12-09-25 FULL SHOW - It's Colorado Gives Day and Step Denver Is Stopping By

Get out your wallets for Colorado Gives Day, Step Denver stops by, and Denver Public Schools is taking more of your money this year.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, it's Mandy Connell, Mandy ton.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
On koam got Saddy can the noisy cuts through?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Three many Donald Keith, you, Sad Bab.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to a Tuesday edition of the show.
We will barrel through our Tuesday adventures. You're invited to
stick around all the way through the show. Most of
you don't. Just my favorite too, I am Mandy Connell.
That guy over there is Anthony Rodriguez. You can call
him a roder.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
If Philip Rivers can do it, all of us Mandy
Wrians can too.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
Ay rod and ever just laughing. I'm laughing about it.
I am laughing about the fact that Philip Rivers is
a forty four Is that correct? Yes, forty four years old,
has been signed to the Colts practice squad. He is
back in the NFL. He if he's if he now,
A lot of stuff would have to happen before he
took a snap, right, But if he took a snap,

(01:11):
he'd be He'd be the only grandfather I think to
play in the NFL.

Speaker 5 (01:15):
Wouldn't he ask me how old is Philip Rivers. How
old is Philip Rivers? Philip Rivers has a million children,
his oldest his oldest son, Yeah, is the same age
as Riley Leonard.

Speaker 6 (01:27):
Who's Riley Leonard, the current Colts quarterback.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
Bro This is just fantastic.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
Philip Rivers is a national treasure. And that's coming from
a Broncos fan that couldn't stand him. But he is hilarious.
Have you ever watched the NFL films of him?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Now?

Speaker 5 (01:41):
Doesn't swear and he's like that high schooler that the
parents said you can't swear and they come up with
all these creative words that sound like swear words. Right,
he never swears, and he says like flip in this
like he's he's in dog kid.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Yeah, he's the Indiana University quarterback this year.

Speaker 5 (01:56):
He is. I cannot believe this. It's ridiculous. And here's
the crazy thing, the Canton clock. He is a semi
finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and if
he assigned to the active roster, his clock resets five years.
Oh no, he's been out of the league since twenty
one and he is a Pro Football Hall of Fame
semi finalist.

Speaker 6 (02:16):
And if he is on the act.

Speaker 5 (02:18):
The choice right this Canton clock resets another five years.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
I don't know. I love this story. This is like
another you know what was the story Invincible? You know
who's written for this to happen, Vince Papali. That's I
love this story. Aaron Rodgers loves this because then he's not.

Speaker 6 (02:32):
The old part.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
God, he's forty two and Aaron Rivers is forty four.
The Aaron Rodgers memes of him sitting on the sidelines
and the school, My favorite so far is Aaron Rodgers
looked like he tried for Rob Kevin McAllister's house.

Speaker 6 (02:46):
The world area, the world deserves.

Speaker 5 (02:50):
The Colts to have Rivers on the field to go
on a run, and for the Broncos to host a
Philip Rivers lead team in the playoffs in twenty twenty five,
because those games for a decade of Rivers and the
Chargers versus the Broncos were crazy. And to have him
have a chance to be here in Denver for a
playoff game in twenty twenty five is legendary.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Well, a lot of stuff has to happen before that.
Paging Mandy Connall, Paging Mandy Connall. It's windy is all
get out and it's been a long time since it's
been this windy. Driving in No Co in Southeast Wyoming
is straight up miserable and I don't suggest and that's
the darntutent truth. Thank you for that wind and traffic report, sir.

Speaker 5 (03:32):
I'm typically a hand rest. Yeah, good at six o'clock
on the steering wheel ten and two today holditude good
lord on I twenty five becas literally like cars are
going left to right.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
I got a low profile vehicle. I don't really have to.
I mean it's kind of low profile. So that's keep
in mind the wind city. No, it's not. It's about
the politicians. I don't know how long that is supposed
to last. Today, I know we were a high wind
advisory situation.

Speaker 6 (04:01):
It's annoying coming up.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah it is.

Speaker 6 (04:03):
When is the worst element known to weather?

Speaker 4 (04:05):
Ooh no, I disagree. I think sleet and I hate snow.
Sleet to me, the wet like frozen sleet like sleet. Yeah,
wind is the worst. Wind ruins Wind ruins everything. Well,
the wind is currently gusting out of the west at
thirteen miles per hour.

Speaker 6 (04:23):
Anthony.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Anyway, uh, let's do the blog. We haven't even done
that yet. It's Colorado Gives Day. We've got a whole
bunch of stuff going on. I started to get mad again,
and then I found some stories I'm not mad about.
And Anthony sent me a video and I chose not
to put it on the blog because it stunned me.
But I can't get it out of my head.

Speaker 6 (04:42):
Which one the.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Woman on the blog with her sixty eight thousand dollars
in credit card debt, one hundred thousand dollars in student
loans and personal loans, so she's letting pro what thirty
maybe with one hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars in
straight up. I just that blew my mind. I can't
get it out of my head.

Speaker 5 (05:03):
Literally, after I sent you that video, I saw another video,
a clip with someone with Dave Ramsey and they talked
about that as a couple they have like a million dollars,
like three hundred thousand, three hundred thousand in student loans
and like over one hundred and fifty grand in credit cards.
And he was like stunned. He was like, and I'm
about to ruin your life the next three years. You

(05:24):
can do nothing there.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
I just I can't even I mean, you guys, at
some point, at one point in my life when I
made no money, so this was a staggeringly high number.
I had like thirty thousand dollars in credit card debt.
But I paid it all off. It took like seven years,
and I finally paid it all off. I just can't
even imagine, like looking at a credit card bill that

(05:47):
is that high. That is so incredibly stressful.

Speaker 5 (05:50):
Now, that video you're referencing really cool because she literally
opens it with I'm gonna help you, make you feel
you you feel better, and hey, she's got the right
mindset because they're looking.

Speaker 6 (05:59):
To fix it.

Speaker 5 (06:00):
Still crazy, Yeah, but everyone else in the in the
comments of that video, comments are always the best thing
about TikTok allways. The comments are like, I appreciate this
because now I don't feel as bad about my one
thousand dollars.

Speaker 6 (06:10):
Right, right, you're sixty eight thousand.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
What's kind of the same theory. I watch hoarders because
I want to feel better about my own homes cleanliness. Right,
I'm like, well, I don't have a four thousand you know,
McDonald's bag over in a corner over there. I'm doing
pretty dang.

Speaker 6 (06:24):
Good, my kajillion pound life those days.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
I don't watch those. I'm not rooting for the for
the I've got two people now that I'm following their
weight LSS journey's from like six fifty and they're at
like four twenty five now, so I'm following. That's just fascinating.

Speaker 5 (06:38):
If you have to wonder and hope that the crane
doesn't break as they have to get them out of
their bedroom.

Speaker 4 (06:42):
Stop it, then you're like, oh no, yeah, I'm doing
O life decisions. Let's do the blog. Find the blog
at mandy'sblog dot com. Look for the headline that says
twelve nine to twenty five blog It's Colorado Gibbs Day
and step Denver is stopping by. Click on that and
here are the headlines you will find within.

Speaker 5 (06:59):
I think it was the office half of American All
with ships and equipments of sen that's going to press plat.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Today.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
I'm the blug It's Colorado Gives Day, step Denver and
step Colorado Springs Independence Institute, Children's Diabetes Foundation, Veterans Community Project,
Steamboat Institute, come Back Yoga, Common Sense Institute, Minors Ally
Performing Arts Center. Nonprofits that aren't in Colorado, gives Day
advanced pathways about face Radio, best Day Ministries, Jimmy Kimmel's

(07:25):
Sad Contract extension. A new group with past issues takes
over the homeless hotel. Great news on gas prices. Adams
County's treasurer won't step down. Denver residents could get a
higher school tax bill. Disabled residents to RTD. No Trump
cat Partantina Peters. At least one crazy criminal will remain
locked up. No, you don't have to idle your car

(07:47):
in the winter. Another weird GOP side effect. Waiter wobile
driver wanted a short film about Saint Bernard's parenting. One
oh one, do what you Gotta do? Emu's on ice?
Isn't that good?

Speaker 6 (07:59):
Willy walk over?

Speaker 4 (08:00):
This is Bob Ross nominated a veteran or first responder.
Dave Logan loved r. J. Harvey last week. A potato
peeling hacked That makes sense? A new wayscumbag steel Justice
Kotanji Brown Jackson thinks for a technocracy. Not all immigrants
are equal. Pull ups are the new whip it out?
This is so real. This is an actual slide in Boston.

(08:21):
And I just had a late edition and it didn't
come up, but I don't remember the headline anyway. Those
are the headlines on the blog at Mandy's blog dot com.
You know, I teck, I know, I know. No I added,
and it just came up. It just came up when
I refreshed my thinking. Well, okay, new favorite sound bite.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
So fantastic, fantastic States of America.

Speaker 6 (08:57):
It the collection is just so vast, it's growing.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Our only political drops there you go.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh no, what I.

Speaker 7 (09:12):
Know.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
At the bottom I added is this for Tina Peters.
Because right before the show, I'm talking, minutes before noon,
I saw this tweet from Assistant Attorney General Harmy Dillon
that said, under my direction at Civil Rights has opened
an investigation into the entire Colorado prison system following multiple

(09:32):
reports of unconstitutional and legally insufficient carceral conditions. Prisoners have
civil rights. Now, this could be completely a coincidence, completely
totally a coincidence. But this is just so coincidental that

(09:57):
it just happens that the Department of Justice is opening
up a civil rights investigation the week after Colorado says no,
we're not going to let you have Tina Peters. Tina
Peters is in state prison for state crimes. And let
me just say this as clearly as possible, because the
fact that this is even a debate is crazy to me.

(10:20):
Tina Peters was convicted in state prison for state crimes
by a state jury. There is no authority for the
president of the United States to pardon anyone for state
level crimes. You can pardon them for federal crimes all

(10:42):
day long, but the two things are completely separate, just separate.
So Tina Peters is not going to get a presidential pardon,
and I think that they know that. And last week
when it was decided, a federal judge said, no, we're
not going to give her. There's no justification for this.
So for this to happen right now is highly suspicious

(11:05):
in my mind. Now here's the thing. If there are
truly human rights violations going on in our prison system,
I'd like to know that I'm one of those people.
And I realized that this is going to make some
of you go. Guide Manny, I didn't know you were
such a lefty. But I think that people in our
prison system who want to be who want to be rehabilitated,

(11:26):
who really want to turn their lives around, they should
have the opportunity, So they should have the opportunity to
make you better choices because ultimately a vast majority of
them are going to get back out. They're going to
be in society and they're either going to victimize someone
else or they're going to become productive members of society.
And I think prison has a responsibility to make that

(11:47):
available and make sure the prisoners have that chance. Doesn't
mean that all of them will, you know, take you
up on it. Some people are just not going to
be better. It's just the way it is. So I
want those things to be investigated. But guys that I mean,
did anybody else after I said that, does anybody else
immediately think? Is this about Tina Peters? Is this you know,

(12:10):
flexing on the state of Colorado to make a point,
Because don't get me wrong, Colorado has done a lot
that I think definitely deserves to be flexed on, especially
when it comes to immigration or sanctuary cities, our sanctuary status,
because that is in violation of federal law. Right, I
do think that the Trump administration has the right and

(12:32):
the ability to say to Colorado, we are going to
punish you for your stance violating federal law. If they
really wanted to. I mean, they could go after every
pot selling state. So you guys are all violating federal law.
So there are ways that I do believe that the
Trump administration should and does have the responsibility to push
back on those federal issues. But this is not a

(12:54):
federal issue. In no way, shape or form is this
a federal issue other than and Tina Peters was just
an absolute, rock solid, never ending ally for Trump, who
continues to keep the narrative that the election was stolen alive.
So this is extremely concerning. And I know that there

(13:16):
are going to be people out there high five and
this is what you get. And I kind of at
the bottom of the blog, I said, mess with the bull,
get the horns. I guess this may be a complete coincidence.
I hope it is, because if it's not, then everything
they're saying about Trump truly weaponizing the DJ is true. Right,
I mean, it calls everything into question because there's not

(13:38):
a rational reason for this. I can logically make the
argument for a lot of Trump's most unpopular policies, the
whole ice and kicking people out, and it's like, I
feel terrible for the people who've been here for a
long time who don't do anything wrong, but ultimately they
broke the law to get here, and you have to

(13:59):
disincentivize other people from breaking the law by holding those
accountable who do. And it's unfortunate that some otherwise very
nice people are getting caught up and it it really is.
But I can defend that all day long, but I
can't defend this. Yeah, yeah, Mandy, I love your show,
but I think you're spending way too much time on politics,

(14:20):
either Trump or Biden. If you do a retrospective of
your recent shows, you should agree more fun topics please,
Just a couple of really important political issues a week,
you know what. I think that is an absolutely fair
criticism and I want to issue an apology and I'm
going to do it again at the end of the
show Yesterday. At the end of the show, a texture
made a comment about Joe Biden being a good guy,
and I responded in such a nasty way that I

(14:42):
horrified myself. I felt really terrible about that, and thankfully
that text emailed me. I was like, dude, and I
was like, thank god you emailed me. I am so sorry.
That was beyond I just was. I've been super cranky,
and it probably is a hormonal you. But it's also
because every day I open up the news and there

(15:04):
isn't good news stories. I mean, it's all it's like,
I look, I swear to God, I look, you guys.
I don't even go to the political websites first anymore.
I go other places. It's just super hard because everything
feels like it's politics and I would love to talk
about fun stuff. And I do have people who actually

(15:24):
send me stuff that is not political, and a lot
of that stuff I do use. So I'm asking I agree,
first of all, I am aware, second of all, and
third of all, i'd love you. If you see a
story that you think is cool, feel free to email
me Mandy Connell at iHeartMedia dot com. It will be
appreciated even if I don't use that particular story. And
there's a lot of reasons that you use the story

(15:45):
and that you don't use the story, and you know,
sometimes it's just an interesting story but not a good
talk topic. So send stuff along because I do feel
like I'm just every everything I see is connected to politics,
and I need to get out of it. But it's
the same time super frustrating. Some of the stuff that's
going on is like so crazy that you just think

(16:10):
to yourself, how have we gotten here? And then I
try and walk it back, try to go, oh, nope,
we can't anyway. It's a big conflict for me. I
don't disagree with you, Mandy. Two things can be true
at the same time. Peters can be guilty and Colorado
elections can be rigged. You are absolutely correct, which is
why it's so important that Republicans start to think about

(16:32):
electability again and start thinking about distancing themselves from the
twenty twenty election and looking forward instead it back. Because
you cannot ensure that elections are fair if you cannot
get someone elected who actually cares about it. So that's
kind of where I am on that anyway. So there's
going to be an investigation. I'm super interested to find

(16:53):
out what instigated the investigation, right like I want to
know what started the ball roll. I want to know
what Steele dossier is behind this. I'm just kidding, I
don't know if it's something like that. Now, today is
Colorado Gives Day. And to the text, who said, what
can we you know, what can we talk about that's

(17:13):
not politics? Well, today's Colorado Gives Day, And for those
of you that are either new to Colorado, new the show,
maybe you don't know what this is. This is Colorado's
Day of Giving, and it's set up in such a
way that it all runs through a foundation that there
are matching dollars available for any of these nonprofits. And
if you have ever thought about making a charitable donation

(17:35):
or you want to share, maybe you've had a wonderful
year full of blessings and you want to spread that around.
I have taken the liberty of putting some of my
favorite nonprofits, and this is certainly not a complete list. Honestly,
when I was doing this this morning, I was like,
I know there's other people I'd like to put on
this list, and I just couldn't remember them all. But
they're all organizations that I know do really good work.

(17:58):
They run on a very lean budget, which is important
to me. I don't like to spend a lot of
money on overhead, and they're doing really good things. So
those are my three things. A lot of them have
to do with public policy, think tanks or veterans. That's
a lot of them. But if you need some suggestions,
go ahead and check it out. There I also put

(18:19):
some nonprofits that are not connected to Colorado Gives Day.
I just think that some of these nonprofits are too new.
You have to have been in existence for a certain
amount of years to be part of Colorado Gives. But
I know the people behind them, and I know again
the work that they're doing is also important. So if
you are feeling a little bit charitable, you can go

(18:40):
ahead and make a donation today coming up at two o'clock.
We've done this I don't even know for how many
years now. I mean I've been doing it for like
ten years. We have stepped n Ver on once a year,
and they're going to come on at two o'clock. When
you hear some of the stories from step Denver and

(19:01):
what they're doing to really help men in homelessness and
drug addiction and alcohol addiction, it's amazing. Plus a bunch
of other stuff going on. But when we get back,
great news on gas prices. How about some good news there.
Metro Denver gas prices dropped to some of the lowest
in the nation this holiday season. As of Monday, gas

(19:22):
to forty seven a gallon in Colorado, down from two
seventy six a month ago, and uh. In Douglas County.
You're looking at two forty four, Jefferson two thirty eight,
Adams two fifteen, l Paso to twenty six. And I
wanted to just take a moment because I believe that

(19:46):
there is a perceived affordability problem and I hear me out.
I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but just hear me out.
The big issue right now is that Donald Trump is
saying that affordability is a Democrat hoax.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
It is not.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Affordability is a feeling, right. Affordability is you know your ability,
and I said it yesterday at the end of the show.
Your ability to pay your bills, maybe have a little
money left over at the end, maybe be able to
take a vacation without gripping the entire time, you know, financially,
that's affordability. It's being able to go to the grocery
store and buy the stuff you want and be able
to afford it. Those are all things that drive the

(20:25):
notion of affordability. And right now Americans are not feeling
like things are very affordable. Our incomes have not kept
up with inflation at all, at remotely, and so people
are stretched and they are stretched in and I think
affordability is a big issue. But I want to take
a moment right now and just say I am the
first to complain when gas prices go up, but I

(20:46):
am not necessarily good at making note of when gas
prices go down. So I just want to thank all
of the people in the EPA and the Governor's office
who somehow managed to not screw this up, at least
during the winter months. So we actually are very very
lucky because we have two things in Colorado that many

(21:09):
other states don't have. Number One, we have oil and
being able to pump our own oil and then take
it right down the road to sun Core's refinery so
we can refine the oil that we take out of
the ground in Colorado. That is a big part of
why we have such inexpensive oil here in our gas

(21:30):
here in Colorado. And I'm just making sure we pay
attention to this. Wait, somebody just said, all bucks seventy
five at Costco? Stop it buck seventy five? Many paid
a buck ninety seven a gallon to weld this morning? Okay,
on the Commons Beardhealth text line, can anyone beat one

(21:51):
seventy five at Costco? Do we have one fifty Do
we have one fifty five? What do we at? I
have to use premium um leaded in my car. It's
the only thing I don't like about my Mercedes. But
it's worth it because it runs really well on the
premium on leted ooh, Andy got gas and Parker the
other day for a buck ninety nine.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
I got two to one the other day. What in
the DTC?

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Shut up?

Speaker 4 (22:15):
Where?

Speaker 5 (22:16):
Huh?

Speaker 4 (22:16):
I'm I telling well, it's not like there's going to
be a run on the place.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I need to know what I need.

Speaker 6 (22:22):
Gas went up to two thirds? Okay, sure, okay, right
over here out Bellevue.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
Okay, Mandy, we have a few gas stations around us
that are a buck sixty nine. And then this textra
makes the point about affordability that I'm kind of trying
to make prices for everything, but gas are up, maybe
not as much as before, but still up now what
I'm seeing. And I talked about this the other day.
Abro do you were Joscelyn do the grocery shopping?

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (22:46):
We have a deliver now.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
Okay, So here's what I want you to do. Can
you go back and look at your past orders and
how much you paid for stuff on your delivery app.

Speaker 6 (22:55):
Well, the delivery we pay the delivery for the whole
year is ninety nine dollars.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
No, no, no, no no, I'm talking about each item,
like when you order, When you order each individual item,
does it show you how much it costs? Can you
go back? Because we usually buy the same stuff over
and over it, Oh you don't, okay, no, never mind,
Because if you buy your groceries online, you should be
able to look at the history and compare old orders
to new orders and see what the prices are doing
for the stuff you buy.

Speaker 5 (23:19):
At all astronomical an astronomical rise.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
See the last couple of months, the things that I
buy on a normal basis, except eggs, have dropped, not dramatically,
but sometimes on a product that's like three twenty nine,
it's back down to two seventy nine, which is fifty cents.
You know, that's that's a for something that costs that much.
That's a considerable drop. Not everything, not everything, So it's
not consistent. But I'm curious if anybody else has noticed that,

(23:46):
because it's you know, we all tend to buy the
same groceries over and over again. We are we are
all creatures of habit. So I'm just curious if anybody
else is having that experience. Mandy confirming buck seventy five
at Costco. We've got one seventy four at Murphy's. We've
got Illy I Lift in Havanah one sixty nine a gallon.
One's sixty five at Kings. Is that with or without

(24:08):
your points discount, sir or madam curious? This is pretty amazing.
I mean, that's that's pretty remarkable. So I just want
to take a moment and let's all just appreciate. Right
before many like we're getting ready to drive for Christmas,

(24:29):
so that's nice, So let's just take a moment and
appreciate that. And if anybody else has noticed what your
groceries have done, are they moving up or down or
you know? And I'm talking about the stuff you buy
all the time, like cans of chopped tomatoes in our case,
you know, like green beans, things like that, the stuff
we buy all the time. So those are the things
that I know how much they cost. But I just

(24:50):
I'm curious because I do think affordability is going to
be a huge issue and if people don't begin to
feel like their dollar is going further. Then that's going
to be a huge problem for the midterms, not just
in the midterms though, in life, right, I don't think.
I think one of the reasons we're also cranky is
it maybe we're just all feeling the pinch and it's
making us cranky and then we, you know, take it

(25:15):
out on everybody else. Mandy, nineteen seventy six. When I
started driving, gasoline was thirty nine cents a gallon. When
I started driving, gas was eighty five cents a gallon.
And I used to in high school have to like
scrounge around for couch money, and I would go to
the gas station and buy one gallon of gas for

(25:37):
eighty nine cents in change. Ah, good times, good times.
Every I think the lowest we've seen here, and that
was with points, by the way, a King super the lowest.
So we're all just going to have to a husband
having access to the grocery list, Mandy, you're insane. Chuck

(25:57):
and I split up the grocery shopping. But we have
a whiteboard at home and we just take a picture,
and let's take a picture of the board for me.
We've tried advance to apps and stuff like that. But
it just doesn't. It doesn't work for our family. We're
like analogue people in a digital world. So let's see here, Mandy.

(26:19):
This past Sunday, after church, we were on the runs,
so we had to eat fast. We got two egg
McMuffin meals at McDonald's, which consists of one egg McMuffin,
one hash brown, and one orange juice per bag. It
came out to over twenty six dollars. Yeah, that's a problem.
That is a huge, huge problem. At some point, you know,
you start to go, well, fast food, it's not worth it.

(26:39):
How is that possible? Because let me see here egg.
I actually ate an egg McMuffin not too long ago.
Because you ever, I don't usually crave food. I don't,
I don't create. But when I do, I'll give it
a day to see if it'll go away. Because a
lot of times if you're craving something, it just if
you just ignore or it will go away. Here comes

(27:02):
the craving for an egg McMuffin of all things. Oh wow,
I didn't get the whole meal. They are expensive, like
ten bucks over ten bucks some places. That's kind of crazy.
You can make that much cheaper. Yeah, No, for the
meal for the meal, the up in itself is like
five bucks.

Speaker 6 (27:18):
Oh yeah, plus a hash brown in a dream. That
is not Uh, that's not cool.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
Mandy on affordability, The problem with the political elite, including Trump,
is that most of them have never had this scrounge
to the couch, cushions and car ashtrays to look for
loose change. Affordability is not only a feeling, but for
many affect of survival. Another reason Colorado Gives is a
great program. We have over fifteen nonprofits here in Fremont
County participating and thank you for reminding me that it

(27:46):
is also Colorado Gives Day. Oh Mandy, I was talking
about a Rod not having access Lol, hilarious. Ayrod. What
is the name of the health insurance plan Mandy promotes
and includes catastrophic coverage combined with a medical facility. I
can't find it on the website that would be You
just need to go to PINNACLEAPC dot com Pinnacle Advanced
Primary Care and talk to Travis. Click on the Chat

(28:09):
with Travis button. He will tell you all about it
and save you big. We'll be right back. So thank
you to listener Trey who just dropped off a cheesecake here.
Oh yeah, he should have seen Aron Space what ay
Ron good news. Cheesecake freezes beautifully. So I'm gonna take

(28:29):
it home. I'm gonna put it into tupperware for you,
and I'm gonna bring it back Tom sticking in the freezer.
So when you are done with your thank you?

Speaker 6 (28:38):
What kind of cheesecake?

Speaker 4 (28:39):
Just beautiful? Plain, it's gorgeous. That's kind gorgeous cheesecake. Absolutely,
I don't think anything. It just looks like pure beautiful cheesecake.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
Just did you get a name and an address and
a Social Security number from this person?

Speaker 4 (28:53):
I know Trey. He was part of our cheesecake contest.
He went up against Dave Lawer's cheesecake.

Speaker 6 (28:58):
And obviously at the.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
Well was very close.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
The man makes a fine cheesecake. Otherwise I would have
been like, no, I'm good, you don't need to bring one, Entrey,
Thanks for that anyway, Love by anyway. Uh, this is
kind of gossipy, but kind of interesting. The Daily Mail
is reporting that there is finally someone who is in
the sphere of Representative Ilhan Omar who was coming forward

(29:30):
to He says confirm that she did indeed marry her
brother in order to get him into the country. And
they have a timeline. And this guy has got some
details that I'm not sure came out prior to now,
but I know that the Trump Investigation Administration is investigating

(29:51):
that entire situation because she was married, she had a child.
They divorce, ex husband goes back to the UK. This
other person shows up. Oh, no, excuse me, now, I
got that wrong. Let me get this right. So Ilhan
Omar comes here. In nineteen ninety seven, she marries a

(30:13):
man whose last name is heirse HRSI. They had a
religious ceremony and it's not recognized legally, but they go
on to have two children. Then in two thousand and nine,
she marries a guy named Ahmad Elmi in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
He enrolls in college and in twenty eleven, Omar says
they split and he went back to the UK. In

(30:36):
twenty twelve, she and her ex husband, the first husband,
have a third child. Oh, this is weird. This is
going to be very very interesting. I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna continue to go down that path because we'll
just have to see very much, Maddy, how much of

(30:56):
the cost of groceries. Is due to the increased cost
of food or due to the increase in the hourly wage.
That's one of those economics questions that I need way
more information to parse out the actual answer. But everything
has an impact, right. One of the things that I
would hope would start to bring prices down a little
bit in the grocery store is gas prices. Fuel prices

(31:19):
are a big part because however much it costs to
deliver something somewhere else gets passed on to the consumer. Yes,
higher wages are probably some of it, but I don't
think that's as much of an impact. You know, there's
a lot of different reasons, and part of it I
think is just profit taking. I'm not going to say gouging.
I don't think gouging is the word, but I think

(31:41):
profit taking is part of it. Plus, our dollar just
doesn't go as far. That's what inflation does. Mandy, I
buy sugar and twenty five pounds bags. I bake a
lot and feed a lot of hummers in the summer.
I'm assuming that's a hummingbird. When Biden took office, I
would pay thirteen ninety nine for twenty five pounds at Costco.

(32:03):
Now it is nineteen ninety seven. It climbing is second year.
Is stayed there, enjoy your show. The biggest inflation that
I have seen is not necessarily Joe Biden's fault, but
the fancy cocoa that I buy. When I started buying it,
it was nineteen dollars for two point two pounds of
this really ridiculous cocoa from France, and now it is

(32:26):
fifty nine dollars for two point two pounds. But that's
partially because there's a chocolate issue. We have a cocoa
shortage right now. So there you go. Uh, Mandy, who
ever paid that at Mickey D's got ripped off. I
can get two egg mcmuffins for two bucks, and a
large drink is a buck sixty nine. Not sure about
the hash Browns, but it can't be five bucks, apiece.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
I do not know, Amandy. I feel like I can't
afford steak anymore. Amen to that. We've all but cut
out red meat in our house household. This is just expensive, Mandy.
Years ago, my dad complained that my mom was spending
fifty five dollars a week for groceries for a family
of four. She suggest did hey do the shopping. Seventy

(33:12):
three dollars later, he never complained again. That is a
fantastic story. Thank you for sharing your family lord with me.
When we get back, my pal Christian Tode is gonna
join me. Jimmy Kimmel just got a contract extension, but
I wouldn't be bragging about it. We'll do that next.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Well no, it's Mandy Connell, Andy dona.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
On Klamnemata say the nicey Ray, Andy Donald keeping your
sad babe.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Welcome Bucca, Welcome to the second hour of the show.
I'm your host, Mandy Connall. That guy over there is
Anthony Rodriguez. Together, We're gonna get you right up until
three p m. One KOA Sports will take over. In
the meantime, it's time to check in with my favorite
entertainment pundit. The man who has his finger on the
pulse of all things entertainment and loves to write about

(34:17):
them and talk about that me does so at Hollywood
Intoto dot com and the Hollywood in Toto Podcast. He
is Christian Toto.

Speaker 6 (34:25):
Everyone.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
Hello, Christian.

Speaker 8 (34:29):
Good to be back.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
Well, it's too bad you're not actually in the studio
because I'm having cheesecake. I don't know if you know this.

Speaker 8 (34:37):
You're rubbing it in my face and I don't like
it one bit.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
I am I am rubbing it in your face. Yes, completely,
bit is delicious. But I wanted to have you on
today because I saw this story and I think it's
interesting what's happening right now when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel,
and we all saw we'll call it the rise and
Fall of Jimmy. When all of a sudden, Jimmy after
being attacked by the Trump administry for saying rotten things

(35:01):
are insensitive things about Charlie Kirk's death right after his death,
and there was this massive outpouring of support from all
of these Jimmy Kimmel supporters for like five minutes, and
then his ratings fell back down to earth. And now
we're talking about a contract extension. But this isn't exactly
a huge win. I would think, you know, what is

(35:23):
your take on all this?

Speaker 9 (35:26):
Yeah, it's a placeholder at best. He basically has been
extended for about a year or so, and usually when
big names sign big contracts. You get three years, four years,
five years. I mean a one year contract is odd. Now,
just some context, he is toyed with letting go of
the Late Night Crown for a while. He's been a

(35:47):
little kind of back and forth about it. And also,
you know, this is in the wake of CBS canceling
The Lake Show with Stephen Colbert. Not only is Stephen
Colbert retiring in a sense in May of the twenty twenty,
the show is going away too. So you know, I
think there's two things going on. One, I think CBS
doesn't want to ABC doesn't want to show that Trump

(36:09):
won or that we're really silencing and so they have
to keep them on the air for a little while longer.
But they also know this is a dying revenue model.
It's just not making the cash it used to, and
they don't want to sign them up for this extensive contract.

Speaker 8 (36:21):
So I think there's lots of things to read between
the lines.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Do you think that there's part of this is they
kicked it a little bit down. I think one hundred
percent to tell Trump, you know, Trump's not the boss
of me, right, that was a big part of it.
But I also think there's there's probably some conversation around
whether or not they're going to be able to pull
what's left of Colbert's audience, right, because if you pull
what's left of Cobert Colbert's audience to your program, now

(36:48):
you're talking, you know, numbers that are decent, numbers that
are that are that are pretty good, that may at
some point justify extending, you know, as long as you're
making money. I think that's part of it as well.

Speaker 9 (37:02):
Completely agree it's a gamble to risk and it may
pay off. I mean, Colbert is getting around two or
so million a night and Kiml's been getting like one
point six or so rough estimates. So if Colbert's gone,
I don't think those people are going to go to
Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show because he isn't as
politically driven as Kimmel. It's sort of light version of

(37:23):
those two kim But you know, Kimmel's a true believer
and he's a propagandist, and as is Colbert.

Speaker 8 (37:29):
So if you want that and Colbert's gone, then you
got to go to Kimmel.

Speaker 9 (37:32):
So it'll be very interesting to see how the ratings
shakeout once Colbert finally says goodbye.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
You know, this late night battle for me is sort
of I don't know, it's in a discussion I'm never
really a part of because who stays up that late
anymore Christian? I mean, who's still on a school night?
Who is up at eleven thirty at night on the
East Coast?

Speaker 9 (37:51):
Right?

Speaker 4 (37:51):
And I think that's part of the problem.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, that's part of it.

Speaker 9 (37:54):
I think that people can get you know, breaking entertainment
news and satire on social media. They can go to
YouTube and find some podcasters and comedians who are actually
pretty funny and who don't play by the rules set
up by the system, and so you don't know what
you're going to get. I mean, if you listen to
Tim Dillon, he's a little bit right, he's a little
bit left, he's a little bit ornery, and you don't

(38:14):
know where the jokes are going. But when to turn
it to Colbert or Kimmel, you know exactly the angle
you made ano the punchline per se, and you know
there's going to be a lot of op edism as
opposed to rules just plain out comedy. So I think
there's many, many reasons why this format is fading, and
part of it is self inflicted wounds.

Speaker 8 (38:33):
A part is just the way that we consume digital
content now.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
That's, you know, Christian, that's something that everyone who's working
in the media landscape is trying to wrangle with. It's like, Okay,
people have the attention spans of a goldfish now, so
you've got to figure out a way to be entertaining
every minute of every second of every moment, or they're
going to turn and go to something else because there's
so many other options. You know, back in the day,
it was well, I'll punch a different button on the radio,

(38:58):
but you only had six presets, right, so you just
punched that button. You keep punching those six. It's a
much different place to be. And I actually think another
reason that they're doing it this way is it allows
Kimmel a graceful off ramp as well, and ABC still
has a pretty significant relationship with him outside of the show.

(39:19):
He hosts the Oscars for them, a job no one
else wants. Let's be real, no one wants to host
the Oscars anymore. So I think that this allows him
to say, in a year, well, you know, I only
ask for a year extension because I wanted to retire,
So there's a lot. I think this is actually probably
the best move that Disney ABC could have could have

(39:39):
made here.

Speaker 9 (39:41):
Yeah, I agree, and also I think that the heat
over Trump and Kimmel will be much cooler, I assume
in six months to a year. And also they could say, hey,
we give it a try. This format is still dying.
The revenue isn't what it used to be, the ratings
haven't perked up like we thought. We wanted to honor
Jimmy Kimmel and it it's not really working out. So
we're going to part ways on unfriendly terms. I think

(40:03):
that's a possible solution here as well.

Speaker 4 (40:05):
Right, let me ask you. I mean, I haven't The
Golden Globes came out yesterday and I looked through the
nominees and once again, I've seen nothing of the nominees.
I've seen K Pop Demon Slayer, which was phenomenal, but
you know the Hunter excuse me, excuse me, K Pop
Demon Hunters, Thank you, Anthony? What are are Is there

(40:26):
any indication in the Golden Globes from your perspective? And
I don't know how much of this stuff you've seen
that we're moving away from those highly sort of intersectionality based,
you know, dramas that they kept nominating that no one
actually went and saw, but they kept nominating and telling
us they were great. They were great, even though they
were rejected by most people.

Speaker 5 (40:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (40:47):
No, that's the culture of Hollywood right now, and that's
the culture of award season. These are smaller films, intimate films,
niche films. They're often very good. I'm not going to
criticize them collectively, they're fine, but they don't have mass appeal.
The one movie it's going to steam roll everything this
year is one battle after another. That's the Sitar DiCaprio
pro anti Ice movie. That one just looked to I

(41:09):
don't see anything stopping it or coming near stopping it
at this point. And that one made about think about
seventy million state side, so it got some attention from
local theaters here.

Speaker 8 (41:18):
Not a blockbuster.

Speaker 9 (41:20):
So but yeah, that is just the culture of the
industry right now, is that they the mass popular movies
just don't get nominated, and if they do, it's more
of a token. You know, like Top Going Maverick. It
got Best Picture nomination, but no one expected it to win.

Speaker 4 (41:34):
Yeah, So I mean Zootopia is probably over a billion dollars.
Zutopia two it is probably over a billion dollars at
this point, and at some point you have to wonder
Zootopia was a fantastic movie. I haven't seen Zootobia two yet,
but I probably will because I enjoyed the first one.
But what doesn't Hollywood hear that billion dollar message a
little louder. Give families movies that they can go to

(41:57):
with their kids, and everybody can go, and nobody he's
going to be offended. And you don't have to make
you know, the lead come out as trands whatever. You
can just let the fox be the fox and the
bunny be the bunny. Right, And why does that message
still seem to bounce off the skulls of some of
these people who want to force this crap nobody wants
to see down our throats.

Speaker 9 (42:18):
Well, in the Hollywood's defense, I think they've actually gotten
a little wiser to the situation where we're a little
bit exhausted by the messaging that's been coming out in
theaters for a while, and I think you're seeing less
and less of that. And you know, even with animated
films from Disney, there was messaging, and now I think
they're going to step back from that. So I do
think they've gotten the message belatedly about that issue.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Generally speaking.

Speaker 9 (42:38):
I mean, I think Hollywood will still continue to crank
out family friendly movies. I think most do really well them.
Some clunkers here and there, but there's going to be
a wide variety of films. I think the bigger issue
is that I almost you know, I mentioned remember Hillary
Clinton did a listening tour back in the day when
they just running for the Senate, and you know, whether
it was real or imagined or just a artifice, that's fine.

(43:01):
I think that the studio executives of people who are
green lighting these movies should go into listening tour of
America and really find out what we want to see.
So I think there's a real significant disconnect right now
with what's greenlit, what's in theaters, what's the oscar bait movies,
and what.

Speaker 8 (43:16):
Regular people want to see.

Speaker 9 (43:17):
I mean, I hear all the time the same thing
you said, Oh, look at all these nominated movies, never
heard of them.

Speaker 8 (43:23):
Never see what they are? Yeah, not interested? That's not good.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
I mean, Christian, this is just going to be you know,
book number two of Virtue Bombs, the book that Christian
has out about how Hollywood going woke and they continue
to go broke. I just want to see movies that
I enjoy. I want to see movies that have good
stories and good characters and interesting, you know, the plot lines.
It's just what's happening right now, though Christian is. It
feels like what I just described is happening in streaming

(43:51):
in the form of series. You know, these short series
that we're getting, they're like eight episodes, four episodes, whatever.
That's where some really interesting storytelling is taking place.

Speaker 8 (44:01):
Couldn't read more.

Speaker 9 (44:02):
I think a lot of the storytellers see television as
a better venue for them. I mean, you know, the
budgets are pretty darn big. They get a list actors often,
and they're able to kind of spread their wings, have
less studio notes and be able to tell their stories.
And it could be a limited series, it could be
a multi series situation. But you know, like Vince Gilligan
is a major storyteller, he'd a better call Saul and

(44:25):
you know, breaking Bad.

Speaker 8 (44:26):
He's doing Plurvis right now on Apple TV Plus.

Speaker 9 (44:29):
And I guess maybe ten twenty three years ago, he'd
be writing from the movies, yeah, and making these really
beautiful films and eloquent stories, and we'd be all talking
about him as a Spielberg like character. But instead he's
not as popular as far as the public goes, and
he just makes great TV shows. I think he's pretty
happy with that.

Speaker 4 (44:48):
But you know that goes right back full circle to
what we talked about earlier in this interview, like attention spans. Right,
we don't have the attention span for a three hour epic,
but we have the attention span for eight hours of
content inter as long as it's musted up into our segments.
I mean, that's what God's kind of where we are.

Speaker 9 (45:06):
Yeah, And some of the TV shows bank on that,
where the last few minutes or seconds of an episode
will set something up where you think, oh, gosh, I
need to find out what's going on next.

Speaker 8 (45:14):
I need to kind of stick around watch the next installment.

Speaker 9 (45:17):
So I think that's part of its kind of built
into the system there. But you know, great content remains
great content, and movies like Sinners and Weapons both from
this year, and I'm going to tout a movie coming
very soon called Marty Supreme with Timothy Shalla, may I
really want to see pretty long, Yeah loose, a true
story about a ping pong prodigy. I was mesmerized, and

(45:38):
I really do hope people see that and give it
a chance, because it's terrific.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
You know what, you don't see a lot of movies
about ping pong prodigies.

Speaker 8 (45:44):
Chris not enough. I think it's filling the game.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
I can explore genre really when you get right down
to it. Well, have you seen the new Neil Diamond
tribute Guy Flick yet or that comes out of Christmas?

Speaker 6 (45:54):
Right?

Speaker 8 (45:55):
Yeah, it comes out in a couple of weeks. I've
seen it.

Speaker 9 (45:57):
I'm not allowed to officially review it. It's got a
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, and I will say after
seeing it, I googled the true story and the film
is remarkably close to the true story. So if you
want to tease, you can kind of google what happens there.
There are different things in the ending that'll leave it
more entertaining for you in general. But you know, it's

(46:20):
almost like a jukebox musical where they have a ton
of Neil Diamond songs, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
He is the best well, I saw Kate Hudson and
Hugh Jackman on The Graham Norton Show and they talked
about the fact that Neil Diamond not only knew about
this guy that the movie is about. The movie's about
a guy who has a whole career as a Neil
Diamond tribute act. I mean, that's what his whole life was.
And Neil Diamond not only knew about that guy, he

(46:46):
loved that guy, and he was excited about the movie.
And Kate Hudson showed a picture of her sitting with
Neil Diamond like he met with her to talk to
her after the movie has made. So I always like
stuff like that where everybody's kind of excited about it
instead of like lawsuits flying. You know, it's always And
I'm sure Neil Diamond's getting the grease for the songs,
so yeah, I'm sure he all wants us to go

(47:08):
see his movie.

Speaker 9 (47:11):
Yeah, And you know, I'll be curiously how the younger
generation responds to his music. You know, through the years
has been deemed a little corny. You know, he was clean,
but man, those songs and lyrics, the harmonies, I mean,
it's just magical to hear them. Again in any format,
and Hugh Jackman's got a great voice as those Kate
Hudson apparently so.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
Just before I left Louisville in twenty thirteen, we went
to go see Neil Diamond perform at the KFCYLM Center,
which is their arena and Christian I have never seen
more oxygen tanks and walkers in one pace in myself.
And you know, when you're in a concert and the
band comes out and everybody stands up for the first song.
Everybody stood up, clap, sat back down. But the show

(47:55):
was phenomenal. He was phenomenal. So I don't know, It's
one of those things. I think some are artists are
bigger than their generation.

Speaker 6 (48:03):
Right.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
My daughters just discovered Billy Joel and I made her
listen to The Stranger all the way through that whole
album and she was just like, whoa, you know, And
the music is different, and some of that's kind of
corny lyrically, but I think Neil Diamond is one of
those people who transcends it all.

Speaker 8 (48:18):
I agree. I fell in love with his music via
The Monkeys.

Speaker 9 (48:21):
He wrote several songs for the band back in the
day and by the way, Billy Joel's lyrics me listen
to them.

Speaker 8 (48:26):
There's so much wisdom and so much maturity.

Speaker 9 (48:29):
And he was a very young man at the time
writing those just banger of his songs, and I just
I was amazed that artists who had that wisdom and
that sense of proportion at such a young age.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
It's a rare gift and insight. His insight as a
storyteller is what gets me every single time. And I
just again, we just listened to the whole Stranger album
and every song I was like, oh my god, I
forgot this song was on here. Oh I forgot this
song was on here, And I just I sang along
to every single one. It was just fantastic. All right,
Christian Toada, I'll let you go. I know you got
stuff to do today. You can find Christian writing at

(49:01):
Hollywood intoto dot com. You can find his podcast at
that same website or on all of your podcast platforms.
You can also hear him occasionally on the Hot Air podcast.
You can He's pretty much Christian is a ginormous media whore.
You can hear him him everywhere. You say it with
love and I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you
for all that you've accomplished because of it. Kristin, I'll

(49:23):
talk to again soon.

Speaker 8 (49:24):
My friend guiltiest charge, thanks man.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
That is Christian Toto. He's so good. He's so so good.
Are you gonna see all the Oscar movies this year, Anthony?
Are you gonna try to?

Speaker 6 (49:35):
I'll try.

Speaker 5 (49:36):
I always try, usually get like at least seventy percent
of them watched. I I am gonna try again.

Speaker 4 (49:43):
Although looking at the Golden Globes list, it's not that
I haven't seen them, it's that I've never heard of them.
You know, I'm so out of the demo. I'm just
so I can't wait till. One of the things I
want to do when I retire is see a lot
of movies. I just want to see them all. So,
I mean, okay, so, how many of these have you
heard of? We've got The Secret Agent?

Speaker 6 (50:06):
Nope?

Speaker 4 (50:06):
Nothing, Sinners, which I have heard that was really good,
Okay it was just an accident, Nope. Never heard of
that Frankenstein. Of course, I heard of that Hamnet.

Speaker 6 (50:17):
Nothing.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
I just saw an ad for that. It has something
to do with Shakespeare and sentimental value.

Speaker 6 (50:22):
Nothing.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
So that.

Speaker 4 (50:28):
The Golden Globes came out yesterday. These are the Golden
Globe nominees and then Actress in a Motion Picture. Tessa
Thompson for heada Nothing, nothing, Even Victor for Sorry Baby Nothing,
Jesse Buckley for Hamnett. You already established me, Rente Rinsby
for sentimental value, Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love Nothing,

(50:48):
Julia Roberts for After the Hunt Nope, nope, actress really, Nope, nope, No,
that's kind of surprising. Musical or comedy Bigonia nope, Blue
Moon nothing, Marty Supreme one battle after another? Huh No,
other choice nouvelle vague. No, yeah, what the best actor,

(51:12):
let me see, let me zip right back to that.
Let me see best actor in a drama. That's some
work to do, Oscar Isaac and Frankenstein watch that. Joel
Edgerton in Train Dreams, Wagner Mora in The Secret Agent,
Uh huh, Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen Delivered Me from Nowhere.
I kind of want to watch Dwayne Johnson in the
Smashing Machine as well. Okay, Michael B. Jordan for Sinners

(51:37):
Really Michael B. Jordan's but not.

Speaker 6 (51:40):
Name name name of her John a blank from what movie? Sinners. Nope,
that's Hayley Steinfeld. Oh so Michael B.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
Jordan not for Best Well, you know what he has
to because he plays two characters that are twins.

Speaker 4 (51:55):
Yeah a minute, that's not all of them. I'm looking
at the wrong Hello for movies, Sinners, Wicked for good
K Pop Demon Hunters wait for Best Picture. Yeah, and
one battle after another the nomination over. It's oh that
was a really good movie. It now, okay, here we go.
I'm just trying to find a dang list. It's going

(52:17):
to make fancy. Wicked two is up for Best Picture.
I believe, No, no, no, I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm totally wrong. I was right the first time. There's
only six nominees. Well, so I know, I hear you. No,
ke Pop Demon Hunters is up for Best Motion Picture.

(52:38):
It should win in a heartbeat. Is that best Picture? No,
that's best uh Animated Animated Picture.

Speaker 6 (52:44):
I give up.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
Yeah that was just best Nobody from Sinners is except
Michael B. Jordan. He's nominated for Sinners and a bunch
of other songs I've never heard of. So there you go,
there you go. So, well, you know what, maybe I'll

(53:08):
try and see something. I just don't have time, Mandy.
Neil Diamond was my first concert at my Ole High Stadium.
I was ten. He played Forever in Blue Jeans like
ten times. Due to the audience screaming for more. He said,
you people are sick. They don't do that anymore. Everything
is scripted out of a concert, Mandy. I was an
usher at mcnichol's arena and was working Neil Diamond's concert

(53:28):
in nineteen eighty four as a high school kid. A
great performance when it comes to Neil Diamond. I'm a believer,
even when drinking my red red wine. Forever in Blue
Jeans nice, really good, Mandy, go back and listen to
fifty Second Street No. Also a phenomenal album. I don't

(53:49):
want to please. Don't take the fact that I made
her listen to the Stranger first as in any way.
A ranking of Billy Joel albums, Mandy, ask your guests
what his phil is for certain shows like Blue Bloods
was canceled and yet it was riding high. Other shows
have been canceled that are riding very high. What does

(54:09):
he think about that? Well, obviously I got that too late,
but not Everything is all about ratings. Sometimes it's the
cost of the program. And I bet you that Blue
Bloods was quite pricey. You all know that the City
of Denver, while the Salvation Army told the City of
Denver they were not interested in continuing the contract anymore
to run the homeless hotels. So the City of Denver

(54:32):
has contracted out with three different organizations for the three
different homeless hotels. Maybe they just thought it was too
much for one organization. They've moved to a pay for
performance model instead of a flack fee, which is going
to be very interesting, especially because they just contracted with
an outfit called Urban Alchemy. Now, if you heard me

(54:56):
talk about this a few weeks ago. Alchemy has come
kind of out of nowhere, and they started in San Francisco,
and they started with a very small budget, and they
ended up getting a contract with the City of San
Francisco to provide sort of management of these situations and
a lot of their employees, most of their employees are

(55:17):
people that were formerly incarcerated, using kind of a peer
to peer model, very similar to the peer to peer
model that they use at step Denver. But the difference
is is that Urban Alchemy has had significant issues in
multiple cities that they have set up, and the city
of Austin just ended its contract with Urban Alchemy after

(55:39):
the city said five nonprofit employees misrepresented shelter exit dates
and other records. The San Francisco Controller's office also flagged
the nonprofit this year after the city controller said Urban
Alchemy did not properly track employee outpit for two years
in a row, along with other cash flow issues. Now,

(56:00):
if you are moving them to a pay for performance
model and they've been flagged in two different cities for
falsifying records, what exactly do you think is going to
be different this time?

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Now?

Speaker 4 (56:15):
To his credit, the guy from Urban Alchemy stood up
in front of the Denver City Council, which I just
have to say, you guys, the city council is starting
to wake up. They asked really hard questions, I mean
really hard questions, and more than one of them said,
I don't think this is a good idea. The problem

(56:36):
is is that because we've waited until right now in December,
when we knew that the Salvation Army contract was going
to end, they're kind of stuck. The head of Denver's
the excuse me, The deputy director of shelter and Stability
for Denver's Department of Housing Stability. Jeff Kozitski, who by

(56:59):
the way, used to work for Urban Alchemy until twenty
twenty four, told the city council members, Look, we didn't
get any interest from providers. We put it out for
bid and very few people bid the job, so the
city council actually approved the contract. It seems based on

(57:19):
the coverage I saw, and if you watched the meeting
or you were there, I'd love to know if I'm
wrong here, but it seems to me that had they
had any other options, they would have gone in a
different direction. But they felt like their back was against
the wall because they don't want to go January first
without a service provider. Yet another Well, I mean, let's

(57:40):
just watch this one, because we've already we already know.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
That the.

Speaker 4 (57:49):
Office of Housing Stability does a lousy job when it
comes to accountability. They've done a lousy job when trying
to be accountable to the city council. When the city
Council asked, you know, hey, how much have we spent
and they come back with, I don't know, I got nothing.
I mean, council Member Paul Cashman said this. He said,

(58:12):
there's a ton of very concerning legal mess related to
urban alchemy in a number of cities. These are not
ten years ago, they're current. They continue to grow at
a rapid pace, and I'm just not sure that this
is the direction that Denver needs to go. Now, let
me just say this. If you have an organization that
is serving multiple cities, and in multiple cities you are

(58:33):
having similar issues. And those issues are employees going rogue,
falsifying documents so they look better on paper than they
actually are. That is because your company culture has indicated
in multiple markets that that was the way business is done.
And if you know that you are working or have

(58:55):
people working for you that have made bad choices in
the past and ended up being incarcerated at some point,
perhaps they need a higher level of supervision.

Speaker 6 (59:06):
You know.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
I I've talked to business owners who are what they
call second chance providers, and they hire a lot of
people who are, you know, coming out of prison or
coming out of jail or whatever, because they genuinely want
to give these people a second chance. But they're not stupid.
They don't give a newly released, uh, you know, a

(59:27):
felon the keys to the truck on the first day.
You've got to kind of earn their trust. And it
seems to me that if I'm the city of Denver,
I am going to assign a single person to oversee
Urban Alchemy. I'm going to sign a person whose job
it is to audit every single thing that comes from

(59:48):
Urban Alchemy, because that's what they've earned, right, That's that's
how they've shown that they do business. If this were
a business that was a you know, a private business
that was looking to do business with the City of
Denver in some other way, and they were under all
these kind of clouds of suspicion, do you really think
that the city would still move forward. I mean maybe

(01:00:09):
if they were politically connected enough, but really, if it
was a for profit business, oh no, they'd be like
I would catch you that. Look at them there. But
because these people work in an industry where other people
don't want to work there, they go, They're gonna we're
gonna watch this, you and I together, eyeballs. You know
what I'm doing right now, I'm doing the I thing.
I'm pointing in my eyes, point in a city of Denver,

(01:00:31):
pointing in my eyes, point in at Urban Alchemy. You
know what I'm doing? Do you know what's happening? I
have an update on a story that we talked about
a few of a couple months ago, when OURTD decided
that they were going to in an effort to cut
costs because RTD's budget is one point eight billion with
a B and they're losing money hand over fist on

(01:00:53):
light rail and other stuff, and so they were looking
to cut costs, which is, you know, understandable, but they
decided to cut costs with people with disabilities. They had
a service called Access on Demand, and it allowed people
with disabilities to get door to door service. And that is,
in my mind, what public transportation should be all around,

(01:01:17):
all about helping people who cannot traditionally or struggle with
traditional forms of personal transportation to be able to help
those people get from place to place. A blind person
is never going to be able to drive themselves, no
matter how much they save up for a car. It's
just a bad idea. So the fact that they decided
to cut a program that costs seventeen million dollars a

(01:01:39):
year out of their one point five billion dollar budget, well,
I'm not the only one who raised an eyebrow about it.
Now a group of disabled folks are suing RTD and
they're arguing that this change violates the Americans with Disabilities Act,
Colorado Anti Discrimination Act, and the rights of people with disabilities.
Now here's the thing, I don't know how much they're

(01:02:02):
actually going to be able to prove on this because
they didn't cancel the service. They just started charging for
it and they've reduced the hours of service. So now
folks with disabilities are going to have to pay four
p fifty and the service hours are going to be cut.

(01:02:22):
Disability advocates and people with disabilities who rely on the
service opposed to change. They came out for public comment,
they set letters, they did everything, and yet RTD still
made the change. So we'll see what happens. But I
think it's kind of ridiculous that that is the first
place that they were going to cut, Like, hey, you
know what those people with the disability is, they'll find

(01:02:43):
in another way. It'll be fine. I can't wait until
we have like entire fleets of self driving vehicles that
we can just call up and then people with disabilities
can just get out like a card, here's your card,
call it that way. We'll just cut out them man entirely.
When we get back good news. One defense attorney found

(01:03:07):
a creative way to keep crazy criminals in jail. I'll
explain next Coming up that two o'clock it's our annual
visit with step Denver. We're going to talk about some
really big news in their world. They're now helping more
people at another locations. Or we're going to have that
because today is Colorado Gibbs Day, and I want to
remind you if you would like to maybe you've had
a lot of blessings this year, and you'd like to

(01:03:29):
spread the gravy, as we like to say, you'd like
to give it and share it with other people. I
have taken a liberty for those of you that may
not have time to vet nonprofits. I listed a whole
bunch of nonprofits that not only I am aware of,
I am extremely aware of, and I know all of
them are spending your money wisely doing really good things.
I don't like spending on big overhead programs. I know

(01:03:52):
you don't either, So if you need an idea of
something that you might want to donate to, you can
just go to my website and see a whole bunch
of stuff. A lot of it has to do with
helping people get up off the streets and out of addiction.
There's a lot of stuff for veterans, and then there's
a lot of think tank stuff as well. Think tanks
and several performing arts organizations. They're just things that are
near and dear to my heart. But one of the

(01:04:13):
things about about philanthropy and about charity overall, and here's
the thing. If you don't have fifty dollars, but you
have five, that's still philanthropy, right and your five dollars
could make more of a difference than you realize. Find
something that moves your heart, Find something that speaks to you,
Find something that maybe you remember a time in your

(01:04:33):
life when you could have used that, or you could
have you know that help would have been something you
would have gratefully accepted. And give them what you can
and you will never regret giving something to someone else,
knowing that you're making a positive impact in their lives
and knowing that you're doing something good for people that
is beyond yourself. And I highly recommend it. And again,

(01:04:56):
if you can donate fifty dollars, if you can need it,
five hundred, if you can date it those five thousand,
that's fantastic. But if five dollars matches your budget, then
if five dollars it is, and you should be perfectly
thrilled with yourself for making that happen. I have to
get this story in because this is actually really significant.
We know that in Colorado we have a significant problem
in the law right now that says if someone is

(01:05:17):
arrested in charge with a crime and found to be
incapable of participating in their judicial process, they are then
they have the charges dropped. Now, in theory, those people
were going to be directed to secure facilities where their
mental illness could be treated to get them to the
level where they could participate in their own defense, or

(01:05:39):
if they were never going to be restored to competency,
they would spend a good period of time away from
people that they could potentially harm. So this loophole has
created a huge problem, and we've seen several high profile
cases of people that have been charged with violent crimes
and then let out because they were deemed un unable

(01:06:00):
to participate in their own trial, and then they went
out to reoffend again. So I want to draw attention
to something that happened in Aurora. Austin Benson is a
guy who shot at people and shot people in Aurora,
and the crimes that we are talking about. It was
June twenty seventh. He fired on three people, seriously wounded

(01:06:24):
two and paralyzed one. So this guy's a danger to society.
He got arrested. We come to find out he did
almost the same thing in Douglas County and was released
because they could not hold him because he was found
to be mentally incapable of standing trial. This time, though,
things are going to go a little bit differently because

(01:06:46):
David Kaplan, one of this man's attorneys, announced a plan
to have him committed to a locked mental health treatment
center indefinitely, and they would not ask the judge to
drop the charges until his space could be secured. So
he is currently in jail. He is a waiting space
at a facility where he can get treatment for his

(01:07:07):
mental illness and also protect the public from his continued menace.
And the defense attorney is the one making this happen
because he could request right now, you need to release
this guy and drop the charges, but he knows this
guy's a danger to himself and society. So I'm wondering
how many other defense attorneys are going to utilize this

(01:07:30):
tactic to not only protect the client from potential harm,
because I mean, it's only a matter of time before
you get killed by police, right If you're running around
shooting people, you're going to end up in a probably dead.
So I think this is as good a solution as
exists until the legislature fixes this ridiculous issue that is

(01:07:53):
putting people in Colorado in significant danger, and I mean
significant danger. We've got to get this worked out. Can
we get back? My friends from step Denver come in
every single year and we talk about the amazing things
that step Denver does. But this year we have double
the excitement. We have double the things to talk about
because for the first time ever, they are replicating this

(01:08:14):
program in a different city with the hopes. And I
remember talking to Paul Scudo about this, I don't even know,
maybe ten years ago, about the fact that they were like,
we have to replicate this in other cities. We have
to export this model. They've managed to do that. I'm
gonna tell you all about it when we get back.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock,
Accident and injury lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
No, it's Mandy Connell and Dona.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
On Kla.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Ninem got Way Nicey through Free and Connell, You're sad thing.

Speaker 4 (01:08:56):
Welcome Local, Welcome to the third hour of the show.
I'm Man Connell. That guy's Anthony Rodriguez, you can call
him ay Rod and today is Colorado Gives Day. But
first I want to read a random text message that
I got. It says, after Thanksgiving it work. I observed
a lady with a giant castroll dish filled with mashed
potatoes and she was just eating them with a spoon.

(01:09:19):
I wanted to compliment her, but I didn't say anything
because I was worried she would take it the wrong way.
But I'm jealous and I admire her stance on the
abundance of potatoes. It never occurred to me to do that. Jealous,
I think I would agree with you in that situation
for sure. I also want to share one more text message, Mandy,
I gave my old Honda to step this fall. It

(01:09:40):
was a good experience. I also have a small donation
twenty five dollars monthly going their way for my check
every month. I believe in what they do and I
am blessed to be able to make a small contribution.
I also love Colorado Feline Foster Rescue and Humane Colorado.
I don't have either of those animal related charities on
the show right now, but I I do have Megan Shay,

(01:10:01):
the executive director, and Andrea. I didn't write down your
last name, so I don't know what your last name is. Okay,
That's probably why I didn't write it down, because I
don't know if I would. Is that Polish?

Speaker 6 (01:10:11):
Its Russian? Russian?

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
So close and yet so far. Megan, you've been on
the show multiple times. Welcome back.

Speaker 10 (01:10:16):
Yes, it's great to be here with you. Love this
annual tradition. Thanks for having us. Well, so much has happened.
I want to start with you, Megan, and then we're
going to come to you Andre. But I just recently
did another tour of Step Denver, and I have to
give Paul Corolei from Citycast podcast a shout out because
out of the and I'm not exaggerating thirty people that
I've invited to come to a tour of Step, he's

(01:10:38):
the only person that has ever taken me up on it.
So Paul and I went down and did a tour
of STEP, although I'm bummed we didn't get to see
all of the residential quarters of what have such a
huge impact. Honestly, you love the bed making, I do, Okay,
that is it's a powerful visual.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
We'll get to that in a moment. But you guys
have There's so much amaze cool stuff happening at STEP Denver.
But the coolest stuff is that there's now a STEP
Colorado Spring. It has been a remarkable year.

Speaker 10 (01:11:09):
We are very grateful to share that we just five
weeks ago opened a fifty bed facility in Colorado Spring.
So we've talked for how many years, a decade probably
about the fact that this model is replicable, should be
taken into communities that don't have these philosophies, these methodologies
at play and the continuum of services. Right, we know

(01:11:30):
we are not going to be able to solve homelessness
us one organization. It takes a lot of different options
and different methods, but we have one that has proven
to work over decades. We have ten years worth of
solid data and we felt that responsibility to answer the
call where there is a significant need, and I'll tell
you we are now seeing that need. We have eleven

(01:11:51):
open beds in the fifty bed facility. Only five weeks
after opening, we will be full before Christmas's Well, congratulations,
thank you. Let's start with the philosophy first, because I'm
sure there are people listening right now who are not
really familiar. They've heard the name step Denver, maybe they haven't, right,
So what is the philosophy?

Speaker 4 (01:12:10):
What is step Denver all about?

Speaker 10 (01:12:11):
So step Dever is helping men exit homelessness for good,
and we do that through addressing the root cause of homelessness,
which is addiction for the majority of the population. We're
also serving men specifically, because the majority of the homeless
population are men. If you look at any point in time,
count and we do that through addiction, recovery programming, workforce development,

(01:12:32):
and life skills. So we are helping men rebuild every
part of their life that's been destroyed from the ground up.
And we're doing it on four core principles sobriety, work, accountability,
and community. We also take no government funding. I have
to say, I think that's why this program works because
we are making every decision based on what's best for

(01:12:52):
the people we serve in nothing else, and we are
able to do that through the generosity of our donors.
We are entirely funded through philanthropy, but that gives us
the freedom to have a methodology that actually produces outcomes,
and we can talk about those well.

Speaker 4 (01:13:06):
I want to share something I was just telling Megan.
I literally just read a book last week called Beyond Homeless,
Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes, and Transformative Solutions. And one of
the points they make in this book is that they
had looked at certain organizations like yours, and they had
a program that worked really, really well, and it was
about accountability and work. But then they went after government

(01:13:26):
dollars and they had to change the programming in such
a way to work with the federal requirements that the
federal government has a housing first policy, and housing first
means that you are looking to get someone some kind
of permanent support of housing before they deal with their
mental illness, their trauma, their addictions. It just get them

(01:13:48):
into housing and then they're going to make better decisions.
I would say from my perspective that housing versus been
an epic failure.

Speaker 10 (01:13:54):
A house does not miraculously solve addiction, and what we
are seeing is that people who are in the throes
of their addiction are put into free housing with no
expectation of sobriety, accountability of them making any progress or
effort in their life. And what happens is they die
in that housing. They are more isolated, they're less likely
to be found. And I do have to say that

(01:14:16):
I was alarmed to hear. And I won't call anyone out,
but somebody stood in front of city council and said,
you know, we don't consider deceased to be a negative.

Speaker 4 (01:14:25):
Outcome because they died inside.

Speaker 10 (01:14:27):
And I could not believe what I was hearing, And
if I hadn't seen it for myself, I wouldn't believe it.
We counter that we believe that compassion. Real compassion is
telling someone that you are capable of more.

Speaker 4 (01:14:42):
We know you are.

Speaker 10 (01:14:43):
We're with you every step of the way, but we
are going to hold you to these standards because we
know it's what it takes for you to get the
life back that you deserve and for you to be
able to be someone that you can look in yourself
in the mirror every morning and know that you have
something to offer this world.

Speaker 4 (01:14:57):
And Andre is an example of that.

Speaker 10 (01:14:59):
And know we'll talk about history and you'll get to
hear from him, but we believe that people deserve better well.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
And one of the most interesting things about Step and
I want to I'll ask Andre about his way through
the process. You know, it was initially called Step thirteen
as kind of an add on to the twelve Steps
of AA, the foundational Steps of AA, which was great,
But now it feels like Step Denver represents the steps
that men take from the first day they walk in

(01:15:26):
the door, when they start learning the rules, and they
start learning what's expected of them, and they start learning
the rewards that come to them when they do these things.
It is like a series of steps. I mean even
and I you know, we talked about the residences at
Step Denver, the visual of how you start to what
is possible and then you eventually move into support of
housing outside of step Denver's four walls. I mean, it

(01:15:49):
is a series of steps. In reality, it is.

Speaker 10 (01:15:51):
We Actually it's a four phase program and every phase
has different goals and milestones that you're reaching in your
life through your own effort.

Speaker 4 (01:15:58):
I often love to say that.

Speaker 10 (01:16:00):
And you know, people talk about Step and what a
wonderful program, and that's true, but it doesn't matter, frankly,
how good our program is if each individual person doesn't
make the choice every day to put it into practice
in their life and so everything these men achieve, those
are their achievements through the support of our donors, through
the support of our program. But at the end of
the day, it takes that individual making that choice to

(01:16:22):
put in the work and that's how they see the
results and frankly, that's how they become the person that
their family needs, that our society needs, and they can
really contribute to our city as people who have officially.

Speaker 4 (01:16:36):
Broken the cycle of dependency. So one of the greatest
things about STEP is that a vast majority of it
is peer to peer. When you are talking to an
employee of STEP Denver, they are someone who has overcome
addiction themselves. They are going to look an addict in
the face and say, whatever you got, I understand it
because I was there. And that brings me to Andre
who now is the STEP Denver Director of Operation. But

(01:17:00):
how long ago were you a client of STEP Denver?

Speaker 11 (01:17:04):
So I joined in August twenty second of twenty two. Okay,
I entered the doors of STEP Denver. And why I
was there, like, well, led me there was I didn't
know a way out. I had been to eighteen other
programs that didn't work.

Speaker 4 (01:17:22):
You did eighteen other programs to overcome your addiction, like
in patient, outpatient everything.

Speaker 6 (01:17:28):
Those were just the inpatients an outpatient as well.

Speaker 4 (01:17:31):
How long did you struggle with addiction that's an active addiction?

Speaker 6 (01:17:35):
Thirteen?

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
Since I was thirteen, Holy cow, So you have really
had a tough road to hoe. As they say, how
old are you now?

Speaker 6 (01:17:42):
I just turned forty one?

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
What finally?

Speaker 8 (01:17:46):
Why did this stick?

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
So?

Speaker 11 (01:17:48):
I think many different things. Right the second I got
to Step, they treat me as a human. I felt
safe in the environment, and I was living with other
guys that went through the similar situation that and just
like you just explained, like the staff there, like they
all knew what I went through and was able to
like approach it from a brother perspective versus a clinical right,

(01:18:14):
those other eighteen programs were all clinical.

Speaker 6 (01:18:16):
I'd stay there for as long as the insurance would
let me, and then it.

Speaker 11 (01:18:20):
Was here's a meeting sheet, good luck, and back to
the streets I went.

Speaker 4 (01:18:24):
So, So, how how many times were you homeless when
you went into Step? This this last time?

Speaker 6 (01:18:29):
That's correct, it was homeless? For almost two years at
that point.

Speaker 4 (01:18:32):
Now, let me ask you a little bit about your
time when you were living were you were you unsheltered homeless?
You were living on the streets?

Speaker 6 (01:18:37):
Yeah, I was living on an intent under a bridge
in Englewood.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
So from your perspective as a formerly homeless person, what
do you think is the biggest issue when it comes
to And I realized that there's a million different reasons
why people end up on the streets. There's no one
single this is why it happens. But why do people
become chronically homeless? Why are they there for five years,
for ten years? What happens that makes that seem like

(01:19:04):
it's the life you're choosing when in reality you're not.

Speaker 11 (01:19:08):
So for me personally, it was the fact that I
hadn't experienced enough pain at that point. And that sounds silly,
because at that point I had lost my children, my
marriage was on the rocks, lost you know, career career
jobs with like Fortune five.

Speaker 6 (01:19:24):
Hundred, one hundred companies. And it was the fact that
I was able to.

Speaker 11 (01:19:30):
Still live right, Like, I had food stamps, I had
you know, third party assistants.

Speaker 6 (01:19:35):
Really that allowed me to stay out there longer.

Speaker 4 (01:19:39):
So how how this is going to sound like a
dumb thing to say, But how easy did they make it?
Were you talking three meals a day or a meal
whenever you wanted it? I Mean, one of the things
I'm trying to impart to people is that I understand
what people's hearts tell them they need to do something
to help people on the streets, but they're not really helping.

Speaker 6 (01:19:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:19:57):
So I mean, I I mean I ate when I
I mean I was on meth and tetamine, so I
really didn't eat, but I ate when I needed to,
and I used the food stamps. I'd cash them in
and use that money to buy narcotics.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
Crazy. So when you went into STEP at the very beginning,
had you gone through Detoks first?

Speaker 11 (01:20:17):
So, yeah, I got committed for nine months prior to
the mental hospital. About twenty seven days in they offered
me to go to the STEP Denver.

Speaker 4 (01:20:28):
So you basically were so strong out on drugs they
put you in a mental facility.

Speaker 8 (01:20:32):
Yeah, correct, Okay, and you made.

Speaker 4 (01:20:34):
The choice, though, what was it? Were you just trying
to get out of the mental hospital at that point,
That's correct, I'm guessing that was.

Speaker 11 (01:20:39):
Yeah, I just wanted to not be there, right, you know,
because I was in a room lockdown for twenty three
hours a day.

Speaker 4 (01:20:46):
How good were you? How certain were you that you'd
be able to snow the people at step Denver and
you know, skate your way through this.

Speaker 11 (01:20:54):
I had no intent in staying. I was just waiting,
you know, And they said all I had to do
was go just step Denver. They never said I had
to stay, So.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
Why did you say? I mean, it's nice, don't get
me wrong, but it's not that nice. Something must have
kept you there.

Speaker 11 (01:21:07):
So it was that first night I went to my
first seven o'clock meeting and one of the recovery support managers, Derek,
was telling his story that night, and the first thing
he said to me or the group was look for
the similarities, not the differences, right. And I get chills
every time I say that, Right?

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
And what did that mean for you?

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
At that time?

Speaker 11 (01:21:27):
In that moment it clicked like I didn't know what
it meant exactly, but it's just like all of a sudden,
when he was telling his story, he spent ten minutes
qualifying himself as an addict, right, so I can believe them?

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Right?

Speaker 6 (01:21:40):
And then fifteen minutes of this solution, right, It's a solution.
That night, by the end of that meeting, I was
just so excited.

Speaker 8 (01:21:46):
I was like, I want to be here, I.

Speaker 6 (01:21:48):
Want to do this right. And I'm like, if a
guy like that can recover, why can't I.

Speaker 4 (01:21:52):
Oh wow, that's fantastic. I mean, that's kind of what
it's about, Megan.

Speaker 10 (01:21:57):
It is and I have to say, you know, watching
people like Andre when they come in from day one
to even day five, they're almost unrecognizable. We get to
watch people come back to life right before our eyes,
and we watch that light come on behind the eyes.
And then we get to watch people like Andre become
men of service who help the next guy and help

(01:22:18):
the next guy. And that is why this works. They're
the heart and soul of this program. One hundred percent
of our program stuff or alumni of our program.

Speaker 4 (01:22:24):
Okay, I just realized I'm five minutes later for a break.
This is going to be two breaks in a row.
I apologize. We'll be right back to talk more about
step Dever after this. By the way, to the text,
Throo said is Leeland Conway's wife doing their social media
commercials for step Denver in Springs. She looks so familiar. Well,
that would be Megan Shay, who happens to be in
the studio with me right now. We're also joined by
Andre and the Russian last name, who is the director

(01:22:48):
of operations for step Denver and also a graduate of
the program. Now there's a couple of things Megan that
First of all, you guys just shared with me how
you ended up getting in the program in the first place.
You actually tried to kill yourself.

Speaker 6 (01:23:03):
Well it turned them on, Yeah, that's correct, So I
didn't see a way out.

Speaker 11 (01:23:07):
So basically I was so depressed and hopeless that I
decided to shoot up bleach and that's.

Speaker 6 (01:23:14):
What got me put onto the cycles.

Speaker 4 (01:23:16):
I can't even imagine what that must have like, like
the entire that must have been a terrifying thought process
that got you to there.

Speaker 11 (01:23:24):
It was I just again felt hopeless. I've lost pretty
much everything in my life. My marriage was on the rocks.
I lost my kids to my addiction, jobs and housing
and just everything, not just once, but three times over,
you know, since I was twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
How what is it?

Speaker 4 (01:23:44):
How does failing at rehab affect you mentally as an addict?

Speaker 11 (01:23:50):
Mix it that it's not an option to go to
another one. Like I said, I went to eighteen programs
prior to STEP and none of them worked. So I
didn't think that treatment was an option for me because
you just thought.

Speaker 4 (01:24:04):
You were hopeless. Yes, Belly, I'm glad you weren't. Andre.
When we get back, and I'm sorry, guys, I did
not break on schedule. I breaked really late, so we
got to take another break here in just a moment,
I do want to talk about some things you need
to know. First of all, we've got a donor who
is offering a ten thousand dollars match. So if you've
ever wanted to donate to STEP Denver, now's the time
you could help them get an extra ten grand if

(01:24:24):
you make your donation today. But when we get back,
let's talk about STEP Spring, something Andre is intimately involved
with and very exciting for Step that they're growing this way.
We're gonna do all of that right after this. Keep
it on KOA in honor of Colorado Gives Day. We
have one of my favorite things that you should give
money to, as Step Denver. We just got a good report.

(01:24:46):
I just mentioned the fact that if they get ten
thousand dollars in donations today they get a ten thousand
dollars match, and the Mandycoddle a against you guys delivered.
We're up to like forty two hundred. That's right, eighty
five minutes. I just got words.

Speaker 10 (01:24:58):
Since you made that announcement, forty two hundred dollars has
been donated towards oh match.

Speaker 4 (01:25:03):
That makes me, you know why, because my audience is
the best. I'm just saying, let's talk first. I gonna
get a couple questions, and someone on the text line asked,
what I think is a very common question, and that
is is step Denver faith based?

Speaker 6 (01:25:17):
We are not.

Speaker 4 (01:25:17):
And it's for good reason.

Speaker 10 (01:25:19):
I'm sure many people have heard about the barriers that
often go up for an individual, especially people who have
been caught in that cycle of addiction for so long.
Any idea of religion, a wall immediately goes up, and
many people, most people will not even enter a program
if there is any image of religion associated with it.
And so what we have found over the years is

(01:25:40):
that by focusing on spirituality and having groups and discussions
around what is the difference between religion and spirituality? Why
are you resistant to the idea that there may be
a power greater than yourself. One day I heard a
man say my ego, right, Well, i's honest. So just
naming it, what we find is it opens the and

(01:26:00):
our men do develop very strong faith through their experience
at step. But it's strong because they've developed it in
their own way and on their own timeline and their
throats exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
This is a.

Speaker 4 (01:26:15):
Let's I think a better way to say this. It's
not faithless, correct, it's not dogmatic at all. They're not
going to tell you what to believe. They're not going
to tell you who to believe or what path to follow.
They're just going to open the possibilities for you to
maybe think about that.

Speaker 10 (01:26:29):
And as a result, men are actually having very strong
faith in their life and a connection to God of
their own understanding.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:26:38):
But they are building that connection to God which would
never be possible if we were a faith based program
in which they wouldn't even.

Speaker 6 (01:26:44):
Walk through the door.

Speaker 4 (01:26:45):
Andre where were you when it came to faith or
God or any of that stuff? And where are you now?

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
So?

Speaker 11 (01:26:50):
Yeah, the God word really tripped me up. Or because
I was molested at a young age by a priest. Oh,
when I heard God, I was kind of attributed to that.

Speaker 6 (01:27:02):
Sure.

Speaker 11 (01:27:03):
And you know, when I got the STEP, I learned
the difference between religion and spirituality, and you know, it
became spiritual.

Speaker 6 (01:27:09):
And now I'm back in the church. Really that's correct.

Speaker 3 (01:27:13):
Wow?

Speaker 4 (01:27:13):
Good, I mean, that's fantastic Actually that it helped you
healed your relationship with the church, that's pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:27:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:27:20):
No, it's it's just been a blessing, like every aspect
of this program. And to know that, you know, I
do have a God of my own understanding and today
has just been really good for me.

Speaker 4 (01:27:32):
I want to talk about how STEP is a little
bit different than some of the the inpatient programs that
you did sixteen eighteen programs you said, andresct Andre's not
only the director of operations for STEP and STEP Springs,
he is also a graduate of the program. So when
you are in the program, you're not just insulated from

(01:27:54):
the rest of the world, you're actually put out in
the world almost immediately tell me about that.

Speaker 11 (01:27:59):
Yeah, So after my first five business days of like
learning the rules, and I was expected to go get
a job in the community, which was amazing because it's
not a lockdown facility. After my requirements, even my first
five days, I was able to like go walk around
the street, like go get some fresh air, go to
the store. And that just made me feel like I

(01:28:19):
was trusted things I haven't had in the past, right,
I didn't feel trusted.

Speaker 6 (01:28:24):
And you know, I early on, i'd run really quickly.

Speaker 11 (01:28:27):
Back to Step, just like testing the water, like all right,
let me go around the block, and and then like
run right back.

Speaker 6 (01:28:34):
I'm like, all right, I'm not ready for that yet.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
I kind of love that.

Speaker 4 (01:28:38):
Actually it's a very but that's kind of I love
the thought of Step being the safe place of home base,
you know what I mean, Like when you're a kid,
you run back to the tree that's home base. I
like that because it sounds like it gave you the
courage to do something more.

Speaker 11 (01:28:55):
Yeah, and then you know, finally I got out there
and I got that first full time job that I
had work probably a W two tax paying job in
almost a decade at that point, and you know, I
got my first job at a seven eleven, and it
was just like I.

Speaker 6 (01:29:08):
Was so proud that day that I got a job.
I was just like there's something I was like, oh
my god, I'm.

Speaker 11 (01:29:13):
Doing the program right, Like this is amazing, right, and
it just made me feel like a part of society
again when I hadn't been for like almost two years.

Speaker 4 (01:29:22):
So you're rebuilding in real time in the real world,
that's correct. So one of the things I didn't know
that I learned on our last tour a week or
so ago is that that you require the men to
find a meeting outside the walls of step Denver. So
you're like, you know what, whatever, pick your poison, you
want to do AA, you want to do this, you
want to do that, but you got to find it.

(01:29:44):
Why is that so critical?

Speaker 10 (01:29:46):
That's so critical because no one is cured when they
leave our program, right, And the only way that a
man will be able to maintain their sobriety is if
they do the work, every day work of recovery program
to keep that disease and remission. And what that looks
like like is connection and community. They always say the
opposite of addiction is connection. And so if we can
get men to establish community outside of our walls, then

(01:30:09):
they have a much better shot of actually being able
to sustain their sobriety and everything that they've rebuilt while
in our program.

Speaker 4 (01:30:16):
You said something at the beginning of this conversation Andre
that I want to go back to, and that is,
you know, you'd go through these programs and then kind
of throw you out of the world with a sheet
of meetings, but you didn't have any connection to any
of those meetings when you were leaving.

Speaker 11 (01:30:28):
That's correct, and the difference that STEP is why I
was there. I found my STEP community like instantly, right.
It's just that it's like a brotherhood as soon as
you walk into the facility. Every you know, somebody offered
me a steak dinner. I think within the first week
they're like, hey, come, have some a mistake, right, But
then I have to create that same feeling outside a
STEP for you know, transition purposes.

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
Have you been successful in that you feel like you
have a big network out now? Obviously you have gotten
hired and you're still within walls of STEP working but
in a much different capacity. So do you have that
network outside to this day?

Speaker 2 (01:31:04):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (01:31:04):
I do, so, you know I do.

Speaker 11 (01:31:06):
I do go to multiple recovery meetings and very active
and recovery outside a STEP because STEP is my place
of employment today.

Speaker 6 (01:31:14):
I can't treat my employment as my recovery.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
That's really great. So let's talk about Colorado Springs. Apparently
Megan gave you a lot of credit for really kind
of what decorating the joint.

Speaker 6 (01:31:25):
Isnaking it a home.

Speaker 4 (01:31:27):
Yeah, so what did you I'm guessing as a as
a former resident yourself, you probably had ideas of things
that were like, you know what that would be really cool?
Did you get to institute all those things?

Speaker 3 (01:31:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:31:39):
It was a very exciting process.

Speaker 11 (01:31:41):
I got to well a that Megan trusted me, and
two like I got to implement like things that I
saw as all right, maybe we can add this, you know,
like and make it a little bit better and really
create that home feeling that was so important to me
when I Step Denver.

Speaker 10 (01:32:01):
Yeah, no, one's going to uphold the standards of STEP,
meaning cleanliness and taking care of the facility like Andrea,
because that is the thing that caused him to stay
at first night is that it wasn't dirty and he
didn't have that excuse. So he makes sure that no
resident coming in is going to have that excuse.

Speaker 4 (01:32:14):
That's fantastic. I want to talk for a second about
what I love, what the visual impact of the accommodations
at STEP, because it's not just the accommodations at step
It is the metaphor for progress at step Denver, and
it just the first time I saw this, it blew
me away. When people come into step Denver, the first

(01:32:34):
place they go, we'll call it shelter, right, I mean,
you're call it a dorm You got out a dormitory,
lots of beds, and when you look at the beds
on one side, there was a bed that they're all made.
Everything is neat and tidy, but the beds at one
end a little sloppy. Maybe they don't have those tight
hospital corners. The beds on the other end you can
bounce a quarter off of. And I asked when I
went through the first tour with Paula, so I was like,

(01:32:56):
what's up with that? He goes, Those are the men
pointing to the beds that are not quite perfect. Those
of the men just got here. Those are the men
on the other side that are about ready to move
to phase two? And what is phase two? How do
you get to phase two?

Speaker 10 (01:33:08):
So you get through to phase two by meeting basic
fundamental goals. You're getting a full time tax paying job
in the community, a phone, email address ID. If you
don't already have it being a sponsor or mentor in
a twelve step or other recovery fellowship outside of our walls.
So just the fundamental things that you need to build
that foundation. So it's about thirty to forty five days

(01:33:29):
for most men before they're moving out of that dorm
and into a private room. That first tangible sign of
success and progress in their life. That momentum builder really
is what that room is. But after you move out
of the dorm, you're never sharing a room again. So
that experience is really just so that it's earned and
gives people the motivation to want to keep moving forward
and making progress.

Speaker 4 (01:33:49):
I also would imagine, Andrea and you can address this.
I would also imagine that being in that dormitory setting
with other men in the exact same place is probably
helpful just from a it's kind of a peer to
peer viewpoint.

Speaker 6 (01:34:03):
Yeah, so it was very helpful. Right one.

Speaker 11 (01:34:06):
They showed me how to make my bed right that
first day when I didn't have the instruction yet, right,
No guy there, would you know, if you see somebody,
the culture really is like if you see someone not
doing something right, go help them.

Speaker 4 (01:34:18):
Right, just help them? I mean, I think that's a
great motto. Then you get to go to the penthouse,
which is a little more private. Yes, that's right.

Speaker 10 (01:34:26):
So when you get through the development phase, which is
really the heavy lift where you're setting smart goals in
every aspect of your life, it takes about sixty days.
Your reward for hitting those goals is moving into an
area that's more apartment style living, more privileges, you can
have food talk up there. It's just a little bit
more freedom in that space. And so with every progression,
as you hit those goals, your quality of life is improving.

(01:34:48):
And then ultimately you get to move to our sober
living homes, which are beautiful residences in neighborhoods where you
have a truly normal life, but within the structured sober
living environment that we have.

Speaker 4 (01:34:58):
Let me get one more thing in before we go.
You guys do a really good job with follow up,
and you reach out and you talk to former residents,
find out where they're going. What does some of those
statistics look like in terms of how many people you're
able to reach and how many of them are still
sober housed and working.

Speaker 10 (01:35:15):
This is how we keep ourselves accountable and make sure
that this program is really working and that our men
are having the successes that we intend. Ultimately, our goal
is really for them to have sustained sobriety, employment, stable housing,
and be able to continue everything that they've built at
step after they leave. So we're following up at eight
different intervals in the first twelve months after they leave

(01:35:36):
our program. Last year, we were able to contact one
hundred and forty one men in the twelve months after
they left our program. Of those, eighty five percent were
still sober, seventy five percent still had full time, tax
paying jobs, and ninety percent were still housed. So the
outcomes speak for themselves, and those calls are an opportunity
for us to continue the relationship, continue the peer coaching,

(01:35:58):
and provide that assistance that transition.

Speaker 4 (01:36:01):
If you want to really help out, you can help
out today. I put a link on the blog because
it is Colorado Gives Day today and there's matching dollars
on the line. If they hit ten thousand dollars, they
are going to get a ten thousand dollars match. So
if you've ever wanted to contribute to a program that
does three things. Number one, they have a track record
of success helping a population that is historically very difficult

(01:36:25):
to help. Let's be real, this is not the easiest
population of human beings to help, you know, come back
from the brink. They do it incredibly well. They don't
take government money because they don't want to have to
use the government edicts that I think have been shown
to be a massive failure. And we haven't even gotten
to how efficiently you guys do this. What do you
spend per year per man to help a man get

(01:36:47):
his life back?

Speaker 10 (01:36:48):
Last year, our cost per man served was fifty two
hundred dollars, that's all in, all in cost fifty two
hundred dollars per man. And while we're investing fifty two
hundred dollars in these men, they are investing in the
communeity by paying taxes, buying goods and services, and having
their money they're saving sitting in a local bank, right
so that money's being reinjected. We had over sixteen million

(01:37:09):
dollar economic impact on a two point six million dollar budget,
So your dollars that you donate today will stretch as
far as they can possibly go. And we always talk
about you know, who better to invest in than those
who are willing to invest in themselves.

Speaker 4 (01:37:23):
Amen to that. Megan Shay, the executive director of step
Denver Andre with a Russian last name that I'll never
be able to pronounce. Thank you so much for coming in,
for sharing your story, for continuing to help men just
like you get their lives back. I mean, there's nothing
better than reminding someone that they are important and they matter.

(01:37:43):
And you know, I don't care if you believe in God.
I believe in God, So I'm going to say it.
God thought you were important enough to put on this planet. Right,
That's great? And thank you for reminding people that they matter,
because I think that's incredibly important. I do have one
question here, Hey, Mandy, would you ask your guest how
many of these men have a violent criminal history and
are they in regular homes and neighborhoods. That concerns me.

(01:38:04):
What do you do about that?

Speaker 10 (01:38:06):
So to be qualified to enter our program, you have
to pass a background screening, and so we are looking
for patterns of severe violence in someone's background. They are
not eligible to enter our program if they have severe
violence in their.

Speaker 4 (01:38:19):
POKA round so that you don't necessarily have to worry
about the.

Speaker 10 (01:38:22):
Reason for that is they're going to need a higher
level of care, a clinical program that can address the
anger management issues, and we want to make sure our
community is safe within our walls.

Speaker 4 (01:38:29):
Fantastic. I hope that answers the questions. Just go to
my blog side or go to Colorado Gibbs dot org
search Step Denver. I put a link directly today on
the blog so you can just do that. It's right
at the top. I would love for you to support
this organization. They're absolutely incredible. And by the way, I
offered another tour to someone this past weekend.

Speaker 6 (01:38:48):
So I'm Marrier.

Speaker 4 (01:38:49):
We'll see if she takes me up more than Marrier Manny.

Speaker 10 (01:38:53):
Can I just and I also just do a plug
for those who might be in a Colorado Springs area.
We are just getting off the ground there five weeks
open now we've got only eleven beds left open and
a fifty bed facility, so.

Speaker 4 (01:39:04):
The need is great.

Speaker 10 (01:39:05):
If you're in the Colorado Springs area, please support STEP
Springs on Colorado Give's Day. They need your support as well.

Speaker 2 (01:39:10):
I say that leads to.

Speaker 4 (01:39:11):
Both of them. And if you are in the Springs
area and you are finding yourself in need of help,
call Colorado STEP Colorado Springs. They can help you. Yep,
they will help you now joining us in the studio.
It's been all bright stock here.

Speaker 6 (01:39:29):
Yeah, he ran from his bath, so he's still sucking.

Speaker 8 (01:39:32):
What you did not want to get dried?

Speaker 4 (01:39:34):
Well, I mean, who really wants to get dried? My
dog doesn't like it. What's your dog's name, Murphy? Murphy?
My dog doesn't like getting dried either, not at all.

Speaker 6 (01:39:42):
He was not having that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:42):
So now I asked Andre and Megan if they wanted
to play out the day, and they both gave me
the scariest looking faces in the history of scary faces.
So I'm not going to make them participate all.

Speaker 10 (01:39:54):
Now, I know, I know much pressure, but I'm letting
him sit here so they'll get used to it so.

Speaker 4 (01:39:58):
The next time they'll be like, oh, yeah, I got
this study, app we'll study. Andre, you were pretty honest
about the fact that because of your addiction, you don't
know a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:40:08):
Sure don't.

Speaker 4 (01:40:09):
Yeah, you know what I mean. You can get caught
up now. We were actually laughing about like showing him
Saturday Night Live sketches and Ben I made a reference
to Deeter and know when I was with had no clue.
I had to pull it up I showed it to
him and they were like, what did you just make
me watch what it was?

Speaker 7 (01:40:29):
It was a different time then, so I could like
see the joy on his face as someone for the
first time sees the SNL fake celebrity Jepanese.

Speaker 4 (01:40:39):
They seriously anyway, we will be back tomorrow. But now
it's time for the most exciting segment on the radio
of It's gone of the day. All right, today I
have a dad joke, Anthony.

Speaker 6 (01:40:58):
Okay, we'll see, I'll get it.

Speaker 4 (01:41:00):
Is where do you take someone that's been in a
peekaboo accident?

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
Where the ICU?

Speaker 6 (01:41:06):
That's terrible? Let me give you a good I'm leaving good.

Speaker 5 (01:41:09):
I just sent my son to his room for saying
Jim Morrison was a terrible musician and the way he
stormed off was unacceptable.

Speaker 6 (01:41:17):
Sorry, but we do not slam the doors in this house.

Speaker 8 (01:41:19):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:41:20):
I'm leaving on that note.

Speaker 3 (01:41:23):
All right.

Speaker 4 (01:41:24):
What is our word of the day? Fleet adjective? Poultry
small amounts kind of easily, not a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:41:31):
Yeah, pretty much, that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:41:32):
Okay, excellent. Here today's trivia question. In what year was
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People founded?
I think it was like nineteen.

Speaker 6 (01:41:41):
Twelve, nineteen thirteen, thirteen.

Speaker 4 (01:41:43):
Okay, nineteen thirteen, what's the year so close? Nineteen oh nine.
The NAACP is the oldest and largest civil rights organization
in the United States. Today, it has more than two
thousand branches.

Speaker 6 (01:41:57):
All right, here we go.

Speaker 4 (01:41:58):
What is our jeopardy category?

Speaker 6 (01:42:00):
Flavors? Flavors, flavors? What flavors as in f as in frank?
What else would I be saying?

Speaker 4 (01:42:07):
I thought you said slavers?

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
It was like.

Speaker 4 (01:42:13):
Flavors, god flavors.

Speaker 5 (01:42:15):
Pungent cheese can be described with this word a goal
when wedding.

Speaker 4 (01:42:20):
What's say that again? Read it again?

Speaker 5 (01:42:23):
Pungent cheese can be described with this word a goal
when wetting, A goal when wetting. What says w H
E T T I N A wetting?

Speaker 2 (01:42:36):
I don't know?

Speaker 10 (01:42:37):
Man?

Speaker 6 (01:42:38):
What a sharp?

Speaker 4 (01:42:38):
Correct crap?

Speaker 6 (01:42:40):
It's an okay name for a small fruit pastry, but
not for a girl at the bar. That is correct.

Speaker 5 (01:42:48):
When infatuated with another, you are said to be this
flavorful word on them.

Speaker 4 (01:42:53):
Correct.

Speaker 6 (01:42:55):
Add an S to this word, meaning.

Speaker 5 (01:42:59):
Acrid cock, and you get a cocktail ingredient that helps indigestion.
That is correct, an adjective for stale milk, or a
verb meaning to become disenchanted with something.

Speaker 4 (01:43:11):
Fanny, what's sour?

Speaker 6 (01:43:13):
Sweatman for the first one? Gentlemen, sweep sweep?

Speaker 4 (01:43:18):
Are you doing Waite sports today?

Speaker 9 (01:43:20):
Man?

Speaker 4 (01:43:20):
I am yeah, what's happening on that? Oh, let's talk
about heroes? Thank you very quickly.

Speaker 6 (01:43:24):
Yeah, we're doing it again, heroes, Thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:43:26):
It's back twenty five hundred dollars checks to UH veterans
in need. We got some great sponsors on first responders
and first responders as well. Yeah, we added that last year. Yes,
so yeah, we're just we're just getting that crank back
up this week. It should be up on the website
if you want to wait.

Speaker 4 (01:43:42):
Colorado dot com Forward Slash Contest. Yes, you can make
your nomination there.

Speaker 7 (01:43:46):
Yeah, you can write in a nomination and give the
story of why they why the first responder or veteran
of the person in need needs a twenty five hundred
dollars check and we're, uh, we'll handle over those, I
think in February, and.

Speaker 4 (01:43:55):
They get big cardboard checks here, we do. We We've
been trying to get them to pay me with big
cardboard checks, but they can saying no.

Speaker 6 (01:44:00):
We stopped.

Speaker 4 (01:44:01):
They don't cash them at the pack, that's what they said.
I'm like, let me try.

Speaker 7 (01:44:04):
We stopped doing the giveaways in the neighborhoods like to
the past because people thought they were winning, like the
publisher's cleaning house, and I'm like, this is just disappointing.

Speaker 4 (01:44:11):
Yeah, now it's anti climactic. Sorry about that, but it's
a somebody's gonna get twenty five hundred bucks. Maybe make
it somebody that you know who's maybe having a rough year.
Maybe they could need a little lexter.

Speaker 6 (01:44:21):
Yeah, we got we got the sponsors, we've got the money.
We should to know who we give it to.

Speaker 4 (01:44:24):
So if you Common Spirit Health, Common Spirit Health and
fix the twenty four soon, my wonderful client love them
all Right, guys, we're gonna turn it over to KOA Sports.
We'll be back tomorrow. Keep it on Koa