The Josh Innes Show - Don't Let Them Divide Us

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

I took Ross for a walk at Forrest Park in St. Louis today. It's a gorgeous, sprawling park. It's one of the largest inner city parks in America. Plus, it's loaded with history as it was the site of the 1904 World's Fair. Anywho, a tornado blew threw the park a few weeks ago and wiped out tons of the trees and it's still a mess. St. Louis is still recovering from this storm and it's somehow become a black/white political issue. That's right, the tornado see's color. But, something happened in the park today that has sort of restored my faith in my own belief that we are all just pawns and we don't hate each other nearly as much as they want us to believe.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Well, I hope your day is just splendid. Welcome in. I just got done taking Ross for a walk at Forest Park here in St. Louis, which is a beautiful, gorgeous, sprawling, amazing city park. It's one of the most beautiful city parks in the country and I guess it was two weeks ago now, two to three weeks ago on a Friday, it was just ravaged by this tornado that blew through the city of St. Louis and it's wild when you

walk through there now. Like this is usually a beautiful park full of big lush trees that have been there for hundreds of years. Seemingly this is where the World's Fair of 1904 took place and you know that I like history stuff like that. For whatever reason, I'm someone that's really into dopey things like the World's Fair and everything. But a tornado blew through there like a legit F3 tornado blew through Saint Louis a couple of weeks ago. And when I tell you that Forest Park is nothing but debris,

downed trees, limbs everywhere, it doesn't even look like the same park, but it's just wild how a massive tornado like that can just blow through a city. Like it happened in Atlanta back in like, eight or oh nine. There was a huge tornado that blew through downtown Atlanta and there's a documentary about that. One of the thirty four thirties or one of those type of deals on ESPN about how that happened during

the SEC basketball tournament in Atlanta and that was crazy. I gotta get the hell out of St. Louis because there's just too many damn tornadoes. Seems like every week there's an alarm. And here's okay so this is interesting. So the tornado sirens we hear them pretty frequently. Like since we've moved here we've lived here for a little over two years actually I guess two years and maybe a couple months and we've heard the tornado sirens a ton and you would think when you hear a tornado siren that that would mean there's a really close tornado and you better get your ass like inside now. So like

the first time we ever heard one here was a couple months into moving here. We had come back from a Cardinals game. We were going to pick up Luther at the daycare and the weather turns real bad. Like it gets pitch black, it's like five in the afternoon, it's pitch black, hail starts coming down and we're driving scared shitless during this and then the tornado siren goes off and we're thinking, holy shit tornadoes coming through, we're gonna die, what do you do do so we hurry up and get home as fast as we can we like get into like the bathroom because that's the most inner most part of the

house with no wall no windows all that shit sirens over whatever we start looking more into this because that tornado we found out wasn't even close to our house but we're in this big sprawling county this st louis county which has i mean it's a huge county. There's St. Louis City, which is its own entity, and then there's St. Louis County. I know you would think that St. Louis City is inside of St. Louis County. It is not. It is a weird political type of thing that happens here in St. Louis where there's a separation between the county and the city. So like, and this

is reality, and this is something people bitch about, but like if you're in St. Louis and people talk about how dangerous St. Louis is crime-wise and you look at the crime statistics for St. Louis, it's always really high. But that's mostly because when they include the crime statistics, they only mention St. Louis City and not the entire metro area. If you get outside of St. Louis City and get into the county where there's a bunch of really nice suburbs that are not littered with tons of violent crime, the

number is actually far less frightening for Saint Louis when you look at the data, but because that number only includes Saint Louis City, not Saint Louis County, and there's like a couple hundred thousand residents of Saint Louis City and downtown Saint Louis is like a nightmarish Mad Max hellscape. It looks like the statistics are a lot worse than they really are. Still, I wouldn't say move to St. Louis. I was a dipshit, but you get my point, but because it's such a large

county, they have to fire off the siren if there is a tornado warning anywhere in the county. So most of the times that we have gotten a tornado warning mixed with a siren, that's been for a tornado that's 20 miles away and it seems kind of dangerous and stupid. Like one time I was over in the Walmart over by our house and a siren went off and they had to stop selling shit in the Walmart. They had to shut down the registers and everything and have the employees go to the back room

because of this tornado warning and this tornado warning slash siren was for a tornado that was 15 miles away and wasn't coming in this direction. It is stupid. It makes no sense, but it is what it is. And now they have a big, hold on, let me play a couple commercials and we'll continue. The NBA Finals are finally here and after spending the playoffs all over the Pick 6 app from DraftKings, well, we're ready for the championship round and this is your last shot to win some real cash before the season ends. The simplest way to get in on

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Neutral. Refreshingly simple. Now there's a big controversy in St. Louis because they didn't give ample warning to the people of St. Louis City that a tornado was coming. Like, for whatever reason, someone didn't fire off the alarm because they are inept, our city officials are inept. So people had like seconds warning that there was a tornado coming through. And if you've seen some of the videos, it's wild, this tornado that just blew through a major American city, not a rural area, not middle of nowhere.

It's like if you're in Houston, it's not like this bad boy blew through Conroe or something like that. Or what's that? The El Campo or something like that. Like it blew through the heart of this bad boy like right through the heart of the city and it's pretty fucking crazy here and people are still pissed off because they didn't get they didn't get adequate warning for this tornado. So they're still recovering and still repairing

from that and this seems like something that's going to be a pain in the ass. It's already become a racial thing if you can believe that like somehow the tornado is racist because it blew through a lot of inner city neighborhoods. Like there's just a bunch of dumb shit that goes along with this stuff. And then recovery efforts, people view that and say, why aren't you trying hard enough? Well, one of the big things that is a complaint is that, you know, you don't get that, you know, they ripped the previous mayor who was a black woman. Everybody ripped her because during a massive snowstorm, it took them weeks to get snow

plows into some of these really narrow streets to clear the streets, which is a fair complaint. But now the argument is with this new mayor who is this white woman, and I think she's a liberal. I'm not sure. I mean, I find it hard to believe that someone who's not a liberal woman in some way is going to win the mayoral race in Saint Louis City, but they're bitching at her and they're complaining saying, oh, you don't want to rip this woman when they they fucked up a tornado warning, but all you

wanted to rip the other mayor whenever they you had to wait a couple of weeks to get your roads plowed and it's like I hate when people do that because it is possible that both of those things suck right like it's like it's like, I hate when people do that because it is possible that both of those things suck, right? Like it's like is one greater than the other? Maybe, but like nobody wanted to sit there for, I'm talking seemingly months, because there was a long stretch this winter where it snowed and the roads were shit, particularly in the city of St. Louis. And this is kind of an old city where there's a lot of kind of narrow streets and there's some like brick streets and some real tight streets where people in their houses

have no parking or driveway so they park on the street and like they could not get and would not get snow plows in there to clear the fucking roads so I can see where people would bitch where hey I'm trying to live my life just because it's snow doesn't mean I can shut down my life for three weeks and not get my car out. I'll tell you that and look, we've talked about this before. You've heard me bitch about the snow. If you're in Houston, this is something you don't experience very often. If it's in Philly, if you're someone up in Philly, you do experience snow. And when I was there, we experienced that massive snow storm that was like two feet of freaking snow and it was a nightmare. that massive snowstorm that was like two feet of freaking snow and it was a nightmare. But some cities are equipped for certain disasters and certain issues and some aren't. Like southern cities tend to not be ready for snow and that makes sense.

Like I lived that in Dallas during the Super Bowl week in 2010. I guess technically it was 2011. But in 2011 when it snowed during Super Bowl week, the city wasn't prepared for it. And I've never experienced something like that where the night before we had all rented a house because that's what we would do the station would rent us a house for Super Bowl week and we'd all go and Sunday night it was real nice. They had a pool. They had a hot tub, right? So we were in a hot tub drinking beers I think the trip was sponsored by Coors Light

So we had a fuck ton of Coors Light. We bootlegged that shit like we're the bandit from Houston over to Dallas. And I'm in a hot tub, and we're having a good time. And it's me and Rich and Mark and John. And I think that would have been a year that Meltzer was there and Brad Davies. And it was fucking awesome.

And we're out there having a good time Sunday. Monday morning, we wake up up and now this is somewhere not in the burbs of Dallas, but like you it was a little bit of a hike because Arlington is a hike from Dallas City as people know to get to the stadium. Although this was although we weren't going to the stadium. We were going to the convention center, so that was downtown, but either way we wake up and there's like feet of snow and I'm watching

like Chris Jones Jones the morning producer trying to get the station van out of the snow and get it to downtown and the city's gone to hell and they don't have enough salt for the fucking roads and it's wild man. Some places are just not equipped for this type of shit and St. Louis you would think would be equipped for this kind, but it's really a terrible town as it relates to handling bad weather on the highways and particularly on the side streets. So what happened is everything has to become a war, whether

it's a class war, whether it's a political war, whether it's a race war, everything has to be a, well you did that for blank, but now you're not going to do this for blank. So when you deal with tornadoes blowing through and hitting lesser privileged parts of town, blacker parts of town, urban parts of town, compared to some of the shit that happens to more upscale parts of town or the white affluent parts of town, there becomes a race war over it and people talk shit because everybody was shitting on the lady mayor, the black lady mayor whenever they couldn't get their roads plowed, but then

people aren't shitting on the white lady mayor and it's just fucking stupid and everything's a race war. Everything's a fight. Everything is an issue. Let me tell you something. I'm gonna tell you something that happened to me today at the park actually and it kind of restored my faith in things. Now that'll go away and that'll subside and that lasted for about five minutes but there was a brief moment that I was at the park, Forest Park, and if you ever do get to come to St. Louis like let's say you come for a ball game and it's fine like the crowds aren't as big as they used to be. I think

it's a fine stadium, ballpark, village is, but so many places are closing in downtown St. Louis that there's just nothing to do. The Hooters announced it closed two days ago. That Hooters has been in downtown St. Louis forever. Shut the fuck down. The Memphis downtown Hooters that I've been to 100 times in downtown Memphis also closed on the same day. Two of my most frequented Hooters have closed down. There is nothing to do in downtown St. Louis, but let's say you want to go to a ball game or you're in town for a hockey game or whatever it is and you're

in St. Louis and you're looking for something to do during the day. Say there's a Cardinal game at night, your favorite team, the Astros, the Phillies, whoever is in town and you're looking for something to do. You could always go out to Eureka and go to Six Flags, which I've seen videos of what's going on at Six Flags lately and it seems like a hellhole because everywhere is a hellhole because basically people are allowed to act like assholes in public now and nobody stops them. Like I just watched a video of a bunch of people just stealing turkey legs at the fucking Six Flags and like no one's stopping them because

people are gonna be like I'm not gonna risk getting my ass kicked or being considered some sort of Karen for stopping people from stealing turkey legs so there's a video of people stealing turkey legs and you read the comments and people are like man just let them go it's just turkey legs everybody says that when it's not your shit but I guarantee you if somebody like walked up to you like you're eating lunch and someone walked up to you like it, you know, a restaurant stole your steak or your burger, you wouldn't go well shit, it's just a burger. But anyway, I

digress. If you're looking for something to do in St. Louis, go to City Park. It is truly a remarkably beautiful place. It's huge for exercise and running and walking and there's great water features and there is the site of the 1904 World's Fair so there's tons of history there. There isn't a ton about St. Louis that's amazing. There's lots of history, lots of old buildings that people haven't restored, a lot of blight. There is some beautiful French type architecture here. I'm not saying there's not.

There are parts of town that are just magnificent, but for the most part it's not an amazing place. But if you're looking for something to do that isn't the Cardinals are going to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery where I am a certified brewmaster because I took the class, go to Forest Park and experience it. It is one of the most gorgeous parks in America. It's awesome. That's what I would tell you to do. There's just not a ton going on. But anyway, what happened at Forest Park today? Walking Ross through the park, by the way, his paw seems to be

doing better. He's moving around good. I like it. Great to see. So we're walking through and there's this area, also down there is like the big museum. And there's a big hill that kids take their sleds to when it snows and they slide down Museum Hill. It's been happening for a hundred years. I took Ross there, or actually Luther there, last year back in 04 when it snowed, me and my buddy was in town. We went over there. Anyway, I digress. So, I'm walking and there's a girl, there's this

nice black girl sitting on like a bench or whatever and she's got her headphones on. And as me and Ross walk by she says, you have a beautiful dog and I said, Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And then she, she said something and I didn't hear it. So I said, What was that? And she took off her headphones and she said, I hope you have a wonderful day. And I'm like, same to you. I hope your day is wonderful as well. And I understand that that's a small thing, but understand this, that when you get caught up in

the world of social media, and there is no positive on social media, it is negative, it is hateful, it is spiteful, it is us versus them and everything is what they try to build you versus the opposition black versus white Right wing left wing Christian non-Christian all this shit It is an evil vile place and it will bring you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it and I'm trying To get my ass out of that funk and out of that world because it's not real. It's poison. It's toxic Don't take the bait don't take the cheese and I know that that's a small little fucking thing that happened at the park, but I'm you know 38 year old grain white guy over here and this is young black girl probably in her 20s, early 20s, maybe a teenager sitting on the bench listening to whatever she's listening to and takes the time to

like not just say hey you have a pretty dog but then say I hope you have a wonderful day and when you see that you're like people don't hate each other as much as we are led to believe but they need us hating each other because that's how they gain power we have to stop like i've been posting all these old uh JNR shows and different shit that I have found I'm not doing that to be lazy by the way mean, it is summertime and there are fewer topics going on, but people have been enjoying those and I've been finding more of them in my old email. And I'm listening to old audio of me and ND Kalu and I love ND and he and I were pretty close when I first got there. We went to Vegas together for a fight. Like I love ND and he and I aren't nearly as close as I'd like us to be and part of that is because when I was there the second time and Kaepernick and everything started happening in the world became super political. You know my opinions were different of those of a

lot of people as it related to Kaepernick and other shit and I feel like a lot of folks just viewed me differently and I think ND was one of those and that fucking hurt my heart bro. Like I hate that that's the way the world world is like I don't want to be in that world. I don't want to be in a world where it's constant fucking you versus the other people or black white and brown white and just I fucking hate it and I and I know it's not going to change because people need this.

They need this for clout. They need this for power. But man when you're walking through a park, and someone takes the time, I didn't initiate this, that someone looks over you, a young black girl looks at you and says, I hope you have a wonderful day. It seems like a small thing. And maybe it sounds trite. And maybe you're like, boy, Josh, this, I think you're reaching here. And maybe I am. But when you hear that and see

that you go, like, what the fuck are we doing fighting with each other over fucking everything? It's driven by algorithms. It's driven by politics. It's driven by politicians and we're all just pawns. Mongo just pawn in game of life and that is what we are right now. And once we stop acknowledging that we're a pawn in the game of life and start living our own fucking lives. Things will be better. Fuck the politicians. Fuck the Bidens. Fuck the Trumps. Fuck every politician. None of them give a fuck about you.

Fuck Elon. Fuck everybody. Fuck all of these people. They don't give a shit about you, me or anybody, but they're doing a damn good job of turning us against each other. And I'm sick of that shit. I listen to this old audio and I'm listening to me and ND having a good time. And I'm like, people don't even do that

shit anymore. Black dude and white dude on the radio do not get on the radio and just riff on racial shit and everything else and laugh about it then afterwards hang out. It's everything's a fucking war with this shit and it sucks. Anywho, let's see more to come.