Gray Matters Radio With Michael DeVine

The longer we are in Silverthorne, the more we begin to realize how special of a place it really is. Kicking things off in Part 2 is Sami Spezio and Dominic Buccilla of Cannagroup where they talk about why they have gotten involved in the Silverthorne Rail Jam and what the state of Colorado means to their business plans. Next up we have event organizer and USASA free style ski coach Teddy Goggin stop by to talk about year 2 of the event and the psychology behind coaching future olympic athletes. Last but surely not least, we have event coordinator for the city of Silverthorne Sydney Schwab stop by to discuss why the town has gotten behind the rail jam and how the importance of community guides many of the events for the town of Silverthorne
Gray Matters Radio with Michael DeVine is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts. Listen to new episodes of Gray Matters Radio With Michael DeVine every Monday.

Join us for part 1 of our 3 part series live at the Silverthorne Rail Jam Presented By Arapahoe Basin. We get things started when event organizers Kevin Sayler & Zach Griffon dropped by the studio to talk about the rail jam, what the sport of snowboarding means to them, and why Z Griff carries a samurai sword with him. Michael and Dom are recovering from a...ahem...busy first night in Silverthorne. Last but not least, we have 2022 & 2026 future Olympic snowboarders Makai & Callum Gelvezon talking about how sibling rivalry on the slopes fuels their success.

As always I am joined by the Armchair QB himself Bill Reed to help keep me in-check and firmly in The Gray. Gray Matters Radio with Michael DeVine is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts. Listen to new episodes of Gray Matters Radio With Michael DeVine every Monday.

In case you have been living under a rock the past week, you may have heard something about the Mueller Report being delivered to the Attorney General & the findings did not implicate President Trump of any wrong doing. Even before the report was released people were salivating about what it would say but count me as one person who was thinking the report would not make a difference at all. Why do you ask? Simple, regardless of what that report said each side was going to reject the data and evidence and continue to believe the same thing.

Since it came out that Trump did not do anything wrong, I knew that Democrats were going to say the report was fixed or still somehow believe that he was guilty. If the opposite happened, then Republicans would have rejected the evidence and said that it was a fake witch hunt & failed attempt to impeach the president.

That is the world that we live in...a post facts world where people deny evidence that contradicts what they want to believe. We literally live in a world where liberals and conservatives live in an alternate reality with its own data, evidence and rules. And we wonder why we are gridlocked as a country!

How do we get everyone to come together when the media and political campaigns are basically trying to divide us and reject the reality that doesn't support what they want you to believe? As a fellow researcher & professional, we have failed in using science and research to talk to people and explain the world around then. In fact we have flat out failed in talking to people in a way that actually makes them want to talk with us.

So what do we do? According to our guest Dan Evans of the non-profit organization People of Reason & Progress, maybe we should do less talking and more listening. Instead of trying to change people's opinions maybe we shoudl start asking what they believe and why they believe that...and leave it at there. If we are going to change the polarization and divide in this country, we are going to need different ways of talking to each other and these suggestions are the best place to start.

Dan Evans is the chairmen of PORP, a nonprofit organization committed to supplanting unreasonable political action with ethical, evidence-based discourse that benefits the public interest. We fight for science, data, and facts through education, collaboration, and coordination. We are thrilled to have Dan on the show to help guide us on how to change the dialogue in this country.

As always I am joined by the Armchair QB himself Bill Reed to help keep me in-check and firmly in The Gray. Gray Matters Radio with Michael DeVine is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts. Listen to new episodes of Gray Matters Radio With Michael DeVine every Monday.

Anybody that knows me well enough understands that skiing is one of my passions in life. It isn't just because I am an adrenaline junkie (which I am) but more because it is the only sport that gives me the ability to push myself beyond my comfort zone and whether I succeed or bite it hard, I grow exponentially as a person.

Snow sports is a unique sport that you have to embrace failing as a necessary part of getting better. If you are afraid of failure, then you will never do anything to push yourself and will never learn what you need to learn to get better. It is something so pure and so simple but something any snowboarder or skier will tell you you must learn how to be okay with. This dynamic is very personal to me because I hear in my office every day a generation of children who are so scared of failing that they will avoid doing anything that might give them a chance of failure.

I don't know about you, but in the world that I live in it is impossible to grow as a human being and get ahead in life if you avoid doing anything that might give you a chance at failure. This is why skiing plays such an important role in my life and why I tend to gravitate to people who understand what this sport can do for the soul. Its not by chance that I started out the blog for this week's podcast with these points because I think we have a serious problem in America that unless addressed, will be a problem that prevents this country from being what it should. If we truly want to Make America Great Again, we have to address the huge problem of people being petrified of failure. 

Not only that, but we have a huge problem with people being pulled apart and polarized in every facet of life. We are so divided as a country that I think it is more difficult to find any area of life right now that brings people together. That is where snow sports again is the model to the rest of the country. Just go to any local ski & snowboard slope and you will see parents and children happily shredding together. Even teenagers and their parents...shocking I know! You will see groups of kids pumping each other up, encouraging each other, pushing each other, and being outside with each other. Not only that, a group of teenagers shredding on the mountain after school & on the weekend is too busy to get themselves into trouble with drugs & other stupid things. 

That is why we have brought in this weeks special guests Kevin Sayler & Teddy Goggin who are putting on The Silverthorne April First Friday Rail Jam presented by Arapahoe Basin. These are two guys who completely understand the role that skiing and snow-boarding can play in a persons life and decided to bring together the community of Silverthorne, Colorado to celebrate the hard work of the snow sports community. Join us as we talk about how snow sports can be a valuable tool that teaches confidence, helps overcome adversity, brings parents and children together, and creates a community that brings people together instead of pulling them apart. If that wasn't amazing enough, it also gets people outside exercising and interacting with nature which research has shown time and time again is the easiest things people can do to overcome depression and anxiety.

All the necessary ingredients to make a country great again. Funny how the secret to bringing the country back together was found by a bunch of skiers and snowboarders in Colorado...who would have though it?

As always I am joined by the Armchair QB himself Bill Reed to help keep me in-check and firmly in The Gray. Gray Matters Radio with Michael DeVine is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts. Listen to new episodes of Gray Matters Radio With Michael DeVine every Monday.

I remember in college sitting around with my friends and talking about what it would be like if marijuana were legalized. Most of our visions centered around going to the local mini-mart and buying a pack of Marlboro Green. How far off could we have been? Just go to any state where marijuana has been legalized for medical or recreational use and you will quickly see that this business is not only here to stay, but whoever was able to get in on it is going to make lot's of money.

But with all of that money has come the very corporate practices that most marijuana patients/enthusiasts are completely against...in fact the yin to their yang. In my own home state of Ohio, we had a legalization bill voted down not because the people didn't want to legalize it, but rather the people behind the bill wanted to have a monopoly where they were the only ones allowed to grow and sell it.

Fast forward a few years and Ohio passed medical marijuana legislation but ask anyone who wanted to open their own dispensary and they quickly found out that corporate interests in the form of outside money and previously owned dispensaries were the only people having their applications approved. Not only that ,just the other day there was an advertisement from former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner about a marijuana industry seminar that helped people invest in the marijuana industry. My how far we have come!

If this wasn't enough to show how corporate interests and monopolies are taking over the industry, the financial banking companies have started taking advantage of dispensary, growers, and merchandisers in the industry in the form of only offering high risk billing and payment solutions. This comes in the form of outlandish credit card processing fees and banking fees which costs these companies hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Its monopolistic because the same companies that refuse to process their payments are the same companies starting high risk processing companies leaving them no options but to take the higher rates.

This is going on across the country and the hypocrisy of politicians who were completely against it 5 years ago are the very same people now allowing these practices to happen. The only thing that changed was the fact that this a billion dollar industry now and the special interest groups have now gotten politicians in their back pocket.

To help us discuss this topic we are inviting Sami Spezio & Dominic Buccilla from Gray Matters Radio's new sponsor Canna Group . The Canna Group LLC was founded on a platform of 30+ years operational experience as consultants in the merchant services industry. Our Mission is to consult and empower business within the dynamically evolving cannabis industry to understand how implement electronic payments into their operation plan. We offer expert knowledge on the ever-changing laws that allow all cannabis businesses, from seed to retail, to accept and utilize debit-based card transactions in a safe environment that will eliminate the risk of cash-based business.
As always I am joined by my co-host the Armchair QB himself Bill Reed to help keep me sane and safely in the gray. So help us tackle the problem of addiction by listening and sharing our show, airing every Monday exclusively on The Reporters Network

Ever since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled her Green New Deal, politicians and pundits have been either saying it is a communist trojan horse or progressive thinking that will save the planet. In my years as a therapist, whenever you see that big of a spread between people's interpretation of something you know the truth lies somewhere in the middle. 

With something as complicated as the Green New Deal, we decided that if we were going to take this to The Gray, we needed someone who actually understands history and macro economic theory. So we once again enlist the knowledge of The Professor, Richard DeVine to help us understand the economic feasibility of the Green New Deal and what the effects of a 80% tax rate would be on people making more than 10 million dollars. 

Since The Professor actually lived through real communism during the 60s, we asked him to weigh in on any fear that he has about The Green New Deal and what he really thinks of the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

Joining me in the studio as always is The Armchair QB himself, Bill Reed, to keep me honest and firmly in The Gray. Gray Matters Radio airs every Monday and is exclusively distrubuted through The Reporters Network.

Anybody that has worked in the addiction industry long enough knows very well that the most important part of treatment/recovery isn’t treatment itself but rather the aftercare. That may surprise many of you considering how much emphasis we have on treatment programs and the costs associated with treatment, but the truth is that real recovery begins and ends with the plan after they finish treatment.

It makes all the sense in the world if you think about it because many of us look at addiction as one part genetics and one part the enviroment someone lives in. How successful could someone be with staying sober if once they get out of treatment they go right back into the same environment that helped contribute to their addiction to begin with? It is almost impossible.

While people who come from a family of means have it much easier to change their environment, people who tend to be poorer and live in lower socioeconomic areas have much less control over changing their environment. That is pretty obvious but you know what factor nullifies your ability for a good aftercare program even if you come from money? Try changing your life and environment around when you have a felony on your record. How exactly does a felony make staying sober more difficult? Easy, with a felony on your record it is almost impossible to get an apartment lease, a good paying job, student loans, etc. I have had clients who come from great families and have totally turned their lives around but still couldn’t get an apartment or a student loan until their felony was expunged from their record.

It is almost impossible to turn your life around when you have such limited options on where you live and how much money you can make at work. This is why most people with felonies on their record go right back into the same environment and will eventually start using again. What is most concerning is we are seeing people with advanced college degrees such as computer science, falling into the cycle of addiction because of the nature of their work. These employees looking to get an edge turn to illegal stimulants which in turn leads to legal trouble because of their habit. Once they have that felony drug or other felonies on their record they can’t get past HR for the big companies because of their legal problems.This is why we are throwing out there that perhaps one of the most impactful & easiest actions that we can take to tackle the addiction problem is criminal justice reform with drug offenders.

To help us dive into this topic we are welcoming our special guest Juan Garcia from the Cornbread Hustle Employment Agency in Dallas, Texas. Juan Garcia is a prison reform advocate and a recruiter for Cornbread Hustle, a staffing agency for second chances. Juan has first hand knowledge of state and private prisons and the struggles of gaining employment after being incarcerated. Juan was sentenced to eight years in prison at the age of 19. Today, he spends most of his time advocating for second chances and putting efforts towards reducing recidivism.

As always I am joined by my co-host the Armchair QB himself Bill Reed to help keep me sane and safely in the gray. So help us tackle the problem of addiction by listening and sharing our show, airing every Monday exclusively on The Reporters Network

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that America is hopelessly polarized right now. America is stuck in a bad marriage between Democrats and Republicans and they are putting the children (i.e. us) in the middle. As a result each side is so dug in that they are waging a gang style war using rhetoric and division as their weapon of choice.

While their tactics are great for votes and ratings, the collateral damage to the country is painfully clear. How many families and friendships have been torn apart because of politics the past 6 years? How many people do you know have talked about how stressed, angry, & anxious they are about our current political climate?

If that wasn't bad enough, just this week we had two incidents where we had a US Coast Guard Officer planing a terrorist attack on liberal media personalities and politicians and we also had a college student beaten up at UC Berkley because they were recruiting for their college conservative group.

Things are not good and something bad is going to happen unless we take action now. So what exactly do we do about it? That is why I named this episode We the People...We The Problem...We The Solution. We can't be naieve and think we can just join hands and sing out way out of this. The thing that we have to realize is that we are all being taken advantage of by the political parties and allowing ourselves to be turned on each other. They are not going to change because what they are doing is working and they don't seem to really see or care about the collateral damage that it is causing.

So that means it is on us to change the narrative in this country and to take control of the situation. On this episode of Gray Matters we discuss where we are at as country and while we didn't create the problem it is our responsibility to clean up the mess. The solutions is so close but yet so far away...but there is a solution in here. Michael & Bill think they laid out the road map that we all need to follow, the only thing you have to do is listen in and become part of the solution. Or write in to us to say why we are wrong and what we need to do instead but that is okay too.

Joining me in the studio as always is the ArmchairQb Billy Reed. You can listen to Gray Matters Radio exclusively on The Reporters Network airing every Monday.

For far too long, the short comings of our mental health and addiction industries were only talked about in the counselor's office. Usually it was a conversation with a parent discussion their frustration at insurance not approving treatment, them finding the right program but them not taking insurance and not being able to afford it, or them struggling to fund treatment again when it had previously failed multiple times over.

These conversations weren't just with clients, but counselors and other mental health professionals also quietly lamenting about their dissatisfaction with the treatment industry and often times the downright shady practices that many people in this industry are on a daily basis. So why is it that you are really only hearing about this right now? That is because most people complaining about it are people that actually work for a treatment facility or an insurance company and them speaking out against it means jeopardizing their career. Not only that, but many clinicians rly on referrals in this industry so by speaking out against them they are jeopardizing their own practices. Lastly, the fear that if clinicians start speaking out, particularly about the short comings and lack of effectiveness of the treatment industry, it would make people lose confidence in treatment and not seek it out. Well that and that if they speak out against how ineffective it really is they will dry up their revenue source which is a major no-no in business.

So as a result, nobody has really said anything but I think we can't sit idly by anymore. Despite all of the money we have thrown at substance abuse and suicide prevention, the rates keep going up and the access to care and affordability of care is getting worse along with it. In a nutshell, what we are doing to prevent it isn't working and our ways of treating it have not gotten any better. In good conscience I can't sit by anymore and not call out the obvious...which is our system is broken and we have to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves what are we doing that is wrong and what do we have to do to fix it.

This episode is my attempt to start this conversation and to layout where the problems are and what are the suggestions that I have to fix it. While this article is sure to stoke some debate, I hope it makes us all look in the mirror and make some real changes. Joining me in the studio as always is my co-host Bill “Billy Ray” Reed of the armchairqb.org.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

One of the things that gets under my skin more than anything is hearing politicians & media personalities talking about what is wrong with healthcare when they clearly have no idea what the hell they are talking about. They come up with solutions that are either too simplistic or radical with neither having any clue of working let alone getting passed. The problem that creates this issue is that too many clinicians or people who work in healthcare are too afraid to lose their job or lose clients if they come out and start speaking out publically about healthcare. In that vacuum the only voices we hear are people who don’t have a clue and/or are biased because they are getting paid by lobbyist to keep the system in chaos which ensures that things stay the same.
The only way any of this changes is if people who actually work in healthcare actually start speaking up and that is exactly what we are doing here at Gray Matters. In Part 2 of our 3 part series on healthcare we attempt to have a hard conversation about how hard it is to discuss having healt insurance but feeling like crap saying how bad yours sucks when so many people don’t have it at all. But the truth is that so many people with insurance pay incredibly high prices for their care, have insurance companies dictate what prescriptions you can take, and will have to take months to pay off your co-pay from surgeries or other procedures.
What happens when you have a doctor, counselor, retired hospital executive, and chemical company team lead on a podcast to talk about healthcare? You get all four of them saying their healthcare sucks and wondering if the only people who have good healthcare are the people in congress and millionaires…ironically the majority of people who are in congress and running our healthcare system. Joining us in the studio this week is special guest Dr. Eric Larson, M.D. who is the host of The Paradocs Podcast. Dr. Eric Larson is an anesthesiologist who is in private practice in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a clinical assistant professor in anesthesiology at Michigan State University College of Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the Kent County Medical Society.
Also joining me in the studio as always is my co-host “The Arm Chair QB” Bill Reed owner of the armchairqb blog & our healthcare & political correspondant Richard “The Professor” DeVine. Tired of being lied to and having healthcare that sucks? Listen to this can’t miss episode of Gray Matters Radio