04-18-25 - *FULL SHOW* Brad Taylor; Cool retirement; Beer; Trump Ukraine fail

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mandy and I are both doing our shows from this
fabulous two point four million dollar show home right outside
Winter Park. I mean really kind of in the heart
of stuff, and it's just beautiful. Mandy and I walked
around this home yesterday. It's professionally decorated and landscaped and
has fantastic views. Anyway, the reason we're here is to

(00:21):
support the Mighty Millions Raffle, which benefits Children's Hospital Colorado.
And I think I've mentioned without too much detail, and
I'm going to keep it that way that Children's Hospital
Colorado has meant a lot to me and my family,
and they helped us when we needed some help. And
so I buy tickets to the Mighty Millions Raffle every
single year. I'll tell you more about it, but you know,

(00:41):
I'd love it if you would join me and Mandy.
We both bought our tickets already at Mightymillions Raffle dot
com and just go go help out and maybe you
can win this house and lots of other things. I'll
tell you more about that later. So you know, I
like to start slowly on Fridays. I don't like to
jump into the heavy stuff. And there is a lot
of heavy stuff. You just heard that headline about well
what's going to happen with the war in Ukraine? And

(01:02):
there was that shooting at Florida State yesterday, and there's
a lot of serious stuff to talk about, and so
I'm going to start by talking about hamburgers.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
And I saw I just saw this story.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Literally five minutes ago, and I wish I had seen
the original story a few days ago. Have you heard
about Red Robin putting out something called a bottomless burger pass.
I did not hear about this until just now, which
means I'm a day late and twenty dollars short, which

(01:34):
I will explain in a minute. But let me just
set the overall framing here. Do you know how when
the Democrats and the state legislator decided to implement pree
kindergarten for or free pre kindergarten for everybody, for all
the kids, and they put out an estimate of how

(01:57):
much it would cost based on their guess of how
how many parents would want their kids to go into
free pre k And of course I said, and I'm
pretty sure Mandy said too, there's gonna be way more
who doesn't want free babysitting. They're underestimating how many people
are gonna come do this. It's gonna cost more, and

(02:17):
the demand is going to be much higher than they're saying.
And you know, I didn't know whether they believed what
they were saying, but I knew it was wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
And then remember the other thing they did.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
And actually the legislature didn't do this, They gave it
to the voters, and the dumb voters did it where
they passed the thing for free lunch for all.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Public school students, regardless of need.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right, so even all the rich kids at Cherry Creek
High School get free school lunch if they want it,
and they put there there was some fiscal estimate with
that as well, to which I said, really, like you
think that that few people are gonna go get free lunch,
even if it's not very good, it's freaking free.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
You're underestimating the demand.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
And now this year in the budget process, in the
state budget process, they just had to cut back on
They're gonna have to do it somehow, But right now
they're only promising free lunch for everybody for the first
half of the next school year because they think they're
then going to run out of money.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
So what's my point, when you're.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Giving away free stuff, don't be a moron and underestimate
how many people are gonna want the free stuff. Everybody
wants the free stuff. So bottomless burger passes from Red Robin.
These things went on sale yesterday for twenty dollars. Twenty
dollars not quite free stuff, but almost, because what does

(03:35):
a bottomless burger pass get you a burger and bottomless
fries every single day for the month of May? Right now,
I'm guessing I haven't been to Red Robin in a while,
but I'm guessing twenty bucks is the cost of one
burger and fries or something like that these days at
Red Robin. This is every day for a month. So
they so they sold out, and here's what they say.

(03:58):
We did everything we could to anticipate interest in the
bottomless Burger Pass, including working with our web and gift
card partners to prepare for the influx of traffic, but
due to overwhelming excitement in the past, our website and
supporting systems crashed.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
We're sorry this happened to our loyal guests. All passes
have been sold.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
We are still gathering information on total traffic to the site.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Now I will say.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
This could just be a bit of marketing genius, right,
This is just this was so popular. People love our
burgers so much that no matter how much we prepared
for all the web traffic, they still took down the website.
That's how good our burgers are. Could be that could
be that. In any case, I'm not surprised they sold out,

(04:43):
and I wish I'd known about it sooner because I
would have been one of the ones who bought one.
You only have to go twice, and you doubled you
you know, you know, I didn't get to this story yesterday.
I'm just gonna do this in two minutes. It seems
like a lot of fun to think about this. The
headlines everywhere, but I'll go to the New York Times.
Astronomers detect a possible signature of life on a distant planet. Mandy,

(05:05):
did you talk about this yesterday? The possible life on
the other planet. Further studies are needed to determine whether
they're called this planet K two dash eighteen B. Interestingly enough,
the K is capitalized and the B is not K
two dash eighteen B. In case you're playing the home
game and want to write it down, which orbits a
star one hundred and twenty light years away, so studies

(05:26):
are needed to determine whether it's inhabited or even inhabitabowl.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
So let me just skip ahead a little here.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Repeated analysis of the planet's atmosphere suggests an abundance of
a molecule that on Earth has only one known source,
living organisms like marine algae. He said, the best explanation
would be that the planet is covered with a warm
ocean brimming with life. They're quoting a guy named Niku Madhusudan,

(05:59):
and he's an astronomer at Cambridge University in England, and
he said, it's a revolutionary moment. It's the first time
humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet one
hundred and twenty light years from Earth.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Now that's kind of far.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
One hundred and twenty doesn't sound like a very big number,
But think about how far light goes in a year.
In fact, let me look up. I should know this,
but how far light goes? How far a light year
actually is a lot of people hear the term year
and they think the light year is a measure of time,
but it's not.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
And let's see how far away is a.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Light year and miles five point eight eight trillion miles.
That sounds far five point eight eight trillion miles, So
this is one hundred and twenty of those. So I
don't know how you'd ever get there, or how they'd
ever get here.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Here's another way to put it.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
If you could go the speed of light, which we
can't get anywhere even vaguely close to, it would take
you one hundred and twenty years to get there. Anyway,
I think this is a fun little thing, and I hope,
I don't know, it's nice to think about this stuff.
I don't know whether it's gonna be little green men
like you know, Mars attacks and they come.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
And kill us all or.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Predator or alien or maybe it could be something good. Yeah,
it could be a nice little guy like ET, cute
little guy like ET. Are there any other movies where
the aliens are good guys? Are good guys? Starman?

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I don't think, I know. I don't know that one.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
All right, text us at five six six nine zero.
If you can think of any movie where the aliens
are nice, I think those make for boring movies.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
We'll be right back on Kowa to be up here in.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Beautiful home, and Mandy'll be doing her show from right
where I'm sitting, or from that chair maybe in a
few hours. And I hope you will join both of
us in supporting Children's Hospital Colorado by buying some raffle
tickets and the mighty millions Raffle. And you'll hear me
mention that throughout the show. So a couple of things

(08:01):
I want to mention. It's funny, I this is how
it always goes on on the show. You plan some
things and then and then something comes up on the
news and at Squirrel, and I'm like that all the time.
Mandy's a little more disciplined at staying with her her thing.
I'm but only a little, only a little. Oh did
you hear a rod? Did you hear a rod?

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Wait?

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Are you saying you think Mandy's more distractable than I am?
I don't think so that's fine. It's more distractable than
I am.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
You're wow equally?

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Okay, all right, So obviously there was this terrible shooting
at Florida State yesterday. And when these things happen, I
feel like I need to mention them generally. I don't
feel like there's much more I need or want to
say about him. I can't add that much, can't make
anyone feel better. I can't write, but I'm going to
just talk about this for a moment. So two people died,

(08:56):
six people were injured. That was the latest info that
I have. The people who are died were not students.
The story sounds like the shooter got out of a car.
There were different stories. First, someone said he got a shotgun,
used up all the amo, went back and got a handgun.
I don't know all that, but you know there were eyewitnesses.
You said he picked took a handgun out of the

(09:18):
car and just shot the first person he saw. And
doesn't look like it was necessarily targeted. Is just sort
of a random killing. And the two people who did die,
we're not students.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
There.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
The other news that I guess was I guess you'd
call it interesting, is that the shooter is the son
of an eighteen year sheriff's deputy down there in whatever
county that is. And I think all those people you
know who work in that department, they know the kid.
They must obviously be beyond surprise. Apparently the kid was

(09:48):
involved in some of these sort of you know, junior
police kind of stuff where kids learn about law enforcement
and support law enforcement and do things to help law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
And wasn't an obvious a person to go do something
like this.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Apparently the pistol is his mother's former service weapon that
the mother brought home to keep for personal protection after
the department switched to a different kind of pistol, so
that pistol was at home, and this kid took his
mom's pistol and.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Did what he did.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Now, this morning, I caught an interview of a student
at Florida State.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
This was on News Nation, and I just wanted.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
To because you probably, you know, might not have been
watching when I was watching, or maybe you don't watch
News Nation in the morning. Probably showed it's a good channel,
and it just kind of struck me a little bit
as his fascinating little microcosm of the world we're in
right now. So they're interviewing this guy, and he looks
like an older college student, right, he looks like he's

(10:49):
a senior, or maybe somebody who did something else for
a year or two and then went to college. Right,
he looks he looks a little bit old, but not
very old for a college student and kind of scraggly
red beard, and you know, he's a he's got a
gen Z vibe about him, you know. And first he

(11:10):
was talking about what happened that day and hearing the
shots and being scared and all that, and I think
he saw he might have witnessed the thing I talked
about with the shooter taking a pistol out of the
car and all that. So then it turns out the
reporters asking him questions and he knew the shooter and.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
They actually knew each other.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Before Florida State at some other college I don't remember
which one where this guy and the shooter and however,
many other people were part of some student group where
they would get together and talk about politics. And so
this guy said, oh wait, let me back up a second.
Before I finished that statement, the reporter asked, who did

(11:53):
you call or text to tell people you were safe?
And he said, I have a group chat with my
family and told him I'm safe, and then I texted
my boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
All right, So that's what he said. Okay, so there's
you know, right, so there's a gay guy.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
And then so he starts talking about how they were
in a political talk group, not online, like in person
political conversation group at a different college.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
And he says that the shooter got into.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Spouting I think that was his word, spouting white supremacists
and alt right rhetoric. Okay, So now you've got a
gay college student who's saying that the another this in
this case, the shooter is saying, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Alt right stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
And of course you might think that in the world
we live in today, with so many college students being
so far left, that you know, anybody to the right
of Bill Clinton is all right to them. I might
be alt right to them. I mean, I'm to the
right of Bill Clinton, but right, so you don't know
what bar they're judging by, because to some people out there,

(12:59):
anybody who's even moderate is right.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
You understand what I mean.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Okay, So now you've got that a gay guy saying
that this other guy is alt right and whatever. And
so I'm like, all right, this is where this is going, right,
And then the reporter asked some other question. I don't
and I think it had to do with the politics
a little bit. I didn't hear the question. And then
and then the kid who was being interviewed said, oh,
don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
I'm a conservative.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
I love guns, and I con seal carry every single day.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Okay, it's a brave new world.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
I wish two people weren't dead, and I wonder if
we will find out what happened here. A lot of
times this, this is the thing that I think gets
missed from time to time. The most the most frequent time,
the most frequent situation in which there is a psychotic
break that causes someone, that can cause someone to do

(13:56):
something like that is among young men from late teens.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
To late twenties.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
And it would be silly for me to speculate, but
and so I won't. But I just wanted to mention
that we'll take a quick break. We'll be right back
on Kawa. Can you please tell me any movies where
there are space aliens who are good guys and not
out to kill us all? And you know, Mandy said ET,
and I don't. I gotta say I don't. I don't
entirely trust ET. I think he's I think he's up.

(14:27):
I think he's up to something. I just haven't I
haven't figured out what it is yet. And I think
he's very patient, because clearly it hasn't happened yet, But
something's happening something.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
I think something's happening. Pharmageddon.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Haven't heard of that, Mac and Me, Third Rock from
the Sun TV show obviously, but had friendly cool aliens.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Alf Mark from Mark. Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Not a movie, but good my favorite Martian? Did they
make a movie out of that?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Or is that just TV? Was there? Was there?

Speaker 1 (14:57):
My favorite Martian movie? Arrival AI two thousand and one
to AI two thousand and one, Steven Spielberg movie The
Day the Earth's Had Stood Still? Flight of the Navigator. Okay,
Ross k Pax was a movie with friendly aliens. Unfortunately,
Kevin Spacey was one of them. Contact was another. All right,

(15:19):
So let me just can I just say one thing here,
Not to go too far out on a limb to
stand up for a guy who I really don't know
and don't know anything much about. But Kevin Spacey was
accused of, you know, sexual assault and what they call
indecent assault, nine different charges.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
He was acquitted of all of them in a trial.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
So I have no idea if the guy is what
they claim he hasn't. I don't know, but I do
think it's got to mean something. The fact that he
was acquitted of absolutely everything.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
I also, let me just make this clear, I also
don't care et close encounters.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
A person said close encounter Superman see soup. We don't
know that.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
Something.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Oh yeah, man, yeah, I don't trust that. Yeah, all right,
Mandy doesn't Interstellar. Let anyone tell you what the aliens
are in that movie if you haven't seen it. I
forgot the Abyss and Superman. All right, that's enough. Any
star trek h oh okay, this one's my favorite. The

(16:27):
cone Heads. We're from France. Yeah, that's good. Speaking of France,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna overly preview anything, but
I think Mandy may have a topic that relates to
a French person.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
In a in a rather funny way. All right, let
me get serious for a second.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Here. You heard in our news broadcast that Secretary of
State Marco Rubio has made some comments about the Russia
Ukraine War, and I want to I want to just
talk about this a little bit, and I'm gonna come
back to it next week.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
I forget which day next week.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
I think it's Wednesday that I'll have admirals to britis
back on the show. And we'll talk about the whole
Russia Ukraine thing. But this was a very interesting headline.
Associated Press version of the story. Rubio says the US
will drop Russia Ukraine peace efforts if no progress within days.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
So there's a lot to say about this, Okay.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Let me just give you a little more from the
news story, and then I'll tell you how I'm thinking
about it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that
the US may move on Those are his words from
trying to secure a Russia Ukraine peace deal if there's
no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts
have failed to bring an end to the fighting. He
spoke in Paris after landmark talks among US, Ukrainian and

(17:43):
European officials produced outlines for steps toward peace and appeared
to make some long awaited progress. A new meeting is
expected next week in London, and Rubio suggested it could
be decisive in determining whether the Trump administration continues its involvement.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
So, as resident to the bad analogy Club, let me
bring one to you right now.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Let's say it's eighth grade, and there's an eighth grade kid, who, eh,
not that popular, doesn't do that great on his grades,
not necessarily bad, but not really good either, just to
kind of mediocre kid at best, could use a little
better parenting, doesn't have a lot of money. And a

(18:28):
bully comes over to this kid, starts beating them up
for the lunch money and does it want gets in
a little bit of trouble, stops, waits a while, comes
back and starts beating up the kid again to take
the kid's lunch money and demand that the kid give
them lunch money every day. Somebody tells principal about it.

(18:49):
Principle comes over and says to the kid who's being
beaten up and whose lunch money is being stolen, hey,
why'd you start that fight?

Speaker 2 (19:01):
And says to the guy who's the.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Bully he's trying to take his money, you know you
should probably be a little bit nicer. I'm going away now,
but maybe you should be a little nicer to him.
And then, and before he goes away, he says to
the bully, by the way, and I'm sorry. He says
to the victim, Hey, you know what, now that I
think about it, I'll make sure that kid doesn't steal
your lunch money, but I need you to give me

(19:26):
half of your lunch money. Okay, So that's the Russia
Ukraine war. Donald Trump is the principal. Obviously, Ukraine is
kind of the slightly smelly victim who doesn't have very
good grades and people don't really necessarily like all that much.
Not necessarily a bad guy, but not the best either.
And you know who the bully is. And so President

(19:48):
Trump campaigned aggressively on being able to stop this war
in twenty four hours.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
What's odd?

Speaker 1 (19:55):
It's not odd to me that he couldn't stop the
war in twenty four hours. I think anybody who believed
it was you know, a little bit gullible, let's say,
putting it kindly. But it really feels to me like
Trump hasn't tried right. So in the in the analogy
that I just gave you, is there anything in that
analogy that would stop the bully from going after that

(20:17):
kid again?

Speaker 2 (20:18):
No, nothing at all, Nothing at all. And so throughout
this process, really all.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Donald Trump has done has been attacked the victim. And
it's an overused it's an overused expression these days, blaming
the victim, and people say that all the.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Time when it's not really true. But that is what's
going on here, and it's a shame.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Now, Look, I don't care very much about Ukraine, right,
even though my ancestors are actually from Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
But I don't care that much.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
It's not near me, it doesn't really impact me. It's
that's not That's not why I care about the situation.
The reason I care about the situation is that as
the United States lose his influence in the world, which
seems to be what this president is intentionally trying to
do is to reduce our influence in the world. And

(21:09):
by I mean, I think he's explicitly doing that, but
he's certainly doing it indirectly by pushing away all our allies.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
So that's how you reduce influence. So he wants to make.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
The US weaker, and he is making the US weaker,
which is odd for a guy who talks about strength
all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
But if he really wanted to stop.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
The war and show himself to be the great deal
maker that he claims to be, he needed to go
to the guy who started the war and say, if
you don't stop, we're gonna punish you. Now, it seemed
like he said that for about thirty seconds, but for
months he's been bashing the Ukrainians. I will also say
Vladimir Zelenski, the President of Ukraine, is not blameless here.

(21:51):
I don't mean in starting the war. I mean how
he's interacted with Trump and that unbelievably brain dead reaction
that Zelensky had to be taunted in the Oval office
by jd Vance, who intentionally taunted Zelenski because jd Vance
is trying to brush up his bona fides in order
to be the next Republican candidate for president. And that

(22:13):
was a great opportunity for jd Vance to kind of
show himself on the world stage, keeping the Trump thing going.
And he he goaded, he baited Zelenski. But if Zelensky
had had a little bit of coaching, a little bit
of common sense, a little bit of anything, he wouldn't
have bit on it. And that really blew things up.
And even just yesterday, Donald Trump, who for some reason

(22:37):
likes to make things personal, said he's not a big
fan of Zelenski, as if that should have anything to
do with it. I don't know why our president seems
to be a big fan of Vladimir Putin, who's a
killer and the determined enemy of the United States. So
here's what I hope to figure out in the next

(22:59):
few days. It is possible that this announcement is a
form of pressure. Again, it's really only pressure on Ukraine.
That Russia has absolutely no fear of President Trump saying, oh,
we're not gonna work on this anymore, because Russia probably
assumes that President Trump will say, we're not involved and

(23:19):
we're not going to supply weapons anymore. You can't even
buy him from US. That's probably what Russia thinks is coming.
So when Marco Rubio says US may move on Russia's cheering,
our enemies, all of our enemies are cheering, not just Russia.
Ukraine certainly will feel pressure from this to do something,

(23:39):
maybe sign this mineral agreement to get back on board.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
And I did see a headline today. I don't know
that it's.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Confirmed, but it sounds like Ukraine signed something and is
now waiting for America to agree. But I have no
idea what Donald Trump's goal is, right, similar to why
I have no idea why the administration is fighting so
hard and making all these lame excuses that only the

(24:06):
most hardcore magabase believes that they can't get this illegal
alien back from l Salvador and then, by the way,
put him through ordinary due process and deport him if that's.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Where he belongs.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Every honest person knows that the administration has violated multiple
laws doing it the way they did, and yet for
some reason, the Trump administration seems to think it's in
their interest to keep fighting that fight rather than just
doing the right thing. By the way, I'm not saying
that guy's a good guy.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
I have no idea. I've never said he's a good guy.
I'm saying I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And there was a court rule and it said, well,
you could deport him, but not to there. And then
they deported him to there. They just they screwed up.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
And they violated the law.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
And they keep just saying, not our problem. It's nuts.
It's really nuts. So that I think the same thing
thing is going on here. We'll see what happens. The
primary reason that I care so much about this situation,
and I'm gonna just put this very simply and then
move on to another another topic. I suspect I suspect,

(25:14):
and we'll talk with Stevritas about this next week that
if Donald Trump abandons Ukraine to the tender mercies of
Vladimir Putin. Europe will try to help, but they probably
won't be able to do enough without the US if
the US won't even allow weapons to be sold. If

(25:35):
Russia ends up defeating Ukraine in a bigger way than
is already the current situation with the US having abandoned Ukraine,
China will try to take Taiwan during the Trump presidency.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
That's that's my prediction.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
If China tries to take Taiwan, the whole world is
in huge trouble. It is an infinitely bigger problem and
bigger threat to the entire planet than the Ukraine situation is.
But if Trump is going to signal that we're going
to walk away from allies or quasi allies and let
dictators just take over, you know, democracies, well, if I

(26:22):
were president, she I would take advantage of that because
there won't be a better opportunity there really won't. I'm
a little worried about that, So we'll see, We'll see
how it plays out. All right, let's switch gears.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
I know that was a little heavy, but you know,
I'm a foreign policy nerd.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
I care about this stuff. So let's talk about beer.
I saw an interesting piece over at Axios. John Frank,
who used to be at the Denver Post, is a
big beer guy and he writes lots of stories about beer.
And I like craft beer myself and had a pretty
good beer last night.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
What did I have last night? Mandy?

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Ninety shilling? Yeah, yeah, ninety shilling. I really like that beer. Yeah,
can't go wrong. And by the way, just free advertising.
The Smhouse in winter Park is really, really good, really good.
Mandy is a barbecue snob. Mandy has had barbecue everywhere,

(27:22):
has a lot of opinions about barbecue, knows a lot
about barbecue, and said that place is fantastic. So if
you ever come up to winter Park, go to the Smokehouse.
I think you'll dig it. Now let's go back to beer.
So the headline from John Frank over at Acxios Denver
Kraft beer market declines four percent in twenty twenty four,
the largest drop of all time. Here's a bad pun.

(27:44):
The craft brewing market is in the tank.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Why it matters?

Speaker 1 (27:47):
The once thriving industry struggled to stay afloat in twenty
twenty four after posting its third consecutive year with negative growth.
A trend driven by market saturation and shifts in alcohol consumption,
particularly of younger drinkers. And I'm gonna get to that
in a second, because I think that part's really really interesting.
Craft beer production, let me get this going. Hit twenty

(28:09):
three point one million barrels in twenty twenty four of
four percent decline from the previous year and the largest
drop in the history of the industry outside.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Of the COVID pandemic.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
According to data released a couple of days ago by
the Brewers Association, the number of small independent breweries operating
in the US decreased for the first time in twenty years,
with five hundred and one closures compared to four hundred
and thirty four openings. So yeah, okay, So the other

(28:43):
thing I wanted to mention there that I think is
interesting is the changes in consumption. Now, look, I'm I'm
whatever age I am, so the age I am.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
You know, we grew up.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
I don't mean as children necessarily, but you know, having
a wine, having a glass of wine, and having a beer,
having a whiskey is a thing that most of us
did for you know, our adult lives, and still do.
But young adults these days are a whole different breed, right,
and you see all these like you see how popular

(29:15):
the hard Seltzer has gotten, like this massive category of
hard seltzer.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
And you know, to me, hard Seltzer is kind of
falls into the why bother category?

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Right, But you know, I'm old school, what do I know?
But so you know because you heard him on the
show one or two times. My friend Joe Brunner owned
Lucas Lickers in Lone Tree, and I loved that store
and I was, you know, he was my advisor on bourbon.
And he shut his doors and the store's gone, not moving,

(29:44):
and he moved to Texas.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
It's gone.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
And he said that sure, some of the problem is
supermarkets being able to sell beer and wine. And I
mentioned the other day on the show, actually a new
law just passed the state legislature that they are going
to not issue any more licenses beyond I think it

(30:09):
was the thirty four maybe that already exists for grocery
stores and convenience stores to sell hard liquor. So they
want to protect what's left of the independent liquor store
business by keeping hard liquor in the liquor stores other
than just those thirty four places in the state that
are grandfathered in already. But what Joe said was, look,

(30:29):
supermarkets selling beer and wine clearly cost the independent liquor
stores money. But then the changing drinking habits of young
adults has been a really big deal, he said, in
particular wine, Like young people don't drink wine. He told
me a story about some big producer of white wine
in New Zealand that had I don't know, six hundred barrels,

(30:50):
not bottles, six hundred barrels of wine. I forget how
many bottles in a barrel, but some dozen, you know,
a few dozen bottles in a barrel at least, and
they uh, just destroyed all the barrels with the wining
because there's such a glut of wine because wine consumption
is down so much.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
And these young adults are not really drinking.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Whiskey either, and it's unclear whether they're you know, just
drinking soda, you know, maybe drinking some some hard seltzer,
maybe smoking marijuana. But as this headline goes, dry January
has become dry February and beyond, and it's a it's
a it's a challenge. It's a serious, serious challenge. Well,

(31:33):
one other story on this one other beer story. This
is also John Frank at Axios, And this I think
is a little bit of ingenuity and just trying to
figure out how to get by. If you ever wanted
to own a brewery, now's your chance, no experience required.
In a tough market, Colorado breweries are turning loyal fans
into part owners through crowdfunding campaigns that raise millions of

(31:57):
dollars in capital. Westbound down I guess that's a brewery
is asking supporters to contribute one point two five million
dollars to help open a Denver location and add brewing
capacity in Lafayette.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Left Hand Brewing, that's a big company.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Left Hand Brewing recently secured more than eight hundred thousand
dollars from the community. The funding will build on its
recent acquisition of Dry Dock Brewing and help add more
independent craft beer brands to its portfolio.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
So even those guys, that's a big company.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
There's there's you know, more stories like that, but won't
I won't go through all those details. But some of
these companies now are are offering shares of stock or crowdfunding.
Right There's a company called Westbound that bought a couple
of Western Slope breweries and they're selling stock.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
It's it's really interesting and it's clever.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Right, I do have to say crowdfunding is a fascinating,
relatively new development ways for companies to go raise money
for normal people. And sometimes they'll raise money without even
giving ownership, right, they'll just say, hey, if you love us,
give us money.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
We need your help. And I'm sure some breweries are
doing that.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
You know what, this is just a market doing what
a market does. You know, similar stuff happened with marijuana dispensaries, right.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I think at some point I read.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Somewhere there were there were more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks.
And you know, there just isn't that. There isn't a
market that can support all that. And so you get
this newly legalized thing or a trendy thing. You get
the legalization of recreational marijuana. You get craft beers getting popular,
and lots of people want to be in those businesses
because it's their hobbies and it's their passions, and they

(33:36):
go do it, and everybody goes to do it, but there.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Are not enough customers for all of them.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Then the you know, hopefully the best survive and you
end up with maybe half as many as there were
at the top. Anyway, that's all I got for you
on that. Let me just make sure, Oh, I know
what I want to let you know. So, I'm going
to be doing an occasional thing with listeners or friends
who are retired, who are doing interesting or inspiring stuff
in retirement, and we're going to have a con station

(34:00):
like that right after this. Keep it here on KOA
across from Mandy next to Shannon, and Mandy'll be Mandy'll
be on.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
She'll ruin the.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
Last half hour of my show, and then ruin the
first half hour of her show. We're gonna do a
little at what do we call it the rossover into
the Mandy Verse.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yes, okay, we're gonna do some of that today.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
So I mentioned a week or so ago that I
want to get into an occasional maybe weekly series of
talking with listeners or friends of mine who are retired
and doing something fun, interesting, inspirational in retirement. So first,
let me say if that describes you or someone you know,

(34:38):
shoot me shoot me an email at ross at Did
I just say shoot me?

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Oh? Shoot me an.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Email at ross at KOA, Denver dot com. R Oss
at koa Denver dot com and and well, there's a
good chance we'll have you on the show. You know
someone who's doing something really interesting in retirement. So joining
us now with our own story is listener Louise. Louise
sent me an email all about something she and her
husband have been doing since retirement, and I just thought

(35:05):
this falls more into the inspiring category. So Louise, welcome
to Kaawai. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 5 (35:12):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
So tell us what you and your husband are doing.

Speaker 5 (35:17):
Okay. We volunteer at our local elementary school. I work
with kindergarten and he works for second grade. I wrote
to you because I want to encourage other people to
do it. It's the easiest thing in the world. Everybody's
got a school in their neighborhood. You get summers off,

(35:38):
you get a week off in the fall, in the spring,
and two weeks off at Christmas. They will take anybody
that can give you one hour a week. We do
about twenty hours a week and it's just perfect. We
don't go in till ten thirty, we'd leave at two
thirty and it just feels so There's nothing like the

(36:00):
feel of a five year old's hand in yours, What
exactly do you do well with the kindergarteners. I do
a lot of one on one work because if you
think about it, with kindergarten, there's a lot of five
year olds that come in that can read on a
second grade level, and there are other kids that have

(36:21):
never seen the alphabet or numbers. So I do a
lot of one on one work. It has nothing to
do with intelligence, they've just never seen it. So to
get them caught up with the others, you have to
do a little bit of one on one work. And
five year olds, you figure their baby still. You know,

(36:46):
they don't have any filter. They're just they're genuine people.
We have over ninety languages in their are public schools.
We had a child this year who came and only
speaking Swahili. So sometimes you need a little one on

(37:06):
one because you need a pat on the back. You know,
it's a little overwhelming to you this first time you've
been without your mommy, and it's a little overwhelming. My
husband in second grade grades all of their time tests,
so you know, you figure they're learning how to add ones, two,

(37:27):
three fourths. They start with their tests based down on
the pay on the desk and they write notes to
him and they say, oh, I think I can do
it this time, or I've been studying hard. He keeps
a spreadsheet of all of their answers. He grades all
of them, so he writes back to them and says, Wow,

(37:49):
you only got fourteen last time, and you got thirty
eight this time. Way to go. It's just that little
bit of encouragement.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
That so let me ask you, Yeah, go ahead, let
me ask you sort of a logistical question, because I
could listen to these fabulous stories all day, but you
started by saying you want other people to do it,
and you know you're doing this in Aurora. I'm not
certain that the process will be the same in every
school district, but it's probably you know something. So if

(38:20):
somebody is interested in doing what you're describing, what's the
process for getting involved.

Speaker 5 (38:27):
Just walk into their local school. Walk into the school
and they will direct them. For Aurora, They've then send
us to the main administration building and they do a
background check and you get your picture taken and you
get an ID card so that everybody knows this person
is supposed to be in the school. It's okay, But

(38:49):
it's that simple it is. And you walk in and
you say I would like to help, and I want
I will give you two hours a week on Thursdays.
And they say, well, I think you would be good
in third grade. We really need somebody in third grade.
Look at preschool through about third grade. It's almost all paper.

(39:13):
So there's a ton of copying. There's a ton of
prep work for the art projects. We do a lot
of that. And that's okay, twenty hours a week. That's
twenty hours a week that the teachers who are still
you know, in family mode, they've still got kids at
home they would have to put in. So it's and

(39:35):
it's it's so much enjoyable.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
It sounds like you enjoy it every day, like you
don't think of it as oh I have to go.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
To work today.

Speaker 5 (39:43):
Oh school, let's out in May. And we look at
each other, we go, now.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
What do we do?

Speaker 5 (39:49):
Although these are all kids in our neighborhood, so they
know in the summertime when they ride by on their bikes,
if my husband is outside with the hose on, he'll
square them with the hose. They all know they can
come to him and he will fix their bikes. We've
got the air compressor or whatever. They all know. We

(40:11):
have popsicles in the freezer in the garage.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
It's it'sandparents.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, well you'reparents, right, that's uh.

Speaker 5 (40:23):
We had a second grade mom asked her kids, so,
who is mister Nikerk And he said he thought about it,
and he said he's the second grade grandpa. And because
we're volunteers, we can't give him a hug. You know.
We had we had a child whose last whose name
began with the Z, and he was just sobbing one

(40:44):
day and they sent him out to my husband and
what is the problem. I'll never be the line leader.
She goes alphabetical and my name begins with Z. I'll
never be the line leader. And that was just the
that broke the camel's back, you know.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
And so did you, my husband, did you go to
the teacher and have the teacher do reverse alphabetical?

Speaker 2 (41:09):
One day?

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (41:10):
I think they probably talked about that, but he just
sat and talked to him about the advantages of being
the last in line. You get to close the door,
you get to turn out the life, you have responsibilities,
you know, on the positive side of that, this is life.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
It's a fabulous story.

Speaker 5 (41:29):
Louis who'd just walked people up and down the hall.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
You know, Louise, thank you so much for getting in
touch and thanks for agreeing to come on the radio
station and share this with people. That's just beautiful and
touching and inspiring.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
And I'm glad you are loving retirement so much.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
We are.

Speaker 5 (41:48):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Thanks for doing this, Louise, and for other listeners.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Again, you know, shoot me a note at Ross at
koadenver dot com if you or someone you know is
doing something fascinating, inspiring, whatever, something in retirement that you
think other people would dig hearing about, like I enjoyed
hearing about that.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
I'm in winter Park and you hear me talk about
that throughout the show. And Mandy's here with me as well,
and she's going to join me in just over an hour.
We'll do the last part of my show and the
first part of her show we'll do together. Just to
have some fun, all right. So let me do just
a couple minutes on two quick stories. This first thing
is just more of a data point than a story,
and I just want to share it with you. I'm
not going to spend as long on it as I

(42:31):
normally might because it's a Friday, and I probably don't
want to get quite that much in the economics weeds
with you. But normally, over the past ten or twenty years,
I suppose the typical amount, let's see, how do I
want to word this. The percentage of all federal income
taxes paid by the top one percent has typically hovered

(42:52):
in the high thirties up to forty or maybe forty
one percent, but usually usually right around forty. And usually
for that top one percent, who pay about forty percent
of all the income taxes, their share of the nation's
income somewhere around twenty five percent, So I mean, obviously

(43:14):
that's it's a lot if you're one percent of the
population earning twenty five percent of the nation's income, but
it's one percent paying forty percent of the income tax
I don't think I've ever seen the number over over

(43:35):
forty forty one, but the most recent data that I
see here, So it takes a long time for this
data to catch up, right, So usually it's about three
years behind. And I don't know why that is, but
I guess there's an immense amount of data to put together.
But in twenty twenty one, which is the last data

(43:58):
that the Tax Foundation has.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
This is an update that they did this year, but
in the.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Last the last update, the top one percent paid just
under forty six percent of all federal income taxes. So
I just wanted you to be aware of that because
a lot of times you hear folks like like when
Congresswoman Britney Peterson was on my show a couple of

(44:23):
weeks ago, near the end of the show when she
started talking about you know this and that policy, and
she's talking about taxes and talking about how unfair the
tax code is. And I said to her on the air,
I said, you're you're absolutely right, the tax code is unfair.
But it's unfair and exactly the opposite way from the
way that you're claiming. It's not that the rich don't
pay too little, it's that they don't pay enough. The

(44:46):
top five percent pay basically two thirds of all the
federal income taxes, the top ten percent pay over three quarters,
the top twenty five percent pay ninety percent. Okay, So
the bottom seventy five percent of American earners, and this
is just people who file tax returns. It excludes people
who don't even file, Okay, so that the top the

(45:10):
bottom seventy five.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Percent pay ten percent of the income taxes.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
And I just wanted to mention that because it's an
entirely unsustainable system, at least without turning us into a
place with much, much lower standards of living, like like Europe.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
It's not good.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Even though Democrats think it hasn't gone far enough, it's
gone way, way, way too far. Let me do this
other one very quickly. This is kind of a fun
story and ties in a bit with the previous guest,
you know, doing good things. This is from Denver, right,
a Denver vigilante in quotes, hides cash filled Easter eggs
for people experiencing homelessness. And what I like about this

(45:46):
story this guy he goes by the name Phoenix Noire,
and he must be a rather unusual character because apparently
he dresses himself as a cat and called the you know,
a cat soul animal or something like that. So I know,
I know, a strange enough dude, and especially at the
age of forty five. Okay, But what he does is

(46:08):
he gets these you know, little plastic easter eggs, he
paints them, he you know, colors him. He puts a
handwritten note in him like a hand for Easter, a
handwritten note that includes a quote from Jesus from the
Bible and a little bit of cash and maybe even
a gift card from a local restaurant. There's a grand

(46:29):
prize and a gold egg of twenty five dollars. And
what I like about this story so much is that
this guy who's doing this was homeless himself. And now he,
you know, when he started this, he was in a
halfway house. And he when he did this the first time,
it was with a total of seventy five.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Dollars, right, a dollar or two right, whatever, he you.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Know, in all these different Easter eggs, and he just
plays them around the city. And now he's, you know,
trying to get back to a normal life.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
But he's not making a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
And uh, he asked friends and whatever, and they put
together a total of two hundred dollars. Again not big money,
but he asked friends and fellow activists for for some support.
And uh, they're they're spreading two hundred dollars out and
some restaurant vouchers over over.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
All these over all these eggs.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
And let me just see that they're gonna they're gonna
be in Capitol Hill, Englewood, Aurora and along East Colfax Avenue,
not at the four to twenty festival, even though Easter
is on four to twenty this year. And I just
think that's a cool story, right, somebody who has, you know,
very very close to no money, right was homeless, probably
not that far from being homeless right now, writing notes

(47:43):
and giving away what little money he has. I think
it's a fabulous story coming up in the next segment
of the show. Best selling thriller author Brad Taylor. Not
everybody's gonna love it. But after what happened at the
Capitol in Washington, d C. On January, a whole bunch
of people were arrested, put in jail, Some were charged,

(48:08):
some eventually weren't, I think, But there was a lot
of that stuff, and a very large number of people,
particularly a very large number of Trump supporters called them
political prisoners, said there's no evidence they committed a crime,
and they shouldn't be in jail like that. There's got
to be evidence, there's got to be due process. And

(48:31):
this was, you know, and I was, you know, halfway
there with them, depending depending on the person. There were
some people who were you know, obviously right there on
video committing a crime. Yeah, you charge them and you
put them in jail. Other people, it was a it
was a much trickier situation.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
And I do think that there were plenty.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Of instances where the federal prosecutors in those cases went
way too far against people who did stuff that I
don't think they should have done. But that doesn't mean
they should be going to prison, you know, in jail
for a long time before any kind of due process.
And a lot of conservatives, a lot of MAGA supporters
were really upset about that, and justifiably so to a

(49:11):
significant degree. And yet now we have this guy who
I'm not claiming is a good guy, mister kilmar Abrego Garcia,
just like I didn't claim that somebody who went into
the capitol or that day was a good guy. You know,
I didn't call him terrorists necessarily. You know, it depends
each person did a slightly different thing, right, But this

(49:32):
guy Garcia, he got scooped up and deported to not
just to Wel Salvador, but to a prison in l
Salvador that is supposed to house the worst criminals and
terrorists with no due process at all in violation of
a very specific court order that didn't actually say you

(49:55):
can't deport him, but it said you can't deport him
to El Salvador because he has at least a maybe
credible claim that he would be killed there. Now, look,
I'm not saying he's telling the truth about that claim.
I'm just telling you there's a court order, and not all,
but many of these same people who called the January

(50:17):
sixth rioters political prisoners and we're absolutely furious about that,
are perfectly fine with the government similarly abusing this guy.
I understand illegal alien in one case and not in
the other case.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
I absolutely get it. Okay, no problem, but have a
little consistency.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
You either believe in due process, in the rule of
law or you don't. So if you're someone who says
it's fine that Garcia is in that prison at El
Salvador and the Trump administration should not bring him back,
then you should say all of those people who went
into the Capitol on January sixth should have been thrown
in regardless of due process.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
There's very little difference of significance.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
I'm gonna do one more minute on this, and then
I'm gonna get to my special guest, so just one
more minute. There was a case in front of the
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday and it's lots of
people against lots of other people. But it's basically Garcia
and his attorneys suing christinome In the government and Pambondi,

(51:30):
the Attorney General and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State,
about the fact that not only did they send this
guy away but in violation of due process, but now
they're claiming they can't bring him back. And let me
just do one minute on this, and I'm gonna come
back to it later because i want to get to
Brad Taylor, but let me just give this a start.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
What the court said.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
In some cases it's difficult to get to the heart
of the matter, but in this case it's not. The
government is asserting a right to stash away residents of
this country and foreign prisons without the semblance of due
process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further,
it claims in essence that because it has rid itself
of custody, there is nothing that can be done. This

(52:11):
should be shocking not only to judges but to the
intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses
still hold dear. The government asserts that A Brego Garcia
is a terrorist and a member of MS thirteen.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Let me just interject.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
They call him a terrorist because they claim he's a
member of MS thirteen, which they have which they have
turned which they have described as a terrorist group, or
they have designated as a terrorist group, perhaps but perhaps not. Regardless,
he's still entitled to do process. If the government is
confident of its position, it should be assured that position
will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. Moreover,

(52:51):
the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or
mistakenly deported, Why.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Then should it not make way what was wrong? Right now?

Speaker 1 (53:01):
There's a lot more, but in the interesting time, I'm
going to pause there. I'll probably come back to it
a little bit later in the show, but I did
want to give you just sort of that overall, that
overall take on it. I'm a little frustrated. I think
Mandy might be as well, but she'll talk about it
herself if she wants to. She's done talking about it, okay.
So I am so pleased to welcome back to the show.

(53:23):
Brad Taylor out with his nineteenth pike Logan novel. I've
read it already, although I don't think actual publication day.
Release day is for a few more days on the
twenty second, but you can order it now. It's called
Into the Gray Zone and it's a very interesting novel.
The plot is fascinating at a time where well this
happens a lot with Brad's novels. The plot is really

(53:45):
crazy and then you think, wait a minute, is it
maybe that kind of thing could actually happen. Brad is
also a retired US Army lieutenant Special Forces lieutenant colonel.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Hey, Brad, good to see you, Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Good to see you too, Thanks for having me back.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
All right, yeah, glad to do it.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
And we're I'm Mandy and I are well you don't
know Mandy, but Mandy and I are sitting in Winter
Park at the Mighty Millions show home.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
And that's why I look a little. I got a
different background than I usually do.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
So hey, I want to ask you one question that's
not on your not about the book, and then I
want to get to the book we saw this morning.
I think it came out this morning, some comments from
the Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the President seems
a little frustrated with a pace of trying to end
the Ukraine Russia war and that if there isn't some

(54:36):
progress soon, Trump might just walk.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Away, whatever that means.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
And I know you've you've spent a little time talking
in public your thoughts about this war and American role
and what it should be in, why it matters and
all that, and I wonder if you.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Would just give us a little commentary on it.

Speaker 6 (54:53):
Yeah, I think that I heard that too, And honestly,
I think that's just a way of putting pressure on
both parties. I don't think they're actually gonna walk away.
I think that's a way of saying, I'm kind of
sick of dealing with this. One of you get both
of you guys need to step up to plate here.
Some of you's got to do because right now that
both were calcitrant. You know, we're getting the mineral deal
through Zelensky, and that's good for us, but Zelensky's not

(55:16):
willing to concede all the stuff that Putin, I mean
Putin's basically saying, getting me the whole bag or we're off,
and so I think it's a way to put pressure
on him to say, look, you guys, obviously you both
have a starting point.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Let's start negotiating.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, and it could be a negotiating thing.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
I continue to believe the way that Trump is approaching
this is putting all the pressure on the wrong person,
which doesn't mean that Ukraine should have no pressure, but
not all the pressure.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
But we'll we'll see.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Maybe Trump is playing forty chests like his supporters, thinking
it'll all work out just fine.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
I hope.

Speaker 6 (55:50):
Well, I mean, you know, well what he's doing one day.
I mean, he could get tired of it in three
days and say, well, I said I was gonna do that,
see you later.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yeah, indeed, all right, let's talk about the book a
little bit. And again, folks, the book is called Into
the Gray Zone and it's a really really fun thriller.
The nineteenth Pike Logan novel. Brad has sold somewhere close
to four million books already.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
And let's say I'm just doing the math here, Brad,
so you saw it.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
So let's just say four million books and you earn
a thousand dollars a book, So you've got four hundred
million dollars?

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Now is that right? Did I do them? I know
it's a personal question, but is that about right?

Speaker 3 (56:27):
If that math was right, yes, that would be correct.
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
So you don't get one thousand dollars for every book
that you sell.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
That's not how the book business works.

Speaker 6 (56:38):
It depends on I mean, it's it's multi tiered over
you know, whether it's ebooks, whether it's time it comes out,
whether it's paperback, whether it's a hardback, they're all different.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
All right, you're treating my question much too seriously. All right.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
So in this new novel, it's it's fascinating because it's
not that far from something I could actually believe about
China's intentions against Taiwan and.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
As part of that story against the US.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
And maybe before we get into the nuts and bolts
of the plot, and I don't want to give away
too much, but you know, why did you decide to
make this the theme?

Speaker 5 (57:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (57:21):
Actually the idea came from me, like a lot of
book ideas come to me, just from a news story.
Last year there was a dry by shooting in Canada
where a Seak guy was killed, real popular guy, a
Seakh guy was killed, just a random murder. The largest
aspora of Sikhs are in Canada and did make a
lot of news. And then about a month later, the
Canadian government came out and said, hey, Prime Minister Modi

(57:43):
and the RAW, the Researcher Analysis Wing, which is their
version of CIA, they came over here to Canada and
assassinated this guy. And I was like, what that makes
absolutely no sense, but I knew that Canada wasn't going
to say that unless they had some serious evidence of
this going on. Well, then two months later, we arrested
a guy and said that, hey, this guy is trying
to kill a Sikh inside the United States and the

(58:05):
government India sent him over here to get assassinated.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
And I was like, holy moly, something's going on here.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
As a matter of fact, the FBI just today arrested
a guy in Sacramento who's a Sek who's running around
trying to kill people. And so I started doing the
research on that, saying, Okay, there's got to be a
story here, and that's what started it. And as I
started looking into, you know, the plot lines I was
going to go with Pakistan, I was like, I'm sick
of writing about led and humas and all that, I'm
not going to do that. And they found an enormous

(58:33):
reservoir of rare earth elements, which my publisher was saying that,
you know, that's not very sexy. I was like, trust me,
it's going to be sexy. Well, sure enough, it's sexy
now because everybody's.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Talking about them.

Speaker 6 (58:43):
So they've got a huge in the real world. There's
a large depositive rare earth elements found in India and
the fictional world. We're also in the real world, China
has an eighty percent monopoly on rare element extraction and
refinement and they want to keep that monopoly and we
want to break it. So fictional world going to help
India to extract this rare earth elements covertly, and China

(59:05):
finds out about it and they're trying to break it covertly,
which is all hybrid warfare inside the gray zone of
warfare between peace and war. And that's pretty much where
the book came from.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
And I will note to listeners, I don't think I
mentioned this on the show a few days ago, even
though I probably should have. But when when the you know,
the volume of the rhetoric got really cranked up a
few days ago between the US and China. One of
the things that China announced is they're going to stop
exporting some of these rare earth minerals to to the
United States. So this is this is a very serious

(59:37):
pressure point for the United States, and we need to
get these things wherever they are. And I will also
note to listeners this is sort of a nerdy point.
Rare earth minerals are mostly not very rare, but they
occur in fairly low concentrations, you know, in any given
pound of rock or pound of war, so you know,
you need a big area with billions of tons of war.

(59:58):
And there are some of these, but it's an it's
a massive mining job and then a massive processing job.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
And because of all of.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Our environmental environmental regulations that we have, it it makes
it uneconomic to try to do these things in the
United States. We may have some a big deposit in
Wyoming even But anyway, back, so back to Brad's story. Now,
actually before we get to the plot, you've used the
term now in our conversation also for the title of
the book, Into the Gray Zone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
What's the gray zone?

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
The gray zone is a.

Speaker 6 (01:00:32):
National defense nomenclature nickname for hybrid warfare, basically anything from
absolute peace to trigger pulling war, a gray zone, using
the Ukraine as example.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Grey zone would be in.

Speaker 6 (01:00:44):
Twenty fourteen when Putin sent his little green men in
and said it was a spontaneous uprising and that this
was all done internally. It's not part of Russia. Well,
it was definitely part of Russia. That's gray zone. He's
got plausile deniability. The China belt Rund initiative where they're
doing basically it's a loan sharking operation. They go on
and say I'll loan you this money for this diamond mind,

(01:01:06):
and if you can't pay me back, I'm taking a
diamond mind. Rare earth elements are part of the gray
zone warfare. It goes on the sharp end of the spear.
You've got people getting you know, Iran, it's got proxies
all over the place. We all know now hamas Hu
Thi's Hesba Lah. They do things on behalf of Iran,
but the brand's got plausible deniability of it occurring. That's
all gray zone warfare. So it can go from the

(01:01:26):
benign to you know, Russia. Bot forums doing disinformation in America.
That's grey zone warfare with a little risk all the
way to you know, Hamas slaughtering a bunch of innocence
on behalf of Iran.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
So again, I don't want to give away much because
listeners should just go buy into the Gray Zone and
read it. Well, you can order it today and it'll
be delivered next week. But part of the plot here
is that the the government of China wants to stop
the development of this rare earth mind and in order
to do that, they need to hurt the US.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
And in order to be able to hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
The US, they feel like they need the US focused
somewhere else or focused on a particular thing. So really
they have kind of I'll use a bad analogy. You know,
you hear these terrorist attacks where the terrissole set off
a bomb and then they'll wait for first responders, police,
fire whoever to show up, and then they'll set off

(01:02:26):
another bomb right there to kill them. And and in
a way, it seems like what you've laid out here
would be a similar kind of tactical approach by the Chinese.

Speaker 6 (01:02:36):
Yeah, in this case, the Chinese have they've hired some
guys to basically eliminate the billionaire who who's willing to
do the mining, and the people they've hired, unbeknownst to them,
have actually have their own agenda. So they're going to
take Chinese money and do what they they say they're
going to do, and then do something completely different until
they're off the rails doing their own thing as part

(01:02:59):
of the Gray War doing. They have their own issues,
their own motivations, and neither Now China is like, what
have we let loose? Because that's going to make us
look bad if these guys go nuts and we of course,
as in the book itself, pike Logan's trying to figure
out what in the world's going on here. Something is
more than just you know, it's not just terrorists. They're
trying to blame it on straight up terrorism, but he

(01:03:20):
suspected something more.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Pike Logan doesn't age very much. Do you think Pike
Logan will ever retire?

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:03:29):
That's actually when I first started writing, I was like,
you know, I didn't know i'd have one book published,
much less nineteen and early on I asked a buddy
of mine, Robert Crace, is a well known writer as well.
His guy Elvis Cole when he first started writing, was
a Vietnam vet, and you know now he'd be running
around in a wheelchair. And I said, how do you
How'd you get around this with a series? And he said,

(01:03:50):
Elvis Cole's Superman. He never ages, And I said, that's
what I'm doing. So administrations will change, people will leave,
come and go in the books. That in Pike loob
in universe. But he's aging for every year I age,
he ages a minute, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Which is which is an interesting thing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Not every author does it that way, but you always
know what you're gonna get with Pike Logan. Oh so
very quickly, just about at a time. Are you one
to the next book yet?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
I am?

Speaker 6 (01:04:16):
I uh just got back from Argentina doing on ground
research in Argentina and what spike that was? It turns
out that Triborder region Argentina and Brazil and Paraguay has
the largest concentration of Hesbalah outside of Lebanon.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
What really?

Speaker 6 (01:04:31):
Yeah, yeah, there's actually more Lebanese if you count the descendants.
There's more Lebanese in leven in Brazil than there are
in Lebanon.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Wow, is anybody well this is going to be the
plot of your fiction book. But in in in the
real world, is anybody paying attention to that? Is anybody trying.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
To Yeah, you know it give some high speed let
for a long time members.

Speaker 6 (01:04:56):
It's basically a fundraising element for him. They do drug running,
do crying that of stuff, especially when we put the
sanctions on Iran, and Ran couldn't fund HESBLA as much. Well,
they turned a crime to do it, and they've got
this diaspora down there in the Tribord. The Triple Frontier
is just crime ridden and that's generally what they do,
although in ninety four they did blow up the Israeli
mutual age society down there in Argentina.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Yeah, and so just for listeners, I mean many of
you probably read Brad Taylor's books already, but the plots,
including into the Gray Zone plot is stuff that is
just barely fantastic. But what I mean by fantastic is,
you know, hard to believe. It's right on the edge.

(01:05:39):
And it's because he does so much research that the plot,
even though it's really kind of out there, you think,
you know, maybe that could happen. And that's why the
books are so much fun. Folks, go buy into the
Gray Zone. It's actual releases four days from now, but
you can order it right now and you'll have a
lot of fun reading it. Brad, thanks so much for
being here as always, and of course thanks again for

(01:06:02):
your service to our country.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Thank you appreciate it, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
All right, glad to do it? All right? That's Brad Taylor.
I love it. I really enjoy his books a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
I want to mention right, Mandy and I are here
at this fabulous two point four million dollars show home
in winter Park, and I want to encourage you to
join me and Mandy buying tickets. We both bought our
tickets already. Part of the reason we made sure to
buy our tickets already is that if you buy them
by eleven to fifty nine pm tonight, then you are eligible.

(01:06:32):
In addition to being eligible to win the show home,
you're eligible for the early Bird Prize. The early Bird
Prize is an auty SQ seven SUV and a trip
to Switzerland and forty five thousand dollars in cash. Or
if you don't want the car and the trip, you
just take one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in cash,

(01:06:53):
but you're only eligible for that if you buy tickets
by midnight tonight. Millions raffle dot com again, join me
and Mandy. Our money is where our mouths are. I
buy tickets for this raffle every single year, mightymillions raffle
dot com. We'll be right back on Kawa. Can about
driving home after the show, Well, I'll have to. We'll

(01:07:14):
have to see how that goes. Mandy's here with me,
I mean, she's not in front of me right now,
but she's here in winter Park with me, and she's
gonna be doing her show from right here where I'm
sitting soon and actually half an hour from now, Mandy's
going to join me for the last segment of this show,
and then I'm going to stick around for the first
segment of her show and at least for the last
segment of my show, because she's in charge of what

(01:07:35):
to do with her show. I thought it might be
fun to do and ask instead of ask me anything,
ask us anything. So if there's a question you would
like to ask me and Mandy and what I'd like
to do here, I don't want you to send in
a question is just for me or just for her
send in a question at five six six nine.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Zero that you would like to hear and answer from
each of us.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
All right, we'll do some of that between you know,
eleven thirty five and eleven fifty five, and then if
Mandy wants to keep going with that at the top
of her show, we will and if she wants to
do something else.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Then we will do then we will do that. Now,
let me.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Share a story with you that just popped up like
in the past few minutes I think, and is from
the well that didn't last very long files, so you
will recall if you were listening that just a couple
of days ago, I told you about Gary Shapleigh being

(01:08:39):
named as interim head of the IRS, and I'm assuming
he was on track to go to the US Senate
for confirmation to be permanent head of the IRS. I
mean not forever, but you know what I mean. And
Gary Shapley is one of these two guys who was
a whistleblower out of the IRS went to Congress and said,

(01:09:02):
the Justice Department and the I R S are are
slow walking the Hunter Biden tax investigation, and we are
certain that Hunter Biden has committed tax crimes and he's
being protected by the government, and these they came forward,
and you know, there eventually was a trial of Hunter

(01:09:24):
Biden on some of the stuff. I won't get into
all that, but these guys were pretty brave, and there
was some retaliation against them by the I R S,
as I guess you might expect in any large and
somewhat corrupt organizations, As most large organizations are a little
bit corrupt, a little bit self protective. They don't care
as much about doing the right thing as as they

(01:09:47):
care about making sure that they can keep doing their thing.
So I told you that Gary Shapley had been named
as head of the I r S. And I said,
you know, he's a very senior I R S got,
and I don't know enough about him to say for
sure he's qualified to be head of the IRS, but
I bet that he is. And I was glad that

(01:10:08):
he got some kind of reward for having the courage
to come out and say the government is protecting Hunter Biden.
It was a ballsy thing to do. One other guy
did it with him, Ziggler, I think was the name.
So anyway, I told you a couple of days ago
the new head of the IRS, Gary Shapley, let me
share this with you. I got this alert just ten

(01:10:31):
minutes ago from the New York Times. The acting commissioner
of the Internal Revenue Service is being replaced after Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessant complained to President Trump that the latest
leader of the agency had been installed without his knowledge
and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk. According to

(01:10:51):
five people with knowledge of the change and the sensitive
discussions that precipitated it, mister Besant believed that mister Musk
had done an end run around him to get Gary
Shapley installed as the interim head of the IRS, even
though the tax collection Agency reports to mister Bessant. Mister

(01:11:11):
Musk's Department of Government Efficiency pushed the appointment through White
House channels, but mister Bessant was not consulted or asked
for his blessing. The people said they spoke on condition
of anonymity to discuss the private conversation. Bessont got Trump's
approval to unwind the decision. The next acting head of
the IRS, which has seen a conveyor belt of temporary

(01:11:32):
leaders under mister Trump, is expected to be the Deputy
Secretary of the Treasury Michael Falkender, he would hold the
role until the President's nominee for the permanent role. Okay,
so I was wrong when I said I thought Shapley
was in line for the permanent role. It looks like
former Congressman Billy Long is in line for the permanent role.
Billy Long, by the way, he has got some issues. I'm

(01:11:54):
not at all certain that that guy will be confirmed
in any case.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Michael Falkender would hold the role until Billy Long.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
If approved by the Senate, and I think that's not
a sure thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Takes over.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Chapley, a longtime IRS agent, was lauded by conservatives as
he publicly argued that the Justice Department had slow walked
its investigations into Hunter Biden's taxes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
What else?

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Trump picked Chaply this past Tuesday, after the previous IRS
interim head, Melanie Krauss, decided to resign. She quit after
the Treasury Department agreed to give ice IRS data to
be used to deport illegal aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Then New York.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Times actually uses the term undocumented immigrants, but I like
illegal aliens. After telling colleagues on April eighth that she
would take the administration's deferred resignation offer.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Missus.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Kraus remained in the role until mister Musk forced the
change on Tuesday. There's a lot more to it, but
I'm gonna leave it there anyway. So that's from me.
That didn't last very long, files, So Scott Bessint was
interim head of the IRS for about fifty hours or
something like that. That's probably an all time record, even

(01:13:16):
for the Trump administration, which is not famous for people
staying in jobs for very long.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
All right, don't forget.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
In about twenty three minutes, Mandy's gonna join me in
the rossover into the Mandy Verse. So Mandy's gonna hang
out with me for the last half hour of my show,
and then I'll hang out with Mandy for the first half.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
Hour of her show, and at least for that part
of my show.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
I would love to do and ask us anything, So
text whatever question you like at five six six nine zero.
Nothing obscene, right, nothing obscene, and please make it a question.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
For both of us, because I know it would be rude.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
To Mandy if you just asked a question of me,
and it would be rude to me if you just
asked a question of Mandy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
Ask a question of both of us, and we'll.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Get through whatever we can. And then if Mandy wants
to keep going at the top of her show, she
will make that decision. We'll be right back. Keep it
here on KOA. It looks like the snow is moving
into Denver. Now we'll see how I do driving home
in a couple hours.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
So we are.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
At this beautiful two point four million dollars show home.
That is the grand prize in the mighty millions Raffle
this year. That's to benefit Children's Hospital Colorado. Mandy and
I bought our tickets already. I buy tickets every year.
I think Mandy does too, and I appreciate Children's Hospital
so much. I just also want to remind you that
if you buy your tickets before midnight tonight, that you

(01:14:38):
will be eligible for the early Bird prize, which is
out EESQ seven suv and a trip to Switzerland and
forty five thousand dollars in cash. Right, But you have
to buy the tickets by midnight tonight in order to
be eligible for that prize. And of course you'll be
eligible anyway for this house and lots and lots and
lots of other things they give away and I'll also
mention that all of the large there's lots of small prizes. People,

(01:15:00):
there are lots of stuff to win, right, I've won
a small prize in this lottery myself. I haven't won
a house. But the big prizes, the cars, the houses,
the expensive trips, all that stuff, all of those prizes
come with bonus cash to cover the taxes. So I
just wanted to make sure you knew that, all right,
So let me just share this story with you. I

(01:15:20):
think Mandy pays a little more attention to a lot
of the kind of health related, physiology related subjects than
I do. We were actually talking about it in the
car on the drive over, but I saw a story
that I thought was really interesting. So this whole GLP
one category of drugs is very very fascinating, right, And
the stuff that they're saying that some of these GLP

(01:15:42):
drugs can do now goes way beyond weight loss. They're
talking about, you know, reducing alcohol cravings and alcoholics and
just on and on, so many possible things with these
drugs now. Of course, so there's two stories that I
want to share with you about these GLP one drugugs,
which are much more interesting. Just as a radio show topic,

(01:16:03):
as a business topic, as a health topic, than most
drugs are because they're they're everywhere and people are using
them constantly. So one of the things you know about
these drugs is they have been very expensive. There was
a lot of talk about these drugs costing fifteen hundred
dollars a month, that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
And then there was a shortage of some aglutide key
ingredient in some of these things.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Because there's so much demand for the drugs.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
When there's a shortage of a drug, the FDA can
allow these organizations called compounding pharmacies to make their own
versions of the drug for as long as there is
a shortage. Now the FDA has said there's no more
shortage and the compounding pharmacies can't do it anymore. Now,
the compounding pharmacies, we're selling this stuff for two hundred
dollars a month, one hundred and fifty dollars a month,

(01:16:51):
that kind of thing again, where patients were paying more
on the area of you know, thirteen hundred a month
on average. Now the FDA is saying you can't make
these sort of copycat versions anymore because it's patent violation.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
So there's two things you need to know now. The
brand name. The big brand name.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Companies that are well a couple of them, Eli, Lilly
and Novo Nordis have cut their prices to five hundred
dollars a month for thirteen hundred dollars a month because
they want to, you know, keep market share and keep
more customers and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
The other thing that's going to be interesting, and we
had a.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Guest on the show talking about this maybe a month ago, actually,
my friend Greg, who works in this area, and that
is some of the compounders may challenge the government, maybe
not saying you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
Know, we defy you, but rather they'll keep.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
Making this thing and then they'll mix something else into it,
like vitamin A. Right, They'll mix some vitamin into it,
and they'll say, well, this is a different product now,
and we're just going to keep selling it even though
it's that drug, but it's that drug with something else,
so it's really not the same and we're going to
keep selling it. So I do think they're going to
try that because there's so so much money at stake.
So anyway, if you been getting one of these drugs

(01:18:01):
from a compounder, just be aware pretty soon you're probably
not going to be able to get it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
And then the other story that I wanted to share
with you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
Is that Eli Lilly announced yesterday that they seem to
have very good results in there in human testing of
a pill version of this. Now there is already a
kind of a pill version, but you have to take
it on an empty stomach, and it's got a lot
of other problems, this thing. And maybe I'll attempt to

(01:18:31):
pronounce the chemical name or or for glipron, or for glipron.
I know they say it's showing promising results and it
could basically replace the injectable drug with a once a
day pill, so keep an eye on that as well.
I don't take any of this stuff, but if it's
if it's helping people, you know, I got some issues

(01:18:52):
with going to you know, using drugs rather than like
eating better and exercising, because after all, using drugs to
get skinnier, it does make you skinnier, but it doesn't
it doesn't help your health the way that just living
healthier does. But I guess if you're not gonna live healthier,
you know, it's better to not be obese, So taking
this stuff is probably better than nothing. All right, keep

(01:19:12):
texting us these questions at five six six nine zero.
Ask us anything for me and Mandy send questions you
want us both to answer, not just for me, not
just for her, and Mandy and I are gonna answer
your questions right after this.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Keep it here on KOA. So that's Mandy, I'm ross.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Mandy's gonna stick around and either ruin or not the
last segment of my show, and I'm gonna stick around
and either ruin or not the first segment of her show.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
And where are we today, Mandy?

Speaker 4 (01:19:36):
We are at this absolutely stunning, mighty millions raffle house
that some person is actually going to win, and Children's
Hospital is the beneficiary of all this, And I just
wanna can I have a moment on Children's Hospital because
my kid is a patient there, she's part of their
headach clinic. And the first time we went in there,
I was absolutely dazzled by how efficiently they run Children's Hospital.

(01:20:00):
And since then I've had a chance to do a
tour of it, and it is such an astounding facility,
not just for the kids it serves, but also parents
because we're the only children's hospital in about a thousand
mile radius, right, So people come from nine states to
come to this children's hospital, and so when kids are
there fighting difficult, challenging illnesses, then they have places for

(01:20:23):
parents to stay overnight. I mean, it's just it is
such a wonderful operation that even if you didn't want
to win this stunningly beautiful house, which you should, I do,
they are worth a tax deductible donation. I'm just saying
that I got to move myself over. I don't like
like talking sideways. Yeah, we don't have an audience. Shannon
has seen this show before he does. He's not impressed.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
Yeah, you are a little too close to me.

Speaker 7 (01:20:46):
Yeah, it's weird. We're always touching me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
And if you if you go to mighty millions raffle
dot com and buy your tickets before midnight tonight, then
you're eligible for the early Bird prize, which is this
fantastic out e suv and a trip to Switzerland and
forty five cash.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
And Mandy was in Switzerland. Was that a listener thing?

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:21:03):
That was just me and and it was one of
my favorite places in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
Was that the Christmas Market?

Speaker 4 (01:21:07):
No, that was we were there at Christmas, but we
only went to a few Christmas markets because they shut
down before Christmas. We went to the Monterey No Montro
Montro Christmas Market, which was just incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
Highly recommend, highly recommend.

Speaker 1 (01:21:22):
All right, let's go through some of the questions that
people that people have asked. And I did ask for
folks to ask one question that we would both answer.
One listener sent in though a question for you and
a question for me within the same text, and I
just think we should do this one and then.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
We'll only do ones where we're answering the same question.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
Hey, Mandy, what is your favorite control voltage for a
vacuum tube?

Speaker 4 (01:21:51):
Golly, that's like picking from you and your children kind
of thing. That's just that's a really tough I mean,
if I had that, if I had to choose one,
it would probably be like twelve point six voltage. I'm
a huge fan of the twelve A series, especially, I
mean the twelve A x seven.

Speaker 7 (01:22:10):
It doesn't get any better than that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
I couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 7 (01:22:13):
Yep, Okay, what's your question?

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
The question for me is, roster, you prefer an exfoliant
or moisturizer for leg washing. So I think that on
those occasions when I really need to wash my legs.
The exfoliant is a much better thing for me. I
don't need the moisturizer so much. I've got plenty of
natural oils in my skin. I do very much like
the ones that have finally ground apricot.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Oh yeah, apricot seed or pit right as the exfoliant.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
And then sometimes if the legs are feeling a little
raw after that, maybe maybe some kind of shade butter products.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Yeah, I think you can't be would be fine.

Speaker 7 (01:22:54):
I agree whole heartedly. Well done.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
Okay, do you.

Speaker 4 (01:23:00):
People think you're too smart for us? I don't think
I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
So, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
Uh, aisle or window seat? And why which one's better
than the other.

Speaker 4 (01:23:08):
When it's a longer haul, I prefer a window seat
because I actually look out the window. I like to
look at this great green you know, this beautiful earth.
I love looking out the window. But if it's on
a short haul, I'm gonna get on the aisle because
I just am going to be up down. I just
want to get off the plane.

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):
I'm I'm pretty much with Mandy on that. I'll word it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
Yeah, I mean it's basically that if I think I'm
going to sleep on the flight. I want to be
on the window because I can lean against that wall
and sleep all right. I also don't like it when
I'm on the aisle when the the cart comes through
and bangs into me. Right, But if it's a very
short trip and I'm not going to sleep, then it's
more convenient to get up and go to the bathroom.
If you're you don't have to ask somebody else to
get out.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
Of the way.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
So so there you go. We're pretty much on the
same page. Uh, let's see Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie.

Speaker 7 (01:23:55):
You did somebody did not test that?

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 4 (01:23:59):
We literally talk about this last night at dinner. I'm
I'm all the way Stevie Nicks. I love everything about
Stevie Nicks, her her vibe, her attitude. And I told
Ross last night I am fascinated by the story of
Fleetwood Back because they all at some point like slept
together and they and they swaw partners, and yet they
still went out and made music, even though some of

(01:24:20):
it was passive, aggressively written about other band members. The
fact that they have stayed together as long as they
have is mind blowing to me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
It's so perfectly late sixties, early seventies, all sleeping with
each other, it is. And okay, so my answer is,
if we're talking about, you know, who would you rather
fool around with, I mean, Stevie's hot or was back
in the day. And but if we're just talking about singing, yeah,
I'll take Christine McVie.

Speaker 7 (01:24:50):
So Stevie's a total package in Mike, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Stevie's total package.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
But if we're just talking about like grabbing the vine,
you know you didn't text.

Speaker 7 (01:24:56):
That to the text. Nobody actually asked me.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
Yes, someone asked that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
So for me, if I'm just gonna go pick up
a you know, vinyl album and I'm not looking at anybody,
I'm just gonna hear a voice, I rather hear Christine McVeigh,
I'd still rather he So, so there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
I like the gravel, You like the gravel.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
All right, Let's see this may be too heavy a question.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
What is the grounding of your moral compass?

Speaker 4 (01:25:22):
I think the grounding of my moral purpose and this
is kind of a it is just trying to do
the right thing and be a good person, because I
think that for me, if you try to do the
right thing, and you try to make sure you're treating
other people kindly, and you're you're making good choices as
best you can because nobody's perfect.

Speaker 7 (01:25:42):
Then I think the.

Speaker 4 (01:25:43):
Outcomes that you have in the world, I think you're
just a better influence in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Let me just follow up though, the original grounding of
your moral compass.

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
Do you think it came from religion or Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:25:56):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:25:57):
I mean because I grew up Catholics, So say, oh,
want about Catholicism. The dogma of Catholicism is very solid morally, right,
I mean it's now it's it's based in it's fear
based morality, like if you do this, you're gonna go
to Hell kind of thing. So there's a bit of
coercion there. But the underlying principles are good. I mean,

(01:26:19):
you know, the under the underlying principles of making good choices,
not violating the Ten Commandments, you know, trying to be
a good person. Those are strong and I my parents
instilled that in me to always work very very hard
and try to be a good person, like leave a
good mark on the world. If everybody just tried to
do that, we'd be so much better off.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
And before I answer that my question, a bunch of
listeners are texting in the same thing about what we're
when we're talking about mighty millions raffle. So I just
want to clarify. So Mandy mentioned tax deductibility. I think
what Mandy was talking about is if you just if
you make a donation two children in hospital, it's tax deductible.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
It is true that the raffle tickets are not correct.

Speaker 4 (01:27:06):
I always a little donation, but when you buy your tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
And so what Mandy was saying, and maybe a few
of the funks, but but what I heard Mandy say
was if you don't feel like doing a raffle, but
you still want to support the hospital, you can make
a tax deductible donation. So that's that's what that was, Okay,
so grounding of my moral compass. Actually, to me, this
question is kind of interesting because of how different my

(01:27:28):
answer is from yours. Right, So I've I don't say
this a lot on the radio because I don't want
to like anyone to think I'm trying to.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
Piss people off or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
But I've been an atheist since I was five or
six years old, although kept going to synagogue with my
parents had my bar.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Mits foot went through the motion, through all.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
That, and very proudly Jewish, but more in a more
in a cultural sense. And but so for me, my
moral compass, which I think is is very is very strong.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
When I care a lot about it. I think listeners
can tell.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
But it's not based on religion, and I'm not exactly
sure what it's based on. But I will say the
thing that has come closest to reflecting my moral compass
is ein Rand.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
And when I read ein Rand, it didn't change.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
How I thought my affirmed it affirmed it and it
and it made me think, Wow, there's somebody else out
there who thinks.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
The way I do.

Speaker 1 (01:28:23):
So I if you, if you, you know, if you
want to get super nerdy and philosophical, you can go
look up Inrand or the Philosophy of Objectivism. And that's that.
That describes me.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Who looks better in a blouse Ross or Mandy?

Speaker 7 (01:28:37):
It depends.

Speaker 4 (01:28:37):
I mean, he looked really good in the Kowa blouse
that he was wearing, which he is not wearing today,
by the way, right, glad you got your other blouse
out of the closet and did that?

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
Maybe looks better in Blaus. Uh, let's see. Would you
rather be ultra smart or ultra rich?

Speaker 4 (01:28:57):
Ultra smart? Yeah, I just can't imagine life as a
stupid person. But sometimes I'm jealous, aren't you jealous of
truly dumb people who are so stupid they don't even
know they're stupid, and they just blaze a trail through
life doing dumb things, but somehow always managing to bounce
off the guardrails enough to keep going.

Speaker 2 (01:29:15):
I'm remarkable.

Speaker 7 (01:29:18):
Sometimes I envy that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
My answer is I would rather be ultra smart. I
want to be rich. Yeah, I think that if you
are ultra smart, you can be rich enough, right, And
I don't need to be ultra rich, So I will
take ultra smart because I think if I were ultra smart,
I would be rich enough to be happy even if
not ultra rich.

Speaker 4 (01:29:38):
Well, I know ultra smart people with no motivation who
are not who are wasting all of their ultra smartness,
and that is a very frustrating thing for me. I
hate wasted potential. I mean woof hate it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
I'm not sure I want to put Mandy in the
position of ask answering this question.

Speaker 4 (01:29:56):
Correct me, your people cannot have asked anything worse than
the same guy who asks about the size of my
nipples on the text slide.

Speaker 7 (01:30:02):
What yeah, yeah, so whatever you got, it's not that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
No, I'm just moving on. Do you covet one another's
time slot? I do? Would you consider swapping it only occasionally?

Speaker 7 (01:30:15):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
Answer no, No.

Speaker 4 (01:30:18):
Ross has the best time slot. It is the best
time slot. I believe for a talk show host to
have free the rest of the day. You knock it
out early, you take care of business. I'm not saying
if anything happens to Ross, you should look at me, Okay,
but I'm just saying if something did Ross. You know,
not that I want anything bad to happen, but you

(01:30:40):
know so.

Speaker 1 (01:30:41):
If what I'll say is, if if something bad happens
to me and Mandy shows up in a Bentley, you
might go check whether she took out some life insurance
on me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
And then maybe you get it.

Speaker 7 (01:30:55):
I'm not motivating enough to kill you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
I don't. I do not covet Mandy's time slot.

Speaker 7 (01:31:00):
I like mine.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
All right, Another radio question, And by the way, folks,
we've got, you know, one hundred questions, so we're not
going to get to all of them. But You're welcome
to send in a question if.

Speaker 7 (01:31:09):
You want, and we'll just carry it over for the
first out right.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
So we'll spend more more time on this.

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
Ask us anything instead of asked me anything five six,
six nine zero, Send the question, h Mandy, who Well
this for both of us. Who had the most influence
on you as you began your radio talk show career.
Let me just see there was a little more what
talk show host do you admire local or not? Past
or present? And this listener was a big Paul Harvey fan.

Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
I at the time when I first got my own show,
I was listening to Neil Boards.

Speaker 7 (01:31:41):
I love Neil Boards.

Speaker 4 (01:31:42):
He was out of Atlanta, he since retired, and then
I found out he has a house in Naples and
I was in Fort Myers, and then he sent me
an email and said he was a big fan of
the show. It was like it was like I got
kissed by the Pope. I mean, it was what I
literally set back, haha, ha, who is this?

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:31:58):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:31:59):
Yeah, totally, who is this?

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:32:01):
And it was Neil And we had dinner and became friends.
And so it's not that he directly gave me a
lot of advice or anything like that. But it was
nice being recognized by him because I didn't have a
program director. I mean, I was basically just making stuff
up as I go, and for him to say you're
doing a good job was really very, very affirming and

(01:32:23):
really important at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
That's a great now out here.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
Yeah, and he was really good, and as I recalled,
he was more libertarian liberty most of the big hosts. Yeah.
I'll answer that question a second. I just want to
address one of their listener listener question Rass and Mandy,
can you get me Avalanche tickets for Dallas Stars at
Colorado Avalanche Game six, Colorado's third home game if necessary,

(01:32:47):
on Thursday, May first, at Paul Arena.

Speaker 7 (01:32:49):
No, I too will say no.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
Okay, So the answer who biggest influence on me? I
probably would name more more than one. But if you're
gonna if you're gonna ask, okay, I'm gonna change the
question very slightly.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
Who gave me the best piece of radio advice ever.

Speaker 7 (01:33:09):
I'm gonna say Mike Rosen.

Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
It was Peter Boyle's on a day when I was
at KOA to fill in for Mike Rosen and Boyles
was on earlier, and so I went to say hello
to Boyles in the k House studio and this is
gonna be my first time ever on KOWA on a weekday, right,
this is probably ten years ago, and I and I

(01:33:34):
said to I said to Peter, I'm I'm a little nervous.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
I don't know if I'm enough like Rosen for his
listeners to like me.

Speaker 1 (01:33:44):
And Boyles looked me dead in the eye and said,
do your own effing show, and then he elaborated, don't
try to.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
Be like anybody else. You won't be good at being
anybody else.

Speaker 7 (01:33:57):
And that guy's already a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
So to me that was that's probably like the number
one radio advice that I've never ever forgotten.

Speaker 4 (01:34:09):
I've given that to dozens of people as their starting podcasts,
because everyone has something in their mind of what they
want to be like. And I'm like, but that already exists,
So why are people going to listen to you?

Speaker 7 (01:34:19):
You have to be different, you have to be yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
Which one of you would win the Manituo mile?

Speaker 7 (01:34:25):
What is the Manitou mile?

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
Is that I know?

Speaker 4 (01:34:28):
I'm I'm not gonna ross one hundred percent? Like yeah,
I would say one hundred percent Ross, There's no doubt
in my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:34:35):
Probably me.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
Uh, would you rather be able to instantly fluently speak
a language of your choice or or a play any
instrument you want?

Speaker 7 (01:34:46):
Oh? Wow, that's so hard.

Speaker 4 (01:34:49):
That's like Sophie's choice for me because the language thing
would be amazing.

Speaker 7 (01:34:54):
But I have no musical ability whatsoever. Like, I just don't.

Speaker 4 (01:34:58):
I can't play an instrument, and I've tried, and I've
always wanted to. But I think at this stage of
my life, I would probably do the foreign language thing,
because especially if I could change it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
Is there a particular language. What if you couldn't change it,
you had to pick.

Speaker 4 (01:35:11):
A land, Yeah, that would be harder. Then I might
choose the other that. Yeah, if I could only do
one language, that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):
I would probably. You can only do one instrument, That's fine.

Speaker 7 (01:35:18):
Though, because I probably I want to know how to
play the.

Speaker 4 (01:35:21):
Guitar, because you can take a guitar everywhere, you don't,
you know, it's like a piano.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
Yeah, haul that around. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:28):
So I think, at the risk of being boring, I
agree with Mandy, And part of part of the reason
I agree with Mandy, like if you had asked me
this question twenty years ago, I might I might have
said language, yeah, and I probably would have picked Spanish
because I speak French and some Dutch already.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
Spanish is just so freaking useful.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
But these days you just turn on tap on your
phone and someone speaks Spanish into it and it speaks
English to you, or you speak English to it and
it speaks or shows Spanish or whatever language, Russian to
the or a gal So I think I would go
with the musical instrument, even though I will tell you, Mandy,

(01:36:07):
my mom was a concert pianist and made me take
piano lessons growing up, and then I switched the violin.
I did guitar for a little while. I was never
very good at any of it. I was kind of
sort of passable at violin, and I just told my
mom I'm not very interested in it. And mom said
to me, you know, when when you're an adult, if
you can't play a musical instrument, you're really gonna feel

(01:36:28):
like something is missing from your life. And and now
I'm an adult and I can't play a musical instrument.
I and I want to say to my mom, if
you're if you're listening, you you were absolutely wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:36:42):
Okay, No, I've tried as an adult. As a kid,
I took guitar in college and I got a pity
c from the teacher because I tried so hard. I
was like, and it was like one of those where
she gave you.

Speaker 7 (01:36:52):
This look like hmm, oh, you tried so hard. I'm terrible.
It just it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
If you could have an I'll answer this question first,
just just to switch up the order. If you could
have any kind of pet it was not a dog
or a cat, what would you choose. And I'm gonna
cheat a little bit because I'm gonna name a kind
of pet that I have had in the past. A
Vietnamese miniature pot belly pig. Oh gosh, I love those
little Why don't you just get another one?

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:37:18):
Maybe maybe that would make agnes happy.

Speaker 7 (01:37:22):
Yeah, and not a threatening you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):
Know tors are you know, stocky little cinderblocks just like Agneses.

Speaker 7 (01:37:28):
Yeah, I'd want an otter.

Speaker 4 (01:37:31):
I mean they have the like they have their little
pocket for their rock, you know, and they got the
little cute human hands.

Speaker 7 (01:37:35):
It would it would be fun to have an hotter.

Speaker 2 (01:37:38):
I'm not sure I should say this on the air,
but I'm going to ye.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
If going to space for three minutes makes Katy Perry
an astronaut, does that make Ross a guynecologist?