BHS - 7A – Selfish Gift Giving | Speakerphone Violence

Wayne Resnick fills in for Bill Handel all this week. Gov. Newsom and healthcare. Selfish gift giving. Speakerphone violence. Heavy Petting: Animal stories.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty. You are listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Here's Wayne Resnick, kamv Iames is forty man Cono. You

(00:21):
kill it with the bumps. It's a Bill Handle show.
He's back after the new year. Wayne Resume here until
nine o'clock. And speaking of California, Governor Newsom, when he
took office five and a half six years ago, whenever
it was, he said he would be California's healthcare governor.

(00:42):
And he has made a lot of stuff happen. And
some of those things he made happen may have to
go away because we have a new federal administration that
is not going to be very friendly toward some of
the things that Governor Newsom has made happen. I think
I just I want to focus on two big ones.

(01:03):
One of them very quickly, because abortion. Enough with talking
about abortion, but just to point out that under Governor Newsom,
California gave the right to an abortion put into the
state constitution and passed a law that allows out of
state doctors to perform abortions in California, and we built

(01:26):
a big stockpile of the abortion medicines because remember they
were trying to ban overturn the FDA approval of mifapristone. Also,
he created this twenty million dollar fund to help Californians
who can't afford an abortion get an abortion. So he
did all those things, and I think that we know

(01:47):
the incoming federal administration is not down with any of that.
So that is something he's going to have to fight
about come January twenty. And then the other thing I
want to bring up, and this is this. These are
two of certainly a dozen or more things that he's done.

(02:08):
He made an Office of Healthcare Affordability. Laws have been
passed about generic drugs and general If you remember where
he said the state is going to get into the
business of manufacturing insulin. That's proved harder to spin up
than maybe he thought it that it would be. But

(02:29):
here's the one thing, because on the one hand, it
sounds crazy, but then I will reveal something that if
it's crazy, then everybody's crazy. There's a program called medicaid.
It is healthcare for poor people, and in California it's
administered under medical but you get for about half of

(02:51):
the money spent through medical on healthcare comes from the
federal government. It's Medicaid money, and it's supposed to go
for things like doctors in medicine and emergency room visits.
But California, under a friendly administration, has been able to
get waivers that allow California to spend Medicaid money on,

(03:16):
for example, housing, because there is a trend of thought
that says housing is healthcare, that for vulnerable populations, that
having stable housing is vitally important to them even being
able to pursue, you know, getting their medical needs taken

(03:39):
care of. So the idea of housing as healthcare and
waivers from the federal government allowed Medicaid money to be
spent on homeless housing. Well, that's only because you had
an administration that was friendly to the idea and granted

(04:00):
those waivers. And I don't think there's a chance in
hades that the incoming administration is going to continue allowing
that use of Medicaid money. In fact, not only might
Governor Newsom have to fight to be allowed to do that,
he's gonna have to fight not to have Medicaid money

(04:21):
cut drastically. So he's got a huge battle on his hands.
And it does maybe sound crazy that housing is healthcare,
and you're gonna use Medicaid money for housing. And I
just want to point out, because sometimes California gets pointed
at as the birthplace of crazy ideas, there's nineteen stakes

(04:46):
that have been doing the same thing. Sometimes it's not
just us, and as soon it might not be any
of these states being allowed to do it. Let's talk
about gift giving, and let's talk about gift returning, because
a lot of gifts are given at this time of year,
and ooh, a lot of gifts are returned. The National

(05:07):
Retail Federation estimates about a trillion dollars worth of merchandise
was sold over the holiday period and that about one
hundred and fifty billion of it returned. You've got a
consumer research firm called Civic Science, and so this is

(05:31):
a survey they did, and twenty eight percent of respond
and said they had returned or exchanged a gift last year.
Because this was taken before this holiday season, and according
to Statista, I'm not as big a freak as I've
been made out to be. I have been criticized roundly

(05:52):
and incessantly by several people in my life because I
happen to think I happened to think that cash or
a gift card, the more generic the better, Like a
Visa gift card is better than a Starbucks gift card,
but a Starbucks gift card is still pretty good. I

(06:12):
think those are good gifts. And people tell me I
have no imagination and I'm thoughtless and bah bah bah
bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah. And yet,
according to Statista, the most desired Christmas gift in the
US is cash, and the second most popular gift from

(06:33):
the recipient's gift cards. So excuse me, I'm not a freak,
I'm a basic be So in any event, I bet
right now, if you think about your home, there's probably
something in there that somebody gave you as a gift
that you don't really use, maybe hadn't thought about till

(06:57):
I just prompted you to. But you haven't gotten rid
of it either, because man, there's a whole bunch of
etiquette around what do you do when somebody gave you
a gift and you don't want it and you're not
sure how to handle it. And I'm not here to
tell you how to handle it, because I do not
work for Emily Post. But why why do you get

(07:23):
gifts from people that are not really in your mind
good gifts, believe it or not. There has been significant
deep research into this question and the lead person in
that area in that field is Deborah Cone from the
New York Institute of Technology, who published this exhaustive paper

(07:47):
in a journal called and there is a journal called
the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior. Every
issue has a centerfold of Bill Handle in it. And
she looked at how this happens, what is the psychology
behind the gift giving that doesn't work out, and has

(08:10):
identified specific reasons that people sometimes when they give gifts,
they're not being nice at all. The least benign, I'm sorry,
the least malicious. The most benign is when simply you
don't know enough about the person and all you really
remember is they said something once about the Miami Dolphins,

(08:33):
so you thought it would be cool to get them
Miami Dolphins jersey. But it turns out they don't really
love the Miami Dolphins at all. It's just a thing
they said once. Now that's not the selfish kind of
gift giving. That's the trying to personalize a gift and
not really realizing that you don't know as much about

(08:54):
the person as you should. Now we get into the
bad stuff, the dark stuff. Here are some reasons that
people will give you a crappy gift. One of them
is they want bragging rights. They're not really giving the
gift for you. They're giving the gift for the other

(09:16):
people who see you open the gift, and maybe it's
something very expensive or very elaborate, and that everybody else
will go, WHOA, what a great gift, and they get
all the kudos. Even though it might be expensive or elaborate,
it's not something that you're interested in having. And a

(09:39):
related concept is the gift I give to you for me.
This usually happens in marriages or partnerships, where for example,
I really like a pair of headphones, So what I
do is I give you the gift of those headphones,
because hey, we live together, you're my wife. I know

(10:00):
I'm gonna be using those headphones. It really wasn't for you,
it was for me. There's also the I know better
than anyone else thing. You might have a gift registry,
and there's a kind of person who will look at
what's on your gift registry and deem them all to
be blame or boring and instead get you something else,

(10:25):
not because they really think you'll like it better, but
because they're rejecting what you want for a gift and
they're gonna show you. It's kind of a control thing.
And then you also have the downright aggressive gift. They're

(10:46):
mad at you, and even though they don't realize that
it's affecting their choice of gift, it is, and subconsciously,
because they're so mad at you, they give you something crappy.
So the next time, the next time you get a
crappy gift from someone, I guess you have to ask yourself,

(11:09):
are they self absorbed, ignorant or mean? Imagine hearing two
people argue a couple because somebody left a wet towel
on a bathroom floor, and the other person hates that

(11:30):
a wet towe was left on the bathroom floor, and
they are going at it with this argument. Now imagine
one person who's part of this argument that you're hearing
is hundreds of miles away from you because the other

(11:51):
person is having the argument on their phone on speaker phone.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is an epidemic in the United
States of America anyway, where people have forgotten mass amnesia,
as if some kind of radiation came down from space,

(12:13):
targeting our brains and erasing the little part of the
brain that holds the memory of earbuds that earbuds exist,
because for some reason, you all stopped using earbuds, and
you're walking around, standing around holding your phone not up

(12:37):
to your head, holding your phone about a foot in
front of your face, talking at it, and someone else
is talking out of it at you, and I'm hearing
it now. I want to tell a little story because
I didn't know. I didn't know that I was witnessing
the birth of a problem at the time, but I

(13:00):
think now that I was. There is a coffee shop
in Larchmont called Go Get Them Tiger. I'm not endorsing them.
I mean, I'm not not endorsing them. They're good, but
that's not why I'm bringing up. I'm bringing them up
because they are the place that on Thanksgiving they have
a tradition that on Thanksgiving Day they make a special

(13:20):
menu of special coffee drinks that usually they are elevated
versions of certain coffee drinks that other huge coffee chain
sell and it's a big deal. The place is packed
all day and I went one Thanksgiving. I went over
there and the place is packed, and I'm waiting for

(13:41):
my order, and there's this kid and he is watching
something on a phone on speed like with the speaker on,
and it's loud, and I don't like it. And I
looked at it. And here's the thing. At the time,
I was on the phone with a friend, appropriately on

(14:02):
earbuds and speaking very softly. So I look at this
kid and I just go, you got any earbuds? And
it turns out he did, and he got them out
of his pocket and he used them because hopefully I

(14:22):
shamed him for listening to his phone audio without earbuds
in a public place. Now, I didn't know at the
time that one day everybody would be doing the same
thing and I would have to have the travel skills
of a Santa Claus to go all around the country
and confront everybody who in any moment is yacking or

(14:46):
watching a movie or a TikTok on their phone on
the speaker. If you've flown anytime in the last year,
you've heard it or you've done it. I don't know
which one you want. Airplane terminals are one of the
worst places for this. I think part of it is

(15:11):
you're not allowed, you know, to be on the phone
on the flight, so everybody's got to get their stuff
in before they board. But also where are your earbuds?
And maybe in an airplane terminal. The thinking is, I'll
when I get on the plane, i won't be on
the phone, I'll watch my tiktoks and I'll put in

(15:31):
my earbuds. But I don't want to run the battery down,
So in the terminal while we're all waiting to board,
I'll blast my TikTok to the world. Do you know
if you fly American Airlines or you fly Alaska Airlines,
they make an announcement about, hey, you need to wear
headphones or earbuds if you're going to listen to content

(15:52):
on this flight. And if you go to Delta's website,
they have a section about their in flight entertainment and
they've got a thing on that website now that says
plays if you're gonna watch anything on a flight, use headphones.
Flight attendants say every single flight there's at least one

(16:16):
person doing this. Also, the people who do it are
getting more and more virulent because it used to be,
let's say two years ago, when this was going on,
if somebody was doing it and you just kind of
gave them a look, they would cut it out and
they would either mute the device or they'd put in earbudgs.

(16:38):
Now people are talking back. Somebody's on a plane, they're
watching a movie on their iPad with the with the
you know, the speakers, and you say, hey, would you
mind using headphones? A lot of times they'll ignore you
or even say you are being rude. Man. It used

(16:59):
to be. Remember remember when everybody had earbuds. Remember when
if you bought an iPhone, you got earbuds with the phone.
And they stopped doing that. Uh in I think it
was twenty twenty that they stopped including a pair of
wired earbuds with an iPhone, and maybe that was the
beginning of the end. Part of the problem too, is

(17:21):
you might not be on it when people are not
on a call. It used to be when you had
a phone, a cell phone, and you weren't on a call.
If you were using it, it was something quiet. Maybe
you were texting or checking email. That's about it. Now
you're either on a phone call, yacking, or you're watching videos.

(17:42):
Everybody's watching videos if they're not talking to somebody, because
nobody knows how to be alone with themselves anymore. I
still do not understand why, though people have no compunction
about doing it with the speakers on. And this happens
everyone where I go supermarket. Yes, ah, they have Texas peats,

(18:06):
and they have Tabasco and they have Tabasco green, and
oh they have Tabasco scorpion pepper. That sounds good. Yeah,
and take a scorpion pepper. Will try and see. It's
too hot for us in the gym. You're supposed to
be working your body in a gym, not watching tiktoks.

(18:30):
For the entire cardio machine section to hear, we need
lass man. I know I'm not a big government guy.
But here's the problem. Okay, it's not that we have
big government and it's bad, or we don't have enough
government and it's bad. It's that we have this bizarrely
shaped government where parts of it are too big and

(18:53):
controlling and other parts of it need to step it up.
I'm not saying the death penalty for having a speakerphone
call in public. I'm not saying death penalty that would
almost certainly be unconstitutional. Twenty years sounds good to me.

(19:21):
Are they great or do they suck? He knows? But
first animals in the news, but never upsetting. This is
heavy petting. All right, Let's start with this year's American

(19:51):
Humane Hero Dog Award winner. It is Bo, Bo, the
blood hound from North Carolina who works with the Gastonia
Police Department. Bo is a youngin at the tender age
of just eighteen months, but he has already made a

(20:11):
big difference in the lives of a lot of people.
And I'm about to tell you how. When he was
just eight weeks old, Bo began training to be a bloodhound, which,
as you know, is a dog that you say, here,
here's a smell, Go find that smell out in the world.
Apparently he took to it pretty rapidly, because he has

(20:36):
already found a missing eleven year old, a seven year
old who had been Uh, this part's not that fun,
but it turns out fine. A seven year old had
been kidnapped, and they gave Bo a little piece of

(20:58):
that boy's clothing, and Bo found that kid seven miles away,
and the child was unharmed and returned to the delighted parents.
He also has found a whole bunch of I don't
even have the number, a whole bunch of seniors with dementia.

(21:19):
You know, sometimes seniors with dementia, they end up getting
lost and he finds them. And even when and I
am not trying to slight the other bloodhounds, but apparently
sometimes other bloodhounds can't find them, BO can find them.
So kudos to you and your sniffer, good boy. Now,

(21:42):
speaking of heroes, there's this eight year old kid, his
name is Zay and Barry, and one day who's out
with his skateboard and he sees another group of kids
and they they are teasing a little feral kitten and
he's like, that's bogus. But there's multiple of them and

(22:06):
only one of me. I doubt they're gonna listen to
my pleas for humanity, and there's no way I can
take them all. So you know what he did. He said, Hey,
if you leave this kitten alone, I will give you
my skateboard. And they went for it must have been
a pretty good skateboard, and he gave up his skateboard,
oh to save this kitten. And then what happened. The

(22:29):
kitten fell madly in love with Zay and Barry and
is now the family pet at the Barry house. And
you may say, ah, but he he gave up his skateboard. Oh,
no worries here, because guess what happened. They took the
cat to the Humane Society be checked out, and everybody

(22:52):
was so like, oh, this kid and he gave up
his skateboard. So here's what happened. A manager at the
Humane Society got in touch with with Zuomies, which you
see in a lot of malls that sells, amongst other things,
skateboard stuff. And they got together and they gave him
a big fat gift card which allowed him to go

(23:13):
into the local Zuomies not only get a new skateboard,
he was able to custom design to his specific specifications
his dream skateboard. So he ended up with a better
skateboard and a best friend. And that is cool. That's

(23:35):
such a precious story. What a great kid, What a
good kid. And then finally say happy birthday to Henry.
Henry is a crocodile and he lives at a conservation
center on a private piece of land in South Africa.
And guess who he lives with, Come and knock on

(23:57):
a door. It's Henry and six lady crocodiles. Yeah, and
he has lived a long time. He's huge, by the way,
you want how big he is. He weighs over fifteen
hundred pounds. He is over sixteen feet long. He is

(24:19):
still growing because crocodiles are one of the animals that
keep growing their whole life. You know, we grow until
seventeen eighteen sixteen depends and then we're done. You're not
growing anymore. I mean maybe maybe, uh with wise, that's
on you and me, but height wise, you're not growing anymore.

(24:39):
Their whole life. He grows, and he is one hundred
and twenty four years old. He's in perfect health. Getting
older is not slowing him down, they claim. I don't
know if this is true. Okay, maybe this number got

(24:59):
a exaggerated, but they claim that he has fathered over
ten thousand little crocodiles. That's a busy boy. Of course,
he's surrounded. I mean he's surrounded by women for exactly
that reason, so they can keep, you know, pumping out crocodiles.
So happy birthday to Henry the old big randy crocodile.

(25:24):
And that is heavy petting for you. Almost certainly we'll
do this again next week. This is KFI AM six
forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening
to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday,
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