The Fifth Hour: The Doc Returns & the Con Continues

other things. But we're gonna begin with this. So, as you know, the Fifth Hour a tribute to the Overnight Show. Let me talk about whatever pops up in the head that I have on top of my body here. So the text arrived the other day. It was during the radio show and the text said are you on the radio? Which I thought was odd because I was literally doing the show. It was like midway through the show and

the text came in, are you on the radio? And so I wrote back, yes, I'm on the radio, and then silence, and minutes later, the call screening board in my computer lit up. Now, they keep the studio usually pretty dark, except when we're recording the YouTube videos, so the callboard lights up. Now. I had a bunch of other calls and then I see the name and it starts flashing on my left hand side. I see the name, and there's the city the callers from. It's from Chicago.

Callers from Chicago, and not just any caller. This is not just your run of the mill radio caller. If you missed it. This week we had the glorious return of Doc Mike. Doc Mike popped up out of nowhere. He is back, well, he was back for one day. He called the show the other night. Now his first call and much. I actually got some email from people who have listened to the show for a very brief amount of time and they're like, tell me more about this guy, Doc Mike, and so rather than right back

to people, because I'm very bad about that. If you've emailed me, I probably haven't written back. Bad job by me. I'm a schmuck. So I said, rather than right back to these people, I will use my platform, the pie pulpit here on the fifth hour, and I will reminisce about the caller known as Doc Mike. So Doc did return to the show. He called for the first time in probably five six months, maybe longer than that. It seemed like it had been years. Seemed like it had

been years. I'm going to decapitate a goat, let's do it. It felt like, Hey, I was running into an old friend. You everyone into somebody at the grocery store or something like that. He sah, look at that. I didn't know you were still around. Yeah, I didn't know you were

around either. And it's like the old friend, the one who always has a story, that really good storyteller, And in this case, this is our friend that's got stories that are half brilliant, half insane, and completely unforgettable, completely unforgettable. That is Doc Mike in a nutshell. He's not just a radio caller, he's a headline. He's also a Hasmad alert as you're gonna learn if you've don't know that story. And he's the reason, one of the reasons that sports

radio is never just about the sports. Now, we learned during the pandemic years ago, that's not really about the sports. It's not We had the most listeners we've ever had to Fox Sports Radio when there were no baseball games, there was no NBA playoff games, there was no sports. We had more people listening in the middle of the pandemic than we've ever had since or before. I mean, it was insane. So many of you have been with me on this audio journey out into the twilight Zone,

and so some of you know these stories. But for those that are new, and we love that there are new people that find the show because they end up working the dreaded overnight shift. All I say it's the dreaded day shift. For them, they say it's the dreaded overnight shift. So you know the Goadhead story. I think everyone does. I mentioned it briefly the other day. He left one at Wrigley Field. He's actually done this a

couple of times. Doc Mike, the Mayor of Chicago. One of the great stories as long as I'm around, I'll remember this, and when I died, that'll be it. But the Mayor of Chicago, Rama Manuel, at the time, the cub head, our goathead knocked was dropped off. They knocked on the cub's offices, dropped off this goathead, right, So the story was and the cub game got rained out that day, so there was no story, and so the

media latched on to the goatthead. The mayor of Chicago at the time, Ram Emmanuel, comes out and says that all police resources would be used to find out whoever did it. They wanted to get to the bottom of it. They didn't treat it like some prank. They were very upset. So think about that a goat heead in a box created the same level of urgency for the city of

Chicago as a citywide manhunt. How ridiculous is that? And my favorite part of that story is that Doc Mike was kind enough to call me up as he was arriving at Iconic Wrigley Field, Chicago, and he had his phone and he was doing play by play. He saw Ben, I got the goathhead. I'm going to go here. He's describing where he's dropping the goat head off. He's doing play by play as this is going on. So juxtapose that I'm playing back this message because I was sleeping

when he sent it. It was early in the morning in Chicago. Cubs were playing a day game. I think they're playing at Giants. So I'm hearing this, and then I'm seeing on the internet. I'm seeing the Mayor of Chicago say, hey, we got to find who did this. And it was the funniest thing. I still chuckle about it. And then there's the time that Doc Mike decided that I needed a goat head and he mailed me a goat actually mail a couple, and there was a problem with one of them send it to the Fox Sports

radio studios. Now one famously leaked blood through the packaging, and this created a very tent situation in the mail room. They didn't know what's in the box. They had no idea what was in the box, so this became a hazmat situation. I get yelled at. People are screaming at me and management. Management's changed. They were screaming, what are you doing. You can't be having this, Senor. I didn't tell them to send it. You can't be having this stuff center. I'm not in control of the United States

Postal Service. I cannot stop someone from sending something to me. You shouldn't have people send this stuff here. I understand, but I didn't tell the person to send it. They chose to send it. You can't send it here. I know that, but I told you I someone can mail me something all they want. It's not illegal to mail something unless it's a hazard. Anyway, we went back and forth, and as a result, I was banned embargoed to everyone say I could not receive mail. I believe it was

like six months. They would not not receive any mail. He just returned all mail that was sent to me as an active protest. Now Doc mailed, as we say, several goattheads in that whole thing. Miranda Marino was my producer. She got a GoAhead, which she didn't want at the time. Another fun factoried about Doc Mike. Every presidential election since twenty zero four, so we are over twenty years. Doc Mike has run for president one of these fringe parties

that gets no votes. So Doc Mike has run for president and he's always been kind enough to include me as his vice presidential candidate. You see, there's no caucus. When Doc Mike decides to run for president, he just does it. Unfortunately, we never picked up any votes. That's not true. We did get some votes people would send me. It was like twenty oh eight. I vaguely remember people sending me photos they were in the ballot box and they wrote they wrote in Mike and Ben Maller in

the Battle of Box. I thought, well, that's both wonderful and horrific at the same time. So then there was the Cansa City story. Doc big fan of the show, drove down from Chicago to Kansas City. Not that bad a drive, but still a decent trip. And he shows up to the Malar Meet and greet and he sets up his own table. Now this is a Malar branded meet and greet, this is not a Doc Mike meet and greet. So he shows up there, He's got a

table in the back. He puts a stack of T shirts out with his face on it, and then he starts signing autographs and giving medical advice to people that were there to eat chicken fingers. And it's like, bugs, Bunny, what's up?

probably the good part. That doesn't look so good. That must be the hard scrabble streets, but you don't really know. And the restaurant, which was not the landing, It was the restaurant before the landing, which is we're not going to give them a plug because they don't have the food anymore, the ben Maler chicken fingers. So go out. It was nighttime and it was another nice, warm Kansas City night, one hundred degrees with seven hundred degree humidity,

seven hundred percent whatever humidity. So I go out the dark street at night, getting ready to leave, and Doc says, hey, I want to show you something. Okay, So I am with my wife, my then girlfriend, she is with me, and Dox says, give me a sack. He then goes into his glove box, and in the glove box he grabs something I didn't know what. I'm not sure what it was. He then walks back out again the street starked as a little bit of a street lamp kind

of gleaning on the face of Doc Mike. And then he opened his right eye a little bit and it had this like sparkle, and he puts his other hand in the air and he's got a screwdriver. He's holding up a screwdriver. And in that moment, I thought, this is it. I'm going to be murdered by my most dedicated listener. But no, it turns out that Doc Mike just wanted to give me the license plate literally off of his car, literally off of his car, a souvenir Doc Mike license plate, and he did. He just took

it off the car and said, here you go. And he had some trouble futzing around trying to get the license plate off the car, and then he autographed he signed it. I still have it, believe it or not. I still have that item. There's a couple of license plates I have. I have the one from Doc Mike, and there was a gentleman from Florida who I've been asked not to name because he's a lifetime member of the country club in Florida. And this guy, big fan of the Ben Maler Show, used to listen all the time.

I haven't heard from much anymore anymore because it's hard to contact people when you're in prison. Costs a lot of money to send those letters. Anyway, back then, it did anyone. I don't know it's like now. So he was deputized. That's probably not the right word. But his job in prison was to make license plates, and so he made a Florida license plate with my name on it. Now, that part is one thing. The next part is you're not allowed to do that. How do you get it

out of the prison. I still don't know how he got it out of the prison, but I did receive it in the mail. So I have a Doc Mike license plate and a my name license plate. It's pretty funny. It's a Florida plate and it's as amateur radio on it, which is really a tribute to my dad as well as Big Ham radio operator. So you don't forget stuff like this. You just don't back to the Doc Mike angle to it. So let's flash way back, way way

back during the pandemic. So Doc Mike somehow became the producer of the Ben mathershw No, we really don't have a producer on the overnight show. He's going to produced the show and do the show and all that. So Doc Mike somehow became the producer. Now, this is another one of those stories. I'm not sure how it all went down. It was a bit of a foggy situation.

One minute, I'm on the radio talking about Tom Brady and the whole situation with Brady, and at that time, he was leaving the Patriots, He's going to go to Tampa Bay, and there was all these stories about Tom Brady. And the next thing, I've got Doc Mike lining up guests. Now, not athletes, not coaches. Doc Mike ended up lining up doctors, like real or at least those that believe they're real. Uh So he put these people on and during the pandemic, we didn't really have many rules. We just had to

fill the airtime. And the bosses were like, listen, there's no sports going on. We hired you to do sports. Just talk about whatever you want to talk about. So I was like, all right, Doc's going to book a guest. No one else's booking guests for me. I don't have a producer, so let's let's do it. And so he puts these doctors on to do urine therapy on national radio. Urine therapy. One even got so worked up and do a tizzy that they cursed on the air. Now I

should have been furious. I should have been very upset. That's a very bad thing to do. You're not supposed to curse on the air. Instead, I laughed, because when you let Doc Mike drive the bus, when you put him in the driver's seat and you let him drive the bus, you do not complain. Do not complain when it crashes. Don't do that. You just and you hope the fire isn't too big when the bus crashes, because you know it's going to crash. And then there was

the wedding. Now some of you attended this, if you went to the Mallard meet and greet in the Great State of Minnesota, a fake wedding at the Iconic Mermaid where Hollering James was there and a bunch of other big stars there from the Great State of Minnesota. They were all hanging out and also other states around there. So Doc Mike and Regina, also known as spin Cycle Regina,

they had a wedding. It wasn't real, of course, but it was, if you'll excuse me, the most real fake thing I've ever been a part of, Doc Mike saying I do in front of radio listeners. I was dragged into that. It was funny, it was bizarre, and it really was perfect in many ways for that of it. It was perfect for that event. You could tell part of Doc Mike believed that he was actually getting married, even if it was all theater. He played along, good acting.

And here's the thing about Doc Mike, and I'll sum it up like this, he shouldn't matter. Doc Mike should not matter in the context of a talk radio show. He's just one guy calling in to the overnight a sports talk radio show. And yet some of the funniest, most memorable, most bizarre things in the history of the show have happened because of Doc Mike. He's chaos, he's theater. He's the best and worst of what makes sports radio

so addictive and the passion of sports radio. So yes, Doc Mike, he has called the show again, and yes, it was wonderful to hear from him, because Doc Mike is a reminder, at least for me and maybe for you. But he's a reminder to me. Doc Mike is that it's kind of why we do what we do in the first place. And it's not just about the sports. It's about the people around the sports, the goat heads,

the screw drivers, the fake weddings that never happen. So Doc Mike is back, and I say, at least for the Ben Mallor Show, and I would say for a larger, larger group of sports radio that means the world's just a little more interesting again, at least when he chooses to call in, he say he's going to call in more often. We'll see if that actually happens. I have my doubts, but he said he's gonna call in more often,

so we'll see. Now, I did want to rant about something else, and there's a need to filibuster for me. For me now, I mentioned this in the previous episode of the radio show. I would like to now mention it again. I want to expand on what has become a pet peeve of mine. And there are people in this world that collect baseball cards. There are some people that collect snaps stamps, there's some people that collect Disney stuff. Whatever your jam is, I don't know what you collect.

It's not my business unless you want to make it my business. So what we're all collecting though, and we're not realizing it, Well, I'm realizing it. I've had the point of epiphanation where having an epiphany. But we're all, all of us are collecting illusions. The greatest hustle of the modern age is not Bernie made Off, It's not Enron,

it's not the Larry David endorsed crypto that went under. No, it's the curated, digitalized, algorithm driven social media mirage that we are living in a fund zone at the count of all, a fun zone of mirrors, and it rubs me the wrong way it does. And so the inside skinning on this, a lot of us know it's a really slick trick, and yet we still clap like seals at a show when the magician pulls the rabbit out

of that. Social media is the wile wild West. There is no sheriff, just tumbleweeds, tumbleweeds of bots, rolling, rolling, rolling across the digital wasteland that is your feet whatever your algorithm happens to be. However, here's the con. The con is there are major companies, billion dollar, multi billion dollar companies who I believe are run by really smart people, really really smart people who are very sharp in business

and know exactly what they're doing. And yet these really really smart people, the top one percent of one percent, those people are falling for it. They get dragged in. Look at these numbers. Millions of followers, billions of views, except spoiler alert, spoiler alert, the followers are fake. The views are inflated, the downloads bought in bulk like you would buy tubs of mayonnaise at Costco or discount toothpaste.

Now we're told that that artist is blowing up, this influencer is a star, and this show is a smash hit except when, and it always happens, when the curtain lifts. The tickets aren't selling, the arenas are mostly empty, the ratings look like they're a minor league team on a Tuesday in Toledo. It is a Potempkin village, is what it is. It's a facade built out of bots, fake likes,

and the illusion of relevance. And it turns out that a lot of these people that have been going around trying to sell music or sell their takes on certain shows that the fans with just an algorithm in Uzbekistan some clicking refresh and there's some new followers and all that stuff. And you see, the matrix is a rigged game. It is a rigged game. Red pill, blue pill, guess

what same destination destination fraud, capital f fraud. And now entering the chat, half man lizard person Adam Silver, who's supposed to be supposed to be the grown up in the room, supposed to be the grown up in the room. He gets on his soapbox this week. Now, I mentioned this on the radio show, but I would like to expand on this because it really ties into what I'm thinking about. And this is my train of thought, and I'm the conductor true on my own train of thought.

So I've just explained to you how I think this great hustle is going on. And it's a Potempkin village. It's all just an illusion, and it's like a movie set. It's like being over at the Universal Lot and they've got the downtown New York scene and that whole deal. It's like that. So Adam Silver, who's supposed to be one of those grown ups in the room. Adam Silver, he gets on his soapbox or his spaceship is flying saucer the other day and he says the NBA is

a highlight sport. He said it. He was asked about people not wanting to money for the various streaming services, and Adam Silber, without missing the beat, says, well, listen, just watch the highlights. Don't bother watching the games. Just snack on twelve second dunks and three point shots that are about eight seconds on TikTok, and you're good, which is the equivalent if if you were the CEO of Ruth Chris Steakhouse said, I know you can't afford our steak.

You can't afford our delicious mashed potatoes or the mac and cheese. You can't afford anything because you're poor. So what I'm gonna do for you is you don't need the steak, you don't need the mashed potatoes, you do not need the mac and cheese. Just lick the plate. That's all you need, right, you don't need the steak. Just lick the plate. That's what it's all about. So

the NBA business model. The NBA makes the lion's share of their money off television when no one's watching television anymore. That may, it may not be true, but television is what pays the bills, the real money. Social media, for all of the glitter and all the metrics and all that, is a cotton candy economy. It's sweet, fluffy and evaporates the second it touches your tongue e. And the other thing about is, once you've seen how the trick is done, and this is with all magic, but this is a

bit of a magic trick. Once you've seen how the trick is done, you no longer say abercadabor, hocus pocus. You learn how the magician slides the box, how the saw never actually touches the lady who's getting cut in half. You see all that. You notice the bots, You notice the inflated viral accounts that you've never heard of. You notice the emperor has no clothes, just a lot of retreats, and it's like, what's up with that? Now? Back in the old days, you're an old head. Back in the

old days, we called this what it is. We called it fraud. We called it fraud. Now, a synonym for fraud is engagement. So we've dressed up the con with a fancier language, slapped a blue check mark on it, and said there you go, sold it as is its progress. Now everyone is making money on this outside of one group of people. And it's one of the reasons that this has gone unchecked. That the creators buy followers and views,

they inflate their value. It's not real. The people selling advertising on the creators' platforms, the social networks all they're all gung ho on that, right. So you got the influencer who's buying followers, So the people that sell followers are making money, they're growing their audience. Then you have the other social media companies who are benefiting because the perception is that you have a lot of followers, more people who are real will actually follow you in so

they're making money on that. The only people who are getting panted and this exercise are the hair brained advertisers who don't realize they're being hustled, scam bamboozled, hoodwinked and led astray all of those things. Then all realize it and so yes, this is a I don't think it's I'm not gonna use work conspiracy anymore. I just think it's

a straight con. The house always wins. The magician doesn't saw the lady in half, the bots don't care about your product, and the NBA doesn't want you to watch the game. It just wants you to double tap a dunk and make sure you give it a like. That's all they want. It's an old movie, which is a great movie, and they should remake it called The Truman Show. Now maybe that's before your time, But The Truman Show.

The crowd is fake, The applause a canned. The illusion is about as airtight as you can get until until someone sails their boat into the edge of the set and finds an exit door. Then it becomes a problem. So it's smoke, it's mirrors, and it's a magic trick that we all agree, not me anymore, but we all agree to pretend is real. And every once in a while there'll be a team that will have an influencer throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, and

it's pretty funny. Most of the time, nobody knows who these people are. It's kind of like YouTube. During that Chiefs Chargers game, they mixed in some YouTube influencers who have a big following on YouTube, and the millions of people who are watching the NFL game had no idea who these people are because they're really not that famous. It's like being famous in a silo. Well, you're really well known in the silo. Outside the silo, nobody really

knows your that's the problem. And that's the problem. The silo is not nearly as big as you think the silo is. That's the other problem. So it's the modern world's greatest hustle and the mark is us. It's you and me. We'll get out on that. We will have a new podcast on Saturday, that would be tomorrow and then again on Sunday, NFL Sunday. Don't forget to watch Benny Versus the Penny Benny versus the Penny on YouTube, Benny Vspenny, that's Benny Vspenny on YouTube. Check that out.

As we have a brand new slate of games up today, just went up last night. You can watch all the picks on the key primetime games, including the game in Kansas City, Philadelphia and KC and all the way through the double header action on Monday night. Got you covered on all of it, and we'll catch you next time. Have a great Friday. Danny g should join me tomorrow. We'll catch you then. Got a murder.