December 10, 2024 • 39 mins
Today, Doug Pike withholds what "frost on the pumpkin" means, and discusses the iHeart rewind, apple species, and a romance novel.
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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? Remember when social media was truly social?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey John, how's it going today?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Well? 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 Bronze roofing repair
(00:44):
or replacement.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Bronze roofing has you covered? And now fifty plus with
Doug Pike. All right, here we go, Tuesday edition of
the program of fifty plus. You're on kPr C first
day of Live fifty plus this week, and thanks to
any of you who happened to be listing this morning
with this afternoon now who may have joined us yesterday
(01:05):
for our golf tournament to benefit Saint Jude Children's Research
Hospital up at Golf Club of Houston. In case you
were wondering, I talked about this for the last couple
of weeks pretty heavily that one day event raised. Will
you got any idea how much we made yesterday? I
have no idea pop quiz. Take a guess. Okay, a
(01:27):
legitimate guess. Okay, you've made a quarter million. No, we
did better. We made four hundred and eighty seven thousand
dollars from that golf tournament to go to those kids
at Saint Jude over in Memphis. That's pretty good stuff, mom, Yeah,
that's what we all said. Weather was great, of course,
was in fine shape as always in course says. We
(01:49):
filled both courses and my team courtesy of Carter's Country.
Since they're all hands on deck for hunting seasons right
now this time of year, that's they've got to all
be working. I think we finished I want to say
fifth or sixth place. We played pretty well, had some
things go our way. So thanks to everybody who played
in it, and especially all of those who bought sponsorships
(02:11):
for all the different elements of the tournament. That really helps.
And man, if you want to jump on board early
for next year and get something really good, just call me.
Just call me your email me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com.
That's the best way, really, the email Dougpike at iHeartMedia
dot com. Into the show, we go as the temperature
(02:31):
continues to just drop like a stone outside. I'll start
with highs and lows in Haiku courtesy of Texas Indoor
Air Quality Specialists. Because cleaner air is healthier air. All
you gotta do is just go to texasiaq dot net
and start looking around. You'll understand what they do, how
they do it, and why it's important to the air
quality in your home. Ready, Will, I'm ready? Here we
(02:55):
go quite warm yesterday. Frost on the pumpkin tonight. That's
status quo. Here, frost on the pumpkins. Yeah, it's December.
Nobody's thinking about pumpkins anymore. Doug. That's a that's an expression, Will,
It's not a.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
What expression is frost on the pumpkin? What does that mean?
Besides plainly what is written?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
That's it? Just plainly what is written frost on the
pumpkin tonight?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So how's that an expression?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Just?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Great? The thing? Well, let's get it over with. You're
you're clearly uneducated as to the whereabout. Well, I'm asking questions.
I'm trying to answer that. No, I'm not going to
answer it because there is no answer. There is one,
but I'm not going to answer it. Okay, sounds like
you're playing with me right now. It's legit. You'll find
(03:53):
out during the break and.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
The up.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And that's a five point one. Well that's better than half. Yeah,
five point when I'll take that. I'll take it just
because I'm a good guy and I'm in a good
mood because we raised so much money for those kids yesterday,
so much money.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
So actually that's a good that's a good point, Doug.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, so why can't you maybe it should be seven
point eight seven? Oh, you know, just for the kids.
I'll take that. There we go and make you happy
for just dropping me farther into the well. Thanks a lot.
I'll rost here than a pumpkin in here. I was
gonna say I'll do better tomorrow, but I don't know
(04:40):
based on your random, sporadic judging criteria. Well, I'm just
mad that I don't know what this expression. Well you
should just well you're probably too young. Uh cool. It
will be for a couple of nights at the thirties tonight,
holy cow, maybe a light freeze up on the northern
edge of of this greater metropolitan area of ours, then
(05:03):
back to a more tolerable range, and then, believe it
or not, back into the high seventies again, if the
forecast is right at least for the days. A couple
of days right before Christmas is as far out as
I saw a forecast, and that's still too far to
really believe it to be gospel. But it showed I
want to say, a seventy seven and a seventy eight
(05:23):
for the twenty second and third of December, which is
that's just status quo around here. Like I said, this
might be the only part of the country where you can,
at least in theory, if not in reality, experience all
four seasons of the year in four consecutive days, be
in the eighties. When you go to bed, then you
(05:44):
open up the front door to go retrieve the newspaper
in your shorts, in your in your bare feet, and
you get hit in the face by a blast of
frosty air. Our weather changes constantly the end period. That
that's how to sum that up, right?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Reasonable, I guess you're paying attention. I'm doing wordle. Oh
my god, yeah, I've already I set the bar at
for today on wordle. So I'll give you. I'll give
you a pass on that. If you'd have said anything
else than that, maybe not so much moving to the
markets courtesy of Houston Gold Exchange dot com ripples, but
(06:19):
no waves across the four major indicators, none of them
changing by more than a fraction of a point so far.
Today oil was up a half a buck around ten
a m and that puts it right sixty eight sixty
nine somewhere in their dollars a barrel. As long as
it stays below seventy, I'll tolerate it for now until
(06:41):
until the end of January, and then I think we're
going to see some really exciting news from the petroleum world.
By the way, a quick sidebar I saw a story
today about the difference between favorability for internal combustion engines,
for hybrids and all electrics. And guess which one's paced
(07:02):
the lowest for favorability E electric And you want to
know why, because first of all, well, I don't even
know where to start. Hydrogen is going to replace electricity
as the as the alternative to internal combustion. Internal combustion,
when oil goes down and gas leans down around a
dollar and a half a gallon, again, that's gonna look
(07:26):
pretty good compared to having a giant, heavy, heavy car
that's tearing up the roads and has to be plugged
in at night, and if it's super cold, you can't
hardly drive around the block without having to stop and recharge.
I'm still not sold on on electric cars. And if
you have one and you love it, more power to you.
But that's just that's just not where I am right now.
(07:49):
So back to it. Gold up thirty dollars an ounce
this morning and was showing at about something like two
seven hundred and fifteen dollars just a little while ago.
That's something I don't really understand. If you want to
know more about it, probably ought to check in with
Brad Schweiss at Houston Gooldexchange dot com. I actually saw
him at the tournament yesterday. He donated He and his
(08:10):
wife donated a really nice couple's package to that silent auction.
This said was valued at almost ten thousand dollars. I
don't know how much it raised, but it was worth
that and every penny of it. He came out for
lunch and I'm glad he did. I hope he had
a good time, and I'm really glad he made it
out there to see the impact of this tournament on
(08:31):
children's children'sa horrible diseases, cancers, immune deficiencies, blood disorders, all
kinds of things that they take care of in there.
It's amazing. Now for the news, which I'll try to no,
I can't. I'm late. Holy cow, We'll pay attention. It's
all your fault if you're in the market for a
beautiful new custom home. I actually ran into Chris McGinley
(08:51):
out at the tournament yesterday too. He's the president of
kirk Holmb's and the third generation leader. He and his
sister both working. That's Melanie working very hard to make
sure that everybody in anybody who wants a beautiful custom
home from about the seven hundreds to the millions gets
what they want. On the northwest side of Houston all
the way out through the hill country. They've been doing
(09:15):
this for well, they haven't, but their family has been
in this business for thirty plus years. Thirty plus years
they've been in the custom home building business. And it
seems like every time I turn around, they win another award.
Still got what is it about eighteen days or so
to go, eighteen nineteen days on Southern Living Builder of
the Year, the honor they grabbed this year and I'm
(09:36):
sure they'll get something next year I'll be able to
talk about for them as well. They offer an industry
leading twenty years structural WARRANTYTS twice the standard and two
by six exterior walls to keep the heat away in
summer and the cold away in winter. Let them turn
your dream home into reality. The design team, the architectural team,
everybody at kirk HOLMBS is all hands on deck to
(09:59):
make make sure you get exactly what you and your
family want. Kirkholms dot com. That's K you are K
because at Kirkholmmes it's all about you, aged to perfection.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
This is fifty plus with Dougpike. All right, welcome back
to fifty plus. Thanks for listening on this Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Uh quickly, I want to let you know you've listened
to your favorite hosts in the free iHeartRadio app for
long time now. I'm sure you have, and I hope
you do. If you haven't yet, you can anytime you
want to. As the year winds down, we are rewinding
and celebrating the stations and podcast you like the most
with iHeart Rewind twenty twenty four. iHeartRadio listeners, Open your
(10:51):
free iHeartRadio app. Check your inbox for a personalized experience
just for you, unique insights like your most listen to
stations and podcasts. Also, we're sharing what your neighbors are
listening to. Search iHeart Rewind in the iHeartRadio app to
relive the year's biggest podcasts and dive back into your favorites.
(11:13):
Thank you as always for listening with us in twenty
twenty four, and happy New Year from iHeartRadio. All right
back to it over here. I've got that taken care of,
I got that. I'm gonna get to some news, really,
and I try to deliver this in fairly small pieces,
not so much as to bore you, but just enough
to encourage you to do some digging of your own.
(11:35):
If something catches your ear, I guess you'd be the
way to say that. First up is a caution from
the FBI. Believe it or not, that pretty much anybody
who sends text messages between iPhones and Android devices should
consider not doing so until they've installed some sort of encryption.
(11:56):
There was a major data breach. It was called salt Typhoon,
and it was launched by actors over in China, and
they quite possibly can see your messages, and the authorities
here aren't really sure when they're going to be able
to stop that from happening. Based on the extent of
this breach, that's pretty big, very big. Look this one up.
(12:19):
It won't take you long to search it and find
it and see what the FBI said about salt Typhoon.
It doesn't impact messaging between the same platforms Apple to
Apple or Android to Android, both of which have their
own safeguards in place, but when the messages crossed platforms, well,
it's scary technology once again, and who knows how it
(12:43):
could be used against you or me or anybody else.
If you haven't heard yet, by the way, and most
of you will have. The man who's accused of shooting
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City has
been arrested in Pennsylvania and was in possession then of
a go of written admissions about the crime. According to
(13:04):
the story and other items at the time of his arrest,
his names Luigi Mangione, and he's been charged with several crimes.
And this one will continue to unfold as more and
more has learned about what happened that day. President elect
Trump's know be let it be known that part of
his plan to secure our border and remove unlawful immigrants
(13:25):
could include deportation of families of mixed immigration status something else.
That's beginning to make sense now now that millions of
people have come here unlawfully and borne some unknown number
of babies while they are here, babies that become automatic
US citizens by this notion of birthright citizenship, President Trump
(13:48):
is strongly considering abolition of that, and given the burden
it places on our country overall and has significantly for
the past four years, that may be necessary at this
point to kind of get the ship back on a
better course. Superman. Superman's in the news. Will you ready
for this? Is Superman has, through his writers at DC Comics,
(14:15):
has been just thrown deeper into the woke movement in
the latest issue of Detective Comics from DC Comics, in
which Superman scolds Bruce Wayne aka Batman for not acknowledging
his white privilege. There's also a page or two on
which the maker of some concoction that restores youth says
that she wants to give her a lecture. This is
(14:37):
all in the comic book. She wants to give her
elixir to rich people so they can live long enough,
they can live long enough to see all the damage
their wealth has caused. I couldn't possibly make this up.
Word the word bubbles that on every page just keep
getting stranger and stranger, more and more political, unless, if
(15:01):
at all, about what comic book superheroes have represented since
their inception. The liberty's taken by the guy who wrote
this stuff. Of it they give his name, I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna give you that. I'm not gonna
give him the recognition for that, because I don't agree
with what he wrote. Uh, but the liberty is taken
by this guy to just dramatic, dramatically change his storylines
(15:24):
based only on his political leaning. By the way, that's
that's the only possible reason he might have written this.
Throw this stuff on Superman. It's gonna have the same
effects on Superman as Kryptonite does. And I'm afraid that
people are gonna stop reading that stuff if it doesn't
go back to what it's supposed to be about. There
was more, even more that was involved in that one
(15:44):
particular issue. They just roll the ice and make it
all happen at once. Pretty kind of I would say, weird,
Will let's take a couple of minutes and go to
the lighter side of the day. And I do have,
by the way, a little later on some really good
news and some really good news, So I'll get to
that maybe in the next segment, maybe in the last
(16:05):
you ready, will, yes, Oh, you solved Whordland? Five? That's right,
I can name maybe five who knew or feels like
the first time, feels like the first time I knew.
You couldn't help, but go lyrical on me. That's okay, though,
that was good. I'm glad you noticed a list of
(16:27):
things that happened for the first time ever in twenty
twenty four include and there's only two of them here.
There had to be more, but there are only two
that got that made this list. Anyway, can you name
either one of them?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Will?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And for a billion, trillion, zillion quadrillion dollars, if I
get this, dug, I'll pay you a dollar to day
and then I'll owe you the rest.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Okay, first thing to happen in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You can give up whenever you want, because you're not
making it no way I say, unless you unless you've
already seen the story. I have no idea. Okay, well,
I'll tell you. This was the first year ever that
scientists detected water on an asteroid's surface. Who knew, right,
(17:18):
And a street food taco stand in Mexico got a
Michelin Star, which pretty much tarnishes the rest of those stars,
wouldn't you think? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I've seen the pictures, and the tacos look awesome. But
it looks so good that you know that the Michelin
Star is. It's where you're supposed to. You know, it's
for travelers. You're going and you want to get some
great food.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You want to leave your hotel and walk out on
the street and buy a taco. Yes, I would definitely
do it. I guarantee you that since that happened, that
taco has doubled in price. You thinks I would bet
on it? I would. All right, I'll give you one
more trio. Yeah, we go, No, gosh, I'll save them
(18:12):
because there are some good ones here today. I'll save
them and get right to a late health and the
good work that doctor Doe and his team do at
all of their clinics around town. If you are a
guy and this is the procedure they do the very
most often. It's called prostate artery embolization, and what it
does is go into the prostate area and after determining
(18:38):
exactly which artery is feeding blood to that prostate, they
plug it up. They just say no, miss, sorry, no
more blood to you prostate. And as it shrinks and shriveles,
so do the symptoms that have been bothering you for
probably so long. If you're older than about sixty or
sixty five, you don't know those symptoms, count yourself very thankful.
(19:03):
If you do, then check in with a late health
and see what they can do for you. They also
do similar procedures. They're a vascular clinic and that's what
they work with. They do similar procedures for fibroids and women.
They do similar procedures for ugly veins, which can be
that's a pretty quick fix and most of what they
do is done just in a couple of hours in
the office in the clinic. You don't have to go
(19:24):
to the hospital. You can get somebody. Somebody's got to
drive you home, okay, cause you're gonna be knocked out.
You're gonna be under anesthesia. For most of these procedures,
and once you're done and you just get driven home,
you just prop back in your favorite chair and take
a little while to recover and get back before you
know it to feeling better. A latehealth dot com is
a website ala te seven to one, three five eight
(19:46):
eight thirty eight eighty eight. They also do regenerative medicine
by the way, seven to one, three five eight eight
thirty eight eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Now they sure don't make them like they used to.
That's why every few months we wash them, check us fluids,
and spring on a fresh coat of wax. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
All right, welcome back to fifty plus. Thank you all
for listening. I certainly do appreciate it. On this beautiful Tuesday, beautiful,
but chili very chilly. You know, I reserve the word
cold for temperatures below freezing. So it's it's nippy, it's chili.
What are some other synonyms for cold? Will cool?
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Oh, it's frostier than the pumpkin.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Oh, I forgot to tell you what that was. I forgot.
Don't let me forget. In the next break, I'm gonna
write a note down here.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
P U M.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
P K I n I'll tell you, tell you during
the next break, I promise. I just saw a picture
that from Yellowstone Park that had a headline over it
that said something i'll paraphrase here, bison or tourists run
from bison stampeding over bridge in Yellowstone National Park, something
(21:07):
to that effect. What I think it actually may have
been is a pretty a sensational headline attached to a
photograph that showed bison probably being moved by park personnel
from one part of Yellowstone to another, maybe an easier
way to get them across a little river which might
(21:29):
have been flowing underneath the bridge than trying to herd
them across the actual river, which could have been far
more dangerous for the animals. None of the people I
looked at in the picture, and it's a small picture,
it's a little bitty thing on my phone, but it
didn't look like anybody was panic. There weren't pictures of
people running away from the bridge. They're all just casual,
(21:53):
casual bystanders, most of them holding cameras and whatnot. So little.
That's about enough of that. The other thing I thought
I was gonna bring up right when we got back,
I read on just before we came back live. And
it's a non event. It was just another clickbait story.
I didn't want any part of it. Let's go back
to these things we were talking about earlier. Will, I'm
(22:14):
gonna go with comes as no surprise, who knew? And
I can name maybe five, which is two of the
first three we went with. Ah, right, comes as no
surprise Miriam Webster's word of the Year for twenty twenty
four got you want to bet and it doesn't. Yeah,
(22:35):
I want to bet it comes as no surprise. Yep,
what do you think it might be? It's still grain rot. No,
oh no, it's not brain rot. But that's a good one.
That's a good one. It starts with a p Okay,
that narrowed down at all, and it's a pretty long word.
(22:56):
Oh it's five syllables. Yeah, polarization. You looked it up,
didn't you. I heard you clicking over there, I heard
you clicking Will. Okay, you're so clever? Was the Oxford word?
Oh oh so yeah? So you you didn't disclose that
you had information? Yeah, okay, that's fine, that's fine. I'm
(23:19):
going to give you one more chance to pick between
these two and then I'll just tell you the other one.
So we're going to get to both of them. No
matter what, I can name maybe five or who knew?
Who knew? Guess who wrote a romance novel in twenty
two excuse me, in the year two thousand? Who wrote
a romance and romance novel? And it would be someone
(23:41):
who would have been probably pretty much in the news
back then. Not from our country, not even from our continent. Okay,
any idea at all? Well, I was gonna say, maybe
it was Bush during the election season. Oh, that's interesting.
(24:01):
As a way to blow off some steams, I'll give you.
I'll just let that hang there. I'll give you his initials. Okay, Okay,
s H, s H. Sherlock Holmes. That's not a bad guess, actually,
despite him being a fictional character. Al right, s H. European, No, no,
(24:28):
Middle Eastern, Eastern. You gotta get it from that. Oh,
Saddam Hussein. He wrote a romance novel in the year
two thousand. I don't recall seeing it on the New
York Times bestseller list. But nonetheless, the guy wrote a book.
And the other one that I can name, maybe five.
Guess how many varieties of apples there. This is a
(24:49):
great conversation starter for holiday dinners and parties. Guess how
many varieties of apples are grown in the world?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Oh, I mean, there's guy to be thousands.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Just pick a number, Okay.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I'll pick one thousand and one.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Seven thousand, five hundred varieties of apple. Wow about depending
on which grocery store you shop, you might see eight,
maybe ten, maybe a dozen total apples of these seven thousand,
five hundred. That's that's pretty interesting, I found. I'll use
(25:28):
that one at some point during the holidays, I really will.
Are they all named after grannies? Granny Smith, Granny Johnson,
great grandma? Oh, there's got you know some of these
older breeds or older types of apples? Of varieties? Who
knows a great Granny Smith? A super uber delicious red delicious,
(25:51):
not to be confused with the rainbow of colors of
other delicious apples. I'm sure that are around the world somewhere.
The crispiest honey, Ye honey, crisp apples I found I
found adequate to satisfy my see you really yes, you're
a honey. I'm just an old school guy. I'm red
(26:11):
delicious now man honey crisp is the way to go.
You want a nice juicy apple, Yeah, I agree. My
wife's named Gala Apple. She likes them. Have you had
them yet? I've had all the apple all seventy five
I'm an apple officionado, an apple a day for what
would that be? Oh my gosh, no will All right, now,
(26:36):
let's get back to some some more important things going
on in the world than seventy five hundred apples. This
past week, we talked about a small New Jersey town
where it's council chairman had a man removed from its
weekly meeting for holding a small American flag. Well, it
wasn't long after that the town residents rose up in
(26:58):
protest of the American flag being designated a prop and
not allowed to be displayed at a meeting of American
citizens in the United States. I am really glad to
see these people in this little town stand up for
the nation's flag, as all of us kind of showed
we were going to do back in November. And I'm
(27:20):
glad we did. All of this stuff that's been going
on where you can't show the American flag in public,
you can't speak of any religion, and because it might
offend somebody in a nation where we have the right
to practice any religion we want, or to just totally
abstain from doing any of that, to have no belief whatsoever.
(27:42):
That's all okay in this country, but we can't talk
about it. And this whole notion of taking free speech
away from us is I think it just is boiling up.
And as Americans, we're about tired of it, about tired
of being told what we can and can't say and
canning can't think. And I hope that this movement I
(28:05):
see back in the other direction, which I consider to
be the right direction. I hope it just continues to go.
How absurd. American flag is not just a piece of cloth.
It represents countless numbers of people who gave their lives,
maybe gave a piece of them. So anybody who ever
fought for this country certainly gave a piece of themselves
(28:26):
to the country, even if they weren't killed in action.
They did that for our country to keep us safe
and to keep more people from being lost. So hats
off to that little town and hopefully more little towns
that are being led by people who just don't get
it or don't want to get it or want to
try to change what we get. Maybe they'll be maybe
(28:49):
they'll be told to just pack up and go. If
you don't like it, all right, well we got oh
do oh? We do, don't we I'm not that late.
I'm not that late. Will Ut Health Institute on Aging
continues to serve the senior community of the greater metropolitan
Houston area with number one access on its website utch
(29:12):
dot edu slash aging access there to a tremendous number
of resources, all of which are of great relevance to
being a senior and continuing to be a senior for
many years to come with a better quality of life.
That's what their goal is, to make sure we all
live as long as we possibly can and enjoy the
(29:35):
time we have on this earth for as long as
that's available to us. The collaborative of providers who are
part of this Institute on Aging number more than a
thousand now, I'm certain, maybe maybe two thousand by now.
It's been up and running for the better part of
a decade a little bit more actually, and all of these,
(29:55):
all of these providers in every medical field have gone
back to get not re educated, but additionally educated as
to how they can apply the knowledge they learned in school.
The knowledge there is applied specifically to seniors because we
are different than juniors and medium ers, whatever those would be.
(30:17):
I'm not sure middle aged people, younger people totally different
than us, and our medical care needs to be pinpointed
to what makes us tick, what makes us keep living longer,
and that's what they do at ut Health Institute on
aging utch dot edu slash aging uth dot edu slash aging.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Old guys rule, and of course women never get old
if you want to avoid sleeping on the couch.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Okay, well I think that sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Fifty plus continues. Here's more with Doug.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Welcome back, fourth and final segment of of the show.
It's almost said story for one reason or another. Will
where did that come from? Who knows? Welcome back to
fifty plus. Thanks for listening on AM nine to fifty KPRC.
How many episodes do we have now? Will? I can check?
Not as many as there are apples, definitely not definitely,
(31:33):
like maybe in another bunch of years. We only we
knock out four live ones a week, so that's a
couple of one hundred a year. Carry the two divided
by seventeen, and all right, are you ready hold on
seven hundred and forty? Really, seven hundred and forty that's
(31:53):
not bad. That's ten percent of the number of apples,
almost almost. And considering how the head start that the
apple farmer got, I'd say we're in pretty good shape.
So in another you know, in another what a couple
of thousand years, we'll be there. We'll probably not when
(32:14):
you look at it the right way, probably not. Will
probably not. In very brief political news, I found this
kind of interesting. In Florida, a US representative, a woman
named Susan Valdez, re elected as a Democrat down there
to the US House and self described as being a
Democrat all her life because she believed, and here's a
(32:37):
hit where I'm going up until recently, that the Democratic
Party was the party of the people. And then she
and she signed up for another term. Hope she got elected,
and she did, and now she's jump ship. She jumped
off that blue bandwagon and jumped on the red one
(32:57):
because the Republicans, it turns out, in her estimation at least,
are and in mind, are the true party of the people. Now.
I found that very interesting so she's gonna continue to
represent her constituents. I think maybe in the well, either
Tampa or Orlando area, or it might be, it might
be somewhere else. I think those two come to mind.
(33:20):
One of those two anyway down there in Florida, and
she's gonna represent them. She's just gonna she's just gonna
lean the other way. Now, two more eyes opened up
in historical news. I found this very interesting, and I'm
kind of an archaeology buff. I like to I like
to hear about and see artifacts from the past, to
(33:42):
learn a little bit more of how people lived and when.
When the Notre Dame Cathedral burned in Paris, there was
great effort put forth to make sure that it reopened
before the Olympics. And as they were digging and moving
things and dealing with the foundation of the whole church,
(34:07):
there was some lo and behold, some archaeological artifacts turned up,
and a team was allowed to work in there for
so long as that work to restore Notre Dame Notre Dame,
if you will, so long as that work was still
going on. And at that point, unfortunately the researchers had
(34:31):
to stop because once again the Olympics took precedent over history,
which I sadly must report. Bottom line is they found hundreds,
literally hundreds, just a treasure trove of religious artifacts dating
back hundreds of years. And like I said, French President
(34:53):
Macron set limits on the time in areas where the
searching was allowed, so the researchers no darned well that
what they found was only a very small representation of
what's buried down there. But they're not going to get
to keep looking, I guess, not until something else happens
one hundred, two hundred and three hundred years from now.
(35:14):
It's fascinating what's been long since buried as the earth evolved,
long since all of the great amazing things in Egypt,
all of the great things in South America and Central America.
Not so much here. Really, our continent and our country
are just infants and maybe toddlers compared to the history
(35:37):
of the rest of the world and the development of
the rest of the world. We don't really have things underground.
And I think partly because I don't know, I would
have to go into a lot of detail, I think
to explain that. But I was fascinated by what I
saw there, and it's just an amazing representation of life
back that several hundred years ago. It was fascinating. If
(36:00):
you're one of the this is good news. If you're
one of the estimated three hundred and sixty five million
adults worldwide who suffer from osteo arthritis, there is very
good news something called genicular artery embolization. And that name,
that word embolization ought to ring pretty familiarly with people
(36:21):
who listen to this show because of the talk I
do with doctor Andrew Do. In fact, we're going to
have an interview coming up with him shortly, and I'm
hoping I can get him also to come back for
another interview to talk about this procedure. It was developed
by the author of the study that I read, Florian
Fleckenstein from University Hospital in Berlin, called this a significant
(36:44):
breakthrough since it is not only minimally invasive, but very effective.
It turns out even in patients who didn't respond to
more conservative treatments. Definitely worth a look. If you've got
bad knees, look up Nick, that's ge N. I see
U L A R. Genicular artery embolization, and I'm sure
(37:05):
the study will pop up. I'm certain of it in
news that's both old and new, and I wanted to
get to this today because it really is important. Researchers
are reminding us that spending more time in nature greatly
reduces emotional distress among young people and the rest of us.
(37:26):
By the way, the study was done on young people,
specifically ten and twelve year olds who had issues, who
had troubling issues, and what they found out was that
being in the outdoors more relieves stress, It relieves anxiety depression,
It mitigates impulsive and aggressive behaviors and slows them down
(37:50):
to or stops them in these young people. And it Hey,
if you fish, or you hunt, or you hike, or
you like to go watch birds or whatever you do,
we're just walking outside. You have to recognize the therapeutic
value of that, for just clearing your head and distracting you.
(38:10):
There's just so much to see in the outdoors. There
was a study done several decades ago now, back when
I was at the newspaper, and I wrote about it
a couple of times, showed that kids who played outdoors
more than indoors tended to be more aware that they
were part of something much bigger than themselves. They even
scored better on standardized testing than kids who were inside.
(38:33):
Kids fascinating related story, by the way, I saw and
didn't get a chance to read. That whole thing noted
that getting outside just three or four times a week
may reduce your need for medications. Who knew, right, well
I did. I'm outside as much as I can be,
and I absolutely love it all right, Will we got
time for one more? Very quickly? A cup of Joe,
(38:57):
Less work, more play, or now just those two A
cup of cup of Joe, A cup of Joe. Good
news for coffee drinkers. New studies suggests that regular coffee
consumption could extend your lifespan by nearly two years, and
with time on the clock. In Tokyo, Japan, they're going
to implement a four day work week for government employees
(39:18):
next year. You know why, will because they want to
have more babies. They're encouraging women to have more kids
by giving them an extra day off. Audios
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. Remember when music sounded
like this? Remember when social media was truly social?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey John, how's it going today?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Well? 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 Bronze roofing repair
(00:44):
or replacement.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Bronze roofing has you covered? And now fifty plus with
Doug Pike. All right, here we go, Tuesday edition of
the program of fifty plus. You're on kPr C first
day of Live fifty plus this week, and thanks to
any of you who happened to be listing this morning
with this afternoon now who may have joined us yesterday
(01:05):
for our golf tournament to benefit Saint Jude Children's Research
Hospital up at Golf Club of Houston. In case you
were wondering, I talked about this for the last couple
of weeks pretty heavily that one day event raised. Will
you got any idea how much we made yesterday? I
have no idea pop quiz. Take a guess. Okay, a
(01:27):
legitimate guess. Okay, you've made a quarter million. No, we
did better. We made four hundred and eighty seven thousand
dollars from that golf tournament to go to those kids
at Saint Jude over in Memphis. That's pretty good stuff, mom, Yeah,
that's what we all said. Weather was great, of course,
was in fine shape as always in course says. We
(01:49):
filled both courses and my team courtesy of Carter's Country.
Since they're all hands on deck for hunting seasons right
now this time of year, that's they've got to all
be working. I think we finished I want to say
fifth or sixth place. We played pretty well, had some
things go our way. So thanks to everybody who played
in it, and especially all of those who bought sponsorships
(02:11):
for all the different elements of the tournament. That really helps.
And man, if you want to jump on board early
for next year and get something really good, just call me.
Just call me your email me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com.
That's the best way, really, the email Dougpike at iHeartMedia
dot com. Into the show, we go as the temperature
(02:31):
continues to just drop like a stone outside. I'll start
with highs and lows in Haiku courtesy of Texas Indoor
Air Quality Specialists. Because cleaner air is healthier air. All
you gotta do is just go to texasiaq dot net
and start looking around. You'll understand what they do, how
they do it, and why it's important to the air
quality in your home. Ready, Will, I'm ready? Here we
(02:55):
go quite warm yesterday. Frost on the pumpkin tonight. That's
status quo. Here, frost on the pumpkins. Yeah, it's December.
Nobody's thinking about pumpkins anymore. Doug. That's a that's an expression, Will,
It's not a.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
What expression is frost on the pumpkin? What does that mean?
Besides plainly what is written?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
That's it? Just plainly what is written frost on the
pumpkin tonight?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So how's that an expression?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Just?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Great? The thing? Well, let's get it over with. You're
you're clearly uneducated as to the whereabout. Well, I'm asking questions.
I'm trying to answer that. No, I'm not going to
answer it because there is no answer. There is one,
but I'm not going to answer it. Okay, sounds like
you're playing with me right now. It's legit. You'll find
(03:53):
out during the break and.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
The up.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And that's a five point one. Well that's better than half. Yeah,
five point when I'll take that. I'll take it just
because I'm a good guy and I'm in a good
mood because we raised so much money for those kids yesterday,
so much money.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
So actually that's a good that's a good point, Doug.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, so why can't you maybe it should be seven
point eight seven? Oh, you know, just for the kids.
I'll take that. There we go and make you happy
for just dropping me farther into the well. Thanks a lot.
I'll rost here than a pumpkin in here. I was
gonna say I'll do better tomorrow, but I don't know
(04:40):
based on your random, sporadic judging criteria. Well, I'm just
mad that I don't know what this expression. Well you
should just well you're probably too young. Uh cool. It
will be for a couple of nights at the thirties tonight,
holy cow, maybe a light freeze up on the northern
edge of of this greater metropolitan area of ours, then
(05:03):
back to a more tolerable range, and then, believe it
or not, back into the high seventies again, if the
forecast is right at least for the days. A couple
of days right before Christmas is as far out as
I saw a forecast, and that's still too far to
really believe it to be gospel. But it showed I
want to say, a seventy seven and a seventy eight
(05:23):
for the twenty second and third of December, which is
that's just status quo around here. Like I said, this
might be the only part of the country where you can,
at least in theory, if not in reality, experience all
four seasons of the year in four consecutive days, be
in the eighties. When you go to bed, then you
(05:44):
open up the front door to go retrieve the newspaper
in your shorts, in your in your bare feet, and
you get hit in the face by a blast of
frosty air. Our weather changes constantly the end period. That
that's how to sum that up, right?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Reasonable, I guess you're paying attention. I'm doing wordle. Oh
my god, yeah, I've already I set the bar at
for today on wordle. So I'll give you. I'll give
you a pass on that. If you'd have said anything
else than that, maybe not so much moving to the
markets courtesy of Houston Gold Exchange dot com ripples, but
(06:19):
no waves across the four major indicators, none of them
changing by more than a fraction of a point so far.
Today oil was up a half a buck around ten
a m and that puts it right sixty eight sixty
nine somewhere in their dollars a barrel. As long as
it stays below seventy, I'll tolerate it for now until
(06:41):
until the end of January, and then I think we're
going to see some really exciting news from the petroleum world.
By the way, a quick sidebar I saw a story
today about the difference between favorability for internal combustion engines,
for hybrids and all electrics. And guess which one's paced
(07:02):
the lowest for favorability E electric And you want to
know why, because first of all, well, I don't even
know where to start. Hydrogen is going to replace electricity
as the as the alternative to internal combustion. Internal combustion,
when oil goes down and gas leans down around a
dollar and a half a gallon, again, that's gonna look
(07:26):
pretty good compared to having a giant, heavy, heavy car
that's tearing up the roads and has to be plugged
in at night, and if it's super cold, you can't
hardly drive around the block without having to stop and recharge.
I'm still not sold on on electric cars. And if
you have one and you love it, more power to you.
But that's just that's just not where I am right now.
(07:49):
So back to it. Gold up thirty dollars an ounce
this morning and was showing at about something like two
seven hundred and fifteen dollars just a little while ago.
That's something I don't really understand. If you want to
know more about it, probably ought to check in with
Brad Schweiss at Houston Gooldexchange dot com. I actually saw
him at the tournament yesterday. He donated He and his
(08:10):
wife donated a really nice couple's package to that silent auction.
This said was valued at almost ten thousand dollars. I
don't know how much it raised, but it was worth
that and every penny of it. He came out for
lunch and I'm glad he did. I hope he had
a good time, and I'm really glad he made it
out there to see the impact of this tournament on
(08:31):
children's children'sa horrible diseases, cancers, immune deficiencies, blood disorders, all
kinds of things that they take care of in there.
It's amazing. Now for the news, which I'll try to no,
I can't. I'm late. Holy cow, We'll pay attention. It's
all your fault if you're in the market for a
beautiful new custom home. I actually ran into Chris McGinley
(08:51):
out at the tournament yesterday too. He's the president of
kirk Holmb's and the third generation leader. He and his
sister both working. That's Melanie working very hard to make
sure that everybody in anybody who wants a beautiful custom
home from about the seven hundreds to the millions gets
what they want. On the northwest side of Houston all
the way out through the hill country. They've been doing
(09:15):
this for well, they haven't, but their family has been
in this business for thirty plus years. Thirty plus years
they've been in the custom home building business. And it
seems like every time I turn around, they win another award.
Still got what is it about eighteen days or so
to go, eighteen nineteen days on Southern Living Builder of
the Year, the honor they grabbed this year and I'm
(09:36):
sure they'll get something next year I'll be able to
talk about for them as well. They offer an industry
leading twenty years structural WARRANTYTS twice the standard and two
by six exterior walls to keep the heat away in
summer and the cold away in winter. Let them turn
your dream home into reality. The design team, the architectural team,
everybody at kirk HOLMBS is all hands on deck to
(09:59):
make make sure you get exactly what you and your
family want. Kirkholms dot com. That's K you are K
because at Kirkholmmes it's all about you, aged to perfection.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
This is fifty plus with Dougpike. All right, welcome back
to fifty plus. Thanks for listening on this Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Uh quickly, I want to let you know you've listened
to your favorite hosts in the free iHeartRadio app for
long time now. I'm sure you have, and I hope
you do. If you haven't yet, you can anytime you
want to. As the year winds down, we are rewinding
and celebrating the stations and podcast you like the most
with iHeart Rewind twenty twenty four. iHeartRadio listeners, Open your
(10:51):
free iHeartRadio app. Check your inbox for a personalized experience
just for you, unique insights like your most listen to
stations and podcasts. Also, we're sharing what your neighbors are
listening to. Search iHeart Rewind in the iHeartRadio app to
relive the year's biggest podcasts and dive back into your favorites.
(11:13):
Thank you as always for listening with us in twenty
twenty four, and happy New Year from iHeartRadio. All right
back to it over here. I've got that taken care of,
I got that. I'm gonna get to some news, really,
and I try to deliver this in fairly small pieces,
not so much as to bore you, but just enough
to encourage you to do some digging of your own.
(11:35):
If something catches your ear, I guess you'd be the
way to say that. First up is a caution from
the FBI. Believe it or not, that pretty much anybody
who sends text messages between iPhones and Android devices should
consider not doing so until they've installed some sort of encryption.
(11:56):
There was a major data breach. It was called salt Typhoon,
and it was launched by actors over in China, and
they quite possibly can see your messages, and the authorities
here aren't really sure when they're going to be able
to stop that from happening. Based on the extent of
this breach, that's pretty big, very big. Look this one up.
(12:19):
It won't take you long to search it and find
it and see what the FBI said about salt Typhoon.
It doesn't impact messaging between the same platforms Apple to
Apple or Android to Android, both of which have their
own safeguards in place, but when the messages crossed platforms, well,
it's scary technology once again, and who knows how it
(12:43):
could be used against you or me or anybody else.
If you haven't heard yet, by the way, and most
of you will have. The man who's accused of shooting
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City has
been arrested in Pennsylvania and was in possession then of
a go of written admissions about the crime. According to
(13:04):
the story and other items at the time of his arrest,
his names Luigi Mangione, and he's been charged with several crimes.
And this one will continue to unfold as more and
more has learned about what happened that day. President elect
Trump's know be let it be known that part of
his plan to secure our border and remove unlawful immigrants
(13:25):
could include deportation of families of mixed immigration status something else.
That's beginning to make sense now now that millions of
people have come here unlawfully and borne some unknown number
of babies while they are here, babies that become automatic
US citizens by this notion of birthright citizenship, President Trump
(13:48):
is strongly considering abolition of that, and given the burden
it places on our country overall and has significantly for
the past four years, that may be necessary at this
point to kind of get the ship back on a
better course. Superman. Superman's in the news. Will you ready
for this? Is Superman has, through his writers at DC Comics,
(14:15):
has been just thrown deeper into the woke movement in
the latest issue of Detective Comics from DC Comics, in
which Superman scolds Bruce Wayne aka Batman for not acknowledging
his white privilege. There's also a page or two on
which the maker of some concoction that restores youth says
that she wants to give her a lecture. This is
(14:37):
all in the comic book. She wants to give her
elixir to rich people so they can live long enough,
they can live long enough to see all the damage
their wealth has caused. I couldn't possibly make this up.
Word the word bubbles that on every page just keep
getting stranger and stranger, more and more political, unless, if
(15:01):
at all, about what comic book superheroes have represented since
their inception. The liberty's taken by the guy who wrote
this stuff. Of it they give his name, I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna give you that. I'm not gonna
give him the recognition for that, because I don't agree
with what he wrote. Uh, but the liberty is taken
by this guy to just dramatic, dramatically change his storylines
(15:24):
based only on his political leaning. By the way, that's
that's the only possible reason he might have written this.
Throw this stuff on Superman. It's gonna have the same
effects on Superman as Kryptonite does. And I'm afraid that
people are gonna stop reading that stuff if it doesn't
go back to what it's supposed to be about. There
was more, even more that was involved in that one
(15:44):
particular issue. They just roll the ice and make it
all happen at once. Pretty kind of I would say, weird,
Will let's take a couple of minutes and go to
the lighter side of the day. And I do have,
by the way, a little later on some really good
news and some really good news, So I'll get to
that maybe in the next segment, maybe in the last
(16:05):
you ready, will, yes, Oh, you solved Whordland? Five? That's right,
I can name maybe five who knew or feels like
the first time, feels like the first time I knew.
You couldn't help, but go lyrical on me. That's okay, though,
that was good. I'm glad you noticed a list of
(16:27):
things that happened for the first time ever in twenty
twenty four include and there's only two of them here.
There had to be more, but there are only two
that got that made this list. Anyway, can you name
either one of them?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Will?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And for a billion, trillion, zillion quadrillion dollars, if I
get this, dug, I'll pay you a dollar to day
and then I'll owe you the rest.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Okay, first thing to happen in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You can give up whenever you want, because you're not
making it no way I say, unless you unless you've
already seen the story. I have no idea. Okay, well,
I'll tell you. This was the first year ever that
scientists detected water on an asteroid's surface. Who knew, right,
(17:18):
And a street food taco stand in Mexico got a
Michelin Star, which pretty much tarnishes the rest of those stars,
wouldn't you think? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I've seen the pictures, and the tacos look awesome. But
it looks so good that you know that the Michelin
Star is. It's where you're supposed to. You know, it's
for travelers. You're going and you want to get some
great food.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You want to leave your hotel and walk out on
the street and buy a taco. Yes, I would definitely
do it. I guarantee you that since that happened, that
taco has doubled in price. You thinks I would bet
on it? I would. All right, I'll give you one
more trio. Yeah, we go, No, gosh, I'll save them
(18:12):
because there are some good ones here today. I'll save
them and get right to a late health and the
good work that doctor Doe and his team do at
all of their clinics around town. If you are a
guy and this is the procedure they do the very
most often. It's called prostate artery embolization, and what it
does is go into the prostate area and after determining
(18:38):
exactly which artery is feeding blood to that prostate, they
plug it up. They just say no, miss, sorry, no
more blood to you prostate. And as it shrinks and shriveles,
so do the symptoms that have been bothering you for
probably so long. If you're older than about sixty or
sixty five, you don't know those symptoms, count yourself very thankful.
(19:03):
If you do, then check in with a late health
and see what they can do for you. They also
do similar procedures. They're a vascular clinic and that's what
they work with. They do similar procedures for fibroids and women.
They do similar procedures for ugly veins, which can be
that's a pretty quick fix and most of what they
do is done just in a couple of hours in
the office in the clinic. You don't have to go
(19:24):
to the hospital. You can get somebody. Somebody's got to
drive you home, okay, cause you're gonna be knocked out.
You're gonna be under anesthesia. For most of these procedures,
and once you're done and you just get driven home,
you just prop back in your favorite chair and take
a little while to recover and get back before you
know it to feeling better. A latehealth dot com is
a website ala te seven to one, three five eight
(19:46):
eight thirty eight eighty eight. They also do regenerative medicine
by the way, seven to one, three five eight eight
thirty eight eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Now they sure don't make them like they used to.
That's why every few months we wash them, check us fluids,
and spring on a fresh coat of wax. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
All right, welcome back to fifty plus. Thank you all
for listening. I certainly do appreciate it. On this beautiful Tuesday, beautiful,
but chili very chilly. You know, I reserve the word
cold for temperatures below freezing. So it's it's nippy, it's chili.
What are some other synonyms for cold? Will cool?
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Oh, it's frostier than the pumpkin.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Oh, I forgot to tell you what that was. I forgot.
Don't let me forget. In the next break, I'm gonna
write a note down here.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
P U M.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
P K I n I'll tell you, tell you during
the next break, I promise. I just saw a picture
that from Yellowstone Park that had a headline over it
that said something i'll paraphrase here, bison or tourists run
from bison stampeding over bridge in Yellowstone National Park, something
(21:07):
to that effect. What I think it actually may have
been is a pretty a sensational headline attached to a
photograph that showed bison probably being moved by park personnel
from one part of Yellowstone to another, maybe an easier
way to get them across a little river which might
(21:29):
have been flowing underneath the bridge than trying to herd
them across the actual river, which could have been far
more dangerous for the animals. None of the people I
looked at in the picture, and it's a small picture,
it's a little bitty thing on my phone, but it
didn't look like anybody was panic. There weren't pictures of
people running away from the bridge. They're all just casual,
(21:53):
casual bystanders, most of them holding cameras and whatnot. So little.
That's about enough of that. The other thing I thought
I was gonna bring up right when we got back,
I read on just before we came back live. And
it's a non event. It was just another clickbait story.
I didn't want any part of it. Let's go back
to these things we were talking about earlier. Will, I'm
(22:14):
gonna go with comes as no surprise, who knew? And
I can name maybe five, which is two of the
first three we went with. Ah, right, comes as no
surprise Miriam Webster's word of the Year for twenty twenty
four got you want to bet and it doesn't. Yeah,
(22:35):
I want to bet it comes as no surprise. Yep,
what do you think it might be? It's still grain rot. No,
oh no, it's not brain rot. But that's a good one.
That's a good one. It starts with a p Okay,
that narrowed down at all, and it's a pretty long word.
(22:56):
Oh it's five syllables. Yeah, polarization. You looked it up,
didn't you. I heard you clicking over there, I heard
you clicking Will. Okay, you're so clever? Was the Oxford word?
Oh oh so yeah? So you you didn't disclose that
you had information? Yeah, okay, that's fine, that's fine. I'm
(23:19):
going to give you one more chance to pick between
these two and then I'll just tell you the other one.
So we're going to get to both of them. No
matter what, I can name maybe five or who knew?
Who knew? Guess who wrote a romance novel in twenty
two excuse me, in the year two thousand? Who wrote
a romance and romance novel? And it would be someone
(23:41):
who would have been probably pretty much in the news
back then. Not from our country, not even from our continent. Okay,
any idea at all? Well, I was gonna say, maybe
it was Bush during the election season. Oh, that's interesting.
(24:01):
As a way to blow off some steams, I'll give you.
I'll just let that hang there. I'll give you his initials. Okay, Okay,
s H, s H. Sherlock Holmes. That's not a bad guess, actually,
despite him being a fictional character. Al right, s H. European, No, no,
(24:28):
Middle Eastern, Eastern. You gotta get it from that. Oh,
Saddam Hussein. He wrote a romance novel in the year
two thousand. I don't recall seeing it on the New
York Times bestseller list. But nonetheless, the guy wrote a book.
And the other one that I can name, maybe five.
Guess how many varieties of apples there. This is a
(24:49):
great conversation starter for holiday dinners and parties. Guess how
many varieties of apples are grown in the world?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Oh, I mean, there's guy to be thousands.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Just pick a number, Okay.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I'll pick one thousand and one.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Seven thousand, five hundred varieties of apple. Wow about depending
on which grocery store you shop, you might see eight,
maybe ten, maybe a dozen total apples of these seven thousand,
five hundred. That's that's pretty interesting, I found. I'll use
(25:28):
that one at some point during the holidays, I really will.
Are they all named after grannies? Granny Smith, Granny Johnson,
great grandma? Oh, there's got you know some of these
older breeds or older types of apples? Of varieties? Who
knows a great Granny Smith? A super uber delicious red delicious,
(25:51):
not to be confused with the rainbow of colors of
other delicious apples. I'm sure that are around the world somewhere.
The crispiest honey, Ye honey, crisp apples I found I
found adequate to satisfy my see you really yes, you're
a honey. I'm just an old school guy. I'm red
(26:11):
delicious now man honey crisp is the way to go.
You want a nice juicy apple, Yeah, I agree. My
wife's named Gala Apple. She likes them. Have you had
them yet? I've had all the apple all seventy five
I'm an apple officionado, an apple a day for what
would that be? Oh my gosh, no will All right, now,
(26:36):
let's get back to some some more important things going
on in the world than seventy five hundred apples. This
past week, we talked about a small New Jersey town
where it's council chairman had a man removed from its
weekly meeting for holding a small American flag. Well, it
wasn't long after that the town residents rose up in
(26:58):
protest of the American flag being designated a prop and
not allowed to be displayed at a meeting of American
citizens in the United States. I am really glad to
see these people in this little town stand up for
the nation's flag, as all of us kind of showed
we were going to do back in November. And I'm
(27:20):
glad we did. All of this stuff that's been going
on where you can't show the American flag in public,
you can't speak of any religion, and because it might
offend somebody in a nation where we have the right
to practice any religion we want, or to just totally
abstain from doing any of that, to have no belief whatsoever.
(27:42):
That's all okay in this country, but we can't talk
about it. And this whole notion of taking free speech
away from us is I think it just is boiling up.
And as Americans, we're about tired of it, about tired
of being told what we can and can't say and
canning can't think. And I hope that this movement I
(28:05):
see back in the other direction, which I consider to
be the right direction. I hope it just continues to go.
How absurd. American flag is not just a piece of cloth.
It represents countless numbers of people who gave their lives,
maybe gave a piece of them. So anybody who ever
fought for this country certainly gave a piece of themselves
(28:26):
to the country, even if they weren't killed in action.
They did that for our country to keep us safe
and to keep more people from being lost. So hats
off to that little town and hopefully more little towns
that are being led by people who just don't get
it or don't want to get it or want to
try to change what we get. Maybe they'll be maybe
(28:49):
they'll be told to just pack up and go. If
you don't like it, all right, well we got oh
do oh? We do, don't we I'm not that late.
I'm not that late. Will Ut Health Institute on Aging
continues to serve the senior community of the greater metropolitan
Houston area with number one access on its website utch
(29:12):
dot edu slash aging access there to a tremendous number
of resources, all of which are of great relevance to
being a senior and continuing to be a senior for
many years to come with a better quality of life.
That's what their goal is, to make sure we all
live as long as we possibly can and enjoy the
(29:35):
time we have on this earth for as long as
that's available to us. The collaborative of providers who are
part of this Institute on Aging number more than a
thousand now, I'm certain, maybe maybe two thousand by now.
It's been up and running for the better part of
a decade a little bit more actually, and all of these,
(29:55):
all of these providers in every medical field have gone
back to get not re educated, but additionally educated as
to how they can apply the knowledge they learned in school.
The knowledge there is applied specifically to seniors because we
are different than juniors and medium ers, whatever those would be.
(30:17):
I'm not sure middle aged people, younger people totally different
than us, and our medical care needs to be pinpointed
to what makes us tick, what makes us keep living longer,
and that's what they do at ut Health Institute on
aging utch dot edu slash aging uth dot edu slash aging.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Old guys rule, and of course women never get old
if you want to avoid sleeping on the couch.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Okay, well I think that sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Fifty plus continues. Here's more with Doug.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Welcome back, fourth and final segment of of the show.
It's almost said story for one reason or another. Will
where did that come from? Who knows? Welcome back to
fifty plus. Thanks for listening on AM nine to fifty KPRC.
How many episodes do we have now? Will? I can check?
Not as many as there are apples, definitely not definitely,
(31:33):
like maybe in another bunch of years. We only we
knock out four live ones a week, so that's a
couple of one hundred a year. Carry the two divided
by seventeen, and all right, are you ready hold on
seven hundred and forty? Really, seven hundred and forty that's
(31:53):
not bad. That's ten percent of the number of apples,
almost almost. And considering how the head start that the
apple farmer got, I'd say we're in pretty good shape.
So in another you know, in another what a couple
of thousand years, we'll be there. We'll probably not when
(32:14):
you look at it the right way, probably not. Will
probably not. In very brief political news, I found this
kind of interesting. In Florida, a US representative, a woman
named Susan Valdez, re elected as a Democrat down there
to the US House and self described as being a
Democrat all her life because she believed, and here's a
(32:37):
hit where I'm going up until recently, that the Democratic
Party was the party of the people. And then she
and she signed up for another term. Hope she got elected,
and she did, and now she's jump ship. She jumped
off that blue bandwagon and jumped on the red one
(32:57):
because the Republicans, it turns out, in her estimation at least,
are and in mind, are the true party of the people. Now.
I found that very interesting so she's gonna continue to
represent her constituents. I think maybe in the well, either
Tampa or Orlando area, or it might be, it might
be somewhere else. I think those two come to mind.
(33:20):
One of those two anyway down there in Florida, and
she's gonna represent them. She's just gonna she's just gonna
lean the other way. Now, two more eyes opened up
in historical news. I found this very interesting, and I'm
kind of an archaeology buff. I like to I like
to hear about and see artifacts from the past, to
(33:42):
learn a little bit more of how people lived and when.
When the Notre Dame Cathedral burned in Paris, there was
great effort put forth to make sure that it reopened
before the Olympics. And as they were digging and moving
things and dealing with the foundation of the whole church,
(34:07):
there was some lo and behold, some archaeological artifacts turned up,
and a team was allowed to work in there for
so long as that work to restore Notre Dame Notre Dame,
if you will, so long as that work was still
going on. And at that point, unfortunately the researchers had
(34:31):
to stop because once again the Olympics took precedent over history,
which I sadly must report. Bottom line is they found hundreds,
literally hundreds, just a treasure trove of religious artifacts dating
back hundreds of years. And like I said, French President
(34:53):
Macron set limits on the time in areas where the
searching was allowed, so the researchers no darned well that
what they found was only a very small representation of
what's buried down there. But they're not going to get
to keep looking, I guess, not until something else happens
one hundred, two hundred and three hundred years from now.
(35:14):
It's fascinating what's been long since buried as the earth evolved,
long since all of the great amazing things in Egypt,
all of the great things in South America and Central America.
Not so much here. Really, our continent and our country
are just infants and maybe toddlers compared to the history
(35:37):
of the rest of the world and the development of
the rest of the world. We don't really have things underground.
And I think partly because I don't know, I would
have to go into a lot of detail, I think
to explain that. But I was fascinated by what I
saw there, and it's just an amazing representation of life
back that several hundred years ago. It was fascinating. If
(36:00):
you're one of the this is good news. If you're
one of the estimated three hundred and sixty five million
adults worldwide who suffer from osteo arthritis, there is very
good news something called genicular artery embolization. And that name,
that word embolization ought to ring pretty familiarly with people
(36:21):
who listen to this show because of the talk I
do with doctor Andrew Do. In fact, we're going to
have an interview coming up with him shortly, and I'm
hoping I can get him also to come back for
another interview to talk about this procedure. It was developed
by the author of the study that I read, Florian
Fleckenstein from University Hospital in Berlin, called this a significant
(36:44):
breakthrough since it is not only minimally invasive, but very effective.
It turns out even in patients who didn't respond to
more conservative treatments. Definitely worth a look. If you've got
bad knees, look up Nick, that's ge N. I see
U L A R. Genicular artery embolization, and I'm sure
(37:05):
the study will pop up. I'm certain of it in
news that's both old and new, and I wanted to
get to this today because it really is important. Researchers
are reminding us that spending more time in nature greatly
reduces emotional distress among young people and the rest of us.
(37:26):
By the way, the study was done on young people,
specifically ten and twelve year olds who had issues, who
had troubling issues, and what they found out was that
being in the outdoors more relieves stress, It relieves anxiety depression,
It mitigates impulsive and aggressive behaviors and slows them down
(37:50):
to or stops them in these young people. And it Hey,
if you fish, or you hunt, or you hike, or
you like to go watch birds or whatever you do,
we're just walking outside. You have to recognize the therapeutic
value of that, for just clearing your head and distracting you.
(38:10):
There's just so much to see in the outdoors. There
was a study done several decades ago now, back when
I was at the newspaper, and I wrote about it
a couple of times, showed that kids who played outdoors
more than indoors tended to be more aware that they
were part of something much bigger than themselves. They even
scored better on standardized testing than kids who were inside.
(38:33):
Kids fascinating related story, by the way, I saw and
didn't get a chance to read. That whole thing noted
that getting outside just three or four times a week
may reduce your need for medications. Who knew, right, well
I did. I'm outside as much as I can be,
and I absolutely love it all right, Will we got
time for one more? Very quickly? A cup of Joe,
(38:57):
Less work, more play, or now just those two A
cup of cup of Joe, A cup of Joe. Good
news for coffee drinkers. New studies suggests that regular coffee
consumption could extend your lifespan by nearly two years, and
with time on the clock. In Tokyo, Japan, they're going
to implement a four day work week for government employees
(39:18):
next year. You know why, will because they want to
have more babies. They're encouraging women to have more kids
by giving them an extra day off. Audios
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