12-1-25 Scott Sloan Show

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you want to be an American?

Speaker 2 (00:03):
All right, it's a great return after the big stuffing
slowly here seven hundred ww you welcome to it, and
welcome to the cold. And with that cold means energy
demand is starting to peak again. And we take it
for granted because we have this little thing called a
thermostat and we set it and we don't you know, here,
kick on you. Oh, thank goodness, we've got some heat.
And you really don't think about it until you get
the bill. And the reason why we get the bills

(00:25):
as high as they are is because of demand. So
the surge is driven by well, look look around us
or Butler County, Columbus. Right, we've got these data centers
going up.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
AI.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
We have electrification of vehicles. Twenty percent of all new
car sales are either hybrid or the nine percent are
just full of evs. Heat pump sales are going up.
That's your air conditioning and heating. It's a heat pump now.
And six out of ten heating installations here in Ohio
are heat pumps. And so we're especially vulnerable things like
brownouts because the supply doesn't meet the capacity in them.

(01:00):
So the Buck Guy Institute's tasked with working with the
US Department of Energy on solutions for this and Ray
Hedderman is here once again to discuss Ray.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Welcome back, Hi Ben, I'm doing well, Scott, Thank you
for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
All Right, that's the thirty thousand foot view down to
Earth here. What's really driving this whole thing? But I'd
imagine part of this has to do with innovation is
the regulatory barriers. Typically with energy, we see a lot
of that.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Absolutely, I mean, let's just recap what's happened. Normally, energy
projects take a long time to build out, and energy
demand was flat, so you're not going to go out
and you're not going to build a whole bunch of
new power plants if you're not expecting customers. Then all
of a sudden, the last few years, you know, artificial intelligence.

(01:47):
Everybody has phones, people are looking at Instagram, Facebook, you know,
using AI. AI takes about ten times as much power
today to get that answer as a Google question ten
years ago. So energy demand is skyrocketing and so now
we need those data centers. The problem is, Scott, regulatory

(02:10):
regulations had made it so painful to build energy power
plants that we're simply not getting electricity online fast enough,
and that's where we're going to see start seeing power spikes,
potential brownouts. We're actually seeing data centers being told no,
you can't be built because we don't have enough energy
to meet the needs. What we've done at the Buckeye

(02:33):
Institute is work with state lallmakers and now we're working
with federal regulators to say this is what needs to
be happen so we can build the electricity to keep
electricity affordable and reliable.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
How I just also has to do with the political
whipso of Washington, DC. Whereas you had Trump We're going
to do the Keystone XL pipeline. Great, we're gonna roll
that thing out, and then Biden comes along says, no,
we're not doing it anymore, and trust bag at office
will we're going to start doing it again.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Well, you know you've seen that. You've seen like the
Trump administration saying hey, we're going to close intermittent energy.
You've had Democrats saying we're going to phase out coal plants.
I mean the last year the Biden administration, they said
we're going to eliminate basically make it almost impossible for
coal and natural gas plants to operate. That's why you
know pjm Our energy grid that Ohio shares with a

(03:22):
lot of other Blue states on the Atlantic Ocean. Dave
Yost many other states sued the federal government saying, you
can't do this because if you're turning off coal plants
are twilling off solar plants, where's our electricity going to
come from? That's dependable. I mean, if you look outside Ohio,
right here in central Ohio, it's not an uncommon December day, right,

(03:45):
it's great, the sun doesn't shine as much. Solar is
great for some states, it's not ideal for the state
of Ohio and scott The other thing that's happened is
you've had a lot of other states that have made
a big deal, like New Jersey. Again, we share the
energy grew with New Jersey. They destroyed their coal plants,
that destroyed natural gas, and they based it all on

(04:08):
optional wind and intermittent injury sources. But those simply don't
have the same reliability or produce the same amount of
base load power, and so now do New Jersey. A
lot of other states have found themselves in an energy
crisis and are scrambling to meet the growing demand.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Ray.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
If you travel through well the central part of the
state where you are, but up north a little bit,
or to drive Indianapolis to Chicago, you see a ton
of wind farms, a lot of turbines out there. But
as good as that, as fine as this is how
much of energy productions that represent? What percentage?

Speaker 3 (04:45):
I thought them five percent? In the state of Ohio. Look,
we get most of our stuff from natural gas. Historically,
Ohio has been a coal heavy steak. Coal produced the
majority of Ohio's electricity into the last ten years, when
natural gas, you know, you being able to tap into
the shell crescent, has taken the place. So we get

(05:05):
most of our energy from natural gas, coal, nuclear, and
then it falls down the solar and winds. And again
you know that's true for a lot of states, particularly
on those of us east of the Mississippi. You know,
we get a lot from natural gas nuclear. And what
we're seeing right now again is, you know, because of
the spike, people are scrambling to get power online. You know,

(05:28):
a Microsoft, for example, has investing hundreds of millions of
dollars to re open three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
That tells you what businesses are looking at when they
see the demand for future energy production and what they
need to do. And really what needs to happen is
Washington needs to say, Okay, why are we not seeing

(05:49):
power plants come online? We see prices are increasing. You
open up your electricity bill, you know, you know when
it's time to rebid, you're going to be facing higher
electricity prices. So why aren't we seeing more production being built?
And part of it comes back to those regulatory barriers,
you know, the blocks that are at the local level,
state level, federal level, lawsuits for environmental review those have

(06:14):
all created a massive choke point that means that we're
really facing a deficit and electricity production that is choking
out the growing economy.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
I mean you mentioned the environmental reviews. How much does
that bogg the process down?

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Well, you know, you take a look at there's so
many album and what you're seeing is nif the environmental
review that by the way, people on both the left
and right are saying, hey, this is not meant to
be a weapon to slow things down. We've seen that
being able to slow those productions down for years. That's
the National Environmental Policy Act about four and a half

(06:50):
years slowing down from the review connections. And so you
know what happens, Scott is the way regulations work is
they move in sequence. Right. It's kind of like a
to train, right, you know, one car starts moving, the
next car, the next car, the next car. So if
you take you know, a year at the local level,
a year at the state level, a year at the

(07:10):
federal level, you're taking four and a half years or
some environmental reviews. You know, you can sit there and
be taking your six plus years for some big power
plants to be built. And we've seen action take at
the state level, you know. With House Bill fifteen, Ohio
is saying, look, we need to speed this up. We
need to make sure that regulators have only a certain

(07:31):
amount of time to review so they can't delayies in
those projects. And we'd like to see the same thing
done at the federal level, because I mean, at least
we can still build things here in Ohio. Other states
that have more state regulations, like California, New Jersey, for example,
they can't build anything because people were able to block

(07:52):
production using these rules, using lawsuits, which means electricity prices
are going to remain high.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Ry Hetterman's here Buckeye Institute working with the US Department
of Energy and Solutions to fast track improving our infrastructure
and power supply because we are near at peak demand
and you know with the winter months here too, we
also have data centers and the light going online. The
demand for electricity is greater than ever, and yet the
infrastructure is way behind. We've often talked about brownouts and

(08:20):
blackouts that have happened at West and those it's and
it's you know, I don't know how close we are,
but they say, certainly the Midwest ray is very vulnerable
to this because of those data centers are going online
at record numbers. These are like small towns, and I
think most people don't understand just how much energy one
of these data centers requires.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah. Absolutely, you know, it's basically you can sit there
and say, look, you know, one of these data centers
can consume more energy than the Manhattan right in New
York City. And so that just kind of called everybody
by surprise, and so they're saying what can be done. Well,
you know, one of the things that we again that
Hospital fifteen did that I'm a big fan of, is

(08:58):
what we call behind the and what that means is
if you're building a data center, you can actually build
your own power plants, you know, to directly power your business.
You can fast track that through the regulatory process and
be able to power your own business. And that's kind
of what we want to see the market working. We've
seen some of those basically power plants be approved. One

(09:23):
was approved just before Thanksgiving. I think those type of
solutions right where businesses working together, maybe they're going to
share a power plant with another business, those are the
type of solutions that are going to get us out
of this crisis and help us move ahead because relying
on the way we've been doing things simply doesn't work. Scott,

(09:43):
to give you an idea, just very quickly, there are
one hundred and ninety seven thousands power requests to pjm
Ohio's grid. One hundred and ninety seven thousand by somebody
who wants to generate power to connect to the PGM grid.
To PJAM doesn't have enough personnel to get through them.
And part of the problem is, you know, these are

(10:05):
everything from five megawatts solar and when smaller production plants,
but that takes the same amount of power, has a
two hundred and fifty megawatt natural gas plant. So, you know,
we have a lot of requests that are going online.
People are gaining the system, flogging it up, and so
we just need a way to cut through prioritize better

(10:28):
which power plants are going to deliver reliable energy to
keep prices load for consumers, to keep light time for businesses.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense if you've
private interested. Hey, you know what, we'll build our own
infrastructure here. The hell with you guys. What kind of
power plants are we're seeing going online?

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Sure, so right now, we've seen a lot of natural
gas here in Ohio work and moving forward on that.
You've also seen some renewable behind the meter as well,
you know. I mean people sometimes will drive by you
might see a big windmill at a car dealership for example,
you know, trying to produce power on site to deliver

(11:05):
to those businesses. Other states are starting to see experiments
with small nuclear power plants.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
Again.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
You know, I mentioned Microsoft, for example, investing in reopening
Three Mile Island for the benefit of Microsoft by themselves.
Other companies are also contracting to build a smaller nuclear
power plants using hydro, using geothermal energy. You know, there's
a lot of ways to be able to get electricity

(11:34):
in businesses or reacting the way you'd expect them to do,
what makes the most sense, what's most cost competitive, and
where my business is located. And so that's what the
beauty of what we see kind of free enterprise working
out is coming up with solutions and trying not to
burden rate payers. You know, that's what we want to
make sure is that we have affordable energy and businesses

(11:56):
aren't taking advantage of rate payers and hopefully not you know,
seeking out special tax breaks. It would be great to
roll back some tax and centers handout to big industry,
big utilities, big tech along the way to make sure
taxes are low, energy prices are kept affordable.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, no, Ray, it makes a lot of sense. And
I'm a big proponent of these small nuclear plants, and
I think, you know, once again, it's a great example
of how private industry will lead the way and solve
the problems that government can't. For those who believe in
government solving all problems, well there you go. There they're
actually standing in the way. Are there going to be
some trials, tribulations, heartbreaks, accidents, etcetera. Sure, there always is

(12:33):
when it comes to technology, sadly, but that's part of
the learning and growing experience as long as those responsible
are held to a standard. That said, though, I think
this is the advent of new power generation, and I
think about you know, some of the like Microsoft reopening
through Mile Island, or smaller like suitcase type of nuke

(12:53):
facilities or machines that produce enough energy to fire a plant.
But it also is hoped to typical America. I mean,
imagine the day where and I don't know if it
will be in our lifetime, but imagine that the technology
gets so good you just buy one of these power
units on Amazon, they ship it to you, You PLoP
it in like a battery, and it lasts probably longer
than you're alive, and then you know, it goes back

(13:14):
to the recycling center. What they do with they spent
phil Rodgs is yet to be determined, but nonetheless, it
seems like neighborhoods Hoa's small towns will have their own
many nuclear plant to power or we may just have
one in our own house in fifty years.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Yeah, you know, Scott, that's exactly right. I mean, you're
looking at the space. Talking to people involved in these businesses,
both from producers and high energy consumers. There's a lot
of innovation that's going on through private enterprise. People saying, hey,
you know what, let's try to use gia thermal right
out west where it makes her sense. You know, given

(13:54):
the geology out there. You know, they're actually experimenting drilling
down to the Earth's cross being able to tie about
some of that geothermal energy. That's a great solution for
some of those companies, you know, small neuclear reactors. You
are seeing more businesses pulling together and basically forming micro grids,
you know, behind the meter. That a way to say, hey,

(14:16):
let's go on our own power sources so we don't
have to wait a couple of years to go through
the PJAM regulations. That's the type of innovation I think
that has really made this country great. That's why I'm
really optimistic about the future because we know what the
need is, we know the demands there, businesses know what
they need to do to power themselves, and we have

(14:37):
a solution for the future. You know, we can sit there,
work together, innovate, development these things and really keep America
moving forward. And I look at the opposite end of
the spectrum. Right again, I looked to Europe, where a
few years ago, you know, they came out and said,
we can't compete with the United States because our electricity
prices are so unaffordable. You know, German MENUF factoring has

(15:00):
fallen off a clock because electricity is so important to
the manufacturing sector. Europe made terrible policy choices by trying
to regulate this market. I am thankful that here in Ohio,
you know, we're making different choices, moving to remove regulations
on businesses, to encourage innovation, to encourage investment, to try

(15:21):
to boost energy so to keep prices lower.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, but in Ohio even will the bureaucracy and will
the status quo machine keep this from moving forward?

Speaker 3 (15:32):
I you know, Scott, I'm optimistic, I think because we're
already seeing this working again. You know, we've seen a
couple of billion dollars behind the meter projects already move forward. Right,
So these private businesses are putting their money where their
hopes are. That's what I'm looking at again. The Public
Utilities Commission of Ohio is approving some of these projects

(15:54):
are all going to be private behind the meter to
power some of these data centers to power some of
these manufacturing plants. I think Ohio is building a model
that should be emulated copied by other states. You know,
we're able to take advantage of it, and if federal
regulators can move faster, that'll be better for us as well.

(16:14):
But HP fifteen, I think is a really good piece
of legislation that is encouraging a lot of private enterprise.
And again, you know, reading from the news reports, reading
the filings before the Public Utilities Commission, there's billions of
dollars of private investment that's taking place right now thanks
to HP fifteen, allowing businesses to power up more quickly.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
All right, he's ray headed been to the Buckeye Institute
working with the Department of Energy on solutions to solve
our power crisis, and it's looming. It really is. Imagine
a day like, for example, class at twenty twenty five, Ray,
you show them a picture of a flat circular thing
with a hole in the middle. It's kind of translucent,
and they don't know what that. It's called a compact
disc Imagine class of twenty one twenty five when you

(16:57):
show them a picture of a utility poll with all
those wires out, and I go, what the hell is that?
Hopefully that, hopefully that's what the future is here at
the Buckeye's date. All the best, buddy, Thanks.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Again, take a lot, Scott, always a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Take care of. Let's get a news update in in
just a few minutes here moving forward on the Scottslan Show.
Another thing that is facing extinction social Security. Some sobering
news about your Social Security benefits that Washington doesn't want
you to know. That's some clickbait right there. Hang out,
we'll get into it right after news on seven hundred WLW.

(17:29):
There come the white death two to four inches expected
tonight and this time tomorrow when their weather advisor and
affected seven two to four inches for most of the
tri state, which means the good solid half inch. Maybe
you have to use it's like a decoder kind of thing.

(17:50):
You have to use a Enigma machine, a Cincinnati climate
terist Enigma machine. Go, okay, two to four inches, what
what's that code? Let's that breakdown? About half inch? About
half inch? But hey, you know what, we will still
lose our freaking minds. We will still lose our minds
driving on the roads, even if it's the half it,
even if just the thread of snow will cause us
to panic, work ourselves up into a froth and just shiver,

(18:12):
not as a cold because of nervous energy. Scott Flow
and I hope you had a great holiday Thanksgiving a
week whether it's maybe a day off, two days off,
maybe you had a whole stretch. Hopefully you had time
to uncharge and eat a lot of food, watch a
lot of football. I know I did. And by the way,
Bengals fans, you're welcome. My Bills beat the Steelers quite
handily yesterday in Pittsburgh. As the Bills then host the

(18:37):
Bengals next weekend on Sunday. I'm actually going to that game.
Maybe you are too. We'll see up there. Buy me
a beer. I'll tell you where to go, yeah, I
And honestly, you know this going into it. Man, if
the Bengals can stop the run, I think the Bengals
beat the Bills, I really do. That team is just
something not right. Well that's the injuries and a bunch

(18:57):
of other things that excuse making. But it was a
fun though the enemy that is the Pittsburgh Steelers, just
watching them get it handed to it yesterday on their field,
Cam Hayward and his I don't know, generally don't see
that a alignment going at a quarterback like he did
with Josh Allen. I just I don't know what the
beef was about. I still still don't understand it. But

(19:18):
a Ken he got shut up pretty good, as did
Patrick Queen, as did Aaron Rodgers for that manner. Nonetheless,
it's always good when you wake up and you revel
in a Bengals win on Thursday night and then Sunday
watch these Steelers crap down their leg and interestingly enough,
all James are penon in the last hour of the
show like eleven thirty five. Normally wouldn't do that because

(19:39):
they play Bengals play Thursday. But the biggest Cincinnati sports
news right now is the fact that Bengals have a
path to the playoffs because the Ravens are a top
at six and six Pittsburgh six and six since he
four and eight. So let's say the Bengals go and
beat the Bills on Sunday and at Heimar Bengals are

(20:01):
five and eight Pittsburgh. I don't know how I know
they're favored in two of their last five games. I'm
not quite sure how exactly that works out, but you've
got Steelers and Ravens on Sunday, and that feels like
all the marbles right there for those two teams, and
you kind of want the Steelers in that one to

(20:22):
lose because that does help the Bengals, believe it. I
will get more of that later, but so the Ravens
go to seven and six, Pittsburgh dropped the six and
seven Bengals, if they win, go to five and eight,
and then after that, I mean, you look at the
schedule after next weekend. Baltimore still has the Patriots and
the Packers to play, and if you're a Ravens fan,
how do you feeling about one of those teams? Those feel
like losses. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh has the Lions and Baltimore again,

(20:47):
and the Bengals have Miami, the Cardinals and the Browns.
That's a pretty easy path than the Bengals. Now for
the Bengals, but you know, we've seen the Bengals this
season and some other seasons that matter, play down to
their level competition. So you know they'll bit, they watch it,
they'll go and they'll go beat they beat Baltimore, they'll
beat the Bills. They go on this run and they
wind up losing the last give of the season the Browns

(21:09):
and missing the playoffs or something like that. But god,
you hope not. There's a chance here the Bengals. Uh,
just a take outside, so we'll see what happens here
coming up. It's really gonna get interesting. Met It's almost
like the NFL and the schedule makers know what the
hell they're doing. They know what the hell they're doing.

(21:29):
I want to get into I want to do this.
You got to do this first. Well, let me rewind
a second here. I mentioned you know how they weekend
everybody getting their family, friends and stuff like that, and
maybe you had a really bad Thanksgiving. There's always people
have bad Christmases, bad holidays. In this case, bad Thanksgiving.
You did not have. This is my uplifting segment of

(21:50):
the show. I'm just gonna bump this up to here
right now. Should play like happy Christmas music, because if
you think your family's messed up, it's it's the Cops.
And now, why did that TV show Cops work so
well for so many years? It's because you know, you
could have a really effed up life, but you've never
bet on cops. I mean, it could be worse. I've

(22:12):
never bet on cops. You know, my family maybe dysfunctional,
We've got problems, and you know there's there's jail and
drugs and all sorts of weird stuff got on in
my family. But we've never been on cops. That's we're
not that bad. We're not cops bad. This is the
same line of thing. You may have a bad holiday
with your relatives to come. My god, I can't believe

(22:32):
the holidays are here. This is here's two stories to
lift you up in a cops sort of way. Guy's
name is Ben Crump, not that Ben Crump, different Ben Crumb.
Benjamin Crump, twenty one year old man in Illinois, lives
with his parents in suburban Illinois. Looks like a nice neighborhood.
Seven thirty on Thanksgiving, seven thirty pm, cops respond to
that home with a call that he was antagonizing and

(22:55):
arguing with two others in the home. With other people
in the home, I should say deputies. They show up,
they deescalate the situation. He agreed, Hey, I'll keep to
myself for the rest of the night. I'm not gonna
get in fights with the family. Hour later, deputies get
a call same address. The house is on fire, so
fire responds. Police respond. They roll up, they see Crump

(23:19):
standing there with a knife on the side of the road,
about a block away from the house. Police say, well,
we're just out here. They take him to custody and
Krump the reason. Here's what happened. Crump was told by
his family he was going to get kicked out of
the house after Antiza. Okay, that's it, young man, twenty
one years old. You get We're not having this on Thanksgiving.

(23:39):
You know what, You're gonna have to find a new
place to live. You're twenty one, Get the hell out.
At that point, I left the residence, came back, went
to his bedroom with a cand of gas line lit
his bedroom on fire. Everyone got out. Everyone is safe,
but the house sustained major damage and now no one
has a place to live, especially Ben Crump. Story two.

(24:02):
It all starts with alcohol. Fifty eight year old man
in Maryland, Paul Susie is his name. He's drinking with
his wife. Three twelve year old girls and their parents
going door to door Friday night, knocked on his door twice,
announcing themselves as Christmas carols. We're gonna send some Christmas carols,
and you often don't see that anymore. You don't see people,

(24:23):
as a matter of fact, as long as I've been alive.
But don't think I've heard someone knock on my door
singing Christmas carols. Anyway, this happens there, and after hearing this,
he walks to his bay window from inside the home
and responds appropriately, because anytime you would get twelve year
olds and their parents singing Christmas carols about the season,
about Sanna, about God, about the birth of Jesus, the

(24:47):
sane and reasonable person would respond by pointing a gun
at the girls, which they ran away to the street.
Parents called nine one one. Paul Susie's in jail years
old pointing a gun at twelve year old Christmas callers.
So an illustration there. You may have had a maybe

(25:07):
a rough Thanksgiving, maybe Uncle Bob, uncle ned whomever. Yeah,
you know, one too many egg nogs, or maybe you
know they're just jerks. They're just a holes. Every family
has them, and you show up to break bread and
bond with family and realizing God, this happens every year.
Or maybe it was just one of those things someone
showed up and it was a bad time had by all.

(25:30):
And I feel badly for you if you didn't have
a lovely Thanksgiving. But again, once again, you may have
had bad, bad Thanksgiving, but at least you weren't on cops.
You weren't cops. Awful bad, Ben Crump, Paul Susie, thank
you for lifting the rest of us up. Scott Sloan
seven hundred World, Scott Flows Shows, seven hundred, WW News

(25:55):
and NUDG just about five. Nasha Aderige Martinez from c
on the show Coming up today, Cyber Monday. We spent
an ungodly money record amount of money on Black Friday.
Today Cyber Monday expected to break all records again today.
And all of this stuff is to be delivered to
your house. You know what that means. It's also Christmas
for porch pirates, which you need to know about that,

(26:18):
and technology and other things to help make sure that
when Santa drops packages off your house and gets stolen
by self absorbed idiots. Nonetheless, that's coming up at ten
oh six this morning. So forty years. We've known this
problem with building for forty forty years, and now the
roosters come home. The chickens come home to rooster. Maybe

(26:39):
the rooster is growing. I'm not quite sure what the
metaphor is there. But Senate candidates in next year's midterms,
so you hear a lot about midterm elections, they will
be facing the looming and solvency of Social Security by
the end of their term. So US Senate candidates who
get elected next yar's midterms will have to do with

(27:00):
the Social Security crisis in about what eleven months, proving
once again there's no free lunch. In twenty thirty three,
the Social Security retirement fund is set to be depleted,
and that means at this point in twenty thirty three,
if nothing happens, recipients would see a cut to their
monthly checks. Like, for example, the average beneficiary is about

(27:24):
two thousand dollars a month, you would see that cut
down to just over fifteen hundred dollars. That's a pretty
good haircut right there. That's a devastating loss for a
lot of people, and nobody wants it to happen, But
because of forty years of an action, it's about to.
And what's driving the whole thing, and so you understand

(27:45):
what's at play here, is we had this huge baby
boom generation that are now retired will soon be. The
youngest boomers are sixty one, oldest are seventy nine. And
we are not repopulating our country at the same rate.
And in addition to that, we are declining in immigration, so
to speak, because of some policies. And maybe that's not

(28:07):
fair too, because we do have plenty of h one
b you know, visa workers in like immigranted in the
United States, for sure, but we're just we're not having
procreative sex anymore. Look, but that way, we're not having
babies at the same rate. In the math, is this
back in the day, you know, thirty years ago, forty
years ago, we had three point four workers and that

(28:28):
would be people who are earning an income and paying
in the system for Social security at the turn of
the twenty first century, and that is now from three
point four workers in what two thousand, early late nineties,
early two thousands, that's down to about two point seven
now and in the next ten years I'll go down
to two point three. So you have fewer workers that

(28:49):
are paying Social Security taxes and end result is there's
less money there. So we have a three hundred and
fifty milli billion dollars should say, three hundred and fifty
billion dollars shortfall for twenty thirty three that trust fund.
That's only about one percent of the GDP. So you
could come up with a solution here, but there's got
to be the stomach to be able to do that.

(29:09):
And we see in a Congress that is constantly enacted,
they just are neutered. Everything now was done by executive order.
Just saw a story this morning it said Trump is
going to undo all Biden's auto pens executive orders so
that it beats out as meaningless and right now, look
at the government gridlock, look at the shutdown, and that

(29:31):
was because well of congressional and action. So you get
three things they can do, and one be raised taxes
and be cut benefits or change how social security works.
So you probably will do that and kick the can
down the road, I would think, because that's what they're
good at. Go, well, you know what we'll do is
we'll we'll take some more money from here and we'll
transfer here, and we'll be solving it for a while.

(29:53):
I mean, this is how they continually fund government Continuing
resolution after continuing resolution. The curs are fast and furious.
But again, we've only balanced the budget twice in my
lifetime and my voting lifetime. I should say, what gives
you hope that you're going to fix the biggest problem
of all and that would be Social Security? And that, I,
believe it or not, is now. It's on the radar.
It's going to happen. People are elected to the Senate

(30:16):
next year this time next year are going to have
to deal with the crisis because that bomb is going
to explode on their watch, let alone the debt bomb
and everything else. Interesting times in which we live, for sure,
get a news update in today being Cyber Monday, off
a absolutely prosperous Black Friday, we are having a record
number of online purchases, but also things ship to our homes,

(30:37):
our businesses and the like, and that also means it's
a heyday for porch pirates, for thieves. How to combat
that with my friend from Senet here, Nasha Aderitz Martinez,
she's on the show next. We're also preparing for some
winter weather. The forecasters say and our friends at Channel
nine say two to four inches possible. We'll find out

(30:57):
what happens. That's supposed to hit some time tonight and
to the commute tomorrow. So just f y a full
update there, traffic and much more just ahead on the
home of the best Bengals coverage, seven hundred WWT Cincinnati.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Do you want to be an America?

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Let's go back an a Monday morning Scott's Flowing Show
on seven hundred WLWT. Just spend a little money this week.
Everybody spent money this weekend. You're kidding me?

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (31:24):
I record twelve billion dollars. Most twelve billion dollars was
spent online during Black Friday sales. Almost all those islands
little shipped, meaning it's Christmas for thieves too, And that
nearly twelve billion is just a couple of days of
the holiday buying season. Today is Cyber Monday, the granddaddy
of the mall used to be Black Friday, but out
Cyber Monday, even more will be spent on that is.

(31:47):
C NET Managing editor Nasha Atrich Martinez joined the show
on seven hundred WLW as they release their annual holiday package,
Theft Report from c Neet. Nasha, Good morning, how are you?

Speaker 4 (31:59):
Hello? Good morning? Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
All right, so this is the fourth time you've done
this and report says eighty billion dollars could be vulnerable
to porch stuff this season. That is, that is a
staggering amount of money. That's like the GDP of a
small country for crying out loud, Yeah it is.

Speaker 4 (32:18):
And it's actually six billion dollars more than what our
reports found from last year. So this could be a
direct reflection of price increases or that just people are
spending more this year.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Okay, so typically speaking, how often does porch piracy happen?
And we've seen the videos on TikTok and instat and
Facebook and everywhere else, but how common is it?

Speaker 4 (32:40):
Yeah, so we actually found that there is a slight
decrease in porch stuff this year. It's around three percent
less this year than last year, but it is still
a significant threat to people who are buying, especially gifts
during this holiday season. And we're seeing it happen in

(33:01):
real time starting now right with Black Friday deal claber Monday,
which is now extended to Cyber Week. So yeah, people
really need to take steps to protect.

Speaker 5 (33:11):
Themselves as year.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Okay, ll right, let's talk about those steps. What do
you recommend?

Speaker 4 (33:16):
Yeah, so there are a few things you can do
to protect your packages from being stolen this year. One
of the things that we recommend is installing a home
security system that usually is enough to deter some thiefs.
Other things that you can do is require a signature
when delivering so that the carriers won't leave the packages
at your doorstep being vulnerable to accept. Other things you

(33:39):
can do include tracking your shipment closely. That way you
know exactly when something is going to be delivered to
your home. Some carriers like Amazon even give you a
time frame which can allow for you to plan ahead
of time or have it delivered to your nearest USPS
ups or FedEx.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
All right, but overall, so you said, thirty percent of
it als have either been victimized or know someone who's
been victimized. And I recognize that, but at what point
does this stop being a nuisance crime and a threat
to e commerce? Because people hear that and go, wow,
so many victims. Am I better off just going to
a brick and mortar or finding another way to get

(34:20):
my package? That's not good. That's not a good ad
for the industry.

Speaker 4 (34:25):
It honestly has an effect that e commerce out rage.
We've actually seen that e commerce has down up this
year slightly. So people are really thinking about poor stuff
when they're buying their items. It's just a new thumth
that happens after the fact that they've already bought it.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Gotcha. There's packages are stolen, Some are meant for the household,
some are containing gifts. Is there any indication that thieves
specifically target certain times a day, or package sizes or
carrier types or whatever it might be that get the
higher value items.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
Yeah, we're actually seeing a trend where people are using
either stolen or bribed carrier data to track shipments in
real time. So what they'll do is that though they
will steal the packages even minutes after it has been delivered.
So that is a new trend we are seeing this year.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
It was in the story you may not be familiar
that I just saw it over the weekend. I think
it was FedEx. They had they just busted this huge
ring of porch pirates, and what happens is they had
someone inside at one of the shippers that would tell
them what's in the package, what time they'd be arriving
on what truck, and it would be coordinated that way.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
Yeah, that's exactly what what I'm talking about. So that
that is something that we're seeing you happen.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
So how do you That's a whole nother problem for
logistics companies is now they've got to keep an eye
on their employees given out sensitive information like that. I'd
imagine that's got to be really difficult to prevent.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
Yeah, it is, and especially when these carriers also offer
insurances for stolen items, so many people can also start
a claim process with them or even with the sellers,
which can also deter the sellers from using those carriers
in the first place.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Gotcha all right? She is seen at managing editor Nasha A.
D Rich Martinez talking about the huge number of Black
Friday sales even bigger Cyber Monday sales expected. Almost a
third of Americans report being the victim of forks pirates
or know someone a neighbor who has, and that's our
stuff getting stolen right out of right in front of
our porch. You mentioned early on in this, Nasha, about

(36:33):
video door bells, ring security cameras, and like, is that
a deterrent or is it just help you get footage
to maybe track someone down.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
It can be a deterrent. So our report actually suggests
that the decline and poor scept is in part due
to the mass adoption of home security systems. So sometimes
it won't be Sometimes, you know, thieves will come in
with their master gloves and they know that they are
unidentifiable and will continue to do it. But for the

(37:04):
most part, it should be a good deterrent.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, where are you on Amazon?

Speaker 5 (37:09):
Key Amazon?

Speaker 4 (37:14):
Honestly, whatever works for your family, I am. Yeah, I
tried it.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
You know what I put a I put you know,
a remote keypad in it. It offered that. I tried
it and actually pleasantly surprised that. Like, first of all,
I thought someone would run the package over because you know,
I I that those are people I live with, they
wouldn't pay attention. But I had a couple delivered in
the garage and what was actually really good because you
could see the door go up, like oh a package delivery,

(37:41):
they close the door, everything goes down. I know some
people feel like uncomfortable about having a stranger delivery person
drop stuff off essentially inside their house, But in a
couple of times I've tried it already, it's worked pretty
good for me.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
Yeah, we have seen that work for a lot of people.
And similarly, they sell these like secure block boxes that
you can leave in front of your home that are
secured to the ground. I think the problem with these
ones is that they are oftentimes small to only smaller packages.
If you buy something bigger, they won't usually fit. But
an Amazon key or similar services is a great option too.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, is there something involving iPhone you can track porch pirates?
Is Apple getting involvement?

Speaker 4 (38:25):
I've seen more home security system just having smart detection
and apps that you can use remotely on your phone
to track them. So we've been seeing a lot of
home security systems that have like AI detection and can
actually identify this whether like an animal or even if
a package has been left at your home, and even
if that package has been removed from your port, and

(38:47):
they will send you alerts of notifications. So having a
good home security system that will send you these notifications
is also crucial.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, which is pretty good, Nasha. For someone who does
have a package stolen, what are they chances they actually
get their money back or a replacement, or that that
person has caught seems like, man, the odds are against
you if you have a package stolen, let alone. I
think the odds are pretty high if you're a package
chief and actually getting caught. Is that true?

Speaker 4 (39:15):
That is true? Unfortunately, it will depend on the seller
and the carrier that you are using. Sometimes I've seen
sellers like Amazon for example, that if a package has
been stolen, you can start a claim process with them
and they will refund you. But it honestly just depends
where you're getting your eyems from.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, I think at some point that insurance companies because
you can buy that private you know, the aftermarket insurance
now for that too. But credit card companies as well,
that those are the ones that are losing money. It's
cutting into their costs as well. Eventually gets passed on
to us. But I would think there's gonna be more
vigilance from the credit card companies at this point, going hey,
we're leaking too much money here, We've got to do
something about this. I don't know what kind of power

(39:55):
they have, but they're the ones that can get stuff done.
They're the ones that are losing.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yeah, absolutely, and we have seen a lot of people
also start claims with their credit card companies. So it's
just trying to find the avenues to try to get
your money back, right if it's either with your credit
card company, with the seller, with your carrier. You can
also try to send a report to your local police.

(40:24):
Usually one incident isn't enough for them to start an investigation,
but if it is something that's happening a lot in
your neighborhood, if you have other neighbors reporting in similar incidents,
there might be a chance that your police both are
an investigation. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, and obviously there's some areas that are probably more
prone to that. I don't know if do you have
any statistics on that or you know, is it is
it more like suburban? Is it more urban?

Speaker 4 (40:52):
You know, we don't really have the stats on the areas,
but I assume that the most populated areas.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, you live in suburbia, probably, you know, the houses
are more spread out, there's more risk. But you know,
in the city or the town or whatever, you know,
you'd probably grab get something grabbed off your port. I mean,
if that were me, I probably invest in one of
those lockers, just because you don't want your stuff jacked
all the time. I'm sure it's pretty bad for a
lot of people in some areas. I'm sure it happens
all the time, and that's a whole other matter entirely. Yeah, anyway,

(41:24):
are there are the retailers themselves. We talked about shippers, Nasha,
but are retailers doing anything differently this year to address that?
Is there anything they can do?

Speaker 4 (41:34):
No, We're not seeing them do necessarily anything different. But
when you do check out, sometimes they are offering, like
where you want to deliver, so you can either have
a delivery your home or like I said earlier, at
your local postal office.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
All right, she's Nasha Edwards. Martinez was seen at the
managing editor there and it is their fourth annual holiday
package staff report eighty billion dollars vulnerable just this holiday season,
a lot and something like thirty percent of us Almost
a third of adults report that in the past year
they've had a package stolen, an attempt to mate or
know someone who was targeted. Imagine that just increases during

(42:11):
the holiday months as well. Not all the best, Thanks
for jumping.

Speaker 4 (42:13):
On, Thank you for having me, have a good.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Great you too.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Yeah, you know, I've got a ring doorbell against security cameras.
But often you know the person you see a lot
of these videos, and the person has a car, not
always but sometimes parked on the street and then they
just run. And it's almost like you need not need
a camera remote camera on you're this is more suburban
than anybody like on your mailbox somewhere out near the

(42:37):
street to get the license plate number at least. Now
they have the flock cameras out there and the like,
and it's that's going to be awfully difficult. I'd imagine
law enforcement is already you know, they're already swapped. Are
they going to go and start pulling camera data because
you've got a package stolen? No, they're going to go, well, okay,
we'll keep an eye out. They're not going to find

(42:57):
that person because they just they don't have the resources
to be able to go after everyone that are stolen.
So it's almost like you got to do this on
your you know, your own. I've heard stories people saying
I know who it is and they still won't go
and you know, question the person or an act a
stop or anything along those lines. So you kind of
feel like, well, you're kind of on your own in

(43:18):
that one. But you know, at that point and then
now it gets into big brother issues too as well.
You're putting a camera out on a street or something
along those lines, that's rough. But in urban areas especially,
you know, if you got a lot of sidewalk lahouses together,
and you think of many areas of Cincinnati and northern
Kentucky where that's happening, I'm sure it's a pretty common
occurrence in a lot of places where stuff just disappears

(43:39):
from your front porch to the point where you probably
have delivered to your your place of work or an
Amazon locker somewhere. You know, a lot of retail places
are now doing that for you, where you can go
and pick your stuff up, and you know, it's more
of inconvenience because everyone's their stuff dropped off right in
front of your house. I know we do, but I
live in the suburbs and we I'm sure it happens,
but knock on wood, it hasn't happened to us yet.

(43:59):
And it's certainly a lot more enticing for thieves. Because
this holiday season alone, the average number of gifts that
and then this is the total total amount, it's well
over three hundred dollars per us adult, which is like
a ten dollars increase over last year as well. The
largest groups to do this are Gen X and baby boomers.
Accounting for the highest expected value of delivered package. Did

(44:20):
it makes sense because gen zers are maybe they're not
having stuff delivered because probably mom and Dad's house as
opposed to those are out on their own right now.
But yeah, we're seeing a huge uptick in the number
of this, and i'd imagine with a record twelve billion
dollars spent this Black Friday this weekend, and probably a
number that's going to clipse that today being Cyber Monday.

(44:41):
Forewarned farm I don't else he can do, quite honestly.
I mean, you know, I remember the old videos the
guy who would put the glitter bombs out there, which
I always thought was awesome. You'd actually get a forget
the guys, and that's that's old. He'd get a bunch
of cell phones with cameras and put them in the
different orientations in the box, and they'd have a GPS

(45:03):
thing in it so they know where the package was,
and they'd upload the video and basically you'd see this
person who stole the package opening the box and this
is like the electronic countdown. You see the person's face
because there's cameras on the side of the box. And
I don't know how you know this when you're opening
the package, but all of a sudden, this glitter bomb
explodes and coach their entire living area with glitter. It's

(45:24):
pretty funny. I don't know if that guy's still doing
his videos or not. Have to google that and find out.
I always thought that was entertaining because you know, it's
a little back at you kind of thing. But we
none of us have the wherewithal or the knowledge to
be able to do something like that. The best you
can do is put a ring doorbell up and you know,
hopefully by the sea, hopefully you beat the porka the

(45:45):
porch pirates before you get home. That's about all you
can do. Or have a neighbor pick stuff up to
as well. But yeah, and I guess it's more of
an inca. Are you really losing money? No, because you
will get your money back if you put on a
credit card. Obviously the credit card company will do that,
and Amazon might or the shipper might. But you know,
it's just more than inconvenience of picking out a holiday
gift and then having it stolen. I will say, if

(46:06):
your mind works this way, you know, if you're notoriously
cheap or you just don't feel inspired to buy someone
a gift. You could always use the excuse if you
know it just came two days ago and it got stolen,
which is another good out, by the way, if you
forget to buy someone a gift you went to the listener,
Oh my god, I totally forgot so and so a gift,

(46:27):
you could always use the excuse if you know, I
bought you something, someone stole it off our porch. So
I'm just what i'd say, And it's something you want
to overuse. But you know, in circumstances where you can
be forgetful and you have a lot I know you
you you've got a lot going on in your life
right now. There's a lot of things you got going on.

(46:50):
You might miss a recipient of a gift. Somebody might
bring you something. Of god, I bought you something, but
it got stolen from my fro oh and I got
it on reorder, but there's a back order. And then
maybe you know, you go long enough and they forget.
And just saying, I'm just trying to give you a
little just trying to give you an out. I care
about you. We'll get a news update in here on
the show on seven hundred WW with Sloane you want

(47:11):
to return. It is Mental Health Monday. Julie Hatters Share,
a licensed mental health therapist, is on the show once again,
and we talk about the holidays often and the joy
of being around family, but sometimes it's not that. It's
the fact that family members or a certain family member
is no longer at the table with us at Christmas
or Hanukkah or whatever it is your Holly or just

(47:34):
you know, over winter break for that matter. And it
has to do with grief and loss during the holiday season,
which is tough for a lot of people, a lot
of people going through it. We'll talk to Julie about
that coming up next on the show. On the Home
of the Best Bengals coverage seven hundred W welw. Everyone
needs help every now and then. I need help, and
she's here to help us get our heads right. This

(47:54):
is Mental Health Monday with mental health expert Julietshe. I
need help. I don't know, it's not right. What's going
on here? Sloan here seven hundred W AL double to
Mental Health Monday. Our friend Julie h is on the show.
How is Your Thanksgiving? Everything rocking and rolling?

Speaker 6 (48:08):
It was really great. We had people over, we did
a delicious dinner, we drank away too much wine, and
then it was perfect. It was everything you hope Thanksgiving
will be.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Did you have to clean up? That's the question.

Speaker 6 (48:19):
Dan did all the cooking, so yes, I did all
the cleaning up. It was three rounds of dishes in
the dishwasher. But it was totally worth it because it
came down the next morning and the kitchen was spotless,
which is just such a nice feeling, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah, it really, and that's nice when people We had
family over and they helped clean up the dishes. But
still it's like to at least two days worth of
doing dishes and putting stuff away. It's a whole huh,
the whole thing. Yeah, here's where I was stressed out.
This is why I need your mental health consoling right now. So,
in addition to hosting seven people, Michelle also decided this

(48:51):
is a good time. She got her knee done Wednesday,
so we're in surgery on Wednesday. I had a houseful
of people on Thursday and I did all the cooking,
and so I was I was a mess by Thursday night,
Like I couldn't even stand up anymore. After three days
cooking and because I'm running, you know, taking care of her.
No no, no, no, no, no, I must. I was like,

(49:12):
I may need some therapy after this weekend. By Sunday,
I was completely out of it. So, yeah, it was
a good time. But I managed it. I managed it.
The food was good, no one got poisoned, it was good.
She's important, she's up walking around. Everybody's good. So I
love the holidays. I'm a big fan of this time
of year. Thanksgift fall fall especially, but Thanksgiving to Christmas,

(49:32):
nothing but fond memories. But I also appreciate that a
lot of people don't have those great memories, and it
could be difficult, especially if you sit down at the
table or under the tree, or there's presence and it's
the first year without someone close to you who had
passed away. A lot of people going through that right now.

Speaker 6 (49:50):
Yeah, a lot of people are going through grief and
sadness and loss around the holidays. And it's something that
I think we don't talk enough about. And you know,
there aren't any TV shows or movies about the holidays
that really focus on the bitter sweet part of it.
You know, the people you're missing the sadness that often

(50:11):
comes with the holidays. They focus on, you know, all
the hallmarks, snow and wonderfulness, and it's great. But if
it's the most wonderful time of the year and you're
not feeling it, that can be a real disconnect for people.
So I thought it was important to talk a little
bit about how many of us have some kind of
grief or sadness around the holidays, and how that's perfectly

(50:31):
normal and some things maybe we can do to help.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Yeah, okay, well, as dry is it the loss of
a loved one? Is that generally yet?

Speaker 5 (50:39):
Well, it could be that.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
For sure.

Speaker 6 (50:41):
It could be estrangement from people that you used to
be in communication and in community with, but you're not anymore,
so you're out of touch with friends or family. It
could be that there are people that are present on
the planet but not present in your life at the moment.
So I'm thinking of people who's loved ones are away

(51:02):
and not able to get back home. They're far away,
they may not be able to communicate, And thinking of
people who may have people who are deployed in other
countries and they can't communicate. But I'm also thinking of
people who may have family or friends who are suffering
from an almost like dementia or Parkinson's disease, where they're
physically present, but they're not fully there, and so there's

(51:23):
this ambiguous loss that goes on with, you know, people
being physically present, but they themselves are not completely there,
and so you don't quite know how to handle that.
It could also be things like the loss of a
job or not enough financial resources to make the holiday
that you want possible. So there are a lot of

(51:43):
things that contribute to this sense of sadness around the
holidays that I think it's important for us to talk about.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
So ambiguous you mentioned ambiguous loss is that grief without resolution?

Speaker 5 (51:53):
Basic?

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 6 (51:55):
It can be grief without resolution, for sure, it can be.
It tends to be more around people who are not
permanently gone, but not currently in our lives or present.
So I'm thinking of you people who have dementia or Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
They're there, yeah, the thing that makes.

Speaker 6 (52:17):
Them them is not there.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
How does that?

Speaker 2 (52:19):
How does that differ? How does that differ than Julie
from someone who's died, for example? What is it? Is
it harder to process.

Speaker 6 (52:26):
It's different. I don't like to compare it as harder
or easier.

Speaker 5 (52:30):
It's differently difficult.

Speaker 6 (52:31):
So they're not really gone, so you can't really grieve
and more in them the way that you would someone
who has died, but they're also not there anymore in
the way that they were. So the them that you
knew is not there, but their physical presence is. You're
still engaging with them, you're still perhaps caring for them,
you're still including them in the holidays, but they are

(52:53):
not there, and so it can be confusing. You have
these feelings of grief and law perhaps, but the person
is sitting right in front of you, you're having a conversation,
and they may be looseid in present in one moment,
and then the next moment they're completely gone and you realize, oh,
that moment that I had them, Yeah, that's never going
to come again.

Speaker 5 (53:14):
That's gone.

Speaker 6 (53:14):
But they are still there physically, So it can be confusing.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yeah, because you're thinking of past memories that that's what
the holidays are about, right, It's about tradition, it's about remembrance,
it's about going back and I mean, look at all
the holiday the holiday imagery is all built on tradition,
and that's a odds with what you're talking about exactly.

Speaker 6 (53:34):
And also you realize that this person, if you are
dealing with someone who has dementia or another illness like that,
you realize they're not going to remember this, that there
is no memory being made for them, that this is
your experience alone. They're in it with you, but that
they're not going to remember it. They're not going to
really be fully present for it, and they're going to

(53:55):
have no memory of it. Maybe five minutes from now,
or maybe tomorrow morning, or maybe next week, they won't
remember it. But there are other kinds of ambiguous loss.
So somebody is present on the planet but not present
in your life, so you're estranged from a family member,
or you're estranged from your partner, or you're estranged from
your children. They're there, but they're not with you, so

(54:16):
you can't really grieve them as being gone, but they're
not in your life. So there's this feeling of incompleteness
and this feeling of having not real words for it.
You know, we know what to say when someone's dead,
and we say I'm sorry for your loss, but what
do you say in these situations.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, because they're there, but they're not there. Oh, I
understand it. Or there's a family member that's just a
strange something happened and it's maybe it's this year, maybe
it's a couple of years, and that often happens in families.

Speaker 6 (54:44):
Well, it's happening more and more frequently. As our world
and our country in particular, become more polarized, there are
more and more people who are choosing not to connect
with or stay connected to family members that they had
in the past because of that use, political beliefs where
they land on the spectrum. In terms of that, there
have always been people who've been disconnected because of religious

(55:08):
differences to other people in their family, or they don't
approve of choices that people have made. So it's always
been there, but I think it's becoming more and more prevalent.
So you have family, but you're not spending the holiday
with them because you're out of connection and out of
communication with them. That's the kind of loss that we
don't really have a lot of words for.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Yeah, Okay, Julie hattersh here's here. It's spent all of
Monday on The Scots Loan Show on seven hundred w
LW and talking about the holidays intensifying feelings of grief,
especially when ambiguous lost meaning that person might be there
and then you think of things like Alzheimer's and dementia
when someone is there but they're not there, or just
just strange family members or people who are no longer

(55:48):
part of that circle anymore. Is that why it's important
to you? Know, there's that concept of chosen family. It's
probably pretty important, right. You don't get to choose your family,
get to choose your friends, but a chosen family. Riding
yourself with people.

Speaker 6 (56:01):
Like that, Yeah, surrounding yourself with people that you do
love and do care about you and who can be
present with and for you is important. Some people have
really small definitions of what makes family. Other people's definition
of that is more expansive. It can include people who've
been in your life for a while, with people who
are very important to you, and so focusing on spending

(56:23):
time with the people who are there rather than focusing
on what's missing can be really really helpful, and creating
new traditions and new rituals around the new reality of
your life. So you used to go to Aunt Suzie's
for Christmas every year. Well, you're no longer in communication
with Aunt Suzie, and so now you have to find
a new thing to do for Christmas. But making that

(56:46):
a positive I'm creating something new, versus a negative I
can't do that anymore. I don't have what I had,
can help shift the balance a little bit.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
I would think typically when you talk about a strange
relationships with the most common thing during the holidays, Julie,
there's probably a tremendous pressure because of familial expectations or
just how you're wired to heal even when it may
not be your fault or out of your control. And
then you go back to that person or persons and say, hey,
you know it's important part because you're trying to put

(57:18):
it you're trying to put it all back together again.
Is that a good idea?

Speaker 6 (57:22):
It can be, It isn't always. It really depends, I
think on if we're talking what it costs you to
heal that relationship, how much of yourself and your morals
and your values and your time and your energy and
your patience do you have to give in order to
smooth things over with that person? If the two, if

(57:46):
the people involved can come to agreement about how they're
going to conduct their relationship after this split, and both
feel like they're getting enough to make what they're giving worthwhile,
then yeah, that can be a really wonderful thing. But
if it's you feel like you have to heal this
at all costs, and you give up so much of
yourself or your values or your belief system, or your

(58:08):
time or your energy or your patience in order to
do that, if it costs you more than you get
back from the from healing the relationship, then in the
long run, it might not be a good idea for you.
It might actually be detrimental to your well being going forward.
So really you kind of have to do the math
and say how much do I have to give and

(58:29):
is it worth it to me.

Speaker 5 (58:30):
To do that?

Speaker 2 (58:31):
You know, And here's a little bit behind the curtain.
I mean, we go through that in our family, and
on my side of the family in particular, we have
a loved one who i'ven't talked to in quite some time.
We're talking years now, and someone who is instrumental in
my childhood and growing up, and it just they became
self absorbed and toxic and had a blow up, and

(58:52):
like you know, I've seen this play out before, and
you know, you come back and try to put back together,
and what happens is you just encourage more of that behavior,
or that they have to realize the mistake they made
and own up to that. I don't feel it's my
job to go and try and bridge that made some
overtures in the past, but you know they've got to admit. Hey, listen,
you know what, it's not always about me one hundred

(59:14):
percent of the time. There's other people involved here, and
it's like, you know, and it's difficult because the holidays,
and this person's older and I don't know how many
more holidays will have left. But I don't feel that's
on me. I think that's okay.

Speaker 6 (59:28):
I think that's okay too. And what I like about
what you've said is you've tried to make some overtures,
but this person, the other person involved, isn't doing their part.
They're not taking accountability, they're not taking ownership, they're not
choosing to make the changes that would make this relationship worthwhile.
So it sounds to me like if you were going
to heal this rift, it would be you doing all

(59:48):
of the work, You making all of the confessions, you
putting all of the effort and energy in and the
other person just continuing to be exactly as they have
been without making any changes or accommodations on their part.
That is rarely healthy. I'm not going to say never,
but that is rarely healthy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Well, you're just encouraging worse behavior and for it to
happen again, you are.

Speaker 6 (01:00:10):
And even if worst behavior happen again, but even if
it is not that it's one person is putting in
the vast majority of the effort and the energy and
making the vast majority of the accommodations and the concessions
in a relationship, and it's not reciprocal. That inherently is
not a healthy relationship. Unless we're talking about adult parent

(01:00:32):
to child child, not adult child, but child child, where
parents do put in a lot more of the effort
and energy to the relationship, but we're talking about age contemporaries.
That's not healthy. So inherently, a non reciprocal relationship is
not going to benefit you in the long run.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Yeah, and that may apply also to relationship with your parents.
I mean, there's a lot of people who have fallen
out with their mom and dad over what we talked
about with the visitors in America these days, that's a
pretty common thing. And at what point do you go, Hey,
it's my mom and dad. I should try and make
amends that. I mean, you can only go You got
to meet halfway.

Speaker 6 (01:01:06):
You got to meet halfway. The other person has to
be willing and able to accommodate and to make some confessions.
You don't have to, for example, agree on religion or politics,
but you can't agree not to talk about it and
not to bate the other person into an argument about it,
and to respect the disagreements that you have and to

(01:01:26):
find common ground in other areas. But if one of
you is willing to do that and the other one
is not willing to do that, then one is giving
more dramatically more than the other to cement this relationship.
And inherently it may not be worth it to do that.
The cost may be too high, and only go ahead.

(01:01:47):
Only you, Only you can make that determination. You have
to decide if you're the one who's estranged from someone,
is this relationship worth paying what I have to pay
and doing what I have to do to make it work.
Maybe the answers, Yet, maybe the answers no, but I
will tell you that if it is not reciprocal, if
you're doing most of the work inherently, that's unsustainable and
not healthy in the long term.

Speaker 5 (01:02:08):
Fair enough.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Julie Hatters Share, licensed mental health therapist here in Cincinnati
mental health Monday on the Scott Sloan Show. If you
have question, concerned comments, where you can reach out to
her at Hey Julie Atbconnected dot care every Monday morning.
Appreciate it, have a great week. We'll chat next Friday.
Thank you, Take care. We get news on the way
in just about five minutes here on seven hundred WLW.

(01:02:29):
The future of autonomous vehicles is here? Howso I know this?
In Dubai they are testing, literally testing driverless air taxis
not only flying machines, but driverless flying machines. That's in Dubai.
How's that going to work in the United States? I mean,
we have autonomous vehicles here that are being tested on
the West Coast, and there is a huge groundswell of

(01:02:51):
people saying we shouldn't be doing this, it's too whatever
the excuse might be. If that's the future, why are
we fighting them? At Taranowski in that coming up after
news on seven hundred w W Cincinnati.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Don't want to be an American.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
It's lonely here, seven hundred WLW. The driverless taxi revolution
is hits. That's like it's on crack and meth at
the same time. I don't know if you can do that,
but let's give it a shot. They're driving, they're testing
driverless air taxis now in Dubai like not just you're
going wait, wait what, Yeah, we have air taxis that

(01:03:26):
are now driverless. And then here at home we're a
little behind that. But Waymo company called Waymo's rolling out
fully autonomous rides on freeways out west. So what would
slow that migration east out this way? Because if you
look at well, for example, holiday traffic or Black Friday
traffic is to night. But imagine taking a air taxi

(01:03:47):
somewhere or hell, just an autonomous taxi to get you
from point A to point B would be amazing. The
other problem with that, of course, is labor groups and
local governments dig their heels and things like. That's the
age old class between innovation and status quo protectionism. On
that is Ed Taranowski's writing in Reason on this. He's
a senior young voices contributor. Welcome back at Hi, Ben.

Speaker 5 (01:04:08):
I've been great. It's so it's great to be on
the show. Thanks turning me on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Yeah, yeah, no worries. So you think about it right there.
And I love history as and indicator future behavior. I'm
sure you do too. So the first automobiles come along,
and farmers hated them because they scared their horses. And
you had moral crusaders clutching their pearls worry that cars
are going to become bedrooms on wheels for young people
to have sex in it. Well, okay, they were right
on that one, but maybe it was like stable owners

(01:04:32):
and blacksmiths and harness makers and the guys who made
bug big buggy whip tried to shut all this down.
It didn't work. We have electric cars now, right, and
even electricity had irrational fears. It was the battle between
AC and DC, Westinghouse and Edison and AC was too
dangerous and fire prone. It was more fire prone than
gas flames on streets or houses. You know, you had candelabras,

(01:04:55):
You had chandeliers that were literally were open flames for
crying out loud. Nothing's less th that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:01):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
They tried to jem up something called electricity sickness, meaning
the RF from the electricity makes people ill, and of
course the more prosuders. Once again clutching you had a
new set of pearls. The immorality of unnatural light disrupted
God's natural order of day and light. So we've every
time we have technology, we have those kind of crusades.
Is this just more of that thinking?

Speaker 5 (01:05:21):
Oh, it certainly is, and I mean it's more of
that thinking. And you know, we are absolutely right with
innovation always comes so secure it and we're not seeing
anything differently when it comes to draggles cars, what we're
seeing is that they're vastly safer than cars driven by humans.
Weimo Had, which is a company that is already on
the hazard Vehicles service on the streets. They recently released

(01:05:44):
some of that safety data showing ninety one percent or
serious injury crashes in their driverles vehicles versus cars driven
by people. That is a vast decline and crashes and
making it makes through much safer. So what we're one
of the things were being cited a news across the
country as a reason for regulating or heavily restricting or

(01:06:07):
even outright banning the type of service safety is often
one of the things cited that's just not in line
what we're seeing because travels cars are bactly safer.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
What's the data on that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:19):
Yeah, So for example, we're seeing compare and like I said,
WEYMO released some data comparing what they're seeing in their
vehicles versus cars driven by humans, and what we're seeing
the name off you is ninety one percent fewer serious
injury crashes, ninety two percent, fewer pedestrian crashes with injuries,
seventy nine percent, fewer crashes resulting in airbag deployment. And

(01:06:40):
those are just three among among others that they've released.
So it's a really exciting time and I think we're
only going to We're going to see this continue to expand.
So it's I'm rigging that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
Yeah, and that's hard to refute that. I mean, again,
you'd have to look at the data and how they
come up with those numbers. But a ninety percent reduction
in anything, we think we'd be jumping up and down
saying hey we need that right now, we need it
here because of safety issues. We have distracted drivers, bad drivers,
stolen cars. Uh, so many accidents you know with people
stealing cars, and we have another fatality just recently here

(01:07:11):
and it seems like it's a steady drumpy to that
a lot of this, a lot of that wouldn't happen
with this wouldn't.

Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
All right, Well, that's absolutely right, and that's a that's
socaing about Wamo and that's that's one of the things
that they privates on is the safety that they're going
to be, the increase in safety they're going to be
offering those services, and and they're really continue to expand.
I mean right now they're they're already operating in many cities,
they're trying, they're continuing to expand new cities and how
sitting at the highway, so I think what we're going

(01:07:39):
to see is Waimo and companies offering driver the services
kind of getting closer to the level of that Uber
and List offers in terms of how widespread their services are.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
Yeah, but the handwringing, tell me about the cat? What
about the cats? Right? And what about the cats?

Speaker 5 (01:07:55):
Well? Right, the data contents go, well, the story of
behind this is uh away a quote Badega cat, as
neighbors called it, jumped out in front of a Waimo vehicle.
As it was, it jumped out in the street as
a WAYMO vehicle was I was exiting and unfortunately the
cat was hit. And listen, like, the death of a
pet is always a tragedy. However, what we're seeing is

(01:08:17):
we saw all this outrage. A San Francisco City commissioner
called a rally over this and used it as a
reason to rally support for new restrictions. We saw it
picked up in rolling Stone and here's the thing. Like,
like I said, is always a tragedy, But what we're
seeing is waymos and driverless vehicles were vastly safer, meeting

(01:08:38):
fewer pests pet deaths. It's safer for petsil on the whole.
So using one example versus looking at the overwhelming the
general evidence is not how we should be making policy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Back to the pear clutching thing again, right to say
cat jumped out in front of a driverless car, it's
a driverless car. Well, a cat jumps out in front
of a you know, a human run machine. It's probably
things that was going to happen. And at the end
of the day, it's a we're going to stop this
because of feral cats. It doesn't make a lot of sense,
But again it sounds like the same protections that we
talked about with cars that begin with are electricity for
that matter?

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
All right, I imagine a rolling stone article every time a
person hit a cat or a dog.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
I mean, it's absurd, right, right right? Why wouldn't you
do that too? How much does labor organizations in big
labor factor in to this too?

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:09:23):
Big time? And what we're seeing Boston is the most
dark example, but I'm not picking in Boston. This is
going on across the country, but there was recently what
we saw there is this summer some special interesting unions
that they're called for and they have support on the
Buston City Council for this, amongst several city councilors for
an advisory board of quote, trade unionists and other stakeholders. Essentially,

(01:09:47):
what this to do is create an advisory board where
you would have industry competitors sitting on being quite in
a position of regulatory power and influence. And that's not
we want to see. We want to see free, open,
open competition, free markets. We don't want to see government
picking winners and losers. We want a new technology to

(01:10:09):
be able to continue innovating. We want America to continue leading,
so we want to keep government out of it. We
don't want to see government being listed as as a
as a tool to against your competition.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Yeah, I could imagine the teamsters aren't too happy about this.

Speaker 5 (01:10:25):
Oh, it's certainly not. And they're one of the leading voices,
not just in Boston, but across the country. We saw,
for example, we see them rallying coort at the House
plus Country in New York, California, in Texas against tribalist peoples.
And again, we all we want to see here is
we just want to see open competition. We don't we're not.

(01:10:46):
We don't want to see one one favorite of it
the other. We just want to see each each type
of industry UH competitor to be able to compete.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Really, it's like a long shorem in they're fighting against
you know, robotic systems at Ports of California and ol
swear for that matter. It's losing battle because the rest
of the world is doing this. It's saving money and
labor and UH production costs. And you know, when when
you have hundreds of cargo ships waiting to be unloaded,
if a robot can do it, faster, that's probably going

(01:11:13):
to go that way. But with this, this is this
is the age old American battle. You know, when you
live in a country in which we live, the blessing
is we have this wonderful technology. It's always changing, always evolving,
and creating new sectors of jobs almost overnight. The bad
side is it's going to displace people, whether it's that
or AI.

Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
Well, I'm so glad you brought that up, especially Court.
I mean, this is really important for your listeners to
sort some background obviously. I mean, China has pretty much
finished automating the reports. They're working twenty four hours a day.
They're working much more quickly than we are. It's God
forbid there's ever a conflict, a global conflict that breaks out,

(01:11:52):
China would be far ahead of us. And how fast
they can use their manufacturing I mean, it's not so
much manufacturing and shipping capabilities. Because of the way that
labor has pushed against automation here in the US, at
our courts, it has made us vastly lower and it's
a national sperit with and what we want to see
is we want to see our innovation being able to

(01:12:13):
be fully realized and used to keep us ahead competitively globally.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
If you look at World War two, for example, we
quickly mobilized and changed from from production to war production, uh,
literally overnight in America, and we won the war through attrition.
We lost a lot of planes, but we could make
more planes than the Axis could make.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
And that's what won the war. Was it like, hey,
we were better at you know, uh, you know, better
dog fighters or soldiers. No, we we just lost a
bunch of equipment that we could easily replace because we
had the machinery and we had the natural resource to
be able to do that. It sounds like, you know,
you mentioned a global crisis, but China's already there. They

(01:12:53):
had that infrastructure in place. They don't have to do
it overnight.

Speaker 5 (01:12:57):
Right, And that's that's what that's the risk is. And
in worse, the little automation that we do have at
our courts is often Chinese made tech. And I don't
know if you've heard about this, but over in I
believe it was in Denmark, there was a situation where
they discovered that they had buses that were made in
China and they discovered that there was the uh there
the Chinese were able to actually uh. They had a

(01:13:18):
function where they could switch off the control systems of
the buses remotely. UH and they have to quickly uh
a tool with the buses that make to take that
piece out. That is alarming. Can you imagine if our
the technology in our courts uh had something like this
uh and if there were a global crisis that they
could cripple us. I mean, this is there are so

(01:13:39):
many reasons why we need to we need to stay
ahead in this race. We can't let UH special interests
hould us back, hold hold back innovation, to hold back
the future. We need to continue to American continued to lead.
We want we want new technology being built in our values,
pree markets, free expressions, and we want to be able
to stay competitive globally.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
Well I mean, call it what it is. But at
the end of the day, America is one hundred percent
about saving cats in China. Couldn't care less.

Speaker 5 (01:14:08):
That's right, And listen, I'm a pet lover myself, but
and that's why I love, That's why I love drive vehicles.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Right save China. They don't care. They're running cats, They're
running budegat cats over the left. And I'm not surely
that Budegue is in China. But nonetheless I think I
think you got the I think you got the point.
But the political landscape here right as you have labor
backed Democrats that oppose autonomous vehicles AI and stuff like that,
is is there a bipartisan shift going on?

Speaker 5 (01:14:37):
Well, I turned. One thing I am excited about at
the federal level is we're seeing the Trump administration announcing
a new set of federal AI regulation where essentially where
it makes it so there's a coheated regulations that early
and that we're not seeing such a flurry of different
ones across the state because that will allow innov AI

(01:14:59):
heed to innovate and not be because if there are
so many different standards that make it very difficult. And
an example that I use is how the Obama administration
back to the day allowed the only California to be able
to set their own admissions rules in the other states.
So essentially the California set the standards of the nation
because car companies aren't going to make cars for just

(01:15:21):
California and then to the rest of the country. So
what we're seeing the Trup administration do here is they're
setting one cohesion through a rule, so it's not just
a bunch of different regulations, different ones that AI has
to keep up with or not letting one state kind
of set the standards for the whole country.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Gotcha, but on a local level because Ed Taranowski with
young Voices and also right about this in reason we
have local regulators to state where there's a regulatory framework
that goes on here too. And it's you know, I
can almost hear the cries about tech oligarchs, like you
know that we got to stop the Musks and the
bezos Is of the world from running our lives because

(01:15:56):
these are kings and they just care about money and
not technology, and it's going to just de troy the
fabric of our communities, et cetera. That's another angle outside
of DC. It's even worse, I think, locally, isn't it.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
Oh? Absolutely? And I love your point about the technolog arch.
So I got to kick out of something I spread recently.
I believe it was Elizabeth Warrene who posted on x
the picture of her Maralex, mom, Donnie and Leon Kahn,
and she this was she put the post that uh text,
the rich billionaire tier is not pictured and this was
on the same day that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has

(01:16:31):
become the second company an institution ever in the world
to land a orbital booster. And what this has this
what's so mentally beneficial about this is that makes it
so much cheaper. When you can reland this, uh, this
type of rocket booster, you can make space missions much cheaper.
That made better internet connection, better, cheaper space missions, better

(01:16:53):
GPS and better weather predictions and all we can all
do it much cheaper.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Environment too, there's an environment component there.

Speaker 5 (01:17:00):
Too, Oh, absolutely absolutely, and that work. It was just
I believe this post compared to have that happening on
the same day, was so comfortable to me. It really
set the contrast between the doers and the complainers or
what I like to say, the builders versus the central planners. Yeah,
I mean it's based and envy and they just and
for them not to see the benefit of that private

(01:17:22):
investment first because okay, they want to tax they say
billionaire shouldn't exist. Do we does any is anybody really
convinced that taxing? Uh they those out of billionaires statuses.
Just do you really really think the federal government was sending
that money better than the innovation that he's creating and
a value he's creating for humanity with disorbital bluetood this innovation. Again,
no other institution does space. The only other company who's

(01:17:44):
accomplished this is basic. No other institution in the world,
no other government, no one else has accomplished this or
So that's why we're seeing the way with this money
being working in the private sector, we're seeing massive benefits.
And I just I got to kick out of that contrast.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Yeah, that is that that's a funny illustration's missed on
those people. The lot of it just want to protect,
you know, it's about protection. Is we're going to do
things the way we always have. But that's not America
at all. I mean that that that might be a
third world country. That might be I don't know, Afghanistan.
But you know, we live in the twenty first century,
not the second century.

Speaker 5 (01:18:19):
Absolutely, And I love your aligned about the way we've
always done things. I think I always say those are
some of the most dangerous word in the English language.
Besides you know, Reagan said the most dangerous. Of course,
I'm from the government here to help. This might be
this might be ranked number two because physically we've really
done this way is not a reason not to look
at doing them differently. And you know I work in education,
so I can tell you that bely that's education, right. So,

(01:18:43):
but with tech is the same thing. I mean, and
you're right, that is not America because for all of
history we've been you know, we've ben pioneers, innovators, uh,
and we want to continue to see that. And we
still have that spirit, I think, the spirit of risk
in this country, that capitalism like a rewarding risk is
really of high value and they want to see that
that continue to be rewarded because you know, it's what

(01:19:06):
we've seen is it is it ESSENTI advises innovation and
that's just that's going to continue to make our lives better.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Well, the clickban and this would be socialists say this
one old weird trick, which of course is what you
just talked about there with the rise of socialism though,
isn't that directly odds with what you're talking about?

Speaker 5 (01:19:24):
Yeah, well yeah, it's it's certainly riskent. What we're seeing
in New York is uh, it's concerning. But I do
I am a little bit uh cautiously optimistic. We did
see the city council elect someone who's uh the socials
through up in arms. Not have they say always he's
in because she's not lefty enough for them. So I'm
hoping that maybe we'll see a check on mom Donnie there.

(01:19:46):
But but it is concerning the rise of the popularity
of socialism and those ideas, particularly among younger people. I
think what we're seeing here is and I think about housing,
a lot, housing, and you know I would like to
own house. They too, So I and I live in
I live in an expensive city. So I understand why
this is so frustrating. But the problem is, uh, capitalism

(01:20:08):
isn't at fault here. It's uh, it's government and socialism
getting in the way. You see, Uh they're all over
regulating there. They're they're they're making too difficult to build
housing for developers to get in and meet demands. So
the problem is we need to get better messaging that
and creating real policy. We need to get in there.
And I use housing as an example. Let developers build,

(01:20:29):
let them meet, let's them, let's us supply. Let's build
a supply to meet the demand for housing. And then
we see we see housing prices coming down so of
course to combat this, we need to we need to
use capitalism, not project capitalism, and we need to message that.
And if we don't, people are going to continue to blame.
It's easy to blame capitalism, but we need to message first,

(01:20:50):
message why this is really happening? Yeah uh, and then
use capitalism as a solution, and then you know, we'll
see and we can bring we can convince people through
results of how capitaliks and why capitaliaks the work.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
Hey Tarnowski you writing this in Reason magazine. He's a
senior Young Voices contributor and joining the show again had
always good thought thoughtful stuff. I appreciate you content man.
Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 5 (01:21:13):
Oh, always a pleasure to be on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
Be well, We've got a news update seconds away here
on seven hundred WLW. When we return, we also have
the Bengals shocking the world. Is it possible? Is there
a path now after beating Baltimore? Is there a path
to win the division? Repeat on this next on the
show seven hundred ww Sloni here seven hundred WLW. So

(01:21:37):
you're saying there's a chance, there's a chance. It's hard
to fathom, but with the Bengals, beating the Ravens thirty
two to fourteen on Thursday night and Thanksgiving night. There's
a path here, believe it or not, just the playoffs.
James Rapine for Massiz Lockdown Bengals, of course is the
daily podcast, but also Bengals Talk dot Com joins the

(01:21:58):
show once again. Didn't expect this conversation on a Monday
following the Thursday game, James, because normally we like to
talk about the game the day after this. You know,
you play Sunday, you talk on Monday. But the whole
city's buzzing about Joe Burrow returning and there's a chance
that the Bengals could win the AFC North Welcome.

Speaker 5 (01:22:14):
How you doing, I'm doing great, score, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
Doing fine, bolstered by the news Joe Burrow returns and
all is well with the world.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
It doesn't mean that this team doesn't have deep problems.
Doesn't mean that the Baltimore Ravens aren't more problematic than
the Bengals are right now as they're at six and six.
It's the division no one wants to win, James.

Speaker 5 (01:22:37):
It is, it really is, and you're right, like the
path is there and the Bengals still need a little
bit of help. But you shouldn't be in the AFC
North hunt at four and eight going into December, like
that shouldn't be something that is even remotely possible, and

(01:22:57):
yet it is. This Bengals team is two games back.
They could use a little help this week. But by
with Baltimore now beating that they play the Steelers, you
want Baltimore to win that game, Bengals fans, just for
everyone paying attention to keeping score at home. But yeah,
it's it's just on the surface that the division that

(01:23:20):
I usually considered the best division in football, obviously that's
not the case this year. But the AFC North, there
are three teams in contention, none of them have winning records.
Two are at five hundred and the other four and
eight and still in the mix here entering week fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Yeah, it's unreal because you mentioned that the Steelers play
the Ravens next up, and the Bengals are in Buffalo
this weekend. You know, being a Bills fan, had missed it.
I'm gonna be at that game this coming weekend. By
the way, the Steelers, I just don't know what to
make of this team. Someone said, like, OK, and they
just they absolutely collapse. I mean the personal fouls and

(01:23:59):
the student pidity with Hayward and just it was it
was very uncharacteristic stealers. I mean they they've always been
kind of a cheap shot team, no doubt about it.
You know Patrick Queen, for example, I thought that was
just absolutely flagrant, and then he got hurt on the
very next play. So maybe there's some football gods at play.
I'm not quite sure. But it's funny because you know,
if you're a diehard Bengals fan, you are rooting root

(01:24:21):
for the Bills last night, and and then you know
this week you got at Buffalo, So uh, it's gonna
be an interesting weekend of football watching the AFC North.
How this all shakes out.

Speaker 5 (01:24:33):
It is, it is, and it's it's fun because they're
playing each other and they're also playing another contender in
the Bills, and Daniel s Frans go from rooting for
the Bills last night in Buffalo handled business to now
you got to find a way to beat them in Buffalo,
and and there's no margin for error. I think that's

(01:24:54):
the thing I really want to stress here because a
lot of people are going to hear us talking about
playoffs and all of those things. Four and eight, well, yeah,
because they got to win out and so you got
to win five more games, six straight going into last week,
now five straight because they hangled business months and the
Bengals seem oddly comfortable in these scenarios. I don't know

(01:25:17):
why they are, but they are. And I'm not saying
they're going to go to Buffalo and win, but it
just it feels like most teams would break knowing they
have to win six straight, and the Bengals, starting with
Joe Burrow, are sort of comfortable in those situations. Whether
or not it happens, we'll see, but they certainly believe

(01:25:38):
at this point that they are going to do that
and get to nine and eight and get to a
winning record for a sixth straight season.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
I think if the Bengals can stop the run, they
beat the Bills. It's that simple.

Speaker 5 (01:25:52):
If they do. If they can do that, and that's
not something the Bengals have done well. And I think
about James Cook and that rushing attack and how patient
he's on and I think that's the thing that stands
out to me about him, is he will stop. He's
got some Le'Veon Bell patience to him and then boom,
instant speed. And we've seen him have some huge runs

(01:26:13):
this year and he's a real weapon for them, so yeah,
you can slow him down. Well, then, Josh Allen's still
a big concern. But it does take away a huge
element of their offense because they don't have the Jamar
Chase and Key Higgins is outside at wide receiver.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
Yeah, you have the has no weapons. That's the problem.
He's running it with his feet and now that's another
element to it. S up in, Josh, and you worry
about that putting your court pirate parrels there as goes
your quarterback, goes the rest of the team, whether it's
still Burrow Josh Allen. But let's get back to that
Steelers Ravens game. I just I don't know what to
expect of that because you don't know which version of
which team you're gonna get.

Speaker 5 (01:26:50):
Yeah, you're right, you're like initially, I'm like, okay, Well,
I assume Baltimore wins that game. Pittsburgh's reeling, Aaron Rodgers
is calling out receivers and you mentioned Cam Hayward, and
I just I don't think Pittsburgh's very good and their
lone win in their last month was against this Bengals

(01:27:12):
team with Joe Blacco and everything that came with that game.
So yeah, I think I think Baltimore probably wins that game.
And guess what, that's what the Bengals need, and they
need that because they need the Steelers to keep losing
because they don't have the tiebreaker as of today with them.
And two, you still have a match up with Baltimore.

(01:27:33):
So you got to sweep Baltimore and you didn't sweet Pittsburgh.
You split with them, And so the Baltimore Ravens are
the team you need to win. And it's not a
huge difference in percentages playoff percentages, but it does change
it by a few percentage points if the Ravens win
versus the Steelers. So put on your Baltimore purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
All right, let's say that. So since he goes to Buffalo,
let's say they win, and we'll say that as you
pray for that the Ravens beat the Steelers, so that
a week from now would leave the Ravens at seven
and six, Pittsburgh at six and seven, the Bengals at
five and eight, with the Ravens and Bengals up next.

Speaker 5 (01:28:15):
And so that's when it gets really juicy, because you
could go from right now, the Bengals have roughly a
six percent chance to make the playoffs. You win this week,
you get it up to thirteen percent, so it just
more than doubles. If you win again, then during that
thirty plus percent range, so it more than doubles. And
then some it's like one and a half times your

(01:28:36):
chances that they jump even more, and we really start
to have that conversation of that pat. So these two weeks,
these two games, when you look at the Bengals schedule,
they're obviously the two toughest opponents, and if you can
get past them, they have the most playoff impact if
you're going to need some help along the way. But

(01:28:56):
that Steelers schedule's tough. If you look at who the
Steelers have, the Ravens that they are, they're dealing with
some quality teams as well. So if you're the Bengals,
you should feel like, all right, if we handle business
this week, get it to a must win game against
the Baltimore Ravens, a team we beat in their house,
beat them, then we're really feeling good going into the

(01:29:19):
middle part of December and a matchup against Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
Yeah, because right, Steelers, Steelers off the Dolphins. After the
Ravens game, the Lions the Browns and the Steelers again.
So are the Ravens again, I guess I should say so, yeah,
they said, and.

Speaker 5 (01:29:33):
The Lions are going to need that. The Lions need
to string together some win.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
So, yeah, it's really interesting to be this late in
the season despite what we've been through with the you know,
Joe Burrow going down at the Bengals. Okay, if it's
only one win, too, is the other thing people like, Oh,
they're on a roll right now. Okay, it's one win,
that's not a trend. And you got to get past
the Bills at Buffalo at High Mark on on Sunday.
Never an easy out, and obviously it's one game at

(01:29:57):
a time, and that is so cliche. Fortunately the Browns
are the Browns. But it's the worst division in football
because you know, you're leading the division with a five
hundred record, that it goes to show you the beautiful
parody of the NFL.

Speaker 5 (01:30:14):
Yeah, it has been. Oh, it's been such a unique year.
And honestly, when we do this and we play this game,
I think of a few things one and I treated
this over the weekend because the Vengals have their flaws.
They're far from perfect. There's a bunch of areas that
I get that the people discussed weaknesses from that ownership

(01:30:37):
to front office on that right, we could get into
those and we'd talk about those because of four and eight,
and it's easy to talk about those things when they lose.
I will say this that Joe Burrow and this is
just the reality of it, at least for me. Had
Joe Burrow stayed healthy, even with their flaws, I think

(01:30:58):
he would have mattered in the games. And he does matter,
just he impacts their mentality, how they carry themselves, their
confidence as a team outside of just scoring points. And
that was something the trap I think fans got caught
in a few weeks ago was oh, well, Joe Flack
was putting up points, it's not the offense. Well yeah, sure,
But Joe Burrow being on the field and being Joe

(01:31:19):
Burrow matters. It just does. And so with him back,
I think they're going to feel like they can get anyone.
And in a season where I especially with the Rams losing,
where it doesn't feel like that there's a team that's
just this unbeatable jugger munt. You you to me, My
brain turns to I can't believe they believe that Jets game,

(01:31:41):
And I can't believe that they didn't put Joe out
there for the Patriots game, because they could have. You
know that they would be in a much different spot
had they won this game or that game, or that's
gone different and none of those things did. But that's
where that's where my mind turns for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:31:55):
Yeah, I don't know. I look at the remaining schedules here, right,
and since he's has an easier path the Bengals to
after Buffalo, of course it's gonna be a tough game.
But if thinking when that you got Miami, you got
the Cardinals, you got the Browns, those all feel like wins.
The tough part about the Steelers and the Ravens respectively,
is Baltimore still has the Patriots and Lions and the Steelers. Yeah,

(01:32:18):
we've got the Lions in there and the Ravens again,
so it seems like the path is a lot easier
for the Bengals after this week.

Speaker 5 (01:32:26):
Yeah, that's really it is. I view it as the
two weeks.

Speaker 4 (01:32:32):
I get it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:32):
The Ravens are the Ravens right now, and they're six
and six and it isn't going great. But there is
a reason. The Bengals were seven point underdogs going into Thanksgiving,
and this morning, I believe that last time I looked,
they were six point underdogs against Buffalo. So the next
two games are going to be tough. I think if
you can get by those, and we're talking about a

(01:32:54):
one in three playoff chance now with three to go,
and you have the Dolphins, Cardinals, and Browns with two
of those three at home. Now you're really talking about
a chance here. Because last year they ran the table,
but they needed they needed so many things to go
their way, and it was this team and that team
and that team, and there was like six different teams

(01:33:16):
that needed to lose or do this or that, and
they got all but one. And this year it's two
teams and all you need them to do is lose
a couple of games and you play one of those teams.
And so it's much more simple from a past standpoint.
Whether or not it happens is a whole nother discussion,
but if you went out, you're talking about just a

(01:33:38):
couple of football games going your way to get to
nine mate and win the division.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):
Really need Pittsburgh. I misspoke there, I said lost so Baltimore.
The two tough games they have left are the Patriots
and the Packers. I don't see them getting past either
one of those teams. Pittsburgh has the Lions in Baltimore
and those those feel like loss. I mean, I don't
know if you're going to get past the Lions. Although
the Lions with the team we saw last year. You
talk about a change of garden in the in the league,

(01:34:03):
right all the teams are the last couple of seasons,
the cases, the Bills are on the edge, on the bubble.
The Lions are are on the bubble as well. Uh,
it's it's really changed almost overnight.

Speaker 5 (01:34:15):
It has. And I I think that those type of
teams would be able to hit their stride. And I'm
trying to see, I'm trying to think of a mon
Rossie Brown just went down. When did the Ravens and
and Lions play. They play the December. Okay, so there's

(01:34:37):
there's some time. Now, there's twenty days for him to
get help it. I think that's such a huge injury.
I think Jamiir Gibbs is the best running back in
doun rail. He is a buddy of mine. Text me
like a month ago, like, who would you rather have
Jonathan Taylor Jamiir Gibson. I said, the numbers are going
to say Taylor, but I think Jamiir Gibbs is the best.
And since then he felt up his end of the bargain.
I I love watching him play, but they're tough. They're

(01:35:00):
really talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
It in Montgomery too. I mean, good, Look, you know
when they're healthy. That is the best one two combination NFL.

Speaker 5 (01:35:07):
It is. It is when the weather changes, even if
it's in that dove in Detroit, it just it feels like,
all right, well, they're built to win those games. They've
had some key injuries, though there's no doubinitely about some
key injuries. So we'll see. But that's a tough one.
Put it like that, I wouldn't be I would be
bombed if I with the Bengals and I started to

(01:35:28):
deal with the Lions and said you have the Cardinals.
I'd much Rayther face the Cardinals.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
All right, they beat Bengals, beat the Bills, and it's
entirely possible, and some may say likely for sure that
that happens on Sunday. They got an easy path in
here provide everything else shakes out with the difficulty of
the schedule makers have for Baltimore and Pittsburgh, so it
is doable. We have a chance. James Rapine over at
at Bengals Talk dot com and Lockdown Bengals Only Daily

(01:35:54):
Bengals podcast with us and I. Thanks again, brother, appreciate it.
We'll talk in about a week.

Speaker 5 (01:35:59):
Wait.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
Thanks love it. Thanks again, man, I appreciate you. We've
got news on the way with Willie. There's something good.
There's some good news coming off the long holiday weekend.
Right Bengals still in this thing, believe it or not,
a chance to win the North. It's unreal. Seven hundred WWD, Cincinnati,

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