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NightSide News Update 3/3/25

Mar 04, 202537 min
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Episode description

We kicked off the program with three news stories and different guests on the stories we think you need to know about!

Boxing Manager and World-Class Jazz Pianist Announces New Book and Two Rare Public Performances! Charles Farrell – professional piano player, boxing manager, former fighter for the Mob joined Dan.

2nd Annual Postcard Show Sunday March 9th at Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History. Kathy Alpert – Founder of New England Postcard Club checked in.

Rent-the-chicken program takes off amid soaring egg prices!  Brian Templeton – Farmer & Co-owner of Templeton Family Organics explained how it works.


Listen to WBZ NewsRadio on the new iHeart Radio app and be sure to set WBZ NewsRadio as your #1 preset!

Transcript

Speaker 1

It's Nightside with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.

Speaker 2

Thanks Nicole. My name is Dan Ray, the host of Nightside. We are here every Monday through Friday night and Rob Brooks and I well, Rob is back at Broadcast Central in Medford in the actually in headquarters. I'm broadcasting remotely, but we will both be here at our appointed locations every day, every evening this week, and we have a very interesting program set up for you this week. We will I just want to mention to have the will

carry the address of President Trump to Congress tomorrow. Hopefully we can talk about that stock market doubiculet. Today we will be talking with CPA Nightside, CPA Mark Misselback about your tax returns. And then on Thursday night at nine o'clock, we're talking with Diana Desaglia, the state auditor, about her quest to audit the state legislature. And at nine tonight we will talk with a member of the Boston Globe Editorial Board, Correine Hajah, and I think that's going to

be a really interesting conversation. I'm convinced of it. As a matter of fact. A fascinating young woman from Milton, Massachusetts, Harvard graduate who in her young life, you're graduate from Harvid in the twenty twenty one, has accomplished so much and now is on the editorial board the Boston Globe as a conservative perspective, somewhat certainly a more conservative perspective. We'll get to all of that, but first we're going to start off with a renaissance man, if you will.

Charles Farrell is my guest. Charles, Welcome to Nightside. Sir. How are you?

Speaker 3

I'm doing well, Dan, thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 2

I call you a renaissance man because I guess you are a professional piano player. You were a manager of boxers, including Mitch Green, who's a pretty well known heavyweight, and you were a former fighter for the MOB. I don't know what that means. And I guess you also did a little bit of time on the lamb, as we would say in Puerto Rico. You've done a little bit of everything. Charles, how are you to I welcome.

Speaker 3

I'm doing very well, thank you, much much more stable than the conditions that you've just described.

Speaker 2

Okay, so you have sort of experienced a great many aspects of life, I would imagine, So let's talk about your status. Now you're a jazz pianist and you're going to appear locally, I believe a couple of times in the next uh in the not too distant future. Let's let's talk about those appearances. Then I want to ask you some questions about the book.

Speaker 3

Go right ahead, great, Well, We my friend Russ Lawson, who's a fellow pianist, and I are playing a duet in March eighth at the Portland Conservatory of Music. Starts at seven o'clock I'm sorry, seven point thirty, and it's

a totally improvised program. And the next evening, next afternoon, actually Sunday, March ninth, we're playing another concert with guests Jenny Tang, who is a magnificent classical pianist, the writer James Parker, and a drummer named David Moore, fine drummer at the Fraser Performance Studio at three o'clock on Sunday than ninth. And that's a much more ambitious program. We're doing fairly indescribable music.

Speaker 2

Okay, well we won't try to describe it that if it's indescribable. And you got a book signing event coming up also as well, we can talk about that in a moment. So how did you become a world class pianist? It sounds to me like your prior career is involved working for the mob and as a boxing manager. Those You wouldn't assume people would necessarily become pianists with a background like that.

Speaker 3

Well, it's actually the reverse of that. Playing piano was something I've done since I was three, so seventy years now, and it's inherited. My mother was a professional vocalist, her father was a professional pianist, his father was a professional

vocust etc. So it was handed to me. So I started doing that for a living when I was about twelve, and it was an interesting way to make a living, but it wound up connecting me strangely enough to the mob, because you could play jazz for a living and not make very much money, or you could play mob clubs and make a lot of money. And I opted to make the money. So I wondered, that's how I that's how I got started.

Speaker 2

What were some of the clubs that you could assuming What were some of the clubs that you played at that you made some decent money.

Speaker 3

Well, the best one actually was a very very legitimate club. I was the musical director of the Charles Playhouse in Boston. Yeah, which was a wonderful job. I got to, you know, work with people who would just drop in, which was a great experience. You know. Zero Mostelle, for example, used to come by all the time, right, and you'd never know what he would do, so you had to be

on your toes. But I played clubs like the English Social Room in Lawrence and Paula's Lounge and Peabody and the Firebarn and Chelsea and these are all these were all mobbed.

Speaker 2

Up clubs and so so I assume they're all out of business at.

Speaker 3

This point, I hope. So what I just said was an an imprudent thing to do. Yeah, I figure all out of this.

Speaker 2

Yeah, no, I understand that. And that would have been what seventies, eighties, what's the timeframe on.

Speaker 3

The That would have started actually in the sixties, in the mid I started working in the mid sixties and I stopped playing in nineteen seventy nine. I was doing a regular gig at a club in Boston called Lulu's Lulu Whites.

Speaker 2

Yeah, heard of that.

Speaker 3

Great.

Speaker 2

So then how'd you get how'd you get into boxing? Because I've got a couple of minutes left and I want to touch upon your book about Mitch Blood Green. I mean, he was he's a heavyweight contender.

Speaker 3

He was a heavyweight contender, very interesting guy. You know, he fought Mike Tyson. He's the first person to go the distance with Tyson without being off as his feet, and he was. He was a very very complex guy. He was a gang leader as a kid, and a very tough guy and a weirdly principled guy where at one point, in a really roundabout way, I was offered a million dollars for him to fight Mike Tyson again, and he wouldn't take the fight. I couldn't convince him to take the fight because.

Speaker 2

Because he was afraid, not because he was afraid.

Speaker 3

I saw him.

Speaker 2

Was a principal guy. Yeah.

Speaker 3

He The question he asked me is how much is Mike making? And I said, well, you know, I said the thing that the thing you should say, which is I don't know. And he more than more than me, well a little more than you know. Of course, heisen was making about twenty four million dollars. But there was nothing I could do to induce Mitch Green to take that fight because, as he put it, he didn't want to do anything to build up Tyson's reputation.

Speaker 2

Interesting. Interesting, Okay, let's is Mitch Green still alive?

Speaker 3

Mits Green is coming to the book signing on excellent?

Speaker 2

Well, that's what I thought. I wanted to make sure of that. So the book signing gets us exactly where we want to be. We're at the finish line here. The book signing is in Brookline at the Brookline booksmith When is that?

Speaker 3

That was on March thirtieth at seven pm.

Speaker 2

Okay, Well that's the one we want people to mark on their calendar. They can come meet you, buy a book, I assume, get an autographed by you and maybe Mitch Green, and that would be That would be the sort of thing I would be really interested in, to be honest with you, because that's a fascinating aspect of your life that I want to learn more about. Charles. I really

appreciate you taking the time. We talked about the musical background, and we touched stone working with the Mob, But I think that's as far as we're going to go on that one. Okay, at least for tonight's Thanks Charles.

Speaker 3

Yeah, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2

My pleasure, my pleasure, Thank you very much. Charles Farrell at the Brookline Booksmith coming soon. Check it out. Should be fun. When we come back, we're going to go from boxing and mob activity and classic piano. We're going to talk about the second annual Postcard Show coming up this weekend at the Spell Museum of Stamps and Postal History, and we'll be talking with Kathy Albert. She's the founder

of the New England Postcard Club. Right after this. By the way, if you haven't gotten your new and improved iHeart app, do it. I've had it for some time and today it was so easy to make WBZ my presets. So every time I go to that app, I'm going to be listening to WBZ Radio. Now. Of course I can't listen to it while I'm doing Night's Ide, but you folks ken so get the iHeart app and put it in on WBZ and you can listen on your wherever you are in the car, at home, whatever. It's

it's great, it's easy, and it's it's fun. You're keeping in contact with WVZ three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four to seven. My name is Dan Ray. We'll be right back here on Nightside to talk with Kathy Albert about postcards.

Speaker 1

Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.

Speaker 2

We have had my next guest, Kathy Albert, on a couple of times here on Nightside, and we generally do it around their annual Postcard Show, which is this Sunday, March ninth, out at the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History, which is a beautiful facility on the campus of Regis College, which I think is technically in Weston. Kathy, welcome back to Nightside.

Speaker 4

Well, thanks for having me. Dan, great to be here.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about postcards. I was intrigued by this about a year or so when we first met one another. I actually went out there and met you. There's a lot of people here in New England who love collecting and trading and I guess in some cases selling or buying postcards. I never realized the extent of the interest in this hobby.

Speaker 4

It's pretty wide ranging. So many different kinds of people collect postcards and for so many different reasons. When I started collecting them, they were just because they were beautiful or unusual. But over the years I discovered they have historic values, and that's why I'm interested in them now.

But there are plenty of people that just like to collect pictures of their high school or the main street home down when they were growing up, or they're interested in ships or classic cars, or you know, certain type of animals that they care about.

Speaker 2

You know. Well, well, postcards are a relatively you know phenomenon. I mean, they haven't been around since a twelve hundred. They sort of arrived sometime, if I recall correctly, sometime in the late eighteen eighties. Is that when they sort of began to bubble up in different places.

Speaker 4

Yes, in Europe they did, but in the United States, it wasn't possible to send a postcard with a picture on the back of it through the mail until nineteen oh one. And at that point you could take the penny postcard. It all post It only cost a penny.

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, I remember. I think there wasn't much more than that when I was a kid, which was well after nineteen oh one. I mean, what, you're still there, Kathy, I'm here, good, okay. So my question to you is, we're baby boomers. I think we would both agree. So when we were kids, what it cost two cents to mail a postcard?

Speaker 4

I remember those purple stamps. I think they were two or three cents. Yeah, a long time ago.

Speaker 2

And so some people have kept postcards, some people had discarded them. Is there a financial aspect to postcards like there are to your baseball card collection? Or is more? Is postcards almost more of a pure hobby in that? Yeah, there may be some value to postcards, but it's much more the intrinsic value the photograph of the town where you grew up or the high school that you graduated from,

which is long now been knocked down. Tell us it's the intrinsic It's not like they're trading postcards for one thousand dollars apiece.

Speaker 4

Right, Well, there are postcards that have a lot of value. You could find a postcard. In fact, I found a Christmas Chris postcard that Roddy McDowell went to Patrician Neil and her husband her name, he was anyway, somebody famous, and it was a very cute card, had a picture of him with a rabbit on the back. And that that's got to be worth money. I mean, anything that had How did you.

Speaker 2

Come across a postcard that Ruddy McDowell had sent to Patrician Neil and her husband, I mean, was that they must have someone's estate, must have been sold or so about how is that postcard that's a real personal postcard.

Speaker 4

I went to postcard Stars in New York City, and New York City you tend to find a lot more really wild stuff like that, because you know, people send that they lived there, and they sent postcards back and forth. And yeah, I mean I found a postcard that was sent by Paul McCarty to a Ringo Start. Not that I didn't find the actual postcard, but I found a scan of it online. So famous people were sending each other postcards. It's a matter of signing them.

Speaker 2

Okay, So let's assume you had the Paul McCartney to Ringo Star a postcard. Realistically, if you had it physically in your hand, what do you think that would be worth? That would be worth quite a bit.

Speaker 4

Of money, I would ask. Julian's Auction, which is an auction house on LA that handles all kind of celebrity related items. I don't know, but I do think the other thing that's worth a lot of money. Is if you had, say something by Alphonse Muka or Apasso or some famous artist the loose Wook Trek. If you found they've all done postcards. If you could find one of their postcards, that would probably be worth a lot of money.

Speaker 2

I mean the postcards that they would have sent to someone, or postcards on which was an art, a piece of art that they created that was replicated on the postcard.

Speaker 4

That's correct.

Speaker 2

Yes, let okay, I would bet you the And I know nothing about the value postcards, but I would bet you that if there really is the postcard, if you had the postcard, I would bet you a McCarthy Paul McCartney to Ringo Starr postcard. I mean, not knowing at all what was on it or what was involved in it. If it was, hey, we're going to meet for you know, you know, a rehearsal next Saturday. Be there, that that postcard would be worth I'm guessing fifty sixty eighty one

hundred thousand dollars. How do you quantify the value of that.

Speaker 4

That would be the message on that postcard, like you are the greatest drummer in the world. That was the message on the postcard.

Speaker 2

Well guess what, then the price just went up Because if you got Paul McCartney call him Ringo Star, the greatest rummer in the world, on a postcard, it's authenticated and all of that. I think it's priceless in many respects. Okay, let's talk about let us talk real quickly. You have a club meeting on Wednesday. Tell us where that is? If is that open to the public or no? Is that your your leadership meeting?

Speaker 4

That has nothing to do with the postcard show. That is the West End Museum has invited me to give a presentation on postcards of the West End, you know before it was demolished.

Speaker 2

I have a lot of sore where you're giving. That's a March fifth at six o'clock? Where is it? Because I want to get that in and I then want to plug the event on Sunday. Where's the March fifth? Uh, you know meeting in the in the west End or whereabouts.

Speaker 4

That's o'clock on at the West End Museum at one fifty Stanford Street.

Speaker 2

Stanford, Yep, standffd's a good size street, very well easy to find. And then the event on Sunday, which again is out at the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History. Lot of parking, easy to get to, right off of one eight on the campus of Regis College. Tell us exactly where that that? What time is that on Sunday?

Speaker 4

Up to ten o'clock and we've got we've got nineteen postcard dealers coming from every New England state and New York.

Speaker 2

Weld on with Cathy, hold up once again, how much time? Rob Okay, perfect, We got less than a minute left. You go right ahead.

Speaker 4

Just really it's really exciting and fun, and come in and bring your postcards. If you have postcards you have questions about, You'll be happy to answer them. We're just really excited to bring postcards into the limelight where they belong like they were in the Golden Asia postcards one hundred years ago.

Speaker 2

Okay, Now, in case they missed that, I mentioned again, what time is it on Sunday?

Speaker 4

It starts at ten and it goes until three o'clock.

Speaker 2

Okay, ten to three at the Spellman Museum, the Spellman Museum on the campus of Reaches College, and they can get that information. Do you have a website we can mention real quickly.

Speaker 4

We have a Facebook page. The New England Postcard Club has its own Facebook group.

Speaker 2

Now, okay, Kathy, that's it because we got to get a CBS special news special worker. You're very welcome, Kathy. Have fun on Sunday and good luck on Wednesday. Here comes a special CBS News report.

Speaker 1

Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm Boston's news Radio.

Speaker 2

Will let anyone who's been to a store lately knows that the price of eggs are on the They're kind of going through the roof in some places. They're pretty expenser. Around here with us is Brian Templeton. Brian is an actual farmer and co owner of Templeton Family or Gaunt Organics. Brian, Welcome to Nightside. How are you.

Speaker 5

I'm doing just great, Thanks for having me welcome.

Speaker 2

You have a program called Rent a Chicken program or Rent the Chicken program. How I think I got an idea what this is, but I want to know when did you start this program? How long ago?

Speaker 5

Well, first of all, I have to clarify, it's definitely rent the chicken.

Speaker 2

Rent the chicken. Okay, well, thank you very much. Rent the chicken. What's the difference between rent the chicken or rent the chicken?

Speaker 5

Well, I don't know what rented chicken is, but rent the Chicken dot Com is where you want to go if you want to rent birds from us.

Speaker 2

Okay, well that's fine. I always like to be accurate, that's for sure. But you're renting the chicken. How do you rent the chicken? Bryan?

Speaker 5

So we started off in twenty sixteen. We got a little farm up here in gost Town, New Hampshire, and basically how it works is we have a small coop. It's kind of shaped like a barn, and you can rent it with either two or four chickens in it. I throw my coops up on a flatbed truck and I drive around in the spring and I drop off the coops. We fried enough to last from say, early May to late October, and I drop off the birds the coop, the feeds, some little treats and some other

little things that go along with it. And people just enjoy having the experience of having chickens in their backyard. And of course, yeah, you get some eggs with a bonus.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So let me ask you this. What I assumed that that if somebody wanted you you could rent. Is it a minimum of four or is it? What was the number of chickens you could.

Speaker 5

Rent it was either two or four.

Speaker 2

Okay, that way that chickens have some companionship.

Speaker 5

Yes, yeah, you are going to have at least two.

Speaker 2

Yeah, gotcha. Now do you have to make sure when you drop your chickens off? And I'm gonna ask some dumb questions here, but I get paid money to ask dumb questions, so, you know, just like you get paid money to rent the chickens. My question is, do you give these people some instructions as to how to care for the chickens to make sure that they're not let out in the hot sun all day or or or let out in circumstances where they could be endangered. I hope.

Speaker 5

Well, yeah, I mean there's a video that they watch and they're very and uh and we we informed them very well. But you know, the truth of the matter is is that the hot sun doesn't really bother them, but they can go inside the coops and you know, as far as you know them being in danger, well, you know, nature is nature, so we don't. We haven't had too many experiences where people's birds have been killed by predators. But yeah, what do you really I can do about.

Speaker 2

You know, understand, do you have to have your yard or I assume that that you have to have an outdoor space. You can't have a condominium and rent chickens, I assume, right, Yeah, I haven't.

Speaker 5

I don't think I've dropped off any car.

Speaker 2

But yeah, okay, not just make it clear because I don't want you to end up getting you know, a call tomorrow. So you need it outdoor space though, correct?

Speaker 5

Yeah? Yeah, I mean a good sized yard and preferly fenced in is great. But I mean we've had people right inside the U in the city, you know, get up.

Speaker 2

Okay, but do they have to have being in a fenced enclosure? I assumed the coup is like a wooden house or or or described when you say you're gonna have a coop for them. Most of us may our city slickers, We might not know exactly what that entails. Brian. So is it like a little wooden house for the chickens.

Speaker 5

Yeah, it's actually shaped like a barn, and it actually has wheels on one end so you can lift it and roll it around.

Speaker 2

Gotcha.

Speaker 5

Okay, but does.

Speaker 2

The does the yard or where? But you know, wherever you live, whether you live in a you know, in a more urban area or more rural area. Does does your airutside area have to be enclosed at least so that it makes it challenging for a predator to come in?

Speaker 5

No, it doesn't have to be enclosed. I mean the birds. The birds are pretty well tuned into their surroundings and they can always get right back into the coop. So if they do sense danger, they tend to run right back in there.

Speaker 2

And so can the predator not get in the coop? Is that the deal? I mean.

Speaker 5

Pretty much they can't get in?

Speaker 2

Okay, okay, fair enough, Okay, I'm concerned about you know, animals of all sorts. And then why May to October? Is that the period of time that the birds can be outdoors here in New England, you know, without being you know, sheltered in a big barn. Or is that the time of year when they are most productive in laying eggs?

Speaker 5

Well, they are more productive when there's more sunlight. But the idea of the time period is just you know, to get to get the birds the people, you know, once things dot, you know, the snow melts and things dry up, and then we come and get them before things you know get too cold. And you know, we people don't want to have to deal with wintering the birds, which is one of the reasons why they rent them.

Speaker 2

So so I want to give you a chance here to give it a good plug. I think it would be really interesting for a lot of people, not only in terms of eggs, but also in terms of teaching kids, particularly kids who might be either living in the cities or in the sub in the suburbs, a little bit about you know, farm life. How expensive is to rent the chickens in how many let's say you have two or four chickens, how many eggs do they produce on a daily basis? You might be able to split the

cost with the neighbors. What I'm trying to get at here.

Speaker 5

Yeah, so for two birds, it's five hundred and ninety five dollars and for four it's seven thirty five.

Speaker 2

So that's for the entire for the entire time from May to October. That's that's yeah.

Speaker 5

Yeah, And you know a bird should you know, technically a chicken should lay one egg a day, so you know, if you have two chickens, then you should be getting about a dozen eggs a week.

Speaker 2

Okay, okay, So if you you could cut it down if you split it with a neighbor, you know, instead of being each you know, five in the five hundred or so range. Okay, I just don't want people calling you figuring that you're gonna go to all of this trouble and drop drop something off for forty nine dollars and ninety five cents. I mean, this sounds like a great project. You've done this? Now, how many years? Brian? I think you started to tell me and I interrupted you.

Speaker 5

Yeah, we started in twenty sixteen, so you know about nine years. This would be our ninth season.

Speaker 2

Okay, And have you noticed a real uptick this year because of the the cost of eggs?

Speaker 5

Yes, I think I think sales are up a little bit it, but I want to clarify. You know the main reason why people do this renting is because they want to have the experience of backyard chickens. You know, the eggs are a nice bonus in the deal. But you know, if you do the math, it's you know, you wouldn't want to be doing this just for the egg I.

Speaker 2

Get it, No, I get it, but but you know who knows where this this avian flu thing is going to go? You could be in a situation where you know, if you got any worse, you could have not only just an increases and prices, you could have shortages. So and then the last question, Brian, real quickly, is how far do you go geographically from from Templeton, New Hampshire or excuse me not Templeton, New Hampshire. That's your last name, from Templeton Family Organics in New Hampshire.

Speaker 5

Well, well, we pretty much cover all of New England. I mean we've we've delivered coopster, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont.

Speaker 2

Yeah good, I mean we.

Speaker 5

Next service fee outside of a certain mile limit.

Speaker 2

Okay, give me your website so people can get in touch with you.

Speaker 5

So we're at real Food NH dot com. That's that's our farm.

Speaker 2

Great, that's easy, realfood dot com.

Speaker 5

Yes, but to order the coops, you want to go to Rent the Chicken dot com.

Speaker 2

All right, we got you covered. Rent the Chicken dot com. We understand why it's important. That's Rent the Chicken dot com. Frian appreciate it very much. Thanks very much for your conversation tonight, and I wish you best of luck and all the success in the world.

Speaker 5

Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 2

Dan, all right, thanks again, appreciate it. We will be back on Nightside with our fourth and final guest of the hour this evening. Stay with us. My name is Dan Ray. This is Nightside. Rob Brooks is lining that fourth guest up right now.

Speaker 1

Now Bet to Day live from the Window World Nice Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.

Speaker 2

Well as occasionally happens, unfortunately, unfortunately, our guest for the fourth and final segment tonight is not responding to his phone, and that guest will never be heard here on Night's Side either tonight or We don't do makeups, so if that particular guest, it's it's just amazing. Marina does such a great job with these lining up these eight o'clock guests, and every once in a while, you know, maybe every

month or so, we lose a guest. And what happens is that we were going to talk about I'm not even going to tell you who the person was, because at this point they're dead to me. They're going to talk about the a thirteen thousand dollars ambulance bill and the raising the question of why and how why does emergency transport cost so much? This was a story about a guy, I guess who was a runner in San Francisco and he got hit by car, wasn't badly injured,

but sprained an ankle and had a potential concussion. So an ambulance was dispatched and he was picked up, and when all the medical bills were finalized, it was a six mile ambulance ride, which he could have taken in a cab or in an uber if he had the wherewithal to call. But I'd like all of you right now, for the fun of it, guess what the cost of

the ambulance ride was. Now, give you about ten seconds, get a figure in your own mind, and I'm sure some of you are saying five hundred dollars, thousand dollars, thirteen thousand dollars, ladies and gentlemen, thirteen thousand dollars for an ambulance ride. Now, this is not someone who has been you know, run over by a truck and has and there happens to be an ambulance there, and the ambulance takes that person to the hospital and somehow their

life is saved. They would have bled out on the street. Now, this is a guy who you know, a typical accident that sadly occurs in every American city, probably several times a week, where some driver or some pedestrian or runner or whatever is not paying attention and boom, you all of a sudden have a person down, and someone calls nine to one one and they they summon an ambulance. And I guess the ambulance got there and fairly, you know, decent time. But I suspect that, and I'm not able

with the guest here to discuss it. I suspect that the ambulance was not a block away, and by time the ambulance got there, the person probably physically would have hailed an uber or a taxi and got into the emergency room. Now again, fine, ambulance is there, and you're put on a stretcher and you're rolled into the back of the ambulance, and there's people who are already monitoring your your size. Now and again, this guy's got a

sprained ankle, potential concussion. Thirteen thousand dollars for the ambulance ride. Now, I know that some of you are going to say, well, you know, the ambulances maybe on any given day only do a couple of rides, and they have a couple of rides thirteenth, that's twenty six thousand dollars. You talk about the level of cost that all of us are paying for medical bills, and we will be doing more on this in the days ahead, and how much of

our money is spent on medical bills. And at the same time, while we're paying more and more for money, more and more doctors are retiring, particularly personal care doctors because they you know PCP primary care physicians or personal care physician, whatever you want to call it. They are on the rung of physicians at the bottom of the

pay levels. They're on the first or second run and the way for doctors to be remunerated appropriately, and I think that doctors should because of the amount there's not a knock on doctors, because of the amount of work that they do to prepare themselves academically, not only while they're in high school. They take all those AP courses, the AP biology and all of that. Then they go off to college and they have to successfully take organic tech chemistry. That's where they say they really do to

figure out who's the potential to become a doctor. Then they have to graduate college, have to get into some of the best medical schools, the most competitive medical schools in the country. Some of the doctors actually go offshore to medical schools in foreign countries, and several of those medical schools, which are really good medical schools, by the way,

in the Caribbean, we're American doctors trained. Because there just are not enough seats in medical schools in America, which we will talk about more, and you will hear that as a theme on this program. That has to change. But it's a system whereby ambulance companies are doing really well. You know. I think many of them are privately owned.

I want to do some more research on this, but I think a lot of those ambulance companies are able to charge exhorbited rates, exorbited rates such as this rate of thirteen thousand dollars in San Francisco for a guy who was out I believe jogging. I think that the facts of the story were the he was jogging and he was hit by a thirteen thousand dollars ambulance bill, which just seems to be totally out of the question.

I'm looking at the piece actually here, which was out of a health news magazine, and it's a young July at twenty twenty three, hit by a car across the busy street in San Francisco. He did a flip over the vehicle and landing in the street before getting himself to the curb on lockers called an ambulance, but written instead had friends pick him up and take him to a nearby hospital. I knew the ambulances were expensive. Well, this guy was not the one who paid the thirteen

thousand dollars. But the fact of the matter is at the hospital, doctors performed a thorough work up, including a cat skin, an X rays, an advisement of followup with his primary care physician and an orthopedic doctor. He was evaluated at second hospital, released without additional treatment. The final bill was thirteen thousand dollars. Crazy. I guess as I look at this story, I guess that because they called the ambulance, even though he didn't take any ambulance, he

ended up being built for the ambulance. Crazy, just crazy. Anyway, we will do more on that. I apologize that our fourth and final guest was not available. When we come back, we're going to talk with a young woman, a Harvard graduate who's a conservative. I think she will admit to that she is also a member of the Boston Globe Editorial Board, and she is I think a journalistic superstar in the making. We'll be talking with Kareem Hajar after

the break here on Nightside. Here comes to nine o'clock News.

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