Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you this week. Here's Ryan Gorman. Thanks so much for joining us here on iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Ran Gorman, and we have a few really great conversations lined up for you. In a moment, we're going to talk to the founder of an organization working to highlight the dangers of distracted driving, and
just to give you a sense of the scope of the problem. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in twenty twenty two, there were over thirty three hundred people killed and an additional two hundred and eighty nine thousand injured in motor vehicle traffic crashes involving distracted drivers. So a really important conversation coming
up. Plus, in light of Shark Week, we're going to be joined by a documentary filmmaker and environmental scientist to talk about the science behind shark tagging, along with the different types of conservation efforts for organists focuses on. And finally, we'll be joined by retired Army bringing to your general Paul greg Smith, author of the new book Confessions of a Weekend Warrior, thirty five years
in the National Guard. He's going to share with us stories about the incredible and heroic work members of the National Guard do, from overseas combat deployments to domestic emergencies, everything from natural disaster responses to staffing clinics during the pandemic. It's really a chance for us to spend some time focusing on those serving who sometimes don't get the recognition they deserve. So all of that is on the way for you right now to get things started. I'm joined by Julie Garner,
founder of Project yellow Light. You can learn more at Project Yellowlight dot com. Julie, it's great to talk to you once again, and let's begin with an overview of why you put together this organization. Well is born of a tragedy. My son was killed in the car crash at the age of sixteen, and you know, when that happens, you pretty much the hight yourself. It's just devastating, as you can well imagine. And so my husband, daughter and I knew we had to do something to keep Hunter's
memory alive. We didn't want to lose him and lose his memory to others, and we wanted to keep all of his friends safe because we realized that car crashes were one of the leading causes of death of our youth, and I had no idea up until that point. And so we started this scholarship competition in his high school where we engaged the young people to create videos,
and it grew from there. A few years in the ad council taptos and we went national overnight from one school to a national competition, and we added on not only just a video competition, but also radio and billboards, which has just kind of grown over the years, and we also added a college
level. So we are just focused on getting our use safe and to have them communicate to each other the dangers of this to strike to driving, because we feel like there's nobody better than that peer to peer, you know, communication that just resonates with one another. You know, it really amazes me that we still see as many people driving while on their phones as we do
these days, knowing the dangers of this. I mean, it used to be when you were driving and you saw someone going slow, breaking a lot, maybe swerving things like that, it was somebody who was intoxicated, maybe they were drunk. Now, nine times out of ten when you see that it's not necessarily they're intoxicated, it's that they're on their phone. They're looking at their phone while they're trying to drive. They're missing what's happening ahead of
them and putting everyone around them at risk. As you can tell, this issue just infuriates me because I see it still all the time, and you know, your organization highlights the impact that distracted driving has had the tragic impact
on so many families across the country. How has Project Yellow Light impacted those young people who have participated in this work, Well, you know, I think everybody who takes part, whether they're a winner or not, kind of gets a little bit of an education on the dilemma and the fact that we are so driven by this, you know, cell phone use, and we're so addicted to it, and it really is impacting our youngest drivers because they
grew up with it. They grew up with the cell phones, they grew up with texting, and we just feel like that so often they think they're invincible, you know, they think they're getting the car and they're fine,
and they're considered a go if they can text while driving. So it's an education process because every single person who takes part kind of gets the feel and the understanding of how seriousness is and how often these car crashes happen with this age group, and primarily due to a distruction which is one hundred percent avoidable. So they are educating themselves and in turn, they're speaking out to each other and educating each other and getting that message out there too to be careful
because the flip side can be help. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Julie Garner, founder of Project yellow Light. You can learn more at Project yellowlight dot com. So you've named the twenty twenty four student scholarship winners who have spotlighted the dangers of distracted driving. But step us through the process. How
does this all work? Well, it's an amazing thing. Everything you need to know about our scholarship competition and some facts and stats and all that are contained within the website that you just mentioned, Project yellow Light dot com. It's an annual competition that opens up each October. Submissions due in the spring, and then the winners are announced in June, and in fact they're going
to be announced just in two days in Times Square. So that's another little feather for our winners in addition to winning a little scholarship money, they get to have their work displayed on the big boards in Times Square, and our media partners including iHeart, distribute and share these winning selections all throughout the country, so from TV, radio and billboard. I mean, it's just a
wonderful opportunity for young people to speak out and have their message heard. And not only that, but the bigger opportunity is to to impact positive change and
perhaps save life. How important is it that this message is not just focused on younger people who are more likely to drive distracted, looking at their phones or doing other things, but also that this message is coming from younger people, because when you start to move across generations, the communication and it changes a bit, the message changes a bit, and sometimes it's just not as
effective as when it comes from a younger person's peers. When we first started this project right after Hunter died, we looked at what was out there at the time, and it was all done by adult, well meaning adults, but it just was not effective. You either had somebody in the uniform talking down to the youth, or somebody kind of like wagging a finger at them, or it was a kind of a show of blood, guts and gore
that everybody just turned off and didn't look at. And so we felt like it's time to hand this message over to the young people and see if they can't come up with a solution and can't impact this. You know themselves better
than we adults can, and I think they do. I think their voices resonate with one another, and they're able to talk to each other in a way better than I can or any other adults, and so we really feel like giving this over to them and helping them help us put an end to this is the way to go. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Julie Garner, founder of Project yellow Light. You can learn more at Project yellowlight dot com. What stood out to you about how the participants in this program have
messaged the warnings of distracted driving to their peers. I'm sure you've seen some really tremendous PSAs that have been put together, But what stands out to you about how they're going about doing this? Well, you know, we give them creative license and pretty much, you know, give some guidance on our website and tell them what we're looking for. But I think they the ones that double to the surface. Are the ones that are so simple and so
clear and also just kind of speak from the heart. You know. They take this on in so many different ways. Some of them use humor, We'll get rap videos, we'll get animated, videos, will get serious, you know, different kinds of radio spots. It's just wonderful the different types of talent and creativity they approach with. But all of them are wonderful and we just love that, and you know, we continue to get more and
more each year and they become better and better as well. Talk for a moment about the resources that you have available at Project yellowlight dot com and based on your experience, what are some recommendations that you would have for parents who are listening right now, who maybe have a child who's about to start driving, who just recently started driving, or just a son or daughter they're concerned about and they want to make sure they don't drive in a distracted way.
What would you recommend they do to really get that message across. Well, like you said, the website is contains all kinds of that from NITZA, who our sponsoring partner, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, So you can learn a lot of information there and also just find out about the scholarship itself and how to get involved. And we would just tell the parents of high school juniors and seniors and undergrad college students to tell their children to get out
there and take part. And that's the best way because they'll have to do a little bit of research and education on their own to figure out how can I create a message? Do I need to do and therefore learn the horrors of what can happen. Julie Garner, founder of Project yellow Light again. You can learn more at Project Yellowlight dot com. That's Project yellow Light dot com. Julie, really appreciate the time and the great work you're doing on all of this. Thanks so much, Thank you, Ryan, thanks for
having us and helping us spread the word. All right, I'm Ryan Gorman here on I Hear Radio Communities, And now let me bring in Kendall Berna, a documentary filmmaker and environmental scientist and founder of the ocean conservation nonprofit organization Beyond the Reef. You can learn more at one beyond the Reef dot com. That's the number one Beyond the Reef dot com. This week we Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and Kendall, thank you so much for coming on
the show, and let's start there. One of the things that your organization does is shark tacking. We see a lot of this when we watch all the different specials during Shark Week, but I'm sure a lot of people are wondering what exactly is the purpose behind that. Talk to us about that. Yeah, so thank you for the great introduction. By the way, For my organization, we mostly focus in the British Islands, which is a shark sanctuary, meaning it's illegal to catch or kill a shark there, but there's
little to no research that's been done on the sharks there. So for different species we tag them for different reasons, but we just need a baseline data basically. So one of the sharks that we're tagging is lemon sharks, and it's believed that lemon sharks might be similar to a salmon and that they actually
go back to where they were born in order to have their young. So what we're trying to see is this one particular island that we're studying a breeding ground or a pupping ground, which makes it even more important and we can take these things and use it for further conservation and also potentially creating marine protected
areas and places that we know are really important. Are also just the first time a few weeks ago, tagged our first tiger shark there, which a lot of people didn't realize we're there, and we're realizing they're sort of a what I'm calling tiger bank in this one really specific area. So that's been pretty cool to see. And we can satellite tag them so we can actually, you know, just go on our phones and see all of their movements.
Are there other things that you end up learning about the sharks just through the process of tagging them. Yeah, totally. Through the process of tagging them, you know, we get to initially see where they are, how many of them there are. There's so much that you don't know even just being on the water in an area for so long, you don't really realize any of these things until you actually start to do the research and get the
data. So yeah, before a tag even goes on, just the process of going out to the areas you need to and and fishing for them. That's usually what we do is we we just call it fishing. We put out a little bait, catch a shark, bring it right up to the side of the boat, put a quick tag, and send it back on its way. It's the most minimally invasive way that we can put a tag on it. Now, have you had situations where you're attempting to put the
tag on the shark and things go a little haywire? I mean, whenever you're working with wild animals, you know you're you're sort of in their territory there. But the more experience you get, the easier it becomes. If you have a good team, you know it's it's pretty it becomes pretty simple to capture it and tag it. There's always things that can go wrong, but we tag you know, anything the twelve foot tigers to a less than one and a half foot lemon sharks. That's the youngest that it could be.
So there's just really different methods and different hook sizes and ITAs. You know, we even just wade through the water to pick them up along. We basically set out bait along the line and hook them that way, whereas with the bigger sharks you'd bring them up just to the side of a really small boat. We use a little Boston whaler actually for it that we just
got out of out of Florida and brought it down. We're joined by Kendall Berner, documentary filmmaker and environmental scientist and founder of the ocean conservation nonprofit organization Beyond the Reef, So beyond shark Tagging. Tell us about your organization, how it came about, and some of the other work you do. Yeah, So the organization actually came about after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which I
feel your listeners are probably somewhat familiar with as well. That happened in two twenty seventeen, and there were a bunch of garlic vessels along the coastline because of the hurricanes. So my co founder and I realized that we could turn
some of these into large scale artificial reefs. So we made these big, you know, some of them were one hundred foot ships, and we turned them into art projects essentially and lean them up to the same standard that you would any sort of boat in the US, which I think that also info that comes out of Florida, and we sunk them as artificial reef for a
few purposes. One to create artificial reef, two to recycle a vessel, Three to increase tourism in an area that had just been devastated by hurricanes, and then we ask for any scuba divers on it to donate five dollars, which goes directly back to local children's swim and marine education programs. That's kind of how it started, and from there it just turned into anything ocean conservation,
soup back research. In the same way that there was no data on sharks, there was no data on humpbacks, so we're finding it's a really important migration route. We also do moral treatment stony coral tissue loss disease, and ghost fishing gear cleanup. So ghost fishing gear is any fishing gear that's been lost or abandoned at sea, and the British Virgin Islands happen at a lot of that that washes up on their shores, so we go in collect
it. Sometimes it's just free divers or scuba divers cutting with knives, nets and ropes out of reefs, and sometimes it requires us bringing in a barge and crane to lift a net that's so big. And last thing I want to ask you about coral reefs and some of the issues that we're seeing around the globe and why caring for them is so important. Can you break that down for us? Yeah, I mean coral. Coral is a really sensitive
thing. They get a bad deal. Coral is really sensitive to acidification, to heat, which can cause bleaching and occasionally diseases like stony coral tissue loss disease, which was seen in Florida and the Keys first and then made its way down throughout the Caribbean. But coral is the home to so many animals on the reefs where I think our world is actually much more reliant on corals than we realize for both food as well as protection. Coral acts as a
barrier in things like hurricanes, which can be really devastating places. And yeah, it just has a semiotic relationship with all the animals that live there. They can't exist without the coral. So when the corel goes away, their home goes away, their food goes away, and it becomes a very different world than what we live in right now. Ye, it has a major
ripple effect. Kendall Berner, documentary filmmaker and environmental scientist and founder of the ocean conservation nonprofit organization Beyond the Reef, which you can find online at onebeyond the Reef dot com that's the number one beyond the reef dot com and of course she's part of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Kendall, thanks so much for all the great work you're doing and for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me appreciate it. Rian,
of course, thanks again, Kendall. I'm Ryan Gorman here on iHeartRadio Communities and now let me bring in our final guest. I'm joined by retired Army Brigadier General Paul greg Smith, author of the brand new book Confessions of a Weekend Warrior thirty five years in the National Guard. General Smith, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show, and of course for your tremendous service to our country. And let me start with your
b How did you originally end up serving in the National Guard? Ah? So, Ryan, thanks for having me this morning. You know when I when I started writing the book, it caused called for some self reflection. I guess one of the things that I said in the book is that I realized that I could never have not joined the Army. Every time I saw a parade. From the time I was a little kid, my favorite toys
were g I Joe's and tanks and all that sort of stuff. My father was a Navy officer, and I think he cried a little bit when I, uh when I joined the army. But uh So, the bottom line is, you know, I felt like I needed to serve. I was kind of in my soul that I needed to be in the military and need to see what that was like. Ro OTC helped pay for college, and then you know, when I finished rote, they wanted me to go in
the regular army, but I wanted to be a special ed teacher. So the only way to do those two things was to join the reserves for the National Guard. So lo and behold. I joined the Massachusetts National Guard, and for thirty five years I was in the army or the Guard, and most of the time in the Guard, and it was quite a ride. For those who have never served in the National Guard, tell us a little
bit about how that works and what you did for thirty five years. So sure, and Ryan, that's that's one of the reasons I wrote this book is I really wanted people to understand what the inner workings of the National Guard are, Like, what really gets under gets my goat gets under my skin when I hear elected officials saying, let's send the Guard there, Let's send the Guard there, Let's send the Guard over there to fix this problem.
Now, the National Guard is America's Swiss army knife. It can do tremendous things, from staffing clinics, driving school buses, responding to floods and hurricanes, and oh, by the way, deploying overseas for combat missions. Can do it all. But the thing that most people don't understand is guardsmen aren't sitting around in armories. They're your kid's second grade teacher. There, your attorney. They're the nurse that brought you into the doctor's office. They're the
ups driver that delivered your package. You run into guardsmen every day and you don't even know it because they are living their lives doing their jobs their mothers, fathers, little league coaches. But when they get a call, they pick up their bag, they change into that camouflage uniform, and they report for duty to take on the mission. I like to call them America's quietest heroes. Pardon me for being a cheerleader, but I've always admired the people
who served with me. What they do Monday through Friday or when they're not wearing a uniform, and then what they do once they put on that uniform and they and they go to duty. Can I tell you one revelation I had and I wrote about this one morning when I was a company commander, and it was a Sunday morning, so everybody had sort of you know, they worked on Saturday in the army, and then they went out on Saturday
night. And there they were a Sunday morning at formation. And I'm walking up and down the line of these people who are in this company that I commanded, and you know they were I'm smelling. I'm smelling last night's beer. I'm smelling perfume, I'm smelling cigarette smoke. You know. I'm looking at a mother who's trying to stay awake because she's been up with her baby all night. I'm looking at a kid who's all excited because he just came
back from basic. I'm looking at a guy who's missing a couple of teeth. It's America. It's those are the same faces that held the line at Gettysburg, that stood on the common at Lexington and conquered, that fought back the Nazis at best, all those are American citizen soldiers who are ready to respond today just as they have been for two hundred and seventy two hundred and
eighty years. And when that revelation sort of came to me, it just confirmed how proud I was to be part of that organization, to be part of that family. We're joined by retired Army Brigadier General Paul greg Smith, author of Confessions of a Weekend Warrior. Thirty five years in the National Guard. So you share your story how you ended up in the National Guard. What about some of those you served with? You just mentioned, you know,
what you noticed about them, what you learned about them. Did you get a sensus to why they felt it was important to be part of that mission? So they served for all sorts of different reasons. They'll tell you that they did it to get the benefits for their kids. They did it for, you know, for for education benefits, that they needed an extra paycheck. But the bottom line is they're all patriots. But they're not going to say that. Nobody's ever going to say I did it because I love
America. I did it because because I care deeply about safeguarding my neighbors. But but that's really the core element because if you're not a patriot, and if you don't care about your neighbors, you're not going to weigh your life on the line during a flood or a hurricane or an overseas deployment. And they do that constantly, and I you know, we we all have friends who made that sacrifice. So everyone is well aware of what the cost of
service can be. But that's the thing. They'll all tell you all sorts of different reasons. But but but they're all patriots. Can I can I just tell you a little illustration. Absolutely different people are though. So I was when I was a commander. We were getting DNA sampled and it was just a cheek swab, but but you know, it went into your records. It's for identification purposes. And I had two guys who wouldn't get wouldn't
go for the spot. And at first, you know, I send him a message, Hey, you need to get over the clinic to get a swap, And then I kept on getting messages back that these two guys weren't getting them. So I called them into my office and I said, I'm tired of chasing you guys around. You've got to get to the clinic and get the swamp. They looked at me and they said, we're not going to do it, sir, And I said, excuse me, why not? And then they said, because the army just wants our DNA to clone
us. I looked at the two of them and I said, if the Army's going to clone somebody, they sure as hell wouldn't pick you. You get a choice. Either get to that clinic or you are now a volunteer because I'm going to stop your pay. Well, they thought it over and they went to the clinic. But anyway, another but I got to tell you another soldier. So I'm signing into another company. And the unit clerk comes out. Now he's a specialist that's somewhere between a private and a sergeant.
It's not a very high rank. And he says to me, here's your your biographical information, sir. You need to verify it. And I look at the education and it says bachelor's. I had just earned a master's degree. And I said to him, well, I need to be recoded on education because I just earned a master's And he said, okay, I'll change that to an E. And I said, oh, you know the code for master's degrees and he said, yes, sir, I have two of them. That's funny. The Guard has the whole given. Yeah.
I worked with a guy who was a sergeant in public affairs who had an Emmy Award for a video that he produced. So there are all sorts of people that you run into, from folks who who sometimes need a boot in the butt to other folks who can tell you how to do your job. And like you said, one thing that they all have in common extremely patriotic
serving our country. And for that we are so appreciative. Retired Army Brigadier General Paul greg Smith, author of the new book Confessions of a Weekend Warrior thirty five years in the National Guard. General Smith, again, we thank you so much for coming on the show and for your service to this country. We do appreciate it. Ryan, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure, all right. And that's going to do it for this
edition of iHeartRadio Communities. As we wrap things up, want to offer a big thanks to all of our guests and of course to all of you for listening. If you want to hear previous episodes of this show, we've got them all for you on our iHeartRadio app. Just search for iHeartRadio Communities. I'm your host, Ryan Gorman. We'll talk to you again real soon.