Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Nod at the Shine

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: Nod at the Shine · The Ben Maller Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Kutbooms.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallard starts right now.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: In the air everywhere.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler and Danny G
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Radio and a happy, happy Saturday.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: College football.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all day long, college for We had NFL football
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: last night as we slide into the sixth day of September.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: And you just got me to Danny G is under weather.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Hopefully my man Danny G will be good enough to
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: join us tomorrow morning for the mail bag. And you
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: got me. So I stayed up, and I really didn't
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: stay up that late. It's rather early here on the
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: West Coast, but I watched the game there on Friday
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: night on the YouTube. I thought it was on regular
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: TV in LA because the Chargers are plausibly an LA
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: team and Justin Herbert three hundred and eighteen yards passing,
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: not one, not two, but three touchdowns, no interceptions, ran
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: for thirty two yards. That's the first three hundred yard
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: three touchdown game since Week ten of the twenty twenty
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: three season for Justin Herbert. And a lot of passes,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of passes to the wide receiver room there
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: for the Chargers eighty two over eighty two percent of
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: his passes for Herbert, the most he's ever targeted wide
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: receivers in a single game in his NFL career. So
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: very unusual these international games. I was, I did take
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: the Chiefs, and so I lost that game. On Benny
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: versus the pen. We actually gonna talk more Benny versus
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: the penny here in a couple of minutes got the
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: cyber swamp and mouthwash madness. But as far as the
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: Chiefs and the Chargers game, the better story is in
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: the losing locker room.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: That is where the story is. And you look at.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: The game, and it was really a domination situation by
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: the Chargers. Now that the stats don't really indicate that,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: because the yardage was rather close, the first downs were
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: rather close. The big difference in this game was that
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: the Chargers were able to get some big plays. They
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: were able to make some wild plays, and the Chiefs,
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: you know, they had.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: A couple of them. But in the big picture, it
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: just seemed.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: Watching the game in real time that the Chargers were
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: leading the race and the Chiefs were going uphill the
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: entire way. And there was an injury early on for
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Kansas City, and you look at Mahomes and Mahomes ran
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: for fifty fifty seven yards. He had two ordered fifty
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: eight yards passing, but a lot of dink and dunk
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: and this, you know, those short passes. For the most part,
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: he averaged Mahomes thirty nine pass attempts twenty four completions,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: averaged a six point six yards per pass attempt. Now,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: remember the standard in the NFL seven the baseline is
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: about seven is average. So if you're above that, you're
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: pretty good. If you're below that, you're not doing so good.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: And justin Herbert averaged nine point four yards per reception,
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: and he spread the ball around. McConkie had six catches,
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Johnston had five catches for seventy nine yards.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: There were three or four.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Charger pass catchers that did a solid job in that
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: game last night, And so the Chargers get off to
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: the good start, and for the Chiefs, there like, oh
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: my god, they lost a divisional game, and Mahomes in
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: the offense, they didn't look all that gray. There was
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: that missed extra point that totally fed up things and
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: just did not help the process or process. The Chiefs
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: their first three drives for rather block. They started out
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: punt punt, punt, and so the Chargers had built up
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: a ten to nothing lead, they had a thirteen to
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: three lead, and then the Chiefs came back and they
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: would have would have tied the game, and then that
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: touchdown that would have made it thirteen to thirteen, Bucker
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: missed the extra point wide right, and that created a
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: situation where the Chiefs had to go for two, and
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: then they didn't get the two. The two point attempt failed,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: and so then they were playing uphill and they went
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: from they could have been tied at twenty down twenty
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: to eighteen. Then the Chargers scored another touchdown, so it's
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: a nine point game, and then the math on that
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: was a problem, but we'll get away from that. On
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: this part. We got the cyber swamp and the mouthwash madness.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Will start with this on a college football Saturday on
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: the fifth Hour here a spin off of the Overnight
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: You my guy Danny, Do you feel better? He'll be back,
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: hopefully tomorrow, But we begin with this. So after two
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: years under the NBC, polished roof, big major national broadcasting company.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: But what an honor it was to work for them.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I've had two different runs at NBC.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: I had one back in the twenty ten, twenty eleven,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: twenty twelve period of my life and more recently. But
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Benny versus the Penny now wanders into the wilderness of YouTube.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: You might know by now if you follow me on
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: social media. It is not so much a move as
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: it is a rebirth, or perhaps a recalibration, trading the
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: corporate umbrella for the wild wild West, And I do
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: mean the wild wild West where the sheriff is an
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: hour algorithm and the saloon owner sells credibility by the pint.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: So you can call this if you want, manifest destiny
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: with ring lights and all that. It sounds somewhat noble.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: Some would say, hey, this is the way to do it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: You're being very noble. It's independence. Some would say rebellious.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Now I have a problem with all of those big
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: words noble, independent, rebellious. The problem is this, I've experienced
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: a little bit, and I'm just starting out here as
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: a YouTuber. The issue I have is that YouTube. While
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: it is a wonderful, wonderful place with all kinds of
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: amazing content, YouTube is like every other digital pastor, it
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: isn't really the field of dreams. It presents itself to be, right.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: It pretends to be this field of dreams where anybody
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: can just all of a sudden pop up and become
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: a star and make a lot of money. And it
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: confirms what of my beliefs that it is the matrix
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: with an algorithm.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: For a gatekeeper. Right.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: It is a carnival midway of smoke and mirrors. It's
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: a funhouse reflection where the guy who yells the loudest
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: gets the biggest stuff to animal and all that. Myself
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: and Tom Looney are diving headfirst into this gooey ooey
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: cyber swamp, and we are armed with what what do
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: we have? What are our weapons? We have a microphone? Check,
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: we have a camera. I have a camera right on
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: my computer here. Check somewhat a sense of humor, possibly
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: football shape, penny. We got that now we were already
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: already dabbling in this world. We've already found out that
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: in the land of independent creators wink wink, nod nod,
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: independence is open to interpretation, and independence is off and
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: as real as professional wrestling going back to the eighties
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: and the nineties and the two thousand tens in the
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: twenty twenties. So yes, it is true. You can be
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: on YouTube. The problem is to matter on YouTube, you
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: need to know whose palm degrease, and I don't know
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: for sure who's palm degrease. You need to know whose
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: ego you have to stroke and how to package reality
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: into the neatest, most clickable thumbnails. Now, the independent creator
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: often has as much independence as a Hollywood studio actor
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: back in the day. I remember reading about this when
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: I was younger, the Hollywood studio actors that had contracts
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties, and good luck on that right.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Even like the Three Stooges iconic in their era, they
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: didn't make hardly any money, and they had no idea
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: that they were as famous as they were because they
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: were just under a studio contract.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: It's wild story if you want to go down that
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Some good books have been written about that there's some
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: good stuff online about the Stooges and not knowing, not
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: real life, the impact they were having on the culture
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: because they were just it was a job. They were
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: under contract and that was that. But you look at
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: the independent creator and it's all big business. It's agents,
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: it's managers, it's investors, all of them lurking off camera,
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: curating the illusion of independence and freedom and pulling yourself
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: up from the bootstraps and all that. Give you an example,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: mister Beast. We saw mister Beasts last night. For some reason,
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: the NFL thinks that that's going to grow their audience.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Spoiler alert, that's dumb. Anyway, mister Beast was not built
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: in a day. He was also not built in the
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: basement of his home somewhere in South Carolina. He was
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: built with investors, managers, lawyers, and the machine, the machine
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: that makes it look like he's just a kid with
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: a big idea, just a kid with a big idea
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: that happened to make it.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: That's all it is. And you're like, what, well, not
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: so much, not so much.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: And it's like the line from the late Great Casey
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Case and keep your feet on the ground and keep
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: reaching for the stars. Well, in this case, mister Beast
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: again a bunch of other people around him.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not knocking mister Beast. That's just the reality.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: A lot of people don't realize that the big stars
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: on YouTube that are very popular, mister Beast, Kai Sennett,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: the Costco guys, these independent stars are all are run
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: by people headquartered in New York boardrooms, groomed by management
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: firms who know that the attention currency is where it's at.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: It's all about the marketing of these people, and it
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: is pay to play. It's not a dirty secret on
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: YouTube or the other social media channels. It's a business model.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: And followers and views are a commodity. We all know that,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: and they are traded in a market worth hundreds of
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: millions of dollars. The amount of money that is tossed
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: around it is crazy. And the Internet is a great
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: case study on perception versus reality and the fact that
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: perception is reality on social media, perception is manufactured that
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: a channel. I'll tell you this, right, So there's two
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: channels and both of them are doing food reviews. You
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: have a channel with one hundred thousand followers, and you
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: have a channel with one hundred followers, right, So who
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: you're going to pay more since attention to you can say, well,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: the channel with one hundred thousand that's got more trust,
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: trust that's more trustworthy, is more credible, while a channel
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: with one hundred followers might as well be broadcasting to
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: the furniture.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: And by the way, our channel Benny versus the Penny
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: has about like two hundred followers or whatever.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So these because we just started, but.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: The psychology is as old as the Emperor's new clothes.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: If everyone else sees it, it.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Must be real. Nobody checks the stitching. They just nod
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: at the shine and the buying and the selling. And
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: this is something I've had my eyes open to. I
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: always knew this was going on. But the buying and
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: selling of followers is no different from printing counterfeit money.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And it's not even illegal. It isn't.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: It circulates, it inflates, it deceives, and no.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: One audits it.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: There's nobody saying, well, wait a minute, that person's got
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: a bunch of fake followers, because everyone is benefiting from
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: the counterfeit. It's a Ponzi scheme where everyone is cashing
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: in on this. The illusion of popularity, and I was
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: reading a story a couple weeks back.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I think I mentioned it to you on this podcast.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Remember the story of there was a couple of musicians
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: who became famous on TikTok and then they agreed to
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: go out and perform in front of a live audience,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: so they had to sell tickets. And I believe the
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: story I'm paraphrasing this, I don't have it in front
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: of me, is that they couldn't sell enough tickets to
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: cover the costs of the crew and the travel and
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: all that to make this happen, because it turned out,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: while they had hundreds of millions of people that were
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: watching their music online, they weren't real people. They were
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: fake and so the amount of real people was not
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: enough to sell out a venue, but the illusion was
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: they were very popular. It is a multi million dollar
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: industry that hums beneath the surface. It's like a black market,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: bizarre behind the town square, and everyone pretends not to notice.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: It is the Komodo dragon in the room because the
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: facade keeps that circus a lot and well a million
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: followers at one point, maybe it did mean a million people.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Now a million followers can mean half a million bots,
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: quarter million engagement farm accounts overseas, and the rest die
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: hards who don't even know they're part of the hustle.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: That's the thing, right, that's the thing. And that's why
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: I say, well, there's nobody that's really hurting from any
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: of this, because what ends up happening. It's kind of
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: like you open up a restaurant and if you want
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: to create a little bit of buzz about the restaurant,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: you pay people to stand in front of the restaurant
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: and then they'll be out of curiosities. People that would
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: never have gone to the restaurant and say, well, this
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: place must be popular.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Why don't we go to that restaurant. Well, there's nobody
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: actually at that restaurant. It's all paid actors. Well we
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: don't know their paid actors. They're online. Looks like they
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: want to enjoy the food, so let's go there.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: Another example of that is the shopping cart, the buggy,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: the shopping cart. So we talked about this on this podcast,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: but the origins of the the shopping cart leave. It
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: started at Oklahoma, but originally it was emasculating. Women did
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: not want to push the cart because it you know
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: something like moms do, and they're like, unless if you
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: didn't have kids or I don't know, I'm not a
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Type cast as that.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: And men didn't want to push carts because it was emasculating.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: So what they did to encourage people to use shopping
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: carts is they got really beautiful women and really beautiful men,
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: paid actors to go to the stores and walk around
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: with the carts and pretend like they were shopping. And
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: so they would do that, and then the regular Hoi, POLLOI,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the flotsam and the jetsum would see this and they'd
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: be like, hey, those are good looking people.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I want to be like them.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: push the cart like them because they're good looking people.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Maybe I'll become better looking. And that is a true story,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Hand to God. That's how the shopping cart became a
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: mainstream thing. But it's the same concept on social media,
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: like you have fake followers and then you gain real
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: followers because people are easily hornswaggled.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: They just are. They just are.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: And you look at these following numbers, it's like baseball attendance.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: When I was a kid in the nineteen eighties. The
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: announced attendance bore no resemblance to who was actually there
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: in the ballpark, and the reality is whatever the algorithm.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Says it is. No one again is.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: Doing any inventory on what's real and what's counterfeit and
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: all that. So for Benny versus the Penny, which we
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: need your help. You can follow that Benny vs. Penny
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: at Benny Vspenny on YouTube. That means to us that
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: the penny may have to be cannibalized. I've been studying this,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: and there's an art to YouTube, and you people do
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: not do not generally watch long form content. So Benny
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: versuspent about half an hour forty minutes every week. What
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: we likely will have to do at some point is
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: chop that up into smaller, bite sized pieces and just
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: instead we'll.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Have long form.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: But then we're going to have to have short form
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: because that's the way the game is played, and attention
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: spans are now measured in seconds, not minutes.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: We're all a bunch of goldfish swimming around.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: So welcome to the YouTube casino, where the odds are
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: long and the attention spans are short, and the house rules.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: But maybe just maybe there's a little bit of room
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: there for an honest game in this crooked canival. So
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: we'll see the NFL season kicks off for real the
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: Mary we had a couple of appetizers with the game
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: back on Thursday, where.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: The Eagles won, and then the Chargers on Friday.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: The NFL season, though, remains a weekly TV drama O
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: rama assume without a script, assume without a script, and
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: unlike the algorithms, you know, we actually care about the
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: results and all that. Now, if we can cut through
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: the clutter on Benny versus the Penny with just wit,
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: candor and a little old fashioned stubbornness, then maybe just
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: maybe Benny versus the Penny can survive outside of that
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: NBC corral and all that. Now, it's not going to
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: be easy, it's not going to be fair. Then again,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: I would argue that makes it all that much much
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: sweeter because my experience in broadcasting I've been doing this
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: a long time, is you actually have to build an
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: audience up, but it's a real audience.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: There's no shortcuts.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: On social media, there's a lot of shortcuts, like if
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: somebody wanted to I've forgotten emails from people in the past,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: they're like, hey, I work in social media. I can
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: get you know, so many followers and all that, and
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: I always turned that down. Now, if somebody wants to
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: do that, I'm not against it. I'm not going to
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: go out and solicit it. But if somebody wants to
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: do it, but we need your help. And really I
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: believe we have a big enough audience based on when
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: I started this fifth.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Hour podcast, I was like, who the hell's going to
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: listen to that crap?
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: And I always said, if the numbers are bad, if
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: no one's listening to this thing, then I'm not going
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: to do it. It's not worth my time. Time is
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: the most valuable thing we have. I'm not going to
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: bother doing the podcast. And the numbers have steadily climbed.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: We've done very well with this podcast. Are we Joe Rogan? No,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: we're not Joe Rogan? Are we Adam Carolla? No, we're
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: not Adam Corola. But however, in our little niche stay
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: in your lane, as LeVar Ball likes to say, we
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: have been able to build up a good following and
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Danny G's helped a lot.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: We was a stretch.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: We were losing people, we were bleeding. We had a
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: lot of politics on the podcast. People got all upset
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: about that, freaked out, lost their mind. And so the
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: numbers have been very good. And we can just take
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: a good chunk of this and put it there on
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Benny Vspenny on YouTube. Get your kids to sign up. Well,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: I don't want to set up there. Those are a
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: bunch of old's talking football. Just do it, little Johnny,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: come on, help your dad out, all right? You know
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing helps us out. That does help
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: us out. It would help a lot if they actually
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: watched the show. So it's not smooth, double churned or
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: slow churned Vanilla. It's gonna be rocky road. It's gonna
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: be rocky road. But with a little help from my
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: friend that would be you. And we are on a mission,
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: on a mission to follow it.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: The show.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: You know, it's nothing looked quite as good as I
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: wanted to look. I wanted to look good. I want
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: I want to look just like the TV show. But
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: the TV show had thirty people working on it. We
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: have two, so it's a lot different. But if you
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: just follow the channel, subscribe to Benny Vspenny, and if
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: you put a review, a comment, in there. You watch
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: the videos. Man, would that be cool? That would help
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: us out, you know, help us fight again. It's the
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: machine and really try to do this organically, and then
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: it's a self fulfilling prophecy where if you do build
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: up a base and eventually we can move on to
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: something bigger and better. Now turn the page on that.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: I would like to address a moment that happened on
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: the Overnight Show earlier this week. I got several emails
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: about this, and I thought this would be the perfect
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: form because this podcast the fifth Hour plausibly you're listening
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: because you are a next level fan. Legends like Lucky,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Tony alf the Alien, Opiner, ferg Dog, Mister nice Guy,
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Jonathan and Delaware. These are big time heavy hitters in
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: the Malin Militia, big balls, Bob, and they listen to
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: this podcast. So this is just like a tight knit
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: group that we've got here. So every radio show, I'm
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: gonna go a little zen on you. So every radio
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: show worth its salt as a cast of characters. That's
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: my belief on talk radio. And if you don't have that, you're.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Not doing it right. You're not doing it right.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: So there's gotta be to do a radio show the
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: right way, there's gotta be rasmatash. There's characters orbiting whoever
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: the host is. In this case, it's me like satellites,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: some are closer to the Sun than others. Some are
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: burping and some are burning, some are burning up in
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: re entry, some others just kind of drifting forever in
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: their own strange you know, just kind of a strange
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: path around the cosmos. But ours happens to include a
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: man on the Malord Militia named mouthwash Mike. So mouthwash
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Mike called up the other night and was really disheveled
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: and all that. And some people have feelings about this,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: and some people reached out to me. Some of you
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: think we are celebrating mouthwash Mic, others that we are
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: exploiting him. Some of you have written into tell me
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: your concerns. Others with amusement, and still others with kind
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: of righteous indigestion indignation. If I could talk to that,
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: what else this righteous indignation that the Ben Maler Show,
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: the nighttime airways of Fox Sports Radio would beam this
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: voice of mouthwash Mike to six hundred plus radio stations
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: around the world. And that's fine. That's the business and
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: all that stuff. That's what I say, right, that's the
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: exchange rate of talk radio. But I would like to
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: reset the board. I want to reset the board here
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: because we did not find mouthwash mic.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: He found us.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: I think it's very important. Like some of you don't
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: understand how this works. You don't understand any of this works.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: So let me just pause and I'll reset again. I
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: did not go out and find mouthwash Mike.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: He found us. Mike.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Not an algorithm. It's not a targeted ad. It's not
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: a viral clip. It's not some made up chat GPT voice.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: It's none of that. He found us.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: That's that's the way it is. It's not because of
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: a server in Menlo Park thinking that you'll like it.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: He is the purest, in the purest sense, broadcast. That
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: is what broadcast is broadcasting. He's out there. You don't
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: know who he is. You stumbled across him. Maybe it
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: is the magic of radio. It's not narrow casting. It's broadcasting.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: It's not narrow casting to your taste. It's not a
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: it's not some Spotify playlist. It's it's a street lamp.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: It shines for everybody. It's not just made for you,
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: it's for anybody. And this guy, Mike, I'm not gonna
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: sit here and pretend that he doesn't shine.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Weird, because he does. He's very weird.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: This is a man who once showed up to our
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: listener event, the Malar Meet and greet with a half
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: drunk bottle of a quit that's the Walmart brand original
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: anti septic mouthwash, the gold bottle be kind you buy
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: at Walmart when you're giving, you're giving a couple of
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: bucks on your EBT card and you can't afford a
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: brand name.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And he would wave that around like.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: A championship belt, a totem passport. Our guy mouthwash, Mike,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: who this guy has given us amazing stories. He tried
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: to get us to go swim at the Bolagio fountains.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: He swims there like it's his private country club.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: We are not allowed to do that. You're not allowed
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: to swim. I do it anyway. What are they gonna do?
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: They're gonna come drag me out of the water.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: So he does that right, swimming at the Bolagio founds,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: and he'll scale the fence over at Caesar's Palace like
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Spider Man, spider Many man after a three day bender.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: So does this sound tragic? Yes?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, a man who is addicted to the Walmart Equate
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: original anti separtic mouthwash does not sound good.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Does it sound comic? Yes, it does.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: And in the dissonance of this is kind of a
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: whole point. Mike mouthwash. Mike is a character on an
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: overnight radio show. That is what he is, and in
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: many ways he is, whether you want to admit it
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: or not, part of the show's mythology. Now, and this
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: is not new, and some of you are new to
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: the show, and God bless you for joining us.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Thank God for that. But those of you that have
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: been with me a long.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Time, sports radio, especially overnight sports talk radio, has always
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: been fueled by the bazaar, but in my era of
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: sports radio by what I'd call booze infested poets. Booze
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: infested poets, Benny's booze infested poets. These are some of
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: the most important people that have helped prop me up,
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: put me on a pedestal legends like the Great Genie
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: in Medford, Jimmy Ray from Tampa Bay beer drinking Brian Moonshine,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Mark you can build a wing in the Hall of
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Fame of radio callers for these people. Now, some of
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: you know who these people are. Genie Metford was a
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: very big star. She's been gone for a number of years.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Ray from Tampa Bay beer drinking, Brian Moonshine Mark,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: all important names. All of them important names, right, And
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: they all lived on the fringes of society that they
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: would thrive at two or three in the morning on
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: the phone to the Ben Maller Show. That was their Broadway,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: that was their Carnegie Hall, that was their big stage.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: And the thing is, you cannot manufacture this. I tell people, well,
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: I have friends of mine. They're in the social media world.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: That's their only world. It's like, it's totally different than
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: what I do. What I do is I can't It's different.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: It's a different skill set. You cannot manufacturers. You cannot
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: program mouthwash mic into existence in chat GPT. He exists
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: in the wild, in hospital emergency rooms, in jail cells,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: on sidewalks, sleeping in Las Vegas with a mouthful of
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: anti septic courage. Now, we don't use him any more
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: than a lighthouse us as a shipwreck. We just shine
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: a light and sometimes he sails into it.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I give out the number, and whoever calls calls, whoever
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: calls calls.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: If you're looking for dignity, right, it's there. It's not
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: some kind of hallmark kind of dignity. Mouthwash Mic. He
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: may be a mess, but he is authentic. Yeah, and
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: that to me, that's important. We live in an era
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: where everything is curated, staged and polished for likes and
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: retweets and all that crap, and on some level in
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: the multiverse, there's a certain nobility in that that he
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: is the opposite of filtered. It is raw, unfiltered, unprocessed.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: That's mouthwashed Mike. And we don't know how mike story.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Is going to end.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: We don't know how mouthwashed Mike's story is going to
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: ultimately end. And while I suspect it will not be
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: a pretty ending and it's not going to go that well,
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: that is not my role in this story. I am
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: just doing a talk show and those that want to
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: be part can be part. We have encouraged mouthwash Mic
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: to get the proper help, and he has chosen to
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: not listen to us. However, for now and however long
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: this lasts, we're just going to enjoy it. Mouthwash Mike
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: is part of our family. He's part of our chorus.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: He's just another voice on the overnight opera. And that's
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: what this is, right. The Mallard Militias a bunch of
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: random people that have come together to provide entertainment to
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: other people that would never call a radio show characters.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Some are louder than others.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: Like Scream and Steven or Scream and Steve, and others
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: are rather quiet, and a lot of you will never
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: call the show. And like all the great characters who
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: have wandered on to the stage on the Ben Maler
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Show before mouthwash Mike, he makes what we do bigger, stranger, fun,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: and just more alive. Because radio overnight radio kind of
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: like mouthwash. It's not meant to be spit out. It's
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: meant to be swallowed whole. Of course, I say mouthwash.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: If your mouthwash, Mike, you swallow a hole. For most people,
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: you're not supposed to swallow mouthwash. But what we do,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: you're just supposed to absorb and enjoy. All Right, On
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: that note, we will get out. Hopefully Danny g will
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: join me tomorrow for the mail Bag. Got a full
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: day of college football today. We're looking forward to that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: I will be perusing I got a lot going on today,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: but I will be watching the college football. I will
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: probably watch most of it on my phone as I
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: will not be home today of some things I have
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: to do. My presence has been requested at multiple events. Why,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: I couldn't tell you. I'm being dragged. But I will
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: make the most of those events. We'll see where that
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: where that ends up leading us, where that ends up
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: leading us. But there are some interesting gambles we'll see.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: I can't imagine arch Manning is going to have. That's
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: an early game this morning here our time here on
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: the West coast. But Texas plays San Jose State, which
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: is a just what the doctor ordered the game for
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: arch Manning to put up four touchdown passes and three
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: hundred yards against the Spartans old Spartey of San Jose
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: and San Jose State, and then Texas can get back
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: on track.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: In that game.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: And then there's not too many really great matchups today.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: I guess Oklahoma State, which is not ranked, and Oregon
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: that should be pretty good. That you know it is
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: a big point spread, as a big point spread in
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: that game, but you'd assume the position.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: That you should get at least half a game.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: From Oklahoma State, and then again, the big one wud
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: be Michigan and Oklahoma a couple of blue bloods. That
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: game not until tonight in beautiful Norman, Oklahoma, one of
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: the great venues of college football. All Right, anyway, we'll
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: watch all that, We'll deal with that at another time,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: mailbag tomorrow.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Have a great rest of your Saturday. And as Danny
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: G would say, later skater or was that Austa pasta? Now? Yeah,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: and don't forget. Don't forget to follow Benny vs.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: Penny at Benny Vspenny on YouTube at Benny Vspenny on YouTube.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Have a great day.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Gotta murder, I gotta go