10-07-25 - *FULL SHOW* October 7; Buying The Fort; New Egypt Tomb; Physics Nobel

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's semi professional radio. You want me ready on time?
Come on, come on, you know better than that way
with some.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Legends here Ross Yeah, and I used to tell one
of them, you know, you can't be good and on.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Time, right, I wonder who that was. Don't tell us,
don't tell us. It is Taco Tuesday, which might be
the most important thing you need to know.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Today is Taco Tuesday. Actually was a thing where what
was it.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Taco John had come up with the you know that chain,
Taco John.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
They they came up with Taco Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
And then I think it was Taco Bell did a
Taco Tuesday and Taco John sued them saying you can't
and anyway, eventually I think Taco John actually won, but
eventually Taco John dropped it. So now it's National Taco
Day or National Taco Tuesday.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Today. Today is and I posted this little thing.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Westward has a fun little note the best Taco Tuesday
deals in Denver. So that's up on the blog at
Roscomminsky dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Lots and lots of things.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Are up on the blog at Roscomminsky dot com. I
probably have twenty plus topics, and I'm sure I'm not
going to get to all of them. I hope that
you will do me the favor and the honor of
going to my blog each day or each day that
I have a show rather and if you look at
that day's blogcast, I think you will find it to
be a very useful source of important news links and

(01:24):
a little bit of discussion around them, and then also
some other things that I hope you will find to
be interesting and formative, entertaining, even if not necessarily the
most important earth shattering stuff, but stuff that I hope
you will find fun.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
All Right. I wanted to just start with.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Taco Tuesday for a minute, because I didn't want the
first thing out of my mouth to be about war.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
But today is now two years since.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
The horrific October seventh, twenty twenty three massacre in Israel, and.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
A lot has changed in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
A lot has changed in the world, and we're gonna
I'm only going to talk about it just briefly right here,
and then at ten thirty we're going to have Ruthie
Bloom joining us from Jerusalem, who listeners just love and
I love having Ruthie on the show, and we're going
to talk in more detail with Ruthie Bloom, But just
a couple of quick comments. Right now, there are ongoing

(02:19):
talks in Egypt where Hamas is what We're essentially waiting
for is Hamas to say what they want to change
in the proposed deal in order to agree with it,
and then for the United States and Israel to say, Okay.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
We'll go along with that, but we won't go along
with that.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
In other words, a negotiation, and we're waiting to see
how this negotiation plays out, and whether it plays out
in a way that lets us get to an actual deal.
I don't know that I would call it a piece deal,
but a cessation of current hostilities, and we will see.
The other thing that I want to mention a little
bit more backward looking is keep in mind what has
happened since October seventh. Since October seventh, Israel has essentially

(03:06):
eliminated Iran, at least in the short term as a
nuclear threat, a truly incredible thing.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Has destroyed Hesbelah.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Has almost destroyed Hamas, who's certainly rendered them ineffective as
a military force. They're not all dead, but they can't
do very much because Iran was so weakened and Hesbelah
was so weakened that allowed the rebels in Syria to
throw out Bashar al Asad to kick the Asad family

(03:35):
out of power for the first time in fifty years.
So much has changed and Israel has accomplished an immense amount.
The other side, however, and we have to be honest
about this, is that Israel is losing the pr war.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Much of the American left has been a Semitic for
quite some time, but they're getting a lot more bold
about it. And you also have a lot of people
who call themselves anti Zionists, which just means they're anti
Semitic but don't want to admit it. Israel has a
serious perception problem, though, as so much of the mainstream
media has lied about what's going on in Gaza. And

(04:19):
I'm not saying it's pretty what's going Gaza has been
destroyed and a lot of people have been killed. But
you have these ongoing new version of a blood libel
saying that Israel is committing genocide or that there's mass
starvation in Gaza, and neither one of those is true.
But you've got a lot of people, and especially young
people and young democrats, who have turned against Israel.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
And believe all that nonsense.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
And Benjamin Netanya, who's still being in place, doesn't help that.
Although for the war itself he's probably the right guy,
for everything else, he's not. And So if I could
hope for anything, and I'm not saying any of this
that I'm going to say here is realistic, Okay, But
I'm just saying, if I could hope for anything, it

(05:07):
would be that this deal happens, the hostages come out,
there's a cessation of hostilities in Gaza, and Benjamin and
Yahoo steps down as Prime Minister and some other more unifying.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Figure takes over.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
We'll see, we'll see, all right, moving on, because I'll
come back to that later in the show. Hey, there's
a government shutdown going on.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Did you know? Did you know?

Speaker 5 (05:30):
No?

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Me neither.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
I read about it in the news. So and I'm
only being slightly sarcastic. Isn't it interesting? How I think?
I think the first shutdown that really became big news
was in the Obama administration, when he went out of
his way to make it as painful as possible for
the American people, to try to make it as painful.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
As possible politically for Republicans.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
He kind of accomplished the first he didn't really hurt
Republicans very much, and in fact, typically these shutdowns have
very little political impact. They tend to be more of
an inside the Beltway story. But it's interesting here how
the Trump administration seems to be doing the exact opposite,
which is they seem to be aiming and successfully so
far at having this so called shutdown have as little

(06:19):
impact on the American public as possible, which is pretty clever.
Show the American public how little you need government.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
I'm all for that. So that's that's quite interesting.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now, there was a story about how there were flight
delays at DIA because of a shortage of air traffic
controllers and or TSA personnel.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
There's actually both of these going on.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
There was a time yesterday at Burbank Airport, which is
a secondary airport outside of La secondary airport but still
has a decent number of flights, and they had no
air traffic controllers there yesterday evening for a while. And
so I guess maybe Los Angeles how we're handled that
or something, because some flights still, you know, came and went,
but with massive, massive delays.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
So that's one area where.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
The government shutdown is having some kind of impact, but
all in all, all in all, it's just.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Nothing's happening. People don't care. Really.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
I think the average American probably doesn't think about the
government shutdown even even once aday. It's about a week
old now, so we'll see the other quick thing.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I want to mention on that. So I've told you
that there was a law that was.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Passed in twenty nineteen that says that federal workers will
get all their back pay if there is a shutdown,
and there was a story up at Axios this morning.
White House memo says furloughed federal workers aren't entitled to
back pay, and it sounds like someone at omb is
going to try to argue that the way the law

(07:49):
was written or implemented is quote deficient, that's their word,
and that because of some deficiency in the law, even
though you might think if you read it that it
meant that all for furloughed federal employees are automatically covered
for back pay, the White House may try to argue

(08:10):
that it doesn't, and if so, this is clearly a
way to put massive pressure on Democrats to vote to
reopen the government. Because the Democrats are the party of
federal government workers. I don't know what the percentage is,
but I bet it's eighty twenty something like that, right,
eighty percent Democrat could be more.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Look at Washington d C. Washington, DC, and.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Not everyone in DC is a federal employee, but lots voted.
I think ninety three percent for Kamala Harris something like that.
So anyway, this will be very interesting. I suspect that
the Trump administration will lose in court if it gets
to court. But I think this is more ross if
non essential people in the government have been furloughed, but
then when they get reinstated, they get back pay for
work they didn't do.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Aren't they just getting a paid vacation during the shutdown?

Speaker 1 (08:55):
And the answer to that is yes, But it's actually
a little bit worse than that for the American taxpayer.
Right you would think, well, maybe it's a wash for
the American taxpayer financially because they're getting back pay.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
They would have gotten paid that anyway.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
But it actually does cost the government some amount extra.
I don't know how much, but some amount extra to
do this non standard processing of back pay and do
these calculations and maybe issue these other checks at a
time in a process that isn't automated anymore the way
it normally would be, because it's not happening when it

(09:33):
would normally happen. And so from the perspective of the taxpayer,
the fiscal impact of a shutdown solely regarding the salary
to government workers is worse than there if there had
been no shutdown, because they get all their pay and
it costs the government more to process it.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
So it's actually worse now.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
I got a couple of listener tech related to the
Israel topic, and.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
I think they're both good.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
One's a good question, one's a good comment, and I
want to address them both. Ross's real quick question, what
is Zionism. So there's probably somewhat differing opinions on this,
but I will define Zionism as support for the existence
of Israel as a Jewish homeland, as a Jewish nation,

(10:27):
as a safe place where Jews can go, since so
much of the rest of the world is not safe.
And obviously October seventh showed that Israel wasn't safe that
day either.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
But you know what I mean, and I will.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Know this does not mean to the exclusion of non
Jews in Israel, A fairly significant percentage of Israel's population
is not Jewish. And I also think not a lot
of people know this, but a majority, or at least
a plurality of Israel's Jewish population is not particularly religious.

(11:01):
They would be what you'd call secular Jews, right, very
much like me, right, you know, Jewish, proudly Jewish, doesn't
you know, don't go to synagogue, don't think.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Much about God.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
That's a big percentage of the Israeli population. In the news,
you'll see a lot of times you'll see the hassideam right,
with the black hats and the curl of the.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Pas and all that.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
And sure there's plenty of them there, but that's a minority,
a small minority of the Jewish populations. Just they're on
TV a lot, so people think that they're a bigger
part than they are. So Zionism is support for the
existence of Israel as a fundamentally Jewish nation, but not
to the exclusion of others. So another listener sent to

(11:46):
text that I think is a legitimate comment, and I'd
like to address it straight on.

Speaker 6 (11:52):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
I love your show, but one thing that drives me
nuts is you don't seem to allow for the fact
that everyone who criticizes Israel is not an anti semi,
or I will re that not everyone who criticizes Israel
as an anti semi.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
You're a fan of free speech.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
But you dismiss almost all criticism of Israel as anti Semitic.
Many supporters of Israel reflectively call any criticism anti Semitism
as a way to shut down legitimate to be Okay,
I like that comment.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
It's a fair comment. I want to address it directly.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
So I don't think that every individual who criticizes something
that Israel does is doing it from a position of
anti Semitism, Okay. And I also I definitely don't think
that somebody who doesn't like Benjaminette Yahoo is anti Semitic

(12:43):
anymore than I would think that somebody who criticizes Donald
Trump would be anti whatever religion Trump is or anything
like that. What Shannon, go ahead and say it, or
just anti American right or anti American right. You can
oppose a politician without opposing the nation that he represents,

(13:03):
or without opposing his religion or any of that.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
But the other side of that is these larger.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Movements that call themselves anti Zionists, those groups I am
absolutely convinced are motivated by anti Semitism and anti Zionism.
If you say you don't support the existence of Israel,
then what exactly are you saying? And I'm not talking
to my listener, Okay, this is a generic thing. Then

(13:33):
what exactly are you saying about whether you support the
ability of Jews to even exist in the world. So
I'm not I don't say that. Let me let me
get back to the listener's text.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
You dismiss almost all criticism of.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Israel as anti semitic, when criticisms are very specific, like
the government shouldn't be the govern of Israel shouldn't be
doing this. And here's the reason why I tend to
assume that those criticisms are.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Not anti semitic. Right, it's a policy based thing.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
When I say Donald Trump's administration shouldn't do this, and
here's why I, or or if somebody else says that,
I don't see that as a blanket condemnation of Donald Trump,
And especially if the person who said it has also
said Donald Trump's administration is doing this, and that's right,
and here's why, and that's like me, and and same

(14:34):
with Israel. You know, I don't think that Netnyahu does
everything right. I think he's quite a flawed guy, and
I wish he would go. But when you have these
large groups that are waving Palestinian flags and they say, oh, no,
we're not anti Semitic, we're just anti Zionist, that my
friend is a lie, they are anti Semitic, and they

(14:55):
just won't admit it.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
So I try to have a little bit of subtlety here.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
It's not always possible to get the level of subtlety
that I would prefer across in every moment of every conversation,
but I hope that clarifies a little bit. A listener says, so,
are you saying that the nation of Israel supports including
people who aren't Jewish living in the country. And the
answer is yes, just over seventy three percent seventy three

(15:21):
points something percent of the population is Jewish and the
rest of the rest most of them are Arabs, and
of those most are Muslim. But there's a fair number
of Christians and some others as well.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And the thing with Israel is they're very tough.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
I mean, it's the only place in the Middle East
that somebody of any religion can live freely and practice
their religion freely, but it is critically important that it
remained primarily a Jewish nation.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
That is its function.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
So it's not Jewish to the exclusion of everybody else,
but it is a place that is supposed to be
a Jewish homeland, given what has happened to Jews throughout history.
All Right, moving on, I got lots of other stuff
to talk about today. So yesterday I made a couple
of predictions that I want to amend, where I predicted

(16:15):
that former NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez would spend not more
than a month in jail and might plead guilty to
avoid a trial. But I said at the time that
he was only facing misdemeanor charges, and that was in
my mind.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Then we learned.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yesterday after my show that he's now facing a felony.
It's a low level felony, but it's still a Class
five felony, but it's still a felony charge.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
And so in that case.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
I think, if you were convicted, and if there's no
plea deal, I think the lowest sentence for a battery
involving serious bodily injury, which is the charge he's facing.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
In Marion County, Indiana.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
The low end sentence there is a year up to
six years. So now that I know he's been charged
with a felony, I'm not going to stand by my
prediction that he will plead guilty, and in fact he didn't,
and I'm not going to stand by my prediction that
he will only serve a week or three weeks in jail.

(17:20):
That was what I thought when all the early reportings
said he was only charged with a misdemeanor. But apparently
the prosecutor there looked at the totality of the circumstances
a little bit more and decided that the situation deserved
a felony, a felony charge. Apparently, this dude, sixty nine
year old dude, had a truck.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Backed up to a loading dock at.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
A hotel, and he works for a business that collects
and recycles and disposes of cooking oil from commercial kitchens,
and so he was there and for some reason, Mark Sanchez,
whom to have been drunk or stoned or something probably
maybe all of the above, like just out of his mind,

(18:06):
showed up and started telling that guy he can't be
at the loading dock. And the guy originally thought that
Mark Sanchez might have been the hotel manager because he
was dressed somewhat nicely. And then everything blew up and
there was a big fight and the guy Pepper sprayed
Sanchez and stabbed him. And I won't go through all
that again, but in any case, in any case, Sanchez

(18:27):
now facing felony.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
All right, you know what, I was gonna do this
yesterday and I didn't.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
I think I'm gonna do it now, especially since today
is the two year anniversary of October seventh, and we've
been talking about Israel a little bit, and I want
your advice on something.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
I want your advice on something.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
So my kid, my younger kid, he's in high school
and he drives himself to school, and like lots of kids,
drives himself to school in the school parking lot with
hundreds and hundreds of other kids cars. And he asked

(19:07):
me a few days ago, hey, dad, do you think
I should put a sticker on my car of the
Israeli flag? And my kid, I haven't talked to him
a lot about the whole Israel situation. It's very interesting, though.

(19:30):
Let me just let me just talk to you know,
talk to my friends here for a minute, and I
mean you, I have two very different kids. Could hardly
be more different from each other. In fact, it bums
me out a little bit. But my two kids have
almost no relationship with each other.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
They don't.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
I mean, the older kid has moved away now to
go to a community college in Seattle. But even when
they were both here, these kids almost never talked, never
did anything together.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
And I will.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Say I had almost no relationship with my sister, who
is about the same age gap younger than me. Then
you know my kids are from each other. We couldn't
have been more different, right. I was a late bloomer nerd,

(20:32):
president of the Science Club, French Honor Society, you know,
chess club, this kind of nerd, That's what I was.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
And my sister is like.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
A popular kid, cheerleader two years younger.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
We had nothing in common. We had nothing in common.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
And now she and I are great friends and we
talk all the time. And my relationship with my sister
is the best's ever been. And so I'm not without
hope that my kids will have a good relationship later.
Well we'll see, but that's not my main point. My
older kid, Okay, I keep getting text messages from listeners

(21:16):
asking me to give you an update. I mentioned to
the other day that one of my kids college teachers
made some comment in class about how Israel is committing genocide,
and I also noted that my kid is not taking
any class where such a comment would be appropriate.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
I think my kid is taking.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Two math classes, some kind of English.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Class, and a science class.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
No history, no politics, no comparative religion, no nothing that
would ever invite a comment about about Israel.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
And I was talking to.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
My kid the other day and said about, how about
that one teacher who mentioned Israel, and my kids said,
what do you mean?

Speaker 3 (22:03):
One teacher was all of them, all of them, And.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
My kid is Jewish, proudly Jewish, spent the summer in Israel,
including doing doing a bunch of sort of charity work
rebuilding a bomb shelter.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
And a park.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
In a particular small town or village. And my kid
is asking me questions like, d is it true that
Israel is committing genocide? And I have to explain all this,
and I won't go through my answers with you now
in the interest of time.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
But of course the short answer is not just no,
but hell.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
No, but the other kids in the classes are apparently
just nodding their heads along and believing what the teachers
are saying. And these idiot bleephole teachers are creating a
generation of anti Israelis and anti Semites because most people.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Don't really separate the two. Getting back to what I
was talking about.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Before, and so I mentioned also that I sent an
email to multiple people at the college and the college.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
System that.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
My kid is enrolled in, and I have not received
any response. I sent to, you know, people like the
board of directors essentially of the college system and the
dean of the college and.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
People like that.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
I sent to maybe five people, and I tried also
to add a group email that would go to the
entire board of directors or whatever they call it their
version of you know how CU as a board of regents.
They don't call it that, but something like that. So
I tried to get this message out to a lot
of people. At the time, I only thought it was
one teacher. I never got a response, and I don't
expect to get a response because I would think that

(24:03):
their lawyers would tell them you better not respond.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
With the Trump administration in place, right.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
They don't want to say anything in an email where
they admit that a teacher or more than one teacher
is doing that, so I don't have a response now.
On the other hand, my other kid, the one who's
still living at home, the one who's still in high school,
he's pretty hardcore the other way, right. He thinks that

(24:30):
the Palestinians are mostly terrorists, and I tell them, well,
they're not mostly terrorists, but they do mostly support terrorism.
And that might sound pretty hardcore to you if you
don't really know what's going on over there, and if
you get, you know, all of your news from CNN
or NBC, although I doubt that most people listening to
my show get their news that way.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
My kid is pretty hardcore.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
And my kid is sick of the idiot anti Semites
because he knows that being an anti c is synonymous
with being an idiot and being ignorant. There are theoretically
anti Semites who who might have high IQs, but they
are exceptionally ignorant. And my kid asked me, should I

(25:16):
put a Star of David flag of Israel on my
car to show my support for Israel and push back
against these anti Semites, whether they are teachers, and I
don't think he's experienced any anti semitism from a teacher
in high school, but certainly you hear it from students,
and I want to push back on them. And I

(25:36):
want to know from you at five six six nine zero,
if that were your kid, what would you say to
the question of, hey, Dad, should I put a flag
of Israel sticker on my car? I want to know
what you would tell your kid if your kid asked
you that. Text me at five six six nine zero
and tell me. And I'll tell you what I'm going

(25:59):
to do, because I don't want.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
To color your answers.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
I don't want to give you a frame or a
psychological anchor for whatever answer you're gonna give me.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
So here's what I'm gonna do.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
I'm gonna switch to a different story for just a
minute or two, and then I'm gonna come back to
this and tell you what I told him, what I
told my son.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Okay, So I want.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
You to text me right now at five six six
nine zero and tell me what you would tell your
kid in that situation. And like I said, I'll come
back to it. I'll come back to it in a moment, Okay.
So I'm trying to I hate it when I try
to get an article here on the studio computer and
then it wants me to log in, But I think

(26:47):
I've probably found a way around it, so let's see. Okay,
this is kind of remarkable. AI stories are everywhere. I
love talking about AI. I'll have more AI to talk
about later in the show, but this story is from yesterday.
Reuter's US senator asks judges if they used.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
AI in withdrawn court rulings.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Now, look, it's one thing if a student cheats a
little bit and uses AI, and I'm not saying that's good,
Or if a business uses AI and maybe happens to
make a little mistake, they're gonna suffer with whatever the.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Results of that mistake might be. But listen to this.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley yesterday asked two
federal judges to answer questions about whether artificial intelligence was
used to prepare recent orders that contained substantive errors. Grassly
sent letters to two judges. I won't bother you with
their names and all that. Grassy asked the judges whether

(27:42):
and how they their clerks or court staff used generative
AI or automated tools to prepare orders in certain legal cases.
He asked them to explain the human drafting and review
done before issuing the orders, the cause of the errors,
the measures, and the measures these judges have taken to

(28:02):
guard against similar errors in the future.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Judges remember have issued fines against lawyers who have used
AI in cases where the AI comes out with errors
and lies. One of the judges in Mississippi replaced an
order in July that he had issued in a civil

(28:28):
rights lawsuit after lawyers for the state said in a
court filing that the judges order contained quote incorrect plaintiffs
and defendants, oh my gosh, didn't even have the right
participants in the case, and included allegations that were not
in the complaint. The judge did not give an explanation

(28:49):
for the original ruling, just saying it contained clerical errors,
referencing improper parties, and factual allegations. He also didn't make
the original faulty ruling available publicly, even after a request
from lawyers for the government. And then another judge just

(29:11):
went in New Jersey withdrew a ruling that he issued
in a securities lawsuit, and I'm quoting it still from
Reuters after defense attorneys told the court that the decision
made factual errors and included quotes that lawyers said were
not in the cited cases.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
A person familiar with the circumstances in the New Jersey
case had previously told Reuters that research produced using AI
was included in a draft decision that was inadvertently placed
on the public docket before a review process.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
And it is remarkable how AI can I don't know
whether you want to say, be wrong or lie. I mean,
it does sort of feel like it's lying. He's not
doing it with intention. AI doesn't have an intention. AI
is just a prediction machine. AI is just guessing what
should the next word be, based on what was the

(30:09):
next word after this combination of words. In the billions
of other times, I've seen a combination of words like that.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
It doesn't have an intention. But to cite a case.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
For AI to say based on the decision of uh,
you know, producer Dragon versus ACME Widget Factory case, I
think that YadA YadA, YadA.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
And then quote from that case, but have.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Those quotes be quotes that actually don't exist.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
In the case.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
That's a pretty remarkable thing. And so now it looks
like you got at least two judges that.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
Have done that.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
They used AI, they didn't review it, they gave it
as an order or posted it publicly. And now we'll see,
you know, if there's any place that needs to be really,
really careful about how they use AI and not making mistakes,
it's the law that's right up there with a medical

(31:10):
doctor right using AI, you better not get a raw. Okay,
that's the story I wanted to share with you. Now
let me go back to my other thing, and I'm
gonna take a take a look at listener listener texts here.
So all right, most most people, most people, but not

(31:34):
all are giving the same answer that I gave my son.
And it's an answer I feel a little bit ashamed of,
although I probably shouldn't because it's not so much a
comment about me, And that's what shame is is a
comment about oneself, as it might be a comment about
the world we live in right now. And my sort

(32:00):
of my son was do not put a sticker on
your car, because either you will get beaten up or
your car will get vandalized or both. And it's and
it's just it's not worth it. I realize you want
to give that, essentially a middle finger to the anti
Semites at your school, and of course they deserve it.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Of course they deserve it.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
But some coward will be walking by your car when
you're not even around, and they're gonna see the sticker
on your car and they're gonna drag a key across
the side of your car, or they're gonna kick it
and you know, dent it or something. And most listeners
have said the same thing. Ross, I wouldn't put a
sticker on the car. It's gonna get damaged.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
If you have a sticker on the car in today's climate,
you might expect there to be negative responses.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
To it, like keying or flat tires. Ross. I would
tell my kids.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Not to put something like that on the car because
it isn't worth the expense of having to repair vandalism.
And I guess I would ask what's the purpose? Bumper
stickers don't change minds. I think they are better to
make someone laugh or offer encouragement. Funny bumper stickers are
the best. Now, I do get that point. Although I'm
not gonna go all the way there with you, I

(33:19):
do think there is some value in showing the world that, hey,
there are people out here who are supporters of whatever
this thing is. I mean, for crying out loud, there
are people who are willing to put Oakland Raiders or
whatever they're from now, Raiders stickers on their cars. If

(33:40):
you're not embarrassed about putting a Raiders sticker on your car,
nobody should be embarrassed about putting an Israeli flagsticker on
your car. And there's nothing funny about a Raiders sticker.
So I'm not look I love funny bumper stickers, but
I do think that there is something useful in reminding
people that there are supporters of this thing or that

(34:01):
thing out there. But I have to say I do
feel a little bit better. I do feel a little
bit better seeing how many of you gave the same
answer I get, because you know for me what I do,
and I don't have it today. But I often wear
a Star of David necklace with a beautiful little Star

(34:21):
of David where the center of it is gorgeous mostly
green stone that my older kid bought in Israel on
that summer trip and brought home and gave to me,
And I do wear that from time to time. I
warrant for probably a year straight, starting a little bit
after the attacks that happened two years ago.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Today.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Hmm, listener, text, my daughter is married to a cop.
Her blue line flag has been targeted. Yeah, Ross, we
tell each other no stickers of any message unless it's
a junkie car and collecting insurance money is worth it.

Speaker 7 (35:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
I actually I feel a lot better. I feel a
lot better. Thank you for that. I was I was
wondering whether I was being a coward in a way.
But the thing is, if I told him to put
a sticker on the car or it is his idea,
But if I said go ahead, he's the one taking
the risk, not me. So I'm trying to protect my

(35:23):
kid's physical safety. And it's true, I'm also trying to
protect my financial safety if that if his car were
to get badly damaged. And I just don't think, I
just don't think there's the upside. Ross and Oakland Raiders
sticker is funny because the Raiders are a joke. All right,

(35:44):
all right, thank you so much for your insights. This
is one of the great things about this show for
me is when you help me sort through things like
this and you know, oftentimes, oftentimes you make me think
I had something wrong. This time you made me think
I had something right.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
That the Fort Restaurant out there in Morrison, the real
Colorado institution, is being sold. It was founded in nineteen
sixty three and has been in the hands of one
family this whole time, and it's being sold to a group,
a local group, a Denver group called City Street Investors,
and joining us to talk about their purchase of the

(36:27):
Fort and their vision for it going forward and why
this was an interesting deal for them. Is Joe Vostries,
who is co founder and principal of City Street Investors.
That is their website as well, by the way, if
you want to learn more about them, citystreet investors dot com.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Hey Joe, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it absolutely.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
One very quick thing before we get to the specifics
of the Fort. I'm interested in what you guys do
at City Street Investors, especially on the restaurant side of things,
because it seems like you've got an interesting thing going there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Our company really is all about place making, and we
are in the restaurant business and we really see our
restaurants as being instrumental in our placemaking efforts, and we're
you know, we're particularly interested in historic preservation. So people
will know us from the as the co developers of

(37:24):
Denver Union Station. My partners and I own and operated
Larimer Square for twenty two years. We're involved in projects
like the Evans School, the historic Evans School that we
just opened south of the Denver Art Museum, and then
people know us for a lot of our mostly probably

(37:44):
for our beer gardens. So we've got Lowry beer Garden,
Edgewater beer Garden, or vat A beer garden. There's the
school Yard beer Garden in Valley Ranch beer Garden. And
we've got some other cool historic projects like people may
remember Billy's in which is we still operates, been in
business since nineteen twenty three. So we love historic properties.
We love these legacy properties around Denver, our home, and

(38:12):
so we're always looking to be involved in something where
we think our skill set can help preserve a historic
asset and legacy projects, including something as unbelievably cool.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
As the fort.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah, and I'll just say in passing Schoolyard beer garden,
that's a great concept and I wish my school yard
it had a beer garden when I.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Was a kid.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Okay, so you're buying the fort. The obvious question.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Is why is why? Yeah? Why?

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Well, as you could probably imagine from what I just
the list of things were involved in, this just fits perfectly.
It's a great fit. It's a fantastic historic structure. We
have the hospitality capability to take it on, and we're
just really like the idea of preserving it. It's such
an amazing backstory. You know, this guy Sam Arnold. I

(39:07):
have no idea how he got this crazy idea to
duplicate Ben's Fort, you know, out in Morrison, but he
did in the early sixties, and you know, reproduced it
brick by brick, you know, just perfectly moved his family
in there. And then somewhere along the line, I think
he figured out, if I'm going to be able to
sustain this thing, I'm gonna have to make some money

(39:29):
out of it, and he turned it into a restaurant.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
And so for sixty.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Three years it has been serving up you know, bison
steaks and rattlesnake, and it has really become, I think
a really important part of the cultural fabric of.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
The Denver area.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
I think it's a it's a really it's kind of
almost like a museum and a restaurant all in one,
but an important cultural asset.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
This is the first place I ever had Rocky Mountain oysters.
All yeah, A lot of me and a lot of
other people, all right. So and I get it, obviously,
I know why you want to buy it. Like who
who wouldn't want to buy it? If they were in
your business and had the chance to buy it. Everybody
would probably want to buy it. But my professional background

(40:13):
is really finance, And so I want to ask you,
and you know, you don't have to get too specific
about the forts, and I'm sure you wouldn't anyway, But
how do you think about something like this from an
investment perspective versus how much of it is a labor
of love? You know, are you targeting an x percent

(40:35):
ROI do you not think of it so much that way?
As long as you're confident that you won't lose money?

Speaker 3 (40:41):
How do you approach a deal like this?

Speaker 2 (40:45):
You know, that's a good question, and we do get
asked that sometimes, And I'll be honest with you. We
have to make money ross. We can't do what we
do if we don't make money. You know, this is
an expensive property and we're going to invest quite a
bit of money in it as well. And the only
way we can continue to do that is to you know,
operate profitably. So yes, when we invest equity, we've got

(41:07):
to get a good return on it, and you know,
as long as we're confident that we can do that,
we're willing to take the risk. And we've been lucky
that we've had so much success doing it, and that's what's.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
Enabled us to continue to be able to, you.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Know, invest in things like Denver Union Station, Hangar two
in Lowry, or the Evans School.

Speaker 4 (41:27):
Is because we've been successful not.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Just with our real estate operations but running successful and
profitable restaurants. So you know, we do need to get
a reasonable rate of return or otherwise we're just not
going to be able to keep doing this.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
We're talking with Joe Vostries, who is co founder of
City Street Investors, the group that's buying the Fort restaurant
out there in Morrison. I just have about two minutes
left to give me fairly short answers. What are one
or two things that you are quite confident you will
be investing in in terms of improvements at the Fort, I.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
Think the biggest thing is just some of the systems.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
It's a sixty three year old building and we're going
to be taking a really hard look at everything from
plumbing and air conditioning and heat to diss the grounds
and investing in some of the furnishings and finishes in
the building. But our goal is to we're not going
to fix what ain't broken, So we're going to be
taking a very gentle hand to all this.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
All right, And then my last question for you is
a little bit more macro and generic rather than Fort specific.
So the costs, the input costs mean the food costs
and labor costs of running a restaurant are much higher
than they used to be.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
And of course, in order for a restaurant to be
able to.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Stay in business, the menu prices have had to go
up quite a lot. And again I haven't been to
the Fort in a while, but I assume that their
prices are up a lot too. Everywhere is as somebody
who is who owns quite a few restaurants, bars and
grills and so on, how do you manage those costs?

(43:03):
How do you manage restaurant pricing in such a way
that you don't end up having people say I just
can't afford to eat out anymore.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
It's a huge challenge for us, and the industry I
think is in a bit of a crisis over this.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
Right now.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
I will just tell you candidly that we don't make
as much money as we used to. The margins have
gone way way down, and everybody in the business you
know will tell you that you just simply cannot pass
on the cost of food and the increasing labor costs
that we've had over the past five or six years.
Otherwise Hamberg would have to be thirty dollars, So we've

(43:44):
had to really tighten our belts.

Speaker 4 (43:46):
The other thing for the staff is that.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Next time you walk into a restaurant in your local restaurant,
you'll probably notice that there's no longer any bussers or hosts,
or you'll.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
Notice the staff is a lot smaller than it used
to be.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
And so restaurants are really having to get ultra efficient
with labor to try and to try and maintain a
margin and keep the doors open.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
But it's an ongoing challenge.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
That the one thing that does help is if you
can really have a high volume restaurant, you know, do
a lot of sales that, more than anything else, will
help ensure your survival and success. And so we've got
to work really hard to make sure that we could
do the sales and just run a tight, tight ship.
But it's a big challenge for everyone.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Does does the Fort fall into that category of high
volume of sales restaurant?

Speaker 4 (44:37):
It does.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Holly Ken, who's been running the restaurant since she took
over her from her dad, Sam Erarnold in the nineties.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
Holly has done an amazing.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Job with the restaurant and it does very high sales.
It does a huge event business, and it's a big restaurant. Yeah,
there have seats like four hundred people and they can
do events all the time, and it's just it's such
a it's so popular with out of town guests. And
you know, if your friends come to town and you
want to take them somewhere and give them a taste
to the Old West, it's it's an amazing place to

(45:06):
take them. And so she's done a fabulous job with us,
but she's ready to move on to her next chapter,
and so we're taking over the stewardship of this from her.

Speaker 4 (45:17):
But we hope we can be as successful as.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
She can, and we're just going to keep it going.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Joe Voustries is co founder and principal of City Street Investors.
Their website is Citystreet Investors dot com. They're the group
buying the Fort restaurant out there in Morrison.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Joe, thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
And I'm very glad that a local group that's passionate
about the things that you are passionate about is you know,
are going to be the folks owning the Fort next.
That makes me much happier than some you know, soul
lists Philadelphia based restaurant group that doesn't really care about
too much. So I'm I'm glad to know you you're
on this.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Well, thank you, and I want to take this opportunity
to say that we have partners in the project, Resondoget
with Ravesco, who's a local developer Investors, our partner on
the project. He's the guy that ran elitch Is for
the last decade or so. So we've got a great
local partner there too. So between the two of us,
we're going to make sure this steward this thing into
the future.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Joe Vostries, thanks for your time, appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back on Kawa.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
So we have the shutdown going on that most Americans
probably haven't even noticed and barely care about.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
I just want to talk briefly.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
About what's going on behind the scenes where what the
Democrats want. The Democrats want to add another one and
a half trillion dollars with a tea over a decade
in additional spending, primarily for healthcare. And in particular, what
they want is to extend what we're supposed to be

(46:55):
temporary additional government subsidies towards Obamacare that allowed some people
who paid a little bit.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
For their Obamacare insurance to.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Instead pay nothing, and some people who made too much
money to get Obamacare subsidies.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
To start getting subsidies. And Democrats want to continue this. Now.
I told you that.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
I think if I were to try to name a
prominent Republican who would be one of the first to
cave on this, my guess is.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Because Donald Trump is not a fiscal conservative, and it
is true that he did allow some modifications to medicate
in the Big Beautiful Bill, but he's always campaigned against
reforming entitlement programs, and we will see how it plays out,
but I would I would expect Trump to be happy
to give the Democrats much of what they want.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Now here's another thing to keep in mind.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Remember that Trump is not a conservative and MAGA is
not a conservative movement. There are conservatives in it, but
it's a populist movement.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
There aren't really liberals in it.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
But there are people who don't have what you might
call a strong ideological core.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
And that is not meant as an insult.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
They're just not hardcore conservatives when they think about politics.
They don't think that way. They think, you know, I
want what in their mind is best for the country,
make America great again. But since they're not conservatives, they're
not worried about, well, will this program make government bigger?
Will this program cost more money? Is this program constitutional?

(48:35):
They don't think that way, and neither does Donald Trump.
And there are quite a few Americans who, including in MAGA,
who want to go along with Democrats and want to
extend the temporary subsidies. Remember Milton Friedman said there is

(48:56):
nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. And I
just want to say, if Republicans can't get rid of
temporary extended Obamacare subsidies while still leaving in place all

(49:17):
of the original Obamacare subsidies. If they can't get rid
of the temporary ones put in under COVID and then
extended for a year a little bit after COVID under
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, if they can't get rid of that,
they'll never get rid of anything. Even the Medicaid stuff
they did in the big Beautiful Bill is kind of

(49:38):
smoke and mirrors.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
They talk about how they're getting people off of Medicare
and putting in work requirements and so on, But really
most of what they're going to do that's going to
kick people off of medic Did I say Medicare Medicaid.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
What they're really doing.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
That's going to get people kicked off of Medicaid is
they're going to make the paperwork for the work requirements
so onerous that a lot of people will fail to
do the paper work and they'll get kicked off of Medicaid,
even though otherwise they do qualify. And I don't like that.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
I do want people off of Medicaid, but I want
them off for the right reasons.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
I want government to say you know, we're gonna make
it harder to qualify basically and get people off that
way instead of doing this nonsense paperwork stuff like, well, yeah,
you do, you make so little money that you would qualify,
and you actually do qualify, at least theoretically based on
the amount.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Of work that you're doing.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
But we're gonna kick you off of it because you
couldn't do this extra.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Forty pages of paperwork twice a year.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
It's nonsense. It's nonsense, it's bad government, it's wrong. So
in any case, I just wanted to keep an eye
on this because there are plenty of MAGA people.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
There are some Republican.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
House members in swing districts and a few squishy Republican
senators who probably would go along with Democrats in extending
the so called temporary subsidies and the temporary tax credits.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
And I'm just here to.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Tell you that if Republicans go along with that, then
they're even more useless than I already thought. When we
come back, Ruthie Bloom joins us from Jerusalem, one of
the show's favorite guests. It is October seventh, so I
won't use the word anniversary.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
I save that for good things.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
It's a commemoration perhaps two years since the horrendous, murderous
invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists on October seventh, twenty
twenty three, and joining us to talk probably more about
what's going on right now than about what happened that day.
Is one of our favorite guests and one of my

(51:49):
listeners request Ruthie Bloom so much, and it's been too
long since we've had her. Ruthie is a senior contributing
editor at JNS so JNS dot org. She's a former
advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
And this may be news since.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
The last time we talked, but Ruthie also co hosts
a podcast called.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
Is Real Undiplomatic, So.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Welcome back and give me a few seconds on the
podcast before we jump into everything else.

Speaker 6 (52:19):
Okay, well, my podcast is weekly and I do it
with Mark Regev, who's the former Israeli Ambassador to the
United Kingdom.

Speaker 5 (52:30):
And what he and I.

Speaker 6 (52:31):
Do is we show how you can have basically the
same worldview but totally disagree on the details.

Speaker 5 (52:38):
So he and I kind of I would say, we don't.

Speaker 6 (52:41):
Have heavy duty arguments, but he's much squishier than I am.

Speaker 5 (52:46):
I'm much more outright opinionated right wing.

Speaker 6 (52:51):
So we discuss the issues of the day, I mean
of the week, of course, because it's a weekly podcast,
and it's on YouTube.

Speaker 5 (52:59):
It's on JA and STV on YouTube.

Speaker 6 (53:01):
And I also posted on social media, except untruth social
and also on Facebook.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
I was watching a conversation and I think it might
have been with someone else, but you you said, talking
about this Trump plan that is being negotiated in Egypt
right now, you said that you don't think of it
as a quote unquote peace plan, but as something else,
And I thought that was very interesting, subtle distinction.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Could you elaborate on that.

Speaker 6 (53:37):
Yes, the word piece is so inappropriate in this context.
First of all, whenever you hear the word piece, you
have the duck, especially if you're Israeli. All right, this
is a plan, and it's a plan to end the
war in Gaza with an Israeli victory over Hamas.

Speaker 5 (53:55):
That's what this is. Okay to call it peace?

Speaker 6 (53:58):
You cannot make peace with Jihadis, bloodthirstate terrorists. Okay, there
is no such thing as peace with them.

Speaker 5 (54:07):
What you can do?

Speaker 6 (54:08):
What the reason that President Trump calls it a peace plant,
not only Trump, I mean Prime Minister Antonio does do
is because they're thinking of the future peace like the
Abraham Accords with the whole region.

Speaker 5 (54:20):
Peace in the region once we get rid of the.

Speaker 6 (54:23):
Jihadis and we have a let's say, a coalition of
anti around countries, et cetera, like the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
But you know, you could call that.

Speaker 5 (54:34):
A deal.

Speaker 6 (54:36):
Between countries that have shared interests. But you know, you
have to be careful of throwing that word around peace
because the Oslo Accords were a peace process and every
so called peace process we've had with Palestinians has been
a disaster. And may I also say that two of
the countries sitting with Trump or acting now as mediators

(54:58):
or in on this plan are Katar.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
And Turkey, two sworn enemies of Israel's.

Speaker 6 (55:05):
Qatar is also a sworn enemy of the West, though
it buys influence all over Europe, the United States and Israel.
It houses Hamas, it supports Hamas financially. Turkey the same
thing is pro Hamas. So you have two pro Hamas
countries involved in mediating this deal.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
All right.

Speaker 6 (55:24):
So the main thing, and what was beautiful about it
is it was the first time a deal was proposed
that actually put the onus on Hamas. First release all
the hostages, and then maybe we'll let you live and
then we'll talk about who runs Gaza afterwards.

Speaker 5 (55:40):
Et cetera.

Speaker 6 (55:42):
With an Israeli partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza a peace
it ain't so.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
I don't know exactly what's in it for Cutter and Turkey,
but let's just say that for some reason they think
it's in their interest to make this deal happen.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Maybe Trump is offering.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Them something or threatening something that we don't know about.
I don't know, but let's just stipulate that for some
reason Turkey and Cutter want this deal to happen. Is
that a big enough change in the overall dynamic that
it could pressure Hamas to go along with something that

(56:26):
they never would have gone along with before, especially if
they come to believe that their financial flows will be
cut off.

Speaker 5 (56:37):
Oh definitely. And first of all, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 6 (56:39):
Of course, Kantar and Turkey are getting something from the
United States, and.

Speaker 5 (56:45):
Also they're afraid.

Speaker 6 (56:46):
But now just Katar also had another insective, not just
to get something from the United States and Trump, but
Israel recently attempted an assassination of the Hamas leaders sitting
in Katar.

Speaker 5 (57:02):
Now, the the attempt.

Speaker 6 (57:04):
Was not very successful because only about three or four
people were killed, and though they were the one of
them was a Katari security guard and for that Prime
Minister Nta apologized to Doha.

Speaker 5 (57:18):
The others were Hamas but lower down, not the big
officials that we wanted.

Speaker 6 (57:25):
But what it did was make was make Katar nervous
that it's not it's no longer impenetrable, you see.

Speaker 5 (57:34):
So it actually was a successful operation.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Is now Trump has gotten in Yahoo to promise, uh,
the qataris that he won't do it again. So I
don't know if that incentive still exists.

Speaker 6 (57:50):
Well, you know he did. He said they're not going
to do it again. But you know, first of all, uh,
and that could be true. But you see, if Katar,
for example, kicks the Hamas leaders out of Doha, that's
one that's one point of incentive for Hamas.

Speaker 5 (58:09):
To release the hostages. You see.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
It's not just cutting off their funding, it's saying, okay,
you have no home here anymore.

Speaker 5 (58:15):
So we'll see.

Speaker 6 (58:16):
And yes, it's not a great thing to promise a
country that you're not going to go after the terrorists
in it, Natania, I wasn't going after Katar, he was
going after Hamas, and.

Speaker 5 (58:28):
I wasn't happy with that vow.

Speaker 6 (58:30):
But I'll tell you, President Trump has been so fantastic
to Israel that I'm sure that Nataniello, you know, he
picks his battles, and he certainly wants no battles with
the White House, not in this administration for sure.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Right.

Speaker 6 (58:44):
So you know, the issue now is as we've seen,
Hamas is already starting to feel like it's a partner
in negotiations rather than a defeated jihad the entity that
the United States and all these other countries are pressuring
and Israel they're now saying, oh, well, first of all,

(59:06):
maybe we won't be able to find all the bodies
of the dead hostages, and anyway, we'll return some of
the hostages if Israel first with draws and etc.

Speaker 5 (59:17):
So the only question.

Speaker 6 (59:18):
Now is how does the United States and how to Israel,
how do they respond, How do we respond to that?

Speaker 5 (59:27):
Hamas seems not to realize or it's trying.

Speaker 6 (59:31):
To still be a player here, and that's the one
thing it should not be.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
So one of the things that I think is important
to remind Americans Westerners generally when analyzing this particular situation,
because it's not something that we in the West have
much experience with, is that Hamas and in particular the
young fighters in the street don't care if they die.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
In fact, it might be beyond that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
It might they might be seeking death in the service
of martyrdom to go get their seventy two virgins and
all that. You know, you might have a few overweight
guys in Saville row suits living off of three hundred
million dollars of stolen aid money that they've gotten in

(01:00:21):
their Swiss bank accounts and they're living in Doha. But
these but these seventeen year olds in Gaza, they don't
care if they die.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
How does that figure into this whole conversation. I'm still
unclear on what the incentive is for at least the Gozzen,
the people, the Hamas members who are actually in Gaza.
I don't see what's in it for them to go
along with any of this if they don't care if
they die.

Speaker 6 (01:00:50):
Well, it's not so clear that the younger, the younger guys,
like you said, these seventeen year olds don't care if
they die. Who doesn't care if they die? Who wants
them to die? Are their battalion commanders, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
And the leadership, of.

Speaker 6 (01:01:04):
Course, Sinwar wanted them all to die, and that's why
the international community said, oh my god, you're killing all
these innocent Palestinians.

Speaker 5 (01:01:12):
He put them in harm's way. But he also, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:01:15):
Many of them were terrorists, most of them terrists, but
he was happy to put women and children in harms
way purposely while Israel was sending flyers into Gaza and
making phone calls and telling Gozins to please get out
of the way because we're about to bomb this tunnel
or this building that is housing missile factory, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (01:01:36):
So the leaders don't care, but the leaders do care
about themselves.

Speaker 6 (01:01:40):
And it's possible that the when you say incentive, the
incentive is for those guys to be allowed to stay
alive and move somewhere else and have be spared. But
you're right, they don't have a lot of incentive because
they're a deaf cult and you're right, they believe in martyrdom.
And worse than that, I'll tell you something else. The

(01:02:01):
Gazans like the the Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority.

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
If they killed Jews or maim them.

Speaker 6 (01:02:10):
Or raped them or whatever, they receive a salary from
the Palestinian Authority in Ramala, from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmund
Abbas otherwise known as Abu Mazen, he pays them salaries.
And if they get killed killing Jews, he pays their

(01:02:31):
families such a sum of money that they that they
can never could never earn in any other fashion.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
So it's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Yeah, I mean, and there there's uh uh, this has
come up with listeners from time to time, and I
don't know, and it's obviously you can't do real polling
right now, you know. I would have thought a year
and a half ago that if there were an election
in Gaza that Hamas could participate in, there's a decent
chance that people would elect them.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
It seems like maybe the destruction has been so thorough
and going on so long that Hamas is a little
bit less popular.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Among the people.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
But still it reminds me it would be like if
the German people, you know, near the end of the
world of World War two, learned about the concentration camps,
which were mostly kept secret from the people, learned about
all the horrors of what the Nazis did and all that,
and said, you know what, I want to vote for

(01:03:30):
them again, right. And that's how I perceive the Palestinian people,
which is why I'm a little bit less sympathetic to
them than some people think.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
I should be.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
They're not all terrorists, but most of them are quite
happy anytime they hear of a dead Jew.

Speaker 5 (01:03:49):
Oh they are. I mean the Palestinian authority.

Speaker 6 (01:03:51):
If there were elections held right now, Haaswood win hands down,
which is why abumanzen Is has been preventing elections. But
I'll tell you how you can be sympathetic to the Palestinians.

Speaker 5 (01:04:03):
Who are who are you know, celebrate the slaughter.

Speaker 6 (01:04:07):
Of Jews, Christians, Infidel Muslims. I'll tell you how you
can be sympathetic to them. Here's the one way I am.
If you were born and raised from the time you
opened your eyes on this earth, you were raised to
hate Jews, to say Israel needs to be destroyed, to
say Israel is committing genocide against you. In your school books,

(01:04:31):
the math problems were if you killed two Jews, and
you kill another two Jews. How many did you kill altogether?
And in your crossword puzzles and in yours and you
had your sports arenas named after suicide bombers and all that.
And if you grew up like that, how lightly is
it that you would be able.

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
To be an independent thinker.

Speaker 6 (01:04:53):
Now there are such people we know who have left
to say, oh my god.

Speaker 5 (01:04:57):
You know, we.

Speaker 6 (01:04:58):
Know the guy called son of Hamas, who who he
goes around and he says, it's all Islam and Hamas
is evil. But what I'm trying to say is these
young children don't know any different.

Speaker 5 (01:05:11):
What they know that is what they are fed.

Speaker 6 (01:05:14):
In their schools, in their mosques, everywhere, in their media
and everything. So in that sense, you could be sympathetic
and it'll take this as one of the things that's
saying they have to reform, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):
It means nothing. This takes two generations exactly, clean up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
The school books exactly. And so I agree with you.
I have sympathy for them in that respect. But it
doesn't make me and of course it doesn't make you
lessen the understanding that even though they were brainwashed into
this from the time they were zero regardless of how

(01:05:54):
they got there. They'd be happy to shoot you or
me in the head. And we can never forget at that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:01):
No, of course not. And let me yeah, of course,
let me just say, do you given analogy? You know
it's as I never took the abuse excuse as an
excuse for crimes and murders.

Speaker 6 (01:06:14):
You know, you have a murderer, a serial killer as well.
You have to understand he was raised, he was abused
as a child. It's not an excuse because if you
are in his in his path, he's going to kill
you too.

Speaker 5 (01:06:28):
That's what you have to care about.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
So just have a couple of minutes left here, and
I want to switch gears a little bit.

Speaker 7 (01:06:34):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
You moved to Israel around fifty years ago, but you're
still in America a lot. You're very American, even though
you're very Israeli, and you are well aware of the
massive move in public opinion, particularly among Democrats, particularly among
young Democrats against Israel. Very sympathetic toward the Palestinian people.

(01:07:00):
I find it evil, but in a way I have
sympathy for them in much the same.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
Way that you are describing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Because my kid just started at a community College in Seattle,
and three different teachers in math and science classes told
the class that Israel is committing genocide in classes that
have nothing to do with it. So what would you
say to either young you know, young adults or parents

(01:07:28):
of young adults where those young adults are getting brainwashed
against Israel right now?

Speaker 6 (01:07:36):
Well, first of all, I would say, if you are
a parent who cares about Israel, you stay vigilant and
you try to talk to your kids. It's no different
from you know, your kids are also being bombarded in
the United States with the idea that you choose your
gender at age five, I don't know, and you decide
one day you're not a girl or a boy.

Speaker 5 (01:07:58):
You The induct.

Speaker 6 (01:08:00):
Nation that goes on on the left in America is
so severe that only I guess the only way to
battle it is in the home, where you're teaching them
your values or you're trying to And by the way,
because things got so out of hand, and by the way,

(01:08:21):
it got so got so anti Semitic, it's no accident
that the Republicans won that Trump won that election, Okay,
when the Democrats got so out of hand in every
possible way, it's in wokeness, in woke marrying jihadis. It's insane,
and it went so crazy that Americans said, no.

Speaker 5 (01:08:44):
This is not us. Okay, we're not Jihadis, and we're
not that woke.

Speaker 6 (01:08:49):
We're liberal Democrats, not democrats as in the Democratic Party.
We are people who believe in liberal values in equality,
not in dei, and not in critical.

Speaker 5 (01:09:03):
Race theory, and not in from the River to the
Sea and all of that.

Speaker 6 (01:09:08):
So I would say that maybe things aren't as bad
as they seem, because you see them in the left
wing media all the time, and you're right, and campuses
and I don't know what to tell you. I at
this point, if I had a kid in college, I'd say,
you know what, I'd rather buy him an apartment than
spend that money on four years of indoctrination.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
I hear you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
I would also note that in the most Jewish city
in America, New York City, and anti Semite is about
to become mayor. An overt anti Semite is about to
become mayor. And I fear that many young liberal Jews
are turning against Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
And we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
I think what we need to see in order to
get a sense of whether this can swing back in
a better direction.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
I think we need two things.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
We need the war to end, and we met in
Yahoo to go, and I don't know if either of
those things is going to happen anytime soon.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
But I gotta leave it there, Ruthie. We'll have you
back to go.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Over all that and more, I wanted to talk to
you on this October seventh. I hope you and your
friends and family are well on this challenging day.

Speaker 5 (01:10:18):
Thank you. Ros So.

Speaker 6 (01:10:19):
We'll be in touch and let's keep our fingers crossed,
as they say, for the hostages to come home at least.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
That absolutely belated happy New Year. Thank you, Ruthie. So
all right, and that's Ruthie bloom Blum from JNS dot
Org is where you can find her writing JNS dot org.
Her podcast is Israel Undiplomatic. If you're really interested in
Israeli politics, go check that out. We'll take a quick break.

(01:10:49):
We'll be right back on Kowa. But I'm still living
with the shame of yesterday. I'm not wearing your my headphones,
so I can't hear anything you say.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Right now, Dragon is looking at me. How would I
describe the look? It's like, uh, disappointment, like really Ross
like and not Dragon. I don't think the look in
Dragon's face is not not at all that he's even
the slightest bit upset that I'm wasting your time.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
That's not it. It's it's more.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
I think that Dragon thinks that I'm like Don Quixote,
or just keep chasing this impossible thing and just keep
it making myself look bad like Ross, why do you
want to put yourself through this again? He's gonna get
better at it. I can't hear you. I see your
lips moving, but I can't hear you. So we're gonna
We're gonna try again. Dragon is gonna go to his

(01:11:43):
best golf.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
Course voice announcer and here we go. He's probably gonna
the suit.

Speaker 8 (01:11:51):
He's a real problem with this time is the trashed
him is not centered flush against the wall. So he's
gonna see he did step back checking the way and
wets his finger, goes up in the air, still just concentrating. Oh,
tilts his head a little bit, trying to figure out
whether or not what kind of angle to pursue. I
think he sees that the trash can is off and
he just missed it. Completely didn't even hit the rim

(01:12:13):
or anything if the trash can utter disappointment in his look.
He tries again, see, this is exactly where he missed
the trash can because it's not flushed against the wall.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
It went right behind the wall.

Speaker 8 (01:12:25):
I'll see now. He notices thatjusts the trash can, steps
back to the original position to where he shoots from
and still still just straight up.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
That was ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, that was okay.

Speaker 8 (01:12:38):
He stood like a foot and a half away from
it and then finally made it. Congratulations, Rush, congratulations.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
I thought I was embarrassed yesterday show. Gosh, you should be.
That was terrible, It really was. That was shocking.

Speaker 8 (01:12:52):
Yeah, well, I do applaud you for finally adjusting to
the trash can being not flu against the wall because
you shot it and kind of made it in between
the wall and the trash can. I don't know how
you did that, but then you came over and then
adjusted it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
I think the wind shifted. Oh yeah, of course, yeah,
blame the wind. I'm gonna try again tomorrow. Oh, thank goodness,
please do all right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
Yesterday I talked a little bit, and then Mandy talked
a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
About after the podcast and listen to those do you what? No?

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Okay, all right, No, you mean listen to those bits
where you're I bet they're pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
I mean, I bet it's better than the rest of
the show. It's not a high bore.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
No, it's semi professional radio, all right, But seriously, no,
I was serious. So yesterday we talked about Barry Weiss
being hired to be the new editor in chief of
CBS News, and I'm not going to go through all
that again, but what I mentioned was the guy who
owns Paramount or the guy who runs Paramount that owns

(01:14:07):
CBS David I think is his first name, Ellison, and
I think he's Larry Ellison's kid. Larry Ellison is a
guy who's sort of been back and forth with Elon
Musk as to who's the richest guy in the world.
Larry Ellison is a founder of Oracle and one of
the richest guys in the world and a friend of
Donald Trump's and all this stuff. So young mister Ellison,

(01:14:28):
when he was talking about why he made Barry wisehead
of CBS News and what the goal was, he made
it about trust, and he said he wants CBS News
to become a place that people trust to go for
their news, and I said, I wish him godspeed.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
We need more places, especially on television.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
We need places that people can go for news they
actually trust and news that isn't heavily slanted partisan bias.
And I've told you repeatedly that my primary cable TV
news source or TV news source has become News Nation
because I think they do it right, and even their

(01:15:12):
opinion shows they do it right, especially Leland Vinter, but
Chris Cuomo as well. They constantly have people on who
disagree with them and it is wonderful. So I'm a
big fan of News Nation. Anyway, CBSNBC, ABC, they've mostly
lost trust and it's I won't go through why. I

(01:15:33):
think everybody understands why. And before that, Barry Weiss's news broke.
Wait what are you laughing about? Oh no, just just
some text messages to come in. You want to share
any or you want me to be just blissfully ignorant
and keep going with what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
Now I'm torn. That's fine.

Speaker 8 (01:15:51):
Ross semi professional radio, sub amateur paper trash basketball, no doubt.
Thanks for the call of air Raw and the bricklayers.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
That's funny. Is that their line or your line?

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
There's Steve Steve. Oh that's good, really really good. Yeah,
it's true. Okay, let me get back to this. So
there's a Gallup survey that Gallup has been doing every
year for a while, every year since the late nineties,
and then before that there were like twenty years between
when they asked the question.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
Right, they did.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
But the question is, in general, how much trust and
confidence do you have in the mass media such as newspapers, TV,
and radio when it comes to reporting the news fully,
accurately and fairly. Do you have a great deal of
trust and confidence? Do you have not very much? Or
do you have none at all? And you won't be

(01:16:49):
surprised to hear that since the nineteen seventies, and let's
just actually, let's just start with nineteen ninety seven, because
since nineteen ninety seven they have asked this question basically
every year. Before nineteen ninety seven, the prior one was
twenty one years earlier, and the trend had actually been continuing.

(01:17:10):
But let's just start with nineteen ninety seven. I suppose
there has been a steady down trend among the number
of people who say they have a great deal or
a fair amount of trust in mass media. In nineteen
ninety seven it was fifty three percent, and now it
is that the lowest ever recorded on this particular survey,

(01:17:32):
at twenty eight percent. I guess I will mention in
nineteen seventy six the number then that's the high watermark
on this that was seventy two percent. All right, So
nineteen ninety seven, what is that thirty.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Twenty eight years ago?

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Twenty eight years ago it was fifty three percent, now
twenty eight percent. I wish that Gallup had broken this
down among separately A newspapers, TV, and.

Speaker 3 (01:18:01):
Radio, but they don't. I emailed Gallup.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
To ask them if they have that information behind the
scenes somewhere, but they never asked the question, so they
just have it all aggregated for it. So I suspect
that most people who listen to.

Speaker 3 (01:18:15):
KOA trust radio pretty well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
And we go out of our way at KOA to
make ourselves trustworthy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
We try to bring you the news.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
We try and I personally, if I get something wrong,
I correct it. So we try to be very trustworthy.
I mean, that's that's the brand of news radio, right
is trust newspapers. I'm not sure. You know, I guess
liberals trust the New York Times and conservatives trust the
Wall Street Journal or something. But is that really the

(01:18:44):
same as being trustworthy and TV we talked about already. Now,
what's interesting about this, So the number of people who
say they have a great deal or fair amount of
trust is down to twenty eight percent. Just as interesting
for me is, in the last two years there's actually
been a noticeable downtick in the number of people who

(01:19:07):
say they have no trust at all, and a noticeable
uptick in the percentage of people who say they have
not very much trust but maybe more than none at all.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19):
And that's I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
A little bit subtle, but on the margin, it seems like,
you know, some people who have said they have no
trust in the media now are saying maybe just.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
A tiny bit.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
And I do think that some of that comes from
some changes in the media and this sort of awakening
by everybody, including some owners of media properties, that hey.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
We need to get a little more fair and balanced here.

Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
So I do think that's an interesting thing. The other
thing I will note is two years ago. Two years
ago was the first time was the first time ever
make sure right, no last year was the first time
ever that a great deal of trust in media or
a fair amount of trust in media was below both

(01:20:04):
not very much trust and none at all. Anyway, I
threw a lot of numbers at you there. I hope
it didn't make your eyes glaze over. My point is
there has never been a lower percentage of Americans saying
they have high level of trust in media. That's why
the Barry Weiss thing aiming at trust is the right goal.
And it also means that since people don't trust mass media,

(01:20:26):
younger people in particular who only trust mass media, like
in the load to mid twenties, they're getting their news elsewhere.
And I do think it's really important for all of
us who want to understand how the society is working,
to know how many young people are getting their news

(01:20:46):
from TikTok and things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
That has upside but also plenty of downside.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
Seeing in various stores that sell chocolate, I keep seeing
this stuff called Dubai chocolate.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
Have you seen this dragon?

Speaker 8 (01:20:59):
Yeah, the cookie places I frequent have done these Dubai
cookies and it just looks like green snot on a cookie.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):
And I really don't want.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
To know, right it looks like a crunchy green snot
inside filling a chocolate bar.

Speaker 3 (01:21:15):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
It looks bad, but at least it's very expensive, and
so I've never tried it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:24):
I would have interest.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
In tasting it, just to see what all the fuss
is about, but it usually costs twice as much as
any other chocolate, and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):
It's this unbelievable craze.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
I saw a piece over at the Associated Press, and
I guess I shouldn't be surprised because I'm seeing this
in lots of places, and maybe part of the reason
it's become such a craze, and the reason the chocolate
companies like it so much is that it is so expensive,
so there's probably pretty good profit margins in it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:51):
But the center here, let me share some of this
with you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
It's too this is Associated Press. It's too soon to
tell for sure, but the Dubai cho movement seems to
have put down roots and is spreading it a brisk clip.
The sweet flavors and thick texture that have made Dubai
chocolate bars ahead are morphing into other kinds of confections too.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
Now let's back up for a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
The original and now classic Dubai Chocolate Bar was created
by Fix Chocolate.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
Hear Fix in the.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
United Arab Emirates, so it really is from Dubai in
twenty twenty one, and by twenty twenty three had exploded
on social media.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
Rich and indulgent, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
Very much like the the Emidis themselves. It features a
thick milk chocolate shell, usually encasing a creamy pistachio and
often tahini filled filling mixed with crispy, shredded philo like
pastry called kata yif. Global brands and small bakers alike

(01:22:50):
are riffing on the concept, translating it too.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Croissant's milkshakes and more.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
Fillings range from peanut butter and jelly to s'mores to macha.
So here's the thing. You know, I'm a picky eater.
I'm not very subtle about that. I really like pistachios.
You know, you give me a bag of pistachios or
a bowl of pistachios, I really like them. They're delicious

(01:23:14):
either it is okay, but I prefer shelled.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
Shelled is more fun, thank you. I prefer shelled.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
Uh, but I don't like pistachio ice cream?

Speaker 8 (01:23:23):
What about you dragon, I'd never cared for what My kids,
on the other hand, every time we go to the
Cold Stone, they're like, yeah, give you weirdo.

Speaker 3 (01:23:30):
Yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
I it's not my I don't like the pistachio flavor.
I don't like that whole thing. And so now that
I know what it is, I'm even a little bit
less interested. But it's chocolate, so I gotta try it
because I love chocolate. The craze checked this out. The
craze has even contributed to a pistachio shortage this year.
By the way, did you know that one of the

(01:23:54):
biggest suppliers of pistachios in the.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
World is the country of Iran.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
We also grow some in America, actually, but Iran is
a huge supporter of pistachios. And they quote this particular
Iranian nut producer called Cane Knea, Kenny k Ei and
i A and they say the primary reason for the
shortage is the explosive surgeon demand fueled by the Dubai

(01:24:18):
chocolate TikTok trend, compounded by underlying supply constraints, so globally,
searches for Dubai's chocolate shot up.

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Quickly at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
They peaked in March, but they've remained high, and different places.

Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Sell different stuff. This company, called.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
All All A L L A l L, has twelve
different flavors of Dubai chocolate, as well as chocolate and
pistachio covered Dubai dates, roasted Dubai coated roasted nuts, and
a layered Dubai Chocolate strawberry parfait, and the Dubai Golden
Chocolate Bar infused with edible twenty four carrot gold for
seventy nine dollars and ninety nine cents. So oh, Trader

(01:24:57):
Joe's has one. I guess I should check that hey, has.

Speaker 3 (01:25:00):
Anybody there tried the Dubai chocolate.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
Carried by Trader Joe's And if so, can you tell
me how much it costs?

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
And can you tell me if it's any good? I
Hop formerly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
Called International House of Pancakes but now just I Hop,
the same way that Kentucky Fried Chicken is now just
KFC has introduced a limited time Dubai pancake stack at
some locations. Baskin Robbins has some Dubai inspired ice cream products.
Costco has a range of Dubai chocolates, including a Dubai
chocolate cake.

Speaker 3 (01:25:30):
Walmart and QVC also sell it. Swiss chocolate giant.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Lint l I n DT has a has a bar
and at jew crowds. When it debuted a limited number
of them in Europe last fall. They quote one woman
who said, for me, it's the crunch. The chocolate is
soft and melty, and the filling is creamy, and then
the crunch of the kadai. If it's about the texture,
plus it's sugar. She was a little annoyed at the price,
higher than your average chocolate bar. Part of the Dubai

(01:25:57):
chocolate's appeal, though, is the way it feels simultaneously indulgent
and worldly. Pistachios, rose, saffron, and cardamoma bring luxury, travel
and exoticism to the chocolate party.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
It's still small. In the fifty two.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Weeks ending June of this past year, retail sales of
pistachio filled chocolate totaled eight hundred and twenty three thousand dollars,
not that much. By comparison, sales of all chocolates were
over sixteen and a quarter billion dollars. All right, in
the interesting time, I'm going to stop there. If any
of you has tried Dubai chocolate at all text Us
at five six six nine zero, and let us know

(01:26:34):
what you think. And if anybody has tried the Dubai
chocolate at Trader Joe's, let me know about that too,
five six six nine zero When we come back. The
Nobel Prize in Physics. Nobel Committee in Sweden announces who
wins various prizes. A few days ago, we had the
Nobel Prize for Medicine, I didn't talk.

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):
About it on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
This morning we got the official announcement of the Nobel
Prize in physics. So joining us to help us understand
what this is all about and hopefully able to do
it without our heads exploding, is the man himself, Paul
Bill see you physics professor and a guy who was
I often say makes me wish I were back in
college so I could take a class from him, because

(01:27:15):
I've always loved physics, which doesn't mean I'm very.

Speaker 3 (01:27:17):
Good at it. Hi Paul, it's good to see you again.

Speaker 4 (01:27:21):
Hi Ross, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:23):
So just jump right in it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
Tell us what these three scientists engineers won the Nobel
Prize in Physics for.

Speaker 7 (01:27:34):
Okay, so there are three physicists, John Clark who's at
Berkeley and Michelle de Vay who's at Yale and the
University of California Santa Barbara joined appointment and John Martinez
who's at the University of California, Santa Barbara. And they
won the Nobel for work they did in nineteen eighty

(01:27:54):
eight in which they were the first folks to measure
what's known as macras scopic quantum tunneling in superconductors.

Speaker 3 (01:28:05):
Okay, we're going to need a little bit of that
in English.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
And I did watch some of the Nobel presentation. Yes,
I did watch some of the Nobel presentation, and it
has basic stick figure kinds of graphics that are nevertheless
mind blowing, like a kid throwing a ball against a
wall and it bounces back, and then one time he
throws the ball at the wall and it goes through
the wall.

Speaker 7 (01:28:29):
Okay, so quantum tunneling goes all the way back to
the right the era when quantum mechanics was first invented
by Schreddinger and Heisenberg. And so it's possible in quantum
mechanics for a particle to be able to go through
a region where it technically does not have enough energy
to go through in any classical way. So you're trying

(01:28:52):
to get from one side of one valley over to
another valley. You got across a mountain. If you don't
have enough energy to get up to the top of
the mountain and go across, then you're never going to
make it, whereas in quantum mechanics there's a possibility and
you can calculate that that an object can actually tunnel
through and get from one side of the hill to

(01:29:13):
the other. And this was applied almost immediately in the
nineteen twenties. George Gamov used that idea to describe why
certain materials have radioactive alpha decay. Alpha particles tunnel out
of the nucleus of things like uranium, and he calculated
how that what the half life of that should be,

(01:29:35):
and how it's related to the energy at which they tunnel,
and it was a perfect agreement with the experimental results
at the time. Now, that's one particle at a time,
and what was discovered later is quantum mechanics applies much
more broadly than to single particles. So superconductor, for example,

(01:29:57):
is represents what's known as a Macrosky at quantum state
all of the electrons in the superconductor are in exactly
the same quantum state, and they act together, and so
that allows the system to have almost a classical degree
of freedom. But what these folks discovered and people related

(01:30:19):
to them, was that the entire quantum state itself is
a quantum. It has a quantum character, and it bays
its own separate Schrodinger equation for this quantum quantum state.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
Okay, I'm not sure if it's too early for Bourbon,
but I'm thinking about it. The Nobel's website says, and
I think this is what you were just talking about.
But I'm gonna tell you what this says, and then
I want you to try to put it in the
plainest English you can. The charged particles moving through the
superconductor comprised a system that behaves as if they were

(01:31:01):
a single particle that filled the entire circuit. So I
think that's what you were just saying. But can you
put it in any planar English or is it just
not possible?

Speaker 7 (01:31:12):
Okay, So they macroscopic effects happen with the things like Okay,
imagine water. You know, so water is composed of a
bunch of molecules, right, but you have enough of it
in a tub and it can slash back and forth.
It has a wave characteristic that's not described by any
one of the water molecules, but collectively they have these

(01:31:35):
wave like behavior, whereas in quantum mechanics, the entire system
can have a wave like behavior which is described by
its own throating equation. And that was the system that
Martinez and Clark and Devoray were investigating.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Okay, what are the practical implications and how does how
would this science? How is this science being used now
to develop computers or anything else?

Speaker 7 (01:32:08):
Right, So, in fact, this is one of the most
commonly used methods for creating what are known as qbits
to create quantum computers. So the superconducting system is what
many companies are developing now in order to create quantum computers.
And in fact Martinez is a big player in that.

(01:32:31):
And Martinez I actually know him. He was at CU
He was at NIST in the nineteen nineties and went
to Santa Barbara in two thousand and four, and so
his specialty is trying to use this quantum mechanics of
the macroscopic wavefunction to create quantum systems that you can

(01:32:55):
then manipulate very carefully, in fact engineer to create well
onto computers.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
What what just strikes me about this whole conversation is
that you must have a whole bunch of friends who
you can sit down with and have these conversations and
actually understand what the other guy is saying.

Speaker 3 (01:33:19):
Like I, I asked you. I asked you to put I.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
Asked you to put this in the plainest English you
could in the first word out of your mouth was macroscopic,
and and so and so this is this is obviously
extremely difficult stuff. But but I and I am kind
of serious about that. But more more seriously is how
how remarkable it is that that this stuff is is real.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
It's almost it seems like science fiction.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
I don't think that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:52):
My confusion is is because I haven't mastered partial differential equations.

Speaker 3 (01:33:59):
I I think it's just crazy.

Speaker 7 (01:34:02):
Right, Right, So all of these the electrons in a
material are not acting independently. They are acting. It's all
as one thing.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
They're all on one team.

Speaker 7 (01:34:12):
They're all going down the field together doing exactly one thing.
And in fact, at that point you can't tell one
from the other. So the team has a behavior and
independent of what any individual member of the team is
trying to do. They all are going to work together
to go down the field.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
Even though I don't know much, it does seem to
me like this work really deserved a Nobel Prize, don't
you think?

Speaker 5 (01:34:42):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:34:43):
Yes, it's It was revolutionary at the time, and many
many people had picked it up and started doing things
with it, including this team that continued to make big
discoveries in this field. And quantum computing is being done
with several different ways. One is with the super conducting
circuits that John Martinez works on.

Speaker 3 (01:35:04):
But trapped ion.

Speaker 7 (01:35:06):
So people at the NIST in Boulder developed the theory
and felt experiments to trap one atom at a time
and be able to use the quantum mechanics of one atom.
And so what Martinez and team have created is a
sort of a super atom. It has its own quantum states,
and you can make it go through phase transition quantum transitions,

(01:35:28):
just like atoms go through transitions.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
All right, My last question for you, and this is
not a sarcastic question, this is a real question. Have
you ever met a physicist and your reaction after talking
to him or her after some amount of time is
that person is smarter than I am.

Speaker 7 (01:35:49):
Oh, every day, every single day really in this department,
I just I've bumped into people in the hall, and
like it occurs to me, it's like, wow, that person
is way smarter than I am.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
What I mean when I when I mean, I realize
you've been studying this your whole life, and I'm sure
there's stuff I could talk to you about, like financial
markets trading that you wouldn't understand. But still, but still,
when I talk to you, I feel kind of stupid.

Speaker 3 (01:36:16):
And I don't mean that in a bad way.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):
It's like, oh, my gosh, there's a lot I don't understand,
and there's a lot that I'm not capable of understanding,
even if I spent a long time trying, and yet
Paul knows all of it.

Speaker 3 (01:36:26):
And and then.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
You to me, it's it's remarkable that someone who is
as amazingly smart as I think you are, routinely, you say,
runs across people who you feel about them the way
I feel about you.

Speaker 7 (01:36:45):
Well, Well, thank you, I will say, I know a
little bit about a smattering of things that you and
I can have conversations about.

Speaker 1 (01:36:54):
You're very humble, Paul b able to see you physics
professor and the guy who makes me wish I were
back in college so I could study more. Thanks so
much for your time, Paul, appreciate it. Okay, okay, you too.
All Right.

Speaker 3 (01:37:06):
So that's the.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
Nobel Prize in Physics, which, uh, this stuff is on
my blog by the way, if you want to go
read a little bit of it. I actually, you know
what I posted on the blog in addition to the
press release, and uh it is is the video from
this morning in Sweden. But it's mostly in English of
the presentation of the announcement and the description and the

(01:37:28):
discussion of the Nobel Prize and really what in physics
and really what they got it for and what does
it mean? And if you're a nerd, you can you
can watch it and you can probably almost understand it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:43):
I mean, if if you're Paul Beal, you would understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:48):
If you're if you're Ross Kaminski, not so much if
you're dragging somewhere in between Paul Beal and Ross. Right,
but it's it is really fascinating. So anyway, I hope,
I hope you liked that. That was that was a
pretty interesting thing. I wanted to share a story with
you that I've had for a couple of days, and
I actually posted it on the blog yesterday, I think.

(01:38:10):
And it's about this new AI platform called Sora sr
A and it's it's put out by chat GPT and
this version that they've released is called Sora to s
O r A and then the number two and it's
it's absolutely remarkable. It's a video making thing where you

(01:38:32):
can you can take a short video or maybe even
still pictures I'm not sure of yourself, like front of
your face, sides of your head, basically, and you can
record a short recording of yourself saying some numbers thirty eight,

(01:38:52):
seventeen twenty nine, and you give that to this platform
and then you tell it to make a video of
you doing something, and it is so good. I'm not
gonna say it will absolutely fool everybody all the time,
but it's it's really quite remarkable. And I posted a

(01:39:15):
bunch of videos of this, so it will. It will
make the video and the audio. Now, it's supposed to
have some precautions in place so that you can't tell
it to make a video of for example.

Speaker 3 (01:39:29):
I think it won't like you let you make a.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
Video of Taylor Swift right or and I don't know this,
but if I were chat GPT, I would prevent it
from allowing people to make a video of a politician, right,
because somebody will make a video of some politician they
don't like having sex with a farm animal. And I'm
not trying to be sarcastic. I mean that's the kind

(01:39:52):
of thing they'll do. Or or they'll they'll make a
video of somebody committing some crime, robbery, arson something. It
is kind of scary, it's also kind of amazing. It's
and it really is, and I encourage you go check
it out. If you go look at yesterday's blog, if
you go to Roskiminsky dot com, click on the Monday blogcast,

(01:40:12):
it's all in there. Uh but this thing Sora too,
It's it's worth looking at. Look, this is the future,
whether you like it or not. And one of the
remarkable things about it, and we've talked about this in
the past, in the recent past, when we discussed Tilly Norwood.
You remember this conversation Tilly Norwood, who is a completely
AI created quote unquote actress, only exists in the digital world.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):
It's not a real person.

Speaker 1 (01:40:39):
Very cute twenty something year old girl with a nice
British accent, and they can put her in in movies
and they can do a sci fi movie or a
drama movie or a you know, some period romantic whatever,
and and there she is just like any other actress,
except there's no physical people there. It's all digital. And

(01:40:59):
this Sora thing is a way for you to make
that kind of thing yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:41:04):
And let me just share a little bit. Let me see,
is this the oh, this is a good text?

Speaker 8 (01:41:08):
Me see why get it to doing a Neil Young song?

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
You probably could? You probably you're welcome to try. I
guess you would need me, you would. I would need
to participate a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:41:20):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
I don't know if everybody can access Sora to yet.
I think at the moment it's sort of an invitation thing.
But I'll look into what I'm I don't know why
I would do that. I'd be like, I mean, making
a video of me singing Neil Young would be like
making a video of me vomiting. There's very little difference
in terms of the quality of what's coming out of
your mouth in those two things.

Speaker 7 (01:41:42):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:41:42):
I know you enjoyed the concert we went to I.

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
Only enjoyed because you and I got to say we
did it. You know, leave early and leave early. You know,
years ago I was, I was somewhere in China, I
don't remember where, many years ago, way before Hijen Ping
was in charge, when China wasn't nearly the competitor or

(01:42:06):
enemy that it is now. I was in China and
I went to this Chinese medicine doctor guy, just for
an experience.

Speaker 3 (01:42:17):
They didn't really have anything wrong with me.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
You know, they do some acupuncture in this and that dragon.
Have you heard of this thing called cupping? Yeah, it's
the suction cup stuff. Yeah, you know, yeah, the swimmers
and the Olympics had it all over, right, yeah, exactly.
So they'll take a little glass it's not quite a jar.
It looks it's almost the shape of a wide light
bulb or something, but the bottom is open, and what

(01:42:42):
they do is stick a candle in it or something,
and the flame depletes the oxygen inside that thing and
creates a bit of a vacuum.

Speaker 3 (01:42:52):
I'm sure there are other ways to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
I'm sure there's high tech ones that actually have a
port and you just put a vacuum on it, right,
but in any case, create a vacuum and then stick
it on my back and it and it sucks like the.

Speaker 3 (01:43:06):
Skin or bit of fat or whatever you've.

Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
Got going on in your back, it kind of sucks
it up into this container and it kind of pinches
you and then it leaves you with this big red
mark on your back.

Speaker 3 (01:43:16):
And I did that, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:43:18):
Had a bunch of these big red marks on my back.
As Dragon said, the Olympic swimmers and some others do
that kind of thing. And for me, you know, when
I think about the benefits of this, and it's a
you know, a very very fascinating Eastern medicine treatment that
I'm sure has been around for a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:43:34):
And so when I think.

Speaker 1 (01:43:35):
About myself, when I think about myself, and like the
pain I was in at the time, I don't mean
from the treatment, but like I had some pain in
my sacrooliac joints and stuff. The benefits for me from
that treatment were what's the word I'm looking for, non existent,
That's the word I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:43:53):
And so to me, to me, it was like a
painful thing that I.

Speaker 1 (01:44:01):
Did just to say I had the experience of it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:06):
And that's exactly how I feel about going to the
Neil Young concert, and it might be.

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
How I feel about eating Dubai chocolate, depending on the
flavor when I eventually get around to it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:15):
Although I do think.

Speaker 1 (01:44:16):
Dubai chocolate, at least because it's in chocolate, will be
better than a Neil Young consc.

Speaker 8 (01:44:21):
It'll probably tastes better if it's free to us. Yes,
if we have to pay for it, right, worse?

Speaker 1 (01:44:28):
Okay, I understand what you're insinuating, and hopefully all the
listeners understand what you are suggesting what you are suggesting
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:44:34):
From the Washington Post.

Speaker 1 (01:44:35):
The new Sora app makes open ai the first major
tech company to attempt to build a social video platform
wholly focused on fake video. Sora ranked as the third
most popular download on Apple's App Store last Wednesday, despite
access being limited to those who have an invite code
from an existing user. Open Ai launched the first version

(01:44:56):
last year as a tool that simply converted text prompts
into short fake video clips. Google and other companies soon
released AI video tools of their own. Meta that's the
parent company of Facebook and Instagram, last week added a
feature called Vibes to it's Ai app. That allows people
to create and share AI videos. Now speaking of a

(01:45:17):
person who was cleverly using AI to I to do
I yeah, to do things, and she's way ahead of
me on this would be the Mandy Connell who joins
us now.

Speaker 3 (01:45:30):
Hello, can you use ON?

Speaker 7 (01:45:31):
There you go?

Speaker 1 (01:45:32):
Ye?

Speaker 3 (01:45:33):
Yeah, come, I ahead of you on.

Speaker 1 (01:45:36):
You're ahead of me on using using AI to create images?

Speaker 9 (01:45:43):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean some of the And I
think I did a great political cartoon today. Ross when
have chance go to my social media okay and look
at the social media cartoon for today. So I'm basically
doing my own little political cartoons every day.

Speaker 3 (01:45:58):
Okay, using AI. All right, is this the one with
net and Yahoo?

Speaker 9 (01:46:04):
Yes, offering a bomb, offering hostages. THEMS is confused. They
don't know which one.

Speaker 3 (01:46:10):
To pick, right, Yeah, that's very good.

Speaker 1 (01:46:13):
And so you are using some AI, you and you
give it some prompts and then it makes that yep.

Speaker 9 (01:46:21):
And the better you aren't prompting, the better the result
will be. That is one thing I am learning about AI.
The more you know what you want and can very
specifically ask it to deliver what you want, the better
results you're going to get.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
And this is pretty clever though, I mean, it's beyond
just giving exactly the right prompt. You had to come
up with the idea of Night and Yahoo offering both
a bomb and a peace deal, and Hamas being confused,
and you had to tell it that exactly pretty cool
what you got.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
Coming up, we're going.

Speaker 5 (01:46:49):
To talk to our futurist, Thomas Frye.

Speaker 9 (01:46:51):
Obviously, we're going to talk a little bit about the
two year anniversary of the Israel War, and yesterday I
got angry text messages telling me to talk about something else,
but sorry, more of that today.

Speaker 3 (01:47:02):
Everybody, stick around for the fabulous Mandy. Talk to you tomorrow.