The Think Tank with Mike O'Neil

Pat McMahon joins the Think Tank as we celebrate our 300th broadcast. What more could you want, the man is an actual rock star!

If you grew up here and are of a certain age, you knew him as one of many key characters on Wallace and Ladmo, the nation’s longest-running locally produced television show (someone counted that he did over 100 characters). And if you came here in the 70s 80s or 90s, you probably knew him primarily as a mainstay in Phoenix talk radio.

These titles barely scratch the surface of what Pat McMahon has done in this community since he started performing here in the 1950s and why, if you go to a play downtown, you might just encounter a statue of him out in front of the building. Pat is an unlimited source of stories gleaned from these experiences. We’ll just get out of the way and let Pat share some of his best stories, including that stint as a rock star, during the full hour in this week’s Think Tank.

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Not much to talk about this week, just the Senate voting on the impeachment of the President of the United States a day after he gave a State of the Union speech, and Iowa voters caucused in the first actual voting in the 2020 Presidential election. Oh, and they screwed up the counting big time.

Chuck Coughlin and Mike O'Neill will try to figure out if they can find something to talk about in this week’s Think Tank.

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Despite paying almost double what any other country in the world pays for healthcare, the US has declining measures on most healthcare attributes. We are unhealthy, are prone to heart disease and cancer, and are increasingly overweight. And an increasing number of countries, including those that spend a fraction of what we do on healthcare, are passing us by.

Could what we eat have anything to do with it? There is increasing evidence that it does, yet our physicians receive almost no training or education in the area of nutrition. We're joined by Dr. Siri Chand Khalsa and Francine Hardaway join us to discuss.

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This week’s Think Tank has assembled a crack team of data nerds, including your host Dr. Mike O'Neill, to discuss long-term changes in the Arizona political landscape which define what Arizona is politically and what it is likely to become. Joining us are Tony Sissons (owner and president of Research Advisory Services in Phoenix), Paul Bentz (Senior Vice President for Research and Strategy for Arizona Highground), and Garrett Archer (political reporter for KNXV Channel 15 in Phoenix). 

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This week’s Think Tank discusses a myriad of issues concerning women in the work place. Our guests: Laraine Rodgers (who was a Chief Information Officer for both public agencies and private companies), Tammy Caputi (a small business owner who is currently running for a seat on the Scottsdale City Council), Kathy Sacks (a former business owner and has been involved in both media and technology startups) and Rep. Athena Salman (an Arizona State Representative from Tempe involved with several Arizona nonprofits.She was also one of nine women to come forward with sexual harassment allegations against former Arizona House member Don Shooter, who was subsequently expelled from the House).

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Until this year, our Predictions show was bundled with our Year in Review Awards Show. But the show was too much fun and we had too much material for a single show, so this year we devote a full hour to predictions, both local and national, for the upcoming year. Our panelists from last week’s Year in Review return for a crack at predictions: sometimes turncoat Republican Chuck Coughlin,  trouble-making attorney Tom Ryan and reformed politician turned consultant Jack Lunsford.

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Join The Think Tank for our annual review of the past year (and this time, the past decade). Our panelists are sometimes turncoat Republican Chuck Coughlin, trouble-making attorney Tom Ryan and reformed politician turned consultant Jack Lunsford. They join Mike O’Neil in a fast-paced discussion of the biggest Arizona and national political stories.

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Republican Arizona Governor Fife Symington and Democratic Mayor Paul Johnson join consultant Chuck Coughlin and Mike to engage in a wide ranging discussion in this week’s Think Tank.

We cover life after politics, their personal friendship, and their post-political careers (they each have them). We also discuss charter schools (which first became a big issue in the state during Gov. Symington’s term of office) and a few other political issues. 

This is a "Best Of" episode of The Think Tank. It originally aired on September 22nd, 2019.

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The word “socialist” is thrown around in our politics as an epithet, reflecting a grade school level (“socialism=bad”) understanding intended to end a discussion rather than to further it. Mike and returning guest Francine Hardaway have both spent a lot of time traveling to countries with a wide array of economic and political forms. In this week’s Think Tank we discuss some of these, with an emphasis on how these countries actually function, not just what they say they are.

This is a "Best Of" episode of The Think Tank. This episode originally aired on November 17th, 2019. 

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In the final segment of the December 15th, 2019 edition of The Think Tank, host Mike O’Neil takes on the “OK, Boomer!” meme.

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