Mark Reardon: Kids jumping on cop cars in Saint Louis, Being a Dad & uncreative politicians

About this episode

Mark Reardon, longtime St. Louis talk radio host who moved from AM heritage station KMOX to FM's KFTK after Rush Limbaugh's death opened a programming slot, returns to the podcast for an in-person conversation ranging from local crime to fatherhood to pandemic-era media distortion. The bulk of the episode centers on a viral incident of teenagers destroying a parked St. Louis police cruiser, which Reardon and Vance use as a launching point to dissect why community and political leadership struggle to condemn disorder plainly — connecting it to defund-the-police rhetoric, a hollowed-out manufacturing base (the departure of McDonnell Douglas/Boeing and Chrysler), and an under-staffed, single-officer patrol model. Reardon argues mainstream media systematically distorts local crime coverage (citing a critical 60 Minutes piece on St. Louis) to fit a national racial-justice narrative that he says doesn't match ground-level data, while acknowledging genuine grievances about aggressive policing (no-knock warrants, his own encounter with an overly aggressive Indiana state trooper). A lighter middle section covers Reardon's account of becoming a father again in his late 40s (via an antibiotic-nullified birth control mishap) and reflections on raising a daughter versus his older sons, paralleling Vance's own new-fatherhood reflections. The episode closes with a wide-ranging economic and pandemic-policy discussion: speculation on inflation and commercial real estate, Vance's pitch for St. Louis to become a "drone capital" leveraging its agtech legacy, a critique of corporate PR departments issuing political statements out of step with employees and customers, and an extended takedown of pandemic mask theater — outdoor mask mandates, the "intransigent minority" enforcing compliance, and mismatched science on transmission versus policy — analogized to Matt Ridley's "global greening" critique of climate models ignoring rising CO2's foliage effects.

“You had all these kids emptying out of the bar... people start jumping on top of the car. They're twerking, they're dancing, they're breaking the windshield... What makes us think that that somehow acceptable behavior [is normal]?”

“We're down 150 officers in the city of St. Louis... at any given time, the amount of officers on the street... is not a lot. And a lot of these officers are in single cars.”

“The intransigent minority is a small group of people that have a story in their head that this is the way things ought to be... the only way to stop the intransigent minority is to tell them to [go] off... if you don't take off the masks now, you could be in them forever.”

Key moments

• ~13-22%: The viral St. Louis incident — teenagers destroying a police cruiser while the lone officer exercises restraint; discussion of why leadership struggles to unambiguously condemn it.
• ~28-35%: St. Louis police staffing crisis (down 150 officers, single-officer patrol cars) and the departure of manufacturing employers (McDonnell Douglas, Chrysler) as root economic driver of neighborhood decline.
• ~29-35%: Reardon's critique of national media's racial framing of local crime coverage (60 Minutes piece) versus his own read of ground-level data.
• ~53-60%: Reardon's story of becoming a father in his late 40s and reflections on raising a daughter differently than his sons.
• ~72%: PR firms and corporate political messaging — "You don't realize how much public relations companies control what's going on."
• ~78-88%: Extended mask/pandemic-policy critique — outdoor mask mandates, the "intransigent minority," and the "condom" analogy from a Harvard epidemiologist.
• ~87%: Vance's Matt Ridley "global greening" tangent, comparing climate-model blind spots to pandemic mask-science mismatches.

Notable quotes

“The only way to stop the intransigent minority is to tell them to [go] off... if you don't take off the masks now, you could be in them forever.”

“They're twerking, they're dancing, they're breaking the windshield... this cop used an amazing amount of restraint.”

“That PR firm is filled with people that have a different way of thinking about the world than all of your employees... that's exactly why Coca-Cola and American Airlines are coming out with these absurd political statements.”

“Telling people to wear masks outdoors so they'll wear masks indoors is like telling people to wear a condom when masturbating so they'll wear one during sex.”