It's NIC's eyes, Dan Ray, I'm doing you easy, Boston's News Radio. Thank you very much, Madison. As we roll into a July first, Tuesday night edition of Nightside, we have sort of made the turn here where it's a halfway point, a little bit past the halfway point here on Nightside. So welcome on in everyone, and thank you for joining us. We have two guys in the booth. Let's see who we get back there tonight. Is it Sean and Shane and Shane? What am I saying? Sean,
Shane and Rob Brooks? And we are We're in good shape here in that regard, we have a good show lined up for you. My name is Dan Ray. I'm the host of Nightside, and let us get rolling. We're going to start off by talking about a new tax here in Massachusetts. Very few things are taxed, as I'm sure all of you who are taxpayers in Massachusetts. No, the only two things that are actually taxed in Massachusetts
are anything that moves and anything that doesn't move. So with that as a backdrop, let me introduce Colon Young. He is a State House news report Colin, how are you tonight?
Welcome very well, Dan, thanks very much, for having me.
So the folks up on Beacon Hill, we're not exactly sure who can claim credit for this, have decided that they want to add to our cable costs because they want to tax some of the cable boxes. Tell me about it.
Yeah, this was something that the Healy administration first floated back in February, and it was finalized in the middle of June, so it is now in effect. And essentially, what the Department of Revenue came out and said was that the last time they looked at this issue, back in two thousand and eight, cable boxes, or at least the ones they were reviewing, were mostly just to actually get cable TV into your house and watch it live. Since then, you know, cable boxes now you can record
almost anything on TV. You can use your cable box to get into your internet based streaming platforms and to get to all kinds of other entertainment. And the Department of Revenue determined that back in two thousand and eight, they said cable boxes were not subject to the state's sales tax because there were a piece of equipment used exclusively for TV transmission, so they fit into an exemption. And now they're saying essentially, Hey, these boxes do a
whole lot more than transmit TV. Now, so now they should be subject to the sales tax, and that'll add a six point two five percent at tax onto those monthly rentals or the yearly leases of those boxes.
Okay, so so what's what's what is the monthly rental for a box? I should have reviewed my own cable bill here, what what are we talking about? Six point six point two five percent of what I guess would be.
Those monthly rentals are usually in the fifteen dollars a month twenty dollars a month range. That you know, I shouldn't have pulled the exact number from my bill too. I'm a little afraid to actually go see if I'm now getting taxed on it. But usually they write about fifteen to twenty dollars a month. So if it's twenty dollars a.
Month, yeah, let's say twenty dollars a month, that's two hundred and forty dollars of your cable bill per year deals with the cable box, and six point two five percent of that's going to be about another fifteen dollars a year that Governor Heally is sticking her hand in your pocket.
I mean, that's right.
Do they have no shame? I mean, it's like they're going to get everybody and the people who rely upon cable boxes off times, our folks who you know are older, and that is really their form of entertainment.
Right, that's right. You think about the number of the just the sheer number of cable boxes I would be willing to bet has been on the decline in Massachusetts as people cut the cord, cut the cable and they say, nope, I'm just gonna use all the streaming apps instead. You're exactly right. It leaves the the remaining people who have cable boxes to foot the bill for something like this exactly.
And was there any opposition up there or was everybody gleeful that they have found another way to uh, to get money from from from this from the stone.
You know, I was a little bit surprised, Dan, there was really not much talk on Beacon Hill about this one, and you know, surprised, of course. I wrote about it back in February and then heard cricket and I was shocked. I thought, for sure, oh this is going to get people's attention, This will get people talking, and it really didn't until it took effect last month. I will say the one politician I heard talk about this in either the House or the Senate was Senator Mark Montigny from
New Bedford. He brought it up during the Senate's budget debate and tried to put a stop to it and basically said, you know, dr can call this whatever it wants. This is a new tax. This is raising the costs of living for people all across Massachusetts. And so he sort of planted his flag of opposition to it, and of course it still proceeded to take effect all the same. But there was at least one politician who you know, said hey, wait a minute, what are we doing here?
And who was that? Which that was?
That was Mark Montigny, as he's.
A state center. If for not mistake, well, at least it's nice to know that there's one guy up there. I just it's just as frustrating to think that so many people are interested in, you know, just just getting every little bit of money that they can, you know, from from people here in Massachusetts. I don't know. It almost as if they have decided that, guess what, people in Massachusetts really don't care. We can just pick their
pockets anytime we want. I mean, that's the impression I'm getting that that that there's no fight left is there's no Republican party up there that's having much of an impact. You're no one in the Democratic Party. There used to be a bunch of Democrats who were concerned about taxpayers, but.
It's they all talk about the cost of living. That that's always they always talk about that as being one of their top concerns, you know, and this one, particularly, the way it came about, I think it might take people by surprise when they get their bill and go, hey, wait, that's a little bit higher than it has been because this wasn't something that needed to be voted on by the House in the Senate and get signed by the governor.
This didn't happen by law. This is something where the Department of Revenue just issued this order, issued this directive and said here's our policy going forward. So, you know, there wasn't a lot of public There wasn't much chance for the public to weigh in. There was a very brief period back in the spring where do R took comments from the public.
But the attention to those it's just interesting that that It's almost as if the fact that that Massachusetts will continue to tax and pick people's pockets, it's almost on automatic pilot. No one even has to fly the plane anymore. No politician has to get up and say it's my idea. And what that does is that immunizes the incumbents, and it is Oh boy, I'll tell you it's it's time for a lot of people to wake up in Massachusetts and realize again. You know you're gonna say, hey, fifteen
dollars a year. Maybe fifteen dollars a year to you and me doesn't mean a whole art, but it might mean something to an older person or an older couple who run fixed income. Absolutely, aren't those the people that the Democrats say that they're concerned about.
I don't know, even if it's only fifteen dollars, you know that's that's still fifteen dollars.
Yeah, you guys are great watchdogs up there. State House News service the local TV stations used to have. When I was working at WBZ, we had state House reporters. John Henning was upgive for two four and different different reporters took times that their Walt Sanders would spend a lot of time at the people who perhaps you didn't grow up watching, but I got to tell you they kept the politicians more honest. And you guys are doing
a great job. How can you subscribe to your service, state House News Reporter the average person just simply state House News dot com.
I assume exactly state Housenews dot com. We are a subscription based service, but people can definitely go to the website, start checking it out, get a trial subscription to read more and to check out some of the other features on our website to try to keep them honest. And if we had more reporters up there, like you know, when all the TVs and all the local papers had reporters there, you know, powering numbers, and it would be good to get back to those numbers.
Yeah, well it really would. But again, you're doing a great job as a State House news service, and thank you for what you do because you're about the only consistent line of communication we have. And I appreciate every time you guys come on the show at night.
You always Walt, it's always a pleasure.
Hey, thanks, callin we'll talk soon, Okay.
My pleasure. Dan, thanks very much.
All right, we're gona take quick break. We come back. We're going to talk about cybercrime. Yeah, I'm going to talk with Eric O'Neill. He's a cyber security expert, and there's a lot of this stuff going on. Spies, lies, and cyber crime coming up on the other side of the break. Here on Nightside, my name is Dan Ray and the host of the show. Been working with a couple of little technical issues here and Robie got everything squared away. While conducting the interv with Colin, I was
doing some multitasking. Rob and Shane are back in the control room, so we have double duty tonight and we're in good shape. We'll be back right after this on Nightside. You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on wz Boston's news radio. Well, I am delighted to meet this next guest, Eric O'Neill. Eric's career began in the FBI's Counter Intelligent
trenches as an undercover operative. And Eric, as I understand it, you spent some time rooting out I think one of the most heinous spies in f well, in US history, Robert Philip Hanson. I know a little bit about that case. You must know a lot about that case. Welcome to night Side.
It's great to be on night Side Light. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, so you worked that case, the Hanson case, if I.
Was sent undercover, and probably what was the most unique case the FBI's ever run. They built a brand new department within FBI headquarters as a mouse trapped to catch Hanson, who was a spy for the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation for over twenty two years.
He also went to the same church I think as the then director of the FBI he was. I had Liz Wheelon, who wrote the book A Spy in Playing Sight two or three years ago. Liz wrote a great book on that I have to go back and reread it. I want you to know that I spent a good portion of my time as a television reporter for CBS here in Boston investigating the totally corrupt Boston office of
the FBI. You probably don't want to hear me say that, but instead of full disclosure, we had an office with people like Paul Rico, Dennis Condon, John Connelly and others up here, and we spent a lot of time going after the FBI. But you're one of the good guys. You went after the bad guys in the FBI. So I am honored to meet you, Eric, let's talk.
That was definitely my job to go undercover and catch the spies and bad guys. And if you want to read the definitive book on the Hanson case, it's my book Great Day, which came out a few years ago, and tell us the story from my eyes of being inside the investigation.
Well, I'll tell you what do you know? You must know Liz Wheel I.
Assume right, I know of her and we don't know each other.
Yeah, okay, Well you know what I'm gonna do. I'm going to call you and I'll have you back on to talk about your book, and we'll do it for an hour some night.
Okay, sounds great.
I mean that's seriously because I'm fascinated by this case. This guy was a devout Roman Catholic as you as you well know. I don't need to tell you anything about him. Uh. And he's has he died in prisoners, he's still alive.
He passed away in June of twenty twenty three, a couple of years ago, natural causes. Yeah, and he was in super max prison in Florence, Colorado, and probably one of the most horrible prisons on earth.
Yeah, he's out there with the Boston bomber and a lot of the other big name people. But what a what a creep. Anyway, great day is the book? Okay, I'll have you back. I problem. So let's talk about cyber attacks. What's going on now? We got to cease fire with Iron and Israel. I believe, and I don't know what information you have, but I believe that Iran's
nuclear capacity and capability has been badly damaged. And the reason I believe that is not any inside information, Eric, but I believe you watch what people do as opposed to what they say, and I know what they're saying for domestic consumption in Iran, but I'm watching what they do, and for them to have engaged in this ceasefire now for over a week tells me that they're hurting right now.
Yeah, I agree with that assessment. I think that if nothing else there a nuclear weaponization program has been pushed back. I've said at least a decade. It takes quite some time to come back from this. Those centrifugures that would have all been destroyed take years to even build and set up and it's going to be very difficult for them to restart the program with all the scrutiny that's on the country.
And as I tried to convince a caller of mine a week or so ago, without centrifuges, Iran doesn't.
Build bombs, that's right. They can't weaponize the ranium, uh, to get it to the point where they can actually put indugular weapon on one of their ballistic missiles.
Okay, so let's talk what what are we looking at right now? How exposed are we to I don't worry about Israel cyber attacking us, but I sure worry about uh, you know, lone wolves, and I worry about Iranian operatives. Uh, they had operatives who are around the world killing people. Uh. I mean it's that they they play for keeps.
Yeah. Well, and remember that not too long ago a plot was uncovered, an Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump. Yes, so they certainly are not shy about launching terrorist attacks of all shapes and sizes, whether it's kinetic or cyber. Now. I think right now they're reeling. Uh. Their military has been decimated.
Uh.
They their regime is struggling internally with their population who uh, you know, maybe most people might not know. Most of the people in Iran really hate the regime. They're trapped, and so they have to deal with that unrest from the inside. But the one thing that Iron can continue to do is the eight symmetrical warfare that they have been waging against the US and the West in general for years, which is cyber.
Attacks, which would include.
Right, So, Iran has been attacking the United States in particular for years, and they've been launching what we call probe attacks against our critical infrastructure. These are attacks that are in preparation for any kind of future of war, which could be tomorrow, and these probe attacks are attempts to embed themselves within different systems in the US critical infrastructure.
When I at lea say critical infrastructure, people normally think lights and power, but it also includes water, natural gas, waste water removal, you know, if you can't plush your toilet problem, and communications. China, you know, just attack our major telecom selth providers and was able to get into networks and read people's texts and listen to their voicemails.
So critical infrastructure is sort of the holy grail for threat actors of all stripes and sizes, and Iran has been embedding themselves in our critical infrastructure for years now. The good news is that we do find them. You know, SIKA, who is the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI i C three, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, and the FBI's different cyber divisions are very good at rooting them out.
But our critical infrastructure is old, it has poorly designed on patch systems, and so bad guys are constantly trying to worm their way in.
You know, I'll tell you a funny story that I've told my callers online listeners. But several years ago, I was with my family in a foreign country I'm not going to say where, and we were having dinner in a at a resort where we were and my daughter, who for some reason checks every room where, every public room where we are located, and she said to me, don't turn around, don't look behind you. And of course, what's your impulse when your daughter or someone says that
to you, You want to look around. Well, we were sitting at a table right behind the author Selmon Rushti, who at that point there had been a Fatois pointed.
Yeah, not the room you want to be in, not.
The room you want to be in. It was, you know, it was a nice area. So but but I remember talking to my daughter after the saying, thank god they didn't execute the fatois on him that night. Of course, he was stabbed and sadly and badly injured recently in Buffalo, New York by it looked like a lone wolf. But these folks on the other side, they play for keeps and eric. Guys like you, guys and women, men and women like you are the front line. And I truly
appreciate everything that you do. The name of your book is Spies, Lies and Cybercrime, kind of like the sex, Lies and Videotape. But that's that's very well done, HarperCollins available everywhere, I'm sure, and it's a it's a book that everybody should read. I'm going to be back in touch with you, and we're going to get you in to talk about Gray Day and the pursuit of Hanson, because obviously we have to make sure that our own intelligence systems N S, A, C, I, A, FBI, et cetera.
All the alphabet soup agencies are you know, purer than the driven snow and Hanson. Hanson was able to live it a complete double life. And the work that you did to to you know, secure his arrest and conviction, it was the service of this country. So I'm honored to meet you, Eric, and I hope we will have you back. I promise, Okay, Yeah, thank you.
It was great to talk to you, and I'm looking forward to coming back on the show and diving into that handsOn case. It was incredibly unique and important because Hanson blue holes and counter intelligence and fixing. It was critical for the entire intelligence apparatus here in the United States.
But despite with some of the old FBI agents might tell you in Bosson, I'm not a bad guy. I'm on the right team.
I haven't heard anything negative, So don't worry about that.
Thanks Eric. We'll talk soon, all right, right when we get back. When we get back, we're going to talk about a new tax, well other tax. It's a tip. It's a tip. It's a charge that you might see when you go to a restaurant. Believe me, you want to know about this one. My name's Dan Ray. This is night Side. It's called a three percent kitchen appreciation. Oh, it's a tax, but it's really, it's a surch arts. Let's put it like that. We'll be back at Nightside
right after this. You're on night Side, well Boston's news radio. All right, let's get right back at it. When look, you walt to restaurants and you run it's restaurants are expensive no matter where you go. Uh, and you certainly want to leave a tip for the waiter or waitress that served you and your party at that restaurant. And there's there's a new charge which is showing up kind
of unannounced at some restaurants. It's a kitchen appreciation charge with us as Sharif Mityas, he's the CEO of Bricks Holdings, a multi brand franchising company specializing in food service chain, so he knows a lot about this. He's been a guest before. Sharif, welcome back to.
Night Side, Thanks for having me back on.
So I've heard of this, I've yet to experience it. But how common is this this new charge? You know, there are a lot of restaurants that when you do takeout now they you know, all you do is you walk up, you drive to the restaurant, you've called the order in. They tell you when you get there, you drive there, you walk in, and you pay for your meal, and they hand you your bag or whatever, and then they're like asking you for a tip, which to me is.
Ridiculous.
Well, it's very common. I mean it's very common. How common is this kitchen appreciation charge? So they kind of call it a tax because it doesn't go to the government, that theoretically goes to the folks who work in the kitchen.
That's right. Well, luckily it's not very prevalent, but you're seeing it, to your point, in a lot of different ways. Some people call it the server benefits tax. Some people call it the living wage tax. Some people call it the kitchen appreciation tax. So yeah, you can call it a lot of different things. But whatever you call it, it's a problem. First of all, you're being deceptive, right, You're not being upfront that this is going to show up on your bill, right, all you get at the
end of the meal that that's that's not right. And restaurants that would would do that and are doing that are are probably going to lose a lot of guests very quickly.
So let's just break it down for people. So you go to a restaurant with your family, let us say your your wife, your husband, and a couple of kids. And when the bill comes the food and the drinks, let's say keep it simple, one hundred dollars. Okay, so it would it would have one hundred dollars. You're going to assume that you're going to pay it. You're going
to add a tip. But on the one hundred dollars right away, you're getting whacked for another three bucks on this again as charge or kitchen appreciation dex whatever you want to call it. So then you say, okay, I want to you know, twenty percent is what you should if you've had nice service from a wai or a waitress. I think that's what should be should be done. So now, so instead of costing you one hundred and twenty bucks, have cost one hundred and twenty three bucks. So you're
getting nickeled and dined a little bit. I'd rather have them say to me, there's a twenty five dollars charge for the cooks in the kitchen, as opposed to they nickel and dime you. It's it.
Yeah, it's a problem. And to your point, they shouldn't even they shouldn't even come up with any type of charge, even if they tell you up in front. If and we know wages gone up, right, people get it. Food has gone up. Everyone who's gone to the grocery store to restaurants, we all know it, right. So it's not some big surprise. Raise your prices a bit, right, we
all know we're paying more. So if the burger has to be eleven dollars versus ten and a quarter, then just raise the price of the menu item, right, Be upfront, Be transparent with your customers.
I found out sunday. I have a friend of mine who's dealing with a pretty tough medical diagnosis. So I take them to brunch. I go to the gym on Sunday morning and I got some time, and so we had men to This was a local restaurant, it's a chain. I'm not going to mention the name of it. And we ordered. We had identical orders, like three pancakes and coffee. Hadn't been in there in a couple of months and normally, well one thing. I guess what that costs one order
of pancakes and a coffee. Two orders of pancakes and two coffees. What do you think you would expect to pay for that?
Well, it shouldn't have been more than twenty dollars, but I'm guessing it was a.
Lot more thirty eight dollars.
Yeah, and that's a problem.
It was unbelievable. It was like, first of all, if we've gone to the ritz or to force size, I get it. It's going to cost me sixty bucks for breakfast, I get it, okay, and if I want to it's like three pancakes. And by the way, this was not We was seated next to a poor, homeless woman who had all of her wife's possession sitting there with us. Oh yeah, yeah, well you know she had to have breakfast somewhere too, so it wasn't what you'd call an elegant dining experience.
Reef right, But you paid for one.
Well, but by time you know, I'm not going to show change the waiter he got, it's like forty eight dollars for two vaters of three pan cakes. Now they were trying to ship pancakes, so let me be honest with you. There at the coat the coffees were three ninety nine, which is a little exhabited. But I think that what's going to happen is that people are going to say, you know, and I can. I can scramble some eggs at home and read the Sunday newspaper. This
easily they will kill the golden goose. I think, I don't know, maybe maybe I'm just quanky, but I think that all that concern in April about the tariffs, right, that a lot of people, a lot of companies have raised their prices, not because the prices went up, but because they saw it as an opportunity.
And I think that's right.
Those companies are going to pay for it in the long run. I mean, what is your own thing? How quickly of the economy right now? The stock market seems to be humming. I know that the tax the so called big beautiful bill, which is not necessarily going to be big and beautiful for everyone, that's for sure, just survived in the in the Senate, and I think they have lots of problems in the House. What is your sense as to where the where the economy is going right now?
Yeah? I think the issue, I think and everyone feels it is just the uncertainty. Right we just don't know what's going to happen three months, six months from now, and so when people are uncertain, people pull back, right, they don't go out as much. They kind of hoard a little bit of the money, right, discretionary spending, So
restaurants do get hit. Other kind of discretionary spending out there, retail gets hit because people are just they're not concerned as much as just uncertain and so that uncertainty creates pullback, and that's what you're seeing. And so yes, more people are going to eat at home, more people are going to hold back on that one extra purchase. And that's what I think we're going to see for at least the next few months, until we kind of see where
interest rates are headed. People see where this bill is headed, and the impact in the economy. We'll see if trade deals get resolved. All these things just create uncertainty, and so once they get resolved, people should be happy to go back out and spend a little bit more money. They kind of know what they have to spend. But until that point, then it's going to be tight and it's going to be tough.
Well, there's a lot of the bill, the no tax on tips for weight staff, which I think is going to help help people. At the same time, I read today the gasoline prices are down lowest in the last for maybe five years, which is a good print. And I also I follow the oil markets very closely. Oil despite everything that's been going on in the Middle East, is still down in the you know, sixty four sixty five dollars range for the various oil, all of which
is a good indicator. Now, you know, apps in something crazy happening, maybe we're on a on a good flight path here. I don't know. We'll keep our fingers crossed, that's for sure.
Absolutely.
I so appreciate you you coming back because I know that you really do understand this industry, and we've talked about different aspects of it and what percentage real quickly, what percentage And I'm sure there's no study on this, but what percentage of the restaurants around the country do you think of doing the on takeouts? Handing you when you give me a credit card, you know you want to do an eighteen percent twenty percent tip. I got hit with that and an ice cream joint a few
couple of months ago. It was like a ice cream goal from my grandson and myself and it was expense. It was sixteen bucks and they wouldn't take cash. They said oh no, you got to go credit card and do create cash when I left nothing as a tip on the credit card, and then I took a couple of bucks out of my pocket and I said, now do you take cash for tip? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I take cash for tip. I believe. Yeah. I got to do something on the direction, and maybe I'll have you
on for this. I want to do something on we moving towards a cashless society. I had a oh, ar, well that I'm worried. Are you concerned about that or no? Or am I paranoid? Well?
I think it's I think there's always going to be a place for cash. Just to be very clear, but yeah, we're definitely moving towards more of a cashless society, especially as more digital payments occur. Right, people are paying on their front to keep up, not even pulling out the credit card. Right, So it's easy to tap a button without even pulling your wallet out. And so especially the younger generation Dan, right, so a little be younger than you and.
I I should have you back and we should talk about that. I was sure at a store on Sunday, just buying scallops, and I went to pay in cash, and the guy said to me, he says, you're the exception. So what are you talking about. It was a nice scallop store, very very nice story. He said. Only about two percent of our customers now pay cash. Everybody's got the plastic. Everybody's got the plastic. And I mean, I'll tell you this, the one place cash is always going
to work. If you're in Vegas and you want to get front row seat at one of those shows, just tell them mister.
There you go, bes as you go always in Vegas. Thanks for having me on again, Dan, Thanks talk soon.
Okay, when we get back, we're going to talk about chat GPT, which is great. We'll explain what it is. But there's not something called chat gp psychosis. People are actually being involuntarily committed because they're spiraling downward into chat GPT psychosis. We're gonna talk with doctor Lee Richardson. She's a professional counselor and founder of the Brain Performance Center.
You won't believe this stuff. This is scary. Back on Night Side after this Night Side with Dan Ray on Boston's news Radio, we're delighted to be joined by doctor Lee Richardson, a licensed professional councilor, founder of the Brain Performance Center, Doctor Richardson. I know we're a little crammed on time here. I apologize for that, but we're talking about people who are being involuntarily committed because they are
somehow spiraling into chat GPT psychosis. You and I both know what chat GPT is, but tell us for those who don't tell us exactly what it is quickly and and what is going on. People are getting hooked on this stuff.
Well, people are getting hooked on it because what's going on is people are finding their best friend on a computer, someone that they can talk to in the middle of the night and they can in their darkest moment, sure what they're feeling and what they're thinking. And the problem is is chat GBT can't tell what's reality and what's delusional.
Yeah, they could talk to me in the middle of the night, at least until midnight. I'm better than chat GPT. Chat GPT basically is this this little website or this website, Well, you pretty much can put anything in there and it'll spit back a whole bunch of stuff to you.
Well, it's a large language model and absolutely you can ask you can ask chat I mean, I have a good friend that calls Chat instead of AI, she calls him Al, her boyfriend. Yeah, I've got to go talk to Al, my boyfriend. I'll tell you because you can say anything and ask questions and you'll get an answer. The problem is is Al will talk back to you the same way you talk to him. And I think that's where people are getting They're getting hooked. They are
I mean they're lonely. I mean, loneliness still continues to be a huge, a substantial global problem. And we're lonely, and we turn to something that we think can give us good answers and it can't. The platforms for a thirteen year old.
Let me ask you this question. I know that there's no number that you can cite from me here, but just from your experience, what percentage of the people in America do you think are clinically what you would call lonely, meaning you know, have such a small circle of friends or don't reach out to people. Are we talking like two or three percent? Are we talking twenty twenty five percent?
Oh no, we're talking twenty twenty five percent. And if you think back till a couple of years ago, our Surgeon General declared it an epidemic. And then there's research that shows that the loneliest population are the young males age fifteen to thirty four, and one out of five of us has depression or anxiety, and with that comes some loneliness.
So how do we here? We have like four minutes left, so let's solve the problem. How do we solve this problem? I mean, you know, there's no quick and easy answer. I know that. But what can people do to turn this this horrific set of circumstances or state of mind around?
Well, I think we all have to take responsibility and pay attention, use your situation aware. If you see friends, if you see family or colleague, and you see big behavioral changes, they're isolating, they're shutting down, or they're not sleeping at all, they're up all night, they stopped eating. All of these are red flags that they're struggling with something. And you know, so many times people say, I don't
know what to say. If you say nothing more than I since you're having a bad day, and if there's anything I can do to make it your day a little bit better, please tell me. You know what's going to make a difference.
It's funny you talk about these males between fifteen and thirty four. I think about the kid that took the shot at President Trump or then candidate Trump, twenty year old kid out in Butler, Pennsylvania, and I still have read very little about his background in terms of how the heck do you get to that point where you're going to climb up on a roof? Or this guy in Idaho the other day who set the fire and then decided to take potshots as a sniper at firefighters,
how do you ever get to that point? I mean, it's.
This is scary you get to that, You get to that point because you get no attention, You get not everybody has access to mental health counseling. If you don't have insurance, you probably don't. And even if you have insurance, connecting with the right therapist is very, very difficult because the demand is so high. So I think that we as society have got to recognize that brain health instead of saying those two ugly words mental health. Brain health
is everybody's responsibility. And when you see somebody struggling, just say how can I help you? Dr Richard, I don't feel.
Like you, Doctor Richard, don't mean to interrupt but and I've short changed your time, and you've been always a great guy. I apologize for that. Give us the website. How do folks get in touch with you or the Brain Performance Center?
Well absolutely, we've got that good old fashioned thee Brain Performance Center dot com and they can find doctor Lee Richardson on LinkedIn.
Doctor Richardson, We'll have you back, and I owe you some time here. You're a great guest. No, no, no, I know that, and I do appreciate that. But I got some guilt fields here, doctor Richardson. I got to work them out. Okay, thanks so much. You're welcome by doctor Lee Richardson. We come back. We're going to talk about a situation that probably I could talk to doctor Richardson about, and that is the guy out in Idaho, not the guy that took the shots of the firefighters,
but the guy that killed four college students. He now is going to be able to plead guilty and avoid the death penalty. Is that really justice? We'll be back right after the nine o'clock news on night sid