Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Derek Hunter podcast.

Your ears are not deceiving you.

I am not Derek Hunter.

I have been writing checks in his name, but don't let that fool you.

My real name is Dean Carriannis.

I've had it since I was born, showed up on my birth certificate.

When you're a guest host, you know that the minute people hear you, the second they hear you, you're invading their ears.

Radio is very intimate.

So I take that responsibility seriously.

Hopefully many of you have heard me before and you're happy to hear me back.

I am a columnist at the New York Sun.

I write a bunch of other places, too. I also host the

history author show on IRR Radio. I'm a former member of Rush Limbaugh's highly overrated staff.

And one thing I learned from Rush, never treat people like customers, never treat the listeners

like customers. This was so important to Rush, and I can tell you endlessly frustrating to the people

on the marketing department who would have been happy if he was just constantly out there chasing

a buck and would put his name on anything. If you are old enough to remember John Madden,

he would endorse a ham sandwich if you paid him for it. And that was just the way that he made his

money and God bless him for it.

But Rush had a different mindset. He felt that too many plugs, too many commercials made people

feel like you were always reaching into their pockets. And he was uncomfortable with that.

And the way that that relates to me is I'm not going to plug any of my social media today.

...