The Best Voice in the Biz: Charles Adler
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Well, hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Jan Arden podcast and show. This week has blown by. I'm here with Sarah Burke, and we have a very special guest today. And let me tell you about him, because I feel like this man is a kindred spirit to me, because whenever I get in fights on Twitter, I'm like, I know someone who's getting effed over more than me. It's probably this man, Charles Adler. You might be familiar with him from your radio. He's a writer, broadcaster, political commentator. The

The best political commentator, former host of Charles Adler Tonight and Global Sunday. Either way, we're talking more than 40 frickin' years in broadcasting. And that's a lot of years. Welcome to my friend. Well, you're my Twitter friend anyway, Charles. Welcome to Charles Adler. I'm your frickin' Twitter friend. Frickin' right.

Frickin' uh... And you know I'm not saying frick on Twitter. I'm just... We talked about this before, but people have this tendency on Twitter whenever they're mad at me and they think, oh yeah, you think you're so kind and everything. Well, remember this, and then they'll take a screenshot of the time when I told a guy to basically F his eye socket, which I thought was such a great comeback. But you know, you have to meet these people where they live. Here's the thing.

Almost all of them are cowards. Okay. They would never say the things they say to you, to your face. They would be embarrassed. They would be ashamed as human beings, as moms and dads and brothers and sisters, you know, just real human beings. But for some reason, something about social media and specifically Twitter that

That just brings out the animal. And of course, so many of these animals aren't even human beings. So they're not even cowards. They're just... Well, it's red truck guy 5678. Or screw Trudeau 1459117911. I mean, it's so bizarre. Anyway, I want to go back in time because we're definitely going to touch on where we're at with social media, where we're at with divisiveness in this country, especially the bleed over from the United States has certainly been a huge, huge...

part of our political conversation in the last four years since Trump was elected, everything changed. And I think you'd be foolish not to make the correlation there. Anyway, let's go back to the heyday of radio. Where did you start Charles Adler? How did you get into radio? Were you a guy that was just like, I love this. I want to talk to people. Yeah, I needed radio. Radio was my escape hatch. It was brought up in a family. It was a

severely traumatized by the war. I don't want to get into all of the drama, but it was the kind of thing that creates what we now call PTSD. And so because of the unpredictable nature of the people in the house, because, you know, tempers were flying all the time. As a kid, I just needed peace. So the way I got peace was by shutting the door,

And having these little

in my ear all the time for my transistor radio. And I realized that, you know, people hear the term transistor radio. They go, wow, that sounds ancient. Well, it was, it was, it was more than more than 60 years ago. So radio became my best friend and radio became my escape hatch. And it didn't take long for me to fantasize about being the voice on the radio. And I, I did whatever I could to,

to sound like the people, and they were mostly, as you can imagine, male voices, to sound like the people on the radio. And I thought, if I can pull this off, I can not only escape in my mind, but I can escape

the home that I was brought up in. And I'm always betwixt and between when I talk about that, because I love my parents dearly and I have 100% sympathy for them being Holocaust survivors. And without them, I'm not here. But all of that stuff is sort of in the brain, in the heart. It's just a very, very difficult place to be. And any person I think in my shoes would have wanted to

Leave. Radio allowed me to leave years before I actually left. Who gave you your first job, Charles? My first on-air job came in Calgary, which is why I've got this

affinity for the West in general and why Calgary kind of owns a lot of real estate in my heart. It was CKXL on 16th Avenue. Oh my God, I went by there. Yes. And that was my very first gig. That's where I turned on the mic at 9 p.m. on Monday, January 2nd, 1975.

You're lucky. Most people do the overnight. 9 p.m., you had a prime time right away. Yeah, it was great. And the reception was fantastic. I let people know. I mean, it wasn't a talk show. It was a DJ show, rock and roll on CKXL in those days because there was really no FM to speak of. If you were the rock jock at 9 o'clock at night, you owned about, what, 50 or 60 percent of the available audience to radio. So it was fantastic.

So those really were the glory days because you and I all know, Sarah certainly knows this, that radio programming is done by huge corporations now. And if they have a chain of stations...

Even if you have 20 pop stations, their radio playlist is very, very... Similar across the board. Homogenized, yeah. And the DJs don't go in there and spin records, but I know that you came into radio at a time at CKXL, and you're talking my language. I was one of those listeners. CKXL was everything. That was the cool thing to listen to. It was either that or the CBC. But anyway, you guys played your own records. Did you not, Charles? Did you go in and you picked the songs that you played? Yeah, I had a lot of freedom today. Yeah.

Today, freedom is this controversial word. It wasn't controversial then. I had a lot of personal, professional freedom. So I took what I played seriously. I didn't want to put stuff on that I didn't think the audience would like. I wasn't one of these people who decided that I should just play a lot of, you know, esoteric music from esoteric people that most people don't know. I was a very, very commercial. I wanted to play the hits. I wanted to get the largest possible audience.

audience and so I took that very seriously just before I did the on-air thing at CKXL that's where I started on the air I had worked off the air as a producer where I too was instrumental in helping pick tunes but I was a producer in Montreal which was my my real hometown I left uh

But as a refugee, I left Hungary in 1956. Montreal is where we landed. So I was two and a half years old when I started out life. So technically, that's my, well, technically, Budapest is my hometown. But Montreal is the town I was raised in. Calgary is the town I fell in love with.

That's a really interesting background. I mean, to have that sort of Eastern, where you guys were like dropped basically in Montreal, here's where you're going to be. And how did you end up coming West? I applied for jobs. Six to midnight was the shift I produced at the rock station in Montreal, the hometown, CKGM.

And so after I got off the air, after I got off the shift at midnight, I'd go into the production studio and I would simulate programs, simulate shows that sounded just like the ones I produced. But instead of the voices of the DJs I was working with, it was my own voice. And so after a few months of that, I thought I was ready to send out some tapes.

And I got very, very fortunate on a particular day around Christmas of 1973. I was 18. At Christmas of 73, I got two offers in the same day. One was from Calgary and the other was from Ottawa. And

And the DJ friends I had were mostly Western Canadian. So they said, Chuck, go West, go West, young man. And that's what I did. I have such fond memories of radio as a kid. You brought up transistor radios.

And this was a little bit before Sarah's time, but no, seriously, Sarah, a transistor radio was such a big deal and batteries were always an issue, right? It was one thing to have the radio, but then it was always batteries because they were just, you know, we didn't have an endless supply of money for my mom and dad to go out and buy batteries, but

I used to get in trouble so much because I'd steal the old man's little transistor radio. And it was in a leather pouch. So the radio went inside a lovely leather jacket. And I always would put it underneath my pillow and listen to the radio falling asleep. But a fond memory is this hand, my dad's hand coming in and taking that radio out from underneath the pillow. And it's one of my fondest memories of my dad because I had a very tumultuous childhood.

father myself. And he never got mad at me for that. It was one of the few times where it wasn't the next morning, I told you not to touch that. I never got that from him. So and I think that was he was proud. Well, it was the catalyst to my musical. I just remember hearing these songs drift through my dreams almost as a kid. How much a part did music play in your early life? Like was that sort of a catalyst to keep you in this business 40 years? Obviously, you went to talk.

uh, at some point, but music must've been big. Music, uh, music was very large. Uh, you know, it was large at the radio station that where I, I learned the ropes as it were in professional radio. That was a rock station, top, top 40 station. Uh, so mostly pop. Uh, but for whatever reason, as I was growing up with that transistor radio in my head all the time, maybe it's because it was most important to me late night. I never slept very much. And that's still the case. I, I sleep for 30 minutes, an hour and I'm waking up all the time. Uh,

And it was the same back then. And for whatever reason, late night, the stations on the AM radio that I was able to bring up on what we called the skip. So they were far away. And for whatever reason, most of them were country stations. So even though I'm being raised in Montreal, where there was like really no country or hardly any country music at all.

I'm listening to stations in Memphis and Wheeling, West Virginia and some other places. So I'm listening to essentially shows that are being done primarily for people working all night long, listening to country. Many of them were truck drivers. So I grew up just falling in love with country and Western music. I know that sounds bizarre, but that's what this child's mind was oriented to. Who were some of those artists that you gravitated to, whether country or when you were working at your first job?

Well, the artists that I listened to on those late night shows were, as you can imagine, Johnny Cash and Farron Young and Ray Price and Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. And, you know, you know many of them now. At the time, they certainly weren't very big and they definitely were not big in Montreal. Like none of my friends listened to country music. It was my own little my little late night secret.

Country is one of those genres, unlike other things, maybe jazz, I would put in this category that musicians that do it right have a long career longevity. I mean, you look at all those people that you mentioned, some of them are passed away, but they still have careers going in perpetuity. You know, Porter Wagner and Connie Francis. I mean, she was on the cusp of country, I suppose, but

So many of those guys, I think Johnny Cash is going to have a career for another 200 years. Elvis Presley. I've been to Memphis a few times and Elvis was pop and country and everything. But if you do it right, man, the careers that you can have in country music is amazing. I know a lot of people that were spinning records in the 70s are spinning those same guys, you know, in the 2020s now, like 40, 50 years later. Yeah.

Some of those artists are still mainstream artists. It's just mind boggling. How did you get into talk radio? I can't remember exactly why, but somebody at Chum in Toronto wanted a DJ to do news. They wanted the news to sound very much like the DJ shows. So I had lots of experience as a DJ and they knew I was a relatively serious person.

I was a news junkie. And I talked about newsy things on my DJ show in Hamilton all the time. And the show did very, very well. So it was well listened to by the professionals in the industry. So they asked me to audition for Chum News.

Dick Smythe loved what he was listening to, and so I became a sub for Dick Smythe and a regular on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Then through Chum, I got an anchor gig in Barrie, which was their big TV station about an hour north of Toronto. I was living in Toronto, and I was working at Chum in the morning.

And then I was driving to Barrie in the mid-afternoon. You couldn't do that now, Charles. You'd never make it. The traffic would be so crappy. No, no, no. It's very difficult for me as a Westerner now to throw rocks at Toronto because...

The business in Toronto and the audiences in Toronto were very good to me. Sometimes I was doing three and four different jobs. As a matter of fact, not only was I driving to Barrie every afternoon and coming back to Toronto late evening to sleep, not sleep much, sleep two or three hours, then go into my shift at Chum in Toronto. But on the weekends, I was using a different name, not Willie Nelson. That was my favorite artist at the time in country. I couldn't call myself Willie Nelson, so I called myself Billy Nelson. Ha ha!

And Billy Nelson was on CFGM in the Toronto area doing country music every Sunday afternoon. And every Wednesday they had me in for about an hour. They would bleed my throat to read a whole bunch of commercials, mostly for car dealerships.

Well, you've got a great radio voice. So good. Obviously doing talk back then, did you have shows where you had interaction with the public? Like did people call in? Oh yeah, lots of it. So obviously Charles, the tone then...

you know, I'm sure you met or talked to some people that were disgruntled about this or that, but we're talking a complete game changing narrative of how people are talking to each other and how they're presenting their points. Now, like you must see such an absolute massive explosion of hatred and anger. And well, I lost my love for the, for talk radio, that aspect of talk, uh, opening the lines. Uh, and that was, uh, such a huge thing for me. Uh,

for so many years, but I absolutely lost it during the pandemic. People were calling in and I was convinced they were just out of their minds or they were going through the kind of severe emotional trauma, which was making them angry all the time and paranoid. Was it pointed at you? Oh, yeah, yeah, because I was...

I was a normal person. You know, I wanted to be vaccinated. I wanted everyone to be vaccinated. I didn't think that was a radical approach. When COVID first hit, I mean, I was just blessed because of –

and talk radio and just radio over the years and lots of TV as well. I got an Emmy in Boston. The media in general had been very good to me. So I had lots of contacts. So when COVID happened, I called some friends in Canada and the United States called scientists. And they told me like right at the beginning that the good news was because

Because of all the research that had been done on SARS and specifically mRNA vaccines, that within a few months we would have a vaccine and the whole world would be saved because they too, just as yours truly, assumed that we would have like a 99.9% buy-in. Like, who wouldn't want to be vaccinated? Little did we know. Well, something happened. It was just...

I don't know how you can even describe the wave of, like you said, paranoia, the fact that people were losing body autonomy and all of that stuff. And it just was this wave. But what's happened sort of in the last year is now that COVID has kind of lifted its head up for a moment anyway, God knows what's coming down at us next. But now the same group of people have moved on

to women's rights issue, LGBTQ, two-spirit, trans community. I mean, they're just moving on to these different things like

All the ground that we made, all the ground that women had made with pro-choice and certainly the gay community is now just being massacred. It's just being chipped away at in huge chunks. It's so frightening these days, the climate these days. I don't know what people are afraid of, why they think that they're allowed to have this fragility

freedom and a way of speaking and a way of thinking, but nobody else can. If you don't think like that, the book banning stuff that's been going on is very disheartening. Well, you know, if you look at the long sweep of history and because of my background, my family was heavily affected by the news of the 30s and 40s. So because of all of that, I started reading very serious books at a very early age, probably too young, frankly.

But in any case, I read lots of history and lots of world history. And we've got these authoritarian waves, you know, every few decades. And unfortunately, I'm sad to report there's no way for me to say this in a lighthearted way. We are experiencing an authoritarian wave around the world right now. And it will get much worse before it gets better. Yeah, I don't disagree with you there.

I'm always saying to my friends, this is the time to stand up taller, to throw your shoulders back. We were talking to Jodi Vance this past week. She's another journalist broadcaster. She's out of Vancouver. You know, just talking about not being afraid to pick a side and not being afraid to express an opinion, which you and I both do on a regular basis on social media. You know, we say what we're going to say and people come at us and it doesn't even bother me anymore because I know it's

It's mired in distrust and kind of stupidity. Just not...

having any facts to back them up. So I don't, I actually don't give them any of my time at all anymore. I don't even, people are like, how do you stand it? I'm like, oh my God, I block them immediately. You gotta do a lot of blocking. I happen to know Jodi, I worked with Jodi in Vancouver and I just have a tremendous amount of respect for her. Yeah, she expresses an opinion. Well, the number one reason I have respect for her is because she is a she, is a she, and just like you are a she, is a she.

your targets. And it's not me trying to, you know, suck up to powerful women. Yes, I was raised by powerful women called my grandmother and my mother and all of that. But it goes far beyond that. I know what the hate mail looks like for me. I know what it looks like on email. I know what it looks like on Twitter.

But I also know that you and Jody and other strong women get exponentially more than I do. I'm still many of the haters just, you know, think that it's just an act with me because I look like a regular white guy.

But a lot of people who look like regular white guys are deep into this hatred. And women are their number one target. I think it is a difficult time to kind of maneuver through it all. But I always tell people, listen, I'm using my real name, buddy.

This is my name on. You don't even have the balls to put down your name. You might just be somebody protecting themselves at work that doesn't want to get involved in that. But when I always click on, before I block them, I'm like, I'm just going to take a look-see at who this person is, basically.

And I'll just read 20 tweets that they've made. They are so disparaging, so filled with hatred, so filled with misinformation. And I mean, there is a stock stereotypical profile in 99% of the people that are doing this kind of stuff on the internet. And I just look at it. I'm like, my God, you actually take time to sit in your car or your truck or your mother's basement.

to compose, badly compose this vitriol. And it's certainly not pointed at me or just you. It is across the board, all these people. I don't even think they understand what the issues are. It's an echo chamber, big time.

So when you do, when you are a person like yourself, Charles Adler, when you go, this is my opinion, I love reading your stuff. When I scroll through in the morning, I'm like, what does Charles have to say? Because it's so grounded in real information that you've done your homework.

that your comebacks are witty. They're well-constructed. You're not just going, oh yeah, well, your mother wears army boots. Like these guys, these guys don't even go after anything relatively clever. It's always like, go eat another burger, you liberal pansy or something. Like I'm singing...

on Parliament Hill on Canada Day. I'm very proud to do it. I'm there with a very diverse group of people, Indigenous speakers, people from all walks of life, immigrants, new immigrants to this country, a group of people that I'm so looking forward to meeting. Well, as soon as I, my office put up the announcement that I was, sorry, that's my fan base in behind me there. As soon as I put it up, I started receiving horrible comments about, I wonder what she's getting paid and

oh, this is how it works. And all these liberals are still going on about vaccinations. So I'm saying, I'm singing it at the parliament buildings. We're going to be there celebrating. And I was, and I am, I'm still proud. I'll always be proud. I'll always be a proud Canadian. So before we do anything else, if I could just say something, because I think it's in line with Canada Day and what you're all about. And I hope you don't get embarrassed by me saying this to you. But

There are certain causes that you associate yourself with, and one of them is the cause of innocent animal life. You touch my heart and the hearts of people that I know and love every time you do that. We love you, Jan Arden. We love you very much. Charles. Guys, this is a moment. Listen, there was a group of women that were doing this since 2006, and thank you, Charles, for always...

extending my messages, for retweeting them. We're trying to stop the live horse export of large draft horses from Canada to Japan that are consumed raw by very wealthy clients and just terrified horses, thousands and thousands of them in an American company that came up because it was banned in the United States. So United States of America, you're a little ahead of us there on the live export stuff, but they came up to Alberta because it was just like,

the wild west and we're going to get away with anything we want to do up there. And they have been for, you know, the better out of 20 years now and making millions of dollars. They call themselves farmers. They're taxed as farmers.

But I'm not going to stop, Charles. And it's because of people like you and the people that you know and people that are magnifying the messaging. And I have such a gifted group of marketing, branding people around me. Wendy Williams-Watt, the Together Heads, who have done the whole horseshit campaign. We have made so much ground in two and a half years. People know what it is. They've heard the messages. And we're only going to

get it going even bigger. Trudeau mandated it. Now, 14 months later, we're still sitting in that

place of nothing really happening. But it is a busy world. There's lots of complications, I'm sure, to just a stroke of a pen. I don't think things work that way anymore, but we'll keep at it. So thank you. Various provincial governments, I'm pretty sure the Kenney government was one of them, passed legislation to try to prevent people from blowing the whistle on the abuse of animals on factory farms and other places. Jan, can you imagine if there was video

If people who are watching this right now are listening, can you imagine what would happen if they could watch the video of these horses, if they could only watch a couple of minutes of video of how these horses are actually transported without water, without the capacity to move at all for many hours on a plane? Can you imagine what would happen if Canadians and people around the world were able to see the torture,

the pain, innocent animals, and for what? So that some wealthy people could

could eat them. And we call that farming. That has nothing to do with farming. Farmers talk about feeding the world, and it's true in many cases. But nobody, nobody will be able to convince you, me, or anyone else watching that kind of video that the people in Japan need those horses to survive. That is horseshit, absolute horseshit.

And they don't know that the Japanese people consuming them, I could show you some of their campaigns that they are being shown about these beautiful horses running through fields. They're fed the same crap we are. But, you know, Korean Air, they have a part of the sinister story. They're one of the last carriers that will take the horses and they leave the Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton airports at four o'clock in the morning. They're killed in the most

horrific way. Their hearts have to be beating in order to be butchered the way that they need the meat to be preserved. I don't know what other word to tell people because it is hard. It's hard bearing witness.

They don't want to get into these boxes. They use cattle prods to get them in, but this industry lies, lies, lies, lies. They like to get in there. They have a good sleep. This is what this 80 year old guy who's their spokesperson repeats to the media over and over again. They don't, they're no trouble. I've been to so many loads at the Calgary airport. They are foaming at the mouth. They are kicking. They make the weirdest sounds.

Sometimes they sit in the tarmac for eight, 10 hours in those crates before a 16 hour flight, which is completely against the law. None of the, none of the regulations are followed, but it's been mandated. So Mr. Trudeau, please, please stop it. Prime minister, you have the power. You have the power to stop it. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be right back with the Charles Adler on the Jan Arden podcast and show.

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That's the one good thing about being a somewhat public person all these years. I mean, I love music and I've loved doing the acting stuff. And I love the opportunity to sit here and talk to Charles Adler, who I admire so much. Charles, you cheer me on every damn day. I'm telling you, I meant that at the top of the show, kindred spirit. When you see somebody else throwing their shoulders into what they believe,

We have to do that more than ever now. We cannot close the door and let other people do the work. We cannot close the door and say, well, you know, I want to help, but it's, there's lots of other people that do that kind of stuff. No, there's not. Anyway, I hope, I hope it's bringing a smile to your face and, and some other faces. It really does. And, um,

Twitter has been kind of weird. Elon Musk has changed so many rules. I tried to get rid of my blue check mark and it keeps coming back. And so I had, I, I asked my office, like, are we paying for this fucking blue check mark? Like, am I, am I giving someone him $7 a month or whatever the shit it is? She goes, we're not. I said, well, we had, it was gone.

And someone said, take your name down, your profile name, re-enter it. So I put Jan, stop, live horse, export Arden. And then my blue check mark went away and I went, oh my God, it actually worked. And fricking three days later, there's the goddamn blue check mark again. And then I have all

have all these people saying, oh yeah, you're whatever. And I'm like, I can't win. And I'm not going to sit there and go, listen, I tried to get rid of the blue check mark, but I'm that good people. I, anyway, I have no reason for it. But when I started in Twitter in 2009, I had so much fun on there. It was all like dog pictures and, and, and rainbows. And I was learning stuff about science and I was meeting cool people. I even had coffee with some people in Nashville that were in Nashville at the same time. And we're like, let's go meet for a

We were so naive and so open-armed.

And now I, whenever I want to get rid of people, I'm like, I know you love me. Do you want to go for coffee? And I never hear from them again. It's these guys that are like, you fat cow. Have you two ever met in person before? No, this is the first time I've... Twitter friends, right? Yeah, we're Twitter friends. Yeah. Someday we'll go for coffee, but it'll have to be in Nashville. Yeah, I don't... Gotta go for coffee with Jan in Nashville. In an undisclosed area. Yes, yeah, right. Um...

Where are we headed? I mean, Charles, do you have, is there any lights at the end of any tunnel? You're a light at the end of the tunnel for me. So there are good things. There are good people. There are, you know, there's, there's a lot of beautiful things in the world and things to celebrate. And it seems like the shitty things get the loudest, but.

I think it's disproportionate. Am I crazy here? No, no, no. I think that, well, unfortunately, ordinarily, I wouldn't even want to say this, but, you know, we're here just shooting the breeze, being as honest with each other as possible and ignoring the fact that many people are watching. We're talking to each other just as we would in so-called real life. Yep. And in real life, I'm positive that we would say to each other,

In a sense, we've got to play the same game the bad guys are playing. Like they only want to talk with each other. They've got their echo chamber. We have to create our own echo chamber. We have to create an echo chamber of thoughtful people who do care about these things, who are willing to communicate with each other. Because if we spend too much time communicating with the bad guys, just being exposed to them and reacting to them, and we don't spend enough time with the good guys, I think they win.

Yeah. I just want to use this as an example. And I hold that to be mostly true. I have four neighbors on my road. I don't know them well, but we're on a road that's just over a mile long. It's a gravel road west of Calgary. And, you know, when I moved here 16 years ago and built my house, I got to know everybody. And, you know, I had pretty positive conversations with everyone. There's one guy in particular that is the antithesis of me. He is, he's a hunter, he's a hunter,

Um, but he's a guy that eats what he hunts and he really believes in it. He, um,

uh, teaches gun safety to police force, RCMP, the police. Like he's a really integral part of how those guys manage their weapons, how to keep each other safe, how to keep the public safe. Like he, he's done that as a career. He's conservative. He hates Trudeau. He is all those things. And I really love this guy. We have become friends.

When he sees me, he gives me a good hug. Like we've just decided to, I'm an artist. I don't know if he knows my background. He doesn't really follow pop culture. I can tell you that right now. And I don't think he'll ever hear this podcast, but I really like him and he helps me all the time. And I give him a Christmas present every year.

I give him a bottle of Crown Royal and I make some cookies or something. I lay in bed sometimes and I think, my God, if I can be pals with him. And he goes off when we're on the road, passing vehicles on our gravel road. And he'll be on to something. He'll be talking about it. And I'll listen. I'm going, yeah. And he goes, oh, I know you and I don't always, we're on different sides of the fence here, but he always smiles at me. He goes, I love you, Jan. And I just thought we found some way to

Make it work because there's a humanity. I'm looking at him. He's looking at me. We're not on opposite sides of the street holding signs that say opposite things. We're having a conversation. He comes down and helps me with the yard or something's broken here. And he said, if anyone ever breaks into your place, if you ever feel scared, you call me. I don't care what time of the morning is. You call me first. Then you call the police.

And so we are at opposite ends of the world, but there's something between us that's based in, I like him. I like his heart. It's just what it is. It's not,

He's not judging me or anything like that. Anyway, I wanted to say that because that has preserved my hope in going forward and having a personal connection with somebody. It goes back to last week's topic with Jodi Vance, disagreeing with decorum, finding respect when people live in a different way than you do. Disagreeing with decorum. But I mean, he's doing it too, though. He's granting me, you know,

a flaky artist and a liberal and don't call yourself flaky. No, no, but I'm just saying the perception. And he'll say to me, I like what you're doing with the horses. So there's our common, he's a hunter and he thinks it's a crock of shit too. You know, it's, it's much harder. It's much harder to hate somebody when you're looking them in the eye. You know, you mentioned that he, he's got the, I hate Trudeau thing and the bumper stickers probably that are a lot more vulgar than I hate Trudeau.

But I guarantee you that if he met Trudeau, the human being, he wouldn't hate him. And he wouldn't hate on him.

Everything changes when you can actually look at somebody. Now I realize there are certain, you know, sociopaths, psychopaths, you know, the Unabomber died a few days ago, but 99.9% of people, whether it's COVID or Schmovit or anything are not like the Unabomber. Okay. Some of them want to present themselves that way because it's a caricature that they enjoy on, you know, on Twitter or some other social media platform. But again,

It's impossible for anyone to meet Jan Arden and to meet your heart, regardless of whether or not we're in 100% support of your cause. It has nothing to do with it. We're meeting a good human being, a genuine good human being. And the genuineness of Jan Arden is much more important to that neighbor of yours than any particular cause. Or politics. Yeah. Well, my dad used to always say, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. And...

The older I get, the more that I really realize, because I watched my dad completely change his voting. He was never a staunch conservative. He, whoever was in our neighborhood that he liked and he'd, you know, once in a while he'd go to, you know, the meetings at the community hall and see what the fella had to say, you know, in the seventies and the eighties. I liked him or I liked her and I've never voted that way in my life. But, you know, you want the guy that you know in your community because what the hell is it all about?

And sometimes we disagreed. I mean, my mother loved Bill O'Reilly. God help me. God rest your soul, mom. But I would look at my mom. I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. My mom loves Fox News. I like it. It's entertaining. I don't know who my mother voted for when she had Alzheimer's. I tried to coerce her to vote my way. Just for the record, because I don't want people to think I'm hiding anything. My life is an open book. But for some people who haven't opened a book yet,

I did about a dozen shows for Fox News, Jan, so there you go. My mom would have loved you, Charles. She would have. Now, I wasn't, you know, just to complete the thought, I wasn't doing the stuff that they do on Fox News. Now, yes, I was conservative, but I was what I think of as, I still think of as a normal, normal conservative. I wasn't making up a lot of crap and getting into these conspiracies. I was Law Heed, and I was all those guys, you know, in Alberta, you know.

the oil and the agriculture. And I just grew up that way. And that's what we did out here. And, and then, you know, there was things are shifted and I got older and I found out more about myself and what I really liked and what I believed in. And I think,

I probably didn't really know what I believed in in my 20s and 30s and probably even in my 40s, Sarah Burke. I know. I'm still confused. Don't worry. But I just, I found my feet and it's so based on a vibe that a person has and who they are and their ethics and their kind of their moral compass and

You know, I'm not always in there thinking about economics and if I'm going to get a fucking tax break and things like that. I mean, listen, I pay a lot of taxes and I'm happy and proud to do it. I'm driving on roads and I'm going to hospitals and I'm paying my way and I'm happy to do it. I live a blessed life. You're not going to hear a peep out of me. I don't want a tax break. I don't want to pay less. I want to pay what I owe.

And I've never been like that. I don't have a group of people like get in there and find me something in the Cayman islands and all that shit. I'm just like, can I just pay what I owe please? Yeah. Great. But I, I know that, but I'm talking about for someone like me who does have this kind of a job and I, I get paid disproportionately from what my dad did. He said to me one year, he said, you made more this year than I did in my whole life, pouring concrete. And I bawled my head off. Well, I'll tell you, uh,

If we're going there, I guess we're there. When my mother found out what I was getting paid and she only found out about it with my straight job, I had several side hustles, Jan. So there I am, 19 years old, and my mother finds out what I'm making. And she didn't get overly emotional about it, but there was a piece of her...

where she was channeling my dad's anger. And she was saying, whatever you do, never tell your dad, never ever tell him because it would tear him up to know that he's working 80 hours a week, slaving over a sewing machine in his little tailor shop. And I'm making more in one hour than he's making in an entire week. And as far as my mom was concerned and my dad,

what I was making was brutally unfair because they felt it came naturally to them. I'm just a member of the family who's always told stories. And here it is. I'm telling stories on an open microphone and people want to pay me a ridiculous amount of money. You know, when you think of it in terms of labor compared to their labor. And so I never again talked to my mom about money. It was just not, not, not a great topic. Yeah.

You're in a new chapter. We should talk about this. So during pandemic, you stepped away from, you know, the syndicated shows and now you're doing your own thing. Did you not just launch the Charles Adler show independently? Yeah. Well, yeah. Through through Cryer Communications, it'll launch eventually. Sarah, do you want to know why we haven't launched yet? Tell me. Because I don't have a Sarah Burke. Yeah.

Seriously. So can I exploit this platform? I'm looking for a producer. I'm looking for a Sarah. I think I was pitched. I was pitched.

No, no, I'm not going to poach from anyone, especially from Jan. It's not a poach at all. She does a lot of stuff. And obviously, I will always be her favorite. And that's all I require from her. It's going to be great. I hope I'm a guest on your show. As soon as we have the infrastructure to launch the show, I'm ready to fly. But independently is what I'm getting at. Get out of my mind. I was just going to say, what does independently mean? Get

brain. Yeah. So how does it feel being like independent of a big corporation? Big brother. And doing it yourself, deciding your own content. What's the vision? Well, you know, the thing is, for the most part, I can't really complain. For most of my career, I was allowed to say anything I wanted to say. I was allowed to interview anybody I wanted to. I was allowed, I guess, a license I had, which some people don't have, is I had a license not to kiss ass.

to certain politicians to make sure that the station or the show continued to have access. So even though I was known as a conservative talk host, the

The Stephen Harpers of the world and many other conservatives never wanted to do my show because I wasn't predictable enough for them. I wasn't an automatic friendly. I wasn't going to not ask challenging questions. You were going to hold people accountable. Yeah. So Stephen Harper did my show, I mean, a handful of times. It was two or three times. One time he insisted it was a, I just wanted him on because we were trying to raise some money for Haiti after one of the earthquakes.

And he made me actually swear into a... On a Bible. His comms person's phone. I had to swear into the phone that I would not ask him any questions except those that related directly to the Haiti earthquake. So no domestic or foreign policy items at all because I just wasn't predictable. So to make a long story short,

The companies that I worked for allowed me to have that kind of, uh, independence in the last couple of years with COVID, uh, things changed a little bit and not for the better as far as, uh, 100% artistic creativity is concerned. So between that and, uh, and the pandemic and how the pandemic turned, uh, some people into angry paranoids, uh, the fun and talk radio left and, uh,

And there was no desire on my part to do a podcast at all. I just thought, hey, I've had about half a century of radio, more than 30 years of talk radio, States, Canada, awards. I felt that the people of Canada were far nicer to me than any human being deserved. They allowed my family into the country. You know, in the 1950s, we were political refugees and I was two and a half years old and my

My dad saved my life. He threw me in his backpack and we ran for the border and we got here and we didn't know where we were going to end up, but Canada took us in. So my whole career has been a thank you card to Canada. In any case, I just felt like my good fortune had, you know, sort of come to an end and I had, I had 50 more years than, uh, than most people get. So I can't complain. So when people talk to you and go on about freedom,

Charles Adler, who has been our guest today. You really have to understand the depth of Mr. Adler's experience and where he comes from, where his family has come from.

what this country means, what an amazing country this is. In all its grand imperfections, we truly have a democracy that works. We have leaders that put themselves in harm's way day after day after day after day. They face so much vitriol. It wouldn't matter who was sitting in that chair. There's going to be half of the people that can't stand you. And even if you're in that chair by some slim majority, I give you a year and you're going to be facing the same kind of vitriolic crudeness

crap. It's just this circle that people don't even understand. Danielle Smith, I always want to call her Danielle Steele, which would be an insult to the author, Danielle Steele. My friend said, why did you call

I said, Daniel Steele. She goes, no, that's the romance author. You're talking about Dan. I said, Daniel Smith, Daniel Smith. I always say, I'll give it another year. And it's going to be the same kind of narrative about get rid of her. And she's got to go. And I can't wait for that to unfold because all the people that think they're going to get what they're going to get are not going to get what they're going to get.

They think they're somehow going to get disfavoritism and that they're going to be rewarded for all this stuff. And that's not how politics works. Thank God we have the biggest opposition here in Alberta than we've ever had. We have more seats. We have a bigger voice. Rachel Notley. I was absolutely supporting Rachel and her team. But democracy works, and I absolutely respect and admire that. And I hope the best for our province. I'm not moving anywhere. I love Alberta. Some of my buds in Alberta were...

you know, ticked off with me because it was New Year's Eve and I decided I needed to make a statement about the coming year. And I endorsed Rachel Notley. And of course, nobody in Alberta or anyone else in Canada thinks of me as an NDP supporter. But it wasn't about that. It was about my beloved Alberta. I've been based in Alberta three times. The best breaks in Canada came to me through Alberta. I've got a

A deep affection for the folks there. And I do not believe, I never believed that anywhere close to the majority of people in Alberta were right wing. I thought of them as, you know, moderate conservatives, center, center right. That's kind of where I've been. I've been a Peter Lougheed conservative for all my adult life. That's what I was comfortable with. And that's who I was comfortable with.

And I have every reason to believe that the majority of Albertans are still that way. Oh, yes. We're going through some turbulent times here. The airplane will get to where it's supposed to get, but we're hitting turbulence right now. Every fire runs out of things to burn. That's my grandmother used to say that. Our guest today has been the incomparable, outspoken, fantastically kind and very direct Charles Adler. And we wish you

So much good luck with your podcast. I'm going to be one of Charles's guests. We're going to have a link in the show notes. And I just think you're incredibly smart and incredibly brave and you put yourself out there. You're one of the good guys and I'm happy to call you friend. I

I can't wait for our coffee in Nashville. I'm buying. You get the flights. I'll buy the coffee. No problem. That's a great deal. I love that. I love that deal. Jan, thank you for not making me beg. I was going to get down on my knees and beg you to be a guest on my show. Oh, I'm there. You've just offered, so you've saved me the indignity of begging for it.

Thank you. Thank you, Charles Adler. You're listening to the Jan Arden Podcast. I'm here with Sarah Burke and Charles. We'll see you soon. Toodly-doo. Thank you. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.