Many years back, and I mean many years back in the late 80’s and early 90’s I worked in the radio broadcasting industry in Southern California: Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and an area known as “The Inland Empire”... it’s sort of a “shadow market” of the Los Angeles area which we didn’t particularly love.  It encompasses the San Bernardino/ Riverside areas of Southern California. It was there during the early 90’s that I was actually on a morning show for a couple-a-three years. It was a rock station that rocked a little bit harder than your average rock station.  

We played the traditional hard rock and classic rock like AC/DC, Aerosmith, Rush, Van Halen, Zeppelin, Metallica etc. and all the hair bands from the 80’s like  Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, White Snake, Motley Crue, Twisted Sister...

Specific to the early 90’s you had bands like:Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Radio Head, Alice In Chains, Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots… We even played  Iron Maiden… yup.  But not in the morning.  Can you imagine waking up to Iron Maiden?

I bring up all these artists and bands to give you a flavor for the kind of rock station I worked for and the core of that audience which is pretty hard rockin’ head banging blue collar folks.  We targeted Males 18 - 34 and 25 - 49 which shouldn’t really surprise you considering once again we’re dialing it all the way back to the early 90’s.

My guest is my former morning show partner who went on to host that morning show after I got fired for my big fat mouth for 25 years.  That’s a pretty unusual achievement in radio back then as radio personalities tended to move from market to market either up the food chain or down depending on your ratings, etc. 

We talk about how radio and the way we consume music and talk radio has changed so completely since then.  I wanna say that the way we listen to music and talk radio has changed in that time as drastically as Uber and Lyft changed the transportation and taxi industry only the Uber phenomenon happened over a much shorter period of time that it seemed so much more revolutionary but the change is still pretty staggering .

We talk about the Portable People Meter or “PPM” which is device like a pager and a radio ratings system developed by Arbitron otherwise known as the Nielson Ratings… remember them?  Maybe you were a “Nielson Family” at one point. Still around.

It’s not going all the way back to the days where we gathered around the radio and stared at it while voices came out of it nor is it George Lucas’ American Graffiti, but it is going back a little way as we reminisce about radio on the Modern Moron... 

AC/DC Back In Black

Motley Crue - Kickstart My Heart

Pearl Jam - Even Flow

Iron Maiden - Run To The Hills

Rush - Spirit of The Radio

we b.s. about the lack of diversity in the party that claims to embrace diversity and the leading candidate, “huggin’ Joe Biden” we also talk about the old news of Trump saying he would look at any “dirt” provided by another country on a competing candidate for president and how Trump said in front of the reporter’s corps that he was “the most transparent president in the history of the country”.  Right.  In one moment I appreciate what I call his honest answer and in the next I think he's nothing but a liar.  Talk about a moron.

We discuss briefly how the kids love Bernie Sanders and end with an ironic story of the Senator’s visit to the tomb and church of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals and the story involves a pet!  

I hope you find it interesting and thank you again for listening to the Modern Moron!

One of the great things about podcasting is that I get the final say as to what goes on each episode, yay!  One of the not so great things is that I get the final say as to what goes on each episode.  If you think it’s good, then Yay for both of us. If you think it stinks then it’s on me. But what one person thinks is good another person thinks it stinks… like sound effects for example.

Or, the first ten minutes of this episode.  The Senator is back and in the first ten minutes he makes a feeble attempt at an apology, he tries to hide behind his trip to New York to visit his daughter as an excuse for not taking 45 minutes to record … from New York.  The Moron even takes a phone call while he’s supposed to be recording this episode. It turns out to be one of our firefighter guests which he refers to as a “former contestant.” What a jackass.

You may not find this entertaining.  You may say to yourself, “I don’t need to hear two old, irrelevant jackasses arguing, with one screaming and the other in denial.  If I want that crap, I can watch “The Real Housewives” or Jerry Springer or Face The Nation or Meet the Press. So if you want to hear me curse and berate the Senator for being an irresponsible flake and not owning his commitments, then let it roll.

However if you’d rather hear what two Moron’s have to say about Women’s World Cup Soccer and Title 9 which addresses sexual discrimination under educational programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.

If you’d rather hear a little about backpacking the Lake Tahoe Rim Trail in California, The Pacific Crest Trail which stretches up the Sierra’s from Mexico to Canada and what the Japanese call “Forest Bathing” and what it can do for your soul and spirit...

If you’d rather hear that than me scream at the Senator forward in about 11 minutes and you should be good.  Either way, thank you for listening to this celebrity-less podcast. Ready... Shoot... Aim.

My guest is radio personality in the Boulder, Ft. Collins and Denver area and stand up comedian Christine Lederman.  We talk about her afternoon drive shift in Denver and Boulder Colorado and what a great sports town Denver is.  I get so excited about it that I refer to Colorado as a city. I have a Larry Walker story to tell from the Colorado Rockies.  She also talks about her time in the hotel industry where she used to book hotels for paranormal Ghost hunters… seriously. That’s the kind of top shelf entertainment you get on this program.  She also used to book rooms for and stay at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado which is where Steven King wrote and Stanley Kubrick shot “The Shining”.

Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron!  I’m flying solo today and it will probably show. I talk about Donald Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom and a welcome he might have been able to see as he flew in.  Then I cover an article in USA Today that discusses tips on getting the most out of your social security… that’s right in our wheelhouse… and I wrap up with a couple of recommendations on Netflix.  And I start out by discussing the invasiveness of Alexa, Cortana, Siri, etc. but mainly Alexa… It’s a summer time grab bag! Thanks for listening!

I’ve had way too many occupations for a moron my age and a good number of those jobs were in the Los Angeles area.  I catch up with a long time friend of over 20 years who is originally from Boston. In this episode we do some catching up and talk about her son who has finished his junior year of high school and has already visited some college campuses.  You probably know through your own kids or grandchildren even that this process starts waaaaayyyyy sooner than it did when we were contemplating college.

I mispronounce Bass- achussetes, we hit the term “Hobo - phobic”, how kids have been and always will be embarrassed and ashamed by the mere presence of us parents, the threats we parents make to get our children to behave… there’s a discussion about my intense sweet tooth and a couple of places in New York where you can get really decadent milkshakes.  Also, my guest shares her interesting encounter with Snoop Dogg. You don’t wanna miss that right? That’s why I put it at the end! Do you think I’m some kind of Moron?

What do you do when you can’t count on a moron to keep a commitment?  You get a 10 year-old to replace him.  My daughter and her friend, with mommy’s consent, sit down with the Moron to examine some of the challenges ten years on this planet can bring.  We talk about birthday parties… we talk about what it’s like to lose a pet, what it’s like to have a ceremony for a pet and then rapidly switch to the subject of cartoons and life before Cartoon Network.  We have a discussion about boys and I’m not sure where they’re at on that subject at 10 years old but there is some bleeping of names to protect the innocent and NOT because they curse like sailors, but it might be fun to imagine that when you hear it.  We wrap up by discussing their parallel acting careers and things get a little chippy.

Hold on to your protons… because in this edition of the Modern Moron we change our initials MM to Miraculous Madduri.  If you remember some time ago I interviewed Achyntia Madduri who has a PhD in Electrical engineering. His work involved independent solar grids that could be deployed to disaster victims.  Well in this show we’re going to talk to the block that he is a chip off of as they say, his father, Dr. Somayazulu Madduri.

He is a scientist as well and is part of a breakthrough in superconductors and superconductivity.  What the heck is that? Don’t ask me, but we are going to ask him to dumb it down or Moron it down for us.  To do their thing, superconductors need very high pressure and very low temperatures, minus 300 degrees almost, because they generate a lot of heat.  Well Dr. Zulu, as they call him, has been part of a team that has figured out how to do it at almost room temperature. And that’s a very big breakthrough… how big?  I can’t put it into perspective but we talk about Star Wars for a second so that’s big enough for me.  I’ll also include a link to a very short straightforward article about his work.

We also talk about Hinduism and bringing up children in a household that embraces both science and religion as part of the same journey.

You’re going to hear words you don't’ normally hear on this program.  Here are a few… maybe you can use them on your daily crossword puzzles...

Lanthanum - A chemical element. It is a soft, silvery-white metal that tarnishes rapidly when exposed to air and is soft enough to be cut with a knife.  It’s used for flint in lighters and is used in the semiconductors in Dr. Zulu’s experiments.

“Dynamo” which is not only a way to describe the Senator’s personality but is literally a generator for turning mechanical energy into electrical energy.

Epistemology - the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.

Upanishads - are ancient Sanskrit texts that contain some of the central philosophical concepts and ideas of Hinduism, some of which are shared with religious traditions like Buddhism.

See how much benefit you’re getting from making the Modern Moron part of your day?

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-evidence-superconductivity-room-temperature.html

In this episode we have our first 3-way!  The Senator and I interview a mutual friend and our second retired firefighter.  This gentleman was an Emergency Medical Technician and Ambulance driver for his department. We find out the difference between an EMT and a full Paramedic which is interesting to me but apparently boring to the Senator as he takes over the interview and instead we hear about a firehouse prank and about our guest’s successful battle with cancer… we even tease him about his cancer as only a couple of morons can.  Thank you for listening!

We conclude our Easter chat by talking about Bernie Sander’s new found wealth, I get angry (surprise) about the old farts running on the democratic ticket as well as Rudy Giuliani.  We have a weeks old Mayor Pete update so I guess that’s not really an update is it? Then the Senator talks about (and to) his new Alexa device. We have a couple of entertaining YouTube videos we point to and then… We’re done.  Except I forgot to stop recording and we end up truly exhibiting what white privileged idiots.. Sorry, morons we are.  So, I’m leaving it in and I’m not sure why other than to say it’s real and I’m telling on myself.  You may think it’s entertaining, you may think it’s racist and insensitive. I have my doubts about leaving it in but its there at the end of the episode. For now anyway.  Thank you for listening… I think.