Learning about Parkinson's Disease

Today, Doug Pike interviews Dr. Elsa Rodarte about Parkinson's Disease.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. Remember when music sounded
like this? You remember when social media was truly social?
Hey John, how's it going today?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
This show is all about you. This is fifty plus
with Doug Pike, Helpful information on your finances, good health,
and what to do for fun. Fifty plus brought to
you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging, Informed
Decisions for a healthier, happier life, and now fifty plus

(00:43):
with Doug Pike.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
All right, here we go. Thursday edition of the program
starts right now. So thank you, thank you very much
for joining us in this afternoon pretty good look an
afternoon actually, and not not ridiculously warm, and certainly not
going to be hot if the predictions are correct. You
know what I got kind of tripped up with a

(01:05):
forecast that I looked at yesterday, and I may have
talked about it on the program, I'm not quite sure,
or maybe I was just talking to somebody over around
my desk, but I looked at one forecast and saw
that the predicted highs for that particular for the next
four or five days were all going to be in

(01:26):
the high nineties, like ninety eight, ninety seven, ninety six,
ninety seven. And then last night I was watching the news,
and I thought to myself, as the weather forecast came
on twenty four hours earlier, I didn't remember those high
predictions being that high. And I watched and the forecaster,

(01:50):
the meteorologist who posted his numbers for the come coming
five or six days, showed nothing higher than ninety five,
which is modest consolation. I guessed it could be much higher.
It could be a lot lower. I wouldn't be disappointed

(02:10):
if we caught another couple of days in the eighties.
That would be nice before we hit the bulk of summer.
I don't think we're going to get them. Maybe a
random eighty eight or eighty nine, but that'll be about
as low as we'll get probably from now through what
will at least through October and maybe even half of November.
Oh yeah, it just summer. Summer's an all day sucker.

(02:34):
It's just you just keep licking and it keeps not
going away, and you keep hoping that you'll get to
the bottom of it, and you just never do. This
is Houston, this is Southeast Texas. It's gonna be that way.
It's always been that way. I've lived here the overwhelming
majority of my life. I've only spent maybe six years,

(02:57):
let's see six maybe years. I think of my life
outside of Houston. No more than eight certainly, and no
more permanent residences except two when I was little. Everything
else was just kind of temporary stuff. School. I went
to school in Alabama. I played baseball over there for

(03:17):
a little while, and I had my mail delivered there.
Other than that, I'm a Houstonian. I know what it's like.
I've been through good heavens, I don't know ten fifteen hurricanes,
twenty I'm not sure how many. If you live here
long enough, you lose count and you're just glad you
make it through the next one. That's how it kind
of works out. And by the way, if you're brand

(03:38):
new to Houston and you're scared to death of hurricanes,
there's an adage run from water and hide from wind.
Nobody ever drowned because of wind.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Now.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I could knock something over on your house and get
a lot of rain in there, but you should be
okay if you just from the wind. And that would
even in our cases. Include most episodes of tornadic activity,
because as long as you get into an interior, say

(04:12):
an interior bathroom or an interior closet in your house,
you should make it through there alive anyway. And that's
that's your goal. But if you suspect or hear on
the radio, KTRH does a fantastic job of covering hurricane
news when these storms come. And if your neighborhood is
expected to take on three, four, five six feet of

(04:36):
water and you can still see the street, get out,
Go ahead and go somewhere else. That happened with one,
I want to say it might have been It wasn't Ike.
What was the next major one after that? Will I
feel like Harvey was Harvey? Yeah, you know, it might
have been Harvey.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
And I got one of those notifications on my phone,
In fact, I got several of them letting me know
that I needed to evacuate immediately because our neighborhood was
going to take about three to four feet of water.
It's coming. You got to get out of here right now.
And one neighbor, my buddy, Jeff Cooper, who's he had

(05:15):
He's the magiver of the neighborhood, always had been. And
on top of that, he had two very big, very
strong at that point, late teenage sons who pretty much
if they'd have had to, they probably could have gotten
on either end of a small car and just picked
it up and moved it up into the yard. That's

(05:35):
how big and strong they were. He chose to ride
it out and stay in the in the neighborhood, and
our neighborhood never flooded. I'm not trying to jinx it
for this year, but it never flooded. Oh. Anyway, if
you're new, you don't have to hoard things. You don't
have to lay away twenty cases of water in the garage.

(05:57):
You don't even have to put four cases of water
in the garage. There's a very good chance that's somewhere
with it. You do want to fill up your gas tank.
You do want to make sure you've got your medications
for this group especially, all of those things need to
be done. You want to have about two weeks of
medication in front of you because if the power goes

(06:18):
out like it did with what was that one blew
us out the free barrel Barrel maybe, yeah, barrel was
the hurricane last year. Yeah, that was that was like
seven or eight days at my house with no power.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Yeah, I think it was a day and a half.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, you're just bragging now. We had to make accommodations
for the guinea pig we had. I had to find
someplace where my wife could spend the night, and a
good friend, John Polis, was kind enough to offer me
a place to stay closer to work and a lot
easier so that nobody would have to listen to me

(06:57):
snore at night, because I kind of do that. He
I just kind of threw out a blanket. Hey, if
anybody's got a place I can lay my head for
a few nights and get back and forth to work
and stay out of your hair, I'd appreciate it. And
within minutes he just said, Hey, we've got room at
our house and nobody will hear you snore. Come on over.
And I'll be forever indebted to that guy, because my

(07:20):
wife and I tried it. Actually, I found a hotel room.
I can't tell anybody where, it doesn't matter, but I
found a hotel room for her, and the first night
she was just she she didn't get a wink asleep
because I snored all night and I got awakened five
or six times to let me know I was doing that,
and we just it just had to change. I went

(07:42):
back to the house actually, and it was miserable. It
was what like ninety degrees or whatever, and just humid
as can be, got no power, got no nothing. And
it all worked out as it usually does for most
of us. Harvey was horrible on the west side of town,
remember that Will almost all of the well not Memorial,
but farther out, like around Darrell, All of that bayou

(08:05):
coming out of the Attics Reservoir had to be stopped
and ended up flooding hundreds of homes, if not thousands,
to protect areas farther downstream. And that that changed a
lot of the way we look at things around here
in more than one way. Actually, Oh my gosh, already

(08:26):
Will yes, Oh my, I have so much more that
I've never even gotten near to covering. We're gonna have
plenty today coming up. By the way, we're gonna talk
about Parkinson's disease with a woman who is who is
part and parcel to some of the research that's going on.
We'll talk to her in a little bit on the
way out ut House Institute on Aging. Is that amazing

(08:49):
collaborative of providers, mostly over in the medical center, who
are so concerned for us, for seniors, that they've gone
back and gotten a dish training additional help to find
out how exactly to apply all of their knowledge which
is vast specifically to us when one of us walks

(09:11):
into their exam room, when one of us walks in
for a consultation for physical therapy, for whatever it is.
These providers know a little bit more than the average
provider just about us and what makes us tick. It's
a nice advantage to have, and it's available to us
right here in Houston now. As I said, most of
them in the medical center. However, most of them also

(09:34):
do a little work a couple of days a week
outside of the medical center, so that if you need
to see one of them, you can do that. You
don't have to drive into the mediciner if you don't
want to, if it makes you uncomfortable, if you're scared
of the traffic, whatever it is, just find get on
the website ut H dot edu, slash aging and find
where you can see somebody from that organization, that group,

(09:57):
that collaborative out closer to wherever it is you live,
around town. U t h dot ed U slash aging
ut h dot ed U slash aging.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Aged to Perfection. This is fifty plus with Doug Puts.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Welcome back. Thanks for listening to fifty plus. Greatly appreciate
that I could have listened a little bit more of
that song will but we have important things to do.
We'll do that next time. Thanks for sharing your lunch hour.
We'll talk in this segment about Parkinson's disease, a condition
that's shared, that will share with the world. Really when
Michael J. Fox revealed years ago that he was dealing
with it, and to help me, I will enlist the

(10:36):
help of doctor Elsa Rodherty, movement disorder specialist and assistant
professor at McGovern Medical School.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Welcome aboard, doctor Hi.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Oh my goodness, no formality for me. I'm just Doug.
It's okay. So, so before we go any farther, how
about a clinical definition, but still one that my audience
and I can understand of what Parkinson's disease is.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Right, So, Parkinson's disease is actually a syndrome, and that
means a collection of signs, which is something we can
see and measure, and symptoms, which is something the patient fields,
and it was initially described around the time of the
Industrial Revolution in England. And this man saw that, you know,
there were several people that he noticed were taking short

(11:25):
steps and not moving and stooping forward when walking. And
so the collection of slowness in movements and also in
thought actually and an organization. So just slowness in general
plus either rigidity or so like you know, you're stiff
or turmor. You don't necessarily need to have tramor, but

(11:46):
either or. And then you can also have postural meaning
difficulty walking or reflexes like when turning, for example. So
the collection of those things together is called Parkinson's disease.
Now it's not one disease, it just can be caused
by multiple things.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Oh my goodness. So would you happen to recall how
much attention was being paid to Parkinson's prior to Michael J.
Fox shining a spotlight on it.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, he's definitely shed a light on it. Oh yes,
And I read his story actually, and it's really really
interesting that he got it when he was very young,
but not just him, but other people in his set
when he was filming Leo and me, like four or
five people in that set work out of like a hundred,
which is not you know, I know that he Yeah,
they called it it's epidemiologically plausible, but it's very interesting.

(12:35):
So there's you know, the environment does play a role.
So you're wondering what wasn't that said, like were they
exposed to a virus or to radiation in the mountains
in that area in Canada or you know, just it
could be many things.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Indeed, it could. It just takes more and more study.
Speaking of there are I read the couple of clinical
trials under way. Now are they looking for better treatment
options or maybe in for a potential cure someday, that's right.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, So the new studies that you were wanting to
cover are the stem cell studies. And the truth is
the truth is that because we don't really know what's
going on inside the cell, this is like a like
a bomb measure, right, you just give everything back to
the body, the whole cell, instead of just you know,
tweaking this protein or that little so you just you know,

(13:25):
like in leukemia, the cells are bad in the bone, Okay,
let's just give them a bunch of cells and replace
their cells for these cells. And there are many other
diseases where they're use So now they're studying, well, have
face one into trials that assess safety to see if
they can be helpful for Parkinson's. Okay, yes, so they

(13:45):
were actually you know, even though the phase one trials
assess safety, they were they also showed some efficacy so
now it has to be proven afterwards. And the two
trials were one with in based in the US Memorial
slow kettering was kind of organizing, but it was in
multiple centers, and the other one was done in Kyoto.

(14:09):
The one in the US was done with embryonics them
celves human and the one in Kyoto in Japan was
done with donors themselves, so they're you know, they're similar
to well there themselves means that they can become any
other type of cell, right, but there's different types of themselves.
And so the embryonic ones that come from you know,

(14:30):
human embryos and they have their ethical considerations, and the
Japanese ones in this study were from donors, so they
can be your skin cells. They're not you know, as controversial.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
That's just so much above my pay grade. And I'm
not I'm not I'm soaking it in. I'm learning as
I go. But and it's fascinating to me because I
get to hear from from people such as yourself, things
that I could never have even imagined are going on
around the world, and it's just it makes me so optimistic. Now,

(15:04):
I did hear that these were kind of relatively small studies.
Is there a reason why it's hard to get more
more patients on board for for trials like these?

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yes, well, they involve brain surgery, right, Oh, and there
are actually a few where not only do you get
brain surgery, but in some studies you are part of
the what is called the control so you are you
may have just like what they call sham surgery, where
you get a surgery but you don't actually get the treatment. No,
it's hard to convince people to join that type of study.
But in these two studies, in these two particular stem

(15:37):
fell studies, there were twelve patients in the one in
the US and seven in the one in Kyoto, and
they all all patients got some sort of treatment. Some
got high dose of cells like three million cells in
you know, in their brain, and a part called austraatum,
which is like deep deep in the brain. And and they're
important for Parkinson's and then the low dose group got

(15:57):
zero point nine million. That's for the US study for
kill the study, we don't know exactly what blowing hind dos.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
Were, but you know, kind of it would kind of
make sense doctor, regard to you that regard to that.
If I was given the option of, hey, we want
you in this trial and we're going to have twenty
people and ten of them are going to get stem
cells and ten are going to get an injection of
kool aid into their brains, I'd probably pass. I think
I would How effective has this been? What are the

(16:25):
what are the results you're starting to see? How long
has it been going on? I got so many questions
for you.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
You know what, Actually, in some studies, even if you
are in the sham arm and the sharm group, okay,
then you can get the treatment after the study. And
so they think like, okay, we'll measure you know, at
some months or twenty four months, and then everyone can
get the treatment, and that's sort of motivation. Yeah, but
I'm sorry, what did you ask? No?

Speaker 3 (16:50):
I was just well, I had so I just threw
about twenty of them at one. What's the current treatment
plan for someone with Parkinson's. I don't want to run
out of time and think that every body's going to
have to wait ten years to be able to get something.
What's going on now with Parkinson's.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Right, So the reason these stem cells have been going on,
the stem cell trials have been going on for a
long time, you know, but the new thing for the
take home message for these stem cell trials were that
they did not have the graft induced this ginesia, the
abnormal movements that can be a side effect of stem
cells in the brain. Okay, yeah, and so they had

(17:27):
no adverse effects or tumor produce. You know, if you
place cells that can turn into anything, you can have
a tumor that has in it. But this was not
the case with this sad But they were short, so
that's why it's also important to follow them up and
do longer studies with more patients treat Parkinson's just treated.
I always tell patients to exercise, that's one thing that

(17:48):
can delay the progression of Parkinson's, and of course physical therapy.
Now what is important is to replace those cells that
have been lost. So Parkinson's patients have a loss of
dopamine producing cells in the brainstem and what we try
to do is to replace that. And so in the
sixties it was found that there was this compound called

(18:09):
levadopa that the brain cells can transform into dopamine and
then you can kind of move again. Right, So that's
the main treatment for parkinson still, and we have now
a new subcutaneous pump that it's kind of the newest
way to deliver the livadopa, but you can also get
it through pills and also in the intestine, but that
has its complications of course, because that would require it

(18:30):
to be replaced. And then we have deep simulations.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Didn't you feel free? Continue? I've got about a minute left, thank.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
You, Okay, Yeah, And deep brain stimulation is another therapy.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, that that deep brain stimulation that's like operating on
somebody's eyeball. For me, it is just so amazing that
medicine has come this far, and to think of what
will be available as as young people such as yourself
end up being able to use all this brand new
technology to help people, it'll be long gone. I'll be

(19:05):
long gone by them. But that's still I'm really thrilled
to hear all that. And you shed a lot of
good light on Parkinson's. I greatly appreciate your time, doctor
Elsa Rodarte.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
It it's nice to participate. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
Well, I'm gonna keep your name high on the list.
We're gonna get you back on here. I got more
and more that I can ask you about this. It's fascinating,
it really is. I'm glad you're on top of it
for us. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
I look forward to speaking again.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Thank you wonderful.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
All right, thank you, I'm oh you too, Bye bye,
all right, we got to take a little break here
on my way out. Speaking of regenerative medicines, late health
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Speaker 1 (21:44):
Now they sure don't make them like they used to.
That's why every few months we wash him, check his fluids,
and spring on a fresh code O wax. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Thanks for listening, twelve thirty six on AM nine to
fifty K. Today Will is national say it over here,
it's International Day. It says here for biological diversity. We're
gonna leap frog over that when and go to National
Solitaire Day. I like that one better. The game Yeah?

(22:17):
The game not yeah, not loneliness, not not that kind
of solitaire or solitary engagement. Uh, the game? Yes? Do
you play solitaire?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
No?

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Why not? Don't get to you're scared? Will? No, you
don't don't want to beat Saul?

Speaker 4 (22:36):
I think I could. I think I could do it.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
My wife will get on the video a little on
the phone game of Solitaire, and her her goal every
time is to not quit until she wins a game.
She can't put it down until she wins. And sometimes
sometimes it only takes one or two tries. Sometimes it
takes more than one or two tries. And I'll go

(23:02):
into it with that same intention of not quitting until
it's done. But if I can't get through it the
first two or three racks, now I've done, and I
don't use the little cheats. There's actually some sort of
scoring system on that game that I don't even understand
how to use it. You can go back and you

(23:23):
can do all these different things, but there's this big
giant pile of points or awards or whatever that I've
garnered over the past five or ten years I've been
playing that game on my phone, and I don't know
what they're for. I don't know. I wouldn't know. I
guess you're going to get free cards or something like that, perhaps,

(23:46):
But it's just so much easier to just push startover,
kind of like worrying about looking at the full story
on some of these little things I bring into the show.
You know what I mean? Well, I don't. I don't know.
Actually for nothing, there's a lot of effort that really is.
It's a waste of my time. It's a waste of
my time. Let's see if any of these get your attention,

(24:09):
will into the basket gone to the dogs? Or this
proves absolutely nothing new, gone to the dogs? Who has
the better social life? Will you or your dog? Sixty
three percent of people said one way or the other?
Which way do you think that went? Oh?

Speaker 4 (24:31):
I think I think they probably said their dog.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yeah, they think their dog has the better social life.
Why because of a phenomenon that hadn't been around but
about maybe twenty years possibly, and that's dog parks. If
your dog needed to run when I was growing up,
you just opened the door. You just opened the door,
and if they found their way back, you'd feed them,

(24:56):
and if they didn't, somebody else would feed them until
they found their way back. We had a dog that
ran away one time, a beagle, when I was very young,
fewer than ten years old, younger than that, and this
beagle ran away for like a week and a half
and then showed back up at the door, like, eh,
where are you been got a little hungry? Did you

(25:19):
got tired of eating June bugs? And Houston toad's did you?
And yeah, I think the dog's name was Lily, if
I remember correctly.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
I have a little Houston toad that lives in the
steps to my home.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
You know that reminds me Will about four nights ago.
It's it's nine thirty, ten o'clock at night, and my
wife is my wife busy. She does all this housework
that we desk my son, and I desperately appreciate her
for doing. She does a lot of that late at night,

(25:54):
Okay into the night, well into the night. And I'm
upstairs just kind of watching the last couple of minutes
of TV I'm gonna watch, and she's downstairs and I
can hear clanking and banging, and I hear the door open,
and just picture yourself at night, thinking everything's wrapped up,
everything's quiet, nothing's going on, And as soon as that

(26:17):
door cracks open, there is almost literally just this blood
curdling scream, and I thought, ah, buddy, I need to
go to the secret place and be prepared for anything.
And then I hear another little scream, and then it's
Doug come down here right away, and so I know
it's not it's not that someone's broken into the how

(26:41):
so I'm pretty sure of that now, or it would
be worse screaming. So it's either got to be a
bug or something like that. And I go down there
and I what's wrong you? Now the door's closed again.
Everything's kind of okay, she said a frog. There was
this frog. As soon as I stepped up side the door.
It was right by my foot as if it were

(27:03):
going if it were a rattlesnake. And I don't blame her.
She's a city girl. And that's not that big a deal.
I mean a lot of a lot of people don't
like little animals like that. But there actually are two
of them that live between the door where it meets
to go straight down onto the slab and then the patio.
There's about an inch little gap, well it's about a

(27:26):
small toad sized gap, and there's a couple. They love
to be in those little gap, two of them. Yeah,
And you know what, they're just enough june bugs and
little flies and whatnot. Whatever is at our door those land?
What are the lance flies that we mistakenly call mosquita hawks?
Is that yeah, I bet they eat a lot of

(27:48):
those two, the ones that the slow was, the low flyers.
But I do. I like seeing the little there were. Well, unfortunately,
there were bazillions of them when I was growing up,
so many that just when you drove down the street
at night, you could not help but hit them in
the street lights. There would be in the mornings. It
was just tragic looking back on it, how many of

(28:11):
those little toads would be out there in the street
light getting the bugs that were attracted to the light.
The low flyers anyway, and yeah, beat eight or ten
dead under every street light. When I was little, they
were everywhere. Man, it was fun to see them too.
It's cool. I haven't gotten hardly anything from the show.
You realize that we went from dogs to toads. But

(28:35):
the Houston toad is a very special animal for me
because it was It reminds me of my childhood. Into
the basket real quick, will or you want to wait,
Let's seize it, let's tease it, let's tease it. We'll
take a little break here. I'll explain what I mean
when I say into the basket in some of these
little odd ball fun facts to know and tell when

(28:55):
we get back. More fifty plus coming up right after
this Life without a Net.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
If I suggest you go to bed, sleep it off,
just wait until the show's over. Sleepy. Back to Doug
Pike as fifty plus continues.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
All right, welcome back. Final segment of the program starts
right now. Thank you also very much for listening. Before
I tell you about into the Basket, I'll remind you
that if if you would like or if you know
someone who might fit in here, as if you know
someone who owns a business that you think should be
shared with more than just the customers they have now,

(29:32):
and do you think that I would endorse them and
that they would allow me to do so, by all means,
please make that introduction. I'm the only guy in the
building over here who is allowed to work directly with clients.
I'm not just your I'm not a point of contact.

(29:53):
I'm the point of contact, which means I can get
copy changes a little more quickly than average I can,
and in some instances work with a little bit better rates.
Sometimes everybody here tries to get the best deal they
can for their clients. I know that because I've worked
with these people for the better part of twenty years.

(30:15):
And so anyway, if you know somebody who might want
to be part of this, by all means, let me know.
I've gotten a couple of clients recently that way. Actually,
they just heard me talking about this and how I
could help them directly, and that appealed to them. And
you're going to be hearing about them more and more
as their campaigns begin. So into the basket. Will it's

(30:37):
not an Easter reference anything else you think it might be,
I don't know. I have no idea, Doug. I'll give
you a hint. It is French in origin. Okay, does
that help it all?

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Now?

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Okay, France did not stop executing people with the guillotine
until what year will?

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Oh, it was like in nineteen.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Seventy three or something. It's very good, seventy seven, seventy seven.
They waited a little longer to put those things out
the pasture. Yeah, that's a pretty barbaric way to impose
the death penalty. But I suspect that. I suspect that
throughout history, more than once, the thought of that being

(31:28):
the punishment has prevented people from committing murder. Would you
agree that that's probable?

Speaker 2 (31:37):
No?

Speaker 3 (31:39):
You don't think they'd stop that. Wait a minute, you know,
I really I'm so mad at that guy. I could. Man,
I'm about to go over the top. But wait, I
don't want to lay my head down in that little track. No,
they're just gonna do it. Crimes of passion is what
you're thinking about? What about premeditated stuff? I bet they

(32:00):
would think twice about that.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
I don't think so. Really, there's the death penalty in
the US.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Well, I know, but it's not it's not so off
with your head.

Speaker 4 (32:13):
Yeah, but it's still death.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Well, yeah they did, Yeah they did. There was one
state I can't remember which one it had brought back
the firing squad as a lawful means of execution. Why
aren't we so gloomy and doomy here? Man? You know,
I've got so much here I would much rather talk about.
So let's do that. Who is this? New trends are

(32:39):
not always good trends and not so appealing after all
the trends one the trends one put your phone down?
Will the trends? One says? Here, there's a new trend
where people are wearing soccer cleats in everyday life. It's
become a viral sensation. Why, because people are really sheeple,

(33:06):
That's all it is. You could start a fad tomorrow,
will and put half a pineapple on top of your head,
the half with the leaves that make it look like
a crown, and put a chin strap on so it
would stay there. And if you walked around with me
and I told enough people that this was the coolest

(33:28):
thing that I had ever seen, somebody else would want
to do it. And then once we got them going,
well before we knew it, we'd have thousands of people
wearing half of pineapples on their heads.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
And you really think, so sure, man, I think it'd
be sticky.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
It might be. You could fix that. You could just
put a little drool bib between the pineapple and your head.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
It seems like a lot of work.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
It does. It's probably an easier trend. We could start
buying wearing non matching socks. Just start that. That would
be an easy trend. You're still dressed completely, but your
socks just don't match. I guarantee you teenagers would jump
on that one already do though it's so non conforming. Yeah,

(34:17):
you know what. By the way, my home has a
repository for single socks. And I found about five or
six actually in my sock drawer when I cleaned it
out recently, just because it would it had become a mess.
There were just so many pairs of socks in there
that I didn't want in there anymore. And I found

(34:40):
four or five of them, just all by themselves. And
I went to my wife and said, hey, where are
you keeping all the mismatched socks that the ones that
don't have a friend, ones that don't have a twin.
She said, I threw them out about two weeks ago. Dang,
I found all of them. I bet I could have
patched up it could have pair up at least four

(35:00):
or five pairs of socks pretty easily. All right, Well,
I'm gonna go back over to my page for a minute.
See that is that interesting? Really?

Speaker 1 (35:10):
No?

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Probably not. This is the Unnecessary Tragedy Desk. Unfortunately, by
the way of Newsmax, comes word that two members of
Israel's embassy in Washington, d C. Were shot and killed
on their way out of the bent at a Jewish
museum there. It's one thing to disagree with people disagree
with the nation's politics. It's another to kill innocent people

(35:31):
over that disagreement, and from the absurdly obvious headline desk
came this in regard to the same incident. I don't
even want to tell you who printed this because it's
so bad. FBI investigating killing of Israeli embassy employees as
a possible hate crime. In the story it said that

(35:53):
the guy who did that was shouting free Palestine when
he was arrested, and so yeah, I would say that
that's Captain obvious is most amazing feet to have figured
out that that might be a hate crime really ticks
me off a little bit from something a little bit lighter,

(36:14):
a lot lighter actually, from the back of the day desk.
When I was a kid, you could still get a
real candy bar for a nickel. That was a case
right up to nineteen sixty nine. By the way, when
Hershey discontinued will nickel candy bars. You could get a
piece of bubblegum for about two cents, I think, if
I remember right, a little less if you bought them
in bulk, like a whole handful at the baseball park.

(36:36):
We'd go up there with fifty cents in our pockets
and just eat all night, you get a hot dog,
and you get a snow cone, you get a small
coca cola, all of that, and all of this to
mention that the penny, the single penny, is about to
go away. The US Mint has ordered its last blank

(37:00):
for pennies, mostly because of the cost of copper. That
is already very little copper in a penny anymore, and
we're just gonna do away with them. And frankly, this
may be the beginning of the end for change altogether,
because how much easier would it be to get through
a day still with cash, which I think always should

(37:21):
be an option if we ever go to all electronic
transactions and all the left the spenders in the world
would have to do. It's just say, okay, we're taking
more tax from you. We don't have to worry about
you paint it. We're just going to push a button
and you're gonna lose some of your money. That scares me.

(37:43):
That scares me. But on the cash side, if you
were just carrying paper money and something with tax, and
the item added together came to ten dollars and forty
nine cents, well it would just roll back to ten
dollars if it came to ten dollars and fifty cents,
it would roll up to eleven dollars, and over the

(38:04):
course of a year or ten years, it would all
kind of come out in the wash. Would you agree, disagree,
or want to study it for a couple more days?

Speaker 4 (38:14):
Well, I mean, if it was ten dollars and fifty
cents and they're just getting rid of pennies, no, I'm
talking about pretty soon all the change is going to go.
It's costing more to make these coins than their worth,
and that's kind of a problem.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
All right, Well, we got to go, don't we. Yeah,
ten seconds worth I got. I don't know if I
have anything for ten seconds worth? Oh, too close to
the chicken. No, I can't do that. I might do
it tomorrow, but I'm not gonna waste No, I won't
do it to you during the lunch hour. That's it
for today. We'll talk tomorrow. Audios.