A bombshell about the AFL-CIO gets dropped in the Larry Householder corruption case: Today in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The leader of the Ohio AFL-CIO is aiming to keep himself off the witness stand at the criminal trial of Ohio’s former Speaker of the House.

We’re talking about why he doesn’t want to testify in Larry Householder’s trial on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

Let’s take a few minutes to talk about John Adams, who provided a soundtrack for Cleveland in his drumming at Cleveland Guardians games. He died Monday. Is there anyone who is more of a Cleveland icon than a guy who night after night sat in the bleachers and helped the heart pounding during key game moments?

Why is the leader of the AFL-CIO working so hard to stay off the stand in the Larry Householder trial, and what juicy morsel of news came from his court filing?

It had been a while since we took stock of the state of in office work versus at home work. What did reporter Sean McDonald find when he surveyed local companies and talked to the experts?

We often wonder on this podcast about how fast we can transition to electric vehicles because of all of the challenges involved in charging the batteries. We received a piece of the answer in a company announcement Monday. What is it?

Are Cavs and Guardians fans in danger of losing access to games on television because of trouble with the network that offers them?

Is Cleveland falling way behind its goals for abating lead in city residences? What are the latest numbers?

So it really is possible for an Ohio Supreme Court justice with a conflict of interest to recuse himself from a case. Which justice did so, and in which major case?

Ohioans did a staggering number of hours as volunteers during the pandemic, and reporter Zachary Smith crunched the numbers. What do they tell us?

Cleveland Heights has an outsized piece of the Super Bowl story because a first-ever happening when the Philadelphia Eagles face the Kansas City Chiefs in a couple of weeks. What is it?

We have an Apple podcasts channel exclusively for this podcast. Subscribe here.

Do you get your podcasts on Spotify? Find us here.

If you use Stitcher, we are here.

RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here.

On Google Podcasts, we are here.

On PodParadise, find us here.

And on PlayerFM, we are here.

Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

[00:00:00] Chris: The final day of January, we have made it through one of the two worst months of the year in Cleveland. Laura, I’m not talking to you. It’s today on Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn, and I’m here with Laura Johnston, who loves this time of the year.

Lela Tassi and Lisa Garvin. How are you all on this final day of January?

[00:00:24] Leila: Doing very well. How are you?

[00:00:25] Laura: Yeah, yeah. I’m ready for February . I did see that we’ve survived the 10 darkest weeks of the year. There you go. Like around the solstice. So, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, I feel like it’s definitely lighter longer and I can really feel that the brightening.

[00:00:39] Chris: and we’re not that far away from the great day of the year where we turn the clocks ahead. Mm. Let’s get going. Let’s take a few minutes to talk about John Adams, who provided a soundtrack for Cleveland in his drumming at Cleveland Guardians Games. He died Monday. Is there anyone who was more of a Cleveland icon than a guy who night after night after night sat [00:01:00] in the bleachers and helped the heart pounding during key game moments?

You

[00:01:05] Laura: start, this was such a simple rhythm, really nothing flashy. John Adams said himself that he could teach a monkey to do it in five minutes and he can like really play the drums. He’s a drummer and he can play really complicated things, but this is just the boom, boom, boom on a bass drum. And I can still hear it in my head every time I think of a baseball game in Cleveland, even.

Been years since he’s been able to play a progressive field. It’s instantly recognizable and he knew that John Adams was up there in the bleachers, rooting for the home team. It really was stirring, and it happened for nearly five decades. We’re talking about a 3,900 home games. The heartbeat of Cleveland baseball, I don’t, I don’t know that anyone will forget it.

I saw lots of people posting on Facebook pictures of that they’d taken with John Adams because he’s a Cleveland icon, a celebrity in his. . It’s just, and he died Monday at, at age 71.

[00:01:59] Chris: And it’s so [00:02:00] specific to Cleveland. Mm-hmm. , it is unique to Cleveland. And any baseball game you went to, it was there. It’s just, it’s hard to imagine that, that it’s not there anymore.

Lisa, I don’t think you probably experienced it, cuz by the time you came back to Cleveland, this was on the, were you ever there at a, at a baseball game when he was pounding his.

[00:02:19] Lisa: Well, I was, um, my father managed to wrangle some tickets for the very first year that Jacob Field opened 1994. And it was like right around Memorial Day, and we were like in the farthest top bleachers, but I remember you, we could see down where he was.

And even though the Astros, for much of the time I was in Houston, they were in the national leagues. So we didn’t play the Indians, you know, or the Guardians Indians, um, you know, unless it was Interleague. But when. The World Series was on TV and the games were in Cleveland, like in 96, 97 when they went to the World Series back to back, it was like, wow.

I mean, you could hear him. And that was like, it was like a drumbeat of home for me because I knew who he [00:03:00] was, and it’s just not a, it’s just not a game without him, quite frankly.

[00:03:04] Chris: Somebody posted on social media that there was a, there was always a special moment in the game where their heartbeat would match the pounding of his drums in a key moment, and they were in sync and it was so special and that, I think that’s the way he kind of came across.

To everybody, you would start to hear it. There was in Terry Pluto’s remembrance that’s on the front page of the plane dealer today. Uh, he talked about how in some of those early years, there were no moments for the drum because they didn’t start pounding unless somebody got the second base and they’d be shelling nuts.

And they would throw the shells on top of the drum. And finally when somebody get on the bass and you hit the drum, the shelves would explode in all directions. , cause they were so bad. Anyway, it’s a, it’s a sad moment, you know, when a city loses somebody like that, I, it just touches everybody. And you could see the outpouring throughout social media and everywhere else.

[00:03:57] Laura: And it was just his idea, right? Like he went, [00:04:00] he asked the, the. Indians at the time they’re at Municipal Stadium, can I bring this drum? And they were like, sure, why not? And then a baseball writer from the Cleveland Press interviewed him, said, are you gonna be here tomorrow? Wrote up a story. Said he was.

And, and so John was like, I guess I gotta go. And so it was just so organic. It was not a, you know, a ploy or some kind of marketing scheme. They came up with it. It’s just so Cleveland.

[00:04:24] Chris: He had a cascading series of illnesses, and so Terry did visit with him in sometime in the past year, and his, he wrote a story back then, but his remembrance cap uses a lot of that.

So it’s worth reading, uh, to, to see some of those cherished

[00:04:41] Leila: moments. I think my favorite part of Terry’s story is when he says, uh, when, when Adam says that every time. Entered the ballpark. It was like Dorothy entering Oz. Mm-hmm. that the place was so mm-hmm. alive and bright with color and, you know, and Terry’s story kind of closes his eyes and says, I can still see it now.[00:05:00]

Got a little misty-eyed when I read that part. Mm-hmm. .

[00:05:03] Chris: Yeah. A few people make the world a better place day in, day out. And he made Cleveland a better place, like Laura said, for five decades. It’s today in Ohio. Why is the leader of the A Ffl C I O working so hard to stay off the stand in the Larry Householder trial?

And what Juicy morsel of news came from his court filing, Lisa.

[00:05:27] Lisa: Wow. They dropped a bombshell in this motion. They’re A F L C I O President Tim Berger was subpoenaed, uh uh, back in January 23rd to testify for the. So for householder, and when his lawyers ask, well, what do you wanna know? What are you gonna ask us in an email to householder’s attorney Nicholas Lesky, they got no response.

So Berger’s attorney Steven Molder filed a motion to quash the subpoena. He also dropped this bombshell. He says, well, the union got a 1.4 million payment from an account controlled by Householder [00:06:00] and his conspirators . So, wow. And that was, You know, previously introduced into evidence, so I guess they’re gonna have to chew on that.

But the A F L C I O was approached in 2019 to join the campaign against repealing house bill six. The union accepted the 1.4 million from Jeffrey Longstreth s USA and Generation now on the condition that they would control the advertising content and, uh, touting only the virtues of House Bill six. So not attacking it, which is what so many people did.

Included copies of the ads with their motion. So, uh, yeah, I guess they’re, you know, householders people are gonna have to work over that new bit of evidence. But a householder attorney, mark Maren says they’re not obligated to tell prospective witnesses what they’ll be asked on the stand. He says, we might have info that they know, uh, but we don’t wanna divulge it for strategic reasons.

[00:06:55] Chris: The, the frightening thing about this is the union was. to help [00:07:00] defeat a ballot initiative to repeal HB six, and the, the union said, Hey, we said we would only do it for in positive ways that this is about jobs at the nuclear plants that were getting bailed out. But it just shows the lengths that householder would go to, to thwart the, the voters.

The, I mean, this was an effort to put this before the voters so they could decide whether they wanted. To give this gift to First Energy, and he was doing everything possible to stop that the voters from having to say, with all of the spin, remember the Red China postcards? I mean, this was mm-hmm. , this was part of that same campaign to convince people that giving this gigantic sum of money to First Energy as a result of bribes, as we now know, was a good.

[00:07:48] Lisa: I, I just, yeah, I, I, like I said, I think this is a monkey wrench. They’ve thrown a monkey wrench into the trial here, and Berger’s attorney Noer says, you know, they shouldn’t ask the question if they didn’t know

[00:07:59] Chris: the [00:08:00] answer. no. That’s, uh, always a good line in a trial. Well, the trial, uh, the Lord, do we know, is the trial gonna pick up again today or is it still postponed because of Covid?

[00:08:11] Laura: I have not heard that. It’s postponed again, so fingers.

[00:08:14] Chris: So it could pick up today you’re listening to today in Ohio. It had been a while since we took stock of the state of in-office work versus at-home work. What did reporter Sean McDonald find when he surveyed local companies and talked to the experts?

Leila. Well, there have been

[00:08:31] Leila: a number of surveys that have given us a good, uh, view of, of what, what’s happening with this issue. The National Center for the Middle Market at Ohio State University, for example, surveyed a thousand mid-size companies in the United States in December and found a mix of approaches to this.

This issue of those companies, 454 said their workforce was primarily in person. Only 27 said they were mostly remote, and then [00:09:00] 519 had embraced this hybrid model Data from the employers Resource Council also shows that local companies are using a mix of in-person hybrid and remote work. Hybrid was the most popular of those working arrangements among companies surveyed for that data with 80% saying that their employees.

Work a hybrid schedule, and Sean included in his story some real life examples from our local workforce. Medical Mutual, for instance, decided to leave their downtown building and opted to consolidate at at their Brooklyn headquarters at least in part because. Workers had a hybrid schedule, uh, is almost finishing, converting the, uh, management services center in Shaker Heights into a hybrid workspace.

Many employees, like, like those in HR or finance, can opt for a hybrid schedule. Progressive Insurance put five buildings in their, in the eastern suburbs on the market. As it consolidates, it reopened its offices a year ago, and thousands of employees have started using them, but they say most of their [00:10:00] employees are still working remotely, at least part of the time.

So, Flexible hybrid or work from home policies became the new normal it seems. So companies are realizing that preserving some of that beyond the pandemic is really important for recruiting and keeping top talent. A representative from a recruiting firm told Sean that the first question out of the mouths of new recruits, as always, whether the job is remote and, and the a hundred percent onsite jobs are really the hardest to.

[00:10:32] Lisa: What was

[00:10:33] Chris: striking to me was the idea and the story that if the economy gets bad, the employers will squeeze everybody to come back. And the idea that. With remote work, you’re not really saving office space in the end because you want people together on the days you’re there and one person said you even need more space to make it more, I don’t know, collegial or something.

[00:10:54] Leila: Yeah. It was interesting that, you know, employers are very sensitive. Uh, About [00:11:00] creating what they referred to as a negative response culture, which is when a negative response to coming into the workplace sets off this domino effect of bad feelings toward the employer. That’s what’s really keeping a lot of companies from forcing folks back into the office full-time.

On the other hand, You know, the erosion of workplace culture altogether by, by working completely remotely is a real problem. And we all experienced that during these last few years. So a lot of employers are, are renovating their spaces to make them more comfortable and more inviting places to work.

[00:11:33] Chris: Look, it hit us. We realized last summer that, that it wasn’t working, that we were not getting the benefit of veterans working with newer folks. And, and the discussions that you need in a newsroom to to further refine a story idea weren’t happening. Mm-hmm. , you can’t do ‘em on Zoom. So we went back three days a week and almost overnight you saw a change in the way people were approaching their jobs.

It’s been. All positive. I, I [00:12:00] don’t think there’s a negative to it. What we’re wondering now is, is next summer, cuz people wanna be able to do all their summer activities in limited months when you can go outside, do we cut back? Do we go to two days a week? What are we gonna do? But I mean, I don’t think, uh, you or or Laura would disagree that this hasn’t been a

[00:12:19] Leila: positive.

I, I would not disagree. And I, I, I feel though also that having those two days, a. where people can work from home. It people feel appreciative of that flexibility and, and I agree, summertime is one of, I for one, during the pandemic would always sit outside and work in the summertime. Mm-hmm. . And I felt like for mental health, you just can’t beat some beat.

You know, the work from home arrangement when the weather’s nice.

[00:12:43] Chris: Yeah, I don’t think, what I,

[00:12:44] Laura: go ahead. I was, I was gonna agree with Layla. I, I, and I love just taking a break to get the fresh air and, and take a walk with the dog. Mm-hmm. or whatever. I, I do think what’s missing from this discussion, and I wanna put a plug in for something I wanna launch this year, is the discussion about childcare.

Because [00:13:00] I think, you know, the pandemic rearranged all of our work lives. Turn childcare upside down and a lot of people have been juggling, and I think that is a hamper to going into the office. If you have little kids, obviously you cannot work and raise a child at the same time from home. I’m, I’m not saying that, but it, it is more flexible to work from home.

And so I’ve, I see this as a key moment that we could be having this discussion in our communities about the best way to take care of our families.

[00:13:28] Chris: Nicely played, Laura. Getting that subject in. It is a project that you’re looking to coordinate this year. Way to Go. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. We often wonder on this podcast about how fast we can transition to electric vehicles because of all the challenges involved in charging the batteries.

We’re received a piece of the answer in a company announcement Monday. Laura, what is it?

[00:13:51] Laura: Well, one truck stop sees money in the future of electric vehicles. Travel Centers of America is teaming up with Electrify America to [00:14:00] install more than a thousand charging stalls for electric vehicles at more than 200 locations.

They’re aiming to put them about 50 miles apart along major US highways, and they’re supposed to serve almost all brands of electric vehicles. And here’s the Chris Creden question, right? How long is it gonna take me to charge my electric vehicle? Uh, so I, I looked this up. The fastest speed, direct current fast charging equipment, um, that can get up to 80% in 20 minutes to an hour.

Obviously that is still longer than it takes you to fill a gas tank, which I think is what the travel centers of America’s banking on, right? Because they have restaurants, they have a convenience store, uh, they have showers. If you’re a trucker, maybe they’re gonna put in playgrounds for families, I don’t know.

But they see a future.

[00:14:46] Chris: Look, we’ve gotta get there. The, the burning of the fuels is bad for the world. We know that really

[00:14:51] Laura: natural gas is bad. I thought it was super green .

[00:14:54] Chris: We, but, and, and this is a step in the right direction. And as, as charging efficiency [00:15:00] gets better, I am sure companies like this will replace their chargers so that people can move along more quickly.

But this, this will place them all over the country, which is needed for more and more people to buy these things. Yeah. And

[00:15:13] Laura: we’re not just talking about. Far in the future. They’re starting this year to put them in and I, you know, you see more and more of these pop up in different places and you think maybe this is viable.

I still think right now it’d be great as a second car, a drive around town kind of car. But hey, this is the future and, and it’s. . I’m glad that a company thinks that there, there is a market for

[00:15:36] Chris: it. I did read a story over the holiday break about an unexpected issue with electric vehicles. The batteries make them much, much heavier than gasoline engine cars.

And so in an accident, they’re, they’re more of a threat because they have so much more weight going into

[00:15:53] Laura: it. And then do they wear our roads more? Are we gonna have to think about that with that gas tax, uh, survey that [00:16:00] ODOT is?

[00:16:01] Chris: Right. That’s a good point. Little more weight. Does it? Does it get us worn down faster?

It’s today in Ohio. Our calves and guardians fans in danger of losing access to games on television because of financial trouble with the network that offers them. Lisa, the Cavs, they’ve had some. Road woes, but they’re a good team this year. People like watching them. What’s up with this?

[00:16:23] Lisa: This is really not good news and I have like a ballet, sports, you know, subscription.

You know, I watch all the games on tv, but, uh, diamond Sports Group, which owns Ballet Sports Ohio, and ballet sports, great Lakes and other regional sports networks is POed to file for bankruptcy and they will likely miss a $140 million. Payment, which is due in a couple of weeks. They’re about 8.6 billion in debt.

They owe 2 billion to Major League teams in in rights broadcast rights fees. Now, the calves really won’t be affected by this because their season, their broadcast season on [00:17:00] B S O ends in April. But the guardians might get, uh, they. This might, might not be good. They receive about 47 to 52 million a year from their regional Sports network contract with B.

That runs through 2027, but right now they’re preparing their TV schedule for spring training as if it will be broadcast on BS o. The options for Diamond Sports Group, according to Bloomberg, is that they can give the local TV rights back to the teams. They can keep the contracts but not make any. Which is the bad one.

And then teams could be offered equity in the company after restructuring in lieu of these payments. But Major League Baseball says they’re, they may try to take back the local broadcast rights. They just hired a brand new position, a new vice president of local media to deal with this issue. .

[00:17:52] Chris: One of the biggest complaints, the most numerous complaints we received about the Guardians last year was their [00:18:00] inaccessibility on television.

Laura talked about this. She couldn’t watch the games unless you bought this. And there were many people that are questioning the guardian’s philosophy here, because if you don’t make the games watchable, how do you build younger fans? So I guess in some ways if they got the rights back and they went in another direction, maybe this would be a good.

[00:18:21] Laura: I, I think so would, so I haven’t watched the Cavs game or Guardians game in years on TV

[00:18:27] Lisa: and see, because I have the package, I have the games on all the time when the, when the Guardians are on, the TV is on. But that’s, you know, but I’ve paid for that, of course. But you know, I, you’re right though, Chris, I think that, and maybe Major League Baseball needs to step in and take, you know, they seem like they’re thinking about that.

So, yeah, because this is a, you know, diamond Sports Group is a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting, which has been. You know, news and sports networks all over the

[00:18:53] Chris: country. Yeah. It’s a, it could affect a lot of fans, so it, we’ll have to keep focused on it until it resolves. [00:19:00] You are listening to today in Ohio.

Is Cleveland falling way behind its goals for abating lead in city residences? Leila, I actually see optimism in this story even though it’s kind of a bad news story. What are the numbers? I’m

[00:19:13] Leila: dying to hear your optimistic take on this so , but the, so, the city of Cleveland had set a series of rolling deadlines for rental property owners to register their units as being LED compliant, and city hall reporter Corn Alfi tells us that according to the most recent data that’s available, Only 20% of those properties have been certified.

The other 80. Out of compliance. And March 31st is the drop dead deadline here. Compliance is, it seems to be significantly higher among rental units in large commercial housing complex with 11 or more units. Also rental units in areas of the city. That were given the earliest deadlines back in 2021 seemed to have done pretty well because they, you know, got the ball rolling sooner, gave themselves more time to [00:20:00] complete the inspections and make the repairs and get their certifications approved by the city.

Single family homes and doubles have the lowest compliance rate, again, with the highest rates among those that had those earliest deadlines. So, These compliance rates are just not good enough. Over the first three quarters of 2022, the city received about uh, thousand applications every three months, but the city says that to reach a seven year goal of compliance by 2028, the volume of applications would need to reach about 2,500 for every three months.

[00:20:33] Chris: Look, it’s th this is big. This is a big job. It’s, it’s, uh, been a challenge for many years, but there was a stat in the story that said we were 1% after the first year, 1% ahead of Rochester, which is viewed as the leader in this. They were way ahead of everybody. And the other part of the story that I thought was instructive is those with earlier deadlines were up in the 40.

Area [00:21:00] and the ones that were in the later deadlines, because these were rolling deadlines, were the ones that were behind. So it does seem like the deadlines are doing it. You can argue it’s not fast enough. For every kid that’s poisoned by lead, it’s a pretty much a disaster, but this was always going to be a big job.

But what they did seems to be moving the needle after decades of not moving the

[00:21:22] Leila: needle. I was trying to think about the significance of this deadline issue because, , the ones with the, the, the more, you know, the more recent deadlines, nothing prevented them from starting this process sooner. Right.

[00:21:35] Chris: I mean ex, but they didn’t have a deadline.

I mean, I look, the deadline appears to work if all the people with early deadline, not all, only 40%, there’s still a long way to go and look. The, the i, the, the, the city used the, the story says the carrot approach in the beginning. Now it’s going to very slowly start using the stick. They’ve started to file charges.

They’re starting to see things go through the courts. Thi this needs [00:22:00] to be the partner. Between the apartment owners and the homeowners and the city and I, they, they seem like they’re trying to get the right balance. Ultimately, you wanna abate as much lead as possible. What’s the best way of going about

[00:22:15] Leila: that?

Right, right. And you’re right that they have tried to incentivize compliance by offering grants to property owners to help them make their properties led safe. And if that doesn’t work, they’re gonna start getting tough on. They have a prosecutor who’s now dedicated to prosecuting lead law cases.

They’ve already started filing citations. I mean, the problem is property owners can just pay a $500 fine and make the citation go away, and that doesn’t fix the lead problem or prevent kids from getting poisoned. So the city will likely have to get even tougher and start charging them with misdemeanors to make it hurt.

but that’s

[00:22:50] Chris: okay. You raised, you raised the pressure bit by bit. I think they came up with a methodical approach that is showing signs of working. I, the, the next step [00:23:00] is let’s, let’s see if we’re seeing a change in the number of kids that are being poisoned by lead. Because at least some of these buildings are safe now.

Fascinating story. Check it out. It’s on cleveland.com. So it really is possible for an Ohio Supreme Court justice with a clear conflict of interest to recuse himself from a case Laura, which Justice did so not at the wine and in which major case

[00:23:26] Laura: we’re talking about Joe Dieters. Uh, he was recently appointed to the court by Governor Mike DeWine, who as we know has a son also on the court, pat DeWine, who did not recuse himself in the gerrymandering case, but this is a huge.

Case as well. This is the Heartbeat Bill Case, uh, filed in Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas in September. At the time, he was the Hamilton County prosecutor and Jesse Hill, an attorney for the providers, wrote to the court clerk on January 11th asking deeds to recuse himself, and then he announced that he was going to do that.

Last Friday, so the [00:24:00] court will appoint another judge to hear this case in place of deeds if the court decides to take the appeal. So you still have seven judges, I’m assuming the replacement will also be a Republican, but they’re looking at this case basically right now, you can still get an abortion up to 20 weeks.

Well, you can get an appoint 22 Okay. In Ohio and it, the heartbeat bill would limit it to about six weeks. So that right now is a stay on that heartbeat bill law while they figure out if it’s completely legal. So there’s kind of two cases, well, it’s one case, but they’re deciding if they should keep the stay, and then the larger case will be decided maybe later this year.

Well,

[00:24:38] Chris: a salute to deters for doing the right thing and a suggestion that he have a conversation with his colleague, pat DeWine . It’s today in Ohio. Ohioans did a staggering number of hours as volunteers during the pandemic and report. Zachary Smith crunched all the numbers to figure out what the totals are.

Lisa, what did those numbers tell?

[00:24:59] Lisa: This [00:25:00] is, this is awesome news. Um, AmeriCorps and a Census Bureau research, you know, crunched the numbers about volunteerism during the pandemic from September, 2020 to September of 20 21, 2 0.2 million. 2.2 million, 2.2 million. Ohioans volunteered formally giving 166 million hours of their time, and that’s worth.

4.5 billion. So they looked at both, both formal volunteering, which is via uh, an organization like a food bank, a church, you know, if you’re tutoring, you’re doing covid testing. And then they looked at informal volunteering. And this is like helping out around your community and in your. Family house, sitting, childcare, running errands for your neighbors, that kind of thing.

Uh, in informal volunteering, almost 55% of Hawaiians lent a hand in their community. 41.7 donated $25 or more to charity. And when they crunched it, you know, as far as you know, demographics, Formal [00:26:00] volunteers. It was more women and actually more Gen X, which is people age 41 to 56. And then the 16, 17 age group volunteered the most.

And in informal volunteering, the men tended to volunteer slightly more, but not a lot. And the people that helped out informally mostly were boomers, veterans, and parents.

[00:26:19] Chris: Yeah, this is one of those feel good stories, right? You, you calculate all the nice things people did during the height of the pandemic.

How can anybody not walk away with a smile?

[00:26:29] Lisa: Yeah. And, and, and it’s good news. Uh, hopefully, you know, some people have continued their volunteerism after the worst of the pandemic is over. We might have to look at that as well.

[00:26:39] Chris: All right, you’re listening to today in Ohio, Cleveland Heights has an outsized piece of the Super Bowl story because of a first ever happening when the Philadelphia Eagles faced the Kansas City Chiefs in a couple of weeks.

Wait, LA This is very cool. What is it? So

[00:26:55] Leila: for the first time in Super Bowl history, Two brothers will be facing one another [00:27:00] as players on opposing teams. Kansas City Chief’s, tight end, Travis Kelsey and Philadelphia Eagles Center. Jason Kelsey, as you said, they’re from Cleveland Heights. Each has won a Super Bowl with their respective teams before Jason’s Eagles won Super Bowl 52 in 2018 and Travis won with the Chief’s Super Bowl 54, 2 years later.

I guess Jason apparently joked on Twitter that he was giving up his Brief Chief’s fandom after Kansas City beat the Bengals to earn their Super Bowl spot. So , I guess it’s on, but it pretty exciting for the Kelsey family. Uh, it, I bears mentioning also that even though they’re making history as the first brothers facing one another as players, the Harbaugh brothers, John and Jim Har.

Coached against each other Back in Super Bowl 47 when the Ravens beat Jim’s 49ers. 34 to

[00:27:49] Chris: 31. Yeah. The Mannings never even went against each other. Peyton and Eli. Huh? They, the, the, they, they, they grew up but about five blocks from my house and [00:28:00] Travis was in school with my daughter. They graduated Really?

The same year. Same class. Yeah. That’s cool. Um, In Cleveland Heights, everybody knows them. And this is just, I, this is a big national story everywhere you look cuz it’s never happened before. Um, so it’s just kind of exciting. I, I think the Eagles are probably gonna destroy Kansas City cuz they look so good.

I should point out I’m from the Philadelphia area and when the Phillies finally ended their long drought of championships, they beat Kansas City. So I think Philadelphia kind of owns Kansas City. Go Travis. Cool story.

[00:28:34] Lisa: Will we? Doing well. I will say, I just wanted to say, I’ve say, you know, I follow a couple of local bars and restaurants on Facebook and a lot of them have Kelsey football pools where you can buy a square in a Kelsey football pool.

[00:28:46] Chris: Yeah. It, it’s just, well, look, we don’t, we’re, I don’t think we’re ever gonna have a day where our local football team goes to the Super Bowl, but we can have local guys go to the Super Bowl and. To accept. That is our lot. Very cool story. [00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Leila: I’m on. I’m on team. Chelsea

[00:29:05] Chris: you’re listening to today in Ohio. That’s it for the Tuesday podcast. Thanks, Layla. Thanks Laura. Thanks Lisa. Thanks, everybody listens. We’ll be back on Wednesday.