Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Matt Gurney: Toronto Mike'd #299

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

Mike chats with Global News Radio 640 Toronto morning show co-host Matt Gurney about his years at the National Post, working with Supriya Dwivedi at 640, recent changes at the station and millennials. Matt also ranks the Star Wars movies and discusses his favourite song of all-time.

Welcome to episode 299 of Toronto Mike. Oh, I just missed. Yeah, you know, you're really close. You're really close. Welcome to episode 299 of Toronto Mic'd. Oh, I just missed. Yeah, you know, you're really close. You're really close. A weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent brewery celebrating 30 years in the craft beer business. Visit GLB at 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard for $5 beers. And propertyinthesex.com,

Toronto real estate done right. And Paytm, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me this week is... I'm going to take a deep breath. Global News Radio 640 Toronto morning show co-host Matt Gurney. Welcome, Matt. Good to be here.

And you do get used to saying it. It does roll off the tongue eventually. Let me try again. Global News Radio 640 toronto that's uh that is a mouthful you're right that so at some point just like me trying to say um brewery it eventually it just starts to roll off the tongue you just got to break it into two global news radio 640 toronto you just get it in the global news radio and then you try to echo the 640 Toronto after it. Let's start with this. Now we're going to do some fun stuff at the beginning and then we're going

to go back and then bring you to 640. But right off the top When I heard you guys were going to be Global News Radio 640 Toronto, my brain instantly sees GNR 640. Yeah, that occurred to me. I decided not to mention it during the meetings about that because the rebranding was a process that took a long time. And it was funny.

I mean, probably the most time and mental energy that we spent on it, at least from my perspective, was figuring out the name. And eventually, like, I mean, I like what we came up with. I know it's a bit of a bit of a mouthful, but I think probably for all the reasons we can get into, it was probably the best direction for us to go in. But then I kind of started to think, oh, GNR. And I'm like, do I raise this? But it's only like idiots, like 40-something-year-old idiots like me that will even care, do the GNR joke. Well, 40-year-old idiots like you are, as you know, prime ratings real estate. So we're not going to knock guys like you. But no, look.

Absolutely. It's something that if people associate us with Guns N' Roses, well, I'll say this. As a GNR fan, I'm okay with that. There's far worse things. I mean, it's got longevity. It's beloved. It kicks ass. Yeah, I mean, it's had some problems, but they keep finding a way to come back and do more.

Yeah, and they're survivors, right? Yeah, absolutely. I just saw them. So I saw, yeah, the vast majority of the founders are still there. So you got your Slash, your Axl. Yeah, good stuff. I did, I don't know if you saw this, I think I tagged you on it on Twitter. So when GNR was announced, GNR 640 Toronto, I said, okay, the first personality at 640 to call at GNR on the radio would get a six-pack of Great Lakes beer.

I saw it too late, because basically I saw it after you'd already announced the winner. Because I completely would have done that if only for the beer. I know what my price is, and beer figures prominently in that. But you also knew. It's too bad you didn't get in there. So for those who don't know, the winner was Mike Stafford. I mean, is anyone really going to be surprised by that? I've noticed.

So Stafford and I, we were digitally friends for quite a long time, but he's been here twice. I consider him a friend. I don't know. I have warm feelings about the man. I really like him. He's a likable man. I noticed he's starting to... He always kind of shot from the hip, but lately

he's out of fucks to give. I can say that. There's no CRTC thing here. You mean here? Everywhere. I think he's decided of fucks to give. I can say that. There's no CRTC thing here. You mean here? Anywhere. Everywhere. I think he's decided no more bullshit. And he's always been

a lot like this. But now I think he's just, I think Stafford is the best he's ever been because he just does his own thing. It just seems like he's doing Stafford's thing.

I think he has, and this will sound like flattery to a colleague and a friend, but I mean this very seriously. First of all, he is, in my opinion, the best natural broadcaster operating in the city. I mean, there is nothing that I can't imagine putting in front of him and having him probably just knock out of the park. I mean, I've told him this story, so this is not me talking behind his back.

It's all good. You can talk behind someone's back when it's good stuff. Yeah, well, he'll probably end up listening. He was the guy I was listening to when the 03 blackout hit North America. It's all good, you can talk behind someone's back when it's good stuff. Yeah, well he'll probably end up listening. He was the guy I was listening to when the 03 blackout hit North America. For whatever reason, and he's explained this to me once before, but a lot of the technical stuff went over my head. At the time it was Mojo, and the transmitter was still operating, and I remember a buddy of mine called me that day, and I'd been out in the backyard at my parents' place. I mean, I was pretty young at the time, and I'd been taking a swim, and my cell phone goes off.

My buddy's like, hey, do you have any power? So I get inside. I'm flipping things on and off, and I'm like, no. He's like, no one has any power. So I didn't think much about it, right? No one did at first. But after an hour or two when there was no power, I thought I'd walk out into the car, turn it on, turn on the radio and try to get some actual news. Nothing was airing in Toronto except Mojo. So I was listening to staff walk me through all of that. And that, to me, just in my

mind, made him like the uber broadcaster forever. And yeah, I mean, he's a guy who not only has the great broadcasting ability, but he's also a guy who not only has the great broadcasting ability but he's also a guy who I think has one of the most interesting mixes of of interests of anyone I've known combined with an incredible memory so when you say he's sounding great these days I'd say he has always sounded great no he's always sounded great great voice he's a jeopardy finalist so he's got his you know he's got the trivia mind and he you know this I remember those olden days with the Simpsons trivia. I love that stuff. But now, I don't know.

It just seems like he's like, whatever, man. I'm doing it my way. I won't say he's gone rogue, obviously, but I think he's just that perfect on the edge. He's kind of walking that razor's edge, and it's just fun to listen to. It is fun to listen to, but it's also powerful to to listen to i'm sure you heard a couple of months ago when he was addressing that he'd had a tragedy in the family and i remember i was in the car uh heading home after uh my show

when he was doing that and i missed about the first maybe five ten minutes of that and then i got home and i immediately emailed uh one of our guys at the station and i'm like you've got to get me that half hour and just email it to me because I don't want to have missed a minute of this. So whether or not he's just having some fun, I don't know if anyone does it better than him. And when he went raw after that tragedy in his family,

to call it must-listen radio sounds like a cliche. I actually made sure I got the MP3. No, it's compelling shit. I listened to that too. This is the episode 299. This is the Mike Stafford episode for those who are just joining us. It's turning into that.

Yeah, that was great. He talked about his wife's brother took his own life and he opened up about that, which is always good. He's great. Has anyone ever confused you with Matt Galloway? Has there been anybody who got Matt Gurney

and Matt Galloway confused? No, but we joke about it sometimes. He and I kind of like, finally we're edging towards that glorious future when Matt G will dominate Toronto Radio. So we need to come up with a few more. We're starting to run out of easy names

to go with there, but no. I mean, hey, if someone did, I would take that very much as a compliment. Yeah, you're both morning show hosts in the big smoke, but on the Venn diagram of listeners, there's not a lot of overlap, I don't think. I would suspect that's the case,

and I would imagine why there has not been a lot of confusion. I always think maybe on Twitter, like when the auto-complete, like on Twitter, you'll type in Matt G and then send a tweet. Like, you'll get tweets intended for Galloway. He might get tweets intended for Gurney. Maybe it's happened,

and I've just thought it was a crackpot, and I had no idea what the person was talking about. There is a fair share of tweets like that. Oh, I'm sure that comes with the territory. You tweeted something. Speaking of Twitter, oh, I have a great song for this. All right. I'm going to play this.

I know where this is going. What a great piece of music this is. It's pretty timeless. The gift that keeps on giving. He's still alive, too. He just did the new one, which we're going to talk about. The Last Jedi, John Williams. So you must have just seen The Last Jedi

because you sent a tweet in which you ranked all of the Star Wars movies. Yeah, I saw it on Saturday, just on the weekend. Did you see it alone? I did. You know, I can't do that. A lot of people are going to movies by themselves, and it makes complete sense

because you can't talk to anyone at a movie. You might as well go alone. I honestly, my brain, I don't know, it's like, it just seems, I don't know. I've never been a guy who can go to a movie alone. It feels a little asocial, but I mean, I found for the years ago, I don't know. I've never been a guy who can go to a movie alone. It feels a little asocial. But, I mean, I found, like, for the years ago,

I really wanted to see a movie, and no one wanted to see it with me. It was something pretty obscure. And I was just kind of, oh, I guess that means I don't get to see it. And then this little switch in my brain popped. I was like, no, fuck that. I can see the movie. I'm just going to go. I'm going to be a big boy. I'm going to get dressed. I'm going to take my money, purchase a ticket, and I'm going to view the movie.

I'm not going to call it game-changing, but ever since then, it's been... My wife and I have very different tastes in movies anyway, and we also have two young kids. And they're too young for this movie. So how young are your kids? Five and three. For this movie.

It's almost too young for any movies, to be honest. The five-year-old can see Coco. The five-year-old, we can take to movies like that. Over the break, we took her to see Ferdinand, which she enjoyed. But what we can do is my wife's like, I want to see this movie. I'm like, I want to see that movie. So she'll go

on a Tuesday. I'll go on a Thursday. We see the movies we want, and the kids get fed and watered. So I'm not going to spoil this. We see the movies we want, and the kids get fed and watered. So I'm not going to spoil this. I want you to, can we start with the, so how many are there? Tell me, is there eight? There's nine now. Nine. Because Rogue One is like a Rogue One.

So let me do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I think there's ten. I think there's ten. Although there can't be, right? Because you're right. Hold on. I think there's 10. I think there's 10 because... Although there can't be, right? Because you're right. Hold on. Well, there's the eight of them. We're on part eight plus Rogue One.

Okay. I'll take it. So can we start with your least favorite of the Star Wars movie and get us to your favorite? Can we do that? All right. Can you remember this ranking? Yeah, I think so.

I have it in front of me. If you screw up, I'll point it out. If I screw up, let me know. Look, I don't think I was courting any controversy when I put Phantom Menace on the very bottom. So here's how we go. You're going to tell me the movie, and you're going to tell me why it's there, and then I'm going to chime in with my two cents

on if I think you're out to lunch or not. So Phantom Menace you have is the worst Star Wars movie so far. I don't remember exactly when that came out, but it was in high school, fairly early high school, and even then, I remember the big lines. I saw it first day, afternoon showing. I was there with my buddies,

because I've always been a sci-fi fan, more a Trekkie than a Star Wars guy. But I wanted to be part of the experience, right? It was the first Star Wars movie of my lifetime. I'm sitting there, and we're doing this goddamn pod race that just goes on and on. Now that's pod racing!

Yeah, and it's just, I remember looking at my buddies and being like, what the fuck? What is this? And almost wanting to walk out. So, Phantom Menace, I watched it again a couple of years ago, kind of thinking maybe I judged it too harshly.

No, it's garbage. But the five-year-old might like it, because it seems to me, first of all, I'm 100% in agreement that the worst Star Wars movie is The Phantom Menace. I think it's really aimed at kids. There's a lot of Jar Jar in that movie. Jar Jar is borderline

offensive as a character. A caricature, if you will. You're right. I would have accepted no other answer. I have a 16-year-old and he grew up watching the prequels. A lot of prequels. I've seen a lot of the prequels. The only one I can actually sit down and enjoy is, no spoiler here, but is the third one there, Revenge of the Sith, which I think is actually a fine film, but the other two are not. Okay, so yes, I agree.

What is your second least favorite Star Wars movie? This is where I got killed on Twitter. Force Awakens. Interesting. That's an interesting choice. Part seven. One from a couple of years ago. I thought it was absolute garbage.

Is it because you thought it was a remake of the fourth installment, the first one we all saw? I don't even want to call it a remake because remakes can be complimentary and can even improve on the original. It was like the cheap, no-name brand knockoff version of the original classic. And I think what bothered me the most about Force Awakens, which, you know, it's funny you mention how the kids will have a different angle, too, because I'm sitting in this theater, and this is a couple of years ago, so my five-year-old then was then like three, and I'm thinking to myself, you know what, in a couple of years, she's going to love this movie. They've got a strong woman character, a girl kicking ass. My daughter's going to love this. But as I'm watching this, I'm thinking, you know, I'm a big's going to love this. But as I'm watching this,

I'm thinking, you know, I'm a big J.J. Abrams fan. I really like some of the cast they put together for this movie. I like the budget. I like the idea of it. I like that we were advancing the narrative so we could see some of the same favorite characters again. I kind of got over my disappointment with the prequels and I'm like, this is going to be when Star Wars gets it right for me. This is going to be my generation's Star Wars. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, all right, let's do this thing. I'm with the same guys I went to the Phantom Menace with in high school. And it's basically the same experience. We're like an hour into it.

We're like, what the fuck? I mean, seeing Han Solo was cool. And Harrison Ford, of course, did what he always does. But I remember at one point being like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So we've jumped forward like 20 or 30 years after Return of the Jedi. But the Empire's back. There's still a resistance. And they've built a really big circle again.

Yeah, I know. I know. I'm with you, man. So that's why I say Force Awakens is garbage. And I put it as second worst. I'm in agreement. I don't have it as second worst. But I have it in the lower third.

I have it down there. But what's your next? OK. You're going to have to check me on the list on this one. But I think I said Attack of the lower third. Like, I have it down there. But what's your next? Okay, you're going to have to check me on the list on this one. But I think I said Attack of the Clones. Correct. Attack of the Clones, I don't particularly hate or like for any reason. Like, I have no real feelings about Attack of the Clones. I saw it when it came out.

And I saw it again a couple of years ago. I did a rewatch. And I was like, okay, well, that's lame. But then, like, it didn't really rub me the wrong way or impress me, so I just walked away from it. I was like, yeah, whatever, okay. It's a boring film, as I recall. It's like a political Senate, like all that Senate stuff.

It's just too much. And there's also the whole mystery of the clones, which is to send, is it Ewan McGregor, right? Yeah. Which is basically get him with long hair and then send him on a half-hour movie arc where he just walks around looking around learning stuff.

And it was... Even The Phantom Menace, as garbage as it is, it's edited well. Like, the movie flows. I can remember more of The Phantom Menace even though I didn't like it as much. Attack of the Cone is so forgetful. I remember there's a Wookiee war or something in there. I remember at the time The Phantom Menace, even though I didn't like it as much. Attack of the Cone is so forget. I remember there's a Wookiee War or something in there.

I remember at the time thinking it was cool, but I can't remember anything from that movie now. No, I remember the very end, like Yoda begun the Clone Wars. That's all I remember. Okay, what do you got? So far, your bottom three are probably my bottom three, maybe a slightly different order, but I'm with you so far. So work with me on this one. I don't recall.

Did I put Return of the Jedi or did I put Last Jedi? Last Jedi. Okay, that makes sense. See, I kind of can go maybe... Oh, hang on. Did I put Last Jedi next or did I put... No, this is your next three. I think Revenge of the Sith was next. You have Last Jedi. Yeah. Then you have Revenge of the Sith was next. You have Last Jedi.

Yeah. Then you have Revenge of the Sith. Then you have Return of the Jedi. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. I mean, all of those to me, and you can tell they're... I mean, I'm trying to remember

what order I put them in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all about the same. But I mean, okay. So The Last Jedi, I thought, was okay. And I enjoyed it. I mean, I'll say this. I thought it was an entertaining movie.

Like, I sat there. I had, I'll say this. I thought it was an entertaining movie. Like, I sat there. I had my ridiculously overpriced Coke and my strangely dry popcorn. You got to go to Costco for that. I had a deal. I got two adult. I know you only went alone, so it wouldn't help you. But I had two adult tickets. I had two pops and a popcorn for $25.

No, we've got the Costco passes. But as you say, I went alone. So we're holding the Costco passes in reserve. I thought it was okay. I mean, I thought it was dumb in a lot of parts, too. There was a lot of questions I wanted to ask. Can we do spoilers on this podcast? What's your spoiler?

For Last Jedi, I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. I would spoil any of the others you can spoil, but Last Jedi feels still too early. I would hate if I were listening and Last Jedi spoilers came on. Nah, let's not do a spoiler. When we're off the air, I'm going to tell you the moment in the movie where I started to go, this is bullshit.

Okay, because I have a couple moments like that from Last Jedi too. We'll do it right after. There was also one moment of dialogue I don't even remember anymore, but where it was supposed to be serious, but I burst out laughing because Kylo Ren is terrible. I think I know it. I keep thinking of the character from Girls

when I see Kylo Ren up there. Last Jedi, by the way, I think I know it. I think, yeah, well, yeah, Kylo Ren. I keep thinking of the character from Girls when I see Kylo Ren up there. But yeah, okay, so Last Jedi, by the way, I think I liked Last Jedi a little more than Force Awakens, but I didn't love either. They're okay

while you're in the theater. I just find after you leave the theater, they disappear and you realize they're paint by number fairly the same mythology kind of regurgitated with different names

and different characters. So you had that, then you had Revenge of the Sith, which we agree is the best of the prequels. And that's kind of why it's there. I mean, I don't think I need to explain that one much more than others. I was in a debate with a friend of mine who actually agreed with my list entirely, except he swaps Last Jedi and Revenge of the Sith. And I said, you know what? I would rather watch Anakin Skywalker become Darth Vader.

That was a fun scene. I would rather watch that happen than I would watch the thing I can't say because it's a spoiler. Right, okay, gotcha, gotcha. What's interesting is a lot of guys our age, I know you're a lot younger than me, but us guys who remember the first

three, if you will, usually they end up, most of the guys our age, we'll put them in the top three and then swap the order. I mean, maybe they'll swap the order. So your Return of the Jedi is coming ahead of... It's coming ahead of... Sorry, it's coming behind.

Coming behind. Rogue One. So before we get into... Spoiler... Sorry, before we get into the original trifecta we all know and love, you have Rogue One. So Rogue One did it for you.

That's your favorite of the new ones. Yeah, no, and by far. I mean, I actually think probably it was the best of any of them as movies in terms of how it was actually written, shot, put together. But the nostalgia factor, I mean, because I did put Return of the Jedi under Rogue One. So Return of the Jedi, everybody likes Return of the Jedi. Good nostalgia factor. What is it, too much Ewoks for you? Well, the Ewoks Rogue One. So Return of the Jedi, everybody likes Return of the Jedi, good nostalgia factor. What is it? Too much Ewoks for you? Well, the Ewoks are stupid and also, yeah,

I mean, kind of that. I just don't think it was as good as the other two of the original trilogy. That's true. But then I also thought that Rogue One, on its own merits, was a good movie. And I think when we've seen them struggle so much, first with the prequel trilogy and now with the two we've seen of the sequel trilogy, they've really struggled to figure out what in the hell to do with this incredibly iconic original trilogy.

Well, with Rogue One, I think they actually figured it out. I enjoyed watching Rogue One. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, I thought it was good as well. And I'm with you on the top two. So your top two are the same as mine. You have A New Hope as your second favorite, which I know is Star Wars.

A New Hope, that's your second favorite. And your first favorite, I agree, is Empire Strikes Back. To me, again, do we really need to even go into that? Is there anyone who really disagrees with that, who knows what they're talking about? No, I don't think so. But that was fun. There's a series on Netflix right now where they talk about old toys.

Toys. Yeah. Have you seen it yet? No, but it's on my list. The first episode's about the Star Wars uh toys it's just a nostalgia I'm big on nostalgia and it's just a roller coaster ride I just finished the episode on He-Man and uh Masters of the Universe and that one too like you forget how funny like uh because I used to watch that cartoon but you forget how funny Skeletor was like it's just just great so thank you for that that's great i think that concludes

our episode uh 299 i just wanted to recap all the star wars movies i'm gonna ask you uh about the silver medal tosser because i haven't talked about it on my podcast this is the guy from sweden who chucked his silver medal into the uh stands do you have a hot take on this like uh some people want to like hang him by his nuts and some people are like, oh, whatever, who cares? I don't know if it's that hot. Look, I was stupid when I was a teenager too. And I think probably the day will come

when he'll regret doing that. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it. I will say this though. This is the only maybe semi-serious commentary I have to make on this. I'm a guy who likes kind of old school hockey. I like chippy hockey. I will say this, though. This is the only maybe semi-serious commentary I have to make on this. I'm a guy who likes kind of old school hockey. I like chippy hockey.

I like emotional hockey. So I don't mind that his emotions are out of control. You know what? The one thing that makes this different for me, though? Tell me.

He's the captain. Yeah, that's true. He has to be the leader and the leader, I think, has to keep a cool head. So, you know, if it was... Like, without a doubt, he acted immaturely

and these are not leadership skills you desire. has to keep a cool head. So, you know, if it was... Like, without a doubt, he acted immaturely, and these are not leadership skills you desire, but at the same time, if he learns from this, like, he's a teenager who was very upset at losing the game, and I don't think we should, you know, I think if he learns from it, I hope right after he did it, like, a coach or a mentor or somebody, like, pulls him aside and, like, talks to him, like, maybe you're not seeing mentor or somebody like pulls him aside and like talks to him.

Like maybe you're not seeing the forest for the trees, but that's disrespectful to your country, to the sport, to the tournament and your teammates. And that's it for me, too. I think it's the teammates. I mean, they look to him for leadership or at least the coaches and the school, pardon me, the team managers wanted them to. That's why they made him the captain. Right. I think the team was owed better than that. But again, I mean, I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over what a teenager does.

No, and let's not overreact. Just a lot of people are really pissed. I'm like, really? You don't remember being a teenager? What a such a dumbass. I think a lot of us don't remember being teenagers. Right, right. You're a military historian? Yeah.

By education? This is not just a hobby where you read a bunch of books, like you're... No, by education, yeah. Wow. So, like, but is that just a history degree where you major in some kind of... Yeah, it's a specialized military history degree that went, well, I mean, it's under the history department, and when I was doing it, the Afghan war was on, so we actually had probably more exposure than usual to current events, poli-sci, and even actual access to the armed forces. I mean, because certainly they needed to draw on the civilian sector for expertise and research and intelligence and stuff like that. Plus, I mean, they were on a recruiting drive at the time. They needed men and women to go over there.

So yeah, I've always loved history, and especially military history. And coming out of high school, I honestly thought the career path for me was probably going to be, in some form, either the armed forces or academia. And looked at both and actually had thought I would go into the Navy, but I ended up hurting my knee quite badly and then needed a while to come back from that. And kind of by the time I did, my life had changed. I mean, the girl I had known for a long time had become something else indeed, and my whole life had gone on a different direction. But yeah, no.

What did she become? My wife. Okay. I was trying to see where you're going there. Yeah. I knew my wife in high school, and we were very good friends, direction. But yeah, no. What did she become? My wife. Okay. Trying to see where you're going there. I knew my wife in high school, and we were very good friends. She went to Waterloo. I went to Laurier. So we were both in Waterloo together.

You went to a real school. I just assumed this was like University of Phoenix online correspondence. No, I mean, these days, Laurier is kind of having a rough ride. People would debate whether or not it's a real school after the last couple of months, but certainly at the time, it was uncontroversially a real school. I'm going to count it.

I think that counts. But I should tell people listening, so people hear your voice every day on 640, but I should tell people you're a very tall man. I am a very tall man. And I note that only because of this.

So I always take note when people come in, do I need to have a little chat with them about the low ceiling? Yeah, I thought you were exaggerating or like, you know, you really got to watch out. I'm like, dude, I'm going to be okay. Yeah, you discarded it like, dude, like you're like, I'm an adult. I have no low ceiling. Yeah, I thought you were exaggerating. You're like, you know, you really got to watch out. I'm like, dude, I'm going to be okay.

Yeah, you discarded it like, dude, you're like, I'm an adult. I have no low ceiling. I'm a grown up. But I'm like, I've been, now that you're episode 299, a lot of times people like you who are 6'4", kind of dismiss it like,

okay, I'll watch my head in the first part. And there is a first part where you, if you're 6'4", you will hit your head. But that's not the part I'm actually concerned about. It's when you turn the corner. You have a decoy. Like, there's this low thing that lulls you into a false sense of security. Like, there's ducks and stuff going on in there.

I don't know. But it brings you to where Ron James, and I just told this story when you're... Do you consider a morning show host on 590? Is that a competitor? Or are your sites just set on 1010? I'm just curious about Elliot Price who was the last guest. If Elliot

Price is somebody you've got you want to consider a competitor? I wouldn't view them as a direct competitor because I think we'd be doing something different than what they are. And I think look, I mean Toronto, to take kind of a big picture answer to this, and I don't need to tell you this, but I think just to make sure the listeners are dialed in on this.

I would imagine anyone who cares enough about Toronto radio to listen to this probably knows this already. We actually have, compared to most major North American cities, an embarrassment of riches. I mean, we have three news talk stations operating. We have an all-news station. We have two all-sports stations operating. Plus, you know, we have some of the other language or the national radio stations. We've got a ton of great FM options.

I don't know if Torontonians realize how spoiled they are with radio right now. So in terms of where we're going to get our listeners from, and obviously to put it mildly, we would like more of them, do we view sports as the natural place to go get them? No. honestly, we don't. And if we

can, by all means, come on over, check us out. Maybe you'll like what you're hearing. But I tend to think most people, and I include myself in this, I mean, especially when I'm on vacation, as I just was my first week back, if I'm driving around the GTA and I'm listening to either music, but if I want to listen to talk, I will flip between sports and news, right? So maybe there's going to be a lot of people who are going to spend most of their time listening to sports, but on the occasion they want to listen to some news, I want to be their option for that.

So do I view them as a competitor? Not exactly. But sort of. Yeah, well, look, we want listeners. So everybody's a competitor, but they wouldn't be the main target. And if you look at your universe of potential listeners, they are people who are willing to listen to AM radio.

Yeah. Because that's a subset of a subset. So I listen to AM radio. You could come to 640 because that's an AM radio station you can get in your automobile. So I would think that all the AM stations, that's the universe that you're all trying to draw from. Kind of a hierarchy, though, right? I mean, you go after the ones that are most similar to your existing listeners first. Yeah, I mean, 1010 listeners would be the ones who would be most similar to ours.

And I would imagine, in fact, a lot of them are listening to both stations, because that's what I always did. And sometimes I still do. I mean, I'm not being disloyal. Yeah, you just toggle. Yeah, I mean, and sometimes it's to hear what the competition's saying. But other times it's because, again, just on the embarrassment of riches for Toronto radio listeners, I tend to think right now 640's got a great lineup, but guess what?

So does 1010. And when you're toggling there, you're listening to good content no matter where you're landing. And if I'm listening to something on my own station where it's a story I'm not that personally invested in, or maybe it's something I exhaustively covered that morning myself, and I'm sick of it, sure, I might bump up the dial and see what 1010's talking about. So the listeners in this city have it really well.

Okay, more on this, of course, soon. But I brought up Elliot Price, only to say I told him about Ron James, stand-up comic Ron James. Right. Who is, I'm going to say he's 5'7". He didn't tell me. That's me sizing him up. I had to have the chat with him about the ceiling. Okay?

He's 5'7", and I had to have the chat with him. What a wonderful moment for him. He actually, I think it makes him feel good, right? Because it's not often people warn him about the low ceilings. So that's kind of something he's, you're used to it, I'm sure, when you come to old Toronto homes. Yeah. And as I was saying to you just before we were getting set up here, having just recently renovated an old Toronto house,

I spent more money than I wish I had digging out the basement because the basement, naturally, the ceiling was two inches lower than my scalp. So that was something we wanted to fix. So we dug it out and fixed it up. So you know what? Basement's where daddy hangs out. Can you throw me at all a ballpark figure? Because I've been told it's very expensive, but we're talking tens of thousands?

Multiple tens of thousands. Multiple tens of thousands. Honestly, no, I can't, but only because it was part of the overall budget. No, I hear you. It's a bigger project and it doesn't break it i that now but it's 10 multiple tens of thousands so if people want me to uh to do that uh go to patreon.com slash toronto mike and that one dollar a month is great but i'm thinking uh we increase that if everybody increases that to let's say a hundred dollars a month then that will go a long way towards the the basement fund absolutely and you can also, I mean, there's one way where you can cheap out

a little bit on it, which is you don't drop it, like you don't do the full perimeter of the basement. You do it a little more on the interior. That's a little bit cheaper. If you want to actually dig out the basement, the entirety of the perimeter of the house, you're looking at quite a bit of money. Big bucks. So get on that Patreon account

and help me out there. The military historian thing, I have a question from Arthur Sinclair before we leave that. I did see this. How long was the Hundred Years' War? The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts that all overlapped and bled into each other and lasted

if I recall correctly, about 117 years. Now, did you cheat in any way? Because you did see that question on Twitter. I did. I did look up the exact length of time. All you knew is it was not 100 years. That's the trick there. Yeah, look, I did cheat on looking up it was exactly 117 years, but it wasn't one war.

It was a series of wars and campaigns. But, I mean, that was not my main era of militaries. Okay, what is your favorite, or what's your main area? And then tell me your favorite history topic, if you will. Well, I mean, I tune in a little bit after, I guess, just in terms of what I studied after the U.S. Civil War. I know stuff that was happening in the U.S. Civil War, but probably conflicts after that are where I got interested. So I would say mostly like the World Wars, but the Cold War. I mean, and it's funny, I mean, I joke about this often. Like when I was in school doing my master's, I was doing it largely

on Soviet Union stuff, Cold War stuff, the intelligence game, nuclear warfare, things like that. And at the time, it all seemed so obscure and arcane. None of it seems obscure and arcane anymore. So all this stuff I learned back in the day about Soviet intelligence and their meddling in democracy and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, man, is that ever coming in handy these days. Suddenly relevant again. And all that work you did studying Nazis in World War II, that's also coming into relevancy again. So yeah, that's why history is important, kids.

Hard to avoid them if you have a history degree. I'm actually a history major, too. I double majored in English and history. And what was your focus? American history. Fascinating stuff. Yeah, yeah. Some interesting chapters being written right now.

But having said that, as I become more, I was born in Toronto, but I feel more Canadian now than ever. I just feel very Canadian. And I'm really interested in the 1812 stuff, like the War of 1812 stuff. So I think for pleasure, I sort of deep dive into that. I think we haven't necessarily had a national conversation about this yet, but I think if you were to talk to a lot of Canadians right now,

the overwhelming feeling so many of us are experiencing is a creeping sense of gratitude. Like, I've always been proud of Canada. I've always been patriotic. I've always known I'm blessed to live here. Looking around the world right now, I'm thinking, Jesus Christ. I know you're right.

There's nowhere I'd rather be. You just take it for granted because it's all you know. You live it. You breathe it. Then you start to see things happening with your friends to the south and elsewhere. Then you realize... I always call it... It's a terrible term, but we won the sperm lottery. Yeah, no, absolutely.

It's like, this is a big world, and look where I was born in Toronto. That's fantastic. I mean, what's better? Maybe, I don't know, Stockholm? There's not a lot of options that sound a little better than Toronto. Our colleague at the station, David Akin, for Global News, was at one of the Prime Minister's events last night, and he was live-tweeting it, and he had this great tweet. I wish I could remember it verbatim, but it was basically, the questions are sometimes tough but very courteous, and everyone here is being very pleasant with each other.

And I just immediately forwarded that tweet to an American friend of mine. I'm like, you want to come? Yeah. You want to move in? I'll get you some paperwork. That's right. I have a wonderful sponsor named Brian Gerstein, and he is a real estate sales representative with PSR Brokerage.

He's recorded a special... I'm going to play this first because it ties in nicely with another sponsor, but he recorded a special message for you, Matt. So let's listen to Brian. Hi, Matt. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mic. Now is the time to call or text me at 416-873-0292 so I can help you plan for the spring market, be it investing, buying, and or selling. I have a listing ready to go on January 24th. Just know that I need a good week and a half to properly prepare your home for sale so you can get top dollar for it. Matt, you've been known to have a beer after your show,

but not right after, since you said that 9am beers are frowned upon for some reason. Rest assured that not only is it okay for you to crack open a GLB at Mike's and shrink it out of my pint glass in front of you, but you will join some elite company by doing so that Mike will elaborate on. I always enjoy listening to you on air where your wit always shines through. There you go, Matt.

So I think what Brian is suggesting is, if you wish, and there's no pressure here at all, but just so you know, your six-pack in front of you is yours from Great Lakes Brewery. That pint glass is from Brian, property in the six dot com. Just so you know, two of those beers are actually, I just

took out of the fridge. I noticed that. Yeah, so do it on mic too. We're going to go for the visual effect here, huh? And hang on, hang on. There we go. I love that sound. That's fantastic. And also, I'll point out,

I washed that pint glass. I wasn't even going to ask. Yeah, because it sits in that box, and I'm sure that gets dusty. But I washed that knowing, when I heard Brian's message, I said, okay, I don't want him to pour it into a dusty glass.

A little dust never hurt nobody. I even had to take the, normally there's a business card, Brian's business card in there. I'm like, we're taking that out and washing this glass just in case you wish to partake. So which beer did you crack open? Let's see.

I mean, look, I've been working my way through the Great Lakes beer kind of the portfolio. This is pompous ass. How appropriate. Yeah. Well, I mean, hopefully you mean not me, of course. No, look, I was saying to you before we came on the air a couple of years ago, just basically for reasons of health, but good beers. And it's Toronto. We don't have as thriving a microbrew as I would like, kind of that community, compared to some other cities.

Especially, you travel in the U.S. sometimes. I was just in Atlanta a couple of months ago, and I walk in, and they've got a bunch of taps. And I'm like, hey, man, what's something local? And the dude said, all of them. So I was like, okay, well, I've come to the right place. Toronto has a ways to go. But we are going that way. We are, slowly. Great Lakes, they've been around 30 years, and when they started, there was nobody. They were alone.

But now, I mean, holy smokes. They're popping up. They're popping up here and there. I was just at George Bell Arena last night in the Junction, and just around there, there's a bunch that have popped up in the last five years. Yeah, and it's a good time to be a beer drinker in Toronto, especially if you've made that choice to drink less but drink better.

But that's smart of you. I think that's very smart because now you're not going to go buy your 2-4 of Bud or whatever. Now you're going to drink less, but when you do drink, you're going to make a choice that you're going to drink local craft beer, and so you're drinking better but not as much. It's a little political as well, though. I mean, I'm not going to editorialize here on your show. I get my chance to do that every morning, but I don't like the way

we sell booze in this province, and I like to buy it right from the source as much as possible. Go to... Let me get the right address here before I send it. 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard, and you can buy straight from Great Lakes Brewery. I always am curious about how

they... Because they have some beers you can get there for like $2.30 and others are higher. It turns out if it's available, I think I have this right. I hope I don't screw it up.

If you can buy that exact beer in the LCBO, you can't charge less than the LCBO. I think they have to match that price. But they have a beer,

my wife's favorite Great Lakes beer is the Blonde Lager, which I think you can only get that at 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard. They can sell that for $2.30

a can. Doesn't that kind of speak to the point, though, that you have to not sell it for less than the province because the province can't stand the guy who actually makes it undercutting them? What a weird, weird time to be alive in this province. One day, we're going to grow up on this, and we've

actually seen some progress on this. I mean, you can now buy at some grocery stores beer, which was game-changing, but we're sick people sometimes. Yeah, you know, there's some stuff that seems to have been grandfathered in, and we can't quite shake the old ways. I think it's almost like, if you came at it now for the first time, it's like religion.

If you take an adult and you explain some religion, he's going to be like, oh, that's nonsense or whatever. But if you get them young and you teach them as a kid and they grow up, they're like, this is the truth, the one truth. Well, for many of us in this secular age, beer is our religion. That's a good way to put it. So enjoy. Take that

well, now it's a five pack, but take that in your pint glass home with you. I kind of want to start at the beginning here. Well, actually, first, my goodness, how could I forget my friends here? Come on, Mike. You're trying to act like a professional here in front of Matt Gurney. Paytm.ca.

Let me tell you about Paytm.ca. They are a free online bill payment service that helps manage all of your bills in one place. There I go, leaving the script to tell you that I eat my own dog food. I really do. I can show you, I have the Paytm app. I do pay all of my bills through Paytm. So I use Paytm as the conduit

on which to use my MasterCard to pay all my bills. So even if it's something like, I'm trying to think what like a property tax is something that won't let you use a credit card, I can use Paytm and use my credit card so I get my points so I get my free groceries at President's Choice but I also by paying it through Paytm they give me cash back there's a lot of other stuff you get cash back like I can go buy an indigo gift card for 50 bucks it's a $50 gift card and I get 5% cash back. I get a whole bunch of stuff. So you build up your cash, which means basically, and by the way, this is the most important part of this spiel.

There's a promo code Toronto Mike, one word. When you make a bill payment, if you use that promo code, Paytm gives you 10 bucks towards the bill. So that $70 bill costs you 60. You slap it on your credit card. That's 10 bucks just for using the promo code Toronto Mike. So trust me, this thing has no service charges. It costs you nothing. It's just convenient. I get alerts when I have bills due. So easy. You don't have to pay a credit card. You can pay directly

through your bank account if you want. It's easy to set up. Go to paytm.ca, download the app, and you can thank me later. Matt, how the heck does a young you end up at the National Post? Because you're a young guy now. I've been trying to figure this out. 34. I would have gone a little younger.

Well, then you haven't looked apparently above the eyebrows. I do have bad eyesight right now. You, then you haven't looked apparently above the eyebrows. I do have bad eyesight right now. You'll see what happens to that hairline and it starts skewing the age range up. I see now. Yeah, look, yeah, I'm young. I mean, I'm almost 35, if that helps.

You know, kind of like how kids would be like, I'm three and a half. Yeah, yeah. I'm 34.979, I guess. I mean, I'd have to do the math on this. Is your birthday in January? Yeah, it's a January birthday. My son's turning 16. I mean, I'd have to do the math on this. Is your birthday in January? Yeah, it's a January birthday. My son's turning 16. I've been calling him 16 for seven months now, but it's actually

happening next week. Well, 16 is one you do want to round up to. A lot of magic starts to happen when you hit 16. I'm not sure that's going to be true. It's not going to be true for you. Yeah, no, I'm young. And the thing is, it's not just that I'm young. It's that I started young. So I have been young at everything I've ever done. Like I have never actually been of an appropriate age. Look, I mean, if you actually want the story, I mean, you asked me how I wound up there. Look, I mentioned to you before that I had thought the career path was either going to be the armed forces or academia. And I was heading

in the academia direction. And I remember one day, for whatever reason, a lot of my profound, deep thinking happens in the shower. And I'd been having this weird sense of feeling lately. And this is when I was doing my master's and I was almost done. And after that, next was PhD. And then after that, hopefully a career. And I felt something that I wasn't used to feeling. And I was having a really hard time putting it into words. And it was not a good feeling. And then I'm in the shower. And all of a sudden, it occurs to me, what I'm feeling is anxiety.

And I'm not someone who's a high anxiety guy. I'm actually normally quite even keeled. And I started to think, why am I feeling anxiety? And I realized it's because I didn't want to do a PhD. I didn't want to be an academic, but that had been the plan for a long time. And by this point, I'd mentioned that girl from high school already. By this point, she and I were together and she and I had plans for the future. And several of those plans were predicated on me having money, having a job, having the ability to do any of the things. So I kind of thought to myself, OK, I'll finish the MA because I'm already three quarters of the way through that.

I'll finish that. But then I need to start figuring out what to do. And I started kind of asking my professional network, I guess, to the extent that a grad student has one, like people who I trusted to give me good advice. So that was my dad, who's been successful in business and obviously has a stake in my success. So I talked with him about it. I talked with some of his colleagues from other industries to give me a sense about it. And I also emailed a friend of mine, I guess, almost have to call her a pen pal, really. She was a National Post columnist, her name's Barbara Kay. She's still a National Post columnist.

Of course I know Barbara Kay. And oftentimes a very contentious one. And she is someone who I'd kind of fallen into this pen pal relationship with, because years before, as a lifelong news junkie, I mean, I mentioned the historian thing, right? I mean, you don't find a lot of historians who don't care about the news, right? It's all the same thing to them. Some of it is more recent than the other stuff. She'd written a column I really liked.

I emailed her. She emailed me back. And then despite having like a 40-year age difference between her and I, we became friends. And I told her, I'm kind of realizing I don't want to be an academic. friends. And I told her, I'm kind of realizing I don't want to be an academic. And she's like, well, look, my son is the editor of the editorial board at the National Post. And I knew there were two people there named Kay, but it never occurred to me that there was a familial relationship there. I just thought, okay, it's weird. There's two people named Kay. I'm like, oh, John is your son. She's like, yeah, I'll set up a lunch between you guys.

I'm not sure I know that. Now I'm just searching my brain database. Is that a fun fact I'm aware of? I'm not 100% sure I even knew this. People who care, who follow newspapers closely, know. But most people would think, okay, it's like K and K. Who cares? So she set up a lunch between her

son and I, and it was the strangest lunch I'd ever had. And now John and I are actually very close friends now, so he won't take this the wrong way. I had never had a lunch quite like it, where it was like we sat down, shook hands, ordered our food, and he just started asking me questions that to me were complete non sequiturs. It was like, what's your favorite musician? Okay, what's your favorite sport? What are your thoughts on what's happening in Florida politics right now? And he's just throwing these things at me, and I only realized much later

that he was basically sounding me out to see how well-rounded I was, right? Because a lot of people who are grad students in anything are little androids for that one particular topic and have no broader interest. So I guess I passed the reasonably well-rounded human being test, and he began feeding me a couple of times a month a freelance contract. You know, like, I've got a bunch of work here,

and we're a little short-staffed this month. Can you come in for a couple of days and get this done? So I started as a freelancer, and then about a year later, I was in Boston. I was walking off the wooden plank decks of the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship in the United States Navy. And my cell phone rings, and it's John. And I'm like, oh, that's weird. He'd never call me. Normally, he would email me, right? Right. And I pick up, and he's like, hey, look, I don't know if you're still looking for work,

but I've just had a spot here open up. Can you start Monday? And I'm like, yeah. Like, what is this? Is this like a week? Because I've been doing these really short pay-for-play contracts. And he's like, no, no, no. This is like a year contract. I have a staff position open coming for a year. And I thought to myself, OK, I just finished the MA.

Why not? I mean, I had no sense that it would lead anywhere. But I thought it would buy me some time. It'll get me some of that money I needed because my girlfriend at the time was expecting a ring, and I didn't have the money for it yet. Right. And I thought, okay, yeah, I'll do this because my thinking at the time was what an interesting line on a resume. Like how many people will ever be able to put on their resume that they worked at the editorial board of a national newspaper? So I thought, great, this will really help me figure out the next step. So I showed up.

I had no training. I had very little experience. I had no idea what I was doing. I probably made 50 mortifying mistakes in my first week there. But a year later, my contract expired. And I'm like, well, John, I know we're coming up at the end of the contract. This has been great. Thanks so much for it. He's like, oh, hang on, hang on, hang on. He just walked away. And he came back. And he's like, if you want, you get another year under contract. We can extend that a year.

I was like, yeah, OK. I'm having a blast. Why would I change this? He's like, yeah, I got a few extra bucks for you, too. So that was an easy decision. And my entire career, Mike, I mean, we can walk this right through to the radio if you want, has just been me saying yes. Like, people will ask me, do you want to try something? And I go, yeah, sure, yeah. And so he said, do you want an extra year? And I was like, yeah, why not? I mean, by that point, I had the ring. I was engaged. We had a wedding coming up. And I'm like, I don't really want to

start looking for work now. I can just keep working at what I've got, and I'm comfortable here. So I said yes. And a year later, they're like, hey, do you want to be full-time salary benefits? I said yes. And then basically three years later, John had left, and another editor, Andrew Coyne, had come in and left as well. And they said, do you want to take over the department? And I said yes. So that is kind of how I went from clueless uh first day or to the guy running the editorial board first of all that's a great that's a great story because it basically all is kicked off by this uh digital pen pal relationship with barbara k like you never

know like these contacts and you never know who will know somebody who can help you you know and wow like that whole story like my son's this have the thing, you pass this audition of some sorts. And that's like we're talking you were at the post that's 2007, 2007. When I started as a freelancer, yeah. And then I began working there in 2008. That's incredible. And you're right. I mean, that's the National Post.

You know, that's a that's a big deal. So you were you were editor of the post's comment page. Yeah. I mean, pages. There were four of them when we started. Yeah, my apologies. But, I mean, as time went on, you know, look, I mean, I left print media for a reason, right? I mean, there were fewer and fewer pages. There were fewer and fewer bucks for them. And, you know, as much as it broke my heart to do this, like, I still think of myself in a lot of ways as a postie. The Post is a place like that. A lot of people

have worked for the National Post and some of them become posties. It's just kind of, oh, you're a postie too. It's kind of this weird fraternity. I do miss it every day, but two years ago I realized it was time to go do something else. Did you get out of there before the

Sun Media merger? No, I still was there when that was happening. I forget how far back that goes. Yeah, that was about, boy, I mean, we're dating ourselves here, but maybe that was three or four years now. No, I got out about, well, I mean, I got out basically a year and a half ago, but I had decided to leave well before that. The rest was just basically

loose ends. I didn't want to be one of those guys who quits and then starts looking for a job. I wanted to go from that job directly into my next one. At this point, you have kids, right? Well, that's it. I just did some quick math. See what I did there?

Now, part of the National Post gig included a radio show at SiriusXM. Yeah. Why do I know this? I think it's... I have friends at that building, the Liberty Village location. Todd Shapiro's there doing a show.

Humble and Fred don't do it from there, but they got a show on that. Yeah, on the comedy channel. On the laughs. So tell me a bit about the National Post radio... Excuse me, the radio show on Sirius XM. Well, I mean, it's easier in another way to take it from a different angle. And I probably would have gotten there eventually.

One of the things that happened when I was at the National Post was a young woman named Ricky emailed me and she was at the time producing for Jerry Agar. And she's like, Jerry really loved one of your columns, and he'd love for you to come on and talk to him. Like, give us five minutes on air. And I was like, yeah, sure. Like, whatever. I mean, I always loved talking on the radio, right? And Jerry and I hit it off, and I love Jerry. I think the guy's fantastic.

And he emailed me after. He says, hey, that was a great interview. We'd love to have you back. And that was how I started hanging out at... So you went in person to do these? Eventually. The first one was a phoner, but eventually, yeah, I started hanging out there.

And that was kind of how I started hanging out at 1010. And after a couple of months of doing that, Ben Dixon came down the hall one day, Mike Ben Dixon, the PD there, and was like, hey, man, we're heading up into the summer and I've got a ton of shows that need hosts. Do you want to try out some of those? So I'm trying to keep

the answer somewhat relevant to the serious side. Please, continue. Real quick, to interject, is to bring it back to Great Lakes Beer, as all things should. But I just recently attended a documentary feature put together about the 30 years of Great Lakes Brewery. And following this documentary feature,

I had a fantastic lengthy discussion with both Jerry Agar and Mike Bendixson. Oh, they were there? They were both there for the movie. Well, they're men who I think who know their way around a beer as well. Yes, apparently. Yeah, so Mike had asked me

if I could do some fill-in that summer. And like I said to you before, I say yes. That's just what I've always done in my career. So I said yes. And that ended up becoming pretty quickly me doing an absolute ton of fill-in at 1010. Like, a lot.

And eventually, I was doing it mostly for John Tory. And John Tory was a guy who was taking a lot of time off. And I was... It wasn't like an official thing that I was the guy, but I was the guy who was taking a lot of time off, and I wasn't like an official thing that I was the guy, but I was the guy they would ask first whenever John was off. And John, being a busy guy who had his fingers in a lot of pies, this was, of course, before he was the mayor,

he was gone two or three days a month. So for a young guy like me just kind of getting started, that's incredible, right? You're actually getting a chance to not just do maybe a week in the summer and a week at Christmas, although I was doing that. I was getting two or three days a month virtually every month, plus more in the summer and at Christmas, but I wanted more. And as I was saying earlier, 1010 has this fantastic lineup. I didn't want to be the guy who's a fill-in guy forever, because I know eventually you get... Can I ask a question

about being a fill-in guy? Sure. Is it like you just invoice for hours? Is this like a pay-as-you-go part-time thing? By the show. I mean, maybe some guys do it by the hour. Just Mike and I had talked about per show, you do this. And, you know, doing morning... I mean, basically, eventually, I did every show on 1010's lineup, right?

And the rates were not the same for all of them because obviously the audience is the same for all of them because obviously the the audience is the same for them yeah we just hammered it up by the show so every month i would send in uh just my invoice for whatever shows i'd done the month before plus anything else i'd done at the station i always was curious about these fill-in guys like sometimes i wonder like is this fill-in person doing it for like the exposure for the reps is are they actually getting compensated i guess it's different for everybody. Maybe it is, and I can't speak for that generally.

I just made sure, I mean, to the greatest extent possible, I never expected to get rich off of doing media work. Believe me, when your first job

is at Post Media, you learn pretty quickly you're not getting rich off a career in media. But it's just, my time has meaning because it's time away from my family.

No, I think, absolutely, it has meaning, absolutely. And that's really like getting this opportunity to do some fill-in work at CFRB, because it was still CFRB back then, I think. It had just become 1010, but I kept screwing it up, and they told me to stop.

And you get to do different shifts, and I guess you even got some morning shifts you got to do. Eventually. Those are the last ones, but yeah. So anyway, this all leads us back though to, to, I mean, you had asked about the serious stuff. Yeah, the National Post radio show. So it was, I mean, what had happened was my fill-in shifts at 1010 came down a lot, I

think for two reasons. One of them was obvious, the Bell Astral deal, right? So all of a sudden, there were a bunch of Bell personalities around who were available to do the fill-in work. And I also think, kind of as I was saying to you, I mean, I know if you spend too long doing the fill-in stuff, eventually you become the fill-in guy. But then there's always going to be someone new the station wants to try out behind you. And I was aware of this, and I wasn't too bitter about it. It's just the reality of it. I wanted to go do something else. And it was Arlene Bynum, God bless her, who called me and

said, hey, look, I know you, I've heard you on 1010. I've heard you at different times at 640 before. I have an idea for something that we could maybe do. And I'd known Arlene a long time and I liked Arlene a lot. And I was like, yeah, like, yeah, let's talk. And actually, I mean, credit where it's due, she had the idea that the serious Canadian news talk channel, Canada Talks, channel 167, was something that was established. And SiriusXM, I love those guys, by the way. They're a great group of people to work with. They didn't have the budget to fill out like an entire day's worth of content.

So they were doing some re-roll or they were kind of putting together kind of a weird mix of things. And she said, we need kind of, um, uh, an intelligent, but right-leaning show. And she says, you are an intelligent and right-leaning guy. Why don't we figure out some way that post media partners with Sirius XM so that you guys get the brand exposure on the platform. And well, she said to me, you'd finally get what you want and need because I wanted to get better at what I'm doing. When you're a fill-in guy, you have a chance to improve your skills, right? But if you want to get good at this, you need to be on the mic basically five days a week, right? So I said, okay. It took a while to hammer it out. I mean, these things always do take a long time, but that's how that got started. It was an absolute ton of fun. I guess I did that almost

two years, and it was a morning show, a satellite right across North America. A ton of Americans were listening, which I always found interesting. And some of those Americans have actually followed me to 640. So we get calls or emails from people in Indianapolis, from Florida, from Houston, some of them Canadian expats living in the U.S. wanting to stay in touch, some of them just Americans. I always find it interesting that an American, the expats I totally get. I just put out this call for people to send

me MP3s, people who listen, because I'm going to do this thing for the 300th episode. And I was like, oh, a lot of Vancouver people, but of course, they're Vancouver people who grew up here, you know what I mean? They want to hear from local celebs that they miss or whatever. But I'm always surprised when the Americans

who are not from here tune into the Canadian news. Like, that's always an interesting... Well, I mean, on the National Post Radio, it's what we called it, we did do a lot of American stuff. We did do a lot of global news. Sorry, world news, I guess I should say. I don't mean global news.

I mean, world news. That's TNR. You're almost there. So, I mean, I wasn't shocked that Americans were tuning in. But honestly, I mean, hey, man, we were just glad for the listeners. And it was a ton of fun. And for me, it was a great experience. And one thing, this is, I mean, when I was, I told you before, when I left the post, I wanted to leave clean.

One of the things I was quietly doing was talking to friends and colleagues and being like, hey, I think my time here is probably going to be over. Do you want to do some fill-in shifts on the show when I'm on vacation? And we kind of figured out by doing that who actually had the ability to take it over. So right now, I believe Anthony Fury does it of the Sun News side of Post Media. He does the show, and I absolutely still listen when I get the chance. It's on the same time I am, so I don't get that much of a chance, but when I do, I listen to it. He's doing great. So you essentially, you leave National Post Radio Show and, of course, your gig at the National Post for the opportunity at AM640. Yeah.

It's funny how life works because I had made my own decision to leave Post Media. And it was made for my own reasons. It had nothing to do with my job there. It had nothing to do with the people. my job there, had nothing to do with the people. I just thought, if you look at the trend line of print media and you look at the trend line of me needing to feed my children, I'm not sure they both end at the same place. I think those lines might cross at some point. That is not useful to me.

And for what it was, I haven't really told many people about this, so it's just between you, me, and the listeners. No one's listening. Open up to me. Well, I was on vacation, and we knew... I don't want to get into the financial details of this, because it's boring. I want to see a T4, if you don't mind.

Well, you'd have to go to the public filings of PostMedia, because it was their financial details. We knew that there was something coming up with PostMedia's debt, and it was either going to be a bankruptcy or a restructuring of some kind. And I knew it was imminent. I'd been tipped off by a friend that they were kind of, to stay tuned.

And the announcement ended up coming up like a day or two later. But what happened was my wife and I had had our kids out. And when we were in the parking lot, some asshole had wiped her mirror out right off the side of her car. And then it helpfully left it on the hood of her car. Thanks, guy! Like, after you smashed the mirror and then drove off, you at least left it. So I kind

of look at that. I'm like, ah, fuck. That's a few hundred bucks of repairs that I didn't really want to spend now. But I'm thinking, ah, well, I'm on vacation. I'm not going to let this get me down. So I told my wife, hey, look, I'm off for the next couple of weeks anyway. I'll take your car, and I'll get it fixed. And then she said to me, well, should we really be spending money right now if your company is going to go bankrupt? And in my head, the switch popped. I'm like, I'm done. I'm not stoic at home. I'm not a Vulcan here. But I try not to project my work stress into the home environment. I think my wife deserves better than that. And I certainly know that my kids do. So I try to deal with my work stress at work or at least outside of the home.

My kids do. So I try to deal with my work stress at work or at least outside of the home. And I didn't talk that much with my wife about this. And I realized if she has picked up enough of my stress about what's happening at my company that her car gets damaged and she doesn't want to repair it in case we end up needing a couple hundred bucks. And it's the mirror. Like, you have to repair it. That's when I knew it was time for me to go. So yeah, so I kind of made the decision then to start looking around. And this was around, I don't know, probably around Victoria Day, I guess, when this had happened. And I started just calling up buddies in the private sector being like, well, what the hell does like a former

newspaper journalist do? And they're like, oh, you're going to be some guy's dream communications manager. And I'm like, ugh. Okay. I mean, yeah, I guess. It is a bump in pay, though. It's astonishing. It's a huge bump in pay. And nine to five hours,

which newspaper work was not. Newspaper work was long hours and often erratic hours. So there was a ton of advantages to it, right? Especially when you've got those young kids, right? And a house and a mortgage and a car with a broken mirror. But I just had no enthusiasm for that. And I'm thinking, well, all right, I'll take some of these meetings.

And I'm trying to work myself up for them, right? I'm trying to think, hey, this is going to be great for me. It's going to be great for the family. This is a way I can still apply my talents. Maybe I can still write a column. Like maybe I can keep like a bit of a toe in the water for journalism or something. I can still probably go on the radio a little bit. But I'm really reconciling myself to the fact that, yeah, like the media journey is over.

And I'm telling myself, you know what? It was never foreseen in the first place. Like I didn't think I would ever be here to begin with when I took that first 12-month contract. I just thought it would be a great resume line. And sure enough, 10 years later, that's basically what it's going to be. And then I get this email from a guy named Nathan Smith, who is the program director at 640. He goes, hey, Matt, I've heard a lot about you, and I'm relatively new in town. Do you want to have a coffee?

And you know what? It's funny. Like I said, I just keep saying yes. That's the secret to your success. A couple of lucky bounces with Barbara Kay and Jerry Agar, for example. Complete luck.

I'd like to think I have some talent and I like to think as time goes on, the talent becomes more pronounced and more to the fore. But I am a very blessed man, both in the parents I had, a very stable family background, successful parents who could allow me to pursue my dreams,

and great luck. You need the two. One without the other is not enough, but you need a bit of that luck. Like we mentioned the sperm lottery earlier, you've got to have a little bit of that luck. Things can go your way, but you absolutely have to have the skills to pay the bills. You've got to back a little bit of that luck. Things can go your way. But you absolutely have to have the skills to pay the bills. You've got to back it up with some chops.

Well, I mean, again, it's always a work in progress. I mean, this sounds like such a cliche, like a warmed-over cliche at that. But I like to think I get better every day. Like, I'm never going to get to the point where I run out of things to learn. And I think when you do, it's time to go do something else. But, yeah, I mean, if people think I'm good at what I do, I'm very flattered by that. But honestly, what I would always lead with, just as a way of keeping myself grounded, is I've just been incredibly lucky.

Now, before it was GNR, of course, AM640, this was The Morning Show with Matt Gurney and Supriya. Please remind me. DeVette. DeVette. Supriya DeVette. That's actually really easy. I think I get it in my own head, and I think it's going to be very complex. She has a little mnemonic for it.

DeVette likes spaghetti. And that's a pro tip I needed really early. So I'm going to call her Supriya if that's okay. That's really easy. But tell me why did John Oakley leave mornings for afternoons? All I can tell you is what I've been told. I haven't talked to him about it personally. We haven't had a conversation about that.

But when Nathan had asked me to come in and meet him, the PD at 640, we met. We had a coffee. We actually had an incredibly frank exchange exchange too, where he's like, where do you sell, where do you see yourself in media in five years? I'm like, out of media. Like I was very blunt about this. I just said to him, and I was very honest about it. I just said, I'm burnt out. I'm stressed out. I'm, I'm, you know, doing my best to hold together my newspaper section in a, in a kind of a very challenging environment. And I'm getting offers now to go hang out in offices on Bay street and not do very much work and get paid a very challenging environment. And I'm getting offers now to go hang out in offices on Bay Street

and not do very much work and get paid a lot of money. And those are pretty tempting. And he's like, well, maybe I can make you an inferior offer. That will catch your interest. That's a good line. Yeah. We laughed about it. We had a good first introductory meeting.

But it wasn't really until the next meeting where we actually had this conversation. And he's like, look, we're going to be making some changes at the station. There's going to be some stuff moving around. By this point, Global, well, Chorus did own the station by this point, but there hadn't been a lot of the integration

work that has happened since. Yeah, well, Chorus always owned the station, but it now owned Global, the Shaw stuff. Yeah, it was that weird corporate swap, right? Yeah. So it's kind of like there's going to be a So, um, so it was kind of like, there's like, there's going to be a lot of changes coming up and he's like, do you,

would you be interested in having like some part in it? And I'm like, uh, yeah, I mean, in theory, like, like let's have the conversation and all, all I can really tell you is that the, the afternoon and the morning drives were both in play, and that was dependent on John Oakley. And what I was told, and I guess you'd have to ask him, was just that, how long had he been doing it for? Since Mojo started.

No, they took over. John Oakley took over for Humble and Fred. When Humble and Fred left Mojo Radio for 99.9 Mix. Which I do remember, but I think, honest to God, I was in high school. So he was doing it for a while. Long time. Look, I get up really early to do this show.

It takes a toll on you. And I can see someone getting to the point where moving to afternoons, doing the same kind of show, bringing your contributors with you, I can understand why that would be really tempting. Right now, for me, mornings are perfect because they're just where my life is, right? Like, I'm home. At the end of the day, I've got all my stuff squared away. You can see a Star Wars matinee. In the middle of the day.

But also, my son, my three-year-old, he only does half-day school right now. I pick him up. We have lunch every day. Like, your kids aren't going to like you forever. And right now, he loves me. So having lunch with him is actually pretty cool. So it's a perfect thing for me right now. I pick him up. We have lunch every day. Like your kids aren't going to like you forever. And right now he loves me. So having lunch with him is actually pretty cool. So it's a perfect thing for me right now. So then Nathan came back to me a few weeks after that. I told him afternoons or mornings would be fine. I told him I would have a preference for mornings just for schedule, but I wasn't going to let that be a problem. And he came to me a little bit later on. He's like, I think we, I think we would go in this direction on mornings and John's going to go back to a,

keep the same kind of show, keep the same staff, but move to a much more normal kind of life and do it in the afternoons. And I said, okay. And then the conversation between Nathan and I proceeded from there. And I didn't actually ever talk about it directly with John.

You know, if John made a request after that many years of service that he maybe, maybe, I'm speculating, maybe for health reasons, who knows, maybe a variety of reasons, he wanted to do afternoons. That just, it's great that they could accommodate that. And of course, this is very speculative

because what do I know? But Oakley, assuming he's happier in the afternoon shift now, his move benefits you and you're teamed up with Supriya. And so how does the team, like how is the chemistry of Supriya? Well, people tend to think

we're bullshitting when we say this. They tend to think this is some... I'm going to look in your eyes when you tell me this. I'll tell the people. No, this is not corporate speak. I mean, some guy asked me about this. So I heard you say that you and Supriya had been friends for a long time but like really what do you think about her i'm like we've been friends

a long time like this was the truth uh we we have been friends a long time and something when i was telling you about the whole kind of the radio odyssey of matt one thing i left off uh just for brevity was just before i was doing the Sirius show, I spent about a year doing an evening show at CJAD in Montreal. Oh, okay. I was doing it from here, but Ben Dixon at 1010 had put me in touch with the staff at CJAD, and they needed some people. Supriya, a Montrealer, well, I mean, not originally a Montrealer.

She's from a smaller town, but she was in Montreal for school and she loved doing radio. And she was doing some of the overnights there, seven to 10 evening shows. And they needed some more bodies on the roster. And I'm like, well, I can do that from Toronto. I have a Comrex unit that I can use. So she and I ended up hosting a bunch of shows on CJAD. This is years ago now.

This is like before my kids were born. We were both quite raw at the time. Sure. And we found that we just liked each other. And then one day she's in town here in Toronto. She's like, let's have lunch. And she and I just completely hit it off. Like we are actually probably a little more reserved with each other on the air than we are off the air because we can't use the fuck word.

And we both have a very similar sense of humor that would get us in trouble in this day and age of heightened awareness. So we are very consciously professional when we're on the air. The moment the mics are off, we're much more just friends. So the chemistry, how it comes across on the air, I don't know. I leave that to you to decide. But a lot of people seem to think the notion of Supriya and I being friends is just sort of like corporate speak and we actually hate each other or something. No, she is one of my closest friends and she had an amazing wedding that I don't remember the latter half of for some reason. That's great. No, I mean, you know, chemistry is so important with these duos. I always am surprised when I hear stories about duos who like, who kind of meet each other for the first time during their first shift.

Like, you know, like this is not a good idea. And I think so many people assumed that was what Sabrina and I were, and they couldn't have been more wrong on that one. But it's funny. I mean, it's almost weird in a way if someone's insisting that you're not friends with someone because you sound sometimes adversarial on the air. I think that speaks in some ways to the strength of our friendship because, you know, she is reasonable in her politics, and I like to think I am too, but she is reasonable from the left. I'm reasonable from the right, and that means we disagree on things. But I don't think there has ever been a single disagreement we've had where we took it personally. And that probably, like you talk about the chemistry chemistry is important but so is trust was it difficult though

replacing somebody like a strong personality who's been there so long john oakley like so you can because it's a time slot right so people are used to you know tuning in 6 40 in the morning and hearing john oakley your show is rather different than john oakley's. Did you have to hear from the John Oakley fan club that, why are you different? Yeah, but here's the thing. I mean, we heard from the John Oakley fan club for a while. We still hear from some of them, but here's the thing. What we hear from the same five or ten people every day is, your show fucking sucks. You suck.

I'm never listening again. Three days later, I'm never listening again. You fucking suck. Two days after that, fuck you for the show. Bring back Oakley. You suck. Never tuning in. Guess what? We've been doing this like we're well into our second year now. And the same five or 10 people are emailing me every day to tell me I suck and that they're never listening again. Well, guess what, man? You're listening. And you can hate my guts.

Who cares? Just listen to the ads. That's fantastic. We did this off the top, of course. This is, of course, GNR Radio. But just really quickly here while we're talking about 640, I'm going to play an old ad. This is just a 30-second timeout, if you will. A little nostalgia.

This is super nostalgic because I don't think many people remember this 640, but let's play it and then we'll briefly discuss. Discover a new country, CFGM 640, with Randy Travis. I told you so. The Judds. Dwight Yoakam. Classic favorite, Patsy Cline. Discover the new sound of Toronto's country, the new CFGM 640.

I would not listen to that, except for the Patsy Cline. I'd listen to Patsy Cline. If they could work in a lot of Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, then that would be okay. If they had Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, maybe they'd get me. That's right. But I don't remember that era of 640. That's a long time ago. I think it's the 80s.

Honestly, the purists will hate me for saying this, but I don't either. I mean, 640 to me starts in the Mojo era. I have a, I'm older than you. So in the very, like 1990, I remember the Hog, okay? And it was hard rock. I remember the Hog.

Like you'd hear Guns N' Roses on the Hog, 640. Because yeah, there was a big rivalry between 680 and 640 because CFTR was doing top 40 and then yeah, 640. Because, yeah, there was a big rivalry between 680 and 640 because CFTR was doing top 40 and then, yeah, 640. So I do, that's funny. And don't forget that era of 640 with Tarzan Dan and everything. Do you remember that? It was like they were doing the top 40. Yeah, okay. That's funny.

So if worse comes to worse, so if the GNR rebrand, you can always go back to country. To old country, yeah. They might need to make a few personnel changes on air to do that because I would not do an effective job on that show. So you've been doing mornings with Supriya since November 2016. Yep. And my question is, whenever a new ratings book comes out,

are you in a lot of meetings where you break these down? How does your PD treat the ratings with you guys? Yeah, we don't do it when the book comes out. When the book comes out, we're not like, whoa, what had happened? I mean, once a week, we kind of figure out where we go, where we're going. And look, the reality of it is, I don't think anyone who pays attention to Toronto Radio is not aware of this. We want to be better in the books than we are. And we have improved somewhat since we've come on, but we're not where we want to be.

And so we pay attention to this. We don't worry about the dailies for the obvious reasons because the dailies are erratic. We don't even worry that much about the weeklies because that's sort of just an average of five random chances. We'd look at the monthlies, and we like to see some steady movement. We have had stretches where we've been very happy.

We've had stretches where we've been tearing our hair out. I joked earlier, check out the hairline. That might have been caused by one book in particular. When did you start losing that hair? I was 19. I see, yeah.

Genetics. I didn't have much of a chance. No, man, that's early. Yeah, but again, I saw that one coming. But were you on steroids? I have to ask because that's the thing, right?

The teenagers start getting bald because of anabolic steroids. They're working out and stuff. The only thing that could possibly link it to that, I was on sleep medication. And I'm not aware of that. I was horribly insomniac, and I still am sometimes. Sometimes I don't need to get up in the morning. Sometimes I'm just up.

I hear you. So yeah, look, in terms of the ratings, no. When the books come out, it's not a big thing by then. I mean, I'm generally well aware of where we're going. There's no surprises when the book, look, in terms of the ratings, no, when the books come out, it's not a big thing by then. I mean, I'm generally well aware of where we're going. There's no surprises when the book, that's when the general public gets a sense of stuff, because some stuff will, whatever, be published or released or whatever. And look, when I came on as well, I mean, I was telling you earlier about these early conversations between Nathan and I, it was understood that part of me coming on was going to mean that there would be a rebrand at some point.

I mean, I wanted to leave the National Post and I wanted to stay part of a news organization. That was not AM640. AM640 was not a news gathering organization. And I was told, don't worry, some way or the other, I was told, we will be part of the global family. We didn't worry then what we'd call it, but it was understood that we would become part of the global news institution. I was like, okay, good. That makes me feel better. And I do TV stuff with Global.

I write commentaries for the Global website. So that was kind of an integrated thing right off the top. And there was also, this is very recent, as you know. I was telling you a couple weeks ago, just to watch out for this, some significant programming changes at night as well, in the evenings and at the nighttime. All of this stuff is stuff that I've known is coming for a while, but for various reasons just took a long time to execute. So it took almost over a full year to rebrand to be now Global News Radio 640 Toronto, to have Alex Pearson come on 7 to 10 in the evenings. Alex is an old, very close friend of mine, and I couldn't be happier she's here,

because I think she's going to kick ass. And then my buddy Charles out in Vancouver, Charles Adler, doing his show 7 to 10 there. Well, guess what? The time zones work out perfectly, because he's coming on the air, just as Alex is signing off at 10 here.

So all of a sudden, I mean, 640, which I'm not trying to, this is not a criticism of any of my predecessors or certainly of the management from before, but let's face it, we were only on the air 13 and a half hours a day. We weren't seriously competing in this incredibly competitive radio market. I think when you go out and you add six live hours of weekday programming, I think that sends a message. It took a while to organize, longer than I would have liked, but guess what? We're here

to fight. This is not something we're doing without thought. This is not a desperation move. This has been intricately, perhaps overly planned, and we're here to win. Now, Alex Pearson, who's been on this show, I've met her, I like her. That's a time slot where previously, for example, Barb DiGiulio,

who's been on the show and I also like, she would have a live show on 1010 and you guys would have whatever re-rolls. We would have re-rolls. So now you have a live program to counter the live program on 1010. Alex Pearson, I was going to say, Barb, I adore Barb and I think she's a terrific broadcaster and

a wonderful person as well. I have nothing but good things to say about Barb, but I just say this and I hope she doesn't take this personally. I don person as well. I have nothing but good things to say about Barb. But I just say this, and I hope she doesn't take this personally, I don't see any reason for us at 640 to make things easy for her. I think she's talented enough to compete. Let's give her the opportunity. A couple of things about Alex,

who we both like, and you know better than I do. But one thing is, did you see her tweet about the guy winter cycling that she called a knob? It got some traction with, as a cyclist, I follow this. So I have decided, if I ever post a picture, because I winter cycle, and I like to use the hashtag knob now, thanks to Alex.

It's caught on with me. I hope it catches on with others. I'm a proud knob. So Alex, I think she took a lot of, She struck a nerve with the more militant cyclists. The tweet ratio was off. There were way more replies than there were likes or retweets. But it got a lot of attention, which I think is more than half the battle in this game,

where a lot of people were talking about that tweet. I don't know if they were just telling me about it because I cycle in the winter, maybe, or whatever, but there's a lot of traction there. So I think, I think she, she heard it from the,

uh, collective. I, I think she did too, but also it's not hard to get attention with the tweet in December. That's right. Like as everything slows down, it,

that errant tweet can perhaps get a lot more attention than anyone expected. I'm hoping, so she's a Hamilton girl girl who loves her hamilton punk and i'm really hoping she'll come back to kick out the jams by the way everyone listening uh we're not kicking out the jams good thing to tell you that an hour and 19 minutes into this uh with matt here but matt hopefully one day you do come back and kick out the jams but we will be playing a jam that you love and we will discuss it at the end of this uh podcast but a Alex Pearson, coming back, I'm going to ask you,

one thing that rubs me the wrong way with Alex is she'll tweet. Now that she's part of the GNR family, which means she's part of this news organization, now I'm uncomfortable when she'll tweet a big, she'll tweet a negative thing about Wynn, Kathleen Wynn. She'll do that,

which is fine and dandy, except I know from her being on my show pretty recently that she just worked for Patrick Brown on his campaign. So I am never comfortable seeing her, because she doesn't disclose that in her tweet. She'll just tweet something negative about Kathleen Wynne. It's just I'm uncomfortable with that when you come off the Patrick Brown campaign.

And I would feel the same way if it was the reverse. Yeah, no, no, and I think that's very fair. Look, I mean, I've always been on the opinion side of journalism. I mean, my first job, like paid job in journalism, when it went for real, was basically as a guy editing opinion columns and writing opinion columns, right? So I've never been a reporter. I've never been the guy claiming to be neutral and unbiased. But I think credibility is important, even for people on the opinion side. I mean, I don't have, my job is not to report the news, but I think I have an obligation to be factual and to be accurate and to be open and honest. I mean, there have been times either

in columns where I've had to make a disclosure for a personal relationship or a financial relationship or where I've even said to my editors, I can't write this. Yeah, you recuse yourself. Yeah. And I think in the case of Alex, I know that was something that she did discuss with management, but I think she is in a little bit of a different situation on this one, right? Because she has had a long career in doing commentary journalism. Started as a reporter, has spent a ton of time doing commentary. You mentioned she's a Hamilton girl. She's been doing a ton of stuff on 900, CHML, and has been doing that recently as well. She did spend some time working with Patrick Brown, but no one who knew her personally or no one who knew her professionally would have been shocked to see that she was working with Patrick Brown. Alex is pretty unabashed about her conservative credentials here.

Sun News Network. Sun News Network, right. I mean, I am too. Sun News Network. Sun News Network, right. I mean, I'm nonpartisan. I'm not a member of a party, and I wouldn't wish to be. I think that would compromise my objectivity a little bit. And also, I think it would just be awkward, because there are times, even though I'm a right-wing guy, where I have nothing good to say about either of the conservative parties,

federal or provincial. So look, I mean, I hear what you're saying, and I get it. But I think if you take a broader look at Alex's career here, it's pretty clear that she's shooting from the hip just like she always did and her positions did not change at all, even though she spent a few months in a

role with Patrick Brown. I'm sure that's true, although the optics being that you just left the Patrick Brown campaign, you might recuse yourself from tweeting about Wynn just potentially maybe because it doesn't smell right. I hear you. But also, I mean, Alex's show is broadcast as well in Hamilton and in London.

She's out of Toronto, but it's broadcast in London and Hamilton as well. We're in an election year. Does it make sense to have someone doing three hours every weekday across some of our largest cities in Ontario in an election year and not talk about it? I think at a certain point you just acknowledge the fact there was a previous relationship and you move on, and you let the listeners make their own judgments on whether or not they find her credible. And honestly, I think if they listen to her, especially if they've known her a long time, they won't have a problem deciding she is.

Now you wrote a commentary about millennials, which my question I wrote, I was going to ask you is, why do you hate millennials? That was my question. I don't. I feel bad for them. So can you, because you got, speaking of things that get attention, that got a lot of attention. I didn't expect it to. I was surprised by it. Yeah, this column, when was it? Yeah, tell us. I don't remember. It was sometime last year. Remind us what your point was and tell me a bit about the feedback received.

Well, okay. I mean, let me tell you the backstory as well because you might find that interesting, actually. I mentioned to you that I do write columns. I used to do it for The Post. Now I do it for Global News. I had been writing this really... I'd really do it for The Post. Now I do it for Global News. And I had been writing this really, I'd really been honing this one. Something I'd actually poured a lot of attention

into. It was going to be kind of about the role of patriotism and dissent in this era we find ourselves in, right? And I was thinking about the Never Trump movement in the United States. I mean, can you be a Republican while also opposing Donald Trump? Can you be a Democrat who thinks that Hillary Clinton was a terrible nominee? I was very curious about this. And I think the answer to both of those questions has got to be yes. I think we do need to have the ability to disagree with each other from inside institutions, not just from outside of them, because then that just becomes an attack. I mean, what about just reflective self-criticism? And I'd written this 1,200-word

essay that I'd been working on for a couple of days and I'd really been tweaking with it. And then the power glitched at chorus key and it killed my column. Didn't back up. It was just gone. And I cannot begin to tell you as a writer how your heart sinks when that happens because I knew there was no prospect of me ever going back and trying to rewrite that thing. It's just gone. I'm not

going to try and rebuild this, but I also have a column due in a couple of hours. And I'm thinking, fuck! My essay! My beautiful piece of... I'm so shocked at several things here, but one is you don't have this thing from school where you control S every 10 milliseconds.

I do! It was like the way the computer shut down corrupted it. It just became a bunch of weird... And by the way, this is... I'm going to be the ass who tells you. But I actually write everything, including what I'm pointing to right now. I write everything in Google Docs. So do I. But the problem is I had moved it into the system,

had been doing all my final tweaks, and I had been doing like an hour on it, right? And I made a bunch of changes. So now you've got two hours left and you lost your entire piece. Also, I mean, there was enough of it left, I guess I could have salvaged some of it. But I was angry. Like I didn't want to look at it again because I was pissed off. And I thought to myself, okay, look, I've got two hours to hit my deadline here.

So I'm going to do the cheap way of writing my call. I'm going to cheat. What was the thing this morning on the show that I enjoyed talking about the most, that I felt the most animated talking about? And it was a column that had been written by a young woman here in Toronto, where she basically wrote an open letter breaking up with the city. And she broke up with the city because even though she's born and raised Toronto, it was just too goddamn expensive to live here. And she was moving out of the city. And that to me, I thought was the most interesting thing we had talked about on the radio that day. So I banged out a quick thousand words.

I write pretty quickly. So I had two hours to deadline. I probably wrote this thing in about an hour and I filed it to my editors there. And here's the thing, just so you don't think I'm completely clueless. I said to them, this will probably piss people off. So I'm it to my editors there. And here's the thing. Just so you don't think I'm completely clueless, I said to them, this will probably piss people off. So I'm turning to you to look at this thing and tell me if it works. And if you don't, I will – I'm going to go home now, but I'll be home in 15 minutes. I will leave a couple minutes from work. I will sit down again and I'll rework it. So I send it to them and they write me back and go, nope, great, love it, perfect as is.

And I go, okay. So then I mentioned to you, my son only does school half days, right? So I pick up my son, and I feed him lunch, and I put him down for his nap, and I open Twitter, and oh my God, yeah, the column had certainly hit a nerve. I guess the thing is... Well, do you remember the title? Because commentary colon...

I don't, so you read it for me. I am really glad someone was a jerk to millennials before I had to be. There you go. So, yeah. So, I mean, to me, it's to evoke some kind of a passionate response. Well, that's what headlines are for. Right. And that's part of your job, I'm sure, right?

Yeah, no, look. A headline that no one clicks is a headline that failed. Yeah. Sure, right? Yeah, no, look, a headline that no one clicks is a headline that failed. Yeah, so the column basically was, to state the obvious here, like Toronto is a city that has had incredible changes in its real estate market over the last 10, 15 years. The first house my wife and I lived in, we lived in Aurora, north of the city. We bought it for just over $500,000. It was like $508,000, I think. It must have been enormous. Am I wrong? How long was this?

God, I don't remember. About 10 years ago? That might explain it. So yeah, we bought this house in Aurora. And you're right, it was a big new subdivision, gleaming everything, two-car garage, big backyard. And it cost just over $500,000.

We sold it a couple of years later for $750,000. And that is not an unusual story in the GTA housing market these days, right? And I think the letter that the young woman had written breaking up with Toronto is just like, I grew up here, and I'm realizing now I have no chance of ever buying a house here. And my column basically was a pretty snarky and cranky, and now you know the backstory of why, column basically saying, good for you, young lady, you figured it out first. Because a ton of her peers are going to sit around thinking, we'll rent for one more year, and we'll save up more for that down payment.

We'll rent for one more year, we'll save up for that down payment. And it's never going to happen. And what they ought to be doing is having a much more rational conversation, which is, we're never going to afford the kind of house we want in Toronto. So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to become lifelong renters? You can do that. It's possible. You've got to be careful about it. You can leave the city, or you can become a condo person. You can kind of go, OK, you know what? I'm going to get that 1,100 square feet tops, probably not even that big, shoebox in the sky. And the column did not go over well. But the thing is, what I thought was interesting about it is that there were

two rebuttals in other serious publications. Other people saying, well, hey, Gurney wrote this column, we want to reply to it. Neither of them actually disagreed with it. I mean, both of them kind of noted the fact that I could have perhaps been less of a jackass, but ultimately, they agreed with it. And I think probably one of the things that got me in trouble is that I alluded to earlier with you that I grew up in a very stable and successful environment. And I acknowledge that in the column. Like when I bought my first house, I had help from my parents. I did. And it let me do things that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. And then when my grandfather died, we got an inheritance, and it let me retire the last of my debt.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, so I've had to – I said to you earlier, I don't pretend I'm totally a product of talent. I am a product of luck. And I think a lot of people were resentful of the fact, understandably enough, that a guy like me was telling them they're never going to be able to afford to live in the city. Here's the question, though. Yeah. Was I wrong? Well, here's where you have to deal with the white privilege attacks

because even hearing that, something I saw recently about where you start in life, like, did you have a father in the home? Yeah. And it was really effective, and it really bangs home the point that those two things you describe are amazing like uh had foot up uh basically helped you along where most of us don't have those things and and it's sort of an unfair does it does this make sense you that you can acknowledge your privilege without feeling guilty for it yes you can acknowledge your privilege without feeling guilty for it? Yes, you can acknowledge your

privilege without feeling guilty for it, yes. And I acknowledge the fact that I have had a completely inexplicable number of blessings in my life, but rather than sit around and feel guilty about it, I've said to myself, okay, what can I do with them? And right now, my number one goal in life is to make sure my two kids are taken care of. I mean, honestly, I'm a pretty easy guy to get along with. And my needs and my wants are very modest. Like, get me a cold beer and some Netflix and I'm pretty good. Like, I don't need a lot in life. But I've got two kids and I want to make sure they have every possible advantage. And they're going to be doing it in a city that, as you well know, it's getting more and more expensive. So that's going to require some bucks.

Yeah. No, it's insane. I just feel bad. I mean, I got four kids and I just feel awful because I know my first home I bought in this city, Toronto, the first home I bought with my first wife was $250,000, I think I paid for it. Now, what would it be worth today? That guy's probably worth,

I'm going to guess that's probably at $600,000 plus or something. I don't know. It's a bungalow on a busy street, so it's not a lot of money, but you're definitely looking at maybe $700,000 plus or something. I don't know. It's a bungalow on a busy street, so it's not a lot of money, but you're definitely looking at maybe $700,000 just for that. But even then, the house I bought was $300,000.

I think that's worth a million bucks now. Yeah, it's insane. The house I live in today, I couldn't have afforded it six months after I bought it. I can't afford my house. This house you're in now, I couldn't afford it today,

and I only bought it like four years ago. Yep, exactly the same. My wife and I bought it like four years ago. Yep, exactly the same. My wife and I bought our house four years ago. We renovated it. We moved in three years ago, and if we had waited six months, we wouldn't have been able to afford it. But I feel terribly for the people

who wait for that bubble to burst. There are people who have been waiting 10 years now for the bubble to burst, the real estate bubble. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was on my mind when I wrote the column that everyone loved was that I'd recently been at a dinner party for a buddy of mine, a great guy I knew from school. And the people I was with were all roughly the same age as me, but had kind of had none of the advantages that I was talking about there. They didn't have a very successful father.

They hadn't had a well-timed inheritance, things like that. father, they hadn't had a well-timed inheritance, things like that. And kind of in a very open conversation, they were telling me that their plan is to kind of wait for that housing market correction so they can move into the place they want to be. And again, me being kind of the jerk there, I'm like, well, hang on, wait a minute. I'm like, wait a minute. What do you think happens if there's a major housing correction? They're like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, well, what happened to the United States? They're like, I don't know. I'm like, well, if there's a major housing correction, all of the banks are going to be massively exposed and all the loans they've made, they're not going to be extending credit to anyone

who is not A, A, A, A plus, like absolutely ironclad. So you're going to have this housing market correction habit eventually. I think it will. I mean, I don't think the market's going to go up indefinitely forever, but only very few people are going to be able to get the mortgage to take advantage of it because the banks aren't going to want to loan anybody a dime. So sometimes I'm not the most popular dinner party guest. So you leave newspaper for radio, and I'm curious what you think of the cultures of the two, like the radio culture versus newspaper culture and how they compare. Different, which is, I suppose, both an unhelpful answer and also an understatement. Newspapers are inherently more collaborative

and radio, I worry about 5.30 until 9. And like, that's my time. And, you know, we talk a lot about trying to break down some of the barriers between the shows. I mean, something that was when we came in at 6.40, we know, we talk a lot about trying to break down some of the barriers between the shows. I mean, something that was when we came in at 640, we kind of had this very clinical overview of the way the station worked and the way it didn't work. And we, as you've mentioned before, I mean, our main competitor in the city is 1010. One of the things we identified very quickly that 1010 does better than we do, and certainly was even more the case before,

is their hosts have kind of an enduring presence throughout the day, right? I mean, John Moore does his show in the morning, but he's got Jerry Agar and Jim Richards on with him. And then later on in the day, if there's breaking news during Jim's time slot, if John Moore is the guy who's been covering that file, he gets on his goddamn Comrex, or his I-Stan, or wherever he's got, he comes back on. And in the rush in the afternoon, often have John Moore taking part.

They do better crossovers. So they're very good at that. So there was kind of the sense of 640. We're working on it. We're not where we want to be yet. But we are working on having less of each show being a silo. But talking about kind of the differences in the culture, well, I don't think the 640 kind of every show is at silo is

honestly that unusual by radio standards, where at newspapers, it's not that way. I mean, all the departments have to work with each other. And honestly, I mean, maybe the most important difference is simply scale. I mean, the National Post is a fairly small newspaper by the standard of dailies, just because of the financial pressures the company's been under for a long time, it is still probably five or six times the staffing size of even a well-staffed radio station. So it's a very different institution, but also the work is very different. Like, you know, come into, I don't know if you spent much time in a newspaper newsroom. You want to know what a newspaper...

No time, actually. You want to know what a newspaper newsroom in 2018 sounds like? A pin dropping. Can't hear a thing. It's dozens of people at their laptops. Many of them have their headphones on if they're listening to things. And you hear the soft sounds of typing. I mean, the old school newsrooms, right?

You had teletype machines. You had dings. You had typewriters. You had smoking. Yeah, like all the president's men or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I had my first tour of a newspaper newsroom, it was John Kay after that lunch

I had where he threw all those questions at me. I walked into it expecting to be all the president's men. What I heard was the soft hum of the ventilation system because there was no noise in the newsroom. So a radio station, it's the opposite. It's talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Commercial breaks come around. Your producer is in your ear saying, OK, we got this coming up. This guest never called.

We're moving this forward, I've got some audio cut, your ops going, 30 seconds, 15 seconds, it's a very different environment. And I think probably the morning shift might actually exacerbate this a little bit, because after the show we will always have our post-show

meeting, we talk about what worked that day, what didn't work, what we're going to do the next day, and then Supriya and I, we just want to go home. We're tired. You never really get used to these hours. So we give each other a fist bump or a high five and then we just go home. Did you ask her if she wanted to see the Star Wars movie with you?

Did you consider inviting her? No, I wanted to go alone. I wanted a chance to take that one in. Sabrina and I, we will hang out, but we'll typically hang out more when the weather is nice because Korsky's got a pretty good bar. What's it called? The Grain? Against the Grain.

Can I ask about that? Korsky, 640's there, but you also have the Edge and Q107. I've been to the bars or whatever overlooking the lake and everything, but I've never been into any of the radio sections of this building.

Come down. I'll show you around. I'm going to do that. You know, I was supposed to come in back when it was Dean Blundell and Todd Shapiro and Jason Barr. I had it all set up. I was going to go be in there while they'd think just for shits and giggles,

just to experience it because I was a curious cat or whatever. And then Blundell read something I wrote on my site, Toronto Mike, negative about him, and he canceled my visit. So I need to make amends for that. Well, first of all,

hold off on shitting on me until you get your tour. You can search mytronomike.com. No Matt Gurney shit, I would tell you. I would tell you straight up. I appreciate that. There's none yet. No, that's something I can't take for granted

on many websites these days. No, look. Yeah, I mean, what's the vibe like? I mean, like... No, not the vibe. How is it separated? Like, the three different audiences, is it just one hallway where there's a room for Q,

a room, like, is it segmented at all with the Q? Are you completely together? The edge is separated from us by a door where you need to use your key pass. But I think that's a relatively recent invention. Just because, you know, look, I mean, the climate of the times we live in, like the building security is a little more enhanced than it used to be. I mean, as you well know, we don't need to go into the details. But there have been some incidents at some news outlets around town and certainly around the world as well. So there's more security than there used to be in terms of having restricted access to areas.

But no, basically, think of a U-shape, all right, where kind of at the bottom you would have 640. On either side of us, you'd have auxiliary studios. You'd have our newsroom. And then you'd have kind of moving up the U, you have the Q. and then their auxiliary studios, their op room, and then you have the Edge. And there's like a kitchenette kind of in the middle, like I'm describing it badly, but no. No, actually, no, I can see that. Yeah, we're all in the same area. So you have some shared communal space, and those studios, I guess that someone has to do voiceover work, or somebody has to do some recording. Yeah, and we never have enough auxiliary studios. You always need more. And then kind of in the middle of this you

and the interior of it is all of the massive amount of buffering and broadcast equipment you need in terms of the computers. It's this huge computer room. Or you know you're going to have an interesting morning when I stroll in at 4.30. If I see a bunch of stressed out engineers

in that room looking terrified, I know what kind of a day I'm going to have. Well, if I see a bunch of stressed out engineers in that room looking terrified, I know what kind of a day I'm going to have. Well, your phones go down all the time. Is this what I hear Stafford complaining about? This is a conspiracy, right? Because they're Bell phones and you're the competitor to the 1010, which is the Bell station. Yeah, I mean, I'm not particularly

conspiratorially minded, but I think if Chorus ran the phones, we'd probably get them fixed. Yeah, we have had some issues with the phones on a couple of occasions recently, and we've had a couple of transmitter difficulty days as well. Look, there's a pretty considerable investment in the station going on right now,

which is good to see. It's great to be part of it. I mentioned earlier, obviously, we've added the six hours of programming, but we're also working on some of the technology and the facilities as well. And in some cases, the money is needed. And I think we're going working on some of the technology and the facilities as well. And in some cases, the money is needed. And I think probably if people want to start giving us a chance, maybe they haven't been listening for a while or maybe they've never listened, I think they're going to like what they hear. But look, there is absolutely a period right now where we are kind of – we have a plan for the future. But right now, we're sort of addressing areas of weakness that we've identified.

And if we can get the goddamn phones working, that would be great. Well, speaking of the phone, what a great segue this is. Okay, so I did open it up to Twitter. I said, if you have any questions. And some people DMed me. Some people actually tweeted in public. So you could cheat on Wikipedia and find out how long the 100 years war was. 117 years.

But Michael H., his question is similar to pucks and beer. That's a great handle. It is and beer that's a great handle that's a great Canadian handle Michael H writes whose decision was it to not take calls for the morning show I know they did it early on for a short time it is after all a talk

radio station so Michael H is asking about why you don't take calls I think and pucks and beer has a very similar question what was the decision behind not taking any phone calls when Oakley did it in the morning? What did they do to... Oh, this is different. I guess it's what did they do to Fast Eddie and Johnny from Oshawa?

I guess these were regular callers. I suppose. Fast Eddie is a good handle too. Okay. People might not believe this, but often real life is not in the grand explanation. It's in the little details. There hasn't been a decision to not take calls.

There has been no decision. There's been no declaration from up high. No, nothing like that. It was just kind of when we came in, we were looking obviously right away for ways to differentiate ourselves from John, who had done, as we've said, he'd been the guy in the spot for a long time. from John, who had done, as we've said, he'd been the guy in the spot for a long time. So one of the quick ways of doing it, and there were a couple of them, was how do we just have a different sound right away? And one of them was, we're not going to eliminate calls, but we're really going to reduce it.

And we just kind of fell into that habit. And our older producer, Ryan Bonner, who's left to go do other things now, he was a real believer in the phones. And Supriya and I, we're not antiphones. We will take calls when we feel it's the right thing to do. But we also don't think, like, if you've got two hosts and you also have something we've been working on a lot is really building out a roster of go-to experts for commentary or technical expertise. Like we interviewed her this morning. We have a former intelligence operative that we use as our national security advisor.

We have a former fighter pilot who eventually became a commercial pilot. And is this leveraging global stuff? Because you're in the family? Some of it is, but a lot of it was our legwork. And in fact, we're actually offering some of it back to global. It's nice to be able to contribute a little bit. Yeah, cool. So when you have all of these people, but a lot of it was our legwork. And in fact, we're actually offering some of it back to Global. It's nice to be able to contribute a little bit.

So when you have all of these people, and also when we're focusing a little bit, we're choosing our topics a little bit differently than John did. I mean, Supriya and I are both of the mind that culture war stuff is really interesting, but it's not the kind of radio we want to do. And when you're focusing on kind of more of a policy story or more of a, hey, what's going on with this? I would rather go to someone, either one of our experts or someone who's intimately involved, and get them to explain it to us in their own words than I would going, wow, two planes collided at Pearson.

What do you think? Thank you. Like, that's not to me where there's that sense of, like, if someone calls up and goes, hey, like, I'm a 30-year ground screw technician at an airport, holy shit, yeah, put him on the air. But you can't count on that kind of luck. I'm driving to hockey, my teenage son's hockey game, yesterday, and I flip stations. I have five presets on AM and I got 10 on FM,

and I'm like jazz musician going nuts there. And John Oakley is talking about, because the flu shot this year is only like 10% coverage. Yeah. Because you have to build these things a year out. You know the story. It's very difficult to predict. It morphs and this and that.

So you have 10% coverage on the flu shot. And he's opening up the phone lines to talk to regular Joes about whether they think it's worth it. And in my opinion, this is hearing from regular Joe's who, you know, half of which think that there's mind control substance put in a flu shot anyway. I would far prefer to hear from maybe different doctors and their opinions, people who know what they're talking about when it comes to flu shots and the 10% coverage and stuff. I believe that's a frustrating,

irritating, annoying use of the phones. This is just my two cents as a listener. Well, honestly, I mean, as a listener, because I mean, I didn't end up in talk radio by accident, right? I mean, we've kind of explained my career trajectory. It might not have been foreseen, but it wasn't accidental.

I'm a guy, I've been listening to talk radio since I was in high school, right? I mean, I remember John interviewing weirdo counselor Rob Ford. I mean, I remember the era of that, right? He made Rob Ford. That's another knock on Oakley. Just kidding, John. I wouldn't say it's a knock.

I'd actually say it's an accomplishment of a kind. Yeah, I'm a talk radio fan, and I appreciate the input of the listeners. I think there's tons of times when going to— Yeah, but your input on what do you think of this policy or whatever is different than is it worth getting the flu shot if it only has 10% coverage? To me, that's not your domain. What do you...

Where's your doctor... Where's your degree, your medical degree? That is how I would view it, yes. So again, even though there hasn't been a decision to not go to the phones, we'll still go to the phone sometimes. And if there's a topic that suits it, I mean, by all means, we will.

But I think a lot of the time, like when we've put all this effort into building out a roster of really great experts and when we've actually, one of the things we've done, and some of this is behind the scenes things that can make a huge difference on a radio station is we've kind of have like a more of a, a more widely shared Rolodex

and we've made sure the producers we have, some of whom are new, don't hesitate to go to it, right? So we've got our producer who has his go-to experts and his go-tos on any topic, plus all the other producers throughout the day. We can usually figure out pretty quickly who the person is, or at least the right kind of person that we want to talk to about a story. So it's not a decision not to go to the phones. It's a decision to go, if possible, to either an expert or someone who's directly involved first. So if we're reading a really interesting study, yesterday we were, Sabrina and I, talking on the show about 50% of Canadians would hide the fact that they had Alzheimer's disease if they were diagnosed. So are we going to go to the phones and ask people, would you hide it?

You can, and you might get some great radio. But what we did instead is we went to one of the study authors and we asked the follow-up question of why. Is it stigma? Is it shame? Is it concerns about insurance? That's more the kind of conversation that I would want to have. And also, if your phones are going to fail on you because of the Bell conspiracy, it's best not to be taking calls. Well, it's not something to worry about too much, but yes, there is that. What happened to Coast to Coast?

Well, honestly, nothing happened to it. We, as I've mentioned, have obviously added the six hours of live Canadian news talk content from when we go on the air at 5.30 until Adler goes off the air, 1 o'clock our time, right? So we are now live 19 and a half hours a day with Canadian-driven news content.

And it just – when you think of the station kind of on a 24-hour cycle, right? Like what would it – not that anyone would do this because it would be kind of weird, but what if you were to listen to the station for one 24-hour cycle? What one of those things sticks out like a sore thumb? It's Coast to Coast. And I'm actually a Coast to Coast fan. I've always enjoyed Coast to Coast. I mean, as I mentioned before, I'm kind of an insomniac.

Nothing new to me about that late-night drive. I love listening to Coast to Coast when I'm on that late-night drive. But Coast to Coast to me in recent, has turned a little weirder. It's no longer alien stuff. It's become... Deep-state conspiracies. I forget the terms, but false flag stuff. I agree.

I'm sorry, but you're a father, I'm a father. I feel nauseous when somebody tells me, was it the Newton Massacre? What was the school? That was fake. I feel nauseous, and I can't imagine losing my child in that and having some idiot on the phone say that it didn't happen. My wife works in a school, too, so I worry about all three of them. Look, I agree with you.

And ultimately, look, we live in an era where fake news is now a talking point. news is now a talking point. Do we as a station want to put 19 and a half hours a day of live news content on the air speaking to Canadians about Canadian issues and largely Torontonians about Torontonian issues

and then fill up the balance of that with fake news? I didn't make the decision. But if I'm reading you correctly, this isn't another station poaching coast to coast. It's you guys saying no thanks, and then they're a free agent, so they're welcome to sign with 1010 if they want.

It did end up on 1010, but by my understanding, it was not a poach. It was we dropped it, and they picked it up. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, that makes complete sense. You have real news all day day and then all of a sudden this big chunk of programming that is fake news, it's

a conflict. Yeah, and well, it's jarring. And also I think at a certain point, given the mandate we are pursuing here, which is we're going to bring Canadians and Torontonians the stories they need and we're going to not just tell them what happened, we're going to tell them why it happened and why it mattered. We're going to try and elevate the tone here. We're going to

try and do really smart radio. Yeah, coast to coast is jarring. But also, here's the thing. This has not been widely picked up yet in Toronto, but it's something that's been announced already in Vancouver. We're not leaving those hours unfilled. Starting this month, I think, like I'm not in the loop on this one, but I think it's this month, in the next couple of weeks, out of CKNW in Vancouver, there is going to be a show going on their time,

10 to 2 in the morning. And guess what? We're going to pick that up here in Toronto. And I don't know about our sister stations in Ontario. I don't know about 900 and London. I'm not sure about that. But look, I mean, in terms of where we're going to be, out of Vancouver, live, we're going to have more Canadian news content

and commentary and analysis and interviews and expertise. And less re-rolls. Yeah, and it's going to be, I mean, just like that. Again, I mean, take a look at 640, not just from the perspective of right now, but look back six months and compare it to, say, a month from now. We're going to go from live 13.5 hours a weekday to 23.5 hours

a weekday. The only gap right now is 5 to 5.30 once this new show lasts. I don't know what we're going to do with that. I can't imagine we're not going to find something to be doing. You'll simulcast a global news program or something. I don't know what it will be, but, I mean, are we as a station going to kind of go,

hey, look, we've made it to that holy grail of 23 hours and 30 minutes a day of live. No, come on. We're going to figure out something. I don't know what it will be, but we'll figure something out. They're going to make you and Supriya wake up a half an hour earlier. No, they're not. No, that is not what's going to be going to happen. What time do you wake up right now?

I wake up, it's funny. I mean, my alarm goes at... I live very close to the station, right? So I don't need a long time to get there. My alarm goes off at 345, and in theory, I try to roll into the station around 430. Often, I'm a little bit behind that. By the time I show up at the station, though, I want to have read all my notes already. I mean, I like to do that at my own house.

I like to make my cup of tea at home, in my kitchen, read my notes, be ready by the time I show up to actually be ready. So I wake up just around 345, and then I'm like a 10-minute drive from the station. I just heard another podcast with DeMar DeRozan in which he said all summer long he woke up at 4.30 a.m. and worked out every day. I do not do that. I'd be in better shape if I did. But it gives me an excuse. Pause for 10 at 4.30 a.m. and worked out every day. I do not do that. I'd be in better shape if I did. But it gives me an excuse.

Pause for 10 seconds here while I play the clip. I'm just like DeRozan. If I shoot it, it goes in. There you go. You don't get an opportunity. You did have that on standby. You were looking forward to that.

I might play it every episode from now on. My daughter, my 13-year-old daughter, loves that track, that tune. And there's that DeRozan shout-out in it, which I love. You're a big Raptors fan. A big Raptors fan. Yeah, last night pissed me off, real briefly. DeMar hits the back bucket.

We're up by one with very little time on the clock. It was seconds, right? Yeah, and they mismanaged the fouls they had to give. I think there might have been an error on the scoreboard, but our coaching staff is supposed to track it independently. Or having a pretty good season. Great season. But that's a home game that I would have liked to have in the bag.

Now, there was a comment on this. The yellow board, it's soundy, is what it's called, but it likes to talk. It loves to talk about AM radio in Toronto, I noticed. Its favorite topics seem to be like 640 and 1010 and stuff. And there was some comments about how much they liked it when Stafford

was subbing for Supriya. They just liked how you and Stafford sounded together. Now, I'm not here to... You sound great with Supriya, I'm not here to say, but it was interesting to read that these, I don't know, the 905ers in their cars, I consider them, but these GNR listeners

did enjoy hearing you with Stafford. Stafford and I, we're not close, and I mean we're not close. And I mean, I'd like to be closer with him because I find him fascinating. But he has his family obligations, I have mine. Although I don't think he gets close to people. I think he keeps you at an arm's length. Here I am psychoanalyzing him, having met him twice.

I can't speak to that, maybe. But I mean, that's probably where we've come to be naturally anyway, which is to say, I like the guy. We get along very well. But we're not close outside of work. But Stafford actually has been a booster of mine since my national post days. And I know that my columns would make fodder for his radio show. And he and I have similar interests, kind of a similar intellectual curiosity. I don't know if I have quite the intellectual firepower he does. No one does. The interests are similar. And I think there is, again,

there might not be a close friendship, but I think there is honestly some mutual respect there. And I like talking to him on the radio. And look, I'm not going to name names, but there are people who are difficult to interview. It might sound good on the air, but there are difficult interviews. Stafford is not one of them.

And I certainly hope he feels the same way about me. Yeah, I have received email from listeners before saying that segment with you and Stafford there was interesting stuff. And I think probably because he and I, despite our... Well, look, I mean, I bow down to him, right?

I mean, he's this incredible talent. I think he and I, in many ways, are cut from the same cloth. We're Toronto guys. We are, in our own way, family guys. We are very aware of and proud of our Canadian heritage and our country. We know our history. We know our pop culture history. There's a lot that we have in common.

But something that we also have in common is that, in contrast to some of the hosts on the station in the city, we don't hesitate to talk about personal stuff. And, you know, he had, you know, we mentioned earlier, like the loss of his brother-in-law a couple of months ago. And I, about a month after that, I lost my grandmother. It was just in late November. It's not great, but, you know, I talked about that too. A lot of hosts in the city would choose not to do that.

And maybe they're right to do it, maybe not. That's a matter of preference. But my grandmother and I were actually very close. Not everyone is close with their grandparents. And that was something that he and I talked about on the air. Because I'm willing to do it. And I know he is a guy who will know what to do with it. Like, I wouldn't just put that out there with anyone.

But with Stafford, I know he would know what to do with it. I wouldn't just put that out there with anyone, but with Stafford, I know he would know what to do with it. So we had a talk about what it is to realize, speaking of my grandmother, not me, to realize that you're at the end, that there's not a ton of life left in you and you've got to kind of look back at the score and ask yourself, am I happy with how things went? I don't know how many people in the city

I'd have that conversation with, but I did not hesitate for a second to have it with Mike Stafford. And that's the stuff that resonates with listeners. Like, you know, the news is one thing, opinions on that is another, but when it, the real talk, I call it, but when you open up and you present that,

that's the stuff that we, you know, that bounces around in our craniums. Yeah, and look, I mean, the news I talk about every day, I joke about this, people don't always believe me. You might know what I mean by this, though, because you and I do something very similar. Like, your podcast and my show are very similar in this regard.

Are you going to remember a single thing we talked about the moment we're done here? Because I don't remember a single news item I talk about on the show once I'm off it. Like, my brain is always going, okay, what's next? Okay, this segment's done. What's next? Yeah, but that's new.

The news cycle's continuous. It's not quite a fair comparison because I feel I'm getting to know somebody. So I actually will remember good chunks. In fact, for the next 20 or 30 episodes, they'll say something or remind me of something you

said. I'm going to remind them of Matt Gurney was on and he's mentioned blah, blah, blah. I guess that makes sense. I mean, for me, the news stuff fades very quickly. But I mean, kind of to the point you're making, when you have a conversation with someone like that, whether it's a caller or it's a guest or it's a fellow host like Mike, those stick with you. And I'm not surprised they stick with the listener as well. A lot of the time when Mike and I talk, it's, hey, what's coming up? Like, what do you got coming up on the show today?

Or, hey, do you see what Kathleen Wynne said? How do you think the listeners are going to feel about that? But when you actually connect with someone on a human level and you're talking about something like death, and you're talking about getting old, and you're talking about having to look back at your life and ask yourself whether or not you've done good things with it, yeah, I mean, does that connect with people? Yeah, no shit.

Absolutely. Now, there's a guy, I doubt you've even met him. I want to know if you met him, because he's on your station every day, but he does it from his home in Oakville. Have you ever met Lou Skizis? No, I never met him in person. I mean, obviously, as a longtime listener, yeah, I mean, I know Lou.

I enjoy Lou. But no, never met the guy. And we have him on three times a show. And to me, he's always a highlight, right? Because I know this is a guy who knows radio. I love having him on. And he loves capitalism. He does. So do I. I know, like, this is a guy who knows radio. I love having him on. And he loves capitalism. He does. So do I.

I mean, like I said earlier, I don't shy away from my blessings here. My blessings are only the sort of thing that happens in a free market economy. So God bless it. Also, and I'm sorry, but I'm running a little long with you. I had nowhere to be.

My good friend, I knew her well before she joined the team at 640. But Kelly Cotrera is, she actually physically goes to the chorus key there. So say hi to Kelly for me when you see her next. I go way back of Kelly. She's a good one. We talked about Alex Pearson. One question from somebody. Let me get the right name here. I go way back with Kelly. She's a good one. We talked about Alex Pearson. One question from somebody.

Let me get the right name here. Digby House, which I think Digby House, if that's the real name, is a fantastic real name. But this is a question from Digby. Who are today's leaders that we can point our kids to and tell them, be like him or be like her? Now, Digby goes into a very long kind of disappointed with, or quote unquote, I'll quote him saying, spineless leaders at every level, municipal, provincial, and federal, business, media, finance, science, et al. So Digby feels there's a lack of leaderships that we can point our children to emulate. Is there anybody like for your for your kids, or is that you? Is that your job? Well, it is my job. I mean, it's my job to be someone my kids can be proud of and also to

set a good example. That means, I mean, look, you know this, you're a dad. I mean, that means being good, but it also means being tough when needed. I think that is my job. But I don't expect to be everything to my kids, and I would like them to have other role models they could turn to. Like Chris Hadfield or something like that. Yeah, and he's a great example, right? But I do think we live in an era, actually, where I would share a lot of Digby's frustration, and I worry about this. And as you've noted, we're already running long here, so I won't belabor the point. But this is, and I say this with someone who has viewed history,

this is not the darkest era in human history. In fact, in many ways, this is one of the best eras of human history. Poverty at record lows, nutrition at record highs. I mean, we went from, as a species, we went, especially in this part of the world, we went from chronic food insecurity in this part of the world, we went from chronic food insecurity to obesity being the issue in two generations. That's a weird kind of victory. I'm watching a show called The Nick, and it's like early

hospitals in New York, and I think it's like turn of the century, so early 1900s. The life expectancy of an adult at that time was 47, but they were really excited about that because only 10 years ago it was like 39 or something. Yeah, a lot of that was the infant mortality.

And that's, I mean, Mike, your grandmother wasn't born that long after, like a reasonable period after this 47 was the life expectancy. Yeah, no, my grandmother, her birthday actually would have been tomorrow. She would have turned 88 tomorrow. That's one human lifespan, but

when she was born, she would have thought that in her 60s was ancient, right? Right, exactly. And my grandfather, who pre-deceased her years before, I mean, we joke about this sometimes. We'll talk about the progress of one human life. When he was born, when he was young, he stepped on a nail and he got an infection right throughout his body and he almost died

because there was no antibiotics. He lived as long as he did because it was possible to treat his cancer with laser beams to make it chronic and didn't need chemo, didn't need radiation. That's it. That's one human lifespan. So look, there's a lot of reasons to be

optimistic about mankind right now. But when I look to a moral leader, I don't see one. And I think right now we're looking at, in journalism, in celebrity circles, probably in sports is due for reckoning as well, with the Me Too and the Time Out movement. Hey, a year ago, you probably could have bet on Kevin Spacey being kind of an okay guy.

You know what I mean? So we're losing a lot of our heroes here, or people who never should have been heroes in the first place. Digby, I don't know, and I worry about this because I don't know who my kids will look to, and I guess it's on me, and that kind of scares

the shit out of me, because I don't think I'm that interesting, and I'm certainly not that inspiring. There's one name I'll throw out there, just because I am a big fan of his character, and maybe you'll tell me, is he throwing, is he, well, not wolf in sheep's clothing,

but is it just a perception of such? But Barack Obama is a guy that from where I stand seems to be a principled, morally right person that I would be fine with my children emulating. Yeah, no, I don't disagree with that.

I wouldn't have voted for him, actually, and I wouldn't call myself a supporter of his presidency, but he seems like a decent man. Right, we're talking about, yeah, character of a man. And I think in many ways, I would say the decent men, on the one hand, as much as I'd like to think that decent men run for office and decent women as well, because I want to be led by decent people,

maybe in a way decent people just aren't cut out for politics. Because look at a guy like Obama, right? I agree with you. He's a man of character. He's a man of principle. He also backed off his own red line in Syria and let poison gas be used on civilians. And I mean, if he was a decent man who wasn't commander in chief of the US military, he never would have had that staining his reputation. But he is that man, and he made that call. So it's hard to look to politics for our heroes because politics will inevitably destroy you. So that's why we have Oprah.

Just kidding. Well, for now. Let's see what the next two years bring. Right. Last 640 question before we kick some jams out here. And I have a quick question from your friend, I think, but you'll tell me, Mike Ross. But my first question about 640 is

can you shed some light on the disappearance of Gary Bell? Honestly, not really beyond what was publicly said. Look, I mean, it's been reported on elsewhere, so I can just refer you to... Okay, tell us what's in the public domain, if you will. Well, what's in the public domain, if you will.

Well, what's in the public domain, as far as I know, is exactly what happened. On one of his shows, A View from Space, a few months ago, Gary, or as I always knew him, Spaceman, made some comments that to me were reprehensible. And look, I like Spaceman, and I'd always respected Spaceman. He had filled in as my op a few times, either in the morning or when I was covering some other shifts. And he was great at his job, and he was a lot of fun to work with.

He was a good guy. I got nothing bad to say about him personally. But look, if you're hosting a live conspiracy-based radio show, it's not unfair to say that you're probably a bit out there in your opinions. And a lot of the time, that was fine. I mean, I think there's room for people who are out there in their opinions. There is never room for anti-Semitism. And unfortunately, Spaceman,

I guess he forgot it. He made anti-Semitic remarks on his show, A View from Space. So he was, the show was cancelled and he was terminated. That's my understanding, certainly, yeah.

And look, I mean, just to follow this up, I mean, I was born generically WASP, but I grew up in Richmond Hill, which, as you know, directly abuts Thornhill, and Thornhill's a pretty Jewish area. All my friends are Jewish! It's just kind of the way it turned out, and my sister ended up marrying one of my friends. So I come to this in a very uniquely personal way.

But when I heard Spaceman talking about the crypto Jewish conspiracy to rule the earth, fuck you, Gary, what's my four-year-old niece got to do with this? And I've always been a supporter of Israel and I've never had any tolerance for anti-Semitism. But believe me, when it's your blood, it becomes something very different. And it was really unfortunate. I had kind of hoped maybe there was a rational explanation. Maybe Gary wasn't feeling well. Maybe he had something going on in his life.

If that was the case, he did not make that case. And yeah, the show was canceled. He's no longer with us. It's a shame to see someone lose their job as always. But man, I mean, you can't say that shit anymore and you shouldn't be able to. And I'm very glad the station took the steps it did, even if it saddened me personally.

Mike Ross, who is the PA announcer at Maple Leaf Games. If I'm talking about the right Mike Ross, am I got the right guy? I got to make sure it's a common name. But taking over for your colleague, Andy Frost, down the hall, I suppose, on the Mighty Q. But Mike Ross asks, he says, does Matt miss our morning sports chats? Because I do. Very happy for his success. Mike was one of the guys I worked with at SiriusXM.

That's what he was talking to there. He was on the NHL side, and obviously the NHL channel is one of the crown jewels for SiriusXM, particularly in Canada. And yeah, he would wander down the hall, literally. We were just a couple of studios down from each other, and he'd pop on the air with me while he was running some interviews from the night before, some highlights from the game. He'd have a reel put together. He'd hop on.

He'd get me caught up on the NHL action. And Mike's a sports fan overall, too, so he'd get me caught up on some of the other action. I'm a sports fan, but it's kind of when kids came along and professional obligations ramped up, sports was something I kind of had to make a conscious decision to not follow as much, with the exception of the Leafs. I will always follow the Leafs. So having a guy come in and kind of keep me current was great. And Mike, well, I mean, he left Sirius XM while I was there and yeah, but just, I mean, sure I miss Mike, but I mean, just a broader comment here, the people at Sirius XM are great. You had asked about the culture of radios, and I said they're very different from newspapers. They are, but I have enjoyed

every radio station I've worked at, and I have loved the people. And I'm not saying I didn't at The Post. I'm not saying that's the difference. The difference between radio and newspapers is not that radio is good and newspapers is bad, but they're very different cultures. Every day, I miss my friends in all those places. It's a small enough industry. I have hope we will all meet again at some point. Before your time, I was a baby.

I have an ad, a radio ad I'm going to play for you that I think you're going to enjoy. Take a sip there, settle in, and listen to this ad that aired on the radio in 1976. The year is 2112. The album is 2112 by Rush. 2112 by Rush on Mercury Records.

2112, a concept of life in the future conceived and performed by Rush. Thousand miles further. Oh, we have a lot to do. Attention all planets. Rush has assumed control with their new album, 2112, on Mercury Records and Tapes. That was an amazing find. Yeah, and the reason it sounds so good is because they put that on a remastered copy of 2112. So that's why it sounds so good.

That's why it sounds so good. So it's not just like some old real tape put up on YouTube. No, they remastered that thing. So I thought you'd like that. So we were chatting about music briefly, and I got to say, so i'm a proud canadian i love a lot of rock and i do like a lot of rush like i like rush songs like they're more accessible okay so like stuff like this all right this is like uh the stuff that you should be you know a little closer to your heart this is much closer to my heart uh let getty kick, and then I'll fade it out and play another type of Rush song I like.

Where are you, Geddy? Big Blue Jay fan, this guy. Coming up. Yeah, I see him a lot of the games. All right, hang on. He's coming in now. Do, do, do, go. And the men who hold high places

Must be the ones who start To mold a new reality It's quite the voice Getty has, eh? I can see some people don't like that voice, and you can see it would be one of those polarizing voices. You either love it or you don't. Pretty unique, right? Yeah. But I've talked to people who say,

I don't like Neil Young's voice, and I go like, what are you talking about? How amazing is that? But it's just one of those polarizing voices. Let me just play another. This is me. This is not you. So this is another one, OK?

So you can get the point here. I like the hits or whatever, the radio singles or whatever. One day warrior, mean, mean stride. Today's Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride. Sounds great in the headphones, eh? It just sounds great. You've seen Last Jedi, eh? It sounds great anyway. You've seen Last Jedi, right?

Yeah. So they did the Ready Player One preview for that movie that's coming out, and this is the soundtrack of the movie. I am super pumped to see Tom Sawyer as a movie soundtrack. Wow. Okay, so I'm part of my ignorance, but this is a high-concept album. You need to be one of those Dungeons & Dragons playing Lord of the Rings reading smart people, right? Or at least a Trekkie in my case. Like a nerdy rock guy.

Can you be a nerdy rock guy? Well, you can, but you've probably heard it said, right? I mean, what are the kind of people you find at Star Trek conventions? The kind of people you find at Rush conventions? Right, yes. I would actually say the Rush guys might even be a little more hardcore. Yeah, look, I grew up, as you said, I mean, it's funny. I mean, I get to work just down the hall from them, but I grew up, in terms of the radio,

listening to The Cube. And my dad is a huge classic rock fan, and he really shaped that for me. So I joke about this on the air sometimes. All my pop culture knowledge dies in the mid-70s. rock fan and he really shaped that for me so i i joke about this on the air sometimes like all my pop culture knowledge like dies in like the mid 70s but it's it's it's kind of a joke but not really but no i'm a classic rock guy and rush has just always been one of my favorite bands but here's the thing about rush i will actually leave rush for months like months will go where i won't listen to a rush song almost Almost deliberately. And I won't

miss them, right? And I haven't listened to much Rush, actually, for the last couple of months. But even just the little segments of Rush songs you're playing for me right now, I know all the way home I'm listening to Rush. And they are...

I hear what you're saying about the accessibility. I mean, even Rush albums... But this song, for example, this is called 2112. 2112, one of my favorite songs. Why is it when I pull it from the album, it's 20-something minutes? Is it a medley? I really have to plead some ignorance here because it seems like it's a story.

It's a story in multiple parts. But you can't play this on the radio, right? No. Often what you'll do on the radio is I guess you'll play about the first eight minutes. Well, I pulled the first, yeah, so I said,

I'm not going to play the 20 minutes. First of all, it was too big for my soundboard, believe it or not, right? So I'm like, I'm going to chop this up.

So I took the first like seven or minutes or something, which I guess is the 2112. And Getty comes in at some point? Not for a while. Okay, not for a while.

Interesting. Yeah, no, this, I mean, have you ever listened to this all the way through? No. This is a song, and we're joking about the Star Trek thing, right? But this is a song about humanity in the future, in 2112. At some point in their past, our future, there has been like a cataclysmic global war, probably nuclear. And most of civilization was destroyed. And there's this new kind of religious dictatorship that now rules the earth,

but they're very limited in what they allow people to experience. And our hero in this song, in the ruins of one of those ancient bombed out cities, finds a guitar and he teaches himself how to play it. And he kind of starts to rediscover the kind of original raw music something that hasn't been approved and programmed by these computers that run the new religious state and yeah i mean so like this it's a 20-minute song where it walks you through the history of this is this everyone's cup of tea? No! No, it's not. But can I lie in the dark and listen to this song three times in a row?

Yeah. I get it. I get it. I haven't experienced it, but like I said, I'm more into Tom Sawyer, but it's technically proficient. It's an excellent song, if you will.

Is it Lifeson who writes these lyrics? No, Peart. The drummer, right? He's the guy who got on his motorcycle and just went for a ride. Alright. I was hoping to wait for some lyrics, but that might be another 20 minutes.

It's going to be a while. Imagine you play this on cue and you had to hit the post. You could read the phone book or something. Well, do you know even, I don't know how deep rush you are, but they had like a multi-record contract from the record company. And they were asked, can you make it a little more mainstream? Can we try to lighten up a little bit? Right.

And they were like, no. And I think technically, actually, they said, oh, yeah, sure, we'll do it. And this is what they came up with, because it was the last record on the contract. They figured they're fucked anyway, because they hadn't been having the kind of sales they wanted. They'd been successful, but they hadn't had blowout success.

And here it is. Those are the explosions of the war. Here we go. Biblical illusion. So the record companies tell them, make it more mainstream. And on their last album, they do this, and it becomes a massive international success. It basically makes Rush the band they are today. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to listen to this album in its entirety from front to back.

It's not literally a concept album. This song is not tied into the B-side. The B-side songs are good and they're also kind of a little weird sci-fi vibe to some of them but it's not like the entire album is one story. This 20 minute song is the story.

We are the priests. It's the religious theocracy, buddy. Man, so would you be willing at a later date to return to properly kick out the jams with me? I would love to. I said to you yesterday, when you said, like, what's your favorite song when you pinged me?

I confessed to you. It gave me anxiety because I've got so many I could have gone to. So kicking out the jams would not be a problem. But no, I'm happy to come back. Absolutely. And obviously, if'm happy to come back. Absolutely. And obviously, if anyone has any follow-up questions,

that they heard this and they want to know more, they can get in touch with you. They can get in touch with me. I'm happy to answer them. Yeah, if you have any questions about 2112, I think Matt's ready. Or other things, but certainly that, yes. No, thanks for doing this. Man, that felt like 20-minute chat, but that's two hours and 16 minutes. Wow.

I know. That's weird, eh? What do you think? Well, but that's two hours and 16 minutes. Wow. I know. That's weird, eh? What do you think? I guess you have a pretty loyal following. I guess people actually will listen all the way through. Oh, I used to care about that passionately, and then at some point I had the same moment you had where you realized you had to leave the post. I don't care.

If it's two hours and 15 minutes, it's two hours and 15 minutes. If there's a pause button, that's what it's for. You can chop it up. Whatever. A whole lot of people will enjoy it. And that's the nice thing about podcasting is

unlike the terrestrial radio is that you control when it stops and it picks up where you left off. It's good stuff. You're in control. So thanks for visiting,

my friend. No, this has been great. I really enjoyed this too. I agree with you. I mean, just a few minutes ago I pulled up my phone and looked at the time. I couldn't believe how late it is.

And you were one away from the big 3-0-0, but it's okay. You got that nice 299. So that, that brings us to the end of our 299th show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Matt is at Matt Gurney. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Brian Gerstein. And PayTM is at PayTM Canada. And Paytm is at Paytm Canada.

See you all next week. It's fine and it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green Well, you've been under my skin For more than eight years It's been eight years for more than eight years. It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears.

And I don't know what the future can hold or do for me and you. But I'm a much better man for having known you.