08-12-25 - *FULL SHOW* Capt Cook's Last Voyage; RIP AOL Dialup; AI Works; Pot Laws

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let me just talk for a moment.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
You just heard a report there in our newscast about
the inflation report, and I want to talk about this briefly.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
It looks like I got to sign in here. That's annoying.
I want to talk about this briefly because.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
As somebody who is in financial markets, has been in
financial markets for essentially my entire adult life, right, I
became a professional financial markets trader at the age of
twenty one. And what I've noticed, and what you'll notice
too if you pay close attention to markets, is that

(00:40):
when it comes to thinking about what the FED is
going to do, and what the FED is going to
do is what drives markets much of the time, which
sometimes seems a little silly, but whatever it is, what
it is. What you'll find is that in any given
period of time, the market is highly focused on a

(01:07):
particular data series because the market believes that the FED
is focused on.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
That data series. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
So sometimes you will have the market thinking that the
FED is focused on the employment number, for example, and
the market just holds its breath, waits for the employment number,
and then has this big move based on whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
The employment number is.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
That sort of thing lately it's inflation, not just lately
the past probably year at least.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's inflation, and.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
The market is paying close attention to these inflation reports.
And I will say for sure the market loved today's
inflation report. The data was up almost five hundred. We're
at new highs in these various indices. The Nasdaq has
been incredibly strong for weeks and weeks now, primarily I
think on the.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
On that aspirations, on the.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Hopes, on the anticipation of AI driving a massive cycle
in tech profitability. Also some expectation now that the FED
is going to cut at their next meeting and maybe
the meeting after that as well. And I won't get
into the details of why this is the case, but
typically declines in interest rates are much better for high

(02:24):
growth stocks, typically technology stocks, than they are for larger
established you know, larger manufacturing companies and things like that.
So when you're starting to anticipate cuts in interest rates,
it tends to be particularly good for high growth stocks. Anyway,

(02:45):
I wanted to just briefly mention the employment report and
that Fox News reporter was talking about it, focused primarily
on the headline number of two point seven percent in
July versus a year earlier, which was one of a
point less than economists that estimated the other side that

(03:05):
she mentioned briefly, that I think is worth just paying
a little more attention to it. I'm not trying to
paint a bleak picture here. These numbers were fairly moderated,
and I think part of the reason that the market
is up so much today is that they think that
these numbers, these inflation numbers were moderate enough that it
almost guarantees that the FED is going to cut rates
next month. So I think that's what's going on today.

(03:26):
But I do just want to be clear the so
called core measure of inflation, which is inflation excluding food.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
And energy, and you've got to be a little careful
with this, of.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Course, because we buy lots of food and lots of energy,
and you want to think about all of these numbers.
But the core is interesting right now because that will
include a lot of stuff that there is tariffs on now.
Of course, the big number with food and energy does too,
but you start getting the food and energy price and
kind of swamping the prices of other things. And what's

(03:59):
been a little bit interesting now is that you're starting
to see some of the impact of tariffs seep into
higher consumer prices. But what's also important to note is
it's not equally distributed.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
You don't have the tariff causing the same price increase
in everything, and not even in every imported thing.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Right. There are some industries where the companies.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
That are bringing this stuff in can absorb more of
the tariff and pass less along the consumers because they
got a big profit margin already, or because of the
competitive landscape or whatever. And then there are other areas
where the profit margin is quite narrow and they simply
can't absorb that much of the tariff and they do
have to pass it along to consumers. And so it's lumpy, Right,

(04:47):
It's lumpy.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's not an.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Even increase in consumer prices in everything.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
The other thing you want to keep an eye on.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Is that with the very aggressive immigration and form by
the federal government, you will see upward pressure on labor
costs in some industries, which will then cause upward pressure
on prices for some things, including potentially food, although food
wasn't up last month. And it's just it's a very
interesting and complex picture. So I'm not saying, oh, the

(05:18):
report was bad. What I'm saying is just keep an
eye on it. The overall number was a little better
than expected. The core number without food and energy was
a little worse than expected. But as I said, the
market loves it because the market seems to believe that
this means the FED is very, very likely to cut

(05:41):
interest rates. All right, let me do another thing with you.
President Trump gave that long press conference yesterday about federalizing
or federal control over the police in Washington, DC, and
there was a question that came up that I thought
was kind of interesting within that whole press conference thing
that I wanted to share with you.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Have a listen. It starts with a reporter's question.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I believe there's reporting that the illustration is going to
reclassify marijuana.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
With that send mixed messages that marijuana.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Is okay, drugs are some drugs are okay, but we're
trying to clean up crime.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
How do they go ahead and hand?

Speaker 4 (06:14):
We're only looking at that. That's early, but you know,
somebody reported it, which is fine.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
We're looking at it.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
Some people like it, some people hate it. Some people
hate the whole concept of marijuana because if it does
bad for the children, it does bad for people that
are older than children. But we're looking at reclassification and
we'll make a determination over the next I would say.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Over the next few weeks.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
Uh, and that determination hopefully will be the right one.
It's very complicated subject, that is, you know, the subject
of marijuana. I've heard great things having to do with
medical and I've had bad things having to do with
just about everything else but medical. And uh, you know,
for pain and various things, I've heard some pretty good things,
but for other things, I've heard some pretty bad things.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
All right.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
So you know, that was a kind of typically trumpy answer.
But I think he's basically on target, right, And he
says and I think a lot of people feel the
same way that Trump does. Right, A lot of interesting
things out there on the medical side, a lot of
negative effects. On the recreational side, of course, you know,
people who want to have some fun and relax could
well be safer than drinking alcohol, or at least drinking.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
A lot of alcohol. I think you know that I've never.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Tried marijuana in any form, so I'm not here to
promote its use. I think it's interesting to hear that
from the Trump administration, in part because President Trump himself
is so famously anti substance, basically, right.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
His brother died from alcohol.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
His brother died, and Trump famously does not drink and
does not do drugs.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
And there's been a move afoot.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
For a long time to move marijuana out of Schedule one.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
And it should not be Schedule one, right.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Schedule one is a drug that is defined as very
high potential for abuse and no medical benefit.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
All right, it shouldn't be there.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
And so the fact that the Trump administration, full of
conservatives who don't like drugs, are actually looking at reclassifying it,
perhaps down to level three, that's what they should do.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
I hope it happens.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
It doesn't mean I am encouraging people to use it,
But I think Trump is on just the right page there.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
I think he's I think he's nailed it right.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Potential medical benefits, potential downsides on the recreational side.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Trump is not a libertarian. I am. For me.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think that adults should have the right to put
what they want to in their bodies, just one more
reason to at least reclassify, if not declassify.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Do you remember this sound I shall do. I've been online.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
My username for most things has been ross putin rosspu
ti n since nineteen ninety five.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
All right, And that sound you just heard was the.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Sound of the old AOL dial up connection. Remember, the
AOL CDs would be everywhere, absolutely everywhere. You get them
in the mail, you pick them up with the supermarket, everywhere,
and you load up the software on your computer with
the CD, and then it would dial in to some
number and you'd hear all that noise while it's connecting,

(09:29):
and then it would say connected, and then you'd basically
be online. And as far as I know, AOL was
the first, really really big successful thing to get a
lot of people onto the Internet.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
It was really the first.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
It was the first experience many Americans, you know, who
were adults or old kids or adults at that time
in the nineties, it was their first experience online and
mine as well, except for the occasional super nerdy bulletin
board thing.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Shannon, do you remember the old bulletin boards. You remember
that Alta, Vista and Prodigy. Yeah, and there would be.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Some yeah, ultimate right, I remember all that too. And
the bulletin boards would be the standalone computers somewhere that
would have a phone number and you could dial into
it and just and just do whatever you're doing on
that particular server and exchange messages with people and stuff.
There were no pictures or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Spider web Crawler. Yeah, oh my gosh, that was the day.
Those were the days, right.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
So anyway, the reason that I share this with you, Oh, first,
I've been Ross Sputant. So I was I got AOL
and I was standing in the trading pit in Chicago
with a friend of mine and asking him, Hey, I
got to pick a username, a screen name.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
I gotta pick a screen name for AOL.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
And you know, he's fairly educated, intellectual sort of guy,
and we're standing there in the pit. His name is
Mike Affinito, and he said, how about Rossputant? Named for
of course Rasputin, the mad Rush and monk who was
very close with the last of the Romanov dynasty in
the early part of the nineteen hundreds before Vladimir Lenin

(11:08):
came through and took all those people out. And I go, oh,
that's awesome, what a great intellectual joke ross Putin. So
I've been ross Putin online. I'm Ross Putin on Twitter
and on Facebook and all these places. And of course
since the coming around of one Vladimir Putin, a lot
of people who don't know any history, don't get the

(11:28):
joke and whatever, think that I'm some kind of cheerleader
for Vladimir Putin, who was a guy I hope would
get hit by a bus or hit by a bullet
or hit by something. So anyway, the reason but I've
been ross Putin for thirty years, thirty years online thanks
to AOL, and the reason that I share that with you.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Here's a headline from the.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Associated Press AP's dial up Internet is finally taking its
last bow.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yes, well perhaps.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Dinosaur by today's digital standard. Dial up is still around,
but AOL says it's officially pulling the plug for its
service on September thirtieth.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
And this is a quote from AOL.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided
to discontinue dial up Internet. And what else? I liked
this part from the AP. The Creaky Door to the
Internet was characterized by a once ubiquitous series of beeps
and buzzes heard over the phone used to connect to

(12:31):
your computer online, along with frustrations of being kicked off
the web if anyone else at home needed the landline
for another call, and an endless bombardment of CDs mailed
out by AOL to advertise free trials. Anyway, there you go,
AOL dial up Internet ending at the end of next month.
This is another thing from the AP story. In the

(12:54):
United States, according to Census Bureau data from twenty twenty three,
just two years ago and estimated one hundred and sixty
three thousand, four hundred and one households in America, we're
using dial up and only dial up to get online.
That represents just over one eighth of one percent of

(13:18):
all the homes with Internet subscriptions nationwide. And I'm not
sure whether I think that number is bigger than I
would have expected or smaller than I would have expected.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
But I guess if you're.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Way out in rural somewhere and they haven't gotten you
a broadband yet and you don't have starlink, then I
guess you'd still be doing Can you imagine connecting.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
At those speeds?

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Can you imagine, like, what would that be a hundredth
of broadband speed or something like or a thousandth Yeah,
maybe a thousandth of broadband speed? Really kind of nuts? Anyway,
do me a favor. Here's what I want you to do.
I want you to text me at five six six
nine zero for anybody who first got all online, let's

(14:01):
say before the year two thousand, and tell me how
was what was your online experience? How did you get online?
How did you connect in the very early days of
the internet, or maybe just after two thousand, but what
was your online connection like back in the day?

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Text me at five six six nine zero. We'll be
right back.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Let me go over to the text line here for
a second and just take a look at what I've got.
Oh my gosh, we got a lot of texts. So
for those just joining, I asked at the end of
the last segment, if you're somebody who first got online
a long time ago, tell me a little bit about
that experience. I'm thinking in particular if people who got

(14:44):
online at first before the year two thousand. I got
online with America Online again, just a little bit of
super nerdy tinkering around with.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
My Apple two plus.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
With a modem where you would dial in and connect
to literally one other computer, not any kind of multi
user thing.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
So I did that before AOL.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
But as far as something that you would consider more
like the Internet. That was nineteen ninety five for me.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Check this out. Ross.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
My late husband had great foresight and we bought the
domain name Marvel dot com the only time. We hired
an attorney who helped us sell it to that company
for around eight thousand dollars that we split with the attorney.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
That's pretty smart.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
But can you imagine what marvel dot com would.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Be worth now? Try eight million or eighty million. I
don't know. I don't know. Ross.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
I grew up in the country. We didn't get MTV
until I was sixteen. My junior year in college, I
got a computer and finally found an AOL free Internet disc.
That's how far out in the sticks we lived. AOL
was the only way to get online. The modem call
was not an eight hundred number, and our phone bill
was almost three hundred dollars and I think I only
got a couple of images downloaded. I must have mowed

(15:58):
one thousand lawns that summer, but it was worth it.
In nineteen ninety three, I was working for the government
and they had a fast internet for the time. I
think it was t one speed or better. In nineteen
ninety seven, I had some sort of dial up at home,
but it was a service other than AOL ninety nine
or two thousand. Cable internet was available in about two

(16:19):
thousand and one. My cousin was working at Microsoft and
he had Wi Fi at his home. Wow, I definitely
did not hear of Wi Fi in the year two thousand.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's pretty advanced. Ross.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
I started home internet in the late nineteen eighties with AOL. No,
I don't think you did, because I think AOL was
founded in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
But yeah, that's fine, you can remember it. A couple
of years off.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I started advanced connections by tying over three hundred phone
lines together in nineteen seventy eight for TV network connections at.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
KBTV Channel nine.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
That sounds like a story that producer Shannon really really enjoys.
Imagine that, Imagine all that fifty six k odem nineteen
ninety living in North Dakota, which made it feel both
exhilarating to have connectivity and depressing because we were still
stuck in North Dakota.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Wow. Yeah, keep those.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Cards and letters coming at five six six nine zero
five six six nine zero. I'll read a little bit
more of that stuff as we progress through the show.
That's kind of a fun story. Let me do a
couple of quick things with you. This one I don't have.
I don't have a lot to add to the story,
but I want to share the story with you. It's
from CBS News. The remains of a British researcher who

(17:36):
vanished in nineteen fifty nine in Antarctica when he was
twenty five years old were discovered amid rocks near a
receding glacier and identified using DNA analysis. The British Antarctic
Survey said yesterday Dennis Bell went by the nickname tink
So maybe that's like a play on tinker Bell or something.
But Dennis tink Bell had been working as a meteorologist

(18:00):
for the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which is the predecessor
of the British Antarctic Survey, when he died on July
twenty sixth, nineteen fifty nine, in a crevass on a
glacier at Admiral t Bay on King George Island, located
off the Antarctic Peninsula. His body was never recovered. Here's

(18:20):
how it happened. Bell and another man named Jeff Stokes
left the base that they were staying in to survey
a glacier using a dog sled. The snow was deep
and the dogs began to show signs of tiredness. So
Bell walked up to encourage them, but he wasn't wearing
his skis, and he disappeared suddenly into.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
A crevass or crevis or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
According to accounts in the survey records, this is quite
a story here. According to those those accounts, let's see,
Stokes was his partner, the one who fell. Stokes lowered
a belt down to Bell and pulled Bell up to

(19:07):
the very edge of the crevass. As he reached the
lip of the hole, the belt broke and Bell fell again,
and then no longer responded to his friend's calls. The
Polish team that just found the remains also found over

(19:28):
two hundred personal items, including an inscribed watch, a Swedish knife,
radio equipment, and ski poles. Bell's brother David told the
British Antarctic Survey quote, when my sister Valerie and I
were notified that our brother Dennis had been found after
sixty six years, we were shocked and amazed.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
David Bell said that bringing the.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Remains home quote helped us come to terms with the
tragic loss of our brilliant brother. Mister Bell said, I
had long given up on finding my brother. It's just remarkable, astonishing.
I can't get over it. In any case, there you go.
I thought I would share that with you. I really
don't have more to add. All right, another kind of
international story, and this one is a much worse story.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
And I don't know anybody who died in this story.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
But even just thinking about it now, you know, you
hear that kind of sigh of exasperation, because it seems
like so many people died due to a failure of
people to do what they said they were going to do,
to abide by the rules, and do to a failure
of government to force them to abide by rules. And

(20:46):
you know, normally I'm not cheering for government involvement and stuff,
but this particular area of stuff is stuff where there
is a massive government and involvement and regulation. And as
areas go of things that are regulated, this one is
probably reasonably so. And it's airports, and it's airports. So
you may recall that a couple of years back, I

(21:10):
guess it was now that a plane crashed basically birds
went into its engines at an airport in Korea. It
was a plane that was coming from Thailand landing at
an airport in southwest Korea, an airport in a in
a town called Muan m U a n And what

(21:35):
happened again, I don't know if you if you recall
the story, but this plane crash landed and it made
it down to the runway and it might have ended
up okay, with just you know, a couple of deaths.
I think this was what maybe this was December of
last year actually, and it might have been okay. But

(22:00):
the plane is, you know, plowing down this runway an
emergency landing and hits a wall at the end, and
the wall causes the plane to explode and everybody dies.
And this is a story I've got up on the
website at Rosskominski dot com.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
And here's the headline.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
And it's just so frustrating, I mean and frustrating to me.
Imagine it's what it feels like to somebody who's loved
one or friend died in this in this thing.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
But here's the headline.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Decades of blunders put a lethal wall at the end
of a South Korean runway, and they talk about a
guy named Lee Junghua who got a phone call from
his brother saying, I think mom is dead. Their mom
was on this fight coming back from Thailand.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
And after.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
These brothers watched the footage of the explosion again and again,
unable to accept that these were.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Their mother's last moments.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Weeks after that, this guy attended and again, I'm at
the New York Times website here a Buddhist funeral rite
at the airport, and was started to startle to see
concrete slabs that peeked out from a mount of dirt
at the end of the runway. The slabs formed part
of a structure that held navigation antennas that helped pilots

(23:31):
find the runway when visibility is low, but international safety
standards say that those structures should be made of material
that breaks apart easily if a plane collides with them.
A New York Times investigation found a series of design
and construction failures that allowed the wall to be built

(23:53):
with concrete and to be put too close to the
runway in violation of international safety guidelines, and they also
found that government ignored a stark warning about the safety
risks since the crash. As the Times has investigated what
went wrong, mister Lee, who I'd mentioned to you a
moment ago, has conducted.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
His own inquiry.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
The blunders started with a design change years before the
airport opened in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
The original plans were drawn up.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
In nineteen ninety nine and obtained by The New York Times,
and they envisioned breakable foundations to anchor the antennas known
as localizers, on.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Both ends of the runway. But at some point the.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Design changed and the private companies hired to build the
airport used concrete instead of breakaway structures.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
The error was compounded when a government.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Ministry approved the construction even though it was warned by
officials that the localizers were too close to the runway.
The structure's height and material composition did not meet international
standards either, and then years later regulators approved renovation works
that added even more concrete to one of the walls,
making it even harder to break. As far as the crash,

(25:07):
the plane was hit by birds as it neared the airport.
Investigators found feathers in both engines, and there's also a
chance that the pilots may have shut down one of
the engines, but The Times has found that the solid
wall at the end of the runway most likely made
the accident deadlier than it would have been otherwise. Mister

(25:29):
Leigh himself said, in a way, you could say what
they did was insane. There's a cause for the accident
and a separate cause for the deaths. The Times obtained
blueprints from the airport's initial construction and the latest renovation
and asked five experts to review them.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Reporters also went through all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Issued documents issued by Korean authorities over the last twenty
six years. The solid wall was not the only problem
that was ignored at the airport. The authorities were repeatedly
warned about the airport's simity to bird habitats, which increased
the risk of bird strikes at landing and take off unbelievable.
Multiple investigations into the cause of the accident, the worst

(26:10):
ever in South Korea, are underway, and some have.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Focused on the concrete structure.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
The authorities found solid structures close to runways at six
other airports across Korea as well. The South Korean government
vowed to fix the problems before the end of the year,
but they haven't closed any runways crazy as he floated
in a fog of grief after the crash.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
The concrete structures.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Solid, unyielding, and misplaced, haunted mister Lee.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
He spent sleepless nights.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Compiling a dossier of local laws on airline and airport operations.
He poured over accident reports for other plane crashes. He
took pictures and measurements of the concrete structure.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
He consulted experts.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
His quest, he says, is to leave the families han
h an, a Korean term for deep sorrow and rage.
He says, if I keep all of this bottled up,
it will turn into something heavy, like a lump. Let
me just skip ahead a little bit. A consortium of

(27:13):
four contractors, led by Kumo Engineering and Construction, won the
contract to.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Build the airport.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
The design was assigned to five other Korean companies. Construction
work overseen by regional aviation administrators, who were in turn
supervised by a government ministry.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Began in nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
The original master plan stipulated that these localizers would be
built on breakable foundations to minimalize to minimize fatal damage
to an aircraft in the event of a collision. The
designs aligned with international standards, but the design was altered
and concrete was added to the plan in two thousand
and three, a change that likely added more reinforcement than necessary,

(27:52):
and by the time of the crash, the foundation wall
itself was over seven feet above ground. But who changed
the design and why is not clear, And at this
point the companies that were involved are saying, we can't
find any people who worked on the project. We can't
find any documentation about the project because it was twenty

(28:14):
six years ago and we just don't have the stuff.
And the people who are on that project are retired
now and they just don't have anything to say.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
There's a lot more to the article.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
I think in the interest of time, I'm gonna leave
it there, but I just, you know, let me just
add a comment like, if you're gonna regulate, if you're
gonna be the government, you're gonna regulate airports, you're gonna
have standards for airports, How can you possibly.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Allow something like this that is so.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Clearly wrong and so clearly in violation not just of
international standards but of the but of the original approvals
for the airport to be put into place. A massive
concrete wall at the end of a runway, like anybody
could foresee that if there were a bad situation, an

(29:05):
airplane that's having trouble could end up running into that wall.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
And it did to me this borderline criminal again so
long ago.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
And I don't know that there's actually a crime committed,
but it sure feels like it. It sure feels like it,
and I hope these people figure it out. I don't
know if there's anybody, you know, ever going to be
taken to task, called to account for this massive failure
to have this done right the first time, But I'll

(29:37):
tell you if I were a family member of one
of these people who died on that flight, I would
be I would be extremely unforgiving. Let's just put it
that way. I would be extremely unforgiving. Hey, I want
to mention a quick thing. You know that a week
and a half ago or so, we gave away this

(29:58):
unbelievable form half thousand dollars outdoor fire pit thanks to
Flatirons Fire who made that possible. And Flat Irons Fire
is gonna do another giveaway, partnering with us, and I
just want to let you know we're gonna do it
in a similar kind of way. Over the next four weeks,
including this week, We're gonna give away three entries a
day on each Friday for four weeks for a total

(30:20):
of twelve entries, and then we'll do a random drawing,
so each person who got an entry will have a
one out of twelve chance to win a gorgeous outdoor
grill called a Phantom Prestige five hundred from Napoleon.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
This thing has digital controls.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
It even has Wi Fi, so you can look at
an app and we'll tell you the temperature of your grill.
Pretty I don't know if you're gonna use that, but
I'm a nerd, so I think it's cool.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
This thing retails for like twenty six hundred dollars, and
you're gonna want to be listening to the show on
Fridays for the next several weeks to try to get
an entry to win this gorgeous, gorgeous grill. So I
just wanted to make sure to share that with you.
I also got to mention a completely different thing now,
this lee fire in western Colorado.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
This thing is just to explode it over the weekend.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
It doesn't seem to have taken out too many structures
yet it's in a rural area and it kind of
turned away from the town of Meeker luckily. But as
of Monday, as of yesterday, it had scorched over one
hundred and thirteen thousand acres, only seven percent contained, and

(31:30):
that basically was a doubling since the previous Thursday, and
at this point, well at that point, as of yesterday.
I don't know exactly what the numbers are looking like
this morning, but it was the fifth biggest fire in
Colorado history.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Pretty nuts, pretty nuts.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
I hope they get it under control. It seems to me,
and I'm far, far far from expert on this, but
it seems to me, oftentimes what you'll have is a
fire reported it zero percent containment zero, zero, the next
day zero, the next day zero, and then the next day,
let's say seven percent. And I find not always, but often,

(32:13):
once they get some containment, even a single digit percentage,
right like that, a lot of times the next bit
of containment comes faster.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I certainly hope, I certainly hope that's the case.
All Right, let me do.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Two minutes on this thing, so you know that I
am no fan of RFK Junior that's putting it mildly.
I think he's a bad dude. I think he's a grifter.
I think he's a snake oil salesman. I think he's
a bad guy. I think he's a really bad guy
who should not be in his job. And I think
he is not science based. And having a guy who

(32:49):
is not science based in charge of such a science
oriented organization, you know that includes things like approving vaccines
or approving funding for vaccine research and all, this is a.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Very dangerous thing for the United States.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
And he just went in torpedoed all the federal funding
FORMRNA vaccines. And again, the companies can go fund it themselves,
but you know as a thing that if the federal
government is generally funding vaccine research, for him to go
torpedo the mRNA research just because he doesn't like mRNA

(33:26):
vaccines is bad and it's anti science.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
And that's what that was.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
And there was another thing that just happened recently, and
this guy RFK came out just absolutely trouncing one of
the or the biggest I think it's the biggest single
study of all time tracking whether there appear to be
any negative impacts on childhood development on autism on things

(33:55):
like that, on autoimmune disease, on allergies.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
On neurodevelopmental disorder.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
From vaccine, from childhood vaccines that have some aluminum in them.
And RFK has been on a rampage for a long
time about having any amount of aluminum in vaccines, even
though there's no data to say that it's harmful. This
huge study out of Denmark, one point two million children

(34:22):
followed for more than twenty years, did not find.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Evidence of exposure that exposure.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
To aluminum vaccines had caused an increased risk in anything. Now,
I will say RFK is right to point out that
there wasn't a control group. The reason there isn't a
control group in this case the control group would be
kids who didn't get any vaccines, is that only something
like two percent of the Danish population two percent of

(34:47):
kids don't get vaccinated, and you can't you can't put
together a big enough control group out of that. Also,
it's arguably unethical to have a control group when what
you're doing by creating the control group of unvaccinated kids
is creating a group of kids who are more likely
to get very sick or die from these ailments.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
But in any case, RFK.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Is calling on the journal that published the article to
retract the article, and the journal is saying absolutely not.
The science is solid. We can back up all of it.
There is nothing wrong with this study and we are
not going to withdraw it.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
And good for them.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
And I do hope that at some point President Trump
might say, you know what, this guy is just such
a clown and such a grifter and such a jackass,
that we're going to get.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Rid of him. But I don't think he will. And
the reason I don't think he will.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Is I don't think President Trump is paying much attention
to this issue. I think he's kind of leaving it
to RFK and that'll be that. But unfortunately, we have
a Secretary of Health and Human Services who doesn't know
or care about science. We're joined by a Rod from
Broncos Training Camp. I will be at Broncos training camp
to broadcasting my show tomorrow and the next day, so

(36:02):
that will be fun. A Rod, what is the reflective
sunglasses situation?

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Right now?

Speaker 5 (36:08):
The oak Leys are once again left in the vehicle,
so I'm at the backup ray bands that I'm staring at.
They are not currently on my face as we speak.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Was that sony.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Was that an accident leaving those sunglasses in the vehicle
or are you just switching them up?

Speaker 5 (36:21):
It's always an accident because I usually get out here
before six am, before the sun is out, so if
it's not sunny, I don't even think about putting him on,
and then I walk and I realize I've left him
in the car because it's still dark outside.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
All right, all right, let's talk a little bit about
the Broncos that first preseason game. It seemed Broncos fans
like me were a little frustrated last year, even though
the last last season wasn't bad, but they just far,
far too often had very slow starts and kind of
less performance than you would have expected from the offense.

(36:54):
And I realize this is just the first preseason game
and we shouldn't read too much into it, but it's
kind of.

Speaker 5 (37:00):
Felt like that it did. There are multiple factors that play.
Number one, like you just mentioned the offense last year, Uh,
they kind of middle of the pack in terms of
scoring in the first half of games, about twelve points
per game, which isn't terrible, not great, But later on
in the season last year, especially in the playoff push
in the last month or so, they averaged over twenty

(37:21):
points per game in the second half. So you got
three series for Bonnicks in the offense where yes, of course,
you know, no one would would would would disagree that
they yes, looks up par, but you took them out
probably and again in a preseason game, understandably, so he
took them out right before they could potentially be reaching
their stride in a regular season game. So yeah, when
you got super Bowl being mentioned, you know that, did
the offense look like they are going to be in

(37:43):
that conversation? No, but for three series and in a
preseason game where ross. The other thing people aren't talking
about too is the forty nine Ers defense did not
really live up to the preseason expectations.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
They sent sent the Blitz a bit more.

Speaker 5 (37:59):
Than and you would anticipate kind of played beyond just
base defense a bit and ross that might go to
again just an assumption. Robert sala is the defensive coordinator
in San Francisco. Again, the history there with Sean Payton
obviously when he had Nathaniel Hackett, when Salah was the
head coach of the New York Jets.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
I don't know if that's.

Speaker 5 (38:16):
Still some long lasting and bad blood. But maybe he
brought a little bit more than you normally would in
a preseason game. So maybe caught the Broncos offense of
off guard a little bit as well.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
So you think.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Again, obviously one preseason game, but do you think that what.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
We saw there the slow start.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
And then not so great offense, especially with bow Knicks. Actually,
Jared Stidham had a much better game than bo Nicks.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Not reading much into that, right, I'm not.

Speaker 5 (38:43):
I'm really not.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
It's the first preseason game. They didn't.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
They still are looking to get into rhythm again. There's
new weapons as well, mind you that the you know,
the six wide receivers the Broncos are rolling into this offense. Yeah,
you've got You've got Courtland Suton, you got Marim Mems.
But there's a lot of new guys in there. Troy
Franklin didn't you know, is gonna get a lot more
playing time this year. Could potentially be pushing Marvim in
for the second widers here, but he's had a big boost.
You got to have an Ingram, your new tight end.
You got two new running backs, so there's a lot

(39:06):
of new moving parts. I will say ross the one
part of concern, if I had to really pick apart
a concern is the offensive line so far, and that's
not just the preseason game, but also in camp the
defensive The defensive line here in Broncos training camp has
kind of had their way with the O line of it.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
And they were returning all five starters as well.

Speaker 5 (39:24):
So that's a bit concerning that Boon Knicks has been
on the run and had to scramble out a bit
more than I think Sean Payton would like. So if
there's a real point of concern, if you had to
make me choose one feet to the fire, I think
offensive lines got some work to do. You definitely want
to see bone Nicks a bit more comfortable and not
have to escape as early as he had, both in
camp and in that preseason opener.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah, you could see that, even on that play where
he was called for intentional grounding in the end zone
and and that safety. So one of the great moments,
I thought, or a couple of great moments. But Nick
Benito had a heck of a game, and a lot
of it was compressed into a fairly or time. You know,
he had he hit a sack and then a few
plays later he had another one or at least a

(40:06):
half a one, and then a couple of plays after
that he just barely missed one.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
And it was actually kind of funny, you.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
So him walking off the field shaking his head like
he was disappointed in himself for not getting that third sack.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
In five plays or something.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
But pretty impressive, Pretty impressive, and again a total assumption
on my part. But maybe part of that frustration could
also be tied in with the fact that he might
have gotten a bit banged up. It just came out
within the last fifteen minutes. He is not practicing, He
is observing after living off after that last quarterback hit.
So nothing to be something serious, but what could have

(40:40):
been that final nail in the I'm looking to get
the maybe they get that contract pay may we may
not see him again in the preseason hits again, not serious,
and we'll we'll hear from Sean Payton to see what
it was. We're not We're not allowed to and I'm
not assuming what's what's what's happening with him out here
while he is observing and not in any of the
that the shells or the spiders that I have on today,

(41:00):
so we aren't hearing in the say anything serious. But
that tape that he put on in that preseason game,
if it's the only preseason action, it could be a
big exclamation point as to let's get this contract done now.
Both sides that way, it's not Hey, maybe he can
make five to ten million more a year if he
waits this thing out, or if the Broncos wait this
thing out and he has what could be looks like

(41:23):
a really fantastic, even better year than his breakout here
last year.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
All right, we got about a minute left here, so
just tell us what does the rest of this week
look like out of training camp other than my being
there with you tomorrow in the next day.

Speaker 5 (41:36):
So he got the last three days as far as
the public is concerned. Obviously they will continue, you know,
the preseason and the practicing, just without the fans.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
So these are the last three days.

Speaker 5 (41:44):
I thought they'd be in shells today and then have
the rest more of the rest day tomorrow because obviously
the joint practice Arizona Cardinal's coming into town on Thursday,
which is always typically the full go full liye full
pads practice that I think I've heard that coaches like
even more in terms of preparation than the preseason again themselves.
But they are in like the shells the Spiders today,
like the least amount of pads you can be today.

(42:05):
So it's gonna be really jogged through a walk through
more mental reps today. Maybe they'll be back in pads tomorrow.
Is a gear up for Thursday. But I mean, we've
we outside of that one touchdown. We know the defense
is looking really really excellent so far through training camp,
but the offense got to continue to to continue to
define their rhythm a bit and again they just like
they have. I've been mentioning in my analogy is president

(42:26):
of the Bad Analogy Club, Ross, I got one for you.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
It's a good one.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
This defense is kind of like the batting donut in
the in the in the batter's box. There as you
getting ready to face off against the rest of the defenses,
you take off the donut of facing this defense and
the offense again to continue to improve and continue to impress.
So they'll they're coming off that finale, but that's that
preseason opener, but they've got some more to do and
hopefully they can continue to do so against the Cardinals

(42:49):
on Thursday.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
All right, give me eleven seconds, just a very short answer.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Sherfield. Boy, he looked good.

Speaker 5 (42:57):
Trenchuarfield looks excellent. I think no no one really gave
him the credit as a wide receiver. He obviously came
in as a new special team's ace, replacing Tramon Smith
who's no longer here. But man in that wide receiver room,
he is shine. He's probably had one of the better,
i'd say, top five, top ten training camps of all
the players out here. That that cat's that touchdown reception
from from Sidham was excellent. He's shown that he could

(43:18):
be a reliable weapon for bowing this offense. He's more
than just a special teams player for sure.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
That's a Rod from training camp. I'll be out there
tomorrow and Thursday broadcasting from training cramp camp. Cramp camp.
So a Rod, make sure you bring the sunglasses from
the car tomorrow because I want to see him again
in person.

Speaker 5 (43:35):
Sounds good? Yeah, please know, Cramps, bring your Sonny Is. Yeah,
it's going to be a toasty one.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
All right, that's a Rod from training camp. We'll take
a quick break. We'll be right back on kow. Don't
have to explain it.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
I get it. I'll come to that in a second.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Sure, so Dragon before you got here, A thing I
was talking about with listeners this morning was that as
of the end of next month, America Online, which became AOL,
is ending their dial up service.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
And I guess I don't know how many people are
using it.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
There's still something like maybe one hundred and fifty thousand
people in the whole country who connect to the Internet
with dial up, about an eighth of a percent of folks.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
In any case, I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
That AOL even still had the dial up service. So
then I was asking folks, like for people who connected
to the Internet a long time ago, like before the
year two thousand, how did you do it? And got
a lot of really interesting listener texts. And a listener
sent an email and I want to share this with you.
This is from Dennis, and he said, here's a link
to a Wikipedia entry that shows a Texas Instruments portable

(44:33):
computer terminal introduced in nineteen seventy one. I used a
similar terminal to access a remote Honeywell time share computer
in the nineteen seventies from my home phone when I
worked for Mountain Bell. Note the cradle for a home
phone handset. Also note that the modem could receive data
at thirty characters per second.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Thirty characters per second.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
So if you want to go look this yup, this
thing Dennis sent me is a device called a Silent
seven hundred. So if you go to Wikipedia and type
in silent seven hundred you will find it. And it
looks kind of like a typewriter, but with two sort
of rubber.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Cups in the back positions.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
So that it could hold the mouthpiece and a handset
of the standard size telephone handset back.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
At that time. And that's just a that is so
so cool.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
So the reason that Dragon played, were you gonna say something, Well, I,
since we're kind of off script anyway, which we typically are,
and you don't even read your show sheet, I'll do.

Speaker 6 (45:36):
But I did happen to stumble upon the blog this morning,
Ross Kaminski dot com, with or without the silent three,
the video on the end.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
The physics one.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yes, yeah, so nerdy, so nerdy, so cool listener Greg
sent that to me. Greg is a super super nerd
into vacuum tubes and stuff like that, older than I am.
Been doing all this electronics stuff for a long time. Yeah,
that was super dirdy.

Speaker 6 (46:04):
You look at it and you're like, nah, and then
it happened and you're like what, No, No, it's so I
don't want to spoil so much of it, but it
actually held my attention for much longer than I thought.
It was.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Same hair.

Speaker 6 (46:15):
Actually it is a very long video, but you get
the meat of it within the first few minutes, exactly right.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
So if you go to Roskiminsky dot com and you
click on the Tuesday blogcast and scroll down to the bottom,
there's almost always at least one video at the end
of my my blog notes, and more often than not,
they don't relate to news.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Or something heavy. Usually they're a little bit lighter.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
You know, some wacky thing with an animal or a
physics thing like this, and just you know, pure entertainment
most of the time. So go to Rosskiminsky dot com
and scroll down and you'll see that. Let me do
one minute on the reason that Dragon played Ziggy. Start
us there, and then when we come back, we have
an amazing guest with it about an incredible book that
was reckoned on the show to me and to you

(47:02):
on the show by Admiral Stavritaz. So I've read the book,
but I'll tell you about that in a minute. So
the reason that dragon played that spiders from Mars and
so on is apparently a fifty four pound meteorite that
came from Mars and originally landed in the Sahara Desert
in the country of Nijer and Iger was auctioned off

(47:27):
in New York last month and it got It received
over five million dollars. It sold for over five million
dollars at this auction. It was the world record for
a media rite. And the country of Nizere not a
rich country. They're a little cranky because they're wondering whether
this is stolen or whether it's what they call illicit

(47:50):
international trafficking. Sotheby's, which is the auction house that handled it,
said that they have the information about this and this
this was tested and proven to be this thing, so
it's it's it's known to be what it was sold as.
But this rock was named NWA one six seven eight
eight was blown off the surface of Mars by a

(48:13):
massive asteroid strike and traveled one hundred and forty million
miles to Earth. It was discovered in Northwestern Nizier by
a meteorite hunter in November of twenty twenty three. His
identity was not disclosed, nor was the identity of the buyer.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
And it's you know.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
According to a particular academic journal, the rock was sold
to an international dealer. Then it ended up in a
private gallery in Italy. Then some scientists from Italy examined
the rock to learn more about it than it was
briefly on display in Rome, and then the next time
it was seen in public was in New York last month.
During the auction in the country of Nizier, is wondering,

(48:51):
like you know, was this ours?

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Is this stolen from us? Do we or do we
still own it? Do UoS money?

Speaker 2 (48:58):
And bottom line is I think Nagierre is going to
be waiting a long time before they get the rock
backed or before they see a penny.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thank you for spending little time with us here on kaway.
You may recall that a few weeks ago I had
a friend of mine and friend of the show on
as a guest again, Admiral James Steve Ritas a man
who knows a little and.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Has written a little, and by a.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Little, I mean a lot, about about being a sailor,
about history, about all kinds of things. One of the
truly great military men of our age, Admiral Steve Ritas,
And when he was on the show, we were talking
about books, of course, and he said on the air,
he said, I would like to come in to you

(49:49):
and your listeners a book called The Wide Wide c
by Hampton Sides. And I said, well, if Admiral Stavritas
tells me to read a book, then I say yes, sir,
and I read the book, especially if it's something to
do with with the ocean. And so I got the book.

(50:11):
I read the whole book. And joining us to talk
about his incredible bestseller, which the New York Times listed
as one of the ten best books of last year. Again,
the book is called The Wide Wide. See the author himself,
Hampton Sides, thank you so much for making time for us.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
I really appreciate it. Thank you. It's great to be
with you. And I guess I owe my friend.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Admiral Stravita is a you know, some sort of I
don't know, a bottle of wine or something. He's a
great guy and a deep reader. Yes, so that's nice
to get that he liked the book.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, A deep reader, a deep thinker, a really really
interesting guy.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
All right. So when I.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
First visited Australia, which was for a two week long
first date with a girl who's now my wife, we
went to Cooktown.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Believe it or not, you know which is which isn't.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
And I'm sure you've probably been to Cooktown multiple times.
It's quite it's quite a location. Even now, I cannot
imagine being the first European ever to land in.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Such a place.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
Let's just start with, right gut reaction to that. Yeah,
I think with Captain James Cook. You you you have
to peel back the layers of what we know to
be true about the world now, of course, uh, and
go back two centuries ago when there were still these
great swaths of the world that had never been encountered

(51:32):
by h by Europeans at least, and in many cases
he encountered uninhabited islands that it's where man had never
set foot. And just imagine what that was like, the wonder,
the awe, the mystery of it.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
He had.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
You know, a lot of these commanders, a lot of
these captains that in that golden age of exploration, had
one or two or three of these kinds of encounters.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Captain Cook had like twenty or thirty of them.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
I don't think there is another captain, another nautical explorer
who can compare to Cook's kind kind of the breadth
and depth and extent of his exploration accomplishments. And so
just imagine going a place like Tasmania for the first
time and encountering the Aboriginal people there, or Easter Island

(52:26):
or the Maori of New Zealand. You don't know how's
it gonna go, or are they gonna be friendly? Are
they going to kill you as soon as you land?
He had so many of these extraordinary experiences, and I
hope that the book. I've been told that the book
taps into that sense of wonder and awe and you know,

(52:49):
takes you back to those times that said he is
controversial today, his monuments have been destroyed and vandalized. People
have started to view him Captain Cook is kind of
the ultimate symbol of imperialism and colonialism, which I think
is largely unfair because what they're really what the critic

(53:11):
the critique is is about those things that came after Cook.
Cook was the explorer found these places, put them on
the map, described them sort.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Of scientifically and objectively.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
And then others came to, you know, exploit the resources,
rape and pillage and bring the germs, and that, you know,
all the things that unraveled many of these quite fragile
island societies.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
So anyway, that that's kind of the background on.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
Cook in terms of that golden age of exploration.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
And I think for listeners, I think I didn't properly
introduce the book, right. So I told you the book
is called The Wide Wide Ce, but that doesn't tell
you enough. The sub the subtitle of the book is
Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Of Captain James Cook.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
So that that's really what this is about, is Captain
Cook's final voyage. And I think I didn't make that
clear at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
So it's confusing.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
It's confusing because he had three of these Rock and
World voyages, each one equally consequential and ambitious, and so
I had to figure out, well, I can't tell ma all,
I've got to pick on and I picked the last
one for a lot of reasons. I was I was
telling my wife the other day about your book, and
she'll read the she'll read the book next, and she said,

(54:32):
they sure don't make them like that anymore.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
And my and my thinking is.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Of course, you think back to the age of exploration,
and Captain Cook, being around the time of the American Revolution,
was really kind of on the the later end of
what we think of as this big age of exploration
with Magellan and Columbus and all these people like that.
He was quite a bit after them. But and so
there were a lot of people doing crazy exploration. But

(54:58):
still some part of me, due to reading your book, thinks,
not only do they not make them like that anymore, I'm.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Not even sure they made him like that.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Then, So I would like you to tell us a
little bit about what makes Captain Cook so special, even
among the kind of people who, at least on the surface,
were doing basically what he did.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Well, you know, I think, first and foremost he had
this unusual for his times and for his profession, this
very unusual sympathy I guess you would call. He was
sympathetic and genuinely interested in the people that he encountered,
and writes about them in his journals quite neutrally, you know,

(55:44):
like he's not trying to convert them to Christianity. He's
not trying to make some kind of argument that English
society is is vastly superior, although I do believe he
believed that English society was technologically superior. But he also,
you know, he kind of had this almost agnostic anthropology

(56:07):
kind of outlook. He's like a proto anthropologist when he
describes the Aboriginies of Australia, or or the Tahitians, or
the Hawaiians when he stumbles upon the archipelago of Hawaii,
which is really fascinating, you know, to think that, you know,
at a time when most of the captains of his

(56:28):
day were where you know, it was, it was very Eurocentric,
and it was very condescending of these people. They were
called savages, they were called heathens. You know, Cook's not
doing that. He's got this kind of rigor to him
that is pretty unusual. Secondly, unlike those other folks like

(56:50):
Magellan and other ones that you mentioned, Cook just so
happened to be trained as a cartographer for his real skill.
I mean, he had a lot of skills, and he
had to wear a lot of hats on his expeditions,
but his pre eminent skill was as a map maker,

(57:10):
and the kind of meticulousness and the kind of you know,
working carefully and closely with complicated instruments, and knowing the stars,
and knowing how to chart a coastline, knowing how to
render a beautiful and accurate map.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Those kinds of skills set him.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Apart from a lot of the other explorers of his
day very unusual. His maps were just phenomenally accurate, and
that kind of rigor is what he brought to every
other aspect of his expeditions, like, for example, diet. He
was really intrigued by diet, experimenting with different foods with

(57:54):
his sailors, because the terrible malady of scurvy, which was
so common in in long voyages, as many as half
as the others would die of this horrible, horrible disease.
Not a single man died on any of Cook's three
voyages of scurvy. So not that he had really conquered scurvy,
but he understood intuitively that it had something to do

(58:16):
with eating fresh food regularly. And so these are some
of the things that set them apart, I think. But
you know, although I put those other explorers certainly in
the Pantheon. Magellan is someone that Cooked very much admired,
realizing that Magellan was the first to circumvent navigate the world,

(58:37):
although he didn't himself make it home, but he did
that with cruder tools. It's, you know, one thing Cook does.
He honors the previous explorers.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
He recognizes their accomplishments.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Really quite a modest guy who was a very laconic,
modest guy from Yorkshire, who came up from absolute poverty,
worked his way up through the ranks of the Merchant
Marine and then the Royal Navy, and you know, to
be master and commander and absolute sort of commander of
the ship, but also to be so modest and sort

(59:18):
of always giving the credit to other people. That's also
an unusual trait for the times we're talking with.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Hampton sides.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
His book is called The Wide Sea, named by the
New York Times as one of the ten best books
of last year. The subtitle of the book Imperial Ambition,
First Contact and the Faithful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.
So let me tell you just a very quick story. Hampton, So,
I used to collect tribal art, mostly New.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Guinea, Indonesia. Some Solomon Islands, stuff like stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
By the way, I don't know what's still there, but
the collection of Captain Cook's stuff that he collected at
the museum in Auckland is one of the greatest things I've.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Ever seen in my entire life.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
And I don't know if any of that stuff is
being sort of redistributed back to the places he took
it from.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I saw it quite a few years ago. It was
just absolutely incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
But one of the things that one of the great
experiences of my life was I was on the Sipic
River in New Guinea and I made friends with one
of the guys who worked on the boat that I
was on, who was from a local village that we
happened to be docked near. So he came to get
me like eleven PM one night, came knocked on my
door like ross, come with me. And so he and

(01:00:32):
a couple of his friends from the village. They had
they had rowed a little canoe over to the boat.
I got in the canoe with them, canoed over to
and walked into the village just me right, and I
spent the night sitting in what they call the men's hut,
a pretty big kind of like a longhouse around the
fire with these elders telling me stories through a translator.

(01:00:57):
And the guy who kind of befriended me said, we'd
never done this with a white person before. We just
we can tell how interested you are in our culture,
because I was asking him all kinds of questions and
that I don't know that that experience maybe exists anywhere anymore,
even New Guinea, Like it's just everything is opening these days,
and thinking about Captain Cook who did this kind of

(01:01:19):
thing every day, every other day for years and for voyages,
and and even me like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Okay, I'm a white dude talking with the elders.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
But they'd seen lots of white dudes, they'd never seen
a white dude before him. I just cannot imagine what
an incredible historical I don't even know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
What words to apply to it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Well, yeah, he had kind of perfected what I call
a theater of first contact, you know, a way of
approaching an island coming ashore unarmed, trying to convince people, hey,
you know, just by looking in the face and demonstrating
through body language and gesticulations and grunts, hey, I'm interested

(01:02:02):
in you. I'm not I come in peace.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
I don't. We're not here to harm you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
It's extraordinary to me how many times that worked. You know,
he didn't, he didn't get killed, he didn't get surrounded,
he didn't get imprisoned by numerically superior group of people.
You know, when he marched ashore on an island, from
island to island to island, until the end when it

(01:02:29):
didn't work, when he gets to Hawaii, and I think
most people it's not really a spoiler to tell listeners
that Captain Cook dies a very violent and very graphic
death on the island of Hawaii, the Big Island, on
Valentine's Day, seventeen seventy nine, where this theater of first

(01:02:53):
contact methodology. I guess that he used. It didn't work
and it backfired on him, and things escalated very.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Quickly, and he was.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Hacked to pieces on the lava flats there. So you know,
it's a lot of you know, I'd say the last,
you know, fourth of the book really is about that,
How that that happened, What went wrong, what were his
maybe his diplomatic skills had failed him, what led to
this horrible miscalculation or a series of miscalculations that led

(01:03:29):
to his death.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
So you know that's that's a large part of what
the book's about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah, and then the last part of the book talk
you know where you almost feel like you're watching a
movie of Captain Cook's last hours on Earth, and and
and in parts of it because of how you write
the story, Hampton, You're kind of like you want to
yell out to Captain Kirk, Captain Cook, Captain Kirk, you
want to yell out to Captain Cook, like, don't do that,

(01:03:55):
don't talk to them that way, Like you're you could
be fine, Right, this is all so unnecessary.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Yeah, it's like, uh, it's like, slow down, negotiate.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Uh, go back to your ship, rethink this.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
Don't be so odd, heeaded, go back to being the
old Captain Cook that you used to be. You you
inadvertently said Captain Kirk.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
And Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
In fact, Uh, Star Treks Captain Kirk of the USS
Enterprise was directly patterned after Captain James Cook.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
James Kirk, James Cook and Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
The creators of the show were just fascinated with with
the story of Cook and and in many ways, you know,
there's so many similarities, like when when they left England
and went often to the other side of the world.
It was as though they were going out into the galaxies,
you know, out into the heavens, uh, going from planet
to planet, not knowing who they would encounter, trying to

(01:04:55):
describe and document these people. That there are a lot
of kind of at least official similarities between Captain Cook's
narratives and Star Trek. So maybe that wasn't maybe you know,
maybe it was a subconscious thing that you mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Kirk.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
All right, we got about three minutes left. We got
about three minutes left, and I want to ask you
two questions about minor characters in the book. And again
for those just joining we're talking with Hampton Sides. His
brilliant must read book is called The Wide Wide Sea.
Just go buy it and go read it. You can
thank him later, No need to thank me. Thank Hampton
for writing this unbelievableook. I want to ask you about

(01:05:33):
two people. I love the fact that there's a dude
named George Vancouver. Tell me a little about George Vancouver.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, it's really important for
me to emphasize that this is not a biography of
Captain Cook. It's really a biography, if you will, of
an expedition of a voyage. And there are all these
great characters apart from Cook on the voyage, and one
of them is George Vancouver, this young explorer who's learning.
He's learning at the sort of at the knee of

(01:06:01):
the great Captain Cook. He will go on to become
one of the great explorers of the Pacific Northwest Vancouver.
Of course the town, the city is named after him.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
The island.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
And so you get the sense of these young midshipmen
who are just you know, drinking this up, learning how
to run an expedition from the master himself.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Also, William Blygh is another one on the vote.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Who will go who learns from Captain Cook, and is
an is like Cook, a brilliant sailor and chart maker
of charts and so forth. But he also has this horrible,
insufferable personality that gets him into trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
People hate him, and of course he will go on
to be on the Bounty, which of.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Course has the most notorious mutiny of all times. So
those are just two characters that Cook has with him
on board the ship.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
One one more question about one more character. We got
about a minute left there were I think two or
three Americans with Captain Cook. Tell me a little bit
about John Ledyard.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Was fascinated by this story for many reasons, but one
is because it left England in July of seventeen seventy six,
just as the American Revolution is really getting going and
the Declaration of Independence. They didn't get the memo on
that declaration, by the way. They left and are gone
for four years and one hundred thousand nautical miles, so

(01:07:31):
no one understood what was happening in America. But yeah,
there are a number of American board born sailors on
board the ship, and one of them, the most interesting
to me, is a guy named John Ledyard, who somehow
got on this voyage as a Royal Marine and he's

(01:07:52):
observing all of this, writing all this stuff down. He
ultimately publishes a book, An Account of Cooksville, that becomes
the very first book copyrighted in the United States, which
is kind of an extraordinary It's very critical of Captain Cook.
I quote from Ledyard a lot. He's a really good,
very keen observer and quite critical of Cook. And you know,

(01:08:16):
and he gets back to England four years after leaving Plymouth,
and he realizes that he's Hey, he's an American now,
He's not British. He's not a British citizen anymore. He
wants to go back to Connecticut where he was worn
and live out the rest of the revolution and fight
for his new fledgling country. So yeah, that's a very

(01:08:38):
interesting little little subplot to the story. Is the American
Revolution going on at the same time Ledyard's great.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Yeah, and where and when Ledyard dies is interesting too,
But don't tell that part. People can read the book, folks,
go buy and read the wide wide see Imperial Ambition,
First Contact and The Faithful Fine Voyage of Captain James Cook,
one of the ten best books of the year according
to The New York Times last year. The author Hampton

(01:09:06):
sides Hampton, thank you so much for making time to
join us. I'm sure you probably thought you were done
with publicity for this book, so I have.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Never I appreciate you, no that at all.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
It'd just come out and paperback a few months ago. Yeah,
it's kind of a whole new tour. We're getting the
word out for the new publication and really excited to
be on your show.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, thanks for doing it.
I appreciate it. We'll take a quick break. We'll be
right back on KOA.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Remarkable conversation with Hampton Sides and that book The Wide
Wide Sea, about the final voyage of Captain James Cook.
I must read if you like history at all. What
a wonderful book, The Wide Wide See. Anyway, there's a
new television series out I think it's on Apple TV

(01:09:51):
Apple TV Plus called Chief of War and it stars
Jason Momoa. Boy, that dude has a story, right. That
dude was like eating ramen every night and living in
his van. Just this absolute epitome of a you know,
starving artist, want to be actor.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Nobody would hire him, and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Then he became Aquaman and now he's.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
This huge star, absolutely huge.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
So anyway, he he stars in this series as Kaiiana.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
And this is from the website for the show.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
A fearless warrior on a mission to unite his homeland
as a monumental power struggery struggling erupts among the four kingdoms.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
This is about the unification of Hawaii and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Jason Momoa is playing this guy who's an actual guy
in history. And actually it is mentioned in Hampton Side's
book The Unification Hawaii. I'm not expert on the history
of Hawaii, but it does have a very interesting history.
It was a kingdom, you know, they had a king,
they had a queen. Some of the early stamps from
Hawaii you'll see, like the Queen on stamp and eventually

(01:10:53):
obviously became part of the United States of America. But
I'm gonna I want to try to see that series.
I don't have Apple TV. I might I'm not sure
whether I would subscribe to it just to get this series,
but maybe it looks it looks really really interesting, So
I wanted to mention that to you. Now, I'm not
sure how much of this I'm gonna get through right now,

(01:11:14):
I'm gonna I'm gonna do what I can. There's a
guy named Ted Nordhouse, and and Ted Nordhouse is a
longtime climate scientist. Now he's at a place called the
Breakout Institute No Breakthrough Breakthrough Institute, And he wrote a
fascinating piece that I published that I linked to on

(01:11:36):
my blog at Rosskominsky dot com about how he has
evolved intellectually from being a climate alarmist to being not
a climate skeptic, but saying, we really need to start
looking get this stuff again. What's the actual risk? And
and are we propose posing quote unquote solutions that are

(01:12:02):
likely to be much more expensive than any actual problem
potentially is. And so Nordhouse and it's kind of an
apology in a way. So and I'm gonna get through
what I can here enough. I need to spend a
little more on this in the next segment than I will.
But he says in this note and his the substack
or the blog note is called the website Breakthrough Journal

(01:12:24):
dot org. Breakthrough Journal dot org says recently, in an
exchange on x my former colleague Tyler Norris observed that
over the years my views about climate risk have evolved substantially.
Norris posted a screenshot of a page from a book
called Breakthrough, where Michael Schellenberger and I had argued that
if the world kept burning fossil fuels at current rates,

(01:12:45):
catastrophe was virtually assured. And here's a quote from that
from that book. Over the next fifty years, if we
continue to burn as much coal and oil as we've
been burning, the heating of the years will cause the
sea levels to rise and the Amazon to collapse, and,
according to scenarios commissioned by the Pentagon, will trigger a
series of wars over the basic resor over basic resources
like food and water. Then Nordhouse says, Norris is right.

(01:13:08):
I no longer believe this hyperbole. Yes, the world will
continue to warm as long as we continue burning fossil fuels,
and sea levels will rise about nine inches over the
last century, perhaps another two or three feet over the
course of the rest of this century, but the rest
of it not so much. There's little reason to think
that the Amazon is at risk of collapsing. Agricultural yield

(01:13:30):
and output will almost certainly continue to rise, if not
necessarily at the same.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
Rate as it has over the last fifty years.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
There has been no observable increase in meteorological drought globally
that might trigger the resource wars that the Pentagon was
planning for back then at the time that we published Breakthrough,
He says, I, along with most climate scientists and advocates,
believe that business as usual emissions would lead to around
five degrees of warming by the end of the century.

(01:13:58):
But as Roger Pilka and and Roger is a frequent
guest on this show have demonstrated over the last decade
or so that assumption not only was wrong, it was
never plausible. That is a remarkable, a remarkable admission by
this guy saying his assumptions.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
It's not just that they were have been proven wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
It's that if you really think about them at the time, he.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Should have realized they were not realistic.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Even then, he continues, there have been some revisionist claims
for the reason for the downgrading of business as usual
warming assumptions due to being due to successive climate and
clean energy policies. But five degrees of warming by the
end of the century was no more plausible in two
thousand and seven when my book.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
Was published than it is today.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
The class of scenarios upon which it was based assumed
a few things all at the same time, high population growth,
high economic growth, and slow technological change. None of these
trends individuals track at all with what is actually going on.
So that's not the only thing, though, But none of

(01:15:06):
those things. There has not been very high population growth,
there has not been very high economic growth based you
know the kinds of numbers he was talking about, and
there has not been slow technological change fertility rates have
been falling, global economic growth has been slowing down, and
the global economy has been decarbonizing for decades.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Nor, he says, is there a.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
Good reason to think that the combination of these three
trends could be sustained in concert. What he's saying is,
you couldn't have all these things at the same time anyway.
High economic growth is strongly associated with falling fertility rates.
Technological change is the primary driver of long term economic growth.
A future with low rates of technological change is not

(01:15:49):
one that is consistent with high economic growth, Which means
that when these doomsday scenarios were predicting high economic growth
and slow technological change, those things wouldn't have happened at
the same time, And yet they were the basis of
his assumptions and the assumptions of so many other people.
He says, as a result of these dynamics, most estimates

(01:16:10):
of worst case warming by the end of the century
now suggests three degrees or less. But a consensus around
these estimates has shifted. The reaction to this good news
among much of the climate science and advocacy community has
not been to become less catastrophic. Rather, it has been
to simply shift the focus from five degrees to three

(01:16:31):
degrees of warming. Climate advocates have arguably become more catastrophic
about climate change in.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
Recent years, not less.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
This is all the more confounding given that the good
news extends well beyond projections of long term warning.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
Despite close to a degree and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Of warming over the last century or so, global mortality
from climate and weather extremes has fallen by a factor
of twenty five or more on a per capita basis,
As Roger Pilka documented recently. And this is really important,
right because I tell you all the time, and I
mean it, even though it sounds like sarcasm. There are

(01:17:09):
two kinds of people who are really pushing this climate stuff.
One is people who are making a living at it
and they'll say whatever they have to say.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
To get the next government grant.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
And the other is radical environmentalists who don't so much
love the planet as they hate people.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
I'm absolutely serious about that. Now, just let me finish
this bit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
As Roger Pilka documented recently, the world is on track
this year for what is almost certainly the lowest level
of climate related mortality in recorded human history, not only
on a per capita basis, but on an absolute basis
as well. The economic costs of climate extremes continue to rise,

(01:17:51):
but this is almost entirely due to affluence, population growth,
and the migration of global populations toward climate hazard, mainly
cities that tend to be located in coastal regions and
on floodplains. There is a lot more to this article.
I think I won't share more with you, but I
want you to go to my blog and read it.
At Ross Kaminsky dot com. You will find the link.

(01:18:12):
It is entitled why I Stopped being a climate catastrophist
and why this is so interesting is it is coming
from a real climate scientist who used to be an
alarmist and used to think, and I'm not exaggerating much,
we're all gonna die, and now thinks not only are
we not all gonna die, but my assumptions when I

(01:18:35):
was saying that I should have understood at the time
that they were wrong and impossible, And to have a
guy like this come out and say I was wrong,
the alarmists now are wrong. Thank you to Roger Pilka
for helping me understand what I was, how I was
thinking about it wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
That is remarkable.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
A listener has properly corrected us when we talked about
Jason Momoa getting famous and you know, from Aquaman. But
as the listener points out, Jason Momoa played the Dothraci
warlord Kyle Drogo in in Game of Thrones, right, yeah,
and so he was in that that probably, you know,

(01:19:13):
was really the thing that.

Speaker 6 (01:19:14):
Well, my wife would like to point out, Uh, she's
not here, but I know this is her feelings. Uh
Stargate Atlantis with the dreads.

Speaker 7 (01:19:24):
Yeah, she was.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
She thought he was hot, big fan. I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
I don't even know what that is. I haven't, I
haven't seen it. But anyway, all right, so Jason Momoa good.
He was also in Baywatch. He was you know, he
was very baby faced and very ultra cute.

Speaker 6 (01:19:39):
What they watch the actual pay watch Paywatch the show what, Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
Look it up?

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
The Pamela Anderson show, Yes, look it up if you don't.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
What's his face? Who was the guy? Was it Hoffman? Yeah? Wait,
wait a minute. He was a series regular. But he
was in Is he old enough?

Speaker 5 (01:19:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:19:59):
You I'm super young, super baby face. You probably wouldn't
even recognize him because no facial hair short, almost a
buzz cut.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Yeah wow, uh huh yeah, unbelievable. He was too cute.

Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
Jason Momoa made his acting debut as Jason Iowana in
the syndicated action drama series by.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Oh bay Watch, bay Watch Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
No, okay, that makes sense because he's not old enough
to have been in the original.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
He's only forty six. It was a bay Watch. It
I really painted missus may Watch Hawaii nineteen ninety nine,
two thousand and one.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
That makes sense. That that makes sense. Okay, good enough.
So let's see what was I supposed to do?

Speaker 7 (01:20:46):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
Yeah, this this thing about rich people and so on?
Is that why you played that? Was that related? Why
does the heat wave stuff?

Speaker 7 (01:20:53):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Heat waste stuff? All right, So I'm gonna put myself
out on a limb. Something most people won't say, but
I believe in tax cuts for people who actually pay taxes.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
I know that sounds crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
I know that folks on the political left frequently when
they talk about tax cuts, what they really mean is
giving people who already pay nothing in let's say, federal
income tax, giving them more of other people's money and
calling it a tax cut.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
But it really isn't there was a story at the
AP yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
The headline is Trump's tax law will mostly benefit the
rich while leaving poorer Americans with less. The CBO says, now,
let's just put aside for a minute our skepticism about
the CBO, and I just want to kind of focus
on the concept for a minute. And for me, the
concept is pretty simple. If there is, of course a

(01:21:46):
tax across the board, this isn't really a tax cut.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
It's hard to describe.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Okay, what the Big Beautiful Bill mostly did was extend
the current tax rates, since without passing the Big Beautiful Bill,
the current tax rates would have gone up for everybody.
Passing this bill is scored as a tax cut, even
though it maintains the current tax rates.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
If you scored it that way, and you will, you
will find.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):
That upper income people will, in absolute dollars, benefit more
than lower income people. And here's the thing that I'm
gonna say that most people are afraid to say, but
I'm not. That's how it should be. Of course, the
upper income people should get a bigger tax cut, not
I mean even on a percent even on a percentage basis.

(01:22:39):
But when you look at something, I say, oh, the
top ten percent is gonna get gonna get you know,
fifty percent of the benefits of the tax cut.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
I say, good, that's not enough.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
The top the top ten percent pay seventy something percent
of federal income taxes. So if there's a tax cut
and they only get fifty percent of the benefit instead
of seventy percent of the benefit, it is a relative
tax increase for them compared to everybody else. Remember two things,

(01:23:14):
government is force. That is what government is. And anything
the federal government does that goes beyond what is constitutionally
authorized to do is theft. So right now, what we
have the government doing is stealing an immense amount of
money from so much of the American population to do

(01:23:34):
things that should not be doing, and then borrowing the
money for the rest because they can't steal enough right now.
And somehow, now we're supposed to feel bad that the
people who pay most of the taxes get most of
the benefit when.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
There's a tax cut. That is as it should be.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
And I know it's not popular to say, and everybody
wants to say, soak the rich and tax rich. And
by the way, I'm not in the top one percent,
I'm not close to the top one percent. I'm not close.
I'm not in this group that's going to be getting.
You know, what this analysis says is a big benefit.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
I'm just sort of middle class, normal person.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
It's not about what's good or bad for me in
this It's about what's right. And what's right is that
we stop using the tax code to punish the successful
and reward the unsuccessful, even if they're unsuccessful due to
bad luck or whatever. Tax cuts should go to the
people who pay the taxes. Yesterday, we had on the

(01:24:30):
show State Senator Jeff Bridges, who is also i think
currently chairman of the Joint Budget Committee and the Caloro
State Legislature, and he gave the Democratic perspective. I will
call it on the upcoming special session of the state
Legislature where the where the legislature is going to have

(01:24:51):
to figure out how to come up with something on
the order of three quarters of a billion dollars to
fill in a budget hole the Democrats complain is caused
by Donald Trump and the Big Beautiful Bill. And I
thought it would be very important to get a Republican perspective,
so joining us to give her perspective, I don't know
if she would call it the Republican perspective, but maybe

(01:25:14):
Barb Kirkmeyer, Senior Republican also I think former chair you
can correct me if I'm wrong, of.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
The same Joint Budget Committee.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Barb is a state Senator from Weld County, Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
Hi, Barb, welcome back to the show. It's good to
have you.

Speaker 7 (01:25:28):
Hi, it's great to be back on and now I'm
in the minority party. Fine, never get to be chair
of the Joint Budget Committee.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
All right, I thought that was one of those weird
committees where they kind of shifted things around and keep
it three to three and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
So, okay, I'm glad I stand corrected. So I want
to start.

Speaker 2 (01:25:47):
With the same question I started with with Jeff yesterday,
and this sort of a macro thing. Can you please
explain and define the problem that is to be solved
in the special session?

Speaker 5 (01:26:00):
Sure?

Speaker 7 (01:26:00):
And I know I listened to what Senator Bridges had
to say and he really went into all the numbers.
But let me just talk kind of in generalities. First
of all, Democrats want to frame this as a crisis
that's forced upon them by federal actions. That federal action
being that the those you know, those crazy Republicans, And
I'm thinking that's how Democrats think. Those crazy Republicans back

(01:26:20):
in Washington, d C. Decided to give us all tax
relief and give us tax breaks, and somehow that's a
huge problem for the Democrats here in Colorado. And it does,
it does create a problem with regard to our revenues
because our revenues on income tax is tied to the
federal income tax as well. It's called a rolling conformity,

(01:26:41):
and so it does. It leads to a loss of revenue.
So less tax is paid in by people, leads to
a lots of revenue.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
To the state.

Speaker 7 (01:26:51):
But the crisis, the crisis that we're in, it's not
because of federal action. It's basically because of structural defects
in the state's budget. We have created, you know, defense
are being created by years of reckless spending and one
time gimmicks. That's what's going on here. And let me
just kind of give you a rundown over the last
seven years, what's happened here, what the Democrat playbook has been,

(01:27:11):
so to speak. In twenty twenty twenty twenty one, Governor
Polish shut down the economy. We kept overspending, we got
in gush gush for us. We received a whole bunch
of COVID dollars, you know, federal funds that came in
and I'm talking like in in the billions, and they
just kept overspending, and they kept spending them on what
was supposedly supposed to be one time kind of things,

(01:27:33):
but they ended up being not one time kind of things.
And so you know, but in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one,
Democrats playbook was We're gonna blame COVID for everything, and
they did. And then for the next six years after that,
they decided it was a good idea to keep spending
all those federal funds, hire over seven thousand new state employees,
start new programs, continue to overspend the budget last year

(01:27:56):
one point two billion overspent where we started in a
whole when we're trying to define our budget for the
twenty five twenty six year and won and behold, you
know who they blame Taber. It was Taper's fault. Doesn't
have anything to do with they're overspending. It's Taper's fault.
And now here we are in twenty twenty five, don't
want to tass overtime pay they want to increase taxes.

(01:28:18):
They keep telling you that they're saving you money. Haven't
seen it yet. And now we're going to have a
special session to raise taxes and they blame Trump, and
the special session is about raising taxes. There is nothing
in this call. You know, the call is what the
governor has to put in place, basically tells us here, legislators,
these these are the only topics you get to carry

(01:28:39):
a bill on that you get to try and have
the influence and make a difference and solve this seven
hundred and fifty to eight hundred million dollar problem that
we have because of shortage of revenues because we're getting
a tax break. And he already puts in the call
everything's about raising taxes. There's absolutely nothing in this call
that lets me put a bill in that says here's
where we're going to cut spending.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
So you heard me talking with Jeff yesterday and I said,
I'm disappointed, but not surprised at how little it seems
like Democrats actually want to cut and how much they
want to raise taxes. And you know, Governor polis And
keeps waving around this shiny object of our somewhat lower

(01:29:22):
state income tax rate than it was a few years ago,
and I am grateful for a somewhat lower state income
tax rate. But in the meantime, Democrats have been bleeding
us dry with fees on everything, and now they just
want more more money.

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
So let me bring this to a question. So as
we as.

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
We drift closer to the special session a little a
little over a week away, now, I guess you're probably
learning a little with a little bit more specificity about
what the Democrats actually want to do in this special session.

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
So what do you think you know now.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
About this upcoming special session in terms terms of any
specifics on democrats plans and what I might broadly call
their priorities.

Speaker 7 (01:30:09):
Well, I'm laughing because the amazing I know is what's
in the call. Basically, the Democrats have been keeping the
Republicans in the dark. They've been doing things behind closed doors.
The leadership has, in fact, I basically you know, and
this maybe wasn't the nicest thing to do, but I
did it anyways, had to threaten Senator Bridges to have
a joint budget committee meeting or I would call one myself.

(01:30:30):
A couple of weeks ago, leadership Democrat leadership called a
meeting of the leadership. JBC wasn't invited. We weren't even
allowed to sit the table, we weren't allowed to ask questions.
Yet they had what looked like should have been a
JBC meeting. They had our non partisan staff create a
new forecast, an updated forecast, which normally goes through the

(01:30:51):
Joint Budget Committee, not through Democrat legislative leadership. And the
two minority leaders were there as well, so two Republicans,
but they didn't call the meeting even know it was
on the agenda until pretty much, you know, a couple
of days beforehand. But anyways, they call this meeting and
don't have the GBC there. And then so I'm asking

(01:31:12):
Center Bridges, when are we going to have a meeting.
We're at the Joint Budget Committee, we should be having
this discussion. And you know, he didn't respond to me
for quite some time, and he like went on the
Mandon Connell Show and said, Hey, if you don't call special,
if you don't call a meeting of the Joint Budget
Committee by noon tomorrow, I'm going to call on myself
because I don't need you to call in, and I'll
just ask everyone to come and I'll bet they show
up so lo and behold, we end up having one.

(01:31:34):
So it's been you know, it's it's going to be
a surprise to all of us. I'm sure we don't
get to see the bills that they're introducing. I mean,
we have an idea that over at least forty bills
have been put in for title and possibility of having
forty bills. We don't know what it's on all forty
of those bills and in those forty bill titles. I mean,
we're not asked to be on bills with the Democrats,

(01:31:58):
and quite frankly, we don't ask the Democrats to be
on our bills either because they're not going to be
quite frankly, so they're not really sharing a whole lot
of information with us. The information I get is what
I gleaned from being at the Joint Budget Committee and
paying attention and looking back at the comments that they
make at forecast or during the you know, the session,

(01:32:18):
or at any times I just happen to see them
or I'm talking to them about things. That's only where
I get stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:32:23):
They're not telling us.

Speaker 7 (01:32:24):
They don't they don't ask the Republicans what we think
should happen we're talking to you. It's you know, it's
kind of with a smirk, like, well, what do you
want to cut? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
Well, you heard, you heard what Jeff said yesterday, right,
I said, I said, if I were in the state
legis like, if I were in charge, I said, I'd
probably go along with using a little bit of money
from the rating Rainy Day Fund, especially for this first year,
because the budget crunch before we get to all the
Medicaid stuff will actually be less.

Speaker 1 (01:32:50):
Next year than a next fiscal year than right now.

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
So I said, all right, just hypothetically, in my mind,
if we need to cut four and a half percent,
I'll give you, all right, one and a half percent
of it of the Rainy Day Fund and then the
rest out of spending cuts and no tax increases, if
I were in charge, right And he said, well, Republicans
always say that, but they never tell us what they
want to cut. So I want to give you a
chance to address that. If you were in charge, and

(01:33:15):
if you were on the you know, the Ross Kaminsky
way of thinking about this, or more importantly, since you
know what you're talking about and I don't, the Barb
Kirkmeyer way.

Speaker 1 (01:33:23):
Of thinking about this, what would you cut? Sure?

Speaker 7 (01:33:27):
And so first of all, I just want to address
the comment where he said Republicans don't tell them what
they want to cut. I would disagree with that. I
tell them all firs thearys that I thought we should
cut last year when we were going through the budget
writing process and during the amendment process, when the other
ninety four legislators because there are six of us on
the Joint Budget Committee, the other ninety four legislators say
this is where we want to cut. There were plenty

(01:33:47):
of Republican amendments that said these are things that we
think you should cut in the budget, and gosh, they
all didn't pass. But here's the thing in this special session,
and what we're dealing with here is a revenue shortfall.
So we're not dealing specifically with the twenty six to
twenty seven budget. We're not necessarily dealing with even now.

(01:34:08):
We can't do any spending cuts because it's not in
the call. So what needs to happen in this one here?
And I'm just going to disagree with you a little bit.
I wouldn't take anything out of the reserve. The reserve
is for when we hit a recession, not for when
we have a crisis of priorities like the Democrats have,
and they keep spending money on things that we don't
absolutely need, are things that you know, they're pet projects,

(01:34:30):
those types of things, and instead putting the money on
core functions of government. How about we fund core functions
of government first. But they don't do that, and we
didn't do that in the budget five sessions.

Speaker 1 (01:34:43):
Okay, fair enough, so that reserve.

Speaker 7 (01:34:46):
Yeah, because they need to essentially learn how to spend
on the right priorities, spend on those things that we
absolutely need to have. But what I would do is,
and you know, I pointed this out to them in
the statute, there's the ability for the govern to do
an executive order. And I wanted to know why he
didn't have a plan, why he hadn't done an executive
order yet, similar to what Governor Owens did back in

(01:35:08):
two thousand and one and two thousand and two, or
Governor Hickenlooper did back in two thousand and eight to
twenty ten, when we actually had these areas of where
you know, we had nine to eleven back in two
thousand and one, and all those fires going on in
our state and Governor Owens came to his state departments
because I know I worked for him, and he said
his first thing was, you will cut four percent. And

(01:35:28):
then he came back and said, and now you're going
to cut ten percent of your general fund operating budget
because that's the kind of situation we're in. So we
need to cut. And the governor needs to do his job.
He is the administrator, he is the executive of this state.
I'm in the legislative branch. We write the budget. He's
supposed to fulfill it, and he's supposed to get these

(01:35:49):
these projects done and do these things that are within
the budget. But he has the ability to stop spending
and he hasn't done that. He's had the ability, and
I brought this up last year during the budget talks,
that he had the ability to do a hiring freeze,
to put a travel ban on, to you know, say
you can't go traveling places, to do all sorts of
things that Governor Owens did and even Governor Hickenlooper did,

(01:36:10):
and he has not done those. So I'd like to
know what his plan is. But my first thing is
you should cut cut across the board. And they keep saying, oh,
we can't do that. I'm telling you, I live through it,
and you can do it. And the governor has every
ability to tell his state departments to go in and
make cuts, and they have you know, you know Russ.
First of all, we do not as a legislative branch,
we do not fund employees full time employees. Specifically, we

(01:36:34):
give them a line item that says, here's how much money,
and it could be a million, it could be ten million,
it could be one hundred million dollars in that line item,
and then they decide how many people they hire and
how much they pay them. We don't get any say
in that. So the governor cold could tell that and
for him to come out and say, oh, but I've
put a hiring freeze on for four months, are you
kidding me? That's a drop in the bucket. He needs

(01:36:55):
to get with it and do his job. Here's the
other thing. We have about two point three billion dollars
of tax credits now. The minute the minute that the
director of OspB, the Office State playing Budget, the governor's
budget director, the minute he realized we couldn't pay our bills,
why didn't we start talking about pausing those tax credits?

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
So now can you what do we mean there?

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
Are you talking about tax credits to citizens of Colorado
that the government pays out.

Speaker 7 (01:37:28):
Yes, So, for example, there are tax credits that are
and I don't have the list here in front of me,
but we give tax credits for the for electric bicycles,
for heat pumps, and electric lawnmower. There's one tex. Those
are three different tax credits. We do other tax credits,
like we have the earned Income tax Credit and the
Affordability Housing tax Credit. Now those are two that I

(01:37:49):
probably would leave in place because they're doing good things.
And then for people who truly need them, we have
another tax credit. It's called the Family Affordability Tax Credit.
I'm okay with the tax credit on that because again
it's for people, you know, lower income people who and
I guess it goes all the way up to ninety
thousand or something like that in income, and you know,
it's it's tiered how much tax credit you would get.

(01:38:13):
But then there's this other provision in the law that
says any amount by which the credit exceeds a taxpayer's
liability is refund it to the taxpayer. So this is
not just a tax credit, it's a refund. So if
you were due, if you should have been able to
get a fifteen thousand dollars tax credit, but your tax

(01:38:35):
liability man, you're not paying any income taxes. You actually
can get a check from the state for up to
fifteen thousand bucks. Why aren't we putting a pause on
that refund? We're dropping below the cap here, and that's
what needs to be happening.

Speaker 2 (01:38:48):
Can the government, can the executive branch, Barb, Can the
executive branch pause that stuff? Or does the legislature have
to do it?

Speaker 7 (01:38:55):
I think both, and it could possibly be challenged. But
I thinks the governor has the ability in statute because
it says in statute that when sufficient revenues aren't available
that for a certain period, that the Governor, by executive order,
by his discretion, may suspend or discontinue in whole part,

(01:39:17):
the functions or services of any department.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
Okay, let me jump in for a second.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
We have just a couple of minutes left, and for
those just joining, we're talking with Barb Kirkmeyer, Republican state
Senator from Weld County and member of the Joint Budget Committee.
So I want to stick on this question of what
would you cut and so you said across the board,
and I want to just hone in on that a
little bit. Do you think it can be and do
you think it could be? I'm sorry, it should be

(01:39:45):
that each of whatever the major departments are of the
state government, each one is told, let's say we need
to cut four and a half percent. Each one is
told you will cut four and a half percent. Or
do you think you tell based on what the legislature
figures out and priorities and so on, you tell this
department to cut six percent, this department to cut three
and a half percent, and so everybody's cutting some but

(01:40:08):
not necessarily.

Speaker 1 (01:40:09):
Every department's cutting the same amount. How would you How
do you think about that?

Speaker 7 (01:40:14):
I would probably look at that. If I were governor,
I would probably say, look, we need to have this
amount of savings, we need to stop this much spending.
And I would charge every department to go first look
because I did this as account commissioner, go look for
first ten percent cut. And even if I just again
want to throw this out there, even if we said, okay,
we're not going to cut education, we could still cut

(01:40:36):
the Department of Education. So maybe they can come up
with two or three percent cuts. I'm not sure in
the Apartment of Education, but I would think they could
at least but you could tell each department individually what's cut.
But even if you took out you know, the total
program amount for students, you know that we fund for
K twelve education, and you took out the Department of
health Care Policy and Finance, which is Medicaid providers, which

(01:40:57):
is access to healthcare. If you took those two out,
we still have about five point five billion dollars of
general fund ongoing expenditures. And if you told all of
the rest of the department, so look for ten percent cut,
that's five hundred and fifty million dollars. I think that
gets us pretty far on the way.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
Okay, if we look.

Speaker 7 (01:41:13):
At some of these tax credits and turn them off,
I think that's how we get there the rest of
the way, instead of going back and increasing people's taxes.

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
Yeah, I'm really sickened by I.

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
Expect that the Democrats are going to raise taxes more
than they cut spending. Jeff Bridges said on the show
yesterday he thinks a third to third to third. I
don't think it's going to be a third to third
a third between the Rainy Day Fund, tax increases and
spending cuts. I think spending cuts may end up being
the smallest of all three of those numbers. And I
think it's I think it's just terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:41:44):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:41:44):
One thing I was a little bit surprised to hear
Jeff admit. I mean, I think it's honest, but I
was a little surprised to hear it come out of
his mouth. Is he expects that out of sheer necessity,
in the Willie Sutton kind of way. I rob banks
because that's where the money is. He said, he thinks
out a sheer necessity, there probably will be some cuts

(01:42:04):
to Medicaid. What do you think about that?

Speaker 7 (01:42:08):
I think maybe he's confusing Medicaid with Medicaid like programs.
That's what I think.

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
How about the one?

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
How about this stuff for illegal aliens which a lot
of my listeners are asking about.

Speaker 7 (01:42:19):
That's what I'm talking about. Those are Medicaid like programs
in the program that. Okay, so here's here again. You know,
Jeff Wotsao, the Republicans don't give us anything. Well, last
year during the Joint Budget Session before there's a program
called covering all Colorados and it's for the undocumented immigrants,
people that are here, immigrants that are here illegally. And

(01:42:40):
it didn't even start till January of this year, January
twenty twenty five. I asked, first of all, if we
couldn't just pause it, we could just wait. I mean,
last year we were looking at one point two billion,
which by the way, they didn't cut one point two
billion dollars out of the budget. But we can talk
about that on another day. But I asked them, if
we couldn't just pause to begin with, let's not even

(01:43:01):
start the program. Let's just posit in the fiscal note.
I think it was supposed to cost somewhere between to
two million dollars in the first year and fourteen million
the next year. This is a program that's now costing.
It is probably fifty one up to fifty or more
than fifty million dollars a year in the state of Colorado.
Then I asked, could we just posit or put a
cap on it to the amount that was in the
fiscal note? I was told no by all the Democrats

(01:43:24):
on that committee, on the Joint Budget Committee. So that's surprising.
But when you hear these Democrats talk about cutting access
to healthcare to Colorado on they are talking not about Medicaid.
They are talking about Medicaid like programs such as covering
all Colorados. There are some other programs.

Speaker 1 (01:43:42):
Your dollars for illegal aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
Look, I'm I can hear the frustration in your voice, and.

Speaker 1 (01:43:49):
It's in mind. It's in mind too, and it should
be in everybody's.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):
And I just will say, just as a macro thing
to listeners, this is what happens when you give one party,
in particular the Democratic Party, full control over a state government.
You end up with spending that's out of control and
people who are unwilling and unable to cut any spending,
even though they should have known better to begin with.
And instead, all they're going to do is raise your taxes,

(01:44:14):
almost all they're going to do. And we're pretty host
and I'll give you the last seventeen seconds, Barb.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
I just want to.

Speaker 7 (01:44:20):
Correct one thing. Senator Bridges and other Democrat leaders have
said that they're just going to cut corporate corporate business taxes.
That is not accurate. That is not accurate. They're going
after small businesses, both mom and pop shops, small floral
shops like what I used to own all these small
businesses they're included in there. Their business depreciation and interest

(01:44:41):
cut that they want to do could equal up to
seven hundred and seventy million dollars wow in twenty five,
twenty six. So that's not true. I just want everybody
to understand that's not true. This special session is not
a budget special session. This special session is about taxing
Coloradoans and small businesses more to cover up for their
excessive growth overspending.

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):
Thanks for that sobering and perhaps frustrating preview of what's
about to get done to Colorado taxpayers next week and
when the special session starts. Thanks for your time, Bob,
Thank you all right. That's all I got for you today,
Mandy Coddle up next. I'll be joining you tomorrow and
the next day from Broncos training camp.

Speaker 1 (01:45:23):
Have a great rest of your Tuesday.