someone. But I want you to tell me some
of the folks just just give their names so they
get a national audience. At ww NC radio that got
(29:35):
flooded in, stayed there, stayed on the air, served the
community despite it all in the in the radio world, folks,
I'll tell y'all, in our industry, the people who do
what we do, these guys are the heroes of the
moment because of what they've done. We're all talking about it.
Mention some of those names so that their families get
to hear them bragged on.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
So first and foremost, I have to say Tank Spencer.
Tank Spencer and I were at the station starting on
Thursday and we kind of rode this. We had asked
our other air staff and our sales staff. You know
the best thing that you can do for us during
the storm is you can be at home, because we're
going to need to reach out to you to find
out what's going on in your section of town. Tell
(30:17):
me what's happening in your section of town. So Tank
and I were there through the duration of the storm
at the radio station, trapped in there by trees that
had fallen. As soon as those trees got out, as
soon as they got those trees moved, our team came
in like the cavalry. Eddie Fox, Amanda Fox, Jeremy Green,
Josh Michael, Ariel Rhymer, Brian Hall, I mean, John hewittt
(30:42):
our engineer, you know the names are. It's just these
folks here. This air staff has been incredible. They were
given the impossible task of keeping people calm and being
a gentle voice when people were at their worst, when
(31:03):
when the when the worst time in a person's life.
They could have lost loved ones, they could have lost
their homes, and they were on edge. That staff, our
staff was able to provide these people with comfort. We've
cried with them on the air, We've laughed with them
on the air. We've we've met them in the front
(31:24):
parking lot of the radio station when they came by
and they just needed a hug, and they came by
with cookies, or they came by with a cast role
because in the South, yes we feel better. Everybody bring
me a cast roles, esta cast roles, or they answer
to anything. These people are just amazing, Michael. I mean
they just I can't say no good things about them.
(31:46):
They they have changed my view of humanity.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Mark Starling, hang tight right there, Program director w w
NC Asheville, North Carolina, hit so hard by the storm.
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