Latest / The SEANC View / Stanley Cup Frenzy, Budget Blues, and the Atrium–WakeMed Showdown

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Stanley Cup Frenzy, Budget Blues, and the Atrium–WakeMed Showdown · The SEANC View

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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I'm Jonathan Owens, along with Artis Watkins, Suzanne Beasley, and Sammy Klein.
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The Homeless podcast continues, and we continue to rely on the kindness of others,
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and I think we've struck a goldmine this week, so let's get into it.
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So, let me set the scene for you. Scenic's central office is on Midtown Place in North Raleigh.
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And across the street from us is a huge studio called Trailblazers Studio.
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And they do amazing things. If you look at their website, they do post-production
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on lots of TLC shows, including Sister Wives and Kate Plus Eight,
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I think, was one of them. Good drama. Not the drama.
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We were without a place to record this week And we rented a studio And that
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fell through And we were kind of at a loss I was so fascinated by the trials and travails of this,
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I just love it So we came to Trailblazer Studio With our hat in hand And they
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were very welcoming of us And put us up in this amazing studio Sounds just Guitars
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on the wall And we are Yeah, it's cool
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They've got a cool building Cool facility use them, Trailblazer Studios.
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So we thank them very much for letting us come in today and spend an hour in here.
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But let's jump right into our podcast. And I guess we usually start with the
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budget, but I think we should start with a bigger story in Raleigh these days.
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The Hurricanes have tied the Stanley Cup Series last night.
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2-2 now. Crazy game last night. Every game has been amazing.
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And what's your thoughts on it? I guess, first off, as Raleigh Folk.
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Well, we're recording on Wednesday.
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Yes. So they'll be back. When are they coming back? Tomorrow night? Thursday night. Yeah.
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So I think, yeah, I think this is, it's always exciting to watch something.
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And I totally was getting into it because the most random stuff seems to be
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happening, including the shot that kind of sealed the deal last night.
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Yeah, I looked up tickets for Thursday night's game and the cheapest one I could
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find was $991 in the upper section.
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I don't think I'll be making that game unless some of our listeners have a ticket.
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I don't think I'll be leaving my apartment because I have to drive near the
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Lenovo Center in order to leave my apartment or go anywhere pretty much.
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Not leaving. Yeah, I'm sure it's packed out there.
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Yeah, I'm one of maybe three people who I'm not watching it.
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But I got to tell you, Andy Speck on X is given play by play,
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and I have gotten sucked into every post. Oh, that's awesome.
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He does. So, yeah, thank you.
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Thank you, Andy. Yeah. Well, it's a very exciting time.
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There's kind of a political angle to it in North Carolina. Last week,
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there was a video of the U.S. Senate candidate Michael Watley.
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Kind of a gotcha video. I don't know if I loved it.
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Even political differences aside, I don't really love videos like that.
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Politics gets into everything. Yeah, but he couldn't name a single Hurricanes player.
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But I'm sure there's a lot of people in North Carolina who couldn't name a single
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Hurricanes. I mean, I don't think in North Carolina that's going to hurt you
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as bad politically as if you couldn't, if you didn't know an ACC team went to
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the Final Four or some kind of.
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Now, if it was like a Carolina or Duke or state basketball team,
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you probably should know at least one of those. Exactly.
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However, I don't know. You know, I remember way back in the day when somebody
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I worked for who was really good at strategizing politics said,
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go to the infield at Rockingham.
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And you can figure out who's going to win a race in North Carolina.
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And that was pretty much true. I remember when you had to know about NASCAR
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to win races in North Carolina. But things have changed.
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Hockey, you know, it started as a Yankee sport, is what people used to call
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it when we first had hockey down here.
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But I don't know. If you like sports, you like sports. I like sports.
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Now, I generally would tell you I would rather watch curling. I love curling.
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I will say, there is something kind of interesting about this Stanley Cup Finals.
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Last night, Carter Hart, the goalie for the,
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Las Vegas Knights, set a record that I don't think anyone wants to set in the
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NHL Stanley Cup Finals, allowing four or more goals to pass him in each of the
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games so far. And that, I guess, is a record.
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Huh. It's not a record anyone wants, but. But it's kind of it's kind of interesting
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because he's pretty good. I mean, he's like pretty well known as a good goalie.
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Well, in defense of that guy, we took tons of shots on goal compared to what
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they took. That's kind of the Hurricanes things. They just throw a lot of shit. Relentless.
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Doesn't change how my generation or a lot of people feel about the guy as a person.
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Oh, this is the one you were telling me. Yeah, the first two games of the series,
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he was booed each time he entered and had chants of no means no
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shouted at him because of sexual assault allegations previously brought against him.
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And the Hurricanes did change their goal layout, too, so they had a new one
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this game, and he did it very awesomely. Yeah, as they do, he used every body
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part. That was wild to watch, some of the contortions they get into.
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So that's hockey talk for the Scenic V-Bike.
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I'll tell you what, the one sport I like. So, oh, I had one more thing about
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it. So the president goes to the NBA Finals.
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Is there a chance we'll get him to come to Raleigh to watch the Stanley Cup Finals?
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I don't know. Seems like it would be fair, right? I mean, I think he went to
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see the Knicks because he's from New York, but I don't know.
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And then the Knicks lost, so people are blaming him.
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Yeah, I know. That's the problem. If you're a politician and you go.
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Yeah. It's like the Cruz. Ted Cruz has, according to Texans,
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since, you know, my family's from there, I hear all about this.
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They're convinced in Texas that Ted Cruz cannot show up at a Texas sporting event or else.
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Throws the mojo. Yeah. There's the Cruz curse, they call it.
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Well, that's probably just because he goes to a lot of Cowboys games and they
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lose a lot. Oh, he goes to college.
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He goes to all of these things. and teams will be undefeated and then,
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you know, so they just, yeah.
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Well, let's just get into the budget then. Okay. I think that's sports talk for us.
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I saw a story this week from NC Newsline that they may not hit the deadline.
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They've kind of self-imposed on them for next week to release the budget.
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Is that true? Sitting here thinking, talking about the budget or lack thereof. Yeah.
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Yeah, apparently there's some holdup and, you know, leadership saying they're
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not sure they're going to be able to roll it out next week.
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You know, Senator Berger, I think, is feeling a little more not positive about it than Beaker Hall.
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But we'll see. And just some of the chatter amongst colleagues.
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I talked to Chris and Flint last night. You know, they're hearing that some
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legislators who are not going to be returning are trying to get some of their
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special projects into the budget, which, you know, you would expect that. So, here we are.
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I think whenever the pay things came out a few months, was it last month?
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Yeah, the framework. I think we were all, you know, people got really excited one way or the other.
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And we were saying, you know, hold your horses.
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We're not sure. I mean, it'll probably happen eventually, but.
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Yeah, and they rolled that out and they didn't immediately call it a framework.
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So it kind of threw everybody, you know, thinking that, oh, good,
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here we are. The budget, you know, it's about to drop. And then it changed into
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a framework and, you know. Well, and then extra money was found and things just got weird.
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But, you know, extra money seems to be found a lot of the time after that employee raises.
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And that kind of ties into something you said a week or two weeks ago where
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someone had said that they'd never see them meet a deadline that they set a
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month in advance. Oh, yeah. The governor said that. Yeah.
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Never seen them. Yeah. So House Speaker Destin Hall said it's still a possibility next week.
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He said, from what I hear, they've made progress.
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So I anticipate Senator Berger and I will probably meet sometime tomorrow.
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Which was today, I guess I mean, they have got to want to be out by now For
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goodness sakes There was a big thing that happened this week Representative
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Sarah Stevens, who's running for the Supreme Court State Supreme Court,
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obviously Because you don't run for the U.S.
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Supreme Court She is leaving her seat Yeah, June 16th Yeah, to focus on that race.
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And that's a, she's a Republican, right? Correct. Yeah. So, I mean,
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it's getting to that point where. Are they not tired of being there?
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Well, and I, you know. No, I don't think so, to be honest.
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Some. Focus members that are, they need to be campaigning. They need to be.
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Yeah. You know, getting ready to rock and roll for upcoming elections. And.
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Yeah. The longer they stay in session. So it's a mixed bag. I mean,
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I think some of them really like being down there.
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And then there's others, especially if they have kids and stuff like that,
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that get irritated, that it drags on.
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So it's a lot. If you're Senator Berger or you're Speaker Hall,
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that's a lot to wrangle in your caucus.
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There's got to be dissension among people. I saw an ex-post this morning.
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It's always Twitter to me. It's always going to be Twitter.
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The milk chugging contest is today. And the post, I know, gross.
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Milk was a bad choice. We're going to chug milk. Explain what it is so people
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don't even. So the NC Dairy, the big lobby, they do this every year. It's a tradition.
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The milk chugging contest.
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Legislators chug it. Yeah, legislators race each other to see who can finish,
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you know, the little bottle of...
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Milk in 100 degree weather i feel like i could win that.
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As someone who's lactose intolerant there's so many things wrong with milk.
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But you know there was there's a little bit of pushback on that because you
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know we still don't have a budget but we're gonna have i think,
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you know it's what i think it's supposed to be one of those wholesome yeah you
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know so this story throwback yeah yeah and there's a what tomato eating contest
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too made a sandwich watermelon tomato Tomato sandwich day.
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And if they've had that, I've missed it. I haven't noticed that.
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I'm not a fan of tomatoes. What? Neither am I. Tomato sandwiches.
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I like sauces and ketchups and things, but just as raw, no.
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What? I'm growing tomatoes this year to try and force myself to like them.
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Man, a tomato sandwich. That's the best. A little Duke's mayonnaise,
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some pepper, call it a day.
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I want to like them. I just don't. But there's a lot of things like that that
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happened down there that are kind of little wholesome.
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A lot of throwbacks to our agricultural heritage as a state,
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which I don't know. I think in this modern age, it makes people feel grounded
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sometimes to have those things happen.
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I do think, though, that with how long we've drug on without a budget,
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I am hearing more and more that I've never heard before of why the heck are
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they doing that instead of working this budget out.
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Again, this is tough. If you're in charge, you've got to balance the normal
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traditions with the fact that nothing's normal right now when we haven't had
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a budget in, well, a long time now. Since 2023, right?
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We're about to be, yeah. What is it? And then tomorrow is like a thousand days. Wow.
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Yeah. So this story says one factor in the delay is House lawmakers waited five weeks to pass the
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property tax reappraisal moratorium passed by the Senate and sponsored by Berger,
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even though that was a key component of the budget deal.
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So maybe there's some hurt feelings about that.
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There's always hurt feelings about a lot of things. You know,
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you hold each other's stuff hostage until you can get the budget deal.
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There's going to be things, bills, that are very important to important people on both sides.
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And so that's part of the horse training in the budget process.
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Yeah. You give me this and I'll agree with you on the budget.
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They need some thicker skin down there if they're getting their feelings hurt on these things. True.
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It's not the art of the deal down there right now. So the state health plan
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board of trustees voted Friday to raise costs for some members,
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the members who are on Medicare Advantage plans.
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So this is around 177,000 retirees in North Carolina.
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And this is people who are enrolled in the Humana plans.
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Right. is certain co-pays and out-of-pocket costs are going up across the board.
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So that's not good news for our retirees who haven't got a COLA.
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No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I actually, I mean, I told the board
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that, you know, our folks are going to, they're going to stand on their heads
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about this. There's not been a COLA for, what, since 2017? And that was 1%.
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They're about 30% behind the buying power that they should have.
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And we're going to increase cost? Retirees on a fixed income,
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if they're out there trying to find work in the workforce, it's increasingly
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difficult for anybody that's reached a certain age to do that.
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And then people want, at this point, they increasingly want employees who know more about AI.
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So what are our retirees going to do? How are they going to afford to go back
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to school to learn all that, what they've got coming in per month?
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And now their healthcare is going to go up some more. So.
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Yeah, that's not good. That's terrible, in fact.
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I talked to a retiree yesterday who retired from UNC, and she fought leukemia.
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She got through it. She is in remission. But the toll of that on her pocketbook
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and her lack of colas, she's going to have to sell her townhome and move in. That's terrible.
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Yeah, which, I mean, she said that she lives in Chapel Hill and the costs are
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very high there. And she's moving to Maiden or something or Mebane.
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But, you know, it's still not.
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She said she'd been there 67 years.
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But this is the society, let's be honest, in which we live right now.
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I went to CVS the other day and there was a breast cancer charity that was raising money.
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And they said, you know, we're literally raising money, not even for treatment.
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We're raising money for people's living expenses because if they get sick and
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they don't have family or friends that can take care of them and they're having
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to try to meet increased medical bills, they can't work if they're really sick.
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And we're trying to help them with groceries, with rent, with things like that,
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outside of CVS, which I'm glad CVS was letting them do that.
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And yet that said it all to me.
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Like, this is where we are, y'all. Yeah.
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That we're trying to groups. We're having to do fundraisers and look after our neighbors.
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Right. In the richest country in the world, this is us.
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How embarrassing. Yeah. It's gross. Yeah. It's just gross.
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It really is. So our retirees are, you know, they're just being pooped on from
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every direction. If you look at it, you're talking about not a real cola.
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And we're going to be talking to the treasurer, actually, because he's making
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a lot of, gaining a lot of ground in terms of investment returns, but...
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Will that translate into money in retirees' pockets consistently?
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That's what we're going to talk to him about.
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That's for next week's episode. We're going to have an interview with the president.
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Yeah, it should be really good. We're excited to talk to him about lots and lots of things.
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But, yeah, and, you know, we have the largest generation in American history
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that are retiring and getting to the age of dependent care.
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And how are we going to pay for this? And at the same time, we have billionaires
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who are, you know, worth more than, I think Elon Musk is like worth more than
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50% of the country and things like that.
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It's just gross despair. Yeah, we're getting to that gulf, which has been there
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for a long time, but it's getting so much worse between a CEO and a worker.
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Yeah. That gulf is getting so pronounced. I mean, how much money do you need?
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Well, I'm not sure how much longer this is tenable without massive pushback from the people.
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But our retirees, I know our retirees are pushing back. And I hope,
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you know, if you're a retiree, continue to make those calls. The budget is not done.
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And that's why they're buying their own islands in Albania. Oh,
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I thought you were talking about our retirees. They are not buying.
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They're doing good to buy groceries. They're not buying islands. But we digress.
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So that also leads us into the Atrium-WakeMed merger talk, because along the
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same lines, you know, health care costs going up.
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I saw this week that WakeMed officials said that the reason they didn't take
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the UNC offer was because of competition in the Triangle area,
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that they wanted to maintain competition. Is that true?
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That if UNC owned more of the market, they would. Yeah.
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But statewide, if Atrium creeps more this way, there's actually less. So I'm not sure.
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I guess they were talking simply in Wake County. The problem is this has effects
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statewide on everyone's pocketbook.
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Yeah, we were in the board of trustees that met for the state health plan last Friday.
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There was quite a bit of discussion about this subject. and the treasurer actually
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had to pull everybody back into the relevant subject matter of the meeting,
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but there were board members who did not understand that every single member of the state health plan,
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would have an increase in their premium of $7 to $11.
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So it is not just Wake County that's being affected.
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It's all of our state health plan members and ultimately everybody.
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Everybody who has health care. I mean, consolidations affect everyone.
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And if you really feel like you would like to understand consolidation better,
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understand these issues and understand why health care is just becoming more.
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Increasingly a game where there's a couple of handfuls of players that are going
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to own all of the hospitals in the country.
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You know, we're not far from getting to that. But like in North Carolina,
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we're pretty close to getting carved up by maybe four or five hospital systems
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owning everything. Cape Fear is buying everything in Fayetteville.
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So if you want to understand more about that. There is a podcast called Relentless Health Value.
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I really suggest it.
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They talk about it and they're, you know, these folks are super into it in the
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industry. So it can be a little wonky, but I feel like they do a pretty good
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job of making it understandable.
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But they're giving you the real deal from inside healthcare.
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And the main thing I think they do the best, is point out that this is not doctors and nurses.
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They're not getting rich off of this. They're not seeing their fair share of
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any of these wild hospital costs.
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It's administration of these hospitals, and it's something new that we've not experienced.
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But they point out in their podcast that the difficulty people have in taking
19:09
on hospitals is that when we think about hospitals, we think about doctors and nurses.
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And we don't have any beef with them. We are very, very thankful to them.
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And hospitals do important, necessary, good work. My gosh, I think we all want a hospital to be there.
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So we want them to make a profit and be there. But at some point,
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we can't go there just because they're there if it's going to bankrupt our family.
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So it's interesting that you bring that up about doctors, you know, not being the issue.
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Because my dad goes to the VA for most of his care. But he needs to see an outside
19:45
urologist, like a community care, which is like someone in the community,
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you know, a different doctor.
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And we are having a really hard time finding a urologist.
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The one we have scheduled for this month is closing down.
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And I wonder if that's maybe the issue. Because he, I think it was,
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I'm not sure, I think he was part of Duke.
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And so they're closing, so we got to find another one.
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So I don't know, just an aside there. Yeah, I mean, that's actually a good point.
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It also, these consolidations, these mergers, these takeovers also do affect
20:19
people's choice. It used to be that people still wanted to have their choice
20:22
in health care providers.
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You don't even hear people talking about that anymore because you're getting
20:27
your choice dictated to you by your insurance company and or the hospital system.
20:34
That situation is very unsettling, though, to think that you can't find a provider that you need.
20:39
You just think that everything's available, right?
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Maybe that's like the spoils of America. I bet in other countries it's really hard to find people.
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But you just think you can just find any urologist anywhere, and you can't.
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It's really hard to find, especially one that takes VA insurance.
20:59
But so this story says that WakeMed is one of the smallest networks in the state.
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Atrium is one of the biggest in the nation.
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The merger would put Atrium in charge of WakeMed. Under the deal,
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Atrium Health would take control of the nonprofit entity that operates WakeMed.
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In return, Atrium has promised to invest $2 billion in WakeMed expansion.
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The deal would enable Atrium to enter a fast-growing triangle market and compete
21:28
with UNC Health and Duke.
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So what does the WakeMed patient get out of all that besides higher cost?
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Higher cost is going to be a no-brainer. It always happens.
21:40
And so if you're talking about the hospital with kind of the glitziest aura
21:46
around them, I mean, we can't say it enough.
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If you're paying your CEO $26 million as a nonprofit hospital,
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it's not likely you're bringing the cheapest.
22:00
As someone who is a WakeMed patient, I don't care about how fancy my hospital
22:06
is as long as I can get seen.
22:09
And I've been going to WakeMed recently for something. And I mean,
22:13
their facilities are really nice, especially the ones in Cary.
22:16
I know, and all of a sudden WakeMed's acting like they're operating out of a
22:19
MASH unit, you know, like...
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Anyway. Okay, so that's the other problem. The Wake County Board of Commissioners
22:25
said, y'all need to go, the public needs to be heard by WakeMed and Atrium.
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And so they had listening sessions.
22:34
What's the point of that? WakeMed and Atrium have already made up their minds,
22:38
even though UNC was offering double the money, Atrium was that this is going to happen.
22:42
It says they've been talking about this for three years.
22:45
It feels like when you are talking to your parents about, like,
22:49
asking them for something, And your dad tells you to go ask your mom,
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despite dad being the one who has the decision power in that moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
22:59
It says they've been talking about this deal for three years,
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and yet it just popped up to the public like two weeks, two months ago.
23:05
Okay. And so that brought the politicians out.
23:08
And Auditor Bullock said, somebody needs to look into this.
23:11
Okay. And again, I think who better to look into it than the auditor.
23:16
And the auditor's office, as he said, as Auditor Bullock has said,
23:20
is a broader umbrella than people have thought of it before.
23:23
So I think this is absolutely tailor-made for the auditor to step in.
23:28
I think people have said Attorney General Jeff Jackson might take a look at
23:32
this. I think absolutely.
23:34
There's lots of questions that, again, if you listen to this Relentless Health
23:37
Value podcast and listen to some of the attorneys around the country that have
23:42
filed lawsuits over this kind of stuff on behalf of patients.
23:47
There's a good question there about what should Attorney General Jackson be
23:51
looking at for us as the public.
23:54
And finally, the legislature. I'm hearing from our members when we talk about this.
24:00
The first question they ask is, can't the legislature just do something?
24:04
If Wake County is doing this weird thing where they're saying, I'm,
24:08
We don't even have control over this, even though it was on their agenda to approve it.
24:14
If they're doing that and then saying, hey, go talk to the hospitals about it
24:18
instead of we'll sit down and talk to the public.
24:21
We, Wake County Commissioners, will hold listening sessions.
24:24
So, but if you're saying, I mean, I don't know if the legislature has any.
24:28
They could. I guess they could remove the certificate of need from these.
24:31
Well, they could pass laws restricting how consolidations can happen, especially.
24:38
I mean, if you're talking about restricting the ability of counties,
24:43
to assess their property tax the way they want to, you could certainly restrict
24:48
the ability of counties to hand over a hospital system that was built with public funds.
24:54
To a nonprofit from somewhere else.
24:57
So the Wake County Board of Commissioners will reconsider this vote in August.
25:02
So we have some time to continue to affect the.
25:06
Yeah. Well, I mean, everybody, the problem is everybody's pointing at everybody else.
25:11
Somebody should do something is what every public official is saying in this
25:15
situation. Somebody needs to do something. Yeah. Nobody's doing anything.
25:18
So this is our call for all of y'all to do something, because there's a role
25:23
for everybody that we've talked about.
25:25
So elections, well, the primaries come and go on here, but there was a story
25:30
out of your neck of the woods, Sammy, the Western Carolina University area in Colowee,
25:36
that there was a member of the Jackson County Board of Elections alleged that
25:42
State Auditor Dave Bolick and another person had kind of forced the closure of the.
25:49
I kind of pressured them to vote a certain way about closing early voting sites
25:53
for WCU's campus. Yeah. So how do you feel about that as a W?
25:58
Talk to us about your experience.
26:00
And my experience at WCU, because I was there during the 2020 election...
26:05
The professors, they are very encouraging of voting and would also make sure
26:10
that you guys had the opportunity to vote. They weren't telling you what to
26:14
do, but they did encourage you to do your research and get out there and vote.
26:19
Even had some professors who would say, hey, if you can't get into early voting,
26:25
I will give you an excused absence to go on voting day because they think it's very important.
26:30
Jackson County is a very large student population.
26:36
It's one of the primary populations in that area, so they have a very big influence
26:41
in that area, and I think this is kind of trying to push us.
26:47
No, I'm not a student there anymore, but it kind of feels like it's a push to
26:51
keep them from being able to vote.
26:54
I mean, I've only been to Western when we went to do the podcast there.
26:58
And you know that I talked for weeks about how difficult it was to walk just
27:03
up the one hill on that campus.
27:06
But I don't remember, to be honest with you, because I wasn't looking at it
27:09
from that vantage point. Is it.
27:12
Hard to get transportation as a student from point A to point B in that area? Yes.
27:19
So the primary voting site for day of elections is not on campus.
27:25
It's at the Jackson County Community Center, I believe, or at least that's where
27:30
it was, I believe, when I was there because I did have to go vote day of.
27:34
And it's very difficult for students who live on campus and maybe don't have
27:37
a car to get over there, which is why having that early voting site on campus
27:43
at the university center was so important.
27:46
Yeah, I wondered that. Because like at NC State, you could get an Uber pretty easy. Yeah.
27:50
There's not a lot of Ubers there.
27:52
We didn't have Uber at all when I was there. We relied on each other.
27:57
We relied on, at one point, there was something that students had come up with
28:01
that was a way for us to get to and from places that certain students would
28:06
basically say, hey, I'll be a personal Uber driver for,
28:10
Like, if people text this group chat, we'll pick people up, take them where they need to go.
28:15
So we're very resourceful. Yes. Even though it was a thing to have to go off campus.
28:21
Because, like, I know at App, they have the Apple Cart. You can get on for free
28:25
as a student, get on Apple Cart, the public transportation, and get anywhere you need to.
28:29
We have the CatTran, which does, it's like the school bus system that kind of
28:34
gets you from where you need to go and stuff.
28:37
And I know, again, on voting day that they had the buses that would take you
28:42
over there if you had like no other way.
28:44
But sometimes people still have classes and they only come so often to take
28:49
you back and forth to those areas.
28:51
So I think something like this happened at App, though, a few years ago that
28:55
they remember. I remember seeing videos of students walking down the side of
28:58
a road on the side of a mountain to get to a polling place.
29:02
Oh, my gosh. State Auditor Dave Bolick confirmed his office,
29:04
discussed the issue with the board chair.
29:06
Bullock said his office received a call after some board members expressed interest
29:11
in eliminating the Recreation Center as an early voting site.
29:15
He said we expressed concern to the board chair over the elimination of the Rec Center.
29:21
So is the concern that it's hard to get on campus if you're not a student and
29:26
vote, why wouldn't you just have them both available?
29:31
He said concerns include the accessibility of the proposed campus location.
29:36
For elderly voters as well as parking. Which I understand, actually.
29:40
I do understand. If you're an elderly voter, the university would be.
29:43
They're going to get confused in the university center. So why wouldn't you
29:46
just have to. He said the taxpayers of Jackson County are paying for the sites.
29:50
So I think this brings up a common problem on our university campuses.
29:55
And when I was at UNC, we called it, I think they called it town versus gown relations.
30:01
And that the schools dominate these cities and counties so much that they pretty much.
30:08
Yeah, but it seems like from when we were talking to people at Western,
30:12
the community there is much more supportive than the community was to us in Chapel Hill sometimes.
30:19
It's a hot issue. We must have been much a bigger pain than the students are
30:22
in Western Carolina. Yeah, I mean, I could see that. Because they do understand
30:24
that it is one of the biggest employers in Jackson County.
30:30
They have a lot of people in the community around Jackson County work at Western Carolina.
30:37
Although I don't know about Jackson County specifically, but I know that some
30:41
of these counties don't want these young college students making all the decisions with their vote.
30:48
I was going to say, gosh, it's almost like they don't want you to vote.
30:51
That's what it kind of feels like and seems like to the students as well,
30:57
because I have some friends who are still up there and they've made some comments of like,
31:01
do they not want us to be able to access the voting sites because they don't
31:05
think that we're going to support the candidates they want us to support? Who cares?
31:09
But that's kind of weird because when we were up there for the UNC golf tournament
31:13
in that area, they were talking a lot about how the students had been involved.
31:18
A massive help after Hurricane Helena. Like, they jumped into action because the campus was okay.
31:26
Because a lot of them were stranded, and they couldn't leave campus to go home
31:30
and be with their families while things recovered. So they weren't in classes
31:34
because professors were so badly affected.
31:38
Administration, people who worked for the school were so badly affected that
31:41
they were like, okay, we don't have classes. We're stuck here.
31:44
How can we help? I was just kind of impressed with it Because I know we at UNC,
31:49
I'm not sure we were as community minded. That was kind of on us as the students.
31:54
But it does, it felt anyway, talking to those students up there and talking
31:59
to the people that work in the administration at WCU, that there is a kind of
32:03
good connection between them.
32:05
Very large service learning community. They are very passionate about service
32:10
learning and community service in that area.
32:13
I can see that being a problem at Boone, too, because the school is really big, App State.
32:19
And yet the city and the county are probably a similar size or even larger as
32:24
far as like old timers who live there and things like that. So it's probably a battle there, too.
32:29
Probably. And Chapel Hill, I mean, the university just— The employees don't
32:33
even live in Chapel Hill at UNC because they can't afford it.
32:36
I mean, same with somewhat of WC. A lot of those professors do have to travel
32:39
from Waynesville. But UNC is just so large that it would dominate Orange County.
32:45
As a voting bloc, if all the students voted as a bloc. But I don't know.
32:48
It's pretty interesting.
32:50
I always went home to vote. Yeah, I always voted in Western.
32:54
I voted in Western because I can't drive five hours home to vote. I can't do that.
33:00
So that's all I have then. Good discussion there, though. I like talking about
33:03
town-gown relationships.
33:06
My first story at the Daily Tar Heel was about town-gown relationships.
33:11
Relations And so I always kept that in my head,
33:14
So do you have a Gen Z moment this week? Hey, what about Taylor Swift?
33:18
I'll always talk about Taylor Swift. She was at the Toy Story 5 premiere yesterday.
33:23
She actually, I thought it was so cute. She brought her own personal original
33:27
copy of the VHS of the original Toy Story. Had Tom Hanks sign it.
33:32
She performed her new original song for the movie.
33:36
Super cute song. It's very much, Swifties are saying it feels like Country Taylor
33:41
is back and that we might be getting maybe debut Taylor's version at some point.
33:47
So people are very excited about that. She also performed, you've got a friend
33:50
of me with. Let's get some country.
33:52
Randy Newman. Yes, with Randy Newman. And she performed Short People Have No
33:57
Reason to Live, too. It was weird. No, she didn't.
34:02
Randy Newman song. So to bring that full circle, this is definitely one of our
34:08
ADHD episodes, But to bring that full circle, you're talking about Taylor Smith,
34:13
Taylor Smith, Taylor Swift, potentially going kind of maybe back to country Taylor.
34:21
And we just talked about the schools in the mountains.
34:24
There is a group called Cigarettes at Sunset out of its folks who grew up in Boone.
34:30
And they formed this band. And it's kind of...
34:35
Country meets rock meets, it's the alternative, you know, as they say,
34:40
but they call it possum rock.
34:42
So you got to look them up. Cigarettes at sunset.
34:45
And they've got this song called Appalachian Raised. And it is,
34:50
it's just all of a sudden taking everything by storm. But this,
34:53
they're a neat group of young folks out of that Boone area. And so.
34:58
Nice. Cigarettes at sunset. Cigarettes at sunset. I've been meaning to ask you
35:02
what you thought of Sturgill Simpson, since you're a songwriter.
35:06
Sturgill Simpson's really good. Did you see his interaction with Hunter Biden
35:10
yesterday? Uh-uh. Oh, okay.
35:13
Well, Hunter Biden's a huge fan, apparently. So, Hunter Biden,
35:17
by the way, taking over Twitter.
35:20
Who saw that renaissance coming? Did they determine if it's him?
35:24
No, yeah. I mean, he put a video out that was like, this is clearly me. Yeah. Yeah, so.
35:30
Anyway, that's pop culture talk. Oh, the Toy Story 5. So this one's supposed
35:35
to be about Daisy, right? About the girl? Yes.
35:38
Well, no. So Daisy, it's Bonnie. Bonnie, I'm sorry. Bonnie is who Andy gave
35:44
all of his toys to after he grew up and went to college.
35:49
That was in Toy Story 3. And Toy Story 4, Woody decides that he's going to live
35:55
on the playground to be played with. Yeah.
35:58
So he's kind of out there with the toys that don't have owners.
36:02
Toy Story 4 was kind of dark. It was a little dark. I feel like this one's going
36:06
to be even darker because we got a lily pad, which is basically an iPad that
36:12
is turning the children into iPad kids and they're no longer playing with the toys. Oh, no.
36:17
So the toys got to rise up against the Internet and fix it.
36:21
Interesting. Please do that in real life as well. How are all these toys still together?
36:26
There's no way. Actually, I still have all of my toys from my childhood sitting in the attic.
36:33
Maybe they play with each other. I mean, that's what me and my brother like to think.
36:37
We like to think that our little Toy Story toys, because we still have our Toy
36:41
Story toys, too. He has an original Buzz, an original Woody that was released
36:46
when the first one came out.
36:48
Well, to infinity and beyond. Just like this podcast, apparently.
36:54
We almost got matching tattoos of Toy Story. We decided for Lilo and Stitch
36:58
instead. That's cute. So play my song.
37:08
All right. Last week's question was kind of obscure, and this one may be even more.
37:13
My question this week is, what's something that they got to fix?
37:17
Do you all understand what I'm saying? Like, something that needs to be fixed,
37:21
in America, in the world. The powers that be need to fix? Yeah,
37:23
they got to fix this, right?
37:25
Mine is the whole situation about Internet passwords and how things are always
37:30
getting compromised and you have to change your password every day on every device.
37:35
And can we figure out some way to not have to do any of that?
37:38
It's so frustrating, even when, because we have the passkey thing that we can
37:41
use where you save your passwords. And I swear, I don't know what I do,
37:45
but even though they're saved. They never work. They don't work.
37:49
And you wind up with like five different versions in that thing.
37:52
And we got to figure this out. It needs to be like connected to your eyeball
37:56
or something. And they just know that it's you. And yes, let's go with it.
38:01
Or maybe no password at all. Maybe since everybody knows our password,
38:05
let's just make everything open.
38:09
So what's something they got to fix? Anybody have anything? Mine's a little
38:13
more mundane than that, but at the same time, incredibly important.
38:17
They got to fix mental health resources. Yeah, that's a good one.
38:21
I mean, there's not a day that goes by that you don't hear about something either
38:24
locally or bigger than that, where someone who needs those resources maybe could
38:30
have had a different outcome. But also just mental health care should be standard.
38:35
Yeah. That should be one of the things that comes along with your annual physical.
38:40
I wonder if people are, you know, we talked about turning to AI for things like that.
38:44
Oh, so scary. I wonder if there's a possibility somewhere down the road where
38:50
that's a viable alternative, though.
38:53
Well, no. No? No.
38:56
Because you can't control, you can't fully control what's going to be said to
39:01
somebody. Well, I've seen things. We all need therapy. Yeah.
39:06
Yeah. I mean, but if it makes it, even if it's like a soulless robot, at least it can help you.
39:12
The soulless robot apparently is telling people in some cases to hurt themselves.
39:17
Yeah. Well, we got to fix that.
39:20
We got to fix that part. But the thing is, they can also not,
39:23
a soulless robot can't express sympathy or empathy for these situations. We can teach you to.
39:28
I don't like that. I think loneliness is a big cause.
39:32
What do they call it? The loneliness epidemic. Right now, it's primarily the
39:36
male loneliness epidemic. Women aren't very lonely. We're very happy being alone.
39:42
We're enjoying that. I do think men are going, yeah, I think men are going through it.
39:46
As the male on this podcast, thank you for seeing me. You're welcome.
39:52
No, I mean, I'm sure. Yeah. But I find like my son, he finds ways to connect
39:58
with people all the time, like through the gym or through sports or he's taking up pickleball a lot.
40:04
I do think personally that there should be more men do need to open up a little
40:09
bit more and be able to talk about their mental health struggles because it
40:12
does seem shamed in our society to talk about that.
40:15
And maybe that's coming with the younger generations. But I know somewhat my age and stuff.
40:20
My brother is still I've told him a couple of times.
40:24
I'm like, I think you could benefit from some therapy just because I believe
40:27
everyone can benefit from some therapy, especially when I hear some of his music.
40:31
He listens to a lot of indie alternative, Midwest emo is what his stuff is called.
40:36
And I listen to the words of some of those songs and I'm like, are you okay?
40:41
Genuine question. Are you okay? Are you okay? You got to listen to my possum rock. I'm telling you.
40:46
It's just happy. He's just like, no, it's fine. This is how I do my therapy.
40:50
And I'm like, I don't like that, but okay.
40:53
Sammy, what do they need to fix? What do they need to fix? There's a lot of
40:56
things that they need to fix. Yeah.
40:59
Right now, because I can talk about this until I'm blue in the face,
41:02
ticket prices, concert ticket prices, fix it.
41:05
There is no reason that it should be $100 for me to sit on the lawn and listen to music.
41:12
Because that's what it's been this summer. I've been looking at lawn ticket
41:15
prices for concerts, like $100.
41:18
So I know that a lot of that is probably, you know, the corporate ticket structure
41:23
and Ticketmaster and everything.
41:25
But I bet it's part of it is the artists, too, because they don't make as much
41:29
from CDs and streaming as they used to.
41:33
See, the thing is, artists are also another thing that they've been doing.
41:36
They're canceling tours left and right because they have like blue dot syndrome
41:41
is what people are calling it, which is they're obsessed with how many blue
41:45
dots are left after pre-sales and stuff.
41:48
So they're canceling tours because they're like, well, I didn't sell enough
41:51
tickets that I wanted to.
41:53
I didn't sell as many as I wanted to. See all those empty seats? No one wants to see me.
41:57
There are people who want to see you. Again, the ticket prices are so insane
42:01
that people can't afford to go to these concerts. Yeah, if they care about the
42:05
Blue Dots, make your tickets $12. Yeah. Or go to the Cat's Cradle or something.
42:09
I was going to say, they could start playing smaller venues.
42:11
Those were the good days. Yep.
42:13
I saw Alex Warren, and his tour was called Cheaper Than Therapy.
42:18
I got front middle section seats. It was cheaper than therapy.
42:22
I genuinely paid less for that concert. And that's like the only concert that
42:26
I've had that experience with was Alex Warren.
42:28
And that's because he sets very specific prices and makes sure,
42:32
I think for that one, all of the tickets were like under $100.
42:35
All original tickets were under $100. I love how they tie into the mental health thing. Yeah. Yeah.
42:40
Okay. All right. Great tour. I was told I couldn't talk about health care.
42:46
Yeah, I did. I didn't tell you the caveat. You can't say health care.
42:49
Although everyone agrees that they need to fix health care for sure. There you go. Yeah.
42:54
So I didn't say it, but you did. Okay. So I'm happy it was set.
42:58
Okay. No, actually, I do have one. Chords.
43:00
IPhone cords. Like, not just iPhone. Cell phone cords. Why do I have to buy 30 of them?
43:07
Can we not figure something out to where devices all have the same cord yeah
43:12
and it's like you think they do in europe yeah well i think there's been a push
43:16
to go to this usbc which the,
43:20
phone i mean the phones are now doing on but but you're right and they die like
43:24
all that like the cords will just they just break yeah stop working yes that's
43:28
why i need to fix all that why don't we have like wireless charging everywhere
43:31
you know yeah i rely on wireless charging a lot yeah,
43:35
Well, that's our show this week.
43:37
We got a little crazy in this amazing studio of ours, but thanks for joining us.