Scott blown back on seven hundred WLW. I don't know if you caught it or not, but there's a Super Bowl yesterday. We have a new champion and the Seattle Seahawks twenty nine thirteen, your final embarrassing New England. A defensive masterpiece on the part of the Seahawks. But part of this and what we witnessed yesterday was not without controversy. Of course, the bad Bunny halftime performance, which anytime you stir it up and pissed people off me. I love that kind
of stuff. I didn't understand the word the man was saying, but as far as artistic value goes out, I was pretty good. And again it was only ten minutes of my life. I'm not going to get too worked up about this stuff like a lot of people are. But the other element two is one hundred and thirty five million people watch this. It was also one of the
most watched Super Bowl shows recently. To share you the success and how on point and how brand the NFL is, so for a bigger picture, Kevin Belson is back and how the NFL became a monster and what drove the success to where it is now. Ken welcome, I have.
Been very good.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, we live in Cincinnati, where Paul Brown still cast the shadow. I think, you know, the person who was essentially one of the cornerstones in the Mount Rushmore of the early NFL. But we're not talking about that. We're talking over the last couple of decades and how it became such a revenue monster. The three people responsible are whom.
Jerry Jones and I started the book in the early nineties. So just as a reference for it, if we're going to expand Mount Rushmore, Paul Brown would most definitely be on it. But Jerry Jones, Robert Craft and now Roger Goodell, and I'm talking dollars and sometimes common sense.
Yeah, and look at that line. Go well, Jerry Jones came in prior to Robert Craft, I believe, and Roger Goodell, of course the last commissioner. So let's start with the time. Let's start with Jerry Jones.
Sure, Jerry came in in eighty nine.
The Cowboys, which used to be a Merethith's team self proclaimed, of course, you know, we're flat on their back. They were losing a million dollars a month, and he revived ived what was then the premier brand of the seventies and all those Landry Stylebach teams, he revived them. He brought money in Glmer and Glitz back, and of course
won three Super Bowls. But his big contribution of at least from where I sit writing the book looking at the league overall, was he was the first to look at the TV kind of tracts, which at back then was CBS, ABC, NBC. There were only three bidders. It was a cozy club art model. The Browns used to run the broadcasting contracts, and Jerry, you know, as an entrepreneur, said why don't we have a fourth bidder, Why don't we get an auction going, which is also a business
common sense. So he invited in a fellow named Rupert Murdoch, who was desperate for sports, to put Fox on the map and to get affiliates to switch over to him, and it worked. He blew CBS out of the water. CBS learned its lesson, came back four years later and paid twice as much for the AFC package. And so Jerry really brought that kind of businessman in things, also a bit of a wildcatter's instinct. He started marketing the cowboys every which way, and that pissed off a lot
of old owners. But yeah, he, as Carmen Polosy said, he taught us how to make money.
That's what Jerry shoes.
He really did. I mean, think how you monetized the cheerleaders too, and said, hey, you know sex Sel Sex Dallas cowboy cheelers are a huge thing in the seventies, had a TV show and everything. So he was squeezing every possible nickel out and this precipitated the era that we're in right now with the flamboyants, the media presence, the monetization of everything. So how does that then lead into Robert Kraft? How did what did he add to the mix?
Well, Robert came in very much like Jerry. He paid record amount for a really bad team. The Patriots were always at the bottom of the league financially and usually in the standings as well, and he, you know, again, set out to revive it. He built a new stadium eventually and then built the real estate around it and went to the Super Bowl, as we all know. But again, and he got very involved in league business and also
on the media side. He had owned part owned a CBS affiliate in Boston, so he already had really good contact with Mets Moonbez and Melkarmzan and these guys. And you know, he was the guy who brought CBS back in nineteen ninety six and they, as I said, they did twice as much for what was considered back then. The AFC package was considered less prestigious. So Robert also had that instinct we all need to we need to lift all boats.
We can't just.
Focus on our own teams in our own markets. And you know, Jerry in various places has picked on the Browns, the Brown family, and the Bengals because they weren't carrying or he felt they weren't.
Carrying their weight.
But his argument was, look, if we juice up the marketing, you know, everybody should be able to sell in their own markets and make extra money. But you know, some of the older teams are the older owners. They this wasn't how they did business. So there was a good culture clash, and that's a good one. But there was a culture class in the nineties that now is just taken for granted. Everybody's in it to make money.
Yeah, and it really has. And I think Bob Kraft from He had a hand in launching NFL Network and Sunday Ticket and all those things we just take for granted. But that was largely out of the mind of Bob Craft, wasn't it.
Absolutely? And you know, Bob still called him Robert. He still goes to the Allen and Company, you know confab out in Idaho every summer. He's you know, shoulders with NBC. All the networks come to see and go through Bob Craft. The big Sunday ticket renewal with YouTube when they switched over to YouTube was over two billion dollars a year, more than double what had been paid. And again, Craft
was very instrumental in that. In some ways, really interestingly, Jerry and Robert compete against each other for who gets credit for all this and they so I guess their egos also put them up on them Mount Rushmore.
Okay, so Paul Brown begets Jerry Jones a big gests Robert Kraft to So where does that go?
Then?
If that lineage you can got Bob Kraft Gtjrie Jones, who's the next, I guess revolutionary? If you will change agent, the NFL's rights ownership goes which owner?
Well, I feel like we're entering NFL three point zero here. You know, where teams are even now like lifestyle brands, they're becoming, you know, real estate plays. They're becoming literally communities. You look at what's happening in Nashville. They're building townhouses next to NFL stadiums. It used to be I mean, you know this every fan does. Stadiums used to be out in the suburbs and they were just surrounded by miles of parking lots. Kansas City still has that, and
teams are realizing, boy, our brands are so powerful. We could sell pretty much anything because fans want to be sort of close to it. And baseball has done a good job of it over the years, you know, building stadiums in cities. You know, fly was sort of grandfathered in, even my beloved bets. You know, they're now putting a
soccer stadium across the street and apartments. So but football's been slow to them, partly because of the size of the stadiums and just the infrequency of this of the number of games.
But there's a scarcity with the NFL, right And that's the thing that is the amazing part about this is they did this is not baseball or hockey or the NBA. This is like seventeen weeks. Eighteen weeks. You're beginning, ending, and done. And that's an incredibly small amount of time to generate this kind of revenue. You're right about the Bobby here in Cincinnati. You know, you can get a
place overlooking Great American Ballpark. So he's Ken Belson. He writes for The New York Times, veteran reporter every day a Sunday, how Jerry Jones, Robert Craft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL into a cultural and economic juggernaut. It's fascinating. So we get to Roger Goodell, now Ken and his target going in when he took office, I think in twenty oh six, he wanted to triple the NFL revenue to twenty five billion by twenty twenty seven. I said
it the open. Last year they did twenty three billion. He's not on target, he's over target.
You're absolutely right, and it was audacious when he made that prediction to the owners. He was a relatively new commissioner then, but he wanted to show the owners what he was about. He was working on behalf of them, the thirty two and you know, he knows who pays his salary. And if you said an aggressive target, even the owners in the room that I spoke with were shaking their heads, saying, how are we going to get there? That's a billion dollars a year for fifteen some odd years.
That's pretty audacious. The league back then was maybe ten billion dollars. So he did it. He did it through TV deals, not just Roger, of course, but he sets the tone in the building, not just for the media deals that the owners negotiate, but the sponsorships. You look now, of course you got Verizon and Pepsi, there's a new official bank, EA, the game company. They keep splicing, splicing it a little thinner and finding new ways to market
and you know it used to be and have a drink. Well, now there's the official rum sponsor, the official box desk sponsor.
Yeah.
So they're finding money in new places, and look, brands want to be associated with the league, and many sports really.
Ken Benson on how the NFL got to where it is. Super Bowl yesterday, of course, and we all watched that and also the big knapers Cantle point out Bad Bunny doing the halftime show, and that was a very very polarizing. I found it interesting simply because this is about international games, no secret, and the NFL's leaned heavily into international affairs, international contests. You've completely saturated the United States, as we
mentioned as far as army. The market goes out. In order to grow, you've got to expand elsewhere and take it outside. They're doing that, and that's what yesterday's halftime show was about. How's that going for them?
It's one future of the NFL. I think there's something of a misconception that, you know, this is like gravy on top of you know, an already robust domestic market. Reality is they need to look overseas. The growth rate in America is population growth rate is slowing. You know, the concussion issue has turned some parents away from football, and you know, many many studies have shown that what sport you play as a kid is going to turn
you into a fan later in life. So if you play up, grow up playing Little League baseball, you're more likely to be a baseball fan. Of course, you like many sports, but your primary sport. So the NFL needs young kids playing the game. And that's where Flag comes in, obviously, because it's a cheap way to start kids out on football and also to reassure parents. But it's also why
the NFL is looking overseas. They need new fans, new markets, new media deals, new sponsors, and so they're using flag because outside of North America probably Germany, really not many people play it, so they have to educate fans. So I see international as much as a necessity as a luxury, and that's why we're seeing all these extra games being added. Roger Goodell see that apparently they want to add two
more international games next year. Eventually they'll get to basically one every week by the time they're done with it.
And that seems like, I think of your football fan here, it just seems like they no way the Europeans a British state, they don't really care about American football that But it wasn't that long ago. Mostly under Roger Goodell, we said the same thing about female fans. It's a bunch of guys watching the women go and shop and make dinner or whatever, you know, back of the seventies, Asaj's thinking, and now just as many women is matter watching football. How do they pull that one off?
Yeah, it's been a very deliberate long term strategy. FLAG is one way to teach the game to fans who aren't interested in you know, option plays and RPOs and all this other stuff, but they want they see the basics. I think they've been very good the branding of the league. I'm not just talking about preast cancer awareness, but literally the fashion items. If you go on NFL dot com,
there's a lot of women. They're lean into the women's fashion as well, and trying to make it st of more fan friendly.
The game day experience.
I mean the days when you would tailgate, drink a six pack of beer and go with your buddies. They're trying to make it so you can bring your kids to the game and your wife, maybe your girlfriend, So softening the sport a little bit. Not like the old dog Pound in the municipal stadium, you know she was. It wasn't even fan friendly, but yeah, it.
Was kind of a rough rout there.
So yeah, so I think these are all very deliberate efforts to sort of broaden the audience because the older fans, I mean not one of them, we're aging out. Younger kids want an experience. This isn't just true of football, but many sports. They're looking for the experience. They're not so much looking for a season package. They'll buy the jersey. But you needed Joe Burrow, you know, you need some star pal. And then the NFL has picked up on that.
Yeah, yeah, I think maybe still a little bit from the NBA speaking of that. Of course, you know we have controversies right and navigating and can suck concussion lawsuits and CTE and the flight gate and all that stuff. NFL is really really good about handling criseses and flare ups like that.
Yeah.
One of the themes in the book is you see over and over the Ray Rice issue, the bullying scandal, the de fight, to a certain degree, deflacate, the social justice protests in twenty seventeen. The NFL is kind of a depth at identifying the problem, trying to minimize the risk,
usually with lawyers. Concussion crisis an other example of this, and then trying to turn the focus back to number one quote what they call solutions, say for helmets, neurologists on the sidelines, and then trying to pivot forward and rebranding the game. They know, like it's you and I would understand, anybody would understand it. It's all about the games.
Once the games start, people are hooked, particularly late in the season, and so they try and ask these problems so they can quickly pivot back to the football, the action on the field.
Yeah, Ken, what do you see as the biggest threat to the NFL over the next decade? Is it health? Is it fan engagement? Something else?
You know. The players now see gambling very differently. Many of them have grown up as adults after sports legalized sports gambling. You know, sports gambling was legalized nationally, so they don't have the same Alex karras Paul Hornig, you know, Pete Rose stigma, right, And it's mean as more entertainment. And I think players are going to unwittingly walk into some of these traps and not fully grasp what's going on. The Other thing is cell phones.
This is both good and bad.
You can watch your favorite highlights to get your fantasy scores, but it also distracts you from the actual product. And gambling only accelerates that.
You know, the dopamine hit.
Of seeing your favorite player score a touchdown and maybe get your six points in a fantasy league is now accelerated, you know, hyped up when money is on the line, and you know, so, I think it's it's it's not just the NFL, but the NFL is the most gambled on sport, and I think they're going to grapple with sort of a changing fan attitude towards the league. And I don't know how you put the genie back in
the bottle. That's not my my expertise, but it's it's going to play out over a bunch of years now.
Also, wonder how AI is going to change all the that's that's the unforeseen. I'm the I'm sure the NFL lean into and adapt to whatever it is, But yeah, I see that from an entertainment perspective, which sports is. It's not about sports anymore, it's about entertainment. I see that as an existential threat.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now AI is being used mostly in in you know, analytics departments at teams, but also to figure out a way to get you to buy an extra ticket or you know, anticipate what you're going to want to drink when you get to the stadium, uh and send you a cl bond for it. So, right now it's mostly on the business side, but there could be media strategies around it. I mean, fans are using it all over the place, and you know, spoofing is a big issue too. But I just think that
the trusts. It's so hard in any brand to build up trust, and it can evaporate very quickly if there's a scandal and people stop believing what they're watching.
All right, veteran New York Times sports reporter Ken Belson. The book is every Day a Sunday, How Jerry Jones, Robert Craft, Roger Goodell turn the NFL knew a cultural and economic juggernauts. Fantastic read, Very very interesting, and considering we are the home of the best Bengals coverage, I think pretty relevant too to see where things have gone and where they're going. Can all the best? Good luck with the book, all right, Seattle your World Champions and
bad Bunny. I think Overshall almost overshadowed all that quick because it's kind of a boring game. We'll talk about that coming to next. Your impressions of it. If you went in and said, Okay, well it's only ten minutes, I've done worse for far longer. I'll watch this. I'll see what it's up. What's up about it your reaction to the Bad Bunny halftime performance of the Super Bowl yesterday. We'll get into that and more just ahead after new Scott's Loan show Monday morning on seven hundred W. I
had no idea what he's saying. I don't know what this is. Like the beat though, you know, whether it's Minnesota or Cincinnati, it is a lot of work to protest it really is. Uh Yeah, the game was Nah, It's kind of what I thought it would be. I was gonna be a close game, like the experts said that. Okay, I'll play along. Four and a half points. I don't know how close it's gonna be. It seemed like Sele was a better team than Man from the jump. They were if you like defensive battle. Sure, So it was
kind of like eh. And the ads I thought were eh, Like the duncan Ad was pretty good. The Infinity one and the will Shat one with I thought was laugh out loud, funny. A couple of key ones, you know, the Budweiser want some other ones, but by and larger. Yes, was all right, just all right. So then the biggest thing to talk about with the Super Bowl then would have been the bad Bunny halftime show. Look, I watched it.
It was only ten minutes of my life. Ok okay, I've done far worse for far longer, and it was just too hard to follow in retrospect. Would have killed you to put some subtitles up there. Maybe I guess I could have switched the subtitles on my TV, but like just sat there and watched it. And and if you did turn the subtitles on, by the way, it was in Spanish anyway, so and I thought, well, okay,
that maybe missed opportunity there. But you know, if you if you look past that, which is hard to do because it's music, and you would enjoy and figure out what the dude's saying. Man, you just watched like the choreography, the stories, the Latin horns. How they got all that crap on and off the field in ten minutes. I was pretty damn impressive myself. I know what I'm going on a limb saying that on this radio station of
all things to you. But I like, if you just looked at it without some sort of biasment and guy put on a hell of a show. You know, where else can you watch all these you know, thick Latina women dancing around and watch them and like, wow, dang things are moving around out there, and you know your wife doesn't give you the sharp bullbo or the stink guy.
For that alone, it's pretty good. A couple different cameos and things like that, and yeah, I watch it because I quite honestly, I was like, well, watch a couple of minutes of I want to see what that kid rock things about. And I try to find it. I'm like, Okay, by the time I find it, it's gonna be over anyway. So Or just flipped around and said, okay, what are the alternatives here? And there really wasn't, you know, unless I wanted to watch I don't know, Saving Private Ryan
or The Princess Bride too. Like I'm good now, I'm good. I think I'll just keep it here for another Well, it's only now seven minutes left, and I know that shot.
You know.
Trump comes out and says, I'm not that he's not a fan and it was the worst show he's ever seen. And at the same time he's never heard of him. I now clearly he's full of it. I And here's the thing, It's like, okay, great, but I'm not taking my musical cues from an eighty year old man, I'm like, I'm not looking at him, going well, should I like this or not? A you're not supposed to know who bad Buddy is, or that that plumb smuggling shorts are back,
or the mystery an intrigue of six seven. I'm much younger. I don't get it. And then I realized, like, I'm not supposed to same reason. I don't pay attention to celebs and their politics. I'm there for the music. And so if I go see Bruce Springsteen and he goes on a political rant, I just rolled my eyes and go, okay, play the songs. I don't we know you're a progressive leftist. I get it, Bruce. You just seem born to run, thank you, and you're gonna get a little that in
a three hour show. So you know, paid attention to celebrities in there possible. I don't. I don't really care. But at the same time, I don't pay attention to presidents and pop culture stick to policy because generally presidents are out of touch with that stuff. Anyway, it's about younger people. I don't know. The other thing too, he's protesting bad Bunny, but I thought he missed an opportunity, quite honestly, to protest the Puppy Bowl because out of
the chihuahua in a Great Dane. I mean, you know, if it's gonna be, just have English bulldogs and MutS. Basically, just have mutts on the Super Bowl. We can't have any peer birds. So yeah, Turning Point USA did the counter program with the Kid Rock headline the halftime show. I was gonna like, I should probably go watch this, but I did not, and Christy know him before they said they suck and will win and promised the NFL as NFL executives won't be able to sleep at night.
Well guess well, guess was right there. So the number came in, and I guess from what I understand, I maybe if you saw it. I'm just curious if you watching the kid Rock thing. And I've seen kid Rock probably half dozen times. It's an awesome show. I mean, he does a such a good job, so good, but like, I wanted to see what Bad Bunny was about. I know what kid Rocks about because I've seen him live half dozen times, but didn't know what Bad Bunny was
about until I watched it. But I guess they had streaming issues and it was also pre recorded, and someone said it was also pretty much on a sink too, so hey, good job there. So what were the numbers like, because the genius isn't that well. NFL executives not to be able to sleep at night. Yeah, because they're counting all their money. Six million eyeballs with the kid Rock thing.
One hundred and thirty five million watched Bad Bunny. That is now the most watched super Bowl halftime ever, beating Kendrick Lamar last year's most watched Super Bowl halftime ever, who beat out Michael Jackson, is the most watched super Bowl halftime of all ever. That's a lot of eyeballs. And I watched this one, Okay, I don't I don't understand what he's saying. I don't get some of the references.
I certainly know it's an interesting perspective from Latino culture, and you know, having all the flags at the end of it, like, oh, okay, get it. This is about the continent and all the way from the south to the north of Canada. I guess I got some of this stuff anyway, And yeah, we're there are political protests. I think you had a kid that looked like the five year old that got snatched up by ice, and you're gonna have moments like that. You know, love beats hate,
and that's that true. The love doesn't the world doesn't run on love, runs on fear and money. But you know, here again your celebrity or naive about that stuff, was really digging the sound. I love the sound of which I got to understand the words, but I couldn't. I think they missed on that one to maybe draw some people in. But again, ten minutes of my life, I'm like, I'm not. This is a battle I don't really care about.
But the business issue behind this, I think is really interesting because Bad Bunny was the world's most streamed artist for the fourth time last year, and it was obviously a business move to reach the Latino fan base because Roger Goodells, he made no stranger about it that he's going to reach out and try and make the same
global audience. And you know, sometimes it's painful. You know, the Berlin game at nine o'clock in the morning and general teams that really don't matter are playing over there, and you have Germany and now you have Latin America being exposed to football as well, and so obviously it's to get not only the Latino eyeballs on this thing, but also younger ones who are you know, gen zers are the future. And I think that's what's missing. This whole thing is if you don't understand the bad bunny
thing is. I understand a little, very little of it, but took it for what it was. It's because you're not the target of it. You're you're not who they're
going after. Let me give an alg Okay, friend of mine, Lisa Brown, who by the way, works at the Reds we went to school together, good friend of mine, and she used to work at MTV back in the day, and people would say this is back in the nineties, and then people, maybe our age would complain and go, that was going on MTV music television because like, there's no music, it's television, but there's no meaning. Whateveren the music videos. You guys don't show any meaning to videos.
And their sponsor was I I'll never forget this because it's one of the most sellient points ever, was that, well, you know, Harmer says, you know who never says that? Who? A fourteen year old never says what happened to the music videos? But it's perfect that opens your eyes or your ears in the case maybe going oh okay, I get it. But the people who complain that MTV is and MTV and you're not watching it anyway. You're not gonna go and watch old music videos or new music
videos because the music's not targeted to you. It's relevant to a fourteen year old. And I think the Bad Bunny thing emphasized that even more. It's it's targeted towards the Latino crowd. It's also targeted towards younger people, very younger people, the emerging money demographic, because look at this way you look at the eyeballs on the super Bowl. It's funny. The or for Bad Bunny. No one said, hey,
boycott the super Bowl, boycot the halftime show. Right, You're still watching the super Bowl because well, it's football, it's the last game of the year, it's a super Bowl. You' gotta watch that. You're gonna watch for that in the ad, it's the most American thing ever. And I think that's what's angry people is there's no America in this. Well
they should be American. Well, We've had other artists in there too that certainly represented other cultures and the like, and maybe not to this extreme, I understand it, but it goes to show you just how global the NFL has become. And in a day and age where we're more, I guess less globalists. That's why what flies in the
face of this thing. But there's no one winding that because if you look at the NFL, you have every eyeball you could possibly have in America watching the Super Bowl, every eyeball of the top one hundred shows, ninety of them are NFL football games. And so if you're to grow the revenue for owners, for Mike Brown, what you have to do is go outside the forty eight contiguous. You have to go to foreign countries, different continents to
do that. In order to draw those eyeballs in, you got to do things like bad Bunny to grow your bass. You know, if you just continue to dry it out. I don't know country and it mean nice, I'll beyond me. It'd be nice to see a country artist once in a while. And there went in like we've had hip hop and urb and you know, we've we've now had Latino. What's it called trap music. Okay, like like a good country artist to be pretty. Maybe next year they do it.
I don't know, but maybe there's at an appeal there. Maybe it's because, hey, guess what, we don't need more Americans watching. We need more foreigners watching this thing in order to grow things. But I mean, I'm curious if you saw the halftime show and maybe you okay, okay, I'll tolerate this, or maybe just kind of went and open minded and watched it. I'll tell you what I wish I would have understood. I wish I would have paid attention in Spanish when I was younger, maybe remember
some of the words, but I don't know. You're singing too fast and it's kind of you know, Pitbull kind of does a mix of English and Spanish, like okay, well, it's it's it's like subtitles within the song itself. I get, okay, good, but this is like the extreme of that. It's like watching a totally it's like watching unibusy on or something like that. This is not for me, but I was. I like the Latin sound. I think that's the coole sound. How can you It's like we have banjo music in America,
like there are no depressing banjo songs. Same thing I think for Latin Caribbean music that or Latin music anyway, Like it's all upbeat, it's horns, it's it's pretty good. But you know, not my cup of tea, because I would like to be able to sing along and understand what the what the words are. But there's I enjoy hip hop, and there's many times I can't understand what people are saying either because again it's not targeted me, it's targeted to someone a third my age. But I
just you know't play along anyway in person. In super Bowl Halftime Show and a Bad Bunny at five, one, three, seven, four nine, The Big One talk Back iHeartRadio app Let me go to a Lynn next on the show on seven hunderd w a Lyn, good morning, how are you?
Good morning?
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good? I'm good. I'm good.
Hey.
I'm sad because the Pats lost. I had a little draft kings on that I got.
Well, I'm happy because I'm a Bills and Bengals fan, so screw the Pats anyway, I'm sorry you lost money, though, Yeah.
I'm a Bengals and in Detroit fan. But uh, you know what last night, I you just hit the nail on the head on everything I was thinking. You know, I'm seventy years old. I didn't understand a word of it, as I didn't in Kendrick Lamar's music. You know, other you just can't understand them sometimes. But I knew going into watching this as much as I did that it
was going to be you know, the Latino dialogue. But man, I tell you, I shock my seventy year old booty because the rhythm looked great and I did like the Uh. I tried to figure out the references because I knew he was going to refer to different things. So I just was enriched with the culture and I did figure it out. So I you know, I enjoyed it. You know, stepping out of the box of money and power is hard, right, so h yeah.
They're just stepping out. Well you know what it is, Leon, it's stepping outside your comfort zone. I mean, we have music we grew up and traditionally you always go back and you know, I'll flipping around exam or something like that,
and it's like, you know, nine eighties, nineties. But yeah, I've heard all those songs before and you can sing along that's fine, and yeah, okay, I like to go to shows where, you know, like I don't know when Bunberry was here or Bourbon and beyond, you know, down in Louisville, where you get exposed a whole bunch of different artists, because you know, there's ones I like. But I'm not going to listen to that NonStop. I mean, there's some new artists out there that are absolutely incredible.
So I think life's too short. It's like, okay, whatever, I don't listen.
To bad Bunny music. I didn't listen to his music because it's just.
Not my show.
I am a large genre right, mostly classic rock and the jazz. But I respect I respect that man because I have I wanted to see him on other platforms leading up to the halftime show. What kind of guy is he? Yeah, you know, and I watched from Stephen Colbert and some some different shows that kind of portray who he is, how he speaks and how he reacts, and I I have a lot of respect for the man, so I enjoyed it looking at it in that to.
Those class, yeah, fair enough exactly, And I don't I don't you know, because you can form or purport to be something. It's like I have to like this specific music, like I'm not allowed to go outside that box. Like I'm not quite sure I agree with that if you like something like I kind of like this guilty pleasure. I have some guys that like chick flicks, like that's kind of funny, and you you know, break their chops
about it. But it's like, yeah, it's what I like. Sorry, I would admitting that it's outside the color and outside the lines a little bit. And it's like and then you're so you know, caught up in your beliefs. It's like, you know, I don't know Progressives, for example, you got to pretend to really like The Grateful Dead and Fish it's terrible. I gotta pretend I like, like, oh my god, these sons are great. They're terrible. List't I smoke a lot of weed. I like, I'll lisson go. It's still terrible.
It's just it's taking much longer. Or on the other side of that is Christians. You know, if you're the Christian identity, Christian and Christianity the whole thing, okay, with the rest of the world knows you love Jesus, Okay, get it awesome, that's awesome, But then you got to pretend to like the Christian rock and it's terrible. Like it's no, there's no green day of Christian rock, right, It's like it's it's kind of the antithesis of it or hip or whatever in my face, Like I gotta
pretend to like this stuff. It's still good to go, yeah, this is not good and then go go listen to something else. Just say, but man, people, the whole identity thing is like wrapped up and it was just a pain and the but to try and stream that, I think, and you know, from what I understand, the you know, six million eyeballs were I'm sure I'm sure you liked that. I've seen Chris Rock, Chris Rock, seen Chris Rock too, but Chris Kid Rock rather live a few times and
it's a great show. But like I've got bad, Buyer's pretty good. I mean, I just wish I would understand the music. I don't think I'm an download any of his stuff simply because I don't understand what he's talking about. But you know, the Latin beat and stuff like that, the choreography, the live wedding and all that stuff, and the fact that they got that much crap on and off the field in twenty minutes was absolutely incredible to me. Incredible. We'll do news and when we return, Dave the it
guy is here. So Nancy Guthrie, that case now enters a second week. How Crypto could open the kidnapping floodgates not just for you know, the rich and powerful, but we could see a revival of kidnappings if they're successful with this. Just how close are they and what we need to know about Crypto and how all that works with kidnapping details just ahead. Scott's Loan show, Home of the Red, seven hundred al W Cincinnati. When you think about the American dream, you think about Bill Cunningham.
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It's got phoning back on seven hundred w LW. Between Super Bowl and everything else, we are now into the second week of the Nancy Guthree kidnapping. FBI says we have no suspects. The family says they will pay the ransom several million dollars. So you hear that, you go, wow, could they really get away with us? And how does a crypto thing work? Anyway? Money it's untraceable. Is it like one of those Swiss bank accounts that bad guys used to back at the task. If you had a
Swiss bank account, you're up to no good? Right, same with crypto. I'm not sure. So we see a new wave of kidnappings result because if they get away with it, could you imagine the floodgates opening up on That is Dave the it guy. This guy is a former black hat hacker, which mean he's from the bad guys that would hack and do things that I can't speak of
right now, but now has seen the light. He's of white hat hackers who helps he good guys beat the bad guys, and especially when digital meets crypto and everything else in blockchain and what it all means. Dave, welcome, how you ben brother? Everything here is lovely? Well, let me put you back on speaker.
There you go.
Everything here is lovely, all right, So let's jump into this thing. It's a bizarre and gripping story. And you hope that she is still alive. Now I would think she is simply because the FBI is saying, look, you know, there's a kidnapping note, there's ransom. I'm sure the family has evidence that she's still alive, otherwise they wentn't offer the money. But how successful in the passes of spend. As I recall top of my head, I think was that the Colonial pipeline ransom was like two point three
million dollars or something like that. Crypto to me is, uh, it seems to me like we've done this before, but somehow they've been able to get some of this money back, right.
Yeah, you know, it's really kind of a mix. You know, it's not a big difference in a case like this, and it is from you know, if you get ransomware on your computer and it's time to pay with bitcoin, you know, it's it's traceable. It's not as anonymous as people think. You know, Bitcoin in and of itself isn't anonymous. It's all a matter of how you set it up and the steps that you can't.
You know, you get to.
Prethink a little bit, you know, if you really if I put my black dad on, if I was going to do something like this, I needed to start months ago by creating an anonymous, you know, bitcoin address, but I would need to make sure that I'm bouncing my VPNs around through the tour network, which is the dark web. Want to make sure that I'm not using anything known that you know it has ever been tied to me in
the past. I'm not using any banking regulation. Uh country easy, you know at the US in places where you mentioned Switzerland, i'mly enough, But if I wanted to cash out, Switzerland would be one of the places I would want to cash out too, for that reason, well, for the anonymity. So all right, so I wouldn't want to.
Yeah, let me go through the first steps here, because you know, again we're still most I don't know most people, but younger people certainly have a handle on crypto. Most anybody over the age of forty, I think may struggle with it. And if you're ever fifty, good luck with that. But it's blockchain, it's encoded. It's so they set up a I guess they would set up a bank account in which the ransom money would be paid in crypto. How does that whole transfer work? What goes on?
So it may not necessarily be a bank as typical people consider. You know, they're bank down the street. It's more of an exchange at crypto exchange, and you know, you get online. There are a lot, you know, their coinbase and Binance and a whole bunch of others. And you have to also look at what what kind of cryptocurrency is being asked for. You know, it's bitcoin that we all throw around bitcoin name because it's the most
well known name. But there are other forms of cryptocurrency that use different you have that use different block chains. Do you have ethereum and many others. So even Trump at a trump mean coin, right that was trading out. So anybody can create a coin of their own flavor and decide what the value is of that coin, and it's up to people to buy and sell it and keep that value flowing. Right, So that's kind of the beginning.
But which have whatever platform that you're gonna get your bitcoin for your you know, cryptocurrency from, that's where you can transfer that money to different wallets, you know, trying to play chase the funds, hide the money from from law, enforcemate that sort of thing, and ultimately consolidated all back into a traditional bank account.
So somebody you have a couple of you know, all these digital accounts and I requested, why wire me some money? Uh, there are little tiny finger digital fingerprints in there. That would be able to trace it to a person. So it's not totally and completely anonymous. So how many layers of laundering then has to go on here?
Uh for for you know, jest to get away with it quite a bit, quite a bit, I say, somebody that would put something like that together, if they just did it off, they're tough because they pay it, you know, at the end of something like this agut thery thing. Then you know, you might fall enforcement might have an easier way to trace them, you know, easier time.
I mean that in a.
Fair way, but uh, you know, because they are not they didn't think it through right. They made a mistake somewhere. But yeah, I could take you know, if if I you know, said hey, uh get me five bitcoin and you sent me five, I could split that up to be you know, half a big point here and and because of a big cooin there and whatever and spread
that out to tim payment. All of those would you could see those on the blockchain, which is basically you know, if you think of an old ticker tape, uh type of thing, it's like a ticker tape floating by going by on your screen. It says, you know, this amount or one point seven big coin went from wallet A to wallet be. That's aught it would show is about
to randomize wallet numbers and not necessarily people's names. And then that's where the investigators have to really get busy, because now you have to go faring where have those wallets UH contacted and their connected to the pass? What banks? What what? What scryptocurrency companies have they connected to? Et cetera,
et cetera. And like I said, if somebody did their homework up front and we created all this stuff months ago and then let them go what we call dark, which means nobody's using them, nothing's happening with them, they kind of fall off the radar. Then when you go to case we use them and law enforcement tries to trace them, then they've got no history to look at, right, there's nothing there. It's been dark for months or years
or whatever in case y Be, you know. And and then that way it makes them much harder to figure out who is assigned to. And by the time they do check it down, you had time to kind of wash that, you know, wash it through a different place.
So there's no way to flag that ahead of time that the counts active like you see the typical bank, you'd have to keep an eye on it all till you have to matter all the time, and you didn't know what it is.
I mean, I mean a wallet address can be up to like thirty five characters long, and it would just be random X y, thirty seven, E five, you know, et cetera, And you'd have to know what that address is going to be edified, which you're just not going to know.
Yeah, no, And it's I know, it's really hard to describe for those of us who aren't savvy with crypto exactly what's going on here. But you know, for those of us don't live in that world, there are different ways, as you said, multiple wallets, different block chaps, converted, different forms of change. If you do that enough times, does it become practically untraceable, unrecoverable it does?
You know? You could you could take a bigcoin and exchange it into ethereum, exchange it into the salata, et cetera. And when I start filling out these names of other cryptos, I mean think about there are thousands on the global scale, and you know, these well known cryptos thousands, and so I could take you know, that one big coin and break down so minutely that in a ware a few to trace it, you had to you know, tase a point.
Here is zero zero seven five three segment of bitcoin that get transferred into Solara, that get transferred into uh, you know, ethereal.
And then different wallet's on top of that. It sounds like you're literally trying to find not even a needle in a haystack, but you know, maybe just the very tip of the needle in the in a world of haystacks. It sounds almost untraceable if they're doing it right. You know, it's really early in this investigation. We also don't know
exactly what the FBI knows. We never will until maybe later at some point in years and years and years from now we're still around, hopefully, Nancy Guthrie is, but does it sound does this look like like this is a lot more organized than a snatch and grab, like they put a lot of thought on this. Does does it come off as you and again we don't know anything behind the scenes here, but do you have that suspicion that this is a really well organized operation?
You know, I I don't know, and I'll say it for two reasons. Well, when I know that there was some guy at his name is staves me that's already been uh you know, got in trouble this week or sometimes you know, last week of a fraudulent crypto claims. Right, he's you know, and and and so obviously that idea came out and somebody started to cash in on the idea.
But it also does to me like it took it took a long time to get to the crypto piece of this puzzle, you know, whereas I used my uh well, so my experience was ransomware and not necessarily extortion via kid happy, but you know, in ransomware, you immediately know, hey there's a ransom for block for crypto. You know, uh, it's right on your communience street. Hey this big coin by this day or goes up or whatever the case is.
So you know pretty quickly, and if if that type of extortion or that type of organization is getting into the physical kid that being a crypto world, then you know, gosh, they were very patient, right, you know, to plan out that kid that being to do it and then wait a little bit before they have throughout the whole crypto gall and so I think, you know, it's hard to say, I mean, gosh, it feels like it's maybe maybe it's not an entirely new world for he's into law enforcement people.
But you know when they start bringing in their IT people, in their their people that trace this thing, geta fe actually do flavor.
It is Uh, it's pretty jaw dropping because you know, in the past, as we mentioned earlier, it's Dave, the I T guy in the show on seven hundred w w w's our black hat white hat hacking expert on the show and knows a lot of things about the deep and dark Web and things unbelievable stuff that he's seen online. And unfortunately he's working on the good guy side of this thing, has no hand in this investigation, but it's kind of taking us through what the FBI
is up against here. In the ransom for Nancy Guthrie, who we presume is still live, the family came out and said, we'll give you the six million. It's going to be in bitcoin or wreathium or whatever the digital wallet, whatever the crypto is, and it'll be converted and laundered in a bunch of different ways, making it really really hard for anyone to get traced. So you know, typically We've all seen the heist movies where they've got Duffel bags full of hundreds in jenas Jason Stadium being a
badass or something like that. In this case, it's all digital. So you don't have that transportation issue. You don't have the physical cash issue. You rob a bank, right, they throw the bundle in that has the tracer on or the die pack. Can you have a digital equivalent of that?
Knowing that they're going to give these people or person bitcoin or whatever it might be, they can the fbiack, Can the Feds actually put a little bit of a I don't know, a digital fingerprint in that particular transaction or is that untouchable?
It's it's not assari I have put it there. It's more so that by default electronic items put them there. You know, like your computer has an IDEA address, so that's okay, but it also has a MAC address, and that it is a fingerprint for your computer or your phone or anything in technology that such is the Internet. So you know, there are different fingerprints the routers that a signal goes through, uh, leaves of drifts, So there are you know, I mean, you know lower as you said,
tracing package that that people can hear that. You know, law enforcement could use that, all the people can use the kind of be a bigger picture. But again, if somebody's planned it out well enough, you know, it would be the same as you know, if you went and buy yourself a house and put it under a shell court that was by a shell corp, by a shell corporate, et cetera. You know, somebody can ultimately figure out that
you own that house. Let's won't take them a while, and by the time they figured it out, you may not care, you know. So you know, different, different analogy, but trying the same same idea as to how hard it could be. So is it impossible? Absolutely not. You know, they're law enforcement takes down these ransomware games, you know, on an annual basis. So it happens, it gets crazy. It just isn't as fast usually as most people want
it to be. But again, this kidnapper, a person, whatever this whole deal is, you know, not not be as tech savvy as if they are. They might be uh scrambling or shares. Now they're going to mess it up and give themselves away.
Yeah. Now, in the past, you know, we we've seen a rise in these things largely as you mentioned, it's ransomware, colonial pipeline. I just looked this up. FBI got two point three million back from that and six million of the fifteen paid for the Chicago crypto case. But now now this is a high profit, high profile individual, national
attention on this whole story. If this is successful, I mean, it's like a I don't know, maybe a modern day version of the Lindberg baby kidnapping, right where the FBI said enough, we're going to stop this, because back in the twenties and thirties it was rampant with kidnappers for
the same thing until it became a federal crime. If indeed this looks and it turns out to be successful over a long period of time, Dave, do you think that other people look at this and go, now it opens the fudgates for kidnappers.
Absolutely, I mean you've already got you know, kidnapped being a store. Shit is going on and Eastern European countries, you know. And then just like you said, this has been a high profile enough that you know, I watched BBC and other international channels and this has shown up on the international stage. And it may be that it's already happened in Eastern Europe at a local level where we are.
Not hearing about it.
And it could be that, you know, the FBI and ANSA and whoever else has had to reach out across the pond to get some experience or to get some ideas or tips. You know, this could already be a thing that we're just in a dark because you know, typically America is behind Europe and just about everything.
Right techno from a technology perspective. But on that I look at this and go okated. In nineteen thirty two, I believe it was when the Lindberg baby disappeared as kidnapped and Charles bertoll Hopman was the one who was caught and summarily execute as a result of that capital crime.
That changed federal laws. They changed right away. It became a the preview the FBI, and now you could go across state lines and the death penalty was part of this whole thing, and it stopped a lot of the kidnappings. We saw a little bit, you know, Patty Hurst back in the seventies with different types of movements, but now
it looks like it's back in a crypto form. Is there anything agat new to change laws to do what they did in nineteen thirty two with Lindbergh to prevent more kidnappings, or are our hands tied when it comes to this.
Yeah, it's a good question. Again, I only played an attorney on YouTube, so I have to gets here. But I think, you know, when it comes to like me being if I was ex kiddingapper and I said an email or some kind of note about ransomware, as soon as I involved the cryptocurrency world, in my esteem, I believe that the Feds already have some laws already wrapped around in place to make that a federal card. You know,
we have that, we have that with ransomware. As soon as you do that, the Feds get involved, be involved if they want to be at least. So I think
to some extent that that rapper is already there. But with day now, you know, the law, have any kids up the technology you know that we that we see every you know, every year and every everything that happens, It wouldn't surprised me that some new kind of tirestore or additional you know, get dumb or something would would get looked at or something like this, especially if it just becomes effective. I really, I hate I hate to
say that I'm interested. Didn't see how this turned out, but I mean, just how this turned out.
Yeah, well I think we are too, because it feels like that might be hanging in the balance here.
Uh.
And then, as you said, the FBI has really got that work cut out for them. He's Dave, the I T guy in the Scotsland. Appreciate you jumping on this morning, buddy. Always great information, all the.
Best, Thank you, thank you.
Take care of yourself. We'll do a news update here momentarily.
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It's gonna get a lot warmer real quick. It's gonna matter. We're gonna be walk around necked this time tomorrow. We'll find out just how warm slowly seven hundred ww.
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Everyone needs help every now and then, and she's here to help us get our heads right. This is Mental Health Monday with mental health expert Julie Hattershire.
Yeah, mental Health Monday. That's how we roll, especially today with you know you're in winter and everything else. We've
talked a lot about that. There's another element here too, and it is probably one of the things if you think of the elements and illnesses that you don't want to get, not that you want to get one, but you don't want to get, dementia has to be pretty near the top of list for you, right, It is for me because that effects of forty two percent of people over the age of fifty five see some of
the effects of dementia. So brain changes begin decades though before the symptoms of We know that now there's a new tool that could help in this, and of course Julie Heatershare, our licensed mental health therapist, to explain. Julie, welcome, Hey, how are you. I'm doing fine. I worry about things like you know, als and dementia. I mean, these are horrible, horrible illnesses that you wouldn't even wish on your worst enemy because and I think for dementia, for the person,
it's probably not bad. I'm guessing it's the caregivers. It's your loved ones that watch this cognitive decline occur. And that's the worst part about it.
I think it's a really hard part about it. And this is a topic that's so important to me because I have Alzheimer's on both sides of my family. My maternal grandmother at Alzheimer's, my father currently does, and then my sons get that double whammy of Alzheimer's from me, but they get a whole lot of Parkinson's disease on their dad's side of the family, which is another illness.
Yeah, not wish on your worst enemy.
So I've been really paying a lot of attention of late to what we can do to prevent or mitigate the impact of these neurological illnesses, and dementia is one that I've been focused on because I have been dealing with it with my dad excellence.
I mean not excellent, your dad is excellent. That you are, you know, because I think a lot of people worry about it, and maybe we can assuage some fears here.
Yeah, I think maybe we can give people some information that you might not hear in the news so much so in the news, we hear a whole lot about supplements for brain health, and those can be really useful about changing your diet the Mediterranean diet, nuts, grains, vegetables, fish, not a lot of meat, not a lot of deep fried food, Olive oil, not a lot of sugar. That definitely improves mental cognition. Pharmaceuticals, there are new medications out
there that slow the impact. But something that I think doesn't get a whole lot of traction in the media are the cognitive and lifestyle changes that you can make that will either prevent the disease to some degree or at least slow the onset of the symptoms and compress it into a shorter time frame. You're dealing with it in the last few years of your life, perhaps not the last decade or two of your life.
Okay, so let's start there. Then. From your experience, it's called cognitive reserve. I think that's the big thing I mentioned. You know, there's a new tool that can he is it really a tool? What's cognitive reserve?
It's not so much a tool as it is a word to describe a bunch of different things that all fall into this idea that the more brain matter you have that you use, the more you can lose before you start to notice it. So think of it like your brain's bank account. If you have a lot of money in your actual bank account, you can lose five hundred dollars and while you might not be happy about it, it's not going to have a huge impact on your life.
If you've only got one thousand dollars in your bank account and you lose five hundred, five hundred is going to have a much bigger impact on your life. So the more cognitive matter you have in your brain at the time that the symptoms begin, the more you can lose before you really start to notice the effects. So we're talking about how to bulk up your brain such that how to bulk up your brain's bank account such that the dementia doesn't have such a huge impact.
Okay, like a muscle, right, you build it up superhuman strength there and you can lose a little but you'll still be okay. So cognitive reserve, So how do you build that brain up and what you're talking about, how do you add funds to that account?
Well, so the first thing is this idea of life long learning. And for many people that's a tenant they live by. But for other people, they go to school, they go to high school, they may go to college, and then they sort of fall into doing the same thing over and over and over again in their life and not trying to either deep in their learning or
learn something new. So one of the things that we've learned in a whole bunch of years of studying this is that lifelong learning continuing to challenge your brain, either going deeper in the field that you're already in, learning more and more about what you do, picking up a new hobby, learning a new language, learning a new skill, and having it be something that you can actually practice and put into use keep all of those brain cells functioning.
It actually builds new brain connections, new neural connections, and it can build new brain cells, and so that when some start to die as a result of the dementia, you have others to take their place. So lifelong learning, whether it's a new skill set, whether it's a new language, whether it's a totally different field. I changed completely changed fields in my mid thirties. I know people who have completely changed fields in their forties and fifties and had
to learn a whole new discipline. All of that sets you up to have a lot of brain power available as you age.
Okay, and that makes total sense. So the idea that hey, and this is maybe why you see it in people who are I retire, I don't want to do anything like me. I've joked for a long time, like, I'll tell you when I retire, all the stuff you need to know about world events and all these history and all those things. It's like, within six months, I'm going to be the dumbest son of a bit you ever met in your life, because, simon, I'm not looking at anything, man,
I'm not reading. And that's probably a bad strategy.
It's probably a bad strategy unless you say I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to do something else instead. I'm going to really focus and try to dive deep abroad into some other things instead. So it's not not doing what you are doing, it's not doing anything at all. So if your retirement looks like watching reruns of Reds games on the TV and drinking beer,
you're probably not setting yourself up for success. But if it looks like completely changing field and going into even more flipping houses and rehabing houses than you already do, or finding some other discipline or some other field that you really want to get involved in and learning new things. That makes perfect sense.
Yeah, I think, okay, the approach should be, yeah, I'm going to play more golf, travel more, but also like maybe I'll learn to play an instrument, or I don't know, if I'll learn better to tell your Spanish or something like that. Those are things that you could volunteering. Those are things that engage your brain.
Volunteering is a wonderful one. I do want to talk a minute about learning to play an instrument. So learning to play an instrument is a wonderful thing to do. I was a music major in undergrad, but I was a singer. I wasn't an instrumentalist. I'm now teaching myself to play piano. So, first of all, music is another language. So when we talk about learning languages, we think about French, Italian, German, Spanish.
Music is another language. And when you actually play an instrument, your hands are dexterous and they have to do different things. There's no instrument where your hands do the same thing all the time. So that physical piece of the learning as well as the new language is really important and fires up two different parts of your brain at the same time. That's gold. So musical instrument or a wonderful way to assuage or minimize the effects of Alzheimer's. Okay,
but yes, learning a different language. Volunteering is really important, being of service to others, having a purpose in life, doing something in your volunteer world that maybe is a little bit different than you did in your work world. If you were mostly a sitter and a talker like I am, maybe volunteering you do something more physical. If you were mostly a physical person like a builder or a landscaper, maybe in your volunteer life you do something
a little more sitting and talking. So you're not just working one set of skills or one set of attributes that you have. You're branching out and strengthening others as well.
Nice, Okay, good, all that makes sense. It's like doing something up. But you've got it. You've got to be a little curious, intellectually curious one to learn new things. Just sitting there and doing the same things you've always done is not going to be good. For your mental health, and we see the client when it comes to dementia because that is a fear for a lot of people as we age. You know, Alzheimer's dementia is very, very frightening.
And are there other elements here too? You mentioned supplements, and I know that's maybe outside your scope a little bit. Here is are there things that actually help?
Or the thing that I can say with confidence that actually helps is the more Mediterranean based diet. Okay, there is so much research behind that that even as a lay person, I can say with confidence that every doctor I know would recommend that as a brain based diet. And that really is vegetables and fruits, whole grains, nuts, beings, fish, not a lot of actual red meat, not a lot of fried foods, all of oil, not a lot of sugar.
So that diet, I.
Can say as a therapist is really great. Anything else would be outside my scope of practice, so I wouldn't be able to talk to that. But another thing that can really help is physical activity. And we know that physical activity is great for all different kinds of things like anxiety and depression. It's also really good for maintaining your cognitive else and when you do complex physical movements. So getting out and walking is lovely. I'm in no
way saying that isn't lovely. But when you do complex movements that engage your brain and require quick reactivity, that's even better. So playing a sport like tennis a pick a ball where you have to respond to what's coming at you over the next or taking up dance partner dance, ballroom dance where you have to remember choreography, or playing golf even where you have to manage multiple small adjustments in your movement in order to get a desired result.
All of those.
Engage your brain. Whereas walking you can kind of shut your brain off you go for a long run. People talk about being able to shut their brain off. There's benefit to that. But when we're talking about the cognitive benefits of exercise, things that actually make your brain and body work together, yoga, martial arts, tai chi, things like that, those are really important because your brain has to say involved as your body is moving.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So with your well, what about social media TikTok for example, you see you've got to use your thumbs to scroll, Yeah, and you.
Just blaze over in front of it and let it all wash over you like a sea of toxicity or redundancy either way. So social engagement yes, social media engagement not so much. And what we know about the social engagement is verbal social engagement is the best in person or even on the phone, because if you are engaging with people via text or via email they send you a test or they send you an email, you have an opportunity to think about how you want to respond,
You have an opportunity to process through it. Sometimes that's good, but if we're talking about keeping your mental powers sharp, being able to respond quickly, being able to go back and forth in a conversation, being able to pivot, being able to support your points and to engage in that way, keeps your brain nimble and nimble and agile brains are far less likely to experience the sentence of dementia than
brains that are less nimble and agile. So social engagement is important, but verbal social engagement is the best of all.
Relative to dementia. Are things like depression chronic stress PTSD. Does that increase dementia risk?
Yes, absolutely it does. And one of the things that was surprising to me is early hearing loss increases dementia risk. So if you're hearing goes in your forties or fifties, the likelihood that you're going to experience dementia goes up pretty significantly. So one of the things that joses are now recommending.
Is that you get you know what I do.
I wear a headphones for at least three hours a day and I'm path right now. So thanks, that's yeah.
And I have seen you at concerts too without your plugs, so I know these things.
I'm not paying to hear the sound of the ocean, my ears from the tenatus. I'm paying to hear the.
Music, really, to hear the music.
I know, I know, so early hearing loss is surprisingly a risk factor for dementia, as is early loss of vision. So with my dad, one of the things that we didn't realize was his vision problems, which happened well over a decade before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, were actually a precursor to his dementia. There's a part of your brain I didn't notice that turns binocular vision into monocular vision. So we have two eyes, we actually see two images,
and our brain turns them into one cohesive image. That part of the brain often dies with Alzheimer's or actrepphies with Alzheimer's, So he was having double visions for a very long time and nobody realized that that was the result of the Alzheimer's atrophying that part of his brain. So vision changes and hearing loss are early indicators could be early indicators of Alzheimer's or dementia or brain loss. Important to get those checked out.
I think we also think we are getting it when we don't too, because you know my wife, for example, I'd love my wife to death, but she will often our marriage is like and you may be in the similar situation too, where you've been together for a while and every day is like playing jeopardy because she'll be, well, what is that thing we ate? You cooked it? And what's an artich joke?
Yeah?
That's it? You know that girl? She was in a closet, and she also in the newspaper. Who is Patty Hurst? Yes, thank you? And it's just like a constant barrage of me trying to figure out I got to keep track of my stuff and her stuff. Does she have early on set dementia, Alzheimer's or is that just life?
I think that's just life. My experience is that oftentimes couples rent space in each other, people in each other's brains for free. Like you asked her where the mustard is and she asks you who that person was in the closet. He was also in the bank robbery. Yes, you rent space in each other's brains for free. You back each other up when you forget stuff. But yesterday I forgot to pretty important thing just completely space them and I thought, oh, no, that does not bode well
because I usually don't do that. I'm usually pretty on top of stuff. Two pretty important things just went right out of my brain yesterday.
We all do it, so I do think we all do it.
We all do it.
But the effects of that, though, as you said, though, that's stress and everything out and we're trying to cramp so much information, ten pounds information at a five gallon bucket, in my case a two gallon bucket, and what in later in life that may cause the attributes of dimension on.
Alzheimer's It could.
I think the overload of information that we don't actually do anything within process can be problematic because it adds stress and stress responses to us. And we do know that stress and depression and anxiety can exacerbate symptoms of dementia. I would not say there's research to indicate it causes it, but people who have chronic stress, untreated or badly treated anxiety or depression tend to feel the dementia more than people who don't have those things. So stress management very important.
If you have depression and anxiety, managing that with the appropriate treatment according to your doctor very important because while it may not hasten the dementia, it may make the symptoms far more impactful than they would otherwise be okay, you.
Know, because we didn't get the mechanisms getting examined and checked out. This is more about prevention and noticing it and trying to delay that, especially if there's a genetic component like in your family, which is very, very scary, but you're even more aware of it. I think we all are, because dimension is one of those conditions where it's just it just rereaks havoc. For a family. It's absolutely horrible. And there's a handful of those diseases disorders
that come to mind. And I always say he's like, listen, oh yeah, you know, get your knee done, your shoulder done, all these things. I'm like, that's fixable.
Man.
The stuff we're talking about is not fixable. If you're to have something, I'd rather have something that be you know, fixed medically speaking through an appliance or something like that, or you know, an implant as opposed to my God, diseases the mind, cancer, things like that. So be blessed. If that's not you. Julie hattersh youre a licensed mental health therapist. It's Mental Health Monday with Julie. You can get a hold of her at Julie. Hey, Julie at
Bconnected dot care. That's hey, Julie at the letter be Connected dot Care. She practices out of Clifton. Thanks again for the time. We'll talk next week.
Thank you.
I don't know what it is about our state, but we've got some issues with THHC and CBD because you know Sentate Bill fifty six with Marijuia. It has to do with the THHC and fused beverages that people like, and now we're going to ban that. Coming up on ag I'm sorry August. How about March twentieth, and they're trying to get signatures for yet another referendum go on the ball, and it's like this thing has been torn apart more than Lindsey Vaughan's knee. For God's sakes, it
doesn't really need to be this way. We've got our buddy on from an urban artifact. Scottie Hunter's on the show to talk about that initiative, that citizen led initiative, and what it means and why we can't get this right. It's really not that hard. Other states around us have figured this thing out. Of weekend in Ohio details on the way of new seven hundred W all right, solw me back on seven hundred WLW. It is a whip saw vomit worthy whip saw back and forth and fourth
and back over CBD and THC and specifically infused drinks. UH, and that battle continues. Is Ohioans for Cannabis Choice received approval to collect signatures for a referendum to appeal Senate Bill fifty six and our friend, of course in UH in Tip City response for that is on often and Steve Huffman, Senator Huffman, and this would look to undo primarily that law and Ohio's coming band on THHC infused drinks. Scottie Hunters here he's the founder and co owner of
Urban Artifact Brewing in Cincinnati. Scotty, welcome.
Are you.
How much I'm doing fine? I continue to follow this. The battle is again. You're lively. You have a family, of a young family. Your livelihood is tied to this whole thing. And it breaks my heart because you and others are early adopters saying, hey, you know what, we found a market, We found a niche that wasn't seen by anyone, and that is using the derivatives of CBD and the THC taken out of the CBD products to make these beverages. A lot of people like it. Literally
millions of people across the state enjoy this. And and you know, with a pens, the wave of a pen, it's all over. You got ninety days to collect signatures the November third ballot and it has to do with undoing Senate Bill fifty six. So we'll start at the beginning. When this whole thing happened. How quickly did it involve? How quickly this thing unravel I guess is the best way to describe it.
Yeah, I mean, in terms, we thought that we were going to have a decent regulatory bill heading into the towards the end of the last legislative scussion and then kind of that the midnight hours when things changed during conference committee and we got what got signed in the law from Governor Dwine, which is now let's be six
and six. So it really took us back, quite honestly, because we thought we had all the you know, the key constituents, yeah, line up in order, We had everybody understood kind of what the industry was and how the industry wanted to root out the bad actors that you know Governor Dwined and a lot of the politicians have highlighted. We were full agreement with that. We want regulation. We've asked for regulation for years. So it took us back.
We really thought we were on a path to get some solid regulation before that last minight hour.
Yeah, and then all of a sudden, it just it completely, it completely fell apart. I think it's a disturbing thing. But give me an idea how much revenue for you guys, without getting too proprietary here, but how much do you have invested in that in that particular sector and talk about its growth.
Yeah, No, it's it's a huge, huge potential piece of
our business. I mean, you know, we're in Ohio based business and I don't think a lot of people know, but but our beer brand is the most widely distributed in terms of geographical territory out of any in the States, with about twenty states and totally we fell to but you know, Ohio's at home working and the same thing for our products to sallow and that was more than fifty percent of our sales for that we're you know, it's I can see that completely gone if we don't
get this successful referendum. So you know, that could be anywhere from twenty to thirty percent using last year's numbers, or if we use some of the growth numbers states on some of the retailers we're expecting to jump on board,
you know, it could be even higher. So there's a lot of you know, potential losses that we're facing with our business, and you know that that can mean you know, less investment in Ohio because look, the demand is not going to go away, right Like there's not there's not an alternative that that serves the same purpose that it's you know, when at least we're talking beverage specifically, and there's other pieces that are still banned that that are very much the same boat, such as full SEC and
CDV products. There's there's no alternative. This just that's dollars and jobs and tax revenue gone for Ohio period.
And that, as I recall, speaking in others, the fastest growing segment, like literally it's wildfire went from nothing to something big overnight. You mentioned twenty thirty percent, but that I would imagine that growth was going to continue and get you your rise had this thing not been knocked down and has this thing been killed by fifty six.
Oh, no doubt.
I mean even with you know a lot of chain retailers. Let me let me say one thing, well quick, So there was this notion that this category is completely unregulated. That's that's not the case. I don't know the state that doesn't have regulation on hemp cultivation or processing, right, So that's that's kind of the starting point. Ohio has
those regulations as well. We hold hand processor's license with the state of Ohio, so our products had testing requirements and other quality requirements that you would expect to see for products for sale in the state of Ohio. That so that notion that is completely unregulated is kind of false. But anyway. Because there wasn't the retail regulation, you had some people kind of waiting in the wings to jump
on board. And because of that, you know, even with that being said, we were seeing ten percent or more months somewhat growth of our brand here in Ohio up until the executive order was issued back in October of last year. That's when we started to see it get a little bumpier. And now we still have retailers, you know, committed to the category and doing what they can to support. But it doesn't mean that some haven't faltered. There's been.
There's definitely been some pullback as people they're not they're not sure where they're where things are going to land, and so even if it's a small piece, so they're they're just in a wait and see mode.
Well, here's the thing, it is the job of you, and I would include other people. I spoke Bobby Slattery at fifty West, Anna Bakovic and Ryan GUIs. All you guys are in the same boat. It's up to you guys to innovate and come up with something that's marketable. And you know, there are a lot of failed stories that we don't know about, and how many products and different things you've tried that haven't worked, but this one clearly hit it out of the park because of the
attraction of the thhch E fuse beverage market. It's just as you mentioned, go through the stratusphere at least it would have anyway. And then the government comes in and says, yeah, you know what, that's unregulated. Well, it's your job to innovate. Isn't that their job to regulate without shutting everything down?
Yeah, I would absolutely agree, especially when you have industry stakeholders consistently coming to legislators and saying, hey, we want regulation. Here's examples of other states that you're can a dooct regulations from those full key pieces from you know, West Virginia, Kentucky. We have neighboring states and not to mention another dozen or so that have retail distribution regulations. There's examples. It works, there's tax revenue, there's xi tax available to the state.
You know, there's this is good jobs for people, for Ohioans that are struggling. Otherwise we're going to have black market, We're gonna have people growing to other states, and that's just money leaving Ohio. When I don't think Ohio can really afford that.
That's so questioned about it. We need the revenue, clearly, it's something that people adults want. I get the idea of preventing you know, edibles and tintures and things that are sold over the counter and carry out stores to kids. You know, Mike, the wine God bless and wants to protect kids. And you know you have a young family, you know, watch your kids getting this stuff. But that's again, it's back to regulation. It's not about prohibition.
Yeah, absolutely, Scott. And you know, we were selling our products into retailers that had alcohol licenses, that already knew how to age gate and ensure that adults were purchasing these products. So the notion that you know, these were just being handed to kids on the street corners is completely false. And it's kind of a spot in the face through the entire industry in the state of Ohio
that was supporting this. In the distribution industry, which the state has trusted us for the craft wing industry, you know a little bit more than a decade or so is in full force. But the distribution injury for you know, one hundred years, right, we've shown that we can do this and to suggest that we can't otherwise, it's just disrespectful.
Honestly, did you ever get a satisfactory answer from the governor or anyone from that line that that party in Columbus as to why no?
Not?
Really, you know, we've gotten the same kind of answers that you've seen in articles or on press conferences. That's pretty much it. I got to think that there's something else lying behind there. I don't know what it is, quite honestly, but when you have so many, you know, whether it be the Ohio Restaurant Hospitality Association, the Craft Brewers Association in the state, and many other trade groups supporting this category, and to see and constituents right widely
popular across the state. To have it take it away when you have all that support is just crazy to me.
In conversations in the past I've had with Governor Mike DeWine, and this was before marijuana was legalized. You know, he was dead set against he's he's hated from the jump. Didn't understand it, don't understand why you want to have it. Well, it's you know, good, destroy families and homes and you know, the sky is falling. Nature of the pearl clutch, so of course that didn't come to fruition. It's been a
boon for the state of Ohio. Sales began in twenty twenty four, late twenty twenty four, and it's in excess of eight hundred and thirty billion, eight hundred thirty million dollars almost a billion dollars just in twenty twenty five. And obviously that number is going to be surpassed this year before we know it. And so clearly there's a market for this. This whole unregulation thing made it all started with that. It's like, no, you can't have it,
can't have it, you can't have it. And then finally because of grassroots, and of course they will say it's outside, you know, foreign money and other states, and yeah, but you know what, I can go to Oregon. I can go to places like that use the products. See how it's dispensed. I remember coming back here years ago Scottie and having and my brother lives out in Oregon and going on, my god, you want it's like a buskin baker.
You walk in, you got a bud tender, you pick your stuff, everyone's happy, you pay the taxes, it's safe, it's secure, the whole thing. They didn't want to hear that. And of course what happened was will the people took over and we got what we wanted, and that at that point they decided we got to step it at
the eleventh hour and start regulating stuff. It's because of I don't know whatever it is that that there against when it comes to what consumers want, reasonable adults want, by the way, not kids adults, And they were just going to fight you tooth and nail. And this is just the latest indignation.
Yeah.
And another piece of SP fifty six too is there's reclineralization of what the voters passed in twenty twenty three in regards to recreational marijuana. Right, Yep, you can get in trouble for buying edibles from another state. Maybe you you know, you visit family in Oregon and you have a few extra gummies left in your in your bag, you bring them back to a while, all of a sudden, you can you can be in trouble for bringing that in the state. If this passes there, it goes into effect.
As it's plated too. You know, it's just rolling and it's not only not listening to the adults, but not listening to the voters, and we're rolling back what the voters had voted on. And that's why you know, we've taken this initiative on this referendum to strip those aspects of SB fifty six, because look, it's clear this is what the voters want, and the industry, when you talk specifically,
wants regulation. So let's come to the table, let's put something together that everybody can you know, work with, and let's move forward, and let's work on bigger issues than you know, something that's very cut and dry in my opinion.
Yeah, and the other things in here too. And I don't know what this is going to change. Maybe you can tell me clearly it's going to in this proposal. By the way, it's Ohioan's for Cannabis Choice, which you're a part of receiving approval. Clock signatures got ninety days from now until to get this on the ballot for November third, in order to overturn fifty six. What else would this change besides the intoxicating drink? So I'll just
run through maybe some of the highlights here. It banned smoking marijuana in most public places, prohibit possession outside original packaging, as you mentioned, criminalizes bringing legal marijuana in from other states, and requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk. This law is going to take effect end of March I think, March twentieth, I believe, and you're gonna get this hopefully back on the ballot for November third. But how much of that would with that overturn everything?
Yeah, so we'll click on the signatures. We have ninety days from when the governor signed the bill to collect the signals. Okay, so we have to collect the signatures before the effective date of the bill. So that's why, you know, getting the EG to certify it on the second attempt was huge because it gives us a little bit more time. That's just the wild constitutions. There's no changing that. But in essence, it repeals all of SB fifty six excess for the provisions that allowed for the
marijuana attack to go to local municipalities. Right, we didn't want to mess with that, ye that those tax dollars should be going to those communities. That's hugely important. That needed to get done. So everything else gets gets removed and then you know, the market can continue to operate as it were, and hopefully you know, that will trigger the legislature to come to the table with a you know, more favorable bill to the industry to be able to
continue to operate. Because we're talking six thousand different businesses just in the hemp in the city of Ohio that are looking to be shuttered if this bill goes into effect. And you know, I know many businesses associated given where we're at with this, there's people that have already made significant layoffs, right. You know, now we have more and more people on unemployment because of the signature of this bill when realistically it didn't need to ever be signed.
Yeah, and it just seems so punitive too, you know, requiring drivers to store marijuana in the trunk in criminalizing bringing from other states. I mean, how the hell would you throw my receipt out when I leave Michigan, for example, I was like, okay, well approve it proved I has bought it there. You can't do that, uh, storing it
into the trunk. I mean I could carry you. I can have a bottle of wine that's you know, bagged or if it's open, or a six pack and a gun in the front seat of my car, no problem, But damn I got marijuana, I better put it in the trunk locked up. It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, And then there's there's a paraphernalia claus in there where if you don't buy pairing a paraphernalia that's approved by the state and consume marijuana with that, you can also get in trouble. And it's like, who's to say, how you like, if I buy a beer, you have to tell me what blast I can drink it?
Right, right right? If you're a pipe smoker, the pipe, the mere sham pipe has to be approved if you're smoking tobacco.
Yeah, like that that's beeing ridiculous. And it just opens things up to target individuals in a way that I mean, I can't believe it is constitutional, but they're they're riding the laws there that gives so much option to target it. Just it shouldn't sit well with anyone.
He really doesn't in the state.
While regardless of how you feel about cannabis in general, like just some of those basic individual liberties that could be harmed, you shouldn't sit well.
Right, it seems easy to keep it out of them. Maybe not easy, but it seems easier to keep it out of the hands of kids because you have strong enforcement. You know. Same with alcohol. I mentioned you could have a bottle of wine or some beer or liquor for that matter, in your front seat. As long as it's sealed, you're good. I don't understand why you can't do that. Why you have to have marijuana, you know, thirty feet
away from it. Is it like a bag, you know, the fries at the bottom of the bag that you're you know, you're so tempted you're going to fire up as opposed to crushing some some Mickey's fries. I don't know. I have used weed for years and years and years, and I've never had that urge to crack it open while I'm operating a motor vehicle. I want to wait till I get to the friendly confines of where it are going and be responsible about it, as ninety nine
point nine percent of adults do. But again, let's come up with some sort of crisis here and just have more big government, in this case, big government Republicans getting involved in your lives. Your job is to regulate and be the official, just stay in your lane. But they won't do that. And does it make you think like because we've seen this repeated over and over and over. Scott is that won't at the last minute, you get your signatures. It looks like to be on the belt
in November. They'll see the polling numbers. They'll see all highlands are pissed off that they're gonna they're gonna overturn fifty six. Won't they legislature just swooping at the last minute They always do and come up with, you know, more hair brained ideas to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
They might try, but you know then they're going to be at risk if they don't come up with some typal regulation for their seats, right because people have clearly said this is what we want. And you know, there's more background into how just got pushed through at the time that it did. You know, the federal language that got planned into the funding bill there in the fall
is part of this story. And I will say, you know, everyone in the in the industry expects that we will get something done in the near future, whether it is an extension to get proper regular regulation in place or regulatory to build through. Especially with President Trump's executive order on cannabis. You know, it was rescheduling marijuana. But it was also physifically calling out that language that Congress had passed in terms of have products and a full spectrum TVD.
So you know the President's got his eye on this. This will get corrected federally. I truly believe that. And then at this point, you know, Ohio needs to fall suit, and there's really they're not able to use that as a talking point for why they put in some overly restrictive law that flies in the face of the rest of the country. Yeah, like we're behind, right if we if this goes into effect, we are behind.
Yeah, you can blame the fans and go ahead. The fans are going to but the feder at least listening, Ohio does our legislatives just want to listen. Anyway, we're on the clock here for this thing takes effect March twentieth. Got to have the signatures by then. It's Scott a Hunter at Urban Artifacts, And if you're in that neighbor to want to sign the position, I sure you have him. I know that they am at fifty West and Ryan
Guyson pretty much everywhere else. I put my name on there too, because I think it's outrageous Scotty Well chat again in the future, brother, Thanks again for jumping on the show.
Good luck with us, Yes, thanks Scott, thankes care.
Yeah, y'a all the best. We got to get a news update in. We are running late as always, because that's what we do here. We run late. We'll talk a little Super Bowl stuff coming up next on the show. News first though, seven hundred ww all right, one more
time this season because the season is over. James Rapine jumps in from Bengals Talk dot com Lockdown Bengals Super Bowl sixty goes down and the game was just the just the twenty nine thirteen year final with Seattle absolutely curb stop in the Patriots defensively speaking, second franchise win for them. Sam Darnold, by the way, and his fifth team he started as a New York Jet, he finishes a Super Bowl champion, and on that as a James
welcome back. How you been brother, that'd be great. I'm doing fine better than Drake May this morning.
That's right.
Yeah, a lot of people are doing better than Drake May. Yeah, he got just absolutely for him. He's getting a Lindsay Vaughn treatment.
That's right.
Yeah, we knew that the Seahawks were going to be able to get pressure on him, and that was a big keem going into this one was all right, well, how does Drake May, who struggled throughout the playoffs, how does he respond? How does that that Patriots offense respond?
And well, they didn't show up.
So I don't even know if you should compare to Lindsay Vaughn because she showed up.
She does.
Hey, I respect that, but I do want, you know, not to get in this Olympic ski or anything like that. But like I wonder who kind of missed that cut because she got in. I was she the best of ailbers because it's Lindsay von and your goat and you're forty one and this is your last hurrah. We think if somebody got bumped in the team, but you know, thirteen seconds in she splatters and the minute it happened, well, watching them, oh man, that's and she turns out it's
a broke leg. But tell you what, the resiliency and commitment that Lindsay Vaughn has, I don't think I've ever seen anything that kind of commitment in sports. She is something else, something to behold for sure when it comes to football, though Drake May is no Lindsay Vaughn. Three turnovers, two I and T is a fumble, sacks six times, they just teed off of them. Was this about Seattle scheme under Mike McDonald or just the fact that New England's front line couldn't do anything?
Yeah, I think it's both. I think Mike McDonald is a hut of a coach. And if you think back to some of his Ravens defenses and what they did to Joe Burrow and the Bengals, the Hubbard yard dash,
you know, the fumble in the jungle. The Ravens had their backup quarterback in that game and it was tied and the Ravens were going in to take the lead, and that Bengals offense could not get going in that game, and there were multiple games like that, and McDonald leaving Baltimore going to Seattle's honestly the huge win for the Bengals because I think he's one of the best defensive
lines in football. And it obviously helps to have the talent that they have in the trenches and the versatility that they have in the secondary, and they have some versatile pieces. At the same time, McDonald is a heck of a coach, and it was a real challenge for any offense, but certainly an offense like New England that you're right, I struggle to protect doesn't have a true number one wide receiver option. I don't think Stefon Diggs
is what he used to be. And so you look at it and it's like, all right, well who stands out and there's just there's a lot of number threes and number four's weapons wise on their offense, not many ones and twos, and so you mix that together and Drake May wasn't enough to overcome it.
Because I sat going into.
It, I was like, I was like, the Patriots have the better quarterback, the Steelers have the better roster, and the better roster one.
Yeah yeah, And you know, okay, Steph Digg's great, but he's he's an old dude, and he was largely absent yesterday, and you know, in fact the matters. You just kept having to punt the ball here too. And I thought that blitz on the game sealing interception really caught them by surprise and sealed the deal.
Yeah. Yeah, I think.
It's when you see an offense like this struggle and not be able to get into a rhythm early, but those first fifteen like if you're going to catch the out off guard usually maybe not necessarily historically in the Super Bowl, but usually it would be in your first fifteen scripted plays. And then they adjusted and then it works, and it was just from the jump they couldn't do anything.
And then in the.
Second half it's like, well, maybe they'll come out in the second half and then it'll get going. And it's like, oh, well that's the Patriots first first down of the second half and it's in the fourth quarter like this. You know, it's a.
Tough, tough leading to the Patriot.
Yeah, no question, you know. And the notion here too is that we live in a new air where offense wins championships and if you watch a Gamias went, well, clearly that's not right. The defense is still I don't think that's still true because you know, had had the New England offense been better, could they have selectively picked apart him on short routes? What about the run game largely absent? You know, if Drake may starts taking off
the spy him, how does that change. I don't felt like I thought that were one dimensional yesterday, and yeah, the defense looked like they won the game, but they didn't. Is new England had no answers whatsoever, no way to figure out around a very good Seattle defense. But again, if you're going to build your entire team around an offensive identities they did, you've got to find ways to make some completions to get some first dollans.
Yeah, yeah, that's it. And to me, offense does win does win championships in a lot of ways.
This was an odd year and if you had if Drake May.
Was one of those top elite quarterbacks, that game would have felt different and been.
A bit different.
And he's just not there yet.
Maybe he will be, maybe he'll get there, but he's just not there yet, Which isn't an insult and it isn't being mean. It's just the reality of it. We know Sam Darnold is a good quarterback and not a great quarterback there. But yes, as far as historically versus today versus the past decade or so, no, I think for sure the offensive part of it, Like, it was a weird year in the NFL in general, and so sometimes you get weird champions and weird built champions that
play different ways. I don't think the Seahawks win defense first free agent quarterback. I don't think that's a bootprint that anyone should try to replicate. Obviously, want to upgrade your defense, I'm not saying that, but it's just it's a unique year and a unique path to a Super Bowl.
Yeah, as far as the MVP case goes, hey you go. Derek Call had two sacks and what I think you had the strip stack touchdown to Witherspoon. I mentioned had that that hit that led to the pick six Byron Murphy, But I don't know Kenneth Walker though, the fact of the matter was I saw this this morning that he was hit at or behind the line of scrimmage on fifteen of his twenty seven touches. But he still rushed for one hundred and thirty five yards and that's like
forty two over expected. That's getting it done in the Super Bowl.
Man, Yeah, yeah, it is, And that's the fun. Dave Keaton described it as fun. But the defensive struggles that are the defensive the standout performers for Seattle and the different ways they're able to win.
From a defensive stem.
Devin Witherspoon's and his biggest play was on a blift and he's a high end corner and so no, I thought the defense, they did a bunch of different things that were a lot of fun if you're in favor of those kind of defensive games. At the same time, I think a lot of people are like, all right, can we see some scoring, can we see something?
Well, we did.
Aught was completely fifty percent of his passes, but you know, like it's the ultimate oftense doesn't win championships game, and if you love defense, it was great.
At the same time, I definitely think that this was kind of an outlier season for sure, an outlier super Bowl. This isn't going to be the blueprint moving forward.
Why could New England adjust to Walker and know what he was doing?
Yeah, he just it was a He had the two big runs, but it was kind of a quiet, a quiet day for Like what I mean by quiet is I know he won the MVP and a huge one hundred and sixty yards from scrimmage, but at times I don't think it necessarily felt that way, and yet he still was able to wreck up the yards and be consistent and yeah, I mean, I think Seattle's run game is just good.
They're really good.
The Patriots new, I'm sure going in we cannot let Walker control this game. And then he went out there and averaged five yards per carry and obviously had the one call back that would have sealed the deal anyway, but played played really, really well. Yeah, I had a great game.
Yeah in New England. Now you'd expect them to go answer, but they could. I mean, I think I had one series late in again where wass Matt Collins on consecutive plays and they scored the first touchdown, which even then felt Okay, are they going to make a run and come back? It didn't feel to me, James like they were mounting this comeback that the momenta was shifting. Was like, okay, they scored on consecutive plays, great, but Seattle just was
still in full control. Even at that point, I felt to me, yeah, yeah, I never felt like New England was about to make that run. And they were hanging around enough.
Like there's times you know, it's nineteen seven, they score and you're right, Matt Collins makes that play and then they get off the field and they have a chance, and there was really no chance. Nineteen seven went the ball and they just they could not get anything going, so it's it was one of those games where selfishly, for me, I didn't have a dog in the five.
I was just hoping for a score so it would be closed down the stretch and be competitive and be a game that goes down to the wire, because a lot of the games throughout this postseason have gone down to the wire. This one, unfortunately didn't. And you're right, I mean there was never a time where I was confident that the Patriots were going to go downfield and make it a game.
Yeah, and I mean it was still it was. It felt like a blowout right defensively speaking, but you know, Seattle is twenty nine points, but seventeen were field goals. I mean Jason myers day record five field goals in that game. They it was it was more about field position for them. You know, the guy who I thought made a legitimate shot at MVP was their punter. He got got dang, was putting. He was dropping the coffin corner like at least three times. I think that was unreal.
But it was field position for them. They won the field position game.
Yeah, oh for sure, that did. I mean early in the game.
It felt like all right, Well, if you get a couple of field goals, you're going to feel really good and control the game. And midway through the first half, a little little bit past the first quarter, it's six and uh, and then I'm like, New England can't do anything on offense and the early down six, Just get a drive, get one drive, and you feel totally different
about this game. And they couldn't do it. And Seattle did a good job of keeping them down and keeping them down and not letting them get any momentum and not letting them string together their first down or two or get a good field position like you mentioned, and they just really were dialed in, locked in and made sure that that wasn't going to have.
Yeah, darnold, I guess he blanked least of the quarterbacks of Drake may In played a manager a Matt Well managed game. I guess he's on the responsible twelve points. The rest was all special teams in field positions. So I think there's your difference, right. There wasn't like Seattle's defense certainly was smothering and overwhelming and absolutely knocked the crap out of may In that front line for sure, but by and large, just as above, who's kicking the ball better?
Yeah? Yeah?
And that and the turnovers, right, I think that's that's it. You have your three turnovers and against that defense, it's it's.
Painful and in the Seattle offense.
But the one thing I think Sam Donald did a really good job of is just managing things. There was one he missed Jackson Smith and Jinger early for what would have been a crazy touchdown where he went off script and threw it deep to him and just threw it a little too far, didn't get enough under it. But outside of that, I thought that he was able to all right, this is a risky play. I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it away or I'm gonna make sure
I don't put this ball in danger. And that's what I was concerned about from a Seahawks standpoint going into that game. Does Sam Donald turned the ball over? Didn't trusted his defense and Kenneth Walker and that's all they needed.
That was enough And that was a knock right going into Champion Chip weekend, this guy second out, Oh my god, we'll see what happens. And he put it together against He put it together in the NFC Championship game and he continued to stretch.
Here.
Now, I don't know if Sam Donold's going to be, like, you know, one of your top five quarterbacks he's in the NFL. Probably not, but uh, it was interesting in that perspect which you said the biggest winner in this game yesterday James Rapine was bad bunny. I uh big the winner, I biggest winner, bad bunny, My good money.
I don't even know if you know, things are wid when the sports guy doesn't want to talk about.
That thirty five million people watching that thing. I thought the game itself was like just mad. The commercials were just mad because you often don't get a chance to sit down and just watch football, James, because you're following the Bengals and you know, but you know, the postseason for sure, especially the Super Bowls, like it's like okay, and that it was just one of those years were like okay. I guess it was fine. It was a game that first it looked like New England.
Though.
Man, they were really pressing early. I thought they they missed opportunities, chances. Gonzales for example, several turnovers they just couldn't come up with the ball. And he thought, at some point, will they keep taking chances like this, they're going to get burned, and ultimately they did.
Yeah, Paul, for sure.
Yeah, there were multiple times where they could have grabbed some momentum. There was a play Drake May took a sack and Hunter Henry's wide open over the middle and maybe maybe Henry makes a guy miss and gets the first down and that's the momentum you need. And instead it's a sack, youet the punt, and so those kind of plays they add up and that's it. But yeah, I felt throughout the game like all right, is there going to be more here or is this all we're doing? Is this all we're doing?
You know?
And that's all? That's all it was like, Yeah, I mean Bay missing that like where they play was on the five yard line and he had a receiver downfield, could have blew that thing open and miss that, and of course took Chrissingganzaleg's had a chance for two or three picks and he couldn't hold onto it. So but that guy's incredibly you know, he gets in position unlike
any other I think back in the league. So anyway, all right, the off season is here, It's time to go Houday once again put the Bengal gear back on as we mount up the attack sometime in August, if not September. James Rapine over at Sports Illustrated, and of course it's locked on Bengals the podcast and Bengals Talk dot com, the website, everything Bengal related. And there's a lot of work to be done, certainly in Cincinnati when it comes to getting the team ready for twenty twenty six. James,
have a great off season, buddy, all the best. Appreciate you, you two, Scott appreciate you. Take carel It's a news update and more to follow, including Bill Cunningham at twelve oh six today. So I watched the halftime show Bad Bundy, like I had ten minutes. I've done worse for far longer. I didn't understand the damn word the man was saying, but I thought the you know, the show itself was pretty damn good, even though I didn't understand it. Willie
will tell me how I'm wrong. Coming up next twelve oh six, Home of the Red seven hundred w DOWT SINCNAT