Who was responsible for getting North Wilkesboro Speedway reopened?

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast. Brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. I love the Monday Night Football theme. Did you see the TikTok dance? It went viral. I can't think of the guy's name. He was like a child star. He was in a lot of movies. He may have been in the Sandlot.

And then he and some buddies. No, it's like the Freckley kid with the curly hair. Maybe the kid that plays catcher. Oh, the great Bambino.

Or the great Hambino, I should say. I think it's him. It's not him. It looks like him. It looks like him.

Grown up. Him and two of his friends in jerseys did basically like TikTok dances to all the different football themes. Like the CBS Sports. And it's hilarious.

Including the Monday Night Football. So now, every time I hear one of the themes in the past couple weeks, I'm thinking about, I'm picturing them doing the dances to them because they were hilarious. And now, I believe this is how TikTok works, right? I want other people to come. In fact, you're on TikTok.

You're out there making your real, I see you making your NC State disgruntled fan or exasperated fan, if you will. This is right up your alley. Get with your boys on the OG. This is seriously TikTok gold. Go find this video.

Put on some football jerseys. You, Julia Novius, do your version of it. And just like them dancing, they're not great. They're coordinated enough. But them not being good at it is part of the charm. And I feel like you guys can go for that same sort of lane there. Yeah, we can nail that. Like, we don't have to be perfect dancers. We'd be good enough and then it's funny that we're dancing.

It's football. There you go. Just throwing out ideas. I'm just gonna claim I'm the best dancer of all three of us. I'm just gonna go ahead and claim that. Wow. Now, by elimination, I'll probably give you that. Exactly.

I'll probably give you that. Novius would be no contest. I've never seen him dance or not dance. Putting it out there. Sandy can't dance. Jillio probably sneaky thinks he can dance better than he can.

Maybe enough to be dangerous. Like, he's been on a dance floor. But I'm not sure if what he was doing could be called dancing.

There's 100% speculation. You... I can see, again, if all you gotta do is clear the bar that they're setting, I'm gonna give that to you. Exactly. It's a very low bar.

It's a very low bar. And I've been in small theater production before. Did you dance?

Yeah, I did. For a moment. Alright, now I wanna see Dennis Cox dance. What would you dance to? I forget the name of the song that we did.

I'm not gonna lie. But the show was Tony and Tina's wedding. Like, partner dancing? Like ballroom dancing with a partner? No, it was a choreographed dance. It was the bridal party. We all did a dance as part of the show. Because it was like a fully immersive, like you were at a wedding. It was a lot of fun. Yes, I actually had to dance to single ladies too. I need to see that as well.

I need to remember the dance. It's been a few years. It is time to take some audio off the wall and listen to it. It's the wall of sound.

The wall of sound is a function of this studio. There's no doubt about it. You sips don't lie, Hayes. You shouldn't put that out there.

Yeah, apparently. Alright, I forgot to call for this earlier when we were talking about the Panthers, but I couldn't let this go unnoticed or missed. We got kind of a new reconfigured Panthers broadcast booth. Gone is Mick Mixon and his descriptive ways that gave us many great audio cuts. We now got our friend Anis Shroff in there. And Jake Delome, who's been in the analyst seat for a little bit, is also joined by Luke Keakley. And I don't even think this is a misspeak.

I think this is the right term for it. It was still just funny when I heard it. Miles Garrett had beaten Iki Akuanu like twice, one of them badly. And here's how Jake Delome described Miles Garrett during the broadcast this past week. You know, we haven't stopped him and our defense is really doing a great job.

Miles Garrett is starting to get extremely lubed up. I'm sorry? I'm sorry? Yeah. But again, that kind of described it well. It's the engine that rolls, man. And he was just, you know, gliding by Iki Akuanu right there.

No friction there. Yeah, there he goes. Also, Serena Williams. Anytime we got a goat talking about a goat, you want to hear what they had to say? Serena Williams talked about un-retiring the possibility of doing it in the Tom Brady manner. I mean, you never know. I always say I just been saying that, you know, I think Tom Brady started a really cool trend.

Retire, retire and retire again. And the way he did it. That was on Good Morning America. Here's my thing with Serena.

And I don't think we talk about this enough. We need to go back and explore her career because I remember screaming this at the time. So she came on the scene and won her first title at like late teens or something like that, right? And then there were periods where she didn't play every Grand Slam and definitely wasn't playing as many events in between as the other competitors, the other female athletes. And this was before she was the greatest of all time. I mean, before she had achieved the resume of greatest of all time. She was obviously great at the time and she was winning championships, but she wasn't playing as much. And people were saying she didn't take the sport seriously. She and Venus were starting businesses and they were like, whoa, you can't.

You're 21. You got to go after the Grand Slam every year, hard at it, every year you can because you might be out of the sport at 25, right? And they kind of said, you know what, we're going to do our own thing. And what was crazy to me was at the time they were criticizing the Williams sisters for not being focused enough on tennis. They weren't going to be able to maximize their titles and the window that you had to play tennis. There were like all these other girls that I'm not the tennis historian, so I'll get the error or whatever wrong. So don't penalize me for like, oh, that girl didn't play then or whatever. But like he had the Kim Klysters and the Martina Hengises, who all and I mean, even the Jennifer Capriatis, who all seem to like come on the scene hard at 16 and 17 like the Williams sisters.

And then they were gone by like their early 20s. Right. And so like, hey, maybe the best way to win the most Grand Slams isn't see how many you can jam in between the age of 19 and 24, where presumably you're in your best shape. Maybe the best way to do it is to pull back sometimes when you're hurt or when you're mentally not feeling great.

Look at Naomi Osaka right now. Right. Yeah. Like pulling back rather than like if you push through when you're hurt and you hate the sport and it's not fun, you're going to get to the end of a year where you push too hard. You like this is no fun.

I'm done. Instead, the Williams sisters always seem to take the tennis is great and like obviously it's our number one ability to make money and build our brand. But then let's use that brand to do things we like, you know, literally the things they like that fulfill them in life, but also other business ventures or things that they may not have the opportunity to do if they weren't famous tennis players. Right. So I've always applauded them and think there was a huge hypocrisy and people who said that they weren't passionate enough about tennis because they didn't play every single tournament at the age of 21. And she proved them right by being like, yo, I could still win Grand Slams in my late 30s if I love the game and I don't burn myself out on it. So to that same end, I don't it's not like a team sport where you got to show up at the time the rest of the team is or it starts to be weird.

Right. I'm fine with Serena, much like we would let Tiger Woods like Tom Brady is not the comparison to me. It's like Tiger Woods.

The it's an individual sport at any given time. If you're feeling up to yourself, even if it's two years from now or three years from now, if all of a sudden you're playing with some friends in the summer and then you're like, you know what? I'm feeling a little bit better than I was last summer. Bring on bring give me a secret workout with one of the best 25 players in the world. And then you're like, you know what?

I'm feeling good. Then go play the U.S. Open. Like I hate that it has to be this big hang up on retired or unretired like she's always going to be playing tennis whether she's training her daughters or whatever. And if she's feeling frisky enough to be in the draw, I feel like she's gonna have that same Tiger mentality of like, even if she knows she's not the number one seed, she's not going to go out there, which is just going to embarrass herself. But if she's at a point like, you know what?

I've been at the healthiest I've been for six months. I'm hitting the ball a little bit harder. My serves are going in at a percentage I haven't seen in a while. Yeah, I'm gonna go play a grand slam. That is how Serena Williams, I think, should be handling. Again, I feel like she should be on the Tiger Woods plan. And anytime you show up, the ratings are going up, the ticket sales are going up, and we're all excited. And if you, but it's like if Tiger's leading after one day, or if Serena goes a match or two deep, we're all in.

Case in point, the US Open, just now. That's what I want to see from Serena. I don't need it defined on retired or unretired, and I got no problem with her if she plays another US Open five years from now. She can do whatever she wants.

She's earned it, and again, she's good enough. And finally, on the Wall of Sound, look, sometimes coaches, we had Brian Kelly last week. You might have seen people for being late to the meeting, although even then, I think he was being playful, right? Sometimes coaches are short, but I gotta say, you gotta at least know who won the game. If you're asking questions, reporter, you gotta know who won the game.

There was a reporter asking the Akron coach about his upcoming opponent and didn't quite have it right. What are you expecting from Tennessee this week, given the way that they lost? Tennessee, they ended up beating Pitt in overtime. Did they? Yeah, they beat Pitt in overtime. Yeah, they ended up going to overtime, and they won. So they won 34-27 in overtime. Did they?

Whoops. That also has that empty feeling of a press conference. Every press conference looks the same if you don't see the media there, but that Akron one has the feel of, was there another reporter there? Was it just that one guy?

Was it one guy and one guy from your school, maybe? And also, you gotta be smart enough when the guy says, no, Tennessee won the game. You gotta be like, oh, my bad. I said it wrong, but I knew. I spoke, my bad.

But you can't do the, did they? Oh, I just watched the first quarter and assumed I knew the end result. Pittsburgh should have won that game, by the way. There's that.

But yes, reporters, you gotta be a little bit better than that, that dude. That is the wall of sound. Adam Gold in studio with my man Coach Pete DeRuder with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement. Coach, let's say I have more than a million dollar balance in my 401k. Congratulations.

Thank you very much. How can that actually come back and bite me? Well, because, and this is a thing that we, it's a mirage.

You see mirages, I've written in the desert before, you see what's water ahead, but it's not there. Well, your financial mirage is thinking that that total balance in your 401k or your IRA is yours. We have two people that want to get ahold of it, two uncles, Uncle North Carolina and Uncle Sam.

Right. Both of them are going to do some damage to that balance, depending on what kind of other income you have, you could lose 40% of your value. So if you're looking at a million dollar IRA, maybe it's only worth $600,000 to you. So how do we get around this? Well, you don't get around it because you end up in jail if you try to do that. But you can do tax planning to minimize the effect of taxation into the future. The tax train is coming Adam, we need to make sure to minimize the effect of the derailment of our financial accounts. And for the next 10 people, we'll do it at no cost or obligation, we'll put together your very own tax and retirement plan.

800-661-7383 or text ADAM to 21000 for coach Pete DeRuta. A little bit later, as you know, if you've listened to the show before when I've filled in Hayes Permar filling in, I try and run the show as it stands and do what the producer tells me to do. But they allow me to bring my check-on bag, I mean my carry-on bag, and in that bag I carry with me Rightly Rated for my Sports Channel 8 days. And we have a jam-packed Rightly Rated, so stick around a little bit later. A lot of items on the menu for Rightly Rated, many of which are going to be interesting.

And in fact, if you mix them all, it might be one of the most fun nights you've ever had. We've got Sun Drop on there. Oh, I don't want to give too much away. Don't want to give too much away. But right now, joining us is our good friend from the North Carolina Rabbit Hole, and we need to come up with a nickname for him. I don't know if he's like, West Durham is the mayor of the ACC, I don't know if Jeremy Markovic, like the North Carolina Whisperer, I'm not sure. I mean, Rabbit Hole is like the name of your thing, I'm not trying to take away from that. But we need a name for you, Jeremy, we need an unofficial role that you carry now as this storyteller of North Carolina. I'll try and think of something. Follow him on Twitter, at Definitely a Name.

For the first three years I followed him, I thought it was Definitely in Lane, but then I figured out it was something else. And we're here to talk about North Wilkesboro, the Speedway, and boom, North Carolina. Two of the coolest and most exciting things happening in sports and in North Carolina right now. But first of all, Jeremy, how are you doing? I am doing wonderful, I hope you are. And should I ask where you are? Like, are you at a state park or something? Like, you look like you could be on a trail in one of the North Carolina mountains to sea trail or something. Oh yeah, I mean, you would think I'm not going to state park or whatever, but I actually am in the forest at Wake Forest.

So that is where I am coming to you from today. Well, technically that wouldn't be Wake Forest though, because we've got that here just north of Raleigh. So that is some other forest in Winston-Salem, have you? The Wake-ish forest, how about that? The Wake-ish forest. The Wake-ish forest. I heard somebody in Wake Forest saying they were worried about new development, they were worried it was going to turn into Wake pavement and not be Wake Forest anymore.

I thought that was kind of a clever line, but regardless. You were on the scene as the North Wilkesboro Speedway opened back up. I know it was a couple of weeks ago now, but just talk about how cool it was to be there when racing was back. I mean, so the crazy thing about this track is that we all know of it as being like a dead track, right? We were all familiar with this being an abandoned place, at least a lot of us are, at least in recent memory. Because before recently, nothing really had been happening there.

NASCAR had not been there in 26 years. So I've been out there a couple of times, you look, it's quiet, you can hear the wind, everything looks like it was just abandoned and everybody picked up and just left it one day. And to see it come back to life, to see cars whipping around that thing at 100 miles an hour, to see it full of people with... You might be losing Jeremy there for a second.

It was really, really amazing to see, just to see it alive because it was dead. So to see the track alive was an incredible thing. And who do you give the most credit for, for the track being back? I know once there is success, a lot of people want to take a lot of credit.

Even, you know, politicians like to get in there and talk about things that they did in the budget. And a lot of people have been involved. Obviously Dale Earnhardt being involved, he seems not to be rushing to take credit. Who do you give the most credit to for actually bringing racing back to North Wilkesboro? I mean, like literally years ago when I was out there and people were talking like, boy, it'd be nice to have racing here again. I'm like, yeah, but that's like a moonshot. Like you'd need like four or five different things to break the exact right way.

And it turns out they all did, like they all kind of did. I mean, like you can give Dale Jr. a lot of credit because he was the one that went out there. And I think I've seen one of the NASCAR, the Twitter accounts, NASCAR Chasm. I can't, I can't, NASCAR sarcasm. Yeah, it works better reading it than saying it out loud.

I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, if you read it, you know what it is. But, you know, they made this thing where they had this picture of Dale Jr. with the weed whacker out there when it was like trying to cut the weeds down so they could scan the track for iRacing. It's like that's not a weed whacker.

That's a magic wand. So like he kind of really got it actually going. But you have to really give a lot of credit to Marcus Smith.

I mean, you know, this doesn't happen without him. This doesn't happen without his passion for this kind of project because everybody else had looked at this thing and said like, yeah, sure, you own the track. Speedway Sports Motorsports owns the track. But like what are you going to do with it? Like really like what like people look at it and say like, yeah, you can't do anything with that. So like he deserves a lot of credit. And then there's a lot of people in Wilkes County. I want to say Terry Parsons is a name that comes up over and over again. She is the widow of Benny Parsons, who was just this beloved NASCAR driver for a long time. And she lives in Wilkes County. She knows everybody in Wilkes County.

She for years, even when this was not even an inkling of happening, took the effort to make, you know, to call Speedway Motorsports. Can we get in there? Can we shoot a commercial there? Can we let somebody in to shoot something there?

Can we do all this stuff? She is really well connected. She knows everybody in town. She she was the one that when there was an opening to get this track back and have racing there once again, she was the one that like it's like, OK, let me get all of my friends and we're going to charge through that hole. We're going to make this thing happen. So you really can't overlook really just the passion for for this track. Not only it's like, you know, the NASCAR Dale Junior, you know, level, but also like the folks in Wilkes County. They really wanted it to happen.

And when like their time to shine came up, they really did it. Jeremy Markowitz joining us. We're talking about the North Wilkesboro Speedway. And then last week, the big announcement Dale Junior showed up in Raleigh with the governor to make an announcement about the NASCAR All-Star race being there next year. Now, obviously, that event is going to be successful. I mean, however you define success, there might be long lines getting in there. But like there's going to be people there. It's going to be crowded. It's going to be cool. My question and I hate to be this sound a little bit of a pessimist.

I don't want to be this way. But like we always talk about, oh, that cool restaurant that's closing and everybody goes there for the last night before it closes. Right.

Or whatever it is. Is there any chance that that there's magic about the speedway because it's been closed? Like five years from now, does it run the risk of, you know, just being a minor league track that doesn't support itself? And that the coolness of it was the fact that it had this mystery of being a closed track? I mean, that that is a great question.

That is a question that I asked Terry Parsons when I when I talked to her about this, because I was like, yeah, this is what happens. Like, oh, I want to go see this thing. I haven't been able to see a race there. And then at some point, like this is going to turn back into a racetrack.

Like this is going to be it's going to go from being this this amazing kind of experience to like, well, OK, I want to go there and see a race. And so I think the folks in Wilkes County know and I think even speedway motorsports know that like they can't just make this into a racetrack because that won't work. I mean, like short track racing is still around. It is still a viable thing. But it's a really hard business.

It's getting even harder. So you're watching a lot of short tracks have a really hard time. And North Wilkesboro is a short track. It's got a lot of history, but that's what it is.

So I think, you know, they know two things. One, one of the things that they know is that you have to use it for events, for concerts, for other things. The other thing is you really have to focus on the fan experience, because if you don't have a good time at the track, if if if if things aren't running well, if it's not a thing that you actually enjoy, if you're just doing it because you feel like it's a bucket list thing, then you probably yeah, you might not come back. And when I went to to Rockingham in 2012, this is kind of what happened. And Rockingham would have been closed for a long time. It reopened for a truck series race. And and it was a huge success. The next year, the crowd was very, very small compared to what it had been.

And and the trucks left. So they're very much aware of that. I think the one advantage they have is they have Speedway Motorsports and a large company behind them.

So, you know, it's not like they're doing this on a shoestring budget. They're going to be able to put some resources and really work on the thing that need to be done there. Well, I look forward to the North Carolina Rabbit Hole Music Festival with Chatham County Line, American Aquarium, Craven Mellon.

I don't know who else we get from Charlotte. I don't know. Yes, I look forward to that event there. It's been cool. Your connection with it.

All right. Another cool sporting event happening this weekend is a football game in Boone. But more exciting than that is who's coming to town to watch it.

And that is College Game Day. I know that the rabbit holes come out on Thursday, but I saw you putting out a call for the the Boone guide. Was there is there anything what are like the top five, three or five things that most people respond to of like if you're in Boone, you've got to blank. Well, you know, there's a couple of things.

That's that's the one thing I was kind of joking. They kind of fall into three categories here. Like all the responses I've gotten so far, they've been like, hey, oh, I like earnestly want you to go to this place, this place, because it's really good. Like, you know, like stick boy, like you got to go to stick boy. Oh, you've got to go up to Howard's Knob.

You got to do all these things. So like like like like a genuine thing, like if you go to Boone, you would actually enjoy this food or this view. The second category is is very much like I went to app like twenty five years ago and I got into some stuff and I don't know if it was quite legal. But maybe is this place even still around? Like, you know, like like is this venue? Is it still even there? I haven't been back in forever.

I wish I could go. So that's number two. And then the third category is like acts of God causing property damage. So multiple people have been like, you know, you really haven't had the full Boone experience until your car has been flooded out at the Boone. Yes. Yes. So so I am looking for all of this.

I'm looking for like, yes, please tell me where to eat, where to go. We want to share all that. But also like weird Boone isms like like there's like the the Gregory Brothers, like like, you know, the ones the ones that remix the tick tock video where the kid is talking about corn. Right. Is this is this enough of an earworm that everybody knows this now?

Enough people. If you're missing out on it, we're moving past you. So don't worry. Yeah. Anyways, they mix all these songs. The Gregory Brothers who like are insanely popular on YouTube, like they're from Boone.

They have a weird like Gregory Brothers song about Jimmy Smith Park. That is part of the Boone culture that everybody should know about. So I'm just trying to gather culture. And, you know, a lot of stuff that really matters about Boone and a lot of stuff that does not matter at all about Boone. But we're just going to have a fun time with it anyway. Excellent.

All right. Personal question for you, Jeremy, you are originally from Ohio and you've become this North Carolina storyteller. Do you think if you if your career and life had worked out and fate had kept you in Ohio, that you would have taken on this same role? Or is it like partly because you come with an outsider's background? I know you've been in North Carolina for a long time now. Is that more like, well, I'm in a new place. I want to get to know the things around me as opposed to like taking a take thing for granted that you're a native.

Like, do you think you'd have this same role in Ohio as a storyteller of people and places and sometimes weird off the beaten path stuff in your own state? I mean, well, I can think of two two responses to that one. Sure. Like, I'm just a very curious person. I'm interested in stuff. And and and like, like, this is what happened. This is kind of the reason why I started this this this newsletter is just because I'm like, oh, I'm really curious about this thing.

And unless I write about it and get to the answer, I'm just it's going to clutter up my head and it's going to be like one of many things I'm like thinking about. Sure. So at least this helps me get things off my plate. I'm sure I'd be doing that no matter matter where matter where I was. But the thing that's really special about North Carolina and like I was lucky enough before I really started this newsletter, I worked for our state magazine for six and a half years.

I'm writing for them for more than a decade. And I've gotten the opportunity to travel. They gave me the opportunity to travel all over from literally from Murphy to Manteo several times. And and like North Carolina has mountains. It has the coast. It's got the Piedmont. It's got large cities. It's got Charlotte and Raleigh. It's got tiny little towns. It's got like a history that is is is both good and bad.

There's been struggle. But there's a lot. There's a reason why people are moving here. Like it is such a fascinating place that is growing and interesting and right on the middle of a lot of different things. And as much as I love Ohio, Ohio is pretty flat.

Right. Like there's a lot. They have a great lake. Given that, you know, but like the diversity of literally everything in North Carolina makes it such a fascinating place.

And I don't know if you could do some of this stuff in any other state. I really don't. I really think, you know, it's got its problems.

We all know that it's got its struggles. But this is a wonderful place to be. And I'm just lucky to be here and I'm lucky to write about it.

And I'm lucky that literally there's like no bottom to that. Well, that once I once I feel like I've gotten to the bottom of one thing, like somebody else is like, well, here's some weird stuff. Check this out.

Let's do it. Check it out. The North Carolina rabbit hole. You can find out why there's random tanks on the on the Neuse River near Morehead City and all kinds of things. And this week, he'll tell you the best place to check out in Boone.

All right. You said you've been traveling the state. You get paid to do so.

You also do it for pleasure. The question, like any good reality show, have you been paying attention when you travel to these places? We're going to put you on the spot right now with name the county seat. I'll give you the county.

You give me the county seat. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. This is also I'm basically going to show my butt on this.

I think probably. No, well, you're going to you're going to. Yeah, we're going to help you look good.

We're going to help you look good. All right. First up, since we were talking about Watauga County, where game day will be, you know, where the county seat of Watauga is. It is it is Boone. It is Boone. He's one for one.

See, I wouldn't I wouldn't hang out like that, Markovich. We also talked about Wilkes County in this interview. What's the county seat of Wilkes County? That would be Wilkesboro, Wilkesboro or North Wilkesboro. I believe it is Wilkesboro. You are correct. Don't let me push you off your game. All right.

Let's get a little bit harder. Beaufort County. Do you know the county seat of Beaufort County, North Carolina? That is Washington.

That is good. He didn't fall for the trip. It's not Beaufort. Not Beaufort. It's one of those classics sitting out in the county. He's three for three.

So he's going to be a winner either way. Let's have some fun. Duplin County. Duplin County. Is that Keenansville? It is Keenansville indeed. And then my personal favorite, the best county seat of all, the smallest county in North Carolina. For bonus points, do you know what the smallest county is?

I do. It is Terrell County. Oh, well, then that's not what my information said. Well, forget that.

What about what's the county seat? Wait a minute. By land area? Oh, maybe. By people. I'm not sure. The Wikipedia said. Let's see.

Well, forget it. Clay County. What's the county seat of Clay County? Clay County is, I believe, Brasstown. No, no, it's not Brasstown.

I'll give you a hint. Well, Brasstown is where they lower, they used to lower the possum. See, I knew, I was going to say, if you don't, if you can't name the county seat, tell us something about the county. It is the spiritual center of Clay County, I believe, but that is OK. You went four for five. You're a winner. The county seat, according to Wikipedia, which may or may not be correct, is Haysville, population 311.

Haysville is the best county seat in all of North Carolina, of course. You went four for five. You're a winner. We put you on the spot. I knew you'd do fine.

Now we could go ahead. Carroll County is the smallest county by population in North Carolina. And I believe there may be more bears living there than people.

So I miss right here. This one is the third smallest by land area. Oh, smallest by total area. What's the difference?

It says Clay County is the third smallest county in North Carolina by land area and the smallest by total area. How could that be? Well, well, then, well, then you have like you have like people, you know, the water, like the sound. So I guess I guess I guess that would count anyway. Well, that's me going to Wikipedia and Jeremy Markovich for my North Carolina information. You're my two most trusted sources.

So if you guys are in conflict, I'll let you settle it. I appreciate the time. As always, keep up the great work. Check out the North Carolina rabbit hole. You could subscribe. Get new news right to your door this week. It'll be about Boone, North Carolina. Appreciate the time, dude. Thanks for having me. Follow him on Twitter at Definitely Inane. He is North Carolina's Whisperer.

We come up with a better name than that for Jeremy Markovich. I don't like or promote cheating. However, as an observer of sports, I know that, you know, the larger the money, the fame, the prestige gets, the likelihood of humans being tempted into cheating is a thing. I recognize this fact and I am intrigued, fascinated, entertained by attempts to cheat in a way that I'd say, well, yes, ultimately, I don't like that people's jobs are hurt by this.

I don't like the bikers that got left out of the Tour de France because all the bikers that were doping got the spots right. Like, I don't like that part of it, but absolutely, I'm intrigued by the methods people go to to try and get around the rules, whether it's like the Russian games where the Russians who literally built the testing sites had special bathrooms for the Russians to go in with secret doors in the back where they, like, exchanged urine so you could have better samples. Like, again, they should be caught, they should be punished, all those things, but I am fascinated at how they tried to pull these things off.

Same with the Houston Astros. If you're caught, you should be punished to the full extent, right? And taken to the game, all that stuff. But I still, and you should be made fun of. You should be booed and mocked and signed, should be, you know, made fun of if you get caught as a cheater.

All those things I want. But as an observer, I'm entertained and I think it's kind of cool when some people are like, you know what, we think it's worth it. We're going outside the rules and we're going to try and do something. So I could only fairly call myself highly entertained when I learned that the chess world may or may not be getting rocked by a cheating scandal. First of all, apparently, now I'm not an expert, so chess experts are going to be listening and be like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. You're right.

I'm only reading up on it. But more and more, chess is having to deal with basically the threat of one person standing there, moving the pieces, or sitting there, getting help from somewhere outside. And presumably outside, people could be sitting there with pictures of your board and running computer logs and everything else. What's the highest probabilities? It gives you the best move, you know, based on what the other person's doing. And it's really not you one versus another. It's you and the manpower of the internet and other people all working against this chess master. So we came upon the curious case of a chess master, Magnus Carlsen, withdrew from a major tournament with $350,000 in prize money.

I imagine that's pretty high in the chess world. After he lost to underdog Hans Niemann. Now, obviously, all the people at the tournament were high rated chess players, but Niemann was like the lowest rated chess player at this tournament and the least likely person to upset Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen left the tournament. Like, you know, you're not out just because you lost. You still play and you figure out where you finish up. But he bounced and he tweeted, I've withdrawn from the tournament.

I always enjoy playing in the name of the tournament and hope to be back in the future. And then and there was a video in the tweet that said, if I speak, I'm going to be in big trouble. Many people started saying that possibly this guy Niemann had cheated.

All right. They're saying Hans Niemann cheated. But it really gets interesting when they talk about how he cheated. Have you ever seen the movie Casino, Dennis Cox?

I know of it. OK, there's a famous scene where guys get caught cheating. And Robert De Niro has his guys bang on the dude's hand with a hammer and tells the other guy, get out of here.

And he says, you know, throws him out in the alley, whatever, never come back here. Like the movie 21. Yes, but they. But well, here's the difference. In the one we're in Casino, they're cheating by one guy sitting where he can see the dealer's card and he's using a little radio transmitter Morse code tapping under the leg to his buddy. And they show it in the movie. They've both got something up their leg, let's say in the upper thigh area.

OK. All right. And they show you a picture. They both got something strapped to the leg. One guy's kind of tapping his leg. The other guy's feeling the vibrations over on his. So this chess cheating set up. Was similar to the set up I described in Casino, where one guy had a device that's sending vibrations to his inner thigh, only how do we best say this at three o'clock on FM radio in Raleigh, North Carolina?

Yeah. The guy cheating is being accused of having the radio transmission receiver hidden in a place that would, let's say, I don't know, be the least likely place to be checked or spotted on a person's body. Do we need to go deeper? Not in between his toes, not in his ear, not up his nose, not in his mouth.

Do I need to eliminate more? He's being accused of having something, yes, on the backside, not where a catheter goes. Trying to think what else what else we could do. Yes. Having something concealed and a part of his body that helps conceal things and getting radio transmissions in there from an outside source that helped him beat the champion. Again, I don't condone cheating, but I am fascinated by this story about the possibility of what's going on in the chess world. There's even accusations being thrown around that the guy who walked away himself may have been guilty of the same kind of cheating.

There's more than one? Only he can't out the other guy because then he'd be out of himself. It's kind of like, you know, if you're playing golf with somebody and they hit into the woods and you find it first and you pick up their ball and you throw it somewhere where they know they can't find it and you're like, I got them now, they're going to have a penalty. They're never going to find their ball. And then later they say, oh, I found my ball. It's got the markings of their ball. Well, you threw their ball away. So, you know, they didn't find their ball. Right.

So, you know, they're cheating, but you can't accuse them of cheating because you cheated and threw their ball away. Right. So, everybody's just got to let it lie.

So, some people are saying that that's what's going on here. So, chess. Okay.

I just got to know. I wish I had a witty pun. They're not going to rook us. Fun take on this.

You know, there's the park it where the sun don't shine. You know, I hope someone could shine a light on this issue or whatever it might be. Maybe we should pawn our research off on someone else. Yes, yes. Well, those puns would be welcome. There's some other, you know, type puns that I feel like we shouldn't be playing in.

You'd say the sun don't shine when this thing was hitting. Yes, absolutely. So, anyway, I was fascinated by this story and I wanted to be true so badly because it just proves some people will do anything to win. Just the fact that you would actually think of that to do that.

I mean, if this is a real thing. Yeah. Well, and then. Okay. So, it's leading to a bigger issues. Now, they're saying more and more, they'll be smart fabrics.

Basically, you could have a shirt on with a patch somewhere that like nobody would know, wouldn't stand out, but would send just enough little vibration. Vibranium sewn into their thresling. I mean, we're getting there. Yeah. We're catching up to that Wakandan technology. Yeah.

So, cheating in chess. It's getting dirty. All right. That's all I'm going to say. It's getting real dirty.

Quite muddy. Let's take this thing down with Rightly Rated. I forgot.

Do we have music for Rightly Rated? Oh, do we? I think we've been overrated. There we go. I think they've been underrated.

Do we? First up in Rightly Rated, Boxed Swan. Is Boxed Swan overrated, underrated, or rightly rated?

I'll save you the answer. It's underrated. It's still the best.

Okay. This comes up because long-time California vintner Fred Franzia, the co-founder of Bronco Wine, best known for his Charles Shaw brand, aka 2 Buck Chuck, passed away at the age of 79. Now, I'm a little disappointed. They talk about his 2 Buck Chuck. You know, you could get it at Trader Joe's, basically $2 wine. You could get five bottles for $10 or whatever. In this tribute to him, and they talk about his brushes with the other wine grates and how he hated the highfalutin' wine society, so he always tried to make cheap wine.

Not nearly enough being made out of what he did for Boxed Swan, maybe. Franzia was the boxed wine industry, and I needed them to discuss that more. But R.I.P. Franzia. Apparently it's now owned by Coca-Cola, so it's less cool anyway.

But I also didn't know it was named after a person, but yes. Fred Franzia, no longer with us. Boxed Swan, underrated.

I'll accept no other answers. Next up, Sundrop. Is Sundrop overrated, underrated, or properly rightly rated? We talked to Jeremy Markovich about Dale Earnhardt driving at North Wilkesboro. He drove a Sundrop car, and we know Roy Cooper has been hanging out with Dale Jr. to get this thing done. Here is the governor discussing his love of diet drinks, including Diet Sundrop. I'm like a diet soda sommelier. So the Mountain Dew is sweeter than Diet Sundrop. Diet Sundrop has a little bit more of a tart taste. That's Roy Cooper, diet soda sommelier. Now I'm not a diet soda sommelier, but I am a soda sommelier, and I agree.

His review is spot on with regular, too. Mountain Dew is a little bit sweeter. Sundrop has that. I don't know how to describe it to people. It's in the Mountain Dew family, but it's a little bit different. They said it's a little bit more tart. Meliello, Mountain Dew, Sundrop, all have distinctive flavors.

Same family, though. Sundrop, overrated, underrated, or rightly rated? Underrated.

I don't really drink it all. It's probably still underrated. I like it. It's great in the summer.

It's good with some vodka and some other mixes. It's good. I'm glad the governor likes it.

And it looks cool when Dale Earnhardt's driving the car. Next up, Wendy's. Is Wendy's overrated, underrated, or rightly rated? That comes up because Wendy's may have had the best college football commercial of the weekend.

Here's what it sounded like. Reggie Bush had something important taken from him, so Wendy's is returning it. It gives me great honor to return this to Mr. Reggie Bush. The pretzel pub! Whoo! Let's go!

Back with its rightful owner. Come on. That's right. Don't touch my burger.

Yes, sir. Y'all can't take this one away from me. We haven't told him it's back for a limited time. Great commercial by Wendy's. First of all, they mock the fact that Reggie Bush got his highs entanglement from him, which now in today's world of NIL, all that stuff seems silly, right?

Any people who took stuff, it's like, really? We're really punishing him? Everyone knows he was the best player in college football that year. Everybody knows he won the Heisman. We really took it away from him.

So they poke fun at that, and then they have him saying, oh, they can never take it from me, even though it's for a limited time, so they are going to take it from him again. What even was the sandwich there? The pretzel pub burger.

But no, well done. College football's got a lot of good commercials. Of all the sports, it might have the best total commercial. I like the Diet, the Dr. Pepper town or whatever, that's all good. Wendy's, overrated, underrated, or rightly rated?

I don't know underrated on Wendy's. It might have moved to a little bit overrated. It used to be really good. I used to get a junior bacon cheese, fry for 99 cents, frosty was a good dessert. I'm not sure it's still the same. We've had some fun today. Enjoy some Franzia, some sundrop, some Wendy's, and whatever that chess guy was doing. This is The Adam Gold Show.