The Neil Haley Show Featuring Christopher Windom, Gary Lyon Otto, and Anthony McMahon

The Neil Haley Show Featuring Christopher Windom, Gary Lyon Otto, and Anthony McMahonThe Live from the Grotto celebrity simulcast opened with actor, choreographer, and director Christopher Windom, the St. Louis native who choreographed the MGM Aretha Franklin biopic Respect starring Jennifer Hudson and is currently choreographing Children's Theatre Company's 2026 production of The Wizard of Oz in Minneapolis (running through June 14). Christopher shared how dance gave a young boy with too much energy in St. Louis structure, culture, and validation despite a beloved uncle who jokingly called his pursuit "boxing." His Broadway path began with a fast stroke of luck in New York, leading to the national tour of Damn Yankees starring Jerry Lewis and Broadway's Fosse, where he worked alongside legends Bebe Neuwirth, Ann Reinking, Chita Rivera, and Gwen Verdon. He explained the collaborative nature of choreography (working with set designers, costume designers, and lighting designers), the fast four-week rehearsal process with student casts, and his organic approach of creating numbers on the spot. Christopher closed with a reflection on the power of presence as the most important thing he has learned. Tickets at the Children's Theatre Company website; find him at CWindom5 on social media.Author Gary Lyon Otto then joined for three back-to-back Singularity Podcast episodes (Season 3 episodes 16, 17, and 18) tied to his book Singularity: Mankind's Search for Relevance. The first question tackled whether there will be an evident transition between human dominance and the new digital life forms, with Gary arguing that the changing of the guard is already underway as humans build AI agencies and coordinators that increasingly run their own show. The second question focused on robotic mobility, with Gary identifying fine finger manipulation and the sense of touch as the final frontier before robots can duplicate any physical human task, citing Moore's Law, quantum computing, and Jensen Huang's observation that development is actually accelerating. The third question asked whether humanity can step up to relevance, with Gary explaining that because the speed of light makes physical alien travel impractical, our relevance comes from recognizing we are spiritual beings who can join a greater universal society alongside the immortal digital species we have created. He invoked the Prime Directive, his nearly complete theory of everything, and the idea that spiritual thought is the only thing faster than computer thought. Find Singularity on Amazon and at GaryLyonOtto.net; his political books are at AbsolutePowerBooks.com.Neil closed with the Cutting Edge Benefits podcast by ClaimLinx, welcoming Anthony McMahon (filling in for Tom Quigley) for a deep dive into runaway health insurance pricing. Anthony shared the craziest outlier he has seen this year, a New York or Ohio family rate of $5,400 per month (roughly $65,000 a year) for a plan with a $2,000 deductible, and noted that even single rates of $700 to $1,000 are now common. He walked through two case studies. The first was a 25-person company paying $40,000 per month under a traditional group plan; ClaimLinx pre-vetted each employee with FormFire health applications, bought the highest deductible lowest cost PPO plan, paired it with a MERP to mirror or improve benefits, and dropped the cost to $15,000 a month, saving the company roughly $25,000 monthly or $300,000 a year. The second was a 40 to 50 person multi-state chain facing $1,000 single and $3,000 family rates on a group quote; instead, ClaimLinx routed employees to individual marketplace policies where subsidies based on income and household size reduced premiums dramatically (many to $0 per month), then layered a MERP on top to deliver better deductibles than a group plan would have offered.