The Fifth Hour: 2026 Benny's Preview!

0:00This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. Start trading crypto on Kraken with just $10. Buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, and over 450 other crypto assets in seconds. Kraken has been around for over 14 years and is trusted by millions worldwide. Whether you're brand new or looking for a better experience, Kraken makes it easy to get started. Download Kraken on the App Store or Google Play. That's K-R-A-K-E-N. Not investment advice. Kraken trading involves risk of loss and is offered to US customers excluding New York and Maine through Payward Interactive Incorporate. If you regal the sploters at Kraken.com slash regal slash the sploters, terms and conditions apply. Are you trying to get weight loss support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed? Check out orderlymeds.com now. Orderlymeds.com was built to be different. Here, you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals. Review your eligibility and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderlymeds provides access to proven GLP1 medications, like some agglutide and Terzepatide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate.

1:02So you have choices back by clinical oversight. Not guess where. It's a simpler, more supportive telehealth experience, designer out people who want clarity, care and confidence in their weight loss journey. And your medication is delivered directly to your home and discrete packaging. So your experience stays private from start to finish. Do your research, ask the right questions, then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. Again, that's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary, not medical advice, eligibility required, see site for details. Tax season has arrived. And doing taxes without the right help can feel overwhelming. Into it, TurboTax is here now to guide you through it with confidence. Match with a TurboTax full service expert who handles everything for you from start to finish. Your dedicated expert checks every single deduction and credit to help you get the best possible outcome so you can feel confident you're getting every dollar you deserve. And the best part, you'll see real-time updates on your expert's progress right on your phone while you live your life. Plus, you get unlimited expert help at no extra cost,

2:05even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax full service experts, real-time updates only on iOS mobile app. Thy ticket, lady Jennifer of coupons. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my discover card. They accept a discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discoverers accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times, you're playing the loot. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discoverers accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nilsen report. Caboom! If you thought four hours a day, 1200 minutes a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the old Republic. A sole fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter, the same as the rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow. The clearing house of hot ticks, break free

3:05for something special. The fifth hour with Ben Mallor starts right now. In the air everywhere, the fifth hour. With me, Ben Mallor and Danny G Radio, we have this podcast on lockdown. On this Friday, the 13th day of March, a very special day on this podcast. We have the democracy of the circus, fun zone of mirrors and break lights, and we'll see what else we have time for. But we begin with this after just doing a full week of overnight radio, we're back here. And on most nights, on most nights in the sports radio overnight world, the stakes are rather modest, right? You play the numbers game. There's a few sports takes. Mallor monologues for those. There's some insomniacs, commercials for Wee Bull,

4:09Tire rack, express pros. There's a handful of callers. Some of them sound like they're broadcasting. From inside a washing machine, but, you know what that means, once a year, once a year, somewhere between the witching hour and the first time you pull over to get a refill of coffee, I don't drink coffee, but I'm told that many of you, you know who you are, you gotta get that refill of coffee when you're out there driving on the highways and the byways. So somewhere between that, the circus tent goes up. And we asked the question, why is this night different from all other nights? Well, you're about to find out. Welcome to the 2026 Benny Awards pre-game show, the overnight radio equivalent of the Oscars. If the red carpet ran through a truck stop, somewhere in Barstow, and the nominees occasionally called up

5:09while doing a backstroke from the Bellagio fountain. If you know what I mean, the real ones know what I mean. Yep, it is not just the Ben Mallorchow. No, no, no, no, no. It's more than that because on this night, it is the night to celebrate the things, the quirkiness, the wildness that make the overnight show what it is, the annual award ceremony, a metaphorical black tie event, at least in spirit, no, no sobriety, no sobriety, somewhere in the dark corners of the night sky under the cover of the moonlight, the Mallorchow. And you say, it was Friday, the things not until Sunday night, the Mallorchow is buzzing. It's a beehive that just discovered extreme caffeine. Now, is that hyperbole? Of course, yes. But then again, hyperbole is the oxygen.

6:10That's what we need late at night to do talk radio. The most important, Benny election of our lifetime. It is naturally, of course, every year, every year, the most important year, until next year, when that's the most important. Now, just like every election is the most important election and every reality show finale is the most shocking in history. Now, the people that do a TV, we do radio obviously, but the people that do a TV learn long ago that if you don't inflate the balloon, nobody notices it's floating. Nobody notices. I remember the late great Craig Sager, sideline reporter for Turner Sports, and it was very popular covering the NBA. And he wore these outrageous costumes when he was doing TNT. And I ran into Craig a few times

7:11at the arena called Staples Center, which is now called something else, the crypto or whatever it's called. And Craig would show up and do his pre-game routine in just regular clothes, just regular outfit and go interview the coaches and go to the meetings, the production meetings. He'd have dinner in the chicken press room, eating his food and wearing just regular clothes. And then about half an hour, about half an hour before showtime, before the broadcast began. Craig Sager would go into the powder room and it was like his phone booth. He came out dressed in some kind of ridiculous over-the-top outfit and he was ready to go. And everyone knew who he was. He was good, but if he'd just been good wearing regular clothes, nobody would have known. He wore these outrageous outfits. I also work with a guy named Victor Breck, the great, we've had him on this podcast, the great Victor Breck Jacobs, same situation. So, same deal. Still, the Benny Awards, which is what we're here,

8:12this is the pre-game show, have become something of a folk tradition with the P1s. It is a con of all of characters. And you know a lot of them, you know the names, they dial the show up, they send messages from behind their smartphones, from every time zone, people internationally, emotional, it's really the emotional zip code, if you will, of the nocturnal audience. And think of it as talk radio's version of the county fair talent show. But that's the, it's also the Malapalooza. This is more to celebrate, celebrate good times. So it's kind of like a talent show every night in the show, except the livestock sometimes will call up and argue about the Seattle Seahawks Secondary or the salary cap or something like that. Now, one of the night's more charming categories is the rookie caller of the year. Everyone loves a rookie,

9:14which kind of reads like a scouting report from the world's most eccentric draft board. We've got Anthony Louisiana, who has become synonymous as he calls up and tries to flirt with Lorraine. Hey, Lorraine, SpongeBob SquarePants. How are we to know whether that's the real SpongeBob or not? The cartoon character now apparently calling overnight sports radio from a phone somewhere beneath the sea. Mikey and the insomniac, the pride of Tampa, whose brand is exactly what the name suggests in Somnia with commentary. There's D block in Miami, whose heart is in Chicago. So a little bit of a riddle. When it comes to that, Quinzel from Oakland, another proud member of the May I flirt with Lorraine a club, a Lorraine a superfan member. Dorco, the comedian from Hawaii, proof that even Paradise has its share of lovable oddballs.

10:19Absolutely. And Bugatti the Trucker, a rolling legend of the highways and byways of the Northeast. You've got Snooker from North Los Vegas. We met him at the last Malar meet and greet. We did in Vegas an Air Force veteran who calls in and has a hot take. He doesn't want to talk about the mainstream sports. He wants to talk about the oddballs, the weird sports, the non mainstream sports. So all of these people come together. They're all rookies, right? They're all rookies. And if Hollywood had casting directors for overnight radio callers, right out of central casting, they could not assemble a lineup more colorful than these characters. And that's just, not just rookies, it's pretty much everything. The intoxication index is through the roof. You've got the intoxicated color of the year. And I'm not going to go through every category

11:20because it's only a 35 minute podcast or something like that. But the intoxicated color of the year, which sounds less like an award and more like a public health advisory, gets somebody from the White House over here. So you got Keg Drinking Steve from Kansas City who hasn't called in a while, but he leads the field. A man whose relationship with beverages is less casual and more of a contractual agreement. J.Dot and Utah, now we lost J.Dot, tragically forced into the dreaded day shift, a cruel twist of fate for someone who thrives on the neon glow of calling a radio show at one in the morning. My personal favorite is mouthwash Mike, who has swam, swam, swam. Swam, I could speak that word out, swam in the Bellagio Fountains multiple times. Now, how do you know who mouthwash Mike is? mouthwash Mike is the guy that carries a bottle

12:20of yellow, basic mouthwash like a lucky charm. Then there's another one of my favorites, Mike and Tucson, who once handed the phone to his wife in a hospital, right? She's in the hospital and even for late night radio that we had to pause, that was wild. Another wild moment happened from the Black Irishman is one of our nominees in Omaha. This happened just a few weeks ago, if you were listening, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm gonna bring up. But the Black Irishman, he woke up his elementary school-aged daughter at about four in the morning, so she could say hello on the show. Fast asleep, daughter sleeping, hey wake up, say hello to Ben. And then there's Jed who fled from the Redneck Riviera, a man whose resume of chemical adventures is so over the top, he is qualified to get a job at Walgreens or CBS.

13:21So if the Nobel Committee ever expands into the field of questionable decision making, the Nobel Prize for questionable decision making, the Benny's already have a short list of candidates. We've already done that. There's the woman division, which is really going away. I don't know what we can do to get more of the ladies to be involved in the show, but the female caller of the year category, very straightforward, you've got Andrea, the astrology insider, who mixes sports talk with planetary alignment and the horoscope and all that. And then there's Robin in Ventura, a study voice who does not like Mike the leper con. And that's it, that's all, that's the big board, not a list, Terry in England, that's a big board. In a carnival full of noise, full of noise, sometimes the comments voices carry, the first, furthest, and then there is the category every award show secretly loves.

14:22Kraken is built to make crypto simple, by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and over 450 other assets in seconds, fast account funding, fast withdrawals, and recurring buys if you want to stay on schedule, simple, secure, and trusted for over 14 years, download Kraken on the App Store or Google Play. That's K-R-A-K-E-A. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to US customers excluding New York and Maine through Payward Interactive Incorporate. View legal disclosures at Kraken.com slash legal slash disclosures, terms and conditions apply. Last support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed. Check out orderlymeds.com now. Orderlymeds.com was built to be different. Here you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals, review your eligibility, and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderlymeds provides access to proven GLP-1 medications like somaglutide and terzepetide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate. So you have choices back by clinical oversight. Not guess where.

15:23It's a simpler, more supportive telehealth experience, designer on people who want clarity, care, and confidence in their weight loss journey. And your medication is delivered directly to your home and discrete packaging. So your experience stays private from start to finish. Do your research, ask the right questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. Again, that's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary, not medical advice eligibility required, so you cite for details. Doing taxes the old way meant handing everything off and just hoping things were moving. But now you can feel confident your taxes are being handled right with into it turbo tax. Now you match with a turbo tax full service expert. Just upload your documents right in the app and boom, they take it from there. Start to finish. You've got a dedicated expert working your return. They check every deduction and credit to help you get the best possible outcome. So you can feel confident you're getting every dollar you deserve. And now you're not guessing what's happening.

16:25You're seeing it happen. Turbo tax gives you real time updates on your expert's progress while you go about your day. Run errands, grab a coffee, live your life. You're always in the loop. And if a question pops up, you get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Taxes are finally transparent, easier and handled. Visit TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax full service experts, real time updates only an iOS mobile app. Thy ticket, lady Jennifer of coupons. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my discover card. They accept a discover at Renaissance fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discoverers accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times, you're playing the loot. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discoverers accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nilsen report. I'm more no different. On the bannies, we are no different.

17:26Worst caller of the year. Officially branded the beer-drinking Brian Memorial Trophy. Another great character on the show, beer-drinking Brian from Minnesota, lived in Missouri, had half pint with him, riding shotgun, and there they were. And this award, the worst caller. Very competitive. This and the alcoholic category right near the top and toxicity category. So the beer-drinking Brian Memorial Trophy, here are the nominees, including Edog from Long Island, who's become the master of the non-sequiter. It just is. He talks about things that are not related. Mike DeLepricon, a man whose controversial style combines a lot of sunscreen and dad jokes. No one else has this slice of talk radio, sunscreen and dad jokes. Hollaring James, whose snore score has become its own form of performance art. Poppy and San Diego, who thinks that you want to hear

18:29Poppy's picks, when really you want nothing to do with Poppy picks, right? You're like, oh my God, I need to hide. I got to get out of here. Why didn't you crash the party, Poppy? Then you've got Dorko, who returns for a second nomination, versatility, like a human pocket knife, Dorko, the comedian from Honolulu, Hawaii. Then there's Blind Scott, who's been with me all these years, a caller who's on air, personality, can swing from brilliant to bewildering in the time it takes for him to clearest throat. There are so many personalities in there. He's like the evil con evil of switching personalities and it's a stunt show, pretty much every night for Blind Scott and every circus needs its clowns. Radio simply gives you guys who are the clowns, the microphone, the big one, right? The big one, the one that stands out, the head and shoulders above all the rest.

19:29And just forget, rookies are great, the booze crews and the lovable disasters. That's all the undercard. And there's some other cat who's international caller of the year and we're not gonna do everything here because I want you to go and look and vote and all that. You can vote on X, on Facebook, there's links on there. We'll send it out over the weekend so you can keep voting. You don't have to be on social media too. If you want, it's not rowing upstream. Just send me an email at either real fifth hour at gmail.com. That's real fifth hour at gmail.com or send me a message at Ben Mallor Show. I'll try to get back to you as quickly as I can and I'll give you the link so you can vote. You need a Google account, it's free to get. Don't care if you use Google or not. We had some people that were fudzing around with this. So we needed some way to limit the damage that you exceptional losers are doing by hacking our contest.

20:32So that's what we did. That's what we did. But anyway, the main event is the Genie and Medford caller of the year. The Genie and Medford Memorial call of the year. Now to the uninitiated in the Mallor militia, if you're relatively new to the show, it's possible you just started working overnight and you found the show and you're in your shot down and I begged you to listen to this podcast so you've started listening to this podcast to the uninitiated. Genie and Medford might sound like just another name on the big board. To the faithful, she is something closer to folklore. Everyone who was around in that era of the show has a Genie and Medford story. And they're all amazing and they all sound like they can't be true and they're all true. Just the gold standard, right? To the faithful, again, she is mythical. She's mythical, right? Radio has, it does have some legends.

21:35It's theater of the mind. It's characters who feel larger than the medium that it's, they're on. Genie was one of those voices and we have these great debates when things get slow in the month of June in sports radio. The eternal argument is it Jordan or LeBron, Brady or Montana, that certainly seems like it's been over. Some people are now trying to hype up Othani versus Babe Ruth. So it's that level that the Malam militia has its own uncontested, heavyweight chip band of the world and that is Genie and Medford. There is no debate. There is no recount needed there is just reverence. And to put in perspective, how beloved Genie was. And she didn't know this and I tried to tell her. She was on her deathbed and I talked to her and she couldn't even talk. She lost her voice from all the drugs and the booze and all that was very sad. And I told her, I said, I want you to know how much people love you. And I didn't even realize how much people loved Genie and Medford.

22:36It was only after her death. When she was by herself, she was a lonely woman and she had some family but she was kind of the black sheep or whatever and they forgot about her. So we raised some money for a burial, memorial for Genie and Medford. And we thought we'd maybe get a couple bucks, maybe a couple hundred bucks and it was thousands. It was thousands of, we were amazed. We had so much money that was donated. We were able to take care of the burial and the funeral expenses. And we had money left over where we have a plaque at Swan Boat Park. If you ever get to LA, if you're in LA, go check it out. Swan Boat Park where they filmed a lot of commercials. That's really a cool thing. I think they've cleaned it up. I know they did. I don't know if it's back to being Skid Row at the park. But it's just a wonderful place. And right near the playground, there's a park bench, there's frogs and there's water and the whole thing.

23:39And there's a plaque dedicated to Genie and Medford. And I thought, boy, that's really cool. And that was with the money. And that's just because she was so beloved. So the nominees for the award that bears that woman's name, the late great Genie and Medford, the Mount Rushmore of show regulars. You've got Lucky Tony. Always have to have your finger on the dump button. Blind Scott, another multi-dimensional performance by Blind Scott. He can win multiple pennies. Marcel and Brooklyn, multi-time caller of the year, Jed who fled from the Redneck Riviera, Rick and Marilyn, who's known for his catchphrase, Morning Time. Weed man, hippie, who's become a regular on the show and Mike in New Hampshire. And each of them, each of these dudes has spent countless nights dialing in to our little audio circus, hoping to lend a couple of minutes of air time under the big top.

24:39And that leads us to the democracy of the circus. Award shows, like the pennies, love grand language. And the pennies, we really lean into it. The democracy of the audio circus is on the ballot. The soul of the Malar militia is at stake. History is watching. One can almost picture the political slogans going up. Now, is it exaggerated, of course? Of course, of course, of course. However, exaggeration is the currency of entertainment without it. What are you doing? I had this guy Chris called up a couple weeks ago and he was ranting and raving like the loser that he is. And he seemed to be upset that we try to do an entertaining show. He wanted some boring people to do the show. And I was blown away by that.

25:40Like, why would you bother listening to somebody who's so bogged down with boring? I don't understand, I don't get that. I talk about entertainments, about show business and all that. So, and without it, you know, we're in trouble. So, in truth, the Benny Awards are something simpler and stranger. It's a reminder that radio, especially late night. It was one of the reasons I loved as a kid radio. And they've got cameras in here and I got to promote the YouTube thing. But at its core, however, at its core, radio is the greatest medium. Because you use your imagination and everyone's got an imagination. Some people forget to use their imagination and they become jaded and old and they don't be that person. Always enjoy the imagination. Wonder what is, Jett, who fled, look like. You know, what's this SpongeBob guy? What's that all about?

26:40Who calls a radio show at 430 in the morning to be SpongeBob? What is that? So, again, let's late night radio. One of the last places where the ordinary person becomes a character and can make that happen. You know, I said, well, the internet, yeah, you're on the internet. And there's a gazillion bodicounds. And there's so many people on there. It's like being a piece of sand on the beach. Well, yeah, you're on the beach, congratulations. However, you're one of a gazillion little specks of sand and you don't stand out and it doesn't really matter what you do. On our show, Abra Kadabra, Hocus Pocus, you've got truck drivers, janitors, trash men, crossing guards, insomniacs, gamblers, drug dealers, police officers, arresting drug dealers, night shift workers, and factories, every voice gets a moment. If they want, if they want, they don't have to call in.

27:42You know, nobody has to call in. We're fine. We can run the show perfectly fine without having anyone call in. We can do that. And we've done it. We've done entire hours or shows without call. So some things happen though, right? Some things happen where there are these moments that just are brilliant and they're unscripted and it just happens. Some are ridiculous like when we mentioned the black Irishman woke his daughter up in the middle of the night to say hello. If you're unforgettable, just completely unforgettable, like the night weed man hippie was calling in during a hurricane and was giving us updates all night as the hurricane made landfall on a lifeguard tower in Miami. Could have died and I would have been blamed if they had figured out why he was on the lifeguard tower during a hurricane in Miami, I digress.

28:45And so you just know like somewhere out there in a kitchen lit only by the glow of a radio dial. Someone is rehearsing their next phone call whether it's cowboy John Brad or who are, because in the mallar circus, this particular mallar circus, anyone can grab the trapeze. Even SpongeBob, which makes a good sideline report. I think SpongeBob would be a really good sideline reporter. All right, meanwhile, I wanna share a brief story. Some of you noticed this, many of you did not notice this, but the other night, it began with the illusion that it was normal. This was normalcy, normalcy and all that. And when you live in Los Angeles, it's usually the first warning sign that something abnormal is about to happen

29:48when you have the illusion of normalcy. So here I was just random overnight talk show dude and professional insomniac performing the normal pregame ritual, the routine on all creatures of habit to get ready for work. And to be prepared so I could provide you with a marginal overnight show, as most people are sleeping and you got the TV flickering, I got the world baseball classic on. I've put my notes together for the mallar model logs, the forbidden fruit, real, this is a real hard luck story, by the way. Yeah. So just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal. I packed up my bag with my headphones and my mic condom and just another routine pilgrimage from the north woods to the glowing citadel of sports chatter, the mothership in Sherman Oaks.

30:51The Fox Sports Radio compound, the compound there that we have in Sherman Oaks. Right at the 405 freeway, get off there, Ventura and Sepulveda, routine dependable like clockwork. Which as it turns out is precisely the problem in a place where the clock had just changed. It had just changed. So before departure, the ritual, I get a text from Sagar, who's my liaison with social media. He's the one that rides the waves, jumps through hoops to put the social media stuff up. So he's my guy and he's the digital town crier and the mall or militia. And every week, my week begins the same way. I get a text from Sagar, who has the devotion of a monk and says, you're gonna be in studio tonight. What's your schedule? Now the answer was immediately and confidently,

31:54yes, normal week. This is in hindsight, I was very optimistic. I was being Benny Brightside. Kraken is built to make crypto simple, by Bitcoin, Ethereum and over 450 other assets in seconds. Fast account funding, fast withdrawals, and recurring buys if you want to stay on schedule. Simple, secure, and trusted for over 14 years. Dell Mode Kraken on the App Store or Google Play. That's KRA KEN. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to US customers excluding New York and Maine through payward interactive incorporate. View legal disclosures at Kraken.com slash legal slash disclosures. Terms and conditions apply. Are you trying to get weight loss support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed? Check out orderlymeds.com now. Orderlymeds.com was built to be different. Here, you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals, review your eligibility, and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderlymeds provides access to proven GLP-1 medications,

32:54like somaglutide and terzepatide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate. So you have choices back by clinical oversight. Not guess where. It's a simpler, more supportive telehealth experience, designer out people who want clarity, care, and confidence in their weight loss journey. And your medication is delivered directly to your home and discrete packaging. So your experience stays private from start to finish. Do your research, ask the right questions, then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. Again, that's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary not medical advice eligibility required. See site for details. Doing taxes the old way meant handing everything off and just hoping things were moving. But now you can feel confident your taxes are being handled right with into it turbo tax. Now you match with a turbo tax full service expert. Just upload your documents right in the app and boom, they take it from there. Start to finish. You've got a dedicated expert working your return.

33:55They check every deduction and credit to help you get the best possible outcome. So you can feel confident you're getting every dollar you deserve. And now you're not guessing what's happening. You're seeing it happen. Turbo tax gives you real time updates on your expert's progress while you go about your day. Run errands, grab a coffee, live your life. You're always in the loop. And if a question pops up, you get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Taxes are finally transparent, easier and handled. Visit TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax full service experts, real time updates only an iOS mobile app. The I Ticket Lady Jennifer of Coons. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover Card. They accept a discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discoverers accept it at the places that I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times. You're playing the loot. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?

34:57Discoverers accept it at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nilsen report. So I climbed into the Malloramobile and I began the journey to the studio. And LA, if you've never been, is a place where travel is less about distance and more about emotional endurance. And you don't drive here so much as you participate in a civic obstacle course filled with potholes, people walking on the highway, people riding bikes. That's not allowed, by the way. On the highway, you got asphalt and patience and some kind of existential crisis that's going on. So I get in the car, I'm stopped at the red light and I did what every modern driver does. I looked at the phone. And now I also made a decision.

35:57I decided to type in my route or route on the GPS. I summoned the Oracle, the Maps app on my phone. The address for the Fox Sports Radio compound was punched a mirror formality, a ceremonial nod to technology, and then the number appeared. Estimated time of arrival, three hours, a three hour tour. That's a dated reference. Does anyone get that? Three hours to travel, what is normally... I kid around about how long a community is. It's like a little over an hour. This was double that. And then some, three hours, the Sherman Oaks, three hours to what should have been a very straightforward late night glide down the web of freeways that Angelino's recite,

36:59like multiplication tables. You got the five over here, the 405, the 101, the 605, the 710, the 110, the 105, the 55, 57, what about the 91? Do I hear the 91? How about the 60? Do I get the 60? Okay, good. I got the 60. Do I see a 10? Is there a 10? Can the man in the back? Okay, for a moment. So again, I typed this in, said three hours. So I thought this was some kind of clerical error inside the app, the Oracle. Surely the what you might call it, the mysterious digital brain guiding the map had suffered some kind of malfunction. The doohickey wasn't working. There was a hiccup, a technical sneeze. The app was closed, reopened, and refreshed. Ta-da, guess what? The result, identical. Three hours, three hours, at this point, I made an executive decision. An executive decision, the calculation became philosophical.

38:02A three-hour drive from the North Woods to Los Angeles suggested this was some kind of cataclymic, some kind of tragic thing or something. I mean, I was trying to put a word to you. It's early, bear with me. Well, we're recording this, but one could clearly fly from LAX to Seattle in that time, about three hours. I've made the flight a couple of times. I'm going to see it all a few times, about three hours. One could watch an entire baseball game and then post-game show as well. Alf could watch a Red Sox game and watch the Nesson post-game. He'd be good to go. Fergdog could watch an angel game and sleep for two and a half hours and then wake up and the game would be over. Yeah, and you'd also age, visibly. So the freeways turned into this grotesque, civic board game was more like a fun house. Like, welcome to the fun house of mirrors and brake lights. Freeway Bingo played with Rex instead of numbers.

39:02Accidents on the five, a stall on the 405. I'm congested on the 101, back up on the 110. And a ripple effect spreading through the asphalt nervous system of Southern California. Now, somewhere in the distance, I'm imagining a bunch of news helicopters hovering like vultures, police helicopters, there's some kind of accident there. The mine begins grasping and trying to find explanations. Now, this was the day of the LA marathon. The marathon's a daytime event. That couldn't have been it. Was there a rogue UFO that landed on the 710 freeway? Probably not. Probably not. The creeping crud of post weekend commuters returning from San Diego to go face the battlefield. Or perhaps the simplest explanation of all, just the clocks had changed, daylight savings time, the annual social experiment that our fearless politicians

40:06will not change a collection of people that were confused that apparently had quietly turned the freeway system into a sleep deprived pinball situation bouncing through traffic and all that. So face with the available evidence that I had a reasonable suspicion that I would not make it to work on time. The clock was ticking. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So I made the only logical move one could make. I made a U-turn in the eloquent vernacular, very elegant vernacular of Southern California motoring. We like to say we flipped a bitch. That's right. Pointed to the car and said, all right, do your thing, cart flipped the bitch and headed back towards the North Woods, retreated to the subterranean broadcasting bunker, Benny's bunker. This remote studio, which I'm in right now, in the bowels of the Mowler mansion,

41:06the pilgrimage to Sherman Oaks was abandoned. Midquests, the Mowler Mobile Retreated Northwood, we went up to the North Woods, like a general pulling the troops from an unwinnable battle of only general customer done that. The legend would not have been that way rather that the legend would have been, hey, this guy's a hero and a, that there you go, safely removed from the asphalt purgatory, saved myself three hours of commute time at least, and the show was conducted. And because in LA, the traffic is not merely transportation, it is theater, it's sociology, it's the drama O'Rama performed by millions of men and women who are just reluctant actors trapped inside these metal boxes. And that's it. And on this particular evening, the freeways had won. However, I considered a win because not only did I do the show,

42:08per normal, and very few of you noticed that I was not in the mothership, and there were no gremlins. I did not get attacked once by gremlins. That is a win-win. That's how that goes. That's a win-win. On that note, we will get out of here, have a wonderful rest of your Friday and enjoy that World Baseball Classic, and we'll have new podcasts for you tomorrow on Saturday, and then the mailbag on Sunday. If you would like to be part of the mailbag on Sunday, you can write in, and how do you do that? Well, you send an email to realfifthour at gmail.com. All letters, no numbers, realfifthour at gmail.com. I have not yet seen an email from Reggie from Detroit yet. He normally emails me very early in the week. I'm gonna assume that he's okay, and we'll send an email between now and Sunday, and I don't see anything new from Alph or Fergdog, so there's opportunity if you wanna get your letter red,

43:08realfifthour at gmail.com. That's realfifthour at gmail.com. Have a, again, a great day, and keep that grind going, and we'll talk to you next time. Later, skater. Osta, pasta. Got a murder, gotta go. This is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. I wanna take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time, and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of, but I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance against hate, that aired during the big game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words, and sometimes standing next to someone is enough,

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