Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 11-07-25_FRIDAY_8AM

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Author Tom Clavin discusses his latest, RUNNING DEEP, story of the USS Tang, the deadliest sub of WWII. D62 Quiz, open phone topics, too.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here, KMED and Grants Pass on 105-9, K290AF, Rogue River, in South Jackson County on 1067 K-294-A-S, Ashland. Got to put a little steam under here, Tom Clavin. Tom Clavin, U.S., or should we say New York Times bestselling author, but he's talking a lot about the U.S. military and his latest one,

running deep, bravery, survival, and the true story of the deadliest submarine in World War II. Tom Claven joins the show. Good morning, Tom. Welcome back. Good morning. Thank you for having me back. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm going to hold up the books so people can see this.

And you are a crackerjack storyteller on this one. We've had you back on for, tell us about some of the other books that you have had on American history that I think have just been astounding. It's kind of run down. I mean, you're really good at this stuff. I did a Frontier Lawman trilogy with Dodge City and Wild Bill and Tombstone. I did a book a few years back. There was also a World War II story called Lightning Down.

And with my great good friend, Bob Vruy, we've done a couple of books together in the last few years that have done very well. Daniel Boone book, Blood and Treasure, in the Last Hill, another World War II story. So I've really been fortunate. You know, come across some good stories and had the opportunity to tell the good stories, and then people have been reading them and responding. And what is it about World War II stories that seem to generate more interest?

Or is that the case? Or is it just because it's like, I mean, the last, dare I say, non-controversial war? Maybe I'm wrong about that. Or it's saying it in elegantly. What would you say? I would say it's because it was the last, maybe the last very clear-cut war. You know, who was good, who was evil, we were fighting evil. And because it was so complex, and it was a weird.

World War. I mean, there's so much that went on in the Atlantic Theater, there's so much went on in the Pacific Theater. Even today, 80 years after the war ended, were finding stories that haven't been told or haven't been told completely. And that's sort of like what running deep is. It's the story of the most successful U.S. submarine in World War II that nobody's ever heard of, and his captain who was a medal of honor when there was nobody ever heard of. I have never heard of this until you wrote this book. And I thought that I knew all the big battles and all the big deals. But and I had never really heard of the USS Tang until this, and yet so many awards,

and how has it, or why has it been so ignored up to this time? I think one reason is because the branch of the service he was in, you know, the silent service, what they call the submarine fleet, and it tended to get overlooked. It was literally out of sight. They operated below the surface of the waves. I think another thing is that Richard O'Kane, when he, received a medal of honor and the war, the war ended, he lived a very quiet life.

He didn't look for any kind of celebrity or anything of that, whereas the equivalent to Richard O'Cain, he was the most decorated officer, naval officer of World War II. The equivalent would be somebody like Audie Murphy, who was most decorated Army soldier of World War II. But he went to the movie business, and he did westerns, he played himself in a movie, autobiographical movie. So I think that's another reason why. And I think it's O'Kane's personality, too, was more modest

and self-effacing. And so a great privilege for me is that I came across the story and could tell not only his story, the O'Kane story, but the story of his submarine called the Tang, which sank more Japanese ships in World War II than any other submarine. So why don't we start then with Richard Heather, Hetherington? Is that how you pronounce it? Boy, that's a mouthful. Yeah, Heatherington, O'Kane.

So tell us about the captain's story and how he got to be. Well, he was a He was a New Hampshire native And he always wanted to Which is not necessarily known as a great naval area But he wanted to Right from the Gipope joined the Navy, which he did The real turn of events for him

Was that he joined the Navy He went to the Annapolis He graduated He entered the As an incident to the Navy on surface ships Like a battleship or something like that and what the difference for him was that he decided to volunteer for submarine duty. I use the word volunteer very specifically because you could not be assigned to work on a submarine,

to be a submarine sailor, because of the risky nature. It was six times more likely to die on a submarine than a destroyer. So you had to volunteer, right? You had to volunteer for it. Is that how that worked? You had to, yes, because the risky nature of it. And also just the experience of being on a submarine. I can't imagine doing it.

You had to take a particularly hearty soul to... And yet, think about this, though. I've often thought about this, Tom Clavon, that if you're... Gosh, if you have any kind of claustrophobia, forget the silent service, right? No way. Exactly. And claustrophobia is a very specific ailment. But even not just claustophobia, it's, let's say you're okay, but being in enclosed spaces,

Because if you're in an enclosed space, it could be 400 feet underwater, and it's going to be doing it mostly underwater sailing for weeks at a time, knowing that the surface, that any chance of escape, there is none really. And that can really eat at you, especially day after day after day of it with some of these longer missions. Tell us then about how he ended up getting the command of this vessel and why the Tang became so, I guess, silently famous that you brought. you know, forth his story, running deep. Yeah, I like the way you use the terms silently famous, because if you go to people who are in the Navy, especially those who are submarine aficionados

and those who are alumni of submarines, they know the Tang right away. That's like the Holy Grail of ships of submarines because of what it accomplished. O'Kane got the job as the captain because he had been the executive officer on a submarine called the Wahoo, captain by a man named Mush Morton,

who is a legendary figure, and they were very successful, too. Then O'Kane got his own boat, the Tang, and what he learned from Bush Morton about surprising the enemy, doing what they don't expect, taking risks, be on the surface as long as you can because you can sail faster than you can underwater. He took that to the Tang, and it's like the Tang was the Wahoo on steroids.

It would silently attack Japanese convoys. Not only did it really effective because they actually destroyed ships, but they were effective in that the psychological fear they instilled in the Japanese Navy. Every time they saw a periscop, it's a tang. Oh, no, we're done. We're doomed. They would actually say that, commanders over there on the other side.

They were quite intimidated by the Tang. And according to the Japanese, the Tang, was everywhere at once. Every submarine was the Tang, and they feared it. Wow. I would imagine then that, you know, the long knives from the Japanese were certainly out for the Tang, weren't they? Yeah, they were. They, I mean, it would have been a great prize to be able. to say, I sank the tang, and there's a couple of times where it seemed like the boat had

been sunk, but they were not. But I saw some proud captains went back to their superior said, hey, I sunk the tank, and the next thing you know, a week later is the report of the tank sinking two Japanese supply ships. So, yes, it would have been a big, big, you know, badge of honor to have sunk the tank, but no Japanese ship ever did. Now, in 1944, you say here, October 24th, the Tang took on an entire Japanese convoy, the entire convoy, right? Yes, it was kind of a lone wolf operation. They were out there by themselves.

They came across this convoy. They figured there's probably too late or there's not enough time to get reinforcements to alert other submarines. So, O'Kane being, you know, the guy that he is, he wasn't going to let this convoy get away, so he attacked the entire convoy and came within a whisker of sinking the entire convoy, but then something happened to the tank. Oh, no. What happened?

Yeah. It's the very last torpedo, you know, submarine in World War II had 24 torpedoes. And at the very last one, the 24th, when it fired off at a wounded cargo ship, it boomerangued, came back and hit the tang itself. It's on torpedo. Oh, okay, yeah. So torpedoes were not very sophisticated in those days, unlike now? Oh, that's an understatement.

One of the surprising things, I think, in the book Running Deep, is how unreliable torpedoes were. How many times some Marines are going into battle against the enemy, not knowing if some of the torpedoes are going to work or not? In this particular case, something malfunctioned, boomerang, hit the tang. The tang goes down to a settles on the bottom, 180 feet down. The surprising thing is that the captain and some of his crew is actually survived. Now, the bad news is they survived because, and then they were picked up by the Japanese and had to endure. The rest of the book is their endurance of a brutal Japanese prison of war camp.

Yeah, and that ends up being a major part of the book running deep, too, because, they were brought to what was termed, what do they call the type of camp that they were brought to, and there were other World War II luminaries, they were also brought to the same kind of tam. Yeah, what's it called? Called the Mori was the camp, it was called a Torture Farm, was a designated because it wasn't even registered with the Red Cross. So the Tang, Captain O'Cain and his fellow crewmen, they did not know. Nobody knew back in the United States that they actually survived because it wasn't registered with the Red Cross. They didn't get reports about people who were still alive.

So they were just captured and disappeared, in other words, is what happened, right? The Japanese guards would taunt them with. As far as everybody knows, you're already dead. Whether you live or die here does not matter to us. And so they would actually torture them, abuse them. There was malnourishment. There was diseased. I mean, Richard O'Kane when he was captured, it was about 170, 175 pounds.

When the camp was liberated, 10 months later, he was 90 pounds. Oh, my goodness. So he's like he was half the man he was. he went in, really. He was half the man he was. And you can imagine, once they found out, he didn't know right away. Once they found out, the Japanese found out that one of their prisoners was the tank commander, the ship that had damaged them the most, they really went after them. And it's a miracle he survived. Boy, I'll tell you. And so it really is a story of bravery and survival. Now, I know that also within that same tank, in the camp, rather,

Pappy Boyington, the famous flyer, right? Yeah, Boba, Black Sheep, some of your listeners may be familiar with the TV show and was based on Tappy Boyington who was the number one American Ace Flyer in World War II. He was a prisoner there. Louis Zamperilli,

Zamperini, who was the main character in Lauren Hillibrand's book and movie Unbroken. He was also an officer there. In fact, it was sort of like an all-star team of officers once Dick O'Cain and joined them at the camp.

And he sort of became, O'Kane became the focal point of the Japanese anger. and sort of let the other two guys off the hook a bit. Yeah, so these guys, people that were taken to this torture farm camp, you know, essentially, they were the big troublemakers, the burrs under the saddle of the Japanese, right? And so they were going to do everything they could to make life hell for them. It's what happened, right? Yeah, not only that, but in the case of O'Kane, I mean, here's a senior American officer, a captain,

and they believed, which was not quite true, but they believed that he had valuable information that would help the Japanese navies, you know, in the war. and so he was especially targeted for torture because they thought he revealed something and he really had nothing to reveal but even if he had he probably wouldn't have revealed it anyway so he ended up surviving there's only a handful of people who made it out of the camp

isn't that right? Yes yes exactly and the ones who did were in very bad if the war continued another week or two they probably would not be anybody left in that camp wow what happened to him afterwards when he came back stateside because you had mentioned And you mentioned in this that it was a pretty quiet life, unlike many of the other, you know, famed fighters. Yeah, that speaks to O'Kane, not only his nature, his personality, but also he was, I guess I could say to some extent haunted by the fact that his ship had been sunk and that he didn't go down with the ship.

You know, many, many years later when there's a shipping, the USS O'Kane is being, you know, launched. and his wife has asked about it. This is after O'Kane had passed. He said he can never forget the fact that his ship, that he came back and his men didn't. So that was another reason why he stayed, you know, sort of under the radar because he really, he always had the survivor's guilt about that.

He had survived at the sinking of the tank, but so many of his men had died. I have known of soldiers, World War II, Vietnam, other, you know, Korean War, various other soldiers who after time had passed, had ended up, becoming friends with the enemy. I'm not saying that, but, you know, would get together

and almost over-approachment of some sort, you know, and remembering what had been, you know, in their battles. Did O'Kane ever do that with the Japanese, or was there just too much nastiness under the river from that camp? Well, it was too much for him. He did go back in 1947 to Tokyo for testify a war crimes trial. But other than that, he did not have any contact with them. You know, surprisingly, one of his, one of his crew members who stayed in the Navy who had survived the sinking in the Japanese camp helped the Japanese build their very first submarine in their post-war Navy. So there was some of the characters that are in the book did have this kind of, you know, reconnection with the Japanese. But in the case of O'Kane,

and it's interesting, he wrote a book called Clear the Bridge about his experiences of the Tang. And it's about a 350-page book. He devotes two pages to his experience with Japanese camp 10 months after all that that hell and torture two pages right this is 20 years after the war end that he still could not deal with it you know is that um

is that something unique to the world uh the world war two generation is this something in which well let's be honest I mean we know how guys can be you don't talk about it you you bury it you you stuff it and you try to find a way to move on or is there

something else in play. No, I think that's exactly it. I think there's an expectation of a lot of these guys when they came back to just get back into the swing of things, you know, find somebody, get married, or you've already married, have some kids, get a job, you know, assimilate yourself back into the normal American society. And also, we did not have the kind of insight and intervention we have today, not that it's fantastic today, but to help these veterans reaccomate themselves in society. If they're dealing with what they used to call battle fatigue. And so, So a lot of these people were silent by choice. A lot of these people were silent because they did not know how to express themselves.

Yeah, you could make a good argument that many of these people, the strong, silent, you know, the O'Kins of the world, were probably clinically depressed and really, you know, having some trouble dealing with it. And so we've got to find some way to get past it. Yeah, and they face the host of problems when they got back to the states, too, because of, like you say, the depression, the anxiety, the fear, the nightmares. and other things. In fact, one of the characters of the tank who survived, he came back into California in his airport. He was beaten by his wife and her husband. Oh.

They thought he was dead. Oh. Got married. Oh, man. What a heartbreaker. But I didn't try to straighten that out. Oh, boy. That kind of reminds me of what was that Tom Hanks movie,

even though it wasn't military, Castaway, right? Castaway, yes. He comes back and Helen Hunt is with somebody else. Yeah. Wow, what a story. And why does this story in your mind, why does it still matter 81 years later? I think one reason is I think anybody is, most people are interested in a story of survival. That's one thing. I think the second thing is because we have really a lot of, not a lot of information about what the submarines did in World War II, especially in the Pacific Theater. And I think the third thing is the idea of a character like Richard O'Kane, who's gone unnoticed, and yet was so inspired. It was his ability to take the punishment and bounce back every day, every day, every day.

They really kept the rest of the lot of the prisoners, his fellow prisoners around and alive and still believing they were going to survive this. Most Americans have no idea who O'Kane is, but the Navy officers do, right? They do. He's a legendary figure and, you know, very, very revered, but really until running deep came along to a mainstream audience, and we really don't know who he is. All right. Tom, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing a bit from it. We're just scratching the surface because there's a lot, there's a lot to cover in here. And when you go out and research a book like this, were you able to talk with family members or people who may have served with them? I mean, everyone's pretty old from World War II. There aren't many left now. Really, you know, if you do the math, the youngest World War II veterans are probably 98 right now. That's right. So nobody was left alive from the Tang that I could talk to. were some family members and also, but also there are institutions like the Library of Congress,

the National Archives, and especially the World War II Museum in New Orleans, where they've been collecting over the years of oral histories. So if you, like for some of the Tang survivors, they had completed oral histories that I was able to get access to, which is the next best thing and being able to talk to them. In fact, it's even a better thing because, let's say I found somebody 98 years old who's still alive from the Tang, their memory might not be as sharp as what it was when they gave the old history 20 years ago. Thank goodness that we did some of those. or many of those oral histories.

Really good. Yes, definitely. Tom Clavin, available at all the usual places, or do you have a website for the book, too, Running Deep? Not for the Running Deep itself, but Tom Clavon.com.

People can find it on there. And yes, they always urge people if they can to patronize their local bookstore, but there's also places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, so running deep can be found. Tom, I'm live without a net here right now. Someone's calling in.

they may be asking about you. Let's see. Sure. So we're going to find out otherwise we'll put him on hold on. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Bill, this is your friend, Brett. Great, great, great guest. But, yeah, I wasn't calling to talk about that. Okay.

Well, I'm going to put you on hold, and we'll let Tom get back to his Jay John, man. Okay? All right. Hang on a bit. Tom, I appreciate you sharing the story and keep us in the loop when you come out with a new one. Are you working on another book to come? I'm working on something that will be coming out next. June to coincide with the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the 150th anniversary.

All right, very good. Tom Clavin. Tom Clavin.com. Thanks so much. Be well. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And the book is running deep. Bravery, survival and the true story of the deadliest submarine in World War II. Great story. 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770. 5633. That's 770 KMED. And when you call, you are signing up with the diner 62 real American quiz. You have three days, three diner 62 quizzes. Yeah, because of my vacation. I'm going to make up for this and get you all set up. Okay?

And before we do the diner 62 quiz, Todd, hello Todd. You wanted to comment on the conversation with Tom Clavin about running deep and the silent service of the submarines. What's going on? Good morning, sir. Yeah, I read a book from the perspective of

a Japanese aviator and he was on a ship and pitch black in the middle of the Pacific one night and they had observers on their deck and they saw just an instant flicker of light they knew it was a submarine and they attacked it and they sunk it

and they were all celebrating and the captain of the ship told everyone to shut up and said they determined it was someone on the con tower lighting a cigarette and that's all they saw and he said, that could have been you that died. So that's just how dangerous it was.

You couldn't even, in the middle of the night, out in the Pacific Ocean, light a cigarette without potentially being seen and dooming your entire crew. And one other thing I was going to mention, he mentioned the prisoner of war camps, and how horrible they were. Yes. For those who knew the famous book in TV series, Shogun by James Clavel, he was a prisoner of war. uh... in japan during uh... the tail of the japanese war thousands of people were working in slave labor in mines and such

and he his opinion i'll just throw this in was that if they hadn't dropped that we hadn't dropped the nuclear bombs on japan the first american boot on japanese soil would have meant the immediate death of all of the prisoners in japan no kidding there's always been a lot of uh... controversy about that. There was controversy even at the time when the bomb was dropped, and we're still arguing about that today. I have known very few fighting people,

people who are actually in the service, who thought that it was a bad idea. Well, my father-in-law was on Saipan waiting to be, you know, taken on to Japan. They were going to be the first, you know, attack. And let's just say he didn't have a problem with the nukes being dropped. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Now, the other news which is coming out, though, is that the emperor had actually called for peace talks and wanted to surrender. I think that was part of it. But, yeah, what would have happened to those prisoners?

We still don't know. Open question. Hey, I wanted to ask you, Todd, would you like the copy of Running Deep? Would you like to read this one? Absolutely. And if I could throw out there, I'd love to give a book review of a book I picked off a shelf. indestructible by Robert Bruning, true story of an American Navy aviator who was in the Philippines when it was overrun by the Japanese. It's an absolutely amazing story. If you ever feel like you've had a

bad day, reflect on that book. Okay. Yeah, in fact, start reading it on your worst day and all of a sudden you'll be thanking God for your misery of life right now, right? Great. Thank you, sir. No, hang on, Todd. Hang on, Todd. We're going to get this set up. you get you get my advanced reader copy okay sounds to me like this is something you would enjoy okay hang on and then if you want the diner 62 real american quiz some great american history we're going to be talking about here in just a moment seven seven oh five six three three good luck we'll play it next compassion it's a lot like empathy but it's fueled by action you're here in the

bill mire's show on 1063 kmED wonderful food diner 62 you know that it's your breakfast favorites your lunchtime favorites and they're all going to be favorites. By the way, today is clam chowder Friday. Clam chowder Friday. We got, hey, clam chowder's so good, you're thinking you're on the Oregon Coast. And we're not talking about Oregon Coast like Filo Fish McDonald's type thing. No, we're talking about the real stuff. Good stuff over at the Diner 62. So Clam Chowder Friday is today. We also have hot open face sandwiches, including the pot roast sandwich served with mashed potatoes and brown gravy or the hot turkey sandwich, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce on special. They always do that every holiday season. Good stuff. Diner 62. And let us go to

Kathy. Hi, Kathy. How are you doing this morning? Great. Thank you. All right. Kathy, we're talking about today, or actually tomorrow in history, November 8th, 1864, Abraham Lincoln is re-elected. In 1864, Lincoln, a lot of challenges to the presidency, the war. Now in the fourth year, many questioning if the South would ever be conquered in Union General Ulysses Grant mounted a massive campaign in the spring to finally beat the Confederate Army of Robert E. Lee. But significant losses at Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor. Yankees were bogged down around Petersburg. And as the fall approach, Grant seemed no closer to completely defeating Lee than his predecessors.

And the weariness fueled calls for a compromise with the seceded states. But the Democrats had nominated George McClellan, the former commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, McClellan widely regarded as brilliant in training the Army, but he had failed to defeat Robert Lee. Now, Lincoln won 54% of the civilian vote in the election. For the win here, Kathy, what percentage of the military voted for him in November of 1864? Was it A, 33%, B, 48%, C, 63%, D, 78%, or E, 93%, or E, 93%, 93%, or E 93%, What do you say? 48%?

48%, I'm guessing. You're going, so if there was a 38 something of the civilian, yeah, makes sense? No, it's not the one, though. Okay, bye. Sorry. Okay. Let me go to Lauren.

Hello, hungry, Lauren. How you doing? Oh, I'm doing good. I'm glad I'm home today to catch you. All right. Well, glad you're here, too. So the military, how many voted for honest day? Was it 33%, 63%, 78% or 93?

What do you say? I'm going to go to 93%. You're going to go 93%. No, it was less than that. Oh, well, you can try again next week, okay? And let me go to Kevin. Hello, Kevin. How you doing?

Good, Bill. How are you? I'm doing fine. So it's, let's see, 33, 63 or 78%. How many of the military? What percentage of the military voted for Abe Lincoln? You're 78%. 78.

Yeah. Just below that. Most important was the fact that the election was held at all before this one, by the way, Kevin. No country had ever held elections during a military campaign, during a military emergency. And Lincoln himself said, we cannot have free government without elections. And so anyway, they worked on that. By the way, 78% voted for Abe Lincoln, including a big percentage of McClellan's old

command. They may have liked him, but they still went for Abe. So there we go. And so hang on. You are going to Diner 62, Kevin. We'll have it all the ones starting Monday. Let's see. Let's go to, well, let me break, and then we'll take some more calls here.

We've got people standing by. We'll grab your calls here in the final minutes of Find Your Phone Friday, November 7th on the Bill Maher's show. Your quest for driving excellence leads. Before we get back to the phones, palate cleanser, because we've had serious stuff talking about seas and submarines and sinkings in death camps, all the rest of it here. Dad Joker the Day sponsored by Two Dogs Fabricating on Brian Way off, Sage Road in Metford. relates here what do sea monsters eat fish and ships okay all right right now you think you have a better one go to two dogs fab dot com submit your joke and then maybe we'll get a chance to read this but two dogs fabricating by the way local dealer of iron bull heavy duty trailers made by north star plus

they have a line of north star light duty trailers too lots of good stuff there by the way built their name on fabrication so you need anything custom fabricated talk to two dog's fab, okay? 852, and let me see. I think we have Glenn Arshambo here. Hello, Glenn. How are you? What's on your mind? Hi, Bill. I've listened intently to your guy about the submarines. Yes. And I remember your father being one of the atomic veterans. Your father was one of the atomic veterans. I'm sorry for interjecting there, but I remember that. You're right. And he was on the island of Saipan. And when they dropped the atomic bomb, him and his team immediately made their way to the bomb sites and began this intense medical data review.

And at the time, the Japanese were already doing that work, and they joined up with my father's teams, and they became lifetime friends. Even in the horror that they stood in, somehow they managed to get along and do the work that had to be done in the medical and the engineering work that was at hand. And so that began a commission, an international commission of the atomic energy, came from those days in that work. And I always remember my father being such a cool hand. He was one of the guys, I guess, that kept people from shooting each other out in the streets of Tirojima, Nagasaki. And so it's a different side of the story of World War II.

It's the story of how we became friends in the most horrible situations. But they made bathrooms for the Americans because they wouldn't use Japanese bathrooms. And they made all these special American meals. And they had geisha girls who come and check in with them. It's a whole different story from the blood and gory. Did your father ever write a book or write out what had happened? Yes. Yes.

There's a book. It was written back in the 60s and 70s by, one of his immediate officers, and it goes over a great deal of this, because they already knew a lot of the Japanese high-level medical people, because they were international people. Yeah, it's a great book, a bit complicated, but it gives you a side to our American history that we rarely talk about. And thank you for sharing a little bit of that. Really do appreciate that, Glenn.

It's 854. I'm almost out of time here. I want to grab a couple more calls, and I could probably go on another hour this morning. There's enough material, but, hey, we'll take your calls. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hey, Bill, it's your friend, Brad. Good morning.

Yeah, Brad. You call back, and what did you want to touch on here? Something out of Breitbart, an interesting article, worth reading. Yeah, yeah, John Carney just published an article yesterday, and, of course, everyone is interested in what happened in New York City. You know, how could, you know, with all of these highly educated professionals, how could we see what we just saw? He makes a really interesting case for what he calls the new American Rust Belt. And just as 25 years ago, we saw the erosion and the financial damage in Americans' industrial sector, which you saw in your state of Ohio. Yep, in Ohio, Pennsylvania. You bet. Yeah.

Ohio, Pennsylvania, you know, it's called the American Rust Belt now. And he's saying what we're seeing now is, but we're seeing it among the educated professional class, we're seeing the same type of thing where even though they're making fairly good paychecks, none of them are able to access the American dream and the way that they expected to when they were going to college and whatnot. And he talks about people trying to raise families in 900-square-foot apartments. Well, you know, it was what I was talking about yesterday that I think that there is some misinterpretation of what happened. Okay, a lot of this is just like, okay, it's a blue area, blue and blue people, and they're voting for blue socialism, et cetera, et cetera.

But we would be in error to miss the economic aspect of what's going on here. Because I remember the Rust Belt in Ohio, Pennsylvania, the sneering elites didn't give a crap about that. In fact, you even had people in, I forget who was it, Kevin Williamson, not that many years ago. it's mentioned in this Breitbart article, how it's like these people, like in Hillbilly Elegie, deserved to, you know, go down hard, you know, that kind of thing. And we would be unwise to repeat that experience, wouldn't you say?

Right. There's a lesson to be learned here. Hey, do I have your permission to mention a Christine Drazen thing this morning? Yeah, I had mentioned that earlier this morning. 11 o'clock she's going to be, yeah, 11 a.m. she is going to be at, let's see, Rogue Lumber. The nice, yeah, the nice people at Rogue Pacific Lumber are hosting Christine Drazen this morning at 11 a.m. If people want to drop by and say hi.

All right, very good. And that's going to be 1187 West McAndrews, okay, in Memphis. That's exactly right. Thank you, Bill. All right. You're welcome, Brad. Let me grab one more call before we wrap for the week. Hi, good morning.

Who's this? Hello. This is another Brad. Oh, Brad. Two brads in a row. How you doing? If I had known it was you, I would have had your polka, but we don't have time for the polka. Let me know.

Thank you so much for revisiting history. You're welcome. It turns out that my brother-in-law, he's older now, but his dad was a medic and made it through southern Europe and Italy and got to Dachau. Oh, boy. When our first troops arrived at Dachau, and he has photographs that they're mind-blowing. Point being, this guy experiences all that and goes back to the states and goes back to living his life. You never would have known he was part of that history. And I know how, well, even my grandfather was part of liberating one of the,

concentration camps and I know it affected him negatively he would never talk about it Brad never how could you not be impacted by that yeah I know the inhumanity to man

thank you for the call and and thanks for the sentiment I really do the email bill at billmyershow.com have a wonderful weekend plenty to talk about and we'll do that on Monday morning Mark Lee Van Camp and Robbins coming up