December 21, 2025 • 29 mins
Chris is getting into the latest with the Epstein files, kids rarely reading these days, and how adults can get free pizza for reading. It's all on KFIAM-640.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to KFI A M six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
For Christmas. There's the Epstein file.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
O feel like there's a banger in there somewhere. I
just have to kind of work it. Let's work shop that.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I think, what do we? What do we?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
We take that to the lab and we'll work on
that in the lab. Do they still say the lab anymore?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
No, Christopher, they don't do that.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Eminem and doctor Dre always used to talk about going
to the lab I.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
Don't think they were talking about the studio in that
in that instance, Well.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Okay, how about the jingle bells?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yeah, let's work it in the lab. Okay, all right,
you want to do? You have jingle bells? Handy dashing
through d C with Epstein on my mind.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
There's files out there.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I now, we'll bring someone down.
Speaker 6 (00:52):
He's a Bill Clinton? Is it trys a Bill Gates?
Is there a prince who first in the fire? I
know that it is not going to mints my words.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
For Epstein, words for Epstein.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
He's a child lester, total predator, had his own island,
and some billionaires went tues say, let's play.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Not as bad as I thought it was gonna be.
I can't.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's not exactly a banger. But again, we're gonna workshop that.
Speaker 7 (01:21):
I think you should have gone like Epstein files Epstein files.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, okay, well we'll work on it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I couldn't find something around with Prince, and so then
I thought I'd do like that, you know, make mints
my emotions.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I don't know. It didn't work.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah, I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, the new files came out. Why did we learn
a lot? Holy cow? I mean, we knew nothing more
than we did before.
Speaker 8 (01:49):
From ABC News, A Department of Justice posted two more
batches of Epstein files on.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Its website today.
Speaker 8 (01:54):
The latest release includes the grand jury testimony from April
two thousand and seven. In it, twenty one year old
woman describes how Jeffrey Epstein recruited her, at age sixteen,
and other underage girls for illicit massages at his Palm
Beach mansion.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Somehow that makes it sound grosser. Oh, he recruited them
for illicit massages. Somehow that makes it sound even creepier.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
Her name is redacted from the files, sources tell ABC News.
Friday's release represents less than half of the Department's files
on Epstein and includes never before seen records from the investigation.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And wait a minute, how does it only include less
than half? Weren't we supposed to have all of the
Epstein files? Wasn't that what the law was that passed?
The law passed nearly unanimously. There was only like one
dude from Kentucky or something that said no. Everybody else
said yes. The president signed it.
Speaker 8 (02:49):
Yeah, and thousands of photographs, many are heavily redacted, and
was released without context.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Okay.
Speaker 8 (02:56):
President Trump had a long standing friendship with Epstein. White
House Chief of Staff Susie Wilde says, Trump's name appears
in the files, but not doing anything awful?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Uh, probably not the phrase I would have chosen. I
want you to imagine I was a troublemaker for a kid,
which meant, of course, that that at least one of
my three was going to be a troublemaker. And lucky me,
I went three for three. And if I were to say,
what were you doing out last night when I caught
(03:33):
you sneaking in and they said to me I wasn't
doing anything awful, that would not make me feel better,
That would make me feel like they were doing something.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Bad.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, I would think that whatever it is they were
doing something that they should not have been doing. When
they say when she says he wasn't doing anything awful,
it's not like she's saying, oh, he wasn't doing anything.
She said he wasn't doing anything awful.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, Susie Wiles actually just made it a little bit
worse for the president. I mean, at this point, the
president can continue to say, yeah, of course, everybody knows
that I used to hang out with him.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
We were a couple of young playboys cheating on our wives.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
And I mean the evidence is there, but but there's
there's never been anything to tie him to other than
other than a few people that have said things. But
we don't have any hard evidence, right, nothing that would
convince a jury of peers. So there's there's nothing that says, oh, yeah,
he's definitely someone who was ordering underage girls.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
There's no evidence of that anywhere.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
And so why does Susie Wyle say he wasn't doing
anything awful. That's not helping, that's not that's not being
a good hype man for for the president.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
Trump says he and Epstein eventually I had a falling out.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 8 (05:02):
I threw him out of my club many years ago
because I thought he was a sick pervert.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, he could stick to that. But then she says
he didn't do anything awful.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Weird.
Speaker 8 (05:12):
ABC's Pierre Thomas spoke to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,
who also served as the president's criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 9 (05:19):
Well, every document that mentions President Trump, every picture of him,
every video, every bit of information related to him in
these files be released today or at some point in
this process.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Assuming it's consistent.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
With the law.
Speaker 8 (05:33):
Yes see, there's always a qualifier, so there's no effort
to hold anything back because there's the name Donald J.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Trump.
Speaker 8 (05:42):
Okay, But then Friday's release also includes some never before
seen images of Bill Clinton and Epstein together. The former
president has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Oh my gosh, you mean to tell me that Bill
Clinton might be a pervert too, Why is it that?
We go, oh, well, Bill Clinton's a pervert. Of course
he's in those files. He must have been doing something pervy.
And then you go, oh, President Trump was in those files. Yeah,
but he wasn't doing anything pervy, nothing awful. Flip side.
Democrats are like, oh, President Trump was definitely ordering women
(06:12):
off of a menu, and you go, what about the Clinton,
They're like, he didn't know what was going on?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Come on, why does everybody blinders on?
Speaker 8 (06:19):
The White House chief of Staff told Vanity Fair that
there is no incriminating information about Clinton in the files,
saying Trump was wrong about that. Clinton spokesperson releasing the
statement in part, saying this is about the White House
shielding themselves from what comes next or from what they'll
try and hide forever.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Okay, this is feeling really.
Speaker 8 (06:41):
Really gossipy, saying that Clinton cut Epstein off for his
crimes came to light. The DOJ says more documents are coming,
but for now.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Okay, when why didn't you put them out at the deadline?
Speaker 8 (06:53):
Many of the answers people are looking for are still
not there. Aik Ajachi, ABC News New York.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Oh my god, it's like the DJ didn't know that
they were gonna have to release these files.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh and then they thought, oh, well, we better start
redacting it.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
We were told during a campaign more than a year
ago that those files were coming out. We were told
after the election that those files were coming out.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Pam Bondy said, they're on my desk. I just got
to get them together.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
And then there was a law that was being debated
for a while, the government was shut down, and it
was obvious that as soon as the government reopened there
was going to be a vote to release those files.
And still the DJ sat on their hands and thought, ah, yeah,
this will never happen. And then it goes through and
then the president signs it, and the DJ still didn't
start figuring out what could or could not be released,
and nan a judge said you have to release the files.
(07:40):
And then the DJ said, oh, I guess we'll get
at this a little bit. What an absolute debacle, What
an absolute joke. Sixteen photos. This has turned up again
to me, this is not evidence of any wrongdoing by
the president what I'm about to tell you, but it
is absolute evidence of political malpractice. Sixteen photos were quietly
(08:05):
removed from the DOJ's Epstein Files website, including one image
that indirectly showed Donald Trump. So, oh, we're not taking anything,
we're not redacting anything because there's the president's name, and
oh what about that thing that you just took off
your website, And they go, that wasn't because of him,
that that was because of somebody else that was in there.
(08:26):
Those photos were pulled because there were concerns about potential victims,
not about politics. So DOJ says, not only do they
need extra time to go through the information to make
sure that they're not putting out any information or doxing
any victims or anything of that nature, But then they do,
and then they claim, oh, we're so bad at our jobs,
and that's why we had to take the photo back
(08:47):
down again. It's also why we can't get the information
out to in a timely manner. And even if we
do get it out to you, we're gonna screw it
all up. This is not a good look all the
way around. Just not a good look. Now, think back, guys,
who want did you want to talk more about politics tonight?
Because that's the only thing I had scheduled. I didn't
want to talk anymore anymore. Guys want to do more
(09:09):
politics more one more politic?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Oh no, no, says I need to know poltext All right.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Very good, good.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Hey, Think back to when you were in high school
and your teacher assigned you.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
A book report. Those were the worst.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
You had to read the whole book, and then you
got to do some summary to answer some lame questions,
just to prove that you actually read it. And for
a lot of students that is no longer true. The
death of reading in American classrooms is next. I'm Chris Merrill.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
If you're on that app, go ahead and hit that
talk back button. Our question today, what is the best
part about the holidays and what is the worst. Was
reading a story from the Washington Post that kind of
ranked them in order they said, according to this author,
Roxanne Roberts is their name. She says, the worst is
buying gifts. Not to be all ba humb but a
lot of people find Christmas shopping expensive, stressful and way
(10:03):
too materialistic, fighting for parking at the mall, standing in
long lines, even buying online can be overwhelming. So that's
part of it. So that's what they say is the worst.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
She says.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
The second best, the second best thing about Christmas, there's
the trees. Do you get real or small? To get
bigger or excuse me, realer, fag big or small? Whitter
colored lights, airloom or decorator design, ornaments, twinkle lights, it's
so exciting it's the sentimental centerpiece of the holiday, and
it's worth every minute. Oh, i'll tell you what she says.
(10:36):
The number one thing coming up here a little bit
later on the show. But I want to get your feedback.
What is the best part about the holidays? What is
the worst best part? I don't want to be too vain,
but I just don't get to I don't want to. I
don't want to sound like I'm being a like I'm
doing a bit, but honestly, I love the food and
(10:57):
I love having leftovers. I know that sounds terrible. You
know what I think I like the most about the holidays? Yeah,
this is fair. This is what I like the most.
It's absolutely what my wife likes the least, and that's
what makes us completely incompatible.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
But I love when things go wrong right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Nobody tells the wonderful Oh do you remember the time
that we sat around and opened Presence and everyone was happy?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, the memories are from when things go wrong. And
I have the same philosophy when it comes to doing
the radio show too. I always say this. I say
I plan to do everything absolutely right, and I love
it when things go wrong. I just do I didn't
I never want them to go wrong, but when they do,
(11:49):
I just think that's that's when the magic happens. And
the same thing with the holidays. It's not about everything
going right and having a Norman Rockwell holiday. It's about
when things go wrong. It's about when somebody says something goofy.
Like I remember when I was little, my my cousin
had just moved to.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Our town. Like they moved.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I was growing up in northern Michigan and my aunt
uncle and my cousin moved to northern Michigan. They had
been in New Mexico or something, and they moved up there,
and so we were doing Christmas well. They had decided
to join the Jehovah's Witness Church, and so my grandmother
said to my cousin, what do you want for Christmas?
(12:34):
And my cousin was like, I don't know, seven or
eight years old, and she corrected my grandmother and said, no,
Jehovah does not like Christmas.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
It was like, oh my, I mean that's the stuff
we remember. Now.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Think back. I want you to think back. I mean
that's been thirty years. Think back thirty years ago, and
I want you to think of when you asked your
niece or nephew what they wanted for Christmas? Do you
remember what they told you? No, because nobody remembers that.
They remember when things go awry. My grandfather had Alzheimer's
and it was really hard on the family. And anybody's
(13:09):
ever dealt with somebody with Alzheimer's knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It It's hard on everybody. It's really tough.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
And my grandfather just at was some point at the
dinner table, he just reached across and he grabbed the
gravy the gravy boat, right and he just started drinking
out of the gravy boat, like what are you doing?
And I just remember being a teenager and I was
I just started laughing. My poor grandmother started crying. My
(13:36):
mother and her siblings were like, yeah, no, no, you
can't do that. And he puts the boat down, and
he's got this like gravy mustache, like you'd have like
a milk mustache. He had like a gravy mustache on
his face. I mean, I just remember when things go wrong.
So the best part about the holidays for me is
(13:56):
when things go off script. That's that's my favorite part
of the holidays, So curious about what yours are.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Hit us on that talkback.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Best part about the holidays, worst part about the holidays,
curious about what yours might be. We'll get your feedback
on that in just a second. The kids these days, oh,
they're not doing this very basic thing that seemed so
normal for us. In fact, not only was it normal,
it was something we took a great deal of pride in,
especially because we always got rewarded. See if you remember
(14:27):
what the rewards were from when you were young, the
good old days. What the kids these days are not doing.
Colleges don't even seem to care. That's next time, Chris Merril.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I we'll talk about the kids and how much they're
just not reading in school right now. In the meantime,
we do have talkbacks, and I appreciate you. Anybody that's
on the iHeartRadio app, hit that talkback button and if
you've got questions, comments, squpt quotes, criticisms, compliments, or you
just want to answer the question, what is the best
part about the how.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And what is the worst part?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
For me? The worst part is all the expectations that
I feel are unnecessary. My wife put all these expectations
on the holidays have to be perfect, it has to
be perfect. Why are you trying to ruin everything? You're
trying to ruin everything for everyone? Like, no, babe, I'm
not trying. I'm a natural. But my favorite part is
(15:24):
when things go wrong, because I think that's when the
memories are made.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I think that's the best part. All right, what the
best part and the worst? For you? Hi, Chris.
Speaker 10 (15:33):
As a Jehovah's Witness, we never celebrated Christmas or any.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Of the other holidays.
Speaker 9 (15:38):
So now that I really don't care either way, I
still don't know how to celebrate them, but I try
to find some joy.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Holidays.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Good for you, Thank you, Happy holidays? Yeah, good for you.
Yeah that was uh, it was nice. My brother, I
can't stay my brother. He's such a little dufist. But
first grade, there was this little there's this little kid
in his last new kid, and the kid was the
Jeovah's Witness and they were doing a gift exchange. But
(16:06):
the Jeovah's Witness wasn't allowed to participate, you know, for
because of his religion. So so they're like imagine thirty
kids in the class, and twenty nine of them are
all exchanging gifts, and my brother gives his present to
the Jehovah's Witness kid and is like, I want you
to be a part of this, like I don't want
you to miss out.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Isn't that sweet?
Speaker 4 (16:27):
That's really sweet.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I thought it was going to be like make your
brother look bad, But that's a beautiful story.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Was the kid allowed to keep it?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
No, and my brother got in trouble.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
You gotta respect people's.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Got to respect their religion.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
And he didn't do it coming from you.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, I mean you're six, You're six years old, year
old enough to know better. You got to you gotta
respect respect them.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I don't think that that's respect.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Okay, Imagine that poor kid went home all excited and
showed his parents he got something at school and his
parents had to like tell him no.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Whatever the case is, sorry, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
The pad feel bad for the parents too, because that
puts them in a really awkward position. So basically, my
brother just screwed up somebody else's non holiday.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Where'd he go?
Speaker 11 (17:10):
All?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Right? From the talkbacks.
Speaker 12 (17:11):
Worst Christmas Time ever was back in ninety nine, bought
my son a motorcycle.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
He was only eight years old. What m h.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Feel like that's not old enough to have a motorcycle license.
Speaker 12 (17:27):
Set it out front all everybody came out and looked
at it. My wife was gonna kill me. My mother
in law ran around saying, he's gonna kill himself. I
wanted to leave. My son was happy as hell, but
everybody else wanted to kill me. Anyway, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I kind of like that. I kind of like that.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
What do you like about that?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
The parenting win, Mostly that he did something nice that
the son loved, and everybody else just freaked out.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Okay, yeah, that sounds like I just love.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I love when things don't go right. Those are the
memories nobody really. Hey, I could not tell you what
I got my kids when they were eight.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I don't have any idea. I don't have an ada.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
That guy knows exactly what he got his kid when
his kid turned eight years old, because it became a memory.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
See, that's what I love. I love when things don't
go as planned. That's what I love. All right? Your
thoughts hit us up of that talk back?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Best part about the holidays and the worst part about
the holidays, worst part about the kids these days. Oh uh,
it's not that they're illiterate, it's just that they don't read.
I know, it sounds like it's the same. It's not
that they can't, it's just that they don't. Jared Henderson
is a host of a Philosophy for the Modern World.
He was talking about how even colleges don't even care.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
At universities all around the country, professors are reporting a problem.
Students can't read books. This is true even at elite
colleges and universities. In one required class at Columbia, students
are often expected to read about a book a week,
But in the past couple of years, students have started
telling their professors that they can't do it. One student
told a professor that she had never been required to
(18:58):
read an entire book. Oh my, this is part of
a larger trend. People aren't reading anymore. This is true
for men and women, people who went to college and
people who didn't.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
And it's really easy to say that's because their attention
spans aren't long enough. They're not reading for fun, because
they've got TikTok and they're scrolling instead, and I think
it's probably true to a degree, but we've also got
to the point where we're not even assigning it. Many
high school students assigned only one or two full books
per year, according to researchers, and more than two thousand
responses in a New York Times survey of teachers, parents
(19:27):
and students, they're not even being assigned those texts. Twelfth
grade reading scores are at historic lows. College professors report
students struggling to engage with long or complex texts. Well,
first of all, when you're a college student complex text
it's intended for you to struggle. The idea is you
struggle through it, and through that struggle, you learn, and
(19:48):
you pick up comprehension and you understand how to see this.
I remember when I was in college and they made
us read some Greek texts. Oh my gosh, how brutal
was that. It's terrible. And yet if I look at
a Greek text now, thanks to everything that I learned
in college, I know right away put this down.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It's a waste of your time.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
So students are not having the opportunity to read long books.
They are also being given things like articles or short
snippets and they're being told to sort of analyze those
sorts of things. Instead, schools are increasingly relying on excerpt
based digital curricula, prioritizing short readings, brief essays, and standardized
test preparation rather than diving into the depth of a
(20:30):
good book. And I was thinking about the difference between
then and now. Obviously technological advancements. Right when I was
growing up, I remember when I was a kid, Kayla,
this is in the before time. We didn't have the internet,
we didn't have quick access. We had television, but our
parents used to tell us go read a book. You
(20:50):
can't watch TV all day. You got to read a book,
or you have to go outside. You can't be watching
TV all day. You have to go outside. That was
the rule. Now, if kids are on social media, even
if they go outside, they take their phones with them
and they're still on social media, so it's a little
bit easier I think for parents to just turn the
TV off. I mean there were times that I remember
my parents unplugging the TV. Right, you can't watch TV
until you've been outside, or you can't watch TV. If
(21:11):
you read an hour of TV a of a book,
I'll let you watch an hour of TV. That was
the kind of thing that we had when we were
growing up. The other thing that we had that really
incentivized reading.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Was book It. Did you have book it? Growing up?
Book it was the best?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
So book it went like this, Caleb followed me on this,
and tell me this isn't the greatest idea from both
a marketing standpoint and a betterment of the world standpoint.
Pizza Hutt would reward you for reading books and you
got free personal pizzas, and teachers would set different standards,
but it was usually like, if you read seven books
in a month, you got a free personal pan pizza.
(21:47):
And they didn't have to be I mean, we used
to call them chapter books, right because it had chapters. And
when you're a little kid, you've got chapter books and
non chapter books, right, so short stories versus actual stories
that have some composition to it. But I remember, the
older you got, it might be seven books a month.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
It might be ten.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
When you're younger, they want you to read some of
those you know, those you know, the children's stories and
things like that. Whatever it was. God, we wanted those
pizzas and it worked. I'm telling you. If not pizzas
how many kids wouldn't read anything?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Is there an age limit?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Because I'm hungry and it's funny you mentioned that I
look this up and book it is now back and
it will also cater to adults.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
They're like, anybody can be a part of it. Serious, Yeah,
they'll go check it out. They'll do like, anybody can
be a part of it.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Now, Oh my god, I read all the time. Where
do I get my free pizza? Got the hut? Just yeah, okay,
bing it?
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Just bing it and see bing it and we'll come
back and we'll figure out the instructions on how anybody
can do it, because I'm telling you I looked this
up and it was like, yeah, you can still do that?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Why not?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
All right, we'll get the being results here in just
a few moments. I can get hooked up with pizzas man.
That was why I read half the time. Otherwise it
was like I just want to play TV or I
want to watch TV and play with my friends.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
It's all I wanted.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
All Right, it is the end of the year, and
what does that mean. It means you're probably getting fired.
But for fun, that's next, Chris Meryl.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You're listening to KFI Am six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
We asked the question what is the best part about
the holidays what is the worst? They got me going
on some tangents, talking about some stories growing up, including
my family, my aunt and uncle, my cousin. They were
Jehovah's witnesses, but we still invited them to all of
the big Christmas gatherings and things like that.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
But then it was kind of weird at times, you know, mostly.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Because it was like, Hey, we're here for Christmas, but
don't talk about it because we don't want to upset them.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh hey, I want to get those other one first. Hey, Chris,
I grew up with friends there in Highland Park that
were Jehovah.
Speaker 10 (23:46):
Witness and they couldn't do Halloween, couldn't do this, couldn't
do that, of course, But you know what, when the
big one hits, they are going to survive it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You know why, they'll be standing in your doorway.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
All right, A good holiday, stop it. That's not funny.
I didn't preview that call. I didn't know what was coming.
I only got me by surprise. That's pretty good, all right.
What is the best part about the holidays? What is
(24:22):
the worst part about the holidays.
Speaker 12 (24:23):
Hey there.
Speaker 11 (24:24):
So when it comes to the favorite things of Christmas,
it all depends on your age and the time of
you know, season in your life. I think when you're
a child, it's all about the magic. When you're a teenager,
it's less magic, more about how much you can get
out of your parents. When you're in your young adulthood
and you can't afford gifts, it kind of sucks. And
then when you're a parent, it becomes so much fun
(24:45):
to live through your kids eyes and make it magical.
And then once you become an empty nester, it's just
about being with your friends and the cheer and being
around family.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Wow, this is really complete. I feel like.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I feel like she just give a modern twist of
the all the World's at stage speech from as you
like It. That's pretty good. Thank you for that breakdown.
I really like that. What is the number? Let me see?
The Washington Post gave like a list of the best
and the worst. The worst thing they said for the
holidays was buying gifts. Most of they didn't you didn't
(25:19):
enjoy it. Christmas markets, Santa con visiting Santa Snaks, light shows,
they say, themed bars, wrapping gifts is miserable, receiving gifts,
greeting cards, office, birthday party, ugly sweaters, and then it
starts to get more and more fun. They said, Top
five best parts about Christmas? Number five classic Christmas movies?
(25:40):
What does that mean? See that changes because I'm an
old man. So is a classic Christmas movie like Miracle
on thirty fourth Street? Or is the classic Christmas movie?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Elf? Kayla?
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Definitely Elf?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
See that's not a classic.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
It's definitely classic. It's it's been twenty two years as
it came out.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
That's a classic, two thousand and three. It's classic.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
You know what, There's gonna come a time where there's
gonna be a film that will come out and it
will be popular, and then you're gonna look back on it.
People are gonna be like, oh, do you remember that
old movie? And you're gonna be like old movie and yeah,
they're gonna say, oh, it came out like twenty two
years ago, and you're gonna.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Say, I was twenty five twenty two years ago.
Speaker 10 (26:26):
I was.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Then you were not twenty five when Elf came out?
Speaker 4 (26:30):
You lie, all right, fine, close enough?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Or a kid when it came out, right, I was
about twelve that was the perfect time for that to
come out.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
For you.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah, great movie.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
For me, I was like, eh, what, I was dating
an old lady. She had three used kids, so I
watched it because you know, they wanted to see it.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Do you still watch it every year? Do you get pitched? Okay?
All right? What about a Christmas Story?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
I used to be on you know what.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I finally watched a Christmas Story. Now, that's one that
came out when I was a kid, and I never
really watched it. It used to be played on a loop,
and I didn't watch it until one year. I finally said,
I got to watch this movie.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And I didn't. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Did you really that's the most boring movie.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Otherwise I had seen like bits and pieces here and there,
But I mean, I really I did enjoy it. Yeah,
I get it once I finally sat down and watched it.
Another one that they list is Muppet Christmas Carol.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Oh yeah, yeah, but Kermit in them?
Speaker 6 (27:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Man, I love Muppet Christmas Caroll. But I wouldn't call that.
I wouldn't call that a classic Christmas movie. Is Mariah
Carey's All I Want for Christmas? Is you a classic
Christmas song or is that just a banging Christmas song?
Speaker 5 (27:38):
Well, I think that's just the time. You know, it's
Christmas season. Mariah Carey has blessed us with All I
Want for Christmas, But she didn't feel about that song. Right,
that's a remake. I think I think that's a remix song.
She just put our beautiful vocals on.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
A right, they said number four.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
They said that for best parts about Christmas, Hallmark Christmas
movies you can put that on the bottom of the list.
For me, pretty much garbage, although they do make the
claim homemark Christmas movies are the TV equivalent of a
Golden Retriever, super cute and dumb as a rock.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Neighborhood likes. They say.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
The third best thing about Christmas, I mentioned this already.
Number two is trees. Number one best part about Christmas,
according to the Washington Post, is.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Cookies. I mean, I'm not gonna argue with that. Oh
you are. I just got to look from killer me.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
No, No, I would never argue with against cookies.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
I love He's the number one.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Cookies are number one, number one.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
It is hard to believe that we are a week
removed from finding out about the horrible murder of Robin
Michelle Singer Reiner.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
You realize that it was almost exactly one week ago.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
I think it was what six thirty last week that
we got the news that that murderer going on.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Yeah, it happened during our showiness. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Authorities are pretty sure now.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Obviously we didn't know this a week ago, but they're
pretty sure now that they was their son.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
They did it. And the more we learn, the more
you might wonder if a conviction is a slam dunk.
Maybe not. What the lawyers are going to say is
next is there's no business.
Speaker 10 (29:14):
Like show business.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I KFI AM six forty on demand
You're listening to KFI A M six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
For Christmas. There's the Epstein file.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
O feel like there's a banger in there somewhere. I
just have to kind of work it. Let's work shop that.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I think, what do we? What do we?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
We take that to the lab and we'll work on
that in the lab. Do they still say the lab anymore?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
No, Christopher, they don't do that.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Eminem and doctor Dre always used to talk about going
to the lab I.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
Don't think they were talking about the studio in that
in that instance, Well.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Okay, how about the jingle bells?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yeah, let's work it in the lab. Okay, all right,
you want to do? You have jingle bells? Handy dashing
through d C with Epstein on my mind.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
There's files out there.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I now, we'll bring someone down.
Speaker 6 (00:52):
He's a Bill Clinton? Is it trys a Bill Gates?
Is there a prince who first in the fire? I
know that it is not going to mints my words.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
For Epstein, words for Epstein.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
He's a child lester, total predator, had his own island,
and some billionaires went tues say, let's play.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Not as bad as I thought it was gonna be.
I can't.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's not exactly a banger. But again, we're gonna workshop that.
Speaker 7 (01:21):
I think you should have gone like Epstein files Epstein files.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, okay, well we'll work on it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I couldn't find something around with Prince, and so then
I thought I'd do like that, you know, make mints
my emotions.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I don't know. It didn't work.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah, I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, the new files came out. Why did we learn
a lot? Holy cow? I mean, we knew nothing more
than we did before.
Speaker 8 (01:49):
From ABC News, A Department of Justice posted two more
batches of Epstein files on.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Its website today.
Speaker 8 (01:54):
The latest release includes the grand jury testimony from April
two thousand and seven. In it, twenty one year old
woman describes how Jeffrey Epstein recruited her, at age sixteen,
and other underage girls for illicit massages at his Palm
Beach mansion.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Somehow that makes it sound grosser. Oh, he recruited them
for illicit massages. Somehow that makes it sound even creepier.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
Her name is redacted from the files, sources tell ABC News.
Friday's release represents less than half of the Department's files
on Epstein and includes never before seen records from the investigation.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And wait a minute, how does it only include less
than half? Weren't we supposed to have all of the
Epstein files? Wasn't that what the law was that passed?
The law passed nearly unanimously. There was only like one
dude from Kentucky or something that said no. Everybody else
said yes. The president signed it.
Speaker 8 (02:49):
Yeah, and thousands of photographs, many are heavily redacted, and
was released without context.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Okay.
Speaker 8 (02:56):
President Trump had a long standing friendship with Epstein. White
House Chief of Staff Susie Wilde says, Trump's name appears
in the files, but not doing anything awful?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Uh, probably not the phrase I would have chosen. I
want you to imagine I was a troublemaker for a kid,
which meant, of course, that that at least one of
my three was going to be a troublemaker. And lucky me,
I went three for three. And if I were to say,
what were you doing out last night when I caught
(03:33):
you sneaking in and they said to me I wasn't
doing anything awful, that would not make me feel better,
That would make me feel like they were doing something.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Bad.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, I would think that whatever it is they were
doing something that they should not have been doing. When
they say when she says he wasn't doing anything awful,
it's not like she's saying, oh, he wasn't doing anything.
She said he wasn't doing anything awful.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, Susie Wiles actually just made it a little bit
worse for the president. I mean, at this point, the
president can continue to say, yeah, of course, everybody knows
that I used to hang out with him.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
We were a couple of young playboys cheating on our wives.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
And I mean the evidence is there, but but there's
there's never been anything to tie him to other than
other than a few people that have said things. But
we don't have any hard evidence, right, nothing that would
convince a jury of peers. So there's there's nothing that says, oh, yeah,
he's definitely someone who was ordering underage girls.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
There's no evidence of that anywhere.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
And so why does Susie Wyle say he wasn't doing
anything awful. That's not helping, that's not that's not being
a good hype man for for the president.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
Trump says he and Epstein eventually I had a falling out.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 8 (05:02):
I threw him out of my club many years ago
because I thought he was a sick pervert.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, he could stick to that. But then she says
he didn't do anything awful.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Weird.
Speaker 8 (05:12):
ABC's Pierre Thomas spoke to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,
who also served as the president's criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 9 (05:19):
Well, every document that mentions President Trump, every picture of him,
every video, every bit of information related to him in
these files be released today or at some point in
this process.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Assuming it's consistent.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
With the law.
Speaker 8 (05:33):
Yes see, there's always a qualifier, so there's no effort
to hold anything back because there's the name Donald J.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Trump.
Speaker 8 (05:42):
Okay, But then Friday's release also includes some never before
seen images of Bill Clinton and Epstein together. The former
president has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Oh my gosh, you mean to tell me that Bill
Clinton might be a pervert too, Why is it that?
We go, oh, well, Bill Clinton's a pervert. Of course
he's in those files. He must have been doing something pervy.
And then you go, oh, President Trump was in those files. Yeah,
but he wasn't doing anything pervy, nothing awful. Flip side.
Democrats are like, oh, President Trump was definitely ordering women
(06:12):
off of a menu, and you go, what about the Clinton,
They're like, he didn't know what was going on?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Come on, why does everybody blinders on?
Speaker 8 (06:19):
The White House chief of Staff told Vanity Fair that
there is no incriminating information about Clinton in the files,
saying Trump was wrong about that. Clinton spokesperson releasing the
statement in part, saying this is about the White House
shielding themselves from what comes next or from what they'll
try and hide forever.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Okay, this is feeling really.
Speaker 8 (06:41):
Really gossipy, saying that Clinton cut Epstein off for his
crimes came to light. The DOJ says more documents are coming,
but for now.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Okay, when why didn't you put them out at the deadline?
Speaker 8 (06:53):
Many of the answers people are looking for are still
not there. Aik Ajachi, ABC News New York.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Oh my god, it's like the DJ didn't know that
they were gonna have to release these files.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh and then they thought, oh, well, we better start
redacting it.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
We were told during a campaign more than a year
ago that those files were coming out. We were told
after the election that those files were coming out.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Pam Bondy said, they're on my desk. I just got
to get them together.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
And then there was a law that was being debated
for a while, the government was shut down, and it
was obvious that as soon as the government reopened there
was going to be a vote to release those files.
And still the DJ sat on their hands and thought, ah, yeah,
this will never happen. And then it goes through and
then the president signs it, and the DJ still didn't
start figuring out what could or could not be released,
and nan a judge said you have to release the files.
(07:40):
And then the DJ said, oh, I guess we'll get
at this a little bit. What an absolute debacle, What
an absolute joke. Sixteen photos. This has turned up again
to me, this is not evidence of any wrongdoing by
the president what I'm about to tell you, but it
is absolute evidence of political malpractice. Sixteen photos were quietly
(08:05):
removed from the DOJ's Epstein Files website, including one image
that indirectly showed Donald Trump. So, oh, we're not taking anything,
we're not redacting anything because there's the president's name, and
oh what about that thing that you just took off
your website, And they go, that wasn't because of him,
that that was because of somebody else that was in there.
(08:26):
Those photos were pulled because there were concerns about potential victims,
not about politics. So DOJ says, not only do they
need extra time to go through the information to make
sure that they're not putting out any information or doxing
any victims or anything of that nature, But then they do,
and then they claim, oh, we're so bad at our jobs,
and that's why we had to take the photo back
(08:47):
down again. It's also why we can't get the information
out to in a timely manner. And even if we
do get it out to you, we're gonna screw it
all up. This is not a good look all the
way around. Just not a good look. Now, think back, guys,
who want did you want to talk more about politics tonight?
Because that's the only thing I had scheduled. I didn't
want to talk anymore anymore. Guys want to do more
(09:09):
politics more one more politic?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Oh no, no, says I need to know poltext All right.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Very good, good.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Hey, Think back to when you were in high school
and your teacher assigned you.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
A book report. Those were the worst.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
You had to read the whole book, and then you
got to do some summary to answer some lame questions,
just to prove that you actually read it. And for
a lot of students that is no longer true. The
death of reading in American classrooms is next. I'm Chris Merrill.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
If you're on that app, go ahead and hit that
talk back button. Our question today, what is the best
part about the holidays and what is the worst. Was
reading a story from the Washington Post that kind of
ranked them in order they said, according to this author,
Roxanne Roberts is their name. She says, the worst is
buying gifts. Not to be all ba humb but a
lot of people find Christmas shopping expensive, stressful and way
(10:03):
too materialistic, fighting for parking at the mall, standing in
long lines, even buying online can be overwhelming. So that's
part of it. So that's what they say is the worst.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
She says.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
The second best, the second best thing about Christmas, there's
the trees. Do you get real or small? To get
bigger or excuse me, realer, fag big or small? Whitter
colored lights, airloom or decorator design, ornaments, twinkle lights, it's
so exciting it's the sentimental centerpiece of the holiday, and
it's worth every minute. Oh, i'll tell you what she says.
(10:36):
The number one thing coming up here a little bit
later on the show. But I want to get your feedback.
What is the best part about the holidays? What is
the worst best part? I don't want to be too vain,
but I just don't get to I don't want to. I
don't want to sound like I'm being a like I'm
doing a bit, but honestly, I love the food and
(10:57):
I love having leftovers. I know that sounds terrible. You
know what I think I like the most about the holidays? Yeah,
this is fair. This is what I like the most.
It's absolutely what my wife likes the least, and that's
what makes us completely incompatible.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
But I love when things go wrong right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Nobody tells the wonderful Oh do you remember the time
that we sat around and opened Presence and everyone was happy?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, the memories are from when things go wrong. And
I have the same philosophy when it comes to doing
the radio show too. I always say this. I say
I plan to do everything absolutely right, and I love
it when things go wrong. I just do I didn't
I never want them to go wrong, but when they do,
(11:49):
I just think that's that's when the magic happens. And
the same thing with the holidays. It's not about everything
going right and having a Norman Rockwell holiday. It's about
when things go wrong. It's about when somebody says something goofy.
Like I remember when I was little, my my cousin
had just moved to.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Our town. Like they moved.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I was growing up in northern Michigan and my aunt
uncle and my cousin moved to northern Michigan. They had
been in New Mexico or something, and they moved up there,
and so we were doing Christmas well. They had decided
to join the Jehovah's Witness Church, and so my grandmother
said to my cousin, what do you want for Christmas?
(12:34):
And my cousin was like, I don't know, seven or
eight years old, and she corrected my grandmother and said, no,
Jehovah does not like Christmas.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
It was like, oh my, I mean that's the stuff
we remember. Now.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Think back. I want you to think back. I mean
that's been thirty years. Think back thirty years ago, and
I want you to think of when you asked your
niece or nephew what they wanted for Christmas? Do you
remember what they told you? No, because nobody remembers that.
They remember when things go awry. My grandfather had Alzheimer's
and it was really hard on the family. And anybody's
(13:09):
ever dealt with somebody with Alzheimer's knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It It's hard on everybody. It's really tough.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
And my grandfather just at was some point at the
dinner table, he just reached across and he grabbed the
gravy the gravy boat, right and he just started drinking
out of the gravy boat, like what are you doing?
And I just remember being a teenager and I was
I just started laughing. My poor grandmother started crying. My
(13:36):
mother and her siblings were like, yeah, no, no, you
can't do that. And he puts the boat down, and
he's got this like gravy mustache, like you'd have like
a milk mustache. He had like a gravy mustache on
his face. I mean, I just remember when things go wrong.
So the best part about the holidays for me is
(13:56):
when things go off script. That's that's my favorite part
of the holidays, So curious about what yours are.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Hit us on that talkback.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Best part about the holidays, worst part about the holidays,
curious about what yours might be. We'll get your feedback
on that in just a second. The kids these days, oh,
they're not doing this very basic thing that seemed so
normal for us. In fact, not only was it normal,
it was something we took a great deal of pride in,
especially because we always got rewarded. See if you remember
(14:27):
what the rewards were from when you were young, the
good old days. What the kids these days are not doing.
Colleges don't even seem to care. That's next time, Chris Merril.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I we'll talk about the kids and how much they're
just not reading in school right now. In the meantime,
we do have talkbacks, and I appreciate you. Anybody that's
on the iHeartRadio app, hit that talkback button and if
you've got questions, comments, squpt quotes, criticisms, compliments, or you
just want to answer the question, what is the best
part about the how.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And what is the worst part?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
For me? The worst part is all the expectations that
I feel are unnecessary. My wife put all these expectations
on the holidays have to be perfect, it has to
be perfect. Why are you trying to ruin everything? You're
trying to ruin everything for everyone? Like, no, babe, I'm
not trying. I'm a natural. But my favorite part is
(15:24):
when things go wrong, because I think that's when the
memories are made.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I think that's the best part. All right, what the
best part and the worst? For you? Hi, Chris.
Speaker 10 (15:33):
As a Jehovah's Witness, we never celebrated Christmas or any.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Of the other holidays.
Speaker 9 (15:38):
So now that I really don't care either way, I
still don't know how to celebrate them, but I try
to find some joy.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Holidays.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Good for you, Thank you, Happy holidays? Yeah, good for you.
Yeah that was uh, it was nice. My brother, I
can't stay my brother. He's such a little dufist. But
first grade, there was this little there's this little kid
in his last new kid, and the kid was the
Jeovah's Witness and they were doing a gift exchange. But
(16:06):
the Jeovah's Witness wasn't allowed to participate, you know, for
because of his religion. So so they're like imagine thirty
kids in the class, and twenty nine of them are
all exchanging gifts, and my brother gives his present to
the Jehovah's Witness kid and is like, I want you
to be a part of this, like I don't want
you to miss out.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Isn't that sweet?
Speaker 4 (16:27):
That's really sweet.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I thought it was going to be like make your
brother look bad, But that's a beautiful story.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Was the kid allowed to keep it?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
No, and my brother got in trouble.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
You gotta respect people's.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Got to respect their religion.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
And he didn't do it coming from you.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, I mean you're six, You're six years old, year
old enough to know better. You got to you gotta
respect respect them.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I don't think that that's respect.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Okay, Imagine that poor kid went home all excited and
showed his parents he got something at school and his
parents had to like tell him no.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Whatever the case is, sorry, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
The pad feel bad for the parents too, because that
puts them in a really awkward position. So basically, my
brother just screwed up somebody else's non holiday.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Where'd he go?
Speaker 11 (17:10):
All?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Right? From the talkbacks.
Speaker 12 (17:11):
Worst Christmas Time ever was back in ninety nine, bought
my son a motorcycle.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
He was only eight years old. What m h.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Feel like that's not old enough to have a motorcycle license.
Speaker 12 (17:27):
Set it out front all everybody came out and looked
at it. My wife was gonna kill me. My mother
in law ran around saying, he's gonna kill himself. I
wanted to leave. My son was happy as hell, but
everybody else wanted to kill me. Anyway, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I kind of like that. I kind of like that.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
What do you like about that?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
The parenting win, Mostly that he did something nice that
the son loved, and everybody else just freaked out.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Okay, yeah, that sounds like I just love.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I love when things don't go right. Those are the
memories nobody really. Hey, I could not tell you what
I got my kids when they were eight.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I don't have any idea. I don't have an ada.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
That guy knows exactly what he got his kid when
his kid turned eight years old, because it became a memory.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
See, that's what I love. I love when things don't
go as planned. That's what I love. All right? Your
thoughts hit us up of that talk back?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Best part about the holidays and the worst part about
the holidays, worst part about the kids these days. Oh uh,
it's not that they're illiterate, it's just that they don't read.
I know, it sounds like it's the same. It's not
that they can't, it's just that they don't. Jared Henderson
is a host of a Philosophy for the Modern World.
He was talking about how even colleges don't even care.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
At universities all around the country, professors are reporting a problem.
Students can't read books. This is true even at elite
colleges and universities. In one required class at Columbia, students
are often expected to read about a book a week,
But in the past couple of years, students have started
telling their professors that they can't do it. One student
told a professor that she had never been required to
(18:58):
read an entire book. Oh my, this is part of
a larger trend. People aren't reading anymore. This is true
for men and women, people who went to college and
people who didn't.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
And it's really easy to say that's because their attention
spans aren't long enough. They're not reading for fun, because
they've got TikTok and they're scrolling instead, and I think
it's probably true to a degree, but we've also got
to the point where we're not even assigning it. Many
high school students assigned only one or two full books
per year, according to researchers, and more than two thousand
responses in a New York Times survey of teachers, parents
(19:27):
and students, they're not even being assigned those texts. Twelfth
grade reading scores are at historic lows. College professors report
students struggling to engage with long or complex texts. Well,
first of all, when you're a college student complex text
it's intended for you to struggle. The idea is you
struggle through it, and through that struggle, you learn, and
(19:48):
you pick up comprehension and you understand how to see this.
I remember when I was in college and they made
us read some Greek texts. Oh my gosh, how brutal
was that. It's terrible. And yet if I look at
a Greek text now, thanks to everything that I learned
in college, I know right away put this down.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It's a waste of your time.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
So students are not having the opportunity to read long books.
They are also being given things like articles or short
snippets and they're being told to sort of analyze those
sorts of things. Instead, schools are increasingly relying on excerpt
based digital curricula, prioritizing short readings, brief essays, and standardized
test preparation rather than diving into the depth of a
(20:30):
good book. And I was thinking about the difference between
then and now. Obviously technological advancements. Right when I was
growing up, I remember when I was a kid, Kayla,
this is in the before time. We didn't have the internet,
we didn't have quick access. We had television, but our
parents used to tell us go read a book. You
(20:50):
can't watch TV all day. You got to read a book,
or you have to go outside. You can't be watching
TV all day. You have to go outside. That was
the rule. Now, if kids are on social media, even
if they go outside, they take their phones with them
and they're still on social media, so it's a little
bit easier I think for parents to just turn the
TV off. I mean there were times that I remember
my parents unplugging the TV. Right, you can't watch TV
until you've been outside, or you can't watch TV. If
(21:11):
you read an hour of TV a of a book,
I'll let you watch an hour of TV. That was
the kind of thing that we had when we were
growing up. The other thing that we had that really
incentivized reading.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Was book It. Did you have book it? Growing up?
Book it was the best?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
So book it went like this, Caleb followed me on this,
and tell me this isn't the greatest idea from both
a marketing standpoint and a betterment of the world standpoint.
Pizza Hutt would reward you for reading books and you
got free personal pizzas, and teachers would set different standards,
but it was usually like, if you read seven books
in a month, you got a free personal pan pizza.
(21:47):
And they didn't have to be I mean, we used
to call them chapter books, right because it had chapters. And
when you're a little kid, you've got chapter books and
non chapter books, right, so short stories versus actual stories
that have some composition to it. But I remember, the
older you got, it might be seven books a month.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
It might be ten.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
When you're younger, they want you to read some of
those you know, those you know, the children's stories and
things like that. Whatever it was. God, we wanted those
pizzas and it worked. I'm telling you. If not pizzas
how many kids wouldn't read anything?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Is there an age limit?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Because I'm hungry and it's funny you mentioned that I
look this up and book it is now back and
it will also cater to adults.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
They're like, anybody can be a part of it. Serious, Yeah,
they'll go check it out. They'll do like, anybody can
be a part of it.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Now, Oh my god, I read all the time. Where
do I get my free pizza? Got the hut? Just yeah, okay,
bing it?
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Just bing it and see bing it and we'll come
back and we'll figure out the instructions on how anybody
can do it, because I'm telling you I looked this
up and it was like, yeah, you can still do that?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Why not?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
All right, we'll get the being results here in just
a few moments. I can get hooked up with pizzas man.
That was why I read half the time. Otherwise it
was like I just want to play TV or I
want to watch TV and play with my friends.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
It's all I wanted.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
All Right, it is the end of the year, and
what does that mean. It means you're probably getting fired.
But for fun, that's next, Chris Meryl.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You're listening to KFI Am six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
We asked the question what is the best part about
the holidays what is the worst? They got me going
on some tangents, talking about some stories growing up, including
my family, my aunt and uncle, my cousin. They were
Jehovah's witnesses, but we still invited them to all of
the big Christmas gatherings and things like that.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
But then it was kind of weird at times, you know, mostly.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Because it was like, Hey, we're here for Christmas, but
don't talk about it because we don't want to upset them.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh hey, I want to get those other one first. Hey, Chris,
I grew up with friends there in Highland Park that
were Jehovah.
Speaker 10 (23:46):
Witness and they couldn't do Halloween, couldn't do this, couldn't
do that, of course, But you know what, when the
big one hits, they are going to survive it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You know why, they'll be standing in your doorway.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
All right, A good holiday, stop it. That's not funny.
I didn't preview that call. I didn't know what was coming.
I only got me by surprise. That's pretty good, all right.
What is the best part about the holidays? What is
(24:22):
the worst part about the holidays.
Speaker 12 (24:23):
Hey there.
Speaker 11 (24:24):
So when it comes to the favorite things of Christmas,
it all depends on your age and the time of
you know, season in your life. I think when you're
a child, it's all about the magic. When you're a teenager,
it's less magic, more about how much you can get
out of your parents. When you're in your young adulthood
and you can't afford gifts, it kind of sucks. And
then when you're a parent, it becomes so much fun
(24:45):
to live through your kids eyes and make it magical.
And then once you become an empty nester, it's just
about being with your friends and the cheer and being
around family.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Wow, this is really complete. I feel like.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I feel like she just give a modern twist of
the all the World's at stage speech from as you
like It. That's pretty good. Thank you for that breakdown.
I really like that. What is the number? Let me see?
The Washington Post gave like a list of the best
and the worst. The worst thing they said for the
holidays was buying gifts. Most of they didn't you didn't
(25:19):
enjoy it. Christmas markets, Santa con visiting Santa Snaks, light shows,
they say, themed bars, wrapping gifts is miserable, receiving gifts,
greeting cards, office, birthday party, ugly sweaters, and then it
starts to get more and more fun. They said, Top
five best parts about Christmas? Number five classic Christmas movies?
(25:40):
What does that mean? See that changes because I'm an
old man. So is a classic Christmas movie like Miracle
on thirty fourth Street? Or is the classic Christmas movie?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Elf? Kayla?
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Definitely Elf?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
See that's not a classic.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
It's definitely classic. It's it's been twenty two years as
it came out.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
That's a classic, two thousand and three. It's classic.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
You know what, There's gonna come a time where there's
gonna be a film that will come out and it
will be popular, and then you're gonna look back on it.
People are gonna be like, oh, do you remember that
old movie? And you're gonna be like old movie and yeah,
they're gonna say, oh, it came out like twenty two
years ago, and you're gonna.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Say, I was twenty five twenty two years ago.
Speaker 10 (26:26):
I was.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Then you were not twenty five when Elf came out?
Speaker 4 (26:30):
You lie, all right, fine, close enough?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Or a kid when it came out, right, I was
about twelve that was the perfect time for that to
come out.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
For you.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah, great movie.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
For me, I was like, eh, what, I was dating
an old lady. She had three used kids, so I
watched it because you know, they wanted to see it.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Do you still watch it every year? Do you get pitched? Okay?
All right? What about a Christmas Story?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
I used to be on you know what.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I finally watched a Christmas Story. Now, that's one that
came out when I was a kid, and I never
really watched it. It used to be played on a loop,
and I didn't watch it until one year. I finally said,
I got to watch this movie.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And I didn't. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Did you really that's the most boring movie.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Otherwise I had seen like bits and pieces here and there,
But I mean, I really I did enjoy it. Yeah,
I get it once I finally sat down and watched it.
Another one that they list is Muppet Christmas Carol.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Oh yeah, yeah, but Kermit in them?
Speaker 6 (27:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Man, I love Muppet Christmas Caroll. But I wouldn't call that.
I wouldn't call that a classic Christmas movie. Is Mariah
Carey's All I Want for Christmas? Is you a classic
Christmas song or is that just a banging Christmas song?
Speaker 5 (27:38):
Well, I think that's just the time. You know, it's
Christmas season. Mariah Carey has blessed us with All I
Want for Christmas, But she didn't feel about that song. Right,
that's a remake. I think I think that's a remix song.
She just put our beautiful vocals on.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
A right, they said number four.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
They said that for best parts about Christmas, Hallmark Christmas
movies you can put that on the bottom of the list.
For me, pretty much garbage, although they do make the
claim homemark Christmas movies are the TV equivalent of a
Golden Retriever, super cute and dumb as a rock.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Neighborhood likes. They say.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
The third best thing about Christmas, I mentioned this already.
Number two is trees. Number one best part about Christmas,
according to the Washington Post, is.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Cookies. I mean, I'm not gonna argue with that. Oh
you are. I just got to look from killer me.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
No, No, I would never argue with against cookies.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
I love He's the number one.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Cookies are number one, number one.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
It is hard to believe that we are a week
removed from finding out about the horrible murder of Robin
Michelle Singer Reiner.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
You realize that it was almost exactly one week ago.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
I think it was what six thirty last week that
we got the news that that murderer going on.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Yeah, it happened during our showiness. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Authorities are pretty sure now.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Obviously we didn't know this a week ago, but they're
pretty sure now that they was their son.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
They did it. And the more we learn, the more
you might wonder if a conviction is a slam dunk.
Maybe not. What the lawyers are going to say is
next is there's no business.
Speaker 10 (29:14):
Like show business.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I KFI AM six forty on demand
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