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January 5, 2026 10 mins
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And he's ABC News correspondent Alec Stone joining us now
on Happy New.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Year, Happy New Year. Did you have a good.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Yeah I did.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I had a good break.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
I did. I had some great time off.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
It was nice to just unplug and not really have
to use my brain very much, and that was that
was a great thing.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Uh, how about you? What was the big New Year's
Eve like in Los Angeles? I mean, were you out
partying ruben Elbows with the famous and all of that
or no?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Oh oh, there was a lot going on. Oh could
you not hear me before?

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I couldn't hear you for a second, so.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I was talking to myself there.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah, you do that a lot, I heard.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, well I do. Uh no, Yeah, it was. It
was a busy news break. There was a lot going on.
But we got a wait for a couple of days,
which was very nice.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, Chuck had a question about somebody in one of
your posts social media posts that had on VR.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah it was that dad. Oh yeah, he was trying
on my daughter from Santa. I got some VR glasses
over the break. They're pretty crazy. It's it's nuts all
of a sudden, like you're you're sitting there looking at
you know, you could be watching live TV or watching
a movie, and it's you could be anywhere you want
to be. It's they're pretty nuts.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
So what is that the what is the I'm trying
to think, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
This one's the the ones from meta from Facebook.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Ye oh okay, is it the meta quest?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, okay, yeah, they're they're pretty, They're they're incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Stone has that Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
So I've I've actually put those on and I'm I'm like, man,
you can have this.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I don't. It was weird to me and because.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I'm old, so I guess that's why I'm like, uh no,
you can have this.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
I need censors for that to even make sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
As then if the other senses, if you're.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
If you're like say you're in a virtual fight or
something like that. If I get hit, I need to
feel a hit. If I hit something, I just can't
take care of that for you. I need to feel contact.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I just stand on Mark's glasses and I'll know you
in the face.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
No, I'm not getting it.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
And the other thing is like, Chuck, what if you
were wearing those and you know, I don't know, you
walk into a seafood restaurant.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
You're supposed to smell fish. I guess is that you should.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
There should be some kind of sensory interface or something.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, interal smell thing that yes.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Right, Oh boy, couldn't that get fun?

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Yeah? I'm you know what, I just I wish I
could live long enough to get to like where Star
Trek the next generation had the Holi deck. That's my
perfect little heaven right there.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Right, Well, you can have that if you put on
the glasses.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
Well, but they seeing the Holid deck, you can disengage
the safety protocols and you can actually experience everything instead
of just watching.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's getting really nerdy right now, it is.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
I want I want to actually taste the food and
feel the wind and just being having the glasses on
and I'm in a room. My intellectually, I'm gonna know,
I am in a room by myself, nothing else is around.
I'm never going to get engaged. That way.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
You can just go outside.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
I could just do.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
That, yes, without the VR glasses.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, that way you could experience stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well, that's a lot cheaper to do it that way,
I know that. I mean it's several hundred dollars. I mean,
Santa had to had the elves build that one of
my talk.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
Yeah, the virtual reality, actual reality. That's a concept.

Speaker 5 (03:20):
Man.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
You walk outside and you're wearing those running into everything
because you know what will happen, is uh the only reason.
The first time I put them on, I was like,
what the hell's going on? And Stone was like, Dad,
will you will you buy me some roebucks or I
don't know, one of those whatever, yeah, and I go
all right, So I connected a card to everything, but

(03:43):
I had to put those on, and I'm moving that
creepy hand that.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
You can see.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
It's like it's almost like a skeleton hand. I don't know,
it's bizarre.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
And I'm moving it around to like punch in the
because I use a pin, you know, like the numbers
for it to okay everything, And so I have it
set connected to a pin that he can't just go
on there and go sure, okay and just buy everything.
And I have to be the one. He's like here,
put them on. And then he's like, you know, like
adjusting them and putting all like hanging them on my

(04:15):
head or whatever, and I'm like, watch out, man, my
hair is greasy. Like I was like just being stupid.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Whether me. It was pretty crazy though, watching the Niners
game on it, like the one right before Christmas, and
uh because Santa came to our house before he went
up north, so she got it a little bit before
and uh, watching the game live and just totally all
around you. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Okay, that's I did see. Now his is just he
just plays games on there. He doesn't he doesn't like watch.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
My daughter probably it does as well, but then when
dad takes it over, then it's like, okay, now let's
do something real on these.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Things, like just watch football or watch a game.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Just seeing dude Checkers probably does.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Where's yeah tag toe that it's funny.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, you can't do paper rock scissors either. Those are
weird hands, so I think that.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Would be weird. Yeah, that would be weird with those hands.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
I don't think that would That would just it would
feel very odd trying to do that. So, as we know, yeah,
FAA closed a bunch of airspace because of the Maduro operation.
As we know, he pleaded not guilty him and his
wife in court earlier. But that's you're reporting on this
massive airline mess that happened because of the Maduro operation.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, there are a lot of people who are stuck
right now. And so Friday night into Saturday morning is
the operation was going down. They closed out off the
airspace for safety and for hours airlines couldn't head into
or out of the Caribbean. Many places in the Caribbean
on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year,
as everybody was heading home, you get ready to head
back to work today. So on Saturday, over eleven hundred

(05:53):
flights were canceled hundreds yesterday. That means people who were
on Caribbean vacations that they are stuck. This is Nathan
and and Aaron. They live in Denver and they don't
know exactly when they're going to get out. They think
on Wednesday that they have found a flight on United,
but they don't know.

Speaker 5 (06:09):
Right We're happy to take whatever is available. This is
unfortunately what we found. You know, we're not asked for anything,
just a place to sleep, right, like to stay safe
until we can get back to the airport to fly home.
I don't think it's an unreasonabley I ask.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
So they were there celebrating and are still her fortieth
birthday in Saint Martin, and United told them they are
going to have to wait until there's an open seat,
and all these flights are already full because of people
who were celebrating the holidays, and so they think Wednesday.
But because this was not the doing of the airlines,
it wasn't you know, their their mess up. Carriers aren't
paying for hotels or food, so hotels aren't available. Everything

(06:44):
is super expensive. They're shelling out an extra four thousand
dollars for a hotel that they found, and they're angry,
and they say United told them, hey, stay at the
airport if you don't want to pay for the hotel.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
Great place to be stuck in. But I mean, we're
just trying to get home, and to expect us to
just sleep in the airport for five days seems kind
of absurd, But you know, yeah, seems to be the
case with airline companies later that I don't know, and.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
The United says it's trying to get people out. Then
you know, they can only do so much flying. But
those two aren't alone. This guy is in Saint Lucia
with his new wife. They're from Ohio, and they have
spent an extra five thousand dollars in hotels and Saturday night,
their hotel made room for them. They were able to
stay one night and then they got kicked out yesterday sold.
Now we're full, Like now you got to go that

(07:29):
we have full bookings, And they say people are chartering
boats now from the islands that they're on to get
to other islands that have more flights, try to get
to like Puerto Rico, where they know that there are
more flights out of there. His audio is a little
hard to understand. Me.

Speaker 6 (07:41):
Listen, I've heard that Dominican Republic has more flights going
to the US than what we have here. There's only
a handful of flights on sad with the show, with
it being such a small highland.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
So the airline said they are flying, but the flights
are so full that they got to wait for open seats.
The one outlier on that is a Marria, which is
they're really ramping up. They're the dominant carrier in Latin America,
so they have the most flights. They've been flying bigger
Boeing triple sevens in especially into Puerto Rico to get
people out to have more seats. But the other airlines
are kind of like, well, this isn't our fault. You know,

(08:15):
just wait, we'll get you out when we have an
open seat. And people are being told that's Wednesday, that's Friday.
Keep paying these incredible rates at yeah, very nice hotels,
but they didn't expect to pay another five thousand dollars
on their trip or even more depending on when they
get out.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
I wonder, so, is there a lot of price gouging
from that you're hearing about.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Maybe, but it seems like these are the air going
oh not from the airlines. Airlines, you know, they're just
trying to get them on another flight when there's an
open seat. But from the hotels, this is just the
going rate of what their nightly rate is. And they're like,
you know, it's twelve hundred dollars a night, it's thirteen
hundred dollars a night, like it would be in Hawaii
or in you know, the Caribbean. That it's just what
it is during a busy time of the year.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
There was a video that I saw earlier.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
I think it was the people who are newlyweds from
Ohio and they it was like a it was like
a video of the guy talking and he may have
been on a you know, what do you call it?

Speaker 4 (09:05):
Video?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Conferencing or something.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
But in the background, so it was like where he was,
you know, you see it's like paradise. But I'm thinking
to myself, I'm like, well, they're worse place is to
be stuck. However, if you are stuck in an airport
and you cannot get a room, and certainly there's a
finite amount of rooms in that area, and then on
top of that, if you do get one and you're
paying an extra foot they talked about an extra five

(09:27):
thousand for that, and then another twenty five hundred for
something that's in addition to what they already paid for.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
The complete paid a crazy amount to go. So a
lot of times you don't have a little bit more
that you're willing to spend. You're kind of maxing it out,
and yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
What a mess. What a mess?

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Sounds like it'll be hopefully cleared up by the end
of yeah, this week, but yeah, the airlines are like, hey,
you know, what are we supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
We're going to get you out, but it's going to
take time to do it.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
Very good? Was there Jack fire on New Year's Eve?
For one, Alex, I don't.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Think we ever pulled it out. It never came out.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
But yeah, not really much drinking.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Really, I know there was plenty just were but we
were up in northern California. I don't think anybody had
jack fire up there. We didn't bring it.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
That's wine country, right, Yeah, you went for the z infant.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, no, the pino came out.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Pino is it noir? Or Gregio Noir noir?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Pino noir? Okay, all right, very good. I was just
trying to I'm jotting stuff down for you, know, so
I can send you a nice birthday pressent. Well you'll
be going, hey, uh, Blazer, I didn't ask for pinis Noir.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Why would you send that to me?

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yea, yeah, that's what you heard. When I said it,
I knew where you were going.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Alex Stone, ABC News out of Los Angeles, Alex, thank
you very much, guys.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
See you man,
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