The Todd Herman Show

A Life in Talk Radio: There Could Be No Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson Without Talk Radio Ep-1872

I'm gonna share with you some radio stories starting with how it all began for me and why I wanted to be in radio. And, I want to tell you a couple of insane stories of the radio times and then one that really has touched my heart and changed me for a very long time.

Episode Links:

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Broadcast on:
07 Oct 2024
Audio Format:
other

Welcome to the three stories version of the Todd Herman Show, kind of a weird approach to this day. It's three radio stories. I still love radio. In fact, I'm in Tupelo, Mississippi. Then here at the radio network where I'm gifted to have a fantastic program on the American Family Radio Network. It's a one-hour day, five days a week, 180 stations. First time I've been in Tupelo. No, I'm actually not in Tupelo right now. I'm filming this in advance. But I'll be down in Tupelo all week with radio people. So I'm going to share with you some radio stories, starting with how it all began for me and why I ever wanted to be in radio, working up to the guy who got me the first education in radio, then just a couple of insane stories of the radio times, and then one that really has touched my heart and changed me for a very, very long time. We'll do this with the help of our YouTube channel, youtube.com/atthetoddhermenshow and with God Almighty. The Todd Herman show is 100% disciplined by big pharma technocrats and tyrants everywhere. From the high mountains of free America, here's the Emerald City side. Todd Herman. Today is the day the Lord has made and these are the times to which God has decided we should live. We live in a time where YouTube has become the biggest podcasting enterprise in the world. It's been the biggest media company in the world for a long time. Most people don't recognize this. Very early on, it amassed a larger database of video content than all three television networks combined, and that blew people's minds because it happened so, so very quickly. It's the biggest media company on earth, but it's not radio. It has live. Like people do live podcasts, they do live streams, we do that. Other people do, but radio is a precursor to this, and if you're too young to remember when radio was really the dominant medium, everything you're seeing now, you can thank talk radio for. It was a formative way of doing this. Before there were images, we had opinion-based radio, and for me, this all began the way a lot of things began with my dad. There was a dude back in the day, his name is Paul Harvey, utter genius in radio. He had a program called The Rest of the Story. I don't care if you're 19. I don't care if you're 35. You would benefit from listening to The Rest of the Story just because he was a master for storyteller. He'd taken a historical moment and tell you everything about it, accept the participants or who they were or a key detail. When you got that, you go, "Oh my gosh, that's the rest of the story." He also did news and commentaries, very famous these days for something he did called, "If I Were the Devil." It's a great bit of commentary that seems to predict what's going on these days. So I would drive around with my father. My dad loved to think of himself as a mountain man. He had a master's degree in social work, but he liked the image of mountain man, and indeed he lived on 22 acres and liked to hunt and fish. But we would listen to Paul Harvey. You know what's so weird? It never occurred to me that I could do that. Here I loved the medium. I listened to it. I looked forward to it. And into high school, I used to go listen to his program. And it never occurred to me that I could do something like that and tell something he changed. Now, have you ever had one of those moments in your life where you look back and go, "Wow, is that why God introduced me to that person and this family?" I'll tell you what happened to me because I do think it was an act of God. I think it's an act of God that he's given me a love of doing really hard things with my body. For me, it's part mental cleanse, it's spiritual cleanse. And one of the things I've realized recently is I really benefit from it being social with people, teams of people. This happened to me at SealFit. I want that more. I like the notion and the experience of working with the team of men who like to push each other and always be positive, always optimistic. I also use some tricks because at my age, I'm over 50. I'm 57 years old. I use some tricks. I think it could benefit from this even if you don't work out. There's a product called Mass Zymes that will help you get more nutrition for your dollar. So whatever you're buying, it will help you digest more of it. This is particularly important with protein. As we age, it's easy for us to lose muscle. When you lose muscle, you lose support for your skeleton. You can lose core stability, which can lead to back injuries. And if you're doing or have been through any form of restrictive dieting, then you're likely to have lost muscle or be losing it. So don't let that happen. Use Mass Zymes. A study at Berkshire National University in Bosnia showed that people who use Mass Zymes produced 1,200% more amino acids in their bodies than people who did not use Mass Zymes. So take action. Go to Baptomizers.com/tod. You get 10% off all their products, including Mass Zymes. So stop allowing poor nutrition to stop you from reaching your full physical end in that way, mental potential. Baptomizers.com/tod. In junior high, a kid came to school. He was from California and I lived in Eastern Washington and Californians weren't popular then. And they're not popular in North Idaho where I live now, right next door to Eastern Washington. We're all filled up. We don't need more Californians is saying. And he came from California with all these concert shirts. Every stinking day, this kid walked in with another concert shirt. And almost, I guess probably 60 days in a row, he wore different concert shirts. And so some friends of mine came to me and said, "You need to kick his butt." Blank. Because he's an arrogant kid from San Francisco. He thinks he's a big deal. Plus he wears weird straight leg jeans. He's not wearing bell bottoms. He's a prop. I won't say what they call them. So he's sitting in front of me in gym class one day and we were going to wrestle. Now I'd become a decent wrestler by ninth grade. Pretty good wrestler. And here's this kid sitting in front of me and I know I'm going to have a chance to maybe wrestle him. Although he's he's smaller than me. So I just tapped him on the shoulder before class began. I said, "Hey, how are you doing? I'm Todd." And he called himself Matt. His real name is Matthew. But at that time, he's calling himself Matt. I'm Matt. Hey, can I ask you question? Where'd you get all those t-shirts? Oh, he goes, "Man." Everybody asked me this. My dad, he goes, "I'm really lucky. My dad works in the radio business. He works in the record business for years." And so I'm really lucky. I get to go to a bunch of concerts and stuff because it's just my dad's business. So I'm just really lucky. This all made sense to me. Why would I beat this guy up? That's the man who led me to Jesus. He is, to this day, a guy I consider a brother. And I'm not saying, "Hey, bro, I'm saying I feel like we were born together." His dad was a radio legend. I didn't know this. I mean, I knew he worked in radio. I didn't know he was a legend. So the first time I went over to his home and I walked into the house, it's this beautiful house right at the foothills of a mountain called Morrow Mountain named after my great-grandpa because it used to be his land. And I'm looking on the walls. Who's that? Oh, that's my dad. Your dad's with BB King. Yeah, yeah, it's with BB King. Your dad's with Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin. Yeah. Your dad's with the Beatles. Yeah, he got to meet the Beatles when he was a DJ. He was one of the first people to bring him to America. Do you know these people? I've met a lot of them. When I met his father, I was expecting something different than I got. What I got was a kind man. What I got was a humble man. And what I also got was a guy who told me to respect my own father. His job was more important. Gary learned that my dad was a social worker. Far more important than what I do. But I got this. I got to ride around in the car with him. I got to listen to him critique live radio. I got to hear him tell me what was a good transition to a song to a bad Zen transition transition to a song. What was a good joke versus a guy who's making it up using the fake radio voice that they used to call puking into the microphone. Used to say the great ones talk to you just like you're sitting in a room with them. And it sunk in the great ones. Gary begged me not to go into radio as a personality. Do sales. That's where the money's at. Earn the money. Being a disc jockeys, not the way to go. But he did bring me down to San Francisco, California. And it was at a really tumultuous time in my life. I can't say I did a great job selling it. I did some big deals, but I wasn't consistent. I was too emotionally hurt at the time. Plus, you know what? I'm great at presenting. I'm not good at follow-up. I'm not good at being a great sales executive. So one day I'm at a car lot, and there's a guy there who is a legend in radio. Absolute morning show legend. And he started to make fun of me. I mean, I helped sell the deals, so I got a commission out of this. And this guy decided to make fun of me, so I pushed back. And he thought it was funny. So he said, "Bring this guy a microphone." So he and I bantured on the air. And he told me later, he actually called me at my desk. Hey, come up here. So I went up with this guy who's making a million, five a year, driving around in the limo from his home, out in Dublin, California. Beautiful, beautiful home. And he says, "What are you doing? Why are you selling? You know what you want. Go get it. How would I do that? Find the smallest market you can, and go to work there. Tell them that you'll sell, do a 50/50 deal, do a rev-share deal, and see if they will give you a shot to be on the radio. That's how I would do it if I were you." Well, I took his advice. I actually left. Moved home to Spokane, Washington, and humbled myself by living in my mama's basement. How was that guy living in mama's basement? I'll tell you the next part of the three-parter, with some insane radio stories in just a second. I wouldn't be able to do what I do now if I hadn't been given the opportunity to earn some great money. I mean, I couldn't be sitting here in the studio that God built for us with the money that God provided. I couldn't be working with the team of Alex and Naomi this morning if we didn't have that. And I wouldn't have had this great base to work on if I hadn't been blessed with a time of working in tech and working at Microsoft and doing some startups, which gave us a really good nest egg on which we still operate today, praise God. Now, I protect that nest egg by not managing it myself. Like I talked about, I don't like follow-up as salesperson, I'm a good presenter, et cetera. That details stuff with money, makes my eyes bleed, and I get distracted. So I employ Zach Cabraham at Boulder Capital Management to care for our investments. He's a fiduciary, so he has to put his interest behind ours. Always has to act on our interest ahead of it, ahead of his. He is really obsessed right now with how current events are affecting people's retirement accounts. You know, I started mine before my daughter was born some 22, 23 years ago when I started seriously investing. And that was set up for a time when there were rules in the finance system. There aren't any rules anymore. The rule is might is right. Well, Zach knows how to operate in these environments. And he employs risk management. And he's obsessed with actively managing every portfolio, which can reduce risk and volatility. But at heart, you know what Zach gets? He's just like me. He's a communicator. He's a great radio show, a great podcast. He's a teacher, and he will, for free, zero obligation. He will talk with you about your own retirement account. He'll look through every detail. He loves that stuff. He loves charts. He sleeps in rooms filled with charts. He sleeps on charts. And he'll tell you if you're set up for retirement. And if you are, he'll give you a double thumbs up. Go get him, kiddo. If you're not, I'll tell you how he thinks he can help go to know your risk radio dot com. That's K N O W know your risk radio dot com or call me 866 779 risk investment advisory services offered through Trek Financial LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advisor recommendations for any individual around any specific security. Any references to performance of securities are thought to be materially accurate. And actual performance may differ investments involve risk and are not guaranteed past performance, doesn't guarantee future results Trek 24308. The necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. I had to be in talk radio. I had to do it. I had this challenge from this morning's show host saying to me when I was working in radio sales in San Francisco, what are you doing? You know, you want to be on air. Go do it. So I moved home to Spokane, Washington, and I humbled myself by being the guy living in my mom's basement. That's truly humbling. You know, that's that George Costanza thing. You meet a young woman. So where do you live? I rather not saying I never did get the Costanza thing right by doing all the things opposite. I live in my mom's basement. But that act of humbling myself led me to the necessity of finding a way to get into talk radio. I put a one year timeline on it, one year. If it does not work, I go do other things. I go back to construction because I know I didn't want to be in sales. I choose something else. I go try to become a firefighter, a cop. I give myself one year. A friend of mine I knew in high school saw me at the mall one day. Hey, what are you doing in town? Here's what I'm doing. Hey, what do you want to do? Here's what I want to do. He introduced me to a guy who is a financial wizard and he somehow made a business out of a 1000 watt radio station in Spokane, Washington. And you know what? It's crazy. But my national radio show is now on that station, KSB and AM1230. Such a weird full circle moment. In any case, I went and I met with Tom. I made this pitch. I'm really good at selling deals. I'm not good at follow up. I don't want to follow up. But I can open the door. I can bring people in, advertise us in, turn them over to you. So how about we do this? I will keep 65% of the money I bring to a show. You keep 65% of the money you bring to my show and you give me an audition. Do you have any tapes? Yes. See, now, if you're new to this medium and you're new to learning about radio, you've just been video or podcasting, it used to be hard to create tapes. You didn't have editing software. That didn't exist. You had to cut tape with scissors, real to real. You had to cut things with scissors. Or if you're like me, you had a four track recorder used to record music on. So you know what I've done in my tiny little apartment in San Mateo, California? I had pretended to have a radio show. I put on bumper music and I made myself the big voice by slowing down the voice. Now the time it just sounded terrible. But I had an intro. I had intro music and then I would come on and host. And on one of the other tracks, I recorded myself as callers using different voices. I just wanted to say, I just love your program. I had better voices at the time. Listen to me. I hate your show. And I interacted with myself. So that's what I gave Tom. Here's my audition tapes. He didn't ask, are these real radio tapes? Because he was too smart for that. He knew they weren't. But hey, the guy can talk. He can shatter. So here's the audition. I think it was 9 or 10 p.m. on Halloween and the night after Halloween, where no one was listening and he knew this. Here's something I learned from talk radio professionals. For every hour of radio, do three hours of research. Otherwise you run out of topics. And then this. Back in the day of call to driven talk radio. The last thing anyone wanted to hear was you seeing the phone number over and over again, because no one was on the phones. So I front loaded the phones. I had friends and relatives ready to call in. The one single time, this specific relative ever, ever, ever listened to me on the radio was that one night. So I did all my prep I bought in stacks of paper. I remember the music I used was the laws. There she goes as an opener. And I went forth and I did the show those nights. My friend Dave came and was an in studio producer. God bless you, Dave. I miss you. So we did these shows and the first phone call was from a woman whose name I won't say, but she was my mom living in her basement. And she was the first call to my show and she is a liberal. She hated every single thing I said on that program. And in fact, it cost her a teaching job. Cost her a teaching job. Not that phone call, but something else I'll tell you. Some other friends called and made conversation. The shows went well. Tom offered me a gig. I gave myself one year from that point to get an actual paying radio gig where I wasn't selling time. I was just getting paid to do the show. So I picked a target and the target I picked was a guy named Tom Foley. He was Speaker of the House at the time and I dedicated my radio program to seeing that he was ousted from the Speaker of the House office that he was not reelected and being arrogant. I went to one of his town hall meetings and being a fool and arrogant. I stood up to him. I think God protected me from this because I think God had a plan. It wasn't to be self-aggrandizing. It certainly wasn't to do the sort of radio I did in Salt Lake City, which was all too often, not Howard Stern sexual, but all too often, just provocative to be provocative. That wasn't his plan. It's this. To put him at the center of all things just took me while to figure that out. But arrogant and young, I went to this town hall meeting with Tom Foley and there he was on stage and I raised my hand in the question and answer period and he called on me and I stood up. I said, yes, sir, Mr. Speaker, thank you for taking my question. It's more of a comment. My name is Todd Herman and on Monday, I'm starting a program called Backtalk with Todd Herman, an AM1230KSBN and I intend to see to it that I use the program to see that you're not reelected because of what you've done to the Fifth District where you've taken IPO monies for yourself that we don't get. You become rich in Congress and I think it's through graft. So I just wanted you to know that. And he said to me, looking down at me in the stage, well, son, a lot of bigger people than you have tried, but I wish you good luck. My name is not son, Tom. It's Todd Herman. You'll remember that. So arrogant, right? Afterwards, a reporter with the spokesman review, the local liberal newspaper came to me turned out to be a decent dude and actually kind of developed a tenuous, not really friendship, but kinship. He knew he had someone he could make good copy out of and he interviewed me that day and where? There you go. The first big write up about the show that was coming and, of course, it featured Tom Foley. So I started this process of daring Foley to come on the show and I started running ads or promos during the show that said this and I'll explain it and I'm going to apologize for the language right now. It said this, my name is Tom Foley. Vote for me or I'll sue your ass. So why could I say something like that? Because he'd sued the voters of Washington State. When the voters of Washington State voted for term limits, he sued us with our money. He sued us. That became a focal point and I created a nickname for him. Again, I'm going to apologize for the language. It's called the sphincter of the house. I was asked once by a couple of national journalists. Among them, the people who worked for Ted Koppel, PBS NewsHour, the Philadelphia Inquire, Nippon Television from Japan, PBS, two PBS shows. They thought they were very, very clever. On McNeil-Lair NewsHour, the young lady who tried to trick me into talking before the interview began, who tried asking me questions by saying things like, "Let me just ask you, how much of what you say on the show do you really believe and how much of it is shtick?" I said to her, "That would be a great question to ask once the interview begins." Oh, I know. I'm just asking now because we're just talking. Well, that's interesting because that camera's on, that microphone's on and I can see it through your monitors. I'm not Newt Gringer's mom. I'm not going to be fooled that way. So ask me the question. She didn't. She did ask me this. You have a very rude nickname for the speaker of the house of this Congress. How do you defend calling him the sphincter of the house? I defend it this way. By involving himself at IPOs and IPOs at pennies on the dollar and enriching himself in ways that we can't possibly do here, he takes all the nutrients of things like that for himself and he leaves the by-product all over the fifth district all over us. That's why calm's finger of the house. She blue-screened. How do you deal with that? Wait, you have a reason for this? Yes. I have a reason for it because I was bothered by saying it. I bet I have a pretty good reason. Ultimately, it came to pass that Tom Foley was not reelected and there was a poll in the spokesman review that showed that my show had a pretty big effect on that. Now, they tried to run the poll saying, "Oh, look, the Todd Herman had no input on this. No impact on this at all." And yet, I think it was three to four percent of voters were swayed by what I said on a thousand watt radio station. He lost by a couple percentage points. They tried to make it seem that I had no effect. Oh, Foley never did come on my show. He wouldn't. But it kept sending campaign people. Finally, they sent in a campaign manager all the way from Washington, D.C., a big ligger, beautiful tie. A couple of days before he came on my program, I was sitting in my office. I had announced this guy was going to be coming on. My office had no security. Anyone could walk in. Anyone who wanted to kill me could walk in. I didn't carry at the time. Praise God. I didn't need it. I'm sitting at my desk and a guy comes and he knocks on the door. A look up, he goes, "You Todd Herman? There was no way out. There was no exit. I tried to jump out the window. He could have gotten to me. I'd also probably gotten really grievously hurt jumping out the window, landing on concrete. I had no choice but to say, "Yes, I am." And he stepped towards my desk, took something out of his pocket, sat it down at my desk and I said, "What's that?" He said, "That's a cassette tape." I said, "Who are you?" He goes, "I'm the guy I gave it to you. Have a good day." And he walked out and I took it in to the studio to play. And I'll tell you what happened in just a second, what I heard and how it changed everything. I will get to a couple of really crazy moments in talk radio. Remember that thing I said about government schools? I'll pay that off, but I'll also tell you a moment that really changed me forever in relation to radio. Something that's changed my opinion about healthcare in this country is this, being through three surgeries. Now, in all honesty, I got very, very good treatments by my surgeons. In fact, my sinus surgeon, my shoulder surgeon, they're very good at what they do. It'd be hard for me to use anyone else for any surgeries. I don't want to have any more surgeries. But even my surgeon, who is a very good guy, works out of my CrossFit gym, he's wrong. He's wrong about stem cells. He asked me, "Why are you going to Mexico to get stem cells when I do that for you?" I said, "Look, Doc, you're giving me 60,000 stem cells out of my bone marrow. It's bone marrow. I mean, I know that you went through a process to make sure that it's just the stem cells, etc. I think it's called lysing. It's 60,000 of them. They're 57-year-olds old like I am. They can't build out the things. They can reduce some information. But what I'm getting in Mexico are ethically gathered stem cells from placentas and umbilical cords only, no aborted babies ever. And I'm getting 42 million in my shoulder. And the second time I went down, I got 12 million in my ankle, 12 million. These stem cells do not. They have not built anything. They have potential to build. Bone marrow is bone marrow. These stem cells will build whatever they're told to build. I mean, you know, Talbot, you suit them into a part of the body. They'll build cartilage in your knee or your back. They'll build muscle. They'll build tendon. And they just destroy inflammation. It can be as bad as people unable to open their hand with carpal tunnel-like syndrome or move their ankles or sufficiently bend to play professional golf. That's why so many professional golfers are there with lower lumbar issues. It is a process that is lovingly done in a facility that's like a W Hotel in the safest city in Mexico. Both times I did it, a Harvard-certified surgeon did the work on me, the investigation and the injection. Check this out. Go to renew.healthcare. It's r-e-n-u-e.healthcare. If you're too young to remember radio as a dominant medium, there's stories you should know. Stories like the fact that I got to build a really beautiful career with two national radio shows and a podcast that's super well in audio, we're building the video version of it. And I've been through talking about how I went to Spokane, Washington, and lived in my mom's basement in order to get into radio. And I picked this target, the speaker of the house, Tom Foley, who genuinely was a really, really nasty and compromised politician who really did get rich on our backs. And I succeeded in targeting him. I'm thank God God had a plan for me because I don't think it was that, but it worked to teach me the craft of radio. So Tom Foley, that speaker of the house would never come on my show. And a guy paid for me to take out a double truck ad in the spokesman review. Again, if you're too young for these mediums, a double truck admin, I took up both pages of the newspaper and it was a picture of me and Tom Foley. On the left, it was an angry picture of Foley taken from below this podium and he was pointing at an angry face and it said, ask this man why he's afraid to talk to this young fella. And it was a picture of me in an Alex Keaton sweater. You too young for that. A yuppy sweater. Yeah, a yuppy sweater, holding a puppy, looking as peacefully as I could into the camera lens. Ask this guy, this man why he's afraid to talk to this young fella on a 1230 KSP and it gave the time of the show and then gave him Tom Foley's phone number two, two, two, two, four, three, one, two, one, the main number. It worked. Well, Foley didn't come on, but he sent on the senior official, the senior campaign guy. And as I said, two days before all this, a guy walked into my office anonymously, are you Todd Herman? I reluctantly said, yes, afraid he was going to shoot me because that's happened to talk show host. Instead, he sat a cassette tape on my desk and I said, what's that? He said, that's a cassette tape. I said, who are you? He said, I'm the guy who gave it to you. Have a good day. I took it into the studio. And here's what I heard. It was the gridiron dinner in Washington, D.C. This is when journalists and politicians would get together and yuck it up and slap each other in the back and glad hand. And there on stage was Tom Foley. And he said something very akin to this. This is almost a direct quote. A lot of people ask me how I can defend my $173,000 year salary. When the people of the fifth district, I represent earn for less than that $33,000 a year. I tell him it's this easy to compare because of all the Johnny lunch buckets and why he do nothing's in the fifth district. Joyful laughter applause from the people in the Capitol just like the Hunger Games. I knew what I had. At the end of Tom Foley's career, in the beginning of mine, I mean, I'd already begun, but I gave myself a year to get out of that small town radio or I do something else, a year to get into a top, what did I give myself? A top 50 market, I think. I took the tape and I played it for the station manager, Tom, and become a friend of mine. Gold. We created a press release that was embargoed, meaning you weren't allowed to release it until the date. I provided samples of the tape, but not the whole tape, to all the television stations and some national ones. So on the day that campaign spokesperson arrived, he walked into the studio with a bunch of television cameras. He should have known at that point something was up. He sat down next to me. I opened the show. This is the show you love to love, love to hate, but always in under any circumstances seem to hate to miss back talk with Todd Herman over the laws there she goes with some music. I don't remember this campaign official's name, but I welcomed him. And I said, you know what? I get to do this uninterrupted all week. It would only be fair if I were to give you, say 10 minutes, to make the case for Tom Foley. And after that, I have some audio I'd like to play for you and get your response. So he went in and he talked about Tom Foley and he didn't have much material. Shockingly, he took about five minutes. So we went to break early. So when we come back, I have a piece of audio I'd like to play for you. We visited pleasantries during the commercial break and then we came back and I played the audio the one I just told you about. I said, what is your response to that? He said, you're not supposed to have that. I said, that's your response. He goes, that's illegal. I didn't record it. That's illegal. This is your response. And then he froze for a long time looking at me. And I said, radio is an audio medium. Awkward silence. This long isn't that great. And he got up and left. Not a word. He got up and walked out. And I said something like, ladies and gentlemen, for the record, the senior campaign spokesperson or stratations for Tom Foley is walking out of the studio as nip on television from Japan and all these other television stations film it. So we left. One last thing happened after Foley lost. I called his office. He picked up. And I said, I hope you know that none of this was personal. I just take great umbrage and offense at what you've done to our district and how you've conducted your business in office. He said, it sure seemed personal. And said, politics is a tough sport. He goes, do you feel better now? I said, I didn't feel bad to begin with, but I really appreciate you taking the phone call. See, those times led to some truly, truly mad captications. At one point, a guy came in. I told you my studio had no security, came in with a two by four to try to murder me for talking about what was going on at Kaiser aluminum, the strikes and the, and the shutting down of equipment, the breaking of multimillion dark equipment. He was outraged. He tried to get that, tried to kill me that way or at least beat me up. There was the cop who had taken an underage girl. She was I think 16 out of a holding cell. He'd arrested her, took her home, but on the way stopped and they had sex. And I found in the law that he actually was breaking the statutory rape law because he had control over her. She was at the age of consent except if the adult had unreasonable control of her, a badge and a gun is that he was the cop who decided to call my radio show and threatened to kill me on the air. Wall on live radio. We had proof it was him and a cop came from all over the city to protect me. In fact, I got escorted home by cops and they said, this guy will not touch you. He did do jail time, prison time, praise God, but we had to force the DA into filing charges by pressuring him on the radio show. Radio shows can do this. I know podcasts can do this. I know this is a different medium now, but all the things you see on podcast and now came from talk radio. They stand on the shoulders of giants. I give you one other and same thing and then a very, very touching thing that happened in radio. The insane thing was this. When I grew up in Spokane and I was a loudmouth kid, I become a loudmouth because I started to hate the school system because I'd been judged by the school system and accused of something I didn't do and had a horrible interaction with a principal and I was a really revenge minded kid. Praise God for changing me. I no longer, no longer seek revenge. But in that attitude, I ran into a principal and that principal did something to me one day lacking proof. He accused me of something. He hated me. He determined I was a bully. I wasn't a bully then. He called me to him before school began and I had my little lunch that my mom made me and he said, I think you're stealing lunches from people's cubbies and I'm going to prove it. Come with me. We're walking along and I said, I don't steal. If I wanted someone's lunch, I'd take it. I don't steal. Well, we're going to find out. We're going to run an experiment. So he took me and locked me in a storage closet all day, locked the door, no bathroom, no water. Just what I had in my lunch bag, which was always a can of apple juice. That was the liquid I had for the day. I did have my knife. So I cut a hole in the wall. It was a temporary wall. So at least I had some light in the space and ended up having to pee in the corner. His problem, not mine. At about lunchtime, I heard the voices of my three best friends, Rob, Eric, and Roar. They were in the library prior to lunch. They had multiple lunches, first, second, third lunch. And they had first lunch and I heard their voices. I said, their names, Roar, Eric, Rob, Herman? What are you doing in there? And they tried to open the door. It's locked with a key. I told them what this principle had done. I said, guys, I need you to do something for me. This is how good a friend we were at the time. I need you to go steal every lunch in the cubbies and throw them away. They didn't ask any questions. They just went and did it. So they went throughout the school, stole lunches from kids and threw them in the dumpsters. At 305, when school was over, I heard the last bell rang and the principal wasn't there. Then at 315, I heard the everybody out of the building bell rang and the principal wasn't there. At about four o'clock, I heard the door start to open. I got up, walked over there. I guess he didn't smell the urine. He opened the door. He said, come with me. I said, what were the results of your experiment? He said, inconclusive. I'll drive you home. And I said, something along the lines of there's not an effing chance in hell. I'm going to ride with you. We're not getting home any other way. Don't touch me. There's not an effing chance in hell. I'm riding with you. So I walked home. Now, all those years later in radio, I was doing show prep one morning and it came across this story. There had been a fire alarm at a school. They literally thought it was a fire. It wasn't a planned alarm. They had thought there was a fire in the school. So they evacuated the kids and then they did a count of the kids. Remember that we'd line up and they'd count you? They were seven kids short during a fire alarm where they literally thought there was a fire. Came out later that a principal had locked those kids in a storage closet and didn't tell anybody. It was the same principle. So I told the story on the show and he called me from district offices. He called me from the district offices. We called back to the school district offices. He picked up the phone. It was him and he wanted to come on my show. So I welcome to the program. And he said, you are ruining my career. I said, no, I'm not. You are. You're bringing attention to this. The newspaper brought it to my attention. I'm speaking about it because you did it to me. You're a liar. You never did that to me. I never did that to you. Funny thing, because before we brought him on, I got in touch with a friend of mine. In fact, I got in touch with all three of them. One was an adjunct college professor. One had a welding business. The other was a deputy sheriff. They were all on the line. When the deputy sheriff came on, he said, not only did you do it, but if you did it in my district, I'd have you arrested. The adjunct professor said, not only did you do it, I've told students because I teach education about what you did. And my friend, the welder said, you did it and you laughed about it. So he repeated the thing, you're losing, you're ruining my career. I wasn't and I didn't. I did run into him later. I feel horrible about this. He gained a bunch of weight. He looked very sad. He was in a grocery store line and I was doing well in life. Praise God. And he was trying to pay for groceries and his check was bouncing or his credit card, something. I remember he couldn't pay. So I took out a 100 bucks and I handed it to him. I said, hey, you know what? Let me help out. And he took the 100, then he looked back at me and he realized who I was. And he said, I'd sooner pick blank with chickens. Okay. And right there in the line again, he said, you ruined my life. I said, no, no, you did that. Horrible thing that happened. Let me wrap it up this way. See, there's a difference between live radio and podcasting and even live podcasts. People accidentally tune in the radio. No one accidentally tunes into a podcast. I mean, yeah, you can binge and you can binge YouTube clips. And all of a sudden, you're watching something that you've never seen before. But live radio is really special this way and that sometimes someone else has an on. In this case, it was in Seattle, KTTH. And I was doing at the time the afternoon show. And I'd gotten off the air and I told a story that was related to veterans and one of my favorite movies, Lone Survivor. And it was saying that in Lone Survivor, there's that incredible scene where the guys are up on that hill and they're getting shot at by the Taliban and axe axleson and had been shot in the head and he's outraged. They shot me in the head. They shot me in the head. Mark of Slichos says, bro, are you good? He goes, yeah, I'm good. We just need to get higher ground. We're faster than these guys. They kept saying that I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. And in the presentation that night, I said, but sometimes you're not good. Sometimes you're not. And it's okay. Now you have to be good in the field. You always have to be good. No matter what, positive, present, optimistic, no matter what. But you don't have to be that with us. Sometimes you're not good. And if you're not good, tell us. I wrapped up the personal note we called it that last segment of the show, walked out of the studio and my producer before I worked with Alex. My producer, Chris X, came and got me. They said, Hey, I think you're going to want to take this phone call. Walk back into the studio and there was a woman on the phone and she was in tears. Mr. Herman said, please call me Todd. My son is here. He needs to speak with you. He's a veteran. He needs to speak with you. I picked up the phone. Hey, it's Todd. Hey, man, I'm not good. Wow. Appreciate you. Tell me that. This was the day before Thanksgiving. He said I was going to wait till after Thanksgiving, but my plan was to go out in the woods and eat my Glock. Yeah. That's not good, man. So I'm sitting here with my mom and we've been listening to your whole show. Yeah. Where are you? I'm in Bremerton. All right, I'm on my way. What? I'm on my way. I can't ask you to do that. You don't get to make that decision. You shared that with me. You did for us. At least I can do as drive to Bremerton. My family's out of town. I'm alone for Thanksgiving. Give the phone your mom, please. And he did. Where are you? She told me I'm at the grocery store and she gave me the name of the grocery store in Bremerton. Is there only one? Yeah, I'll be there. Praise God. I was able to make it out there. Go up to the car and this huge man got out. It's so crazy, but he hugged me. Why? Because a voice in the radio. A voice with no expectations of him. No capacity to judge him. Only that he heard me speak about how much I love veterans and how deeply I care for the struggle and how appreciative I've been. And an opportunity to sit with him that night and to talk at length. And praise God, he became one of my closest friends until he gave his life as a contractor fighting a war for the most important country in the world, Ukraine. But trust me, he wasn't in Russia. Because we don't have controversial research. This is the Todd Herman Show. Please go be well. Be strong, be kind. Please make every effort to walk in the light of Christ. [BLANK_AUDIO]