Speaker 1: This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: There we go, another one of The Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 3: Weekend fixes opportunity for us to talk about stuff that
Speaker 3: we didn't get to during the rest of the week,
Speaker 3: because you know, twenty hours is not enough out of
Speaker 3: five days for us to squeeze in everything that we
Speaker 3: need to talk about.
Speaker 1: I like seeing us on the weekends. This is nice.
Speaker 1: It's very casual, wearing our pajamas. We've got a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, fireball.
Speaker 3: I only wear slippers in my house on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 3: That's the only time, and it's even then. It's only
Speaker 3: maybe a couple.
Speaker 1: Of What kind of slippers are we talking about?
Speaker 3: The old like literally like look like grandpa slippers, brown suede.
Speaker 1: Those are the way to do it. I have those
Speaker 1: two with the wool inside. Yeah, I've got two pairs, but.
Speaker 3: I can only do it for about ten minutes. My
Speaker 3: feet gets super hot. Yeah, I got hot feet.
Speaker 1: You get clammy feet with all that hair.
Speaker 2: Oh my toes, my toes get super hot. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You So make sure that you subscribe to the podcast
Speaker 3: wherever you listen to it, if it's on the iHeart
Speaker 3: app and you type in Gary and Channing and the
Speaker 3: podcast comes up. When you subscribe to it, these extra
Speaker 3: episodes will automatically populate.
Speaker 1: Is that the word You wouldn't put Chewbacca in a moccasin?
Speaker 1: Would you?
Speaker 2: No need? No need?
Speaker 3: So you're saying I have Chewbacca feet is what you're
Speaker 3: getting it today. I thought this was kind of an
Speaker 3: interesting discussion. There has been a lot of talk. It
Speaker 3: actually was prompted by earlier in the week the stories
Speaker 3: about how the administration was going to start collecting payments
Speaker 3: on student loans.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 3: Remember during COVID, the administration did away with student loans
Speaker 3: and or at least you didn't have to pay them,
Speaker 3: but they didn't wipe them out, or tried unsuccessfully to
Speaker 3: wipe them out. And I thought about you and I
Speaker 3: both went to Chico State. We detailed that in one
Speaker 3: of the other stories. But what was it that prompted
Speaker 3: us to go to college?
Speaker 2: Like what I mean?
Speaker 3: Because in this industry, now looking at it, having worked
Speaker 3: in it for a long time, I don't think a
Speaker 3: college degree is necessary to work it.
Speaker 2: I don't know either.
Speaker 1: But when we were growing up. It's funny my husband's
Speaker 1: older than I am. When he was growing up, college
Speaker 1: was not a conversation in his house. In my house
Speaker 1: at that time, it was the only conversation. It was absolutely,
Speaker 1: you're going to college. And I remember as my brother,
Speaker 1: who was not academically inclined, could fix or put together
Speaker 1: any puzzle or fix anything, rebuilding a transmission when he
Speaker 1: was like sixteen years old. He remarkable mind, but just
Speaker 1: not an academically inclined person. Hated it, always hated school.
Speaker 1: And I remember it was this great conversation, not a
Speaker 1: great conversation, It was a conversation that kind of dominated
Speaker 1: the house of like is Andy even gonna graduate high school?
Speaker 1: It was like a whole thing, and he's not going
Speaker 1: to go to college. And it was all about because
Speaker 1: my parents don't have a lot of money, so it
Speaker 1: was all about out getting a scholarship. My dad always
Speaker 1: tried to have us play sports, and that was the
Speaker 1: way in his mind that we were going to get
Speaker 1: sports colorship. And we were both awful athletes, awful. But
Speaker 1: I love that raise optimism, raise optimism. Bless his heart,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. But yeah, yeah, like when when my
Speaker 1: arm came out of the socket playing around with my
Speaker 1: brother when I was little, and Andy popped my arm
Speaker 1: back in the socket. They were like, we've got a
Speaker 1: doctor on our hands, you know. But anyway, when so,
Speaker 1: it was a big deal when my brother didn't go
Speaker 1: to college and then he went to a JC and
Speaker 1: that was kind of like, okay, it kind of mollified
Speaker 1: my parents a little bit. And then he that wasn't
Speaker 1: his thing, and it ended up going to trade school route,
Speaker 1: which is the route he you know, he always should
Speaker 1: have gone, and I think that they knew that.
Speaker 2: Too, and has his successful career.
Speaker 1: And has the successful he has his own plumbing business
Speaker 1: and everything. It was a roundabout way of getting there.
Speaker 1: But he always had work. If you could work with
Speaker 1: your hands, you'll always have work, and he can. But
Speaker 1: for me, there was no option. There was no like
Speaker 1: if you don't go to college, than what it was,
Speaker 1: you're going to college, just where And it was never
Speaker 1: a where do you want to go to college conversation?
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, we did tour some of the colleges
Speaker 1: state schools in California. The idea of going to some
Speaker 1: place like Boston, which was my dream, was a dream
Speaker 1: like there was no chance in holl my parents had
Speaker 1: the money or were going to spend the money to
Speaker 1: send me someplace that was like a boutique degree.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 3: Did you ever even think of adjoining states like university
Speaker 3: and nevatt Areno or Oregon State or any too expensive?
Speaker 1: It was too expensive because I we weren't. We weren't
Speaker 1: going to be capable for getting financial aid. But we are,
Speaker 1: you know at least.
Speaker 3: Right, you were in that middle zone, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was in the same I was in the same boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did both of your parents go to both of your
Speaker 2: parents went to college?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was in that same boat. Both parents
Speaker 3: went to college. I had an old two older sisters,
Speaker 3: and they had both gone to college. So by the
Speaker 3: time I as a junior in high school and that
Speaker 3: conversation gets ramped up, like you, there wasn't a conversation.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a maybe you take a gap year and
Speaker 3: you travel, you know, travel through the andes or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: No, No, no, it was it was where you were
Speaker 2: going to go.
Speaker 3: And to your point, also tempered expectations about where what
Speaker 3: was possible because at the time they had my parents
Speaker 3: have been paying for both of my sisters to be
Speaker 3: in college. So by the time I got there, my
Speaker 3: oldest sister had just graduated college. So then now they're
Speaker 3: going to be paying for two people to be going
Speaker 3: to college. So it had to be a state school.
Speaker 3: I didn't even I didn't bother applying at any UC's
Speaker 3: or anywhere out of state, like you said. So I
Speaker 3: applied to San Francisco State because it was close, and
Speaker 3: Chico State, and that's it. That was, that was Those
Speaker 3: were the only two. I just figured I would get in.
Speaker 3: I had good grades that the time. There was very
Speaker 3: little problem. I didn't have an expectation that I wouldn't
Speaker 3: get in.
Speaker 1: I looked at San Diego State Long Beach, San Francisco State,
Speaker 1: and Chico and San Diego State. There was something about it.
Speaker 1: I knew I would just end up in a gutter,
Speaker 1: like it was the party school more than Chico at
Speaker 1: that year at that time, and I was like I
Speaker 1: went to visit and I was like, oh, hell no,
Speaker 1: Like this is too beautiful.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 3: It's such a mature thing to be able to know,
Speaker 3: well eighteen or even.
Speaker 1: More mature was. I realized that the classes were super
Speaker 1: impacted in every major. So it was taking everybody six
Speaker 1: years to get out of San Diego State at the time,
Speaker 1: and I was driven up, driven enough to be like,
Speaker 1: I want to graduate in four years. I want to
Speaker 1: get out there. I want to make money.
Speaker 2: How did you choose then?
Speaker 3: I don't remember what they changed it to, But when
Speaker 3: I graduated, the degree I have is Information and Communication Studies,
Speaker 3: same thing with a concentration in media art.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, why that? Well, how did you choose that?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I have no idea. I went
Speaker 1: in as a police sign major, took my first polypside
Speaker 1: class and realized I didn't want to listen to other
Speaker 1: people's politics for four years, that that was not something
Speaker 1: I was interested in because I kind of thought I
Speaker 1: was thinking about law school at the time. But who
Speaker 1: knows what they want to do when they're eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I got a job at the radio
Speaker 1: station when I was nineteen, and I changed my major
Speaker 1: to communications because I liked the radio station. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that that was going to be my future, but
Speaker 1: I liked it there.
Speaker 3: Not the campus radio station, no, yeah, the local one.
Speaker 3: I knew that that that I wanted to do something
Speaker 3: in radio or TV. Felt completely out of love with
Speaker 3: television pretty quickly. Yeah, because you do those things where
Speaker 3: you do internships or you do a shadow day where
Speaker 3: you follow somebody around, and those I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was the was local TV in Chico, I mean,
Speaker 3: because they had a couple three four TV stations at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: It was so cutthroat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the young, the young reporters who knew that that
Speaker 3: was just a stop on their way to bigger and
Speaker 3: better things.
Speaker 1: They know what I hated more the fact that you
Speaker 1: had to be so perfect and beautiful and fake, or
Speaker 1: that I was so so terribly bad at it. I
Speaker 1: think it was a real ding dong. I couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: just putting on a smile for the sake of putting
Speaker 1: a smile. I mean, it probably would have done me
Speaker 1: a lot of good to learn that back then and
Speaker 1: then carry it through life. But you know it just
Speaker 1: I was awful at it from go, Like even in
Speaker 1: those those those college courses you'd had where you'd put
Speaker 1: on the newscast or whatever. Oh my god, like.
Speaker 2: Zero would great to go back and find some of
Speaker 2: those tapes.
Speaker 1: Oh, I already know what they look like, because I
Speaker 1: never got any better, and yet people still had us
Speaker 1: do TV stuff and it was always awful.
Speaker 3: But like I said at the beginning, I would have
Speaker 3: if I had the opportunity to say to eighteen year
Speaker 3: old me what to do in college, I would have said,
Speaker 3: get a degree in anything else. You don't need the
Speaker 3: degree in the communication field. That I would have gone
Speaker 3: with a polysai or something I didn't.
Speaker 1: Need to learn about the Communications Act of nineteen forty
Speaker 1: eight or whatever the hell. My eyes would glaze over
Speaker 1: and literally all the classes, I learned everything that I
Speaker 1: needed to know for this job at my job at
Speaker 1: the radio station.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And I've said to before blast from the past name
Speaker 3: from the KFI archive. Jody Becker and I did a
Speaker 3: discussion at cal State Fullerton one time, and she was younger,
Speaker 3: She's probably ten years younger than my your age. So
Speaker 3: she said something to this class and we're talking to
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty communications majors there, you know, all
Speaker 3: in want to get into radio and TV. And she
Speaker 3: said at the time, do something else. Yeah, not don't
Speaker 3: get a job in radio TV.
Speaker 1: Something you know about so then you can bring that
Speaker 1: to if you're a communicator. If you're a talker, no
Speaker 1: one's going to take that away from you, right, So
Speaker 1: learn something.
Speaker 3: That's basically what she said is if you've got it
Speaker 3: and you're going to get a job on the air
Speaker 3: or in a TV station or whatever, it's baked into
Speaker 3: your person, you're not going to exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: That's what I keep telling myself every day. I wake
Speaker 1: up and I go, what are you going to learn?
Speaker 1: I'm still doing that And how's that going about?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Uh, what do you mean? Well across from you for
Speaker 2: four hours?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, It wouldn't hurt us to go back to
Speaker 1: school and do something like online or whatever and learn
Speaker 1: something in some other field. You did the constitutional course.
Speaker 3: The other day, right, which was I mean it was
Speaker 3: it was a lot of refresher. Not fun, but it's
Speaker 3: a good refresher. It's a good it's a good reminder
Speaker 3: of some of that stuff that's so covered with cobwebs
Speaker 3: in your head.
Speaker 1: I do this three times a year where I get
Speaker 1: into a local college and the courses and I look
Speaker 1: at things and like, what should I do? I can
Speaker 1: do this? I can I have time to take an
Speaker 1: online course or in person or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, and my wife going back to nursing school, you know,
Speaker 3: in her late was an example of how different you
Speaker 3: approach education after you've been Actually you approach it. You
Speaker 3: know it, you understand it, you understand that you have
Speaker 3: you have time management skills, you know how to study,
Speaker 3: you know how to do the extra work that's required
Speaker 3: or not required, But would you know, help help your education?
Speaker 1: The want to is a lot.
Speaker 3: The other thing that came up this week that I
Speaker 3: thought was interesting because I don't think we've we've spoken
Speaker 3: about a lot is the use of the word journalist
Speaker 3: almost as a pejorative or or as an elevated uh
Speaker 3: status of someone who's a reporter, anchor, news gatherer, whatever word.
Speaker 3: Because you had George Clooney going after Megan Kelly uh
Speaker 3: suggesting that she's not a journalist and then her fighting
Speaker 3: back against it. And then also a CNN guy was
Speaker 3: working at the White House was talking about these right
Speaker 3: wing influencers that have been allowed into the White House
Speaker 3: Press briefing room that are unabashedly right wing. They talk
Speaker 3: about their bias, they say that they're biased, but that
Speaker 3: they they wear their bias on their sleeve. Was basically
Speaker 3: their their excuse or their explanation, and he asked a
Speaker 3: couple of them, well, do you actually consider yourself a journalist?
Speaker 3: So I thought that was an interesting question because I've
Speaker 3: never despite working in the business of journalism as a reporter,
Speaker 3: as an anchor, as a writer, I've never considered myself
Speaker 3: a journalist.
Speaker 1: You spent more time as an anchor and as an
Speaker 1: entertainer than as a reporter. Is that fair?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I never, when I was a reporter, considered myself
Speaker 1: a journalist. That was always like Walter Cronkite to me.
Speaker 1: I always thought that those were the serious newspeople. I
Speaker 1: was a news reporter, but I never considered myself a journalist.
Speaker 1: I would have never introduced myself. I'm a journalist. I'm
Speaker 1: a reporter, is what I would say. I still say that,
Speaker 1: but because because that's really what you are. You're reporting
Speaker 1: things you're not. It was never a newspaper journey. That's
Speaker 1: the other thing I think it goes with newspapers journalism,
Speaker 1: and the term now is so loose. I remember when
Speaker 1: I was still in the field, and that's when the
Speaker 1: blogs were starting, and our bloggers journalists and that was
Speaker 1: the big thing and should they get press credentials And
Speaker 1: I think it's a very loose term. Now you go
Speaker 1: on X and everybody's a journalist.
Speaker 2: Everybody's a journalist.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone's got their their their news camera right
Speaker 1: in their hand and they're telling you what they see
Speaker 1: and they hear. And I used to hate it as
Speaker 1: we got into it, and now I kind of love it.
Speaker 1: I kind of love that you're having everyday voices tell
Speaker 1: you what they see and what they hear and what's
Speaker 1: going on. And I love going to X for breaking
Speaker 1: news and getting you know, reports from people that don't
Speaker 1: consider themselves journalists because I like to hear it like
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: You know, when canceling people was a big deal for
Speaker 3: things that they would say. One of the things that
Speaker 3: we kind of touched on repeatedly, whether we said it
Speaker 3: directly or not, was the more voices in any instance
Speaker 3: are are usually better than fewer voices, Yeah, because you
Speaker 3: have a fuller picture of what is actually.
Speaker 1: Always hated a pool reporter and I still do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one person in the courtroom or wherever telling you what happened.
Speaker 1: I hate that because.
Speaker 3: You can't it's the thing that that I think bothers
Speaker 3: me about the use of the term journalists now is
Speaker 3: it elevates people to a certain to a certain status
Speaker 3: that they may never have actually earned.
Speaker 2: That true, and you.
Speaker 3: Are expecting someone who is a journalist, big jay journalist
Speaker 3: to give unfettered, unbiased just and that's gone now in
Speaker 3: certain instances. I mean, on our radio station, we have
Speaker 3: people who are reporters and anchors and news gatherers, but
Speaker 3: we don't discourage personality. Bias is different than personality. You
Speaker 3: can have a personality, you can deliver the news. You
Speaker 3: can deliver the information in a clear, cogent way with personality.
Speaker 3: But if you're a journalist finger quotes big Jay journalist,
Speaker 3: you're not supposed to have any of that stuff. And
Speaker 3: I think that people use it now. They elevate people
Speaker 3: that they think are journalists and put a crown on
Speaker 3: that person and then assume that whatever that person says
Speaker 3: is absolutely the God's honest truth.
Speaker 2: We're humans, we can't do that.
Speaker 1: I never had an opinion when I was a reporter.
Speaker 1: It didn't dawn on me to have an opinion. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of it was that I was young, but I
Speaker 1: would I was completely objective. And I remember one time
Speaker 1: when I started this talk show that means the Sunday
Speaker 1: morning stuff that you started on this station, and then
Speaker 1: when you left and I picked it up, and that
Speaker 1: was such a hard thing to do, of giving my
Speaker 1: opinion on anything. And I remember being at home and
Speaker 1: talking to my husband what I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about on the show, and I was going through. I
Speaker 1: was doing it like I would do an expository essay,
Speaker 1: basically just going through, Okay, here's a topic, and then
Speaker 1: so and so says this, and so one says this,
Speaker 1: and this is what's going to happen next. And my
Speaker 1: husband said to me, what do you think? And I
Speaker 1: remember that moment because I was like, nobody had ever
Speaker 1: asked me that before, and it never dawn on me,
Speaker 1: like what do I think about this? Right?
Speaker 2: It just it's not a muscle that you it's not
Speaker 2: at all at all.
Speaker 1: So anyway, now there's no shortage of people telling you
Speaker 1: what they think.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 3: We do the show every day Monday through Friday, nine
Speaker 3: am to one pm every day. Right after the show,
Speaker 3: it's packaged as a podcast and you can listen to
Speaker 3: any segments that you like that you don't like that
Speaker 3: you missed whatever it was. But then we also do
Speaker 3: these weekend fixes, so on Saturdays we will drop an
Speaker 3: extra extra few minutes whatever it is, on whatever topic.
Speaker 3: If you have ideas or questions that you'd like us
Speaker 3: to cover, make sure you send us either a talkback
Speaker 3: on the iHeart app, hit that button and leave us
Speaker 3: a message where you could send us email or to
Speaker 3: us or Twitter.
Speaker 2: I don't care however you do it ron. That sounds great,
Speaker 2: That sounds like fun.
Speaker 1: We're running out of steam. Well I hope not.
Speaker 2: It's Saturday morning. I got to go out and do stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll take your slippers off, put your pants on, and
Speaker 1: be a man.
Speaker 2: Thank you. We'll see you on Monday.
Speaker 1: That sounded really weird to put your pants on. You
Speaker 1: have to know the reference.
Speaker 2: That's all. You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 3: You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
Speaker 3: forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
Speaker 3: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app