06-06-25 - *FULL SHOW* ADM Stavridis; Run For Their Lives; Antique stethoscopes

On Friday's show, Ross talks about today marking 81 years since D-Day, Russia/Ukraine & Israel/Iran with Admiral James Stavridis, this Sunday's gathering with Run For Their Lives in Boulder & stethoscopes!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I will remind you that coming up half an hour
from now, we've got Admiral James Tavritus. You are not
going to want to miss that conversation. I'll mention briefly
a couple other guests that we're going to have in
the eleven o'clock hour. Shira Weiss is national director of
Run for Their Lives.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Run for Their.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Lives is the organization that this, you know, wanna be
gee hottest anti semi illegal alien Egyptian tried to you know,
firebomb these people, including a ninety something year old Holocaust survivor,
and anyway, so we're going to talk with her about
the organization and about where you can meet up to support.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's not really I mean, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Everybody who's doing this is pro Israel, but it's not
really a pro Israel thing. It is a please bring
the hostages home thing. That's really what it's about. And
I am almost certainly going to be there on Sunday,
and I hope you will join me, and we're going
to talk about that with Serrol Weiss at eleven oh four.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
By the way, it's going to be I'll just.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Tell you now Sunday at noon on Pearl Street mall
just on the east side of Broadway in Boulder, Okay,
Sunday at noon, Pearl Street on the east side of Broadway,
and hopefully I will see you there. Don't be shy
about coming over to say hi if you see me,
if you know what I look like, and if you
don't know what I look like, just go over to
anybody else and say hi, and that will be fine.

(01:26):
And then the other really wacky kind of random thing
we're going to do today, we're going to talk with
a guy.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
This is going to be really interesting, I think, but
you have to be a nerd. But we're going to
talk with a guy who is a former.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Professor of medicine and at NYU Medical Center and actually
was president of NYU Medical Center and also happens to
be my uncle. And he is a longtime collector of
antique medical devices and made a website if you want
to go look at it, actually you can look at
it now Antique dash Stethoscopes dot com Antique stethoscopes dot com.

(02:06):
And I think all of the antique stethoscopes on the
website are part of his collection. So we're gonna like
stuff from the eighteen hundreds, and I don't know how
much older than that. So we're gonna talk about that
a little bit in the eleven o'clock hour.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
We're gonna do name that tune as well. So we
just got a lot of a lot of stuff to
do now. I don't want to say that again. How
many doctors in the fans?

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Oh, my gosh, Okay, my dad, my dad's sister, my
dad sister's husband, who's this guy, my youngest sister, my mom. Uh,
I'm not my mom's sister. That's probably nobody in my generation.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
I thought about becoming a doctor, But you have to
have a certain desire to help people that I don't have. Right,
Sure you can relate to that, Chann And you and
I are kind of similar that way. And and none
of my siblings even thought about, Oh, I take.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
That back, because how stupid am I?

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I just told you my youngest sister as a doctor,
and then I said my other two siblings and I
did not go down that road. My youngest sister in
a way, I think she was really trying to follow
in the footsteps of.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
My dad, maybe even more than my mom. Anyway, A
lot of psychology there that I won't try to try
to psycho analyze, but yeah, you see, this is the thing.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
This is the thing, Shannon, when you're talking about depression
era Jews, like my grandparents, they were very much of
the mindset that you should get a job that is
recession proof. And there are basically three of those that
would frequently come to the mind of people like my grandparents,

(03:50):
although my grandparents only ever said two of them, but
there was a third that was pretty common. Doctor, lawyer,
government worker right. Government basically never runs out of money.
People get sick regardless of the economy. People need lawyers
regardless of the economy.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
More or less.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
And so that's why a lot of people, a lot
of Jews of my dad's generation became doctors and lawyers
because their parents really pushed them that way. And I'm
not sure my dad actually wanted to be a doctor.
I think he sort of felt a little bit like
he was pressured into that. And I think we're way

(04:28):
off track here, but I think that part of the
reason I think that my I think that.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
A big part of my dad's reaction to being kind.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Of forced into a career path he didn't necessarily want,
was demonstrated when he joined the Navy. Because Jewish boys
from Ivy League schools did not join the US Navy
in the nineteen sixties, right, But.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
My dad did.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
And he's always loved novels about the ocean, hornblower novels
and master and Commander kind of stuff and all this,
and so I think I think my dad probably joined
the Navy as his way.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Of his mode of self expression. Let me just take sixty.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
To ninety seconds here on the story that everybody was
talking about the last twenty four hours, the Trump and
Musk blow up.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I don't want to go through it too much because
you've probably.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Seen all the headlines, but they were kind of at
each other's throats a little bit, and Trump Musk didn't
like the bill, and then Trump insulted Musk, and then
Musk insulted Trump, and then Trump said, well, then I'm
gonna maybe look to cancel government.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Contracts to Musk's companies.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
And then Musk said, well, then I'm going to decommission
the Dragon rocket, which is what the US government uses
to get people and stuff to and from the International
Space Station. Musk actually back down on that a little
bit later yesterday and said, all right, we won't decommission it.
Musk said, Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files.
That's why it hasn't come out yet. You know, it's

(05:58):
long been known Thatald Trump hung out with Jeffrey Epstein
a bit.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I don't know that there's any evidence.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
He ever went to the island though, but they were
both you know, rich, rich, young playboys in Manhattan, and
they obviously knew each other. I don't read any more
into it than that. But anyway, the whole thing just
got really really ugly. Tesla stock lost about one hundred
and fifty billion dollars in market cap yesterday, which is
a pretty remarkable number.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
It's definitely up today. Let me see how much. So
it's up six and a half percent, so it's gained
back a little less than a half of what it
lost yesterday.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
And the market overall is up big today. And let
me just give you a couple seconds of analysis here. Politically,
Donald Trump is at least one, maybe two orders of
magnitude more powerful than Elon Musk. The people who have
liked Elon Musk and liked Donald Trump are loyal to

(06:55):
Donald Trump, not to Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
You know, by vast, vast.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Maybe there's ten percent of tech bros and crypto people
who like Elon Moore, but this is not even a
close call. In business, well, Elon Musk has more power
and business kind of sort of, but Trump is president.
When Trump is out, Elon will be much more powerful
than Trump. But Trump's you know, he's still president. So
neither one of these guys can really beat the other.

(07:22):
But they can each hurt the other a bit, and
in doing so they can strengthen Democrats, and they can
strengthen people who well believe in all kinds of things
that I don't believe in. And so tensions seem to
be down this morning. Nobody's yelling at each other On Twitter.

(07:43):
Trump was asked about Musk and he basically demured and
just said, oh, I'm not really thinking about him.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I'm doing some other things and that's all fine.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
And I think that's part of the reason that Tesla
is up pretty good and part of the reason the
market is up pretty good. And I hope they keep
it that way. And here's what I would do if
I were Trump. I don't think he will, but this
would be at least worth considering publicly. Ask Elon Musk,
what's one thing that you would like to see added
to or deleted from the bill, and then let Elon

(08:11):
Musk answer, and then see if there's congressional approval for it.
That said the bill already, you know, and then try
to get it through in the Conference Committee. Perhaps get
it in in the Senate and let the Conference committee,
and that way maybe those guys can play nice together,
because it really is in the country's interests that they do.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
It's National Donut Day.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
It's National Donut Day, Shannon, so you need to know
about National Donut Day. Let's see at duncan I'm just
reading from USA today, free classic donut with any beverage purchase.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Eh, it's not that generous.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
And then Krispy Kreme one free donuts to all customers,
no purchase necessary.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
And if you want a whole bunch of donuts.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
If you buy a dozen donuts at the regular price,
then here on National Donut Day, you can get a
dozen of the original glazed donuts for oh my god,
for just two dollars. Gina just walked in with Lamar's,
which are very good donuts.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, I do want one. Oh my gosh, it looks
almost green. What is that?

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Oh my gosh, can you can.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
You cut one in half for me? That that round
chocolate one right there? Yeah, look at that. Gina is
feeding me on her birthday. Yeah, that's amazing. Gosh, what's
service around here? Well, if you're taking care of the
elderly people, that's what she's doing. That's what she's doing.
I can't believe how much older I am.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Then, Gina.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
There's an interesting lawsuit yesterday that I want to talk
about briefly. I'll go to our news partners at katib
R Fox thirty one. Here's the headline. Colorado official says
Governor Polus ordered him to violate state law and cooperate
with ice.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Interesting interesting lawsuit.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
So there's a guy named Scott Moss who is a
it is a long title director of the Colorado Department
of Labor and Employments, Division of Labor Standards and Statistics.
So apparently the FEDS came to the state government with

(10:14):
an administrative subpoena, but that is not a court authorized
subpoena asking for some data presumably or or their claiming.
And I'm not saying they're lying, by the way, Just
you know, here's the story. About illegal alien children who
were brought across the border during the Biden administration, and

(10:36):
it seems that a lot of these illegal alien children
ended up with people who aren't their parents, or came
without their parents and ended up with, you know, with
who knows who knows who. So we have multiple state laws,
including one that was just recently signed by the governor,

(10:57):
that are aimed at blocking any state officials from providing
any information to the federal government unless it is a
criminal investigation or a court issued subpoena. And so these

(11:18):
guys in the state government said, you know, we're not
going to give ICE the information and just and do
keep in mind again you might you might.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Have this idea come into your head.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Oh, these liberal government employees, they want to protect the
illegal aliens. You do have to keep in mind that
the law does seem pretty clear, and if these people
gave the information to ICE, based on their current understanding
of the law, they'd be breaking the law and could
potentially be subject to prosecution or fines or whatever.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
So it's in their own personal interest.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Just to protect themselves to not give the information to ICE.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Now, there's also a provision in the law.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
The same law that says you won't give information to
ICE that says you can if it is to to
try to stop, you know, find and root out sex trafficking,
child trafficking, stuff like that. And so what it looks
to me like this is coming down to okay. So
this guy sued Governor Polus, saying, I don't want to

(12:21):
provide this information because by doing so, you're forcing me
to violate the law and there and you're putting me
at legal risk by giving me this.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Order to do something illegal.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
And it sounds like Polus's reaction is, I don't think
what I told you to do was illegal, because I
believe that the information is part of an investigation into
child exploitation, and therefore it falls under an exception to
the law, and we are allowed to give that information.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
So we will see.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
It's an interesting thing because you've got a governor who
just recently signed this thing that makes us even more
of a sanctuary state than we were before. And I
think it was the very next day that he then
gave this order to people in his administration to give
particular information to ICE. So I think the liberals are
probably pretty happy that he's being sued.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
I think he's making.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
A legitimate argument that he had the right and maybe
the responsibility to do what he did. But I guess
we'll all see how it plays out in court when
we come back. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stivritis.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Before we talk about what's going on in the world,
tell me a little about the Admiral's bookshelf.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
Sure, it's twenty five books that have shaped my life.
So if I think about the novels and nonfiction books
that really helped me in life's journey, I picked twenty
five out of my library of about five thousand books,
and everything from.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
Ernest Hemingway and.

Speaker 5 (13:53):
The Old Man in the Sea to The Godfather by
Mario Puzzo to Dwight Eisenhower Crusade in Europe. It's twenty
five books that shape my life. And for each of
those books, I tell a story about why it's important
what's in the book, and then by the end of
the book, and for all the listeners out there, I

(14:13):
just kind of challenge people and say, what's on your bookshelf,
what books shaped you? This is a way to start
down that path, because I think reading and leading in
life are all inextricably joined.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Is there any overt philosophy in there, any Marcus Aurelius
and anything like that.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
In this particular compendium, Nope.

Speaker 5 (14:38):
I have found that I get more out of the
kind of novels that I mentioned a moment ago or
a straight history or biography, than I do out of philosophy.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
But that's the beauty.

Speaker 5 (14:55):
If you ask my good friend Jim Mattis, he would
definitely have the meditations of Marcus Aurelius on his bookshelf.
So again, the idea is to challenge folks to think
about what books really helped shape them. I'll close with
just an anecdote.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
I gave the.

Speaker 5 (15:12):
Commencement speech, very proud to do so at Adelphi University
on Long Island a couple of weeks ago, and the
book that I chose to talk about was The Godfather
by Mario Puzo, which I think is one of the
great books of leadership ever written, and it includes that
immortal line, don't make the mistake of hating your enemies.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
It clouds your judgment.

Speaker 5 (15:40):
I think we could do with a little more of
the Don's philosophy in today's world.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Indeed, yeah, I mean those guys are I mean, I
don't know them, but personally, you know from the movies
and so on, they were always an interesting mix of
sometimes being really good at separate eating business from the
personal right and we've all heard the line in all
the Mafia movies it's just business. But then every once

(16:06):
in a while something would come along that was personal
and they would not let it go.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
And it almost felt like we had a little bit
of that in our own politics in America. Yesterday, Yeah
I could.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
I could not agree with you more.

Speaker 5 (16:18):
And by the way, another really interesting aspect of all
this is the simple proposition that the don has a
big choice to make right which of his three sons
are going to be the heir apparent? And he picks
the obvious one, Santino Sonny, the big masculine, strong, like bold, handsome,

(16:45):
lots of affairs. You know, he seems like the obvious choice,
oldest son. But who's quietly in the corner, Michael. Michael's
the smart one. I think the lesson of that is
sometimes the right answer for you in life is actually
right next to you, hiding in plain sight. That's a
pretty good life lesson.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Also, we're talking with Admiral James stevritas the first recipient
of the Distinguished Ally of the Israeli Defense Forces Award,
presented by IDF Chief Benny Gantz a decade or so ago.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Tell me anything you want to tell me about that award.

Speaker 5 (17:22):
Israel typically does not give medals of any number, even
to their own forces. They do a handful, and they
certainly for the course in history of the nation, never
gave awards to non Israeli military personnel. I was very
honor when they chose to give me the first Ally

(17:42):
of Israel medal, and they've given a handful subsequently. It
was because I spent four years not only as NATO commander,
but my side hustle on behalf of the US government
was US Israeli military to military cooperation. So I spent
a lot of time with General Benny Gantz. He subsequently

(18:05):
became deputy Prime Minister, and I got a chance, as
you know, to meet many times with very senior leaders,
including Shimon Perez, the president at the time.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
I have a lot of regard for the state of Israel.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
You know, let's let's stick with that.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
You wrote a piece just in the last hours for
Bloomberg which folks is linked on my blog if you
want to, if you want to go read it about
what a potential joint US Israeli strike on Iran might
look like. And I got a lot of different aspects
of this that I want to ask you about. So
before we get to what's in your article, Well, you

(18:44):
talk about this, but I'd like to ask you to
elaborate on it. What did you make of the somewhat
recent reporting that Israel seemed ready to launch an attack
and Donald Trump told them not to.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
I believe that's true.

Speaker 5 (18:59):
I don't know that, but it makes sense to me
if you're Israeli, particularly Benjamin NETANYAHUO you know that Iran
is that its weakest position in fifty years. All of
their proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Huthis, the State of Syria,
all of them have been effectively denuded by the Israelis. Additionally,

(19:22):
their ear defenses were largely incapacitated. They tried to rebuild them,
reconstruct them, but it's a very weak moment. So if
you're in Israeli and you have spent decades listening to
the Iranians talk about their objective is to build a
bomb and destroy the state of Israel.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
You think this is pretty good time.

Speaker 5 (19:43):
To go after that nuclear program? Why does Trump want
to hold them back? And I think he's right to
do this. He wants to hold them back and try
and do this without resorting to big strikes, because that
would roil the global economy, terminate a lot a movement
of oil out of the straight or moves create a

(20:03):
lot of economic discomfiture. So I think Israel is correct
to think now would be a pretty good time. Trump
administration is correct to say cool your jets quite literally
for the moment, and let's give diplomacy a chance. That's
where we sit right at ross is.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
There is there any reason to think that diplomacy can
work in this situation.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
I think there is.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
I wouldn't give it you overwhelming odds, but if you
ask me to put a percentage on it, I think
there's a one in three thirty five forty percent chance
that diplomacy could work. And the reason is what I
articulated a moment ago. It's that Iran is at its
weakest point in decades. They just don't have a lot
of options, and if they don't take a deal Iran,

(20:55):
then I think they're facing a very significant strike which
will knock their.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Program act two to three years.

Speaker 5 (21:01):
It'll kick open a hornet's nests that ultimately I think
will work to the detriment of the Iranians.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
So for those reasons, I think there's a chance, but.

Speaker 5 (21:11):
I think over fifty chance, call it fifty sixty percent chance. Unfortunately,
we're going to end up needing to do a military
strike here.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
We'll know more in the months ahead.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
One of the things that really strikes me in your
article and you just said it again actually, and by
the way, folks, the article, the Admirals article for Bloomberg
is called could US and Israel destroy your runs new program?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Here's how So what you talk about in the article,
and you mentioned again just now, is that the US
and Israel could throw some of our most capable weapons,
systems and personnel, basically everything short of dropping a nuclear
bomb on them and still only set them back by
a year or two years or three years. So thinking

(21:59):
more about strategy, now, well, how do we think about that? Like,
you go do your worst, and I guess sitting them
back two years is better than not sitting them back
at all. If they're a week away from breakout, but
it's still not opt I mean, it's not what you
would dream of.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
No, not at all.

Speaker 5 (22:17):
And as I always say, life is full of choices,
many of them are imperfect. This would be an imperfect choice.
But I think if the option is Iran just says nope,
we're going to continue enriching uranium above ninety percent.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
That's weapons grade.

Speaker 5 (22:36):
They've got enough uranium and the ability to enrich it
to produce ultimately a dozen bombs. Admittedly they don't at
the moment have the ability to then put them on.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
A ballistic missile and deliver them at range.

Speaker 5 (22:50):
But could they build one, put it in a container,
smuggle it into Israel, take out the porta Hypha.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, I think unfortunately they could.

Speaker 5 (22:57):
So you're imperfect choice is to knock them back another
year or two, and here you hope, and hope is
not a strategy, but you hope that internally inside Iran,
the youth, the demographic, the generation coming along, which I
think is pretty sick of the mulahs and the morality

(23:21):
police and all of that, you hope knock the program
back and in three years, five years there are internal
changes in Iran that make that strategy look more palatable again,
imperfect choices.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Let's switch to Russia Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
So I think we all saw the news about the
remarkable Ukrainian drone strikes on multiple Russian air force base
or air bases. I don't know that they call them
air force and so, first of all, when do we
start with that? What do you tell us about the
importance of that. I will say it strikes me is

(24:00):
a little bit more psychologically important than militarily important.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
But I'd like to know what you think.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
I agree with you.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
Some commentators, I think, have expanded the view of this
to say this is like Pearl Harbor, It's going to
be a definitive moment that changes geopolitics. Others have said
this strike is the new face of warfare, will never
go back to manned aircraft. I think neither of those

(24:28):
are true. I think it's an important strike as follows.
It shows the Russians that nothing is safe. It demonstrates
the ability to strike three thousand miles into Russia.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
It shows Russia how penetrated they are.

Speaker 5 (24:44):
These drones came out of wooden trucks, containers on trucks
that were smuggled into the country. Who knows maybe Finnish
border could have come across the Ukrainian Russian board.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Nobody knows. That tells Putin he's quite penetrated.

Speaker 5 (25:02):
And then, finally, to your point, the psychological aspect of
this is quite simple, which is that these Russians for
centuries have felt they were The great advantage Russia had
was space and distance. They're too big, and so Napoleon

(25:25):
failed because of the distances. Hitler failed because of the distances.
Russian winters had something to do with it as well.
But the point is it pierces a sense that Russia
has of invulnerability.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
I think that's very important.

Speaker 5 (25:40):
It may help encourage Putin to eventually get to a
negotiation hope.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
So the other psychological point that occurred to me when
I saw that news is that Trump's favorite adjective, most
valued characteristic as he sees himself or anybody else's strength.
He always talks about how strong some he is. He
always describes his own policies as being executed strongly. It
is his number one adjective. And he has been sort

(26:09):
of shamefully on the side of Putin more or less
definitely not on the side of Ukraine throughout all this
it's been probably his biggest failing in international policy for sure.
And now to me, this shows that, you know, Trump
kept saying, you don't have any cards, and now Zelenski
just showed him, well, you know, I had an ACEP
my sleeve. You know about it, And maybe there's some

(26:31):
psychological impact on Trump that might get him to be
a little more willing to help Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Thoughts.

Speaker 5 (26:39):
I agree with you, and I'll add to it a
sense from President Trump who said, by the way, you
call this strike quote badass unquote, and I think it is. Again,
it's not going to buy itself change the course of
the war, but if it can flip the switch in
President Trump's mind, that could be the most important aspect

(27:03):
of the strike. And then secondly, in the Senate you
probably know this, a bill has been crafted with strong
bipartisan support. I think somewhere between sixty and seventy senators
are supporting a bill that says to put secondary sanctions
on anybody doing oil and gas business with Russia. That

(27:25):
would sanction China, India, Brazil, other markets that are doing
business with Putin. It would crack the Russian economy. I
think that if that were to get pushed over the
top perhaps as a result of this strike. That would
be another very important psychological aspect of this.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Do you think we the United States have the kahones
to sanction Russia.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I'm sorry India in India.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
I mean, we kind of need India, right, and we're trying.
India is a very strange country politically, and they try
to play everybody and all that, but they've been playing
pretty nice with us, and they're very important. I find
it hard to think we would actually go ahead with
sanctioning India.

Speaker 5 (28:11):
Again, life is full of imperfect choices, and sometimes how
you do something is more important than what you actually do. Meaning,
if we approached India, Brazil, who's a very close trading
partner of ours, a close friend, if we approached them
and said, look, you really don't want to do business

(28:33):
with Vladimir Putin's Russia at this moment, I think it
could be delivered in such a way that it would
have economic impact on Russia. Perhaps we could increase US
oil and gas exports to India and Brazil.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
I certainly would have no problem with that.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
China I think would have no problem putting sanctions on Overall,
I would say do it and see what happens, and
it would really put pressure on Putin. And two final thoughts,
in addition to secondary sanctions on Putin to push him
to a negotiation, you would say to Putin.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Hey, you Russia, You've got.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
Three hundred billion dollars in Russian finance that's parked in
Brussels under Western control and sanctions. If you don't get
to a negotiating table, we're going to spend that money
reconstructing Ukraine. And then, third and finally, in terms of
what you could do, secondary sanctions, go after the Russian money,

(29:32):
and thirdly, increase the defense, intelligence, the weapons systems, get
the Ukrainians to buy more of that from the United States,
and increase military pressure on Russia. As a result, you
do those three things, Putin's house and cards collapses. He's
got to come to a negotiation at that point, and

(29:53):
I think you can kind of craft a deal. He
gets what he's taken already. It's about twenty percent of
Ukraine arrest of Ukraine sales on free democratic path to
the European Union.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
That's the likely.

Speaker 5 (30:06):
Outcome, and it would at least stop the killing freeze
the frame. I don't like to see Putin have a
bunch of ill gotten gains, but it's better than him
just grinding away for the next five years killing another
couple of million Ukrainians and Russians.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
We're talking with Admiral James Tavritiz. His newest book is
Admirals The Admiral's Bookshelf. I encourage you go buy it,
read it, buy it as a gift as well. The
Admiral's Bookshelf. All Right, Admiral, we have two and a
half minutes left, and I think you and I have
talked about this once before, but I'm going to ask
you a very open ended question. What's going through your
mind today on this anniversary of D Day.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Thank you for asking me about that.

Speaker 5 (30:47):
So, for those who are not constant World War two historians,
on this day in nineteen forty four, as Ross just said,
it was the invasion of Europe by the largest amphibious
force ever assembled, American, British, all the Allies who were
fighting the Nazis, and it was overwhelmingly successful. It opened

(31:11):
the door to the conquering of that Nazi war machine.
It ended in the death by suicide of Hitler, the
liberation of Europe.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
So incredible moment.

Speaker 5 (31:21):
There's two points I want to make about it. Number One,
how young this greatest generation were. These were teenagers in
many cases, who are in those landing craft who climbed
those cliffs. These are the boys of Ponta Hak this
tower that was climbed by army rangers that Ronald Reagan
spoke about after the battle some decades later.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
And so the.

Speaker 5 (31:46):
Youth and the courage and the unity of the country
at that moment, there's a lot to admire about that.
And then secondly, I want to make a point about
leadership and accountability. You know Dwight Eisenhower, or was the general.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
He was in command of that mission. It was a gamble.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
It could have failed easily, and he kept in his
pocket a scrap of paper with a statement on it
that he was going to use if it failed, if
the invasion failed, And that scrap of paper said, today,
I am bringing the troops back because our invasion failed.

(32:26):
It did not fail because of lack of courage. It
did not fail because of our troops. It was my failure.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
I was the.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
Commander, the commanding general. I gave this order. It's my failure.
Any guilt should be attributed to me. Boy, that's leadership.
And fortunately he never had to use that scrap of paper,
and that's part of the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower, part
of why he went on to be one of our
most successful two term presidents.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Those are two things going through my mind.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
The scrap of paper story gives me chills a little bit.
It's really remarkable when you think of what it meant
for the world. It's you know, sometimes folks, especially Americans, kind.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Of joke about how, you know, if.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
The war had gone a different way, then you know,
the people living in Paris would be speaking German. And
the people living in Paris or Amsterdam, where I used
to live, they don't think that's a joke at all.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
I mean that was real. That was real to them.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
And when I lived in Amsterdam, it's a long time
ago now, it's twenty now, close to thirty years ago now,
but still on Liberation Day and Amsterdam was more Canadians
than Americans liberating them on that particular day. But there's
still parades and people come out and the army jeeps
US and Canadian and the gratitude toward America across Europe.

(33:48):
You can feel it in France too, and you don't
normally think of France thinking of Americans.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
That way is palpable.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
I'll give you the last seventeen seconds because I like
prime numbers.

Speaker 5 (33:58):
Yeah, so I'll tell you a story about a cemetery
in the Netherlands. It's an American battlefield cemetery. There are
thousands of Americans buried there. The Dutch individual, individual families
have taken those graves. Each grave has a Dutch family
that tends that grave, that brings flowers. That is part

(34:19):
of maintaining this American battlefield cemetery. New book coming out
this week, it's called Remember Us. It tells the story
of that is by the author of The monuments Man,
and it is a very powerful example of exactly what
you're talking about. Europe remembers America. We should be very
proud of that.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Admiral James Tavritus's new book is the Admiral's Bookshelf. Admiral,
thanks for your time, as always, appreciate it. Enjoy whatever
you're going to do to remember d Day and we'll
talk against him.

Speaker 5 (34:52):
I'm going to have a nice single malt Scotch and
toast President Dwight David Eisenhower.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Thanks a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
All right, thank you. We're going to take a quick break.
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
It's the D Day anniversary, and it's also National Donut Day,
so the other D Day. And as I mentioned that, Gina,
who liked serving the old folks like me, brought a
donut in and I asked her cut one and a
half and I still have it here. I haven't eaten
it yet, Gina, but I promise I will. And Gina
had tagging along with her another gal almost Gina, but

(35:24):
Gene from the Salvation Army Communications and PR manager with
the Salvation Army. And Gene was telling me a story
about the history of National Donut Day that I thought
was so cool. And I said to Gene, well, if
you're going to stick around, you know, to ten o'clock ish,
I'll have you on to talk about it for a
bit because I had the admiral in the last segment,
and so Gene joins me in studio.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Hi, good morning, thanks for bringing donuts. That's right, it's
a sweet, sweet day. So tell us a little We
got about four minutes, so tell us the history of
National Donut Day.

Speaker 6 (35:55):
So it was actually created in honor of the Salvation
Army donut Lassies that served donuts on the front lines
of World War One and World War Two. And these
brave women went to the front lines. They actually had
to fry the donuts out of helmets because they didn't
have cooking facilities and stuff at the front lines. And
they distributed donuts and coffee and cigarettes and just supplies

(36:17):
to the soldiers and it was so memorable for the
soldiers that one hundreds some years later they created a
day to honor them.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
I don't know anything about the history of the donut.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
I mean, I don't know if you've looked, but were
they a thing before that or did did these lassies
kind of make them up because they needed to make
something that they could cook that way.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Do you know?

Speaker 6 (36:38):
So they were a French treat back then. And so actually,
the Salvation Army and the donut Lassies are also credited
with popularizing the donut in the United States because when
all of the soldiers came back from the war, they
had been eating these tasty little treats, and so donut
stores actually started popping up after the war, and a
lot of people think that the.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Term dough boys there's a lot of.

Speaker 6 (37:01):
Definitions of how it was created, but a lot of
them say it was because they ate these donuts and
then came back in one of the donuts. So that's
one of the theories of where dough Boys came from too.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
But it's just a.

Speaker 6 (37:12):
Great holidays honor you know, the Salvation Army and our
service to the military and veterans. We're still serving them
on the frontlines today. As a matter of fact, we're
delivering donuts out to the VA Hospital today and so
just a fun holiday with some real history.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
I just think that's great.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
That's just one of those things that I had no idea,
and I would have just assumed that it was you know,
like I don't know, Valentine's Day or one of these
other holidays that I think was created by a flower
company or a greeting card company so they could sell
me some stuff.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
But it's not, No, it's not.

Speaker 6 (37:45):
And it actually the first Donut Day was actually nineteen
thirty eight in Chicago, and that was done to raise
money for the Salvation Army and raise awareness for the
Salvation Army in Chicago. And then several years later, Dwight
Eisenhower actually made it an official day, really, Yeah, like
I think it was nineteen forty one.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
National Donut Day is recognized by the federal government. Well
you know how they are. You can recognize anything as
an official.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Home I guess so because we talked quite a bit
about about Eisenhower in my last segment with Admiral Stavridis
as we were talking.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
About D Day.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
So how about that Eisenhower involved with both versions of
D Day.

Speaker 6 (38:20):
Yeah, he actually also commemorated National Salvation Army Week. So
he was a big fan of the Salvation Army and
the work that we did with soldiers and during the war.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
And wow, very cool. Well thanks for dropping in and
sharing the story.

Speaker 6 (38:34):
Absolutely, and have a great National Donut Day.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
A totally now you know it's related to the Salvation Army.
There you go. That's Gene Communications and PR manager at
the Salvation Army. Thanks for the story, Thanks for the donut.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Have a great weekend. All right you too.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
All right, I'm going to do one other story very
quickly here and this falls into the category of that
doesn't seem like very good security.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
So this is.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
From WGN in in Chicago, and of course the big
airport in Chicago was O'Hare.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
I used to live in Chicago and flew out of
O'Hare too many times to count. Check this out.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Newly obtained video shows a door dash driver's attempt to
deliver food to a customer at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport
last month not only breached perimeter security but also.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Failed to trigger an immediate response.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
In surveillance video obtained by WGN, the delivery driver's red
Hyundai is seen pulling up just behind and to the
right of a United Airlines wide body jet parked at
Terminal one Concourse C around midday middle last month. The
vehicle stopped for about twenty seconds before pulling forward again

(39:46):
and then stopping alongside the jet. Baggage handlers noticed the
driver and approached. However, it took nearly ten minutes for
a marked Chicago police vehicle to arrive. It's unclear from
the video whether police or airport security officers may have
approached the scene sooner on foot. WGN has learned that
the driver entered the restricted area through a security gate

(40:07):
at the southeast corner of the airport, indicating he traveled
a significant distance across the massive airfield without being stopped
or raising alarm. Quote, no guard was clearly visible, and
he proceeded through the gate, following instructions from his GPS coordinates,
in an aim to deliver the meal. That's what the
driver told the police. Police found the food order and

(40:29):
adored hash receipt in the driver's car, and released him
without issuing any citations. The private security guard manning the
perimeter told police she didn't immediately report the breach.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
According to the police reports, this lady.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Said the vehicle had indeed driven through her posts, to
which she regarded as strange and unfamiliar. Then she closed
the gate, but made no attempt to contact the operations
center or notify her direct supervisor.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
That is very much from the files of that doesn't
seem like very good security. A little bit more than
the market had expected.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
It was a pretty good report, right.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
The market had expected a significant decline in jobs, and
there was a decline in jobs, but not as much
as the market had thought there might be. And I
would also note that while there was a big decline,
I'm sorry, let me make let me get this very precise.
When I say there was a decline in jobs, what
I mean is fewer people hired into new jobs this

(41:33):
month than the previous month. I don't mean there was
a net decline in the number of employed people. That's
not what I'm saying, right, So I just want to
be be clear about that. So all of these reports
are very interesting. On the surface, that report looks pretty good, right,
the job market did not slow down as much as
some people thought it might.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
But a couple things to keep an eye on. Oh,
I didn't finish my last point.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
It was a pretty good number, and up one hundred
and thirty seven or one hundred and thirty nine, I
forget which, And that included a drop of twenty two
thousand in government jobs, which I guess is probably almost
all federal government jobs. So that's that's a fabulous thing.
When the federal government has fewer workers, that is great

(42:21):
for the country generally. It's not maybe great for the
person who loses his or her job, but go get
another job, and hopefully go get a job in the
private sector where you can, you know, be a little more,
be a little more productive. And I don't I'm not
against government workers, right, It's just our government is too
big and it spends too much and we're going bankrupt
and we need to solve all this.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
So so that was that was pretty good that the.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Number was a little better than expected, even with the
decline of twenty two thousand government job But here's the
other thing, and people don't talk about this this as
much unless you're sort of a professional pardon me at
watching this data, and that is when they put out
these reports, they do revisions of the prior month or two,
and the revisions for the prior couple of months in

(43:03):
this report were significantly negative, like dropped another ninety thousand
or so, dropped ninety thousand jobs or so. So that
was so there were a lot fewer jobs created according
to this data set over the prior couple of months
than had previously been reported. Still not a recession, but

(43:24):
not great. So that's one thing to keep in mind.
The other thing to keep in mind, and I didn't
know this until I just read about it a couple
of minutes ago, there was a very big change in
the labor participation rate.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
So why does this matter.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
The labor participation rate means what percentage of Americans who
are in what is defined by the economists as working age,
And I forget what that is eighteen to sixty four
or something like something like that, right, So what percentage
of people who are in that age bracket where they
could be working actually are either working or looking for work.

(44:05):
Because here's the thing, and we haven't really talked about
unemployment as an important data point in a long time,
So you might not have heard anyone talk about this
for years because we haven't had significant unemployment for years.
But if somebody loses a job and then decides they're
not going to look for another job, they just decide

(44:28):
to go into retirement early, or they just go live
in their parents' basement or whatever it might be, but
they are not looking for a job, that person then
does not count as unemployed.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Did you know that does not count as unemployed?

Speaker 1 (44:43):
So what in some of the background stuff in this
particular report, the one that came out this morning, it
turns out there was a huge drop in the number.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Of people in the labor force.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
And I don't know whether they're older people, whether they're
younger people. I don't know that breakdown, but a lot
like a few hundred thousand people apparently stopped looking for work,
which means they don't count as unemployed. If those people
had still been looking for work, you would have seen

(45:16):
an increase in the unemployment rate. So it does look
like you have fewer people working than the headlines suggest,
but it's masked by the way the data is presented.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
And I think that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
So as I look at that report, I would say
it's slightly weak, not terribly weak.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
It's not saying we're in a recession. It's not saying
we're going.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
To be a recession intercession, but it's also not saying
we won't be. And I realize it sounds like I'm
trying to have it both ways. I have no idea
how all of this tariff stuff is going to play out.
I have no idea whether it's going to push us
into a recession. I have no idea if Trump is
going to keep backing down. I have no idea if
we're going to get into a bigger trade fight with China,
or or if they'll sort something out. I have no idea.

(46:05):
One last quick thing here in terms of in terms
of how you got to be careful with data series.
So there was also a report about imports and exports,
and the headline on BBC tariffs prompt record plunge in
US imports. Goods brought into the United States plunged by
twenty percent in April, their largest ever monthly drop, in

(46:29):
the face of a wave of tariffs unleashed by President
Donald Trump. And I want you to be careful with
this one too. Yes, there is no doubt. There is
no doubt that tariffs will cause fewer people to buy
stuff from overseas. And that's too bad. It means we're poor,
we're worse off. We should not be discouraging imports. But
I'll save that for another day. But here's what this

(46:50):
doesn't say that you need to keep in mind. In
business's efforts to beat the tariffs, they rushed and bought
an immense amount of stuff in the prior couple of
months before the tariffs hit, and now they have a
lot of inventory to work through, so they don't need
to go import stuff now.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
So it's not really right.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
To say, well, it's it's not right the way they
mean it. To say the tariffs caused the plunge in imports.
They did indirectly because they caused people to go by
lots lots more imports earlier, so they don't need to
buy more now.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
All right, that's your Econ lesson for today. We'll be
right back.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
It's a little bit heavy, but I do want to
And then coming up in the next segment of the show,
although that's still half an hour away because we had
a long segment here, we're going to have a guest,
the national coordinator for Run for Their Lives, which is
the group of you know, peaceful demonstrators calling for the
release of the hostages in Gaza that were attacked and

(47:50):
firebombed by this lunatic anti Semite wannabg Hottest Loser in
Boulder little less than a week ago. So, like I said,
I was trying to decide whether to share this with you,
and I think I think I will. So this is
written by a guy named Ed Victor who's from Boulder

(48:14):
and was at the Run for Their Lives march, you know,
walk slash run last this past Sunday, as he is
pretty much every Sunday, and he wrote this and I
just want to share it with you. I heard a
glass break. Then the first thing I felt was the heat.
It came out of nowhere. Then I looked to my

(48:35):
left and the older woman near me was on fire.
She crumpled to the ground, the flames following her. This
all happened in no more than two to three seconds
in the next few minutes, and it couldn't have been
more than one or two.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
It felt like an eternity.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
My world completely narrowed, rendering me oblivious to my surroundings
to the shirtless man not more than fifteen feet away,
who was yelling free Palestine at us, and who had
another firebomb in his hand.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
It never dawned on me that I might be in
danger too.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Until later that day, when I watched a video of
the scene that showed me with my back turned to
the man, completely unaware of his presence. Run Away, I
told myself through the screen watching the video.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
But in the moment I didn't. I couldn't. My boy scouts.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Training from nearly four decades ago kicked in. I saw
a fire, and I knew the only way to get out,
to get out of it, was to smother it. There
was no water around, but from what I could see,
I could also smell. There was no water around from
what I could see, but I could also smell the
subtle hint of gasoline, and water would never work to

(49:38):
put out that kind of fire I knew.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I had to look for something, anything.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
I could find a few Israeli or American flags strewn
on the ground.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
No, they were too thin.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
So I grabbed a banner, the one we marched behind
every Sunday, which read let them go Now. I was
concerned that it could be made of a synthetic material.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
What if it lights on fire? What if we create
a fireball? I feared.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
But there was no time and nothing else in sight
that I could possibly use. So two others and I
laid the banner on top of the agonized woman, trying
to put out the flames all over her body. Once
the flames went out, one of my friends, who had
medical training, began tending to the older woman and her wounds.
By this point, her clothes were tattered and I noticed
burns across her body. My attention then turned to her husband,

(50:25):
an older man standing beside her, when the fire erupted.
His leg was badly burned, and he watched as his
wife lay on the.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Ground in utter pain. He screamed.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
I can't remember what he said, but he was distraught,
beyond distraught. When the first responders finally arrived, I watched
him get loaded into an ambulance. Eventually I learned he
was taken by helicopter to a local hospital. Last Sunday
had begun like any other. It was an overcast spring day.
I woke up, put on a shirt, shorts, and a

(50:56):
pair of tevas, and drove from my home in a
nearby subber to Boulder's Pearl Street Mall to join in
the Run for Their Lives walk. I had been to
the gathering every Sunday since September of last year, since
a visit I took to Israel made me realize how
important it was to keep the hostages names alive, to
show that there were people fighting for them.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
To me, this rally never had anything to do with Israel.
It was always about the hostages still in Gaza. What
bystanders normally noticed about our walk is that we are
completely silent. People often hold pictures of hostages, some who
have died and some who are still being held by
Hamas and Gaza. Now for over six hundred days.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
It wasn't uncommon for a few bystanders to offer up
nods of support or for others to shout free Palestine
at us as we walked. We were always instructed not
to respond or react, so I learned to ignore those things.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
I never felt unsafe.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
I never imagined I would feel unsafe walking in downtown Boulder.
Occurred just as we gathered in front of the Boulder
Courthouse to read out the names of the hostages, both
those who have been murdered by Hamas and those still
held in captivity, and just before we were to sing
together the Israeli national anthem Hatikva, which literally translates in English.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
To the Hope.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
I can't remember much from the time I felt that
sensation of heat to the moment I found myself going
from ambulance to ambulance, trying to gather the names of
the injured and find out which hospitals they were being
taken to so I could communicate that information to our family,
to our friends and their families. By the time I
finally looked up and took in my surroundings, I could

(52:40):
see police putting up caution tape around the area where
I had just been standing. Minutes before, police were speaking
to witnesses. The man who allegedly threw the firebomb had
already been arrested and taken away. As for me, I've
put up my own internal caution tape. I may never
feel comfortable going back to that spot again. Though I
planned to try and rejoin the march this coming Sunday,

(53:02):
one week after the attack, I don't think I'll ever
be able to go back to that exact space and
feel normal.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
This has unquestionably changed me.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
If anyone asks how I'm doing, I say I'm okay.
But if I dig a little deeper, I'm sad, angry,
and outraged. Upon reflection, I've come to realize that free
Palestine can mean something for those who want to Palestinian state,
but it has also become a rallying cry for killing
the Jews. It was the rallying cry for the two

(53:33):
people gunned down in Washington, DC just two weeks ago.
It was the rallying cry in Bolder. That is not okay,
and I don't know what to do about it.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
That piece is in the Free Press, which is THEFP
dot com. It's entitled I saw my Friends set on
fire in Bolder, written by Ed Victor. Now, my intent
at this time is to go to this event on Sunday.
We're going to talk about it more with a guest
from Run for Their Lives in the next segment of

(54:03):
the show a little over twenty minutes from now. I
hope that you will consider whether or not you're Jewish
in coming up to Boulder. And I know I don't
love going to Boulder either. I get it, I get it,
But you know what, some folks could really use your support,
your moral support, and I want to go up there
for them, and not just because I'm Jewish.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
I want to go up there for them because they
were attacked. And maybe you can join me. It's noon
on Sunday on Pearl Street, starting just on the east
side of Broadway in Boulder. And again I'll give you
that information again, but it's also up on my blog
if you go to Roskiminski dot com. I've actually embedded
as an image the flyer that is advertising the event basically.

(54:52):
But all you really need to know is Sunday at
noon on Pearl Street, just east of Broadway in Boulder,
and hopefully I will see you there.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Please do come say hi to me if you if you.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
See me there, I will also just sticking with this
for a second, and again I realize it's heavy, but
from our news partners at KADIVR Fox thirty one, this
came out yesterday afternoon. The FBI is warning of an
elevated threat to Israelian Jewish communities, citing recent attacks like the.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
One in Boulder, among others.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an announcement
yesterday evening to quote highlight potential public safety concerns related
to ongoing threats to Jewish and Israeli communities. Now, I
am not the bravest man in the world. I've never
served in war.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
I've only ever been in one or two real fights
in my life, and those were, you know, when I
was a kid.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
So I don't consider myself any kind of hero or
particularly brave dude. But when they say that there is
an elevated threat to Israeli and Jewish communities, that makes
me want to go to this event more, not less.
They need our support more, they deserve our support more,

(56:06):
and separate from anything they need or deserve, I want
to go there more, and hell, yes, I'm gonna be armed.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
I don't actually think there's gonna be any problem.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
I think the police presence is going to be enormous,
although I'm hoping they will stay, you know, back a
little bit, so it doesn't feel like the police are
really in the middle of everything, in the middle of
the walk and all that. I think they will be
as discreet as they can, but with a very strong presence,
that's my guess.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
But that's my plan. That's my plan.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Hopefully I will see you there, all right. Let me
switch gears here. Oh, this is a fun story. This
is a fun story. It's about it's about Trump, but
it's still a fun story. I really dig this. This
is from CBS News.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
To South Florida shark divers convicted of theft for freeing
nineteen sharks and a giant grouper from a fisherman's long
line several miles from shore, have been pardoned by President Trump.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
The pardons were signed the day before yesterday. These two guys,
last names Mansell and Moore, had been convicted in twenty
twenty two of theft of property within special maritime jurisdiction.
They avoided prison time and they did have to pay
a few thousand dollars in restitution, but their felony convictions

(57:34):
are gone. So you know, these guys are in Florida,
and in Florida, if you got a felony conviction, you
can't vote, you can't own a gun, and I think
it impacts your ability to get a passport too. So
very good for these guys that they were pardoned, and
that stuff is.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
That stuff is gone. Now let me tell you what happened.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Mister Moore was the captain of a or of a
shark diving charter vote and mister man Cell's a crew
member on that boat. And they saw this long line
about three miles off of the Jupiter Jupiter Inlet. And
this is all the way back in August of twenty twenty.
But they didn't get convicted until twenty twenty two. But

(58:12):
this was back in August of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
They thought that it was an illegal fishing line, so
they freed the sharks and this grouper, and they themselves
reported it two state wildlife officials and brought the long
line back to shore. Again. They thought someone was fishing illegally.
Now it turns out that the line actually belonged to

(58:37):
a fisherman who was licensed by NOAH, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, to catch sharks for research.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Mansell and more were convicted by a jury. Their appeals
were later denied. The full and unconditional pardons signed by
mister Trump erased those convictions. Mister man Cell, attorney said,
this case should never have been filed. These gentlemen made
an honest mistake, and we're trying to save sharks from

(59:08):
what they believed to be an illegal long line fishing setup.
I can't think of two individuals more deserving of a
presidential pardon, and I agree, I agree.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
I've got to say, you know, whoever brought that case,
whoever decided to prosecute two guys who said, we thought
this was an illegal long line. We reported it ourselves
and brought the long line in. We thought we were helping,
and instead you're going to charge them with a felony.
I I, first of all.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
I think that whatever federal prosecutor did that did it
because the you know, the injured organization was a federal organization.
But if I were in charge, I would find the
prosecutor who brought that case and fire them, or at least, uh,
you know, put something into demote them, do something that

(01:00:02):
is a recognition that they either shouldn't be there or
at least shouldn't be in any higher position, and put
something in their record so that they don't get promoted.
I mean assuming, okay, assuming that the facts of the
case are what is written about in this CBS news story.
But that sure does sound to me like a case
that should never have been brought and a prosecutor who

(01:00:26):
represents exactly and I do mean exactly what I don't
want in prosecutors.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
All right, move on to other things. Oh, here's something
you could do tomorrow night, if you're interested, if you
like a little beer, and if you live in Denver
or want to go in Denver. This is also from KDVR.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Businesses along Callfax Avenue have been vocal about concerns that
their businesses will suffer while a bus rapid transit project
is constructed between Broadway and Yosemite on Callfax.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
And we've talked about the BRT thing for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
So the Callfax Avenue Business Improvement District just announced the
Big Wig Bar Krawl, a wig themed bar crawl to
five of Denver's favorite bars. Oh five isn't that many,
but in any case, the announcement says, from bold and
bright to sleek and shake, all wigs are welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
And here's the twist. Your wig is your drink ticket.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
The goal of the crawl is to sport small businesses
impacted by the ongoing construction project. The crawl is going
to kick off at the Squire Lounge at eighteen hundreds Colfax,
and then it's going to go to you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Know, originally that said five bars. This says five other bars,
but I think it might be four other bars, Pete's
Satire Lounge, lions Layer, d NVR, and bar Max. Tickets
to join the event the event are ten dollars, and
I think if you just the event Bright has the tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
So if you type in event Bright and then type
in Big Whigs on call Facts, you'll find it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
The event is scheduled for this Saturday. Registration is three
to four and the Barkrawl starts at four. All right,
enough of that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
So I mentioned yesterday that there were a bunch of
Supreme Court decisions that came out yesterday that we were
opinions that you probably would have thought of as conservative
opinions written by conservative justices, and they were actually unanimous opinions.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
And at least two.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Of the ones that you would have thought of as
conservative opinions were actually written by liberal justices on the Court.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
And so is this one. This is an interesting and
interesting case.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
So you are probably aware of a large umbrella organization
called Catholic Charities affiliated with the Catholic Church that does
all kinds of charitable stuff. Now, in Wisconsin, they have
a religious exemption to I'm just going to simplify it.

(01:03:08):
They have a religious exemption to a payroll tax, a
particular payroll tax, and so if you are, let's say
a church, you don't have to pay this payroll tax.
And the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin ruled that Catholic Charities,
and specifically the group is called the Catholic Charities Bureau

(01:03:31):
of the Diocese of Superior. The state Supreme Court ruled
that that that organization was not religious enough to get
the tax exemption to not have to pay the payroll tax.
They said, they're not really teaching about God, they're not
teaching theology, and they offer their charitable services to people

(01:03:53):
who are in Catholic so it's not religious enough to
meet our test for the religious exemption from this tax.
And the Supreme Court, in an opinion that was unanimous
and written by the most or second most liberal member
of the Supreme Court, overturned the Wisconsin Supreme Court and

(01:04:16):
said that Catholic charities do indeed qualify just like any
other religious organization qualifies. And I'll quote from NBC, the
justices ruled unanimously that the state's decision unlawfully discriminated against
the groups on the basis of religion under the free
exercise clause.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Of the Constitution's First Amendment.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
So, boy, there are a lot of free exercise cases
and they're mostly going very well. I do think there's
a whole bigger conversation to be had about why there
were so many cases yesterday that again you might think, wow,
it sounds like a really conservative outcome that were written
by the liberal justices. And I think part of the

(01:04:59):
reason in there is that Chief Justice John Roberts wants
to have the public understand that the Supreme Court is not,
or at least not most of the time, divided on
a partisan basis the way so much of the rest

(01:05:21):
of the country is because when Americans think of the
Supreme Court as acting on the basis of partisan politics,
it dramatically reduces the faith that Americans have in the
Supreme Court.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
And this has been going on for years.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
With Democrats attacking the Supreme Court and Donald Trump attacking
the Supreme Court and Jack Schumer attacking the Supreme Court, and.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
It's really bad. It's really bad for the perceived legitimacy
of the Court and the eye and the mind of
the American people. And it's a legitimacy that's critically important
to the functioning of our republic. And so I think
what Roberts is doing is he's first of all, he's
trying to get people who might be on the fence
to go along with it and say, look, we really

(01:06:04):
need you on this one. You're gonna lose anyway if
you go the other way, right, why don't you just
join us, You write the opinion, and we will show
the world that we are more united than politicians think
we are, or than politicians want us to be. That's
my guess as to why we saw so many conservative

(01:06:25):
decisions written by liberals yesterday. And that's my And you
know you didn't pay much for my guests, and that's
probably about what it's worth. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
I shared with you in the last segment of the
show a note written by a gentleman named ed Victor
that was published over at the Free Press entitled I
saw my friends set on fire in Boulder. Ed Victor
has been to every or almost every one of these
Run for Run for Their Lives events for the last

(01:06:57):
nine months and it was quite a movie. Peace joining
us now to talk about not just what happened in Boulder,
but bigger picture stuff and what folks can do who
want to support not just Run for their Lives, but
again the bigger picture here is Shira Weiss and Shira
is national director of Run for Their Lives.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Shira, thanks for joining me here on Kiawa.

Speaker 7 (01:07:21):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
So I do plan to go to the event in Boulder.
I don't know if you call it an event. Go
to the walk in Boulder this Sunday. What do you
want to tell people who maybe haven't been to one
before and are thinking about it now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:07:42):
Our mission and our core values have always been surrounding
the hostage situation in Israel. So Run for Their Lives
were established on October fifteenth, twenty twenty three, shortly after
the TAPS, and it was established as a global humanitarian

(01:08:05):
crisis when over two hundred and forty civilians were taken
hostage and the civilians were of many different nationalities, ethnicities, religions,
and we came together as a group because we strongly
believe that no one person should be taken against their

(01:08:28):
wills and have you know, their basic freedom and needs
taken away from them. And currently there are fifty six
hostages still intactivity. It's six hundred and nine days, and
we just don't believe that this should continue. Our I

(01:08:48):
know the mission is called Run for Their Lives, but
it's walks there. It's local walks that are happening in
over two hundred and thirty groups worldwide, and it's a
way community to come together and just be together in
a time when everything is so divisive and people just

(01:09:10):
have differing opinions. What we hope is that the people
who join us are of the same opinion that no
other human beings should be treated.

Speaker 4 (01:09:19):
In this former.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
The FBI put out a release yesterday that I talked
about on the show earlier, and it's entitled recent attacks
highlight elevated threat to Israelian Jewish communities. And as I
said to listeners before you got here twenty minutes ago
or whatever, that that makes me want to go more.
You know, I mean, I am Jewish, but even if

(01:09:44):
I weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
It makes me, It makes me want to go more.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
And I'm curious how you feel, as the director of
all this multiple locations, not just here in Colorado, how
do you feel about this idea that times are much
riskier for Jews now than even just a year ago.

Speaker 7 (01:10:08):
Well, first, I want to address the fact that not
only Jewish people in Israeli people join these walks. We
have many walks that are actually led by non Jews,
so people who agree with our mission and wanted to
create a chapter in their area and participants. Also, it's
a mix of people. We welcome people from all walks

(01:10:31):
of life. Of course, with the rise of anti Semitism
and just you know, the general politics and issues in
the Middle East, that's obviously put us kind of, as
you know, with targets on our back. But this is
the first violent attack that we've had happened to our organization,

(01:10:51):
and we've been walking for almost two years, So that
just goes to show you the type of people that
we have coming tojoin us and support us, and the
manner in which we conduct ourselves. We are peaceful, we
are not protesting, we are not demonstrating, we are not marching.

(01:11:12):
We are literally just going for a walk together as
a community, you know, for people to come together. I initially,
when the attack happened in Boulder, we because different groups
walk at different times, we immediately ceased operations because we
needed to ensure everybody's safety. And the outpouring that we

(01:11:35):
have gotten from not only our community and our leaders,
but strangers just asking us not to stop because of
how important this mission is really made us reassess and
reevaluate if we should continue going. And we made a
decision to continue. And we you know, have been in

(01:11:56):
touch with a lot of organizations and local law enforcement
to help our leaders, you know, to assess potential threats,
to help with security, and to even help with you know,
potential protocol of what to do if you know, something
happens in terms of how you keep your your members safe.

(01:12:16):
So we've we've kind of, you know, we were living
in this bubble of not having to deal with potential
violent attacks or any sort of attack on our groups.
That now we have to just reassess how we approach it.
But all right, most part, every group is going out

(01:12:39):
this weekend and walking.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
I just have a few seconds left. Would you would
you say that the most common characteristic of your groups,
your group's leadership, your group's membership in recent days, either
most common or at least fairly common is determination. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought it
would be. And I mean that's how I that's how
I feel too. And again I used to live in Boulder.
I live kind of far from Boulder now. But folks,
if you want to join me and what it doesn't
matter if you're Jewish, come on up this Sunday to
Boulder Pearl Street Pearl Street Mall, just on the east

(01:13:24):
side of Broadway at noon and we'll just take a
little walk together. We're not we're not doing a marathon.
We're not going for a three hour hike. It's just
a short, quiet, peaceful walk to show support for our
friends and neighbors.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
Do you want to add anything, Shira, Yeah, And for
any of.

Speaker 7 (01:13:42):
You that are listening, if you have a family out
of town you know, or friends, like I mentioned before,
two hundred and thirty groups worldwide, you can go to
our website and you can find you know groups, local
chapters in your area, and we would love to have you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
Folks, if you want to find the website. Just go
to your favorite search engine and type in Run for
Their Lives or Shiro, what's the u r L.

Speaker 7 (01:14:04):
It's run the number four live dot org.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Run four lives dot org and that four is the number.
Shiro Weiss's national director of Run for Their Lives. Thank
you for being here. I'm sorry that you and all
of us had to go through this. I'm I'm overjoyed
that nobody died, and you know, and and in a way,
maybe maybe we come out of this even stronger. You know,

(01:14:32):
it's a thing I can easily imagine since nobody died.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Yeah, agreed, Shierra Weiss, thanks for your time. Thank you
very much.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
We'll take you a quick break. We'll be right back
on kaway. I'm ross thanks for being here. I'm looking
forward to the weekend. Hope you are as well. In
the next segment of the show, we're gonna have a
super nerdy conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
I'm not going to tell you more about that right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
Let me just do a couple of quick stories in
this segment before we get to that. A little, tiny,
a bit of freedom just showed up in southern California.
Not really used to seeing freedom arrive in southern California,
and especially from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which
is historically a really, really terrible court. But this is

(01:15:14):
about yoga classes on the beach and in public parks.
So the City of San Diego banned any kind of
basically commercial activity maybe you know, unless you're a license
I guess, in public parks and on beaches, and a
couple of folks there just started doing a guy at

(01:15:38):
a gal started doing yoga lessons on the beach and
they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Charge for it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
People are welcome to give a donation, but they don't
charge for it. You can go for free and anybody
can go, so it's not some kind of exclusive thing.
And the City of San Diego go, nevertheless, you know,
wrote them tickets and cited them for teaching yoga, and

(01:16:06):
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that teaching yoga
is protected speech and the.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
City can't ban it. And the court said that the city.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Has not shown any and I'm quoting here plausible connection
between plaintiff teaching yoga and any threat to public safety
and enjoyment in the city's shoreline parks. So either on
the sand or on the grass near the sand in
these California beaches. And you know, the city claimed that
they had an interest in what they called protecting the

(01:16:40):
enjoyment and safety of the public in the use of parks.
But again the judges said, there's no the city hasn't
provided any explanation as to how teaching yoga could lead
to harmful consequences to those cities interests, or even what
those consequences might be.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
And all of that was interesting enough.

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
But then the funniest part, and this happens sometimes when
you read these articles about local stories, sometimes there are
these little nuggets that just kind of show up out
of nowhere and you're like, oh, my gosh, that's even
more ridiculous than the rest of the story. So the
two people who had been written tickets and fined and
you know, we're being charged with stuff by the city
for teaching yoga, they also filed another lawsuit against the

(01:17:21):
city earlier this year in state court, which and in
that lawsuit they claimed that one of them was cited
multiple times now listen to this for live streaming yoga
classes from his home and those citations were, according to
the lawsuit, issued because the lessons streamed on YouTube could

(01:17:44):
be viewed by people at a city park.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
How insane is that? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Remember before I told you that if I were in
charge of the prosecutor's office where they charged these guys
for freeing some sharks from a long line that they
thought was an illegal fishing thing, and Trump just pardoned
these guys, I said, I would find the prosecutor who
brought that case and convicted those guys, and I would
fire that prosecutor, or at least make sure that they're

(01:18:14):
clear that they're never getting a promotion because their judgment
is so bad.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
I would do the same thing here in San Diego.

Speaker 8 (01:18:20):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Whoever wrote a ticket to a guy teaching yoga on
YouTube from his home based on the argument that somebody
who was in a city park might watch the lesson?
Whoever wrote that ticket, likewise should be fired. There are

(01:18:41):
a lot of people in government who think that because
they're in government, they are our bosses, and, as Mandy
likes to say, you're not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
The boss of me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
And sometimes these people just need to be taught a lesson,
even a hard lesson like you are fired, because that
will be not only a lesson to that person, but
to everybody else who might make a stupid, tyrannical decision
forgetting who the government actually works for. All right, when

(01:19:14):
we come back, something completely different, super nerdy and really fascinating.
My next guest, doctor Eric Rakow, is former Professor of
Medicine and president of NYU Medical Center.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
And he also happens to be my uncle.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
And I saw Eric at the bot Mitzvah that I
told you I went to over this past weekend. And
I know that Eric collects medical devices, you know, antique
gorgeous old medical devices. And I asked him about it
and he showed me a new or new ish maybe website,
Antique hyphen Stethoscopes dot com. And I said, this is

(01:19:57):
so cool. I got to get you on the show. Oh,
uncle Eric, Welcome to KOA.

Speaker 4 (01:20:04):
Hi nephew Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
I don't even know where to start. Why don't Why
don't we start with linek? Who is linek?

Speaker 4 (01:20:15):
Okay?

Speaker 8 (01:20:15):
Well, that's that's the start of the history of the stethoscope.
And as you said, I collect antique steth scopes, and
I'm very interested in oscultation from my medical practice. Oscultation
listening to the body for sounds is a very old
practice dating back to oh Egypt on the seventeenth century BC,

(01:20:40):
when when they listen to audible sounds that the body made.
And Hippocrates is the father of medicine, you know, recommended
using instruments to improve listening to sounds in the body.

Speaker 4 (01:20:53):
And then you fare forward and you get to a neck,
and it's a term.

Speaker 8 (01:21:00):
In the century of the nineteenth century eighteen hundreds, Leneck
found it very inefficient to listen to the body by
putting your ear against the chest, which is what had
been done all those centuries up until Leneck. And he
came up with a clever idea, according to the story,
because he was embarrassed to put his ear to a

(01:21:21):
robust young woman's chest of rolling up pieces.

Speaker 4 (01:21:25):
Of paper.

Speaker 8 (01:21:27):
And then using one end to listen placed on the
chest and the other on his ear, and he could
hear the heart sounds really well. And it turns out
Leneck was a flutists. In other words, he played the flute,
and he had a lathe in his basement and he
made flutes.

Speaker 4 (01:21:44):
And then he.

Speaker 8 (01:21:44):
Realized the flute as a musical instrument transmission transmitting sounds.

Speaker 4 (01:21:50):
Maybe he could make something to transmit sounds.

Speaker 8 (01:21:53):
He made the first stethoscope in his basement, a piece
of wood twelve inches long with a whole through.

Speaker 4 (01:22:00):
The middle to listen to the chest.

Speaker 8 (01:22:04):
Uh, and therefore not put your ear up against the
chest to hear heart sounds or lung sounds.

Speaker 4 (01:22:09):
And that's where it all started.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Did he call it a stethoscope?

Speaker 4 (01:22:14):
He called it a cylinder.

Speaker 8 (01:22:15):
He prefers to just call it a cylinder, but eventually
became known as the steth scope to listen to the
sounds of the body, And and.

Speaker 4 (01:22:25):
That name stuck.

Speaker 8 (01:22:27):
But it was really quite a quite a remarkable idea,
which over time led to the modern steth scope, which
is every doctor uses today.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
How how rare are LINEX stethoscopes or cylinders?

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
And do you have any? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:22:45):
When that the next deeth scopes are quite rare, especially
ones that were made by him as opposed to made
by an instrument maker instrument maker which there are many,
especially in Europe, England and France. So the original ones
he made, a can tell that they're not really perfectly laithe,
They're not perfectly turned. So I have one of his
original and I have a few others, about four or

(01:23:07):
five the next steth scopes, but in particular, and you'll
see it on the website, the one one that he
made personally.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
Folks, you can you can check this out at Antique
dash Stethoscopes dot com. And if you forget that, if
you go to my blog today at Roskiminski dot com,
you'll you'll find the link when you go to my
guest section of today's blog and you've got the link.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
For Eric's website.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
It's kind of cool that you made or had made
an entire website just for your collection of antique stethoscopes.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
How many do you have in your collection?

Speaker 8 (01:23:43):
I must have hundreds, and probably some of the rarest
and maybe fifty or sixty or those. Because the Seth's
copes come in all varieties in all shapes, so for example,
where you just can keep collecting until you go crazy.
The steth scope evolved from a piece of wood twelve

(01:24:08):
inches long one and a half inches wide with a
hole through it. It got more practical, it got shorter, thinner,
easier to carry, but really didn't change until about eighteen
fifty two.

Speaker 4 (01:24:20):
So well that invented the steths scope in eighteen sixteen.

Speaker 8 (01:24:23):
So in eighteen fifty two, when a rather bright cardialgis
in New York whose name is George Cammon. He's on
the site and I have an old painting of him,
an original oil that was originally at the New York
Academy of Medicine. And he said, well, you know, listening
with one ear, is that really going to be as

(01:24:45):
good as maybe using two ears? And so he made
the first practical binaural two ears versus monaural steth scope
that Lenek developed the one ear would piece. He made
a two ear ear piece stethoscope that really became the
basis of the modern stethoscope in eighteen fifty two at
the Northern Dispensary in New York City, which has a

(01:25:09):
whole story attached to it. If we have time, we
can talk about that. And it's about a few blocks
away from Saint Vincent's Hospital where I was at in
the nineties, and I actually toured the Northern Dispensary was
closed at that time. It's now open. But that was
quite a remarkable invention. A stethscope that had ear pieces
for both ears looked kind of like what you see

(01:25:30):
a doctor use today.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
So what would you say, is which of your stethoscopes
in your collection do you think is most fascinating?

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
It's one question, and then the other question.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
Was is where was the most surprising place that you
found a collectible stethoscope where you might not have expected
to find one.

Speaker 8 (01:25:55):
Well, the most impressive that's the right word stethscope from
the point of view of invention is leneck, the wooden cylinder,
and then the camon by Nourl and then I lad
one other to it.

Speaker 4 (01:26:12):
David Littman, who was a cardiologist.

Speaker 8 (01:26:14):
In Harvard, who also had a metal lathe in his
basement and said, you know, the ones that are available
now not so good.

Speaker 4 (01:26:21):
So he made his own.

Speaker 8 (01:26:24):
Litman's death scope and sold them out of his basement
for twenty five bucks. Lenex sold histeth scope for two
francs along with his textbook, So twenty five bucks you
could buy a litmusteth scope nineteen sixty and then his
and then his little company was bought out by three
m That still makes the Linex stethscope today, which is

(01:26:47):
you've probably seen it in the office when you go
that almost every doctor uses the Lenex deth scope. I'm sorry,
the litmansteth scope. The most surprising place, well, it wasn't
the surprising place. What happened is I had a pre
court personal website. The one that I'm developing now is
new and easier to build. David Littman's grandson had his

(01:27:13):
grandfather's original metal steth scope prototypes in in his grandfather's basement,
and he saw my website and I had Littment on it,
but a regular Litman steth scope you could buy in
a store. And he contented me and he gave me
his grandfather's David Littman's entire collection of the original prototypes

(01:27:38):
also on the website of Litman Stethscope. So that was
that was nice, that was surprising.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
That's amazing. That's a great story.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
We're talking with doctor Eric Rakou, who happens to be
my uncle, and his website is Antique dash Stethoscopes dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
I saw I saw.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
A thing on your website here, and I'm just trying
to look for it for a second. Austin Flint in
the American lineck, So what's who is Austin Flint?

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
How does he fit into this story? That's an interesting story.

Speaker 8 (01:28:14):
Actually, Austin Flint was the pre eminent cardiologist of his
day in eighteen fifties, which is why he got to
be known as the American linette, referring back to the
inventor of the steth scope, and Austin Flint was an
expert at oscultation, pitch of sounds, diagnosing cardiac problems.

Speaker 4 (01:28:36):
And he fits in, and he's on.

Speaker 8 (01:28:38):
The website also an original all oil painting. He fits
in because he had an argument with doctor Camen, who
invented the buyinural stethoscope, the common stethscope, and he said
that's steth scope's not as good as the monol. Mono
is easy to use him, works much better. And it
wasn't until ten years later, after doctor Cammon's death that

(01:28:59):
he admitted that Camon had invented a better instrument, the
buying oral steth scope, using two years and said so
in one of his subsequent texts when he wrote about
the seth scope.

Speaker 4 (01:29:10):
So he was.

Speaker 8 (01:29:11):
He was the leading cardiologist who was sort of pooh
pooed Camon working at the Old Northern Dispensary. Flint was
a founding member of the NYU School of Medicine, but
eventually agreed that Camon had done a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
All right, switching gears just a little bit, have you
personally ever diagnosed something or at least found some big
clue that led to a diagnosis by using a stethoscope
in your own.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
Medical career, Like how does that work? And when I
go in for a check up and the doctor puts
the stethoscope on me, what's he listening for?

Speaker 8 (01:29:48):
Yeah, so the answer is yes. So I go back
to my training now. And this is how I got
involved in all this. When I was in medical school,
the doctor John krock I was head of a course
called Physical diagnosis. That's a first course you're take in
medical school where you see patients. The first couple of
years all basic science, and then you take physical diagnosed

(01:30:10):
to go to the clinical years. And he took a
liking to me, and my hair was a little longer
than ross. He asked me to cut my hair before
I went on the wards, which I did, and then
he took me under his wing to teach me how
to oscyl take the chest, the heart and the lungs.
He was actually a lung specialist, and Bernie Wexler, who

(01:30:31):
was the cardiology specialist, took me under his wings and
taught me how to hoscle take the heart. So I'm
not pretty good listening to the heart and the chest,
and people would come to me as, oh, Eric, could
you take a listen to this patient's heart or chest.
So I would discover things you could clearly diagnose the
murmur or diagnose pneumonia of the lungs. And I got

(01:30:55):
interested in oscultation and start to read about it. Then
I started to collect texts. Then I started to collect
the stethoscopes that I couldn't stop. But yeah, I mean
any number of times. Bernie Wexler was interesting. I used
to go around with him.

Speaker 4 (01:31:11):
In that day.

Speaker 8 (01:31:12):
Cardiacath had just been developed, where you would do a
cardiacatherization by placing through the vessel into the heart of
catheter and make very specific diagnoses of murmurs, mitro valve problems,
the oric valve problems. And Bernie would always say, oh,
what do you need that for. Just listen to the patient,
it'll tell you the diagnosis. Listen to the heart, listen

(01:31:35):
to the long you know, need to a cardiaca. He
was almost always right. It was pretty interesting, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:31:41):
Last question for you, is there a particular historic antique
stethoscope that you don't have that is at the top
of your list of what.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
You want to find and acquire.

Speaker 8 (01:31:59):
Let's see, I guess I guess the answer is no. Wow,
that's I mean, there are other ones who acquire, but
there's nothing that would be so special that I would have.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
To have it, so to speak, because you got all
those already.

Speaker 8 (01:32:20):
I actually, it's the interesting question. I just one of
the ways I built my collection. I got attached to
a antique dealer called Alex Peck.

Speaker 4 (01:32:28):
He'd be an interesting got interview.

Speaker 8 (01:32:30):
So he does medical critiques in general, but he he
liked what I was doing, and so he helped me
build my collection, and so a lot of the leads
you know, and purchases came through him. I asked him
the other day, where're all the desk ups, soaps gone?
I don't see money, eBay, I don't see somebody you
know selling them.

Speaker 4 (01:32:48):
He said, well, the collector saw all of them like you.
You guys were too good. So I guess that's it.
There's not much left.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57):
Well, I'm sure you've got one of the great collections
in the world. Doctor Eric Rackhou former professor of medicine
and president of NYU Medical Center where I was born, actually,
and his website is Antique dash stethoscopes dot com. Just
fascinating story, such a cool collection.

Speaker 2 (01:33:19):
Thanks for thanks for sharing it with us.

Speaker 4 (01:33:21):
Eric, welcome, my pleasure. Nice to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
Nice to talk to you too. All right, that's that's
fabulous antique dash stethoscopes dot com. Go check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
All right, I need to We're still probably got a
couple of minutes here, but I need to copy over
some audios so I can do my name that tune
song and a rod is going to have it name
that tune song.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
Also, let me do literally one minute on just.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
A kind of a political thing that I wanted to
mention this week, and I just don't want it to
get away from me. And that is the fact that
Kareem Jean Pierre is coming out with a book. And
you know, she was an unbelievable propagandist for the Biden administration.
Not only did she lie to every to all of

(01:34:08):
us every day, but she aggressively attacked people who challenged
like is Joe Biden actually up for the job. And
now she's out with a book called Independent and what
she's going around saying, well, I'm leaving the Democratic Party
and I'm going to become independent because I feel betrayed

(01:34:31):
by the Democrats or something. And I just wonder who's
buying this nonsense literally and figuratively right.

Speaker 8 (01:34:37):
You know, I.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
Don't know whether I think or hope that her book
does terribly right. I cannot imagine who would want to
read what she has to write, knowing that she's probably
going to be lying and blaming other people for her,
you know, her issues. And there's been some other reporting
coming out about these are anonymous but probably anonymous senior

(01:35:03):
people from the Biden administration talking about just how bad
Karine Jean Pierre was at her job, and what a
huge ego she had, and how people had to spend
all their time managing her because she was constantly making mistakes.
And now she's gonna come out and condescend everybody and say, look,
I'm becoming independent and I'm going to sell you this book.

(01:35:25):
You know, from the perspective of an independent, I just
think it's absolute nonsense. I don't think she's fooling anybody
at all.