11-07-25 - *FULL SHOW* My Last 9 AM - Noon Show; Musk Money; AI Trust; Robot Helper

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is my last nine to noon show on KOWA.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Can you believe it? It's been what four years? So
thank you for four great years. And I noted this
in my blog today if you go to Roskimminsky dot com.
I've said all this, and I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna spend a lot of time reminiscing because it's not
like I'm really leaving, just.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Moving a few hours earlier.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
And hopefully, hopefully lots of you will be able to
listen to at least some of that, and this show
will be a little different, but not wildly different.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
It's still gonna be me, It's still gonna be talk.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
We'll have a little bit more news, and we will
have a lot more Gina, which is gonna be a
lot of fun. And it's just it's it's gonna be great.
It's gonna be great. And I will say I am
honored and not intimidated by the fact that KOWA is
putting a talk show in morning drive for the first time,

(00:51):
maybe the first time ever, but certainly the first time
in decades. And they're you know, they're given me or
me and Gina the chance to you know, make something
off it and I'm really excited about it. And we'll
talk with Gina in a little bit and we're going
to talk about random stuff, but maybe about that too.
So anyway, yeah, this will be my last nine to
Noons show. So we got a ton of stuff to do.

(01:11):
You did hear Gina and our news team talking a
lot about what's going on with the FAA and flights
and all this, and I do want to just touch
on it for a minute. Obviously all this stuff can change,
but the FAA has announced that they want airlines to
ramp up to a ten percent cut in the number
of flights because they don't have the full staffing from

(01:34):
air traffic controllers, some of whom are calling out sick,
you know, not coming to work doing something else to
put food on the family while they're not getting a paycheck, right,
And I get all that. This comes back to why
we talked yesterday about the idea of removing air traffic
control as being a function of government and let it
be a function of some kind of nonprofit private organization

(01:56):
like they do in Canada, and so you won't have
this kind of risk. I will say that because politics
is so stupid these days, well not just these days,
but maybe a little more stupid than usual these days.
You may well have some politicians, and especially right now,
on the Democratic side, but the shoe could be the
foot could be on the other hand later if there's

(02:17):
a republic if there's a Democrat in the White House,
and Republicans want to shut down for some reason, but
you could have some politicians who are thinking to themselves,
actually want to keep air traffic control as a function
of government, specifically so that we can make it painful
to the American public when the government shuts down. Because
right now, other than air traffic control and some debate

(02:39):
about snap benefits food stamps, which might get funded anyway.
So but other than that, people seem to not be noticing.
And you will recall even just a week and a
half or two weeks into the government shutdown, I said
on the show, And then Leland Vidertz said when he
was a guest, maybe a few days later, he said,
and I said that I think the only thing people

(03:01):
are really going.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
To notice, people outside of the Washington, DC area.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
And people who don't work for government contractors or directly
for government.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
The thing they're going to notice is is flights.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Flights getting disrupted, and I do think some politicians want
to keep that as a weapon in their arsenal. In
any case, Denver, of course, is one of the major
airports in America these days, and they's supposed to be
a four percent flight reduction at these airports starting today,
six percent by the eleventh, which is Tuesday, eight percent

(03:34):
by the thirteenth, and ten percent by the fourteenth, so
next Thursday and Friday.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Now, if it does get.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Up to ten percent, in other words, if the government
doesn't open before then, since there's about sixteen hundred flights
every day coming out of DIA, a ten percent reduction
would be about one hundred and sixty flights a day.
So yeah, well you get the idea. That's sort of
an order of magnitude kind of idea about it. The
other thing to keep in mind is that United does

(04:04):
a lot of smaller regional flights using United Express and
sometimes United Express actually are there are other airlines officially,
but they operate as United Express. There's some of that,
and according to our news partners at KDVR, right now,
when they're looking at four percent a day of flight cancelations,

(04:28):
United has said that for them, not for the whole airport,
but just for United at DiiA, that's about twenty round
trip flights a day, and they said, at least for
now that's primarily going to be United Express flights.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
So there's that. I also have information up on the blog.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
You can go to Rosskiminski dot com and find the
link yourself that talks about different airlines doing different things
for refunds.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
If you end up with a problem.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Right now, including airlines that will refund more or not
you know, charge you the way they otherwise might to
change a flight or something like that, even on tickets
that are theoretically not refundable.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
So you might wanna you might want to look into that.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
If you maybe are thinking of going to Michigan this weekend,
you might want to look into that, just you know,
or or anywhere else really. Okay, So, uh, here's another
thing I wanted to mention you. I mentioned this just
in passing a few days ago that the board of
directors of Tesla recommended to shareholders a thing that went

(05:34):
to a vote yesterday about a new pay package for
Elon Musk. That is, that is being described as a
one trillion dollar pay package. But we do need to
be a little bit careful about that, because yes, it
could be a trillion dollar pay package, but certain things

(05:56):
would have to happen, right, So there's it's all about
have these incentives, these thresholds in place, and at each
of these various incentives, which The New York Times describes
as ambitious financial and operational goals over the next decade,
which have to do not only with the stock price,

(06:16):
right which right now the total value of the company
shares is a little under one and a half trillion dollars, right. So,
and I think there's twelve steps in this package, but
one of them would be the stock value would have
to get to eight and a half trillion dollars, so
six times what it is now.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
They also, in order to.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Get some of this pay would have to sell a
million of their kind of human ish robots, and they
would have to have ten million paid subscriptions to the
software that accompanies self driving vehicles and Tesla taxis and
that sort of thing. So it's not that he's going
to get a trillion dollars worth of stock now, it's

(06:58):
that he could potentially earned stock that could eventually potentially
be worth a trillion dollars now I mentioned that there
were a couple of large organizations that make recommendations about
shareholder votes that recommended against it, also the Equity Fund,
the Sovereign Wealth Fund I'm sorry of Norway. Their investment

(07:23):
in Tesla is pretty large. It makes them one of
the bigger investors in Tesla. They recommended against it as well,
and I think their argument is, yeah, you gotta incentivize
Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
It already has a lot of stock.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Okay, give him some more, but do you need to
give him another eighth of the company, which means everybody
else who owns stock has their share their ownership in
terms of percentage of the company diluted by maybe twelve percent.
It's a lot. They recommended a vote against it. I
also noted that Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Himself votes something.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Like fifteen percent of the share so in any case,
drum roll the answer.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yesterday, seventy five.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Percent of the votes cast in the Tesla shareholder meeting
voted to approve Elon Musk's pay package. So it doesn't
instantly make him a trillionaire or anything like that, although
it seems like he's well on his way. But they
decided that the risk of being diluted was much less
than the risk of disincentivizing Elon Musk from giving it

(08:30):
his all.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
We'll be right back on KOA starting Monday.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
You're gonna hear Rosskominski on the news with Gina Gondeck
six am to nine am right here on KOA. And
the aforementioned Gina Gondeck is in studio.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
With me right now, and she apparently wants a robot
to do her laundry. I don't know about that.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Well, maybe maybe maybe to water my plants.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Oh yeah, that is one thing that it did say
it could possibly do.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
But tell us about this robot you found that you're
gonna buy soon?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Okay, Well, if I if you just have like a
cool twenty grand just laying around only month, that's I know.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
It was actually cheaper than I expected.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Twenty seems like, but five hundred a month, A lot
of people could do that.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Well, this thing is kind of freaky to begin with
because it's created by.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
A company one X.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
They're calling it the Neo Robot Housekeeper right now, and
it truly looks like a human. It's got it's got
life size arms, legs. The thing that I think is
the freakiest is they didn't put a mouth on it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And like you mentioned, you could get a pre order
right now for what they want to do is launch

(09:46):
it next year possibly and how it works. And this
is the part that's kind of uneasy. As they say
it can do your household chores. They can, it can vacuum,
it can do the dishes, load the dishwasher, water your plants,
fold your laundry, whatever. But the catch right now is
it's not just like your room boat vacuum cleaner, where
it paths throughout your house and then and then it

(10:08):
just learns and it's vacuuming. There's a there's a one
x person in some company somewhere in some business controlling it.
So it's just a remote controlled robot by somebody who's
technically looking.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Through your house. Really yeah, So it's not like it,
you know, it's.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
The pilot program of it right now, is they're saying, well,
in order to make sure it can do all the
things that it's looking to do, we have to have somebody
controlling it remote control through your house, walking around doing
your everyday chores, which then starts to uh, I don't know,
get into the question of how much are you willing
to get convenience over security?

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Well, and then also what that makes me think of
if they can do that, if they can use the
robot and they can you know, use the robots eyes
and then see what you're doing on their monitors in
Palo Alto or whatever, right, then how do you know
they won't be doing that later?

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Or finding out where you leave your checkbook or you're
hot you leg yeah, or how often you.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Watch your legs.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I mean, I really don't know, but it's a lot
of people saying, Okay, well, it's gonna do all the
things I don't feel. It's so funny if you watch
the video, the like promo video they have like this
indie music that's playing in the background.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
They make it seem like this guy's like your.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Best friend and he's walking around and he's hanging out
and you're and you're enjoying the Broncos games.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
It's doing your laundry and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
But it's also like a black mirror, really freaky episode
of being like, who's.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Watching and what are they?

Speaker 4 (11:42):
What are they doing with you?

Speaker 1 (11:43):
You know?

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Putting aside the privacy concerns, Once something like this gets good,
I kind of want it, I think, So, you know,
five hundred bucks a month, so especially okay, how I'm
going to make this real here?

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Right? So we pay twice a month for a few.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Cleaning people to come to the house and clean the
house right, to vacuum and and you know, wash some
stuff and dust and whatever.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
So you know, we do that twice a month.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
We pay a little under two hundred dollars each time,
but still five hundred bucks a month.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
If you had something that could clean all the time
and do this and do that, lots and lots of
people will do that. To me, I think the odd.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Thing is this fully human sized thing that'll kind of
be in your way right and walking around in your house.
And where does it go to the rest of the time.
Does it go stand in a closet somewhere?

Speaker 1 (12:35):
It's just like in the corner, I guess room.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
I have no idea, because, like when you think about it,
we always joke, my husband, I always joke that, like
we've already automated our lives to the extreme. We have
you know, the room, but robot that does the vacuuming
for us. Our cat gets fed through an automatic feeder
that drops at the right time.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
And things like that.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
There's things that we do for our convenience with hopes
that there's not eyes watching us or some life size
human thing walking around doing it for us. So I
think there's ways to to have the convenience but maybe
keep a little bit of the privacy. But then again,
people have ring doorbells, people have all the Alexa and
everything that's good that are in their houses listening all

(13:16):
the time.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
So are you adding just a robot human to the mix.
I don't know, Folks, if.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
You want to, if you want to look at this,
and we're not advertising for them, and it's just.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Kind of wacky to look at. It's interesting. We got
one and it was just walking around the studio, it'd
be pretty amazing. Yeah, one x dot tech t e
c H. So in not dot com, one x dot tech.
You know what.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
One other thing, Gina, that you know, I read about
this stuff from time to time, and it turns out
that one of the most difficult things to be able
to train a robot to do is fold laundry. M
And imagine, like if you're gonna fold a shirt, right,
and I imagine that's something you do because you're a professional.

(13:58):
My my T shirts generally I like grab them out
of the laundry basket and throw them in a jar.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Perfect.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
But I have heard about folding, and sometimes on rare
occasion I do when I feel weird about it, When
I fold it, it's kind of like doing sockshoe stockshew,
it's just not quite right. Oh, don't even But anyway,
when you think about it, think about the dexterity of
folding a shirt and what you have to do and
fold it over and then fold the next thing. And

(14:25):
it really will be an achievement when they get a
robot able to do that.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
And then there's also so many other ideas of Okay,
let's say it's folding the shirt, but then it goes
and picks up another shirt, drops it on a lit
candle nearby. How do you know that it's not going
to just malfunction in a way of just like basic
daily human habits.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
So it's like, because I thought about it.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Watering my plants, and then I was like, but I
have a very specific way I make sure what plant
gets X amount of water. What happens if this robot
dumps it all over itself? Shorts out and my twenty
grand robots.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Now, oh, we need to build a fire extinguisher into
the mouth of the robot.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Something catches on fire.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
It opens its mouth and blows and puts it out,
kind of like a reverse fire breathing dragon.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
You need to add a mouth first, because I said, oh, yeah,
there's mouth. There's just two beady eye. Yeah, and no nose.
No mouth. That's a good point. There's no mouth. Can
you stick around for a few minutes.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
I want to do something random.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
And I haven't told Gina this, but you know, from
time to time we do a thing, especially on Fridays,
of ask Me anything, and you.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Can ask me any question you want.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
And I don't promise to answer everything, but I think
we should do ask Gina anything. So text in at
five six six nine zero anything you want to ask Gina.
We don't guarantee that you will answer every question, but
maybe you'll get your question asked and answered on the
air five six six nine zero, Asks Gina anything you want.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Gina's in studio with me and next Monday we start
our new show together. Ross Kaminski on the News with
Gina gondk And if you take the k out of
the out of you know, if you take Kaminski out
and just make it ross on the news, then you
can anagram it is rot with Gina Gondeck. And I
didn't come up with that, but I don't actually hate
it because I am semi professional.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
And it's up to you to It's up to you.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
You have this actually terrible burden Gina kind of making
it a professional show or it's not gonna be easy, this.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Running dragon you debate of asking am I going to
be pulled more to the semi professional side?

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Are you going to be pulled more to the professional side? Yeah?
I think we'll just stay on our I don't know, just.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Stay in our lanes, all right, Folks. If you want
to ask Gina a question, text your question to five
six six nine zero and I'll pick the questions to
ask Gina. And I don't promise to ask every question.
And also just so you know going forward, since you'll
be probably texting Gina and or me, but talking about
Gina here for years to come, it's j E A

(16:53):
N A and not g I N A. Yes, So
G G I N A is a very common spelling
of Gina and and of course, since Gina is on
the radio rather than on TV, you're not looking at
a screen where you see her name written on the screen,
so it's j E A n A. Although one listener
has unintentionally demonstrated that there will probably be quite a

(17:13):
bit of automatic spell check going on that people don't recognize,
where it comes out as jeans jeans gens.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yes, in college, I was always called mom jeans when
autocorrect and everyone was texting. Plus I was always helping
my friends, so.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
I was just known as Sumariously, you're yeah, you're young
enough that when you were in college there was a
thing called autocorrect.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
That's ridiculous. That's the part that you took from it. Yes,
that's exactly what I took from it.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
When I was in college, there weren't cell phones, right right.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
You just carry your pigeons. What'd you do a landline?

Speaker 2 (17:51):
You picked it up and you had to and you
had to remember people's numbers.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yes, do you remember anybody's number? Only a couple. And
that was when I was young, and.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
I would call my next door neighbor on the landline
to ask if we could hang out.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
When you were in college, did you have a cell phone? Uh? Yes,
When you were in high school? Did you have a
cell phone?

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Eight seventh and eighth grade. Wow, gosh, you're so young
there you go. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, you had to remember numbers and you had to
get the phone, and then.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
You know earlier on.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Now this is more when I was very young but
still had a rotary dial phone.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
But then the touchtown. Oh god, I feel make sure
no one's on the internet dial up. Feel so old.
I mean, I'm way after party lines and stuff. You
even know what a party line is? Yes, but you
want to know why I know what a party line is. Yeah,
I didn't want to know why when you would.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
Swing on the swings as a kid, and you were
both swinging at the same time, you were both going
up and back. You go, you're on my party line?
Did we know what that was as a kid?

Speaker 4 (18:52):
No?

Speaker 1 (18:53):
So when did someone explain it to you?

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (18:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
All right, let's get to some listener questions, and folks,
text your question for Gina at five six six nine
zero and it will you know, if it's a good question,
I will still pose it to her.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Even if you, even if you spell.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Her name wrong, Gina, what is the proper number of
times each year to wash your legs?

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Each year? Each year, every time you shower, you washed
your legs.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Okay, so what is that like ten or fifteen times
a year? Then?

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Is that what you're is that what you're.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Saying, I'm probably an every other day shower, So all right, whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
The moth is of that, that's good. I've never noticed
you being stinky, that's good. So you're not a naturally stinky.
But unless my wife can go a few days without showering,
not that I encourage that, but I can't smell her
when I walk by here, which would.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Probably not be the same for me.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
And meanwhile, have you seen a rod's reaction to this
conversation that we're having right now?

Speaker 5 (19:48):
No, do you want to say anything a rod? Is
your shower every day is worse than him not washing
his legs? That's awfully gross.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
No, Okay, so listen, I do I do like hot
yoga every day, So it's either a full hair body shower, yeah,
or just a body shower. So I guess I should
say that it's pretty much I'm showering every day, is it?
But one's a full shower, is it or something like bickram?

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (20:17):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (20:17):
A hot version of vinyasa.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, so it's probably thirty or sixty minutes.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Not ninety. It's sixty, it's sixty. Yeah, okay, all right,
let's see Gina.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Is this the kind of show you thought you'd be
getting into when you came to Colorado? No?

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (20:35):
What's your What kind of plants do you have? And
which are your favorites?

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (20:40):
I have a lot of plants. I name them all,
So all have names. Okay, I like it. It's either
a pothos or a pothos. Everyone says it differently, but
that's the really finy one. You pretty much don't have
to do anything to it, and it just grows and
grows and grows.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
I really like those. Okay, same question about cats? You
have cats? I have one cat, alright. She's as deaf
as can be? Is she old or she's just deugh?
Her name's Luna, and we found her on the street.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
She was probably some like luxury cat, you know, like
like some prized cat. She's really really pretty long white hair,
but as deaf as can be. So I have a
feeling they realize we can't make money on this one.
And huh, so we the cat distribution system, as we
like to say, broader to us.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
All right, yeah, listener, text, Gene, are you okay?

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Can I get you anything? Love it?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Listener, text that isn't normal and take it from me,
the guy driving around stinky people seven days a week.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
We can smell you.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Well.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Okay, So I guess I will say I do shower
every day. It depends if it's a hair or just
a body shower. But I do wash my legs every
time I shower.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, Ross, I think a body shower is the thing
that counts as a shower, whether or not you wash
your hair. I think even a rod would say the
definition of a shower does not have.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
To include, but can include washing your hair. I agree,
but it feels weird if I don't wash my hair,
it just feels icky. See it's different.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
I feel like for longer hair, it's like if you
wash it too much, then it just gets greasier, quicker.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Oh, greed, So every other day, tell.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Me the cat name again, Luna Luna.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Oh, she doesn't know it because she's deaf, so we
just call her whatever we want to call her.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Oh my god, we had a core you named Luna.
It's a very good and very popular dog name. I
hadn't heard about it so much for cats.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Oh all right, it's a very common pet name. There's
a lot of Lunas out there. Anytime we go to
the vet, we go Luna and they're like, yeah, you
gotta be more specific than that.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Gina, how do you feel about bell pepper and blue cheese?

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Bell pepper and blue cheese, blue cheese.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yes, bell peppers probably have to be grilled, Like, I'm
not just going to.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Eat a raw bell pepper.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Gina, are you going to be okay eating weird foods
with Ross and Dragon? No?

Speaker 1 (22:59):
I am a vegetarian, so sorry, what if it's vegetarian?

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Sure? What if it's like trying to find the hottest
ramen we can find and seeing if our heads explode?

Speaker 1 (23:10):
If it's vegetarian? Yeah sure, yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Do you have a favorite band?

Speaker 2 (23:15):
And then a second question from the same person, do
you have a favorite movie?

Speaker 1 (23:19):
That's tough?

Speaker 3 (23:21):
I am a huge concert goer. I pretty much will
go to any live music.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
If I had to.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Say, maybe just my go to Sense Forever, Maybe the
Luminiers has been a go to artist for me.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
A local, right, they do have some Denver roots to them.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yes, I don't know if I think they might have
been grown up in California also, but they do have
Denver roots. Favorite movie is really tough for me because
I don't watch a ton of movies.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
If I had to.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Pick a couple that I've liked as them late and
I know, everything everywhere, everything, everything, everywhere all at once
was a wacky one that some people liked or hated.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
I think you hated it?

Speaker 4 (23:58):
Did you know?

Speaker 1 (23:59):
I didn't see it.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Okay, I didn't see it, but didn't that did it
win an a cat?

Speaker 1 (24:03):
It did? Yeah, that one's pretty wacky. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
From a journalistic perspective, Civil War is very very hard
to watch.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, but it is very very well done. What else?

Speaker 2 (24:13):
How do you feel about Neil Young? And how do
you feel about Rush? These are listener questions. It seems
like that would be my question, but it's not.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Well, I did buy tickets for Rush. I've never seen
them before, but I wanted to, so I'm pretty much
in that.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Which show are you going to the first one that's
a Monday then Monday show? Right?

Speaker 4 (24:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (24:31):
I think and the second one is a Wednesday show.
All right, I'm going to Wednesday show.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Oh nice? Yeah, all right, Neil Young, it's funny.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Another listener wants to know how you feel about Rush.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Well, I don't know the Rush uh backstory? What you
are a Rush fan?

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, yeah us okay, yeah, I was sure that the
backstory is.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Nadian band uh And early on a lot of their
inspiration was from Iron Rand, which is a big philosophical
inspiration from me. And one of their one of their
big albums, is called twenty one twelve and on the
inside of the album cover, I don't know if you're
old enough to know what it looks like when you
have an actual album and you can hold it, open
it up and you can see the inside, but it
says something like I'll get it, maybe a little bit wrong,

(25:10):
but with acknowledgment of the genius of Iinrand. And one
side of twenty one to twelve one album side is
their take on an in Rand short novel called called
Anthem Yeah, which is a brilliant thing.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
My brother's a huge fan, so I know what you're
talking about just through him.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Uh, we're doing by the way, in case you haven't
figured out we're doing.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Ask Gina anything, so.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Text your questions to five six, six nine zero. I'm
just gonna keep going with this, partly because it's fun
and partly because I'm lazy, but also, you know, you're
gonna be with me and Gina from six to nine
for some years to come, I hope, and so I
think it's good if we And I'm learning a lot
of this stuff for the first time too about Gina,
so I'm so I'm digging it. Gina, what's the grossest
vegetarian food?

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Ooh, that's hart. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Actually, all right, I've tried some some wacky things like satan,
you know, like the funky meats that they make and stuff.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Some of those are better than others. Gross. I love
to arod. This is more for you than for for Gina.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
A listener text, my wife doesn't wash her feet in
the shower because she claims the soap from the rest
of her body makes.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Its way down and cleans them. HM. So of course
that guy's wife is exactly right. Yeah, and it applies.
It applies to the lower leg under below the knee
as well. No, yeah, it doesn't. No.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
No, if you get really gross and you do something
really gross outside. Yeah, wash your feet, actually the feet
wash otherwise in the soapy water.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
You're good, uh, Gina.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Sock sock shoeshoe or sock shoe sock shoe.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Definitely sock sock shoe shoe because my shoes are in
a completely different area and I don't track my shoes
through the house.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
So I'm in the room, usually in.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
The closet, trying to put on my clothes, getting ready
in the morning, not waking up the husband.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Sock sock.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Then I go out and grab the shoes. I do
get your rationale of doing sox shoe sock.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Shoe, which I don't. I'm sock sock shoe shoe. Are
you think are sock sock shoe?

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah? I think sock shoe sock shoe people are a
little bit insane.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Have you met sock shoe sock shoe people? Only a couple, Okay,
only a couple, and some.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Of them they tend to be so they were in
the military and they get used to.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
It because you don't want to put a sock down in.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
The sand if you're deployed to the desert or there
are some people who really go to the gym a lot,
and they don't want to put a sock down on
a wet locker room floor. Oh so they'll do sock shoe.
But most most people, most people aren't. This next thing,
I'm going to just handle myself here. I'm gonna handle
this a little bit carefully.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
I've got a whole.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Bunch of listeners asking Gina questions about politics and her
political views and all that, and I'm gonna I'm just
gonna say this in public. One of the things, because
I I've said it in private to Gina and to management.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Here I said, one.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Of the things I appreciate so much about Gina is
that while I might have a guess perhaps at Gina's
political views, after all of these months and years listening
to Gina on the radio, I cannot tell you what
her politics are. I cannot tell you. And I'm guessing
if I looked at her Facebook feed, maybe i'd have
a better idea. But I love the fact that Gina,

(28:27):
as a journalist, does not wear her politics on her sleeve.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
And I'm not going to drag her.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Into politics now, and I'm not going to drag her
into politics later. And if Gina wants to talk about
politics later, She'll be more than welcome to do so,
but that's more my lane and I do you want
to say anything about any of that?

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, I hope that even if you looked at my social.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Media, there's not really anything that stands out because I've
been doing this for so long of being more on
the journalistic side of things, that my main goal was
always just I'm just going to give it to you.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Here's the news. You take it and where you want.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
You go to Ross, you go to Mandy, you go
to Michael Brown, you go wherever you want to get
the reaction to it.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
This is the news. And I've been doing that for
a very very long time.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
So it's something that I've always really take a lot
of pride in because it's not something that I ever
really feel like expressly.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Plus I never feel.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Like I have an opinion where I want to be
expressing it openly like you do. I just feel like
I want to give people the information that they want
and then or they need, and then take it to
where they want.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
And just one more thing on this for listeners.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
My default position, although I'm open to having my mind changed,
especially because it really has nothing to do with me.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
It's about Gina.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
But my default position is that Gina is a journalist,
and Gina is going to continue to bring you the
news four times an hour, plus all of the five
am to six am Colorado Morning News hour, which you
might not be aware of this, but it's a huge
hour on KOWA.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
That five am hour is a really big deal.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
So if I were, if I were in Gina's position,
I think I would not want to give a political opinion,
even during an opinion show, a talk show like like
mine or like What's hours now. And I just think
we have an unlimited we have an infinite number of

(30:17):
topics we can talk about Gina and I without having
to ask her a political opinion. So infinity minus one,
if you remember your math from fourth grade, is still infinity, right,
So that's kind of where I am, and I feel
no need to drag Gina into into politics. But again, Gene,
if you ever want to express an opinion about anything,

(30:37):
although I'm I'm already a little thrown off as to
the quality of your opinions since you said blue cheese
is okay, But it's up to you. But I'm not
going to drag you in any of any last thing
on that or are you good? No?

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Great? Okay? So where have you lived?

Speaker 4 (30:57):
So?

Speaker 3 (30:57):
I grew up in Michigan Metro Detroit, then moved over
to Grand Rapids. So pretty much if you make the
little mitten on your hand, I traveled all across your
little palm right there, because that's what we do in Michigan.
We always point to where we lived on our hand,
like Michigan mitten. Then I worked in Jacksonville, Florida for
a little bit, and but Denver was always the main goal.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
That was where I've always really wanted to go.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
But so we did a road trip out here when
there was the not the most recent total lunar eclipse,
but the one that happened maybe eight years ago, and
we went to the path of totality.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
And then we came out here.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
We went to Rocky Mountain National Park, saw our first
Red Rock show, and I'll be honest as a music fan,
the Red Rock Show was the one where we were sold.
We said, we're coming out here. We don't know how when,
where We're going to make it work. Somehow we actually
didn't think we were going to be out here as
soon as.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Were you with the guy who's your husband nowt Okay.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
So we did the trip out here together and he
works in he's a journalist as well, and so we
both realized that we were going to have to just
climb markets, because that's really how it works in this business,
is making sure that you know, the smaller the city,
the smaller the market. We had to work our way
up the ladder to work in Jacksonville, Florida, and then

(32:08):
then it just worked out where I saw the the
Colorado's Morning News position open and he was the one
that said just apply, just apply, and I was like,
oh way, no way, There's no way I would get that.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
So here we are.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
We're both we're both doing exactly what we wanted to
be doing in an area we wanted to be.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
So can't complain. Just one quick anecdote for you.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
When my when my parents got divorced, and this would
have been in the in the eighties, uh.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
My dad we were living on the East coast.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
My dad drove to the West coast and I drove
with him and we drove through Colorado and I you know,
I'll give you the ultra short version of the story.
Ever since that, ever since driving through Colorado and seeing it,
I had in my mind I want to move there
one day. Yeah, so it's very much like your like
your experience that that eclipse was amazing. I was on

(32:57):
Kihaw at the time, and we did a thing where
we met hundreds of listeners out there just north of
Lake McConaughey near Arthur, Nebraska, and we met oh, oh
my gosh, so check this out. I was.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
I was.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I was on K Howe six to ten in the
show after Mine's Tom Martino, who's still in that time
slot over there. Tom as a helicopter. Did you know that? No,
Tom as a helicopter. And Tom heard me talking about
going out to Nebraska and hanging out with listeners for
his total eclips and he said, can I come? And

(33:32):
I said, of course, of course you can. Why not
The more the merrier, And then he said, well, can
we go out there in my helicopter?

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Nice?

Speaker 1 (33:40):
And I said, why didn't you lead with that?

Speaker 2 (33:43):
And so I flew out there from Centennial Airport to
this place on the north the North Shore Lodge I
think it's called, in Lake McConaughey. In Tom Martino's helicopter.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
That is so cool. It was it was really you
guys have good weather where you were at for that time. Yeah,
it was good, it was it was really good. It
was a little overcast where we were at.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
But the last one we were in Michigan for and
that was that was crazy.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
That was amazing.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
All Right, We've got one minute left here, which one
question do I want to do here? What's the what's
the biggest news interview you've ever done?

Speaker 1 (34:15):
And who would you most like to interview? Oh?

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Man, that's that's tough because it really depends on what
people say. I do really enjoy the governors that I
have been able to interview, which is the governor of Michigan, Florida,
and and Governor Polis. The one I.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Would love to do.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
I mean, shoot for the stars, if if if there
was if we could interview the president, if we could
interview anybody. You know, you want to you want to
go big and pick somebody that you could do from
the very top. But we've done fun ones too, you know,
like I don't know, going to the Botanic gardens and
when they have that death flower that bloom, talk to
the guy that that you know took care of it,

(34:53):
and things like that. There's always just one ones that
stick in your mind, but you always really want to
aim for just the really big, big interviews that you couldnail.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I mean I'd love to interview the president whichever president
you know that would or or you know, a king
of something, a prime minister or pope.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah hope, especially in American Can the pope be amazing?
Uh huh? Yeah? Would you ask him if he does
sock sock shoes shoes? Did you ask him if he
washes his legs?

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Oh my gosh, that might be a little far.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, I think that one. Maybe not, that might be
a little far. One other question. I like asking a
random question.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
I like asking people is is the best flavor of
pop tarts? So let me end with asking you the
best flavor of pop tart? Although you're probably a little
too much of a healthy eater to eat pop tarts.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Well, you know, I don't I like the cherry one.
I don't know if that's weird or not frosted or
not frosted. It's always gotta be frosted. Yeah, yeah, all right,
that's a fine answer. I don't really like the ones
that are like or like the brown sugar. I do
like the brown sugar cinnamon, not the ones that have
like chocolate.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Where the mean there are abab these wacky new flavors
and all that Sunday things like that. You're not down
with that?

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Try to blueberry crumble, lemon crumble or something like that.
That was pretty wacky.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
I am. I actually have a pretty big pop.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Talk all right, there you go. I think minus frosted blueberry.
But some of the new flavors are all right. The
Apple Jacks flavor is not terrible. Yeah, But on the
other hand, you know, I have I have the taste
buds of a six year old. So anyway, all right, Gina,
thanks for playing along. Yeah, I have a have a
wonderful weekend with whatever you decide to do, uh this

(36:28):
weekend and uh and I'll see it.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
I'll see it bright and early on Monday. Sounds all right.
We'll be right back on KOA.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
We live more and more online, including more and more
of our financial lives online, more and more business transactions online.
But with the advent of very clever criminals and AI
which could potentially be used by clever criminals but also
by the good guys, how do you know that you
can trust the business you are trying to do online.

(36:57):
My next guest, Max von Cat, is head of a
company called Iowe You that is working in that space,
and frankly, I don't.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Understand it very well. It's technical, but it will apply
and does apply to.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Your every day online business life in particular, so I
want to understand it. Max, thanks for joining us here
on KOA.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
Thanks Ros, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
So, first, describe the problem that your firm IOU is
aiming to solve.

Speaker 6 (37:33):
So the main problem, the way I'm going to solve,
is who should you trust when you're engaging in a
small business transaction. There's a lot of systems in place
for large business transactions obviously that go into legal spaces
in other areas, but when it comes to doing small
business deals, it's hard to know if the person you're
about to engage in business with is somebody that has

(37:54):
a good track record of doing business, who they've.

Speaker 4 (37:56):
Done business with before.

Speaker 6 (37:58):
There's no real place out there right now now that
has that as a validated source of peer reviews of
people they've worked with. And so the point point we're
looking to solve is I want to know that is
this person I'm about to engage your business with someone
that I should engage business with, someone that will probably
pay on time, Somebody that will communicate well, that is professional,
that has all these things right, And how can I

(38:18):
know that that's a there's verifiable evidence that they are
somebody that they say they are based off of their
past business transaction history.

Speaker 4 (38:26):
And so that's that's the main point we're trying to tackle.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Is this mostly B to B? Is it equally B
to C? What is it?

Speaker 6 (38:34):
That's a great question. So a large part of this
is B to B. It's going to be small. Our
main target audience is small business owners, teams of you know,
anywhere from solopreneurs to fifteen to twenty people that don't
really have the infrastructure to go and do all that
kind of diligence.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
They're the people that are getting left behind the most.

Speaker 6 (38:54):
Me and myself as either an entrepreneur, as a co founder,
and as a contractor in all those situations, been in
places where I've gotten into business with people who don't
end up paying their bills, and it's the most painful
emotional toll of any business owner. And so that's where
it really starts. But it also applies for there's kind
of a B two C sector as well. If you
are a contractor, sometimes your client is a person, not

(39:16):
a business, right, Maybe you're building a maybe you're doing
a bathroom contracting. A lot of these places coming these
transactions come into a place where there you don't know
this is a client that's so one you want to
work with because in the past, maybe they haven't paid
on time, maybe they're really problematic client, maybe other people
don't like to work with them, whether it's an agency

(39:37):
and individuals. So our target is small businesses where they
have the biggest pain point, but individuals as well.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
Apply.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
And I'll mention to listeners.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Max's website is iowe you Marker dot com. I owe
you Marker dot com. So let's just stick with your
example and we just have a few minutes here, but
I want to get as much as.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
We can in.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
So imagine there is a a company that remodels houses,
and there are potential clients out there, and potential client
contacts this company, and so what you're suggesting is this
can go both directions in the sense that the person
who's looking for a home remodel or wants to make
sure you can trust that that particular contractor, and the

(40:20):
contractor wants to make sure that he's not getting involved
with a deadbeat or otherwise problematic client. Right correct, Okay,
so how does AI help with solve This'll.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
Jump into it.

Speaker 6 (40:32):
So the way it works basically that a contract was
set up contract through IOU, they would countersign the contract
our AI and AGENTIC would then have context in the contract.
It would be responsible for the follow ups on the payments,
it would be responsible for mediation, and then when all
of that work is done, it would then allow both
counterparties to review each other, just like an Airbnb host
reviews of guests.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Oh wow.

Speaker 6 (40:52):
Right, and so over time you build this equity of
reputation that you can say, you know, this is somebody
that you want to work with.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Would the only available source of reputation impacting information on
your platform be what people have done on your platform,
or does your platform go out and look for BBB
violation or you know, complaints or other such things.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
It's a good question.

Speaker 6 (41:19):
So we're exploring integrating other sources of trust that you
can come to us with.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
The One issue that we have is, as.

Speaker 6 (41:27):
You mentioned in the beginning, the Internet's becoming very hard
to trust, right, and top down reviews also are becoming
hard to trust. People are not really trusting institutional reviewing
and things like that. There's a lot of corruption in that,
and people trust each other, but they need to be
verified that it's somebody that should have done the review,
most online reviews or all these things. At this point,
I can build a bot network that can just fill
my Yelp up with positive reviews or whatever it might be.

(41:49):
And so there are going to be external factors that
can help. But our bet is that we're making a
platform that has the utility of the AI agentic payments
remediation as well, that is so useful on top of
it that that's how we start to implement this scoring
and you start building that reputation, right.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
And so before the scoring.

Speaker 6 (42:08):
Goes in, what is there is the knowing that you
will get scored, which is what social accountability is, right,
So you know in this that there will be a
social accountability level at the end, and that even though
you don't know the person at start, should create some pressure,
which is normally where this happens. Pressure comes from the
social accountability.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Okay, last question for you, and this is more of
a logistical question. But let's stick with our example of
a home remodeler and a potential client. So how would
it work. What would one of those parties perhaps say
to the other one, Hey, I want to work with you,
but I want to go through IOU marker for our contract.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Is that how it works? Correct?

Speaker 6 (42:47):
They would upload their contract and get the counter signature
and IO you right, and so the kind of party
would sound and are you just like any accounter sider software.
There's plenty of them out there, and so the contract
would go on there. Than our urgentic would then pull
the information out of that provide the end voices of
depaus it's would do. The follow up would do the
chasing weld check with both parties when.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
It is the job done? Are you satisfied?

Speaker 6 (43:06):
Yes, no, blah blah blah, And it goes through the
steps and then it gets to the end and then
that's where the you know, there's social accountability evolved. And
then the client and the contract and say, hey, this
is good for both of us because it's going to
create social accountability that I do my job well and
I communicate professionally and well and all these things and
it's going to create a track record for you that
you're a good client and somebody the people want to
work with and they don't have to worry about it
and put all these protections because they don't know who

(43:26):
you are in that structure.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Are you guys on the hook for anything if somebody
doesn't perform.

Speaker 4 (43:33):
No, it's their contract, right, it's their contract. There are things.

Speaker 6 (43:35):
All we're doing is creating the tool set to help
pull for these things and the social accountability. But they're
doing a business transaction. We're just providing a platform that
they're able to execute that transaction through. Right, We're not
actually providing any sort of guarantee of payment or any
of those things.

Speaker 4 (43:52):
It's just this is the information.

Speaker 6 (43:54):
We're providing a sort of platform that allows to make
that information more transparent, more trust more accountability.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
It's a fascinating and important space in an online world
that is increasingly in reality and perception, less and less trustworthy.
Max von Couch's company is called io You. Io you
marker dot com is the website iowe.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
You marker dot com. Thanks. Max, is very very fascinating.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
I actually understood most of that, but that's because you
dumbed it down.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
For me.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
I wish you lots of success and maybe we'll talk again.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
As you as you get bigger.

Speaker 6 (44:29):
Yeah, absolutely, ross, thanks for the opportunity, Thanks for having
us on.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
All right, glad to do it. We'll take a quick break,
we'll be back on Kawa.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Grant. You told me you didn't get to sleep until
two am.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Is that just because you were out partying after the
Broncos massively impressive dominating when or whatever else that might
have been yesterday?

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Gosh what and ugly when? Yeah? I was not out partying.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
I was sitting right here working really Yeah, Broncos react
until two am until midnight, yeah, and then do some
stuff afterwards to get everything situated and right for the morning.
Got home about one fifteen. Yeah, and you can't fall
asleep right at no get home, So sat on the couch,
watched a couple episodes of sign Feld.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
And then fell asleep around too.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Okay, plus the adrenaline from that incredible offense field game.
What an amazing forty seven to thirty seven win for
the Denver Broncos yesterday?

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Oh no, wait, that was some.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Other games, some other My brother, who does not watch
many Broncos games, lives in South Carolina. He texted me
in the second quarter and said, there's no way Bonnicks
has been your starting quarterback all year, right with this record,
There's no way. Yeah, I said, he's actually been really good. Yeah. So, yeah,
it was an ugly win. But in the NFL, all
the matters.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Is a win. Right, There's been a lot of ugly wins.
But I think.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Once they start playing better teams, this ain't going to
cut it. Well, I'll say this. They seem to play
up or down to their the competition. Yeah, so they
play up to the Chiefs level. Yeah, and a week
they almost lost to the Jets, right, yeah, I should
have lost that game. Yeah, okay, all right, Well, I'm
glad you're here and mostly awake. So I want to

(46:13):
speak of sports. I want to send out a big congratulations,
not that he's going to hear it, to Alex Ovechkin
of the Washington Capitals, who became the first player in
NHL history to score nine hundred goals. It took a
little longer than expected. He's been a little bit off
to a slow start this year, but still, nine hundred
goals isn't that incredible. Let's see, this is from NHL

(46:35):
dot Com. Ovechkin, who was in his twenty first NHL season,
becomes the eighth player in league history to play fifteen
hundred games with one franchise. That milestone had great meaning
for him as well, but he never tires of celebrating
goals no matter how many he scores. Yeah, first player
ever to score nine hundred goals in the NHL. It

(46:57):
is absolutely incredible, you know, and I actually put it
on the blog if you want to see the goal.
It was kind of an unusual goal. You know that
it was a backhand from this a slow backhand from
the side where it wasn't even really looking but the
goalie was kind of out of position and just went.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Into the goal behind the goalie.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
But you know what, you don't you well, you almost
never make make a goal when you didn't, you know,
at least shoot at the net.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
That's what.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Anyway, there you go, nine hundred, nine hundred for Alexandrovschkin.
Pretty incredible thing. I'll tell you what I want to.
I want to get back on track here as far
as keeping the show on time. So I'm going to
hit a quick break here and when we come back.
I got a lot of things I want to do
with you.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
One of them is.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
You will not believe how much money one commercial real
estate company just lost in the last four years or
so buying real estate in Denver. I'll tell you about
the story right after this. For those of you very
very concerned about inconvenience to me or or my lifestyle,

(48:05):
don't worry about it. I already wake up early enough
to do a six am to nine am show without
having to change my sleep patterns. So it's it's okay, right,
it's fine for it would not be fine for Grant.
Would not be fine for Grant to have to do
six am to nine am every day, But it's fine.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
It's fine for me.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Be totally fine for me if that was a normal skis,
if it was only it was just a flipping from
working till one am and then coming in at nine am.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
If you were one hundred percent in charge of your
own schedule, would you work mornings or would you work evenings?

Speaker 4 (48:43):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
I'd work that beautiful midday ship, would you? Yeah? Ten
to three?

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah, well ten to four seems like you got to
put in six hours on the board around here. You're married, right,
and your wife works yes, so if she's I presume
she's working midday. We never see each other. You never
see it, right, you never see each other. Sucks, but
it's also kind of nice sometimes, to be honest. I mean,
I do like my alone time. Uh huh, all right,

(49:10):
well maybe maybe Dave is listening right now and he'll
look for a way to get you some more mid days.
So I mentioned in the last segment of the show
that Alex Ovechkin it just became the first n NHL
players scored nine hundred goals.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
And then I.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Got texts from a few listeners all at once, say, hey,
did you see what the goalie did? The goalie that
Ovechkin scored against, And that's Jordan Bennington and the Saint
Louis Blues. And so I went to look, because I
hadn't seen it. I went to look, and so what
happened the goal? Obviously, the goal went in the net,

(49:45):
wouldn't have been a goal. And I guess Bennington reached
down and grabbed the puck, right, and of course the
player who scores nine hundred goals is gonna want that puck.
The goalie reached down, picked up the puck and shoved
it down the back of his pants. And then I
just saw I just saw this video. It looks like
one of the one of the linemen. Uh went over

(50:06):
as Bennington went back to the neck the net because
they because it was caught on camera. It was on
it was on all the TV cameras and probably the
overhead in the stadium as well, and and he went
over to him and said something to must have been like, hey, dude,
we know you have that puck.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
I need it now.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
And Bennington reached down like like as if you were
going to grab something out of your pocket but kind
of inside his huge occupants and grabbed it and gave
to the lineman, who then gave it to o Vetch.
Bennington says, uh, he said, it's a quote. I figured
I basically had an assist on that goal turning the
puck over. I didn't think he'd mind sharing it, and
then he was. And then he said, no, I had

(50:43):
full intention to get it back to him.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
But I bet you he didn't.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
I bet he did not have full intention on giving
it back to him, because if if you did, you
would have picked up the puck and skated it over
to him, or skated it over to the Washington Capitol's
bench or done something other then kind of stick it
somewhere down like by your underwear. Right, So, anyway, that
was kind of a bad move by that dude.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
All Right, what else? Okay, I promise you this story.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
This is a really shocking kind of kind of number.
So there's a very large commercial real estate firm called
Brookfield Properties, and they own some number of some number
of billions of dollars of commercial real estate.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
They are a.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Really really big group now less than five years ago.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
In January of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Now, think about what happened in March of twenty twenty,
and think about what happened to the Denver commercial real
estate market because of COVID, And think about how often
I talk about how slow the recovery in downtown Denver
has been as far as people come back, come backing,

(51:57):
what the heck was that coming back to work in offices.
It's been one of the slowest recoveries as far as
that of any major city in America. Right the office,
the office occupancy rate is recovering very very slowly. So
in January of twenty twenty, Brookfield bought a couple of

(52:22):
things They bought a twenty nine story office building that's
called the Johns me John's Menville Plaza because.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
The biggest tenant in the building is that company.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
But the address is seven seventeen seventeenth Street, Okay, seven
seventeen seventeenth Street. And then they also bought part of
another building right next to it, essentially seven oh seven
seventeenth Street. And what they bought in that building, which

(52:54):
is a forty two story building, they bought the twenty
two floors that have office.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
The other twenty floors are.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
A Hilton and are owned by I don't know if
Hilton owns them, as somebody else owns them. Right, So
they bought a twenty nine story office building at seven
seventeen seventeenth Street, and they bought twenty two floors at
seven oh seven seventeenth Street, and they paid four hundred
million dollars all right, four hundred million dollars in January

(53:24):
of twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Grant, Are you listening to any of this?

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Okay, grant, They paid four hundred million dollars in January
of twenty twenty. What is your guess as to how
much they just sold all of that for? They just
sold it five million, seventy five million. So you you
think they lost three hundred and twenty five million dollars.
That is an incredibly good guess. I mean, it's not

(53:52):
right on, but it's an incredibly good guess. And actually
for that property company, they did even a bit worse
than what you said. They sold it for fifty seven
point four million dollars, but that was a heck of
a gas. Well. I have a buddy who works on
the buildings in downtown Denver, and he just talks about

(54:13):
how empty all of them are. Yeah, all the skyscrapers
that used to be completely full.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Right right.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
In fact, this is a perfect example. When they bought
these buildings or a building in half another building in
twenty twenty, the space was ninety four percent occupied and
now it's fifty percent occupied. And it's only fifty percent
occupied because they got one big tenant earlier this year,

(54:40):
Colorado's Department of Labor took one hundred and thirty one
thousand square feet in that seven oh seven seventeenth Street building.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
So anyway, not incredible.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
On the other hand, Brookfield is so big that they
said divesting this asset has no impact on our real
estate business.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Where our core.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
US office portfolio was ninety five percent least, with net
operating income up nearly twenty percent since twenty twenty. So basically,
what they're saying is they're doing fine, but Denver's not right.
I'm not being sarcastic here. They're doing fine. Commercial real
estate is doing okay, maybe not fabulously well, but okay
in much of the country, in big cities. But Denver

(55:24):
is really an outlier as to just how bad that
recovery is in terms of people coming back to work
in the office.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Okay, Now, instead of a story about.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Someone losing a ton of money, let's talk about someone
making a ton of money, but in a very very
different way.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Check this out.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
A few brothers were cleaning out their mom's home after
their mom passed away, and their mom had told them
in the past that she had some valuable comic books.
Comic books, by the ways, this whole massive world of
stuff that I really don't know much about, have never read.
You know, when I was a kid, I had comic books,

(56:09):
just like a kid would have comic books.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
You'd get a comic.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Book for a quarter or fifty cents or whatever, and
you'd read it and then you have no idea what
happened to it after that, Probably your mom threw it away.
You have no idea. But these guys, these brothers, they
knew that she had some old comic books, but they
didn't know much else about them. And so they're digging
around in the attic and they found they found, and

(56:34):
I'm quoting from the New York Post here five valuable
early copies of action comics. And check this out, a
pristine copy, so ranked nine out of ten on quality
by whoever does these rankings.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
You ready, the very first Superman comic.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
And it is expected that that one, and they have
a bunch of other valuable ones that they found in
their mom's addic, but that one, because of the rarity,
and especially the rarity in essentially perfect condition, is expected
to get six million dollars at auction.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
That incredible.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
These guys are in their fifties and sixties, and their
mom had always said she had some expensive comics, but
she never showed her kids the comic collection. It's a
twist on the old hey mom threw away my comics story.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
This copy of.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Or Superman number one was issued in nineteen thirty nine
and for those of you kind of into this whole
comic book thing and the movies that come about after
or tied to the comic books.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
A little bit of.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
History here, National Allied changed its name.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
To Detective Comics, Inc.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Forever known to fans as DC, So the whole world
of DC comics and movies related to.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
D C and all the Batman.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Stuff that actually stands for Detective Comics, which is not
the original name of the company.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
The original name of the company was National Allied.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
So Heritage Auctions, which is handling the sale, says that
Superman has long been among the world's most valuable comics.
A copy of Action Comics number one, which is different
than Superman, but a copy of Action Comics number one
sold for six million dollars last year. Superman number one
went for five point three million dollars in twenty twenty two.

(58:37):
But this one is in better condition than either of those.
They also got a little bit lucky in the sense
that this attic, this woman with her attic is in
northern California, so when a very low humidity environment where
this thing survived essentially perfectly.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Where like the auction.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Guy, the guy running the auction how in Texas, and
he said, if the attic had been here in Texas,
there's no way this thing would have survived.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
So how about that.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
Anyway, it's going up for auction in about two weeks
at Heritage Auctions if you want to go.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Check that out. All right, let me do a somewhat
heavier story here.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
I don't think I've talked about this on the news
on the show, but it's been in the news a lot,
so you may have seen it. This trial, civil trial,
not criminal trial, civil trial of a teacher suing the
assistant principle of her school for the teacher having gotten

(59:38):
shot by a six year old boy who brought a
gun to school. Now, why is she suing the assistant principle.
By the way, she also tried to sue I think
the school in the school district, and the judge tossed
those for technical reasons, but did allow the case to
go ahead against the vice principal or the assistant principle.

(01:00:00):
And the reason that the assistant principal, his name is
Ebony Parker, is getting sued is that multiple people apparently
told the assistant principle that this six year old kid
had a gun, either directly or indirectly. For example, a

(01:00:20):
teacher testified last week that she had informed the assistant
principle that students told her the teacher that this boy
had a gun in his backpack, right, so that this
not the teacher who got shot. A different teacher went
to the assistant principle and said, hey, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Being told that this kid has a gun.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
And then another instructor this is from NBC News, by
the way, another instructor testified that she relayed the same
concern to the assistant principle after a student alerted her
to the boy having a gun.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
But the assistant principal didn't do any thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
And the argument from the assistant principal's lawyer is quite
an interesting one.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
The lawyer said.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
That the assistant principle, and I'm quoting, did not have
a legal duty to protect the teacher, whose name is
is Werner Zweer Nr. Abigail is her first name. So
the lawyer for the assistant principle is saying she did
not have a legal duty to protect miss Warner. She

(01:01:29):
did not volunteer to protect missus Warner. In any case,
we don't need to dig into that much more now,
because yesterday a jury awarded Abigail's warner ten million dollars. Now,
she was seeking forty million dollars, but that's okay, she's
seeking ten million dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Oh, by the way, what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
The six year old got the gun and shot the teacher,
who kind of saw it coming but was at a distance.
Put her hand up the way you might try to block.
You know, if a ball is being thrown at you
very hard, right, you might put a hand up to
try to block it. She put her hand up. The
bullet went through her hand, into her chest and collapsed

(01:02:10):
her lung.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
She lived.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Obviously, she's suing now, and she still has some ongoing issues.
Actually I think she has more ongoing hand issues than
ongoing pulmonary issues with the lung, but still ongoing issues.
And it is a kind of a shocking thing that
this assistant principle was told by multiple people that this

(01:02:34):
kid had a gun. And so now that part is
interesting as far as it goes, but it goes further.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
There's a couple other things I want to mention to you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
So the assistant principle is also facing criminal charges of
child abuse and neglect, and my understanding I could be
wrong about this, but my understanding is that the basis
of those charges is essentially she was aware that there

(01:03:08):
was a student with a gun in a school where
there are lots of other students, so she put other
students at risk as well as putting the student with
the gun at risk by just leaving that six year
old with a gun. So anyway, she is facing felony
criminal charges. Now why is that interesting. It's because there

(01:03:33):
is a chance that all right, let me back up. Obviously,
an assistant principle doesn't have ten million dollars. So normally
this verdict would be paid for by a risk sharing
pool in Virginia that is called the VRSA Virginia Risk
Sharing Association. And this is an insurance pool, like the

(01:03:56):
same way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
You might have deposit insurance.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Right, we got all these banks paying into the FDIC
fund and then if a bank fails, then your bank
accounts are guaranteed if you're at a bank that participates
in FDIC, guaranteed up to some amount of money. Right,
So you've got this this risk sharing pool. So they
have something like that in Virginia, and it's made up

(01:04:20):
of lots of public institutions around the state, not all schools,
but it does include this particular school district, the Newport
News school district. And so in theory, this ten million
dollars and I don't know if it'll be appealed as
for the amount, but whatever the amount is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Would be paid for by this risk pool. But but.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
If the assistant principle is found criminally guilty, then it's
possible that the insurance pool will say that the assistant
principle at that point was not doing her job and
had essentially abandoned the requirements of the job so much

(01:05:06):
that for the time period in issue here, they could say,
you're actually not even in your job at that time,
because you have so clearly abandoned the responsibilities of your
job that we the insurance company are gonna say you
actually functionally weren't even in your job because you abdicated that,

(01:05:28):
and therefore we are not going to pay now. I
don't know that they want that they would even go
down that road. That would be a pretty egregious thing,
and it would also I think damage the reputation of
the insurance pool and possibly cause other organizations to say, well,
if you're gonna look for ways like this not to
cover things that obviously obviously should be covered. Then we

(01:05:50):
don't want to be part of this insurance pool at all.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
So you know, it may well be that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Even if the assistant principle is convicted on a crime
account or more than one criminal count, they might feel
some pressure that they've got to pay ms Zarner. So
we will see the other thing that I wanted to
mention to you, and let me just see if I
can find this in here. I think it was in
a different story. I think it was in a different

(01:06:17):
story about the same thing. But I believe that the
mother in this case, so the the six year old
got the mom's gun. I believe that the mother in
this case was charged and found guilty and sentenced to
two years in prison also for child's abuse and neglect

(01:06:37):
by leaving a six year old, by leaving a gun
in a place where a six year old not only
could get it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
But apparently knew it was there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
So in any case, I wanted to share that story
with you and the ins and outs rather than just
the headline.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
Right, you probably heard the headline.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
You know, the teacher won ten million dollars in the lawsuit.
But I liked some of those ins and outs of
the legal details. I hope you found that interesting as well.
We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back
on KOA. I'm not feeling misty eyed about it. I'm
not feeling particularly, you know, reminiscent or sentimental, because.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
I'm not leaving the station.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
I'm just moving a few hours earlier, so I'll be
on six to nine. The new show will be called
Ross Kominsky on the News with Gina Gondek. And if
you take out the Kaminsky part and think of it
as Ross on the News, you can abbreviate that as rotten.
So it will be rotten with Gina, which is fine,
Which is fine with me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Fine with me. So I got a ton of stuff
to do. Oh, this is a.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Very timely thing that I wanted to mention to you
if you were listening yesterday's show. I had a woman
on the show from what was the organization called Common
Sense Media, Common Sense Media, and her name is Holly,
and we spoke about a lawsuit that is called net
Choice versus Wiser and I had a guest from Net

(01:08:00):
Choice on about a week earlier, and the subject is
a Colorado law that will require social media platforms to
somehow alert warn, notify something social media platform users who
are under the age of eighteen to post some kind

(01:08:23):
of thing to them about. For example, being on social
media for too long has been shown to be harmful
to something right, almost like a cigarette.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Label warning, maybe a little less intense.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
Than some of those, which basically say you're gonna get
cancer and die, but.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
You're gonna have to do something for.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Users under the age of eighteen who have been on
social media for over an hour over the course of
a twenty four hour period, or who are on social
media between the hours.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Of ten pm and six am. Now Net Choice, the
plaintiff in this case.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Is suing, saying that that's an an unconstitutional government mandate
of compelled speech, where they're going to tell Facebook or
Snapchat or Twitch or whoever, that if your user is
under the age of eighteen, you have to show them
a message.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
And Holly from Common Sense.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Media argued yesterday that she thinks that the law will
be upheld because that's commercial speech and not personal speech
or political speech. And I said, I understand the argument
you're trying to make, and I certainly understand the goal
you are seeking to achieve because I do think that

(01:09:38):
social media is absolute poison for our children, not that
there's no positive.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Use for it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
I mean I think social media is borderline as far
as sort of like break even if you think about
the upsides and the harms for adults. I think it's
around a break even for adults. I don't think it's
around to break even for kids. I think it's very
harmful for kids, especially for girls. So I understand the

(01:10:07):
goal wanting to do something to get kids to use
social media less. But my take at the end of
the conversation yesterday was, while I understood Holly's argument and
why she thinks the law would be upheld, I think
it won't be. I think it is a violation of
the First Amendment, and I think it is compelled speech.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
And I did a little.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
More research yesterday if you want to nerd out with
me on the law for a minute, because Holly is
absolutely right that commercial speech gets less First Amendment protection
than personal or political speech.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Just because the speech is coming from a corporation, and
speech doesn't have to be words, you can hear. It
could be a message on a screen or on a billboard,
or anything like that. But just because it comes from
a corporation does not, under the way our law works,

(01:11:06):
qualify it automatically as commercial speech for purposes of getting
less First Amendment protection. And in particular, what commercial speech
means is speech that is directly involved in commerce, in
the sense that it is somewhere in between a potential

(01:11:26):
buyer and a potential seller who are thinking about a
commercial transaction.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
But at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
That you or your kid is using Twitter or Facebook
or something just using it as a social media platform,
you are not about to buy something from Facebook. Facebook
is not trying to sell you something. Facebook is selling you.
As I often say, Facebook just as an example.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
It's just an example. I've used a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Is providing a service that costs an immense amount of
money to provide you. Think about the programmers and the
servers and everything that's involved in making it possible for
you to show other people how much fun you just
had without them, which is the purpose of Facebook. Think
about how much it costs to create and maintain that platform,

(01:12:21):
and yet it's free for you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Why is it free.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
It's free because you are the product being sold. And
once we understand that, you understand that then at the
moment that you are using Facebook, you are not the customer.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
You are not about to buy something. And therefore, Facebook.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Or whoever popping up a message to a seventeen year
old saying you probably shouldn't be doing this, that is
not commercial speech for the purposes of the law. That's
my take, and the reason I wanted to share this
with you, and this is so timely, is that we
had this gal on the show yesterday talking about it,
why she thought the law would be upheld, and I

(01:13:11):
thought the law would be overturned. And literally four hours
after that conversation, this news story comes out on the
Denver Post website. A federal judge in Denver has blocked
a new state law that's intended to warn young users
about the dangers of too much time on social media.
US District Court Judge William Martinez ruled yesterday he granted

(01:13:33):
a preliminary injunction against the measure that, as I already said,
would require those companies to display warning labels to miners.
I'm going to skip ahead in terms of just in
the interesting time here I'm quoting from the judge. Now,
the court fully appreciates Colorado's legitimate effort to protect the
children and adolescents of our state from the impacts of

(01:13:54):
social media use on their health and well being. The
court concludes, however, that it is substanti likely that net
Choice that's the plaintiffs suing to overturn the law, will
succeed on the merits of its claims that Colorado may
not pursue this laudable goal by compelling social media companies
to speak the state's expressive messages.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
And I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
I'm not a lawyer, but you know, for someone who's
not a lawyer, I do pretty good analysis of this
stuff because I think about it a lot, and so
I'm not surprised by the outcome, although I was pleasantly
surprised that the judge decided to issue his ruling three
or four hours after we talked about it on the show.
We'll be right back, Hey, Ross. Sam Adams Utopius is

(01:14:40):
on sale at Costco and Park Meadows for two hundred
and forty dollars. So there you go if you want
some Sam Adams utopias. I bought some what was it
a year now, it's probably more than a year ago.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
Now. I bought two of them. I don't remember how
much I paid.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
I think it was less than two forty, but not
a lot less per bottle, a couple hundred per battle.
And I've opened one, I've had some of it, and
I had hoped it would be better. Specifically, I had
hoped it would be a little thicker. Right, the thickness
of the utopias is.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
It's not.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
It's not that much heavier than a kind of heavy
beer and I.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Which is what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
But I was still hoping that it would be a
little a little bit more in the direction of a
port or something like that. So it's good, it's good,
but it's I don't I don't need more of it.
Rob hi Ross, I'm really going to miss your show.
I wrote back to this person, saying, it's not going away.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
It's just earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
And then this person just wrote back saying, but the
format is changing. You will have a partner. So let
me just say a couple of things about that. First
of all, Gina is awesome. A second of all, it
is not.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
The show is going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
Mostly like my current show, not mostly like Colorado's Morning News.
So it's still going to mostly be me talking about stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Just like we're doing today.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
We will have a little more news, and we will
have some amount of participation from Gina. We still have
to figure out how much that'll be. But there are
going to be things that I'm going to be talking
about where Gina is not going to have any interest
in participating, and I'm not going to drag her into it.
Political stuff, right, Gina will probably almost never be involved

(01:16:31):
in political stuff, economics, you know, econ nerds, or nerdy
stuff or legal nerdy stuff, just like now it's going
to be me. We will, of course do a lot
of other stuff, and we will we will bring in
lighter topics and cultural topics and life topics. And I
love the fact that Gina. Actually I don't know how
old Gina is, but she's somewhere in the vicinity of thirty.

(01:16:56):
I guess, after all, she had to sell phone in
high school, right, so she can't be very old.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
She's so I actually don't know her age.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
But I love the fact we're going to have someone
who's a lot younger than I am and female, and
it's just a different vibe and a different perspective and
a different all these things, and so and so there
you go. There you go, Ross, you got fired.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
No, I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
I'm not sure if you know whoever you are who
said you got fired, maybe you can elaborate.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
On what you mean.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
If you think that I'm going to the earlier show
because I got fired from this show, I don't know
if that's what you mean, but if so, let me
just say I'm going to the early show because I
was asked if I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
And I also.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
Have long dreamed of having morning Drive on KOA and
have always thought that would be impossible because we never
did talk in morning Drive on KOA, and management decided, hey,
let's try talk there, and they've offered me working with
Gina that opportunity, and I'm incredibly grateful.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
So if you know you should, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
I want to just say this without sounding defensive, because
I'm not. But if you think that somehow it's like
management shoving something down my throat that I don't want
or something like that, it's it's not that at all.
This is morning Drive on KOA has Let me put
it this way, Nine to noon on KOA was always
my radio dream that I always thought was very unlikely.

(01:18:31):
Morning Drive on KOA, like before nine Am was always
my impossible dream on KOA because we didn't do talk there,
but now we do. So we'll give it a we'll
give it a try, and we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
And I'm very very excited about it. Let me do
just one more minute on the topic we were talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
In the previous segment, and that is this Colorado law
that was a bipartisan, bipartisan in Republican Democratic support and
the very controversial part as I describe, but I'll just say.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
It again in case you weren't listening ten minutes ago, is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
That for social media users under the age of eighteen,
if they were to use social media for more than
one hour in a twenty four hour period, or if
they are on social media between ten pm and six am,
the platform would have to pop up some kind of
warning message saying you shouldn't be doing this. And yesterday

(01:19:28):
a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the law.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
It's not they haven't done the whole trial.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
But what a preliminary injunction means is the judges looked
at the case and said, I expect that the Planktiff
is going to win, and therefore I'm going to put
this injunction in now. We will still have the trial,
and I might change my mind, but based on what
I know right now, I think that the planktiffs will

(01:19:55):
win and this law will be found to be unconstitutional.
We talked a little bit about commercial speech, and there
are two a couple of listener texts that I wanted
to address. One is ross what about cigarette warning labels?
Do you think that is a violation of the First Amendment. So,

(01:20:18):
given that there is First Amendment Supreme Court precedent saying
that what counts as commercial speech is speech that is
in between a potential buyer and seller of something. It
is in the midst of a transaction, the Supreme Court
has said that kind of speech does not get as

(01:20:40):
strong a First Amendment protection, meaning that if there is
a compelling government interest, even moderately perhaps compelling government interest,
they can interfere in that speech more than the government
could interfere in personal.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Or political speech.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
That the cigarette warning label is something that is clearly
in between a person and the purchase of a cigarette.
It is right in the heart of a potential transaction,
and therefore it gets less protection under the way the
Supreme Court interprets the First Amendment, and therefore, at least
under that interpretation, it's not a First Amendment violation for

(01:21:18):
me as a as a question of principle, I think
it's a close call. Right, As a libertarian, I actually
don't think it's government's job to protect people from themselves.
So I guess if you had to really put a
gun to my head, I would say I'm against those
warning labels if they're not voluntary, and they wouldn't be.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
So, so there's that. What was the other?

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
What was the other question someone wanted to ask about
regarding this thing?

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
Hold on, let me find this real quick.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
Oh, some of the posts on social media are advertisements.
So does that make it commercial speech? I think the
answer there is also no, because the advertisement is not
speech coming from Facebook.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
It is speech that is on Facebook's platform or.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Whatever, but it's not there speech, and so therefore I
think I think the ad is commercial speech, but I
don't think it turns Facebook's interaction with you and a
warning message into commercial speech. All right, I'm gonna take
a quick break here. We're gonna do a bunch more
when we come back, including name that tune. So I

(01:22:19):
got like twenty minutes left with you from you know,
a nettle end, four years of nine.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
Am to noon here on Koa for me, and.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Then starting Monday, it'll be six am to nine am,
and I sure hope you will join me for all
of that. Gosh, I have so many things I still
want to talk about today. I don't know I want
to get to any of this, all of this, and
then we're gonna do name that tune with with Grant
Who's got a song? Okay, oh, let me do this one.
You know it's some I always like some of these
wacky legal stories. So do you remember, I'm sure you do.

(01:22:52):
Remember it was all over the news, even though it
wasn't super important. Do you remember that dude who threw
a subway sandwich at at an ice agent?

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
You remember that? I think it was a nice agent anyway,
definitely a federal agent of some kind.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
So that dude, his name is Sean Dunn, who, by
the way, was a part time employee at.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
The Department of Justice.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Obviously he's not working there anymore, but anyway, he got
pretty mad.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
He was in Washington, d C.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
He sees these federal agents around After Trump said, you know,
we're gonna clean up DC and do this and do that.
And I guess he didn't like it very much. And
he was yelling at some of these federal agents and
yelling FU. And he didn't say f he said the
whole word. And he said, you know, you fing fascists.
And he was yelling, why are you here? I don't

(01:23:39):
watch you in my city. And so he's yelling at
these guys and then he left, and then he came
back with a sandwich that I presume he was planning
to eat, but apparently his emotions got the better of
him and he flung it at a federal agent. He
flung it at a federal agent. Now, they first the prosecute.

(01:24:00):
I guess this is jenine Piro's office at the US
Attorney in Washington, d C. They tried to get a
grand jury to indict him on felony assault and they
could not get the indictment, so then they charged him
with misdemeanor assault. And it went to trial and it

(01:24:24):
went to a verdict. And I'll tell you about the
verdict in a second. But his attorney said in her
opening statement to the jury, he did it. He threw
the sandwich and She added that he has very strong
feelings about the Trump administration, you know, having federal law
enforcement in DC. And I think it's really important to

(01:24:49):
recognize that this is a DC jury. And remember that
I forget what percentage of DC voted for Donald Trump,
but it was over ninety per I'm sorry, Kamala Harris.
It was over ninety percent the percentage of DC that
voted for Donald Trump. With some small single digit number. Okay,
so you get you know what you're gonna get in

(01:25:11):
the jury pool there. But what was kind of funny
about this, but funny in a stupid way, funny in
a government is stupid way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
Is that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
The agent, he was actually a Border patrol agent. His
name's Gregory Lairmore. And here's the dude who was hit
with the sandwich, right, And so this guy he flung
the sandwich hit the dude, and the dude.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Was wearing the agent is wearing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
A bulletproof vest, and the sandwich hit the ballistic vest.
And so this guy, when he was testifying, the agent
said he could feel it through his ballistic vest. It
exploded all over him, he said. He said that he
could smell the onions and the mustard on his uniform

(01:26:05):
and that he had an onion string hanging by his
police radio later that night, and he said the fast
food mustard stained his shirt.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
And as this guy was.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Testifying, the people in the courtroom were laughing out loud
as you would be right, as you would be. The
guy who flung the sandwich did not testify in his
own defense, and so anyway, went to trial, and they

(01:26:35):
said that the prosecutor said, this case is not about
someone with strong opinions. It's about an individual who crossed
the line. And I'm quoting from CBS here. They said
done had the right to express his anger at the
federal agents, but he didn't have the right to strike them, even.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
With a sandwich.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
The prosecutor, now, just listen to how funny this is.
Here we have the defendant throwing a sandwich, but he's
throwing it hard that meets the definition of force.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):
Guns attorney then told the jury the sandwich that was
thrown in this case was not forcible. And then the
attorney said that what her client did was kind of
like a child's temper tantrum and said that when a child,
quote takes that stuffed animal with which he sleeps and
throws it at you. Are you offended? Are you scared
you might suffer bodily injury? No, she said, the federalation

(01:27:27):
could not have been assaulted because the throwing of the
sandwich did not place the officer in reasonable fear of
immediately but immediate bodily harm. She said, think about where
the sandwich landed, arguing that a bullet proof vest is
definitely going to keep you safe from a sandwich if

(01:27:49):
it can keep you safe from a bullet and she
added a foot long from subway could not and certainly
did not inflict bodily harm. Long story show or the
guy was acquitted. You knew he was going to be acquitted.
And on the one hand, I understand when the federal

(01:28:09):
government is trying to make an example of somebody, because
there really is way too much of this kind of
a very aggressive resistance to federal agents, most of whom
are just doing their job the right way. Every once
in a while, yeah, every once in a while, so
someone crosses the line and does something they shouldn't do.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
I get it happens everywhere all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):
Large organizations, especially large organizations that are tasked with doing
difficult things.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
I understand wanting.

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
To make an example out of someone and say, you know,
you're you're not going to assault our people or whatever,
but it was not very smart of these prosecutors to
take this to trial. You're talking about a guy who
flung a subway sandwich that even if it hit you

(01:29:02):
in the head, couldn't have hurt you. But not only
did it hit the guy in the chest rather than
the head, he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Could not
only not only could that federal agent not have been
hurt by the sandwich, he also, assuming he's a rational person,
could never have feared getting hurt by a sandwich.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
And at some point.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
These people have to start, these prosecutors have to start
realizing that by going after some of these cases that
they should know that they can't win. They make themselves
look worse, they make themselves look incompetent, and they actually
inspire more of the kind of behavior that they are

(01:29:51):
trying to deter.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
So I wanted to share that with you. All right,
something completely different. Great, you follow sports a bit, follow
this Antonio Brown thing at all?

Speaker 2 (01:30:02):
The rest for attempted murder. Uh huh oh, yeah, what
a nutty story. Did you hear just about the like
the last twenty four hours news but that he got
extra dieted back to the United States from Dubai. Yes,
and he looks if you see the picture of his
mug shot, Yeah, it looks like he was trying to
stay under the radar because he looks very different than

(01:30:23):
what he normally looks. Yeah, right, normally he's got kind
of long hair or some version of dreadlocks.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
And so he's got i won't quite call it clean shaven,
but a very very neatly trimmed.

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
Beard and mustache.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
And his hair is, you know, a quarter inch longer
than a crew cut, and he looks like a different
person from CBS News.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
Again, there's another CBS story.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
The thirty seven year old X Wide receiver is facing
an attempted murder charge after he was accused of grabbing
a handgun from a security staffer at an event in
May and firing two shots at a man he had
gotten to a into a fistfight with earlier that night.
The victim, I'm gonna mess this name up, Zuell zull
quir nine quame non Taboo, told investigators that one of

(01:31:10):
the bullets had grazed his neck anyway back in May,
Miami police you know this this shot spotter system, So
they have these microphones around the city and the microphones
are listening for something that sounds like a gunshot and
then it tries to isolate or triangulate, you know, where
did it come from. So these spot shotters heard a

(01:31:31):
gunshot in a Miami neighborhood called Little River, and when
they arrived, there was an amateur boxing event being held,
and some video that showed up on social media showed
Antonio Brown fighting off a group of people that he said.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Were trying to rob him. So he said on Twitter
the next.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
Morning on x the next morning, I was jumped by
multiple people who tried to steal my.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Jewelry and cause physical harm to me.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
And then in another video he's seeing whole a handgun
while chasing somebody, and then you can hear shots off
the camera. Brown didn't mention any you know, shooting in
his own ex post, but this one guy said he
was injured. And then there was another video that shows
Brown being detained by police, being walked into a cruiser
in a handcuffs. He was temporarily detained and then he

(01:32:19):
was released, and then apparently he left the country and
went to Dubai and he's back now.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
So we'll see. And I don't know. I don't know
what will happen to the dude. I don't you know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
Maybe he'll try to claim self defense. I don't think
it's going to go very well for him. But on
the other hand, the guy he shot seems like barely injured, right,
like it grazed me right like, Okay, I got a hangnail,
and so it's worse than a hangnail, I know. But
we'll see. Anyway, kind of a kind of a wacky story.
I wanted to wanted to share that with you. I

(01:32:51):
don't do a lot of politics on Friday, especially later
in the show, but I do just want to follow
up on this thing I talked about a little bit
earlier in the week, and that is what's going on
at the Heritage Foundation with Kevin Roberts.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
And I'm gonna do this first part very very briefly.

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
After Tucker Carlson did a softball interview with a Nazi
named Nick Fuentes, some people for some reason got herited.
So Tucker Carlson is pretty close to Heritage Foundation and
Kevin Roberts came out and decided to give a speech
that I guess was or not a speech, but some
comments online on a video that I think were written

(01:33:27):
by his assistant rather than by him. But of course
he read it and went along with it and did it.
And basically what he said, the thing that got him
in trouble was he said that the people who are
criticizing Tucker Carlson are sewing division and they are trouble
makers representing other people's agendas. Actually it's Tucker Carlson who
is a troublemaker representing someone else's agenda.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
I don't know who it is. Well, maybe it could
be his.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
He could have just been that either that brain damaged
recently or that much just chasing this particular grift where
he realizes.

Speaker 1 (01:33:57):
That as long as you're willing to narrow your audience enough,
there's enough.

Speaker 2 (01:34:00):
There's some money to be made by promoting anti Semitism.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
In America today, which is kind of a sad thing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
But in any case, Kevin Roberts, the head of Heritage,
all he needed to do was keep his mouth shut
and say nothing. Nobody needed him to have an opinion
about it. But he came out and defended Tucker Carlson,
and the world blew up all around him, as it
should have, because it was a.

Speaker 1 (01:34:18):
Massive pr mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:34:20):
Who was a stain on the reputation of the Heritage Foundation,
and it was a completely unforced error.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
And now he's losing scholars.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
And they had set up actually an anti Semitism task
Force at Heritage that was tasked to look at anti
Semitism on the left, which is a real thing. And
in fact, in recent years, anti semitism on the left
has been a bigger problem than the anti Semitism on
the right. But now anti Semitism is being mainstreamed on
the right a little bit more as well. It's a
dangerous and sad, tragic thing. The reason I wanted to

(01:34:52):
mention this to you is my good friend Steve Moore,
who you have heard on my show many many times,
and he's been on Mandy Show quite a few times
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:35:02):
But he is one of the top economists in the country.

Speaker 2 (01:35:04):
He's worked in Congress, he founded the Club for Growth,
close advisor, economic advisor to President Donald Trump, and just
a great, great guide. When you just sit down with
Steve and have a beer, he is hilarious. He's a
wonderful human being. He has for about a dozen years
been a senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
It's not his full time job.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
It's just a part time title and he'll do some
research and you get to call yourself that he does
other things for his full time job. He announced this
morning that he is leaving his position as a senior
Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
And I sent I posted a note on X and.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
I sent Steve a text personally just saying thank you
for doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):
It's the right thing to do.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):
You just cannot be associated with people who don't understand
that it's wrong to promote Nazism. And when someone like that,
someone like that, very conservative, been with Heritage for a
dozen years, says, you know what, I don't want to
sully myself by being associated with these people. You know
that there's something important going on. All right, it's Friday.

(01:36:14):
It's the end of the show. It's the end of
my last nine to noon show. Starting Monday, I'll be
six am to nine am