05-2-25 - *FULL SHOW* Starbuck Sues Facebook; Year of Quantum; Fluoride in Water

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I haven't been sleeping a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I think there's just so much going on at this
part of the process when Christina and I are having
this house remodeled, and we're at the part of the
process where the builders need to know, you know, floor
tiles and where.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Lights are going and all this stuff, and we just
have decision after decision after decision we have to make.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
And and so we're just like up all the time
and thinking and brainstorming and and and you know, changing
changing minds. Christien's an artist, right, so, you know, dealing
with an artist, and she wants it to be perfect
and and it means its gonna be gorgeous when it's done,
but it also means there's kind of a lot of
a lot of brain damage before then. And you know,

(00:48):
taking taking a week or two weeks now more than
a week, taking two or three or four weeks to
pick a wall tile and stuff like that. And again,
it's gonna be it's gonna be worth it when it's done,
but it's just hard now. So just to give you
an example of how how worn out I am, yesterday
I went you so I you know, I go to

(01:08):
Rocky Mountain Men's Clinic from time to time, and yesterday
I went over there. Normally I go Wednesdays, but I
went Thursday this week. And when I walked in, one
of the gals sitting behind the behind the desk has
Uh said to me, Ross's what happened to your eye?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
And I guess she.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Thought I got punched in the eye. Oh gosh. And
it's just it was just like being tired. It's unbelievable, unbelievable.
But I actually feel good and we're getting there and
we're making progress. So we got a ton of stuff
to do on today's show, and.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm just going to go through a few things with
you in no particular order.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I do want to remind you if you have not
seen my report yet. My report done with the Common
Sense Institute Colorado, and really they did most of the
work I have to say. But it's about well, it's
entitled the Legislative Assault on Tabor, and if I were
trying to if I were to try to describe to

(02:11):
you what it's about, I would say it's about the
legislative assault on Tabor.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
So it's up on my website.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
If so you can click out it easily and get
to it, or you can just look up Common Sense Institute, Colorado.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
And you can find it there.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
But I do hope you'll go read it and just
keep this in mind when you start thinking about what
our politicians are doing or when you see ballot measures
that impact.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
This sort of stuff, because it's a big deal.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
The next thing I want to mention to you, I'm
only going to mention briefly because I am going to
actually try to get the guy who is the subject
of the article to come on as a as a
guest and hopefully next week.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
But I just wanted to share it with.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
You because it's a kind of local story that a
lot of people have been paying close attention to. You
will recall for a few years that downtown Denver and
specifically the Union Station area seemed to just be this
magnet for crime, homelessness, drug users, and just a terrible
experience and a blight on Denver. And I am not

(03:13):
overstating that. Yeah, and you know, stabbings and all kinds
of stuff. And there's a new RTD police chief coming in.
His name is Steve Martinano, and he has been acting chief,

(03:33):
and I guess he's going to be the official chief
going forward.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
He's he's going to be sworn in at some point
this month.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
There was actually, I'm looking at axios here, there was
a woman who was shot in the neck near an
escalator at Union Station this Monday. This Monday, I guess
she's still in critical condition. As of yesterday, police arrested
a nineteen year old on suspen of attempted first degree
murder after police said video surveillance helped identify him.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
He faces other charges as well.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Police believe he knew the victim and it was an
intended thing, and you know, the police call it isolated.
But of course, to people who live around there or
travel through there or whatever, you just you don't like
these stories. That said, that said, the stories about crimes
at Union Station, I have absolutely plummeted right again. According

(04:29):
to this piece, security related calls dropped by nearly sixty
percent from twenty twenty two.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Until now, and overall for.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
RTD, which means not just Union Station but everything they
cover with their own police force, a fifty two percent
drop in security calls between February of last year and
February of this year. So anyway, I think I'm not
going to spend more time.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
On that right now.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
I just wanted you to be aware of it, and
I'm going to try to get the new RTD police
chief on the show sometime soon.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
What else, here's a sort of interesting national story.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
This kind of falls into the category of well, I
understand why he's talking about it, but I'm not sure
he can get it done. And the headline this is
from National Review. Trump vows to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
President Trump announced today that he will be revoking Harvard
University's tax exempt status, a significant escalation in the administration's
ongoing campaign against what they call the Ivy League's crown jewel.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Maybe it is, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Trump posted on his own social media platform, truth Social.
We're going to be taking away Harvard's tax exempt status.
It's what they deserve. And there were no more specifics
than that, nothing about how you would actually do that,
And I suspect. I suspect that in order to do it,

(05:58):
what it would require is a determination from the Internal
Revenue Service that Harvard University no longer met the requirements
to be a nonprofit. I further suspect that the IRS
cannot prove that, and that if they try to do it.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
They will be in federal court about.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Five seconds before they make the decision, and that Harvard,
at least initially will win. I just don't think they're
going to get this done. What it will take to
get this kind of thing done, if it's the kind
of thing that the you know, the people want done,
is an act of Congress. Right, You just we just
can't be in a situation of having a politician. And remember,

(06:39):
don't don't think about this in terms of Trump, right,
think about what happens when a Democrat becomes president and says,
we don't like how they teach the Constitution too much,
or there's just to hint too much Christianity at Hillsdale
College or Oral Roberts University, at Liberty or at Liberty University.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
And so we got to be whenever you're thinking about
this stuff, you got to pull Trump out, You got
to pull out the party that's doing it now, and
think what would the ramifications be if a whole different
group of people took power and could do the same
sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
We got to be very very careful with it.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Even though I completely understand why there might be a
desire to limit or remove the tax deductibility of profits
earned by an institution with a fifty billion dollar endowment. Right,
But it's a very complicated thing. I just wanted you
to be aware that they're talking about it this morning.
We got a ton still to do on today's show.

(07:35):
Keep it here on Koa Ross. Did you fall down
the stairs? It's okay. Your trauma and abuse is safe
with us.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
No.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I did not fall down the stairs, either literally or metaphorically.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
No, I did not.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Let's just talk just for a couple minutes about this
whole Mike Waltz thing, because this is pretty fascinating.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yet.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
No, I don't have him. I don't have him as
a guest. Now you want to call him. I don't
think he answers. He hasn't been answering. I texted him
a time or two since he got the since he
got the gig, and uh yeah, yeah, I'm good with Jeff.
In about a minute and a half, yeah, uh so,
Mike Waltz. We had this these hours yesterday morning where

(08:17):
it had been announced that Mike Waltz was, you know,
being fired. The word in the Fox News article actually
was purged. Remember I shared that word with you yesterday morning.
He was purged, and I said, it sounded like stalin
or mal. You know, they purged somebody, and usually usually
when somebody gets purged, they don't find the body, right.
But that was the That was the tenor of the
news stories yesterday. And then all of a sudden, what

(08:39):
we hear a little bit later in the day is
that Mike Waltz is now nominated to be the new
US Ambassador to the United Nations. Now you have a
few people out there talking about this as a promotion.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
It's absolutely not a promotion.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
It's a massive demotion, massive because you go from being
the guy whose job it is to talk to the
President of the United States every single day about key
global security issues to a guy who's off in New
York going to the pinkies up cocktail parties with the
ambassador from Botswana, who's probably a fabulous person. By the way,

(09:18):
I would like to have a beer with the ambassador
from Botswana. But that is not the same thing as
saying that it's a promotion from being the National Security Advisor,
which has got to be, and this is not sarcasm,
one of the greatest jobs in all of governments. If
you know what you're doing right. What an amazing job
that is. So but it was very very interesting how
we had all this stuff about how he's he's fired

(09:40):
and then suddenly that comes up, and I think what
happened there is the hardcore MAGA people. They don't like
Mike Waltz because he's very, very tough on Iran and
Russia and China and a lot of these people kind
of the Tucker Carlson wing, they're really soft on those
on those countries for some reason, the Tucker Carlson wing

(10:00):
of barely the Republican Party supports our enemies more than
they support our friends. And those people don't like Mike
Waltz because he knows who the enemies are. So they
got him out. But Trump really likes him, and this
is my guess, and Trump didn't want to just see
him fired and see him embarrassed and all that, so

(10:22):
that he offered him this other job because the least
Deephonic was going to be un ambassador, but they didn't
want to lose her vote in the House of Representatives,
so they asked her to step away. And she's pissed
about that. But that's where we are right now. So
that's what happened yesterday, a very strange story the other on.
One other thing to keep in mind as we go
through this is that Mike Waltz is going to need

(10:42):
to go in front of the Senate to be confirmed
as USA Ambassador to the United Nations, and Democrats are
going to do everything they can to embarrass the Big
Jesus out of him while he's there, because this is
all politics, all right. I want to do something completely different.
It's just a you know, a local thing, potentially of
help to the Elizabeth School District and potentially of help

(11:04):
to folks who might be looking for an interesting job
and maybe live in that neighborhood and joining us to
tell us what I'm talking about. Jeff Maher is the
public information officer at Elizabeth Public Schools. We had Jeff
on the show recently on another topic. Hey Jeff, what's
going on?

Speaker 4 (11:22):
Hey Ross, Happy Friday, and thank you for the opportunity
to talk about our job fair, which is happening tomorrow
at Elizabeth High School from eight thirty am to twelve
thirty pm. And basically, when you work in education, this
is the time of year when there's a lot of movement,
so you have teachers that retire or they move on

(11:42):
to other opportunities, and so at the school district. This
is why we hold job fairs around this time of
the year. We're just looking for some passionate educators and
support staff who are interested in a fresh start here
in Albert County. And this is one of those places
that's considered to be a sweet spot of Colorado for

(12:04):
various reasons. It's not overpopulated. It's a fantastic commute coming
out here to Elbert County. I mean, you're gonna absolutely
love it. A positive work culture. And at this job fare,
we have teacher and support staff positions available at all
K through twelve levels. Interviews will be conducted on site.
Contracts are ready to be offered, and we also have

(12:27):
pathways to leadership opportunities.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Okay, just give me, give me a couple of quick
seconds of elaboration. Are there particular kinds of teachers you
are looking for? In particular kinds of support staff you
are looking for?

Speaker 1 (12:41):
I just have about thirty seconds.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
We have positions for second grade, third grade, fourth grade.
We have art teacher positions available, coaches, counselors, custodians, bus drivers,
we have various positions at the high school level, and
this is for the upcoming school year. So we have
about just over two dozen different positions available, which you
can find on our website as well. But we'd love

(13:05):
to see you tomorrow morning.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Elizabeth High School.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
What time again, It starts at eight thirty am, it
goes to twelve thirty pm, so we'll be there for
a good portion of the day and just bring your
resume and we'd love to talk to any educators or
support staff who are interested in coming out here.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
And the easiest way to find more online.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, you can go to the Elizabeth School District Facebook page.
The most recent post is about our job there. You
can also go to Elizabethschooldistrict dot org and under departments
you'll find human resources and there you can see the
links to the various job postings that we have.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Very good folks, if you're interested in being a teacher
or support staff at Elizabeth Public Schools in Elbert County,
you know where to go. They're hiring right now, well
tomorrow tomorrow morning. Go check it out. I think you
rich and joy if you're in that field or want
to be. Albert County is a lovely place, and I
think I think you'll dig.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
It a lot.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
You'll find it satisfying. Jeff Maher from Elizabeth School District.
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 5 (14:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Ros. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and
when we come back, we're gonna nerd out a little
bit with SeeU Physics Professor Paul Beale. You probably know
that our show's most frequent guest is SeeU Physics Professor
Paul Beal, and we almost always have him on a
Friday when he's on. And it occurred to me when
I was thinking about having Paul on today, actually as

(14:33):
a request based on a subject that came from Marty
of Colorado's Morning News, But it occurred to me that
I normally have Paul in the eleven o'clock hour, and
there are lots of folks who listen in the nine
o'clock hour, not the eleven o'clock hour, and I thought,
why not give everybody a chance to get to get
to hear from Paul. So Paul joins us now a

(14:53):
little bit earlier in the show then usual.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Good morning Paul, Thanks thanks for doing this. As always,
Good morning Ross.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
So my colleague Marty sent me an article that I
then sent to you, and the headline is this, this
massive dam in China is slowing down the Earth's rotation
by zero point zero six micro seconds. So I have
a lot of questions about this, but let me let
me start with two and then you can just take

(15:23):
it wherever you want to go.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Based on my.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Two questions, Uh one, uh, is it possible that the
dam is actually doing that?

Speaker 1 (15:33):
And two?

Speaker 2 (15:34):
If it is possible, is is there a device sensitive
and sensitive enough a measuring device to be able to
say that the Earth's rotation is slowing down by zero
point zero six micro seconds? Not zero point zero six seconds,
but zero point zero six micro seconds. So what's a

(15:58):
micro is a millionth of a second? Right, that's correct,
So this would be six one hundredths of a millionth
of a second.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
All right, go ahead, Okay, So the answers are yes
and yes. So the largest dam in the world is
the three Gorgeous Dam in China, and it's slowly filling
up with water, and so that's rain water that's falling
and not going back straight to the ocean. So it's
staying up farther from the center of the Earth, and

(16:29):
just like a skater in the Olympics. When they're spinning,
they can change their spin rate by putting their arms out.
They slow down when they put their arms out, and
they speed up when they bring their arms in. And
so if the mass is a little bit farther from
the center of the Earth, that means the Earth's rotation

(16:50):
rate will slow down by a conservation of angular momentum.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Okay, So angular momentum is something I haven't studied since college.
So can you, in plain English explain that to us?

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (17:03):
So, yeah, if you have a really good wheel on
a really good axle and you spin it, it will
spin at a constant rate, and in order to change
the rate of the spin, you have to apply what's known.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
As a torque.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
You have to apply a force somewhere off center on
the on the wheel. So that's what a brake does.
Provides a force that's off center, and therefore that can
slow down the rotation rate. So that changes the angular momentum.
But the Earth there's no break acting on the Earth,
so the Earth's angular mintum is more or less constant.

(17:36):
And so if the mass is farther from the center,
that means the rotation rate has to be a little
bit slower.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Why why does why does it have to be slower.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Because the angular minum is is proportional to the rotation
rate and how far away the mass is from the
center of the rotation.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Wow? Does that?

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Does that have anything to do with gravity, like in
the sense of the force of gravity being proportional to
the square of the distance or is it a completely
unrelated thing.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Well, gravity also conserves angular momentum, So the Earth's orbit
around the Sun is also conserving angular momentum because the
force between the Sun and the Earth is directly along
the line between the centers, so that that's a force
that doesn't provide a torque. And so the angle momentum
of all the planets each or have the same angle

(18:31):
momentum at every point in their orbit. That was first
discovered by Kepler in the sixteen hundred.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Okay, so my second question, I'll slightly reword it. How
is it possible to measure a change of six one
hundredth of a millionth of a second? And I is
this over the course of a day, since we're talking
about rotation or what That's.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
What I interpreted the figure that the Earth's rotation rate
in one day would be differed by six one hundredth
of zero point zero six microseconds. Yeah, and that's actually
easily measurable. The clocks at NIST, which helped define coordinated
Universal time, can measure things much much, much.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
More accurately than that.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
In fact, this rotation rate I looked up, there's plenty
of other rotation rate changes in the Earth's spin that
are much bigger in fact than this effect that's described
for the DAM. So even year to year, the Earth's
rotation period of rotation can change by milliseconds a thousand
times more than this amount that's predicted for the DAM.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Okay, last question for you, and I'm going to see
if this question implies that I'm a reasonably good physics
student or a moron. So, based on what you said before,
I'm I'm thinking that if you, if you will, even
though the Earth isn't exactly straight up and down, just
for the purposes of our model, imagine, imagine the Earth.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
With the access of axis of rotation straight up and down.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Are you saying that if the three gorges damn moved.
Let's see, it's in the northern hemisphere now right. If
it moved further north, closer to the North Pole.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Are you saying that it would.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Then have less of an effect slowing down the Earth's rotation.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
That's correct, because it would be closer to the axis
of rotation, so it would be a bigger effect near
the equator in a smaller effect near the poles.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, I'm a good physics student. Okay, let's switch to
here next semester. There you go, I bet you will.
So you told me that twenty twenty five is the
International Year of Quantum and why wouldn't it be I
should get a T shirt to that effect rather than
my abolish Everything T shirt that I'm wearing today. And

(21:00):
I'm not sure how many listeners know that there is
a lot of really great work in theoretical physics, quantum physics,
anything related to time, atomic clocks and all this at
Boulder and at CU Boulder, And so I'm guessing you
know this guy, Christer Schalm, and I wonder if you

(21:20):
can tell me a little bit about what he's doing
and maybe entanglement that you and I talked out talked
about before.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Sure, So the twenty twenty five celibrates one hundred years
since Heisenberg's paper on what became known as matrix mechanics,
and the following year Shreddinger and a year after that
di Raq putting quantum mechanics and relativity together. So there
was an enormous burst of research in the development of

(21:50):
quantum mechanics about one hundred years ago. So Christ Shalm
is a staff scientist at NIST. He came to NIST
some years ago and he joined what is known as
the CU PREP program, So that's the Professional Research Experience Program.
It's a program that John Cumulot and I and Physics
run and we have about one hundred CU employees working

(22:11):
at NIST with the top scientists at NIST doing cutting
edge science and engineering.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
And Christ came.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
And the thing he started working on is quantum entanglement
of photons. So he has a device which can produce
puts the an atom in a specific quantum state so
that when it decays, it gives off two photons, one
going in one direction and one in the opposite direction.
So those photons travel along and they have various properties

(22:41):
you can measure, and one of the properties is called polarization.
So if you have polarized sunglasses, the more ordinary ones
you buy in the in the Walmart. They what they
do is they filter out the polarization that where the
electric field is going horizontally, and they let through the
electric field that goes vertically. So if you had two observers,

(23:05):
one at either end of a long optical fiber, which
is what he has in the lab, and they each
have on polarizing sunglasses, and if they're both standing straight up,
if one sees one photon, the other one will see
the other photon because they will both have the same polarizations.
They're in an entangled state, and if one person turns

(23:26):
their head in ninety degrees, one person will see the
photon and the other person will definitely not see the photon.
And they can do those measurements with the electronics there.
They can do the measurements nanoseconds apart, so that one
measurement will affect the other measurement instantaneously across hundreds of meters,

(23:47):
much faster than the speed of light. And so these
experiments are testing what's known as Bell's inequality. So it
was a theorem written down by John Bell the nineteen
sixties that said quantum mechanics is really spooky, and in
fact it is what Einstein called spooky action at a distance,
So a measurement of one photon can instantaneously affect the

(24:10):
measurement of another photon, even if it's very very far away.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
I just want to tell listeners.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
I realized, like this is pretty intense stuff, and it is,
as I said yesterday on another topic, a little bit
too early in the day for us to be drinking bourbon.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
So Paul and I have been talking about.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
This for a long time, but I was actually texting
with Mandy today this morning because she wants to be
involved too. And sometime pretty soon here we are going
to put together a listener event with me and Mandy
and Paul Beal and we're all going to get together
somewhere and we're mostly gonna listen to Paul. Maybe Mandy
and I'll say a thing or two, and then maybe

(24:50):
we'll all hang out and Mandy and I will answer
questions and paula answer questions, and I'm gonna want him
to talk about entanglement a little more because it's just
such an, such an incredible thing. But we will be
doing that, so I just wanted you to be aware, Paul.
I also think just as a matter of history. I
think it's pretty amazing that the scientist who came up
with this quantum stuff named himself after a character in

(25:15):
the TV series Breaking Bad, which is that's a pretty
amazing thing.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Heisenberg. I mean Heisenberg.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yes, Eisenberg was my favorite character in Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, and how amazing that one of the great physicists
of all times named himself after the show, right, I mean,
you don't get that every day, see you. Physics Professor
Paul Biel is a guy who makes me wish I
were still in college, not kidding, not kidding about that.
I just love these conversations and how Paul can make

(25:48):
most things at least understandable, even for me. Thank you, Paul.
Have a wonderful weekend, and we'll be in touch soon.
I promise to schedule.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
I would really like to do that, so let's be
in touch and make this happen.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Thanks, Thanks again, Paul, have a great weekend.

Speaker 5 (26:04):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
All right, all right, there you go. That's a fabulous
theophysics professor Paul Beial. And like I said, I did
that earlier in the show that I normally do. Just
so folks who listen in the nine o'clock hour instead
of the eleven o'clock hour.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Have a chance to hear him.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
And if that's the first time you've heard Paul Beal
or maybe the second time, I hope you found that
nerdy but also really interesting. All Right, I'm gonna switch
gears in a very very massive way here. This is
quite a quite a story from from yesterday. So you
know the retail store Coles Kohl apostrophe s right, mostly clothing,

(26:42):
but they've got others. They've got home wears, and they've
got you know, pots and pans and vacuums and linens
and perfume and this stuff like that, right, And Cole's
actually has been Coles has been struggling a lot in
recent years.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
The stock is down.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Let me see if I can find the percent actually
how much this how much the stock is down because
I don't want to I don't want to like bash
him or anything.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
I like Coals.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Actually I actually shop at Coal's, and I don't I
like them. But in any case, the stock is down
something like eighty or ninety percent in the past several years.
So anyway, the stock was actually up yesterday and I
haven't checked it today.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
And it's always a.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Bit of a slap in the face to the CEO
of a company if the CEO gets fired and the
stock goes up, right, And but that that happened to
Cole's yesterday, And let me just check today. The stock,
the ticker symbol, by the way, for Coals is is KSS, And.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah it was.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
It was up like eight or ten percent yesterday and
up another percent and a half today. The stock is
seven dollars and thirty cents. But a year ago today
it was twenty four dollars, and five years ago today
it was fifty five dollars. So just to give you
a sense, now, let me tell you, let me tell

(28:03):
you what happened.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
So their CEO is, uh, was Ashley Buchanan.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
This particular Ashley is the male variety of people named Ashley.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Ashley Buchanan.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Now Ashley Buchanan has a girlfriend, and his girlfriend's name
is Chandra Holt, and she is a business consultant since
she's got a coffee company, and I, you know, I
think she's probably a fairly credible business people, business person.
But nevertheless, nevertheless, it turned out that the CEO directed

(28:39):
what's called a highly unusual, multi million dollar consulting contract
from the company he was running Coles to his girlfriend,
Chandra Holt. They they met when they were working at
Walmart a few years ago. And I don't mean they
were on the floor, right, They were doing management kind
of stuff and he was fooling around with her while

(29:03):
he was still married, got divorced dating this gal.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I don't think they're married.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Then he went over to Michaels and he actually tried
to do some kind of business deal with Michaels and
a business deal between him and this girl while at Michael's,
but they couldn't get it done.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
So now anyway, he's been fired, as you know, violating
the ethics of his job.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
And not not only fired, not only fired, but he's
been he's required now to reimburse Cole's most of his
signing bonus of two and a half million dollars, as
well as any stop grants that he had.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Been getting he had been given.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
He's got to give that stuff back or they're just
gonna they're just gonna take it back.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Don't you wonder.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
How people who are CEOs, and I'm not talking about
if a small company now of a fairly large, publicly
traded company, right, public, it's not his little company where
he can just do whatever he wants with the books. Right,
it's not the Trumpet organization that's owned by just the
family and you, and you don't have to disclose everything

(30:21):
to everyone all the time, right. Cohle's is like, I
don't know, iHeart were public and there are all these
requirements about reports to file and then and you've got
to file your earnings and you've got to file all
this and then and then you get an auditor to
come in and the auditor says, yes, we believe this
earnings report or right?

Speaker 1 (30:40):
I mean, how do you think you're going to keep
this stuff secret?

Speaker 2 (30:44):
How did he think he was possibly going to get
away with that, this kind of unethical behavior, spending shareholder
money on his girlfriend. It's unbelievable. I guess I don't
have that much more to say about it. I just
wanted you to be aware of that story.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
All right. Let me do another thing.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
This was really a story from a couple of days ago,
but it hasn't changed in that time. So a couple
of days ago, there was a hearing at the Supreme
Court of the United States, and I will note that
Justice Amy Cony Barrett has recused herself from the case.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
We're not entirely sure why.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
And it's a case out of Oklahoma where.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
A where a group wants to.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Start a religiously based Catholic in particular charter school.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
And I actually think it's intended to be a virtual
charter school.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
So the kids who are enrolled in this would do
their classes at home. But still, and that's actually pretty
common these days, there's.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
A lot of online schooling.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
I bet in your kids school district, I bet the
district themselves offers an online curriculum. I bet you if
you were, especially if you're in a larger district, if
you got in touch with the district, they'd probably tell
you they have some you know, online resources like that.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
In any case, here's what the case is about.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
So these folks want to.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Start this religiously based charter school.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Now, charter schools are public schools, they generally don't have
to follow all the same rules as public schools when
it comes to, for example, do you have to have
a degree in teaching in order to be able to
be a teacher. Right, generally, at charter schools you don't
have to do that.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
That's why.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
For example, up at Liberty Common School in Fort Collins,
which former Congressman Bob.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Schaeffer runs, he can do things.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
And this is a real life example from Liberty Common School.
He wanted a chemistry teacher, and he knew a guy
who had recently retired after thirty or forty years of
being a professional chemist, and so Bob hired him. And

(33:04):
the guy doesn't have a teaching degree, but Bob interviewed
him and determined he would be a good teacher and
hired him, whereas the regular public school couldn't do that.
And so that this is some of the stuff that
makes charter schools appealing. You also tend to get a
little bit less wokeness in these charter schools. In any case,
the question then is whether a public school of any kind,

(33:30):
which does include these charter schools, are allowed to be
religious as they are government schools. And the idea here
being that under some school choice in Oklahoma, that the
money that is following the students rather than just staying
necessarily in the system or in the government schools, can

(33:50):
follow the student to the charter school, which it does
in other charter schools in Oklahoma. But can it go
to this one, which is religiously based, and the state
Supreme Court in Oklahoma ruled against the school, and I

(34:14):
think that this is the first federal court that it
went to. I think it went from the state Supreme
Court in Oklahoma right to the Supreme Court of the
United States. I don't think it went to a federal
circuit court of appeals. I could be wrong, but I
don't think it did. And in recent years, religious freedom,
generally speaking, has been winning at the Supreme Court of

(34:36):
the United States most cases where religious freedom, free exercise
of religion, the government's ability to restrict religion is on
the ballot.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
In most of these cases.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
In recent years, the pro religion, pro free exercise groups
have been have been winning, and that's fine with me.
I'm not a religious person, but I think a lot
of folks don't understand what the Constitution is really about
when it comes to religion. By the way, the separation
of church and state, that's actually not in the Constitution.

(35:10):
That was in a letter from I think it was
Thomas Jefferson to I think it was a church. But anyway,
it's not in the Constitution. What the Constitution has is
two things about religion. One is the establishment clause. The
government shall not establish a religion. And what that was
about is we wanted freedom of religion in the United
States and we did not want a situation like England

(35:31):
where the King of England is also the head of
the Church of England, that is a government established church,
and it tries to push everybody into that one church.
You could certainly have political problems in England if you
weren't part of that church, right.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
We didn't want that here.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
So what that rule is really about, it's not about
stripping religion out of public life. It's about not having
government establish or favor one religion over the other. And then,
of course in the First Amendment you.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Have the free exercise clause.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
You are allowed to live your life according to your
religious principles as long as you're not hurting somebody else.
So that's what the Constitution has to say about it.
Most people don't understand that. I just want you to
be aware of this case. I don't think we're going
to get a result until October. Remember also that since
the lower court, even though it wasn't a federal.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Court, ruled against the Church School.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
If this comes out to be a tie, which normally
Supreme Court votes can't be because there's nine members, but
one is recused, so only eight will be voting.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
If it turns out to be a tie, it means
the school loses.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
And it seems pretty clear right now that there are
three liberals against the school four conservatives in favor of
the school, it appears, which means John Roberts, the Chief Justice,
is going to be the swing vote. If he votes yes,
the school will be approved. If he votes know, it'll
be a tie and the school will lose. When we
were talking with ceophysics professor Paul Beale a few minutes ago,

(36:58):
I got several listener tech with interesting questions that I
didn't see because I was busy, you know, talking to
Paul and working on other things.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
And there were some very good questions.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
So we asked Paul if he would just do a
few more minutes with us answering a few listener questions,
and he kindly agreed to do so.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
So welcome back, Paul.

Speaker 5 (37:18):
Hey, Hey, I'm glad to help, all.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Right, So give me fairly quick answers.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
I have I think three, actually no, I have four questions.
Four questions for you if ice was melting at the
North and South pole would So this is the listener question.
Would the Earth gain speed if the ice melted at
the north and South pole? And let me tell you
my guess is the answer? And then again you tell

(37:44):
me if I'm a bad physics student.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Here's my guess.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
If if I first of all, the ice is already there,
so I don't think it would make very much difference.
But in theory, if somehow there were a bunch more water,
let's say, like massive rainstorms on the North pole and
on the South Pole, my guess is that would not
affect the speed of the.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Rotation of the Earth.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
But if the water spread out over the globe, so
the sea levels around the whole globe rose, then the
rotation of the Earth might slow down a little bit.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
How did I do.

Speaker 5 (38:19):
Thank You're right? So, yeah, the mass moves from the
poles area to the equator area, then yeah, that would
be farther from the center and therefore would slow the rotation. Right.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Next question, this is the most important one.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
I think.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
If you throw a bell pepper, a piece of blue cheese,
and anil Young CD from the top of a building
into a trash can, that's down on the ground.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Will they land in the trash can at the same time.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
Well, if there's no air friction and you said throws,
you have to be careful about You need to drop
them all at the same zero initial velocity or throw
them at the same initial velocity. Yes, they would get
to the ground except for rare friction, which is important.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Right, So if there's air, that changes everything. So, for example,
the Neil Young CD might land at a different time
depending on whether or not.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
It's in the case if there is air.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
But I do agree with the premise of the listener's
question that Bell Pepper's Blue Cheese and Neil Young CDs
all should be thrown from the top of a building
into a trash can.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
And I appreciated that.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
Okay, we won't argue with that.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Next listener question, please ask the professor if he would
fly on the Blue Origin spaceship or the the SpaceX
one if you were offered that opportunity.

Speaker 5 (39:41):
Well, if someone did it for free, I would do it.
I'm a pilot. I love going up in the air
and the opportunity to go a little higher will be fun.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Last question for you, and this comes back to when
we were talking about the polarization of photons. Why can't
I see things like the digits per rejected on the
inside of my car dashboard or inside of the my
car glass when I wear polarized sunglasses.

Speaker 5 (40:07):
Oh, that's an excellent question. So liquid crystal displays use
polarizing filters in order to create the patterns, and so
the liquid crystal rotates the plane of the polarization. And
sometimes if you've got polarized sunglasses on and at the
wrong angle, and that's not terribly expensive liquid crystal display,
then it'll blink out.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
So in a lot of those displays, LCD displays, or
or maybe the radio in your dashboard if it has
an LCD display, those are polarized, and and.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
Star polarized comes out absolutely right there.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
And in some in some situations, it'll be polarized to
ninety degrees of what your glasses want to let through.
So in that situation you will find that if you
turn your head, you'll be able to see the stuff.

Speaker 5 (40:56):
Right, that's correct. You have to tilt your head and
then you'd be able to see it.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Love it. That's all I got for you, Paul.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
Thank you, Hey, that was fun.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Thank you that was fun, all right.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
See, let's see who physics professor Paul Beile what a
good sport. A couple of I I was talking about
this religious school case at the Supreme Court, and I said,
we don't really know why Justice amy Cony Barrett recused herself,
And a few different listeners texted in saying, well, she's
very Catholic and maybe in some of a slightly fringy

(41:27):
part of the Catholic faith. That is not why any
member of the Supreme Court would recuse.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
They wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Another listener has a quote from The New York Times
which may get closer to the answer. The Justice did
not provide an explanation for her recusal, but it may
have to do with her close friendship with a professor
at Notre Dame Law School who was an early advisor
to the Catholic school that is involved in the dispute.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
So that makes a lot more sense to me.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
You're not going to have a You're not going to
have a Catholic justice recuse himself or herself just because
the subject of the case is a Catholic organization. They
wouldn't say that that's enough of a conflict to recuse themselves.
And also imagine if the standard were that low, then
you would have lots of justices recusing all the time

(42:21):
in religious cases, and that wouldn't be very good. So
one other thing that I didn't bring up. I'm just
going to do this for one minute. One other thing
that I didn't bring up on this Oklahoma religious charter
school case. And this is a thing that is very
much an issue in this case, even though there and
I actually think it came up a little bit in

(42:41):
the oral arguments. If the Supreme Court says yes, it's
okay to have the money follow the student, and some
people call it taxpayer money, but taxpayer money is still
it belongs to the taxpayers. It doesn't really belong to
the government. That's how I think about it. Not everybody
thinks about it that way. But if you are gonna

(43:02):
say yes, there can be a Catholic charter school, or
in this case, a Catholic virtual charter school, then you're
not gonna be able to say no later. And this
is an example that has come up with a listener text,
but also in discussion about this issue. You're not going
to be able to say no when somebody wants to

(43:24):
set up.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Let's say an.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Islamist charter school or some you know, a Satanist is
a I think the whole Satan thing is really people
kind of trolling the Christian right. It's not really a
serious thing, and people don't really think of it as
a religion. But that could be a question too. What
if somebody wants to set up a Satanist charter school,
right or the great Flying Spaghetti Monster based based charter school.

(43:50):
And what it'll come down to at that point probably
is either a court will say, well, that's a legitimate religion,
and we already know because of this Catholic case that
you can't block a legitimate religion, so they'll be approved.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Or on the other side, they'll say that's.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Not actually a religion, and then I don't know where
it goes from there. Right, if it's not really a religion,
then how are you going to stop them? You probably
have to use some other charter school rule and say
this just isn't appropriate for a charter school. In any case,
this question of well, if the Catholics get it, you
know darn well that Saudi Arabia or Cutter or somebody

(44:28):
is going to come through trying to set up an
Islamic charter school, and you're going to have to say
yes to that as well.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
So is that what you want?

Speaker 2 (44:36):
And the last thing I'll say is I don't love
trying to determine what the proper outcome of a Supreme
Court case should be based on whether or not you
think you will like the outcome of the ruling. Right,
it's either constitutional or it's not. And to me, that's
the only thing that matters. And I wouldn't sit around saying, well,

(44:58):
I don't want to do this because because then there
might be a Muslim school either it's constitutional or not
when we come back.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Gosh, I have no idea what we're doing next, but.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
I do want to let you know in the next
few minutes is your chance to win a thousand bucks
in our keyword for cash thanks to Mavericks to keep
it here. Good day the other day, just a good moment,
let's say, a good moment in a day. The other
day I went into King Supers And so here's my deal.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
I wake up at whatever time I wake up.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Today was four fifty, and I do work for a
little while and then usually I have some kind of
breakfast around seven and by the time it gets to
ten or eleven, I'm doing the radio show, and I
get a little hungry. Sometimes it's more it's not so
much hungry, it's almost like a little bit hypoglycemic. I
get a little bit shaky. I'm not actually that hungry.

(45:45):
So what I usually do is I keep a supply
of some kind of granola bars around, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
And so I.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Checked the granola bar aisle, and what I find them
on sale at a great price. I'll buy three or
four boxes and that'll get me through a month or
a month and a half or something like that. So
I was doing that yesterday and dude, Dragon, I hit
the I hit the mother load.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yesterday. I found these new bars that are.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Cannot possibly be good for you, and they were on clearance.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
So that's like what a home run. So look at this, Dragon.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
These are these are bars made by the Skippy Peanut
Butter bread Yeah it says Skippy Peebee and Jelly peanut
butter wafer bars in the grape jelly flavor.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
And you know, you know how you can tell this
is healthy? Right?

Speaker 2 (46:43):
These are it's it's almost like a candy, right, but
it's got it's got peanut butter, and it's got grape jelly.
But here's how everything is made perfectly okay for you
and me both to eat, it says right here on
the wrapper, topped with blueberries and oats. So it's okay,
now healthy, healthy, Now it's healthy now. And let me

(47:06):
just see what this says.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Believe. It actually only has fifteen grams of carbs, which
is less than I thought.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
I mean, it's it's it's sort of a lot for
a small bar but pugar, but you and I have
seen stuff that's it's much much worse. Two grams of
the fifteen grams is fiber, and yeah, and it has
peanut butter which is roasted peanut, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil

(47:33):
including cottonseed oil, soybean and rape seed oil to prevent separation.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Salt.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Wheat wafers only has one fake food coloring, which is
FDN C RED number forty, which is I think one
of the ones.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
That they're banning soon. So I better eat these while
I can still.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Get them, because otherwise I'm not gonna get My doctor
said I wasn't getting enough red forty and and so
and so here we go a source of red forty
that is otherwise super healthy because it's topped with oats.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Now Banda was on clearance.

Speaker 6 (48:07):
The big question that I have is it a creamy
peanut butter or it is a crunchy peanut butter.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's creamy, okay, creamy the bar.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Right, but the bar itself is crunched out the way
to it. The wafers are crispy, and the super healthy
oats on top were kind of are a.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Little bit count out the blueberry. Can't count out the blueber?
Is it makes the whole thing healthy.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
So I don't know if it's still on clearance, and
I don't know if every King Supers has the same
stuff on clearance that any other King Soupers has. But
if you want the healthiest breakfast ever, it is this
skippy peanut butter and jelly thing because it has oats
and blueberries on top. Score score is, Score is exactly right.

(48:49):
Score is exactly right. Let me do this story for
thirty seconds and then, gosh, I have so much stuff
I still need to do with you today. This is
gonna be one of those days where I don't get
through all my topics. So that's most days. The Denver
County Jail has a new program where they've got like
a closet with a whole bunch of clothes that were
donated to them by goodwill.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
And when an.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Inmate at the Denver County Jail has a visitor, you know,
a wife, a kid, whatever, they can go over to
that closet, then go into a private grab some stuff,
go into the private changing room, take off their inmate
clothes and wear these normal clothes, and you know, they

(49:36):
stick their inmate clothes and a locker and then they
go out and see their visitors while they are wearing
normal clothes.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I actuel like this. Look. I'm not the kind of person.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Who wants to be too nice to people who are
in jail, but I also think it would be better
for us as taxpayers if the people who are in
jail can get as close as possible to having a
normal life when they get out of jail, because it
makes them less likely to end up in jail again, the.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Denver Sheriff's Department said.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
The sheriff Diggins said that he was inspired by a
Netflix documentary called Daughters that showed four daughters were reuniting
with their fathers inside of jail.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
In Washington, DC, and in that documentary.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
The fathers were allowed to wear normal, everyday clothing, and
he said it made him think about visiting his own
dad in the Denver jail when he was a kid,
and the sheriff said, I can tell you that coming
into a stark white room and seeing your parent come
out in an inmate uniform is something you never get
out of your mind. One of the city council people,

(50:45):
one who I rarely agree with, but I think I
do on this, Sean tel Lewis, said it's not just
a policy change, it's a culture shift.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
So I wanted to share that with you. I know
a lot of folks will.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Say, ah, they did the crime and YadA, YadA, YadA,
But I think this is good.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
I think this is good. I don't and I think
anything that.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Allows these folks to have a more normal life, such
as a more normal family life after jail, increases the
chances that they won't be back in and that's a
win for everybody. Listener wants to know if you and
I have talked about the dill pickle pizza, and we
we have not.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Dragon and I have not talked about the dill pickle pizza.
I'm not the biggest.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Fan of dill pickle on I like, like, you give
me a really good kosher dill pickle and I will
happily eat it. But I don't really like pickles on
my burgers. I don't really like relish on stuff. In
Chicago is actually a big thing to put relish on
hot dogs. I don't know if that's outside of other
people other places relish.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
I don't know because I didn't really do it. I
don't like either one of them. Do you? Okay?

Speaker 2 (51:47):
So do you like just a straight up a good
crispy dill pickle?

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yes? Yes? Do you like slices of pickle on your burgers? Yes? Okay?
I mean it's not crazy. I'm all crazy in on
the dill pickles.

Speaker 6 (52:01):
Cannot stand the sweet pickles at any sweet relish disgusting.
But you'd put the dill relish on the hot dogs again,
I'm your man. But pickles on pizza, I don't think
I've ever done that. My kids have worked at like
a Papa Murphy's, Yeah, and they're like, yeah, it's a thing.
People people like it.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Has anybody all right?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
I would like you to text us at five six
six nine zero, if you have had dill pickle on
pizza and tell us what you think of it.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna hate on it. Is
this going to turn into pineapple on pizza?

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I I doubt it'll ever get to that level, right,
I doubt it'll get to that level. But text us
at five six six nine zero, if you've had dill
pickle on pizza, and we'll talk about that. I'm going
to get to the treasure thing in a second. That
dragon is going to make me talk about But you
put on your shows, I know, but.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
We all know who's in charge around here. It ain't me.
So I want to tie in two stories.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
I've had a couple listeners actually text in saying, hey, Ross,
did you see the white House's budget proposal? And the
White House's budget proposal. I'm just looking at the news
quickly here, but they're proposing to cut something like one
hundred and sixty billion dollars, which doesn't sound like a
lot until I tell you they're looking to cut one
hundred and sixty billion dollars just out of non defense

(53:17):
discretionary spending. Right, So that would be something on the
neighborhood of twenty percent of all non defense discretionary spending.
The problem is that most of the federal budget right
now is in non discretionary it's in so called entitlements
and the and much of so called discretionary spending is defense.

(53:42):
So if you're looking at non defense discretionary spending, yeah,
there's money there, there's like seven hundred billion dollars or
something in that neighborhood, But as a percentage of the
federal budget, that's small. And if you're going to try
to get all of your federal budgets out of non
defense discretionary spending, you're just, first of all, you're not

(54:05):
going to be able to do as much as you think.
And second of all, you're not going to be able
to cut very much of the federal budget. Right So,
they could be talking about cutting twenty percent of non
defense discretionary but that actually only turns out to be
two or three percent of the whole budget and not
really enough to move the needle and to save our

(54:25):
kids from having to bear the burden of national fiscal insolvency.
Because of the lack of kahones on the part of
our politicians and also the lack of willingness of American
voters to take less of future generations money. You know,

(54:48):
I was never I was never a big fan of
John McCain, but he did have a great line at
one point, and he talked about what the federal government
does as a form of reverse inheritance. And what he
meant was, what the federal government is doing is transferring
money from future generations to today's voters, and especially to

(55:13):
today's retirees. So you think about the fact that Medicare
and Social Security don't take in nearly enough money to
fund what they're giving out to today's retirees. So in
order to fund what they're giving to today's retirees, they
issue bonds which are going to need to be paid
back by my children and yours and our grandchildren and

(55:35):
their children, and until the game of musical chairs stops
and the whole thing blows up, and there's going to
be just massive pain for the whole country. And like
what Greece went through, And it's true that we can
print our own currency, which puts us in a slightly
different situation from Greece, but not as much of a
different situation as a lot of people want to believe.

(55:57):
So we're going to have a huge problem because we
got politicians with no balls on the Republican side, on
the Democratic side, it's that they don't It's not that
they don't have balls, it's that they don't have brains,
and they just want to keep spending more and more
and more, and they just figure they're gonna soak the
rich for it. Later it's gonna be really bad. But

(56:18):
even this, okay, even these cuts in non defense discretionary spending,
this is all the stuff that Doze was looking at, right,
whether it's USAID or anything else, right, this is all
the stuff that Doese was looking at.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Dose was not looking.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
At reforming Medicare and Social Security, which are where the
big money is.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Those are the things that need to be fixed.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
And we have a Republican president who campaigned explicitly against
reforming them.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
And that's why there will not be any.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
Important change to the federal deficit and debt while Donald
Trump is president, and while we have a whole bunch
of Republican congress men and congress women without the balls
to do anything. And if you think I'm exaggerating as
to how difficult it will be to even do this

(57:12):
tiny thing. It's not tiny as a percentage of the
non defense discretionary budget.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
It is tiny as a percentage of the whole budget.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
If you think I'm exaggerating, is how difficult this is
going to be. Here's the headline from the Washington Post.
And I'm looking to see when this came out. I
mean it's from today. It's from today. GOP balks at
approving even a fraction of Musks Doze cuts.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
White House officials have in recent work weeks brainstorm strategies
for enshrining into law the government cuts implemented by a
billionaire Elon Musk's team, attempting to turn the US doze
services moves into lasting policy shifts. Now, this is actually
the thing they should be doing. The reason they should
be doing this is that anything that a president does

(58:02):
by executive order can be undone by executive order of
the next president. And so Trump came in and undid
as much of Obama's stuff as he possibly could, partly
because he didn't like it and partly because it was
Obama's stuff. And then Biden came in and undid as

(58:23):
much of Trump's stuff as he possibly could, just because
it was Trump and the next president will come in
and on the next Democratic president will come in and
undo as much of Trump's stuff as he can, just
because it's Trump. And it leads to this crazy kind

(58:46):
of roller coaster that's not just annoying. It is annoying,
it is it's very annoying, but it's not just annoying.
It's really important in a free country with a thriving
economy to have a certain level of stability and predict ability.
And when you have presidents who just do stuff by executive.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Orders, you just don't know. You don't know.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
A tariffs are like that too, right, You just don't
know what's gonna stay, what's not gonna stay, and it
makes things very difficult. It makes very difficult for businesses
to plan. But back to this Washington Post piece. So far,
administration officials are running into resistance not just from Democrats
but also from congressional Republicans, who have, in private conversations

(59:29):
made clear that it would be difficult to codify even
a small fraction of the measures that Musk's team unilaterally implemented.
According to lawmakers and several other people familiar with the discussions,
GOP members of Congress have also raised concerns about tackling
cuts as Republicans are trying to corral their rowdy and
tiny majorities into extending tax cuts in one so called

(59:53):
big beautiful bill. So we're gonna have to keep an
eye on this. This whole budget thing, the spending side
and the tax station side, is going to be very,
very difficult because you've got a bunch of Republicans who
represent districts that Biden won or Kamala Harris won, and

(01:00:14):
let's say they're in New York State, not in New
York City, but maybe near New York City.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
And these are not deep red districts.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
These are districts that Democrats can win. Now here's the problem.
Robert Novak is a well known Republican columnist from a
long time ago. He's passed away, probably twenty years ago,
but he was very well known. There's a Evans and
Novak had a TV show and he used to say

(01:00:45):
that if Republicans don't cut taxes, there's no use for
them to even exist. And that's basically right, but these
days I would extend it a little more. If Republicans
don't cut spending, there's no reason for them to exist,
and they're just not doing enough of it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
And when you think about some of.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
These relatively liberal Republicans, they're still more conservative than the
most conservative Democrat.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
It didn't used to be that way. Thirty forty fifty
years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
There were liberal Republicans who were measurably more liberal than
the conservative Democrats.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
But it's not like that now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
If you imagine the then diagram of these two political
parties in their policy positions, it used to be that
there would be pretty significant overlap where the left wing
of the Democrat of the Republican Party would overlap with
the right wing of the Republican Party, and that's how
it was possible to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Get some things done.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Now those diagrams, if you imagine a circle that includes
all the Republican policy positions and a circle that includes
all the Democratic policy positions, they don't overlap at all.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
They don't overlap at all.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
And that means if you're going to try to get
a Republican policy position done, and there are the majority
of Republican policy positions except for on some social issues,
are things that I support, right reducing the size of government.
But you've got these guys and gals who who want

(01:02:24):
who are afraid to cut government spending, who are afraid
to go after entitlements, and a perfect example.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
And then I promise I'll get to the treasure thing. Boss,
don't worry, I'll get you. Oh we got what listener taxes?
Uh huh okay, So let me just finish this up
because we got to get to pickles.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
So there's this salt deduction state and local taxes. Now,
the proper amount of your state and local taxes that
you should be able to deduct against your federal.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Income taxes zero.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
I fully understand that people want to say, oh, that's
double taxation. If you pay taxes at the state level
and then pay tax is again at the federal level.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
The proper number is zero.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
You got your federal tax you got your state tax
and what and local? Why should a state or locality
that charges high taxes be able to raise their taxes
and fob off some big percentage of it on the
rest of federal taxpayers. Why should taxpayers who live in California,

(01:03:25):
voters who live in California who constantly vote or have
voted to the point where now they will have nine, ten,
twelve percent state income tax. Why should wealthy people in
that state who are facing twelve percent income tax be
able to deduct.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
That income tax from.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Their federal taxes and saddle the rest of us with
effectively with their state taxes. The right rate is zero,
but these congress critters in New York want to raise it.
Trump had lowered it in twenty seventeen to I think
a tenanit.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
They want to raise it again.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
Why because they don't have the balls or the skill
to go to their voters and say, sorry, but this
isn't fair. It's not the fault or the responsibility of
taxpayers in Colorado to help to subsidize the crazy tax
rates we have here in New York State. That's what

(01:04:23):
they should be saying. Our problem is with the government
of New York and it is not right, and we
are going to bankrupt our children by adding to the
federal debt by saying that we should be able to
deduct more of our state taxes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
But they're not going to do it because they got
no courage.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
They do not apparently have enough marketing skill. And what
I think of when I think of these issues is
one of my favorite lines all times, of all times
in politics, and that is leaders do not follow polls,
they change them, but none of these people have any
interest in doing that. And unfortunately, Donald Trump, who is
a a guy who can change poles, has no interest

(01:05:03):
in leading on this issue. So I'm very pessimistic about
any significant improvement in the federal dead end deficit despite Doge.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
All right, go dragon pickles.

Speaker 6 (01:05:12):
I had a cheeseburger topping pizza with dill pickle included,
and it was delicious. Pickles on pizza or anything is yummy.
I love pickles and cucumber, but I don't think I
can bring myself to putting either on a pizza. No,
but I'll probably get pretty close to green olives on
pizzaw gross.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Green olives are disgusting, and they sometimes have blue cheese
in them, which makes them doubly disgusting.

Speaker 6 (01:05:36):
Many pizza places make cheeseburger pizza and it comes out
with a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Pickle on top.

Speaker 6 (01:05:41):
Actually not too bad, all right, Pistrami pizza is delicious
and that has pickles.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
I would love to try a Pistrami pizza. Yeah, that
sounds actually pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Oh, somebody text me and tell me where we can
get a pastrami pizza and then maybe we'll organize for
someone to bring one to the station and Dragon, I
can try it for lunch.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Where can we get someone?

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Please text us at five six six nine zero and
tell us where we can get a pastromi pizza.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Dragon started this segment by playing music that invoked the
word treasure because he wants me to talk about this
thing that's on the show sheet and you create it,
and I'll get in trouble if I don't talk about it.
He's going to go. Well, he doesn't need to go
to HR. He is HR. So here's a story, and
it's kind of a fun story. But I actually have

(01:06:26):
a question about it, a question for you about it
as well. So there were some hikers in the Czech
Republic and they were hiking in the countryside and they
just stumbled across this kind of old wall, a stone wall,
like from a dilapidated house that had basically fallen down,

(01:06:46):
and they're just digging around in there, and they found
a couple of containers and one of these things weighed
fifteen pounds or so and had in it. Checked this out,
five hundred and ninety eight gold coins wrapped in black fabric,
also a delicately woven silver purse, some gold colored objects.

(01:07:10):
Don't know as of this article if they're actually gold,
but bracelets and cigarette cases and a and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
There was a key h and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
There was a little makeup compact that you'd have like
powder in. The woman might have powder in and it's gorgeous.
I'm looking at a picture of these gold coins. By
the way, most of these coins dated from eighteen oh
eight to nineteen fifteen. But just as an interesting historical tidbit,
some of the coins had little stamps like.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
You make a mark on a coin to use it
for some.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Other purpose, that were added a little bit after World
War One. And there were also a couple other coins
that were minted in the former Yugoslavia between World War
One and World War Two nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties. So
that suggests that even though the vast majority of the
coins were before nineteen fifteen, the hoard was probably was
buried clearly buried after that. Most of the coins are French,

(01:08:07):
some are from the Austro Hungarian Empire, some are from Belgium,
some are Ottoman now Turkey. There's no coins in it
from Germany or Czechoslovakia, which is kind of interesting. Considering
that the coins were buried in the former Czechoslovakia now
Czech Republic.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
So here's my question for you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Upon realizing this isn't from Heritage Daily dot com. Upon
realizing the scope of the discovery, the pair that found
them notified authorities and handed the hoard over to the
Museum of East Bohemia.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Here's my question for you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
If you found six hundred gold coins and some other stuff,
would you turn it into a museum?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Would you keep all of it?

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
If you were going to turn it into a museum,
would you keep some of it? I think those are
your choices. I want you to text me at five
six nine zero and tell.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Me what you would do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
When we come back, we're going to have a conversation
with Razras Gatis, who is the CEO of a company
called flow Water, and he is all about clean water
and one of the what we're going to talk about
today is the fluoridation of water, as some states are
making moves to eliminate fluoride from drinking water. While I

(01:09:24):
might have occasional differences with RFK Junior, there are some
aspects of the things that he has focused on and
is getting the country focused on that I think make
for very interesting discussions.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
One of the most famous ones.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Right now is food ingredients, but another one is water
and fluoride in water. And this has been at least
modestly controversial for some time. It's not just our FK,
but he's bringing some of this stuff up. I note
that Utah recently passed a law there became the first
state to pass a law that eliminates fluoride in public

(01:09:56):
drinking water systems, and Florida seems to be kind of
on that track.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
So joining us talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Ras Res Gatus is uh we'll call them a clean
water evangelist and the co founder and CEO of flow
Water flo wat er Ras.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Very good to meet you and great to do on
this show. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
All right, just in the interest of offering you just
a tiny bit of free advertising, give us seventeen seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
Because I like prime numbers. On what flow Water does.

Speaker 7 (01:10:25):
Flow Water focuses on providing clean drinking water to every man, woman,
and child, primarily focused in the B to B market hotels, schools, gyms, corporations. Basically,
it's the system that plugs into top water runs it
through a proprietary set of seven filters and purifiers and
then outcomes clean drinking water that's free of contaminants, remineralized
and tastes fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
I might have to talk to you later about doing
that for the house we're remodeling. So tell us your
thoughts just on the macro level right now about fluoride
in water. They're like, there's some controversy, does it make
kids stupid? Or if hey actually said that? So what
do we need to know at kind of the science level. Well,
at the science level, the data is pretty clear in
most people. Most people would.

Speaker 7 (01:11:08):
Agree that florid actually helps reduce cavities I protecting the
mineral and the enamel in adolescence. There's also arguments, though,
as we're hearing very pervasively about why it should be
removed from our drinking water. And one of those arguments
is at high enough doses, florid is neurotoxin and that

(01:11:28):
data shows, or preliminary data shows that you can actually
see a reduction in IQ in children that have been
over florid dated And so part of this premise is
he as Americans, a lot of people want to have
free choice and they don't want the government kind of
chemicalizing their drinking water.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
There's some irony to.

Speaker 7 (01:11:45):
That, which I hope I get to in a second,
with about forty nine thousand other chemical containments that are
entering our drinking water. So why floride is the number
one topic of the day is a little bit of
a mystery to make it. The argument that people make
for keeping florid in water gen ends up being one
of protecting marginalized communities. And so when we're talking about
removing floyd from drinking water, we really need to be

(01:12:07):
having a conversation of how do marginalized communities access floorid treatments.
The best way to get floyd really is topically. So
the data, you know, it's very safe, it's highly effective.
There's no reason to take it systemically just to treat
your teeth. And but you know, florid data, toothpaste, floor data,
mouth re instance and mouth washes, these are all very practical,

(01:12:28):
very current treatments. But we need to make sure marginalized
communities have access to that as well when we're talking
about removal fard.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
So what you're saying, and I'm going to use somewhat
less less politically correct terms, you're saying poor kids are
less likely to have or have access to the dental
products that they need to keep their keep their teeth
good correct, and therefore the most likely way they're going
to get that benefit is from Florida to drinking water.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
That's the argument. That's the argument.

Speaker 7 (01:12:57):
Now there's ways to countermeasure that. I think this is
one of the missing conversations in RFK right now, which
is there's a lot of there is a lot of
alignment around moving a chemical contaminant as many see it,
from our systemic drinking water. Plus it doesn't help anybody
over the age of eighteen, So is that true? I mean,
there's some shows that marginally helps some people over the

(01:13:17):
age of eighteen, But the reality is like once your
bones have been set, they're set, the enamel has been built,
and then remnializing toothpaste certainly helps in your olderly age.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
But if that's true, why do I.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Use floridated toothpaste now then I'm over eighteen? And why
does the dentist put fluoride on my teeth pape?

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
I mean there is some marginal bend.

Speaker 7 (01:13:32):
Marginal Okay, the adolescence is where you're building all the bone, right, okay,
once you're eighteen at set. So you know, this is
why when people talk about drinking and using calcium, that's
really just used to reduce bone turnover. It's not bone
building in first eighteen years is bone building, same with
mineralization and enamel that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Makes as relates to the teeth.

Speaker 7 (01:13:52):
So the maximum benefit is during those adolescent years. And
I think most people would agree floride treatment applied topically
a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
I mean, you're not ingesting it.

Speaker 7 (01:14:01):
It's not systemic, it's by choice, and there's a lot
of different ways to get it. So there is a
good question as to why are we putting this in
our drinking water.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
And it goes back.

Speaker 7 (01:14:10):
It's interesting, it goes back to the forties and fifties.
Alco the original, the original floid that was used in
our drinking water supplies was a byproduct of Alcoa.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Really, yeah, it was a byproduct.

Speaker 7 (01:14:22):
Of aluminiums aluminum Okay, it was aluminum smelting, and it
was it was driven by Alcoa. And so I think
there's some really good questions to be raised as to
why was Alcoa the world's largest, or at least the
US's largest aluminum manufacturer and aluminum smelting, using a byproduct
and repackaging that effectively in all of our drinking water.

(01:14:43):
That's not the same product that's used today. But that's
what started this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
I really struggle with this issue because as a libertarian,
I'm all about, you know, choice and all that. And
on the other hand, some of the argument that it
makes kids stupid really bothers me in the sense that
everything is poisonous at a high enough dose. Right, So
that's like, we use these fake sweeteners in our tea

(01:15:07):
and it's fine. But if you give the equivalent of
twenty cans of coke of diet coke a day to
a rat for the equivalent of forty years, there's a
five percent higher chance that they're going to get cancer,
or a fifty percent higher chance that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
They're going to cancer.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
But nobody has that dose, So I'm not I'm not
at all convinced by the dose argument. So now I'm
stuck between this kind of public benefit versus it's not
really the government's business.

Speaker 7 (01:15:35):
Well that's I think that's the dilemmaa that a lot
of Americans are having. And the way I look at
this is this is a great opportunity for US to
look at marginalized populations, poorer communities that can afford access
to dental care. Fluoridated treatments are just one part of
the many benefits that would be derived as a result
of US protecting and working with marginalized populations to ensure

(01:15:58):
that they do have access to dental care. And I
think the other piece of this is on the florid
dated argument is that in the US today, there's over
fifty thousand chemicals in use in the United States today,
youwer than one hundred of those are regulated by the
Safe Drinking Water Act.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
So we got I just.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
Have a minute here, and I actually wanted to file
because I know you wanted to talk about this. So
let's just do one minute as fast as we can
on this. So you say that all these chemicals in
the water, My first question is are they intentionally added
to the water or are they just in the water.

Speaker 7 (01:16:25):
These are byproducts as a result of agricultural pharmaceutical manufacturing use.
So fifty thousand chemical agents, actually eighty thousand chemicals have
been registered with the Toxicology Division of the EPA. Fifty
thousand arreested made it to be in use in the
United States today, Fewer than one hundred of those are
regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. So while I
love the RFKS bringing a lot of attention to clean food,
clean water, I think that's fantastic. I think it's very

(01:16:47):
non partisan that topic. Specifically, The question that I have
is why are we talking just about florid, not this
chemical cocktail that's in our drinking water today, which we
need to clean up because everybody deserves access to clean
drinking water that they can trust.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Yeah, and it's probably conversation for another day, but a
lot of people are talking about pfas as well.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
That's right. That's a great one.

Speaker 7 (01:17:05):
Two hundred million Americans drinking water with pfas.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
Lead's another one.

Speaker 7 (01:17:09):
Over half of Americans in the last five years are
drinking water with lead. In American Academy A Pediatrics says
the only acceptable dose of lead for kids is zero
part Really, yeah, it's zero, it's not seven, it's not five.
And there's not even a federal mandate. So here we are,
fifty years later, five Republican presidents for Democratic ones, there's still.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
No federal mandate on lead testing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Ras Rezgatis is co founder and CEO of Flow Water.
The website is drinkflowwater dot com, so that's drink flo
wa t e er dot com. If you want to
learn more about his system. I got to go learn
more about it myself. We'll definitely have you back here.
A great guest, and there's a.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
Lot to talk about, all right, appreciate it, keep it
here on KOA. You'll get good at this job on
one day. One day. Let's see where what was the
listener question ross.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
I'm not advocating that we should keep fluoride in the water,
but if you go to Australia and look at people's
teeth and they don't have fluoride in the water there,
Holy caw, the difference is astronomical. This is why it's
an interesting question, right I do I do believe. I'm
not gonna say I know. I believe that fluoride in
the water is a real and fairly significant public health benefit.

(01:18:19):
And there is data out there that shows a measurable
distance in the number of cavities, for example, that people
get when they don't have fluoridated water versus if they do.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
And as I.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Mentioned when we were talking with raz, I'm not at
all convinced by the argument about fluoride making kids stupid,
which is something that RFK said just a couple.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Of days ago, because everything is dose dependent.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
I mean, now, I promise you I'm not exaggerating, right,
If you take a big enough dose of water, it
will kill you, right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
Almost anything, almost anything, if you take enough of it.
The poison comes in the dose.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
There are lots and lots and lots and lots of
things that we ingest every day, and some people might
say we shouldn't that are poisonous at a high enough
dose and absolutely fine at a low enough dose. Now,
of course, there are also other things that we shouldn't
have in any dose. Let one of them arsenic things
like that benzene should be zero. But you know, some

(01:19:28):
people live in this odd world that I don't live in,
where if it's not perfectly healthy for you, regardless of dose, basically,
then you shouldn't have it at all, and don't. I
don't live in that world. So there you go. On

(01:19:49):
today's episode of How wrong a take can Ross make,
we will dive into his opinions as bad as his
analogies excellent, Just so you know, my.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
Opinions are pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
And so they will never be as bad as my analogies,
because my analogies are terrible, absolutely terrible. Let's talk briefly.
We may do a little of this here and then
a little bit more in the next segment, but let's
talk briefly about senior citizens and maybe very senior. I
have one topic about senior citizens and one topic about.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
The most senior of senior citizens.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
If this is a local story or a statewide story,
there are a bunch of states. Actually forty one out
of the fifty states let senior citizens out of jury duty.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
And Colorado is one.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Of the nine states that does not have a provision
that lets senior citizens out of jury duty, as Westward
puts it, because of old age. Now there's a new bill,
House Bill ten sixty five, and I'm looking at it
right here on the state Legislature's website jury duty opt
out for certain people. And I'm just going to read

(01:21:14):
you directly from the state legislature website. And I note
by the way that this bill has it looks to
be looks.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
Mostly to have Republicans. No, it actually has.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Bob Marshall is a former Republican now a Democrat. It
has two Republicans and a Democrat on it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
Right. Now, here's the summary.

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
The bill allows a person who's seventy years of age
or older to choose to temporarily or permanently opt out
of jury service.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
The bill allows a person who.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Is out of state because they are actively enrolled full
time at an out of state institution of higher education,
or because they are working for an extended period of
time out of state, to choose to temporarily opt out
of jury service. The judg Georg Jury Commissioner may require
documentation and support of the opt out of jury service.
So I think that latter part is pretty uncontroversial. Right,

(01:22:06):
If you're actively if you're in a college out of state,
I think it's perfectly reasonable for the government to say
we're not going to make you come back to Colorado
to serve on a jury.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
I think that's fine. I think it's pretty non controversial.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
So my question for you is, do you support a
change in Colorado law that would allow somebody who is
seventy years of age or older to decide?

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
Again, this is voluntary. It's not saying you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
It's saying it's your choice as to whether you want
to say I don't want to serve on juries anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
I want to know what you think.

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
Text me at five six six nine zero when we
come back. An interesting story about even more senior citizens.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
I'm going to speak on behalf of Dragon as well. Here.

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
We were talking about pizzas earlier and a listener recommended
a blue cheese, green pepper and moth pizza.

Speaker 6 (01:23:01):
So pass, hard pass, not even yeah, I'll think about it. No, no
hard pass, uh huh ross.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
It's not convenient, and it's corn beef instead of pastromi.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
But the Reuben Pizzaid.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Buffalo Alice in Sioux City, Iowa is delicious.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Definitely not convenient, I asked earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
I shared with you a specific story about some people
who found five hundred and ninety eight gold coins in
a bag and a container when they were going for
a hike somewhere in the Czech Republic, and they apparently turned.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
It into a museum.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
Now, they didn't actually say, because you wouldn't say. They
didn't actually say whether they kept any coins for themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
You know, five hundred ninety eight coins is a lot
of coins.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
I just assumed that they turned them all in, but
maybe there were one thousand and ninety eight coins and
they kept five hundred, right, I don't know, but I
asked you, I asked you, what would you do if
you found five hundred and ninety eight gold coins? Would
And here's another thing I should just mention. I don't
know if there's a law in the Czech Republic that

(01:24:01):
says if you find something of historical value that you
must turn it into a museum or to the government.
Because if there is and you didn't and somebody found out,
then maybe you're risking jail time, and that might change
your incentive structure a little bit. But just for the
purposes of this conversation, let's assume there is not such
a coercion, yes, dragon.

Speaker 6 (01:24:20):
And outside of the value of the gold, do we
know that these are actually worth anything other than historical
value and the value of the gold, right right? Probably not.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
I mean, gold coins from the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth century are mostly not very rare, but the
value of the gold would be enormous. I mean, I'm
just looking at them. They look to me to be
maybe a quarter ounce.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
More than two dollars and fifteen cents. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So they looked to me, if.

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
They're a order ounce of gold, then each one is
worth eight hundred dollars, and there's about six hundred of them,
so that's let me do the math. Uh, two hundred
dollars about something like close? Something like that close? Now
what about you, dragon? If you what would you do
if you found if you found it?

Speaker 6 (01:25:19):
Can I dive back into a story that actually happened
short like two weeks ago?

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
Please do?

Speaker 6 (01:25:24):
I found in our parking lot a Visa gift card
that was all beat up and worn and you couldn't
even read the magnetic strip anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
Uh huh, So I was just curious.

Speaker 6 (01:25:34):
I picked it up and came in, popped it into
the machine, typed in the code, found that it had
five hundred dollars on it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
For real, for real? How did you What machine did
you pop it into that you can type in the
serial numbers? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
You went to a computer you wouldn't into, like a
pay machine. Cokay, yeah, it has five hundred dollars.

Speaker 6 (01:25:54):
And I told the bosses here and I said, hey,
found this in the parking lot. And what did they say? Okay,
we'll find the owner. Are they going to give it
to you? Back to you if they don't, no idea,
So who did you give it to?

Speaker 1 (01:26:09):
Tepper?

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
Dave, if you're listening right now, can you please text
us or text me.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
You have my cell number, Dave.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Dave, if you're listening right now, please text me and
tell me whether you are going to give the visa
gift card back to Dragon if you don't find the owner.

Speaker 6 (01:26:28):
You need to do due diligence to find the owner first. Yeah,
how much due diligence? Though I don't know that's up
to temper.

Speaker 2 (01:26:34):
I mean, you could do this in a way that
could sort of weed out somebody who just wants a
free five hundred bucks by saying you are able.

Speaker 6 (01:26:43):
To see what the purchases are on there. So I
think that's probably one of the requirements is to hate you.
So it had been used, It had been used, Yes, okay,
So you could say, what, you know, what kind of
card is it?

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
What does it look like?

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Because there's all kinds of different things, and don't say,
don't say what it looks like on the air.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Let me ask you one just sort of question, is
is it sort of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
And there's a lot of different patterns of this, so
it won't give away too much.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
But is it just a kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Generic thing that says VISA on it, or is it
like a card for a specific store, like a King
Supers gift card.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
It is not a specific store. Okay, interesting, So you
did turn it in.

Speaker 6 (01:27:20):
Yes, But as much as I am willing to do
that here because I found that in hour parking lot
at four o'clock in the morning when I come in
right and you know it must belong here. But if
I'm roaming the woods in the middle of nowhere, yeah,
and happen upon an old, dilapidated, you know, stone house
that just so happen to have, you know, I knock
over a stone and wooh look coins.

Speaker 1 (01:27:40):
That's a very different story. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
I may hang on to a couple of them, Yeah
for sure. So for listeners said I'd keep some, sell some,
I'd take them all to pawn stars finders keepers. I
think you keep seventy five percent until the government you
found twenty five percent.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
I'd want a finder's fee. Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
I'd keep it all, wouldn't you turning the coins for
a negotiated price. This person says, I'd keep one quarter
and donate three quarters. Another person I would turn in
less than some of the coins. I'm talking like maybe
two coins to be turned over. So almost everybody says
the same thing. Oh, here's a good one, Ross, I'd

(01:28:22):
keep it all. If the museum wanted it, they could
write me a check for it. Cz H very very,
very well played. Ooh, this is a good one. This
is a really good one. Loan them to the museum. Ooh, okay,
so they can put them on display for a while.
So this, this one definitely counts under falls under that

(01:28:46):
category if it depends what the laws are there.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
If the law is that you're supposed to give it
to the museum, then you better not try to loan
it to them, because they're gonna ask where you got it,
and they'll figure out that you're lying, and then they're
gonna take it. So but if there's no, oh law
like that, loaning it to the museum is brilliant.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:29:03):
If I found the coins on my property, i'd keep them.
If it was on public property, i'd look for the
party missing them. If I find them on someone else's property,
I bury them and buy the property. Ah, that's fabulous.
In the immortal words of Steve Miller, go on, take
the money in on.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
All right, my answer, And I've thought about this a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
I've thought about this for hours and hours over the
last several days, and well, I've seen this story.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
I've really pondered it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
I've thought about how the great existential philosophers might have
approached this question. I've thought about the difference between, for example,
the utilitarian philosophers and the empiricist philosophers Descartes versus John
Stuart Mill, how they would how they would answer this question.

Speaker 1 (01:29:47):
And as I was thinking about this.

Speaker 2 (01:29:49):
For hours and hours, it actually took me about zero
point zero one seven seconds to realize, of course I'm
keeping them all. What do you talking about? Why would
you possibly turn that stuff in? Are you crazy?

Speaker 5 (01:30:06):
Are you crazy?

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Ish?

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
I would do a lot worse things for two hundred
dollars then keep those coins. Sorry, all right, the other
question I asked you, and we actually have quite a
lot of listener response on this one.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Well, we had a lot of listener response on the
other one. Thank you all for playing along on the
home game here.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
And the question that came up just in the last
segment of the show is a law that is at
the state legislature right now I don't know if it's
going to pass.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
I don't know if it'll be signed.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
Wouldn't surprise me if it does, though, And again I'll
just recap. Colorado is one of nine states that does
not have a provision in law to allow people over
some age to opt out of jury duty. And Colorado
now is looking at a law that would allow people
who are seventy and older to voluntarily decide, either on

(01:31:08):
a temporary or permanent basis, to not serve on juries anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
And I think what they.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Mean by a temporary or permanent basis is like you
could fill out a form saying don't contact me for
jury duty, and then two boxes like, you know, for
a year or forever. That's what I'm That's why I'm
guessing they're putting that choice in it. It's a little
bit difficult for me to imagine. Well, not that difficult,

(01:31:35):
but there won't be very many circumstances where a seventy
five year old is going to say excuse me for
a year. But like, let's say you really do want
to serve on a jury, but you're going through some
medical stuff right now, and you think it's going to
take you a while so then you might say, all right,
leave me out for a year. So let me just
share with you. Let me just share with you a
little bit more. Let's see, Ross, I'd vote for it.

(01:31:57):
I know I wouldn't want to serve on a jury
as a senior by the and my patients would be
far gone anyway. Yes, opt out. Many folks of those
ages don't drive. Yes, let's see what else. Senior citizens
should do their civic duty, perform jury duty unless they
are mentally impaired.

Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
I'm seventy five, and I still.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
Have a pretty good mind to discuss current events. Of
course you do. That's why you listen to this show.
Here's the other side of that coin, from the very
very next text. That's a great idea. Would you want
Joe Biden sitting on your jury? Now, that's not fair
to most older people. Most people who are Joe Biden's
age are far more cognitively able than Joe Biden. Yes,

(01:32:39):
let them out if they want. At my age of
eighty three, it's hard to get there. Ross is somebody
that's almost seventy and has multiple physical ability issues.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
I would love to be able to opt out.

Speaker 2 (01:32:51):
Ross, just because you're seventy doesn't mean you should be
exempt from serving on a jury. We need more people
with life experience, not if you were. There are already
ways to get excused if you have health issues. Okay,
So I'm going to leave that there. And I promised
you that I was going to talk about much more
senior citizens. And so this is about a sprightly young

(01:33:15):
gal named Elizabeth Catherham. Now, before I tell you about
Elizabeth Catherham, let me just tell you that there is,
or rather there was, a nun and teacher in Brazil.
Her name sister Na Kennabauro. I n ah, I won't
bother spelling the last name, because it doesn't matter. She

(01:33:37):
died a couple of days ago, at just short of
her one hundred and seventeenth birthday, and she was the
She would have turned one hundred and seventeen this month.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
She was the oldest person in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
And so now the next the new oldest person in
the world. Her name is, as I said, Ethyl, which
is a perfect name, a perfect name for the oldest
person in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
This kind of yeah, yeah, I believe you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:09):
El Ethyl Catherham Ethel is a perfect name. Just the
same brand of name that my wife was going for
when she chose the name Agnes for our little English bulldog.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
Right, my wife wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
A name that sounded like an old English woman. And
that's what we that's what we've got, And so Ethyl
Catheram could hardly be more of a name like that.
And I will note I'm gonna tell you a little
bit about Ethyl Catherham because she's there's actually some interesting
stuff about her and one of the subheads on one

(01:34:46):
of the websites that talks about this, and and I
don't I don't actually have the detail of this little factoid.
But Ethyl ethyl is one hundred and fifteen years old.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
And I'll we'll get in a minute to one.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
Hundred and fifteen and how many weeks are, how many months?

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
But what's interesting is at one.

Speaker 2 (01:35:06):
Hundred and fifteen in change, the new oldest person in
the world. Ethel is the youngest oldest person in the
world in quite a long time. It doesn't say just
how long in this article, but that's kind of an
interesting thing. Now over at there's a website called longevy
Quest that keeps track of all of the you know,

(01:35:29):
oldest stuff. So let me just share a little bit
of this with you because this is fun. And there's
a smiling picture of Ethel there. She's sitting in I
guess a wheelchair, but she looks very happy and yeah,
looks like she's got all her teeth, which is really
unusual for a British person.

Speaker 6 (01:35:46):
And being her age though, I mean she could hold
that title for several years.

Speaker 2 (01:35:49):
She could, she definitely could. So she's the oldest check
this out. She's the oldest known British person in history.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
She lives in Surrey.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
She is one hundred and fifteen years and two hundred
and fifty two days old as of three days ago,
so she'd be one hundred and fifteen years, two hundred
and fifty five days old.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):
Now, just listen to a little of this. Just it's
incredible that this is like we're talking about a person.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
We're not talking about, you know, a building, right or so.
She was born August twenty first, nineteen oh nine. She
was the second youngest of eight kids. Her parents' names
were Alfred Collins. Her dad died in nineteen twenty seven.
Her mom's name was Fannie Shears, which is a hilarious name.

(01:36:46):
Her mom died in nineteen fifty one. Ethel was raised
in Tedworth, perfect Her eldest brother, Norman, was killed in
action in World War One. Her oldest sister lived to
be one hundred and four. At eighteen, Ethel took her
first job as a nanny for a British family in India.

(01:37:07):
Now just listen to this life, what this life mice
must have been like, and just try to imagine a
little bit of life in nineteen twenty seven, especially life
outside of a Western.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
Nation in nineteen twenty seven. Listen to this.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
Driven by a sense of adventure, she made the three
week voyage alone by ship in nineteen twenty seven, going
to India. She later recalled her time in India fondly,
describing a life where they were served by household staff
and embraced both British traditions like Christmas and Indian customs

(01:37:41):
like tiffin and tea. Over four years, she worked as
a nanny in India and the UK. In nineteen thirty one,
she met her future husband, Major Norman Katheram of the
British Army at a dinner party. They were married in
nineteen thirty three at Salisbury Cathedral, where Norman had once
been a choir boy. Norman rose to the rank of

(01:38:02):
Lieutenant colonel in the Royal Army, and the couple lived
in Harnum before postings in Hong Kong and Gibraltar.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
While in Hong Kong, Ethyl.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
Established a nursery for local and British children, teaching English
crafts and games. Their two daughters, Gem and Anne, were
born after the family settled back in Surrey. She was
widowed on August twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
She inherited a car from her husband.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
Called a Dolomite by Triumph, a British car company, at
Triumph Dolomite, and she continued driving it until she was
ninety seven. She remained active well into old age, playing
bridge regularly after she turned one hundred. Sadly, Ethel has
outlived both of her daughters. Her first daughter, No, her

(01:38:49):
second daughter, was also named Ethel, died at the age
of seventy one in two thousand and five. Her older daughter,
Uh that wait, No, that's not right. Ethel was the
first daughter of Ethel. The second daughter, is Anne, died
at the age of eighty three in twenty twenty. All right,
there's more, but I'm gonna I'm gonna stop there. That's

(01:39:10):
enough about Ethel. But just think about that life. Oldest
person in the world, now, oldest person in British known
British history ever, I mean, takes a three week ship
journey as a single woman going to India in nineteen
twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (01:39:26):
What a remarkable person. I do.

Speaker 6 (01:39:29):
Enjoy this most recent text we got the Biden used
to babysit Ethel.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
Oh that's really really funny.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Hey, folks, if you're listening on the podcast right now,
that's the end of today's show.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Don't forget you can catch us every day on the
podcast as you are right now, on your smart speaker,
on your iHeartRadio app, even on the computer at Koa, Colorado,
and the good old fashioned way on your radio.

Speaker 1 (01:39:56):
Thanks so much for listening to the show.