04-16-25 - *FULL SHOW* The Oldest Computer; Distracted Driving; Colossal Squid

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's great to be with you. We have a ton
of stuff to do today, lots of topics, political, economic science,
just lots and lots of stuff. Producer Shannon. In a moment,
I will ask you for that audio clip, just so
you can be ready. I want to start the show
just with a little slightly sad news. I say slightly
in the sense that when somebody passes away, yes it's sad,

(00:24):
but when somebody passes away at a ripe old age
after living a great life, it's a lot less sad.
So with that, I share with you the news that
one of the all time great and famous television game
show hosts he did other things as well, Wink Martindale
passed away yesterday at the age of ninety one. According

(00:48):
to the Associated Press, he had been struggling with lymphoma
cancer for about a year. His publicists said he had
actually been doing pretty well and just until a couple
of weeks ago. So anyway, I wanted to share a
couple of things with you about Wink Martindale. So in
nineteen seventy two, he started as the host of a

(01:09):
game show called Gambit, and it actually started in September
of nineteen seventy two, on the exact same day that
The Price Is Right started, that of course with Bob Barker.
And then there was another game show pretty well known
in the seventies. You know, it's not still around like

(01:29):
The Price of Price Is Right, is called The Jokers Wild.
I remember seeing that when I was a kid. That
was hosted by a guy named Jack Barry. Anyway, Gambit
did quite well for a while. It was on CBS,
and he had been beating Wink Martindale had been beating
his competition on ABC and NBC for a couple of years.

(01:53):
And then in nineteen seventy five on NBC a new
show started. Might have heard of it. It's called Wheel
of Fortune. And by December of nineteen seventy six, Gambit
was gone off the air and Wheel of Fortune is
still one of the biggest game shows going. So and
then Wink Martindale came back a few years later with

(02:15):
Tic Tac Dough, which some of you might remember that
ran on CBS until nineteen eighty five. So the other
thing I wanted to mention to you, you know, he
had an interesting life. You can go read about it.
I've posted all this stuff on my blog. But one
of the other things that Wink Martindale is known for,
you know, to the extent that people know him anymore,

(02:37):
is that is that he did one of the very
first television interviews with Elvis Presley. And at the time,
Wink Martindale was hosting a TV show that was not
a not a game show, and I'm blanking on the
name of the show, but it was some kind of

(02:59):
like dance show something like that, and so he got
one of the first interviews with Elvis. It was it
was nineteen fifty four or so, Elvis would have been
nineteen years old, and it's it's way too long for
me to play all of it, but I just wanted
you to get a little taste. So here's this Elvis

(03:19):
Presty either played or.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
He's one of our hottest guys that's ever hit show.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Missess.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
I realized that any kidding more, say obady, thanks a
lot time.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
You won't but you got your money.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
I'll be back way Okay, you cost you much, I'm
out there, Elvis. It goes without saying that all of
us here a dance party appreciate very much you're taking
time out today to come by and say Hello to
all of our friends that watch a dance party and
also the people who are with us here on the
floor today. And it's nice that you were able to
spend these past few days at home. How is it
if you've been at home for so many days?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
The role here?

Speaker 5 (03:55):
Well, it's it's first time I've been off and run.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
So I've been on the road and.

Speaker 5 (03:58):
I've been I'm mean, I don't know with coast and everything,
and I decided I need a.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Little rest a few days off. Yeah, well, do you
don't want to go too fast now?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Now, I'd like to tell you that I'm gonna enjoy
I mean, I hear you know all these people, we
were certainly glad to have you here.

Speaker 6 (04:12):
That was.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
We want to ask you a few questions and you shoot.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Here we go.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Let's go back to the beginning, first.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Of all, to your quick rise to fame.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
First of all, how old were you when you first
remember being attracted to music and singing?

Speaker 6 (04:25):
And well, how old were you?

Speaker 1 (04:27):
How'd you get started?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
And when'd you get that first guitar?

Speaker 4 (04:29):
And where'd you get it?

Speaker 5 (04:32):
Let's let me start with the first question.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, how old were you when you first or when
I first started singing when I never sung in my
life until I made my first record.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
You know, uh huh, I uh, where'd you get that guitar?
I got it in Mississippi.

Speaker 5 (04:46):
I it cost twelve dollars I think twelve dollars guitar.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
And it was all right, we'll leave it there, just
just out of pure reminiscence in history. I could keep listening,
but I know you're not. You're not here to hear
a long interview with Elvis. But if you want to go,
here the whole thing, and it's pretty cool if you're
an Elvis fan or just love old TV or music history,
it's really cool. And it's up on my blog at
Roskiminski dot com. So wink Martindale, rest in peace. All right,

(05:11):
let me mention a couple of other things that are
kind of sort of related. So Pat Woodard actually just
mentioned and I think it's pretty cool that he did,
because I don't think very many local radio stations are
going to even even mention the story at all. But
Pat Woodard mentioned that the Supreme Court of the UK,
not the US, but the British Supreme Court has ruled

(05:35):
that transgender women are not to be treated as women
for the purposes of a particular law called the twenty
ten Equality Act, which is, you know, like one of
their big civil rights laws there, and you know, the
government in England will provide what they call a GRC,

(05:59):
a recognition certificate, so you know, you can have a
transgender woman biologically male transitions to female can actually get
some kind of government piece of paper saying all right,
I'm female now. And again in the United States, actually
in most states I think, or at least in at

(06:20):
least in some states, a person who's going through that
process can actually get a birth certificate issued, like a
corrected birth certificate, so it'll show the new gender on
the birth certificate as if that it were the gender
the person was born with. And I'm not looking to
debate whether you like this or not. What I'm talking

(06:42):
about is the UK has now decided that, for the
purposes of that law, transgender women do not get the
same civil rights protections as women for being women. And
I think it's the right ruling. That judge just said
in their ruling that the law will not cause disadvantage

(07:03):
to trans people. And I'm quoting here. Let's see who
has this, Who has this article the UK Independent. They
say transgender people are still protected from discrimination and would
be able to invoke the provisions on direct discrimination and
harassment and indirect discrimination if needed. But so I haven't
gone through this whole ruling, and frankly I don't really

(07:24):
know anything about British law. But in any case, one
of the key things though that this is about, is
in fact, I'll just read a little bit. The Supreme
Court ruling means that transgender women, even with that certificate,
can be excluded from single sex spaces for women if proportionate,

(07:44):
whatever proportion it means. The judges said that if sex
didn't only mean biological sex in the twenty twenty legislation,
providers of single sex spaces, including changing rooms, homeless hostels
and medical services, would face practical difficult and the judges said,
read fairly and in context, the provisions relating to single

(08:05):
sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex.
I think most Americans agree with that. I think most
Americans think a lot of the world has gone kind
of crazy with with just how hard some folks are
trying to insert biological men into women's spaces, women's sports,

(08:29):
and so on. Which relates to the other thing that
I'm just gonna mention briefly. Might or might not come
back to it later. But the Justice Department has filed
suit against the State of Maine for Maine's refusal to
go along with the new Ish federal interpretation of Title
nine that says that Title nine is to protect girls

(08:52):
and women's sports, and girls in women's sports in education
are for girls, not for boys. Is not for biological boys.
So that lawsuit is coming against the State of Maine,
which is not a surprise. We'll be right back on KOA.
I have an ethical question for you, a question I've
been struggling with, a little bit. So I brought a

(09:15):
container of Shannon's what's that brand of the stuff you
put in your tea or coffee? What's that stuff called?

Speaker 7 (09:21):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Hang on, like, is it coffee mate or something like that?
You nailed it, coffee mat, Yeah, okay. So I went
and I bought this, maybe not quite a quart of
Irish cream sugar free, because I want as many chemicals
as possible, coffee mate, and I put it in the fridge.
I'm at the radio station here, and I put a
little bit in my tea every day, because I have

(09:44):
tea with me pretty much every single day when I'm
doing the show. It helps me get through the show
a little bit, or keeps my voice all right, and
that sort of thing. So here's what happened. So I
finished my coffee mate, and I bought another one, but
I forgot to bring it in, so it's it's in
my fridge at home, and I need to bring it in.
And I made some tea and somebody else had some

(10:07):
other you know, coffee meat like a thing in there,
and I used about two teaspoons of it. And I
have no idea whose it is. And I would like
to know if that makes me a bad person or
a thief, if I'm going to prison or to hell
or or something like that. So please text me at

(10:28):
five six six nine zero and tell me whether whether
that makes me a bad person. I do think I do.
You think it might, But I don't know really who
to apologize too. I don't know who's I don't know
whose creamer is. All right, all right? Moving on from there,
You just like, would you do that? Have you done that?
Just make me? Mainly, I'm asking you to make me

(10:50):
feel better. Five six six nine zero, All right, A
couple of quick stories I want to share with you.
These are actually just one of these is the story
I saw this morning. This other one I so I
think yesterday, but I'm gonna share with you now because
we've talked a fair bit on the show about the
ongoing potential relationship, well long relationship and then potentially ongoing

(11:10):
relationship between Tivoli Brewing and the Area campus. Right, So,
Tivoli Brewing is the oldest or second oldest brewery still
alive in Colorado, if I remember correctly. And they ran
for a while, and they stopped for a while, ran
for a while, stopped for a while, and eventually they
they moved like ten years ago into the Tivoli Student

(11:34):
Union building over there by Metro State, you know, the
Area campus by by Ball Arena, and they may be here.
Then they stopped, and then they did it again. Then
they stopped like a year and a half ago and
haven't started up again. So they're trying to figure out
what to do. Long story short, long story short. They
are not renewing their lease, and it's unclear where they're

(11:58):
gonna set up next. I hope they do set up somewhere, right,
The guy who's kind of behind the reboot is guy
named Corey Marshall who used to be at Molten Course
and back in twenty twelve he got a tax grant
from the state of nearly a million dollars and then
I don't know where he got the funding, but three

(12:19):
and a half million dollars to kind of improve the
building and all. And now they're leaving. So anyway, I
just wanted to share that with you. It's kind of
a historic thing and we'll see where they end up.
The other story I wanted to share with you is, so,
do you remember a dude And I don't mean you
like met him for a drink, but do you remember
a dude named Gary Shapley. Gary Shapley IRS employee who

(12:46):
was very upset about how his organization, the IRS, and
the Justice Department, in his opinion, were, and I'm actually
going to quote from National Review here were slow walking
the Biden tax probe and not allowing the IRS, including
Shapley and his colleague at the IRS, a guy named Ziggler,

(13:10):
not allowing them to pursue relevant lines of inquiry into
Hunter Biden's various tax frauds. And there certainly were multiple
of them. And so those two showed up in Congress,
they testified in Congress, then they backed it up with
a whole bunch of documents, and then they later testified

(13:31):
about you know, Hunter Biden's taxes and his business dealings
and all that. So last month, the Treasury Secretary Scott
Bessen promoted both of those guys, Shapily and Ziggler too,
and again quoting from National Review, senior advisory roles to
help the Treasury Department's efforts to modernize and reform the IRS.

(13:53):
Their promotions came after a push from Senator Chuck Grassley
of Iowa, a longtime advocate for willistle blower protections, to
reward the courage of the IRS agents. And I'm fully
on board with all of that, and Grassley is actually
it's one of the things he's very very good at,
is supporting whistleblowers and trying to make sure they don't

(14:14):
get punished for coming out and reporting wrongdoing by others
in government. I love that. So here's the news story
that I wanted you to know about today. Gary Shapley
was just named Acting Commissioner of the IRS. Acting Commissioner
of the IRS. So good for him. I mean, I hope,

(14:35):
I hope he's qualified for the job. I don't want
him to get the job just because the Trump administration
is happy that he did something that they think hurt
the Bidens. That's not why he should get the job.
But he was a senior guy, not a junior guy.
A senior guy who did something courageous. And I suspect
he is qualified for the job. And assuming he is,

(14:56):
I'm glad that he gets this promotion in sense continuing
the previous promotion. In a sense, it is rewarding his courage.
We'll be right back earlier this morning, Colorado senator and
want to be governor. And by the way, I suspect
he will be governor. Like if I were betting on
it now, I bet I'd say the odds are probably

(15:18):
eighty percent already that he's gonna be governor. Unfortunately for us,
as I as I said a couple of days ago,
when when he officially announced, I suspect that a Michael
Bennett governorship is going to make Republicans, Libertarians, and even
some Democrats long for the days of Jared Polis, as

(15:39):
hard as that may be for you to believe. I
look sometimes I'm just gonna admit this on the radio.
I probably shouldn't, but I will. Sometimes I'm a little
bit gentler on a politician then I might otherwise be.

(16:00):
And I don't mean I don't say anything when I disagree,
but maybe I say it a little more politely or something.
If it's somebody who I want to make sure will
come back on the show. And it's not having anything
to do with my ego. It's because being able to
get somebody like an attorney general or like a governor,

(16:20):
like a senator on the show brings valuable information to you, right,
So I my purpose for doing this show is to
bring you some combination of information and entertainment, right And
so if I can, for example, get Governor Polis on
the show, and I'll criticize him, you know, on the
show with him and when he's not here and in private.

(16:44):
But I don't do it brutally normally because it's just
not necessary. But with Michael Bennett, I'm sort of making
an exception because this guy, his people at least have
never agreed to have him on my show. Try to
get recently, actually for the first time in a few years.
No luck. I'm always nice to Democrats, but uh, I

(17:08):
guess he's a coward. And if you hear him speak,
you know, he sounds sounds like he could be a coward.
I got an email from a listener. I know this
is gonna sound unnecessarily gratuitous, but let me just share
this and then I'm gonna get to this audio from
Colorado Morning News Colorado's Morning News this morning. A listener

(17:29):
named Chris said, I never really paid much attention to Bennett.
I heard you talk about him the other day, and
I heard his interview on KOWA this morning. Wow. My
initial reaction is he's not impressive from any angle. He's
not a particularly good interview weee, he's not a gifted orator,
he's not an intellectual, and he has zero charisma. And

(17:52):
then Chris says, it'll make for an interesting election. So
I agree with all that, except for the last part.
It will not make for an interesting election. Michael Bennett
has very high name recognition, much higher name recognition than
anybody else who will be running for governor. And he
will have more money than anybody else running for governor.
And some unless some I don't know, self funding billionaire

(18:17):
jumps in and it won't matter anyway, and Michael Bennett's
gonna win the primary, and then he's gonna win the
general election unless some crazy thing comes out about Michael Bennett.
And you know, if Michael Bennett were a scandal prone guy,
we probably would have had him already. You know. They
used to say that, you know, voters won't care unless

(18:40):
they unless they find him in bed with a live
boy or a dead girl. I know that's a harsh line,
but it's an old line in politics. And you know,
Bennett's not that guy, you know, And so he's gonna
be governor and all these things are true. He's not
a very good interview. He's not a good speaker. I
wouldn't think of him as an intellectual, but he's not dumb.

(19:00):
He went to some very high end I think it
was Saint Alban's Prep school in Washington, d C. He
went to college out there too. He's not really a
colorad in as far as all that goes. And he
has zero charisma, and he's gonna be your governor and
you're gonna wish that Jared Poulos was still your governor
now to give you a sense of what we're in for.

(19:21):
So this Morning. This Morning, Marty and Rob, who was
in for Gina today, had Michael Bennett on the show
and they asked him about TABOR in the context of,
you know, there's a lot of discussion about whether we
should mess with Taber and there's gonna be a ballot
measure about undoing at least parts of TABOR. And here's

(19:45):
what Bennett had to say.

Speaker 8 (19:47):
Well, I agree that the right of people in Colorado
to vote on tax increases is basically etchton stone and
it should stay that way. You know, what can you
pull it?

Speaker 1 (20:03):
So let me just tackle that part first. So he says,
the ability of Colorado's to vote on tax increases is
etched in stone. Well why is it? Why is it
etched in stone. It's etched in stone because it's part
of the state constitution. It's not etched in stone because
in his brain he likes it that way. That's not
how any of this works, you know those TV commercials.

(20:25):
That's not how any of this works. Michael Bennett should understand.
That's not how any of this works. There's no such
thing as etched in stone unless it's in the constitution,
and even then it's etched in stone. But you could
break the stone, or you could like scrape the stone
and you know, chisel all that stuff out by amending
the constitution. Right, so echtin stone is whatever. But but

(20:48):
so he's saying that that part of Tabor that he
claims to like, I don't think he does like it.
I just think he finds it a little too politically
risky to say he wants to throw out Tabor and entirety.
But he's saying, oh, that's etched in stone, But what
about the rest? Michael continued, basically etched in stone and
it should stay that way.

Speaker 9 (21:09):
I do think that we don't need to be shackled to,
you know, every single word of some a a part
of our time Hamadahama forty or fifty years ago, and
we should be having a discussion about the best way
to fund public services in Colorado.

Speaker 8 (21:29):
We'll see what that discussion yields.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Oh my gosh, I want to throw something. I want
to throw something. I want to throw my headphones just
hearing that that auditory pollution in my ears. So let's
be real clear about this. The part of Tabor that
Michael Bennett claims to support, although I don't believe him

(21:55):
on being able to vote on tax increases. He says,
that's etched in the other part of TABOR that is
in the same right, it was the same constitutional amendment.
It's all one thing. It was all voted on at
the same time. It's all this one thing. Tabor has
multiple parts. Voting on tax increases is one of them.

(22:16):
But another big one is that the state may not
keep revenue that beyond a certain level. I won't go
through the whole formula. I'm just we'll just simplify it, right,
And what it does is it keeps the state budget
from growing too much, it keeps the state from spending
too much, and it allows this state, even though we

(22:39):
have an immense amount of fees that are effectively another
couple of percent probably on our income tax rate. But
in any case, it allows us to have an income
tax rate four and a half percent, maybe going a
little below four and a half percent, where California, which
is governed by the exact same kind of people that
are currently governing in Colorado, have eight nine percent state

(23:00):
in cone I actually think it goes up to twelve
percent in California. It's been a while since I look.
But TABOR is what keeps this state from turning in
to the ultimate left wing fiscal basket case, because there
is no amount of money that the people who are
in control right now won't spend. So back to what

(23:22):
we're talking about here with Bennett, the part of Tabor
that he says he still supports is quote etched in stone.
The other part of Tabor that he doesn't support, the
part that limits how much of your money the federal
the state government can take from you. Right, that part

(23:43):
he doesn't described as etched in stone, even though it
is literally etched in the same place that the other
part is. Instead, he describes us as being shackled to
that and not only that, by the way, he says,
why should we be shackled to something that's forty or
fifty years old? Taber was passed in nine, so it's
thirty three years old. So even there he's you know,

(24:03):
exaggerating or lying or whatever you want to whatever you
want to call it. But think, just just think about
the brain deadness of all that. You know, this part
is etched in stone, Well why that other part, Well
that is just a thing we're shackled too. How crazy

(24:24):
is that? How unprincipled is that? How ultimately injustified. The
means is that it's it's shocking, it's it's shocking but
not surprising. There's a difference there.

Speaker 8 (24:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Every time so often I hear Michael Bennett say stuff,
I'm like, oh my gosh, really, and then of course
I think, yeah, really, I knew he would say that.
That's what he's that's what he's like, that's what he's like.
Listener text. I don't like Polus's policies, but I like
his personality. Bene has neither. Another listener question, would Phil

(25:03):
Wiser be better or worse than Bennett? That's a good question.
That's a good question, I think. I I don't think
anybody who's who would have even a small chance of winning.
And I would say Wiser has a small chance of winning,

(25:25):
but very small. Right, I already put his odds. I
already put Bennett at eighty percent. But I don't think
anybody could be worse than Bennett. And I don't mean
in charisma and personality and all that, because that's all
like about zero anyway on Bennett. But it's not the
most important thing. Like I remember when I lived in Australia,

(25:46):
the Prime Minister of Australia at the time was a
guy named John Howard, and he had maybe the least
charisma of any politician I've ever seen. I'd ever seen.
He wasn't okay speaker, not great, but okay. He had
the least charisma of any politician I've probably ever seen.
I freaking loved that guy. He just kept his head

(26:09):
down and did the job. He was a moderate conservative
by Australian standards, and he wasn't flashy, and he wasn't showy,
and he just did the jobs. You don't need to
have a lot of charisma. But the thing with John
Howard that's very different from Michael Bennett and from lots
of other politicians is that John Howard had a backbone.

(26:29):
He had a spine. Michael Bennett, as far as I
can tell, is is a jellyfish. I just don't know
ross what percentage of the vote is necessary to change
the constitution. I assume we're talking about the state constitution here,
because we are talking about Tabor. The federal constitution is
a much more complicated thing here in the state of Colorado.

(26:52):
If you get a constitutional amendment on the ballot, it
needs fifty five percent to pass there was a ballot
measure some years ago, and I'm blanking on the number.
I should remember it because one of my friends was
much involved with getting it passed, and I supported it
as well. It used to be the constitutional amendments and

(27:13):
statutory changes, which are ballot measures that change the law
rather than the constitution, each required fifty percent plus one vote.
But there was a vote here in Colorado to raise
the constitutional amendment threshold to fifty five percent. So that's
what it is now. Ken Salazar might run. I don't

(27:36):
really see Ken Salazar as as. I mean, he's a
soon as, he's seventy years old, and he's probably not
as left wing as Bennett, but he's not gonna win.
He's not. Do you feel like this state that's full
of young progressive leftists is going to vote for a

(27:57):
seventy year old dude no matter what is POB unless
it's Bernie Sanders, They're not voting for an old person.
And Benett's not young, but he's way younger, and so
I just Ken Sealizar might run, might not run. I
don't know. I don't know. Let's see what else ross

(28:17):
what Republican are you going to endorse since there's no
independent or Democrat that could ever get your vote. I
got to see how it all plays out. I don't know.
There's probably gonna be a lot of Republicans in the field.
I don't think it matters much. So, first of all,
in general, I don't overestimate my own influence here. I
every once in a while, on the margin, I either

(28:39):
think or maybe I just hope that I made a
difference in some election. And there were some Republican primaries
last time around where I was very very aggressively against
terrible candidates like Ron Hanks, and aggressively for other candidates
like Jeff Hurd and against Dave Williams and four Jef

(29:00):
Crank and stuff like that. But I don't really think
I make that much of a difference. You know, how
many people am I going to sway? I mean, even
if I even if I sway to thousand people to
change their votes, and I don't think that's likely. But
even if I did, how many elections are decided by
a thousand votes? Not very many. So back to the question,

(29:21):
what Republican am I going to endorse. I have no idea,
and it won't matter because Michael Bennett's going to be
our governor. But what I am hoping, at least, here's
what I'm hoping, and I'm not hoping for much. We
live in East California. Okay, not hoping for much. But
what I'm what I am hoping is that the Republican nominee,
this is actually, this is important, This is important. I

(29:44):
am hoping that the Republican nominee is a sane, presentable, likable,
well spoken, center right person. Not far right, okay, but
also not you know, pretend conservative. I want someone who's libertarian,

(30:08):
conservative for real, not running on abortion, not running on
culture issues, but running on economics, crime, other things that
really affect people's daily lives. Why do I care, fair question?
Why do I care? Since whoever that Republican is is

(30:30):
going to lose because that person will be the primary
representative of the Republican Party in this election season, and
that person who's the Republican running for governor, and then
maybe secondarily whatever Republican is running for senator. No, I

(30:53):
take it back, we don't have senator. We don't have
a Senate election now, so forget that whatever Republican is
running for governor. I think that's right. I don't think
he can loopers up yet. I'll have to check. Is
he's going to give the the flavor of the Republican
Party to voters and to the extent that whoever that

(31:15):
is makes the party look better than it's looked in
you know, the past several years under previous leadership. And
I'm very glad we have Britta Horne running the GOP
here now. But she's got a you know, a tough
hill to climb to rebuild that brand. But that's what
it's about. If there's a really good, likable, credible, interesting

(31:37):
Republican candidate for governor, it helps rebuild the brand in
a way that might might drag a few more Republicans
out to vote who might otherwise not vote because they
might say why bother, or get a few people who
were maybe moderate independent type people who could potentially be

(32:01):
open minded to voting for a Republican to perhaps if
they were on the fence, vote for a Republican in
a different race in this in the state House or
more importantly in the state Senate. The reason I say
more importantly is that the Democratic majority in the state
House is so so large, all right, Dick Wadhams says

(32:25):
hicken Looper is up in twenty twenty six and there
are no Republican candidates yet. Thank you for that, Nick.
I should have asked you before I opened my mouth
about that. So in any case, that's that's why I
care who the Republican candidate is, because it will impact
the Republican brand in that election. And if there's anything
that can be done to help the Republicans pick up

(32:49):
you know, one net seat or two net seats in
the state Senate and any number of net seats in
the State House, that would be a huge plus. And
I would love, love, love to see it. There's gonna
be plenty of candidates. I do know that Greg Lopez
announced the day before yesterday. I was actually supposed to

(33:12):
have Greg Lopez on the show yesterday and I decided
against it. Actually nothing against Greg, but you know, he
just keeps running for office and keeps losing. And he
got appointed to Congress, and he's a nice enough guy,
and he's done some good stuff with the what was it,
the Chamber of Commerce and Mayor of Parker and all that.
I like Greg, but I don't know I want to

(33:35):
I want a sort of new face, you know, you know,
maybe someone who's been in office, but it hasn't just
doesn't just keep running and losing and running and losing.
And I don't want to pick on Greg, but you know,
you gotta you gotta pick someone who's gonna build your brand.
I don't know that Greg is that guy, even though

(33:56):
I kind of like him. So so we'll see who
jumps in and then and then all decide, and then
all decide. Listener says, I missed the show yesterday. Maybe
you've addressed it, the issue of Bennett appointing his replacement
in the Senate. Yes, I addressed that in a fairly
detailed way, but I'll mention it now since you seem
to be listening right now. And that is that Bennett

(34:18):
is talking as if he wants to stay in the
Senate until he gets sworn in as governor, until the
moment before he gets sworn in as governor, in order
to not give Jared Polus the chance to name Bennett's successor,
and instead give Bennett the chance to name his own successor.
And I noted yesterday that the Denver Post put out
an an editorial, an editorial, remember Denver Post a very
left wing place and loves Michael Bennett. They said Michael

(34:43):
Bennett should resign his Senate seat if he's running for
governor and just commit full time to running for governor
and not try to do what he's doing. I think
I think it's a really gross, almost you know, halfway corrupt,
halfway scummy kind of look for Ben to try to
name his own replacement. I think that's the kind of

(35:03):
stuff that makes Americans sick, sick, sick of politics. We'll
be right back before getting to all this other stuff.
I think we just need all of us together, need
to do a little Kumbaya and and have a little
intervention or something with our good friend Dragon, who's struggling

(35:24):
a little bit psychologically today. It just feels weird. You know.
Sometimes you're used to doing things a certain way, and
you've done it a certain way for a long time,
and then and then suddenly you can't, and your whole
world is turned topsy turvy. And uh and and and Dragon,
who is much more than just my boss, he's he's
also a friend. To the extent that someone who is

(35:46):
your boss can be your friend. You got to be
careful with those sorts of things. But that's how I
think of Dragon. I don't know if he, you know,
deigns to lower himself to my level. But Dragon, you're
struggling a little today, and I just thought maybe we
could enlist some listeners. Well, tell us what's going on.

Speaker 10 (36:01):
Sure, Yeah, there's some tree trimmers coming this week to
you know, of course, trim the trees outside in front
of the house. So I normally place the garbage cans
on Wednesday because that's when you know, trash goes out
as for me as Wednesday, and I put them under
the tree essentially because that's that's where they go. They
go to the left side of the driveway as you're stacking.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
The left side of the driveway as you're looking at
the house or looking out from looking at the street.

Speaker 10 (36:26):
Okay, so it's on the left side, which is right
in front of my car because I park out on
the street because the girls get the garage and you know,
they So I'm under the tree and the trash cans
are under the tree, and there are tree trimming guys
coming today, so I had to move the garbage cans
to the opposite side of the driveway so they're on
the right side.

Speaker 6 (36:44):
If you're facing the street and it just feels wrong.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
I imagine it as a similar kind of feeling to
the other day when I forgot to put my watch on.
Doesn't it feel like you're kind of gonna You're gonna
to fall over to the other side, Like it feels unbalanced,
doesn't it?

Speaker 6 (37:03):
Yeah, like when you wore the woman's shirt too.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Oh stop?

Speaker 3 (37:07):
What was that thing?

Speaker 1 (37:09):
That missus? Redbeer? Is hilarious? What did she text?

Speaker 6 (37:12):
She texted me this morning. She says she drives to work.

Speaker 10 (37:14):
The Roskinski Show isn't on yet, so she has forced
to listen to the Fox, and she texted me, Dude,
looks like the lady is playing on the Fox right now,
and all I could think was Ross wearing his woman's shirt.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Oh that hurts, That really really hurts. By the way,
there's nothing wrong with listening to the Fox in the
morning until I'm one right, great station, great people. Rick
and Kathy Lee are fabulous, of course, But I'm never
gonna live that down, all right.

Speaker 6 (37:46):
That's what happens when you had missed.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
So I would just like to I would like to
invite listeners, especially licensed psychologists and therapists, to text into
five six six nine zero, with any of your advice
about coping mechanisms, meditation, crystal meth or whatever you think,
just dragging off. I need a little crystal moth. That's

(38:08):
what I meant crystal moth for for for Dragon to
be able to get through this, this very very stressful
time that that he's suffering through today. The bright side Dragon,
if there, if there is one, if we can try
to put a silver lining on a cloud as dark
as this is. That is that assuming the trash guys come.

(38:31):
And there's a big assumption now, assuming they actually take
your trash, you know, because of the potential confusion of
them realizing just how wrong that whole thing is. But
assuming they take it, then maybe by the time you
get home today you will be able to put the
trash cans back and you will not have had to
suffer this trauma for long enough to cause any permanent harm.

Speaker 6 (38:54):
Here's hoping.

Speaker 10 (38:55):
I mean, it's just and and being on the right
side of the driveway when you're facing the street. The
neighbors place their garbage on the left side of the
driveway when you're facing the street, so they're right next.

Speaker 6 (39:06):
To each other.

Speaker 10 (39:06):
I think my garbage right that close to the neighbor's garbage.
If we don't get confused when they go, cans are
all emptied, and now we don't know who's can is
who's it's just utter chaos.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
All right, Well, let's let's keep an eye on the
listener text line and we'll see what advice I just see.
So I thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Yeah, yeah,
a lot of thoughts and prayers. Let me do a
couple of a couple of stories here. We do have
a ton of stuff to do. I also have some
great guests later in the show. I'll tell you more
about them later. I'm gonna I'm gonna do these in

(39:39):
no particular order. Well, I only have about two minutes
here before breaking, so I'm gonna get to one of
these things now and then just a bunch of short stories.
This one's kind of wacky. And this this falls into
the category of if there is something that is even
potentially valuable, somebody will be willing to steal it. That's
what this that's the folder this story is in. This

(40:00):
is from CNN World headline Belgian teens arrested with five
thousand smuggled ants that would be a nts, not aunts,
which would be a whole different story. As Kenya warns
of changing trafficking trends, two Belgian teenagers were charged Tuesday

(40:22):
with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of
ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authority said
was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser
known species. I won't bother with these kids' names, two
nineteen year olds. They were arrested eleven days ago with
five thousand ants at a guesthouse. They appeared distraught during

(40:42):
their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted
in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate they
were collecting the ants for fun and didn't know that
it was illegal. Anybody behind that show a hands. How
many of you believe that they didn't know it was illegal? Nope,
not a hand. In separate criminal cases, a Kenyan guy

(41:04):
and Vietnamese guy were also charged with illegal trafficking in
the same courtroom following their rest while in possession of
four hundred ants. The Wildlife Service in Kenya said the
four men were involved in trafficking the ants to markets
in Europe and Asia. And that the species included mesor cephalotase,
a distinctive large and red colored harvester ant native to

(41:28):
East Africa. The illegal export of the ants quote not
only undermines Kenya's sovereign rights over its biodiversity, but also
deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and
economic benefits. This next part, actually, I think is kind
of interesting because I have actually been to Africa a
few times, but not that part of Africa. I've only

(41:50):
been to southern Africa plus Egypt, of course with dragon
but as far as the parts of Africa that are
famous for having animals, I've been to the southern part.
Kenya has in the past fought against the trafficking of
body parts of larger species of wild animals like elephants, rhinos,
and pangolins, among others, but the cases against the four
men represent a shift in trafficking trends from iconic large

(42:15):
mammals to lesser known yet ecologically critical species. So I
actually do think that's kind of interesting. I do think that, Look,
it is not the United States, so I don't need
to ask some other country to abide by the United
States Constitution. They don't have our constitution. So my theory
is that these people who come through to poach elephants

(42:38):
or rhinos in order to sell their tusks or horns,
either for you know, collectors who want ivory or some
odd Asian dude who wants to eat rhino horn because
he thinks it'll make him better and bad. Right, if
these people go out and they will kill the animals
just to take the tusks, just to take the horn. Right,

(43:01):
some of these people will go kill sharks just to
cut off the fin and show the shark back, throw
the shark back in the body in the water to die.
And I think that the punishment for that should be
whatever you do to the animal. Right, So if you're
cutting off the tusks of an elephant, and I realize
the tusks are a form of teeth and not the nose,

(43:23):
which is the trunk, but it's protruding like the nose,
So I think the penalty there should be to have
your nose cut off. Absolutely the same with the rhino horn.
Cut your nose off. You know, with these ants, they're
taking them away in test tubes, So maybe make some
giant test tubes and stuff these guys in giant test
tubes for a week, you know, but I would just
that's my eye for an eye theory, and I'm happy

(43:46):
with it. We'll be right back. Spend just a few
seconds on it and then get to some other stories.
There's a dude named Ed Martin who is the acting
US attorney or the interim US attorney for Washington, d C.
And President Trump's nominee to be the full time US
attorney for Washington d C. He was some kind of
official in the Republican Party in Missouri. He's a conservative activist.

(44:10):
He was very much one of these like stop the
steal kinds of guys who was always claiming that the
twenty twenty election was stolen. I'm not going to get
into debating all that, but you know, Trump likes to
give big jobs to people who are loyal to him,
and this is a somewhat troubling thing though. So this
is obviously a big job US attorney for Washington d C.

(44:32):
And you have to be absolutely above board. You have
to be squeaky clean. It doesn't mean that you you know,
can't have political views. You can have political views, but
you got to be squeaky clean. Now, in order to
get these these these jobs, in order to get security
clearances and so on, you one of the things you

(44:53):
have to do is you have to disclose media appearances.
And it turns out this guy Ed Martin did something
like one hundred and fifty appearances on Russian government propaganda
media outlets RT and Sputnik. They're both they're both funded

(45:17):
and directed by the Putin government. So he was on
these two networks one hundred and fifty times ish more
than one hundred and fifty times. And he was supposed
to disclose this at a Senate Judiciary committee on a
questionnaire to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he didn't. And

(45:39):
just to you know, give you a sense. And again
this is this is from the Washington Post, which admittedly
hates Trump and will try to poke at you know,
any Trump, any Trump nominee. But I just, man, this
this really does trouble me. In early twenty twenty two,

(46:02):
he was on RT and he said there's no evidence
of a Russian military build up on the border of Ukraine.
That was nine days before Russia invaded, and everybody who
was paying attention to the satellite stuff knew there actually
was evidence of a Russian military build up, right. So
so he went on Russian TV and spouted Russian propaganda.

(46:24):
Some years earlier, he was also on RT and he
said that Bashar Asad, the president of Syria at the time,
who you may recall that you may recall it President Trump.
Unlike Barack Obama, President Trump actually backed up a red line,
which is he said that if Basharisad uses chemical weapons

(46:48):
on his own people, that America will respond. Basharisad did
use chemical weapons. Trump launched a whole bunch of cruise
missiles at Syria. You don't think he killed very many people,
but blew up a bunch of buildings, and you know,
sent a message. Right. And so this guy who's now
the nominee to be US Attorney in DC went on

(47:12):
the Russian propaganda network RT and said that Asad might
not actually be to blame and said that the situation
was actually engineered in America by people who want war
in Syria.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
So he's just spouting outright putinesque propaganda, and I just
I just don't dig it. I don't know if that's
enough to sink him. If I were in the Senate,
that would be enough for me to vote no on him.
The combination of spouting Russian propaganda and then lying to

(47:48):
the committee about it would be enough for me.

Speaker 6 (47:50):
All right.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Actually, I've got so many more stories to get through.
I'm going to try to go through a bunch of
stories kind of quickly in the next segment, So keep
it here. You're listening to Ross on koa text colossal
squid caught on film and its natural habitat first time ever,
not something you see every day or or ever. So
I don't know if the listener knows, but that's actually
on my blog today already. A colossal squid, by the way,

(48:14):
not the same as a giant squid. It's a different thing.
The giant squids are actually longer, but it's thought that
the colossal squids are heavier, but we don't know much
about them. And so that video is actually up on
my blog along with a news story about it. So
go to Rosskominsky dot com and check that out. We're
also going to have one of the most incredible kind

(48:36):
of intersection of science and archaeology story that I've ever seen.
We're gonna have a guest on the show from from
England actually an hour from now, to talk about what
some people describe as the oldest computer ever made. It's
it's really really amazing. Listener question, what a charismatic talk
show host who wears women's clothes and drinks snake semen

(48:57):
be a good candidate for governor? Answer to that is,
I don't know. You would have to find such a person,
although if that person is talking about me, I need
to clarify that I drank snake blood and not snake semen.
Big difference, big difference, right, very very big big difference. Now, Dragon,

(49:20):
just a quick thing. A bunch of listeners sent in
some some helpful thoughts on how you can cope with
the whole trash situation. Rake said, suicide is not the solution.

Speaker 10 (49:33):
I do appreciate the prayers that that's that's helpful, but yes,
suicide is not the not the solution to this problem.
As well as, uh, this is the first world problem.
Things like this usually require drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Right, yeah, so we we hope you're we hope you're okay. Dragon.
Another listener says, hang in there, brother, suck it up,
suck it up. But our cup all right. So here
here's the other other listener question. I just want to address,
partly because this is one of the most important things
going on in the world, and partly because Dragon and

(50:05):
I like to waste your time when we can. And uh,
so here, let me find this this question again. Where
where did it go? Missus Redbeard? Is that a real
name or is that a play on Dragon's nickname? And
where did Dragon's name come from? And so I'm going
to answer the second one. I already answered the first. Now, yeah,

(50:26):
I mean Dragon answer. I already answered this right several
several months ago. I answered this question already. Uh, if
you were actually and Dragon clarified that his name change
to Dragon is not actually a legal name change. It's
it's not on his both certificate. It's just it's just
a nickname. So if if you, you know, if if

(50:48):
you had the authority to go to the correct office
of records where you would get these things and and
and get or or look at Dragon Redbeard's birth certificate,
you would actually see that it says Mephistopheles Redbeard. And
that's obviously way too much to say.

Speaker 10 (51:06):
And and Dragon impossible to spell, especially Yeah, Joe, I'm
an adult and I can't spell it, So try to
do that as you're you know, growing up and learning
how to write and spell.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
It's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So so he couldn't even
spell his own name. You know the actually you know
the question, I don't know the answer to dragon. At
what age did you start going by dragon? Realizing that
Mephistopheles was just not a way to go through life.

Speaker 10 (51:31):
It's a better first girl, when you could get into school,
he'll first kindergarten somewhere in that range. It's just like,
ain't nobody else can say it? Ain't nobody else can
spell it, So we'll just we'll just go this route.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yeah, and I don't think you know meth like me
e p h. That's not a wonderful like shortened version
of your of your born name. It sounds like meth.

Speaker 6 (51:51):
It's just not it's not that great trying to get
any seven year olds to say that. It's just it's
not gonna work.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, that's right now. Now what a about missus Redbeard?
What's the story there?

Speaker 6 (52:02):
Well, that's her name.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah, it doesn't seem complicated. So I wasn't. I I
wasn't even I mean, like my wife isn't Missus Kominski
actually that's not really true. And technically, but my wife
actually uses her maiden name. She's almost never introduced or
on legal documents as as Kristin Kominski was famous before

(52:26):
she met you. So yeah, yeah, you've got to keep
it that way, right exactly. And I, you know, I
don't know about famous exactly, but she was an artist
and who had world famous artist hundreds of clients, are
thousands of clients around the world, and they knew her
by her maiden name. And frankly her maiden name, which
I won't say on the air, but her her you know,
Christian Kominsky just sounds a little it's just not a.

Speaker 6 (52:48):
Great it's just off.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
The tongue feels harsh. It feels harsh hard with the
double K. Yeah, exactly right, that's exactly right. Uh, okay,
let's let's do some other things. So many of you
have probably heard of Timu and she In, these Chinese
companies that will sell usually low priced items. She In

(53:11):
especially is for primarily for clothing. And I'm only saying
that based on what I've read because I've never used
that app or site or whatever. I've used Timu one
or two times. I use Ali Express a lot. Ali
expresses kind of like the retail side of Ali Baba,
which was much more of a wholesale business to business thing.
Like you might be able to go on Ali Express

(53:34):
and buy one of something or two of something, whereas
if you went on Ali Baba, since it's B to B,
you might be required to buy like a minimum mortar
might be one hundred or a thousand or ten thou
depending on the thing. Right, So I really really like
Ali Express and I use it a lot for small
electronic parts, you know, resistors, capacitors, stuff like that. Sometimes

(53:56):
you can get here, but sometimes it's much cheaper to
get there anyway, So I will buy parts. I will
buy parts for six bucks, and you know, I got
to wait a while for him. Sometimes they show up
two or three weeks later, but it's okay. And so
those things were coming into the country without tariffs under

(54:20):
a fairly old what's the protocol, I don't know what
the right word is, called deminimus an exception an exception
from tariffs called deminimous, and the deminimus limit was eight
hundred dollars. Trump was going to change it for a while.
That caused a bunch of problems at the post Office,

(54:41):
and they said they were actually gonna stop taking packages
from China. And then Trump backed off on the Deminimus thing.
And then and then post Office said, all right, we'll
bring the packages in again from China. And what I
want you to know, this is going to be very interesting.
It's gonna be painful for a lot of people. It'll
be interesting to see how it plays out. So the

(55:01):
first thing that Trump was gonna do, so he's he's
imposing tariffs on all kinds of things from China, but
specifically on the Deminimus stuff. First there was gonna be
a tariff. Then there was gonna be a twenty five
dollars per package, not per item in the package, but
twenty five dollars per package fee two on I think

(55:24):
starting May second, maybe, and then June first, that was
supposed to go to fifty dollars if I remember correctly. Now, remember,
so I'm buying parts that are worth five dollars or
ten dollars or fifteen or twenty dollars, and people will
go to San and Shean is a place where you
can buy very inexpensive Chinese made clothing. They call it
fast fashion. And there really isn't an American alternative to

(55:47):
that stuff? Right, Almost no inexpensive clothing is made in America.
So if you're not buying it from China, you're buying
it from Vietnam or Bangladesh or Thailand or maybe Mexico.
So in any case, you'd buy something for twelve dollars
and maybe you pay for shipping, and maybe you don't. Well,

(56:08):
adding twenty five dollars and later fifty dollars to a
package that was eight or twelve dollars to begin with
means that most people will stop placing orders like that,
or or they will place bigger orders. So instead of
buying something for twenty dollars and having a twenty five
dollar fee, they'll save up their purchases and they'll buy

(56:29):
a bunch of stuff for three hundred dollars and pay
the twenty five dollar fee because you know, that's only
like eight percent more instead of over one hundred percent more.
But but as of I think a week ago, a
last Friday, I don't remember if it was last Friday
or the Friday before, it doesn't matter. They changed this

(56:50):
deminimous package fee so that starting on May second, the
importer will have to pay either, and I'm guessing it's
whichever is more, but either a one twenty percent tariff,
although that may be going up, or and I think
this will apply. This will apply more often a one

(57:14):
hundred dollars package fee now and on June first, that's
going to go to a two hundred dollars package fee. Now, again,
these places they also sell things like electronics and furniture
and stuff like that. But still, when you add one
hundred or two hundred dollars to the kinds of generally
inexpensive stuff that these websites sell your you're probably ensuring

(57:43):
that they don't sell anything to Americans any more. Now,
this is the key if if the stuff ships from China.
Now here's where it gets difficult. If the US were
only going to impose, let's say, a ten percent tariff

(58:03):
on Chinese stuff, and that is not where this is
going right now. And there's some debate right now whether
the tariff is going to be one hundred and forty
five or two hundred and forty five, and people are
trying to figure out which it is. But these websites
have been looking to set up American distribution portals so
that when you order something on the website, it would

(58:25):
come to you from a location in the United States
as the last shipping point. Now, of course the stuff
would have to come into America from China. But again
with my hypothetical, if it were only let's say a
ten percent tariff, then these companies could bring in hundreds

(58:46):
of thousands of dollars of stuff at a time and
then put it all in the warehouse in the US.
And then anything that is bought on these Chinese websites
buying Chinese stuff, since it would be shipped from in
the US, there would be no more tariff on that
next shipment because that shipment is in the US and
there's actually no way to collect a tariff on it.

(59:09):
So anyway, I think this is super interesting. So this
will stop me from being able to buy these inexpensive parts, right,
And I give you just an example. Let's say I
just want to buy, you know, a little package of
five resistors because i'm you know, a little a nerd
playing with old amplifiers and stuff, and there's some strange

(59:32):
value of resistor that I don't already have at home.
In fact, check this out. This is uh, this is how,
this is how nerd I have. Let me shake this
this this package. This is four hundred different assorted one
half watt resistors. Okay, so that's how much of a
nerd I am. So let's say there's some resistor I

(59:52):
don't have, I need it. Go on alleyexpress dot com.
I find it forty cents a resistor and a dollar
ninety nine shipping, right, I buy five of them, right,
So that's what four bucks including shipping. Now, starting May second,
instead of four bucks, it'll be one hundred and four bucks.
So obviously I'm not buying that. Now, there are websites
in the US where I could buy the same stuff,

(01:00:15):
maybe if they have that size or resistor, and let's
say they do, and the resist will probably be a
similar price. Maybe it'll be you know, fifty cents instead
of forty cents. Not that big a deal. But then
you've got the shipping is going to be eight bucks
or ten bucks, so that that package of stuff will
be let's say, you know, if I'm lucky, it'll end

(01:00:39):
up being ten dollars instead of four. Now you may
say it's only six dollars, but think about allocating that
kind of thing over millions of people who are buying
all sorts of different things every day, and suddenly what
you realize is we the buyers, are either going to

(01:01:04):
just have to not get the things we want and
end up doing less, building less, not being able to
start a business, whatever it might be, or spending more
to get those things and then having, in my example,
six dollars less that I could have used to go

(01:01:25):
to a restaurant where I'm supporting in you know, American
jobs right here in my in my neighborhood, or to
go on vacation, or to put in my retirement account,
or to buy something else. Because there's no new money
in this example, you just have the same amount of money.
And if you have the same amount of money and
the price of stuff, the price of something goes up,

(01:01:47):
you're either not gonna buy it, or you'll buy it
and not buy something else. Anyway, it's going to be
very interesting to see how how this all plays out.
You know, there's no real public report right now about
significant conversations between the US and China about trade, so
we will see how that all goes All right, let

(01:02:09):
me switch gears. This is more of a political story
than an economic story, and I really like this story,
and I'm not sure that the most hardcore MAGA people
are going to like this story. But before I get
to it, let me just set the frame for you.
If you go back to Donald Trump's first campaign for president, right,

(01:02:33):
let's say in twenty sixteen, before the twenty sixteen election,
and he was talking about immigration, and of course everybody
remembers how much he was railing against illegal immigration, and
he still does. And by the way, I'm with him
on that. I do not support illegal immigration. But you
will recall back then the thing was build a wall,

(01:02:58):
and there was the stupidity about how Mexico is going
to pay for the wall, and Trump had, you know,
people who were gullible enough to believe that he was
going to get Mexico to pay for the wall, which
was always a lie. But whatever, he wanted to control
illegal immigration. And in fact, this is I want to
give Trump credit for this. Trump made immigration an issue,

(01:03:20):
and then one on that issue. You know what, It
reminds me of a bit a line that I really
really like. Leaders do not follow polls, They change them.
Isn't that a great line? And I'll tell you what,

(01:03:40):
Trump is the best I've seen it that probably since Reagan.
Probably since Reagan. He changes polls. A lot of people
kind of had immigration as their seventh biggest issue or
something right going into the twenty sixteen election, or at
the beginning of twenty sixteen before Trump started aggressively campaigning,

(01:04:04):
and Trump made it number one, number two issue, and
one on it and then he did it again really
in twenty twenty four because Joe Biden stupidly handed the
issue back to him by opening the border. So anyway,
back to twenty sixteen. Sorry for that little tangent. Back

(01:04:28):
to twenty sixteen. I remember this very clearly. I'm not
sure if you'll remember it, but Donald Trump said I
want to build a big, beautiful wall. You probably all
remember that part, but do you remember this part because
he didn't say it every time, and I wanted to
have a big, beautiful door. And what he meant by

(01:04:53):
that was that he is in favor of legal immigration.
There are a bunch of people in the broader Trump
coalition who are against legal immigration. There are people in
some of these organizations like Care and Fair and CIS

(01:05:17):
and stuff like that who not everybody even in those organizations,
but who argue for at least pausing all immigration, which
is as stupid a policy as one can imagine. Economic
suicide is what that is. Now again, I'm not talking
about illegal immigration. They want to stop all immigration, absolutely moronic.

(01:05:41):
I'm not going to get into the details of that.
Trump knows it's dumb. Part of the reason that Trump
knows that immigration is good is because he's a builder,
and it's not rocket surgery to know that builders use
lots of immigrant labor. Trump used lots and lots of
immigrant labor. I have no idea how much of his labor,

(01:06:04):
if any, was illegal immigrants. I bet quite a bit was,
but I don't really care. But immigrants build things, and
Trump always said he wanted a big, beautiful wall. So
with that long setup, let me go to this piece
over at Axios. So Donald Trump had did an interview

(01:06:28):
with the Spanish language arm of Fox yesterday. Fox No
to see us. I actually think he did the interview
maybe two days ago and they aired it yesterday, and
he was on with Rachel Campos Duffy, the wife of
former Congressman Sean Duffy, who is currently Secretary of Transportation,
and those two have been fixtures on Fox, especially on

(01:06:50):
the weekends. For a long time. And so Trump gave
Rachel Campos Duffy an interview, and in this interview, and
I'm gonna share a little bit with from Axios here,
Trump pitched a path to legal status for what he
called great people who are undocumented immigrants. You and I
might call them illegal aliens. But in that interview, Trump's

(01:07:13):
informal proposal would help create a pathway to living in
the US legally for people who self deport and have
an employer supporting their return. The idea was also recently
floated at a cabinet meeting, But it's a sharp pivot
from Trump's campaign promises for mass deportation now and from

(01:07:34):
the rhetorican policies his administration has embraced. Trump said, we're
gonna give them a stipend, We're gonna give them some
money in a plane ticket, and we're gonna work with
them if they're good. So it sounds like he's saying,
bring back these illegal immigrants as long as they voluntarily
leave now, go back to their own countries, apply the
right way to come into the US, and have an

(01:07:57):
employer who will be hiring them, so they won't even
attempt to go on welfare or anything like that, although
illegal immigrants don't use very much welfare, at least not
federal welfare. Anyway, Trump said, We're gonna work with them
to get him back as quickly as we can. He
said the details are still being planned, but he wants
to make it comfortable. He said, we want our great

(01:08:18):
people to stay. He said, right now, we're getting the
murderers out. We have our total aim on the very
bad ones. As you can imagine. We have some great
people that came in, but we have some very bad ones.
And I got say, I think this is exactly the
right way to go. I think it's good policy. I
think it's good politics. And you know what Trump should do.

(01:08:39):
I don't think he'll do it, but here's what Trump
should do. If there's actually no evidence that that guy Garcia,
who was deported from Maryland to the hardcore prison in
El Salvador, there's no evidence that I'm aware of that
this guy has ever committed a crime. Only claim that

(01:09:01):
the guy as a gang member was some informant who
said that Garcia was affiliated with a New York arm
of a gang. But Garcia never lived in New York,
and the claim seemed to be made because Garcia liked
to wear Chicago Bulls stuff, which can be associated with
a gang. But I suspect that the guy is not

(01:09:22):
a gang member and has not committed a crume. I
don't know. I suspect if the administration believes that, I know,
it's gonna be hard for them to back down, but
they should use this guy as the poster boy for
this plan. Right, have him say, all right, I'll stay
out of the country for a little while voluntarily. You
let me out of prison and maybe let me go
somewhere other than El Salvador. Right, and I want to

(01:09:44):
be the first person in this plan to come back
through this big, beautiful door you're building. I think that
might be a way to thread the needle. I'm not
saying it'll happen. We'll be right back. The National Highway
Transportation Safety Administration NITZ says that just under three hundred
people were killed based on due to distracted driving, and

(01:10:06):
we're talking about potentially four hundred thousand, four hundred thousand
injuries last year in the United States due to distracted driving.
So what can be done about it other than telling people,
you know, pay attention, joining us to talk about the
problem and what he's trying to do about it is

(01:10:28):
Dan Glazer, who is a driver distraction engineer at General Motors. Dan,
welcome to KOA. It's good to have you here.

Speaker 5 (01:10:39):
Hey, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Is it bad for me to play wordle while I'm driving?

Speaker 5 (01:10:51):
Yes, it is a problem because as you look at
your screen, you do it for a long period of time,
and then, you know, to help protect yourself a little bit,
you look back up the road for a fraction of
a second, but then you go back to wordle and
it turns out, I mean surprise, surprise, that that actually
increases risk by a lot. So wouldn't suggest wordle per se?

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Okay, So to get slightly more serious, when you say
that increases risk by a lot, can you kind of
quantify for us when somebody's doing that kind of thing.
I think they don't understand, just like how far they're
going down the road when they're not looking.

Speaker 5 (01:11:32):
Absolutely. So we've been able to study this rather closely,
and one great example of this is this thirty one
hundred driver's study where each of them volunteer for a
year to be you know, monitored with cameras and we're
able to see the kinds of things that are happening
before crashes and how much more likely those things are happening.

(01:11:53):
And so that allows us to understand that texting is
six times more likely to lead you to a craft.
But it's not just about texting. Rubber necking, that's when
you look off the road for a long period of
time and then look forward for a fraction of a
second and look back off because that crash is so interesting.
That multiplies your crash risk by seven. You don't want
to get in a crash, well, rubber necking, even something

(01:12:16):
like rummaging around your vehicle, that multiplies your crash risk
by nine because it leads to that long off road
glance short forward. And so it's not so much the thing,
it's what that thing is making your eyes do. And
so I think it's good to think in that way.
There's lots of ways to be you know, distracted and
dangerous without a phone in your hands.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
So one other form of quantification that I'll I'll ask
you for And I remember I've seen something like this data,
but I don't remember it. But if you are looking
away from the road, it doesn't matter what else you're
looking at. But if you are looking away from the
road for some very short amount of time, like you

(01:12:58):
go the length of a foot ball field like faster
than you can imagine, And so that kind of puts
it in context as to you know, how hard it
might be to stop and avoid an accident. Do you
know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 6 (01:13:13):
I do.

Speaker 5 (01:13:13):
I think it's fifty five miles an hour for five seconds. Now, yeah,
you never want to look away for five seconds, but
I think there are times you do have to look away, right,
you need to check a mirror, and maybe there's just
you want to change a setting on your kind of
big screen in the car. That's all appropriate, but you
want to make sure that that field is clear when

(01:13:35):
you take that short off road plant. So not all
fields are the same. If it's a crowded football field,
you're maybe going to behave a little bit different than
if it's a clear football field.

Speaker 6 (01:13:43):
So it's not just the distance, is how much stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
Is in that distance.

Speaker 5 (01:13:47):
So we should be you know, we should have prudence
when it comes to once a good time to take
your eyes off the road, and it should always on
should come first.

Speaker 6 (01:13:56):
Is always a.

Speaker 5 (01:13:57):
Long on road plant.

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
So you know what's ahead of you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
Okay, so we pop out in front of you. So
for how many seconds can I prudently do wordle while
I'm driving?

Speaker 5 (01:14:09):
Well, really, at any any particular opera glance that's come
with the risk. Unfortunately, driving is not risk risk free,
so I wouldn't really suggest wordle, but but you can
reduce the risk of those opera glances by really understanding
what's in front of you first.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
And just for listeners, don't do wordle or anything else
like that while you're driving. I'm just sort of messing
around now now I want to switch gears a little
still basically on this topic. But Dan, you are an engineer,
and what I'm really fascinated by, and we just have
about two minutes left, but what I'm really interested in
is on the technological side, what are you guys able

(01:14:50):
to do so far and what do you think you
will be able to do to try to increase safety
on the road, knowing that some people are just gonna
do something that distracts themselves.

Speaker 5 (01:15:05):
Okay, so there are two things I want to talk about. First,
one is we're now able to monitor the driver in
a way that's rather useful. So there is a little
camera in some of our vehicles that doesn't take video
and store the video. That's not what it's doing. But
rather it can tell whether a driver's yawning, closing their
eyes about the fall asleep. I'm sure you want your
relative to be woken up that they're about to fall

(01:15:27):
a sleep. Some of our cars can do that also
the same as you're looking off.

Speaker 6 (01:15:31):
The road too long.

Speaker 5 (01:15:32):
Also, I think the advancements of voice assistance in the
vehicles and being able to just say what you want
to happen has great promise. So I would look at
that board advancements, you know, for not just our company,
but for all vehicles being sold and getting familiar with
that technology so that you can spend more time with
your hands on wheel and eyes forward.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
So I have a vague recollection that maybe at some
point I drove I want to say it was a
Cadillac and it had some level of self driving feature,
and it had what you're talking about, and so if
it if it thought you were looking away for more
than a very very brief time, and remember, maybe it
would vibrate the steering wheel or or something. I mean,
is that kind in a sense.

Speaker 5 (01:16:12):
You're talking about supercrews.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so so is that like what else
can be done to say to a driver, dude, look
at the road.

Speaker 5 (01:16:27):
Well, you know, we're always working on stuff, and I'm
unfortunately I'm not allowed to talk about all of those things.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
I really relieve I could.

Speaker 5 (01:16:34):
But for instance, what happens in in Supercreuse, which I
think you're talking about, is if you don't look at
the road at some point because at its hands off
and feet off, it actually drives you down the highway.
If you stop paying attention, the vehicle will simply slow
down and come to a stop.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Yeah, I think I think that's what it was. It
was it was super Cruise. It really does seem like,
first of all, it's it's a it's a serious problem.
We're talking about hundreds of thousands of injuries in the
US every year. And I have to say, I drive
around a lot, go to work, from work to my
kids school, from my kids school. Do you know whatever errands?
I see distracted people all the time, constant, it's everywhere.

(01:17:13):
It's more than it's ever been, and it doesn't seem
like it's actually getting better, and people are getting hurt
and people are going to keep getting hurt. So this
this is you know, April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month,
and Dan Glazer at GM is a driver distraction engineer
trying to save us from ourselves. I'll give you the
last seventeen seconds if you want to add anything.

Speaker 5 (01:17:36):
Yeah, So you know, as of January first, twenty twenty five,
in Colorado, it is illegal to touch your phone hold
it up, whether you're texting or not. Find start at
seventy five dollars and you have points taking from from
your license. So if the risk of you know, hurting
yourself and those around you isn't enough, you know, at
least let's be lawful out there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
Dan Glazer, driver distraction here at General Motors. Thanks for
your time, Dan, interesting stuff, Thanks for having me. All right,
we'll take a quick break. We'll be right back on Kowa.
So there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Dragon. Do you ever drive distracted? I try not to,
do you succeed you seed most of the time. I
never really pick up my phone itself and text through
my phone. The more distracted I am ass too, if
I'm reading the text on my watch or if I'm

(01:18:32):
trying to do a quick voice to text through my watch.

Speaker 6 (01:18:34):
That's That's about as distracted as I get.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
All Right, all right, I saw this story today over
at CBS News' website. I guess it was published, Yeah, yeah,
this morning. And I gotta say, you know, I'm not
a very religious person, but I'm gonna I'm gonna just
go with this here and just say maybe this story

(01:18:57):
is evidence of the exist sense of God. So here's
here's a story I want to share with you. There's
an American pastor named Josh Sullivan. He and his family
moved to South Africa in twenty eighteen. They moved there

(01:19:18):
from a town called Maryville, Tennessee. They moved to South
Africa in twenty eighteen, according to Sullivan's own website, opening
a school. And you know, in a sense, he's probably
a bit of a missionary, you know, maybe either converting
people to his version of Christianity and setting up a
church there and all and all that. So less than

(01:19:43):
a week ago they were having not really a full
church service, but a prayer meeting at his church. It's
called the Fellowship Baptist Church in the mother Well township outside.
Now I'm not going to be able to pronounce the city,
but I'm going to and care. Let's see I gotta
do the click because it's in Cosa Caberra. I think

(01:20:05):
it's That's what it is. And if you're ever around
you know, like Cosa people and other other folks who
have any of those clique languages, it's the most amazing
thing you've ever heard. And I've been to South Africa
a few times, so I've heard a lot of it. Anyway,
he was doing this prayer meeting and a bunch of
guys showed up and kidnapped him at gunpoint. Now this

(01:20:28):
is where the whole like maybe there is a God
story shows up. So there's a specialized police unit part
of the South African Police. There's a specialized police unit
called the Hawks, which is kind of sort of like SWAT,
like hostage rescue that that sort of group. So the

(01:20:49):
Hawks caught the case. They figured out or somebody maybe
leaked to them where this guy was being held captive.
And I'm going to quote from a police statement here.
As officers approached the house, they observed a vehicle on
the premises. The suspects inside the vehicle, upon seeing law enforcement,

(01:21:13):
allegedly attempted to flee and opened fire on the team
on the on the police. The officers responded with tactical precision,
leading to a high intensity shootout in which three unidentified
suspects were fatally wounded. Now, how does all this come

(01:21:34):
out to, like this story being, you know, maybe God
really exists. Pastor Sullivan was in the car, the car
in which three people were killed in a shootout with
the police. Pastor Sullivan was in the car, unharmed, unharmed,

(01:21:58):
came out of the car perfectly fine, and and he's fine.
It's just an unbelievable story. I'm just sort of kidding
around to kind of sort of making it a religious thing.
You believe whatever you want to believe about God. You
believe if you want that there was a divine hand
here or just good luck. I don't care. It's just
quite a story. How often how often do you hear about,

(01:22:21):
you know, somebody kidnapped at gunpoint in a third world
country and it ending ending up, you know, as a
happy with a happy ending. And then really, how often
do you hear about that happening in a third world
country and the police then going into in a shootout
with the captors with the with the kidnapping victim actually

(01:22:41):
being with the captors and being unharmed. It is just
an absolutely incredible story. Speaking of incredible story, if you
are at all a science nerd, a history nerd, the
thing we're gonna do next on KOA is gonna blow
you away. I saw a dum article recently about a
thing that it's been known for a while, but it

(01:23:02):
just came to my attention recently about something that some
folks are calling the oldest computer, the oldest known computer.
That doesn't begin to capture just how incredible this thing
is joining us to talk about it. Tony Freety is
a PhD mathematician and he's Managing director at Images First,

(01:23:27):
in England's film and TV production He's also an honorary
professor at University College London and founding member of University
College's Antikythera research team. The antikytherra mechanism is what we're
here to talk about, and let me just tell listeners
before we jump into the conversation. If you find this

(01:23:48):
even a little bit interesting, go to my website at
Rosskominski dot com, where I have links to Tony's papers,
videos and all kinds of stuff that'll go way beyond
what we're going to have time to talk about today.
So Tony, thank you for joining us from London today.
I appreciate your making the time for us. You're welcome.
When do we start by just describing this thing and

(01:24:11):
just paint a picture for listeners?

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
Well, perhaps if I describe how it was discovered.

Speaker 7 (01:24:19):
In nineteen hundred, a great party of Greek sponge divers
left a tiny island called Siami in the eastern Mediterranean.
They traveled westward across the Mediterranean to their customary sponge
fishing grounds, which are actually in North Africa, because the
sponges had been fished out in the Mediterranean.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
And when they.

Speaker 7 (01:24:43):
Reached a tiny island called Antikythera, which is an island
between Crete and mainland Greece, they encountered a severe storm
and they had shelter from the storm, and when the
storm subsided, the captain, Captain Condos, sent down the youngest
diver ilies steady artists to look for sponges in the

(01:25:04):
local waters.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
And a few minutes.

Speaker 7 (01:25:07):
Later he came down from it, up from his dive,
and he was quivering in fear, and he said he'd
seen a heap of dead naked people underwater. And so
the captain then went down himself and he found that
the dead naked people were sculptures scattered on the seafloor.
And what they discovered was an ancient wreck, very large ship.

(01:25:32):
It was about one hundred meters long, and it was
full of ancient treasures. Basically, the captain then covered a
bronze arm. They went back to their home and debated
whether they should perhaps plunder the site next year or

(01:25:53):
tell the authorities. And I don't quite know how it happened,
but the authorities were told about this, and they actually
commissioned the same divers to dive on the wreck in
the later in nineteen hundred, and they had a gunboat
standing by did at Looters And to start with it

(01:26:15):
was stormy weather. But by nineteen oh one they were
still working on it and the weather subsided and they
started to bring up tons of really fascinating ancient Greek objects.
You know, there were beautiful bronzes that were superb glass,
There was jewelry, There was amfori which were vessels for
carrying wine or olive oil. There was a bronze lyre,

(01:26:38):
there was table.

Speaker 3 (01:26:40):
Wearing so on. It was a very rich find. And
one thing they discovered.

Speaker 7 (01:26:46):
Which they brought up was the thing just about the
size of a large dictionary, almost certainly in one piece
at that stage, and.

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
They probably recovered it because it looked a bit green.

Speaker 7 (01:26:59):
You know, when bronze corrodes underwater, it produces green compounds,
so it looked a bit green. Everything was taken back
to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and then it
was putting in a heap of stuff to be examined later.
And in fact, about it year later, a man called

(01:27:22):
Stce noticed that the object is split apart, and inside
there were these gear wheels, tiny little gear wheels that
were about the size of coins, with teeth about a
millimeter long, very tiny teeth, very surprising for ancient Greece.
In fact, it was a complete shock this discovery, because

(01:27:48):
these such gears shouldn't have existed in ancient Greece. They
knew about gears from water mills and windmills, but these
are precision gears. Gears sometimes got mathematical gears, gears used
calculating and so on. And it caused a huge amount
of excitement, and a lot of distinguished experts started to

(01:28:09):
look at it, and they had all sorts of speculations
about what it was, you know, was it a sort
of clock, or a navigation.

Speaker 3 (01:28:19):
Instrument or an astrolabe.

Speaker 7 (01:28:21):
Advice were looking at stars, but they didn't really make
much progress until a German language expert called Albert Reim
started to look at the object was by then it
was split into fragments, and started to make some very

(01:28:42):
interesting discoveries about it. He found very astronomical inscriptions on it,
and I identified these as a star calendar. He found
a lot of gears, but he didn't really have enough
data to make good sense of it. But he suggested
said that the machine was an astronomical calculating machine for

(01:29:05):
calculating the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and other
astronomical parameters. And Albert Reen left a set of notes.
He didn't publish them because he couldn't really make full
sense of it all.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
And these were so his work.

Speaker 7 (01:29:26):
He did publish a couple of papers, but he didn't
really his ideas were far richer than what he published.
They were buried in his research notes. And it wasn't
until fifty years later that a British physicist called Derek
de Sola Price, who ended up at Yale University as
a professor of the history of science. He started to

(01:29:50):
get interested in it and started to make some more
progress from what REM's original work.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
And he developed a model of all the gearing.

Speaker 7 (01:30:04):
He was the first person to actually X ray the
surviving fragments with a Greek radiologist called Caraculous and Curriculus,
and his wife Emily estimated the tooth cunts. You know,
if it was clearly a geared mechanism with machine gears
machhing bronze gears. And if you want to know what

(01:30:28):
a mechanism like that calculates, you need to count the
teeth of the gears to see what ratios it's producing by.

Speaker 3 (01:30:36):
Meshing the gears. But they.

Speaker 7 (01:30:41):
At that stage, to be honest, they got a lot wrong,
and Price developed a gear diagram for it, which has
proved to be mostly wrong. Though he did discover one
very important thing, which was a cycle of the moon,
an ancient cycle of the moon from Baba Lone and Astronomy,

(01:31:01):
which is a nineteen year cycle of the moon.

Speaker 3 (01:31:04):
And that's the.

Speaker 7 (01:31:05):
Basis, one of the basis for how the machine calculates
the positions of the moon in the zodiac.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
So so let me just jump in. Let me just
jump in the in the interest of time, because there's
I mean, we can and you do talk about this
for hours or weeks because you know so much and
the whole thing is so complicated. But you know, we
only have maybe eight more minutes, so I want to
try to get in what we can. So as a
as a thing that you know, modern people might be

(01:31:34):
able to think of that could be a little bit similar, uh,
putting aside the automation of the power, maybe one might
imagine a very complex watch, that is, you know, one
of these watches with complications that shows not just the
time and not just the date, but the moon phase

(01:31:55):
and some other thing and some other thing and time
in some other place, like one of the most complicated
watches you could ever imagine, but not with automatic power.
But the other stuff is that sort of close and
if it is, give.

Speaker 7 (01:32:08):
Us so, yes, I think that's a very good analogy
of a watch with many complications. Nowadays you get these
superb watches with astronomical calculations. But the anti Kira mechanism
did this not on the scale of a watch, but
more of a mechanical clock, and it did it two
thousand years ago. So yeah, that's the extraordinary thing about

(01:32:30):
this technology is that it comes from ancient Greece, but
when you start to look at it, it has so
many ideas that you would think were for much later
in history.

Speaker 3 (01:32:43):
It's a completely unique object.

Speaker 8 (01:32:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
I mean, folks, if you saw, if you saw the
the recreations that are done with computer simulations of this device,
and you didn't know anything else about it, you might
think that it was, you know, the most clever invention
of Leonardo da Vinci, right, like some renaissance to do,

(01:33:06):
who figured out all this stuff and here are the planets,
and it's just it's incredible. And it's still a geocentric
model of the Solar system rather than a heliocentric model
of the Solar system. But it's just in a way
that makes the story more incredible that they kind of
worked around that they had the wrong underlying model and
still made something that sort of worked. I want to
answer one listener question here, Tony, and make sure I

(01:33:28):
have this right. A listener is asking about the approximate
year of this thing. Is it about one hundred BC?

Speaker 7 (01:33:36):
Well, we don't really know the data bit we think
it's between the late third century BC and the middle
of the first century BC. It can't be later than
that because the wreck has been very well dated to
the middle of the first century BC.

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
But actually the exact date is still a puzzle. We're
working on it. It's a very difficult puzzle, and I
don't know what the answer is going to be.

Speaker 7 (01:34:00):
That have been various trends of thinking it was late
third century PC, and then other people saying no, it's
closer to the days of the wreck.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
But we don't actually know the answer to that, all right, So.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
For this listener who asked, is somewhere between roughly two
thousand and twenty four hundred years years old. Now are
there you mentioned this to me and I don't know
the answer. Are there any mentions of this device or
a device even like it in ancient literature?

Speaker 7 (01:34:31):
Well, the most interesting mentions, I think are the ones
which Price found, which were in the writings of Manchel Cicero,
who is a famous Roman orators, statesman, and lawyer. And
Cicero wrote about two devices which Archimedes had made. Archimedes

(01:34:55):
was the greatest scientist from ancient times, one of the
greatest scientists from all time. Died in two hundred and
twelve BC, late third century BC. But Cicero describes how
he made two devices, and when you look at the descriptions,
they sound very like the anti kith Or mechanism. They

(01:35:16):
don't even say that they have bronze gear wheels, but
it's difficult to see how you could construct such a.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
Thing without that.

Speaker 7 (01:35:23):
And this makes you think, well, is this that one
of the devices that Archimedes made? And I think people
think it's a bit later than Archimedes, but it's my
own personal feeling is it's very.

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):
Likely that it follows a design of Archimedes.

Speaker 7 (01:35:42):
It was so famous in the ancient world, and just
as the ancient Greeks copied temples, famous temples like the
Parthenon in Athens and reproduce that throughout Greek emper I
think if they were going to make one of these mechanisms,
they'd have looked at archimedes design, probably copied it, maybe
even quite close closerly.

Speaker 3 (01:36:03):
But we don't know really.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
I mean, if if Cicero was actually writing about this,
then it had to be at least I don't remember
the year fifty years forty or fifty BC when Cicero died.
I know. I know for sure Cicero was assassinated before
Jesus came around, So if he was writing about it,
then that is this.

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
Isn't Caesar, this is Cicero.

Speaker 1 (01:36:25):
Yeah, Sara died like forty he died forty BC or
something like that.

Speaker 7 (01:36:32):
Cicero did, I can't remember. He was first century BC.
He also describes another machine made by somebody he knew
very well called Posidonius, who was a philosopher in Rhodes
Stoke philosopher in Rhodes, and Cicero studied under him, so
this is almost certainly a first hand account. And he
describes again a mechanism that sounds just like the anti

(01:36:54):
mechanism that Posidonis made on Rhoads.

Speaker 3 (01:36:57):
But we don't think the Antikidar mechanism is that either, you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
Know, so so amazing. So look we have we have
just a few minutes left and I want to what
I want to give listeners a sense of here is
the complexity of this device. And folks, remember that that
Tony just described this, and if you're just joining, by
the way, Tony Freeth is a founding member of the

(01:37:22):
anti Kithra research team at University College London, does a
bunch of other things as well. PhD mathematician and one
of the world's leading experts on this, all kinds of
papers about it. So imagine something the size Tony called
it the size of maybe a large dictionary from over
two thousand years ago, full of gears, like a complex
watch again two thousand years ago. Tony tell us some

(01:37:47):
of the things that based on your research, you believe
this device displayed to the user.

Speaker 7 (01:37:56):
Good, Well, imagine this books and it's crammed full of gears,
c really crammed together. Our latest model has at least
seventy gears in it, which is extraordinary, and these are
branching networks of gears, and it uses extraordinary gearing called
epicyclic gearing, where gears move attached to other gears. And

(01:38:17):
it calculated the position of the Sun and the moon
in the zodiac of stars, and the phase of the moon,
and also the positions of all the planets. And it
also discovered it also calculated eclipses, when eclipses would happen,
the hour of day of the eclipse, the color of
the eclipse, characteristics of eclipses.

Speaker 3 (01:38:40):
It is just quite extraordinarily clever device.

Speaker 7 (01:38:43):
You know, quite remarkably ingenious device, and it was almost
certainly created not to show the current positions of things
that to be able to predict, say a year ahead,
where the moon would be, and you turn to handle
the sigh almost certainly hand turn to the date you
wanted to know where all the astronomical bodies were, and

(01:39:06):
then it would display these on these beautiful displayed dials
on the front and back of the device.

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
Are you aware of any Let's just put aside the
level of accuracy, right, I mean, it probably was pretty accurate,
especially given that they had the wrong model of the
structure of the solar system. I bet it was pretty good.
So are you aware of any device ever made later
in history before the computer age, put aside computers that

(01:39:37):
calculated all of this using a mechanical method.

Speaker 7 (01:39:43):
Well, to find another device that's known about you have
to go another fifteen hundred years later in history to
the fourteenth century when they were building astronomical clocks. There's
a very famous one called Giovanni Didundi's Astralium, which calculated
everything the anti Kithra mechanism did, but produce more, much

(01:40:08):
more accurate calculations. But you have to go that much
later in history to find something of comparable complexity. And
there are really deep questions about what happened in the
history of science and technology that this extraordinary invention, this
extraordinary device, didn't produce more development and expansion of technology

(01:40:33):
at a much earlier stage.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
You know, Yeah, I mean, maybe it's the kind of
thing where, you know, every once in a while throughout history,
you get a mind that is so far beyond everybody
else's mind, right, you get Newton and you get Einstein,
and it's not once a generation, it's once a century
if you're lucky. And maybe that's what this was, except

(01:40:57):
it was once in a millennium, right until until somebody
was able in the fourteenth century or fifteenth century to
disseminate the concept and other people could copy it. But
maybe this was just the product of that kind of
mind that wasn't reproduced for a thousand years. So I
just have thirty seconds left with you, Tony. And here's
my last question for you. If if I gave you

(01:41:20):
a bottle with a genie in it, but he was
a cheap genie and he only granted one wish instead
of three, and you could have the genie answer any
one question about the Antikithra mechanism. What is the question
that you most want to know the answer to, Well,
I think the.

Speaker 7 (01:41:40):
Key un soul problems now are exactly where and when
it was made and by who, and we can we
have evidence, but we don't have any definitive answers to
those really basic questions. I would say to your audience,
I'd urge you to look on the internet, explore the
link that you've got on your website and any other links.

(01:42:02):
There's a lot of videos out there. There's a lot
of misinformation out there actually, but there's a lot of
good stuff as well, and explore it because the more
you look into it, the more fascinating it becomes.

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
I couldn't agree more. I watched half an hour video
of this yesterday and then said, all right, that's not enough,
and I found another hour and a half video to watch.
I didn't get through all of it, but I'm still
going this thing. The anti Kithra mechanism is one of
the most fascinating things I've ever seen in my life,
and nobody knows more about it than Tony Freeth. And

(01:42:37):
I'm very, very grateful for your time and it's just
such fascinating work. I'm a little I'm a little envious
of you that you get to do this for a living.
It's just fabulous. So thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:42:48):
Okay, well, thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
Glad to do it, Glad to do it, all right,
Folks Again, if you go to my website at Rosskominski
dot com and just go to the guest section, you
can see articles and videos and all kinds of stuff
and papers by Tony. I'm telling you, if you're even
a little bit of a nerd, you're just going to
love this.

Speaker 3 (01:43:08):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
That's all I've got for you today. Stick around for many,
have a great rest of your Wednesday.