St. Louis Radio Host on Generational Media Bubbles and Coming Mob Justice

Mark Reardon [00:00:00] I had to press things. And this even happened with my car. It's so funny. I had a car, I got rear-ended, didn't have my car for five weeks. Right. And when I get back in my car, I forgot how to press the button for Park because I was doing a different, you know, my brain had already kind of shifted into the other car where I was putting it into park with the shifter. And then on my car, it's just a button. And it was like, oh shit. That's right, because your your brain, you, you can train it real fast. Yeah, exactly. Takes them 21 days to create a habit. Well, and that's what happened. It was five weeks. And then I'm like, okay, I gotta figure out the habits to go back. Oh, alright. We're good. It's recording. I think that port is bad. I,

Vance Crowe [00:00:38] We're trying to, it doesn't matter, you know, all the details, but I, I think I have it fixed. Okay. But you just found something to talk about. No problem at all. If,

Mark Reardon [00:00:47] If, if nothing else, we can just market this to lip readers.

Vance Crowe [00:00:54] Okay. I gotta reset my brain here.

Mark Reardon [00:00:57] That's all right.

Vance Crowe [00:01:03] Mark Reardon. What, so what is the name of the radio station that you're at now?

Mark Reardon [00:01:08] It's 9 7 1 FM talk. KFTK.

Vance Crowe [00:01:12] Okay. Because I like, that's the one that's on my radio, but I never listen to radio except for if I'm pulling my Bluetooth off my phone. 'cause I'm usually listening to my phone. Right. Are you using to radio?

Mark Reardon [00:01:22] Do I listen to radio? Yeah, I listen to, well, I'll be honest. Like when I'm in my car, I don't like to listen to other talk shows because I'm a talk show host, but I monitor Fox and CNN all the time. So, you know, I have Sirius XM in my car and I listen to music stations. But during the day, I'm always listening to CNN and Fox just to see what news is breaking, what audio might be out there. You know, I guide my producers into different soundbites and stuff like that. So really, I, if I'm not paying attention to spoken word, that's what I do. Spoken word radio, they call it. I'm listening to music and on a playlist or something like that. I'm a big music guy, you know, really, that's where my roots are,

Vance Crowe [00:01:58] You know, for a lot of people. Like, they, you know, they'll go like, oh man, I haven't been paying attention to the national news. I haven't been paying attention to the news lately. It's been great. But that's like a cycle, the same way that people go on a diet or something. You don't ever get to do that. You don't ever get to stop paying attention to the news. I

Mark Reardon [00:02:14] Don't, no, I I will say this though. I've become relatively disciplined on the weekends where, and, and even in the evenings, you know, it's weird. I have a dynamic at home that's very unusual. My wife has paid attention over the years. Like, we've been together for 23 years. So I'm not gonna say she wasn't paying attention to the issues, but in 2024, she got very, very interested. And we never had a situation where I would come home. I'm coming home from work. My show's on three to six, I get home, I wanna watch baseball. Right? I wanna watch the Stanley Cup finals. I wanna watch something. I do not wanna watch Fox or CNN All right. I've been listening to 'em in the car on the way home. I'm ready to take a break. My wife's become like a big fan of some of the Fox shows. So I come in and she's watching stuff. I'm like, turn it off. I can't take it. So while you're, you're true, I do tend to peel away and I peel away on the weekends. And, you know, if I go on vacation, I, I tend to not pay attention. But it's hard because there's so much happening and there's so many things, you know, especially even the last two months with the war, you can be talking about something, you know, on Saturday and even by Monday it's outdated. So what, what people always ask me, Vance, is, you know, how much show prep do you do? And my joke answer is, well, not very much because I don't really work for a living. But the truth of the matter is, is it all kind of comes in and I absorb it, right? I have, like, even for my show today, I had a customer service experience that was just awful today. And that got me fired up first thing. And it's a, it's a story that I'm gonna share on the air. So I'm always developing content, or if I see something that happened or if I'm, you know, in a situation with one of my many animals that I have, because I think I've told you, I have the Reardon Zoo, I have two dogs, three cats, a bunny.

Mark Reardon [00:03:58] And we're, I don't think I'm allowed to say this, but we're about to adopt another cat. So, you know, there are things like that that happened in my life. And we talk and, you know, you've met Fred and Sue and Ethan, the other players on my show. I have this rule where if you have a good story, it's like an unwritten rule. I don't wanna hear it until we press go on the microphone, right? Because I want the spontaneity to come out. And we've sort of done that even here today. You know, you and I were, were talking before we sat down and you know, you sort of think about things that you're gonna talk about. So I like spontaneity and radio, and I'm still doing my thing after all these years. And I'm, I'm lucky to do it.

Vance Crowe [00:04:32] So it's funny, I was just showing my child the other, we were reading a book and the, it was just a regular children's book with illustrations.

Mark Reardon [00:04:40] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:04:40] And there's a TV in the background. And my daughters don't know what that is. You

Mark Reardon [00:04:47] Don't have a tv? Well 'cause you don't have like a, it was like a Tube TV or something

Vance Crowe [00:04:50] Like that. It was a tube tv. We have a tv, but they have never seen it be like, you turn it on and there's just a show on Oh yeah. They've, they've never seen that. Right. Like the, if we ever do let them watch something, it's either a movie that plays off of the, off of the TV that we just, you know, select out of nowhere. So for them, it's like beaming there. Or we would show them maybe something on YouTube, but they don't associate that with the TV because the TV is just a flat screen in their house that turns on.

Mark Reardon [00:05:17] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:05:18] And does something like, it's, it's not like,

Mark Reardon [00:05:20] Yeah, well, it's all different. See, I guess I have an 11-year-old now, and as you know, I have older kids too, or 26 and 29, and I'll admit to being a, a bad parent with some of the screen time stuff. But, you know, she's pretty adept at searching around for stuff. And, you know, we have parental controls and everything like that, but it still makes me nervous. But yeah, look, let, let's face it, my daughter knows what a radio is because her dad works in radio. A lot of people just don't know. I mean, I grew up in an era, you're younger than I am, but you had to have the radio to get school closings.

Vance Crowe [00:05:52] Oh yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:05:53] You know, there, there is a period where every author or anyone that wanted publicity for a show, they would want to come to radio because it was essentially free advertising. Like if you're a guest on a show, you know, you're promoting your book or your comedy special or whatever. And radio used to be a primary destination for that. I mean, obviously television would be first, but it, it's, it's just been so segmented with stupid people like you Vance who have podcasts and stuff like that.

Vance Crowe [00:06:20] But people do listen to the radio. Like I, if I,

Mark Reardon [00:06:23] Yeah. Oh yeah. If

Vance Crowe [00:06:23] You, you and I do an episode on your show, I will drive home and by the time I'm driving home, somebody will wave me down in my neighborhood to be like, Hey, Vance, I heard you on, on

Mark Reardon [00:06:32] Nick show.

Vance Crowe [00:06:32] Yeah,

Mark Reardon [00:06:33] No, the good news is, it's wild. Right? And, you know, so just as, as a quick recap, I was on KMOX, which is a legendary station here, not only in St. Louis, but across the Midwest, because the signal, you know, back in the day at night, used to go to like 30, 35 states. And they, I, I did afternoon driving that station for about 15, 16 years. And one day, four years ago, it was about an a, you know, I did my show during COVID for a whole year from 2020 March to 2021. And one day I get a call and they're like, we're gonna flip the shows. We're taking you we're putting you on 97 1, which is an FM talk station, taking the other show, putting it to KMOX. So now I've had this FM station that I've worked at for four years, and I think I was telling you earlier, it's like, it, it's like I was traded, you know, the, the, the other team's on the other side of the building. But I'm on this team right now and, and I'm happy with it. And I'm just, you know, really happy to be a survivor. I've worked in this business since literally, I was like 15 years old. I I started when I was 15 and I did music radio for much of my career. And I've never gapped my employment. Right. Whenever I, I got fired twice. But when I did get fired, I, I went right to work for another station, at least to fill the gap. Like I was fired here in 1997. I got a job relatively quickly in Milwaukee, but I did three weeks of fill on KMOX at that time. I got fired in Milwaukee in 2006. I went right to WGN in Chicago, and I did fill in there swing shift. Right? And the reason I was able to do that is because over the decades I had built up a lot of connections and contacts in, in the business. And if I would get fired today, I don't know what that opportunity would look like.

Mark Reardon [00:08:06] You know, the climate's changed.

Vance Crowe [00:08:08] Well, I, it strikes me that, you know, in I'm in an information bubble and what the boomers hear about what's going on in the news is completely different. It's, if I go talk to my father-in-law, for example, he may be up to date on whatever it is that the boomers are up to date on. But it's a wildly different media diet to the extent that we are not talking about the same events.

Mark Reardon [00:08:31] No, I think you're right about that. And I don't know what that means for the future. For me, what it means is I'm at the, the latter part of my career. I still need to hang on for a while. And I really truly, deeply believe in live local radio because there are things that live local radio and television. But for radio, we, we can do that podcast can't do things move very quickly. You know, whatever might happen in the morning on Capitol Hill or even here in St. Louis might change by three o'clock in the afternoon. But I get what you're saying, and it kind of scares me because I see those news sources as not being able to really explain the, you know, whole nature of a story. And people grab little TikTok videos and stuff like that, and they assume that they know what things are. But journalism is a mess. You know? It is a mess right now. And I would say that it's lost. And I don't know how they're gonna find a way back because the American people do not trust journalism. And legacy journalism, to your point, is, is gonna go away because the younger people are just gonna consume this in a different way. They already are.

Vance Crowe [00:09:27] It's such a wild, like we are actually living in the dystopian future where you're like, there is so much fake there that it's, and with ai it's a totally different level. There's something else. So, and a bunch of my most recent guests, I've talked to Protestants, Catholics, and AI researcher on the conflict I see growing between faiths. Like what does it all mean?

Mark Reardon [00:09:53] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:09:53] So I've been really focused on that. But the one part of the fight that I also see the Civil War going on that I haven't talked very much about, 'cause I haven't had somebody that's got an expertise, I think that, that you do is, I think there is a, a civil war coming between boomers and young people on a scale that's not happened before.

Mark Reardon [00:10:11] And how do you think, by the way, I don't know that I disagree with you, but how do you think that that manifests itself?

Vance Crowe [00:10:17] Well, I think that the boomers have become a voting class that has made them into the people that the politicians are gonna please. And right now, the way that you please them is not only through medica is you care, you care for the old. So Medicare, social security, and then we've started doing things to be able to preserve more and more of the wealth of the older generation. And you can say nicely, oh, we're doing it for the poorest of the older generation, but they're doing things that are tilting all of the inflation to be able to pay for their debts, goes into assets. Right.

Mark Reardon [00:10:57] Which

Vance Crowe [00:10:58] Is what old people own. And so the value of people's houses has gone up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And only boomers are able to live in them. And I think there's a lot of young people looking at why are we giving all these things to older people when we are down here, not making it not able to raise a family.

Mark Reardon [00:11:15] I think that's real. You know, look, I I I told you I've got kids in the twenties and 26 and 29. I worry about their future in particular. I don't know how you, you get around it. Your, your point about older voters is true. I mean, if you look at the voting block, even from some of the more recent elections, the 60 plus, or the people that are voting right now, I, I would make a case that, you know, and, and this is always something at an election cycle, we talk about maybe more young people are gonna get involved, right? They, they don't seem to, and you know, I don't know why that is, because you still have a choice in who you're picking for these positions. And I think a lot of people in my age group or higher would say, man, we just want to, we wanna get to that point and enjoy our retirement. And man, we're probably pretty glad that we're not on the other end of the spectrum, especially considering all the challenges with ai, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [00:12:07] So I think that that is an example of a Boomer concept because what I think is actually going on culturally is boomers still believe in elections, and the younger generations do not. And I mean it to the extent that you will get to a place where young people, not only are they not voting, they're going to start being heard in other ways. And we saw that, right? You could look at Ferguson and say, those people aren't heard, or you could look at various, you know, but I think it's actually gonna be among working class people that are, have historically just kind of gone along with things. And I think look no further than Belfast, Ireland, where they're doing race riots Yeah. And people burning parts of their cities down. I think that is in many ways a generational fight as much as it is a religious fight.

Mark Reardon [00:12:58] Yeah. Look, I hope you're wrong about that because I do think there's some warning signs out there. What I would also say is, you know, in defense of the, the boomers, if you will, or at least people my age, there have been efforts and, and I would take you back to 2003 with someone that I used to be very close with, who is now relatively someone that I can't even mention on the air. And that's Paul Ryan, who was a congressman from Wisconsin, ended up being, you know, very important role ran for vice president, was Speaker of the House, was even more importantly, the, the chair of the house Ways and Means committee, which is the more powerful, if not the most powerful committee on Capitol Hill. It's the tax writing committee. Paul was a policy wonk. Right? That doesn't work anymore Ideas on Capitol Hill or with politicians. No one wants to hear ideas. But we would've conversations in, and this goes back to 2003, okay. In the first Bush administration about changing and, and, and saving social security. Okay. Saving it for the younger generation, right? We still have some talks about that, but no one wants to tackle it. They gonna kick it down the road because it's not politically popular. And then you have the commercials that'll get taken out saying you're throwing granny off the cliff. Right. You know, there, in my opinion, there are not two difficult ways with political courage to fix the social security problem. So it is there for younger generations, but no one has the courage to do that. So I,

Vance Crowe [00:14:17] And I don't think anybody believes that it's even possible, like the, the, like the cynicism among younger people to me, my myself included on down Seems Fever pitch that we don't have any choice in who is president, the school boards on our most local level. Like who has time to be involved. And these people are playing games that are way more complicated than anything I can understand. I think people feel really disillusioned by the system.

Mark Reardon [00:14:47] Yeah. You know, you're, you're probably offering me a pers you know, a perspective that I don't have even on that. Because my argument would be, okay, I get people are busy and everything, but get engaged and learn about these things. You know, I've made the case for years that some of these smaller elections that people participate in the school board elections, the municipal elections are maybe even more important than the national elections because they really affect you. But I get also that people are busy and, and they feel like they vote for change and then change never happens. Right. I worry, you know, going back to the asset comment that you made, that, you know, will my kids ever own a house? Will they have to rent? Right. So I think that's becoming something that is a, a reality moving forward. And what does that do overall for society when it comes to raising families and things like that. You don't have as much room probably in an apartment. So there's major challenges moving forward that I think we have as a society. I also think that things work themselves out. You

Vance Crowe [00:15:46] Said that. Yeah. But I, I think they worked themselves out through Revolution. Yeah. Like I, so to me, the, the idea, so I spent a lot of time being like, why I really wanna be on my kids' school board. I wanna be in these various activities Right. And be around them. Like that's something I really want. And I interview all these people, right? Yeah. Telling their

Mark Reardon [00:16:06] Life of stories. Yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:16:06] People that were on city council or the Rhodes Commission or the PTA or whatever, they were really involved also in their church.

Mark Reardon [00:16:14] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:16:15] And I keep sitting here being like, what is going on? Why, why is this happening? And ultimately, I think because time is being sped up and I, I don't mean that in terms of the seconds on a clock, but on how quickly value erodes, meaning like, as soon as you are handed dollars Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:16:34] The

Vance Crowe [00:16:34] Value that those dollars can buy is going down faster and faster and faster over time. Yeah. So they just keep printing more money and the people that own assets take that money and use it to buy more assets. And young people are sitting there being like, I have to work more hours. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:16:49] And

Vance Crowe [00:16:50] The amount of hours that I am working, whatever I'm purchasing, is degrading faster and faster. And so I think young people feel like the boomers are speeding up time on them and making it so they can't participate. And the and they're they're taking the value of the money Yeah. Away from them.

Mark Reardon [00:17:09] I mean, I, I, I don't think I can argue with the premise and, and the argument that you have there, I just don't know what, you know, there's, there's so many things that seemingly don't have, well, they're not easy solutions. Right. But, but might not have solutions. And I've really been talking a lot on my show about ai. I have a fear of ai. I actually recently went and sat down with a, a friend and a client of mine here in St. Louis ThrottleNet. They're an IT provider. And I literally did an AI class with them because I haven't jumped in. So we, we downloaded everything. He got me going. He, he started teaching me what to do, but I'm the type, this may go back to high school and college. He doesn't do his homework very well. Right. So I haven't really dove in in the way that I need to, but it's really intimidating to me. And you and I have even talked about this. I remember a conversation that you had with me, and this goes back maybe even more than five years ago, about how these things are gonna change. And with self-driving cars, maybe Starbucks doesn't become as important because traffic patterns are gonna change. So you, as I know you've been on

Vance Crowe [00:18:10] Top of this stuff,

Mark Reardon [00:18:11] But now it's happening so fast. Right. So fast. And I see the benefits and I bet you use it a lot to help you, you know, organize your life, know

Vance Crowe [00:18:18] It. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:18:19] And, and I haven't done that. And I can, doing a radio show collating topics and things like that, so I know it's out there. But look, it is super intimidating and it scares the hell outta me. It really does.

Vance Crowe [00:18:28] Well I think like we are in a, like a Cambrian explosion. Are you familiar with this term? This is like when

Mark Reardon [00:18:35] I've heard it, but you're gonna have to help define it for me here.

Vance Crowe [00:18:37] So like, there was enough, there were bacteria that were converting the, whatever the atmosphere was into oxygen. So they were eating like carbon dioxide Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:18:45] And

Vance Crowe [00:18:45] Turning it into oxygen. And as you're filling up the oxygen, it's floating away and then being pulled to earth until it can be held close enough to the earth.

Mark Reardon [00:18:53] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:53] That all of a sudden all different kinds of life can happen. And it is just a wild explosion where you go from there being just a few species to being billions and billions and all these things that you can try. I think we are in a Cambrian explosion. And I go to that level of depth, because when you say revolution, people think, oh, the industrial revolution where we got mechanization in cars, that was big. Yeah. Well that went linearly. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:19:17] Right. This

Vance Crowe [00:19:18] Is going to go grow from every angle of the earth in ways that are not possible to, to describe. And so being intimidated by it's a, a real Yeah. A real thing.

Mark Reardon [00:19:29] Well, and it's another thing that no one really, you know, you might wanna talk about it, but what do you do? I mean, what are the solutions? Pope Leo, I think expressed genuine concerns about the future. There's lawmakers.

Vance Crowe [00:19:39] Did you The the encyclical is awesome. Have you looked at it?

Mark Reardon [00:19:41] What? Meaning what?

Vance Crowe [00:19:42] So when a pope comes out, they can be like, ah, I'm a little worried about ai. Yeah. Or they can write what they call an encyclical.

Mark Reardon [00:19:48] Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:19:48] So you write an encyclical, you put that out there, and that is the word of God. Right.

Mark Reardon [00:19:52] So

Vance Crowe [00:19:53] Like, what is in there. And it actually is a super thoughtful approach to ai. He, one of the things he says is, everybody knows the story of Babel. Right. Which is where man goes to build this tower. And he keeps building it taller and taller and taller. 'cause he wants to be like God. Yeah. Yeah. He wants to know everything. Well, God then makes them do different languages. They go in different directions. He says, we should not build AI like that. We should build it. Like, and he describes a prophet that was told by a Pharaoh, go to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. And the guy goes around to all the different people in the community.

Mark Reardon [00:20:27] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:28] The priests, the merchants, the peasants, all these people and says, you have this job, you have this job. And each one of them goes to contribute to the wall, and together they build it together and it makes the city

Mark Reardon [00:20:41] Great.

Vance Crowe [00:20:41] Yeah. And so he was saying, we cannot stop ai, but we have to use it in a way that everyone sees a place for them to build a wall for. Great.

Mark Reardon [00:20:50] Well, I think he's right. And I think a lot of people are saying that and that, that that's the path. But what, how do we do that? Because this thing is, is happening so fast and you know, it's, it's gonna take over some of these things. It 60 minutes to the story a few years ago that really scared me just about, you know, the notion of AI becoming smarter than us. And you know what, it can really become. So I'm a fan of the possibilities, but I'm also worried about, you know, the, certainly the repercussions of it.

Vance Crowe [00:21:18] So I have a lot. So I started running like a small meeting with a group of people I really trust. And I'm like, all right, we're gonna get on here. We're gonna do AI drag racing. Yeah. So

Mark Reardon [00:21:27] Everybody,

Vance Crowe [00:21:28] We have like six people. We have like 20 people on the call. Six of them will be like, here, this is what I'm working on. Yeah. And then you, and then you can be like, how did you do it? And you get to see them actually using the ai and they're not talking about it. Yeah. They're, Hey, see my screen, this is how I'm using it. And it's one of those things that you realize, like every single person on that phone call, there's 20 of us there, maybe one of them doesn't feel like they're behind. Everybody else is like, I'm behind. I gotta use that more. Yeah. I gotta do more. I gotta do more. But the very first step is just trying it and getting it I to use it. I'm to solve you a problem.

Mark Reardon [00:21:59] That's where I am right now. But I've, I've gotta, I've gotta take, I'm in, you know, I've said this over the years, and it's true. I'm either an all in guy or an all out guy, and it's kinda like with workouts and stuff like that, man, I can get into a great rhythm and stuff like that, but once I'm out, it's gonna take

Vance Crowe [00:22:14] Me, oh yeah. The wheels come off. It

Mark Reardon [00:22:15] Takes me a while to get back. So once I take the step, and, and I think it's gotta happen here in the next few days because I, I made some promises to George who was teaching me this. I said, by next, by next week I'll have it down. And I'm off next week. So I bought myself an extra week. But definitely, I gotta work on the homework. So

Vance Crowe [00:22:33] When you are thinking about using ai, what is that like for you? Like you, you're gonna have to think of a project you might use it for and then

Mark Reardon [00:22:42] Well, I think a variety of ways, and the way that it was really kind of being discussed to me is use it as kind of, and talk to it as a personal assistant. So there would be a variety of things that I do on a daily basis, even this morning that I did before I come in with you, where I'm looking at every source that I pay for and I pay for a lot. Right. LA Times, Washington Post, wall Street Journal. I can go in my understanding is, and George kind of taught me how to do this. I can say, all right, find me all the stories on this particular topic. Show me the best stories, tell me how they're different or whatever. So I think that I can use AI certainly from a show prep situation to make me more aware of the stories that are out there. So that's gonna help me in my personal life. What I really want it to do is to teach me how to hit a freaking golf ball the right way. I don't think it has that capability right now, but I would use it for gathering. I'm a music guy, so I think I would use it for maybe gathering information on what new music is coming out or what bands might be touring. I don't know all the possibilities because I'm just now getting to the point where I might use it. My wife has used it to clean up documents. I've used it at one point, this is funny because here's how I did use chat a couple weeks ago. The, there was an assignment that came down from my boss in the sales department that said, here's what we need. We need a bio, we need this, we need, you know, whatever you're passionate about. Stuff like that. Something to put in front of clients. Right? So I'm like, I'm having, I do that. So I, I give all the, the bullet points to my wife since I'm not really good at this and she puts this, you know, bio and document together and I send it to them. And I mean, it was great, right?

Mark Reardon [00:24:13] It was, it was better than what I could have done. It showed a little personality, which is, I think maybe encouraging, but scary at the same time, right? Because it gets to know your tone and everything that's happening right now with Apple, you know, and Siri and they just rolled this out. They're gonna, you know, have Gemini work with Siri and this is gonna be a game changer, I think for a lot of us at this point. So I don't know all the options, but it intimidates me. It scares me. I think that if I can get on some of the positive side of things, it'll help me.

Vance Crowe [00:24:42] I've had a lot of fun interacting with people, like for their first time of, of doing ai. And the thing that I've learned is people are like, yeah, it's doing what a computer, when we were young and we were told this is what a computer would do, you just walk to the computer

Mark Reardon [00:24:57] And

Vance Crowe [00:24:58] Be like, tell me this thing. And then it gives you an answer back. But then we spent the last 25 years being told, no, you have to go www dot

Mark Reardon [00:25:05] Right to

Vance Crowe [00:25:06] Google and then it's gonna do these things. You have to unlearn that. And what, what ends up unlocking is you're, you're working with your printer and you can't get it to work. You just turn on the AI and says, it's giving me this code. What should I do? Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:25:19] And it'll tell you and

Vance Crowe [00:25:20] It'll tell you.

Mark Reardon [00:25:20] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:25:20] And then, oh, walk through this problem. You know, and it, and like it starts solving problems with you. And like the more you are deliberate about, okay, this is the chainsaw that I use, right? Yeah. Then it knows, Hey, you know, first we're gonna check the filter because

Mark Reardon [00:25:36] Exactly. And that's how, you know, George has kind of taught me this, my friend from ThrottleNet. And it, it's interesting, he even recounted a, you know, a health issue that he had last year. And after even visiting with the doctors, he, you know, talked to the AI and the AI basically gave him steps to lose weight and to reduce blood pressure and all these things. Now, here's where I don't like it at all, and I'm just gonna tell you this and I don't know what we can do about it when it comes to creativity in the arts. A couple weeks ago, I have a friend in Cleveland, we've been friends since high school. We love music, right? Passionate about music. I love music, passionate about music. Got my treble clef here on my arm. And I was a disc jockey when I was younger and I worked in the music industry, right? So we share songs that we think each other might like. He sends me one, I can't remember the artist, it's an older African American artist. So I listen to this song and it was really good. It was soulful. I'm like, is this one of those guys? This happens every once in a while. Is this one of those guys that's been kind of out there for a while? He is, been doing music and all of a sudden now he has maybe something that might be a hit. Or is it somebody that, you know, and this happens too, it's a great blues artist from many years ago, passed away R.L. Burnside. And he didn't really hit until he was in his fifties doing, you know, blues music. Right? So I asked that of my friend, and the answer is, as you might expect at this time, it was ai. So now, and I think Spotify is identifying the AI songs. I saw something even I think today in the only Times of the Washington Post about something related to an AI song that was in hit. I, you know, at the very least, I wanna be told that that song is ai. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:27:06] Why?

Mark Reardon [00:27:07] Because I don't like it.

Vance Crowe [00:27:09] Okay.

Mark Reardon [00:27:09] I do not like it. I've had a friend in Columbia, Missouri who writes country songs. He, he thinks he can write country songs. Actually, I think he can, he's trying to get them on the radar of people in Nashville and he's having AI sing the songs. And I'm like, why do you need to get it to someone in Nashville? Because it sounds pretty good with the AI singer. I, that does not sit well with me. I mean, I, I'm very frightened because the creativity that, you know, musicians have, if I'm a musician, I'm like, where is this gonna take me? Right. Especially a touring musician who doesn't have a lot of, you know, money that really has to work as a working musician. So do you like that with music?

Vance Crowe [00:27:47] Oh, I, I mean, I think the, there's a guy named Joscha Bach, I did an interview with, and he said something that really kinda, I bruised my ego a little bit. Yeah. Because I'd done it and then I've now I'm like, he's a hundred percent right. Which is I was using AI to communicate with my, like, past clients and I'd be like, Hey, just checking in. And I was having it pretend to be me.

Mark Reardon [00:28:06] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:06] And he said, in a communication from one human to another, you should not use AI because there's value, not just in the words that you're putting down there, right. But that you thought through each one of those words. And it's a part of the chemistry that happens between you and another person. And I think that's true. Like, if there is something that is being conveyed as thought emotion, something that is, you knows, we maybe wanna preserve as unique or sacred to humans, you probably wanna make the AI be tagged on it. Yeah. But I don't think it's gonna happen.

Mark Reardon [00:28:41] I don't think it's gonna happen either. So I don't know where that takes us. And that, that, that, I don't like that, you know, you,

Vance Crowe [00:28:46] What did you think about the data center that, you know, big booming project? It was, as far as I could tell in a big building nobody was gonna use. And people come out of the woodwork and they are mad that there's gonna be a data center going in there. What's going on there?

Mark Reardon [00:29:00] Well, that's a lot of nimby, right? And the bottom line is that, you know, is we have to have these data centers to move forward. And I have not studied this issue very well, but I think urban data centers certainly have advantages because you're not taking up huge acreage and you're, you're in buildings. But this is one of those things that I will tell you Vance, over the years, you know, you see things kind of take on a life of their own. This happened during COVID with the mama bears that weren't happy about what was happening in schools. And this data center thing has really done that. And I think you, you've had, you know, situations local here to some of the counties outside of St. Louis, where hundreds of people have shown up and they say, we don't want this. You've had, you know, boards of alderman or city council say we're, we're gonna ban this. That kind of caught me off guard. And I don't think that people are thinking through the benefits of the data centers. They just don't want them near them. And I'm not even convinced they know why. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:29:55] I mean, it truly feels like the GMO pushback that we got where people Yeah. Were really passionate about it. They were afraid and angry. And if you talk with them about it, it's more of like a nebulous, right.

Mark Reardon [00:30:10] It's

Vance Crowe [00:30:11] Not just like, what is the immediate impact of this? It's kind of a fear of AI that, that you had expressed. But I think it is really worth trying to understand that, because I think a lot of, I think those, I think the people getting booed Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:30:24] Like

Vance Crowe [00:30:25] Commencement speeches, talking about AI are a demonstration that in the universities, the professors are saying, no, don't use ai. This is bad. This is gonna take all your jobs, be afraid. 'cause the truth is it's gonna take most of their jobs because there's not gonna be Oh yeah. The, the, the specialization that can come with AI for what a university professors. So they just indoctrinated the last of the, the people that are gonna need the credentialing institutions, which is what universities are. They're just giving you a stamp to say, I mean, some universities have good things to offer. It's not zero. But I think they're making young people afraid of AI when the real truth is they should be handing them their a their diploma and having

Mark Reardon [00:31:05] Taught

Vance Crowe [00:31:05] Them how to use that, embrace the

Mark Reardon [00:31:06] Positives of it. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you. I think you're right about that. I definitely agree with you on academia. You know, so there's just so many things that will change and, and it, it's, it's overwhelming when you think about it. And it's really even more overwhelming when you think about it in the context of what's happening, you know, in this country with stress and tension over politics. You know, we, we haven't talked for a while. I've been in a situation where I lost, you know, a friend of 45 years because of politics. So you have all those other things, things with families not getting along, and then inflation, which is crushing people. The home ownership issue that you talked about, you know, a lot of us are sitting with money. We have equity in our homes. We don't wanna take it out because rates are low. There's just so much going on. And I, I really don't know how younger people are gonna make it. And I, I really do worry about that. And there is a sense, maybe this is bad. I, I tell, maybe tell you I should be approaching something differently, but there's, there's almost a sense of relief that I'm on the other side of it. Oh, really? Does that make sense? That,

Vance Crowe [00:32:05] That, that you'll be able to outrun it, that death will come before the big change occurs.

Mark Reardon [00:32:10] Yeah. Maybe I'm killing myself off a little too early, but Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:32:13] Not, I mean, what, how many, how many more years do you or you think just security.

Mark Reardon [00:32:17] Yeah, yeah. Like, I'd like to retire, right? So I, if we get to a point where, and then I don't have to worry. I'm not saying I'm not gonna worry about the country, but I don't have to learn all these new things that other people are gonna have to learn. Does that make sense?

Vance Crowe [00:32:30] Yeah. But I mean, man, I don't,

Mark Reardon [00:32:32] That's the wrong approach.

Vance Crowe [00:32:33] I don't, I don't know that it's true. I think that this may be, maybe this is hitting on you. You're helping me think about something. 'cause I think the boomers are kinda like, yeah, there is a lot of change coming. Glad we're over here. And then being like, Uhuh, you don't understand everything's going to change. Yeah. And what was secure to when you watched the greatest generation retire and go off into the sunset? That's because we were still flying on airplanes and using the internet. We hadn't hit AI and space travel. And now all of a sudden, what it means to be a geriatric person is very different.

Mark Reardon [00:33:07] You know, I will say this, that when you look at young people, and I wanna talk to my kids about this because I don't know how much, I honestly do not know how much they've embraced ai, but I am very surprised by how many people my age and older, and I'm 61, I don't like to say that have used ai. Like I've been on the phone with some friends of mine from across the country, even in the last couple of weeks since I've had this training. And they are using it on a regular basis. I went out to lunch with someone a week ago and lawyer friend of mine, he's retired, saying, oh yeah, I use it for this. I use it for that. Like, I was blown away by how many people in my orbit are using it. They're using it for good purposes and they're embracing it. Right? So even with the profession that I'm in, there's a transition from listening on a radio dial to listening on an app. And I was very concerned about that transition happening with older people in the older audience. And I'm encouraged by it now. So where you say, you know, maybe younger people are being told, you know, warning signs. I'm thinking that there are older people that really are embracing this and trying to learn it. And with everything that's going on with Apple and Siri and how that's gonna change in a couple of months, I think that will accelerate the, the po the, the, the positive progress of

Vance Crowe [00:34:21] It. Yes. I, I think this is like, there's going to be trade offs. My great example, there's a, there's a guy named Jay, he's a farmer from up in Ontario, right? And he's always wanted to create this sensor that tells you how deep your seeds are going into the ground

Mark Reardon [00:34:35] To

Vance Crowe [00:34:35] Make sure they're at the exact right depth. And he used AI to work through an engineering idea that he had in his brain, and then helped him like, get together all of the pieces that he need and then help him set up like, how would I test this the right way and know I've run into this problem and now he's got this sensor and the sensor is now being used by other farmers that have his kind of tractor.

Mark Reardon [00:34:55] See, that's amazing. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:34:56] And like, would he have done it if he had to use Google? No way.

Mark Reardon [00:34:59] Yeah. No.

Vance Crowe [00:35:01] And so certainly anyone that picks it up and can find a use for it, but we are going to need more data centers. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:35:08] And

Vance Crowe [00:35:08] We're gonna need a lot more electricity orders of magnitude more. And this is,

Mark Reardon [00:35:14] We're not talking about that enough. You know, all the coverage is about against data centers. No one's pointing out why we need them. And no one's really trying to understand why we need them. So that, and the politicians are, you know, scared to be on the wrong side of it. So they don't wanna make, they don't wanna have political courage and, and try to do the right things.

Vance Crowe [00:35:33] Well, I don't think politicians wanna talk about energy prices when we're all of a sudden, sudden over. No, the Strait of Hormuz have been blocked off. Yeah. You know, Iran was gonna be an easy thing. And now we've just gone and definitely changed the world's energy supply. I am not totally convinced that that is not a, a mechanism to try and slow the rest of the world down in ai. We went down to Venezuela, got their oil and brought it up to us. So now we've consolidated to that. And then you've got trying to block off the Strait of Hormuz, which really puts pressure on China.

Mark Reardon [00:36:05] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:36:05] Russia, Europe. Right. They all now have way higher energy costs as we are going like this on ai. To me, it may have been a, they may, the US may be perfectly fine with the Strait of Hormuz being cut off for a long, long time.

Mark Reardon [00:36:19] All right. That's, you're veering into territory that I, I've never even thought about, but that's interesting. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:36:25] What are you, when you think about Iran, what, what is, what are you focused on there? 'cause it's in the news every day. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:36:32] So I don't like it. And I've been pretty vocal from the beginning. Look, I, I'm, I'm a guy who calls balls and strikes. All right? I'm a libertarian conservative. I have done conservative politics on the radio for my entire talk radio career since, you know, 1992. And I saw a guy in Trump that was flawed, certainly in the, in the first ministry. I didn't vote for him the first time. I did the second and third time. But I saw an opportunity for something that was dramatically different than what the Democrats were offering. Right. And, and I, I didn't trust what Kamala or Joe Biden or any Democrats could provide because some of the progressive stuff that's out there drives me nuts. Now, having said that, I, I try to be fair in my analysis of situations. So if there was a Democrat who last summer dropped, you know, bunker busting bombs from B twos in, you know, Missouri here from Whiteman Air Force Base, and said, we decimated the nuclear program and then six months later starts a war that's gonna be six weeks. And now we're, you know, not, not even close to any kind of finish

Vance Crowe [00:37:39] That's all been memory hold. I would, he wouldn't even remember it.

Mark Reardon [00:37:42] But I would criticize that if a Democrat did that, and I'm criticizing it, that Trump's doing it. He, he seems to be writing off the inflation and the gas price issue in a way that Biden did. You know, I, if I have to hear one more Republican say, well, they were higher under Biden at, at a point, I don't care what I care about and what the American people care about is right now, and this is outta control. And I don't know that there's a plan that can fix what's happening in the Middle East right now. You know, when I was in high school, I thought I was gonna be smart. And they used to have these van, you're probably too young. You remember the, the record memberships and the book memberships. Like, you'd, you'd pay like nothing and you'd get all these records for free, but that's because they would hook you in and then you could

Vance Crowe [00:38:22] Never cancel

Mark Reardon [00:38:22] It purchase. Right, right, right. So I did that with books and I was like, I think I was a senior in high school. Right? I'm gonna get some books that are gonna make me smarter. I'm gonna buy a book on the Arab-Israeli wars. Right. First of all, never read it. You know, second of all, had I read it, would it made any difference? Because this goes back now, what, 75 years? It's, it's unbelievable. There's not gonna be a diplomatic solution. So I think the country's in a really, really tough spot right now, because people who did support Trump are saying, wait a second here, these gas prices, and they're not going down right away. There's no way they're going down right away. Right. I, I think he's gotten us into a mess. I really do. And, and I don't know how they're gonna get out of it. I do know this, I'll tell you, you know, I talk to people on Capitol Hill, I know these people, they're not happy with it, but they're not saying it publicly because politically they don't think that they can. But there are more people on Capitol Hill at this point and throughout the country who supported President Trump, who are not supporting him privately than I think has ever happened in the last, you know, couple years. Because things are moving in an uncomfortable

Vance Crowe [00:39:24] Direction. I, the, the level of knowledge about what's going on with individual people. Any, I, the only senator I could name right now is, you know, Eric, you know Eric

Mark Reardon [00:39:34] Sch Smith?

Vance Crowe [00:39:34] Yeah. Schmitt. That's like, maybe I could, maybe a couple. But I have no knowledge of that at all. My level of analysis, of, of geopolitics is whatever they are doing is exactly what they mean to be doing. Meaning like whatever the outcome is, is what they were shooting for. And to me, it appears that the United States is trying to make a quagmire. There they are. They are trying to extend it as long as they can

Mark Reardon [00:40:00] Seem to be,

Vance Crowe [00:40:01] Because you could do a bunch of different things and try, I think try. I like, and if you really wanna stunt the rest of the, the, the world make it so their energy goes completely crazy. Their prices.

Mark Reardon [00:40:13] Yeah. But I don't think I really, I, I don't think Trump, I think Trump wants an exit ramp right now, but he has to get the highly enrich uranium, and I don't think there's any way to do that without going in with special forces. So this is, this is not, so

Vance Crowe [00:40:23] You believe that he actually, I don't even think that they, that they care nuclear program or not. This is not, I do not think this is actually primary, the, the primary reason there.

Mark Reardon [00:40:32] Yeah, I do. I I think it is. I really do. But you know, look, I've been wrong so many times about things in politic. No, no. I I'm not gonna sit here and tell you you're wrong.

Vance Crowe [00:40:39] Many, I think this is what I'm talking about the information bubble, right? My people are like, no, they don't really care about the nuclear other places, nuclear bombs. We don't want 'em to proliferate. But like, this is, they're there for a different reason. And your world is my, my father-in-law, for example, he'd be like, we have to go into Iran. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.

Mark Reardon [00:40:56] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:40:56] And I, I'm kinda like, well, why'd we do it now rather than some other time? Right. It kind of got looped into the Israel Yeah. Gaza thing. Like, it, it kinda, to me, we're not there for the nuclear and the, at the end of the day, they will let them have the nuclear if it requires them not to go boots on the ground.

Mark Reardon [00:41:17] I don't think that's wrong because I don't, I don't think he can do boots on the ground. There would not be support for that. But I do think that overall making the world a safer place considering the threat that Iran has been going back to when I was, you know, opening the newspaper here in St. Louis as a high school kid every day looking at the Globe-Democrat day, you know, 100 day, two 50 day 300 of the Iran hostage crisis, you know, it's been death to America. So yeah, there's other nuclear powers out there and those are of concerns. But this is not something that we certainly want to have happen because I think they're too much of a threat to the region and to the world. Now, as far as a timing thing, you're right. I mean there, there were opportunity, well, we did it last summer, right? Did we not take out the nuclear capabilities? Did we lay delay it by 10 years, 20 years? I don't know. So when people like you and younger people have different ideas about this, I get it. I understand where that notion is coming from. You know, I, I really do because I think things are confusing for a lot of people right now.

Vance Crowe [00:42:18] I always poke you on this. I don't think it's an area you spend much time thinking about, but it's always just a good bellwether for me. Where, what do you think about Bitcoin right now? When was the last time you had a conversation about

Mark Reardon [00:42:28] Bitcoin? Dude, okay, so what's funny about that is, and I, I won't mention the name, but I, about a year ago had someone who was gonna jump on with me as a sponsor. And I sat down to dinner with him and it was fascinating. It was really, really an interesting conversation. It was like Bitcoin 1 0 1, Sue and I sue's my colleague on my radio show. We've always kind of laughed it off as something we don't really understand, right? So I sit down with this potential client and his assistant, and we, we start just talking about everything. He's a fascinating guy. He really is. And he shoots me a hundred dollars in Bitcoin, right? And he's telling me, and you know, it's hard to get my head around the, there's a limited amount of Bitcoin and all this stuff. I think it's difficult for people to understand, but you know, I'm told there's no doubt that this is going to a certain, you know, amount and this is a good investment, blah, blah, blah. So he sends me the a hundred dollars on my app that I have, and I think that's worth about $70 right now. So not too impressed with Bitcoin. And in cryptocurrency, I was very, I was ready to put my entire retirement savings into Bitcoin. I really wasn't. But you come out of a conversation, excuse me about that. And you hear someone who's enthusiastic about it, you're like, yeah, I'm all in. But then I see the reality of it, and I'm like, and that happens in the stock market too. So I don't give one thought to cryptocurrency these days. I really don't.

Vance Crowe [00:43:52] Interesting. I

Mark Reardon [00:43:52] Don't care about it. I don't really, it doesn't affect me. And until I'm forced to maybe, you know, take another step then, and, and the client disappeared. The, the sponsor opportunity disappeared. Right. I don't know why.

Vance Crowe [00:44:05] And in your world, like in my bubble, there's a, there's a Senator Cynthia Lummis, and people are watching what she's doing basically every day until she leaves her term. Is that true in your world? Are you watching the Clarity Act or the, the any of this, the bills going on?

Mark Reardon [00:44:20] No,

Vance Crowe [00:44:21] This, this is what I'm talking about, man.

Mark Reardon [00:44:22] I, I, I know. Here's what I do though. I know when I sat down with this person last year that we talked about this, and we know that Trump is very open

Vance Crowe [00:44:31] To a lot of these things. Yeah. I I'm not

Mark Reardon [00:44:32] Saying you, so I, I know some of the basics, but I don't know the, you know, the,

Vance Crowe [00:44:36] The details of that. So like, my version of Iran right now

Mark Reardon [00:44:38] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:44:38] Would be the Clarity act. Now I, I'm not, I don't really care that much about it, but a lot of Bitcoiners are like, this is the biggest thing. Yeah. This is gonna be a huge deal if this happens. Banks will start allowing, you know, there'll be custodying, Bitcoin, there's all kinds of things happen. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying, whether it's a boomer divide or just our tribe divide, I think right now, more than any other time in history, what is news to you? What's going on and why it's going on and what's going on with me and why I think it's going on are so different that I wonder how are we going to even define ourselves as Americans? Yeah. How are we gonna define ourselves as anything when you're, 'cause you are your group based on the information that you have and the values that you have and the information we have is completely different.

Mark Reardon [00:45:26] Yeah. It depends on people. You know, I hang out with a fair amount of, even though I'm old, a fair amount of younger people, and we have conversations, I think you're a guy that is super dialed into this. You're like microfocused and you always have been. Right. I'm not saying that there's not the masses out there that are paying attention to this at that level. But I, I think there's a lot of people that are still just trying to live their lives, do their jobs, have some kids, you know, and it's very easy. And I'm maybe the worst defender of this to kind of put things in the background and say, oh, that's not gonna affect me. And we as a country are very good at this too. Maybe we're finding that out about AI right now. We kind of wait until there's a big crisis, right? So we had nine 11, and then we start looking at, you know, airport security and all this stuff. So we re we're reactive more than proactive. That's part of the problems with, with everything in politics when it comes to social security, cryptocurrency, ai. We're, we're not, we're not looking toward the future. We're kicking the can right. On a lot of these things. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:46:21] There's just so, it's like, it's the Cambrian explosion, right? Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. There's so many things that how could you possibly, in your world, are people getting more religious?

Mark Reardon [00:46:32] No, in my world, no. But when you ask that, you, you mean my friends? And I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] Just like you, you look around, you memetically, you see things on the news, you see your friends, you, you know, people, you

Mark Reardon [00:46:44] Talking, I think there two answers to that question. Here's why. The people that are in, like my orbit, the real close people to me are not super religious folks. I was brought up Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, went to church and catechism and all that. I took a philosophy religion class when I was a, maybe a sophomore at Mizzou. It opened my eyes to a lot of different things. I ended up taking another one with a professor that I really liked. And I would be along the lines of, I think there might be something out there, but I, I'm not an organized religion person at all. So I have seen that my audience, you know, and I'm very careful. I don't wanna alienate people. I have respect for people. My family's Catholic, actually, the rest of my family. And I see people in my audience who are very spiritual, maybe more spiritual than they've been. Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong, wrong people. But the people that I hang out with are not the churchgoers on, you know, Sunday, I certainly have some people who are, you know, who are Jews are very even, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:47:38] Very religious. Yeah. That be

Mark Reardon [00:47:40] So, but I, I don't have a lot of discussions about religion. Whenever I have on my radio show, it's been something that usually gets me in trouble because I'm criticizing, you know, the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church or something like that. But I don't think that, and I'm using my kids as an example, and some of their friends, this is what's interesting. Not very spiritual, not churchgoers. I have a producer, young person, a couple other young people that are in his world that I know, very, very spiritual, were really affected by Charlie Kirk. And so I think it's a mix. I really do think it's a mix when it comes to that.

Vance Crowe [00:48:20] I, I think there is a giant religious revival going on in the United States under the ground. I think it is starting, oddly enough with the Catholic church, but I perceive that the more Pentecostal excited pr like the Southern Baptist area. Yeah, I think those are growing too. And I, I actually called up one of my friends totally randomly a guy I know down in, in Mississippi, and he said there's been an explosion of young people returning to the church.

Mark Reardon [00:48:52] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:53] And they want the Starbucks pastor to go and they want hellfire and brimstone back. And that's

Mark Reardon [00:48:59] Fascinating. And

Vance Crowe [00:48:59] My mother always said, when I was growing up, she was like, when somebody converts to Catholicism or they recom back

Mark Reardon [00:49:05] To the church. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:49:06] They're always the most con, they're always the most conservative. They want hardcore rules. They want the mass in Latin. And my buddy now is telling me down in Southern Baptist, they're like, we want hell, fire and brimstone. We wanna know what's the rules, what's good, what's bad. See,

Mark Reardon [00:49:20] This is where some of this stuff is passing me by Vance. You're, you're kind of giving me a perspective. And I know that there's been things with younger people, especially with Turning Point and you know that, but I'm not sure if there's that revival going on with older people. But I could be missing that. You know, there's things culturally that I, that I certainly miss. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:49:36] I, can I

Mark Reardon [00:49:37] Take a break? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:49:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. May have

Mark Reardon [00:49:39] Take a break.

Off-air break — Vance & producer Sam (multiple voices) [00:49:39] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and then I'll be right back. Sorry. It's, she, you don't have to do anything. Just let it run and we'll cut it. Sorry about that. It was, I, I was looking for a spot that was little more natural. What do you think of this conversation? Very interesting, Sam learning some things. He's definitely a different tribe than my people. Right. Like it's why it's interesting. Yeah. I don't like making him feel uncomfortable that he doesn't know what's going on in current events. That doesn't feel good. But I am not a very current event kind of person. I don't think, I don't think you are. I don't think he wants to say everything. Yeah. He's in a different situation, but a totally wildly different thing than Jim Rutt or Joscha Bach or Rob Long. Right. Yeah. He is what I would say, like down the graph, like mass audience, but not the first to know. So if you think about that graph that I, you've seen, you've seen me draw the, well actually graph Yeah. He's down the, down the graph. Right. He's after the well actually point, which means big audiences not, not necessarily Yeah. The most Yeah, that's right. Specific. That's right. Alright, sorry about that.

Vance Crowe [00:51:10] Oh, here we go. Is this a fun, fun vein or?

Mark Reardon [00:51:12] Yeah, yeah. Take, I mean, I don't care what you wanna talk about. I'm talk about everything.

Vance Crowe [00:51:18] Yeah. So I think that there are a lot of people that we're told everyone is the exact same. There is no difference in your makeup. You, if you, if you're standing next to a black person or a Hispanic person, you're exactly the same. And I think people intuitively knew that wasn't true, but we went through this kind of forced

Mark Reardon [00:51:38] What you're

Vance Crowe [00:51:39] Allowed to say what corporate America will allow you to say these things. And then I think eventually they hit a point where they're like, is there any space I can go to where I'm okay to be me?

Mark Reardon [00:51:49] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:51:49] And that we can draw the line nice and bright on who's in and who's out. And faith is is one of those areas that, that people can do it. And I think that's happening right now.

Mark Reardon [00:52:01] Yeah. I think we've seen a little of that. Again, that's, I, I'm a little removed from that because I'm, I'm not the biggest God guy. Right. There's things that, that don't make sense to me with where people choose to, you know, put like, as maybe controversial. I don't think Jesus is deciding who should win a football game or a baseball game.

Vance Crowe [00:52:23] And I understand that people,

Mark Reardon [00:52:25] They, they want to think, but I,

Vance Crowe [00:52:26] Is that actually controversial or does everybody kind of hym haw? Like,

Mark Reardon [00:52:30] I mean, watch the athletes and what they say. I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:52:32] I do. I don't. Okay.

Mark Reardon [00:52:33] I don't. So you missed that. Oh yeah. There's, there's, you know, I, I won this because, and I, I get people's, you know, passion about faith, but I just don't think that God is picking baseball winners and football winners and players because they are of a certain faith. So I get a little disconnected from that. And then the money that gets involved with organized religion, and then don't get me started on the Catholic church and the absolute hypocrisy of everything that happened with the sexual abuse scandal and billions, billions of dollars that have been, you know, given in settlements. And that's just in California, by the way, to some of the victims of that in the name of religion. That, that's one of the more, what, what happened in the Catholic church. And again, my family's Catholic and I like Pope Leo. He seems to be like a real dude. And I love Timothy Dolan too. I'm not making a blanket statement here. But that was felonious behavior that under any circumstance people would be in jail for a long time. But in the Catholic church, they were simply moved around to different parishes. It's outrageous. It's one of the more outrageous things that's happened in the past 30 years in this country. And I would put COVID in that mix too. And, and there doesn't seem to be any, you know, it's like, okay, write the checks. We're, we're all outta there. So that, that makes me lose a lot of personal faith in people of faith because they don't see how awful that was. And, and, and it's just beyond me that anyone can overlook that it really is. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:54:00] There's a darkness there that you, you have to grapple with if you are going to be a part of that faith. Right. Where you're saying, 'cause when I look this up, it's the, the number of children that are exposed to sexual abuse by priests was not out of the norm to the general population because we have so much sexual abuse in the United States.

Mark Reardon [00:54:25] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:54:26] But the problem is that's a priest, a person that is like your family. You refer to him as father. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:54:32] There's a level of trust there. There's we're the same, you know, you had people that were in those positions that took advantage of that in, in the Boy Scouts or whatever the other situation will

Vance Crowe [00:54:40] Be. I mean, I know a a, a faith up in the Montana area that's like a Dutch Protestant faith. And they had a very similar thing, you know, it was very small group of churches that shared pastors. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:54:53] And

Vance Crowe [00:54:54] People didn't wanna make the accusations or go through the law because then their children would be exposed. So they as a group just kind of moved them around. And you think this is abhorrent, right? Yeah. Like, because your parish or whatever you call it in that, that church sent a monster to our church because you didn't want to deal with it. And to think that somebody in the hierarchy of the Catholic church did that. It,

Mark Reardon [00:55:18] It, it, but but wait a second. Also, not only did that, did that repeatedly. Yeah. And repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly in everywhere on the planet. It, it's really, it's beyond comprehension to me. It really is. To

Vance Crowe [00:55:31] Me, one of the things about Legacy Interviews that has shocked me is how many people have been sexually abused in general.

Mark Reardon [00:55:39] Yeah. You know, I've come across a fair amount of people too. And that, that is, I mean, that's the thing that I think I'm most worried about with my daughter, you know, and some of the things that she might be ex exposed to. But that's,

Vance Crowe [00:55:52] That's the only running out the clock that I kind of feel like with a parent. Like the boomers aren't gonna be able to run out the clock, you know, on like, oh, I'm not gonna have to learn about ai 'cause it's coming, it's gonna be involved. Well,

Mark Reardon [00:56:02] My daughter's gonna know much more about this even very quickly. Yeah. But

Vance Crowe [00:56:05] Running out the clock in terms of like, I got my child to a point where they are gonna make smart decisions and, and stay away hopefully. But you know, when you have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, you're like, I am entrusting this child to other people. Yeah. And to imagine having that trust violated is the most defiling of, of

Mark Reardon [00:56:27] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:56:28] Purity that there is.

Mark Reardon [00:56:29] My, my at my daughter's school, we had a, a gym teacher that was, you know, arrested and charged and removed and, you know, in an elementary school. So, so

Vance Crowe [00:56:38] This goes right in line with my religious conversation. I think there's going to be a cultural thing that we have to deal with because I think people are calling for more public executions and executions to happen much faster. I see, I see Elon Musk doing it. I see Jocko Willink doing it. I see people in England talking about, you know, kill those people. I think we are reentering a phase where people will want lynch mob style justice because they don't feel like the courts and the executive branch are legislative branch are, are doing right by them. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:57:17] Maybe. Look, a lot of that stuff still is very organized and, you know, there are people that are getting paid to do this protesting. So I think there's frustration certainly with the justice system. I don't know if I agree that that's gonna be something that's gonna be a big issue in the future. I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:57:32] You don't, you don't see that. I mean, people are you, Elon Musk is on X saying execute him quickly, right? Like this is I when

Mark Reardon [00:57:39] Elon Musk is crazy Okay. In, in a, sometimes in a good way. But there, there look are you talking about the situation with the kid in Texas in particular?

Vance Crowe [00:57:48] Oh, I was talking. I mean, he said it on multiple occasions. I think the, the stuff that happened in, in England where that kid got stabbed. Right. And the police then, I think they were talking about it with that Ukrainian young woman that got stabbed to death and nobody talked about it. Yeah. I mean that and then also sexual abuse.

Mark Reardon [00:58:04] Well, people talk about this all the time and like what I was referring to in Texas is Karmelo Anthony case where the kids stabbed the, the white kid tracking. Oh.

Vance Crowe [00:58:10] And I don't know about that one. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:58:11] There were people that were calling for lynchings and then that became ra racially charged because you know, the, the, the Stabber, the Karmelo Anthony is black. But I, you know, there's always gonna be people that are gonna do stuff like that. I I really think that that's more hyperbolic than anything else. I mean, we're not gonna go to public executions. We barely have the death penalty involved now, and I'm a proponent still of the death penalty. But even in a case, you know, some of the cases here in Missouri, we're a death penalty state. Illinois is not, there are a lot that aren't, we don't use the death penalty that much. You know, prosecutors shy away from it. It's not something that is as popular.

Vance Crowe [00:58:42] I think that this is, so my experience in Kenya, I maybe Haveve told you this before, I

Mark Reardon [00:58:46] Don't know if I've heard this.

Vance Crowe [00:58:47] So, and when I was living in Kenya, the people started having their shops robbed at night and there's no police to call. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:58:54] You're

Vance Crowe [00:58:54] Living in a little village, there's middle of nowhere. Right.

Mark Reardon [00:58:56] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:58:57] So this happens a couple times and finally they're like, all right, what are we gonna do? Well there's a bunch of young guys, you know, 18 to 26 that don't have jobs. Why don't we pay them a little bit of money at night that the community security and then they'll just kind of go around. Well, a group of young guys like that, it's nighttime. They're walking around the sticks and they're hearing, you know, like looking at eyes in the, in everywhere, you know, they start hearing things.

Mark Reardon [00:59:21] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:21] Eventually they decide, you know what, we know who it is. It's those people from that other town and we're gonna, we know they just got released from jail, so we're gonna go to their house. We're gonna bring pitchforks and torches, pull 'em out, drag 'em back to the city, put tires over and pour kerosene on 'em, light 'em on fire and kill 'em. And people do that when they're afraid and they don't think justice is coming.

Mark Reardon [00:59:42] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:42] And so even you yourself are describing, we don't have the death penalty here. Look how long it takes. I think my perception is culture is boiling to a point where we are going to see lynch mobs. We are going to see actual killings because justice is not being met at out. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [00:59:59] I don't, I don't agree with you on that. And I think that, I think if we would've had that, I think we would've had it by now. Given the, the climate, you know, post Mike Brown and post Ferguson, and then even this thing in Texas. I think the thing that perhaps would keep that from happening though is a proper level of staffing of law enforcement, which is a huge issue here in St. Louis. It's a issue in New York. And yeah. Could some of those things get outta control because we don't have much supervision? Maybe, but man, you're taking me down an area there that, that i I I would hope that's not true.

Vance Crowe [01:00:31] Well, I mean, I look no further than Belfast. I didn't even look at that very closely. I saw videos of guys kicking down

Mark Reardon [01:00:37] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:00:38] Muslim men's doors dragging them out and lighting their houses on fire. Yeah. That what, what happens over there is coming here just like Brexit signaled Trump.

Mark Reardon [01:00:47] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:00:48] I, I this is, I'm not trying, I'm, I do not want to be an apocalyptic person. I'm giving it to you to push back on me. Yeah. To say, no, this is how I know you're not right Vance. 'cause I'd love to be talked outta this, but I see disillusionment from AI where people are like, what am I gonna be in the future?

Mark Reardon [01:01:04] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:01:05] A joining of either religious or ethnic groups in order to be able to protect themselves from the chaos of, if I'm, if I'm not a part of a group, then I'm out in the, in the wild. I'm a nobody a a feeling like the, the judicial system and the legislative system are not fair. And that you don't control the executive system. I perceive we are on the path towards much more mob violence.

Mark Reardon [01:01:32] Do you think there's a difference between, because I, I, you know, this is maybe not fair and this is where we fall down on politics, politics too. But I, I think there's a big difference between any kinda level of frustration that could end up resulting in that from an educated person that's gone to college, that's in the medical field or something like that. I have family members and you know, we've, we've been very fortunate to put kids through college. I think there is a lot more possibility of that with people who don't feel like they have opportunities. And certainly AI plays into that. But I'd like to really firmly believe that there are a lot, and I'm cynical, I'm very cynical, but there are a lot of young people in this country there are still focused on their life, on their career, on, you know, doing positive things, on having their faith on having kids, raising a family, and doing all those things. The subculture stuff is out there, there's no doubt about it. I don't see it overtaking all of the common sense that, that hopefully, you know, can still exist. I, I'm, I'm a little more hopeful on that. Good.

Vance Crowe [01:02:26] Yeah. I mean, I, it's, it's, I wonder, I've always been a techno optimist and I think my sense in the last few months is certainly not cheering for this, but it is, I sense that the herds of humans that, that we are, are starting to get very, very nervous about the future. Yeah. And that sort of energy can be funneled in directions that cause us versus them and, and big actions.

Mark Reardon [01:02:58] Yeah. And you going back to the point you made earlier too, it's different when you have a long evolution of issues, but when it's happening so quickly, the situation for what you're describing is more, more ripe for that outcome. So I get it. I understand what you're saying and I like to think that you're wrong and I hope that you're wrong on that stuff.

Vance Crowe [01:03:17] Yeah. It'd be interesting to see, I mean, the young, it's always the young people where, where they fit in and in many, many times in human history, the way that if you had too many young people that didn't have jobs, the government just started a war, right? Yeah. The Romans did this, the Chinese did this. You just start a war and you kill off the young people and things get better. But hopefully Good, good. Golly, that doesn't happen.

Mark Reardon [01:03:39] No. Hopefully it doesn't.

Vance Crowe [01:03:41] Well, what other lighter topics you, you, when you're not jumping down the path of apocalyptic doom, what else do you talk about? I

Mark Reardon [01:03:50] Try to keep things, you know, as entertaining as possible. Because I think that there is a level of exhaustion with listeners and with people and, and that keeps people from going to news sources too. Because it is so doom and gloom and it's negative. And you, you know, you get taken down these paths that are, you know, completely not true by a lot of the media. But I'm really trying to focus on things that are happening that, you know, might be fun for people. I do talk a lot of music. I have, you know, one of the best segments that we do is my friend George Gray, who has one of the most awesome jobs on the planet. He is the modern day Johnny Olsen. Johnny Olsen was the guy who was the voice for Bob Barker on the prices. Right. So Drew Carey is the host of the prices still, I think the number one daytime rated talk show in America. George grew up here in St. Louis, George Gray is his name. He's the voice funny guy, used to be a comedian, actor, et cetera. He comes into my studio, we play a little game called The Price is Wrong. It's just goofy and fun. We take real issues from, or items rather from Facebook marketplace. And, you know, we do that. In my personal life, I'm coming up with a lot of different paths. I'm coming off a a really, you know, this a really bad year with anxiety and depression. So I'm trying to get more active because I fell into more, you know, just being lazy and making excuses for being lazy. So I'm playing pickleball every weekend. I'm playing racquetball, keeping active with, with my exercises made a big deal. Yeah. Because, you know, you sit at home and then, you know, that's not positive. So just keeping active. We have what we call the Reardon Zoo. I have two dogs, three cats and a bunny.

Mark Reardon [01:05:23] And we're about to get another cat. 'cause

Vance Crowe [01:05:26] I fell for this. I cannot not imagine that. Yeah, I know.

Mark Reardon [01:05:28] It's crazy. And you know, with the bunny, you, you, we should insert some video here, Cindy, because we, I got this rabbit two years ago. It was at a farm that I hunt on in mid-Missouri. Right. And I honestly, my boys had had Guinea pigs and Guinea pigs are boring, you know, I don't even know why you would want a Guinea pigs. Sorry, Guinea pigs. So, but with the bunny, I thought it was gonna be Oh, cute little bunny back in the cage. Cute little bunny play with the bunny. No, no, no. This bunny has complete control and roams freely around my house at, you know, most, not during the evening. I put him in a hutch during the evening. But he's completely litter trained. He comes to his name, he's very treat motivated. So he is like one of the cats really. I think he thinks he's a cat and he is a blast. I call him my emotional support bunny because I will, he'll come up. He did this last night. He'll come up on the couch, I'm watching the hockey game and I just start rubbing him right here and right here and then behind his ears. And if you don't keep that up, if, if he thinks you should keep going, he'll give you a little nip and say, you know, he can throw, he throws a little attitude. He really does. So they have personalities. And I never thought it would be this way. So I love this bunny so much. You have no idea. I call it my bunny. My daughter even knows that it's that it's my bunny. And he entertains me and my animals. They, the, the dogs. We have a puppy. We lost a dog a year ago. We have a dog that's a year old and, and he's fantastic. He's just a lot of fun. We run around with him,

Vance Crowe [01:06:50] Dog, you were me on a bunny, man. 'cause my dog, I, I was a dog person. I had no kids. I love my dog. We would do all kinds of stuff together. Yeah. Then you have kids, it's hard. And you're like, oh man, yeah. I cannot deal with you. I just got a crying baby back to sleep. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [01:07:06] Like

Vance Crowe [01:07:06] Last night, my dog, you know, sat next to my bed and whined until I took her out for no reason at all. Right. Of

Mark Reardon [01:07:12] Course. Of course.

Vance Crowe [01:07:12] At like two in the morning.

Mark Reardon [01:07:14] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:07:15] I'm like, you're gonna find a farm if we do this again because the children can wake me up. I can't afford, dogs

Mark Reardon [01:07:20] Are hard, you know, and that, like we, I'm lucky because I have a schedule which can afford me the opportunity to handle the animals and stuff because I don't really go into work until early afternoon. I do all my work at home so I can run around in the morning and do things with the dogs and stuff like that. But it's a lot of work. And look, even with the bunny, it's work. I have to, you know, in order for it to go in the litter boxes, you gotta clean litter boxes. You gotta stand on top of that. Right. So my only advice for anyone who thinks about getting a bunny is we have this awesome place out in Fenton where I live. It's called the Missouri Rabbit Society. And we didn't even know it was there when we got the bunny, but it's literally a $25 a year membership. And you can go in there and you can get hay and pellets and we use wood pellets for litter and it's very, very inexpensive. Right. And they have bunnies that are up for adoption in there. In order to adopt, you have to kind of get the bunny on a couch, see how it socially interacts. That's just their rules. And some of these rabbits are so cool looking. I dunno if you've ever been to a state fair where, you know, the kids are showing I've been

Vance Crowe [01:08:19] Around rabbit

Mark Reardon [01:08:20] Rabbits,

Vance Crowe [01:08:20] I've around rabbits. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Mark Reardon [01:08:21] And some of 'em are really, really big. Right. So I, at one point I'm like, man, I like those, those big mine's a Dutch, he's very small, you know, and black and white, just a small Dutch, the bigger bunnies. This is common sense. But I didn't think about it till I saw it in person. They got bigger poops Vance. So if you're gonna get a bunny, don't go too big because you gotta deal with that as well. But there really are, I mean, I, I'm sold. I don't want, I think two bunnies would be too much. Just because How

Vance Crowe [01:08:45] Long long does a bunny live naturally?

Mark Reardon [01:08:47] Well, they live 10 years. I mean, that, it's a commitment. My friend who, whose farm it was, he goes, you better realize that. And I'm, look, we're committed to our animals like we've adopted. I I rescued my puppy from the Humane Society. It was an aftermath of the terrible tornado that we had here in St. Louis. There were some adoptions, you know, people couldn't have the dogs. So everything, even even the bunny, I consider a bit of an adoption because it was on this farm and we saved it. This bunny has the life of luxury Oreo. This May, this may, he's got a Twitter page too. Oreos, Oreo the bunny on Twitter. 1.2 million followers. Or maybe not.

Vance Crowe [01:09:19] I, I the, if my dog were a bunny and my bunny gave me the problems that that dog gave me last night, the bunny probably would've been fed to the coyotes this morning.

Mark Reardon [01:09:32] You know, you know what's funny is that I, I have in the three cats. Okay. And I got another one coming. I have a hunter. He goes outside, dashing, you know, we named most of our animals after Pixar characters, dashes from the Incredibles. So I have a rabbit as a pet in my house. And about a month ago he brings a bunny and, and it's

Vance Crowe [01:09:53] Pretty

Mark Reardon [01:09:54] Big. So yeah, the bunny does not go outside. And the animals just kind of, it was a process. Look, when the dog came into the household, it took two months for the bunny and the puppy to be able to be in the room together where they felt safe. And the bunny was smart. He had very good instincts. He knows, you know, don't, don't come around. But now he jumps around. It's, it's a complete, you know, cohesive unit with our Reardon Zoo. It really is. And it, for me, it's fun. I love animals. I've had cats and dogs all my adult life. Not my, when I was a kid I just had gerbils. That's it.

Vance Crowe [01:10:27] Well Mark, we should probably wrap there. What a great way to pull us outta the apocalyptic doo

Mark Reardon [01:10:31] Map right

Vance Crowe [01:10:32] Into rabbit. Yeah.

Mark Reardon [01:10:32] Animals always do that. Lemme tell you. And your kids bring your kids over to meet Oreo. 'cause they get a kick outta of 'em. They really would

Vance Crowe [01:10:36] Use mine. Oh my girls would love a rabbit. Yeah. Yeah. Well thanks for coming on man. If people wanted to tune into you, how would

Mark Reardon [01:10:43] Get, yeah, you can use the Audacy app. You can just use, you know, Alexa and say, my daughter's name is Alexa by the way. So maybe that just went off in some people's homes when I said that too. Just say, you know, play 97 1 fm talk, the Audacy app. We're on the radio here in St. Louis and 97 1 on the dial. So yeah, I'm just kind of doing my thing and, and trying to get through the summer here and, and having a better 2026 than a 2025. I'll tell you that right now. Thanks

Vance Crowe [01:11:08] For cruising in, man. This is fun. Fun to

Mark Reardon [01:11:09] Catch up, man, to see you. It's been a little while we communicate. We don't see each other in person that much though. That's

Vance Crowe [01:11:12] Great. Thanks man.

Mark Reardon [01:11:13] Thank you. Look at that all.