Speaker 1: Welcome to the Three Stories version of The Todd Herman Show.
Kind of a weird approach to this day's three Radio Stories.
I still love radio. In fact, I'm in Tupelo, Mississippi,
down 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, one
hundred and eighty stations. First time I've been in Tupelo. Now,
I'm actually not in Tupolo right now. I'm filming this
in advance, but I'll be down in Tupolo 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 do this with the help of our
YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash at the Todd Herman
Show and with God Almighty.
Speaker 2: Is one disapproved by Big Pharma technocarrats in tyrn cebrianware
from the High Mountains of Free America. Here's the Emerald
City exime Todd Herman.
Speaker 1: Today is today the Lord has made and these are
the times to which God has decided we shall 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 was 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 begin
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 nineteen, I don't care if you're
thirty five. You would benefit from listening to the rest
of the story, just because he was a masterful story teller.
You take an 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. News and commentary is very
famous these days for something he did call 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 twenty two
acres and liked to hunt and fish. But we would
listen to Paul Harvey, and you know what's so weird. It
never occurred to me that I could do that here.
I love 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 key changed.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: 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 in this family.
I'll tell you what happened to me, because I do
think it was an active 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 cleans 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 Seal Fit. 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
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dot com slash todd. 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, it's 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 sixty 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 blank because he's an arrogant
kid from San Francisco and he thinks he's a big deal.
Plus he wears weird, straight leg jeans, he's not wearing
bell bottoms. He's proba. I won't say what they called him.
So he's sitting in front of me in gym class
one day and we were gonna 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 gonna have a chance to maybe wrestle, although
he's smaller than me. So I just tapped him on
the shoulder before class became. I said, hey, how 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.
Speaker 2: Hey.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question? Where'd you get all
those T shirts? He goes, man. Everybody asked me this
my dad, he goes. I'm really lucky. My dad works
in the radio business. He worked 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 he 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 Marl 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, he's
with BB King. Your dad's with Robert Plant from led Zeppelin.
Yeah that's wait, 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.
Speaker 2: What I do.
Speaker 1: 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's enterance and transition to a song? What was a
good job versus a guy who's making it up using
a fake radio voice. So 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 jockey's 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. I did some
big deals, but I wasn't consistent. I was too emotionally
heard 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 bantered 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, driven around
in a 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 fifty to fifty deal, do a revshare 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. I was that guy
live 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 Aona 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 a
sales person. I'm a good presenter, et cetera. That detail
stuff with money makes my eyes bleed and I get distracted.
So I employ Zach Abraham at Bullwart 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 interests ahead of it, ahead of his. He
is really obsessed right now with how current events are
affecting people's retirement accounts. Now, I started mine before my
daughter was born, some twenty two twenty three 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 Mike is right.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: 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 is. He's just like me. He's
a communicator. He is 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 and 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 know Know
your Risk radio dot com. Or call him at eight
sixty six seven to seventy nine.
Speaker 3: Risk Investment Advisory services offered through Trek Financial loc and
sec Registered Investment Advisor. The opinions expressed in this programmer
for general informational purposes only, and are not intended to
provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on
any specific security. Any references to performance of securities so
are thought to be materially accurate, and actual performance may
differ investments involved risk and or not guaranteed. Past performance
doesn't guarantee future results Track twenty four three zero.
Speaker 1: Eight 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 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.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's that George Costanza thing. You meet a young woman,
So where do you live? Ah, I'd rather not say
I never did get the Costanza thing right by doing
all the things opposite. I live at 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?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 1: That'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 one thousand watt radio
station in Spokane, Washington. And you know what, it's crazy,
but my national radio show is now on that station,
KSBNAM twelve thirty. 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 advertisers in turn them over to you. So how
about we do this. I will keep sixty five percent
of the money I bring to a show. You keep
sixty five percent 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
looking or 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 reel to real you had to cut
with scissors, or if you were like me, you had
a four track recorder used to record music on. So
you know what I'd done in my tiny little apartment
in sam Atteo, California. I had pretended to have a
radio show. I'd put on bumper music and I made
myself the big voice by slowing down the voice. Now
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 okay, the guy can talk, he
can chatter. So here's the audition. I think it was
nine or ten PM 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 caller 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 brought 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.
I was 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 had dedicated my radio program to
seeing that he was ousted from the Speaker of the
House office, that he was not re elected, 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 this 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 a 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,
mister 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 back Talk with Todd
herm on an Am twelve thirty KSPN. And I intend
to see to it that I use the program to
see that you're not re elected because of what you've
done to the fifth District, where you've taken IPO monies
for yourself that we don't get. You've 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 him in the stage, well Son, a lot of
bigger people than you have tried, but I wish you
good luck. My name's 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 Folly 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 gonna
apologize for the language right now. It said this, my
name is Tom Foley, me y're all sue your asss.
So why could I say something like that, Because he'd
sue 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 gonna
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 work for Ted Copple, PBS
News Hour, The Philadelphia Inquired nip Ontelligion Television from Japan PBS,
two PBS shows they thought they were very, very clever.
On McNeil Lair newsaur the young lady who tried to
trick me into talking before the interview began, who tried
to 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 stick? 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
Gringridge'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 this fhiner 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 byproduct 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 that,
because I was bothered by saying it. I bet I
have a pretty good reason. That came to pass that
Tom Foley was not reelected, and there was a poll
in the spokesrom Review that showed that my show had
a pretty big effect on that. Now they tried to
run the poll saying, oh, look that 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,
fully never did come on my show. He wouldn't, but
he kept sending campaign people. Finally they sent in a
campaign manager all the way from Washington, DC, a big, ligger,
beautiful tie. A couple days before he came on my program,
I was sitting in my office. I'd 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 commes and he knocks on the door. I
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. Had the 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
I 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. 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 sixty
thousand 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 this stem cells, etc.
I think it's called lysing. It's sixty thousand of them.
They're fifty seven year olds old like I am. They
can't build other things. They can reduce some information. But
what I'm getting in mechao are ethically gathered stem cells
from placentas and umbilical cords only, no aborted babies ever.
And I'm getting forty two million in my shoulder, And
a second time I went down, I got twelve million
in my ankle. Twelve 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 talbot. You suit
them into a part of the body. They'll build cartilage
on 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 systrome, 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.
Got to renew dot healthcare. It's r E n U
E dot healthcare. If you're too young to remember radio
as a dominant medium, there's stories he should know. Stories
like the fact that I got to build a really
beautiful career with two national radio shows in a podcast,
the 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.
And 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 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 ad meant. 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're too young
for that, a yuppie sweater. Yep, a yuppie 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 AM twelve thirty
Case bann 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 win the main number.
It worked well, fully didn't come on, but he's 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 gonna shoot me because that's
happened the 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. I have
a good day. I took it into the studio and
here's what I heard. It was the grid Iron dinner
in Washington, d C. This is when journalists and politicians
would get together and yuck it up and slap each
other on the back and glad hand and they're on stage.
Was Tom Foley, and he said something very kin to this.
This is almost a direct quote. A lot of people
ask me how I can defend my one hundred and
seventy three thousand dollars a year salary when the people
of the fifth District I represent earn far less than
that thirty thirty two thousand dollars a year. And I
tell him it says, that's easy to compare because of
all the Johnny lunchbuckets and Whitey do nothings in the
fifth District. Joyful laughter, applause from the people in the Capitol,
just like the Hunger Games. I knew what I had
by 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
fifty 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 and under any circumstances, seemed to hate to
miss back talk with Todd Herman over the laws. There
she goes, it's a bump 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,
ten 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 I'm going to come back.
I have a piece of audio I like to play
for you. We visited pleasantries during the commercial break, and
then we came back and I played the audio. But
when 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 in 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 stratgys for Tom Foley is
walking out of the studio as nip on television from
Japan and all these other television stations film it. So
he left. One last thing happens after fully lost 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 and office.
He said it sure seemed personal. I 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 caped occasions. At
one point a guy came in I told you my
studio had no security, came in with the two by
four to try to murder me for talking about what
was going on at Kaiser Aluminum, the strikes and the
shutting down of equipment, the breaking of multi million dollar equipment.
He was outraged. She 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 sixteen, 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 the
cops 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 podcasting now came from talk radio.
They stand on the shoulders of giants. I give you
one other insane thing and then a very very touching
thing that happened radio. The insane thing was this when
I I grew up and spoken, and I was a
loud mouth kid. I become a loud mouth because I
started to hate the school system because I had been
judged by the school system and accused of something I
didn't do, and had a horrible interaction with a principle.
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 principle and
that principle did something to me One day. Lacking proof,
he accused me of something. He hated me. He determined
that 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 gonna 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 they ended up having a 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, probably to lunch.
They had multiple lunches, first, second, third lunch, and they
had first lunch and I heard their voices. I said,
their name's 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 of friends we
were at the time. I need you to go steal
every lunch in the cubbies and throw them away. Didn't
ask any questions, he just wentn't did it. So they
went throughout the school, stole lunches from kids and threw
them in the dumpsters. At three h five, when school
was over, I heard the last bell ring and the
principal wasn't there. Then at three point fifteen, I heard
the everybody out of the building bell ring, 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 and 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 fin chance in hell I'm going to
ride with you where you're not getting home any other way.
Don't touch me. There's not an fin 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, you'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, right,
I never did that to you. Funny thing because before
we brought them 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 welders, said you
did it and you laughed about it. So he repeated
the thing, you're losing, your 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 hundred bucks
and I handed it to him. He said, hey, you
know what, let me help out, and he took the
hundred and 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
into 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 it on. In this case,
it was in Seattle KTCH 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, Loan Survivor, and
it was saying that in Loan 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 Axelson
and had been shot in the head and he's outraged.
They shot me in the head. They shot me in
the head. Marcus Sluche says, bro, are you good? He goes, yeah, matter,
I'm good. We just need to get a 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, not what we
called it, that last segment of the show. Walked out
of the studio and reproduce her 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 as she was in tears mister hermit 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. I appreciate you telling me that.
This was the day before Thanksgiving. He said it was
going to wait till after Thanksgiving. But I 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 in Burmington?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: 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 is 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 and
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 of him them,
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.
We don't have contracts. This is a Todd hermannshell. Please go,
be well, be strong, be kind, Please make every effort
to walk in the light of Christ.