Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / 80,000 teddy bears and one teen’s mission

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80,000 teddy bears and one teen’s mission · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:09
  You are listening to the Hidden Lightness on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
• 0:12
  I'm your host, Jimmy Hinton.
• 0:14
  I hope you survived Snowmageddon.
• 0:18
  This was like the storm of a century.
• 0:21
  And uh man, a lot of the United States just got hammered with the snow with ice.
• 0:29
  And uh I'll update on some pretty cool things that came out of the storm on our end, and sometimes you need the storm to see the the uh good stuff that comes on the other side.
• 0:41
  I happen to be a snow lover, so uh this was incredible.
• 0:45
  Speaking of snow, today we're going to the ice, specifically the ice ring in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
• 0:55
  It's a place known for chocolate sweetness, and surprisingly, for one of the most aggressive displays of softness the world has ever seen.
• 1:08
  Want you to picture for a moment a hockey arena, the giant center in Hershey.
• 1:16
  It's cold, the ice is scarred from the skates, the air smells like the uh the Zambi, the Zambini fumes, popcorn, hot dogs.
• 1:32
  Hockey is uh a sport of very hard edges.
• 1:38
  You have the puck hitting the glass, body slamming into to the boards, the sharp scrape of steel on ice, you can hear it constantly, fist fights, just kind of a hard, it's a tough sport.
• 1:54
  But once a year, the Hershey Bears, the local American hockey league team, they host a game that feels a little bit different.
• 2:05
  The stands are packed, but the fans aren't wearing just jerseys, they're carrying bags, giant black garbage bags.
• 2:18
  Now, I know you're thinking, what in the world would somebody be doing bringing garbage to a hockey game?
• 2:25
  Well, it's not just garbage bags, some are carrying suitcases, but everybody is holding something soft.
• 2:36
  This is known as the teddy bear toss.
• 2:40
  Now, if you've ever seen a teddy bear toss, the concept is pretty simple.
• 2:45
  Fans bring stuff to animals, and when the home team scores their first goal, you throw the bear onto the ice.
• 2:54
  But in Hershey, they don't just do a toss, they do an absolute avalanche of teddy bears.
• 3:03
  This is one of the coolest events, and I actually just recently found out about this, but they've been doing it since 2001.
• 3:12
  It's a really cool thing, and it's a really cool cause, and the fans get absolutely crazy about the cute little cuddliness of these teddy bears.
• 3:25
  And I don't know about you, but I think we could use a little cuddliness here in America.
• 3:32
  The constant stories that we see on the news, I I highlight this often.
• 3:41
  Over and over and over, they talk about the bad in people and the bad in politics and the bad in religion.
• 3:51
  And you hear so much of this negativity that sometimes we forget that there are really good people out there, and a lot of them.
• 4:01
  And you often don't think of hockey fans as being stuffed cuddly people who are into raising funds and and and support for people in need.
• 4:13
  But here we are in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
• 4:17
  This began, like I said, about 20, what, 25, 26 years ago.
• 4:25
  And uh it's still going on to this day.
• 4:29
  So picture this.
• 4:30
  It's Sunday, the game starts, the tension is weirdly high, not just for the win, but for the release.
• 4:41
  Everybody is clutching their plushie.
• 4:45
  They have teddy bear, stuffed dragons, a plush pizza slice, and then three minutes into the first period.
• 4:55
  That's all it took this year.
• 4:58
  There was an opening by defenseman Louis Balpadio.
• 5:04
  He takes a shot, and boom.
• 5:09
  The goal light turns red, and the sky turns furry because teddy bears are being tossed out onto the rink.
• 5:18
  What a cool sight.
• 5:20
  And if you watch the footage, I I highly recommend you watch the footage of this.
• 5:27
  It looks absolutely stunning.
• 5:30
  It looks like graffiti.
• 5:32
  Um not graffiti, confetti.
• 5:36
  That's the eddy word I'm looking for.
• 5:38
  It looks like confetti.
• 5:40
  When I first saw the picture, I was like, man, why why do they have so much confetti on the on the uh hockey rink?
• 5:48
  That's what actually caught my attention.
• 5:50
  That's what drew me to the story.
• 5:51
  I saw the picture, and I was like, I've never seen a hockey game where they rain that much confetti down on and especially in the beginning of the game.
• 6:04
  So one moment it looks like a hockey rink.
• 6:07
  The next moment it is absolutely raining soft toys everywhere.
• 6:13
  They come from the nosebleeds, they cascade down to the lower decks, they fly over the glass, and the announcer screams, sweet cuddly mayhem.
• 6:23
  It's a sky full of stuffies.
• 6:27
  The players stop.
• 6:29
  Kind of breaking the rules, right?
• 6:32
  They can't skate, you can't play hockey when they're 81,000 796 stuffed animals on the ice.
• 6:42
  Now that's not a random number.
• 6:46
  Last year, they set a world record with over 102,000 stuffed animals.
• 6:54
  This year, they nearly matched that intensity.
• 6:59
  And it takes about an hour to clear the ice.
• 7:04
  I mean, imagine the patience.
• 7:06
  I mean, these people are all in.
• 7:11
  And I don't know if you've been to sports games before.
• 7:14
  I used to not be into sports at all.
• 7:17
  You would not find me at any sports game.
• 7:21
  I found them to be extremely boring.
• 7:25
  Uh I didn't know anything about sports.
• 7:27
  I didn't care to know anything about sports.
• 7:29
  And I just found it really boring.
• 7:33
  And uh, it turns out there's actually a lot of fun in sports if you get into it.
• 7:39
  Uh obviously, millions and millions and millions of Americans are into sports.
• 7:45
  But to stop a game for an hour to clear the ice, yeah, to pause an already long game for an hour.
• 7:56
  Uh that's absolutely incredible.
• 8:00
  So it shows you the fans are all in.
• 8:02
  They're 100% in.
• 8:04
  And uh they they absolutely pack the seats, and the community really comes out.
• 8:12
  So, yay, Hershey, yay, Pennsylvania.
• 8:16
  But here's the question that I had.
• 8:19
  When I was watching the video of the plushy confetti, my question was, where do all of these come from?
• 8:27
  Uh, yeah, you might bring a bear or two, but to get over 80,000 and last year over a hundred thousand.
• 8:37
  I mean, that's not casual participation.
• 8:42
  That requires logistics.
• 8:45
  It requires communication, it requires at least a leader.
• 8:51
  And buried in the sea of fans is a high school junior by the name of Gabby Kirchner.
• 9:00
  And most teenagers in junior, I have a sophomore, and she has a lot of friends who are juniors.
• 9:10
  Uh they're worried about SATs, they're worried about prom.
• 9:15
  Uh, they're in an awkward stage of life.
• 9:18
  They're trying to figure out life, their future, where they're going to college, if they're going to college.
• 9:25
  But Gabby is worrying about worrying about the plushie supply chains.
• 9:31
  You see, she's not just a participant, she's a catalyst.
• 9:35
  She's the reason that a significant chunk of that mountain of teddy bears exists.
• 9:43
  It's a really cool story, and uh I absolutely love everything about this.
• 9:51
  It's it brings me back to this idea that people are a lot nicer than what you think they are.
• 10:00
  That people actually care.
• 10:04
  That people care about helping their neighbors.
• 10:07
  They care about other people.
• 10:10
  We don't hear this very often, do we?
• 10:13
  Usually we hear about all the bad that people do, and people are um people are mean, they're cruel, they're nasty, on and on it goes.
• 10:24
  And we definitely hear this when it comes to politics, and that's pretty much all the news talks about anymore.
• 10:32
  It's just over and over and over again.
• 10:34
  They talk about politics, they talk about Donald Trump, they're obsessed with Donald Trump.
• 10:40
  Absolutely with President Donald Trump.
• 10:46
  And these kinds of stories get hidden in the shadows.
• 10:49
  That's why we call this show The Hidden Lightness.
• 10:53
  These stories are still out there.
• 10:55
  They still exist.
• 10:56
  There are still good people in the world.
• 11:01
  And lots of them.
• 11:03
  But you wouldn't know that if you watched the news, or you wouldn't know that if you spent any amount of time on social media.
• 11:11
  Because it's always doom and gloom.
• 11:13
  It's always, you know, you might catch a positive story every now and then.
• 11:18
  But for the most part, they highlight the really crappy things that people do.
• 11:24
  And there's, you know, there's an abundance.
• 11:27
  It's kind of like picking low-lying fruit.
• 11:31
  It's not hard to find these stories.
• 11:34
  I mean, it if you're searching for these stories, you're gonna find them.
• 11:41
  They're out there.
• 11:44
  Right?
• 11:44
  I mean, am I wrong?
• 11:48
  You can find these stories if you're looking for them.
• 11:52
  And what happens is when we see these stories repeated over and over and over again.
• 11:59
  It changes your world view.
• 12:02
  And you begin to think that everybody's corrupt.
• 12:04
  You begin to think that there are so many bad people that it affects people's mental health.
• 12:12
  I've known people to stay at home.
• 12:15
  They're afraid to go out.
• 12:18
  We recently had an event at our school by event.
• 12:22
  I mean, somebody calling in and they called a threat in.
• 12:27
  And people, uh, there were there were so many parents locally that were posted on social media, and they were like, basically, this is what the world's come to.
• 12:39
  Uh, there are so many bad people out there.
• 12:41
  We can't even send our kids to school.
• 12:43
  It's an awful world, it's so corrupt.
• 12:45
  I'm keeping my kids home for the next week.
• 12:48
  You know, on and on and on.
• 12:49
  It's like this constant doom and gloom.
• 12:53
  And I just kind of scratch my head, and I'm I'm like, that's not reality.
• 13:00
  Like, yes, bad things happen, and we shouldn't be naive about uh about it.
• 13:04
  I mean, we shouldn't ever bury our our heads in the sand.
• 13:07
  Ever.
• 13:10
  We should be on defense.
• 13:13
  We should be alert and aware.
• 13:16
  But to come up to the conclusion that everybody's bad, everybody's corrupt, there are no good people in the world.
• 13:23
  It's simply not true.
• 13:25
  It's an absolute falsehood.
• 13:28
  And uh a large part of that comes from the media constantly, constantly highlighting the bad that people do.
• 13:38
  And it really does.
• 13:39
  I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
• 13:43
  But it it shifts your world view, and it makes you really hesitant to to get to know people, to trust people.
• 13:54
  You know, you learn that there are a lot of bad people out there that you know, the boogeyman is gonna get you.
• 14:00
  People are scary, people are bad, people are mean, people are corrupt.
• 14:06
  And it doesn't help that these narratives are pushed constantly.
• 14:12
  That young people, right?
• 14:13
  I talk about that a lot.
• 14:14
  Young people are they're lazy, they're unmotivated.
• 14:20
  They're flat out bad.
• 14:23
  Bad apples, right?
• 14:24
  We have that term.
• 14:25
  There's they're bad apples out there, and on and on it goes.
• 14:31
  But the reality is there are a lot of really good kids, and this story is about a really good kid, a junior in high school who happens to be very motivated and very giving, very loving, and she is a leader.
• 14:47
  She 100%, she's going somewhere in life.
• 14:50
  Gabby is 100% going somewhere in life.
• 14:54
  She started her own nonprofit.
• 14:56
  We'll talk about that after the break.
• 14:59
  She started her own organization, and that's how they're able to get tens of thousands of teddy bears at these events.
• 15:08
  It's because of the passion of one girl.
• 15:13
  I found that incredible and inspiring.
• 15:16
  And these are the kinds of things that I talk about all the time.
• 15:19
  I I constantly highlight them.
• 15:23
  And there's no excuse for us to not go out and let our hidden lightness shine.
• 15:30
  I I I see I witness people who want to sit around and complain and talk about how bad the world is, how corrupt it is, how evil it is.
• 15:39
  And I'm like, why don't you just go do something?
• 15:42
  Go help your neighbor.
• 15:45
  I see some of these keyboard warriors that they can't have time.
• 15:51
  They actually can't have time to help people because they're they're constantly on social media complaining.
• 15:59
  And I'm like, if you spent half of that energy, just suck up the things that you don't like.
• 16:05
  Suck it up.
• 16:07
  Just deal with the things and the people that you don't you don't like or you don't agree with.
• 16:12
  Just suck it up and don't let that change your worldview.
• 16:16
  People are so focused on Donald Trump.
• 16:20
  All the antis.
• 16:22
  I guess that's a good name for them because they're anti-everything.
• 16:25
  But the antis are so focused on President Donald Trump that they don't have time to go out and do good things for people.
• 16:35
  So we're not going to focus on that minority group of people, the small group of people that are raising trouble across the United States of America.
• 16:45
  We're not going to focus on them.
• 16:46
  We're going to focus on the good that people are doing because there's plenty of it.
• 16:50
  And we're going to shift that narrative.
• 16:53
  And we are going to talk about this after the break.
• 16:56
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• 17:02
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• 17:05
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• 17:09
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• 17:10
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• 19:22
  We are standing metaphorically at the edge of an ice rink, buried under 80,000 stuffed animals.
• 19:30
  Before the break, I mentioned Gabby Kirchner.
• 19:33
  She's a junior in high school.
• 19:36
  A local from nearby Mechanicsburg.
• 19:40
  I've been through Mechanicsburg lots and lots and lots of times.
• 19:45
  She is a longtime season ticket holder for the Hershey Bears.
• 19:50
  And Gabby had a dream many years ago.
• 19:57
  I believe it was nine years ago.
• 20:01
  Oh, let's just scroll through here.
• 20:04
  I was just browsing over the break here.
• 20:08
  Um, but at any rate, I believe it was nine years ago that she wanted to start this Facebook page.
• 20:17
  She's a junior in high school.
• 20:18
  So this shows you that little kids actually can do a lot of good.
• 20:25
  I mean, a lot of good.
• 20:27
  So this is what I'm talking about.
• 20:29
  We we tend to limit kids.
• 20:31
  And we do that by asking them the question, what do you want to be when you grow up?
• 20:36
  And I remember fun in a video, and I I I showed this to my daughter when she was pretty young.
• 20:42
  And I said, here's like a 12-year-old kid that is a millionaire because she started her own business, and when asked how she became successful, she said, Well, it simply was by my parents asking the right question.
• 20:57
  Everybody's parents asked them, what do you want to be when you grow up?
• 21:00
  My parents asked me, what do you want to be right now?
• 21:04
  What do you want to do with your life?
• 21:06
  You know, what are your skills?
• 21:07
  What are your interests?
• 21:08
  What are your desires?
• 21:10
  And how do you turn that that hobby into something that blesses other people?
• 21:15
  If you can do that, you'll never work a day in your life.
• 21:20
  And that really is true.
• 21:21
  It's not a cliche.
• 21:23
  If you find something that you love, if you do something that you love, you're not showing up to work.
• 21:28
  You're simply doing what you love to do, and you're blessing other people.
• 21:34
  And so this girl started her own jewelry company.
• 21:39
  She was making bracelets, and her parents gave her seed money of $20, a $20 bill.
• 21:47
  She took that $20, she started making bracelets, she bought all of her own things, her overhead.
• 21:55
  She sold the bracelets, and then she folded that money back into her company.
• 22:00
  Well, it wasn't a company at the time, but she bought more supplies to make more bracelets.
• 22:06
  And she just kept that kept that cycle going, became wildly successful.
• 22:12
  But she said it began with that question.
• 22:15
  What do you want to be right now?
• 22:17
  And she's always loved making bracelets.
• 22:20
  That's just kind of her thing.
• 22:23
  So, you know, it's things like that.
• 22:25
  It's really not that hard to inspire people.
• 22:29
  And young people, it really doesn't take a whole lot because they just naturally have that curiosity.
• 22:38
  And they love to do things and they love to help people, and they love when they see a cause, they step up and say, How do we do that?
• 22:46
  It's usually the adults who are like, well, we could never pull that off.
• 22:50
  We could never do that because they just come up with all kinds of excuses.
• 22:58
  But Gabby's parents didn't do that.
• 23:01
  Gabby's parents said, hey, yeah, we'll start this Facebook page for you.
• 23:06
  And I just want to show you just for reference.
• 23:13
  Because I know some people might think, well, she has all this support, and she's got this massive Facebook page.
• 23:19
  And so I could never do something like that.
• 23:23
  This Facebook page has been around for what, nine, yeah, nine years.
• 23:29
  It's been around for nine years.
• 23:33
  She's now a junior in high school.
• 23:37
  And this Facebook page has let me look here.
• 23:41
  One point four.
• 23:44
  You ready for this?
• 23:47
  Thousand followers.
• 23:48
  You thought I was going to say million, didn't you?
• 23:52
  1.4,000 followers.
• 23:54
  That's a very small Facebook page.
• 23:59
  Especially for one that's been around for nine years.
• 24:05
  She only has three reviews.
• 24:08
  You know, this is not a huge page.
• 24:11
  And uh there's a I see a hotmail email address.
• 24:16
  So now we're really going into the dark ages.
• 24:20
  So this is what I'm talking about.
• 24:22
  You don't need these big huge Facebook pages, and you don't need a massive media presence, and you don't have to be an influencer and have connections to Mr.
• 24:34
  Beast and all the you know, all these famous YouTubers.
• 24:37
  You don't need all of that stuff.
• 24:41
  This was a huge event, and it happened on a Sunday, and I think that's really cool.
• 24:45
  It was uh the whatever the first Sunday of the the year was the fourth.
• 24:50
  I had to look up at my calendar.
• 24:52
  January 4th is whenever this happened.
• 24:54
  It was the first Sunday of the year.
• 24:55
  What a great way to kick off the first day of the week.
• 25:02
  And the first Sunday in 2026.
• 25:06
  Now, I've been highlighting uh a story or two, especially the one that happened in Minneapolis with the lunatics who stormed into a church on Sunday morning.
• 25:20
  By the way, one of those people has been arrested.
• 25:24
  And we'll have more on that, I'm sure.
• 25:28
  Um I just wanted to get away from politics and that kind of stuff that infiltrates the religious community for a moment and just highlight a really cool, literally a cuddly story.
• 25:43
  But what a contrast, right?
• 25:46
  Here on the first Sunday of the year, you have uh a girl that's I'm assuming 16, 17 years old.
• 25:54
  She has her own organization, and she just wants to bless people.
• 26:01
  And I'm just scrolling down through, and it's not just the teddy bears.
• 26:04
  She does these uh big food and pantry drives for Salvation Army.
• 26:10
  There's a picture of her inside of a 53-foot trailer, and it's full of boxes, and these are all the teddy bears, and she said something to the effect of um, oh, here we go.
• 26:24
  And just like that, the day is over.
• 26:27
  Tens of thousands of smiles for children.
• 26:30
  Nothing could be better.
• 26:32
  Thank you all.
• 26:35
  Right?
• 26:35
  This is it's so cool.
• 26:38
  It's so incredibly cool.
• 26:41
  But this is what I'm talking about.
• 26:43
  It doesn't take this massive following.
• 26:47
  It doesn't take a massive uh YouTube channel.
• 26:54
  You don't have to be a social media influencer.
• 26:59
  She literally has one point, what what I say, 1.4,000 followers.
• 27:06
  Half of those probably have it muted, or it just doesn't come up on their feed just because of the way the algorithms are.
• 27:14
  But yet she's able to move mountains, mountains of teddy bears.
• 27:19
  So it all begins with one person.
• 27:21
  It began, this began with one little girl who showed up at one of these games and was like, this is really cool.
• 27:29
  I want to bring this to my area.
• 27:34
  And I want to, I want to expand it.
• 27:36
  I want to, I want to see how many teddy bears that we can bring.
• 27:39
  Her alone, her organization alone.
• 27:43
  Gabby's acts of kindness, her nonprofit, has brought in more than 600,000 teddy bears.
• 27:56
  She said, I think about it every day when I wake up.
• 27:59
  It's just so incredible.
• 28:01
  I realize how much more those stuffed animals on the ice mean.
• 28:05
  That's why I'm on the edge of my seat during the game.
• 28:08
  It's just insane and always an insane number.
• 28:13
  Her group has helped collect more than oh, sorry, hers was 125,000, her organization since it was first created.
• 28:24
  And thousands of her latest contributions hit the ice on Sunday.
• 28:30
  So basically what she's doing is she's padding the numbers.
• 28:37
  So her she's been doing this, like I said, for for a long time, but she's helping out.
• 28:42
  She's padding the numbers, she's adding to those numbers, and she's doing tons of other fundraisers.
• 28:50
  She's raising food and diapers, and having all those types of items contributed to Salvation Army, and probably other organizations too.
• 29:03
  It began with a little girl, and she had a dream, she had a vision, she had something that she wanted to do, and kudos to her parents because they empowered her to do it.
• 29:15
  They saw that there was a benefit and that they weren't going to say no to this little girl.
• 29:20
  And that's what I love about these stories.
• 29:23
  We've got to stop saying no to our children.
• 29:27
  We've got to stop standing in the way.
• 29:29
  When they want to bless people, let their hidden lightness shine.
• 29:33
  And just see where God takes that.
• 29:36
  Because usually God's going to take that and bless that in magnificent ways.
• 29:43
  And this definitely is a case in point.
• 29:47
  Um it's just really, really cool.
• 29:52
  So I'll read a little bit more from this article here.
• 29:55
  She said, Um, this is Gabby here.
• 29:58
  She said, I definitely think a lot of people.
• 30:00
  Don't really understand what that teddy bear toss number means.
• 30:05
  All the places that it goes puts a tear in my eye.
• 30:09
  And you see, that's the thing.
• 30:11
  There's so many poor people.
• 30:14
  And we we probably don't talk about this enough on the show, but I you know, I don't want I don't want it to sound negative.
• 30:22
  But there are a lot of people who are struggling.
• 30:24
  There are a lot of poor people.
• 30:25
  There are a lot of people living at or below the poverty line.
• 30:30
  But that's not the end of the story.
• 30:33
  There are people who step in just the other day.
• 30:38
  I got a text message from my sister.
• 30:43
  Who her and her husband are they're on the waiting list for taking in a foster kid, or two or three.
• 30:53
  And it's it's a very fluid process.
• 30:55
  It's a it's a tough process.
• 30:59
  So the point is that people just have big hearts, and we see this all over the place, right?
• 31:05
  People are willing to take in foster kids, people are willing to adopt, people are willing to raise money for stuffed animals and for food.
• 31:13
  And on and on this list goes, it never stops.
• 31:17
  And that's what we want to highlight.
• 31:22
  None of this garbage about how negative everything is and how the world's falling apart, and uh, you know, it's going to Hades in a handbasket.
• 31:33
  It's not.
• 31:34
  We live in such a beautiful place with such beautiful people.
• 31:40
  And I see this all the time from successful people too.
• 31:43
  Uh, people who are very successful, they all say the same thing.
• 31:48
  There is ample opportunity for people to do well and to bless other people.
• 31:53
  All you have to do is find out what helps somebody else.
• 31:57
  And you do that, and you make that your passion.
• 32:04
  And you find ways to include other people.
• 32:09
  I just got off the phone a little bit ago, and I'll talk about this too.
• 32:15
  But remember the whole uh I I did a couple shows anyway on helping people with snow removal.
• 32:23
  I talked about it last winter.
• 32:26
  That we have a church member in my my one son, as we would drive around town, he was like, you know, dad, look at all these places that they're not shoveled.
• 32:36
  And do you think that they're people who are not able to?
• 32:39
  Do you think they're disabled or elderly?
• 32:41
  And I said, chances are pretty good that that's the case because you can see it every time that it snows.
• 32:48
  People go outside, and I mean, you'll just see lots of people out shoveling, and they have their snowblowers and and plows, and you know, people are just digging out.
• 33:00
  But inevitably, you see quite a few, actually, quite a few houses where it never gets shoveled.
• 33:10
  And uh, so I made a phone call finally, and I I found out actually, I I had this idea last winter.
• 33:18
  Well, it turns out that ironically, somebody else had the same exact idea.
• 33:25
  And this has never been done before in our town.
• 33:28
  So this year they put a flyer up for snow angels, and it's the area agency on aging, and it was an employee there, and she came up with the idea.
• 33:40
  I just had a long phone conversation with her, literally today.
• 33:46
  And uh, it was absolutely wonderful.
• 33:49
  I mean, what what a sweetheart.
• 33:51
  And she was talking about how she doesn't have to tell me.
• 33:54
  She's like, I don't have to tell you how big the need is around here, because you already know.
• 34:00
  You know, we both talked about how we how we came up with the idea, and we both were just driving around and looking at all these houses, and we're like, my goodness.
• 34:11
  So at any rate, she did it, she organized it.
• 34:15
  And I gotta tell you, it's it's very loosely organized, but she pulled the trigger on that and actually made it happen.
• 34:22
  So I called her up and I just wanted more information, and uh, I actually have right in front of me.
• 34:30
  I have a little booklet with a whole bunch of addresses that she gave me.
• 34:36
  And she said, We're you know, we're looking for more customers, we're looking for more volunteers, and she was like, anything that you can do to help.
• 34:45
  She's like, by all means help us out.
• 34:49
  So that's the kind of thing, you know.
• 34:51
  Literally, everywhere you look, there are good people doing good things for other people because they see a need.
• 34:59
  There's ample opportunity to bless people.
• 35:02
  And so entrepreneurs get this.
• 35:05
  And they're like, yeah, all you have to do if you really want to start a business, and and this is not a business that we're doing.
• 35:14
  This is all volunteer.
• 35:16
  But the point is, if you want to start a business, find a need, and something with high demand, you feel that need, you feel that pain point that somebody has, and you can start a business.
• 35:32
  I mean, literally overnight.
• 35:35
  You don't have to make it complicated, it doesn't have to be perfect, and people are doing this all the time, and there's so much opportunity, and I guess that's the point of this.
• 35:45
  Number one, uh, there are two main points.
• 35:48
  Number one, there are a lot of good people out there, a lot of good people who come up with really good ideas.
• 35:55
  I experience this every single day of my life.
• 35:58
  I really do.
• 36:00
  And the other part of that is that there's so much opportunity out there.
• 36:06
  If people wanted to capitalize and and make money, there is unlimited opportunity out there.
• 36:13
  I just heard Grant Cardone, uh, I saw a video that cropped up, and he was like, There's absolutely zero excuse why people aren't wealthy.
• 36:23
  He's like, There's so much opportunity, there's unlimited opportunity out there.
• 36:28
  He's like, people that they just don't want it.
• 36:32
  Now, with the exception of people who can't work, who are physically not able.
• 36:38
  But he was talking about able-bodied people.
• 36:40
  There's no excuse.
• 36:41
  There's so much opportunity out there.
• 36:43
  It's endless.
• 36:45
  And I see this every single day, and and I see people stepping up and helping.
• 36:50
  Um, but the the needs are they're there, trust me.
• 36:55
  All right, we're coming up on another break.
• 36:58
  All of our shows do go to podcasts the next day after the broadcasts heard on talk radio.
• 37:03
  You can hear them on Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, iHeart Podcast, Apple Podcasts, many, many more.
• 37:08
  Be sure to subscribe, rate the show, share it, and when we come back, we'll talk more about these cuddly little teddy bears.
• 37:17
  We'll be right back.
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• 38:24
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• 38:28
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• 38:55
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• 39:01
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• 39:03
  And patriotism is loyal to that principle.
• 39:06
  I'm happy to report that American patriotism flows freely once again.
• 39:14
  America out loud dot news is that place to awaken your heart, soul, and mind to the outloud.
• 39:40
  And she made a big splash, a cuddly splash, by organizing teddy bears and throwing teddy bears onto the ice at a hockey game in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
• 39:54
  That was on January 4th, Sunday the 4th.
• 39:57
  There was a game and
• 40:00
  Just three minutes into the game, the home team scored, and that was the cue.
• 40:06
  So imagine sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting for your home team to score.
• 40:14
  For a young Gabby, the suspense of the game wasn't, will we win?
• 40:19
  Her suspense was when can we unleash the kindness?
• 40:25
  She sits on the edge of her seat, holding onto her bags of teddy bears, just waiting for the red light.
• 40:34
  And then he shoots and scores.
• 40:39
  And the crowd goes wild.
• 40:43
  And they litter the entire hockey arena.
• 40:47
  They litter the ice with teddy bears.
• 40:52
  Tens of thousands of teddy bears that are all going to be given away to underprivileged children.
• 40:59
  It's very cool.
• 41:01
  And very noble.
• 41:03
  And next thing in the video, I really encourage you to watch the video.
• 41:08
  You see the goalie fall back, and you see some of the other players, they fall into this sea of teddy bears.
• 41:16
  And it's such a cool inspiring story.
• 41:19
  And this is the kind of stuff that America's made of.
• 41:24
  This is the fabric of America, not the pink slash blue-haired loony bins who are raging and walking into churches and disrupting the service.
• 41:36
  That doesn't define who America is.
• 41:40
  America is better than that.
• 41:42
  Every single day, America is much better than that.
• 41:46
  There are so many stories that inspire me.
• 41:50
  And I don't even think we've scratched the tip of the iceberg.
• 41:56
  A lot of these stories don't get covered.
• 41:57
  A lot of these stories never make it to the news.
• 42:02
  A lot of these stories never make it out into the public arena.
• 42:07
  They're not viral stories.
• 42:11
  What just happened in my town with a young woman by the name of Taylor who started a project called Snow Angels.
• 42:23
  Getting volunteers together, people with businesses, people who plow, plow trucks, people volunteering to shovel, snowblow snow, you know, that kind of thing to clear people's driveways, elderly people.
• 42:38
  That doesn't make the news.
• 42:41
  That's not a viral TikTok.
• 42:46
  In fact, as far as I know, my church members are the only volunteers.
• 42:57
  It's hard to get word out.
• 42:59
  But we're going to be the beginners.
• 43:02
  We're going to let our hidden lightness shine.
• 43:05
  We're going to take the charge and we're going to do it and see how many people get inspired.
• 43:11
  And the dream is this is Taylor's dream, not mine.
• 43:17
  I mean, it is mine, but she's the one who expressed it.
• 43:22
  She said that her goal is for people to uh to spread this from town to town and then start moving beyond the county and move into other areas because up here in the Northeast, when you guys found out this past week.
• 43:39
  Most of America found out.
• 43:42
  It is not easy to remove snow.
• 43:45
  It's not easy.
• 43:48
  And I think people in the South have this misconception, and they're like, well, you guys are used to it.
• 43:53
  Up there in the north, it's it's easy for you to remove snow.
• 43:57
  No, it isn't.
• 44:00
  There is nothing easy about it.
• 44:02
  I think a lot of times we wake up in the morning and we see that roads are plowed and driveways are plowed, and we're like, oh, we woke up to a magic winter wonderland.
• 44:13
  Well, the reality is it's a lot of work.
• 44:15
  There were people working, I mean, busting their humps all night long.
• 44:19
  I spent three hours plowing our church parking lot just the other night.
• 44:25
  I mean, it's it is I didn't get home till almost 11 30 at night after working a full day.
• 44:35
  It's hard work.
• 44:38
  But people are out there doing it.
• 44:40
  People are volunteering, people are helping their neighbors.
• 44:44
  And uh I will probably, as some of these stories come out, I'm gonna have to fish and dig.
• 44:52
  Uh no pun intended here, but I'll have to dig for some of these stories, but I guarantee the people who got snowed in, they're gonna be superheroes all over the place.
• 45:03
  People who come and save the day, people who rescue other people, uh, people who get stuck on the highways and they run out of gas.
• 45:11
  I mean, this these things happen every single time there's a major storm like this, and they're calling this the storm of the century.
• 45:20
  So, anyway, back to the teddy bears.
• 45:22
  Uh, the the point is people are great people.
• 45:25
  There are people every single day, ordinary people, and by now you should know that is the mantra of the show.
• 45:33
  There are people everywhere who are stepping in and helping other people is fantastic.
• 45:42
  So there are 80,000, 80,000 teddy bears.
• 45:52
  Just a sea of them, as far as the eye can see.
• 45:58
  And we've talked about Gabby, the teen architect who helped to fuel that supply.
• 46:06
  And now the ice is clear, the game is over, the arena's empty, and we're left with 81,796 stuffed animals.
• 46:16
  What happens next?
• 46:21
  Well, the work is just beginning.
• 46:25
  See, somebody has to box up all of those teddy bears, they have to figure out where they're gonna go.
• 46:32
  Each of those teddy bears, each of those 81,000, over 81,000 teddy bears has to has to find a home.
• 46:41
  That's a lot of kids.
• 46:42
  That's a lot of underprivileged kids that somebody has to find.
• 46:48
  So the Hershey Bears organization and their volunteers, including Gabby and her group, they load the toys up.
• 46:58
  And they don't put them in a warehouse and you know, they don't make them sit for a couple months at a time.
• 47:04
  They go immediately out into the world.
• 47:09
  A lot of them go to the Milton Hershey school.
• 47:12
  My daughter got to visit the Milton Hershey school, and she absolutely fell in love with it.
• 47:16
  If you're not familiar with a Milton Hershey school, check that out.
• 47:22
  It's a school for students from low-income backgrounds, and I mean, the the way my daughter described it, she said it was like I walked into an alternate reality.
• 47:33
  She's like, it was so cool.
• 47:36
  I believe it's free.
• 47:40
  Uh the Milton Hershey School is free, and these people get these kids get an incredible education.
• 47:46
  It is unlike any school that I ever heard of.
• 47:49
  It's really, really cool.
• 47:51
  Check out the Milton Hershey School.
• 47:55
  So a bunch of the teddy bears go there.
• 47:58
  Others go to the Penn State Health Children's Hospital.
• 48:02
  Some go to military families who might be missing a parent.
• 48:07
  Or they're deployed overseas or what have you.
• 48:12
  And again, Gabby said, all the places that it goes, it puts a tear in my eye.
• 48:18
  And how cool is that for a young 16 or 17-year-old girl to step back and to look at that and say, I helped organize this.
• 48:31
  I helped make this happen.
• 48:34
  You know, there's something really empowering about that.
• 48:38
  And again, that's why I talk about this all the time.
• 48:40
  It's the idea is to inspire other people to act, to bless people.
• 48:49
  And if you think that I have all kinds of extra time, and I just have extra time to volunteer to shovel people out, uh, I don't.
• 49:00
  It is so time consuming.
• 49:05
  And I'm already pushing, you know, 60 plus hours a week.
• 49:11
  And I know many people are.
• 49:12
  This is not about me.
• 49:13
  I mean, lots of people are in that position.
• 49:17
  But if we can inspire one person to pick up the baton and to do something, or to start something, or to to inspire somebody to motivate them into an idea.
• 49:29
  I think that we've won.
• 49:32
  I 100% think that we've won.
• 49:37
  It takes one person to let their hidden lightness shine.
• 49:42
  And look at what happened.
• 49:44
  I don't know how this started.
• 49:46
  Uh, this whole teddy bear thing that started in 2001.
• 49:51
  I don't know what its genesis is.
• 49:54
  I don't know how it started.
• 49:55
  Who decided that they were gonna do a teddy bears?
• 49:58
  And it probably was some silly.
• 50:00
  Off the wall idea, and they were like, hey, maybe we can get more tickets if we throw teddy bears once a year.
• 50:08
  It probably could have been something as simple as that.
• 50:12
  Oftentimes these ideas are.
• 50:14
  It's just, it's a silly idea that somebody has.
• 50:17
  And they're like, yeah, let's try it.
• 50:19
  What do we have to lose?
• 50:22
  And it was somebody bold enough to step out and to take a little bit of a risk.
• 50:29
  And what's the worst that's gonna happen that's gonna happen?
• 50:32
  You get two or three teddy bears.
• 50:35
  It flops.
• 50:36
  People are like, eh.
• 50:39
  If that's the worst that can happen, so what?
• 50:44
  Till you tried it, it didn't work.
• 50:46
  On to the next.
• 50:49
  And you see, that too is what we don't teach our kids that enough.
• 50:53
  We don't teach our kids that that's not failure.
• 50:57
  You didn't fail if you try an idea and it doesn't work out.
• 51:01
  That's not a failure.
• 51:04
  That just means you got to try something, and how exciting is it that you get to try something different?
• 51:12
  That just provided more opportunities to bless people.
• 51:15
  That's all it did.
• 51:18
  But we look at failure, we call it failure, and we look at that as a negative thing, as if that destroys our self-esteem, as if then we project onto ourselves.
• 51:28
  Well, I must be a loser.
• 51:31
  I must not be good at filling the blank.
• 51:36
  And I think a lot of times, unknowingly, parents do that to their kids.
• 51:42
  And they teach their kids that their kids are failures, or that they, you know, well, see, I told you this wasn't gonna work.
• 51:51
  When kids hear those kinds of things, do you think that motivates them to try something different?
• 51:58
  My kids have tried so many things that haven't worked.
• 52:02
  I mean lots of things, and I let them experience that disappointment of something not working.
• 52:09
  They feel it for exactly about 60 seconds.
• 52:15
  And then my kids now they say things like, well, that didn't work.
• 52:20
  What do you think?
• 52:21
  Uh what do you think another idea is?
• 52:23
  My daughter just did this the other day.
• 52:25
  She said, um, they're trying to raise money for something.
• 52:28
  My kids are, and I won't go into the details, but uh it's pretty cool.
• 52:34
  And my my boys have always wanted to do t-shirts.
• 52:39
  They want to design t-shirts.
• 52:41
  It's just like a fun, silly thing.
• 52:45
  Well, my daughter's not all that interested.
• 52:48
  So she said, Dad, what do you think I can do besides for t-shirts?
• 52:54
  I was like, I don't know.
• 52:55
  What do you want to do?
• 52:57
  Give me some ideas, tell me what your interests are.
• 53:01
  You see, that's how we shape people.
• 53:04
  We let them explore ideas.
• 53:06
  We let them come up with their own ideas.
• 53:09
  We don't give the ideas to them.
• 53:11
  We don't tell them, well, if you want to go anywhere in life, you have to go to college, or you have to do this, or you have to go into this trade.
• 53:19
  No, you don't.
• 53:22
  Let people explore, let your kids explore, your grandkids, whoever.
• 53:26
  Let them explore.
• 53:27
  And uh, I just love that Gabby's parents let her do this.
• 53:31
  They let her pick up the baton, they let her figure it out, and she is absolutely on fire.
• 53:39
  She loves it.
• 53:40
  And the people love it.
• 53:43
  And if you think about the specific magic of a stuffed animal, you're like, well, why stuffed animals?
• 53:51
  Did you ever have a stuffed animal?
• 53:54
  Did your kids ever have a stuffed animal?
• 53:58
  My kids, all three of my kids still sleep with stuffed animals.
• 54:02
  My oldest is almost 16.
• 54:06
  And she still sleeps with stuffed animals.
• 54:10
  There's just that they're they're fun.
• 54:15
  I had one till, oh, I was probably 16 till until I got rid of mine.
• 54:20
  I had the old uh, you remember the cabbage patch dolls.
• 54:22
  I had one of those.
• 54:24
  Um, I had a teddy bear.
• 54:26
  I still remember this teddy bear.
• 54:28
  It was so popular in the 80s.
• 54:30
  And uh I had one.
• 54:32
  I just had to have it.
• 54:33
  I took that thing everywhere.
• 54:36
  Teddy bears are great.
• 54:37
  Think of the magic of them.
• 54:39
  It's a comfort object for a kid in a hospital bed.
• 54:44
  That bear's not just a toy.
• 54:47
  It's a message, it's a physical manifestation of a stranger in a hockey arena cheering for them.
• 54:55
  Cheering them on.
• 54:58
  A bear that a fan threw from section 204 because their team scored a goal.
• 55:05
  That bear is now being held by a kid trying to be brave before his or her surgery.
• 55:15
  Gabby knows this.
• 55:17
  She sees this.
• 55:19
  It's why she does this.
• 55:22
  She understands that harnessing that energy inside the arena, that roar of the crowd, harnessing that energy and using it for good, not sitting around and complaining about how corrupt the government is and how awful people are, and that's not how she uses that energy.
• 55:40
  She harnesses that excitement and that energy inside that arena, and she stores it inside of these plushies and transports them to quiet, scary places where kids need it most.
• 55:58
  She's using that energy for good.
• 56:01
  She's using the cheers and the excitement and the generosity of other people.
• 56:10
  And she gets to see some of the people who benefit from these teddy bears.
• 56:18
  Yeah, we hear about compassion fatigue.
• 56:21
  I've talked about it before.
• 56:23
  I experience it a lot.
• 56:26
  Compassion fatigue is exactly what it's called.
• 56:30
  You get tired from caring.
• 56:33
  But the teddy bear toss proves the opposite is possible.
• 56:36
  The compassion is contagious.
• 56:41
  Started in 2001, they've collected 650,000 animals since then, and it continues to grow.
• 56:49
  Last year they broke a world record.
• 56:53
  Gabby is picking up the torch, her and her generation.
• 56:56
  They're picking up the torch, and they're making it bigger, louder, and softer.
• 57:03
  One teddy bear at a time.
• 57:05
  It reminds us that kindness doesn't have to be solemn.
• 57:09
  It doesn't have to be quiet, it doesn't have to be reserved.
• 57:13
  We all have the ability to be kind.
• 57:16
  Let's be kind to our neighbors.
• 57:18
  You can find more out about my show and get all the latest podcasts if you go to the many navigation bar at America Outloud.news under our shows or schedule.
• 57:25
  You'll be in the know.
• 57:26
  There's a hidden lightness that shines inside of all of us.
• 57:29
  When there's so much darkness that envelops the world, remember that it doesn't take much light to expose that darkness and to ultimately inspire other people.
• 57:37
  Join me in being aligned.