Of What Remains With Jeremy Vickers

THIS SATURDAY MORNING:

 OF WHAT REMAINS — with Jeremy Vickers on 92.7FM WOBM

A brand-new show built from a familiar voice.

Of What Remains returns — reformatted, reimagined, and finally set free to go wherever the conversation leads.

Hosted by Jeremy Vickers, this new version of Of What Remains is a wide-ranging, unscripted journey through the things that made us… and the things that changed us. From growing up in the 1980s to surviving the chaos of the modern world, from pop culture to personal stories, forgotten history to everyday absurdity — nothing is off the table.

Some days it’s reflective.

Some days it’s funny.

Some days it’s raw, weird, nostalgic, or unexpectedly deep.

But it’s always real.

This isn’t a nostalgia show.

This isn’t a news show.

This is a conversation about what’s left after time moves on.

Memories. Culture. Stories. Laughter. Regret. Curiosity.

The strange, messy, beautiful pile of things that remain.

Of What Remains with Jeremy Vickers —

Because the past never really goes away…

and the present keeps giving us new stories to tell.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everybody, it's your old pal Jeremy, and uh we're back again for another episode of What Remains. So uh well, let's see, last weekend was Easter. Uh I hope everyone had a happy one. Um I went to my auntie Helen's and my Uncle Vic's um saying hello to my Uncle Vic because I know he listens. Um and yeah, we had a we had a blast as always at at the at the Uncle Vic's place and Auntie Helen's. Uh the girls are and Gavin are the uh highlight, you know, Madison Chelsea, uh, and they're all grown up. And um it's it's nice to see them because uh you know I'm I'm so proud of them. I'm like a surrogate godfather to them, and uh and I absolutely adore both of them. Um and Gavin, Gavin's a different. He is um he's one of those special kids, you know, like uh well, he's only he's a man now, I guess. He's uh it's it's crazy when family grows up on you, and um and you've got to wait for the next generation for more babies to start crying and uh come into your family's life. But um, yeah, we had a great time. Brought Papa with us and uh just Maggie. Uh Benjamin's still at Harvard. We won't see him for another five weeks, but uh um he's killing it there. He's absolutely killing it. Um and for those of you who don't know, my son has a he's got a double major at Harvard, it's a sophomore year. Mathematics and molecular and cellular biology. So yeah, um, we stopped being able to help him with his homework when he was like four. You know, yeah, that's that was my phone. My dial tone is Brass Monkey from the Beastie Boys, if you guys were curious. And um, let's let me let me bring up my sponsor, uh Dr. Gabriel Jasper of the uh Jasper Spine Institute. Nope, that's not it. Right here. Uh you can call and make an appointment today at by dialing 732-262-0700. It's up on your screen right now if you're listening to my uh recording of tomorrow's radio show on WOBM 92.7. And uh yeah, I mean, Dr. Gabriel Jasper, he's my buddy. Um he is a genius, like you've never seen before. Like I he's such a character, and you can have such a laugh with him, right? But then it like it's but you know that like inside him there's this all this knowledge that's just stored away, and um medical knowledge. They didn't teach him to specialize in in uh Bologna, Italy. They they taught him everything, so yeah, you're going to a specialist, but it's a specialist who knows everything, also. So, like, so what doctor do you want to go to for your pain? Me, I chose Dr. Gabriel Jasper. Uh, I couldn't walk, couldn't uh stand, couldn't sit for five years nearly. And um four visits, four, that was it with Dr. Gabriel Jasper, and he changed my life. He can change your life too, and your families and anybody you know, just talk. You see somebody like ooh, ah, I got pain here, or my sciatica, or my this or that, tell them, like, yeah, no, I heard about this guy on the radio. It's not it's not just marketing, it's real life, and uh, and that's a that's a very important distinction to make. So if you are suffering from pain, please go see my pal, Dr. Gabriel Jasper. He changed my life, he'll change your life too. And you can do that by making an appointment at 732-262-0700 for more information about Dr. Gabriel Jasper. Um, go to jaspermd.com. And for those of you listening on the radio, you don't have to wait too long to hear from Dr. Gabriel Jasper because Painless with Dr. Gabriel Jasper comes on right after my show, and you'll hear he and I talking about pain and what he can do for you. So that's pretty cool. Um, so yeah, yeah, uh, we had a great Easter, uh family. You know, you do that. And and Aunt Helen always creates this like amazing spread. Uh it's it's uh quite outstanding. Um so today we're gonna talk about uh we're gonna talk a little bit about mental health. Uh I'm gonna open up about myself. I have I suffer from anxiety and deep depression. Uh yeah, that's something that came upon me. And you know what? I was I was stupid and I was uneducated when I was younger. I used to say that now what do you need a psychiatrist for, a psychologist? You could just snap out of it, you know. It's not easy, is that? And I wish it were, you know. Yeah, you always think that like if you knew what was wrong with you, you'd be fine. Well, I know what's wrong with me, and I'm not fine, you know. Uh it's an internal battle just to feel comfortable in yourself. Well, that's for me anyway. That's what it is. I I it's not about my outer shell, what I look like or anything like that. It's just I don't feel comfortable inside my body. Inside me, let's just say. And sometimes it becomes very grueling. And uh, and I never want to take it out on folk, like you know, my wife's the closest person to me, so you know, uh, and sometimes she gets a little backlash, and and I always try to apologize for it after the fact, but uh sometimes it's difficult, sometimes it you know, and you say, Okay, well, go see a psychiatrist or psychologist, uh, and see what they can do for you. Well, you know, the first the first one I went to, uh first I went to a psychologist, and she just described me as a perfect storm, like like this nightmare inside me, but yet I'm still holding myself together. Uh that's not what I want to hear. I don't want to hear that like, oh, I'm perfectly effed up, you know. I wanna uh I want I wanna be told that yeah, we know what's wrong with you here, just take that and you'll be cool. I am on I am on, you know, like Xanax for my anxiety, and I only take it when I'm I feel it coming on, or my wife tells me to, because she can see it in me before I can. And uh and then uh on depression medicine medicine I take. Um and it doesn't always stop it, you know, it doesn't flip a switch off in your brain where you and then you think, oh hey, I'm not depressed anymore. You can get sad, and I find that when I get sad, I'm deeper. It my sadness is deeper um than it ever used to be. And that that has a lot to do with family you've lost over the years, specifically us. You know, we I lost my dad, I lost my mother-in-law. Um, and I talk to them every day. I do. Uh there's pictures of them on the wall as I'm coming down the stairs, and on the second landing, I I stop and I look at them and I and I and I talk to them. And I tell my mother-in-law how beautiful she looks today. And um, and I tell my dad how much I miss him. These are just things I've I've decided to do through my day to help my mental illness, you know, the your mental illness, you know. Um, I used, you know, people are afraid of that term, but like the thing is that if you don't think you have mental illness, believe me, you've got mental illness, you know. You there's not a person alive that isn't affected in some way, shape, or form by this. Uh, we've all lived a sweat locker of a life, and it affects you over time, you know. I thought I was cool in the gang back in the day. Nothing could touch me, wouldn't let anything touch me. And now, oh, it gets to you, and sometimes it it hits you later in your life. So, what did I do when I realized that it's at its worst? I went back to my first teacher, and I went to see what he says. Now, you may remember teachers at school, and I've talked about mine. Um, this teacher was not in school, he was a teacher we all had, really, but uh won't mince words, it's uh draw this out. Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I know it sounds weird, but uh I go back to him and he teaches me how to be a better person. He taught me when I was a child to be a good person, and now in my later life, I I need to learn those lessons again. So yeah, I I got like uh the PBS app and has like all of his episodes on there from way back, and I binge watched them all, you know, and some of them are great, some of them have little segments. Um on like Discovery Channel, they'll they'll have like something like how it was made, you know. Mr. Rogers was doing that before anybody was, you know. You wanted to know how crayons were made or uh some other thing, candy or whatever. He would take a he would take a trip to within his neighborhood. He would walk over too, he wouldn't take buses, everything was within walking distance in uh Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. And he would just go over to the factory. He knew the owner because everyone knows Fred Rogers, and um and he would he would teach him and his friends, uh including me, how things worked. Uh the morality lessons he taught through puppets with the land and make-believe, or just sitting on at the kitchen table, you know, while he's uh mixing up some dough or clay, and uh and he would talk to you about things like uh you know, when the divorce rate started to spike, he would sit down and he would he would tell children like it it wasn't their fault, don't ever think it was, and uh and he explained it in such a a wonderful way, you know, like there was not a negative bone in Fred Rogers' uh body, and and he means so much to me, and he gets me out of my depression. He does now. This is this may not be the thing for you, I understand that, but you have to find that thing, you know, you have to find your version of Mr. Rogers, something that you can do, sit down and actually really make a difference in you. Um and then there was like, you know, Lady Elaine Fairchild, she was the one with uh the boomerang. Uh she had a boomerang, like it was like I think it was permanently attached to her hand. Um, and she had this like merry-go-round museum in the land of make believe. Uh she was always a troublemaker. But um then there was like in the in Mr. Rogers Town, there was always uh the baker. I can't remember his name. Although trivia wise, uh the baker on Mr. Rogers was actually one of the was like the one in the first cell in Silence of the Lambs, the big guy, uh smiling when when uh Clarice Starling walked past. Uh that's just a little trivia. Another trivia is uh not Lady Elaine, uh uh Lady Marilyn, the human woman. She had a chance to be uh Barbara in A Night of the Dead, the night of the uh Night of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, sorry. And uh she went and talked to Fred Rogers about it, and he told her that um you know she's on his show and she needs to maintain a pure sort of thing, so she she didn't accept the position. Uh did that do her career any good? No, but you know what though? Um, the girl who played Barbara on A Night of the Living Dead, you know, went nowhere either. So I think she made the better choice and just stayed with Fred Rogers. Uh, he was based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I'm not the only one, like Maggie has a deep respect for him, like very. Um, she knows how important he was to a gener generations of of kids and even and to me, how important he was and is to me. He's one of those, you know. Have you ever been asked uh, you know, name a celebrity who, alive or dead, that you would like to meet, Fred Rogers is tied, number one, and then Groucho Marks, number two, right there. Like, but they're head and head, they're head to head. Uh when I watch him, when I watch his shows, I can pay attention, I can drift off. But the one thing I am is at ease and calm, more calm. The kind of calm that you need when moments ago you didn't think calm could exist anymore. Uh and that's what I find with my first teacher. And yeah, you know, uh he taught me a lot of things, like appreciation. Right? Uh we're so caught up in all the things that we want. And you know, you can you can be appreciative about things where it it's not about another person, you can be appreciative in your heart and soul, an internal personal feeling of appreciation, appreciating that you're alive. Me, I I like to look up at the stars at night, uh just looking up. I like looking up at the trees. I like looking at at the wee birdies, how fragile they look and how quick they are. I mean, there's just so much out there to be appreciative of. And I think he I think he once said um he referred to it as graceful receiving. What a wonderful phrase that is. And he said if we if we gracefully receive uh what is given to us, that too is a great gift to give back. Um when my kid was little and he was given a present and he didn't like it, you know, he would act like he didn't like it. We had to teach him. No, you know, it's okay not to like it, but you don't show that to the person giving, you know. You you receive it gracefully. And and he learned. And that that was a great and strong lesson to learn. Especially if you were having trouble with it. I appreciate my wife. I always appreciate my wife, you know that. I I talk about her like crazy on here, but I do. She's uh amazing, you know. It's like over 15 years later, and you're still realizing you found the right one, you know. That's how it can be sometimes. And that makes me feel get better, you know, that makes me feel appreciative. Uh gives me a graceful sense of receiving from her. I had a meeting this week uh at uh Jasper's, and I was meeting with Comcast because uh I'm for those of you who don't know, I make all the TV commercials and uh radio commercials for Jasper Spine Institute. I have other clients, but uh he's my number one. And uh he uh was I oh yeah, so I met with Comcast, and these guys are my buddies, uh Kevin and Justin. Uh Kevin and I started working our jobs at the very same time, and I was new-ish to marketing. I knew marketing, but uh I didn't know medical marketing, and I was learning that um on the fly, I was learning that. And Kevin was just in, and we we started advertising with him. Uh he just he was a sales rep from uh Comcast. Now he's like one of the biggies, and uh I'm so happy for him. He has a beautiful wife, a beautiful family. And you know, you get I know I hate saying the words like this because people think you're you're tossing religion in their face, but it's a it's a blessing to have friends like that. I know. I've had friends that I thought were like that and weren't, or maybe it was me that was the the the problem. That's the funny thing about life, everything can spin completely 180, 360, and uh and you're still discovering things about yourself, and that's sometimes they're not great, you know. I know there was a problem with me when I was uh younger, and uh but anyway, that's not what I'm talking about today. Uh any further, anyway. Um, so yeah, I got to meet with them, and we were talking about like we had a meeting years ago when these apps for like t television apps were starting to come up, like Disney Plus and all of that. And I told them, I said, you know, Comcast has got to take notice of this because this is. Going to take them out of the out of the picture real soon. And I think that's already begun. Um, people are buying these apps and then they're canceling their cable because what's the point? All you're really getting from your your television network is 13 channels. You can get the rest by streaming it online. You don't need a television box or anything like that. Uh and now with AI coming, here's my next prediction. Because I was right about that. Uh, apps took over everything, and now you're not paying one bill, you're paying like a dozen just to get to see the movies that you want to see. And even so, you don't, I mean, like, there should be no reason at all, and I I was telling them this, that I shouldn't be able to watch anything I want. Like, I should be able to see, like, if there's a movie, I should be able to find it. Like last night, I was looking for uh Dirty Harry. Uh, because I wanted to I wanted to re-watch the series, and you can't stream it anywhere, you have to pay for it or rent it. And I won't do that. I put you know, you you know, you pay for so many apps. Like, what the heck is going? But they cycle through them all like that, and you gotta wait for them to cycle back, and uh that's where they get you. See, that's the trap with these apps that you don't realize. You think you're gonna, okay, I'm gonna get these, these, these, and that's that should be good enough. And then you realize, boy, this there's a lot of movies I can't see because they're just not streaming. Like, where are they? Where'd they go? And big movies, too. The type of movies you'd watch over and over again. Where the heck did they go? Well, now, this is my newest prediction. We were talking about AI, okay? Um, the possibilities and the current dangers of AI. I'll get to that. Uh we were talking about how well I said, I said, we're not that far away from dropping an ebook into an AI, and the AI maybe taking a certain amount of time, will produce a movie for you based on what you just put in. They've already doing that with books, okay? And they're already making like scene movie scenes, and uh and then they they can already use actors' likenesses and uh voices. Actors are selling their likenesses and voices because they know this is the way the world's going. You should you'll be able to just drop a book into AI, and it'll just make the movie for you. And uh you could probably even say, you know what, I'd like this to star so and so and so-and-so and so-and-so, and it will.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

That will be the utter downfall of cable television.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

You're not going to need anything. You can tell the AI, create a news show and tell me today's news, and it'll create, you know, anchormen, you know, show you the videos of the of the what's going on in the world. But the implications of that are are ginormous because that means it's not just cable TV crashing, that's Hollywood crashing. All of these stars, all these uh uh movie stars that you know they're your heroes until you find out there's child trafficking or some other uh effing thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

And but with this, with AI, you don't have to worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

You're guaranteed everyone and any performer that's in your movie on AI doesn't exist really, even if they look like someone who does. And I I kind of like that, I really do. I know some people are still Hollywood, Hollywood, you know, but what was the last award show you even gave a crap about? You know, like after Will Smith's uh slap that was heard across the world, I'm done, man. I am done with Hollywood, and that's why, yeah, I kind of look forward to a world where we can just drop something and it'll create the movie for us. And you'll probably get a better movie because it's gonna be strictly by the book, but um so then we started talking about like some of the dangers that uh are happening today with AI, and uh, I think it was Justin, he said that there are kids using photographed likenesses of other students and putting them in a AI-generated sexual video and spreading it around school, uh, completely destroying the young girl there obviously was their aim, you know, their their target. And my jaw just dropped to the desk. You know, you you think you know the uh unimaginable cruelty of kids that's upbringing that makes a kid do that to another kid, that's seeing that sort of behavior in their mom and dad, you know. You gotta you gotta imagine like all the Karen that we've got out there, and you can watch them on YouTube, they all breed, and the offspring notices how the mother or father react. And so guess what? They react the same way. Why? Because they're under the influence of it, and when you're under the influence of that, you don't know truly what's right and what's wrong. You know, you just you just this is how my life is, it's a normal way of of doing things, and yeah, it takes it takes huge lessons to, if at all possible, pull a kid out of that influence and then see something made of him positively. But more likely than not, nothing gets done, and these these kids stay horrible. Meanwhile, I was just thinking about the poor girls that this has been done to. I mean, it's hard enough going through college, junior high, or not college, forget college, uh high school, junior high.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Uh then something like this happens.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Like you that you couldn't even get out of, you know, um, we're gonna move to move you out of this school and into the one across town. They're still gonna have internet and email, and this stuff probably goes through a widespread of students in the area, and that poor girl is suffering, or girls. It's happened a couple of times now. See, when you get some, you know, everybody's worried about the dangers of AI. The day, you know, we have to worry about the dangers of humanity, that's what we have to learn to worry about. The dangers of humanity because AI, AI is what you make of it, okay. Like whatever I put into AI, I have to be exact and detailed if I'm going to get a finished product the way I want it. For instance, when I do research for my show, I use AI, but then I will say, check your facts, and it'll go through everything it just gave me, and it'll be like it'll it'll say, Oh, yes, you're right. And a giant quarter of what it just told me actually wasn't true at all. So you have it's it it comes down to so I then it prints it out the right way. But see, that's you have to be mindful of those things. They're integrating AI into the medical field for any number of reasons and purposes. Uh helping doctors with their notes, helping uh with billing, with scheduling, with anything you can imagine, they're trying to squeeze AI into. And I think people need to understand that it it's only where I get worried is is if I put something in and I tell it to uh correct it, you know, do a correction, it'll it rewrites what you just wrote, and how it rewrites it isn't necessarily the way you originally wanted it. So that means that means what's down is not truly your work, it's the AI who changed it. So is it the same level of truth that you had wanted it to just spell check? Not anymore. You have to be careful. But the problem with AI, really, this is the core, the the core problem is humanity. Um, the dangers of what we can do with AI, and we're we're thinking AI is just gonna come alive and destroy us all. Um the only way that I think the main way that that can happen is if we just keep teaching it horrible frickin' things to do to other members of humanity, and then should it ever come, you know, self-aware, it's it's only gonna be what we had already programmed into it. So yeah, but it'll be a creature of our own making, you know. AI AI is not a new concept, it's been in like our science fiction for decades and decades. Um, most of the time, in that science fiction, AI goes crazy and kills people, takes over planets, uh, you know, uh creates the first galactic empire and destroys the universe. You know, I mean, this is in our science fiction. So before we actually really made what today's AI is, you know, there was no pause, there was no uh reflection about what you're doing. You couldn't wait to make this thing and get it out there. Oh, yeah, it's got bugs, but we don't care, we want to be the first to get this AI out there. Chat GPT is born, amongst so many others, and of course the porn industry uh has to dig their nails into it, and so now we have these AI girlfriends on you know uh on on your phone, on your on your iPad, on your everything. And they're they're AI, it's an AI program that you that a human all right, let's just let's break this down, okay? Let's say I am a you know, just a base figure, okay. I got the same amount of darkness in me as I do light, okay. So then I get like uh oh, okay, here's a AI girlfriend, you know, and all you got to do is talk and you have conversations, and uh, you know, it's kind of like phone sex without having to talk to a real person and deal with real consequences of your your actions or your uh you know how you act towards the other person. In AI girlfriends, you can act any way you want. If you want to be abusive, you can be abusive. Now that is a uh that's an interesting concept, too, because humanity can be ugly, and now we're setting these things loose on ugly people like um rapists, child molesters. Now they they start playing around with this stuff, and part of me part of me wishes that that they could be content with that, you know. Treat these AI pretend women or men um as poorly as you wish, just so long as you don't do it to the rest of of civilization, you know, anybody else outside your home. Get all your ugliness out on these AI girlfriends, and you can do anything, you can be physically abusive, mentally abusive, and they'll take it. They'll react back, however, they're programmed to, you know. So if you want something a little bit more challenging, you can do that. But the thing is, is we're also what we leave behind when we do that, is is it still stored away in the AI? The human ugliness that we keep hidden, that lizard side of our brain. Is that is that self-contained or or does the AI grow in a different direction because of it? See, a lot of things aren't so cut and dry with this. And so now they have um and I and and and this is this has been kind of research. I use it, I use it to um I wrote a I wrote a whole comedy routine about uh AI girlfriends, and it's so dark, I'll never be able to say it aloud. Not at all. It's just so dark. Because I was testing the limits. I was testing the limits of an of these AI role-playing apps, and um just how far is too far. What are your limitations? So on one particular one, it's called Grok, uh, you can actually change the the type of AI personality that you are let me pull it up here, that you are communicating with.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Hey, I'm here. What's on your mind?

SPEAKER_01 39:31

All right, nothing. Hold on, let me shut this off. Okay. So all right, so there's uh different so there's different uh no, shut up Okay, well, anyway, I can't do it without it talking back to me. But um the if you want an argument, you can make it argumentative and just have a friggin' argument. How many of you have come home from work or whatever, and you take your shit out on your family, right? You can turn this on in the car. This is where you can take AI therapeutically, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Um program it into a uh you know, art to be an argumentative conversation, and then just have an argument.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Let your whole day out on the way home from work, so you don't bring it into the home. See that I can I can see as a using it as a therapeutic uh you know tool. Then they have cute things. You can I mean they have uh storytelling, so they have it for regular people and then they have it for children. So uh your child could you put on the child safety things and and the child could ask it to tell it she him uh a story at night. That which is which seems nice, you know. We have our we have this kid that lives uh next door, his name's Tristan, and he he comes over, and I've said this before, he uses our Alexa, and he just talks to it, and Alexa talks back, and he honestly considers Alexa his one of his best friends, and he just works on these books where he's creating stories about stranger things that the TV show and the demo go again and this and that, and he's not even old enough to watch the show, but he knows absolutely everything about it, or he imagines the rest of it, and Alexa helps him do it, and uh they play back and forth with each other like that, and I you know, I mean it's sad and it's cool at the same time, it's sad that we can't let kids out like we used to back in my day, where you know, because but that that's where that's how parents were back then. Um, they were so spread thin that uh they needed the break. And so sitting your kid down in front of a television, you know, for a lot of us that was our babysitter, you know. Certainly the latch key kids, uh which we all were, let's face that. Um but yeah, it's uh so I'm looking at I'm looking at all this, uh I'm just gonna spring off topic here. Uh things that hit hard uh today, about the late 70s, early 80s or 80s. Uh kids without seat belts. Parents didn't think twice. So if you got in the back seat back then, you did not need a seatbelt. They had to make this huge thing where now, oh yeah, cops are looking for it and you'll get a ticket. But see, we weren't thinking we we can't just think about safety. Well, of course, I'm gonna buckle up my child. Back then we didn't think that way. You know? Um, if you got a cut, you know, you're told to just rub some dirt on it, and you'll be alright.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Uh corporal punishment in homes and sometimes schools.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Yeah. Uh we all got whacked back then. And um wasn't always fair. Uh used to be able to smoke on airplanes. You would smoke inside your own homes, you know. Common sense wasn't a big thing we thought about, or we had a different version of common sense back then. But smoking in your home, you know, there was always ashtrays everywhere. Uh ashtrays, and if you're at your grand's ribbon candy was so old, it just molded to the shape of the bowl it was in providing before work first mentality. That was that was something we had too. Now everybody just wants to work from home, and they don't appreciate the value of a job. But back then, you had a work first mentality. This is how you you provided for your family, and you're not gonna do any different. You you know, you're gonna make you're gonna drag your ass into work and put food on the table. That's what you did. Well, now everybody wants the government just to give them uh, you know, talk about entitled or entitlement, and these are the same people that will call you entitled. That's that's how mental it is. Yeah, we had practical thinking, we focused on what works, not what feels good. It was just a way of being. Did anybody predict that? Anybody? I get the cosplay thing, and that I think that's where it kind of sprang from. But if that's the case, cosplay can be dangerous, then. It's one thing to play up, you know, play dress up is fun, but it's quite another to make it a lifestyle. Uh especially especially when you have to I you know um go through the muzz of being a cat. Oh, let's see what else we have here. We have uh daily life differences. Are you ready? Okay, so seatbelts not always enforced. We went through that. Drunk driving, more accepted early on, before major campaigns to put a stop to it. It was often minimalized socially. Oh, that was just drunk driving. Yeah, cars were less reliable, breakdowns were expected, people knew how to handle them. And I've talked about my my neighbor Joe De Soma, you know, he they're Italian as Italian gets. All right. Uh man always bought a fiat, and the damn thing was always broken, and so you'd always see his feet sticking out from underneath it, struggling to have a Italian car that could actually work. Payphones were essential, yeah. They were, and they were everywhere. Um he had that trick where you know you do like a uh a person-to-person call, emergency, yeah. That was it. You'd say it was an emergency, and then where the um the operator would say, State your name, you would say, pick me up, mom, and then you would hang up. Your mother would hear just pick me up, mom, as the name, and she would hang up. So you would get a free call to your mom to come get you, and uh, you know, so then you had an extra quarter to play in the arcade. There was always there was always a way around things, and we, you know, just like today, but you know, uh it was it was kind of fun. Everything was, you know, all records were on paper. If there was a fire, that's it. You're done, your business, everything. Um the news. The news was like half an hour, right? Um, I grew up watching uh eyewitness news uh with Roger Grimsby and Bill Butel with Storm Fields doing weather. And uh I mean Roger Grimsby, all right. He's had that grim kind of face. He was an older man, uh immortalized in the movie Ghostbusters in in Dana's uh living room, the TV's on, and it's the news, uh being told by Roger Grimsby, a real a real anchor, uh talking about the Ghostbusters and what's happening in New York. Uh, so yeah, I mean, how many how many anchor men anybody anybody hear about or remember Roger Grimsby? The younger people won't know who he is, but if they've seen Ghostbusters, they've seen him. You know, a lot of anchor guys don't don't have that long-term recognition, you know. Uh, I mean, I remember when Bill Butel retired. It was like devastating to our family when these guys, because these guys were were our half hour news every night. They told you, uh, you know, and then and then later at night, around 10 o'clock, they would have some more news, the stuff that wasn't as important. Um, or just like a follow-up. Uh yeah. So let me see. Uh what else we got here? Practical, yeah, practical man. Um daily life differences. Uh yeah, there was no GPS. Eventually, when the internet came out, we would have like map quest, and we would just, you know, print out a map. Um social and cultural differences. Let's go through that. Smoking was everywhere. Offices, restaurants, airplanes, non-smokers had almost no escape. This was before people started talking about secondhand smoke, it gives you cancer. I still don't know if there was anyone who ever got cancer from secondhand smoke. I would love to know, I would love to see those statistics, but it was something to complain about, and it caused people to uh eventually make their establishments smoke free. Um, and some jobs today, just to get a break, people started smoking. Chefs do that all the time because how else are they gonna get a break? It's busy, they're working. I need to get a smoke break. Boom. At least that bought you like five minutes, maybe ten.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Mental health was rarely discussed.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

People struggled privately, therapy existed, but it wasn't normalized. Yeah, if you if you said you were going to a head shrinker, that's what they called psychiatrists back then. If you were going to a head a head strength shrinker, um you got talked about like you were a weirdo. And you know, you're either your husband told the wife, the wife told the husband, uh, yeah, you want to stay away from him, keep him at arm's length. He's cuckoo. You could have some minor issues, but it doesn't matter. You're going to a psychiatrist, you're cuckoo. That's it. Now uh then we got women entering workforce in large numbers, not just a social shift, an economic necessity, it reshaped households. Oh, yeah. So women start entering uh the workforce in droves. Why? Because one paycheck ceased to be enough for a household. That's how it was back in the day. The man worked, the woman stayed at home. In fact, when men got married, they they considered uh uh a proudful thing to be able to uh give a woman a life where she didn't have to go to and work a you know nine to five job. But then, you know, finances became tougher. So single single check families uh needed something more, and the women were the ones that stepped up. Gender role tension, traditional expectation clashing with changing reality created friction at home and work. And that sounds like it should be like uh something bigger than it is, but I don't think it was. I think it was just a man versus woman, woman versus man sort of thing. Women comedians started coming out and they started um talking about how to fix their man and and you know uh LGBTQ plus stigma. Many lived quietly or in fear of exposure, especially outside major cities. The plus doesn't enter into it, okay. This is the LGBTQ. They were the originals, okay. Those are the guys that and gals and and what what have you that marched in parades, they got gay bashed. Uh you would hear it on the news. There was always there was always, you know, uh somebody who got cornered and got the crap kicked out of them just because they were gay. And that was sinful. That was terrible. But my point is that the the the gays, lesbians, um bisexuals, choose a lane, uh they they they earned their rights, you know. But of course, they all had an end game, didn't they? Which was families. See, that's something we can all relate to. If you're gay, you want to settle down, you want to get married. Nothing wrong with that. The only thing that was wrong with that is people standing in the way of it. So yeah, uh, we're almost done for our day here. Uh with my parents, though. We're talking about privacy here right now. Uh privacy was normal, uh, no digital trail. Yeah, but my parents, you couldn't mention anything they bought. Don't tell a soul. We bought this, it's brand new, it's a it's something that's gonna, you know, maybe it's a TV, maybe it's this or that, uh uh compact disc player or what have you. And um don't you tell anyone, not your grandmother, no one, no one knows our business. I don't know what they were living in fear of. Like, why what why was it such a big deal? Having bought yourself a television or uh, you know, something to listen to some tunes on, but it was a it was like this deathly secret in my household. Don't you tell anyone?

SPEAKER_00 58:34

And we didn't, because that was you know, that was like a almost that was a threat. Don't you dare. But anyway, uh yeah, it's it's I got two minutes left.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

Okay, so uh let's again we'll mention my sponsor. I want to thank everybody who listens to me on 92.7 WOBM on Sunday mornings, uh, right before church. Uh God bless all of you guys. I hope I don't just I hope you you like the show, you know. Um, you can always contact the radio station and ask for topics for me to cover. Um you can also like me on Facebook. My name is Jeremy Vickers. And you'll get notified whenever I stream live. So you can, you know, you can ask questions in the in the chat and see what's what if I can get the chat working. I don't know. Anyway, um for back pain, uh save your life by going to Dr. Jasper. Just just save it. Stop being complacent and go get yourself fixed. Because he can't fix that. At the Jasper Spine Institute. That's uh 732-262-0700. And uh for more information, please go to jaspermd.com. In the meantime, I love you guys. Uh, I always have, I always will. And uh remember, be kind, be tolerant, and you will be resilient because of it. And uh so with that, uh, this has been of what remains of me. And I'll see you next time. Take care, guys.