08-25-26 Part Two - What Are You Afraid Of?

Now, it's Red Eye Radio, Gary McNamara, and Eric Hurley talk about everything from

“politics to social issues and news of the day, whether you're up late or you're just starting”

your day, welcome to the show from the Relief Factor Studios. This is Red Eye Radio. All across America, we are Red Eye Radio. He is Eric Hurley and I'm Gary McNamara. Man, I love this one. You know, because of the whole, you know, the whole flock camera things and, uh, and, uh, what was the other thing? Uh, the other thing was in the news here. Um, uh, flock cameras, there was something else. I just came up with the other one is,

but people been talking about, you know, what Americans fear the most, and one of the things

that the Americans fear the most in the top 10 from the pole taken last year. It was number 10,

“government tracking a personal data. Yeah, all right. So Jim Garry writes this.”

The list of Americans, most common fears included government tracking a personal data. Well, every year, every American sends an document detailing his or her name, data birth, home address, telephone number, sells the security number, marital status, number of dependent children together with complete financial records of income, investments, and bank accounts, and in some cases expenditures that allow one to claim deductions, charitable

donations, mortgage interest, medical expenses, student loan interest, local or state tax payments, records of adoption, higher education enrollment, and child care expenses, among others. Many Americans also list their direct deposit routing and account numbers for tax refunds or payments. So the question is, what personal data do you fear that you was government having, that the internal revenue service doesn't already have? Exactly. Tips. Yes.

I was just dying left when I was reading, because it's something that you and I have said,

“you know, I just, I think it's terrible that a tax system delves into the personal life as much”

as it does. We've said this for, I've said this, I think since I'm in a talk show host. Well, you know, and if you go back to not too far, just a few years, the Janet Yellen move of the Treasury now, you know, when they wanted to track any deposit over $600. Yeah. Right.

They wanted to know where that money came from. Basically, their point was too many people are

working for cash under the table. That goes anywhere from like a babysitter. I don't think I've ever actually hired a babysitter. One of my granddaughters, usually, because they're in their late teens early 20s, the old swims. But, you know, a babysitter makes cash usually, I guess. These days may be venn male, I don't know. But, long guys, someone who does a job for you around the house a project guy, you know, people too many people working for you, or you're selling things

on marketplace. And you're doing it as a business. You're not just selling things you bought years ago. And they wanted to tap into that money. You know, and if you think about that approach, I mean, that's getting into everything. Actually, the billionaires tax would go even further, because think about this, if the, if the wealth tax, not a new income tax level for billionaires on their earnings. But a wealth tax came in based on your status of becoming a billionaire.

You would, there would have to be a much greater level of audits. Potentially, you would have to audit everybody to find out what their net worth is. Because I don't know, let's say a guy finds a gold mine and his backyard. I mean, that's a ridiculous thing. But, or, or, uh, becomes a Bitcoin billionaire overnight. I mean, that, that is kind of, over. But, uh, you know, these odd, no last week, I, it was reported on X, that I had become

very wealthy on. Well, you, you're a crypto king. We all know on a, and that wasn't a hat. That was you just flexing. It's what that was. You were, I was flexing. You range over in your house and

Nobody hacked your account. You just wanted to pretend to be a victim so you could flex how rich,

“how crypto gets you are. I was looking at hoping to get me some chicks. Yeah.”

Well, unless you're talking about baby chickens. Well, but it's, no, but that, you know, that's the whole idea is that you would have to get into people's every day. Uh, oh. And they wanted to, and that, that's important. Uh, an important point to add to that, that whole idea, uh, during the Biden administration. Uh, we would, the transactions sending money through the pay apps like Venmo, or Zell, or whatever, the cash app. You, it, anything that you send over a certain amount

where we're, we're going to scrutinize. Even if you're sending it to another family member.

And what, because their point they were making is too many people are getting away with exchanging money and not paying taxes on it. And that gets into the, I mean, it would get down to the, I, I don't know the level of audits that you would have to do on every level that we just poke up. Uh, from if they ever wanted to go that far and do the whole $600 or more thing or

“the billionaires tax where you have to audit what they have their possessions every single year,”

because somebody new people, people, new billionaires are created all the time. Usually, it's a rise over time. But not all weeks. Well, I, I think that, you know, that the, the, the, the question in Jim Garry brought it up could, uh, could be those. And also, as I mentioned, uh, the flock cameras and, and, and, and, and AI, you know, and AI data centers that, you know, they're getting your info and everything else. And the US soccer podcast on the US Megan Klingabark and after interviewing

so many dudes during this men's world cup, I'm so happy to be back with my US 1/2 players. I know the US men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that world cup and we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in US soccer. Are you ready? It looks good. The US soccer podcast presented by Henkel, and listen on your favorite platform. There's, and here's, I, you know,

when you look at flock cameras, there's no doubt that flock cameras have helped to solve it a lot of crimes out there. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. Uh, I, I can look at, I was, uh, doing some research. I think three, I saw three different drive-by shootings that they were able to solve because of flock cameras. They were looking at every single car that went down that highway. Yeah, and every single

license plate. So it took us still a lot of legwork, but they were able to do it. The problem is

the government has abused their authority in many different, in many different cases. Again, there aren't, you know, a million different things of where they've abused it with flock cameras. But if you're a, if you're a Republican, and you look at what they did to Trump, you look and see the lies about Trump. Not that that was leaking. I mean, they did leak his taxes.

“Remember that? Yeah. Remember they leaked his taxes? Yeah. They got the leaked his taxes. But when you”

see what they did with the Russia collusion to him, how organized that was, when you see the censoring that went on in this, in this country, when you see what, uh, was it, was it lowest learner in the IRS? You know, going after charitable, you know, uh, or excuse me, nonprofits that were, you know, made up by conservatives. They were looking for reasons to deny them a nonprofit status. And you can say whatever you want. Well, it, it wasn't institutionalized. Actually, I can say the

censorship is. Yeah. The censorship in government was institutionalized because it was going on during the Trump administration from bureaucrats in the government that hated Trump. And so when you see this happening, when you see the instances that had been, you know, a publicized about, for example, on unfloc cameras, you know, people are torn. They're torn because they know it's a tremendous, it's a, a tremendous vehicle to fight crime, but they also believe that

government abuses the power that we give them. Yeah. And if they get a chance, they'll do it here.

and the point is one point spread up, but is it a searchable database available to millions of

people across the country with very little oversight? And that's a great, quite. I mean, that's a great point. You can't release what's in somebody's taxes. It's against federal law. But when people see that Trump's was leaked, what Trump's got leaked is somebody peeking at yours. Yes, there are government agencies that, that is, that is, that is peeking at yours. When we know, you know, the NSA violations that happen, you know, when we see that, when we see what happened,

think about this, when you think about, and this is something that every Republican thinks of, yeah, and maybe a ton of independence, the Pfizer warrant. Yeah. When they were able to get a bogus Pfizer warrant on Trump running for president of the United States, a presidential candidate, and it was built by the opposition campaign. Think about that. It was built. It was created by the, it was funded and created by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, no accountability ever for that. Right.

“It was never an accountability except one FBI agent, except if you want to count the accountability,”

that the money, the Hillary campaign used it. There was a campaign, you know, violation because they listed it as something else. But the whole thing, the whole lie was created in order to get Trump and they use that. That was the information that pushed it over the top to get a Pfizer warrant on Carter page in the Trump campaign. Yeah. That's what put it over the top. And you had officials in the government lie, I believe even even even in the Pfizer

warrant, or in order to get the Pfizer warrant lie about Carter page in order to get that. They were trying to get inside the Trump campaign. Right. Yep. And if you can abuse a Pfizer warrant like that,

well, and then there were all the other abuses of the Pfizer warrant that we never found out that

“I was about to say that how deep does this go? Right. And you know, I honestly believe that there's”

something to it because, you know, the Trump's the president now, obviously, they could go further back if they wanted to. I don't know why they don't. I don't know if there's maybe some stuff that was, I don't know, bleached off of computers or, you know, the Clinton said that it disappeared or whatever. I don't know if there's stuff that they can't find in or connect or maybe president Trump just says, you know, no, it's enough to talk about the Russian hoax and demonstrate

that. And that's been proven. We don't have to go back any further. We know how they operate. I would love for somebody to get into telling that story. And actually, I think it would have to be somebody outside of the administration, outside of the Trump organization to do it. I would love to see a Twitter files type approach to the level of abuse that happened over the years. You know, Michael Shalomberger actually talked about or wrote about the level of abuse with some of the

the programs that were being funded and then that those funds would go to target political enemies domestically here in the US. And it was supposed to help people. It was supposed to be, you know, humanitarian effort type of money that was being spent. But much of it in Shalomberger did a good job. We talked about it here on the show. We read from his article and he demonstrated how scary that is. You know, if they have that kind of power to go, you know, and take on the biggest of names,

you're not safe. The average person is not safe. And there's no telling how far back that kind of abuse went. But when you look at it, and this is something I've been

“thrown you since the beginning. I know you have to. The problems we have with the income tax. And”

that's the amount of information you have to give the government just to pay your taxes. And that's

why we've always advocated for some kind of sales tax. Yeah. Because anything else, you're going to

have to give the government so much of your information. And I don't believe it's necessary to fund the government to do that. Yeah, irrespective of whether it is abused at a 50% level, a 1% level.

vote or 0.1% of the vote. It's the fact that voter ID keeps fraud from happening. Yeah. Any fraud and gives confidence to the system. Yeah. And government just does not in my opinion

never had never has had you look at our founding fathers. If they were looked at the information

“that you have to give government to file your income taxes, they'd be saying, well, no way. We're”

not going to do that. There's got to be another way to raise revenue besides getting all this particular information. Now, the only other way would be a flat tax, which no deductions. Right. It would just be whatever your income is. Boom. Yeah. So they don't know anything. That would be another thing. So you could still have some type of income tax, but as soon as you add in deductions, as soon as you start going down that road, boom. Well, you mean Steve Forbes, flat tax,

ski, flat tax, ski, right. Right. You still have to give your data birth home address,

telephone number, so security never, but government has that anyway. Yeah. Have that. Right. Yeah.

“And they're listening to all your calls and monitoring all your internet activity. I hear and”

they're telling your family. Well, when I'm upset about this, all my my privacy's been invaded. I mean, there are, you know, hundreds of millions of people, you know, monitoring us right now. Okay. Millions. Okay. Hundreds of thought. Okay. Dozens of people monitor us right now. There are tens and tens of people. Yeah. There are tens of people. I don't, don't want to go. And maybe they're maybe I shouldn't. There are certain that there should be an expectation. There are people. People listening

to this show. I can say that because I can see three of them right now. We are right. I radio

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number 10 on the list. Government tracking a personal data was number one. 52.7% of the American public is either very afraid or afraid. I don't know how you judge between the two. Yeah, I don't know how you judge. If you're afraid, you're afraid. Yeah, I don't know how you judge the fear. Well, I mean, you're simply taking the red line. I'm very afraid. I don't know how an individual judges that something that really is a it's happening but it's a hypothetical that you will

be affected by it. Yeah. Right. Right. So coming up on the bottom of the hour, we'll give you the rest of them. Yeah. And tell you what the top one is and it seems like some of the analysis. This was done last year. This was the top fears at 2025 and they go to, you know, the shrinks and professors would say. Well, okay, there's a lot of anxiety out there. People need to calm down and yeah. Right. But look at the back of it now.

hit online radio. And he is our colleague. I'm Gary McNamara. Download our Red Eye Radio app today and you can listen when you choose. All right. This was from last year and this was,

this is based on, you know, basically we started this because of the plot cameras, AI, data centers,

invasion of privacy, all that, that need stuff and the Jim, uh, a guarantee talking about all the

“information. You have to give just a thought your taxes a year and it's like what private information”

or personal data is the public worried about government getting when you give all this stuff, you know, to file your taxes. Uh, but this was done by, uh, Wilkerson College of Arts Humanities and social sciences. It was a nationally represented survey about what Americans fear. And that was

number 10. Government tracking a personal data. Number nine, pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes,

53.5% either very afraid or afraid. Russia using nuclear weapons, 53.7% pollution of drinking water, 54.5. US becoming involved in another World War, 53.3%. People I love dying 55.3% that was tied with US becoming involved in another World War,

“cyber terrorism 55.9, uh, economic financial collapse 58.2. People I love becoming seriously”

ill 58.9 and corrupt government officials, the top spot at 69.1%.

What people are very afraid or afraid of, which I find pretty interesting. What was the other

thing I was looking at here that the common problems, okay, these are the, this was taken this year, the, the, the common phobias that, uh, that people have are you ready? Yeah, yeah, okay, here, here are the top one two through the top ten. Okay, here we go. All right. Okay. Arachnophobia, fear of spiders, fear of snakes, okay, fear of heights, fear of flying, fear of dogs, fear of thunder and lightning, and intense fear of injections,

“needles, and intense fear of social interactions that included public speaking. Yeah.”

And intense fear of places that are difficult to escape, sometimes involving a fear of crowded or open spaces, and germophobes, the, the others were, let me just see the, the, the others, other common source of fears, birds, tunnels, bees, choking, swimming, dentists, visits, and driving in bad weather. There we go. I can have the, I did have the actual, let me see, you know, it's interesting when you look up something on your phony,

you look to exact same thing up online, and it gives you two different things completely, even though it's two, the stories are the same, yeah, yeah, but yeah, the stories are the exact same. Here we go, the, okay, that's the one there, but here we go. 50% of Americans are afraid of heights. Now, I'm not afraid of flying. I love flying in airplanes. Absolutely love it. Yeah. I do have a fear of heights, like looking over a building. Okay, if it's a, here's the weird thing

for me. My wife and I were just discussing in the chest today, because a buddy of mine that I've known all of my life, he, he, he needs his chimney sweep. And he said, you know, I looked at the roof and he goes, man, I just got up here, heights. I just didn't, I said, I don't. I can get up on my roof and run around like a mad man. Now, I try not to run around. I'm trying to, I'm very careful getting up on the ladder and everything else. Your dangers have, in fact, my brother-in-law

fell and hurt himself badly off of his very large RV recently. So it can be very dangerous, but I, for, for some reason, I used to have, I couldn't stand on a chair, right, to, to reach a light bulb or something. I could, a, a tiny step ladder, you know, would make me a little shaky. Now that, I can get up on my roof. I can run around. I can look

buildings and Dubai and look over at that, on the roof and look over the edge, it would probably send me into a spiral. You know, that, that kind of, for heights would definitely. For me, it's being close to the edge of, of, of, of it without and it would be clearly fatal. Yeah, because I've, I've been in hotels and, and purposely gotten the 50th floor of a hotel just to see the, you know, the, the scenery at night. Right. And personally say, yeah, and I've no problem with that,

but if it was, you know, where I would be, we're all be open that would scare me, but I've no fear of flying in planes at all. No. But one of the worst fears I have is a ski lift.

“When I look at that little piece of metal holding onto that wire, that's what I'm looking at. I'm like,”

this is the engineer and enough for the weight that's being put on it and your legs are dangling down and you've got that one little bar in front of you. Yeah. scares the daylight, it's out of me. Yeah. You know, other than that, I don't think I, you know, but have you ever walked what across one of those walk bridges that is, that is acrylic, and you can see through the bottom? Yes. I don't like that. I don't have any issues with those, and I don't know what I had to trust.

It all the time. I'm not afraid of being 50 feet near. Right. Yeah. That's not the fear. Right. So I have a, a very specific fear of heights, but yeah, 50% of Americans of a fear of height, public speaking, 32% I have none of that. I used to. Yeah. You know, and I went from,

I went from, is incredible fear. I tell people the first time I had to open a microphone

in a college radio station that just was being fed into the cafeteria of the college. That's it. Yeah. Right. And I opened the mic three times and it was the fourth time I finally talked. Yeah. I was afraid that, afraid that everybody was listening to every word, and then it got to the point, you know, now it's like, I care less, but even public speaking in front of people. Yeah. It was very tough. I used to have to, you know, either write a speech or have

“notes, and now you could give me just what's the topic? Right. And I think it's because I've been”

doing this so long. Yeah. Just give me the topic. Yeah. Absolutely. What's the topic? Okay. I can do it. Yeah. And really without any preparation because in my head, I go, okay, what's the topic? Okay. I got this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Yeah. I got it. I got it. We have our own, because through the whole 30,000 hour or 50,000 hour, we're, you know, we are in this career. It's closing in 50,000. You have this. Yeah. You, you, you, you, you have this

pantry, basically, of things, items that are usable in your mind, and you know, where they,

where they fit and, and, and, and how it would flow. I got up on stage one time and talked over an hour and had no nervous sense whatsoever. I came off the stage thinking, you know, I, man, I did this great job. And they said, you were only supposed to introduce the music artist,

“Terry Clark, you weren't supposed to do an hour. That's my problem, actually. I didn't do an hour.”

But I probably did go too long. You were just up there to introduce the artist. I, I did do that for Trace Adkins one time, but it was very simple and is managed or told me. Ladies and gentlemen, Trace Adkins, that's your, that's your, that's your script. Yeah, I, I, but if I do that, I'm, I'm very good at getting through that for as quick as possible. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, you know, but in, in the events that I go to, if I have to MC things,

they expect you to be creative, right? They, yeah. And, and they hire you to do that. And it's sometimes it's artists, a country artist and sometimes it's just various events, whatever it is. And I, I guess my problem is based on what we do for a living is that I, I feel like I, I really focus on not going too long. Get to a point. Yeah. You know, do a nice breaker of a little humorous thing. And then talk about, you know, why you're there? Of course,

mentioned sponsors that that's required, whatever. And then, you know, get the, yeah, I know why you're quite in talk here. Yeah. I know, I'd be quite, I want to talk. Yeah, no. And, and, and that's it.

And it's, I always, because I always have that fear of that hook, you know, the old fashion hook of,

you know, pulling you off stage. But, but, yeah, no, I don't have one fear of public speaking. And once I bombed, it was the biggest bomb ever doing stand-up comedy. Yeah. And I felt the fear of the loudest thing ever is the silence of nobody laughing except one person way in the back.

you just need to develop. You need to, you need to warm them up to you.

“Goes to materials great, but it's got to be more than material. But that silence, that sort of,”

I thought I had conquered it and that that brought it back up a little bit. It was like, oh my gosh,

I'm there. You know, for me, because it's in comedy, there's the host who basically

introduces all the comics. And I've done that. I didn't do it on the roads. I didn't know, in fact, until recent years, that actually a big name comedians take their own hosts up there. And they're, they're stand-up comedians, but they're not openers and they're not headliners yet. They're hosts. Well, for me, I was doing it because I was in radio. Right. So you're hosting a local comedy event, whatever it is. And what I learned to late, I think, was you got to get out there

and you're basically kind of the warmer. You know, hey, Lubbock, how's it going? Wait, don't answer

“that question. It's, you know, it's, you have to, you know, get them and, you know, because”

typically, you're there. Well, that, that and they're drinking. Yeah, most of your audience is drinking. That's, that's why I would probably have a lot of fear of doing dry bar comedy because they're most people aren't drinking. But it's, you know, you got to get up there and warm up, break the ice, warm up the crowd. They're not there to see you. Get them a little work to get their energy going and ready for the headline. But that's why we work over nights now because we're not talking

anybody who's sober. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Let me finish the list here. Here we go.

Public speaking, 32 percent in close spaces, 32 percent also of the American public afraid to do

that. Snakes 31 percent, very afraid or afraid. Spiders 30 percent of the American public deep water 24 percent of the public. There you go. Hmm. All right. And so as to the other thing about, you know, the, the general fears about being doomed and all that, I really don't have, really don't have those, you know, those kind of fears. I have a lot less fears as you get older. You know, just don't, you just don't, it's like, I would ever. Yeah. Yeah. It's like,

Russia could attack us tomorrow. Yeah. dealt with that when I was eight years old laying in bed. And listening to the radio going, and you know that these Soviets have 20,000 nuclear missiles pointed right at us, listening to my little transistor radio skiering the hell out of myself. But so I dealt with that paranoia a long time, that, that fear a long time ago. Yeah. And, you know, anything else is sort of like, okay, whatever, it's life. You know, not that you

don't get emotional about it. Because somebody dying, yeah, she always think about that. You know,

people, right, you're not sure. Yeah. That's something. But I don't think most people obsess with that. It's not like a 24 hour obsession. Only if the people get sick, we, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but really interesting what people are afraid of. Yeah. We are run our radio. We'll be right back with more run our radio with every currently and Gary McNamara. We are run our radio. And he's our currently and I'm Gary McNamara. And that story about the

majority owner of the, of the 49ers, Jed York. Yeah, getting initially charged with engaging

“in prostitution and another charge of possessing criminal tools. What was that charge about?”

I'm just a prostitution. The prostitution charge was downloaded or downloaded, uh, downloaded and graded to, uh, you see, disorderly conduct. But it was, it was a, it was a sting. You got set up online. Oh, wow. Cops were waiting for 140 bucks went to a place to meet the, uh, the prostitute was busted by police. It's said in the story in Fox News, he was intercepted by police. It's like, uh, a football analogy. Yeah. But I'm just like, I, I, I said there in that, we, like, probably

the majority of American going, what? Yeah. What is? Yeah. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, his lawyers tried to get all the record sealed immediately in the judge said no. Right. Yeah. Do that. Yeah. That's, uh, highly unfortunate. You know, it's like, when the Heidi

start a relationship or even if you don't want to get into serious relationships,

“date so that you know something about the person,”

because otherwise it's like, yeah, you, I, I don't know what other word that's, it really is.

It's, it's a growth. I'd like to have a great monologue here. Yeah. Yeah. On Moral and

everything else, and all I can think of is, yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, growths. This, see his red eye radio on Westwood One. Starts your day with the morning

“jolt of Drake toll. See, now it's on demand. My podcast is kind of a radio thing, I think,”

but also it's a bit of a TV show and it's about whatever I want it to be. It's listening

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“How is the best thing ever? It was something I always wanted to do.”

If you show me a clear goal, I'm like, okay, I can do that. Master chief. He's like, you realize it's about 1% chance that you're making a 3%? 1%? That's all I need, Master chief. My cartoon went home early, and I just went up to my chief and I was like, I'm not doing all. Turns out I'm scared. That's when we go to war. Yeah. I was like, okay, I could get used to this. Microsoft. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.