Latest / The SEANC View / State Health Plan, Tik Tok Ban, Piano Man

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State Health Plan, Tik Tok Ban, Piano Man · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Music.
• 0:09
  Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:11
  We have the regular crew in here today.
• 0:14
  I'm Jonathan Owens, communications director here at Scenic, joined by Artis
• 0:18
  Watkins, executive director, Suzanne Beasley, government relations director, and Sam Klein.
• 0:24
  Let's just call you podcast producer now, right? That works. Okay.
• 0:28
  She's also the digital communications specialist, but in this room,
• 0:32
  you'll be the podcast. Our in-house Gen Z-er.
• 0:34
  In the podcast pod, you'll be our podcast. Sounds like nuts of us. Call me whatever.
• 0:39
  Pretty much Well, we had a pretty popular episode last week From the numbers
• 0:44
  that I've seen so far And we've been sharing it a little more And it seems like
• 0:49
  people are really interested In the healthcare debate that we had last week
• 0:52
  The three-hour-long healthcare debate Now,
• 0:55
  it was only, I think, 42 minutes So,
• 0:57
  Sam, you did a good job of cutting that down And making it sound like a coherent thought throughout,
• 1:03
  That's a lot of information that we Well, it's a lot of change on the horizon Several tangents.
• 1:09
  So did you guys get any feedback from anything at all yet?
• 1:13
  You did have some meetings with some folks over at the state health plan, correct?
• 1:19
  Yes, I met with Thomas Friedman, the executive administrator of the state health
• 1:23
  plan, who I think is reaching out to all the different constituencies involved
• 1:26
  to basically just talk, not lay out their plans yet.
• 1:30
  We don't know a lot of specifics about the plans. Although, Suzanne,
• 1:35
  we were talking about the fact that it came out in the media Friday.
• 1:39
  There's some consideration of the premium being based on what employees make in salary.
• 1:46
  Meaning you pay more. Yeah. If you make more, you pay more for your health care.
• 1:50
  Which is, that's not good. We were having a discussion earlier.
• 1:53
  If you've got an employee who's making $70,000 or $80,000 with a serious health
• 1:56
  condition, they may be struggling already as well.
• 1:59
  So just because they're making $70,000 or $80,000 and you increase their premium
• 2:04
  doesn't mean that they are actually in a position to be able to afford that.
• 2:07
  So there's so many things that we have to consider before just jumping on,
• 2:12
  you know, basing it on salary.
• 2:13
  Well, that's an assumption, though. Don't do it at all. They're talking about
• 2:15
  salary as an assumption that the only way you can solve this is by more money out of the employees.
• 2:20
  That is a false, patently false assumption. Yeah, so here's my thing.
• 2:23
  Patently false assumption.
• 2:24
  So what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So if that's the way we're going to play it with
• 2:30
  employee salaries and what their premiums will be. Why are we not doing this with providers?
• 2:34
  Because they pay a range of amounts to providers. We don't know what those are
• 2:40
  because they're secret contracts. We know the range.
• 2:42
  Some providers make 10 times what others do. If you're going to treat state
• 2:47
  employees that way as far as premiums go, then why in the world are you not
• 2:52
  looking to your providers and charging them based on what we pay out to them? Better Yeah.
• 2:57
  Why are you not asking for transparency so you can see what exactly you are
• 3:01
  paying for to all of the providers?
• 3:03
  Yeah. So we posted the podcast and stories on our Facebook page and the response
• 3:07
  was, as expected, folks were not happy about premiums on the rise.
• 3:12
  Folks were calling for one term briner, as a few folks said.
• 3:16
  And, you know, our state employees are not obviously not excited about paying
• 3:20
  more for their premiums. and we can't go try to sell it to them because we would
• 3:26
  be really committing association malpractice if we said there's no other way.
• 3:32
  Yeah. Right. When this is actually kind of funny to me. I did an interview just
• 3:35
  today with Tim Boyham, actually, who's awesome. He's Mr.
• 3:39
  North Carolina political interviews. And he remarked, Treasurer Briner says
• 3:43
  he's not going to the legislature for this money.
• 3:45
  So are y'all wanting the legislature? I said, you know, it's not even a matter.
• 3:48
  We're not even asking them to provide an appropriation for the health plan.
• 3:52
  We're asking them to take away the part of the law that allows secrecy of these contracts.
• 3:58
  And he asked me, do you think that's going to yield enough money if you could
• 4:01
  see those and alter the contracts that you wouldn't need to ask the legislature for money?
• 4:06
  And I said, it is our assumption because everybody wants so badly to keep them secret.
• 4:10
  So they must be pretty doggone good. But if not, at least then we know and we
• 4:15
  could tell folks there's just no other way.
• 4:17
  So for decades and decades, Blue Cross Blue Shield has been the administrator
• 4:23
  of this plan and they've negotiated those contracts.
• 4:26
  With Aetna stepping in, do you see any change in that or is that pretty much
• 4:30
  a standard practice among administrators?
• 4:33
  Is there any room for... If they don't have to be public about it,
• 4:38
  it's just good business not to be right.
• 4:40
  I mean, how much how much pressure is on somebody if the job they do is never
• 4:45
  really going to be known? How much pressure is on them to do a good job? Yeah.
• 4:49
  But think about state employees. Their salaries are on display.
• 4:55
  For the media to see, everything about state employees. But if you've got a
• 4:59
  contract with the government, you enjoy this protected status where it doesn't
• 5:05
  make any sense to most people that you could be absolutely fleecing the government.
• 5:09
  No one will ever know. And yet we're going to really go out of our way to make
• 5:14
  sure that the 35 grand some employee in Onslow County is making is broadcast to the world. For what?
• 5:22
  What's that going to change? A common thought on the Facebook comments was,
• 5:26
  we missed Dale Falwell already. So just throwing that out there.
• 5:30
  Well, he fought a good fight about it, but he was a friend for a long time.
• 5:35
  So where do we go from here? I know the story, I don't think we mentioned it last week.
• 5:41
  We didn't have a date for it, but I think the News Observer story said that
• 5:44
  the State Health Plans Board of Trustees will meet on February 7th to discuss
• 5:49
  the topic, but that premium increases remain a.
• 5:54
  2026 problem, according to Treasurer Briner.
• 5:57
  And he said, we do have a little bit of time, but not a lot. Is that surprising?
• 6:01
  No, they have two budget cycles. So they've got enough runway.
• 6:05
  You know, I keep saying this, if they would come out and say,
• 6:08
  we have to have access to all of the contracts, we can't possibly recommend
• 6:13
  who needs to pay what with public dollars or with state employee retiree dollars,
• 6:18
  we've got to get this information,
• 6:20
  then they've got plenty of time. You know, they've got time to do that.
• 6:22
  It doesn't take long once you get the information to plug those numbers in if
• 6:26
  you were to make adjustments.
• 6:27
  And adjustments in this case would mean where you're overpaying for health care.
• 6:32
  Stop it. But that's complicated a little bit by the fact that the legislature
• 6:36
  has to pass a two year budget. Right.
• 6:38
  Would that not be necessary in that budget? This budget?
• 6:42
  Yeah. The upcoming one. For 2026. Well, I mean, because it's an expansion budget in 2026.
• 6:49
  Yeah. So they can tackle it then. Of course. Okay.
• 6:52
  So obviously, we'll keep watch on this issue. We're going to be reaching out
• 6:56
  probably to our members to take action ahead of that meeting in February,
• 7:00
  just to let the plan folks know that we're here and we're watching.
• 7:04
  Well, yeah, and there's so many. It appears there's a whole lot of new board
• 7:07
  of trustees, members of the health plan.
• 7:10
  And that's a group nobody really knows, but who hold amazing power over the
• 7:15
  lives of state employees and retirees.
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  And not many of them have any connection to. And they're responsible for making
• 7:23
  recommendations to the GA.
• 7:25
  None of them are low-paid state workers or retirees. Yeah, should we maybe review
• 7:30
  that a little bit? Like what happened?
• 7:32
  Remember, we had a podcast on this whole subject when we lost a seat there.
• 7:36
  Well, the bottom line is when it was set up for the Board of Trustees to exist.
• 7:41
  There were going to be experts and then real-life people. There was supposed
• 7:45
  to be one active teacher, one retired teacher, one active state employee,
• 7:50
  one retired state employee.
• 7:51
  And the idea there was that people who have to live with these decisions and
• 7:56
  for whom, you know, that can be tough based on their public employee salary.
• 8:01
  But if you put in people who qualify as state employees but don't have your
• 8:06
  average state employee salary or lower, you're not getting what the goal of
• 8:11
  the statute or legislation was. It's not in the spirit of the law, right?
• 8:15
  To put a real person on there living with this right. It violates the legislative intent.
• 8:20
  We worked so hard on that with former Senator Apodaca.
• 8:23
  His intent was very clear, so...
• 8:26
  He was a man of the people, truly. He wanted regular people to get in there
• 8:30
  and have a voice because, you know, this was coming out of a time frame where
• 8:33
  the Health Plan Board of Trustees way back in the day, I remember sitting in
• 8:37
  there and one of them saying with a straight face,
• 8:40
  state employees need to do things to be healthier.
• 8:42
  They need to go to Whole Foods and buy organic eggs instead of just buying food line eggs.
• 8:47
  Now, this is before you could you really saw organic eggs and in a lot of places.
• 8:52
  It's before egg issues, period. Yeah, before eggs became like.
• 8:55
  Like, I was astounded because I thought, OK, none of them have ever lived on
• 8:59
  a state employee salary.
• 9:00
  Organic eggs. We over here eating hamburger helper, you know.
• 9:04
  Right. But that's what Senator Apodaca and others at the time in the legislature were trying to solve,
• 9:10
  was this complete disconnect of folks who really probably thought they were
• 9:16
  doing a real service to the public by coming forth and saying how this health plan should work.
• 9:22
  And it was kind of belittling. So that's one of many issues we'll be facing
• 9:27
  this year. And we need your help, too.
• 9:29
  We need members to stand up for yourselves and get involved as well.
• 9:33
  Stay tuned to that issue.
• 9:35
  Moving on to another topic that has just ravaged the Scenic staff.
• 9:42
  Well, one member of the Scenic staff last week or so. So Sam,
• 9:47
  it sounds like you have some opinions on the TikTok band.
• 9:50
  What's going on? Can maybe you give our listeners who maybe aren't.
• 9:54
  Who don't care. Yeah, exactly.
• 9:57
  Maybe you can give us a synopsis because we are not as versed in the subject
• 10:02
  as you. What's going on with TikTok?
• 10:05
  I think you should put on your digital communications specialist hat now.
• 10:09
  Switch hats. Okay. So that's what you are now.
• 10:12
  So last April, there was a bill package that was introduced to give $95 billion
• 10:19
  to Ukraine and Israel as relief aid.
• 10:23
  And a week before that was voted on, there was a legislation slipped in that
• 10:29
  included a ban on TikTok, which takes effect January 19th.
• 10:34
  But yesterday, after they decided to have a hearing regarding what was going
• 10:39
  on, where normal people could come and speak about how TikTok has affected them,
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  because there are 170 million Americans who use TikTok,
• 10:47
  and millions of those people also, that is their primary source of income. Wake up, Arniss.
• 10:52
  Oh, no. I fell asleep there. I'm absolutely paying attention because I'm thinking,
• 10:57
  okay, our messaging has to go to TikTok then. This is crazy.
• 11:01
  So millions of people who are on TikTok, that is also their primary source of
• 11:05
  income that they are about to get stripped away from them on January 19th.
• 11:09
  And yesterday, Senator. Oh, like influencers or something? Okay.
• 11:13
  And also small businesses.
• 11:15
  Yeah. They get a lot of business from TikTok and they have no way to promote
• 11:19
  their small businesses that largely anymore without having to pay for ad revenue.
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  And yesterday, Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts introduced a bill that would
• 11:31
  extend a 270-day stay on TikTok so that they can essentially,
• 11:37
  for the most part, it doesn't sound like they're extending a stay to do more
• 11:42
  research and figure out if there's a way they can keep it unless a U.S.-based
• 11:46
  company were to buy the U.S.
• 11:48
  Assets of it, which there has been a bid. No one knows exactly how much they
• 11:52
  bid for the money because they have not released that.
• 11:54
  But Project Liberty has produced a bid. It does not sound like ByteDance slash
• 11:58
  TikTok is going to take it.
• 12:00
  And that was a stipulation in the legislation, wasn't it, that it has to be bought by a U.S.
• 12:05
  Company? Yes. So what Project Liberty has suggested, I believe that is the exact
• 12:11
  name. If this is confirmed true, we've seen a lot of speculation about it.
• 12:15
  Is this the Shark Tank app? That's what I asked earlier.
• 12:17
  That's just a grift, by the way.
• 12:20
  But it's they have not announced what the bid is, but they are just offering
• 12:26
  to buy the U.S. assets of TikTok.
• 12:28
  They are not trying to buy the algorithm because that is intellectual property of China.
• 12:32
  They're not trying to buy the algorithm. They just want the U.S.
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  Assets and they will build their own interface for U.S. users.
• 12:39
  Yesterday, Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts introduced a bill that would
• 12:44
  extend a 270 day stay on TikTok.
• 12:46
  And Representative Ro Khanna signed on with that.
• 12:50
  So if that gets voted on in the next four days, because it is supposed to go away at midnight,
• 13:01
  January 19th, if that gets voted on the next four days and it passes,
• 13:06
  there could be a 270 day stay, which is...
• 13:10
  Every time you say a stay on TikTok, I'm like thinking, you know, death row. Yeah.
• 13:15
  Like a stay on TikTok. Well, I mean, it's kind of a... So, have some thoughts.
• 13:21
  We won't make the whole... We could do the whole podcast. Maybe we'll start
• 13:24
  our own podcast. Do it on TikTok.
• 13:27
  On TikTok. So, first off, if you make someone sell something by a deadline, right?
• 13:33
  That seems like it would depress the value of that thing.
• 13:37
  So, like, if the government tells you you have to sell this newspaper that I'm
• 13:41
  holding right here by a certain date or you lose it, right?
• 13:44
  You basically lose all of the American audience. Mm-hmm.
• 13:48
  Then the value of that would go down. So doesn't it behoove TikTok to just hold
• 13:52
  out and wait till everyone gets mad and then sell it?
• 13:56
  And make a lot more money. Everyone already is mad.
• 13:59
  Yeah. Everyone is extremely angry. Even other countries are saying if U.S.
• 14:04
  Gets banned from TikTok, I'm moving wherever they're moving because that is
• 14:09
  a lot of other countries' source of entertainment is us looking ridiculous on TikTok.
• 14:14
  So people from Europe, people from Canada, people from Australia have said on
• 14:20
  TikTok, we're following wherever the Americans go after this. Yeah.
• 14:24
  Well, okay. This is my favorite part. I need to understand that a little better.
• 14:28
  So basically, we're the court jester for the world. Yeah, it looks like the Americans.
• 14:33
  Oh, my gosh. So why don't you tell them about this, where you think people are migrating to?
• 14:39
  As of right now, everyone that I have seen on TikTok, which is a lot of people,
• 14:45
  including massive influencers, they are slowly migrating to an app called Red Note.
• 14:50
  OK, now tell us what Red Note is. red note
• 14:53
  is a chinese owned version of tiktok that
• 14:56
  is primarily everything is in mandarin and
• 15:00
  solely owned by the chat not solely maybe but it is owned by the chinese government
• 15:05
  so you went from tiktok which is probably you know the ceo is from singapore
• 15:09
  and he may have may or may not have ties to china to an app that is totally
• 15:15
  yes and everyone on there i don't think that's going to end well either.
• 15:20
  And people on TikTok are joking, saying, you know what,
• 15:23
  if you want us to be safe and make sure that our data is not going to the Chinese
• 15:30
  government as is claimed, we're going to voluntarily give it up and download
• 15:35
  this app and just hang out.
• 15:38
  People are posting already on there. It's already got a lot of American users
• 15:42
  on there. But it's in Mandarin.
• 15:44
  Yes, but you can change the language to English, but people are learning Mandarin
• 15:48
  to interact with Finally, you say something that doesn't kill my brain self.
• 15:53
  People are learning Mandarin and we're also teaching people who speak Mandarin English. Awesome.
• 16:00
  Okay. Look at me over here like, oh, yeah, like I'm not old and not down with this.
• 16:05
  Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean, that'll totally be interesting to see what happens.
• 16:09
  But, you know. What am I going to do at bedtime? Exactly.
• 16:12
  What am I going to laugh at? All the cat videos. Where are the cats going to go?
• 16:17
  A scenic podcast. Just listen to it. Over and over and.
• 16:24
  Instagram reels. Everything will be two weeks late. Oh, no, no, no.
• 16:28
  See, that's another part of it. People believe that Mark Zuckerberg and a lobbying
• 16:33
  team he was working with is the
• 16:35
  big reason that this legislation got introduced. Oh, I'm sure it's like.
• 16:39
  And people are now boycotting all meta apps and they're deleting their accounts.
• 16:45
  They're deleting the apps. And it's causing the stock in meta to completely
• 16:49
  crash because people are so angry about TikTok.
• 16:53
  You know what I think of when I hear all this? It's like those memes where it's
• 16:58
  like two cats fighting and it's like nerd fight.
• 17:01
  So it's basically people being pissed at Mark Zuckerberg and saying,
• 17:07
  we're not going to support your platforms because they believe that he was part
• 17:15
  of the lobbying team that introduced this legislation that got passed.
• 17:19
  Oh, my goodness gracious.
• 17:21
  In order to cause Meta to be one of the number one things again.
• 17:24
  And people aren't happy.
• 17:26
  I mean, I've got I've got friends my age who a couple of them who are single
• 17:30
  and TikTok was like they're saving grace when we were on COVID lockdown.
• 17:34
  I mean, it's. Well, OK, but somebody's trying to save it now through legislation,
• 17:39
  but it would control the right of companies to do what they want with their own businesses.
• 17:45
  Right. So I think the argument is. Which is great. Yeah.
• 17:50
  Because if they can do that. I know your reason is that. If they can do that.
• 17:55
  Yeah, they can put a limit on what these companies can charge us.
• 18:00
  Because part of the argument with this hearing that just happened was that it
• 18:04
  is an attack on the First Amendment right of having free speech.
• 18:08
  Because there are some people who learn more from TikTok and hear more about
• 18:12
  what's happening with government, what's happening in the rest of the world,
• 18:15
  what's happening in their own area.
• 18:17
  Saying this is not a good thing. Then they have heard from the news and they
• 18:20
  feel like the government is trying to hide things from them.
• 18:23
  Oh, for goodness. So you're saying that's what they want.
• 18:26
  You're saying that some regulation of government is necessary then, right?
• 18:30
  Well, I find it interesting because it sounds like government has stepped in
• 18:34
  and put in regulations around the free market with regard to some things.
• 18:39
  But then with regard to our right not to be massively overcharged for life-saving drugs...
• 18:47
  Not so much. And I just find that strange. I had another thought totally separate
• 18:53
  from this. Are we done with TikTok?
• 18:55
  We seem to be protecting us from the evils of the TikTok.
• 19:00
  Yeah. But not keeping our medicines out of reach.
• 19:04
  That's where I've learned to dance, y'all. I know. I got sick dance moves.
• 19:08
  It's not going anywhere.
• 19:09
  You always know how to dance. Hopefully that bell passes.
• 19:12
  Now see, no one knows what's going to happen. Nothing too bad or too great ever
• 19:15
  happens. No one knows what's going to happen. somewhere in the middle.
• 19:19
  Well, this is going to be. What's the distraction for? What else is going on? Why this distraction?
• 19:23
  So no one knows what's going to happen to TikTok if the ban goes into effect.
• 19:28
  I see. It's either going to be a total blackout and they shut off all servers
• 19:32
  in the United States so that we can't see TikTok at all anymore.
• 19:36
  Or it'll be similar to what happened with Vine back in 2014,
• 19:41
  2015 when it got taken off the App Store.
• 19:44
  And so you couldn't get updates anymore, and it just slowly started to glitch
• 19:48
  and phase out to where you could not use it anymore. That's what happened to Flappy Bird, too.
• 19:53
  Yes. I like Flappy Bird, by the way.
• 19:57
  A totally different story, but Flappy Bird was awesome. Here's what's funny.
• 19:59
  I'm sitting here thinking, this is interesting, but I'm not sure how much it
• 20:03
  has to do with state employees, and probably more people will be interested in this.
• 20:08
  Although, it does have a state government connection because TikTok was banned. Yes. Yes.
• 20:14
  And that's why, yeah, that's why we haven't done as much on TikTok because it's
• 20:18
  banned on state government phones.
• 20:21
  I remember when Solitaire was banned. Do that for federal?
• 20:25
  Oh, gosh. Because back in the day, we were all on Solitaire.
• 20:29
  Mindsweeper. Remember that game? You know, you got to clear your mind every now and then.
• 20:32
  So speaking of world events and local connections, when Trump was having the
• 20:36
  whole, I want to buy Greenland thing, people were starting to say,
• 20:40
  but what's made in Denmark?
• 20:41
  We can't have a war with Denmark because Ozempic.
• 20:46
  Yeah, I was going to say, can't have the Ozempic.
• 20:49
  Probably just all comes full circle, doesn't it? We're finally going to get our war with Denmark.
• 20:53
  Well, yeah, I'm a little bit more concerned over the NATO implications with
• 20:58
  all of that, but yeah, you're right.
• 21:00
  I mean, Denmark... Oh, it's not. Is it Ozempic? The company that makes Wugobi.
• 21:06
  And but, of course, makes it again down the road here.
• 21:09
  We're all over the place. But the and by the way, the weight loss drugs,
• 21:13
  since you bring them up, you know, that's definitely something that there's
• 21:17
  still an impetus to change that back to where the health plan will cover those.
• 21:22
  And I think, you know, there's a lot of state employees who would like to see
• 21:25
  that. There's a lot of state employees that don't want to see that if it means
• 21:28
  prices go up for everybody.
• 21:30
  And again, scenic's position is still don't be mad at each other.
• 21:35
  Be mad that the drug is allowed to be sold at this multiple times the cost of
• 21:40
  what it's sold for anywhere else in the world.
• 21:43
  Contact your congressman. Contact your state legislator about that.
• 21:47
  Don't get mad at each other over either needing and wanting the drug or not
• 21:51
  wanting your premium to go up so some people can have it. Contact your leaders.
• 21:55
  And speaking of that, January 20th, we will have a new president.
• 21:59
  And he, President-elect Trump, also came out and said the exact same thing a
• 22:03
  few weeks ago. It's hard not to.
• 22:05
  It's really hard not to look at the American public right now and say,
• 22:09
  yep, I think it's a bad thing that you get charged so much more than the whole rest of the world.
• 22:15
  I mean, if you don't take that position, you definitely can't pretend you give
• 22:20
  two pippies about the American public.
• 22:22
  Yeah. Bernie Sanders has had a tweet when he said that. He's like, was he serious?
• 22:26
  Will he support my legislation to cut prescription drug costs in half?
• 22:31
  So, yeah, I mean, look, you never know. Yeah. Well, I think that's a quick and
• 22:36
  easy, or maybe not quick. Never quick.
• 22:39
  It was a good little episode, a little entertainment there. Next week,
• 22:43
  we will have an episode with our officers.
• 22:45
  We're going to kind of discuss, you know, their careers and what their vision
• 22:49
  is for scenic. And then the next week, we will return ready for the legislature.
• 22:53
  I think that'll be around the legislature coming back. So we'll preview the session for you.
• 22:57
  So excited. But first, we have Martin Luther King coming up.
• 23:01
  Yeah, Martin Luther King is on Monday.
• 23:03
  That's also the inauguration day, right? It is. It is. So Monday is Martin Luther King Jr.
• 23:10
  Holiday. As usual, the Department of Administration will be holding its observance
• 23:15
  program on Friday at the First Baptist Church in Raleigh. It says here 1145.
• 23:21
  Yeah, that is always a very cool event. Yeah, for state employees.
• 23:25
  And I guess they will also be doing the John R.
• 23:28
  Larkin Award presentation at that time. So I know a lot of state employees like
• 23:32
  to go to that event, correct?
• 23:34
  And let's see, before we get out of here, we also want to send our condolences
• 23:38
  to folks in California who are suffering through the fires out there.
• 23:42
  Sam, do you have an update on the fire situation? I've been keeping track of the containment.
• 23:47
  I know that there are quite a few different states who are sending people to help with the fires.
• 23:51
  Pretty sure North Carolina has probably had some people who have gone out to volunteer.
• 23:55
  So hopefully they are staying safe as they continue helping with the fires.
• 23:59
  And we have a problem with that here, too.
• 24:02
  Sometimes I don't think it's been dry enough this year to have.
• 24:05
  That's not something we want.
• 24:07
  But a couple of years ago, we had several meaningful fires and the staff vacancy
• 24:12
  really hit us there. So people did have to come help us, and I hope everybody's
• 24:17
  helping California. Yeah.
• 24:19
  So let's move on to John's Wacky Weird Question of the Week.
• 24:22
  John's Wacky Weird Question.
• 24:24
  Music.
• 24:29
  It always makes me nervous. We brainstorm long and hard for that.
• 24:33
  And by that, I mean maybe like two or three minutes.
• 24:35
  And Suzanne, if I have come up with a question this week, what is your go-to karaoke song?
• 24:40
  Sam, you start us off. You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home by Hannah Montana.
• 24:48
  Is that even offered at bars? Yeah. Hannah Montana's not a person.
• 24:52
  That's a long title. Smiley Cyrus.
• 24:56
  Okay. Can you sing? No, I'm just... Go to TikTok. You'll see Sam singing.
• 25:01
  I just keep thinking of High School Musical.
• 25:04
  I also do. My parents have a karaoke machine at their house.
• 25:07
  So whenever we go home and bring our friends, we'll sit around the pool and
• 25:10
  hang out and do some karaoke.
• 25:13
  Nice. And we usually just use our phones to connect it to there.
• 25:17
  And we'll go to Spotify and basically use the lyrics on Spotify.
• 25:20
  We're all in this together.
• 25:22
  That song from. That is a song from High School Musical.
• 25:26
  My car has karaoke. I have a Tesla.
• 25:31
  It has karaoke. Yeah. So we can do karaoke. Are you going to start doing carpool karaoke with Scenic?
• 25:39
  So whenever you search like a song, it always gives you the karaoke song first.
• 25:44
  And you'll start listening to it and you're like, hey, there's no words in the song.
• 25:47
  We actually could have like a Scenic station if we wanted to.
• 25:50
  Because there are songs that are very Scenic-y.
• 25:53
  Yeah. That we always play at events that we love to dance to.
• 25:56
  People love the convention mix. That's true.
• 25:59
  The Wobble. Suzanne, what's your go-to song? Bring It On Home To Me, Sam Cooke.
• 26:03
  Oh, that's a good one. That's a classic. Artists, we're all waiting in anticipation.
• 26:09
  I already told y'all mine.
• 26:10
  Anything I like to sing, and people love for me to sing, anything by Adele, Celine Dion.
• 26:18
  Y'all have never heard artists sing. I can throw some Mariah Carey.
• 26:22
  Maria Callas, was it Callas, the opera singer? It's those really high notes
• 26:26
  that get Something really long and drawn out And you can't dance to Can we hear
• 26:32
  a brief And sometimes a brief verse.
• 26:36
  It's a great day to be alive Mine would be I guess Return of the Mac My former
• 26:42
  roommate slash friend Well he is my friend still I'm not my former friend.
• 26:48
  Gordon used to sing that at the bars At the karaoke And he used to be the hit
• 26:53
  You caught yourself through like the bars, I mean the karaoke mom at the Fellowship
• 26:58
  Hall karaoke. John and Gordon were the men.
• 27:01
  To be fair, the only place I've ever done karaoke is on a cruise.
• 27:04
  Maybe that's why they always had a Hannah Montana song or two.
• 27:09
  Because it was like during the teen club at night when it was like the 15 to 17 year olds.
• 27:14
  We'd go over there and they'd have Disney for us. The last cruise I was on,
• 27:17
  some people thought they were like really good at karaoke. They've been doing three or four songs.
• 27:23
  Are you saying that when I've done Adele and Solivia?
• 27:27
  They were really feeling Adele. So we actually have karaoke every year at the
• 27:32
  Scenic Convention at one of the events.
• 27:34
  And there are some really amazing voices up there in the Scenic membership.
• 27:39
  And I'm kind of always amazed. I remember one year, the winner of that,
• 27:43
  we then asked him to sing the national anthem and he tore it up.
• 27:46
  Maybe we should do that every year. I always think that. We need to choose one of our members.
• 27:50
  I mean, we've got a litany of talent out there.
• 27:53
  Have one of them sing. I don't do karaoke well because I make,
• 27:56
  apparently I make any song known to man, country.
• 28:01
  Like I try really hard because I do enjoy music. We did hit me with your best
• 28:05
  shot one year at convention and it was twangy.
• 28:10
  We were good though. It was fun. Y'all will never hear me sing a lick at convention.
• 28:14
  I came in my apartment in law school singing Only the Good Die Young.
• 28:19
  And my roommate said, stop singing country. And I was like, that was Billy Joel.
• 28:25
  Maybe it's your Texas thing It's just your twine
• 28:28
  I know we're off Come out Virginia Don't let
• 28:31
  me I know we're out We're out in the musical weeds Right now But I do vaguely
• 28:35
  remember Artists singing Apple bottom jeans Boots with the fur Okay Alright
• 28:42
  That's the end That's the end
• 28:44
  of our episode Thank you for joining us And God bless you God bless you.
• 28:50
  Music.