NightSide News Update

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

Hope you have a great weekend. It's going to be great weather wise, or wish the Patriots are playing back home, because I think it's going to be better weather here than in jolly old London. My name is Dan Ray. I'm the host of nightside'd heard every Monday through Friday night. This being a Friday night, it is the last night of this week. If you stick with us till midnight, I'll get you all the way to Saturday, well just right to the cusp of Saturday morning. So stay with us.

I am good.

Thank you for having me, Well.

Thank you very much for joining us. So you're a licensed professional counselor and founder of the Brain Performance Center. But there was an article, I guess in Forbes Health that my producer saw about election anxiety, politics and mental health. So it's politics based driving people crazy. I guess that's the opening question.

And there's a one word answer for that. Absolutely.

Oh.

I thought it was going to be yes. Okay, that's even more okay. So, other than the interfamilial disputes which clearly exist within our country, within everyone's family, I'm sure, why are people so hot and bothered about it?

Well?

They are. Actually it's cyclical. Every four years people get upset about the election, but this year I think it's really different. Think back, we didn't even know who was going to be running for the election, and is you know President Biden didn't run who was going to run?

Well, no, he ran. He ran, and he won the nomination of the Democratic Party, and then he was counseled by some of the senior advisors that maybe he should step aside, so we have a new candidate. Yes, you're absolutely right there. So it's been kind of a wrinkle that we haven't seen in a long time in American politics, if ever.

And I think that while he did run and did get denomination, the American public started doubting him way before that. And that's uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes fear and the unknown. And I think that this election, we're going into it and it's a really difficult time. If you look at what's going on around us worldwide, that plays into our consciousness and when you look at what's facing this inflation.

So okay, I think you have categorized the problem very accurately. I deal with this every night of the week, well not every night of the week, but most nights we do something on politics. Tonight, I don't think we will be doing anything on politics other than this interview, which is merely you're kind of around the edges and you're tangentle to it. And I will tell you that I hope that this election on November fifth has a decisive winner, because I don't want to go through what we went

Go right inad Well, I think listening to the news a little bit of it is a positive thing. I think having extreaming twenty four seven is not. And I think using social media as your knowledge base and reading comments and letting those comments influence you it's not positive behavior. And you know, we all know who we disagree with, right, Well, there's still some people.

Who claim, even as late in the game as we are, who are theoretically undecided. So there are some people out there who are still trying to figure it out for better or words.

Well, and you make a really good point because there's also some people the survey that you mentioned cided twenty seven percent of people are excited about the election. So you're right, there's a lot of variables out there. And how those all come together peacefully and decisively, I think, is the question that we're all trying to project the answer for, Well.

We'll see in about two and a half weeks. Tell me you and the founder of the Brain Performance Center, what is that and is that something that my listeners can be in contact with take advantage of. Tell us about the Brain Performance Center.

Absolutely. The Brain Performance Center was started in two in a nine and it deals with behavioral health issues which we're all experiencing today as a result of the election. It's anxiety, it's depression, it's stress, it's dealing with that neurodivergent population and all of that is it's just a dysregulated brain and there are ways that we can train

Yeah, do you have like little test or analysis that people can kind of do what this brain performance center so they can figure out if they are okay.

While we do it more scientifically. We actually record the brand ways and we can flare them to a database and we see, you know, it works off the bell shaped curve. What's it's age specific? And but where is your brain within normal within normal limits?

So the people in order to take true advantage that they have to physically be where the brain performance center is. I'm not exactly sure what's what state or city you're in.

We're in Dallas, Texas, Okay, And there are there are organizations across the United States that do the same thing that we do.

I guess is what I'm hearing you say.

Absolutely, I would encourage anybody that wakes up and thinks, you know, I don't know if I want to do this today or oh not another day? Why is this so hard? Give me a call, because it can that you calm that brain down and lie it's a game changer.

I would say. I would say it all starts with the brain one way or the other. You wake up in the morning and the first thought is oh the alarm clock. I gotta get up. I hear you, I hear you. Doctor Richardson. Always appreciate talking to you. I think we've talked before, and I hope we're gonna talk again.

Thanks so much, Thanks you, Bye bye.

When we come back, we're going to get a little local. We're gonna talk with Mark shield Drop. He's seen your spokesman for Triple A. And guess what. Deer crashes are increasing by leaps and bounds, and it is that time of year. We will explain I had won many years ago. I'm not even gonna bother to tell you. Maybe I will tell you this story. I don't know, but you have to be a little careful with those little with those big deer running around, all their homeowners are going crazy.

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

All right, if you've been driving in New England recently, I suspect you probably have seen a little more activity of the deer running hither thither and Yon with us is Mark shield Drop, senior spokesperson for tripa A, and he's going to explain what's going on.

It's a seasonal thing, correct, Mark.

Yeah, it is.

And thanks for having me Dan.

It's great to be back in order to have you, by the way, one of my favorite guests. Right ahead.

Oh wow, I'm writing that down. It's mating season for the deer, and when in its mating season they get a little frisky. That means they get bolder, more aggressive. And when deer on the move, it tends to be in the afternoon around dusk and the days are getting shorter, and when it's dusk, that's like matching up perfectly with our commute home from work. So it's really a recipe for a lot of crashes because he got more active deer, a lot of people on the road, so that all

Well, what it comes down to is the deer will looking for love and all the wrong places.

I think, yeah, they are, you know, on the roadway. It's a terrible place for deer, but it happens to be kind of an ideal environment for them. So I'm not a wildlife expert, but I have some interest in this topic and I did cover it a bit when I was a journalist before working with Triple A. So I've talked to some wildlife folks and a lot of our roads, you know, have a tree line like a buffer, and then oftentimes it's next to kind of an open area,

So that's why we see them a lot.

I think, on the highway and hit one. I've never hit one personally, but I've been in a car with someone to hit one, and it was quite an ordeal. And we weren't even going that.

Like giving a stone wall it is. It is the big one that that I hit long, long time ago. We were headed to Thanksgiving dinner on Martha's vineyard. This is going to be sometime in the nineteen nineties, I'm guessing. And I saw a car in the distance flashing its lights and I thought they were telling me, well, there's a police officer had slowed down. It wasn't going that fast.

Yeah.

I went to pull over to try to help the deer, and my wife said, what are you doing? I said, I want to see if the deer's eaten nuts. So, yeah, the kids in the back seat, two of them. What was that? What was that? I think my wife said something. Well, Daddy just bumped into Bamby.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not fun. They're beautiful and majestic. Well, unfortunately they're less and less afraid of us, which seems to be not helping them problem. And then there's a massive deer over population problem. So I pulled a total number of deer crashes in Massachusetts by year. I started twenty

We're going to the wrong direction.

Last year, Yeah, last year thirty eight hundred and sixty seven.

Wow, that's doubling.

Every ten years, it really is, And it's just every year more and more and more. So there's more deal out there.

I remember one year I was on the early morning news and it was heading to some story at five o'clock. Four five o'clock in the morning. Light had just come up. It was mid November, and I looked about I don't know, a quarter of a mile ahead, and there was this deer that was trying to cross the road. There wasn't much traffic, but the deer was sort of like slipping it sliding. It was like, come ons, the deer get

Yeah, they're skittish, uh and and they can often they can jump really high. I have no folks who are just driving along and a deer just launched out of the woods like right.

Into the side of the car, like for.

No reason apparently. So it's unsettling when it happens. Fortunately, we haven't had a lot of fatalities from these crashes, but they cause a lot of damage, you know, they can. They can really be stressful, and they caused some injuries too. You know, folks who've had the misfortune of a deer going through the windshield. You know, that's that's an image you're not gonna get out of your mind anytime soon. You can get, you know, pretty badly hurt from that.

So I will tell I will tell this story the weekend of the Monday that I came in after the deer strike. Five thousand dollars damage to the front of my car. By the way, it was the easily damage. And I wasn't I mean, I really wasn't going that fast because I had slowed down thinking there was a police officer. So I was telling the story in the newsroom that day that following Monday, and one of my colleagues I'll not identify who it was, said something like,

Oh that's horrifying.

How many years of therapy has she been?

Oh my god, don't don't player the Godfather or anything like that.

Oh no, No.

The other question is, how does Massachusetts compare to other New England states. In New Hampshire, I guess they worry about hitting moose, which can even be more US.

Yeah, you know, that's a good question.

I would have to do some comparisons.

But a big.

Problem throughout all our territory at triple in northeast. So when we put the advisory out in mass we also are putting on New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the numbers are pretty much across the board going in the same direction, and there's a lot of crash and on all those states and the more rural parts of New Hampshire Vermont. I think just due to the fact that fewer people driving around, maybe they have less of an

I'll tell you what worked for me. I went to a you know, a hunting and gaming store, and those little plastic deer horns you mount on your front bumper they worked. They really do. They set out some sort of a signal, you know, just a high pitch properly whistle, and they're pretty cheap. They're just plastic, and I can remember so many times driving along and realizing that there was a deer that did not cross the road in front of me. I would recommend, at least my experience.

I think, yeah, I think that those are maybe a good deterrent. You got to make sure you install it correctly, you know, and and you know, there's different types out there, and I haven't looked into them too much myself. People have asked me if they work, and I say, hey, look, you know, as long as you're not covering up an important sensor or something, and you can install it properly.

There's no hart, just simply little plastic things. They looked like a horn and you just yeah, they were self glued down to you and you could take them off. I mean, but they stayed. They stood the test of time, and they I thought they were pretty good investment and might have saved the deer or two along the way. Hey Mark, thank you much. I enjoyed the conversation with you as always. Triple A available folks. I'm a Triple A member. I would advise other people to it's all

Appreciate it very much. Thanks for the kind of words, Dan, have great night.

Well they're from the heart. Thank you much. Taking a break, we come back when to talk with a Medicare consultant and certified financial planner. We are getting into the Medicare season and we have all the mustnos to avoid coverage gaps available with Joh coming back right after the news at the bottom of the air of My name is Dan Ray, and you're listening to Nightside.

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

All right, we are coming upon the time of year when people who are on Medicaid or looking to get on Medicaid have a window to apply and it's not easy. It's not simple. I find it confusing with us. Now is Jay Oh. He's a Medicare consultant and certified financial planner and hopefully he's going to simplify it for us. Jay Oh, welcome to nightside. How are you?

Thank you very much for having me Dan, How are you today?

More than welcome? Is it as confusing? I am not on medicare, but I got to tell you, from what I know about it, it's everyone tells me it's confusing, am I it is? How confusing? Is it? I'll ask you. I'll ask it to you that way, not necessarily to you because you know it, but to the average person who's going to try to get on for the first time or renew their membership.

Sure, I think that first many people who have been employed and have had benefits, health insurance benefits from their employer. The issue is that they have to learn a language that they've never really faced. They face a menu of selections which it can seem overwhelming compared to the one or two plans that you kind of get offered by your employer. And that's it. Well, under Medicare, we've got

So first, people who for whatever reason find it complicated, can they reach out to people like you? Are their private medicare consultants? If you're a medicare consultant, certified financial planner. Are there enough of those folks around the country who can make themselves available to help people, particularly the first time or does one have to be very wealthy to even consider using the services of a medicare a consultant and a certified financial planner.

Access to medicare is as democratic as it gets.

Pointing that everybody, yeah.

Exactly, and access So for example, people like me, if you're coming to us and you can see information about my book Maximize your Medicare dot com, there's contact ability and our consults for pure medicare are free of charge, So nice.

And do you do it you're located in Boston. We have listeners all over the eastern half of the US. Do you have a website? You know, whenever someone comes on here and they are for informational services, I'd like to try to put people in contact. And in this day and age, the telephone still works, so.

I don't work internetwork.

Can they get in touch with you?

Sure? The best way is the official website for my book, which is Maximize your Medicare dot com. And there are tons of resources, videos in recordings of interviews kind of similar to this. Not as good, of course as you but you can understand my point that there are resources. And every state also has something called SHIP, which is government funded volunteer staffs Medicare guidance. Now the caveat there is that they are not licensed. That doesn't mean that

One of one of the things that I learned when I became eligible for Medicare when you become sixty five, Unlike Social Security, where you can take it early, you can take it late and all that with Medicare. Even if you are going to continue to work and therefore you do not need Medicare. You still have to sign up for Medicare and get a Medicare card because if you don't sign up, I believe that there's some penalties that can occur at that time when you want to go on Medicare.

So I had spoken about complicated rules, and here's you've mentioned one. So I wrote, that's my job.

Jay.

I wrote an article that appears in Kiplinger, a byline there Kiplinger, a personal finance magazine, and it is the number one thing, especially as you rightly point out that people, in order to get the maximum from Social Security, they delay.

But that let me I understand because I understand enough of this to be dangerous. Let's assume someone turns sixty five tomorrow and whatever the grace period is they choose and they say, well, I'm still working, I'm a full time person. I won't need Medicare or any of that stuff until I'm probably seventy. And they wait until they're seventy and then they say, Okay, I got to get

You do not have a penalty. You do not, so you give a way.

So what you're saying is people do not have to They can wait until they need Medicare. They don't have to secure a card at sixty five. I was under the I was under that impression. And if that's a misimpression, thank you for correcting me.

And you can see you're not alone in this short little to and fro, right, which is that this the Medicare system has a number of rules and people are afraid of something that says penalty, and it is if you incur it, it never ends. But this is but the point here, the nuance here is that if you have health insurance as a full time employee covered by your employer, then no, no.

Or if you are a full time employee and you're covered by your spouse's insurance, I also believe that that you are protected, you're not obligated to take to pay for Medicare. Again, that's another wrinkle. I think I'm correct on that, but tell me if I'm wrong.

More wrinkles, which is that as long as the spouse is the full time employee. So, in other words, if your spouse is retired and let's say retired early sixty three because that person didn't like their job or they were able to access retirement, and then you turn sixty five, your spouse is retired, you cannot use her spouses or the sixty three year olds health insurance at the time that you turn sixty five. You need to be the spouse of a full time employee covered by health insurance.

In this day A number of combinations, Jay, in this day and age is I'm sure you probably know better than I. There are more and more people who are working full time sixty five, and married couples are working full time past sixty five. Both my wife and I, you know, oh past sixty five, we're both working full time, and in our situation, she has a better health insurance plan,

Absolutely, the number of iterations we can combinations is dizzy, and I recognize there I'll get a better one for you.

I have a better recommendation. Why don't we plan on doing an hour sometime in the next week or so. If if your schedule permits, and we during this hour we just do an interview. We don't take phone calls from nine to twelve. Nine to midnight, we open our phone lines, so during those hours that would allow people to call and ask you questions. I think that might even be more helpful.

What say you, I'll make myself available, no problem.

We'll get back in touch with it. Jay. Thank you very much. And again, the name of your book is Maximize your Medicare dot com, so people get a head start on our on our next conversation. Thanks very much. I really enjoyed this conversation, and thanks for setting me straight on a couple of things. I am not someone who claims to know everything about everything. You're the expert here, and I appreciate you taking the time my privilege.

Dan, Thanks for having me.

We'll talk to you soon. Okay, when we come back, We're going to talk about a subject we all can agree upon, and a subject there over which there is no confusion, and that is we are in for a beautiful mid October, mid to late October weekend weather here in at least most of New England, and we are gonna we're going to We talked with Brian Thompson of AKI Weather. Right after this break on Nightside Stick with Us.

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

Well, I don't think if the weather folks are correct, that we're ever going to have a weekend as beautiful as these next two days, at least at this time of year with us is Brian Thompson of AKI Weather. AKI Weather Meteorologist Brian Thompson. Brian, it appears that this weekend is going to be on a scale of zero to ten, about a twelve and a half. What's going on.

We have a pretty warm weather pattern shaping up, But Dan, we've had an area of high pressure that's been sitting off to our west for the last few days. This what's been bringing us this dry weather. I mean, it has been on the chili side most of the week, but for most of the time, with the exception of a little while yesterday afternoon and evening, we've been seeing quite a bit of sunshine throughout the last few days.

Yeah, I mean, eventually, I assume the law of averages would make us pay for this, but when you get a weekend like this. We got the Head of the Charles in Boston this weekend, which is spectacular no matter what the weather, although then it's some soaking rains at some of the heads ahead of the Childs races in the past. So I missed what you said, So if we do hit seventy tomorrow in a little better than seventy with beautiful you know, sun drenched skies, you know,

Yeah, the average tomorrow and Sunday or sixty one degrees, they're going to be a good ten to fifteen degrees above that. In fact, Sunday we won't be all that far from the record high, which is seventy nine set back in nineteen sixty nine. The record high tomorrow is eighty four, so it can still get warm this time year. A lot of the record highs are still in the eighties. But this isn't just a one or two day thing.

Well. Of course Monday, most people are going back to work. So that's why I like to focus on Saturday and Sunday. Now. In addition to that, good news for people who are not Patriots fans, because the Patriots play early on Sunday morning in that game over in London against the Jacksonville Jaguars, which means that the guys who are football fans and want to stay ensconsed in front of that TV set to watch the Patriots, that game will be over by

No, and it is going to be warming up quickly. I think by noontime could very well be in the low seventies already. This is a pattern, especially with how dry it's been the last few days, that the nights will be relatively cool still and the knights will still generally be in the forties to near fifty, but by mid to late afternoon we're talking about highs at or above seventy.

So then here's my question. I was told I read an article actually this week that they said the leaf peeping was insane last weekend. People were out there in the woods. They had annoyed you. I'm sure you read some of that, and I guess they had a significant not twenty inches but they had a real, actual first snowfall up on the top of Mount Washington. You're a weather guy. I'm sure you can give me more information about that. How does that juxtapose with what we're doing

Yeah, it's it's quite the change. And last weekend was quite the range. All across the northeast. You get down toward Philadelphia and Baltimore, it was pushing eighty degrees last weekend. And here we were in the fifties, if you remember, it was kind of cloudy. It was even in the forties of times, with the kind of a damp feel to the air. And as you got far enough north through the White Mountains over toward the Adirondacks, too, a

People. People were in flip flops and clocks and stuff like that. The other thing real quickly. I got to ask you, is for the first time, some of the weather people this week had pointed out those I call them like the blanket clouds. They almost look like whipped cream clouds or something like that. I forget what the name of them are, but apparently that's a rear sight. And I actually saw some of those yesterday. What what's what are those clouds? I hate to put you on the spot here.

But I guess i'd have to see a picture of it. I don't know offhand what you're what you're.

Okay, it almost looked like the clouds look like ocean waves. Oh okay, that they you know, normally you see you know, the cumulus and the cirrus and all of that. But there was this, uh, this cloud formation, which apparently the atmosphere has to be just certain, and they were people actually sending and pictures of it. Uh. And this morning when I went out door as I saw that for the first time. We'll save that for another night, Brian, Thanks,

I'm on duty Sunday morning. But but like the Patriots fans. I'll be out in the afternoon.

You can watch the Teatriots game where I know that. Thanks Brian, we'll talk Sooneray, all right, weaken back. We're gonna give you an opportunity to have your dreams analyzed. Yeah, how about that. We have a PhD psychologist, but he's also a dream researcher. He's director of the Sleep and Dream Database. You can tell us what your crazy dreams are, Ben, or what your recurring dreams are, and we'll get them analyzed for you. All you gotta do is call the