Elevate the Extraordinary: Support U.S. Phenomenon!
Elevate the Extraordinary: Support U.S. Phenomenon!
Welcome to US Phenomenon, where possibilities are endless. Put down those same old headlines. It's time to expand your mind and question what if? From paranormal activity to UFOs, bigfoot sightings and unsolved mysteries, this is US Phenomenon?
Speaker 2:It all began on a drive home from Swing Shift. The radio, my only companion, the legendary art bell, filled the car, a beacon in the darkness, speaking worlds beyond our own, the stories, untold secrets that kept just out of sight. That voice, those tales, ignited a spark within me, a drive to seek the truth and explore the phenomenon that lies just beyond the edge of reason. From the whispers of the paranormal to echoes of the unknown, my quest began. So join me, fellow night travelers, as our journey delves into the enigma of the night's uncovering mysteries that await us. This is US Phenomenon, where the search for the answers never ends. The adventures just begin. Tonight we're going to talk to our very I would say very own Pacific Northwest, robert Stack. I would say this guy has been boots on the ground for quite some time. He goes by the name of Photogog steve uh, but his real name is, uh, steve hickey.
Speaker 3:welcome to us, phenomenon thank you for having me on. I've been looking forward to this okay.
Speaker 2:So I say this minus you don't have the jacket when you're out there. Now, do you ever get creeped out? When you're out there at night it's like oh dark 30. It is like pitch black in some of your videos. Like it's dark. Do you ever like get that like that, that you know the the unsolved mystery theme song going through your head and you're like who the hell else is out here with me?
Speaker 3:you know, it depends on the location. A lot of what I do is in the city, but some of those times when you have to drive out of town for 45 minutes to an hour and the streetlights disappear and you're kind of just working with the moonlight and you're in the trees, it can definitely feel a little sketchy.
Speaker 2:And so how long have you been doing photog work and news reporting and such like that?
Speaker 3:for those who may not know, you so I've only been doing this now a few years. I kind of started during the 2020 protests in Seattle and Portland and I was dabbling with it. I was home, it was a pandemic and at the time I was still building homes and developing real estate. So at the time I thought it was just a moment in time. I would use this hobby. I had to go and capture what was going on, took some time off and then, about a year and a half two years later, decided I really love this work and I want to really commit to it it's interesting that you say that because, uh, some of the footage that you had that time seems like a lifetime ago.
Speaker 2:Right 2020, the pandemic seems like another world from from like today's day, where everything seems to be relatively back to normal, minus all the stuff in Portland recently gone that is closed, same with Seattle. It's like it kind of has that urban like tumbleweed feel to it is what I guess I would say. What was it like to cover both sides, the Seattle side and the Portland side, when you were getting this footage?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I found. So I started in Seattle because I'm from the area and at the time I thought I was just going to capture this, create a library and then maybe years later, as they go back and say, well, what happened? And start making documentaries, that I would have some footage. So I didn't really have a long-term goal at the time. And then, as it developed out here, the national news agency started coming to town, like NBC and CBS and ABC and I've been a news nerd since I was a little kid and so a lot of people walk around. They don't get recognized. I know who everybody is, including the producers who are behind the scene. I know who they are. And so we started chatting. We were parking in the same parking lot. They asked what I was doing, really liked the footage and said, hey, we'd like to license. And then that turned into. Have you thought about going to Portland? We don't really have anybody down there.
Speaker 3:And I found out that in these scenarios you know when they, when they want to go in and cover it, they have to have such a large group of people. There's your onscreen journalist or talents, your camera guy, sound guy, producers. You know it's five, six people. I can go out and grab it and and as one person, to not create such a spectacle. And so they said we'd like you to go to Portland. I did that, and so the two cities operated very differently and the footage I would send back. People up here would say, man, it's so crazy down there, it must be scary, or whatever. No, they were a lot more intense down there, but the crowds that I was standing in seemed to be more unified with each other compared to Seattle. Seattle felt pretty fragmented and pretty hostile as a whole Portland and it's not to say whether or not you are for or against what they're about, but they certainly have unified and found commonality within the crowd down there in a way that Seattle hasn't. Excuse me.
Speaker 2:It's crazy when you talk about that as I sit here and choke on my own saliva and try to recover, um, whoo, um, to see some of the footage from seattle, the whole chop situation. When you look at it it seemed like. And then portland had their own version of the CHOP. Right, they had their own little sector of something of the CHOP. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so theirs really rested around. There was this federal building that became kind of the epicenter and then the president came in and said that they were going to protect this building. And once the president stepped in and spoke about it that really became all of a sudden all the efforts really just kind of unified and it became kind of them against the government. It started out as a social justice movement that really became at that building and then that's when I think it really intensified down there when Seattle, there was the CHOP, but it was also still pretty spread out as well and the CHOP seemed to be more, you know, and I'm kind of paraphrasing the CHOP seemed to be more a unified group of people who felt a certain way Portland had that same feel, but also it was a unified group of people who also really wanted to make the fact that government was stepping in to protect this building as a big part of their cause as well.
Speaker 2:Wow, like I go back and I think about all that stuff that happened during that time. And you know, I was actually working at the time for the abc affiliate in town in the in the engineering department and clearly, when we're watching all these guys come back in to bring in gear, we're like you got to leave your gear over here. We don't know who you've been around, it's just it's. It's crazy to go back and think about that. When you talk about being a, you know, a small group or for yourself, when you were going out in the field and you still are and you're looking at these small like your, your footprint is so much smaller. Were you using ai cameras at the time to get some of your footage?
Speaker 3:No, I just used a full-frame camera. It depends on what I was going to go and do. So I use most of my. I'm heavily into kind of the Sony ecosystem, so I have A7R4s At the time. That's all I was using. I've added FX3 now, but at the time all A7R4. So you can pretty much handhold that. I like to add a little bit of gear to it. So I have a monitor, but you can also kit it out to where I have it, where it'll be on a tripod and you can actually shoulder it. Sure.
Speaker 3:And sometimes when especially in Portland, when you had kind of outside agencies coming to have this law enforcement component you really want to if you're holding an iPhone, they seem to take those people as hostile. If you had a commercial looking rig, they would still take you as hostile. But give you a little bit of grace that somehow you must be traditional media and so there's some expectation of being able to be there. But that whole time too brought out a lot of interesting things. When the laws about press came in. I have a press pass and an agency that I assign it to, but you don't actually have to have that. You know, this was kind of designed decades ago and the concept was, if you had a camera, you were media. Well, back then you had to have a big, expensive camera. Now you can have a phone, but those same protections are still in place.
Speaker 3:The other side is you get a lot of people who are there to document, but they're there to document as a protester as well, or as whatever that situation is For me. I really wanted to come there as an observer. There are some people who want to kind of fit in. They'll dress a certain way to match the crowd. I would dress the same way I do every day in shorts and a T-shirt. I look like everybody's dad and so you know to say I'm not for you, I'm not for you, I'm not either side. I'm just here observing and as an as an outsider who's not even from the area, basically, and that way at least they knew kind of who I was and it seemed to help. Um, cause sometimes you would get where law enforcement would really want cameras not there and they would seem to target, and then sometimes you would get the crowds that don't want cameras there. So if you just kind of fit in the middle and have everybody a little bit on edge about what you're about. It seems to kind of actually work better overall.
Speaker 2:Our guest this evening goes by the handle on Instagram as PhotoxTB81. The mysterious things that you have covered, one that really intrigued my, uh, my, my interest, one of vast many stories that you've covered, but the one that uh I I bring up here is this one here that uh talks about I need to pull up the uh the link here so I can play it but it talks about limbs. How did you become? How did this story come to you?
Speaker 3:So I had followed this in the past for a little bit. It seems to kind of come and go, and it was. There was more washing up some years ago. Originally I thought maybe it was part of the tsunami, and so you kind of have the Washington's, a coastal state, and so is Oregon, and so every so often you would have limbshington's, a coastal state, and so is oregon, and so every so often you would have limbs there's a lot of feet because they're still in shoes wash up on shore, and so, uh, for a while they thought it was part of the tsunami that uh had hit uh country over on the other side of the world. Maybe the people were washing up over here. And then there was a thought of course we're like the serial capital of the country. Out here We've had a lot of serial killers in the Seattle area. That's just factual. And so there was a thought well, could there be another serial killer? There's the Dexter concept. Could they be out there dumping them? And they're just making their way up, and so here and there I would kind of follow it, and it becomes this kind of urban legend story.
Speaker 3:Everybody has a theory. And then recently it was sent to me that, hey, scientists got together, they've studied the currents. They believe that these body parts could not be making it all the way from around the world. It's more likely that these are boats that have sank with, you know, pleasure boats people who went out for the weekend, went out for the day have sunk and then washed up or drowned.
Speaker 3:And the more I looked into it it's a logical explanation. I did the story kind of tongue-in-cheek because with stories like this it doesn't matter if you come with science. Whatever you come with, people are going to say it can't be that, it's got to be this. So I kind of tried to tell the story of hey, this is what science tells you, because it's saying it's just doing science stuff and kind of a little bit of sarcasm with it. But the theory, checked out, it seems now to be in the, in the investigative community, the accepted uh reason for these body parts and they have had a number come back where they've done dna and they've tied to boats that have disappeared.
Speaker 2:But but you know, like I said, no matter what you do, people are going to have their own opinion sure I mean, and that's the crazy thing I saw the story and I was like, oh, ew god, can you imagine you're a beachcomber and you're hanging out and what is that? A shoe?
Speaker 2:no, oh no that's a shoe that that's, and I'm trying to think how many times have I gone out there and, like, I don't think I've ever seen anything of the nature? But to see a shoe wash ashore and, as you're right to protect the foot, still, the limb, everything in that foot is still intact, right, because the shoes protecting the, the, the, what would be essentially, you know food, fish food, you know the bait of, uh, of the rest of the human remain, um, quite interesting story. When you're out here and you're doing these different stories and I'm assuming you're doing this now full-time, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's right, it's a full-time job and how much have you been giving to, like, the local affiliates? Are they purchasing your stuff now? Um, the stories that you're covering? The reason I think I come to you now is because when we, when we talk about media and we talk about the pandemic, uh, there there seems to be this stigma that is really portrayed out there with the media that there's a lean or a bias to to a story that their, uh, their parent company may be pushing up, some type of bias to the story.
Speaker 2:And to me, that watching your stuff over time just comes to me as straight factual, the old school journalistic. I mean, just as you were saying earlier how I kind of grew up the same way, what a nerd watching news. You know, I thought my best friend was, you know, susan hutchinson and you know the local guys from town. But clearly, when I watched the cbs affiliate, uh, cairo back in the day and then becoming the going to work for the, you know, como tv, I was like, well, I can't watch that station anymore. Clear, I was like they make they.
Speaker 2:You know cbs isn't paying my paycheck. Um, everyone quite great at at the local level, but it seemed like the pandemic really changed a lot of the media and how you consume the media and either you know however, you know some people may think the media may not be telling truths to all these stories and what has come across on all of your stuff, on how it's, you know, put on the social media platforms, that everything seems to be just straightforward facts and how we're consuming this. I will call you the modern day. You know, uh, dan, rather, or you know, like tom brokaw or peter jennings were like the younger versions of these guys out in the field telling these stories. Um, at least that's how it comes across to me that there isn't anything other than the straight facts and a great story that is being told by you. And to me it felt like someone who's been in the business and has seen it. You know it felt and it feels like you've been doing this for decades. Thank you.
Speaker 3:You know, I was hoping you would ask about this because I actually kind of stepped in something here in this last week because I told a story and I mentioned that, hey, I'm the only one telling you this, which was accurate. But the way I did it, I got a lot of feedback and more actually, in my text messages People actually have my number, who I work around, who was like, why are you roasting everybody? And I really didn't mean it that way, and so I've been hoping to kind of expand on this. You know, I said I grew up as a news nerd. I love being able now, at this point in my life, being able to go out and help people understand things and explain stuff. I think that's a big part of what the movie is about. That being said, you know there is obviously bias, depending on the different agency and affiliate and parent company. There just is, and they themselves will tell you that that's kind of what they market for right, one of the local stations that's affiliate really focuses on a lot of narrative storytelling. They're now even going back and telling unsolved homicides from the past. They're phenomenal at it. Then you have another group that really doesn't do any of that and they just tell hey, here's what happened in the night. So everybody kind of has their thing.
Speaker 3:That being said, they only have a certain amount of time. Somebody like me kind of has unlimited time. I don't have to make it, I don't have to find out. The story happened at 9am and have to get it for the noon airing or the six o'clock airing. I can air whenever I want. I can spend as much time on it, I can zero in, stop worrying about other things. And so when they have their meeting in the morning this is usually how it goes for those who you know. You you probably know this, but a lot don't they have their morning news meeting. That starts out the day and everybody comes in and they go what's going on out there, who's going to work on what? And most all the resources for the day are there in that room. And so, whatever they have, they have to figure out what are we going to tell today? That in itself is going to inherently create some sort of narrative and decision-making process. Right, they're going to have to kill some stories, they're going to have to go put a bunch on other stories, and it's based on the amount of resources they have. Then comes the time limit that they go. Okay, you leave the office there at 10 am and you have to have it ready by four o'clock. You can only do so much and those kinds of things inherently do create at least narrative. You could argue also bias. But I think where a lot of this has changed is back when we were growing up. They had a lot more resources. They had a lot more reporters in the street.
Speaker 3:I do not gatekeep my stories. Every story that I work on that is local, that we go and film, we offer to all the news stations. I do not believe in gatekeeping the information to the public. The way that that works is myself and two other photographers. We go out every night and we capture stuff. Last night we got a wrong way driver on I-5 that hit a woman in a van and I'm still waiting to get confirmation. Sounds like the victim is not going to die but her life is forever changed, heavily changed. That's available for them to grab. Nobody's grabbed it. We've had actual full-blown homicides, had a homicide in Auburn and nobody picked it up. So these are really serious stories.
Speaker 3:Now it's for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 3:One, they didn't have anybody that they could send there.
Speaker 3:They didn't have enough resources because their budgets are slashed, they don't have people.
Speaker 3:Two, when they get it from me it's not because Steve Hickey sent it in and I write a narrative like we can trust it. I'm not their reporter. I can work with that. I've seen it. I've spoken to people out there. I've spoken to law enforcement. I've listened to the entire call through radio traffic. I have first-hand account. They can't do that.
Speaker 3:So what happens is, as they get overnight I send them a footage package to say hey, there was a homicide. Here is footage of the scene, the coroner, the police. This is the nature of the call I give them. You know kind of the 10 facts of how the call came in, what they believed happened and who's been arrested. They then have to reach out to the agencies that responded and get a written statement from them that they can work with.
Speaker 3:And a lot of times they don't get those statements. The statements don't come in in time or by the time it does it's already days old. So there have been stories that they want to tell but they can't. And had they just sent their own reporter and their own camera there, they would have done the exact same thing I did, whether law enforcement gave them the full breakdown or not, but because they couldn't even go in the first place. It doesn't get told. And we're talking. 80% of the stories that we send in don't get picked up. And I'm not going out chasing parking tickets and you know things that don't have public interest interest.
Speaker 2:We don't upload unless it's a serious situation and what's interesting to me is when you talk about these stories, these, um, major stories that have been covered in like, interesting facts of like, for example, uh, when I think there was a story where there wasn't a lot of information being told about, uh, mayor mcginn's uh son, that that whole situation, I'm like wait, why is? Why is this story not being told in the normal media? Is it as you're saying? Do they not have the resources? Or is it? Is it is it a narrative?
Speaker 2:I can't imagine that that in local news that they really would be pushing like, ah well, we're not going to cover it because I guess maybe they don't have that. I'm not going to defend them in that piece, sure, but it's interesting to me that a lot of these stories that are being told aren't being covered anymore. But again, like you said, tv news resources have become so much smaller. The business, which I think is now catching up to it, the radio version, now the TV version, radio shrinking and being consumed by conglomerates tracking out syndicated shows, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't have the whole old school news field 24 7. Yes, there's someone in the newsroom, but the resources to go out fly a chopper because no one's doing that anymore, um, just because it's that point there's only one chopper left.
Speaker 3:If you see it on como, it's what it's air for. If you see it on cairo, it's, you know, cairo's truck. It's all the same helicopter and they're still looking at canceling that. They still, with all three of them contributing, cannot make that work yeah, I and I, I'll add one to that.
Speaker 2:Um, I actually called those guys over. I was like, hey, what's going on in west seattle? You know I'm, you know I live over in west seattle. And they're like I said there's a helicopter and they're like well, it's not ours and it's not. I was like what do you mean? It's not ours. They're like I'm like I was like you guys still have the, you know the job. They're like no, we got rid of it all the stations in december. The contract was was ended, so they cut.
Speaker 2:But that that to you know, say the least, I'm like like, oh, okay, well, budget must be tight, but these stories that you're covering, that maybe aren't being covered. You're able to work on these stories a lot longer than most people and be able to tell the I don't want to say narrative, because then that starts to get to. You're able to tell the story, you're able to fully produce it, go through it without the time restrictions of we got a four o'clock deadline. We got this package has to. This piece needs to get into the news station by 3.30 so that it can air at 4 or 4.15 or 4.10 or however that plays out.
Speaker 3:Do you sleep ever? I I do a lot of napping. I'm up a lot, you know. I think um, I I used to be when I in my previous life I was like in bed by 10, up by 4 am. I could sip coffee for two hours. Now it's just kind of whatever comes and goesa lot of times I'm working nights or on my way home something else pops, I'm back out. It's just kind of whatever comes and goes. A lot of times I'm working nights or on my way home something else pops, I'm back out. It's kind of that way. But you know the energy and excitement that comes from that keeps it going. You know a big difference too, I think, between myself and I'll touch on the McGinn one a little bit.
Speaker 3:So it was McGinn's son. For anybody who's watching who doesn't know the story, his adult son now lives in the McGinn family home. Mike McGinn and his wife have moved to DC to continue his career. His son, who's an adult late 20s, I believe 20, 29, homeland Security came and raided the home. He admitted to what he was doing. So it's not as though we were putting words in his mouth, but at the time I think in talking to some of the stations. They were stuck with that. He had been, he was under investigation, he had not been formally charged, because you can be arrested while under investigation. And they were stuck with that and I would push back on that saying okay, let's just say that's true, you can say under investigation, but still in custody. And what they opted to do was I had had photos of the raid, I had footage of the house. We had a significant package. All they did was take the SPD did a blotter post. Later they did a screenshot of the blotter post, a quick mention and just moved on. And it was frustrating to see because I think it does matter for two reasons. One, I don't want to just go do exposés on people's lives and ruin their lives. It's not my intent. But that story was out enough. There were enough people who lived in the area talking about it on Reddit. It was spreading and you want to actually try and get that to a factual base, set of facts and don't let the public just play the game of telephone or you'll have far more chaos. And, if you can, come in and make sure that they factually understand it. And that story too is one you know or as leading to that is talking about, you know, not sleeping and getting all this information.
Speaker 3:Sure, the big difference that I, that I have found that has made that gives me an advantage over the, the stations or the traditional media, because they have entire research rooms. They have many layers of people that I can't compete with. What I, what I have, that they don't, and it's worked out repeatedly. There was recently a politician who's now in jail for killing a young girl here locally. I got that story because of the followers Originally. You want a lot of followers. It's a lot of fun to grow social media and get recognized for your work, and that's well and good.
Speaker 3:The difference, though, is I now have over 1.4 million people who follow my work across platforms. What that really means is 1.4 million people out there all over the place sending me info, going, hey, the coroner or the King County medical examiner just pulled up and this person just got arrested and I'm getting it. Before the stations ever can, and the way that they can access me feels like a lower threshold. They don't have to email an anonymous tip email. I get the amount of information. I get hundreds of messages a day saying, hey, this is happening, that's happening. Now you still got to go through and actually validate all that stuff that comes in. But that was the game changer and that really in the last six months opened up so many doors where I'm getting so much information, so many things happening that they're just not getting.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about that story real quick too. I don't want to say quick, but let's talk about that story about this former politician. That story just kind of I asked. I was like, has anybody seen this story? Obviously I, and then I'm like showing everybody but like no one had a clue and I know that in the story you had talked about and I think it was in a follow-up story that people were coming down on you about calling the individual sex workers and the story that is of a former council member from, was it Bothell? Was that correct? That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:I'm baffled my my mind, I just I on levels that I can't comprehend. Like I understand the, the whole, the piece of you know, the the on the, the unspoken piece that no one likes to talk about, that isn't sexy, about people paying for sex and that whole industry. Look, I'm not here to judge anyone for what they do. That's for another show. That's not my place to judge. It's unfortunate that somebody's daughter passed away. She was trying to make a living. It was it right? Not my place to, you know, not my call to make. Uh, it's unfortunate about somebody's daughter, somebody's family member, somebody's friend is no longer with us because of a selfish act of an individual who may allegedly had killed an individual in an encounter. What do we know about this story? What do you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this one. I wanted to put out some information on how I even got this because I think it's a testament to kind of this type of work and where it can go. So everybody missed that story and it happened the day before I actually did the initial rundown and the reason I found out about it. And it's kind of cool, I think, in showing, if you just shoot stories straight and factual, what can come of it. What I found out a while back was not only do I have a massive amount, a very high number of law enforcement and investigators who follow my work, but a large amount, very large amount of people from the other side of the street. You know pimps and sex workers and people doing wild stuff out there who like watching my stuff. Some of my favorite place to go at night when I'm working a scene is the toughest part of town because I get out and everybody's like, hey, can I get a picture? I love this, I love that they don't do that in the other parts of town. They kind of look the other way. It was like, oh, this guy's here, something bad must've just happened. But they were like, hey, thanks for just saying what's going on out here and just letting people know Because of that, at that particular story I had received a photo of that city council member in handcuffs the day it happened, within a couple hours of him being arrested, covered in blood, and I was getting from a lot of girls.
Speaker 3:She worked around saying, hey, this guy just killed one of our girls out here. I actually knew him from some years ago through my work, my camera work. I have interviewed him in the past, talked with him a bit, and I look at the picture. I haven't seen him in a couple of years and I was like, oh, I think I know who this is instantly, and so I messaged back. I was like who do you think this guy is? Well, we don't know. We're hearing he might be a politician and they kind of give me this whole backstory on how they knew each other.
Speaker 3:So at that point I'm like all right, I got to get to the bottom of this. I start checking booking records. He's not booked. I'm starting to call contacts. I'm starting to go. I'm getting a massive headstart from every other agency. I don't call the stations yet because so far I kind of have a half-baked something. As I said, I don't gatekeep, but I also need to have something to actually pass on.
Speaker 3:As it went through through that night. I'm getting more people hitting me up who knew of their relationship. It sounds like it started out as you know what you call a professional relationship. She is seeing him through her work At some point. That apparently then transitions into he wants to not have her doing that work. He's willing to financially support her and wants to continue to control her life and so on. And then eventually you know she's no longer comfortable with him and he feels like he's paying a lot of money and should get more. And then it ends the way it does During the night, about 5.41 in the morning, finally he gets booked.
Speaker 3:I find out later. The reason is, once he got arrested he had to go to Harborview because of these self-inflicted wounds. They then couldn't book until next morning. Then they retro book him back to where he could see the judge that day. Now I have a name. Now, as I talked about earlier, I've gotten many, many tips, I've got photos, I've got all this stuff. Now I've got a name on a government document that says this guy, this age, this birthday, is in for this. I got it now. So I decide I'm going to release something right now.
Speaker 3:And so I in my driveway shoot a quick video, as I'm going to head that way and start putting together the rest of the story, and said I'm the only one talking about this, which is reality. This thing happened now, at that point, 18 hours previous. Nobody's on it, nobody even knew what happened. And I knew nobody had it happen. Because once I posted the video, about 10 minutes later, I started calling around to different newsrooms and stuff saying hey, what do you guys know? And they're going we just watched your video five times, taking notes Like how did you even get this?
Speaker 3:And it's like I'm kind of dumbfounded at this point, going you really didn't have it. And they go no, we're still trying to. They're trying to call people at SPD, get something to back it. And then for the rest of the day they're all playing catch up. Right, I'm already way ahead. They're still trying to figure out did he, was it even him? And I've already got motive, I've got lead up, I've got all those things and so, and then it stayed that way. We've had other stories uh, the guy that we'll probably talk about too, who spd shot. You know, I had motive and everything long before everybody else, and it's it comes from, though.
Speaker 2:Having that kind of reach that's the followers are fun and it's cool to say you got them what they really are is an amazing tool to be able to get information quickly it's interesting me, as we sit here and have a conversation, because this is the first time you and I have ever, you know, had a chance to chat, listening to your stories and having you share this with us. The levels that you don't have, the bureaucracy, the all this stuff. It's just how many people are on your team Beside when you, besides you, there's others right that work with you, that do this. You have a couple other people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's an editor named Laramie, and so he actually sits. You can see that table back there. That's where he sits. He does a lot of I'll go shoot. Then he goes to the body part, washing up on shore. That's when we never got to go there to film it because, you know, it's so sporadic.
Speaker 3:I basically build out, I write up what I'm going to say, I then shoot it in the camera. I have a camera with a teleprompter over here. It then goes to him and then from there, I just get a finished piece back. Sometimes I'll have a little bit of feedback, but he's he just kills it every time. And then, uh, there's two photographers who also go out at night brandon and wyatt and they, uh, they like to just shoot both. Both of them are phenomenal photographers, I think you know crime photography and incident photography has a way of not really getting to show your skill set. They do a lot of auto photography, people photography just great shooters. Wyatt also is a really good editor.
Speaker 3:The piece that I just put out of some of my 2020 footage with the music, that was actually him, so I just handed him my hard drive and he came up with that. That's great. And then from there there's a handful of people who I can lean on for help for research. Research is actually a huge undertaking. Every city, every municipality, every county puts their documents out differently. They have a completely different infrastructure online, completely different way, they call documents, different things. Just getting stuff to where we can get our facts is a lot of the work. Going out and shooting it that's actually probably the easiest part. Knowing it happened, getting there, getting footage, that part's slammed out Now being able to get all the evidence and stuff together is the work.
Speaker 2:I feel that the way in which we consume media and we talked about this earlier in the show, about sitting down to watch it I'll be honest with you, steve. I think what you're doing is cutting edge, where you're able to tell the story without having how everyone consumes media. Now, I mean, this is the way of the future, right? I mean, there's a handful of people that are listening to this radio show, who may be watching this stream, and however you're consuming this show, they're not. No one sits down to watch the new. I don't even watch the news anymore. Well, I have reasons why I don't watch news anymore, but I I just don't find it. I feel like it's time consuming the most. If I'm going to watch anything, it's going to be live sports. Occasionally I'll go watch the news, and now I know that you know someone's retiring from, you know, the tv station, after something, something, years yeah, they put a lot of effort into those, don't they?
Speaker 2:yeah, those retirement pieces are huge right, you know, or I gotta go back for the 70th anniversary and whoo, you know, you go, you go to the nation, you know, and that stuff is all fine and dandy, look, yeah, I definitely be an alum now, now that I don't actually work there. Um, it's, it's not. It's. It's kind of it's okay not to like consume it. I think what I really wanted to do was kind of like consume news on a different level, and this is the one thing I always try to tell individuals Don't be a sheep, don't just like you're just consuming and you're like, okay, we're just going cattle prod, we're going through whatever. Do some research. It's a little extra to get it and I think that you provide that. So if someone is looking for you, know good, and I think that you provide that. So if someone is looking for you know good news, journalistic integrity, steve, your stuff is great, it's phenomenal, and they can find you on Instagram. If you're like, where do I find Steve? If you're listening to the radio, you can find him at photogsteve81 on Instagram. We'll have the links available on the podcast, on the YouTube channel as well. Okay, guys, we're going to go someplace that typically isn't really talked about. It's not sexy, it's not fun. This is something that kind of was like you know what I want to have him.
Speaker 2:The real reason why I wanted to have you come on is I felt like you were speaking to me, but I think you were speaking to everybody and that, to me, is great Journalist being able to tell the story and to feel like you're having a conversation, which is clearly hard to have when you're just the only one there looking at the camera. But to tell the story, but to like, feel like you're just the only one there looking at the camera, but to tell the story, but to feel like you're engaging with them. Several weeks back, there was a story and I think that you even broke the story while you were in NAB in a hotel. Is that right the footage that you had prior to that?
Speaker 2:There was a great piece that you had You're out, I'm out in ab blah, blah, blah and you had this like cameo and great stuff and um. But it led into this story. Um, that talks about, uh, an individual that was going to meet up with a, you know, with a family. A family was. How did this even come to the table? How did you get the information about this horrific. This story goes into levels of things that are going around around here that I don't think people are really talking about.
Speaker 3:Steve yeah, this was a really interesting scenario. So, thankfully thankfully, I have my two photographers still here. While I was down in Vegas. There's this National Association of Broadcasters thing they do every year and you go down there and learn about the latest tips and gears and everybody talks about how great they are. It's the usual convention, right.
Speaker 3:And then I get word while I was in my hotel that there's an officer involved shooting in Tequila but it involves SPD on an op, what we call an op that went sideways and that was kind of all I had. So I check first. There is a shooting call that lines up with this hotel. So I start calling some people in Tequila and they have no idea about this, which was interesting, and I don't say that to say that. And they have no idea about this. So, which was interesting, that and I don't say that to say that somehow this was a botched situation. It's just a lot of times when these ops happen, you don't want to broadcast it out to too many places because you don't want it to get out, and so they actually had an officer involved shooting, and for a significant amount of time. A lot of them didn't even know what was happening and there's already aid and stuff coming, at least in the leadership side. So I'm now stuck with okay, I've heard again, I've heard this happen. This is starting to check out. I don't have anything yet, so I call my guys. I said you got to go there now. This is kind of half-baked, but just go. They started heading that way.
Speaker 3:Then, as fire gets on scene I'm able to start hearing kind of the situation of what's happening. It's confirmed that it's cops. At that point we thought it was just two Seattle police officers who were there. Then we hear it was part of a sex trafficking sting, and sex trafficking is actually a very broad term. Now, if you go back, that used to really be used for a very specific thing and now, as they've not wanted to use words like prostitution and so on, it kind of all ends up in that umbrella. So they still don't know much of what happened.
Speaker 3:We then find out that at least two officers discharged their weapons. He's deceased. It's on the fifth floor. There's a number of things. It's like this is odd. I know that hotel where it's at. I've never been in it, but my photographers are saying it's one of these big open atrium type places and they're saying it happened up there, but there's all these other areas shut down. And then, coming back to a lot of followers, I got people who are staying in the hotel start sending me photos from inside the building, and so what they're telling us at the press conference and what they're starting to disseminate isn't quite lining up with the footage that's in there, and so I kind of start diving deeper.
Speaker 3:So, first thing that happens in this business, you got to get out what is the basic set of facts that we know, and you got to own it. You got to grab a hold of the story. So, from my hotel, I put out a quick story that hey, this happened. We're getting information. My guys had already sent me some clips from the scene at that point. Now we're seeing a massive amount of SPD leadership show up. Tequila is there, but a secondary stance. This thing's getting layers.
Speaker 3:What came of that, though, is I said shoot every single thing. You can remember this. You know we're shooting on SD cards, we're not burning film, get everything. And they managed to get a car that nobody else gets getting towed early on, really early on. Usually, when there's something like this, the scene just gets iced, Nothing gets touched for hours and they wanted this car gone early. And I said get that, get me that license plate. I want to know the car. That sent me down the path of who is this guy? And, um, I don't know if either some of the other cameramen either camera people number one didn't see it or two didn't understand the gravity of it, and they might've thought the same thing I did I can't have anything to do with this. Why are they towing it so fast, right, well, cause it anything to do with this. Why are they towing it so fast, right? Well, because it's evidence and they want this, they want this thing closed down. Uh, that day I didn't find out who drove the car and where he lives and who he is.
Speaker 3:I start looking at his background and you can actually find him on google, because he was the medical director for guantanamo bay under bush and obama for a couple of years. And I'm looking. I was like this can't be. This is huge, this is too absurd, yeah, huge. So then I start looking and we find that he also has some past arrests for sex trafficking and that he's also still he's been traveling around, and so on. So I'm going okay, we have something again we realize nobody else is touching this, I start texting other people I know in the space hey, do you know who the guy is? Like we have no idea and I'm like, okay, we're going, let's do it. And it comes down to just having resources out there.
Speaker 3:From there I start finding out that the sting operation consisted of this he believed that he was communicating with a mother who had a 7 and 11-year-old daughter. He wanted to rape those two girls and the mother said that for a certain amount of money she would let him do that. There was a considerable amount of negotiation that went into it and they then set up this meet to happen at this hotel room in Tukwila. And when he knocked on the door, there were actually three seattle police officers who opened the door. He then pulls out this gun out of his jacket pocket and, uh, they then open up and they, they, they shoot a lot right. So, um, the footage was pretty, pretty wild and it was interesting in telling that story because a lot of these I come in to tell you the base level of facts.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to give you cause and effect, I'm not going to make a political, I don't open up with you know, in woke Seattle, I just say in the city of Seattle, right, we just go, because it's not that I don't believe politics don't have a lot, aren't in a lot of things, but you've got to wait on that. Let's agree as a, as a group of people, as everybody watching this. This is the base level set of agreed upon facts. Then, if you want to take the baton and go from there, more power to you. That's not what I do, but that's what we do here. So we go through showing. This is what happens Sometimes when I'll show these people go, man, they shot so many times.
Speaker 3:Wow, if this is a child molester, that apparently killing child molesters is the universal love language I was waiting for. Like man, we're gonna put this out. I didn't post all the body cam footage, but I'm thinking man, people are gonna get really hostile. The con. I gotta watch the comments. Try and tame it down and it was like 99.9 percent of people are like why didn't they put another clip in and empty that one too? Usually, and even a lot of people say I don't like cops, but I like this, and it's like okay, we need to keep going with this story.
Speaker 2:People want to know more it's interesting because when you watch the footage we'll link it, the footage in in your the story that you told here. I, I mean, I, I think I laughed at the piece where you're like explaining to someone who may not understand what mag dump means that they will shoot you. They will shoot you until you know they. Basically they unload the entire magazine. But again, someone who was in police explorers but let's, let's, let's not get it twisted. That was such a long time ago.
Speaker 2:But when I made that decision not to like go into law enforcement at that point in my life, I was like, well, I don't know that I could actually shoot anybody. Um, I was like, yeah, I don't. I just, you know, it's not my thing. But I was like, well, clearly they didn't leave any room for error because that guy is not going to be around to tell his side of the story, right, um, and as as you, then, so that that piece comes out, then you do another piece that kind of continues your, your investigation on the same said story. How did that story evolve? I mean just more research, right, and time spent with yeah, it was one.
Speaker 3:Once we realized, hey, this is really something here, and saw the response of people who watched it, I thought, okay, let's keep going with this. And so, um, what's been really neat out of this that has come from it is so there's some large military publications I'm not going to name who they are, but significant ones people have heard of, even if you're not in the military and people, because I think people think that somehow they don't want this out and there's a lot who don't want to tell the story. They're not doing what I did, even locals. This is one where I do believe they made a decision to not continue the story and explain who this man was and explain kind of really the issues that are happening out in public all the time. But the military publications that are very pro-military started putting stuff out.
Speaker 3:In the following weeks I got reached out to by a couple of journalists who write big articles who said that work was amazing. We wanted to keep going, but we had a time limit that we couldn't get to, so we put out what we did. I'll tell you right now I'm not going to be able to go back. They didn't give me budget, they didn't give me time. I have other cases, not quite that amazing. I don't want to allude to that. There's a bunch of military people out there trying to meet with mothers, but really bad stuff they go. Can we start sending you files for you to keep working with them?
Speaker 3:Because what you will find as you look into this and I think it comes to my point earlier that a lot of the issues that I've had with the media are really coming from the top down, the journalists that you see out there. They went into this line of work because they wanted to tell stories, they wanted to investigate things, and this is a great testament that this person reaches out going. Please, I will send you everything I put together that I couldn't finish, and can you just take the baton and keep going with it? And I think that's an amazing thing. And you start to realize that a lot of the industry is that these are people that they didn't know they were going to be on tv or that they would.
Speaker 3:Their name would get known. They just wanted to tell stories and they want to get into it. And now they're farther in their career and they're finding that they're held back and they still want it to happen, and so that's been another thing where now I'm starting to get files, large files, uh, tied to joint base lewis mccord, here locally in this state where I can work these, and I'll be able to tell stories that uh, I wouldn't say the media doesn't want it, but they just can't, they factually can't, and so now we're going to be able to get to do that and and when you were talking about this uh agency that uh set up the sting operation, uh, down in takwila, you said there was a whole agency that just focuses on this type of crimes.
Speaker 2:Um, and I, I think the general public, I think we all are in a bliss of like, we live our daily lives and like to not think of like somebody's daughter or you know, there are there's like a full team that seattle has that is working these types of crimes. If it's these types of crimes, if it's sex trafficking, it blows my mind that you know, I know that when you know the joke is you drive down Aurora. You know you're like, oh yeah, you drive by the Krispy Kremes. You might see someone, you might see someone do a magical thing on the pole dance or whatever on the the street pole.
Speaker 2:But again, these stories that aren't being told, that are like horrific. I mean, it's unfathom to me that we live in a day and age where I think we are so immersed in our own little bubble that the stories like this that are being told by you obviously aren't always taken to the level where you have the resources, which may be also limited, but you have the ability to tell a little bit more than just like tonight. At five there's a guy shot police officer blah blah blah, check out the full story at 11. You know it's different. You have that full, that ability to kind of tell the story and I think that it's important that we open our eyes, we're able to see these stories because, look man, it's unfortunate that it, even for someone who's a dad, like my, biggest worry is like your kid being kidnapped, right or yeah it's on horrific levels of like.
Speaker 2:Even when I go to, like a store, it's like I'm always aware of my surroundings, but I I feel like we sometimes we just get in this, the, the day-to-day nuances of life, and we're just like boom, just get through it. And then here we are. We come across a story that, yes, there was a guy who was. The story was told two different ways right and and the way you you told the story. Quite an amazing piece, but it opened my eyes to say, holy smokes, if there's an entire team at seattle that just works on these types crimes, how much is out there that we're not, that the media is not talking about? How much have you not, you know, have not covered or been able to put to the light, to the, to the, the average consumer, to share these stories? If there's something that, um, that you would say to someone right now, I mean, you're probably getting thousands of tips or tips in general of what these types of crimes are happening. Do you feel like you will be doing more of those types of investigations?
Speaker 3:So this is going to become a big direction I'm going so. That task force is called ICAC or the Internet Children Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Spd heads up this task force, but it actually involves multiple agencies across the state. There are many, many people working full time on this. I've talked to a lot of them who've said we work full time and I'm telling you they work like 20, you think I work a lot. We joke about me not sleeping. They're going to a whole nother level and they are saying they're not even scratching the surface. They don't know if they're actually making a measurable impact out there. They're concerned. They're not.
Speaker 3:A couple things about that organization also. They are publicly funded through tax dollars. It is Seattle Police Department, but they operate a huge amount of their budget comes from donation from private parties. That means they need way more money. And what I found out in telling that story is people from around that work started reaching out saying we want to tell these stories so badly, but what we can't have are our means and methods being leaked. They're nervous to work with a lot of media organizations because they don't want more information out there. That just makes their job get harder. Sure, they also don't want to compromise investigations that are in process and a lot of these people you know we talk about undercovers and such these people are deep undercover, right, so you can't go out get interviews and such. It's a real challenge for them. They want the stories out but inherently for them to do the best work, they can't really participate with media. What I think is going to happen, though hopefully in the near future is I will start getting more of these that I can start telling the public so that the public can understand the gravity of this problem, the scope of this problem and how really widespread it really is, and hopefully be able to direct money there because businesses can also donate to them. People can donate to them but also create purpose. You know, what I don't want to do is desensitize the public by continuing to tell them this to where it just becomes noise. That story hit because of the gravity of it and who was involved, and I got a lot of attention. If you keep telling them and don't pick the right stories in the right time and the right way to tell it, you just become another person talking about something, but also talking to them.
Speaker 3:I think some things changed from when we were growing up. When I grew up, I mean, we got my parents were really good about don't talk to strangers. There's always that fear of what if? But you really hardly ever heard about it.
Speaker 3:And now there's so much more happening, and what they believe is going on is not only one are kids more available through the internet to have predators find them and take advantage of them, but also the predators themselves, who in the past were pretty isolated to themselves, generally didn't know other people. Now they are also able to congregate within each other and learn methods and exchange information. And that's where these child pornography rings have become a really big issue, in that now they're all getting images, they're creating images, then disseminating it to others on a large scale, and then it's really become a much bigger problem. So not only do you have children more available, you have the predators themselves able to operate and teach each other in a way we've never really seen in history. All those things come together, and that's why we have this problem to this level.
Speaker 2:And something we talked about earlier and I think we were kind of joking about, you know, pacific Northwest being the capital of, you know, serial killers. Um, does this feel like this is the new type of serial killer where you know you talked about a task force like the green river task for for gary ridgeway or the green river killer. For those who may or may not be from native from the Pacific Northwest or have any clue, I'm sure everyone knows who Gary Ridgway is and the Green River Killer. But, growing up from the Pacific Northwest, I was terrified. I lived in Kent, you know. I went to school in Des Moines up the, you know, from the Green River. I remember coming back with my dad from a mexican restaurant in kent across the green river bridge and there they were pulling out the first body, you know being that little.
Speaker 2:Um, do we feel like that? This is that type of level of of like, like them trying to get a handle of this like because there was such a predominant of like, you know, gary ridgeway or the green river killer, they put a task force together trying to catch this guy, but they're not just trying to catch one person, they're trying to catch multiple people. I mean this. This is on levels that are probably probably just so out of control that they I mean I, I, my mind is like blown right now as, as you're telling me, I'm like I can't even fathom how many people are are out there, that they're trying to catch and and are will they, they will make a significant dent in this type of crime. It's just going to take time and resources, like yourself and us sharing these types of stories so that it becomes I don't want to say make it numb, but to enhance the awareness to the normal public to say, hey look, this is going on out here, this could be your child, this could be your cousin, this could be a family member, this could be a friend of a friend. You know, you just don't know what's happening out there, and these stories are so horrific that even myself, I'm like I, I'm like I just don't want to go out. Not that I don't want to go out, but it's like you want to keep your kids safe and close you. Just you don't know what the capabilities of one individual might be.
Speaker 2:Um, I think about these stories and I think about one that I haven't even heard about in a while, but it reminds me of the 16 year old girl that they found her body on 509. I don't know if you remember this story. Um, the news covered the story but that was it. It was. It was in and out and I don't know whatever happened to that young lady. That was 16, you know she was young. They found her body on 509. Don't know what happened, but this was very close to the same time. They found the body in the duwamish river, just by uh, by the duwamish bridge, in the same proximity.
Speaker 2:I'm like, and everyone is now freaking out the stories that were told online were completely different. Um, that there was a local serial killer that she may have been picked up from uh, from someone from a nightclub who had money. The stories were wild out there. What was actually said, what was done? I was like this is someone's family member, this is someone's daughter. Again, these types of cases. I don't have the resource to go and do the investigation, but what happens to these types of? Could this? Have you heard about this story did?
Speaker 3:was this something that was brought to your attention back in the yeah, I remember I had looked into it at the time and I remember the king county sheriff's department even had to release a statement because it really there was a, a local page that has a large amount of distribution and does like to be a little bit more provocative and push the concept that this was a serial killer. There was nothing from, so it really was only that in the public, behind the scenes, there was really nothing indicating that there was a serial killer of any kind, but it was wild to watch that grow. I think that there was a couple things that were happening around the time and it was kind of like the pandemic. You have a few things line up and all of a sudden all the dots connect and boom, we're going to where they actually because in the beginning they weren't going to make a statement they're like we don't have time for this, this is what. And then they realized like, okay, we really need to get on this and like, quell this down. And it was interesting to watch too, because I think the Sheriff's Department kind of learned something through that experience too that if you sit back and do nothing and think that you are, you know that you speaking to this is not worthy of your attention or whatever it is, you're wrong. You need to get on this stuff and you need to get on this stuff quickly, because if you don't, by the time you do, there'll always be the what if? Component. Get out there, get ahead of it, disclose properly and get ahead.
Speaker 3:There's, you know, pierce County Sheriff's Department. There's a guy down there, darren Moss, who's their PIO. I talk about him frequently. I think he is one of the strongest PIOs, maybe nationally, but definitely locally. He is very proactive, gets information out there quickly, he knows how to edit a video, get it out and he really becomes the standard standard even ahead of the news, and maybe sometime we could talk about that whole part of the world too.
Speaker 3:You know departments that don't like to try and work with media and how do they deal with that? And I think that Pierce County Sheriff's Department just decided we'll just own the process better than we think the media could and we'll just become the standard and people will just look to us instead of trying to check their news app. And they've done a pretty remarkable job. There's also some you can make an argument that well, now you have the government setting the narrative, so I'm not saying it doesn't have its own challenges, but that was really their thing. Is you get other agencies out here who just don't want to play ball, they don't want to disclose and they don't participate, and then that lets the public come up with their own conclusions?
Speaker 2:sure, the news is about grasping at straws it was interesting because I think the case of the body that was found in the duwamish, I was like I, you know, I was like, okay, let me, let me put my pieces together. I'm like what's I think they have, like I know that there's an area that a homeless population, back then that was going on, um, and I so I mean that could have been a case too. You know, who knows what's going on. And it's quite interesting because when you're not a part of that community, it's like you stay, it's like it's like the plague, you're like I don't want to be a part of that, I don't want any, you know, you just don't. And yeah, you just drive by it and you're like, wow, that's it's, it's an eyesore.
Speaker 2:But clearly that whole area has been cleaned up, um, and it's unfortunate because I I barely can, you know, get the show out as much as I possibly can, but it to look to you towards these types of stories, um, I don't feel like like the modern day.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say this, but it feels to me like the modern day serial killer can't really exist like they did back in the 80s, um, just with social media. But I mean that one did spread like wildfire, because I remember seeing on blogs, uh, blog posts of these different little you know, you know neighborhood blog posts like there's a, and people just went crazy. They're like, oh my god, there is a serial killer, he's brand new. You know the body over here, this one over here that you know women need to be careful, blah, blah, blah. Look the in these types of stereotypes of when you know, when the media doesn't get ahead of the story, as you were just saying, it does, the story transforms into a whole new piece and the media not participating adds to the concern right inherently them saying well, we're just not going to address this has people going well, no wonder it must be true, you know.
Speaker 2:Now you're trying to hold it back right and I I think this really boils back to again, resources understanding. Again, like I always tell everyone, look if you're going to watch. I think this really boils back to again, resources understanding. Again, like I always tell everyone, look if you're going to watch the news, make sure you get the full story. Understand what you're learning, what you're consuming on many levels and I know that we typically don't have that ability to do the research or it's like if it bleeds, it leads. I mean, these were disgusting lines from back in the day, but to understand what we're consuming as a consumer of news, I have to give you like full props with the resources that I'm sure very much limited more than a big TV news station to be able to, like you know, do what you do. It's on levels that look so great. And I say this because it feels to me like I'm watching a younger version of some of these big anchors who were correspondents back in the day. When you talk about Peter Jennings out there in these war zones, and Dan Rathers and Walter not Walter Cronkite, because that was way before my time, but you know, tom Brokaw to watch them do these things made me really think of, oh wow, steve is doing very much what I think is missed in today's local news pieces. So again it's, it's, it's refreshing pieces. So, uh, again it's, it's, it's, it's refreshing if.
Speaker 2:If anyone's looking for news that doesn't have a lean, you need to be. You need to follow steve, uh and your. Your social handles are available instagram, because then it links to everything. Uh photog, steve 81. Before we head out, steve, is there something that you would like to share with us tonight that maybe someone has no idea? That like, wow, this is a great story. Maybe it's not being covered on the news, or maybe it's just something in general that inspires you, that keeps you awake every night?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think you know we talked about a bit already. But I really think trying to get deeper into these icac type stories and being able to really help the public understand how they can actually help in these scenarios, whether that be donations or spreading awareness, a lot of what I've been able to do is actually help victims and hopefully, along the way a couple investigations, be able to get information out as needed. But you, you know there's find a purpose in this stuff. Find something that you can actually contribute to. Being able to come out here and get people to watch is one thing, and it's a lot of fun to get out there and get a lot of views but find an actual purpose and for me that's really to just try and add a voice to the victims that may have otherwise been missed and also be able to help some of these organizations like ICAC be able to do more and has your stories even do you feel like your stories are like, especially these big ones, like the one down in Tukwila?
Speaker 2:do those even make national news?
Speaker 3:no, I actually tried to feed that one nationally. I tried that one and the Mike McGinnis, so I have access to all the national desks too and they are not taking it, and that I do have a little bit more frustration than I do the local news, because I know what their resource level is and I think part of it too, is they don't seem to value the online component to their business at all. They're all about broadcast, because that's where their marketing dollars are driven from and that's where their revenue comes from. And it comes back to what are you in this for? You got to make money, I'm with it. I'm with that. These are for-profit entities, but some of these stories need to get out. Use your internet arms to do that, where you have unlimited bandwidth to push information.
Speaker 3:60 Minutes has a great TikTok, by the way. How much more traditional can you get than 60 Minutes? And they are killing it on TikTok because they realize that you need to be able to continue to get those eyes to come over and watch your really heavy, impactful work. Don't turn away from it and act like you are better than that. You are doing the public a disservice with that mentality. Get them to come in. You're selling tickets to the show on TikTok. Get out there, get some content out there. So they go, man. I don't remember last time I watched 60 Minutes. I want to hear more about this. And they're one of the few organizations that really understood that, and too many of these think that they're too good for it and they're not using their biggest platform. I reach millions daily. There is not a local news station that can say the same thing and that helps in so many other ways.
Speaker 2:If you care about the work, and I think that will continue to create almost a new standard steve. As you continue down this journey, which it's going to be fun to continue to watch because you will be, I want to call you. Know you, you look back and before cable was a thing, it was like four, five, seven, eleven, right, 13 or whatever. The uh, channel 22. You're gonna, you're in that, you're there. You're there on a level that has supersede, which I see is the future of new being new, stories being told on a level like, sure, the news stations stream their shows, right, but to be able to tell these stories, these packages that are told on the TV station, what you're doing is being missed, being thrown to the wayside, as you're saying.
Speaker 2:I think this is where it's at. I mean, people are going to consume the news on this level, the fact that news stations and agencies aren't taking. You're ahead of the game, so you're already in this lead. I believe, as you're saying, that you're right that measurable of that, that mighty tough broadcast television station is traditional. That I understand. But the way and how you have so many different ways to now share that same story, I think they still are kind of waiting, still behind the bus on.
Speaker 3:So again now that their non-compete clauses are no longer valid. If you saw that in the news. I think you're going to see a big shift. I I talked to a lot of a lot of them in that space who wanted to break out of there, but those non-competes have kept them. I think you're going to see a lot change just in the next 12 months.
Speaker 2:It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I mean, we're going to watch people retire, people move away, continue to grow. I'm excited to continue to watch you Again, if there's something. What's going to be interesting for us, too, steven, what we're going to be interesting for us too, stephen, what we're excited to be doing is we're going to go back to the studio inside the flagship station of KVI and we're going to do the show live, which we haven't done in a while, which is exciting. But we're going to do two hours instead of just the one, and to do two hours of radio is a lot of work for one individual. Because I don't have a producer, I do it all myself, and that was the one thing that, when I built this radio show was, from soup to nuts, to do it all myself. So everything is done with, well, a little help from AI, but the rest of it is, you know, editing-wise. Yeah, that's all me.
Speaker 2:So again, steve, it's an honor to have you come on to share these stories. If something breaks or if there's something, I mean you don't need to bring it to the radio, but, uh, we would love to continue, just to hear, uh, your stories and uh, and to continue to share them. For those of the older generation that maybe don't know how to type, or maybe arthritis has kicked in and they just consume it on this level and it's. It's the one thing I always say is radio is still romantic. We still tell a story. You still have to, you have to build these stories and you tell the story and then you build the picture in your head. So again, you're doing it on levels that are quite astonishing and just brilliant. Uh, again enough, I can't say enough. But, man, if you have a chance, go check out steve stuff instagram, go find him photog. Steve 81. Uh, any parting words before we go no, this has been awesome.
Speaker 3:I'm looking forward to coming back.
Speaker 2:We'll get into some other deeper stories when we uh, yeah, we look forward to it. Again, I appreciate your time and we'll chat with you soon.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:All right, it says that you are about 52%.
Speaker 3:I got a ways to go. My internet is trash out here. So we're on Starlink, which everybody thinks is so great it's. It's good on the download. The upload is what sucks.
Speaker 2:Where it sucks. I know when I worked at the, the reason why I left TV broadcast is I worked at Sinclair. Sinclair sold the radio stations. I went there to go work. They needed a radio guy. So I came to to work at Sinclair I was like, fuck, I'm going to get the TV experience. This is going to be awesome. I'm at there, I'm at the during the fucking pandemic. All the engineers, we all split that up. They're like okay, we don't, we can't have everyone in the studio at the same time. Okay, we get it. I understand. Okay, so I'm at the station. We got a guy at the transmitter site. Everyone's working on different locations. Fine, I'm working morning shift, I think. When they decided to sell the station, I get a call. My boss like hey, any, you come in my office. Uh, he goes, sit down. They're about to break the news. We sold the for me. Well, you're going with them. I was like. I was like I still have a job. He's like yeah, you.