Speaker 1: It's Night's eyes Dan Ray. I'm going Mazy Boston's news Radio.
Speaker 2: Good evening everybody, and welcome on in. My name is
Speaker 2: Dan Ray. Thank you very much, Madison. As we work
Speaker 2: our way all the way until midnight. Rob Brooks back
Speaker 2: two nights in a row for Rob here right, it
Speaker 2: was this is your third night back. What am I
Speaker 2: talking about? Third night back? You're back in the swing
Speaker 2: of things at this point. Rob is all set. I
Speaker 2: am off tomorrow night, so feel free to call in tonight.
Speaker 2: Morgan White will be here tomorrow night, but we'll get
Speaker 2: you more information on that a little bit later. My
Speaker 2: name is Dan Ray. I'm the host of Nights I
Speaker 2: with Dan Ray and delighted to be here. Is always
Speaker 2: normally here every Monday through Friday night. I think I
Speaker 2: had a streak right now about sixty nine. This is
Speaker 2: my first night off Tomorrow night, personal matter. Just taking
Speaker 2: a Friday evening off to spend some time with some friends,
Speaker 2: and I've had sixty I think I've worked every day
Speaker 2: since early February, every weekday. So I think Rob, with
Speaker 2: your blessing and your benediction, I will he gave me
Speaker 2: the I deserve it. Okay, Rob I appreciate that we
Speaker 2: have a great show lined up tonight. A couple of
Speaker 2: interesting and different guests. Going to be talking with the
Speaker 2: owner and founder of Cityscapes, which is a wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 2: business in Boston, Jan Goodman. She really is an amazing individual.
Speaker 2: I call her the Queen of Plants. We'll explain that.
Speaker 2: And we're also going to talk with a gentleman by
Speaker 2: the name of Kevin Sorilli. He is a futurist. His
Speaker 2: he will stun us, I think with conversation and ideas
Speaker 2: about what we are all going to interact with in
Speaker 2: the future. So enough said about our nine o'clock and
Speaker 2: ten o'clock hour. Let us get now to our eight
Speaker 2: o'clock hour. We have four guests, interesting topics, different topics.
Speaker 2: Going to start off with Aaron Solomon, who's the president
Speaker 2: and founder of First Help, and nonprofit that honors police
Speaker 2: service of first responders who die by suicide and support
Speaker 2: their families. This is National Police Week and we want
Speaker 2: to raise awareness about why more police officers die by
Speaker 2: suicide than in the line of duty. This is a
Speaker 2: frightening statistic. Karen Solomon, thank you for being with us tonight.
Speaker 2: But let's talk about it, and let's find out what
Speaker 2: we might be able to do about it to make
Speaker 2: people more aware that more officers take their own life
Speaker 2: than lose their lives in the line of duty.
Speaker 3: Great, thank you so much for helping me. I love
Speaker 3: this topic because I love raising awareness about it, and
Speaker 3: the more people that talk about it, some more that
Speaker 3: understanding there is.
Speaker 2: So Look, I have police officers in my family, a
Speaker 2: brother who is a state police lieutenant, a sister in
Speaker 2: law who's a former state police trooper. I am well
Speaker 2: aware of the pressures that these folks feel, not only
Speaker 2: in terms of what they do in the line of duty,
Speaker 2: but how it impacts their family life. What you know
Speaker 2: more about it, probably than I do from the from
Speaker 2: a broader perspective. Tell us what you have seen in
Speaker 2: your capacity.
Speaker 4: Absolutely so.
Speaker 3: As you said, more officers died by suicide than in
Speaker 3: the line of duty. And typically, you know, we talk
Speaker 3: about police officers who are killed in the line of duty.
Speaker 3: If you look at the statistics, sixty percent of them
Speaker 3: are feloniously killed, meaning they're killed are assaulted by another person.
Speaker 3: The other forty percent are things like heart attack, he stroke,
Speaker 3: COVID COVID. You know, COVID is the number one cause
Speaker 3: of law enforcement deaths is twenty fifteen. Second to that
Speaker 3: is job related illness, and third is being shot by
Speaker 3: someone another suspect. You have accidental shootings, you have drownings,
Speaker 3: you have falls. There's all kinds of things that are
Speaker 3: categorized as a line of duty death. So you don't
Speaker 3: have to be killed by another person. You just if
Speaker 3: you die on duty and it's you know, you're performing
Speaker 3: your job, that's a line of duty deaths. Now you
Speaker 3: can go to your work waiting police station and your uniform,
Speaker 3: sit in patrol car on duty, and take your life
Speaker 3: in your car, and that is not a line of
Speaker 3: duty deaths, you know, And typically we don't see that
Speaker 3: very often. We do see it, and those officers are
Speaker 3: currently making a statement if they're doing it at the
Speaker 3: station or in their patrol car, but most times it
Speaker 3: happens at home. And with even worse about this is
Speaker 3: most of those families either witness the death or find
Speaker 3: as a body, so they're traumatized by the suicide. They're
Speaker 3: traumatized by the job, they're traumatized by the death, and
Speaker 3: then they're further traumatized by the treatment afterwards. So you
Speaker 3: have stress of being a law enforcement officer, the regular stress,
Speaker 3: the stigma that the culture has put upon them of
Speaker 3: not being able to get help, or if they get help,
Speaker 3: they're seen as weak. So there is just such a
Speaker 3: complicated issue. So you have all of that, and then
Speaker 3: after the death, families are treated poorly. There is very
Speaker 3: little support nationwide when we started this in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Now that supports has grown, but it's not where it
Speaker 3: needs to be. There's still not enough support for the
Speaker 3: family's afterwards. There's not enough support for the officers while
Speaker 3: they're on the job, and there's certainly not enough qualified
Speaker 3: mental health professionals to help them make their way through
Speaker 3: these careers wholes.
Speaker 2: So how can people help your organization? Your organization is
Speaker 2: first help spelled capital H, capital E, capital L, and
Speaker 2: capital P with a period after each of those capital letters.
Speaker 3: Helps is an acronym for honor, educate, lead, and prevent,
Speaker 3: because we honor the officers who gob by suicide, We
Speaker 3: educate people about the topic. We lead the country as
Speaker 3: we are the only organization in the country that collect
Speaker 3: law enforcement suicide data. In twenty twenty two, the FBI
Speaker 3: started collecting it, but they haven't collected quite as many
Speaker 3: as we do. We have a rolling number that you
Speaker 3: can see on our website, and then the P is
Speaker 3: for prevent because we try to prevent law enforcement suicides obviously,
Speaker 3: so people can help by going to our website one
Speaker 3: st ht LP dot org and learning about what we do.
Speaker 3: People can help by reporting first responder suicides to us
Speaker 3: so that we can support the families. Obviously, as a nonprofit,
Speaker 3: we you know, obviously take your nations, but our main
Speaker 3: thing is to get people aware of the issue, to
Speaker 3: make them understand and to have idea as a whole
Speaker 3: be better about mental health and the knowledge of mental
Speaker 3: health and what it means to have mental health issues
Speaker 3: or to be depressed, or to have push traumatic stress
Speaker 3: and to take your life, because once we as a
Speaker 3: mainstream culture start handling it better, then it's going to
Speaker 3: roll into all of these other subcultures, such as the
Speaker 3: first responder profession.
Speaker 2: Has anyone or any organization ever done a study, and again,
Speaker 2: this is one of those questions that's just popping in
Speaker 2: my mind, So anyone ever done a study as to
Speaker 2: what occupation has the highest percentage of deaths, vice sor
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure that there are people who commit
Speaker 2: suicide in lots of uh, you know, occupations, vocations, professions,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call them. But I have to
Speaker 2: think that probably the percentage of people who are police
Speaker 2: officers who commit suicide has to be right up there
Speaker 2: if any such studies ever even been attempted.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's been plenty of studies, and surprisingly law enforcement
Speaker 3: is not at the top. First responders is not at
Speaker 3: the top. But what but first responder profession and law
Speaker 3: enforcement profession do have They are they have more from
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress, more oppression, They are two to four
Speaker 3: times more likely to have all of that. So it's
Speaker 3: definitely you know, it's their their actual trauma is higher
Speaker 3: than other professions.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, well that explains that you gave the website.
Speaker 2: I want to just slowly one st like the number
Speaker 2: of if you write as opposed to first it's right
Speaker 2: what s T and then the word help all one
Speaker 2: where it's so it's the numeral one s P H
Speaker 2: E l P dot org uh, and that is the
Speaker 2: that is the website that if you happen to be
Speaker 2: a police officer of police officer family, you certainly should
Speaker 2: be aware of the group and the organization if you're
Speaker 2: someone who would like to contribute. Now, it's funny and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna mention this because it's something that bothers me.
Speaker 2: All of us get these phone calls from these groups
Speaker 2: that claim to raise money for police agencies and organizations,
Speaker 2: and you get the slick talking guy on the phone, Hey, good, good,
Speaker 2: how are you calling from the Police Officers Assistants organization?
Speaker 2: And we're hoping that you'll send some money. And I
Speaker 2: always asked them, I said, well, what are the administrative
Speaker 2: cost your agencies and all of these that are doing
Speaker 2: this telephone solicitation? You're not one of the groups that
Speaker 2: does the telephone solicitation.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, well are not?
Speaker 2: And it's called question?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, we word of mouth, We have fundraisers.
Speaker 3: Most of our funds come from individual donors and believe
Speaker 3: in not many of the families. But also we only
Speaker 3: have one full time and whilst you have a part
Speaker 3: time employee. So so we're an all volunteer organization. We've
Speaker 3: done this as a volunteers.
Speaker 2: Some of these weeps, what's your administrative costs? Well, our
Speaker 2: administrative costs or ninety seven point three percent oh, so
Speaker 2: that means two point seven percent actually goes right right
Speaker 2: right truth bizarre. They'll say, well, well, I don't understand
Speaker 2: the question. What do you mean by administrative costs? At
Speaker 2: that point, I know they know what the question is.
Speaker 2: The answers they just don't want to answer.
Speaker 3: Look, I really do Can I just tell you what
Speaker 3: we do? I'll just quickly say we.
Speaker 2: Got to do it quickly because I'm running up to time.
Speaker 5: Here, go ahead. Yep.
Speaker 3: College scholarships for the kids of the officers who done
Speaker 3: by suicide. They don't get that anywhere else. We do retreats,
Speaker 3: we do care packages, we do all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 3: so our money is going right back to those families.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great, that's great. Look, thank you for what
Speaker 2: you do on behalf of a lot of people in
Speaker 2: my audience who are police families who listen. Thank you
Speaker 2: what you do, and keep up, keep up your great work.
Speaker 2: Karen Solomon, President, co founder of First Help and again,
Speaker 2: that website is the numeral one st so it's like
Speaker 2: first and then H E L P. All those that
Speaker 2: letter that the number and the letters all you have
Speaker 2: together dot org. Thanks very much, Karen, appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you have a great night.
Speaker 2: Okay, you do. We get back. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: with an associate professor of kinesiology mechanical engineering at Penn
Speaker 2: State University. We're talking about when you jog with a stroller.
Speaker 2: It's great because you're getting some exercise and you're getting
Speaker 2: some fresh air, but you might be doing some harm
Speaker 2: to your body. We'll be talking with Alison Singles right
Speaker 2: after the break here on Nightside.
Speaker 1: You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's
Speaker 1: news radio.
Speaker 2: Well, all of us have done this if you have kids,
Speaker 2: and all of us probably have seen others doing it.
Speaker 2: And what am I talking about? I'm talking about running
Speaker 2: with a jogging stroller, getting yourself a little exercise, and
Speaker 2: getting your young child who's able to buckle in the stroller,
Speaker 2: the fun of kind of zooming along with mom or
Speaker 2: dad both. But but but, bod, maybe there's some damage
Speaker 2: we're doing to our bodies while we think we're getting
Speaker 2: ourselves in better shape. Joining us is Alison Singles. She's
Speaker 2: a PhD and Associate professor of Kinney's Kinesiology and Mechanical
Speaker 2: Engineering at Penn State. Go Nitley lions Hi Alison or
Speaker 2: professor singles, how are you tonight?
Speaker 6: I'm good, Hi Dan, I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I did this with my kids a
Speaker 2: long time ago. Put them in the stroller, get out
Speaker 2: to get a little exercise. But oftentimes we're not running
Speaker 2: straight up. So I think I understand where you're going
Speaker 2: with this, but I want people to pay attention because
Speaker 2: the last thing we want to do is while exercising
Speaker 2: inadvertently injure ourselves. Tell us about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we've been doing some research on how the
Speaker 4: runner behaves differently when they're pushing a stroller. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of work out there about the kid and the
Speaker 4: stroller and making the ride safe, and nobody really thinks
Speaker 4: about the person pushing it. So we did some research
Speaker 4: to see what was happening, and we've seen that runners
Speaker 4: tend to lean a little more forward when they're pushing
Speaker 4: a stroller. Like you mentioned, they tend to kind of
Speaker 4: hit the ground a little less hard, which might actually
Speaker 4: be protective of injury, but they have to spend a
Speaker 4: lot more effort into controlling the stroller and that kind
Speaker 4: of puts some extra twisting forces underneath their foot, which
Speaker 4: might lead to increased risk. Of overuse injury, especially bone injuries.
Speaker 2: So I'm assuming that I'm a baby boomer, and I
Speaker 2: don't think the baby boomer generation that many of us
Speaker 2: were pushed in strollers by our World War two, you know,
Speaker 2: vintage parents from the greatest generation. This is something that
Speaker 2: probably has come into vogue. I suspect after the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies when the jogging craze kind of swept the country.
Speaker 2: So how much information do we have over time or
Speaker 2: have I underestimated that when people started pushing, pushing the
Speaker 2: little ones in strollers, I.
Speaker 4: Think you are. You kind of hit the nail on
Speaker 4: the head there. So running strollers, I don't know much
Speaker 4: about regular strollers. I think that they've been around a
Speaker 4: bit longer. But running strollers kind of came into popularity
Speaker 4: in the eighties and nineties, but they weren't very commonly
Speaker 4: used until much much more recently. You know, now it
Speaker 4: seems like you see everybody's got a jogging stroller, But
Speaker 4: I don't think that technology was really there, you know,
Speaker 4: more than ten years ago for it to be a
Speaker 4: nice ride.
Speaker 2: The statistics that you have, maybe you've got some studies done,
Speaker 2: but I guess you don't have necessarily the long term
Speaker 2: stats that you'd like to develop.
Speaker 4: Aysome right, we don't really have long term statistics on
Speaker 4: anything yet, but we are trying to follow some people
Speaker 4: long term, so we hopefully will know that in a
Speaker 4: few years. But ultimately, nothing we're seeing is incredibly worrisome
Speaker 4: for long term effects. It seems to be a mixed bag.
Speaker 4: And it does seem that when people push a stroller
Speaker 4: and then stop pushing the stroller, they're running mechanics go
Speaker 4: right back to normal after they finished pushing a stroller. Okay,
Speaker 4: so we don't think that this is having carryover effect.
Speaker 2: So are we talking about primarily maybe the hips are
Speaker 2: going to be a little mis sore, or maybe the
Speaker 2: lower back. What areas you know from a kinesiology perspective,
Speaker 2: do you think would would likely be impacted, if any,
Speaker 2: if any areas were going to be impacted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're right. The lower back certainly, if
Speaker 4: you have that hunch of posture or leaning forward of it,
Speaker 4: you might have some effects on the lower back. And
Speaker 4: like I mentioned, with the twisting forces, that could be
Speaker 4: indicative of stress fracture risk. So like stress fractures or
Speaker 4: shin splints, you might see that happen more more commonly
Speaker 4: when people are pushing strollers, but the stress fracture risk
Speaker 4: risk goes away right away when you stop running with
Speaker 4: the stroller. The lower back is a tougher one. Right
Speaker 4: backs are tricky, and.
Speaker 2: We get a lot of running. When my kids were young,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that on occasion we didn't have running
Speaker 2: strollers per se. There was no one had marketed those.
Speaker 2: This would have been back in the late eighties early nineties,
Speaker 2: but just a regular little stroller as long as they
Speaker 2: were strapped in that much resistance. Now that I have
Speaker 2: my grandson who's three, well least not three until July,
Speaker 2: but most of the activity that he likes is to
Speaker 2: take a ride in a golf cart. That's easier. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's any impact from the kinneesiological point of
Speaker 2: view as I sit in the golf cart, So that
Speaker 2: that is that's good good news. Before we scare people,
Speaker 2: I just want to clearly this is not something that
Speaker 2: people should lose sleepover. I will say that one of
Speaker 2: the things I learned that as great as jogging is,
Speaker 2: it does have an impact later on in life on
Speaker 2: your on your knees and on your ankles just from
Speaker 2: the impact of running it if you were in well.
Speaker 4: One thing could be that strollers could actually be protective
Speaker 4: of that. We saw less less impact when you're running
Speaker 4: with a stroller. You're kind of sharing the load between
Speaker 4: your legs and your arms because you're holding onto the
Speaker 4: handlebars with the strollers. So there is a possibility that
Speaker 4: running with a stroller is actually protecting you from some
Speaker 4: of that long term can be and arthritis risk later
Speaker 4: in life.
Speaker 2: What I hope you could do with some sort of
Speaker 2: a study on ellipticals. About ten years ago, I discovered
Speaker 2: ellipticals and there's no impact and they really do help
Speaker 2: people of a certain vintage. And I am one of
Speaker 2: those of that vintage. So I hope that you're not
Speaker 2: doing it. I hope you're not doing a study that's
Speaker 2: suggesting that of use of ellipticals three or four or
Speaker 2: five times a week is going to be problematical at
Speaker 2: some point to have a.
Speaker 4: Line, I hope not. I don't think so, though, Okay, great, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I also don't think that running with a stroller can
Speaker 4: be really problematic either. I think that I think the
Speaker 4: mental health and physical health then if it's really outwigh
Speaker 4: anything that I'm looking at. But you know, it's important
Speaker 4: to consider that the mechanics of the runner that's pushing
Speaker 4: the stroller, not just the safety of the of the baby.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you the little ones love it. They
Speaker 2: love to feel the reason and their hair at that
Speaker 2: or whatever heir they have at that point, they love.
Speaker 2: They love the movement and the motion. Allison, I appreciate
Speaker 2: very much. Thanks very much for being back. We missed
Speaker 2: you the other night. I hope all is well. I
Speaker 2: know you were dealing with a family matter and I
Speaker 2: hope everything has worked out fine on that and thanks
Speaker 2: for coming back.
Speaker 4: All's well, that ends well, and thanks so much for
Speaker 4: having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's all that matters. Alison Singles, Associate Professor of Kinesiology
Speaker 2: at Penn State. If folks want to get in touch
Speaker 2: with you and ask a question, I see that there's
Speaker 2: an interesting article that was in the Washington Post. Do
Speaker 2: you want to give out a you know, an email.
Speaker 2: If anybody does have a question that they'd like to
Speaker 2: run by you, they certainly can read this article, which
Speaker 2: was May third in the Washington Post by you and
Speaker 2: a colleague, John Mahoney. Does what running with a jogging
Speaker 2: stroll it does to your body, which is why we
Speaker 2: reached out to you so they can find that. And
Speaker 2: are you a periodic writer for the for the for
Speaker 2: the Walpo Walpole As we say.
Speaker 4: No, this was just a one off. I actually wrote
Speaker 4: it initially for another publication called The Conversation, and it
Speaker 4: got picked up by the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 4: You can find me at State Burks. You can Google
Speaker 4: me and my email address will be right there. Feel
Speaker 4: free to reach out if you have any questions.
Speaker 2: Penn State Berks, b E r Ks. Thanks so much, Allison,
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Happy running, Happy Running. When we get back right after
Speaker 2: the News at the Bottom of the Era, we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about a very interesting theory that have
Speaker 2: we created a culture of mediocrity in America where good
Speaker 2: enough is ruining people's lives. We will talk with an
Speaker 2: author and speaker and transformation coach. I'll also remind you
Speaker 2: if you haven't found the iHeart app at your app store,
Speaker 2: please do take advantage of this. This is free. It's
Speaker 2: a new and improved iHeart app, and the great part
Speaker 2: about it is when you put it on whatever device
Speaker 2: you or as many devices as possible. Make us your
Speaker 2: first preset, so no matter where you are, anytime of day,
Speaker 2: any place at all, you're only a fingertip away. My
Speaker 2: name is Dan Ray. This is Nightside to listen to
Speaker 2: WBZ ten thirty and your am dial, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 1: It's night Side with Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 2: Well we continue along with our Thursday night edition of
Speaker 2: the Nightside News Update, and with us is Kellen Flukeeger.
Speaker 2: He's an author, speaker and transformation coach and the issue
Speaker 2: that he's going to talk about is our culture of mediocrity. Kellen,
Speaker 2: Welcome to Nightside. How are you.
Speaker 5: I'm just fantastic, Dan, thank you for having me on tonight.
Speaker 2: You're very welcome. I have never seen a last name
Speaker 2: like yours. We see people with Smith and Brown, but
Speaker 2: Flukeeger are the many Flugers in the country. I'm guessing
Speaker 2: that it's a small.
Speaker 5: Clan, very very small. Three brothers came over in the
Speaker 5: late eighteen hundreds from Switzerland, and everyone I've ever met
Speaker 5: in North America can be traced back to those three.
Speaker 5: So no, it's very unusual in North America.
Speaker 2: That's great. So you are a business coach and a
Speaker 2: life coach in Los Angeles, as I understand that correct?
Speaker 5: Yes, actually, yes, I am okay?
Speaker 2: Was it quite sure? Did I overstate or understate either
Speaker 2: of those?
Speaker 5: Me to one? I'm actually an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and
Speaker 5: the Los Angeles may have come because I have an
Speaker 5: LA talk radio show called Your Ultimate Like, but I
Speaker 5: actually live in Edmonton, Alberta and that's why I.
Speaker 2: So you must be you must be an Oiler fan.
Speaker 5: I'm assuming right, we're just freaking out because they won
Speaker 5: last night four to one and they're going on probably
Speaker 5: to meet the Stars. But yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, look the Jets. Did they knock
Speaker 2: the Jets out? Is that is that who they were playing?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: But it's three to one. The Stars are out three
Speaker 5: to one, and so I'm thinking, I don't know if
Speaker 5: Winnipeg can pull that off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we'll see. We'll see. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: what the culture of mediocrity, why good enough, is ruining
Speaker 2: your life. We're addicted to a culture of mediocrity. I
Speaker 2: don't disagree with you, by the way, I got to
Speaker 2: tell you, I happen to agree. How did we get
Speaker 2: here and how did we get out?
Speaker 5: Of here, Well, addiction to mediocrity learned helplessness. We're sort
Speaker 5: of raised that way. We settle. We just we get
Speaker 5: the idea that we see fabulous things that other people do,
Speaker 5: and then we have this story, well, I can't have that.
Speaker 5: I'm not good enough. I really can't. And then we
Speaker 5: also make that words by teaching ourselves and our kids
Speaker 5: and culture that everything's got to be easy to solve,
Speaker 5: like in the length of a TV sitcom, and if
Speaker 5: it's harder than that, then people just give up. And
Speaker 5: so we end up settling for way less than we're
Speaker 5: capable of doing, and it just goes on.
Speaker 2: Okay, so can you trace the origins of this? Uh,
Speaker 2: this addiction to mediocrity? Is there is there a period
Speaker 2: a time period will we as a society fell into this?
Speaker 2: Obviously I believe in the mil curve of life and
Speaker 2: not I. If this seventy five percent of the people
Speaker 2: who are addicted to mediocrity, you have there's going to
Speaker 2: be some people who, frankly are not addicted to mediocrity.
Speaker 2: This is we're talking about a trend here, not an
Speaker 2: absolute number that that is are that's that's affecting everybody? Right?
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely. There's always going to be those that say
Speaker 5: I can do this, I can do it, and then
Speaker 5: they go there no matter what the obstacles.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, so when did this start? Can we trace
Speaker 2: it or or is it just something that has evolved
Speaker 2: and it's it's an imprecise starting point.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, life used to be harder, like when
Speaker 5: those three Flukiger brothers came over from Switzerland. I mean,
Speaker 5: you made your living off the lane and you had
Speaker 5: to work, and people were taught to work. And in
Speaker 5: the last who knows, thirty forty fifty years, we sort
Speaker 5: of gradually have gotten easier and easier and more people
Speaker 5: take care of us kind of thing, and we've lost
Speaker 5: a lot of our drive and a lot of the
Speaker 5: belief that we can create something. So I think it's
Speaker 5: come along with the ease and development of technology. It
Speaker 5: wasn't required and by how we view, you know, the
Speaker 5: separation between people that have stuff and don't, and then
Speaker 5: we adopt the story of yeah, but I could never
Speaker 5: dot dot dot and it doesn't matter what comes after that, Okay.
Speaker 2: Is the solution that all of us should take a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks in the woods every year and leing
Speaker 2: to live off the land. I assume that's not the solution.
Speaker 5: No, it isn't the solution. It's all in the mind.
Speaker 5: And what I mean by that is you don't just
Speaker 5: sit and say some affirmations. It starts with the choice
Speaker 5: and the knowledge that we each really create our own lives.
Speaker 5: Like if you develop and some parents do this, but
Speaker 5: if you developed the idea that you can create what
Speaker 5: you want and if it's not obvious, I'm going to
Speaker 5: go figure out what how Like, I'm going there no
Speaker 5: matter what the obstacle, instead of I'm giving up the
Speaker 5: first time I get kicked.
Speaker 2: And is this something obviously, since you're in Edmonton, is
Speaker 2: this something which is endemic to North America or is
Speaker 2: it the American culture? Is that the Canadian culture? I
Speaker 2: think our cultures are pretty similar. Frankly, obviously we're geographically contiguous.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to start a Donald Trump just
Speaker 2: In Trudeau debate here.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: Is this something that is this something that is more
Speaker 2: endemic to a more comfortable we have We're two fairly
Speaker 2: comfortable societies. I mean, we have pretty much everybody has
Speaker 2: indoor plumbing and heat and stuff like that. We're not,
Speaker 2: you know, living on the equator and in one hundred
Speaker 2: and ten degree temperatures nine months out of the year.
Speaker 2: Is this a Canadian thing, an American thing or is
Speaker 2: it a North American thing.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's both, and I think it one
Speaker 5: of the key and not the only, but one of
Speaker 5: the key determinants is how easy it is to get
Speaker 5: by with life. In other words, have CABLETV and aough food,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. So it is certainly North America.
Speaker 5: I mean in Canada and the US, and there are
Speaker 5: some cultures in with the western part of Europe where
Speaker 5: we make life easy and it isn't just quote the
Speaker 5: Western culture everywhere where life seems to be created easy
Speaker 5: and there's a big safety net to take care of
Speaker 5: you if you don't feel like it or if you fail,
Speaker 5: we sort of move into the well then I really
Speaker 5: don't have to create much, do I sort of mindset?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, that of course is also I think you're
Speaker 2: alluding to sort of these social safety nets that we
Speaker 2: talk about in Western Europe. And we look up at
Speaker 2: Canada and say, oh, they're almost a socialist state up there.
Speaker 2: We we got plenty of quasi socialism going on down here.
Speaker 2: Am I getting close to the nerve when I when
Speaker 2: I mentioned those those three elements.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I don't want to sound like I'm anti
Speaker 5: any of that. There are safety nets that we are
Speaker 5: privileged and blessed to be able to provide. What we've
Speaker 5: done is we've made it too easy to be lazy,
Speaker 5: We've made it too easy to not I mean, look
Speaker 5: at the school tests. And I'm both I'm both dual national,
Speaker 5: so I was born in San Francisco, I'm you and
Speaker 5: my wife and I are both US and Canadian citizens,
Speaker 5: So we watch everything down there with great interest. And
Speaker 5: I think that the more we create the situation where
Speaker 5: you can be you know, I won't say only lazy,
Speaker 5: but where you don't really have to be innovative and work,
Speaker 5: then we learn helplessness and we learn to expect that
Speaker 5: the external things are going to come to my rescue
Speaker 5: and solve my problems in some way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sah, I was in a supermarket line today and
Speaker 2: I saw a woman in front of me, and I
Speaker 2: have no idea how old she was, but she was
Speaker 2: clearly elderly and she had a basket, you know, full
Speaker 2: of items, and it took her she struggled a little
Speaker 2: bit to get the items out of her cart, But
Speaker 2: I just thought to myself, what an amazing woman that
Speaker 2: she obviously was not. Again, well, I don't think it
Speaker 2: was just old age. I think I think that there
Speaker 2: was some complications for her physically, but it wasn't going
Speaker 2: to stop her from going to the store. And I
Speaker 2: walked away from that experience just having an admiration for her.
Speaker 2: And at one point one of the clerks actually helped
Speaker 2: her empty her wagon. And she's tiny, not a big
Speaker 2: woman physically, so she had a little struggle to reach
Speaker 2: into the basket and pull heavy items out, if I've
Speaker 2: depicted it clearly, But that spirit that she had I
Speaker 2: wish all of us had. That she was going to
Speaker 2: get to the store today and she was going to
Speaker 2: do what she was needed to do today, and that
Speaker 2: was to fill her pantry and all of that. So
Speaker 2: I had that experience today and I walked away saying, Tom,
Speaker 2: I hope that I would have the courage to do
Speaker 2: that and fight through whatever limitations she was dealing with.
Speaker 5: I love that. And one of the things in the
Speaker 5: business and personal coaching world that I do is I
Speaker 5: have to begin to address when someone comes to coach,
Speaker 5: no matter what the problem is, they want help overcoming something.
Speaker 5: And one of the first things that we have to
Speaker 5: figure out is is there a real barrier or are
Speaker 5: you making this up? Meaning you're experiencing a barrier? But
Speaker 5: is it in your head? Have you tried this? Have
Speaker 5: you tried that? What responsibility have you taken for yourself
Speaker 5: in the creation of the success you say you want.
Speaker 5: I'll ask people often, so how bad do you want
Speaker 5: this whatever it is is, And they'll say, oh, I'll
Speaker 5: do anything. And then I'll say, okay, good, let's start
Speaker 5: with these three things, and inevitably, oh, well, I didn't
Speaker 5: know I had to do that. That's the kind of
Speaker 5: simple Kellen.
Speaker 2: I like your approach, I like your philosophy. How could
Speaker 2: folks get in touch with you if they would like
Speaker 2: to avail themselves of your guidance?
Speaker 5: So I'm running a book challenge right now and it's
Speaker 5: helping people tell their stories of resilience. So the easiest
Speaker 5: way to get a hold of me right now is
Speaker 5: a website Www dot dream, build right it dot com.
Speaker 5: And it has to do with mighting your life, figuring
Speaker 5: out the value you can create with your life stories.
Speaker 5: Of overcoming and then doing something with it. That's www
Speaker 5: dot dream build right it dot com.
Speaker 2: Kellen, thank you very much, appreciate it. I enjoyed the
Speaker 2: conversation and go Oilers. Okay, since the Brewers out in it.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much.
Speaker 5: All right, Thanks Dan, I appreciate being here.
Speaker 2: You're very welcome. We get back. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: with a representative of FIRE, one of my favorite organizations,
Speaker 2: the Foundation of Individual Rights and Education. A new report
Speaker 2: finds that Harvard has punished more students speech than just
Speaker 2: any other school this decade. That's not good news for Harvard.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it on the other side of the break.
Speaker 1: It's Night Side Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 2: Delighted to welcome Ryan Weiss, the director of research at
Speaker 2: the Foundation of Individual Rights and Education. Ron. I gotta
Speaker 2: believe you're from Chicago and you were named after Ryan Sandberg?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 6: Correct?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 6: Yeah? That's true.
Speaker 2: Well, the only reason to look I totally guess that
Speaker 2: because the only other person who I knew with the
Speaker 2: name R. Y n. E. Was the great uh Chicago
Speaker 2: Cub baseball player.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I actually got my current job at Fire
Speaker 6: the same week the Cubs won the World Series, so
Speaker 6: it was a big week for my family.
Speaker 2: Wow, but you they did name you after Sandberg. You're
Speaker 2: not pulling I was just having fun with you. You're
Speaker 2: not pulling me leg right.
Speaker 6: No, No, that's that's that's true. And in fact, my
Speaker 6: dad got the WGN broadcasters to announce my birth on
Speaker 6: it in the same dair.
Speaker 2: Now, how many times has anyone else in your life
Speaker 2: when they met you came out at the box with
Speaker 2: I assume you were born in Chicago and you're named
Speaker 2: after Ryan Sandberg? Does that happen you a lot?
Speaker 6: Well, God, go to the universe of Chicago and Oaks
Speaker 6: would always ask me that question. Then I moved to
Speaker 6: Philadelphia and Ryan Sandy a short and not very good
Speaker 6: stint as the general manager for the Phillies. So a
Speaker 6: couple times people would ask me that with a little
Speaker 6: bit of a more aggressive tone than in Chicago.
Speaker 2: I got you. Well, okay, so I wasn't the first,
Speaker 2: but that's okay. So let's I'm a big fan of Fire.
Speaker 2: Harvey Silverglade, who was one of the founders of Fire,
Speaker 2: is one of my closest friends and Harvard fantastic stats
Speaker 2: here more than six hundred college students and student groups
Speaker 2: have been punished to invest gated for speech in the
Speaker 2: last five years. At Harvard. What's called. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I know that it's not.
Speaker 6: No that's in the nation as a whole. At Harvard
Speaker 6: we've tracked eighteen of those in the last five years,
Speaker 6: which is more than any other college.
Speaker 2: Well, the way this is written, the way this is written,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking to myself, Harvard has become worse than I
Speaker 2: ever would have imagined. Both of my kids went to Harvard,
Speaker 2: and wow, So all those eighteen we all know that
Speaker 2: Harvard claims, or I believe it has been attributed that
Speaker 2: ninety seven percent of the professors at Harvard considered themselves
Speaker 2: to the left of center. About three percent of them
Speaker 2: consider themselves to the right of center. If you break
Speaker 2: down the eighteen instances at Harvard, is there a proclivity
Speaker 2: one way or the other as to who's being you know,
Speaker 2: censured or in some form of fashion punished.
Speaker 6: So I can't speak to Harvard on those, but we
Speaker 6: do have those stats for the universities as a whole.
Speaker 6: And one of the interesting things about this report is
Speaker 6: it shows a change in the trend over time. So
Speaker 6: if you look at twenty twenty to twenty twenty three
Speaker 6: attempts to sanction students speech broadly, we're coming from the
Speaker 6: left of the students being targeted. Coversten.
Speaker 2: Let me make sure I understood what you just said,
Speaker 2: that the administrators were sanctioning, suspending, whatever, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: they did conservative speech.
Speaker 6: Broadly. Yes, we have a little more complicated coding there,
Speaker 6: because you know, it's sometimes hard to tell. We usually
Speaker 6: do it whether or not the direction is coming relative
Speaker 6: to the speaker. So if someone you know, to the
Speaker 6: left of a centrist, center leaning speaker is targeted for
Speaker 6: we then coding on the left the case, we code
Speaker 6: that as being from the right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so so, so what's so you said the
Speaker 2: trend is switched? Is it is now that there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of activity on campuses as I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: particularly left uh throw Palestinian, anti Israeli and often sometimes
Speaker 2: viril and anti Semitic activity. Is is that the trend
Speaker 2: that we have seen and that the administrators now have
Speaker 2: had to get a little backbone against the the progressives.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we've seen a switch in the trend so that
Speaker 6: now most of the speak speech is being targeted from
Speaker 6: the right of the speaker, and this is you know,
Speaker 6: largely on the topic of Palestine. So you have pro Palestine,
Speaker 6: sympathetic protest being targeted more for their speech than what
Speaker 6: was happening before.
Speaker 2: So okay, so, how does fire distinguish between pure speech
Speaker 2: someone who is who's who's criticized for making a writing
Speaker 2: an op ed piece in a newspaper or or speaking,
Speaker 2: or someone coming on campus, as opposed to somebody who
Speaker 2: engages in action activity such as blocking a doorway, impeding
Speaker 2: progress of other students, maybe taking over a building, something
Speaker 2: like that. Do you distinguish between the type of activity
Speaker 2: that elicits the sanction or the suspension.
Speaker 6: Yes, we absolutely do. So we hold to the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court precedents on what is protected versus unprotected conduct. The
Speaker 6: examples that you gave, as far as you know, keeping
Speaker 6: people from entering buildings, building occupations, that kind of stuff
Speaker 6: is not protected speech. We exclude that our database. We
Speaker 6: have lawyers who are in the intake meetings making sure
Speaker 6: that the things that we're including in the database our
Speaker 6: entirely speech that would be protected by the First Amendment.
Speaker 2: Okay, how is fire doing these days on campus? I
Speaker 2: mean Obviously, there's there's a there's a bit I did
Speaker 2: an hour a couple of weeks ago. There are now
Speaker 2: I guess, three hundred members of the Republican Harvard Republican Club.
Speaker 2: So the Boston Globe been a big front page story
Speaker 2: on their Sunday magazine about the return of Republicans to Harvard.
Speaker 2: How is there any trend across the country that shows
Speaker 2: that the campuses are becoming a little more balanced or
Speaker 2: there's the imbalance that we came to either know or
Speaker 2: at least endure is stable.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I think our report shows
Speaker 6: is that the tenor of the problems on campus change.
Speaker 6: Their amounts fluctuate from year to year. But we've seen
Speaker 6: in a lot of cases just a changing of the sources, like,
Speaker 6: for example, in the early years, as I mentioned, most
Speaker 6: of the attempts to get students sanctioned for speech came
Speaker 6: from other students. Now the majority is coming from administrators.
Speaker 6: So it doesn't seem that things are getting much better.
Speaker 6: We're also having to deal with Gougle interference.
Speaker 2: Beach.
Speaker 6: We see you're.
Speaker 2: Breaking up on me here. Ryan. I don't know what's
Speaker 2: going on with your phone, but you break it up
Speaker 2: on me. So if folks want to get in touch
Speaker 2: with Fire, give us the website because it's a great organization.
Speaker 2: I always want to give you a chance to plug
Speaker 2: it was. I hope hopefully your phone will will hold
Speaker 2: through this. What's what's the Fire's website?
Speaker 6: The tire or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, next time you do this, we
Speaker 2: got to get we got to get you a better phone.
Speaker 2: I believe it's the F I R. E dot org,
Speaker 2: thefire dot org if you can hear me, and I
Speaker 2: think that's correct, and if not, we'll we'll double check that.
Speaker 2: Coming out of the nine o'clock news, Ryan, thanks very much.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry that the phone deteriorated. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you're in a car, if you've moved around, but I
Speaker 2: think we've lost you at this point. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Always nice to meet someone who's named after Ryan Sandberg.
Speaker 2: We'll be back right after the nine o'clock news here
Speaker 2: on Nightside, and we're going to talk about flowers and
Speaker 2: what they mean to us and how they impact people.
Speaker 2: We are going to be delighted to be joined by
Speaker 2: Jan Goodman of Cityscapes Boston. Coming back