Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 11-12-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

11-12-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer 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. Great to have you on here, the Bill Myers Show, with some open phone time here on Wheels Up Wednesday. I wanted to talk with you this morning and get your opinion on the H-1B visa, because this became a big deal, especially yesterday, with a talk that the Trump administration is set to bring in 600,000. thousand Chinese students, Chinese students into the American university system. And the Trump administration had a dust up, President Trump had a dust up with Laura Ingram yesterday on the

Ingram angle. And to her credit, she asked pretty good questions. See if we can get this on. Let me try it again. Let me start it from the beginning. Okay, here we go. There's never going to be a country like what we have right now. The Republicans have to talk about it. And does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration. Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can't flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. You also do have to bring in talent. When we have plenty of talented people here. No, you don't. No, you don't have talented people here. No, you don't have, you don't have certain talents and you have to, people have to learn. You can't take people off an unemployment, like an unemployment line and say,

I'm going to put you into a factory who are going to make missiles or I'm going to put people. How do we ever do it before. Well, let me just, I'll give you an example in Georgia. They raided because they wanted illegal immigrants out. They had people from from South Korea that made batteries all their lives. You know, making batteries are very complicated. It's not an easy thing. It's very dangerous, a lot of explosions, a lot of problems. They had like five or six hundred people, early stages to make batteries and to teach people how to do it. Well, they wanted them to get out of the country. You're going to need that, Laura. I mean, I know. I know. you and I disagree on this, you can't just say a country's coming in going to invest $10 billion

to build a plant and get to take people off an unemployment line who haven't worked in five years and they're going to start making their missiles. It doesn't work that way. Okay, so President Trump making the case, and I was astounding when he said, you know, you don't have the talent in the United States, but do you think that maybe the president is correct? Do you think the president is correct that we have to import, you know, 600,000 H-1B visas from China, specifically is what, is what Laura Ingramman, President Trump were talking about yesterday. Do you think that that is true, that we have to bring those people in? And I'm not convinced. I'm not exactly sure what is driving this push, this idea, oh, people who've been making batteries all

their lives, we've made batteries here, we've made all sorts of things in this country. Or is that just an admission that, you know, today's younger generation doesn't have the educational or the workplace stuff to be able to make things happen. And so you have to import the third world or China or India would be the other one that tends to be, you know, a big source of these H-1Bs. Do you agree with this? I'm kind of siding more with Lori Ingram on this. Because the thing about the H-1B visa that people don't understand, everyone makes this case They're trying to make this case that this is the best and the brightest. These are the best and the brightest coming from China or from India.

And, you know, we need the best and the brightest coming over here and training the American workers before we fire them. You know, remember that with Disney just a few years ago. That's the way it's actually been playing out, in my opinion. Or if you want to work in high tech, you better be from India or else you're not going to get hired. You know, that kind of thing. what people forget though is that the h1b visa is a lottery it is a lottery system did you know that h1b is a lottery system there is a lottery people sign up and then they get selected it's part of a lottery it's not a lottery of ooh you are the finest and best workers available it is strictly a lottery

the way that someone gets selected to be H-1B. So I'm kind of, I'm looking on the side of Laura Ingram's position, and kind of like, how did we ever do it before? But maybe I'm short-sighted at it. I'd be happy to take your call on this or anything else on your mind, too. But I think, you know, this is a big one. This is a big one. I don't think H-1B Visa is making America great again.

What's a you? This is the Bill Meyer show. Do a quick home health check. Have you noticed this wireless company, Pure Talk. The Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. 7705633. Big dust up with President Trump and Laura Ingram on Fox News Channel yesterday. And Laura, to her credit, you know, took it to it.

And about the H-1B visa. I think most Americans already instinctually or instinctively understand that the H-1B is a scam. It is about just reducing American wage levels and keeping. them low by diluting, by diluting the workforce competition under the claim of, oh, we need these people. It's the best and the brightest, but President Trump seems to have his finger purely on the H-1B. Go ahead. $600,000.

Bring him in. China, which kind of strikes me odd. Jim, it's good to have you on. You have an opinion about this? I'm a little uncomfortable with this one. What do you say, huh? Well, this is something that I've Harvard for. several decades is the government being so laxadaisical and inviting these students into the programs

that are high-tech, like physics, nuclear physics, chemistry, electronics, all those kind of things. We don't need to be teaching these people high technology. Let them figure it out. Well, I know that part of it is that President Trump said without the Chinese students that half the universities would go bankrupt. He did say to that, but I wasn't all that convinced that is a reason for us to bring Chinese in, though, is it?

No, no. I just, I don't, they are an adversary in any adversarial country. I don't want their student body in our universities. If they want to go to law school maybe or become teachers or something or something like

that, that's something else to consider. But I'm focusing on high technology and uh there should be nothing like that going on and i'm going to write the white house and tell them i said you know you've got to you've got to kind of um break this down not all students are equal from china well and the other thing is that we have supposedly all of these stem graduates because they you know they were uh you know taking the bait saying hey the only way you're going to make it in america is if you had your uh you know your high tech degree, your high-tech degree, and then, you know, you're replaced with somebody from

Bangalore at half the price. I mean, I'm not convinced that we don't have the talent, Jim. I appreciate the call. Let me go to Francine. Hello, Francine. Good to have you on. What's on your mind, huh? Go ahead. Well, yeah, I was kind of wondering how this has been paid for. Are these people that he wants to bring in paying for their own education? Oh, yeah, they're paying it. And one the, the beauties of it, at least according to the, you know, the woke university systems that we have is that they pay full ride. You know, they don't do any or take any subsidies. So, I mean, it's part of no problem with this. But, you know, the whole idea is that everybody knows this is not coming here and just getting an education. You know that they're... I know. I know. I know that.

Well, it's like, you know, we have our chips all and we have our chips made in China and stuff like that. It's like, you know, for our computers. I mean, you don't think that there's back doors built into everything. I mean, we cannot trust China. China is not our friend. And this is nuts. And there's so many people in the United States who are actually brilliant but come from very disadvantaged, you know, homes, backgrounds and stuff like that that cannot afford college.

And why don't they make some kind of program to seek out these people and help them? And we'd have our own really brilliant people. Yeah. Well, there's also no incentive to reduce the insane cost of higher education right now, too, is when you import $600,000 to pad the enrollment either. Okay? And on top of that, Bill, they're not our elementary and high schools and stuff like that. They're not teaching the kids enough so that they're qualified to go to college most of it.

You know, they come out of school. They can't read. Right. All right. I appreciate the call. Thanks for that, Francine. Let me go to Chris. Chris, I'm always willing to be wrong on something like this, but, you know, this one gave me pause. You know, this dust up with Laura Ingram and President Trump yesterday. How do you see it, huh? Well, like I said, Bill, you're not wrong. You're not my optic. Look, I went to Red Robin for Veterans Day, and I met two young ladies that were in the same branch of services as I, the Navy. And, you know, that renewed my faith, that we have young patriotic people ready to serve our country and, you know, go to universities and do things like, you know, know the technology for batteries and all this stuff.

Yeah, I agree with one of your callers about all that is, all that intellect should stay in our country. We shouldn't have all these people in our country. It's horrible. All right. Thanks for the call there. Chris, 770KMED. Hi, good morning. Welcome.

Who's this? Hi, it's Monica. Monica, what are you thinking? A lot of my thinking. I'm thinking it's part of his deal. He wants that deal with China so bad that he's going to do this. I don't think he's thinking of anything else. He wants that deal.

And what he needs to do is get his head back into our country and tell, because China has never, ever, ever went through with any of the deals that they've ever made with us. Now, listener, Dave, who wasn't able to hang on for some reason, he had posed the question off air when I was talking to him. He was wondering how many, how many of the Chinese students coming in and the H-1B visa will be required to spy for the China while they're here? Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely.

Oh, definitely. But that's what Trump's after. He's after this deal with China. This is the biggest thing he has. You know, he's his friend and all that. Okay. All right. Okay.

I appreciate the call. you for that already. I'll take one more. I think we're kind of getting the pulse. Good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hello. Hey, Bill. Is this me? Yeah, it is. Go ahead. Bill. Steve, Sunny Raleigh. Yes, Steve. What are you thinking about this one? Quite the dust-up yesterday. Making news. Well, two things. It's not new. In 86, I graduated from college. My roommate got a degree in computer science, and every job back in 86 was filled up by a guy from India who graduated from the Mumbai Institute of Technology. And quite often, mediocre students, too.

It's like the best and the brightest weren't being sent. The mediocre ones that weren't able to make it there were being sent. Oh, no, no. All of them came here because even a bad job here paid 10 times what a good job there did. Oh, okay. My roommate ended up going into IT for Portland State University. Big, big cut in a waste of his talents. But you get one Indian.

I used to be a big, but vague supporter until he said that, oh, no, we need to bring in these Indians. And I watched what happened to Fry's Electronics. They got in one Indian, and now you can't talk to anybody that doesn't have an Indian accent. They just got rid of everybody else. Turns in a big tribal thing, doesn't it? Right. Right. And they do stick with each other, and nobody blames them of being racist for sticking

with their own race. Yeah, but if Americans stick together, we're always racist. I get that. Okay. Yeah. All right. Steve, I appreciate the take. Thanks so much.

All right. We'll take a pallor-glenzer break here after the news, but, yeah, I'm hoping that President Trump finds a way to reverse course. on this particular one, all right? Now then, Medicare, you're getting ready to join? Boys a Complex. We can help you out on this one because all of the supplemental programs and everything else. Very confusing.

What's the best deal? Talk to Lynn Barton at Sky Park Insurance. Her number's 499-958, 499-9-59-9-58. We have open enrollment on Medicare through December 7th, and it doesn't cost more to have Lynn do the hard work and the heavy lifting. So have her do the work. Have her do the work, and you just say, sign me up. Okay. Call in Barton at Skypark 499058. More information. Skypark INS.

shall help you make Medicare easy. One more time, 499-0958. For reliable well-water services, look no further than Sisku Pump Service and Rotary Drilling Company. From well-drilling and water testing to well-pump installations, holding tanks, and... The Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. Amber streamed on KMED.com 738. Bacon joins me, and it was 50 years ago that this happened. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down. The Big Lake they called Gitchie Gould.

Yeah, 50 years ago on Monday, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is still stirring the memories and the imaginations even today. And John Bacon has written, you've written, what, about 13, 14 books, John? On the greatest 14. Are you more of a history guy? What is your background here? Well, my background is history as a history major at the University of Michigan, which my engineering friends called pre-unemployment. But anyway, we did get a career of it after all.

So history is the background, although a lot of my books are sports books, mainly on college football and hockey. Okay, but this time you turn your writer's pen, or the word processor, I guess, to the Gales of November, the untold story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. and I've been reading this off and on for the last couple of weeks, and it is a beautiful. I'm just going to, I'm sorry to be a fanboy, but I'm just slobbering over it, but it is such a great story. And what is it about the Edmund Fitzgerald first off that stirred you and got you into it? Because my first exposure, really, 15-year-old, I'm living in Mylon, Ohio, and I'm hearing the wreck of the Evan Fitzgerald on CKLW out of Windsor, Detroit. Oh, yeah. You know, back at the time.

And I remember the Evan Fitzgerald in the news, and it was very sad, and it was big in the news for a little while, then it sort of sank, no pun intended, out of sight for a while. And then Gordon Lightfoot comes around, and we're still talking about it 50 years later. Well, exactly right. You have to credit Gordon Lightfoot in that great song you're playing a bit of before we got on. Look, without the song, there is no book. Let's be honest about that. And on top of that, I would say that, well, how about this? There are 6,000 shipwrecks from 1875 to 1975 on the Great Lakes. And you're from Ohio, you know how dangerous these lakes can be, but even I was stunned by that.

That is one shipwreck a week, and not row boats we're talking about, but freighters. One shipwreck a week for a century, incredibly. And this is the only one that almost everyone knows, and the reason is the song. what was it though that uh that struck gordon so deeply about this too because you're right there have been many many shipwrecks on the great lakes many shipwrecks period you know for uh for centuries going back really but this one was different somehow i didn't have a very different uh one gordon life it was actually a very good sailor he had done the um port huron to mackana sailboat race that's a three-day uh race through lake huron which is gigantic as

you know. So he knew what he was talking about. He'd grown up in the lakes and Lake Ontario, of course, near Toronto. And so he knew about it. He was working on an Irish sea shanty that night on November 10th, 1975, had no words, but the song was in his head. His first song he could remember when he was three years old. So that was pretty amazing. And then, of course, the words come to him once the ship goes down. He read everything he could get his hands on, Newsweek magazine, the AP story by Harry Atkins, both of which are in the book. I talk about how those stories impacted his songwriting. And then he tried the song out. She hadn't tried the song out in March of 76, the recording the song in Toronto. And he's got 11 songs ready to go

for his new album, Summertime Dreams, in a studio in Toronto. Yeah, in fact, they had it pretty much they had booked five days. I was reading the book, it booked five days about this, and they had the album in the can at about three days in, didn't they? Exactly. Three and a half days in, they're done on Thursday afternoon, and he says to the guys, thanks for coming down, we're all set. This song was not part of that album, amazingly. And then the producer says, hey, look, man, I'm charging it for five days,

whether you use them or not. We're all here right now. The producers here, the band's here. Why not try that song you've been screwing around with? And he says, it's not ready. And he says, well, like I said, we're all here now. Yeah, he always said it wasn't ready for months leading up to that, right? Correct.

I mean, it didn't play it for anybody, really. No one knew the words. No one had ever heard the words. The drummer and the bass player had never heard any parts of it. They didn't know what to do. So he finally talked into it, and the drummer asked him, Barry Keane. He says, what do you want me to do? And he said, I'll give you an eye when I want you to come in.

So after a minute and 30, Barry Keene, the drummer, figures that, okay, he's forgotten all about me, and this song's about to end. because back then, of course, songs lasted about two minutes. And then, nope, Gordon Lightfoot at 134 exactly on the song, leans to Barry and gives him the nod, and he comes in there with that famous drum part that makes it sound like the storm is coming down. Oh, yeah, yeah, the part that Bum, da-da-da-boom,

he just makes it up in the spot. He's a 24-year-old drummer. That's a gutsy move. They finished the song, and they said, you know what, that wasn't half bad. Let's try it again. They tried it again three or four more times that afternoon. They tried it again five or ten times.

the next day, it was never as good, Bill, as the first time. And so the song you hear on the radio is not only the first take. It is the first time they ever played at this song. And Barry Keane has been on 500 albums. He said, look, I've had, you know, five or 10 maybe first takes in my career. I've never had the first time ever played it, get on the radio. And I said, how did that happen? How did that work out that way? He said, look, man, this is not a song that you think your way through. The song you've got to feel. If you feel it, the listener's going to hear it, and that's a Gordy decided to go with that, and they did not expect it to be a success either. They were on Saturday Night Live a few months later, and they could play three or four

songs, and they didn't play that one. So they were stunned when this song became a hit, and it finished number two behind Rod Stewart that year, and tonight's the night with his hot supermodel. Yeah, his hot supermodel, yeah, cooing in the background, right? Exactly right. That was the 70s people, not this. So this song was a very unlikely success. A friend of mine at Rolling Stone magazine, the music editor, Christian Horde said,

this has to be the wordiest hit until rap came along. It's an incredible song. And Gordon-Life had said the rest of his life, it was his favorite song. It was his signature song, too. This was the song of his career, really. And I wanted to take it back, if you don't mind here, because some listeners had some questions about this, because you have done voluminous research on the Edmund Fitzgerald,

on what happened. And first off, why was it called the pride of the American side, so to speak? What was it about the Fitzgerald that made it so noteworthy? Sure. It was simply the greatest ship on the Great Lakes. At Memphis Gerald himself, the CEO at the time of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, his great-grandfather and his five great uncles had all been captains on the Great Lakes. So like 2% of the total of 300 raw in one family, it has to be a record. So he's from a shipping family. He had two edicts, one that it would be the greatest ship, the Great Lakes I've ever seen, and it was.

15,000 people came out to see it launched in Detroit. That's more than the Detroit Tigers were averaging at that time, which is pretty amazing. And when did it launch, John? On June 7, 1958, it was the longest ship in the Great Lakes at 729 feet. It was one of the fastest. It had the biggest cargo holds. It set and broke. in the Great Lakes for cargo again and again and again.

It was also the most luxurious, amazingly. The quarters were outfitted with plush carpeting, wood-paneled walls, tiled bathrooms, TV, AC, when hotels did not have those things in 1958. So it truly was the greatest ship in the Great Lakes. And his second edict was that the ship not be named after him. And so he's a humble guy, apparently, and a very likable guy. So the board arranged for him to get out of the board meeting for five minutes to do something else. And while he was gone, they said, okay, let's do a vote.

That's all name it for Edmund Fitzgerald, and they did against his wishes. Okay, against his wishes. But to serve on the Edmund Fitzgerald was a big deal as a mariner, wasn't it? Bill, exactly right. You've done your homework here, obviously. No, there are 300 ships in the Great Lakes. Each is crewed by only about 30 people, so it's a pretty tight little club, 9,000 total. total. Every night talked to said, man, you fought like hell to get on the Miff's drilled,

and if you got on it, you fought to stay on it. So they did, in fact, have the greatest captain, Ernest McSorley, and by all accounts, the best crew. And I learned that from, I found six crew members who'd been on the ship, obviously before it went down, because all 29 men that night went down with a ship. I found these guys, and they said, man, this was the cat's meow, no question about it, and the best crew. And one of the guys told me, and these guys, by the way, and no weirdos, and this was the 70s, when weirdos were more commonplace. So that got my attention. So, yes, this was the pride of the American side.

No question about that. I also appreciated how you brought up the stories of the individual crewman, and the name escapes me right now, is his name, Bruce, the one who had a girlfriend, a pregnant girlfriend in Ohio. That's right. Bruce Hudson. Yes, Bruce Hudson. He's from Cleveland, from North Olmsted outside of Cleveland. 20-year-old deckhand, he'd gone to Ohio State for a couple years. He got on a ship for a couple summers because it paid three or four times better than a teacher's salary even back then.

But yet he was going down the academic world, that's where he was. But then, you know, once he got on the ship, it was just like, man, this is the life for me, right? It's that kind of thing. It was not clear he was going to stay on it or not, but he loved it, and he had great pride in being on the ship. He had one weakness, and that was his muscle car in Toledo, waiting for him at the dock to go on a great cross-country road train. trip, it was a 1972 Dodge Challenger bill. If he found the car, it is still in men condition. And in the passenger back window, he's got a sticker with the MFSero logo on it.

That's how proud he was of it. So he and Mark Thomas were about to go on a trip, his fellow deckhand, across country to Colorado, which back then had Coors beer that was very exotic at the time. Yeah. How about that? Remember it. And then, exactly. And then out to L.A., then back.

And then he finds out from a phone call with his girlfriend, Cindy Reynolds, and Toledo. that guess what? She's pregnant, and he's going to be a father, and he thinks about it fast and says, don't worry about it, we'll move in together, we'll raise a child ourselves, will be okay. And then she said, you know what, go on that trip anyway. It only takes a month. It's November, and the child does not do until June. So that's what happens, of course. When the ship goes down, Ruth Hudson, Bruce's mom, she's lost her only child, and I can only imagine how devastating that is. Sure. And then six months later, she finds out from Cindy Reynolds, guess what, you're going to be a grandmother.

and she was. And I met Heather over the weekend, by the way. She was up at the whitefish point, obviously 50 years old, as you might imagine, her 49. She had four children, and the oldest Austin looked just like, looks just like Bruce Hudson. So Ruth Hudson, the great-grandmother said, I love all my grandkids equally, but yes, I play favorites in Austin as it. So it's an amazing story. Yeah, and what's really interesting is to, you know, see how all, or how many of the family members of the departed from the Edmund Fitzgerald have become kind of an extended family among the survivors, isn't that right?

That's right, Bill. You've read all the way to the end then. So what happened was this crew was unusually close as the crew members had told me. A very good crew, the best in the business. They're very close, but the families did not know each other at all. This crew is about one-third from Duluth, Minnesota, at the western end of Lake Superior, one-third in Toledo, one-third in Cleveland, basically. They didn't know each other's names, addresses, phone numbers, anything.

But then, through years of anniversary of ceremonies, of course, also the effort to get the bell brought up from 530 feet down on the ship, up to Whitefish Point, where I just saw it two days ago at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. That was a big effort, as you might imagine. Also getting the Canadian government to declare the site and international grave site to make sure that, you know, the ghouls and the goblins and the grifters can't take stuff from it, including videos of the deceased and so on. Well, in that process, just like you said, Bill, these people became very good friends.

And up at the kitchen table at Whitefish Point a few years ago, Heidi Wilhelm, a 12-year-old girl at the time when the ship went down with her dad on it, now she's 62. She grabbed the arms of two people next to her. Pam, the cousin of Bruce Hudson, Deb Shampo, the daughter of Buck Shampo, on engineering the ship. And she said, these people are not like family. They are family.

Because who else could ever know what I've gone through? These are the people. And then she asked Sarah, her daughter, who was born on the 23rd anniversary of the accident on November 10th in 1998.

When she's 21 and 2019, she gets a tattoo on her arm. And she has, Sarah, show me the tattoo, and on her forearm is tattoo. we are holding our own, which are the last words from Captain McSorley, the captain of the ship, before the ship went down on November 10th, 1975.

That's how we're connected to all our to this event. And, of course, these families are actually doing surprisingly well despite getting almost nothing from the company, so they're tough. I wanted to talk about that company, if you don't mind. John, U. Bacon is with me, and it's an incredible book, The Gales of November, the untold story of the Evan Fitzgerald. Yeah, they talk about the song, how it came to be and everything else, but also it's the family and the company there, too.

Captain McSorley, by all accounts, was a superior captain. I mean, just absolutely incredible. You never saw him out of uniform, right? That's the first thing, right? You never saw him out of a uniform. That's correct. He was a formal man in some ways. Yeah.

And people have asked me, in fact, I had a listener Patrick this morning ask, Bill, is it true, though, that they started overloading the Fitzgerald over time and time as time went on? I'd have read other accounts of that, and I'm wondering if that is the case where, you know, for maybe it was 14,000 long tons at first, and then finally in the end, you know, 26,000 long tons. And was there any evidence of that or contribution of this contributing to it? What do you know? Well, it's difficult to say exactly, of course, and I probably cite with Ruth Hudson, Bruce's mom, who said ultimately only 30-0, 29 men and God, and no one's talking.

So without witnesses, we can't be for sure. sure, but there's no doubt that it had to contribute to this problem. And on a few levels, one, something called a Plymstall line, named for a British politician from almost 200 years ago, he created the edict where they paint a line on the ship, and now they weld it on, that you can't, your ship cannot sink any lower in the water safely and still be insured, basically. So that's how far you can go down. And in 1958, when the ship was started, they allowed them 14 feet of preboard. That means 14 feet above the water when fully loaded. That added up to about 22,000 long tons, as you say, of taconite, of iron ore.

So, okay, fine. But then in 69, 71, and 73, they kept raising that limit. So instead of having 14 feet above water, you could have only 11 feet above water. That's three feet more. That is literally 4,000 tons of iron ore. It's a huge difference. And it's not designed for that. It's not built for that.

So that's not on the engineers. That's on the regulators who thought what's the problem. And on top of that, of course, there are ways to cheat the plums of the whole line very cleverly. And this crew, like all the other crews, was very good at that. It would only be a few inches, but a few inches is worth several thousand tons, amazingly. So, yes, it's undeniably overloaded. The ship also swapped out rivets for welds in the construction. Welds are lighter, faster to do, and cheaper.

The problem is, like I said, the lighter part is great. You can add 1.2 million pounds of taconite on each trip because the weld are lighter. But they're also more flexible. They're not as strong as the rivets. You keep on adding these things up, and after a while, draws and the camel's back, at what point is truly the breaking point, and you're going to get there. do we know for sure whether or not the Evan Fitzgerald struck bottom at what was the name of the shoal again there was a fathom shoal six fathom shoal yeah do we know great great question i can't say with

complete certainty but i can't say original research in this book uh comes from dick race Dick Grace was the greatest diver on the Great Lakes by all the count. He found a Boeing jumbo jet in Lake Michigan when no one else could find it. How about that? So he was commissioned by the company in Cleveland that ran the ship. North Western Mutual owned it, but it would be Nord and ran it. That to go down there and six-fatham Shole, six-fatham Shoe, a fathom is six feet. So six fathom is 36-feet deep.

This lake can be as deep as 1,300 feet deep. is an incredible lake. It has 10% of the world's fresh water in it. It's bigger than the country of Ireland. I swear to got, the island of Ireland, I should say. And yet, in the northeast corner, there's a little spot called Carrable Island, one mile by. Hey, could you reposition, are you on a cell phone right now, John? No, mine, I, here we go.

How's that? Is that better? Okay, I'm just losing, losing you a little bit. So anyway, we got this area 36 feet down. So, was there, so do we know if it hit it or not? I guess that's the question. So here we go. So the island is one mile by three miles.

The six of the show is right in front of it. It says 36 feet, but in some place it's 11 feet. Oh. We know we're near this. But his long radar is out. His short radar is out. The lighthouse at Whitefish Point is out. The beacon from that lighthouse no longer works.

So you're sailing blind. So he might have gone over this. And Dick Race goes out on the site six months later, and he dives down 35. Pete, and he finds the paint from the Edmifist Gerald on that floor. Oh. But in his report, the report is gone. It goes to the company.

The company goes bankrupt. The guy known in Peter Groh, went through hundreds of boxes, bankers' boxes of all the documents. He found all the boxes, except for three, and the three are all on the MFS Gerald, signed out by nobody, disappeared. Go figure. But Dick Grace did tell four people I interviewed at different parts of the country. the exact same thing, I found the paint on the bottom of Six Fathom Shole, which tells me 90% probably and almost certainly bottomed out on Sixth Fathom Shull. That's how you damaged the bottom and taken water underneath on the hall of the ship.

Gordon Lightfoot also started changing the lyrics of the Evan Fitzgerald as time went on because they started finding out more. It's like at 7 p.m., the main hatchway caved in. There was always thought that maybe they didn't do the or secure the... the hatches and that ended up not being true and he changed it didn't he that's correct that was the U.S. Coast Guard theory that came out the next year but we've seen the hatches and so on the crew we talked about including Mark Thomas and Bruce Hudson they've got a clamp 1400 sea clamps Kessner clamps on these 21 hatches before the ship leaves and by all

count they did their job correctly I got the two crew members who are colleagues of theirs who've been on the ship that year they said there's no way that ship goes out without those guys doing their job. So there's no way. And that's what we found also. So Gordon Life would change the lyrics, which exonerated Bruce Hudson, and, as you might imagine, greatly pleased,

Bruce Hudson, his mom. Sure, yeah. And also, it wasn't a musty old hall, right, in Detroit? I heard that story from Rick Haynes, the bass player in the band. And I got so lucky, Bill, so many times. Rick Haynes is still alive. He's in the studio that day.

Obviously, Barry Keene, the drummer was Rick Haynes tells a great story that Gordon Leifford is in Mariner's Church, a beautiful church right downtown Detroit, right there on the river by all the downtown buildings. And he's there for the first time about a year later. And the cleaning lady comes up to him with Rick Haynes right there. He says, look around.

It ain't musty, is it? He changed it, didn't he? Yeah, and he changed it to a rustic old hall in Detroit. Yep. So God bless him. Yep. Rusticola. It's a great story. It's a great song. It was a great crew and just an amazing book here. The Gales of November and the untold story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. We are just scratching the surface. It is tirelessly researched. And you just have a great footnoting and bibliography in here where you got this information, tons of research and the human stories behind it too. I give it, if I had five thumbs, I'd give you five. I'll take them all, Bill. Thank you very much. All right.

Is it in the usual, get it in the usual places, John? Yeah, it is a New York Times bestseller. And you can find out more on John Ubacon.com. The book tours on there, excuse me, the booktours on there, as well as how to order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all your local bookstores, they have been phenomenal. You can click a link, and I'll tell you what your local bookstore has it. John Ubacon.com, John Ubacon.com.

John UBacon.com. Thanks so much, John. Good talk. Really appreciate that. Bill, thank you. All righty. This is KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, France Pass. Charlene, owner of American Industrial Door, and I'm on 106.7, KMED.

Three minutes after eight, KMED, KMED, HD, Eagle Point, Metford, KBXG, Grants, Pass, and I appreciate you being here this morning. Bob Mooney writes through this morning. Bill, I never told Gordon Lightfoot about this. Remember Bob Mooney, of course, of a Kingston Trio. He says, I never told Gordon about this, so not sure what he's. he would have thought. But sometimes I hear a word twist that leads me down a wacky path that if Gordy can change the lyrics, well, why not? Oh, okay, so you've recorded this. Okay, I'll take a

listen to that off air here, Bob. I appreciate that, all right? But yeah, it's a great story, great song. And like I said, this was one of those songs in which nobody thought it was going to be a hit. But you know what ended up breaking it free and how it ended up getting some attention? Nobody thought about taking it to Top 40 radio at first, which is where I heard it on CKLW. It was 15-year-old at that time. And I loved Gordon Lightfoot music as a kid. Still do, actually. And it was on FM radio.

It was kind of the underground radio at the time. You know, the FM album rock, you know, the days we're going to play this stuff that didn't necessarily make it to the big top 40 stations like here in Medford. It would have been KYJC or KMED, various other things. You know, we didn't do that kind of stuff, but it was the underground, the long hairs, I guess where it was getting its traction and then it broke and then became a huge hit on a top 40. Great story. Great book, by the way, too. All right, we're going to check in with Fox News here in just a moment, catch up. And about quarter after eight or so, we have Senator Christine Drazen, state senator Christine Drazen, running for governor.

I'm going to ask her a few questions about the candidacy because there's going to be a report. Republican primary from all looks of it and why she wants your boat. Have that coming up.