Stormy Weather Hits Houston

Today, Doug Pike discusses stormy weather, tipping, and Robert De Niro.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplacethe TV remote right because you were the
TV remote. Remember when music soundedlike this, Remember when social media was
truly social? Hey John, how'sit going today? Well, this show
is all about you. On ita good die. This is fifty plus

(00:25):
with Doug Pike. Helpful information onyour finances, good health, and what
to do for fun. You knowthat one fifty plus brought to you by
the UT Health Consortium on Aging,Informed Decisions for a healthier, happier life,
and by Incredible. If a staineseems indelible, you haven't tried Incredible

(00:47):
And now fifty plus with Doug Pike. Wednesday edition of the program starts right
now. Thank you all for listening. I don't want to brag or anything,
but we're doing our and I'm gladthat all of you are joining me.
I'm glad you're telling people about theshow. I'm glad more people are
finding the show as all of usare around here. That's what I'm trying

(01:11):
to do is I'm just trying tohelp as many people as I can.
And I'm not fooling myself. We'renot curing anything here. But the good
news about this show is that weget to talk to people who are doing
the curing, whether that be ofsome health condition or a cure for I

(01:33):
haven't been to a good movie ina while, or a good concert or
a good art museum. There's artmuseum news today, I believe it or
not, and there's not a lotof that going around. But every now
and then I'll trip over something that'srelated to entertainment somehow, and I'm happy
to share it because I think itmatters to all of us. I really
do. So what this morning,sloppy, nasty Wednesday. All morning long,

(02:00):
I was awake for much of thenight, not because of the weather,
but because of a back issue that'ssuddenly developed. And I'm honestly not
sure. I'm not sure if it'sgoing to just go away by itself this
time. It was pretty rough lastnight, I'll tell you that. And
I might have to go see myortho guy who doubles as my primary care

(02:21):
physician. He's also an orthopedic surgeon, so I might have to get him
to put on his other hat andtake a look at this back of mine
and see what's going on. Fingerscrossed that it doesn't require anything more than
a little time and to make itgo away. It's actually a little better
now than it was this morning,which is encouraging. But I don't know

(02:43):
how many more nights I can dolike I did last night. I got
maybe four hours of sleep and itwas about it, and that's a maybe.
All right. So back to theweather. This stuff we had this
morning as well east of us nowlooks more dry than wet this afternoon.
If you need to run some it'sanother pretty good chance for rain tomorrow though,
up to about maybe noon or alittle afterward. Then some marginal relief

(03:07):
maybe maybe not. There's there's talkof isolated, scattered, random pop up
showers, which there always is thistime of year, so don't be surprised,
and then another round of sloppy stuff. Lucky lucky us. Huh Will
Melbourne? Did you get awakened bythe weather this morning? Oh? I

(03:30):
certainly did. The skylight was hummingalong all last night, a lot of
noise through them. It is theloudest thing in the world. My girlfriend
and I cannot sleep through it.So you're renting though, right. I
was gonna give you an idea ofsomething you could do if you were if
you owned the place and were renting. Okay, well, asked the guy,

(03:53):
ask whoever your landlord is the manor woman. I don't care who,
but asked that if you could putup some sort of secondary barrier to
that sunlight where the light still comesin. It's a clear piece of glass,
but it's just we have some ofthe reason I ask or reason I
mentioned it, is it because mywife and I have some of these window

(04:14):
inserts in our house and the masterbedroom. An ambulance could come down the
street and you'd barely hear it.It's that quiet. Well, that is
definitely something that no, I mean, I do kind of care. Yeah,
I mean, especially since storm seasonis upon us, some season always
upon us here. Yeah, itkind of is. Yeah, you might

(04:34):
look into that and just find outwhat your options are. And even if
you put up something yourself that justcovers that completely and has a little bit
of a maybe a foam barrier aroundit to secure it. Yeah, that
might that might help. Who knows, can't hurt you? Market indicators,
we're more green than red this morningat the opening, but we all know

(04:58):
that those things have been tough topredict for the last I don't know year
and a half. If you're aheadnow of where you were in January of
this year, just thank your luckystars, hold your nose and let it
ride. Whatever you're doing is workingif you're ahead, and this is no
time to panic and just put everythingyou got into cash or gold or Star

(05:23):
Wars collectibles or old fishing lures.Although that fourth option there would probably be
one of my first to go tosome of that stuff. It's amazing.
Actually, I've in fact, I'vegot a couple of boxes of lures that
I got back in the eighties i'dsay eighties and nineties, kept them in
original condition, original boxes, andjust tucked them away, and some of

(05:47):
them when I go back and lookat those boxes every now and then,
when my wife asked me to goclean out the garage, and I get
stuck opening one of those boxes andhave to go through it from top to
bottom just to see it, anddon't ever get anything done garage. Unfortunately,
some of those things are probably notgoing to be worth much more than
they cost when they were originally manufactured, but a few of them have hope.

(06:10):
And if you as a quick sidebar, and then I'll get back to
fifty plus business. If you dofancy yourself a lure collector. First of
all, they've got to be intip top shape. The original box makes
a big difference. And the onesthat are going to be the most collectible

(06:30):
are going to be the ones thatyou, probably as a fisherman, would
never have bought because it was justtoo ugly or weird or different. But
those are the ones that get theshortest runs coming out of the manufacturer and
thus make them They make themselves morescarce and thus more valuable. It's a
long way to go for nothing.I'm not an investment adviser, by the

(06:51):
way, by any means, butI do have one, and he has
at least kept my head above waterthe past year. And I have quite
a few eggs, and in thebasket too different eggs, so that if
one chunk of the world's money goeshaywire, I'm not totally at risk.
I'll take my word for anything relatedto money, though. Either immerse yourself
in education about money for yourself,or hire somebody who's already doing that for

(07:16):
a limit, and you'll probably comeout way better than if you just try
to do it yourself. On awing and or a prayer, already just
one minute. Oh my gosh,all right, well, let's go straight
to you, lady liberty, fulldisclosure or spell it out, spell it
out. In a poll, seventyone percent of mothers with Mother's Day coming

(07:38):
up this weekend and Sunday say theydrop hints to let their partners know what
Mother's Day gifts they want. Mywife is among them. She knows better
than to just cut my son andme loose in some random store somewhere,
because she is very specific on thethings she likes and dislikes, and so
that may not work well. However, we do Troy. Sixty seven percent

(08:01):
of moms said that they even willcreate wish lists to make it easier.
Oh how I wish I had aprinted wish list from which to choose,
thereby eliminating most risk of getting somethingthat she doesn't want. I'll do my
best, I promise us. LowShield does it's best to protect our rights

(08:22):
as gun owners in this state.You do have the right as a Texan
to protect yourself, your family,your property, and even other people.
Of some whack job shows up witha gun or a knife or a hammer
or whatever. You can stop thatthreat with whatever force is required to do
so. Afterward, though, you'regonna have to answer a bunch of questions.
And if you are a member ofUS law Shield, you can just

(08:46):
politely but confidently say, you knowwhat, I'm not talking to you without
my attorney present. Let me justgo make a phone call and twenty four
to seven, the number you getfor being a dues paying month member of
US law Shield, connects twenty fourseven to someone who will then assign a
gun rights attorney to you, andthat person will be with you every time

(09:09):
your questioned about whatever the incident was. Go to the website, read the
downloadable guides, consider going to oneof the seminars where you can hear firsthand
from law enforcement and gun rights attorney. Uslows shield dot com is a website.
Sign up first, that's the mainthing. Go ahead and get signed
up, because once you're in,no matter how far your case goes through

(09:31):
the system, you pay no additionallegal fees. US law shield dot Com.
Now they sure don't make them likethey used to. That's why every
few months we wash them, checkhis fluids and spray on a fresh cooto
wax. This is fifty plus withDoug Pike. All right, welcome back

(10:03):
to fifty plus. Thanks for listening. I'm Doug, He's will and we
will plod on through. Let meget back to some of my stuff here.
I'm trying to figure out which weall want to go. Yeah,
that's okay, let's go back tothis. I saw a piece at Breitbart
this morning about a column in Newsweekthat pretty much blames Republicans for the dreadful

(10:28):
situations in most of America's largest Democratrun cities. It's apparently the right's fault,
according to this column, for notproviding voters an alternative to one train
wreck after another of Democrats who areproving to be perpetually soft and softer on
crime. They're just there's just thislitany of stuff that they do that makes

(10:56):
their cities not so good, andthe left is trying to blame us for
not offering an alternative, when,as the person who wrote this story points
out, the only thing that willhappen to any Republican who dares to go
up against a Democrat in a cityrace is that they will be accused of

(11:20):
all kinds of things that most likelyare not anywhere near true. They will
have to claw and fight and dealwith a stack of mistruths or distorted truths
about who they really are, andit's just not worth it. It's just
not worth it. The same peoplekeep electing the same type of person into

(11:45):
leadership in these big cities, andman, pick one you like Chicago,
Baltimore, Cleveland, Oakland, SanFrancisco, even Houston. It's just that
just doesn't work. It's like it'slike blaming Tom Brady for what's wrong with
the Texans. He's not involved,he can't get involved. He probably would

(12:09):
like a good try at it,but it would have to start with a
complete revamping of the entire team,and that's not gonna happen. All right,
shifting to some good news, let'sdo that will I'm gonna try to
intersperseit. I've started. I usedto write down all the crummy stuff first,
and then I'd write down all thegood news. And now what I'm

(12:31):
doing is going back into it andgoing good bad, good bad, goodbad,
and trying to make myself make myway through. In Greece, for
example, in good news mode,access to the sea in that beautiful country
and historic country is considered an inalienablehuman right and to accommodate those who need
accommodation. The Greek tourism folks areretro fitting two hundred and eighty seven beaches

(12:58):
with wheelchair accessible ramps that lead acrossthe sand to a means by which people
in that situation can, without helpfrom anyone, they can get into the
water, they can enjoy it fora little while, and then get themselves
out of the water as well.I think that's fantastic. They've also actually

(13:20):
installed wheelchair ramps and elevators at manyof the country's historic sites, including now
the Acropolis. There would have beenabsolutely no way for someone in a wheelchair
to get up there and see whatthe Greeks saw centuries ago. Until this
is done, I do feel prettygood about our country being at least on

(13:45):
par with Greece on this issue asfar as access to buildings goes and historical
sites goes. But the beach accessis something that maybe we could I don't
know, Maybe we could just usetheir models and make our coastlines more accessible.
Well. I think that would befantastic, I really do. Somebody.
All that would take in this countryis for somebody to suggest that,

(14:07):
and our pride as a nation whatever'sleft of it, would encourage somebody to
launch a program to get that done. Moving south where one day away now
from dissolution of Title forty two,the only remaining hurdle between migrants along our
southern border that's enabled agents there toturn some migrants away at least some estimates

(14:33):
vary today, but there are currentlyanywhere from I don't know, maybe twenty
thousand to forty or fifty thousand peoplelined up to just waltz into border cities
tomorrow, and not a one ofthose cities can possibly be prepared. Even
with the extra troops that our governorhas sent down that way, they can't

(14:54):
possibly be prepared to deal with theswarm of people who are going to come
across. Governor rabbit shifted. Ithink, I don't know a couple of
thousand. I think Texas National Guardsoldiers to areas believed most in need of
support, and other strategies did alot of things actually to minimize this preventable
invasion of our state and country.I couldn't believe my ears this past week

(15:18):
when the federal officials visited, actuallyvisited the border and then walked away from
there and tried to tell us innews conferences that it was, Oh,
it's secure. Nothing to see herewhen officers are logging six thousand encounters daily
all people who want to come intoour country, and this is best case

(15:41):
scenario. Immediately get things. Evenpoor Americans don't get that's a problem,
and it's about to get way bigger, and I honestly have no idea how
we're going to balance this out.The long term goal of this whole deal
is to secure somehow secure national votingrights for people who just who got here

(16:06):
yesterday. If you can show upand if you can punch a button or
make a check mark or put acolor in a box, they want those
people voting because those people will beled to believe that, for example,
the current administration is giving them achance, when all they're doing really is

(16:27):
just creating a larger group of peoplewho are almost totally dependent upon the federal
government. And that's the last thingwe need. I saw a wonderful interview
I believe it was Johnny Carson talkingto Ronald Reagan, and it was that
that speech. It wasn't a speech, it was a conversation. But what

(16:48):
Reagan said essentially is that government isusually the cause of a problem, not
the solution to a problem, andthat when people finally figured that out,
the world and especially this country,would be better off for it. I
wish I had I wish I hadjust transcribed it so I could read it
too. It was fantastic. Uhwell, I'm gonna go back to you.

(17:14):
Let's see here we did spell itout. Let's go. I'm gonna
go to three totally different things.A tipping the scales, wolf in sheep's
clothing, or they'll be sadly disappointedtipping the scale. Oh good, I'm
sorry. This is the first timewill probably in weeks, that you've picked
one that I really liked as well. Have you heard of the term tipping

(17:38):
fatigue? Will Melbourne, tipping cowsor something? No, no, no,
not that the financial exchange between someonewho serves you and and you.
I've never heard of that. Now, well, here's what it comes at.
Wall Street Journal just did a bigpiece on this, and we pointed

(18:00):
out that we're being asked to leavea tip pretty much everywhere we go.
It used to be that you tippedin bars, you tipped the bartender,
you tip the servers in bars andrestaurants, you tip somebody, somebody who
was doing something to bring you somethingso that you didn't have to get up
and go get it yourself. Isthat a fair assessment? Yea, So

(18:23):
now we are even being asked.It says here to leave tips at the
self checkouts. Everybody wants a tip, even if they didn't do a thing
for you. Should we tip?For example, will the cook who makes
our meal in addition to the server? Do we tip the cook? I
mean there's a follow up question,so I will say that person, you
know, I mean they make thefood, you know, But do you

(18:45):
so do you have to walk backinto the kitchen or get a special jar?
I mean I don't think that it'sa special jar, but I think
you know, if you're paying withcard like usually, it just gets divvied
up at the end of the night. Right, Well, there's a pool.
Well no, not necessarily for thecooks. No for bartenders. Now
bartenders and servers. Yes, theservers were were expected to tip back a

(19:10):
certain percentage of their tips to theperson who made the drinks for them.
But nobody had to go tip thebartender in the service area, not the
ones out on the floor, butthe people behind the scenes. Making drinks
for the servers, So that waskind of weird. Should we tip baristas?

(19:32):
That's a question to ask them,because they just make the drink,
they don't stand there and wait forit. Yeah, I do too,
but I think the case could bemade. And the baristas are really like
if you get a coffee shop right, you know baristas not only your servers,
but also they're making the well andthey make small talk. The best
ones do, the ones who makethe most money and tips do they make

(19:56):
small talk. They get to knowyou. My wife, for example,
for years, just walk into aStarbucks by the house and there'd be her
drink just sitting there already because shetipped them pretty well. Ut Health Science
Center's Consortium on Aging doesn't ask fortips. In fact, it gives them
to you on how to live abetter life as a senior. The doctors,

(20:18):
the therapists, the trainers, everybodythere, probably even the receptionist is
specially trained in senior medicine and makingus feel better, look better, live
better. Boy, if my backdoesn't get any better, I'm gonna go
over there and see what they cando for me. I'm so proud to
speak for them and I'm so proudthat they're on board as a presenting sponsor
of this program. What a greatplace, and we have it right here

(20:42):
in our city, right down therein the Med Center, ut Health Science
Center's Consortium on Aging. Take alook at the website. See what they
can do. You'll find all kindsof information there that is relevant to us
and only us. Ut dot eduslash aging ut h dot edu slash aging.

(21:04):
What's life without a nack? Isuggest you go to bed and sleep
it off. Just wait until thisshow's over. Sleepy. Back to Doug
Pike as fifty plus continues. Twelvethirty four, Will is it correct?

(21:40):
Do you take it almost? Twelvethirty three? Fifty? Well, yeah,
so that's ten seconds off. That'snot so bad. By the way,
this watch I'm wearing right here,do you see it? See it?
See it's here, the little justlittle teeny tiny little thing. It
weighs virtually nothing compared to the watchI've been wearing, and it has been.
This is the most miss serious thing. Will. It's been in my

(22:00):
garage for in my tackle area,well one of my tackle areas. Let's
just leave it at that. It'sa long story, but it's been sitting
out there literally for years, notmonths, at least two years that I
know of that it's just been sittingout there. I see it regularly.
I look at it and I think, you know, I should probably go

(22:22):
take this and get a get abattery put in it, so maybe it'd
work again and I wouldn't have towear a nicer watch that I've been wearing
to go fishing and play golf andsuch. And I actually won this watch,
believe it or not, in TexasOutdoor Riders Association competition years ago.
I want to watch and had someother stuff I did, okay, those

(22:45):
things In any event, I've hadthis watch for many many years. I
probably had I don't know, acouple of three batteries put in it,
and I looked down at I broughtit into the house. I got it
out of the garage and I roughtit into the house because you know,
I've talked about it before. Myother watch was kind of giving me little
fits where it would stop running andthen it was hard to get it going

(23:07):
again. And I got Donald overat Houston Gold Exchange to help me figure
out what was wrong with it.So it's been working okay, but I
bring this watch in and I happenedto walk by the kitchen table that it
was on for a couple of days, and I looked down there and well,
I'll be darning if things running.It's running, okay. I haven't

(23:32):
changed the battery, I haven't takenthe back off of it. I haven't
done anything to this watch. Butjust bring it from the garage to the
house and it is spot on,still kicking, still ticking. I have
no idea, how, no ideawhy you want some? I'm gonna give
you another chance here. This isa pretty interesting choice. Will dinosaur news

(23:56):
or Space nerd News? Oh there'stones. Yeah, you know what,
let's go a dinosaur news like thisone. Bend your two for two today
or two for three. It's beennearly ten years now since a dog named
Walter alerted during a walk near Rangely, Colorado, where Walter and his family,

(24:22):
I guess his owners live. They'reout there giving the dog a walk,
and Walter finds this rock and justhis paying an inordinate amount of attention
to this rock. Well, thatrocket, turns out was a seventy four
million year old fossil, a bonethat, ultimately, amongst many turned turned

(24:45):
out to be the nearly complete skeletonof a was it a hadrosaur? Whatever
the heck that is. It's aduck billed dinosaur, quite common in its
time, but I'd never seen one. I still haven't seen one. I've
seen the skeleton. Scientists who excavatedthe site said they also found found a

(25:06):
wide variety of other bones and teeth, even something they believed to have been
dinosaurs skin. I guess it stillwould be technically. And the impressions of
plants that look like they look likeartwork, but they're actually plants that got
just kind of jammed into the stone, oh and pressed into the rock over

(25:27):
eons of pressure and change whatever.Pretty cool. Oh and by the way,
researchers named that that almost complete dinosaurskeleton Walter to honor the dog that
found it. How's how's that gofor you? Will? Is that pretty
cool? Like that one? Yeah? Um? Oh? Robert de Niro

(25:53):
Robert de Niro, when asked recentlyin an interview about his six children,
kind of slipped a little and said, actually it's a seven. And it
turns out, at seventy nine yearsold, he is now a new dad
for the seventh time. And forperspective for old Bob and his being a

(26:21):
dad, I'll just leave it atthat. His oldest child is a daughter
named Drina, who is how oldwill take a pot shot at this?
Oh, I'm gonna go with fortyone. No, she's fifty one.
He has a daughter who is fiftyone. He is a grandfather, and

(26:44):
he also has an infant child.I don't know if it's a boy or
a girl. It doesn't matter tome. That's all I have on DeNiro,
probably more than any of you wanted. But I just found that for
some just it piqued my curiosity.And that's all I promised. When the
let's see No not that, No, No, I'm not going to do
that one today. I promised inmy Facebook post that I would talk a

(27:07):
little bit. Where is it?Where is it about? Fine art?
I can't even find what I wrote, but I'll tell you about it.
It's just as simple as that.So there was a research study done.
I can't believe I can't find this. Oh there we go, Yeah,
here it is right here. Therewas a research study done in several museums

(27:29):
art museums, and the study wason how much how involved the patrons of
the museums were depending on whether ornot with each piece of art, be
it a sculpture or a painting orwhatever, whether there was just a plaque
there, a simple plaque with thename of the piece and the name of
the artist on it, or whetherthere was a detailed description. And in

(27:55):
the case of the detailed descriptions,the people tended to linger longer. They
tended to stop and really look andlook for what was described as the artist's
meaning to that piece. And Iwould have to completely agree. Some art,

(28:15):
as anybody who's walked through a contemporarymuseum knows, some of it's easier
to stand than others. But ifthere were an explanation beneath that piece to
let me know what the artist wasgoing for, at least I would stand
there longer, and I would studyit, and I would try to put

(28:36):
myself in the artist's place and appreciateit from his or her point of view.
Most museums, though, still tendto only provide just titling artists title
and artist title and artists beneath yourexhibits, and people are zipping on through
there more quickly now in some cases, in very very fancy museums if you

(28:59):
will. I wonder if they wantpeople stopping and lingering and clogging up the
line at the front door that wantsto come through, perhaps the louver or
something like that. The best wayto go see one of those, if
you ever get the chance, isto hire a private tour, and that
way you get to skip all thelines. It's kind of like going to
Disneyland and getting that super pass,I don't know what they call it,

(29:22):
and just get a little bit moremoney from you upfront, and you get
to jump right to the start ofthe line. Isn't that lovely? China
has made his first arrest after aguy used chat gpt to create a fake
news story about a train crash.Wait, just wait, there's gonna be
a bazillion of these things before it'sall over. Story was loaded with very

(29:44):
believable details, got more than fifteenthousand clicks on social media before it was
taken down. And this guy,I don't know. Over here, he
might not have gotten more than aslap on the wrist and probably would have
gotten a job at some of thenet works. But over there he's in
a heap of trouble or saying thingsthat he wasn't allowed to say. Kirk

(30:07):
Holmes, I'll tell you about them. Kirk Holmes is the third generation custom
builder for which I've spoken now forgosh, I don't know the better part
of seven, eight, ten years. I'm really not sure. It's been
a long time, though, andI will continue as long as they'll let
me, because kirk Holmes is oneof the few companies out there that when
they build you a custom home,it truly is unique to you and your

(30:30):
family. They're not gonna suggest anything, really, they are. The Only
two things that are going to bethe same in all of their homes are
the twenty year structural warranty that's twicepretty much twice the norm, and the
two by six exterior walls that's fiftypercent better insulation around the perimeter of that
house for keep the heat out inthe summer and the cold out in the

(30:52):
winter. Everything else is your decision. Everything else is your choice. Where
that house is gonna be, whatit's gonna look like, how many rooms
it's gonna have, how big they'llbe, how much closet space you want,
how you want your garage worked up, if you've got if you neat
boy, I could use a biggergarage. I can tell you that they
have a Southern living showcase home theirsecond that is complete up in Mission Ranch

(31:17):
in College Station. If you wantto go there. You can tour that
home anytime you like and get areally good idea of the attention to detail
that kirk Holmes puts into every homeit builds. I've been through five or
six of them now, can't rememberexactly how many, but they're all absolutely
gorgeous, fantastic homes. Kirkhomes dotCom pretty much anywhere from the Gulf Coast

(31:40):
all the way up through the HillCountry, San Antonio, Austin College Station.
Now just go see see what itmeans Kirkhomes dot com. That's ku
RK because at Kirkhomes it's all aboutyou, aged to perfection. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike. Well, welcome back to fifty plus on this

(32:32):
Wednesday afternoon. I'm Dougie's will.We are rounding third and headed home the
Astros. Speaking of one last night, and like a dope, I stayed
up and watched the entire game.Once again, these West Coast games end
late, much later than I needto be jumping in bed, especially with
my back bothered me like it didlast night, and I've paid a price

(32:55):
for it. But in fairness,I joy watching them win. I do,
and they need to start doing thata little more often. We are
so beat up and torn up rightnow as a team, those guys.
I hope that everybody gets back upto full speed. We already we got
one pitcher out with Tommy John comingup. He'll be out sixteen or eighteen

(33:17):
months. He's not coming back anyof this year and probably most of the
next year if we're lucky. Butwe do have depth. I believe we
do, and I think some ofthe younger players who kind of fingers crossed
we're gonna help us out, aredoing just that. Mauricio Dubon is a

(33:37):
good, good candidate there. Onemore time, I will remind you about
this AM radio situation where several carmakersare getting rid of AM radios in their
vehicles. And if you kind ofhappen to like having an AM radio in
your vehicle, you can share thatwith your congressional representatives and let them know

(34:00):
that you don't want those radios goingaway, because they are, after all,
not only a source of entertainment,hopefully I try for that, as
do all of us who are onthe air here, but also as a
sort of as a connection during anemergency. Two lifelines, basically two reports

(34:20):
on where the worst damage is,where the shelters are, where you can
go get a couple of cases ofwater because your water's out, and every
grocery store is empty. All ofthese things you can get from AM radio
that you're probably not going to getanywhere else. You're certainly not going to
get it on your phone if theelectricity's out. What good is that phone
if you have no electricity with whichto charge it, after all? And

(34:45):
even then, the stuff you geton the phone, if your phone's anything
like mine, the alerts we getjust say flash flood watch from today to
tomorrow. Keep your eyes open,people, And that's all you get with
AM radio. You could get thereis a traffic issue because of the flooding
over here, there are shelters overthere, All of these things that are

(35:07):
being exchanged between listeners and the onair hosts to make sure that everybody gets
through these situations the best they can. All you gotta do is text AM
to five two eight eighty six,get on your phone, now that it's
all charged up and text AM justthose two letters to five two eight,

(35:29):
eight to six. All of ushere would be happy if you would do
that, not only for us,but for yourselves. It's a big deal.
You can get AM radio through alot of different means outside the car,
but when you're riding around in thatcar, it's kind of nice to
be able to just flip that radioon and get instant baseball games or whatever,
football games, basketball games, andnews, all of which is important

(35:52):
to most of us. All right, moving on that one, know that
one, No, boy, comeon, oh, this is kind of
interesting. A company over in Estonia, the little town of Taalin in Estonia
on the Russian border, has introducedan entire fleet of robots, each the

(36:15):
size roughly of a dog, andlooking at the pictures, I would call
it a medium sized dog that cando all sorts of things. They'll deliver
pizza, maybe, go to thedrug store and get your medicine from the
pharmacy, help you across the streetif you're actually out there and not letting

(36:36):
the robot do you're walking for you, I guess. And they are having
great success introduction of the introduction excuseme. Of these robots, they call
them starships, of those in othereditions earned that city what was the name
of the city again, Talin earnedthat city the title of green Capital of
Europe. Now, I'm still notentirely one hundred percent on board with going

(37:02):
electric and going green before we actuallyhave a legitimate, reliable alternative fuel.
But these little robots, especially forfolks our age, could keep us from
having to go out. They coulddo a lot of things for us,
especially if you've got bad weather,maybe you've got a bum knee. Lots

(37:22):
of reasons to employ that robot.And I think they're being used much like
the car services around here, thedoor dashes and uber eats and things like
that. And for the green record, by the way, Toland still gets
ninety percent of its electricity from shaleoil power plants. They're kind of going

(37:45):
green and they actually earned that award, but they still get ninety percent from
shale oil power plants, so notexactly emerald green, but green enough I
guess to earn the title, Andhats off to them. We got little
robot. It's just skittering all overtown. Good news for Americans, maybe
not so good for tobacco farmers.Though the US cigarette smoking rate has hit

(38:07):
an all time low, it isfantastic. I got off that bad,
bad habit twenty something years ago,and I'm glad I did. I've never
looked back once I finally found away to get off of them. And
if anybody wants to send me anemail and ask me how I did it,
I'll shoot it back to you,and it won't take four lines.

(38:27):
Basically, but I pulled it off. And like I said, once I
stopped, once I got help stopping. The help I got enabled me to
get off of those things and neverhave another one. Not since not says
on decline since the sixties when thenumber was about forty two percent of Americans
who smoked cigarettes, including both myparents for a while. By the way,

(38:50):
that percentage in twenty twenty two onlyeleven percent, which is fantastic.
And like I said, unless you'rea tobacco farmer, we've finally gotten a
general that didn't grow up with manysmokers in the house, not in the
workplace, anywhere else that smoking inthe workplace is not allowed anymore. When
I started at the newspaper here,almost every desk down there had an ashtray

(39:12):
on it and cigarette butts in it. How we got where we are now
is irrelevant, though. The goodnews is that we did it, and
hopefully the medical community's ability to focusa little more on curing other stuff and
a little less on bandaging self inflictedwounds of smokers can maybe get us some
new innovation there as well. Allright, well, time for a couple

(39:36):
of just one of these short ones. Let's go wolf in sheep's clothing or
close but not close enough, closebut not close enough. Okay, I'll
do this one. Spirit Airlines passengersenraged on Sunday. They said when their
flight left early, the boarding doorwas closed a few minutes before these edual

(40:00):
departure time, causing a couple ofpeople to miss their flight. But what
it turns out is that they werein the bar whooping it up and missed
the announcement. So I don't knowif that's I don't know if that's Spirit's
fault or not. Really, Iguess twelve or seven is twelve or seven,
And if you get there at twelveor five and the door shut,

(40:22):
that's not fair either. So Idon't know which way to go with that.
We have time for one more.We have about twenty five seconds.
Yeah, okay, I'll read oneline. Sixty three year old woman with
a walker arrested in New Orleans onFriday after trying to rob a bank.
Stick them up, Stick them up, or I'll hit you with my cane.

(40:45):
I guess I don't know. Allright, that's gonna run it down
to the wire for us. Wewill be back tomorrow at the same time,
straight up noon. N Audios.