09-26-25 - *FULL SHOW* Comey Indicted; Zelenskyy Wants Out; Paul Beale & Physics

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My pal Andy McCarthy, former federal prosecutor and contributing editor
at National Review and author of the still fabulous book
Ball of Collusion. Andy, good morning. Thanks for making time
for me on short notice.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Ross. It's my pleasure. I'm having one of those mornings.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
I bet you are. I bet everybody wants to talk
to you. Let me just say like a few things
really quickly, and then I'm going to hand this off
to you. Regarding the James Comy indictment, number one, it
looks like political retribution number two. I get it. Some
of these people kind of deserve to be retributed against
number three. Trump's people are perfectly down with political retribution

(00:39):
number four. I'm down with the indictment as long as
it is being brought with a high level of certainty
that they can convict.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
And that's the part.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm not I have some real concerns about I would
not I would really not like to see this go
in a way that turns Comy into a hero and
a martyr and a victim because DOJ brought or the
US Attorney brought a case that's two weeks. Okay, I'll
shut up now and tell us anything you think we
need to be thinking about Well.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I think I'm going to react to your last point
because we're in general in agreement on the other stuff,
and what I can best address is the strength of
the case. I think you're quite right that you don't
bring a case like this unless it's bulletproof, and this
is bulletproof, all right, but it's bulletproof for acquittal. I

(01:33):
don't think ross that this case. I mean, I think,
as I said in what I wrote about this today,
I think Comy has a dilemma because the case should
be thrown out on a pre trial motion to dismiss.
But unfortunately, in the environment we're in, if that happens,
it's the case has been assigned to abiden the point

(01:57):
to Judge Trump and his supporters will say that the
fix was in and that was why the case got
thrown out. So, you know, probably even though the last
thing anyone should want is to have to go through
a trial, I know Comy said last night that, you know,
let's have a trial, but it's probably better for all
concerned if he gets acquitted by the jury, then gets
the court throws the case up, but there's.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
No case, okay, So I'll be just even though I'm
inclined to agree with you, I'm gonna play devil's advocate
for a minute because that's what I like to do
with you and with lawyers generally. So the argument from
I'm not gonna I have no idea what the US
attorney's argument really is. But from people generally on Trump's side,

(02:39):
they look at what Comy said in front of Congress,
and we can't use the twenty seventeen thing because that's
past the statute of limitations, but the twenty twenty interaction
with Ted Cruz, and they say that he that he
lied there. One of the things I guess is about
whether he authorized somebody to leak to the media. And
Andy McCabe, who's probably a liar himself, said that Komy did.

(03:05):
So I think they're saying, well, there's a prima facia
case here because you had the former what deputy director
or whatever McCabe was of the FBI saying the exact
opposite thing from what Komy said.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
So isn't there some basis there?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Well, no, even though what you described as accurate, And
it's because what Toomy and McCabe, the conflict in their
version of events, and this Russ involves an October twenty
sixteen leak to the Wall Street Journal of information about
the FBI's Clinton Foundation investigation. So that's what we're talking about.

(03:44):
What they disagree about is what McCabe told Comy about
it and what Komy's reaction was. So they have a
disagreement about that. Here's what they agree on. McCabe has
said any number of times, as I think even Ted

(04:04):
crew said in his testimony, that he that he authorized
that he made the leak, that he uh and he
told Toby that he made the leak. The problem is
what Ted put in his question was that McCabe that
Comy authorized McCabe to make the leak, and in fact,

(04:29):
that just isn't true. It didn't, you know, it didn't
happen that way. McCabe says that he did the leak himself,
and that having done the league himself, after the he's
got published in the Wall Street Journal, he had a
conversation with Tomy about it. Now, he claims in the

(04:51):
conversation with Komy that he explained to him how he
had authorized the leak and why he did it, and
he said Comy didn't seem to be troubled by it. Kobe,
to the contrary, says that McCabe told him about McCabe,
and he talked about the Wall Street Journal article when
it came out. McCabe pretended that he didn't know anything

(05:12):
about what the sources it was, and that Komy made
quite clear to him that he was upset about the leak.
This was investigated by the Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who
found that McCabe lacked candor and that there was overwhelming
corroboration for Combe's version of events. And let's remember, Horowitz

(05:33):
did any number of reports that were scathing in their
assessment of Komy's performance in various parts of his sewardship
of the FBI. But on this one, you know, he
said McCabe was he referred mcabe to the Justice Department
for prosecution. The Trump Justice Department, the first administration ended
up not bringing it. But like, no matter what you

(05:56):
think about all that stuff, even by McCabe's own account,
call me didn't authorize the leak. Okay, their issue was
their issue was what happened afterwards.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Okay, So I got just over a minute left here,
and let's say, just hypothetically that I'm I am unaware
of the level of detail that you just described, and
I'm just reading current news about this. I will tell
you two things that stand out for me that give
me a lot of concern about the strength of the case. First,

(06:27):
the actual attorney, who knows right, the former US attorney
who was qualified for the job, declined to prosecute Comy,
even knowing there was some political pressure to prosecute him,
and appears to have said, there isn't a strong enough
case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and I'm not
going to bring charges, So.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
That gives me some concern. And the other thing that
I think.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Is really interesting, but maybe it's not actually interesting, and
I want you to tell me whether it is or isn't,
is that when this new US attorney who really isn't
quified for the job, went to the grand jury, she
brought three charges and actually was only able to get
an indictment on two. And for me, I have an

(07:10):
inference there that the two are also then probably kind
of weak. But maybe that's not a fair inference. What
do you say to that it's.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
An absolutely fair inference. The third charge she tried to
bring the grand jury rebuffet and let's remember now, this
is the grand jury where you don't get the defense presentation,
there's no cross examin it's just the government's version of
the event. And she still couldn't get an indictment because
it was an absurd charge. It would take me too
long to explain why it was absurd. But I'm telling you,

(07:42):
no federal prosecutor should ever get a no true bill
from a grand jury, which is one of grand jury. Yes,
rebuffs you because you get to say to them at
the end of your presentation, now, does the grand jury
think that there's any other evidence that they'd like to
hear in this case? And as a result, they will

(08:02):
tell you if they have a problem with the case
before you ask them to vote on it. Okay, So anybody,
any federal prosecutor who has been around for ten minutes
knows that.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Okay, last quick thing, give me quick answers on these
two questions. What is the percentage chance that gets to
a trial, And if it gets to a trial, what
is the percentage chance James Comy is convicted.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
I'd say twenty percent chance that it gets the trial
just because of the political environment, and zero percent chance
that he gets convicted.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
And the reason you're saying it's a twenty percent chance
to get to trial is that you think the answer
to that question should be zero, but that politics may
cause it to go to a trial when otherwise, in
a normal situation it wouldn't correct. Andy McCarthy, former federal prosecutor.
You can read his writing at National Review dot com.
He also writes for The New York Post and elsewhere.

(09:00):
Thanks for making time for us on short notice. Andy,
That was great. All right, talk to you soon. We'll
take a quick break. We'll be right back on Kowa.
We'll say one thing. It's it's clearly political retribution by Trump,
and separate from the question of whether.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
They'll actually be able to.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Convict Comy or not, just in the sense of like
karmak justice, Komy richly deserves it, and so does Brennan,
maybe to a slightly lesser but only slightly lesser degree. Clapper, Oh,
another guy who's like right there on the a list
of deserving whatever happens to him. I don't mean physical violence.

(09:42):
I mean, you know, political karma is Adam Schiff. These
guys all used their titles to imply to the American
public or even state directly to the American public that.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
They had information.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Story is a little different the other guys that they
had information that Trump had some kind of nefarious connections
with Russians, whether it was Putin or some hookers. And
I will say, and Shannon will back me up on this.
From the very first day that these accusations came out,
and I was over on our sister station KHAW during

(10:19):
Morning Drive doing the Morning Drive show at that time, from.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
The very first of.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Those accusations, I said, this is nonsense. None of this
makes any sense. There's no way it's true. And it
wasn't because I was, you know, saying that some hugely
positive thing about Trump's character or whatever. It's just nothing
about the story made sense. Nothing. And call me and
Clapper and Brennan again, Clapper a little, Brennan. I thought

(10:45):
it was one of the very worst. Brennan and Shift
probably the two worst, because in a way, as bad
as call me is, we we actually probably have call
me to thank for Hillary Clinton not being president not
winning that election, because he came out and accused her
of this stuff. And yeah, he said, then, well we're
not gonna charge and he did all that kind of
inappropriate sself. But he didn't actually even have to come

(11:06):
out and say the bad stuff he said about Hillary Clinton.
So Comy is as much as Trump despises him. Comy
is probably a key reason that Trump won that election
because of what Comy said about Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
But anyway, these guys all.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Attempted to prevent Trump from getting elected and then tried
to destroy his first term, and to a significant degree
they did. I won't say they destroyed it, but they
massively disrupted it. And so much time and ink and
whatever was spilled on this Russia absolute nonsense. And here's

(11:45):
the thing. Here's the thing. Back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
twenty seventeen, even when I was on the air saying
this Trump Russia stuff was nonsense, I was speculating, right.
I mean, I had a high level of confidence that
the whole story didn't make sense. Trump wouldn't have done that,

(12:07):
and he wouldn't have done that, and Putin wouldn't have
worked directly with Trump. There's no upside for Putin and
working directly with Trump. It was all nonsense. I was
speculating though, that it was nonsense. Here's the thing, Comy
Brennan Clapper Schiff. They knew it was nonsense. They knew
before we did that the Steele dossier that all that

(12:29):
stuff was built on was a product.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
It was political, paid for propaganda, and they knew it,
and yet they kept going. And that's why, you know,
for me, like I'm really torn, Like I don't want
them to bring a case against Jim Comy that they
can't win. And I agree with Andy that they can't

(12:56):
win this case. I shouldn't say can't. Probably can't win
this case. That's my concern. But I will say, as
I said when we're talking with Andy McCarthy, President Trump
supporters do not care about that. What they care about
is they want Komy to suffer through the same kind

(13:17):
of process, at least a little bit of the same
kind of process that he and his collaborators put Trump through.
And as I say, as a matter of Karmac justice,
I completely understand that I have read all your texts.
I'm not gonna respond to them right now, but I've

(13:38):
read your texts about the conversation about Trump and Russia
and Komy and all that. Everybody's got their their theories.
I'm a little tired of the whole story. My point
was simply that the Biden people, who you know, tried
to destroy Trump with what they knew were lies. You know,
they deserve something in the way of karma. All right,

(13:58):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna move on now. This is
a story that I had for a couple of days,
not political, just a very different thing, uh, And I
just thought it was very interesting and I want to
I want to share it with you. And it's from
a writer at the New York Times named Michael Wilson.
And the headline is I've written about loads of scams,
but this one almost got me.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
And they're just more.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Not only are there more and more scammers, but they're
getting more and more sophisticated.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
And you really really have to be careful.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
And these scams are coming by email, by phone call
and by text. They're coming every possible way they can
get to you. And just one sort of top level
thing to keep in mind here, and this is important
and you and we'll get to it again when I
share some of this some of this article with you.
But remember that you cannot necessarily trust what shows up

(14:52):
in caller ID. It is very important to keep that
in mind, just because you know the caller ID shows
up and says, well Wells Fargo Bank does not mean
it's Wells Fargo Bank. And I don't think a lot
of people understand that it's really important.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
So let me share this with you again.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
This is from the New York Times, and I have
this link in my blog. I'm pretty sure I have
it in there today, with a kind of link where
you don't need to have a New York Times subscription
to read it.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Please hold, the.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Caller said, while I transfer you to my supervisor. It
was a Wednesday in August, a little before lunch. The
call came from an area code two one two number,
which for a New Yorker could be almost anything.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
The school, the pharmacy, the roof guy. So I answered.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
The caller asked for me by name, and stated in
measured tones that he was from Chase Bank and wanted
to verify transfers being made from my account to someone
in Texas.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Wrong number.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
I said, I don't have a Chase account, but one
was recently opened in your name. He replied with two
Zell transfers, and minutes ago someone tried to transfer for
those funds twenty one hundred dollars to San Antonio.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Now this carried the whiff of plausibility.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I'm one of some one hundred and fifty million people
who have access to Zel, the payments platform that lets
you send and receive money from your phone. But my
scam radar was also fully operational and pinging.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
How do I know this isn't a scam?

Speaker 1 (16:21):
I asked, sounding like that guy in every movie who
asks an undercover cop if he's a cop. He had
a quick answer. Look at the number showing on your
phone and google it, he replied. Now look up the
Chase branch at three times square. He instructed cee the
office phone number. I did, and it matched the one
on my phone's screen. Then he added, here at Chase,

(16:42):
we will never ask for your personal information or passwords.
On the contrary, he gave me more information, two cancelation
codes and a long case number with four letters and
ten digits. That's when he offered to transfer me to
his supervisor. That simple phrase failure from countless customer service calls,

(17:03):
draped a cloak of corporate competence over this unfolding drama.
His supervisor, I mean, would a scammer have a supervisor.
The line went mute for a few seconds, and a
second man greeted me with a voice of authority. My
name is Mike Wallace, he said, and asked for my
case number from the first guy. I dutifully read it

(17:23):
back to him. By the way, let me just interject
here in this already remarkably sophisticated kait, let me continue. Yes, Yes,
I see, the man said, as if looking at a screen.
He explained the situation new account Zell Transfers Texas and
suggested we reverse the attempted withdrawal.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
I'm not proud to report.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
The reporter says that by now he had my full
attention and I was ready to proceed with whatever plan
he had in mind. Internet fraud has grown steadily, with
twenty twenty four setting new record high losses a staggering
sixteen point six billion dollars according to a recent FBI report.

(18:02):
These crimes include elaborate cryptocurrency schemes and ransomware attacks on
entire cities, but phishing and spoofing the cloning of an
actual phone number still lead the list of some eight
hundred and sixty thousand complaints a year. Are these scams
entering some sort of improved two point zero version of
the old school Nigerian prince type set up. He quotes

(18:26):
a special agent from the FBI in New York who says,
I wouldn't call it an improvement, It's an adaptation. As
the public becomes more aware of schemes, they need to adjust.
The man, claiming to be a Chase supervisor asked me
to open zell where it says enter an amount. He
instructed me to type twenty one hundred dollars the amounts
the withdrawals that he was going to help me reverse.

(18:47):
Then in the inter phone number or email where the
other party goes, he instructed me to type the case
number the first caller had given me, but to leave
out the four letters numbers only gosh. I dutifully entered
the ten digits, but my skepticism was finally showing. Ah,
mister Wallace, I said, somewhat apologetically, this case number sure

(19:12):
looks like a phone number, and I'm about to send
that number twenty one hundred dollars. No, he replied, because
of this important next step in the window that says
what's this four where you might add babysitter or block
party donation He told me to enter a unique code
that would alert his team that the transaction should be reversed.
It was incredibly long, and he read it out slowly

(19:34):
s T P P six seven one two, and I
typed a long and now and then he even threw
in some military style and go zero zero Charlie X
ray nine to eight. Once we were done, he had
me read the whole nineteen character code back to him. Now,
he said, press send, but one word above the what's

(19:56):
this four bucks? Containing our special code with the Ray
and the Charlie kept bothering me optional. Then I had
an idea and asked the supervisor if he was calling
from three times square. Yes, he said, fine, I'll come
to you, I said, and we will fix this together.
By then, it'll probably be too late, he said, I'll
call you back, I said, and he said that it
would be fine, and I hung up.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
I called my.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Bank and confirmed what I'd come to expect.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
There had been no Zell activity.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
My jaw dropped when I went back and looked at
my call history. Sixteen minutes. That's how long they had
me on the line. In my decades as a crime reporter,
I've covered many, many scams, psychic scams, sweetheart swindles, real
estate scams, even the obscure nanny scam where a fake
mother reaches out to a young caregiver to try to

(20:43):
rip her off. I should be able to spot a
scam in under sixteen seconds, I thought, But sixteen minutes.
I wanted to know why this scam seemed to work
so much better than others. By the way, folks, I
don't normally share with you articles this long, or all
of an article this long, but I just think this
is so interesting and so important for everybody, for everybody,

(21:06):
that I'm just gonna keep going. An online search for
Chase zellscam turned up many posts on social media describing
calls that were nearly identical to mine. Kaylee Coleman, who
runs a trash removal company in Florida, wrote for her
the transfer to the supervisor is when it got fishy.
Another gal, Candice Lace, a boutique dog rumer in California,

(21:30):
was busy with a client's pet when she got the
call and all but volunteered her password, But she caught
herself in time and hung up to call her bank.
Not everyone gets out before sending money. Uugh. A Reddit
user posted seven months ago, I just had this happen
to me. I fell for it. I'm an idiot. I'm
out three hundred bucks. I reached out to Zell I
was connected with the guy. Benjamin Chance is the name

(21:53):
head of identity and Payments risk at Early Warning Services,
the company that owns and operates the platform. He said
in person and imposter scams have grown since the pandemic,
and he broke down what makes this particular scam work?
And this is really what I want you all to
pay close attention to, and me as well. I mean,
I'm pretty sensitive to these things, but I mean, so

(22:15):
is this guy right. First, the callers express urgency. If
you're that young mother taking the kids to soccer practice
unloading the minivan, you might be in a rush and
more likely to fall for this type of scam.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Then there's that supervisor.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
They're attempting to lend authenticity and legitimacy to the call.
You feel like you're actually in a real call center
and like you're talking to a real person, but it
could be just two people sitting together sharing the phone,
or even one person changing his voice. Then there's all
that information coming at you in my experience the case
number two cancelation codes and that nineteen character string at

(22:51):
the end, mister Chance said the delivery of all that
stuff creates a lulling.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Effect on the would be victim.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Quote, as you started to type that long number in
letter string, it's getting you to just do a task
at the request of this criminal. On the other side,
As you do that, you've shifted as a critical thinker
to someone performing a task.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
He said.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
People should be very wary of answering calls from change
strange numbers. If it's someone claiming to be from a bank,
hang up and call the bank's number on your card agent.
Roberts had advice for those who do take the call.
Take a breath, think a beat. Take a breath, take
a beat, think about what's going on and what this.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Call is about.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
In the end, I have avoided the scam easily enough,
but it nagged at me, and so I knew I
had one more stop to make.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Three Times Square on West.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Forty second Street, in the heart of Times Square, once
the nation's capital.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
For old school scams like three card Monte.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Did the bank know what was going on with fake
calls seemingly come from their office. Inside, there are ATMs
in the small chase lobby and an escalator up to
a floor of cubicles and bankers in glass and closed rooms.
I'm looking for a Mike Wallace, I told an employee.
No such person here, she replied. I began to describe

(24:08):
my call, and she smiled knowingly, the Zell transfer of
the supervisor. She'd heard it all before, many times from
people calling the branch for verification, she said. Had anyone
said they'd sent money like the scammer's requested?

Speaker 3 (24:22):
She thought and said maybe two.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Finally, looking for more victims, I turned to Reddit and
wrote a post in a thread of user swapping stories
about this scam, asking anyone interested in sharing their story
to reach out. My post was rejected by moderators because
apparently reaching out to people who have been victims of
a scam, it turns out, is a classic maneuver at

(24:45):
the start of a whole new scam. Wow, that's the
end of the article that New York Times it's called.
I've written about loads of scams. This one almost got me,
and I just wanted to share that with you, partly
because it's a fascinating story, and partly because well, something
like a public service announcement. Right, I want you all
to be very very very careful, right, email, but phone

(25:08):
and text, especially these days. If somebody gets in touch
with you claiming to be your bank, do not talk
to them. Just simply say I will call you back.
That's it, and then call the number on the back
of the relevant credit or debit card or which is

(25:31):
most of the time what these things are about. You'll
have a phone number there or if you know, on
a bank statement, but credit card or debit card should
be fine. Do not volunteer any banking information to anyone
on a phone unless you call them and then even them,
never ever, ever give a password. Just be careful. These

(25:51):
criminals are soulless, heartless, clever, and they are out to
get you. Absolutely remorse, they are out to get you,
and they will always be half a step ahead of
the good guys. And so it's incumbent upon you to
not be scammed. All right, let's talk a little bit

(26:15):
about the whole BUCkies situation going on down by Palmer Lake.
So far, we have had both US senators from the
state of Colorado and the governor of the state of Colorado,
and one of the Senators. By the way, as a
candidate for governor now Bennett, we have had them all
way in publicly saying they do not want BUCkies to

(26:36):
be built in the spot that they are looking. They
say it is part of a beautiful and important and
historic green space right near the Greenland Ranch, which is
one of the oldest continually operated cattle ranches in the
state of Colorado.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
John Malone, I'll read this from the Denver Post.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
So John Malone is one of the second richest guy
in Colorado after phil An Shoots in two thousand in
the state conservation organizations, Douglas County and ranch owner. So
I guess that's Greenland ranch owner John Malone agreed to
conserve the twenty one thousand acre ranch to maintain open
space on wildlife habitat. So they want to put BUCkies
right near there, and all of these politicians are saying,

(27:18):
please don't.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
It just simply doesn't belong there.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
In Palmer Lake, they actually just recalled a couple of
the members of the city council who supported this. This
is not a done deal yet part of the city government.
That's more of an advisory group, the planners. I think
it was voted no on this, but they don't have
the authority to stop it. It goes to the city council,

(27:44):
and the city council has seemed very very interested.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
In doing it.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
And I don't blame them on one level because palmer Lake,
which I'm not expert, I'm just telling you what I believe.
What I believe I understand based on information that listeners
have sent me. Palmer Lake is a town that doesn't
have a lot of revenue sources, doesn't have a lot
of money, very much struggling financially, and adding this to
palmer Lake's revenue would completely change the way that town

(28:09):
operates on a fiscal basis, and so that must be
the reason that the city council members have been leaning
towards supporting it. The reason that I'm bringing this up
now is from the I'll give you an a for
effort files. The city of Lamar has proposed itself as
a possible site for the next BUCkies if if BUCkies

(28:32):
can be talked out.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Of the location in palmer Lake.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
The problem for Lamar, and again I think it's awesome
that they're trying, the problem for Lamar is that they
are not on I twenty five, right they are. They're
on what is it US fifty more east southeast Colorado,
and it's just not the same as being on I

(28:56):
twenty five now, So I don't think Lamar is going
to get this, but I appreciate their trying. The other
thing that I don't know whether they will look at this,
but earlier on in the process, much earlier on in
the process, the city of Fountain, which is on I
twenty five. It's I'm not expert on the geography, so

(29:16):
I'm gonna call it fifteen miles south of Colorado Springs,
all right.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
I could be wrong by a little bit. I'm not
massively wrong.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
But anyway, Fountain wanted to be involved in this process,
and as that is on I twenty five and not
terribly far from where they want to put the BUCkies
right now. I mean, where do they want to put
BUCkies right now is north of Colorado Springs and fountains
south of Colorado Springs.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
But still that might not be a terrible alternative. I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
The pressure on BUCkies here seems pretty large, from the
from federal politicians, from the state governor, from people around
that area. I don't know whether they are interested in,
you know, quote unquote read the room. Maybe it's just
business and they don't care about any of that. If
they can get it done, they'll get it done. I

(30:05):
don't know if I were running BUCkies, I don't know
what I would do. I think the calculation comes down
to how much do you want to piss off the
local people? And then secondarily, and again I'm speculating here.
I'm not in that room. I'm not part of this conversation,
but I'm thinking, if I were running this company, is

(30:25):
there a chance that the level of business that you
are expecting to get that you have modeled in the
business plan to justify building this BUCkies, is it possible
that public displeasure with the location might cause you to

(30:48):
not get as much business as you thought, even on
the margin.

Speaker 4 (30:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
So, I'm not saying, and I have no idea what
number of people, but let's just say they're expecting a
million people a year. I'm just completely making up a number,
or that could be off by an order of magnitude.
I have no idea what the number is. But let's
just say you model this thing on a million people
a year. And let's say that because.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Of the public not being down with the plan.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
What if you end up with nine hundred thousand a
year instead of a million. Obviously that's still an enormous number.
But the first part of revenue for any business is
covering expenses, and then the rest is profit. Right, You're
gonna have to pay for this, and you're gonna have
to pay for that, and you're gonna have to pay
for the other thang. And then whenever you pay for
all the things you have to pay for, then whatever's

(31:39):
left over for you is your profit and what you
get to keep. So if you were to take ten
percent off.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Of their revenue, and I'm just spitballing, but.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
If you were to take ten percent off of their revenue,
that doesn't mean you're taking ten percent off of their profit.
It could mean you're taking fifty percent off of their profit.
And so for me, as a business decision, that's what.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
I wonder about.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
So anyway, I give lamar An a for effort throwing
their name out there might as well, and it seems
to me that this Bucky's decision is getting more and
more difficult for them. We'll take a quick break, we'll
be right back on KOA at some point, probably during
this hour, we're gonna give away some Broncos tickets for
the Monday night Broncos Bengals game.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
I will be there on the sideline and.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Can I win.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
You can't win, damn it, you can't win.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
I'm going to participate in the contest. Well somehow you
can participate by helping the winner win. Okay, fine, if
that's what you If that's what you meant, and you
can also, folks, you can try to win a pair
on Koa's account on x and also on Instagram so
x dot com slash Koa Colorado and Instagram dot com

(32:54):
slash Koa Colorado.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
So that'll be coming up at.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Some point, not too long from now. But I want
to take just a few minutes and talk with my
pal Jimmy Sanenberger, who, in addition to being an occasional
fill in host here on KOA for Me for May
and on k How across the Hall, Jimmy is an
investigative reporter who writes for the Gazette and the Denver
Gazette and wrote a very interesting note entitled Lakewood's Shady

(33:20):
School deal gets even shadier and Jimmy, I am going
to ask you to give us the details of this
in three minutes or less, so get started.

Speaker 4 (33:34):
There are a lot of different aspects of this ross,
but I think I can do it. Thanks for having
me brother. So we have seen in recent years, last
several years, different school districts, including Jefferson County schools sell
different clothes are well rather close schools. In this case,
we're talking about a school that Jeffco intends JESFSCO School

(33:57):
Districts intends to sell in diffictly to sell to Lakewood.
It is called Emery Elementary School. It was closed in
twenty twenty three after two point six million dollars worth
of upgrades to the building, and in early twenty twenty four,

(34:17):
the school district created the pathway. Normally, when they would
sell property, they put out for competitive bidding. Well, in
this case they cut out private developers by creating a
process called municipal interest, which basically in this case means
that Lakewood City Hall can say we'd like to purchase

(34:38):
this property and then they are the only buyer that
they're going to negotiate with. Those negotiations have been ongoing
and even though the school property is valued at twelve
million dollars in estimate, they're going to buy it in
Lakewood for just four million dollars. Then the City of Lakewood,

(35:00):
after closing on the deal, intends to turn that around
to flip it and sell it to a nonprofit called
the Jeffco Action Center that primarily provides things like homeless
services for just one million dollars. So again, twelve million
dollar value property sold to the city, and then the

(35:24):
city selling the building and the parking lot ten of
the seventeen acres for just one million dollars, even though
taxpayers are footing up four million dollars. And the thing
that's so striking about this is not just the sweetheart deal,
but also a lot of the behind the scenes machinations

(35:46):
that have been going on. The fact that this has
been hardly out in the public, not that it hasn't been.
Rumors started swirling in January of twenty twenty four, and
the city council voted authorize the purchase of this property
in April of this year, but that was with very

(36:07):
little notice to the public that it was happening, and
people in Lakewood are very much unaware of the fact
that this deal is happening in any way, shape or form,
let alone the ways in which it is being done.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Okay, so it works rock Yeah, Yeah, that was very good.
That was very good. So, I mean, on the surface,
it looks like Lakewood is intentionally setting itself up to lose,
you know, three million dollars minus whatever the value is
of the land that they're going to continue to hold,
so maybe a million or two or something. But it
looks like the enormous loser here is the Jefferson County

(36:44):
School District. If they're selling a twelve a property that's
worth twelve million for four million. So I have two
questions for you. What you know, why why do you
think the school district.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Is willing to lose money at all?

Speaker 1 (36:58):
And how confident are you in the twelve.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Million dollar valuation?

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Is it possible that it's actually worth a lot less
than that.

Speaker 4 (37:07):
Well, you never know in terms of the way in
which a market value may end up going in a negotiation.
I couldn't say. I don't think anybody can say with certainty,
but I definitely believe it is closer to that ten
million mark. And the fact of the matter is ross
that by going through this municipal interest process, they are

(37:28):
preventing private developers from even bidding. Let's say that Lakewood
is willing to pay four million dollars and a private
developer is only willing to pay three million dollars because
they want to tear down the building and do stuff
with the land and what have you. They're not even
getting the shock for it, which rate is a question
to me? Is it in fact valued significantly more than

(37:52):
four million dollars in what it potentially could be to
a developer? Which justifies or explained why the school district
would say let's cut out private developers. Which is real
quick that Jefferson County Schools has a sixty million dollars
structural deficit and they are giving this kind of a
deal without any private bidding. I don't know how that

(38:15):
really can work.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, I don't either. I'm just about out of time here, Jimmy.
But do you have any inkling, any rum or anybody
whispering in your ear about why Jefferson County would be
willing to sell a property for so much less than
it's worth, Assuming the rest of your research is correct,
and I assume that it is, why would they be
willing to do that?

Speaker 4 (38:37):
That is the eight million dollar question here, and I
don't have a definitive answer on that. I am going
to tell you I'm looking into that more bush for
the Jeffco School side and on the Lakewood side, because
in both cases, I think it raises a ton of
red flags and tax players need to be aware of

(38:57):
what's happening and get a more reasonable explanation than the
non explanations that have been presented.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Jimmy Sangenberger's new article just went up this morning. It's
at Denver Gazette dot com entitled Lakewood's shady school deal
gets even shadier. Jimmy, thanks for your time, Thanks for
the interesting reporting.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
We'll keep up on this issue.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
Thanks Ross, always pleasure.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back on KOA. Oh,
don't forget. We're gonna give aways some Broncos tickets coming soon.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Listener.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Texts from the past, couple of topics and I want
to share first. I want to share just two texts
about the scamming topic that I did a little bit ago.
I actually no, I'm just going to do one in
the interesting time. Ross, my mom just got scammed and

(39:48):
lost nearly twelve thousand dollars in a romance scam. He's
somehow convinced her he was the actor from a popular
show on HBO who invested in AI trading, convinced her
to sell her car. She sold it to a local
dealership for a fraction of what it was worth, and
then sent that money by PayPal to the scammer. She

(40:09):
asked for her money back to the scammer, deposited a
bad check in her account, and asked for the extra
that he sent over what she sent him from the
sale of the car. She now has no money, no car,
and the scammer was so good that she just now
realized after three months that she's been scammed. These people
are just terrible. Wow, lots of other people ross. Why

(40:33):
can't phone companies prevent phone number spoofing? Seems like that
would be a fairly easy thing to do. Well, I'm
not expert on this, but I will speculate it would
be a fairly easy thing to do if there were
just a few phone companies. But these days you've got many, many,
many companies that offer voiceover Internet Protocol VoIP phone services. Right,

(40:55):
so you're not just going to, you know, one of
the former Bell companies. They're not really what you would
call telephone companies. They're actually Internet companies, and your calls
go through their stuff, and they're in control, and there's
so many of them, and I just don't think I
don't think they could keep track of it all, even

(41:16):
if they even if they wanted to. Okay, so that's good.
I think I'll leave that there for now. But I
am reading all your texts that come in, just so
you know, to the person who sent in a text
for Mandy. Just as a general note, do not expect

(41:37):
a Kowa host, or really a host on any of
our stations where the hosts take text messages, do not
expect them to see your text message if you send
it in at a time when that host is not
on the air. So even if you start the text
with the word Mandy, it's not as if we have
some kind of filter that then shunts those things over

(41:59):
to Mandy or pops up on her phone or anything
like that.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
It just doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
It's just all one thing, it's all one screen, and
it just it pops up when you send it. So
I'm going to see this.

Speaker 5 (42:11):
So think of the family group text that you've got
that has twelve different family members. So if you send
something at one am, but twelve other people sends other
things at four am, five am, six am, you know,
a dozen things at ten am. Yeah, that would mean
that the person you intended it before has to scroll
all the way back to one am, and that could

(42:31):
be very difficult to do.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
So just send it at the time of the show.
There you go. And not only will it be difficult
to do, but in the example we're talking about here,
like when you send a text to Mandy during my show,
or send a text to me during the sports shows
in the afternoon. And I'm not I promise you. I'm
not saying this as sarcasm. It's just I would never
go look for that, right, I would never go look

(42:55):
for it. So it's not just that it would be
difficult for me to find a text for me, It's
that I wouldn't be trying. So anyway, there you go. Uh,
Mandy tell Ross hi, all right, how do you uh,
how do you want to do this? Boss? Let's just
do it. Okay, fine, let's just do it. We're gonna
give away right now because Producer Dragon said so a

(43:15):
pair of tickets to the Monday Night Broncos Bengals game
at Empower Field and Mile High. I will be on
the sideline with the parabolic microphone and the other sideline
will be Mandy's husband, Chuck, so you will see us.
I'm the smaller guy and Chuck is the much bigger guy.
So why don't we say texter number what? Dragon four?

(43:37):
Texter note what?

Speaker 6 (43:38):
No?

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Nice? Try, No, you gotta pick a different number. Number eight,
Oh god, fifteen, you're killing me. Sixteen, ten, ten, that's it,
you know, that's that's all right. Number Texter number eleven.
Uh text text number eleven at ten twenty eight and

(44:03):
eleven seconds. Texter number eleven at ten twenty eight and
eleven seconds at five six, six nine zero. And what
you need in your text is your name and your
email address and any indication that.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
You are texting in for tickets.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
You could say tickets, you could say Broncos, you could
say anything like that. You'd say Mandy. You could even
say Mandy. That'll work too, that'll be It's like the joker.
It's a code word that means anything we want it
to mean. So send that along. Texter number eleven at
ten twenty eight and eleven seconds at five, six, six
nine zero will win a pair of tickets to the
Broncos Bengals game on Monday Night. Also, if you don't
win this way, go to x dot com slash koa

(44:37):
Colorado or Instagram dot com slash koa Colorado and you
can win tickets that way as well. From the official
home of the Broncos KOA Nick last initial J in
case there're a bunch of Nicks trying to get in.
But Nick, congratulations winning the Broncos tickets. Maybe if you
see me, Nick, wave and say hi, I'll be on.

(44:58):
So I will be on the Bengals sideline in the
first half of the game and the Broncos sideline in
the second half of the game, and Chuck will be
reverse from that. I'm sure you'll wave back. And by
the way, Chuck, I will if I hear my name,
If I I will, well, wouldn't I I mean, if
he's you know, even in the upper one hundred though, Okay,

(45:19):
so if it's during the game, obviously I won't hear
any if somebody gets there. It's actually it's kind of
surprising how empty the stands are even fifteen to twenty
minutes before the game. Starts. So if people are around
and I'm usually just wandering around just it's because it's
so cool to be able to walk, you know, walk
on the sidelines stuff. Yeah, it's cool.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
It's it's the it's the best perk of this job.
I just absolutely, absolutely dig it.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Let me tell you about a wacky story that isn't
even from the United States, but it's just the kind
of thing that so I've said from time to time
that I would much rather have America's immigration problems than
Europe's immigration problems. And Europe seems to be Western. Europe
seems to be on a suicide mission. It has been

(46:07):
for a long time, with its economic policies, its tax policies,
its labor policies, especially its energy policies, and also it's
immigration policies. So let me just tell you a little
story here. This is from the BBC. A Muslim man
in England named Musa Kadri, fifty nine years old, saw

(46:31):
another guy lighting a koran on fire and shouted at
the guy who was lighting the koran on fire, shouted,
I'm going to kill you, before he slashed at him
with a knife. I think he missed, but he's so
Basically what happened was he saw this guy burning a Koran,
which is the Muslim holy book, right, maybe what a

(46:51):
Bible is to a Christian or what the Old Testament
is to a Jew, and saw that, saw the guy
doing that, and called.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
The guy who was doing.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
It an idiot and said one second, I'm coming back,
and then he came back holding a knife and he
slashed at him. I guess the guy got out of
the way and I don't think he was injured, but
he tried to he tried to attack him. Now what
I have for you here is the remarks from the

(47:24):
judge who caught the case. This is a British judge.
Mister Kadre, I have to sentence you today for two matters,
possession of a bladed article in a public place and
common assault.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
The offenses to which you.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Have pleaded guilty occurred on February thirteenth, near the Turkish
consulate in central London. You were clearly deeply offended by
a man who was protesting outside the consulate and who
has a part of his protest had set.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
Fire to the Holy Quran.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
You were heard to issue threats to him, calling him
a bleeping idiot and telling him that you were going
to kill him.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
You then returned inside your property.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
When you came back outside, you had armed yourself with
a knight kife and went to confront him. What happened
next was graphically recorded on CCTV, and it showed what
to any passing member of the public must have appeared
to be a very frightening and violent attack in the
street by a man armed with a knife.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
You slashed toward the other man.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
And when he went to the ground, you kicked at
him a number of times and spat at him. These
events must have been very frightening indeed for other members
of the public to observe. It's actually kind of funny here,
not not funny, but how how about the fact that
the judge doesn't mention the significance or the impact of

(48:34):
a psychological physical impact.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
To the to the victim.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
The judge here is only talking about how that might
have seemed, how that might have seemed frightening if to
some passer by, isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Uh?

Speaker 3 (48:50):
And then the.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Judge goes on, it's like, even if you didn't actually
intend to stab him, your your you know what you
did was unacceptable, and then he said, I note, however,
this is the judge.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
I know, however, that you.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Are now fifty nine years old and someone of hitherto
exemplary character. Those who know you speak extremely highly of
you and observe this behavior is.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Totally out of character.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Those observations demonstrate what a tragy it is that a
man of your previous good character should find that, because
of your actions, you are before the Crown Court for
the first time in your life. I also note the
good works that you do, especially your work with charities.
You get an idea where this is going. Both of
these offenses occurred together and were bound up with each other,

(49:36):
and is therefore entirely appropriate that I should take one
of them, the bladed offense, as the lead offense, and
reflect the circumstance of the assault in this sentence. Past.
On that count, it follows that in my judgment, concurrent
sentences are appropriate in this case. Oh my gosh, all right,

(49:56):
I accept the categorization agreed by the prosecution. A head
for the blade, for starting, YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
The fact that you sought to.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Mislead those investigating the case by sending a photograph of
a palette knife. That's the thing you use for painting
something you were clearly not carrying. Is an aggravating factor. Okay,
So this guy went home because he didn't like that
somebody was burning a book. So he went home, he

(50:24):
got a knife and came back. He slashed at him.
I guess he missed him, but the guy fell down,
and then he was kicking him while he was on
the ground. And then when he was asked about it,
he sent a picture of something that you know, that
wasn't the knife that he was using.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
And so here's what the judge sentenced him to.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Again. I think you probably know you know where where
this is going, by the way he said. Oh, by
the way, the judge says that in the circumstances of
the assault lead, in my judgment, to an upward adjustment
from the starting point of six months. Right. So now,
he says, the judge says, I note that you are

(51:05):
a fifty nine year old man of a previously exemplary character.
You are a loved husband and father, a hard worker,
and someone who those who have written on your behalf
cannot praise highly enough.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
You are allied upon as a career and.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
Much respected in your work with charity, HM. The use
of blades is a curse on our community. There cannot
be separate standards based simply on the type of person
who chooses to behave in this way. There has to be,
it seems to me, this is the judge. There has
to be. It seems to me a clear message that

(51:40):
these courts take this type of offense extremely seriously and
that prison sentences will be imposed. Awesome.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Let me continue that said, in your case, I see
no reason for that sentence to result in immediate custody.
I have already observed that your mitigation reflects a highly
respected and valued individual. I accept your remorse, and except
that there is an almost non existent chance of repetition
of this behavior, the effect of your incarceration now on
others would be wholly disproportionate.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
I propose, therefore, to impose a.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Suspended sentence of imprisonment for eighteen months, giving you credit
for between twenty and twenty five percent. To reflect your plea,
I will reduce that, and this is for the other
sentence to twenty weeks. For the common assault, there will
be six weeks concurrent. There will be a requirement of
one hundred and fifty hours unpaid work in the community

(52:36):
and up to ten days rehabilitation.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
And then the judge goes on to.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Say, you know, if you do something bad again and
you're in front of me again, then I'll have to
actually impose a sentence. So this guy goes out, tries
to stab somebody, then kick some while he's on the ground,
then lies to the police about the investigation. And then
the judge says, people need to understand the courts take
this very seriously, otherwise they won't feel safe, right, and
so people need to understand that there will be prison

(53:00):
sentences imposed.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
For this, but for you, no prison.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
And this, my friends, is how and why Western Europe
appears to be on a suicide mission. Quite a story, right,
Quite a story, all right? I want to do something
completely different. You know, we've been following the whole TikTok
thing for a while, and TikTok has a is believed

(53:28):
by many, probably including me, at least to the extent
that I won't put it on my phone to be
to include within it potential Chinese malware or spyware. And
some people who are much more expert than I am
seem to believe that that's true. And given the relationship
between China and the United States in recent years, it's

(53:50):
not entirely surprising that Congress passed a law saying that
TikTok needs to either be sold to US owners or
banned in the United States of America. That was supposed
to happen quite a while ago. President Trump kept extending
the deadline. It was probably illegal, but nobody's quibbling over
that too much. President Trump just signed approval for a

(54:13):
particular kind of deal, and I want to make sure
I understand this deal and what it means and what
it doesn't mean, and what we do know and what
we're not actually sure of today. And joining us to
help us fill in those details is Scott Sutton. He
is CEO of the influencer marketing platform later l a
t er dot com is their website. Scott, thanks so

(54:34):
much for joining me here on ka WA. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Hey, ros say you Joan, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, very very good. Hey, one quick thing before we
get into TikTok. What is an influencer marketing platform.

Speaker 6 (54:48):
Yeah, it's a great question. We work with some of
the biggest brands in the world. To help them connect
with influencers to help promote their products. So in our platform,
they can discover creators, They can look at their content,
their historical performance, and write out campaigns to help promote
the brands. We help creators make money and help consumers
discover products.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Gosh, I have so much to ask you about that,
so I might have to have another day to talk
about that whole the whole influencer thing I find fascinating.
Part of me kind of wants to be an influencer,
and part of me wonders about, like, are these people
just famous for being famous? And why does anybody care
what they say? But we'll talk about that another day
because clearly you know what you're doing there. You got
a lot of big clients. Okay, so let's talk about

(55:30):
the TikTok thing, just kind of at a bullet point level,
what do we know about what is in this deal?

Speaker 3 (55:38):
And then we'll get to what we think we know.

Speaker 6 (55:42):
Yeah, I would say you are an influencer whether you
think it or not, as an assign, but what we
know about the deal so far. You know, we had
the initial legislation from Joe Biden, Common and state that.

Speaker 7 (55:52):
We needed to split apart the app.

Speaker 6 (55:55):
We need to have American control, and so you know,
we now have done two successive extensions were now in
this third period, Trump signed the executive order to kind
of initiate this one hundred and twenty day process of
closing the deal. And so how that's going to look
is it's a deal value of fourteen billion dollars. It'll
give eighty percent of the ownership to non Chinese entities.

(56:19):
There's a wrinkle in that that a portion will be
out of a Saudi fund out about Dabu Dhabi, but
the investors will also include Oracle, the Murdocks, and another
syndicative adventures, including silver Lake. So the deal will then
split off a separate set of the algorithm to be
controlled by Oracle. The data which was already split off

(56:42):
and the processing which is being managed by Oracle today
will continue, but they'll also take over this algorithm. The
profit of this whole deal will be split.

Speaker 7 (56:52):
There's an interesting.

Speaker 6 (56:52):
Wrinkle though, in that there will be a hefty licensing
fee that'll be paid back to ByteDance. So approximately fifty
percent of the overall profit from this new venture. Actually
we'll still go back to China. Yeah, so it's an
interesting wrinkle. And then the valuation has also caused the sirve.
Fourteen billion is quite a low valuation based on most

(57:12):
estimates for the US entity.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Interesting, Okay, I got a few things to say about that.
When I heard fourteen billion, I thought it was low
as well. But when we were talking about this to
begin with, the conversation seemed to be more about somebody
trying to buy all of TikTok and not just the
American asset, So it might not Fourteen billion might not

(57:35):
be that low if half of the profit has to
go or half of the revenue has to go back
to China, so it'll be I mean, I don't know
how profitable it is. I don't know what multiple to
put on what number at this point, but I'm very
curious about a couple of things.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
First, can you.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Elaborate on what you said about a Saudi or Middle
Eastern investor because I hadn't heard that until you just
said it.

Speaker 6 (57:59):
Yeah, one of the end investors is from the MGAX fond.
It's it's the investors out of Saudi that were led
into the deal. So it's looking like sixty five percent
of the overall ownership will be American fifteen percent being
with the Saudi Fond, and then the remaining twenty percent
of by dance.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
Okay, So I'm not a lawyer, don't know if you're
a lawyer.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
I thought that the original bill that required this or
that to happen with TikTok had some limitations that whatever
the deal was going forward couldn't include, you know, some
level of ongoing interaction and necessary commercial involvement with the

(58:41):
Chinese entity. And I wonder just based on your understanding,
and feel free to tell me you haven't researched that
level of detail and I haven't either, but do you
think this actually comports.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
With the law?

Speaker 6 (58:58):
I think there were two primary concerns with the initial legislation.
One was around you know, data security and national security
and privacy, and then the other was about control, which
then leads to that also. And the goal was to
get a controlling ownership by a US based entity and

(59:18):
direct control over the algorithm, the technology, and the data
security and privacy.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
And so I think.

Speaker 6 (59:25):
In spirit we you know, we will have accomplished that goal.
There needs to be clearly delineated separation of access to data.
Despite that twenty percent ownership and that fifteen percent ownership
out of Saudi, but with Oracle in the mix, they're
the ones who are you know, in charge of governing
against that kind of data security with its hosting and

(59:47):
then also controlling the algorithm from the US.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Okay, So just to make sure I'm understanding this right,
So the US entity an Oracle, will handle the technology,
so will license the algorithm, which really is the secret
sauce of TikTok. The algorithm is the thing that decides
what to show a user of TikTok next in order
to keep them addicted.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
So that's the secret sauce for this thing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
So Oracle or the entity however you want to think
of it, is going to license the algorithm and then
and then modify the algorithm in order to ensure that
all the data remains on the US servers and that
it is not feeding stuff to China and any other
questions related to national security. So my question I have

(01:00:35):
two questions for you. First, did I describe that roughly correctly?
And then more importantly, do you think that Oracle or
whoever actually has the capability to truly ensure that there
still isn't some kind of Chinese spyware embedded.

Speaker 6 (01:00:55):
So let's unpack it in a couple different ways, one
around the algorithm them The way it stated is that
Oracle will work to rebuild the algorithm by licensing proprietary
ByteDance underlying technology and just thinking about AI models and
machine learning, which the algorithm is just a very advanced

(01:01:16):
AI and machine learning model. There's the model, and then
there's the data with which you train it on. And
so what will be very interesting and where I'm keen
to understand is when Oracle goes to retrain this model,
will that be with US centric data that maybe skews
the model to have a different set of characteristics rather

(01:01:38):
than a globally trained model. You could think about a
reinforcement potentially of the US perspective or US point of view.

Speaker 7 (01:01:44):
If we're only looking.

Speaker 6 (01:01:45):
At US content, maybe it's going to reinforce certain types
of things that Americans find more interesting than the global
population found interesting. And so, even though we have the
same underlying technology, perhaps the same algorithm, if the training
data shifts, there may be nuance ways that the algorithm
shifts in its behavior of what to suggest to different users.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Do you think that the actual logic of the algorithm
and the true heart of the algorithm separate from the
data that is trained on, will be identical to the
Chinese one. I don't mean that as a spywork question.
I just mean how it recommends separate from the training
data question. Will it be the same?

Speaker 7 (01:02:25):
I would say certain components of it.

Speaker 6 (01:02:28):
Understanding, for instance, what Ross finds interesting and how long
you stay engaged with certain types of content to promote
additional content. I think a lot of that will be
very similar. I think perhaps the way it's recommending based
on the available content. So again, if you think, if
we segment off content and I'm looking at US centric content,

(01:02:53):
that algorithm says Ross finds it is interesting and I'm
going to put it in front of him. But if
he's already viewing US centric content, what you see will
be very different perhaps than you saw in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Okay, So I'm just about out of time, and I
should have asked you this question before, So give me
kind of a quick answer here. Even though it's a
big question, how important is this deal for I don't
really care about people watching cat videos, but I do
care somewhat about people who use TikTok to.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Make a living.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
How big a deal? How important is this for the economy.

Speaker 6 (01:03:24):
I think it's incredibly important for those in the creator
economy and brands who have been leveraging this platform to
grow their businesses.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
There's TikTok merchants, what.

Speaker 6 (01:03:33):
Are they doing, you know with TikTok shop tomorrow, and
there's a lot of dollars sided into SECO system. One
benefit is the two successive rounds of extensions have forced
a lot of brands to become cross platform. And I
think that we'll see a growing hedging strategy from brands
and leveraging all.

Speaker 7 (01:03:53):
The different social networks, all the different.

Speaker 6 (01:03:55):
Channels, such that if it shifts, they can adapt. I think,
regardless of what happens, this will be a continued source
of income for brands. I think what we don't know
is how it will shift, how the strategies to extract
the most value, how to engage with audiences will come
about in a different way than it has in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Scott Sutton, the CEO of the influencer marketing platform Later.
You can check them out at later dot com. Scott,
that was great. I got to have you back in
the future to talk about the whole influencer thing and
that whole online ecosystem because I'm fascinated by it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
But you're a great guest. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 7 (01:04:31):
Yeah, any time, Ross, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and we
will be right back on Kawa. Listener says Ross, when
is the deal final the TikTok deal? I guess I
know you were going to ask, but now I can
take credit.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
So we don't exactly know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
What we know is that there's going to be this
four month or one hundred and twenty day period where
they're going to try to finalize it. So I think
they're going to try to finalize it, you know, in
that period of time, so that Trump doesn't have to
extend the deadline on the law.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Well, we'll see. This is this is an exceptionally complex deal,
the TikTok thing, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Didn't know that this massive.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
I knew there would be some fee, but you know,
what our guest said was that half of the either
the revenue or profit I'm not sure which, but of
the American TikTok entity is going to get sent back
to the Chinese company Byte Dance.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
I also note.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
That Byte Dance, and part of the reason Trump might
have gone along with this.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
By the way, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
This didn't come up with the guest. Yes, Byte Dance
is the Chinese company, but they have non Chinese investors
who own pretty big pieces. And one of the biggest
non Chinese owners of byte Dance is a guy named
jeff Yass Yass who is a founder or co founder

(01:05:49):
of Susquehanna Trading, one of the biggest financial markets trading
firms in the country.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
He is a billionaire and he is a Trump supporter.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
And maybe that's the reason Trump allowed a deal where
so much money is getting sent back to the Chinese
company because one of Trump's biggest supporters owns a big
chunk of that Chinese company. I just thought of that
now as to I'm like, why would they Why would

(01:06:20):
Trump allow so much money to go back to China.
So anyway, I that's my suspicion. Russ an internet dating scam.
One internet dating scam is to lure a person onto
WhatsApp after texting them for a while, and then begin
to bring up bitcoin investing. I now just block their
phone numbers or the text number when they tell me to.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Chat on WhatsApp.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Will.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
This is all from a topic I did a little
bit earlier in the show. I shared a really wonderful
article with you from the New York Times about a
guy who writes about scams and he almost got caught
up in one. It's a really good piece, and I'm
pretty sure it's in my blog today, Dragon, is that
piece in my blog today?

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Do you know the piece of out scams? Don't recall?

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
It was definitely in my blog yesterday and maybe the
day before and I didn't get to it. And if
I didn't put it in the blog today, I'll make
sure to go. I'll make sure to go put it.
So anyway, there there's that, and yep, it's there the guests, okay, right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
After the guests.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
And I note these days, especially because I found I
found a good way to do this. I I almost
never have a link in the blog where you need
a subscription to read it New York Times. Right, I've
got a way you'll you'll see what it is where
you can read the piece without a subscription to the
New York Times. So I think that's a that's a

(01:07:40):
helpful thing for for a lot of folks. I have
been getting so many texts on my phone that are
just straight up scams and phone calls too.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
But so and they're I mean, they're clever. This is
the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
They're a little bit clever. Most people won't be fooled
by it. But if it CAUs them essentially nothing to
text one thousand or ten thousand or a million phones
and they have a zero point zero one success rate,
they're still making money because on the margin, it costs
them almost nothing. And that you know what I've been

(01:08:16):
getting lately, I've been getting these texts from numbers that
I don't know, that aren't programmed into my phone saying hey,
I'm coming to Denver in November. Wow. Right, So it's
almost like they know I'm in Denver. Although what they
might not actually know who they're texting. What they might
just know is they're texting a three ZHO three area code.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
But it's pretty clever.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
It's pretty clever as a way to make someone who
might not be paying very close attention to think, oh,
maybe this is someone who knows me and I just
hadn't programmed their number into my contexts. Be just be
super super clever, okay, be extra be careful, be diligent
and just even if you're a very very nice, trusting person,

(01:09:05):
when it comes to texts and phone calls that you
don't recognize and that seem even the slightest bit fishy,
assume it's a scam. Assume it's a scam. I saw
a story in the Denver Post yesterday. Here's the headline,
Colorado Representative Jason Crow will help lead Democrats free speech

(01:09:30):
legislation targeting Trump actions.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
The subhead is coming bill motivated.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
In part by pressure to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air,
faces tough path in GOP Congress.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Well, that's true, will.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
I will also note, just as a side before and
aside before I get to this, after Jimmy Kimmel went
back on the air, Trump set out an angry tweet
about that, saying he was really pissed that Jimmy was
back on the air because ABC told the White House
that Jimmy Kimmel had been canceled. But of course ABC
and the White House shouldn't be talking about that. That's
part of the problem going on here is that is

(01:10:03):
that folks in this administration are assaulting the First Amendment
so frequently. It's not just them. Biden did it too.
Lots of presidents have done it too, So I'm not
only pointing the finger at the Trump people, but they're
the ones in power right now now in any case.
So from the Denver Post, Jason Crow is set to
lead the charge in the House as Congressional Democrats draft

(01:10:24):
legislation aimed at deterring officials in the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
From curtailing free speech.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
And here's my take, I'd have a lot more sympathy
for these guys, and I'll be, you know, a lot
more likely to support whatever it is they want to
put out. And maybe I still will depending on what
it is. If they had given a rats ass. Back
when the Biden administration was using the power of government
to leverage Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, we didn't talk

(01:10:50):
about it. A few days ago, though, YouTube announced that
they were reinstating accounts that they had banned because the
Biden administration had told them to.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Said you should probab banned these things.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
And YouTube, which is owned by Google, and then Google
is owned by it's called Alphabet. They said, yeah, a
lot of stuff the Biden administration did was really inappropriate.
So I guess the Biden administration asked them to do
even more than they did. But what they did was
already inappropriate. And we didn't hear boo from any Democrat
about oh this is bad. No, all they wanted to

(01:11:22):
say was, oh, yeah, these evil Republicans want to kill
people with their bad ideas about COVID.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
And there were bad ideas about COVID, right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
There were definitely some absolute nonsense, which doctor snake oil
nonsense out there, but there was also a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Of good important stuff out there, right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
I mean, some people were saying, for example, especially after
the first variants, hey, the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission, and
you got blocked, you got deleted, you got canceled for that.
But it was right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
And now you got all these Democrats. They don't care
about this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
The Constitution they I'm sorry, I know democrats yelled.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
At me yesterday when I said this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Democrats only seem to care about the Constitution when they
can leverage it to try to score political points against Republicans.
And look, spare me the text from democrats who served in.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
The US military.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
If you served in the US military, I think of
you as a person who served in the US military
much more than I think of you as a Democrat.
You took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution,
and I believe you that you care.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
And I'm not talking about all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Democrats when I make this accusation. I'm talking about the
progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
It's not just that they don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
They're explicitly against the existence of a document that limits
the power of government. It's always been true for more
than one hundred years. Anyway. Look, if they write a
bill that is nonpartisan, that doesn't just go after the
Trump administration, but is a blanket statement of support for
the First Amendment in defending it from officious, unconstitutionally oriented bureaucrats,

(01:12:53):
then go for it. But until then, Jason Crow and
people like him do not get the benefit of the
doubt from me. Look at the shit I have to
say it. Maybe I have to say no, you don't
have to say it. I got it, I got it,
I got it. You don't have to say I'll take
care of it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
Dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Just for a second, though, you probably need to come
in here and get my credit card.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
I need you to take care of something for me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
On the text line, a listener sent this, and I
just need your help to respond for me because I'm
busy right now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
This is the UPS store. We're having trouble delivering your
blue Cheese of the Month order. We need a credit
card to ensure prompt delivery. Please respond with your credit
card number asap to avoid any future delay. So if
you could come get my American Express and just text
them and let him know the proper credit card number,
I wo'd appreciate that I can help, because any request

(01:13:39):
for a credit card number over the iHeartMedia text line
must be okay, not oh my gosh, all right? Dragon
Dragon played that tobacco road thingy Denver post headline tobacco
companies aid vape shops in pushing to repeal Denver flavored
tobacco ban raising laws backers. So you are probably well

(01:14:02):
aware if you live in or near Denver, that the
Denver City Council. I think it was like eleven to
one or I don't know, some crazy vote like those.
I think Kevin Flynn was the only one who who.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Voted against it. But anyway, they passed.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
A thing to ban flavor tobacco and nicotine product. So
vapes are you know, really the primary thing here?

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
And so now you've.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Got a whole bunch of companies, and obviously the vape
companies and tobacco companies that are associated with the vape companies,
but also stores that make a lot of money selling
vape stuff are raising a ton of money. They raised
enough signatures, They gathered enough signatures to get this on
the ballot.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
It's Referendum three ten.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
And this group is called Citizen Power exclamation Point, and
they've raised a bunch of money, they got enough signatures.
It's on the ballot, and they are going to try
to overturn the ban on flavored tobacco. Kevin Flynn voted
no because he said, look, people, the main thing here

(01:15:10):
is they're claiming that they don't want young people to
get access to vapes because and they don't and I
don't either, because it will get them addicted to nicotine
and they'll be addicted for many, many years, and it's just,
you know, really bad. And they and they believe, and
I think they're probably right that a lot of these
vape companies put out flavors like watermelon and bubblegum and

(01:15:31):
so on just to just to get the kids hooked.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
Kevin Flynn voted no.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
Saying they're still gonna be able to get all this
stuff anyway, and in the meantime, you're gonna, you know,
do a lot of damage to local businesses. So I
would have been a no on on this. Also, I
think what they need to do is intensify the enforcement
regarding selling to kids and massively increase the penalties and

(01:15:58):
enforce them for to kids. If you'll make the penalty
for selling to kids such that nobody's willing to take
that risk, then kids won't be able to buy it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
In the store.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Maybe they'll get us somewhere else, but they won't be
able to buy it in a store in any case.
The point of this article is that the people who
want to overturn the ban have raised almost twice as
much money as the side that supports the ban.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
I'm bringing this to your.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
Attention because ballots are going to start going out just
in a couple of weeks to denver rights, So I
just want you to keep.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
An eye on that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
The other thing that is a little bit tricky about
this particular one is the way the question is worded.
So if you will say yes, it means you want
to keep the ban, and if you say no, it
means you want to repeal the ban again.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
It's tricky. We'll remind you when ballots go out.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
All right, We got ceophysics professor Paul Biel coming up next,
one of our most frequent guests, most requested guests. And
I actually had a listener who emailed a math thing
that we're going to get to with Paul in a
little bit, saying you should have Paul on to talk
about this, So we will, uh, and I will note
in advance because I will forget later if I if

(01:17:11):
I don't say it now that the listener who asked
about it lives in Abu Dhabi and listens to the
show from there. So so that's pretty cool. So seniophysics
Professor Paul Bill, as I say frequently, a guy who
makes me wish I were back in college and had
a professor like him.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
I did enjoy physics in college.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
I only took I only took one semester of just
basic introductory physics. But Paul, I did get an A
plus in college in basic introductory physics. But anyway, and even.

Speaker 7 (01:17:42):
Pardon you didn't even take Electricitian magnanism.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
I didn't get that far.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Oh God, long story. That would be fun though, right,
and Paul also runs the Buffalo Bicycle Classic, and just
give us seventeen seconds on how the Buffalo Bicycle Classic
was this year.

Speaker 7 (01:18:02):
It was fantastic. We had thirteen hundred riders and we've
got lots of sponsors and people raised money and so
we raised over one hundred thousand dollars for our scholarship fund.
Then we have twenty five students from Colorado high schools
who are at CU now because of the Buffalo Bicycle
Classic Scholarship Fund.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Fantastic. All right, one quick thing before we talk about
black holes. One quick thing where I think, I think
you're going to be very proud of me. So I
like to do things at prime numbers. Right, And we
did a thing earlier in the show where we gave
away some Broncos tickets and I had to tell listeners
at what time they could start texting in to try
to win the tickets. And the way I always do

(01:18:41):
this is whether I'm doing a time that's minutes and
seconds with a colon in between or whatever it is,
I just eliminate the colon and look at the whole number.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
Okay, So if it's like one oh one pm.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
Then I'm asking myself is the number one hundred and
one prime? And if it is, then I can use
that time? Right? So Dragon kept doing in these stupid
things like telling me to use textra number four or
eight or fifteen, and I said no, and then anyway,
and then I said all right, and here's the time
to text in. And I just picked off the top
of my head. I said ten twenty eight and eleven seconds.

(01:19:16):
I said ten twenty eight and eleven seconds.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
I just made that up.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
And then I went to the Google machine and I
typed in, is one O two eight one one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
A prime number? And the answer is yes?

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
How about that?

Speaker 7 (01:19:29):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
Nice?

Speaker 4 (01:19:30):
Long?

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
Yeah, yeah, better to be lucky than good. All right,
you sent me. You sent me some physics about black
holes and black holes merging and stuff that I really
don't understand. And I found a couple of web You
sent me a website. I found another one clearest signal
of two merging black holes. So tell us about this.

Speaker 7 (01:19:53):
Okay, First I am checking to see how what was
your chance that you got that right? M one chance
in eleven that you that that would be a prime number.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
Wait, but you got to narrow it down.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Is it one chance in eleven that any that any
number that could represent a time, so would have to
be within a certain number of digits, right, Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:20:16):
I took the fact number and just randomly if you
chose that number randomly, yeahs a prime number, and the
chance is one in eleven point five.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
All right, all right, not bad. I should go buy
a lottery ticket. All right, So tell us about merging
black holes.

Speaker 7 (01:20:31):
Okay, so about ten years ago a device that was
built in the United States called LEGO. It's a laser
interferometer which they use lasers to measure the link between
two mirrors that are ones in Louisiana and ones in Hanford, Washington.
And the whole goal of that was to try to

(01:20:53):
measure gravitational waves, which were first predicted by Einstein in
nineteen sixteen. And so something really cataclysmic has to happen
to generate a gravitational way big enough to be measurable.
And so what happens. This wave travels through space at
the speed of light. And what it does it slightly

(01:21:15):
changes the length between these two mirrors in a and
you can measure that using this interferometer. And so the
first measurement of a black hole. Collision and coalescence happened
in nineteen to twenty fifteen, and it won the folks
who built that the Nobel Prize in twenty seventeen. So

(01:21:37):
the black hole was about three or four solar masses
and another three or four solar masses and they combined,
and that was the first time in history anyone had
observer observed the universe using something other than electromagnetic waves
or particles.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
So the interferometer, it's really looking at light or is
it looking at something that looking at.

Speaker 7 (01:22:01):
It uses light, it uses lasers. But what it's looking
is the stretching and compressing of space time that happens
as a gravitational wave passes by. So gravitational wave is
a ripple on the fabric of space time.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
So does that work by deflecting a laser beam?

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
Or how is it? How does it measure it?

Speaker 7 (01:22:22):
Well, it just measures. So these two mirrors can they
will differ, their distance between them will differ by less
than the diameter of one proton, and that's enough to
be measurable by this particular laser interferometer. And so this
ripple what you'll see as a little in fact, if
you turn it into a signal, you'll these things go

(01:22:44):
closer and farther apart, and it will create a little signal.
It sounds like and their first data set when you
play it as an audio, sounds exactly like that. And
that characteristic that characteristic sound comes from the calculation that
Einstein could have done had he had supercomputers. And that's

(01:23:08):
what comes from the black hole merger.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
All right, this is going to be a dumb question,
but when two black holes merge to you just get
one more, one larger black hole. And also, if you
had a black hole of I don't know whether you
want to talk about diameters, circumference or volume. But let's
say you had a black hole of one of those
measures of X and another black hole of one of

(01:23:32):
those measures of why.

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
What what is the.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
Measure of the combined black hole in terms of X
and Y?

Speaker 7 (01:23:41):
Okay, So there's only three things you can literally a
black holes has in terms of measurable quantities. It's its mass,
it's charge, and its spin. Okay, And so mass and
its spin are related to what's known as the area
of the black hole is in fact the important thing
that you can measure, and in this recent measurement. It

(01:24:04):
happened in early this year, and it's taken some months
of analysis for the researchers to analyze exactly what happened
in this case. It was black holes of about thirty
or forty solar masses collided with each other and created
a black hole that was twice as big, and the
area of the final black hole is bigger than the

(01:24:25):
area of either of the beginning ones. But the important
thing that Einstein that excuse me, Stephen Hawking predicted in
the nineteen sixties was that the area has to increase
when two black holes come together, and so the final
area has to be bigger than the sum of the
areas of the two individuals. And that's what they were

(01:24:47):
able to measure from the exact details of the woo
that happens in the collision.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
Okay, so I'm going way, way way out of my
league here with this next questions. This is probably going
to be a really stupid question. I would have thought
that it was at least possible that when you combine
these very very massive things, that the increase in the

(01:25:14):
gravitational field caused by the increase in the mass of
these two things would could cause the area of the
combined black holes to be.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
Smaller than the some of the areas.

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
Is that a ridiculous concept, You know, it's clearly wrong,
as you just said, it's wrong. But is it ridiculous?

Speaker 7 (01:25:38):
No, not at all. And in fact, it took you know,
Stephen Hawking to prove that the area can only increase,
and so that caused him to start thinking, and he
worked with another mathematical physicist by the name of Beckenstein,
and they came up with a calculation which showed, oh,
not only is this area interesting and measurable, but it

(01:26:02):
is proportional to the entropy of the black hole. So
the black hole, when stuff goes down into it, it's
sucking in thermodynamic entropy, and the entropy is completely encoded
in the area of the black hole. Wow, we're talking
with all the way back to thermodynamics, the second law
of thermo dynamics.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
We're talking with cuphysics professor Paul Beal. I don't know
if there's some other term, some other units. You can
put this in. A listener wants to know how big
is a solar mass?

Speaker 7 (01:26:34):
Oh solar mass, So solar mass is about ten to
the I'm gonna ten to the thirty something kilograms, okay,
and I forget whether it's thirty or thirty two or
thirty five.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
I did that. I can't remember, all right. And Paul
didn't look that up, by the way. That's just off
the top of his head. So that's how big a
solar mass is. That's a lot. Okay, one more listener question,
even though it's way way off topic and probably a
question that you teach in all of your most basic
basic physics classes, but people ask from time to time.

(01:27:10):
So we'll do this one listener question quickly, and then
we'll do math. Can we travel faster than the speed
of light?

Speaker 7 (01:27:16):
Okay? So, as our theory of the universe does not
allow an object with mass to travel faster than the
speed of light, because it would take an infinite amount
of energy to accelerate the particle, you know, exactly to
the speed of light. So the fastest anything we've ever
created is ninety nine point nine nine percent of the

(01:27:40):
speed of light. And that set the Large Hadron Collider
where they accelerate protons to very very close to the
speed of light.

Speaker 3 (01:27:48):
Wow, all right, excellent answer.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
Okay, let's do some math and this math thing is
actually the thing that caused me to reach out to
you yesterday when a listener inn Abu Dhabi, said, hey, Ross,
have you heard of this?

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
Have you heard of this.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
Thing called the Goldbach conjecture?

Speaker 3 (01:28:07):
And I said no, and I looked it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
Up, and actually I probably have heard of it without
that name, just as the mathematical concept. But it's pretty interesting,
as you and I were talking about on the air.
It's a mathematical concept that's easy enough to understand that
you don't have to be a mathematician to understand the question.

Speaker 3 (01:28:23):
But it turns out it's well nearly.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
Impossible, I guess, because it hasn't been known yet to
prove it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):
So can you can you elaborate please?

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Okay.

Speaker 7 (01:28:32):
So this was a conjecture made by Christian Goldbach, and
he was lived in the seventeen hundreds. He was a
contemporary of Leonard Euler, who I think is the greatest
mathematician in history, and they were communicating and talking to
each other, and Goldbach made this conjecture that every even
number bigger than four can be written as the sum

(01:28:56):
of two prime numbers. So for example, six is three
plus three and eight it can be written as three
plus five, ten, five plus five, fourteen. It can be
written a seven plus seven or three plus eleven. So
you can always find two prime numbers that add up
to every even number. And I would say conjecture, because

(01:29:18):
no one's proven it, but people. It's fairly easy with
a computer now to check two fairly large numbers and
up to numbers with eighteen digits, and them people have
checked is like a yes, every even number is the
sum of two prime numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
Why is this so far for what two and eighty
years impossible to prove?

Speaker 7 (01:29:42):
Well, I will say it's impossible. People are making progress.
There's a weaker form of the conjecture that says, oh,
let's look at odd numbers. Every odd number greater than seven,
it can be written as the sum of three prime numbers,
three odd prime numbers, and and that is people are
it's it's a weaker conjecture because if gold box and

(01:30:07):
original conjecture is true, then this other one is trivitally true.
You can take any of the even numbers that Goldbock
referred to and just add three to it, and that
would give an odd number, and that would count all
of the odd.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
Number m H.

Speaker 7 (01:30:21):
And he and Eiler figured that out immediately. He say, ah,
if we can prove this, then uh uh, that would
be maybe easier. But then the first one, the strong
conjecture would actually have that is a required element that
every odd numbers and some of three odd primes.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
I mean there from time to time you run across
things like this in math, if you're even a little
bit of a math nerd, and I am a little
bit not not to your level, but two, but were
you where there are these these conjectures, these theorems with
you know, fair modern oiler and all these guys and
all these famous theorems, and and some of the theorems. Yeah,
almost have to be a mathematician to even understand the

(01:31:04):
question being posed. But this one is so easy, conceptually easy.
And I don't know whether that I don't know whether
I'm whether I should be surprised that a question that
is so conceptually easy has proven to be so theoretically
difficult to prove.

Speaker 7 (01:31:25):
And there are lots of things like this that seem
to be easy to state, and there's lots of them
we could talk about but have never been able to
be proven so far. But a lot of them have
fallen to the mathematicians who have proven some of these
very hard to prove theorems, like Fairma's last theorem was

(01:31:45):
in the nineteen nineties, and that had stood the test
of three or four hundred years, and so this one,
this one could happen soon. Now there's a one million
dollar prize if someone can either prove it to be
true or to be false. If they can find an
example of a single even number that is not the

(01:32:06):
sum of two primes, then that's enough. That would be
the proof that, yeah, that conjecture is false because there's
a counterexample.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
All right, less, super quick question.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
Then I got to go, do you think your mathematical
skills are close to good enough that it would be
a good use of your time to try to win
that million dollars?

Speaker 7 (01:32:23):
No way, no way. So even the weak conjecture, there's
like a two hundred page paper that's getting closer to
ward to proof, and mathematicians are pouring over that two
hundred page paper and trying to you know, cross all
the t's and dot the i's and everything. I can't
even begin to read the math that's present in that paper.

Speaker 4 (01:32:45):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
If Paul Beale can't even begin to read the math
imagine the rest of us. See you, physics Professor Paul Beial,
Thanks so much. It's great to have you back on
the show.

Speaker 3 (01:32:53):
Sorry it's been so long. We'll do it again soon.

Speaker 7 (01:32:56):
Okay, thank you, ros Ry good one.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
Hey you too, have a great weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
Hey, folks, if you're listening on the podcast right now,
that's the end of today's show. Thank you so much
for listening. Don't forget. You can catch us every day
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