Do you want to be an American? On the weekend in the books, and we're back at here, scotts Fold, thanks for jumping in the show on seven hundred ww. You know, even without the mass shooting, Cincinnati's crime numbers are up sixty two percent. I believe that the first ten weeks ten eleven weeks of twenty twenty six, and in one western neighborhood, of course, two eleven year old's
now killed at the same playground. Since twenty twenty three, we had a dangerous street takeover on Saturday night early Sunday morning, resulting in arrests and great work by CPD. By the way, So here's the thing. We're halfway through March and it's snowing. What happens this summer when the city actually is out in full force and what's the city actually doing to maybe prevent or tamp down a lot of this crime? Joined the show is council member
Seth Walsh. Seth, how you been? How's life? You're good?
I'm doing great, Scott getting ready for the snow today?
Yeah, yeah, you thought it was over, It's just beginning.
I that's way you're call it.
What the damn PLOWD tracker doesn't work. It's a seventy yesterday, so you gotta even the software says i'm out. Software tapped out. But seriously, Saturday night, and this could have been much worse than it was. You have to give one hundred percent of the credit to CPD because they did a fantastic job. I think thirty nine people arrested, sixty five cars towed during a mass street takeover, and it happened in several different areas. They picked up a
couple I think stolen guns as well. One of the places where they congregated was Riverfront Live parking lot, and that's the same venue, of course, where nine people were shot just a couple of weeks ago. The bigger picture, though, is we've seen bar and dining in public transportation, a bunch of other numbers indicating that that is down in the city.
Now.
Some of that may be the weather, another part of that may be the economy, But how much is crime impacting all that?
I mean, the issue was crime conversation you and I professional Stingy be having right and unfortunately in the city this conversation we're going to continue to have. I think it's important to take a step back and really appreciate, as you said, what CPD was able to do, able to get ahead of this, you know, you know, road takeover and arrest all these bad actors. They were coming out to participate in that. And that's really you know,
it's an interest point. It's just some of the ground that we're seeing around the city because you know, the people that were coming from that weren't Offincinnatians. I don't. I've actually get many work, even the Statians. They're coming across problems in the city. It was kind of wild the reports I'm getting who they were even finding there, and keeople bringing their kids to this for example. I mean,
it's a dangerous something was being pulled off. And so first off, I just think the polices are a big accolades for that. The staffs, though, are the facts. And so I think there's some good questions that you're going to be asking me about. You know, why are the crime up and anytime you have crime to problems and we got to do more to fix that. But you know, this is the priority that I've had since I got a city council. Continue to point to the fact that
we we are dramatically understaffed in the police department. So while they're able to have these great moments like this weekend, we are still dropping the ball city leaders in terms of making sure they're fully funded to be able to do the action plans. And they say they need to be able to be successful on our streets.
Do they need more tools? More bullets in the belt, so to speak? Because if you go back to twenty twenty three, the state of Ohio moved to increase the penalties for street racing and you and Vice Mayor Janashloman Kearney opposed it. Does this change your mind? Should it be more than a misdemeanor? What I mean that's a payout ticket.
Yeah, So Jeff Cramond and I actually were talking about this last night customer to Jeff Cramedy and I were talking about this, and we're going to be customer Mark. Jefferies already has the motion he's putting forward SASS for a report we'd like to take a little bit further, and actually kind of moved to just amend our organs
is to go further than that misdemeanor. At the time we were voting on a resolution, I just had some personal issues at the resolution, But I do think that it's time that we that Bob would make sure that we are actually, you know, clacking down on these and making sure that it's not happening in the city, because you know, it isn't a true point for what we're seeing crime happening, and we need to make sure that we are not allowing it and not going too easy
on it. Because thirty nine people being arrested as an indicator of some problems that are going on.
Yeah, what what made you change your mind on that or say, hey, we do need to get harder. Is it the size of this one? I mean thirty nine arrests, sixty five cars and it's March. As I said, you know this is going to happen more and then maybe bigger ones over the summer. God knows. Is it a couple of years ago, maybe it wasn't a bigger deal as it is now, or what was a catalyst?
No, I would say that, you know, one thing I think you appreciate about me, Scott when I play learning and growing and at the time, I think this was my first year for several months on city council, and I've spent a lot of time since then you know, integrating myself in the police department to learn how they operate, what's going on, And it was really a nipening experience when you go on a violent crime squad ride along and you're an on marched police vehicle and you're seeing
what's happening and the officers are telling you that tells that you can't even tell are happy because you're not. You know, you're not used to this, I mean, really changes your perspective on here. When the police come in and they say these are the tools that they need, what does that mean and how does that actually matter? And so I think for me it's a matter of
continuing to learn and grow. And at the time, I wasn't nearly informed or educated on some of the policing issues and how they are trying to solve bigger issues in the city. So I think that's that's the good time for people to just take the time to continue to educate yourself and not get yourself locked in on a position, because that's how we get bigger problems here.
Yeah, so as I respect that, I think most people listening due to it's like, yeah, you're learning, your young man, you learn on the job. And go, okay, well, we do need tougher laws. I think that's a I think that's a great answer. Council members Sess Walshawan with slowly here seven hundred w WELLW crime numbers are up sixty two percent through the first ten weeks of twenty twenty six, and of course we just had this street takeover. No
injuries or accidents, so thank God for that. But you're talking thirty nine arrests, a couple of guns off the streets, and sixty five cars towed in all credits to CPD because they did a fantastic job up and and and shutting this down. I don't think it's going to cause people to maybe think twice about it because the laws, it's only a misdemeter one that's as low as you can go. It's a ticket, that's about it. I know in northern Kentucky this this is an eye opener.
Uh.
There's a lawmaker there who I had on that said, listen, this is happening in Sinsey. It's happening all over the place in Louisville and UH and Lexington and other cities. The three takeovers. We want to make it a felony. What we want to do is after the second strike, second time you're caught, we're going to take your car and put in a crusher. Is that too extreme? Is that going too far?
I think the bigger, the bigger issue. I don't know that I have an opinion on, you know, first stripe, second, sorry to put your car and pressure you. There's a lot of people that can use out there, so I think there's probably better ways that we can redistribute here.
But I think the bigger issue is you're looking at how many people have illegal guns that were arrested in that and then we talked by gun violence and as you put them out, it's happened right in front of it, like we just had a mass shooting of the city, sincating the issue with these takeovers. You know it It
started a seemingly it's a cute TikTok trend. I don't love keepe the right word for you know, but you know it started as a TikTok trend, and it is driving from reality, if you will, and it is driving people with shady so on margs and in some cases illegally and illegally owned guns that leads to these insiders. And I feel like we're constantly hadn't have conversations about which is then we're shooting people and that's the problem,
that's fundamentally it. So what we have to do proactively is we talk about crime numbers, is to bring them down. We have to stop the things that are bringing people with illegal guns that are going to create the environments for potential shootings, for potential violence, potential print and so yes, I think we have to step up our enfortmate, we
have to step up how we can do this. We have to give us police department more tools to make this something that people stop doing and because we just can't tolerate what we know leads to worse action.
And then this summer you're gonna have the you know, the people on the dirt bikes and the quads out there too. That's a whole another set of problems when it comes to traffic enforcement. Seth Walsh, the city's on crime report showed fifty two people shot in Cincy in the first ten weeks at twenty twenty six, and that does not include the mass shooting at Riverfront Live, so it's up sixty two percent of the same time period year over year. We've talked a lot about with you
and other members of Council here on the show. With all the anti violence measures Council approved last September, the five million dollars spent, what why are crime members going the wrong way?
Man? If somebody have the answer that with Scott, they would be a very rich person. Right now. It's it's troubling, it's frustrating, it's disheartening. It makes you feel like anything you do is succeeding. You know, I wish I had the answer for why our choice seems to be violent. As opposed to just solving these problems through conversations, we're
just walking away and dealing with it the next day. Yeah, I think we've just y to become too numb to to the you know, what violence actually is and what those lng term impacting consequences become. And I think we, you know, continue to try to chase and put these measures in the effect that are going to take long time to solve it, and then the next week or the next day, there's another tragedy, and then we have to pivot again, and we try to ramp up again, and and some of this is just a long term
societal adjustment we have to make. I think we dealt with a lot of youth problems last year. I suspect we have some more on the way this year, because you know, there is trauma that our youth are dealing with from COVID that I think is only just now starting to have the conversations about it. But I still think we're so far behind on what that conversation means.
But that's going to take time to fix and solve, and and so that means we have to figure out what short term solutions are and how we manage those long term solutions at the same time. That's complicated and unfortunately right now that's not working to the best that we could possibly make it happen. And I think we have to be honest about that.
How much of the problem, though, is outside of your control sets and that would be judges who are on this this own cognizant kick zero bond. We've seen people, you know, the shooting it in between a guy had an ankle monitor on. He didn't even bother cutting it off. They cut it off. There's no repercussions for it whatsoever, And so it just emboldens the this this extreme one percent or less than one percent of the population to commit more heinous and more violent and more deliberate crimes.
There's not much you can do. You can pass all laws and roles. You're not going to tell judges what to do. But how much of the problem lies defeat of We've got too touchy feeling when it comes to dealing with criminals.
Look, I think we're talking about a really complicated topic. So I think it's really easy to pass the buck and blame somebody. Whether you want to blame you know, if you're a city council member, is to blame a judge, if you're a judge, to blame the state legislature, the state legislature, blaming the city council members, and you know, the work the system back and then blame everybody else that say, well, we all have to just do better. At the end of the day, we all have a
role in this. Every single one of us has a role in this. You know, I was at a service yesterday and this gentleman had a public puzzle piece on lapel and I asked him what it meant, and he told me, you know, it's a puzzle piece because we're all part of the bigger puzzle and if we don't all click it in, it doesn't work. So can I blame the judges, Sure, you can blame me as well, you can blame everybody. At the end of the day, we have to all do our parts. We have to
lock in and say this is not acceptable. We got to do better, and that means we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. And frankly, you know, while I think the since that police department is doing fantastic job, are we as the city leaders doing enough to help and support them, I would argue no. And you know, they've been clear since I got on City Council that they've been asking for more resources. They've been asking more office just to get to the minimum compliment and we
haven't done that. And so before we until we solve those problems, I think it's difficult to start pointing to think at others, But I also think that others need to start looking at themselves and saying, are we solving all of our problems before we pass the bay back to city Hall? Because we all are part of the ecosystem and it is a really really complicated topic. And passing the blame and pushing the blame on others only makes it harder to solve this.
Okay, I'll play a little partisan paul or a second here, and I think you know me, I'm not necessarily I just I want things to work. I don't care who gets the credit. It's been a pillar of a progressive platform to be more hands off when it comes to policing, that treating criminals more like victims themselves and the root cause. And we heard that a lot from Vice Mayor Janiel Selim and Kearney. I'm sure the Mayor feels the same way. But you know, at some point we look at this
and go, it's not working for us. I mean, case in point is a judges aside. We have a gun shot This detection system called shot spot or logged nearly one hundred shootings in the city in West Side and West End since twenty twenty three. More than half the victims were children. We had two eleven year olds killed at the same playground in less than three years. Neither case has been solved. They're both cold cases at this point. We have a camera system that doesn't work that had
to be fixed after the second homicide. What does that say about how good a job that leadership of the city, and this would be the Democrats that get elected there are doing because clearly the idea that hey, we have to police differently because of a mandate from the public. At some point you have to go off to that fraction of one percent that are recidibus that are causing most of these bad crimes. I'm not talking about jaywalking
and things like that. I'm talking about violent, predatory crimes that from this end anyway, the rest of us who don't live in the city look inside and go, it's a mess down there. And we just keep bringing the same people, or at least the same parties back to try and solve a problem that they helped create. Is that fair?
No? No, I would not say that's fair. I would say that that that gets the exact point that I was just trying to make. You can certainly put all that on the City Cincinnati, and I think that they're a fair amount of that. You know, the city deserves to answer and the city deserves to be held to the standard have to answer that. But if we start
playing partisan politics here, we start playing the fingers. The city has been trying to do legislation around gun control that would allow us to actually go after some of these bad date actors, and we've been stopped by the Republicans to control the state. Does that do us any good? Points those fingers at each other right now. No, of course, it doesn't do us any good to solve that. The reality is we have to say that we have a problem with violence in the city of Cincinnati to some degree.
But also you know, you look at the statistics and it is down in the last several decades. So anytime there's any violence, anytime there's any crime, that is an unacceptable period, full stop. Until we get to a perfect year where there's a zero zero zero across the board, we are failing, and we have to continue to strive toward that Democrat Republican. Whether you live in the suburbs or do you live in the city, all of us
have a role in making this happen. And we can point to fingers and say, well, you haven't solved all the problems, Scott, because you're a radio host and you have a responsibility to be a moral adult, and blah blah blah blah blah. That doesn't do us any good. It's just it doesn't do us any good. And we can get into the partisan vickery, but at the end of the day, when somebody get shot, they don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican who comes and helps save them.
And so we all have but the majority of city voters of the city voters are railities, so we don't see it. Though I'm a check and balanced kind of guy. I love parties keeping each other in check, and it's it's completely lopsided now federally at the state level and even at the local level for that matter. We can talk about Republicans running Columbus and Washington, but of course Democrats have a stranglehold on the city of Cincinnati. So
these issues are relevant in that regard. You know, I'll bring it back, and I think you're right on a two degrees seth is that you know, you talk about the gun policies in Ohio. I'm a big Second Amendment guy, but I see what happened here when it comes to stand your ground. We've now had what three cases of people of criminals shooting each other. People with disabilities, meaning if you're under disability, you can't own a possessive even
think about a gun. And yet we know that felons are out there handling weapons, and we've seen this where they just claim, oh, I was at the Riverfront live shooting. How can both of these people with a beef with each other shoot shoot at one another at a crowded nightclub and both claim self defense. That's part of the problem right there, one hundred percent. So I agree with you there, it's just at the local level where it's
controlled by the Progressive Party. Here, it's like the whole idea that we're going to be a kindler, gentler society to these victimized people, I'm not and I think most people aren't buying it at this point. We just we got to get tougher on those who are going to break the law. And the biggest victim and all that are the people that allegedly Democrats are trying to help, which would be the people of collar and the poor.
Well.
And so this is where I want to push back on you because and I hear you. I'm not disagreeing with you that you know, there are criticisms that are rightfully come our way. But I want to push back is that this is that police department has said repeatedly in or I'm chief and I said it. You know, we their hands are not high in policing to go
out there and do what's right. Where I would argue the problem is that we haven't given them enough officers to be able to go out there and do the job when when they're already dramatically understaff they can't they can't spend the time going after the bad actors that they know are out there to make sure that they're getting our streets safer, and what they are doing and what they're pulling off given how understaffed they are, is a herculean feet, which is why every year, you know,
we get into the budget season and I raised this point, which is we need to hire more officers than firefighters. It is clear asday those are the most menial services we provide as a city. We have to provide them because then if we're still having problems, then we have to figure out the next step to solve it. Until we solve that problem, we can talk about all these various policies, that those policies are noted in the way
of our police officers ability to do their jobs. Our police officers are overworked, they are working you know, there there's understaffed and that's their fundamental problems to our ability to be successful. So the fact that they are successful, the fact that we have you know, this year is a hopefully an anomaly, but they have, we have been successful them well. Being understaffed, well, being overworked, is a
testiment to our police officers. The policies that you talked about, that you've cited, I mean a lot of that, I would argue is rhetoric. And you know, I would argue that you can't point to a specific policy pass the citizenincinnati that actually does those things. I think it's easy to point to the rhetoric, but our officers say consistently that their hands are not tied to do the policing, their problems, and that they're overworked and understaffed.
Okay, So a final point, because we run a lifefs Walsh, I'll give you a give an example of what I was just talking about. Reinforces. It's like, how is the police department? How how has it gotten to the point where we're one hundred and fifty officers behind if it weren't because we've taken the money from that and spent it elsewhere as opposed to focusing with crime rates, going up. Now. You know, overall nationally the crime rates are pretty good.
Right now, we're starting to see those numbers turn Cincinnati for some reason in the first ten weeks of the year as an outlier. But if that's all true, then then how do we get to a point where one hundred and fifty cops and we're losing good officers all the time because they can't stand how the department's being managed by those people the top, including the mayor. And this would go back to the beatdown over the summer in July where you know, someone gets arrested later because
a captain says, Okay, we've got to cite someone. I know a lot of CPD officers in their prime who are getting reassigned because the shortages and they're just retiring. That that's a climate that this partisan bickerings helped create.
The one hundred and fifty police officer short is. I mean, you can look at the data. It began during the Great Recession, where we just simply as the city didn't have money to hire more officers, and then we couldn't keep up with the retirements that were happening. Well, yes, college, I can't, I can't. I can't speak to the leadership those here, but I can tell you it was a nine Democrats like counsel will not happened. I can tell you that they were negotiating with the Republicans and the
Charter and the Democrats. So to your to the point that you were trying to make earlier. You know a lot of the problems we have now we're not when is an I'm member Democrat, and so I think we have to acknowledge of the city. We are dealing with historic problems that have come for whatever reasons. Now we have to solve them. And we can point fingers all we want, or we can get to work solving the problem.
And I would argue, let's get to work solve the problem because tomorrow, you know, we need to not have any violence. You know, to the next day, we don't have any violence. And whether you're a Democrat Republican, and I think we all agree with that. So let's get to work. How we do that?
Are you a little scared about what's coming? I mean, if this is March, what the hell is don't going to look like July August?
Yeah, this is one of the things that keeps me up to night and it's one of the things that I spend a lot of time trying to advocate as much as I can, because we got to do better for our police, to make sure they didn't go out there to do the best for us. Famous fire. You know, we didn't touch on that. There is an anomaly half here right now with single family homes catching on fire and fatality is coming with that. Doesn't that scare you? Why is that happening? And I think we gave the
root of that as well. I'm gonna use the real issues that that you keeping up to night and I keep trying to solve. But they're not going to be easy solutions. But we're not going to solve it by ignoring the fact that their real problems well.
I mean exceptionally cold winter too. I think that's the the main all are. But Seth, I got to get going, man. I appreciate the great debate. Felt like we're having a beer there for a minute. I love it. Hey, all the best, keep keep doing what you appreciate you man, Take care all right. Console member Seth Walsh on the Scott's Loans this morning, running really late here seven hundred w Scott's Loan with you Monday morning, seven hundred w l W March Madness is set Austin Elmore a half
hour from now. On that, on that, on that, on that, bring on the sports. And by the way, thirteen days from today we are inside two weeks for Reds Baseball here on the home of the Reds. Seven hundred WLW so walls. She Seth Walsh was on a few minutes ago. Do you think we're overreacting to the street takeover thing a little bit?
So?
Thirty nine people arrested, sixty five cars towed, and a planned streak takeover event, and you know, it's all over the news, it's all over social MEDIAU one hundred drivers involved here, people coming from all over the region, from Dayton, Columbus and elsewhere in order to participate in these street takeovers. And you got a couple stolen guns and they're sure
fortunately I went injured in this thing. But is this concern over street takeovers any different than what drag racing was back in the sixties and seventies, And then cars got really crappy in the eighties and no one no one did any more because you couldn't really go how to drag race somebody when your car does like forty five miles an hour in the steerwheel shakes. So I just want to make sure I like, I'm not overreacting to this whole thing with the parole clutching, because it
is about text and perspective. You know, we all and if you're been how old you are, you remember the even then grossly outdated drivers education tear scare flicks that they showed to us when we're in the process of getting our permit.
The highway is a river of glass and steel, and like any river, it can kill you. This is the road. It doesn't care about you. It never has. He had the right of way, he was also dead. And my favorites. Metal does not forgive, concrete does not forgive, physics never forgives.
Signal thirty and made by the Ohio State Highway Patrol, by the way, absolute legendary, legendary stuff. I don't think the driver's ed films that we watch really scared anyone and complied. So I goes certainly bloody and gory for the day, because you know, today you can get far less, far more alow of blood and gore on your phone than you could back in the day and you kind of watch it and go that's kind of gross.
So the guy got ooh man. Remember I went to the guard rail and the guy was impaled, and they showed that like, oh man. I don't think it really scared anybody from not doing stupid stuff behind the wheelbows because it was like nineteen fifty. Man, come on, it's the nineteen eighties. Come on, that's different. Really. But I bring this up because you know, today's street takeovers are yesterday's drag race, isn't That was, of course drag race
immortalized in movies like American Graffiti and others. Right, that's essentially I guess that's why I think of the nineteen fifties, like the threat of nuclear war and going in to the drive in and drag racing people. I think that
were basically those three things. I was not part of the area in which I grew up, so but I look at the issue here, and it's a very serious one because you had, as I said, one hundred drivers involved in this thing, couple stolen guns and they kept moving to different neighborhoods, and a testament to CPD because they were definitely hit it out of the park as far as is following this group around and enacting arrests, and it may be part of the you know, the
young brain thing. And I can't help but think, Okay, is this just is it today's version of drag racing? And in some ways yes, in some ways no. I mean, obviously you have young people, you have cars, you have speed, you have risk taking. And it's also part of virtue signaling and identity and community for young people because there's a subculture, its own rules, its own hierarchy, its own language. That's what being young is, right, that that's part of it.
That's how you define the cohort. And of course drag racing back in the day and street tookers today both draw law enforcement attention and outrage from old people like me. And you know, the thrill seeking youth panic is nothing new. It was that way, I think right after Adam and Eve pretty much we started having the thrill seeking youth
that juvenile delinquents. You know, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, drag racing was Yeah, it migrated eventually from the streets to drag strips or largely it was you know, in rural areas or highways. But the difference here is street takeovers happen at busy intersections, urban areas, with innocent people and bystanders inches away. So the risk isn't just as participants as it was with the drag races. Lots of course, you know, he went off and killed somebody, but the
risk isn't just the participants. And drag racing back in the day it was about raw performance. It was getting from point A and the starting line to point B the finish line and as little time as possible. Street takeovers now it's about drifting and donuts and show and so you occupy you an intersection public space longer, and therefore it's a bigger risk of crowds. And you also factor in social media too, and it just it makes it more. You know, obviously, back in the sixties seven,
I'm sure drag racing was more word of mouth. Today, you know, it goes viral overnight and it spreads. But I think the biggest difference here is I don't know if it happened back in the day, but it's there's no way it happened less than it is today in that weapons are involved here, and that's the biggest difference. You know, the street tag ver events in a number of cases involved gunfire, could be celebratory, could be from
disputes and beefs. That wasn't happening with drag races back in the day, and now it's escalated to actually blocking freeway on ramps and stopping traffic and eventually you're holding infrastructure hostage, is what you're doing. That's a whole different legal and moral category than two guys racing a red light. You know, as I said, you know, fear has has always been amplified generationally. The drag racing of the fifties and sixties was portrayed is a it'd be a gateway
to delinquency and depth. Juvenilinquency and drag racing go hand in hand. But you know, jazz music in the thirties also added to juvenilinquency when the automobile became something that young people embraced and leaned into, you know, with the with the little jump seat in the back, the rumble seat, you know, and going and driving out to the country now so to get away from people, so you can do what young people are doing for a long time now. And I have sex so believe it or not. Sex
is not a new invention. It's been going on the time between young people because that's what you people like to have sex, and so you know, it's all put in that moral panic kind of thing going on to and that's true today as it was yesterday. But you know, most participants then weren't really people with criminal records. Most participants day now aren't either. I don't think it's more the thrill thing, but I guess the different thing is that it's the same impulse and the modern version of
this is more dangerous to uninvolve people. And then you add the mix of guns in there too, and I think that's made in the dark difference between yesterday and today. But it still is built on the same old adage about these damn young kids back in my day never did anything like this. Yeah, it's because the needle keeps moving, it keeps changing, it keeps evolving, and so it was
offensive to older generations when we were young. Is kind of quaint and pretty basic today because it's always evolving. So now and I think in this case, you know, taking the streets over and blocking traffic is obviously a bad idea. It could be a minor convenience. But as a matter of time, before you do this in a highway and somebody's going to get killed, and this person's
gonna get killed, and we'll get serious about it. Maybe I'll circle back with our lawmaker in northern Kentucky was proposing much much stiffer crimes in Kentucky, and they're still working their way through this here in Cincinnati. Mistere mean. It's an m one, mistermeanor of first degree and it's
very low. It's you know, that's a ticket. I don't know if that dissuades people from not doing it again, because, as you know, as a point of assaf the problem is we just keep arresting the same people and releasing them and debate when you say what you will about the political partisan wars out there, that's part of it, for sure. But I don't think I'm wrong in saying that, you know, the policies and Democrats and progressives are to simply, yeah,
you know what, the criminals are victims too. I think it's a bad look. I think that's an entirely the wrong way to think about it. And here we are. There's other factors involved in this, for sure, but the touchy feel of stuff. You know, there are people who are going to be predators and take advantage of you being soft on crime, and when they're not, it just
escalates it first further. And that's why you see people with shooting each other in public and claiming that it's in the act of self defense when neither one should have a gun in the first place. I mean, that's how we got here, right, there's no denying that. But we'll see where this whole thing goes in the summer months. Not even here yet. Hell, we got snow moving in today and we've got what sixties percent rise in shootings
in the first ten weeks of the year. It's not good, I know, crime all overall though again the crime picture nationally just saw a story today that it's all down
all over the place. So we might be an outlier in that category, and I just think we should be a little bit nervous about it warming up and what the hell happens next, And hopefully you can get the resources together and take the seriously and realize, hey, listen, sometimes you got to split some wigs in order to send the message that we're not going to allow this stuff. And you get really really tough on crime. But when you're one hundred plus one hundred and fifty plus cops down,
that's kind of hard to do. It's kind of hard to do anyway, So we got that going on. If you live in suburby, like I do, not a problem for us. I haven't seen many street takeovers. But then again, you know you're you're literally close to rural areas and do this somewhere else. But you know, part of the peal too, is doing it in you know, with with Cincinnati the backdrop. I would say that other factors that
social media right is doing it. I don't know out on a country road somewhere, and Clairemont County is not going to provide you with the same number of clicks as you're going to get if the backdrop is of the city of Cincinnati in downtown intersection. That's part of this as well. Part of this as well, all right, other stuff going on. I did not watch it. I did want to see Conan's monologue stuff because I may be an outlier. I think Conan O'Brian's hilarious, but so
I'm not a big award show person. But one battle after another was a big winner last night at the Academy Awards Best Picture and Best Director and Best Supporting Actor and Best Drafted Screenplant on what that means, but I know that Sean Penn was absolutely incredible in that though I watched that one. Wow, Sean Penn is going
to win an oscar and he did last night. The other big winner was Sinners, which I'm not allowed to watch because it's technically a horror flick and my wife will not allow that in her house, so IM have to sneak off and watch. So like I watched Nuremberg this weekend and with Russell Crown was fantastic, by the way, absolutely fantastic. Yeah, K Pop had a good night. I
know that I did see this. Though War of the Worlds dominated the forty six Razzie Awards, that is, the awards given out to the worst films of the year. War of the Worlds. I briefly remember seeing a trailer for that going that doesn't look very good. The other movies were The Weekend, Don't Know What that is in the Lost Lands, Alarm, and tron Airis, which was terrible. The Razzies also worded Kate Hudson like ay Kate Hudson.
Didn't she just do that Neil Diamond movie. Yeah, she got the Redeemer Award for her Oscar nominated performance in Songs Sung Blue, and she has won three Razzies in the past, my best Friend's Girl, Mother's Day and Music. I don't know any of those, Kate Hudson. I think she's gets got to get better screeners, like people read the script and I don't have to do this. She has a role and it's always in a terrible movie, and she's a better actress than that. But I watched
Songs Sung Blue. I thought it was really really good. Who doesn't like some Neil Diamond. It was a fantastic, fairly true story on top of it, So take that for what you will. Hey, if you're headed out of town anytime soon, I feel for you. US Airlines have urged Congress to move quickly at the end the month log. Oh yeah, we're still in a government shutdown. By the partial government shutdown. We're really good at that other stuff
not so much. We had travel well last weekend, as a matter of fact, and now the flight from Florida to here, it was a little bit of a long line. I'll be honest with you, ain't nothing like it is today though, So if you have to travel anytime today in the near future, I feel for you because the TSA agents are overwhelmed. We have disruptions at a lot of airports right now. Local groups have stepped up to provide help to TSA agents who have gone without paychecks
now for two weeks. The Justice Department is investigating about the cost overruns and a renovation project. We got a lot going on in the federal government right including this little war we're having by the way, it goes by the wayside. But TSA agents, man, if you're traveling, be a little bit kinder, a little bit more. I guess open to saying there's gonna be some delays. It's not their fault. They're also not getting paid and they're working.
So I put ourselves, put ourselves in those shoes. It's a different story, intelligy, Speaking of which, I want to end the segment. This morning, something happened on Friday that had the potential to be weekend ruining, which was actually really really wrong. So Friday, I'm out, I'm like, I washed my car, Like okay, it's get some of the salt off got rid of the old salt, so I can get new salt today. That's fine, just try to make it another year in the old hooptie. But anyway,
I roll up and I'm gonna get gas. So I roll into the gas station. I gonna use some fuel points, and I pull up to a pump and I noticed the pump in front of you. There's always two pumps, and I pull up and there's no one there. I'm like, this is a great time before it gets really full at lunch hour. And so I pull up a pumping my gas. Now, the pump in front of me had the orange cone of death in front of it, meaning
that that pump was not working. And so I pull out and I'm pumping, and I look over and a guy's sitting behind me in his car, and he has giving me the moose Man. He's got a moose on his face. He has pissed off, and he's saying things that I can tell are directed to me, even though I can't hear it. And I know, and I'm often
told by my wife STFU. But I got a chirp, so I give him the you know what, and he starts yelling through his winchel even more, and I realize it's like, because I've parked at the first one and said the second one, I'm like, well, there's a cone there. Now I can't hear it because he's in his car, And so he pulls around, swings his car on, gets out, starts pumping gas and he's with him, you know, the next island over. And I said, dude, what's your problem?
You got what do we have a problem? And no, like it sounds like we have a problem. Let me know if we got a problem. And I may have sent some other choice words there to emphasize it. Something that I'm pumping my gas, I'm not paying attention, and I'm kind of pissed off, like, come on, man, what do you want me to pull up to a pump that's broken? God, people are out of their minds these days, and you know, because it's me, I'm getting myself worked
up even more. And so I'm just about finishing and I look up and this guy is walking towards me, and I'm like, okay, well here we go. So I get on the right side. I don't want to trip over the uh, you know, over the hose, So I step over that, and I'm putting my watching his hands. He's got one hand in his pocket. I'm like, okay, well, if he's got something there, I'm gonna be in trouble. And so I'm looking for covermine, that pump or my car or something else. And he takes one step closer.
I'm like, well, he's about three or four steps away from me. So I kind of quickly moved towards him and he backs up a little bit and he goes, hey, I just want to apologize. I'm sorry. I didn't see the cone there. Man, I was wrong, and I went from having a crappy day to having an incredible day. Like I stood there for a second and then I walked towards him a little more, and he kind of backed up, thinking I was going to poke him or something. I stuck my hand out. I said, man, that is
the best thing I've heard in a long time. Thank you for doing that. I understand we're all there. Hope you have a great weekend, you know, stuff like that. It's like we all make mistakes and maybe react in the wrong way. But to walk up to a stranger and say, man, I was wrong, I apologize absolutely huge, and I want to be that guy more than me. Quite honestly, it was cool. Made my weekend. Scott Sloan on the way it's Austin Elmo will break down a
little selection Sunday action. Miami's in. You agree with that, you gotta be happy. I'm sure Auburn fans are mad as hell about it. We got a number of teams from the area not from Cincinnati in the tournament. We'll talk to Audi about that next on the Home of the Reds and College Basketball. But not well, you see xavior over for them. How about the Red seven hundred? Nobody's Cincinnati. That music means something, well, that music used to mean some.
We've got sports, sports and more sports come once mean I don't know, I don't know. It celebrates it used to mean something, used to mean something. Today we celebrates.
Wow, our buddy Austin Elmore from ESPN fifteen thirty today is Austin three sixteen. Congratulations. Thanks we have. We got to get into some bracketology. As the kids say here from out the brackets, bracketology.
Bracketology is more of a disease than it is a study of a science.
At this point, more like a lance kind of thing. Yeah, that kind of geeky stuff. Anyway, I will say this, We've gone from Wes Miller to Les Miller. There's no more Wes Miller in the house. We have Les Miller. I'll tell you.
I sat here on Friday and I was pretty confident, like Wes Miller's still going to be the coach of Cincinnati.
Like I really thought that was going to be the case.
And part of that is because I don't really have a lot of faith in the people that make the decisions over there, and I thought that they would just run it back with Wes Miller. To their credit, they did not. They did what they were supposed to do, which is move on from a dude that can't get you to the NCAA tournament. And it's bigger than that.
It is the way you got in, but also how you collapse in the last few minutes of that game. And to me, Austin, I would have been shocked had this not happen in a program at this level.
And I know what you say, Hey, they love Wes Miller. I guess he's got the secret sauce. But again, yeah, you can't win. But it's the way they lost that game. That you have to say, listen, this is not what we expect this program to be. Blowing an eight point lead with two minutes ago and the strange time out on the final possession to end the regulation period, and then to go into overtime and really not have much of a fight there. I think that was kind of
like the perfect encapsulation of the West Miller era. When you really really needed a bucket down the stretch, you couldn't find one correct, and you just weren't able to outlast a team in UCF, which is is kind of a rival to you see it going back to the football days. So yeah, man, I it sucks for west Miller because I do think he's a legitimately good guy, and you know, he's been on our show many times and he was awesome and he was gracious and I'm glad,
but I can't move the goalpost. The goal was always to get back to the NCAA tournament, and he didn't do it. It feels like he's in over his head and it just makes sense for both parties to move on.
Where did they go? It's a good question.
I think the main guy that keeps getting brought up for Cincinnati is Jared Calhoun, former UC assistant under By Huggins, played in his final year here. He's out there coaching Utah State. They're in the NC DOUBLEA Tournament. He's been really really good with them. He used to coach in the Horizon League at Youngstown State. Took the Youngstown State to the NC DOUBLEA tournament. So he's got some experience in this area. That's the one that makes the most sense.
But you can't just say this is our guy, no matter what. You got to do a broad search. I'm sure they will.
Yeah, all right, So back to the tournament selection Sunday yesterday, How surprised are you Miami of Ohio r Miami squad gets in at thirty one and one. Honestly, I was like, how do you get the play in game after going thirty one and one? Yeah?
I think they got the first four that play in game in Dayton because they lost the way that they did in the MAC Tournament. If they had advanced to the MAC tournament, maybe it's a different story. Maybe they're, you know, one of those fourteen seeds it gets straight into the tournament. Maybe there's something else and they steal a bid from someone else. But because of the way that they lost, I think that bumped them down to being one of the final teams in. But they're gonna
play in Dayton. That'll be awesome for Miami fans to be able to see a basically a home game less than an hour away from Oxford. To get to watch your team in the NCAA tournament. Hell yeah, that.
Would be huge. And certainly they could do it against SMU and it's a home it's a home game. But then you get Tennessee in a second. Yeah, not going to be easy. Not gonna be easy. It never was going to be easy.
But I mean it's better than being a fourteen seed like Wright State, who's in the same bracket. You know, it would be really funny if Miami wins and beats SMU, and then they beat Tennessee, and meanwhile Wright State beats Virginia, and Virginia, by the way, they've been known to lose a big game in the tournament in the first round. Could you imagine a Miami right State battle to go to the sweet sixteen?
Would be cool. That's where dreams are made.
I think it's kind of cool. I'm kind of I got it right here. You hear this. This is I got the bracket right here in front of me. It's fine. I'm looking around. I see Wright State, Miami, Akron, Ohio State, Ohio. Weall representatives. Yeah, there's a lot of teams from Ohio here except for you know a couple.
Anyways.
Hello, yes, check one one one one hello, okay, one too hello all right. Other than teams from Cincinnati, we're good the college basketball, yeah, staple Cleveland not having any team so choice.
Cleveland State was halfway d a couple of years ago. Cleveland State from right, so the East region. Maybe a team from Ohio will move out and it could be Miami.
Who knows. The bowling Green Falcons aren't in the areas, they're not nowhere, terrible at sports. So NC State, Texas and SMU, by the way, all came in after Miami of Ohio, so it wasn't like they're the last team to get in. And okay, but I still think, man, come on, you can't fourteen fifteen. But maybe this is a better position.
Yeah, I mean, either way, I think a lot the first four gets a bad rap because it doesn't feel like it's a part of the tournament. But it is This is an NCAA tournament appearance, and plenty of teams have won, especially teams that win to go on to be an eleven seed, which is what Miami would be have won in that situation and advanced in the tournament.
It's far from the worst possible outcome for them. But the committee did look at the strength of schedule and the loss in the MAC tournament and say, okay, well, you're gonna have to earn your way in a little bit more because of the schedule that.
You had to face. Yeah, all right, Austin Almore your your your Ohio State Buckeyes. Yeah and tcu uh an eight seed and first down matchup. Buckeye should should win that one. If they do, though, how dangerous are they mean? You know, Duke is the one that everyone has in a second round, They're gonna get Duke.
So tough scene for Ohio State when you h literally the second game revealed right after Duke is oh hey, Ohio State, if you win, you get to play the number one all seed in the Duke blu Devils. But listen, Ohio State is this situation similar to you see where they took a brief hiatus from the NC DOUBLEA Tournament. They haven't been there in a few years either, and so they're finally back. The best story about Ohio State is Bruce Thorton. He is stuck around in Ohio State
for five years. He never left in the transfer portal. He has been committed and loyal to that program. They've changed coaches, all that stuff that typically a guy would at the first chance runaway, Bruce Thornton stayed. Bruce Thorton's now the all time leading scorer in Ohio State basketball history and for the first time in his career, gets to go to the NC DOUBLEA Tournament. That's a fun story.
TCU is no pushover. I mean, we've seen them a little bit in the Big Twelve this year watching Cincinnati. They're not going to be it's not going to be a blowout. Here's the thing with Ohio State. They play about thirty five minutes of really good basketball every night, and they play five minutes of the worst basketball you've ever seen. And that's why they're twenty one to twelve.
Got it.
So it seems like every game they play in the second half, there's this little lull, and if they can withstand that lull, they can advance and after that, good luck against Duke.
All right, so it wasn't coach k It was like Duke. They had to get a lot of legitimacy pants back here after Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's been a minute a while, stay a minute, right, get used to it. Every year, Coach k it is going to be there.
Just and their coach John Shire came up with coach k and so still anytime he leaves, it's going to take a second to get back to this. And this is the standard for Duke basketball to be the number one overall season. Just speaking coming back, Louisville's in there as a sixth seed. They got South Florida. I believe you know, South Florida. That's pretty significant too. Yeah, deep can they go? I don't know if they're going to
get past South Florida. I mean, right now, there may not be a hotter team in college basketball than the South Florida Bulls. A lot of people are picking this team just because of how good they are offensively, as that first round upset to take over Pat Kelsey and Louisville. So they got a tough draw for sure, and even if they do win, they're likely going to play tom Izzo in Michigan State. I mean, that East Region bracket is loaded with so much any good teams. Mick Cronin's
on that side of the bracket as well. Oh, by the way, Danny Hurley and the Yukon Huskies are in that bracket as well. I mean that is difficult. No Oh, there's Kansas by the way as well. So it's not going to be easy. But Louisville's back in the tournament. South Florida can score man and that's going to be a challenge for Louisville.
In Louisville is part of an interesting trend here. If you look at the multi bid conferences, the MAC got two in again every twenty years you do to thirty forty years, you got the A ten head two, the Big twelve had eight, ACC had eight, doubled the number of teams representing the ACC this year.
Part of that, Yeah, I mean that's a credit to that conference because that used to be one of the best different the best basketball conferences in the country. And so many years of Duke and North Carolina going back and forth and all that. Clemson has a good team, They've made the tournament this year and Louisville's resurgence under Pat Kelsey back where they're supposed to be.
Now, NC State and SMU are playing games that's hey, they're there, Yeah they are, they're there. Let's go do uk Kentucky and it's say seventeed the Midwest they've got they're picking up Santa Clara. So like a little preseason game there at a little for Kentucky. They played, Kentucky.
Played, they're playing down Yeah, I mean, you want to talk about five minutes of horrible basketball. Kentucky fans have seen that a lot at times this year for them. Yeah, you just never know what Mark Pope's team is gonna gonna give you. And there are times where they look like they could easily make a run deep in the tournament, and there are times where they look like they should be playing in the CBI. Like it's hard to put a finger on what Kentucky is going to be on
a nightly basis. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know anything about Santa Clara.
I have no idea, I have no clue, no clims like that I have know who this is. However, if they do beat Santa Clair, they got a good play Iowa State. That's a little bit more of a test. Yeah, it is.
I mean the Big Twelve, I think is the best basketball conference in the country. In Iowa State, though, is not. They've lost big games before. I mean they've lost games they shouldn't have lost before. You might remember since Sinnatty beat them like a Grand Canyon Mule a couple of weeks ago. So yeah, I mean it's it's it's as corny as it sounds, like the whole March madness thing. Like you can see a run for any number of these teams, like early on favorites losing in the first round.
It's very possible, Like a team like Houston.
Right.
Houston's a perfect example. They are not nearly what they used to be, but they're still really good. But there are more holes than we've seen from them in the past, right, Right, But they're just one of.
Those teams like you don't know what you're gonna wind up getting. Oh, you can say I made Kentucky, you know Kentucky Ohio State they put can can get rid of that five minutes of IC or ten minutes of INC. Yep, they can make a deep run here.
Yeah, it's consistency, it's you know, the big thing. I always feel like every good basketball team, when you need it the most, has a player that can go and get you a bucket, that can put the team on their back. And you know, I think Ohio State has that in Bruce Thornton. You know, obviously the name that that a lot of people are talking about right now from Arkansas is is Darius Acuff, who went crazy yesterday
for John Calipari. By the way, how about coach col all of a sudden sec champions I'm on with Arkansas. You know those types of players. Do you have that player that you can lean on to go and get you a bucket in a big moment?
All right? So we're chopping up with Austin Elmore here from ESPN fifteen thirty with the March madness now in full swing here on seven hundred WW. Big star of course is Mayam Ohio getting in. He has to playing game in Dayton yet it's gonna be a home game for them. Can they advance? Sure? But after that it's Tennessee.
So circle that one on your calendar. I would point out too, going back to Miama, Ohio, Austin that Auburn went seventeen and sixteen and they beat Florida defending national championship. They didn't get en over Miami. How to how pissed are the people down there.
I'm sure they're upset, But also they went seventeen and sixteen. That's true, and they obviously have a really difficult schedule and playing in a really good conference. And I understand that argument to say the least. But I mean, you went seventeen and sixteen. You gotta win the games that are on your schedule, and they were inconsistent all year long.
We think Miami of Ohio is the darling, but I mean, clearly the darling is Nebraska. It's one of those teams that you're like, wow, Nebraska. Yeah, I mean they've been pretty good.
I mean they were at one point there were three undefeated teams left in the country. It was Miami, Arizona, and Nebraska. And I remember, you know, like you rub your eyes and you look at it again, does that.
Say what we're talking for? Nebraska?
That's what I thought when I saw a higher state in TCU playing, I said, is it twenty fourteen in the College Football Playoff? But yeah, it's yeah, it's it's pretty wild to see Nebraska back in the NCAA tournament. All right, So every bracket is going to have a double a double of the Huskers double digits to goes.
Are you going to join our office bracket Challenge this year? No?
Why not?
I might?
No?
Yeah, why not?
I want?
I don't know because it's I'm not sure. I don't like to pretend to like you know what. I picked my friends. I picked my own friends. I'm asking you to be best friends.
I'm asking you for ten American dollars because the people and a submission to the tournament challenge, and if you win, you you win a couple of bucks.
When's the when is my when's the bracket deadline? In this fine office? By Friday or by Thursday?
Thursday? Okay, Thursday at noon. I'll get it into you. I would like it if you did. I make it really easy on people. I've been so for years. No, he's normally the last couple of years, he's been towards the bottom. But you know, Moe bestowed this responsibility upon me a couple of years ago. And you're one of the people that were chasing You've never participated since I've been a part of it.
I don't really like you people.
I know that, but that doesn't you don't have to You don't have to sit and watch the games, you know, because you're my buddy, You're Austin. I'm in Okay, thank you, I'm in Ai. It's ten bucks. It's not the money you lose one hundred in the wash every day.
Yeah I do. That's why I'm going to the filter taking a washing again. Every bracket has that double digit Cinderella story in the East. Who is it? Oh boy?
From a double digit seed to Ohio State? Is that Yukon Louisville. I don't think Furman can do it.
I can't. I don't know. I don't think Florida can do it. I got no hops run.
Yes, yes, it's amazing how quickly you can do that, like to just like between him and said, you just don't even hesitate.
To h by the way I have, I don't even know what a method. When when we.
Left the old studios to these studios that sometimes work, there was a reds jersey with Furman the last name are Furman on the back. You gave me that jersey when we have that, I still have it still.
That's huge.
And it's funny because that thing was pinned up. The front of it was up against the wall, so the back of it is like all dusty and worn and seen by the sun, but the front of it looks like a brand new jersey. And it's probably twenty five years old. You get him to sign it. I know, I need to get a Randy Firman.
There you go.
Anyways, South Florida in the East is the double digit seed to go.
Okay, sorry, Louisville, Louisville, you're out. You're out. Is it a foregone conclusion that Duke is your national champion? I don't think so.
I think the best teams in the country are Michigan, Florida and Duke. I'm not entirely a believer in Arizona, but you can absolutely make that argument. And I'll never ever, ever, ever, ever ever pick Michigan to win anything. So I'll take the Florida Gators to go back to back and win the national champs. So again, you're betting with your heart and not your head. Uh, this is a mix of both. Okay, yeah, all right, fair enough. Austin Elmer, what's on the Big Show?
Today at noon on ESPN fifteen thirty. We're going to see if we remember how to do a show because Kentucky basketball preempted us Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Of last week.
Can you see if Tony still recognizes me? Now, Tony was the Saint Patrick's Day Parade grand marshall over the weekend, so I have no idea what type of condition he's going to be in.
When he walks the studios today. He should be fine, buddy. He's got Patrick's Day now, that's true. And as Leprechaun and he's the Yeah, he's the Queen of the prom so all that sort of stuff. So we'll see how he does. We'll see if we remember how to do a show.
But we got a lot to talk about that we didn't get to last week, especially the Bengals and obviously Wes Miller and so on.
Yep, you got it. So it's all a chopped out again at noon today over in ESPN fifteen thirty. Give it a listen. Thanks again, Buddy, appreciates you. Here's my ten bucks seven hundred WLW.
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 Julietshire.
That was interesting. You know, your brain, maybe not mine, but your yours was built for the outdoors. Most of us barely step outside, ay more especially kids, and there's some significant things that happened, some good things had happened when you do on that in that mind body connection. Is Julie hat to share, our licensed mental health therapist out of Clifton and Cincinnati, jumping on the show again this morning at beconnected dot Care. Good morning, how are you?
Good morning? I'm great?
How are you?
I'm doing fine. We were outdoors yesterday. Today is a different story because we're in Cincinnati and the weather sucks here.
It's really not pretty out is it.
It is not no, no, no no. You go from good to bad to bad and good. But it's true. We know that the human brain needs it and we need a little bit of outdoors. What specifically happens when you step outside is I guess the big question here? That makes you feel good? Or at least it should make you feel good. Anyway, from a clinical standpoint, what do you see in patients who are chronically indoors? How does that show up?
It's interesting because you know, for most of our human evolution, we use large parts of our lives outside. Even if we worked, for example, in a factory, we still generally walked to and from work. We often live large parts of our lives outside. And it's only been in the last really small part of the entire history.
Of human evolution that.
We've gone from a home to a vehicle, to an office, to a vehicle to a home without really spending any time outside. And as we have become more sophisticated in testing what happens in our brains.
And our bodies, we're learning that time.
Outside, even as little as five to ten minutes, can make a difference in how we feel and how our bodies act physiologically, and how we feel in terms of our.
Mental processes, in our moods. And so it doesn't even have to be on a.
Lovely day, on a day like today, just being outside in nature in five to ten minutes, the heart rate flows, the nervous system calms down, and the stress response starts to go away. To ten minutes outside, that's not doing anything special, that's just being outside. In thirty minutes, we get even more benefits. We get a drop in cortisol, we get a drop in blood pressure, we get increased muscle relaxation, and we get a boost in mood in thirty minutes of just being outside.
It's amazing interesting. One of the phrases used here is attention restoration that keeps coming up in the research. What does that actually mean.
Well, we've talked many, many times about how we get over stimulated. There's so much calling our attention with all of the inputs we have from all of our devices, from all of the people in our world, from all of the sites and sounds around us. If you live in a big city, it's like sensory overload. My big city is sort of like being a casino.
Or an adult chuck e cheese. You know, it's sensory overload.
Well, there's a lot that calls our attention when we're in nature, but it's softer.
All of those calls are softer.
Wind moving through trees, bird sounds, grass under feet, leaves crunching under us, the feel of the wind on our face if we're sitting in the grass, the feel of the grass under us, and so it allows our brain to stay engaged, but to sort of go offline a little bit, which then allows us to solve problems better, to be more imaginative, to focus better after time in nature, to be more creative, to be better at problem solving.
All of those things happen after about thirty to forty five minutes in nature with devices turned off, so no inputs through your ears other than what you hear in the world around you, no screens in front of your face.
The brain resets and.
Can become much more productive in the aftermath of that than it was going into it.
Okay, gotcha, No, that makes sense. And we hear a lot about screen time being bad for us. Is there real problem the screens themselves or the screens are keeping us inside?
Both actually, because if you're on your screen outside, you're still not getting the full benefit of what's around you. It's better than being inside on your screen, but you're still not reaping the full benefit of what's around you. And you know, we talked about how crummy the weather is in Cincinnati, and that's often the case, but even being outside in bad weather, there's a lot of benefit to that because the sun is shining, whether we can see it or not, and the sunlight, even if it's
filtered through the cloud resets our circadian rhythm. We still feel the effects of the wind and the temperature and the surroundings, and it has the same impact.
Whether the weather is good or whether the weather is bad.
But the screens typically keep us inside, and they keep us focused on artificial lights and artificial stimuli, which don't have the same impact on the brain as being outside in the world does.
Whether it's a forest or near.
The ocean, or on a river or on a lake, whatever it is, being out or in a meadow, being outside in the world has this impact on our body and our brain and unervous.
If I'm on screen, if I'm a scrolling TikTok for seven straight hours, but I'm doing it on a park bench, isn't that better? Don't I get credit for something?
You get credit for being on a park bench.
Yeah, I'm outside. I get the benefit of vitamin D in the smell of the air, the birds. But I'm uh, it's more entertaining to be on my phone, So it's better.
It's better than being inside, but it's not as good.
As putting your phone down.
It's not as good as putting your phone down, and some of the things that it takes very little, like thirty to sixty minutes a day improves your.
Mood and reduces anxiety.
Thirty to sixteen minutes a day also improves your focus and mental clarity, and twenty.
To sixteen minutes a day.
Improves your sleep because of the light exposure first thing in the morning and first thing in the morning. Light exposure is really if you're having sleep difficulties, getting up and opening your eyes and getting outside for about twenty to thirty minutes, even ten or fifteen helps. First thing in the morning sends the signal to your body that Okay, it's daytime and now we need to start moving. That then lets it power down at night when the light goes down and the sun goes down.
Okay, Julie, morning sunlight gets mentioned for a lot of sleep, But why does that timing specific morning? Why does that matter so much?
Because our bodies operate on a circadian rhythm. We are designed. Before there was electric light, we were designed to go to three point it got dark and to wake up when it was light. And for centuries, for much of human evolution, we lived like that.
And then there was candle light, which was still a softer light than.
Electric light or firelight, and then electric lights came along, and electric lights extended the day significantly, dramatically extended the day, and our bodies and our brains didn't.
Necessarily catch up to that.
So what happened and when you get morning light is it tells your brain and your body and your hormones, okay, now it's time to get going on your day. And all of those things work together, and via the pituitary gland is one of the glands involved. All of those things work together, and then as the sunlight goes down, your body says, okay, it's time to start powering down.
Now.
That's why we tend to sleep more in the winter than we do in the summer, because daylight keeps us awake longer, and when the lights go down, our body tends to shut down. But the trigger for all of that is mourning sunlight, whether it's sunny or gray light today, getting.
Outside helps Julie. I blame whales. I blame whales well. So it was whale oil, lamp oil well, the original lamp oil was whale oil. When we discovered a lamp oil well from whales, we hunted whales, and it almost made him extinct, and then we took the land and we said, well wait a minute, now we've got petroleum in the ground, let's do that. And that was the beginning of the twenty four to seven life cycles. But you're going back a couple hundred years there. We have evolved,
have we not? Two hundred years that we don't need. We just don't need. We don't live like that anymore. So haven't we evolved?
I would say we've adapted to the life that we're living, but.
We actually haven't evolved.
Our brains and our bodies still work essentially the same way they did then. Our brains still respond to the keys and the signals of daylight and darkness the way that they did then. So we have adapted to a longer and artificially extended day, we have adapted to a shorter and artificially shortened night, but we have not necessarily evolved to it. So we still need what we needed, We've just adapted to live without it, all right.
She's our licensed mental health practitioner, Julie Hattershare on the Scotsland show Metal Health Monday, talking about your brain being built for being outdoors and we barely step outside these days and got a lot of what ails us from mental health and beyond. Even the body for that matter, be fixed with a little bit of just going out, putting the phone down, and even just standing in your standing in the middle of the road example, jumping out
of the way of the street takeovers. Getting outside is a big deal. We're not doing it off and just a little bit is going to go a long way. So what is the bare minimum here? We're talking like ten minutes a minute an hour.
How long we're talking five to ten minutes. First thing in the morning is the thing that if you have a hard time incorporating this, that's where you should start.
Five to ten minutes first thing in the morning.
Take your morning coffee or whatever it is you drink in the morning outside, sit on your patio or your porch, walk around in your garden, even if it's really cold.
Just a couple of minutes will help.
Go out and bundle up and just get a couple of minutes of sunlight through your eyes first thing in the morning. It helps reset your hormones, it helps tell your internal clock that it's time to wake up, and it actually helps you get much more restorative sleep when you do sleep at night. So that's the bare minimum that most of us should be doing on a daily basis.
All right, ten minutes is the bare minimum. Well, some of us work for a living, and we got to get up early, Julie, what about us? We just that's it, plany in the funeral. Now, what if you.
Get up and you're at work before it's light out, then the first opportunity you get to go outside and get some sunlight through your eyes five to ten minutes as soon as the sun is up. If you can get outside and get some sunlight through your eyes, that will really help you and it will actually help make it easier for you to get up in the middle of the night when you have to to get to.
Work before the sun is up.
So it all works really well if your brain and gets that signal first thing in the morning, and it's harder if it doesn't. And so it's worth taking five or ten minutes and taking a little walk. Go get a cup of coffee and walk to the coffee shop instead of you know, just grabbing it from your kitchen, if that makes sense, whatever works for you. Just get your sunlight first thing in the morning if you can.
Is there a meaningful difference between like walking through a city park or your backyard if you live in the burbs, or walk in the woods, or walking out on the ledge you're building and contemplating things as your coworker, there's appreciable. Okay, yeah, but as long as i'm outside, it's still good.
It's still good.
But your balance needs to be really on point if you're walking on the ledge of the building. But no, your backyard, a city park, even down a city street, as long as there's some sunlight and there's some air movement and there's some part of nature. Obviously nature is better than city streets. But what matters. First thing in the morning is the sunlight. You can get that anywhere. But in terms of the other things, your backyard is lovely. If you like to garden, go putter in your garden
for twenty or thirty minutes. If you have a park nearby, take your dog for a walk. And if you are and I live in Mountlookout Hyde Park area, which is you know, an urban area with a lot of nature around it. Don't focus on the street in front of you. Focus on the trees, focus on the grass, focus on the flowers in somebody's yard, focus on the natural elements, pay attention to what the birds sound like in the wind, in the trees.
That is also really beneficial and will help you feel better. Why Geologically, your blood.
Pressure and your hormones regulate and your nervous system calms down, and things change in your body within fifteen or twenty minutes of doing that for the better, they change.
For the better.
What about someone who works long hours, has a very demanding job, and you genuinely can't carve time outside. You can't get it. You can barely get a way to go to the restroom, let alone go outside for five to ten minutes. Is there anything you can real sickly do?
Do it when you can do it on the weekends, do it in the evenings because although we're talking a lot about light, being outside in nature in the evening is helpful too.
So when you get home from.
Work, whatever time that is, if you've got five or ten minutes to have a cup of tea or glass of wine or a glass of water and sit outside and just listen to the wind and feel the world around.
You, that can be helpful.
If you can't do that, roll the windows down in your car when you're driving home and turn the radio off and just enjoy what's around you, hear the night sounds, feel to breeze. If you can't do that and you don't get a break at work at all, try to get up five or ten minutes earlier and get outside. Do it on the weekends, do it on your vacations. Every little bit helps, but daily is better.
Than in chunks.
Okay, So we talk about this as a menthol all to it. And again the optimal is doing it first thing in the morning for sunlight, or at least when the sun is up at a reasonable hour before you start your day. But you know, in a panch, anytime.
In a pinch, anytime can do.
And overall, overall, what we know is that about one hundred and twenty minutes a week is what's necessary for optimal functioning.
So it can be broken into chunks.
Ideally you do smaller chunks every day as opposed to two big chunks on the weekend. But if that's all you can get, that's all you can get.
I mean, really, there are.
People who simply can't get outside very much during their work week, and that's understandable.
So about one hundred and twenty minutes is optimal.
And so if you've got to break that into five or ten minute chunks, and you've got to use some in larger portions and some in smaller, little bite sized portions, that's fine too.
But it's all counts.
It all helps, and first thing in the morning is ideally the best.
All right, So if you missed the being in a segment about being outside for five to ten minutes really will help help you in many, many, many ways, just being out in the outdoors. If you miss that, this is showing up. How how does it present? When you don't get enough outdoor time.
Attention challenges, your sleep isn't as restorative as it might otherwise be. You sometimes have a difficult time getting to sleep or staying asleep because your brain hasn't gotten the signal that it's time yet, because it didn't really get the signal that it was time to wake up.
And that's the other thing.
Long term morning grogginess can happen because your brain hasn't gotten fully gotten the signal that it needs that it's time to wake up and get moving during the day.
Well, it's also Monday, too, so let's just pump the brakes a second on expectation.
Well, that's true, but but mid day grogginess as well. People tend to get a little intentionally challenged between two and four in the afternoon. But one of the things that we've noticed in the studies that I've read is that this early morning sunlight helps minimize that, so you can stay more productive during the day.
And if you're more.
Productive during your day, then maybe you don't need to do as much work when you get home in the evening, which might allow you to get outside more.
Okay, all right, there some mood, mood.
Improves and irritability decreases, and so you're going to be less irritable with your family and friends, and your mood is going to be better, which is going to make you more fun to be around, which is going to give you more social opportunities.
So all good stuff.
Did a long weekend last weekend down in Florida at our friend's place. How long does that boost last recharge in the battery, so to speak? Get in sunshine now, Florida sunshine is real sunshine, not we'll pass us for us here in the Midwest, right, it's real sunshine, Donner. How long is that a car real done picketure your body battery, and a lot of people do that this time of year, maybe if you're fortunate to have a place down there or whatever. But how much does that recharge things?
It lasts about a week, because you really need about one hundred and twenty minutes, like about two hours a week, and so it'll last you about a week and then you're going to need to recharge it again.
And now that the time change has happened.
We have more daylight and spring is coming. I thought this was a really opportune moment to have this conversation and get people into the habit of getting outside regularly so that when the weather changes and it gets yuckier, which it will, they can already be in the habit of doing that and maybe continue that even in the gross weather.
So I got to go to Florida every week and I don't know, Willy money, Willy time, what are we doing here?
I can't do that?
I don't know. I wish we could go someplace for him every weekend. It would that just be the best, right.
Well, some people who travels, like they work out of state or whatever, does they do that on the regular largely they drive it.
But and I don't know how you do that for a sustained period of time. I know a guy who commuted from Ohio to Ottawa, Canada every weekend for five years.
Imgine that.
I can't imagine it either either in a plane or it's crazy, right, but he did. He did insane, I know I'm talking about. That's a different level of stress, right. You never see the outdoors. You're going backwards. You got to go the other ways on. But anyway, well, thank god we deported him. Anyway, Julie hattersh here is here. She's our licensed mental health therapist and she's at Bconnected
dot Care in Clifton. Again, if you want to reach out to her directly for a question, concern, comment, or maybe a future topic, it's hey Julie at B Connected dot Care Mental Health Monday with Julie. Thanks again, have a great week, Thank you. All the best news on the way in about five minutes, so get get outside. Well maybe not today today we got snow coming in, scattered snow showers just after and they said it's not
going to stick. Uh, but again, once you start seeing the flakes, after what we were treated to the last two days here. It is ald depressing, is it not? You'd agree with me there. The good news is the warm up is on the way, although the cold's gonna last a little. But anyway, I'm butchering this forecast. How about we get it from catch Market nine. Well, she'll do that, chuck as your traffic. We've got news and seconds here on the home of the Red seven hundred WWT Cincinnati. Do you want to.
Be an American idiot holding your seven hundred w dow?
So?
Your electric bill is already painful? Man, it hurts right, So now we add artificial intelligence into the equation. The AI boom is really running our power grid down here in America, especially in the Midwest, really really thin right now. You know this. I've talked about it a lot. You We're gonna see blackouts. The rates are going to continue to rise. There seems no end in point, no no
breaking breaking points coming up. Let's face it, and experts say, you know, you can expect unless we do something drastic, you can expect rolling blackouts for businesses and for homes neighborhoods. It may not be far behind. I know that's like doomsday prophecy stuff, but It's true. You can only squeeze so much juse of that lemon? Right, So what do you do when you can't trust the power grid anymore? This is where you got to start thinking about options here.
His name is Levi, bobmin. Levi is the chief revenue officer for a company called Ingenuity Power Systems. That's Ingenuity with an E. And welcome to the show. How are you?
Thank you so much?
Gay, We're living the dream and super excited to be here.
Thank yeah, yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
You know.
The thing is the US par grid was built for a different era entirely, and now we have AI. We have data center expansion. I mentioned off the are Ohio is fifth in data centers. We want to be number one. We've got about seventeen plan right now. In every municipality. It's going to face this issue of data centers at least neighboring communities for sure, and whether or not if they come in, but how they look. I mean, we're not going to be We're not turning off AI anytime soon.
It's the future. And data centers now consume about three percent of all of our electricity. That could double triple or quadruple by twenty thirty, right, so just just a handful of years. Because the major tech companies, the Amazons and Microsoft, the Google's are using gigawatts of power, which is about the same as small cities, and we have PGAM as our great operator here in the Midwest, they're stretched,
really saying. A lot of the experts are saying, be prepared for brownouts, be prepared for rolling blackouts unless things change dramatically. But I don't know how we can do that considering how long it takes to put this infrastructure in. So that's the setup. Leave How close are we realistically to seeing widespread residential and commercial power disruptions in the United States and to the Midwest in the Tri State Here in Cincinnati, Scott.
I'm really impressed because you are absolutely right, and not enough people are talking about it. It is absolutely going to happen this summer. So we'll see it happening this summer.
Once people start turning on their air conditioners, they're plugging in those electric cars and only gets worse.
It's not as bad in the winter because people use furnaces to heat their homes and heat their buildings, so that is running on gas, but it is coming, and it is coming now, so it'll happen in this summer.
You're absolutely right.
And what will be short a real number for you by pjam by twenty thirty, which the number that you use is eighty gigawats, and what a gigawatt? One gigawatt is equal to one nuclear power plant, and we just can't get a Milton time. You're absolutely right, and nobody wants to live by a nuclear power plant. Where we need the power is where the people live.
So we are the answer. We're one of the answers. We're not the only answers. It's going to take a lot of substitutes.
But that is our whole slogans, be your own utility. So what we do is we manufacture CHPs, which is combined heat and power units. Think of us as a boiler that is also a generator.
So we make heat.
Over a million BTUs of thermal load in the form of hot water. We produce fifty eight gallons of hot water at two hundred and three degrees per minute, and in doing so we produce one hundred and eighty kilowats of continuous three phase prime power.
So the President said.
Himself, whether you love him or you hate him. He brought it up during the State of the Union and he told commercial properties and businesses that you are going to have to bring your own power.
Well, that's going to be the solution.
And because we're in distressing because your company, and you know, it's one hundred kill a lot and two hundred kill a lot power stations basically, and this is not for you. Your house does not need one hundred kilo loots, but your small business, medium sized business does. And so your generators in particular produce electricity as well as heat, and that is that natural gas.
Correct.
So we run on four fuel sources, so you can use natural gas, you can use pro pain, you can use biogas, and you could use hydrogen and HPS. By definition as a category, we take one fuel source and we produce two outputs.
So you put.
Gas in, natural gas in, and you get heat out, and you get power.
We're out. That's what we.
Do, gotcha. Some might say, okay, well, if we start going towards generators with natural gas, what then happens as the price of natural gas goes to the roof, So where's the offset?
So that's a great thing for our country though, if you think.
About our overall political stance and our overall security. We have a lot of natural gas, so natural gas is not in short supply.
The prices of that are not going up.
We can we have our own and so we're much more secure as a country to use our natural gas versus being dependent on electricity, and that requires usually a lot of batteries in different.
Forms, right, and those batteries are not great. Well.
We're adding more evs or at least hybrids online, so the load for your house is even in more demand, and that just adds to it. Obviously, commercial on our price is the bigger the business, the more power they need. And AI is at the very top of that pyramid, but certainly down near the bottom of residents and neighborhoods and the like where hey, listen, you know, I get home. I want to make sure when it's two thousand degrees here and as hot as a dog's mouth and Cincinnati,
that I get home to air conditionings. The opposite when it comes to the very cold winter we just had. But if you're a business owner or worker, you hear, hey, the grid's under stress. We just assume that's an infrastructure problem, the utility companies, the government are solved. That's a pretty dangerous assumption, isn't it.
It really is a very dangerous assumption.
And what we really believe is that the facilities that will thrive in the next decade won't just consume energy, they'll produce it. Because the reality is politicians like their jobs and in order for them to keep their jobs, they got to keep your air conditioning running. So they are going to prioritize residential homes to make sure that they stay on because the outcry is just too great.
But will they'll shift that not having it and they'll pull back. The supply is going to be for all the commercial properties because they're going.
To have to bear increased rates and increase lack of civility.
Yeah, we all work for someone, so you're going, wow, that's my money, that's my income, that's my benefits. It's all that stuff for sure, But there's also the residential sides. What you guys sell a producer right now is not built for residential. It's built for commercial. At the smallest unit you have as one hundred kilowatts, which you know he may be able to power a subdivision with that for sure, and maybe that's in the future hoas get together and buy something like that.
Right exactly, exactly, And so really what we see is the grid prioritizing residential. So where we're focused is not so much the data center size because to what you said, they're buying the megawats, right, and so what we're producing is kilowats. So we're focused on every other business out there that is impacted by these higher utility rates.
And then what you don't use, you can sell back to the utility. By law, they have to buy back, right absolutely.
So that's a little bit dependent on the area and by the utility, but that is the goal, and I believe that that will become more and more popular as this energy crisis increases.
It really does. Levi Bauman is here. He is a chief revenue officer, chief financial officer for Ingenuity Power Systems. We're talking about the stress on the grid and it's you know, this is his business for sure, and it sounds like a lot of alarm bells going off. But typically as Americans, we ignore problems. The big problems I've mentioned countless times on my show is the power grid issue here for businesses and for residentialists. As we put more AI and more demand, more load on the system,
we don't have the capacity. We don't have the lines, we have the transmission, we have any of that. In doing that anymore is going to take ten, fifteen, twenty years. With right aways and everything else, we are going to as we add more AI, we're going to face brownouts. That's a natural fact at home, but especially in business. And his company helps solve part of that problem with natural gas and these combined units that generate electricity and
it generates heat using natural gas. So when you hear that for commercial customers, one thing, if I say, hey, man, I listened to live on a street. I don't have a subdivision, it's my house. I'm scared that that should I just go get a regular generator. But that's usually off of gasoline or diesel, which is a whole other issue entirely. What's the solution for residents to hear this?
Well, for residents to.
Hear this, it's really to work with their utility companies to ensure that their utility companies are working with business owners to get them using CHPs right. They really have to push on the utility to make sure that they're being prioritized over data centers, over any new commercial properties that are being built, to ensure that they're.
Going to have stability for their homes.
What industries are most exposed to a serious disruption if the grid starts to fail to keep up.
Oh, it's really everybody.
I mean, I would I'd like to tell you that it's this one particular area, but it's really everybody. And what the President talked about and what PJAM published right after the State of the Union is that they're essentially going to go a lifeboat style, if you will. So the last in so any new buildings that are being built, any new subdivisions.
They'll be the first turned off.
So the grid is essentially PGM is essentially saying, listen, we're at capacity right now. Yeah, and so whatever is added to it, that'll be the first that will be
taken off. And so anyone who is considering any new type of building, any new type of business, they should be looking at HPS to at a bare minimum supplement their power in order to do peak shaving and really produce the primary power they need for most of their loads, and then any excess that they would need, then they would use the grid as a backup.
Gotcha. So it is it's like work, right, last tired, first fired.
Yeah, Unfortunately, that's just the way it is.
Yeah.
And we're also going to see huge rate increases as well. And so what's a realistic number if your commercial customer, you know, what does an energy budget even look like? If you're trying to budget out electric costs over the next five years. That's impossible, isn't it.
It really is. I mean, you're looking at a bare minimum of probably a.
Twenty percent increase in your utility costs, and it's not unrealistic to consider forty percent. I don't know the rates off the top of my head for you in Cincinnati, but you know in California they're paying fifty one cents of kilowatt.
Yeah, that's that's that's substantially higher than what we're paying here. And speaking of California, ballso Texas in there we've seen rolling blackouts. Is that now a realistic scenario for the Midwest? And if so, how soon?
Yeah? This summer, So we will start to see that this summer.
Yeah.
And the primary driver of that is that the biggest use of electricity in a residential property.
Is your air conditioner.
So in the winter, this problem isn't as bad because people are using furnaces to heat their homes. But the country for the past ten years has gone through this idea of going to heat pumps, and a heat pump is essentially turning your air conditioner into your furnace as well. Right, So we've eliminated furnace use and we've increased our electrical use, which only come hounds this problem.
So you got to be thinking about getting a generator. Now, natural gas would be the best option for a house.
Yes, absolutely, at least as some form of backup.
Yeah, have a backup, have a plan, right. But you know the other thing we haven't talked about Leevi Bauman, is a national security issue here that you know, a grit under this kind of stress. You know we're having as we speak, terror attacks, right, we saw cyber attacks, we saw attack on infrastructure. Man, it doesn't take much to knock that whole house of cards over, does it.
No, it really doesn't.
And we are currently working with the DoD to help ensure that. So we do a lot of things with the National Guard, in particular to ensure that the armories have their own backup power or their own primary power that we produce for them to eliminate that risk.
Leevi I. Bauman on the show this morning on seven
hundred WW. He's the chief financial officer chief revenue officer for Ingenuity Power Systems that make commercial generators for businesses the small, medium, and large because of the unreliability infrastructure, and saying that even for residential customers, which is most people, well all people listening are residential customers, that we could see brownouts and outages this summer, because he's saying it's going to happen because of just how strained our power
grid is in this country right now and national security huge issue. You know, there's something called the concept of behind the meter power generation. People are here maybe hearing that for the first time and never thought about it, and this is what we're talking about here. The concept is going to get a lot of attention in next year.
Yeah, absolutely, and that really is our slogan, right, be your own utility.
And so we are.
Behind the meter power generation, so on site generated prime power. And then what we do in order to get eighty eight percent efficiency from our unit is that we capture that exhaust heat and we turn that through a heat exchanger into that hot water property can then use to run through an absorption chiller so it can create their air conditioning. They can put it into a storage tank, and we essentially become their hot water heat.
What's the word on incentives federal incentives to do this stuff? Is there money coming in?
There is all kinds of money coming in.
So it's a little bit dependent on the state that you live in and what they're doing. From an AI perspective, as you said, you're doing a.
Lot in AI.
So there's more available in Ohio than there is in other areas. But yes, there's all kinds of federal incentives, rural incentives, and local state incentives.
Okay, Levi Bauman again, he is the CFO or Ingenuity Systems. They make one hundred kilowatt in two hundred kilowatt power stations basically behind the meters we're talking about. So for businesses, as power becomes more and more in demand and more unstable because of that demand, it's an option you should be looking at because doing it now is going to
save a lot of heartache. Because we start it's like anything in America, you know, no one takes the hurricanes seriously until all of a sudden they see clo then they run to the tame deep onto tray, get plywood and bottled water. It's like the time to do that is now right one.
You know, I really couldn't conceptualize this until I went on safari in South Africa and we're staying at a really nice resort and then they come to us at breakfast and say, now make sure you charge your phone by ten am, and then we'll lose power until five o'clock. Then we'll have power from five to nine o'clock, but we lose power during the day so that their grid can prioritize office buildings during the day when people are at work. And so, I mean, I just thought that
was crazy. And then I was working for Residio and for Honeywell, and I got a call from Tony Yutley, our CEO at Intinuity Power Systems, and then he showed me this data from PJM and he explained that's what we're headed towards.
And so being im working for a.
Company that can provide a solution to help our nation with this is why I'm so excited to be.
Here feels third world. But third world is coming to America before we know it. LEVI abouming all the best. Thanks again for jumping on. The show is really interesting and frightening at the same time.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Scott, have a great day.
Yeah, that's a lot of money too. I mean ten twelve thirteen grand for a generator. Wof just another expense you've got to look forward to. And I don't think it's one of those things we can fix really quickly either, just simply because it takes a long time to get more transmission and generation, but particularly transmission online. That's just
a fact. Anyway, onward Scott's loan show. We've got news on the way in just about four or five minutes here, and then thirteen days from now it is opening today. I don't care what's happening. I don't care it's gonna snow. Us do care about it. I ain't trying to hear that you got thirteen days Mother Nature to get your bleep together. We need warmth, we need sunshine, and we need Reds baseball. On seven hundred WLW, Scott flown here seven hundred WLW. The Reds the Reds. I said, the Reds.
I'm not talking college basketballs. They did early with Austin. The Reds are thirteen days now from opening day. We're inside that two week window, two rotation spots up for grabs, and their top candidate was struggling. And the latest and goodyear from our buddy Jeff Carr with Lockdown residently daily. That means year round Reds podcast available. You get yours, Jeffrey, welcome. How are you?
Plonie is going to be with you. We are so close. We're talking about roster spots and it feels like there's only a couple, but I'm happy. I keep looking at the forecast. I know you're not supposed to do that, but as of right now, it doesn't look horrible.
Hopefully we don't know. Two we don't know for two hours from out alone, two weeks. Hell, I mean walking on in shorts, Yesterdaday, I got to get the snowshovel back out. And of course the other side of this was they had to move game times in Arizona because there's one hundred and bleep degrees out there, so you're getting extreme temps in Arizona and we're getting a stream comes here in Ohio, I don't hopefully we won't have snow in the ground for opening day.
Yeah, I remember twenty twenty one I have about froze in the outfield, and it's been a few years since that happened, so I'm still kind of got that in the back of my mind, like it could be coming. All right.
So relatives of the Reds, they have two open rotation spots and we got three candidate. It's a good problem to have, especially with your ace out for the foreseeable future. Rhet Lauder has been the most consistent I think, all spring and then he comes out and what almost fifty pitches and two innings? Is that a concern?
Now?
It's just a build up. I think that the number of pitches is the key number for any pitcher in spring camp, especially when they are competing for the starting rotation. It's just how many pitches can they get in one outing? You know, you might have fifty pitches to be three or four innings, but they're trying to work themselves up to about one hundred pitches. Last year, in his first season as manager, Terry Francona had said that he would like all of his pictures to be stretched out to
one hundred pitches by the time camp breaks. So he's working his way up to that number. He's got a few more starts to get there, and I think he will. Yeah.
But the other guy here is Chase Burns, and as opposed to building up, they're taking more off his plate, uh, to get him a little bit of time to get getting his groove here louder struggles I mentioned, So Brandon Williamson is there is there an opportunity here to get one of those spots.
Well, I thought it was interesting the way that both guys were talked about. Of course, you know, everybody's new favorite buzzword around the Cincinnati Reds is dload. Yeah, you know, I know, I know, upload down load back to front load. Now we're dloading. But so that that was kind of a strange thing to hear, and it feels like semantics.
But at the same time they were talking about Brandon Williamson and one of the things that Terry Francona said is he's still going to work on getting into his routine because some days are good and some days, well they aren't. And it's like okay, So it sounds like both guys are dealing with a little bit of something
right now. And the interesting part about Chase Burns, like, I don't think it's unprecedented, and it's possible that Derek Johnson talked with Terry Francona about this and like, well, you know, we had this other guy whose last name rhymes with smell and the way that he treated his pitchers at the beginning of the year. They only threw like four innings in their first start, and that kind of feels like what they might end up doing with Chase Burns, I mean, only throwing twenty eight pitches his
last time out. Realistically, he's got three more starts between now and opening day, maybe just two in a bullpen session, so it's not likely he gets stretched out to that one hundred pitch mark, So I would expect that. I still expect him to be in the opening day rotation, but I think his first start to be more of the four tough, five inning variety as opposed to a six inning one that we would like to see.
All right, waita, it's the Hunter Green situation and we're in this era arm care, monitoring even and deloading. The situation of Chase burns though it kind of tells us about the way the Reds are managing pictures. Does it feel like it's different this year and how they're they're managing, especially with the medical staff. And I bring Hunter Green back in because a guy, you know, had elbow chips that can't you can't fix that with an injection, that's surgery.
That's why he's out. He had the all off season to do this, and yet here we are today. So does it feel like they're changing their tune or at least changing their strategy when it comes to management from a medical standpoint.
I think so. And I think the only issue that they've had has just been the messaging with it. I think they've been much more careful with the guys in spring training. We keep hearing, you know, different things about
this and that and the other. In fact, you know, there was a conversation with Nicolodolo the other day where he alluded to, without going into any specific detail, that he is already preparing for the blister issue, which he's like, I've never had the blister this early on in the season, so it's never been a problem. But they're doing as much as they can right now to prevent it from
ha Benina at any point in the year. So I feel like the mantra, albeit ironic with how one hundred Greens News played out, is just being careful with this pitching staff as you get into into the year, because I think they understood that most of the starting rotation was set before Cactus League games even began, and so it was really about keeping guys healthy and making sure that they are warmed up and ready to go for the season, and not so much about Hey, make sure
you go out there and you can give me your best stuff in February and early March, where it doesn't matter because we need your best stuff in August and late September.
And nf and then the final push in the last thirteen days of spring training. Jeff Carr, Obviously, these guys want to show out so you can lock up a rotation. Spot Terry Francona came out and already announced the starters were opening day, at least the first three. Of course, you've got now to decide who the other two and what that looks like right now, if that were today, what would it look like.
I think for me, it's it's going to be red Louder as the fourth starter and Chase Burns as the fifth starter. Now, the significance of this would be those two guys would pitch in the Pittsburgh series that follows the Red Sox series that was the Red Sox being Abbot, Lidolo and Singer, and then you would see those two guys going up against a couple of key starters for
Pittsburgh that's always every single one of those series. This year is just going to be super heightened with the way that Pittsburgh attacked their offseason trying to get themselves up to the level where the Reds are, and you know, in their minds even past that point, there's four teams that are competing for this division and so you're going to need your best stuff. I still think that Brandon Williamson will be up here.
At some point because they're going to have to manage.
The innings of Red Louder and Chase Burns. But those are the two guys that I think deserve those spots.
We think Green may be back by when All Star break.
Yeah, I would say probably after the Alto.
Okay, Okay, it just keeps repeating itself again. He gots back after it, but hopefully Abbott, Lodolo, Singer, Louder and Burns and Williamson can keep you in the hunt. I mean that's the goal, right is to win the division and go wall to wall. Can you do it with that rotation you do with those guys? How much do we miss Hunter Green? I guess we'll find out shortly here, but with everyone fighting for roster spots and also Ferguson's on the iel as well, so how much more pressures
that put on? This starting rotation.
Definitely puts a little bit because you look at the bullpen and you felt good about the two lefties and Ferguson and Burke, and now you move Ferguson out at least for the time being, and you talk about Burke and Mall, and where Burke is a strong pitcher, he's not necessarily that effective against lefties as far as Payla Ferguson was, So you're gonna have to lean more on Sam Mall than I think anybody would have guessed, or some people didn't want to see him, But I feel
really good about him bouncing back in a big way. He was a guy that a couple of years ago there was a stat that I and I never really came up with a good term for, but a relief pitcher that came into a game didn't allow a base runner and got at least one strikeout. And Alexis Diaz led the team in twenty twenty four. We know how that went ye, but Sam Mall was number two, and so I think that he is a guy to watch bounce back in this bullpen in a big way this year.
But you're right, like the bullpen isn't going to be starting the year full strength, but probably going to have Luis May in the back end. I would think he takes that open spot that Ferguson vacates. Albeit there's been some interesting performances from Hagen Danner, and there's been the guy that they acquired from the Pittsburgh Pirates for Tyler Callahan and Kyle Nicholas, but I still think we see some usual suspects there filling out the balls.
We spent a lot of time talking about the starting rotation, but the more pressing roster question might be the bullpen. You got three open spots.
There three open spots, and it feels like one of the guys that, at least when camp began I felt like Honor Phillips did a lot toward the end of last season to earn a spot, and while he hasn't had the most consistent spring, I still think he earns one of those spots. So you're looking at two spots, and I think it's Sam Mall and you can kind of shuffle Luist May and Zach Maxwell back and forth there. I think that we will see a lot of both
this season. There's never been now as much as we talked about twenty twelve is the last time that the Reds really only used five starting pitchers, except for the one time that they had to play a doubleheader and use somebody else. We've never seen this season where they only use eight relief pitchers. There's definitely a lot more guys that are going to get up here, but I think the start we'll see one of May or Maxwell, and my money's on May between those nos.
Jeff Carr from Lockdown Red's thirteen days left before it starts for real here in Cincinnati. With opening Day, all right, we talked about the arms, let's talk about positional players. Three airs in one inning on Saturday, two from wild pickoff throws, one from a Jajblede just absolutely lazy from what it's on. I like, you know, that's always kind of been a trend with the base running two and of course defense. Do you just chalk that up as to, hey,
it's spring training or three hours in one inning. It seemed like it's one of those things where mentally it multiplied.
I definitely would say it's a little bit of both. I mean, you know, you're talking about the pickoff moves. You wonder a little bit if it's just okay. It's a lot of differences, whether it be first baseman and pitcher and who's used to who and how does that all play out. But the Bledet thing is interesting because he came into camp really competing with Will Benson for
a spot on this roster. You weren't going to keep both because you just don't have enough spots from the bench to do that, and especially whenever they went and they got Nathaniel Low, it was clear you're only going to keep one of them at least for opening day. And I kind of feel like, as much as we
talked about early on, neither guy had lost it. I think Will Benson has sort of separated himself a little bit more here, and so jj Bleda is kind of behind the eight ball, and he's he's a guy that's probably if he hasn't already turned it on, he needs to turn it on right now. And I almost wonder a little bit if that was him. Okay, I gotta go, and then he just makes a bone head move and so there's there's part of me that thinks that there's
something more to that error. Not all spring training errors are created equal, sure, but at the same time, it's it's going to reflect more on his resume than it would say on some of the other fielders. All right.
Now, the other side of that, I'm said it was Ellie's still selling three bases. I mean, he has spent unbelievable in the infield for that matter, looks loaded. You got day La Cruz, he got McLain, Hey, Suarez, Stewart. There's a lot of baths to manage, and it's a great problem for Tito, you know.
That's that's been the question that we asked just about every spring training game, is Okay, what do we take away from this game that means anything at all? And we've we've had some fun with the hard contact and the way the guys have just absolutely smashed the baseball.
And we've talked about Matt McLain a lot this spring, but that for me was the biggest sign that everything is okay with Eli de la Cruz because there was that one play or that one sequence where he got walked, he steals second, South Stewart hits an easy single up the middle, and Ellie scores from second on that easy single, and I'm like, that is the sign to me that everything is good with the guy who everything needs to
be good with. And so we're ready to go with La de la Cruz because if he is able to score on those types of plays and will, by the way, if he's adding more power to his game and things like that, then we are talking about, you know, really getting excited for our expectations for a guy that should be a top ten player in the league. And he didn't play like that last year, but I think we'll see that and.
It really feels, I mean, it's really well done if we can continue this pace with the Reds because bringing Suarez and it it lightens, it makes it easier for their guys to do what they do, and that's Matt McClain and Eli de la Cruz and they're all playing phenomenally right now, and hopefully we don't have a we saw last year. It's like, oh, they're losing one nothing. These one run games. They can put some runs up and cover some of the problems in the bullpen and
certainly the starting rotation. It's not gonna tay much of guys to get the dub.
Right. And I think that that's the key thing to underscore here when it comes to Suarez, is that if these guys are going like they can, Suarez just has to do one thing. He just has to match to baseball songs. He's doing that, then he's doing everything that the Reds needs him to do because they are leaning more on Ellie McClain, Stewart and those guys to really
carry this ball club. They did not bring in au Heeni asar As to be a superhero because I've seen people wonder, They're like, is he going to be as good as they need him to be? And I keep telling me, folks on like, you're over selling what the Reds are asking him. Reds are asking him to mash bombs and just keep this lineup dangerous, and he is well within his capability of doing that, especially when you've got Ellie doing everything that he can do on a baseball field on top of everybody else.
Yeah, you had McClain, You add Sal Stewart and some of these other pieces in their haze, and it's a really really good mix. Steer right right, Everyone's hitting on all cylinders here, So I can't wait. At thirteen days from now, it'll be opening day here on the Home of the Red seven hundred WIT Live the Holy Grail Banks. As always, I'll start it off Jeff Carr. You can follow him locked on Red's He's all over the place.
That's the only daily Reds podcast, year round two and no one is certainly knows more about this ball club than Jeff. Appreciate you joining us on this Monday morning. We'll talk next week, buddy, Appreciate you. We've got news on the way in just minutes. Willie takes over at twelve oh six this morning here on seven hundred w WDE, Cincinnati,