Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, March 8th, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 18 UTC as we are starting to record. I am Sam Minter.
Sam: Ivan Bo is not with us this week. He messaged me actually a couple days ago
Sam: at this point saying he was sick and he was feeling worse every day than the day before.
Sam: And he had a lot of other stuff going on too, so he wasn't able to make it.
Sam: So I put out my usual, hey, does anybody want to join us? And this time we have Ed.
Sam: Hello, Ed. Welcome back to Curmudgeon's Corner.
Ed: Hello. It's been a while.
Sam: Yeah, it's been a while. Oh, I should check my notes. Let's see when you were last here, Ed.
Sam: You were last here on August 3rd, 2024.
Ed: My anniversary.
Sam: Oh, there you go. And so, you know, I will mark that you are now here with us today.
Sam: Okay. um so anyway
Sam: we're gonna have our usual sort of thing we will
Sam: talk about sort of less newsy stuff uh at the
Sam: beginning of the show and then we'll move on to more current events focused
Sam: stuff as we progress and as i usually do when we have a guest i'm let the guest
Sam: drive so ed will determine what topics he wants to talk about and i will react
Sam: and chat with him and all that kind of stuff,
Sam: but, but yeah, Ed's going to drive.
Sam: I will do my media review to start with a, yeah, I have a movie.
Sam: I have a movie to talk about. It'll be very exciting. I'm sure.
Sam: Um, and yeah, so, so Ed, what, how, how do you want to start?
Sam: Oh, first of all, I should just say, you know, it's been since August that I
Sam: talked to you. Um, how you doing?
Ed: Pretty well, actually. We just got back Monday from a trip to India and Nepal,
Ed: which was a fantastic trip.
Ed: Really had a ball until I came down with influenza the last three days of the trip.
Sam: Yeah. Good way to end.
Ed: Yeah, I was almost over it. And then this morning when I woke up,
Ed: I've got a sore throat and I have a horrible feeling that I'm coming down with
Ed: a strep throat in addition to that. So if I start coughing or looking sick,
Ed: I may have to step out for a minute.
Sam: We'll see. Yeah, yeah.
Ed: But I already have an appointment with my primary doc next Monday for a routine
Ed: visit. So I figure rather than going in and get a throat culture now,
Ed: I'll just wait and have her check that Monday.
Sam: Yeah.
Ed: But anyway, I'm feeling better than I did four days ago.
Sam: Well, that's good. Yeah. Yvonne mentioned, like, I guess wherever he is,
Sam: something's been going around and he got it. And so, you know, yeah, as far as I know.
Ed: This, this has been a bad flu year for the whole nation, even with a vaccine.
Ed: I got the vaccine. I get it every year religiously.
Ed: In some years I get it twice this year and I don't need it twice because I've got flu.
Sam: Nice. Yeah. No, I've lucked out so far this season. I haven't really had anything.
Sam: I don't think, but of course, as soon, because I've said that now I'm going
Sam: to be like on my ass next week with something.
Ed: Well, you know, it's been since COVID five years ago right now, I have had,
Ed: two episodes of COVID, which were incredibly mild.
Ed: I mean, for a day, I ran a temp of 99 and a half and had a little sore throat and then was well.
Ed: I have not had anything else, no colds, no flus or anything. So I was really spoiled.
Ed: And of course I let my guard down on the trip and didn't wear my mask all the time.
Ed: So I'm paying for being stupid.
Sam: Well, there you go. So do you have something else in mind for this beginning
Sam: or do you want to talk about your trip?
Ed: Well, I could talk about the trick a little bit. It was, this is one of the
Ed: companies that specializes in working with alumni associations.
Ed: So the members, the tour group were all people associated with the University
Ed: of Chicago as alumni or spouses of alumni.
Ed: So it was right off the bat, it was kind of fun because we had some fairly common denominators.
Ed: A couple, three of us were doctors, several lawyers, and then various other
Ed: people in the group. But the trip itself was, you know, I've never been anywhere quite like India.
Ed: I've been in lots of crowded places.
Ed: It was fascinating. They have a natural preserve there to preserve an area for
Ed: tigers that we spent two days in.
Ed: And as we were going there, the guide said, look, I've been doing this 27 years now.
Ed: I've only seen tigers about four or five times. Don't get your hopes up.
Ed: So we got there the first day, went out in the afternoon and saw a mother and
Ed: her cub and got several pictures of her.
Ed: Then the next day we went back again and we followed, I think it was four tigers
Ed: all together for over an hour.
Ed: They were going around the lake and doing various things. And we just kind of
Ed: stayed on the road going and walking. And it was incredible seeing them in their habitat.
Ed: Plus, we saw several other animals. We saw something called a sloth bear.
Ed: And from a significant distance, we saw one leopard.
Ed: But, I mean, he was up on the side of a mountain. We could barely see him. But we did see a leopard.
Sam: Nice.
Ed: Yeah. So it was the Taj Mahal, of course, we went to.
Ed: We went over to the Ganges and spent a day watching people bathing their sins
Ed: off. So perhaps one of the highlights was one evening we went to spend the meal
Ed: and a couple, three hours with an Indian family.
Ed: It's a married couple who had one daughter and then have adopted seven other
Ed: daughters. So they have eight daughters now.
Ed: And the girls all were very poised. They all speak English.
Ed: And one of them sat with each of our tables. We had about six or seven tables
Ed: and talked with us. And we really had a really an interesting evening.
Ed: So that was then the other real highlight was one night we went to a sitar concert.
Ed: OK. And listen to a guy who's one of the more prominent sitar artists in the
Ed: world. He tours around the world.
Ed: And, you know, sitar music is if you just listen to it for a minute or two,
Ed: it doesn't sound like very much.
Ed: But if you sit there and you watch the performer and realize that it's almost
Ed: all improvising, they have a very short melody, and then the rest of the concert
Ed: is improvising off that melody.
Ed: And like any jazz musician who's improvising, they're laughing as they play
Ed: because, wow, that really went well.
Ed: And he was looking over at the percussionist and they would laugh at each other, make faces.
Ed: God, and the music was just mind boggling, I thought.
Ed: Not everybody liked it that much, but I could have sat for hours.
Sam: Very good. You mentioned India and one other place.
Ed: Nepal. We went out hoping to be able to see Everest because it's not that we were in Kathmandu,
Ed: but the smog and dirt in the air was so, we couldn't even see the foothills
Ed: until the very last day when we were just able to make out the foothills a little bit.
Ed: But we still, we toured a couple villages and went several places.
Ed: So it was quite interesting. It was at the end of the Nepal trip is when I came down with my influenza.
Sam: So you didn't actually climb Everest this time?
Ed: No, no.
Sam: Maybe next time?
Ed: I didn't do any mountain.
Ed: My Kilimanjaro was my last mountain climbing. That was five years ago.
Ed: The friend who talked me into that trip wanted to go again this year.
Ed: In fact, he went. He wanted me to go. And I said, you know, Bijou,
Ed: I don't think I'm up to it this year.
Ed: And indeed, that's right. There's no way I would have made it.
Ed: I'm 83 now, so, you know, that day has passed me. It was a wonderful trip.
Ed: Anyone who's in fairly good shape can make it. But when you're in your 80s,
Ed: whether or not you're in good shape for 80, you're still 80.
Sam: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So did I sort of hijacked you to ask about the trip?
Sam: Did you have another non-newsy thing you wanted to talk about that you had in
Sam: mind before I do my movie?
Ed: Nope. Nope. That's what I was going to bring up.
Sam: Okay. See, I just have this mental ability and I was able to like read your
Sam: mind and guess what you were going to talk about.
Ed: So, well, it was the last four weeks. I mean, we got back Monday and other than
Ed: that, it was four weeks over there. So not much else has happened to me. We did.
Ed: My, my iPad broke down about three days into the trip. So I really didn't get to read news very much.
Ed: It's hard to read news and interact with, with, with an iPhone, which is all I had.
Sam: Okay. Okay, so movie for me. We are up to a movie. You know, I have...
Sam: I have such a big backlog at this point because, you know, I caught up on the
Sam: show giving the movies that I'd watched before.
Sam: And then I went a long, long time before I actually, like, updated my master
Sam: list with all the movies I'd seen and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: So we've got, like, a few dozen of these. But the problem is,
Sam: I think I'm actually watching these things at a rate that's maybe even slightly higher than once a week.
Sam: So, like, I'll never catch up if I only do one review a week.
Sam: Like, I might need to do two at some point.
Sam: But I'm going to stick with one a week for now, and then we'll see how it goes.
Sam: But anyway, the next up is something I watched in June. June 7th, 2024.
Sam: For Ralph Breaks the Internet from 2018. Have you heard of this thing?
Ed: I don't think I've heard of that one.
Sam: Okay, so this is a Disney movie. It is a sequel. It is a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph.
Sam: Have you heard of Wreck-It Ralph?
Ed: No.
Sam: So let me talk about both of them in a minute. I did watch Wreck-It Ralph earlier.
Sam: I'll check. I'll check to see when I watch Rocket Ralph. Hold on a second.
Sam: But I'm bringing up the wrong website.
Sam: You know, it is silly of me.
Sam: Okay. I watched Wreck-It Ralph back, which is a 2012 movie, back in 2022.
Sam: And then Ralph Breaks the Internet in June 2024, which was from 2018.
Sam: So basically, the theme of this series is that it's basically about video game
Sam: characters. So the first movie
Sam: is in an arcade and you have the characters of a couple of video games.
Sam: One of them is Wreck-It Ralph, who's sort of a character.
Sam: He's the bad guy in a video game that tries to wreck a building.
Sam: And the hero plumber, you know, clearly inspired by Mario, you know,
Sam: tries to like, it tries to keep him from breaking the building.
Sam: But like the conceit of it is that the video game is their jobs.
Sam: And then the game ends and they go back to their lives. So it's like people clocking out of a job.
Sam: So like Wreck-It Ralph, whose job in the video game is to be the mean villain
Sam: trying to break down the building or whatever, is really a really nice guy.
Sam: And he's good friends with the plumber who's trying to stop him.
Sam: You know, sort of the bell goes off and they like shake hands.
Sam: Good day work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and then go off and go to the bar
Sam: together and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And then the other girl who's in here is Vanellope,
Sam: who's a character in a sort of a racing video game called Sugar Rush,
Sam: which is all sort of like candy and popsicles and little cars running around.
Sam: It's sort of like a version of Mario Kart, but with sort of the candy, girlish theme, etc.
Sam: And the first movie deals with the candy sugar rush game is malfunctioning and they have to like...
Sam: They have to do something. Wait, I'm confusing the two movies.
Sam: I have to make sure I have this right.
Sam: Yeah, in the first game, Vanellope is a glitchable character,
Sam: and there's adventures within the thing.
Sam: And anyway, look, the first movie I gave a thumbs up to, it's a lot of fun.
Sam: These are both animated Disney movies.
Sam: They are cute. They are fun. They are the kind of things that are intended for
Sam: kids, but also aimed so adults will enjoy them as well.
Sam: There's lots of nostalgia bait for older millennials, Gen X,
Sam: etc., who went to physical arcades where you put quarters in the video game
Sam: machines when they were kids.
Sam: And so there's you know this cameos
Sam: by all kinds of video game characters that you would remember from
Sam: when you were a kid in the arcades and the
Sam: you know the first one's very cute there's sort of emotional heart heartstrings
Sam: at the end where you know the they they save vanellope they oh sorry spoilers
Sam: like happy ending sorry i i i maybe shouldn't have given away that there's a happy ending um i'm.
Ed: Not sure how many of us will be watching it.
Sam: But you know they they they they,
Sam: the first one has a bunch of nice heartstrings it works well you end up you
Sam: know with a little tear in your eye the second one they sort of escape the arcade
Sam: and have to go to the internet so what i was saying before about like the the
Sam: the machines malfunctioning and they need to park That's the second one.
Sam: They basically go to the internet to try to find the broken part for the arcade game.
Sam: The first one was a lot of drama within, like, within the game itself and trying
Sam: to go beyond what the programming was and things like that.
Sam: The second one, they escape to the internet, basically, and are in the wider
Sam: world of the internet, you know, trying to find this part and get everything saved.
Sam: The Vanellope character is tempted by getting into sort of grittier,
Sam: more grown-up games that she finds when she's on the internet.
Sam: And, you know, and, you know, again, happy ending.
Sam: Everything's everything's good at the end, but the characters do get to grow
Sam: and move on and not just do what they were doing before.
Sam: And if I had to say the first one's probably a little bit better than the second
Sam: one, but they were both good. I'm going to give a thumbs up to both of them.
Sam: Enjoyable, fun, animated movies. Yeah.
Sam: You know, I honestly found myself thinking, hey, it would be nice if there was
Sam: a third one. There is not a third one yet.
Sam: I don't even see that they're planning a third one.
Sam: But the critical response for the second one, looking at the second one now,
Sam: Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 88%.
Sam: They actually say it levels up on its predecessor with a funny,
Sam: heartwarming sequel that expands on its colorful universe while focusing on
Sam: core characters and relationships.
Sam: And yeah so audiences pulled
Sam: give it an a minus on an a to f scale down
Sam: from an a on the first film so that that sort of
Sam: coincides with me saying it's down a little bit from the first movie but still
Sam: both very good and yeah so ralph breaks the internet do watch both of them if
Sam: you're going to see these movies if you have a kid to watch watch them with
Sam: even better it'll be fun But really,
Sam: look, it's it's nostalgia hacking for people,
Sam: you know, I'd say 40 and above,
Sam: you know, especially like I said,
Sam: especially those who are in the the prime age of like actually seeing actually
Sam: playing video games at physical arcades with quarters, but also going a little
Sam: bit past that to like home consoles and stuff like that.
Sam: The first couple of generations of home consoles, but yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Sam: I recommend them thumbs up. I enjoyed it. You know, watch these movies.
Ed: I'll have to get after my grandchildren. They have some great-grandchildren.
Ed: My youngest grandchild gets her doctor's degree in occupational therapy in a month or two.
Ed: So if they'll just get busy and provide me some great-grandkids,
Ed: I'll have someone I can take.
Sam: Well, there you go. Speaking of which, I'll just throw this out here.
Sam: My sister, my younger sister, who's a veterinarian in Toronto,
Sam: is like eight and a half months pregnant right now.
Sam: So, so any moment now I could be an uncle for the first time and,
Sam: uh, very, very, very excited about that.
Sam: Haven't worked out when we'll go visit the new youngster yet.
Sam: I, I, I'm assuming the new parents will need some time and I'm also sort of
Sam: crushed with some work stuff right now.
Sam: So, so I, I don't know when I'll get up there, but I'll get up there before
Sam: the kid is like too old to, to, to, to meet them and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: You know? So yeah. So I'm thinking of my sister, Cynthia.
Sam: So hopefully all, all that goes as smoothly as you would want it to go and all of that.
Sam: And yeah, I'll mention again, since I just did like, yeah, I'm swamped with
Sam: job stuff now, but very much interested in trying something new.
Sam: So abulsme.com, A-B-U-L-S-M-E.com slash resume. If anybody out there has any
Sam: tips or intros or anybody they'd want to put me in touch with,
Sam: you can see what's on that resume.
Sam: But interested in, sure, things that align with my resume.
Sam: Obviously, that's the most natural path. But also wouldn't mind looking at things that were a change.
Sam: So I am so like wanting something different.
Sam: But anyway, yes, which includes, by the way, if you guys want to like put enough
Sam: into the Patreon to replace my salary so I can just do curmudgeons corner full
Sam: time, I'd be completely up for that as well.
Sam: You know, so if you have the resources to add a few more zeros to your Patreon
Sam: contribution, please go right. I'm not going to stop you, you know.
Sam: So anyway, that is it, I think, for our intro. So we'll take our first break.
Sam: And then when we get back, we'll let Ed pick the first of his more serious current
Sam: events, what's going on in the world right now kind of topics. And we'll go from there.
Sam: So here comes a break.
Sam: Okay, we're back here. So, Ed, what are you thinking?
Ed: Well, I was thinking we might, since I'm a retired physician,
Ed: there's been a lot of medical stuff lately, and I thought we might just kind
Ed: of touch on a few of them relatively short at a time.
Ed: The first one that just kind of, the final steps on it came out yesterday,
Ed: I think, was Gene Hackman's death.
Sam: Ah, yes.
Ed: It turns out after some confusion at the beginning that what happened is he
Ed: was apparently suffering from fairly advanced Alzheimer's.
Sam: Yeah.
Ed: And his wife, who was his caretaker, quite a bit younger than him.
Ed: I think she was in her mid-60s.
Sam: Yeah.
Ed: And he was 95. But she apparently incurred an infection called Hantavirus,
Ed: which is usually seen in New Mexico and Arizona where they lived.
Ed: And the desert mice droppings carry antivirus.
Ed: So it occurs in people who have been cleaning that up. That apparently happened to her.
Ed: And I'm going to guess that maybe she wasn't doing so well herself because as
Ed: far gone as he was in the Alzheimer's, it's a 24-hour-a-day job and people who
Ed: are the only caretaker really get run down.
Ed: But in any event, she died in their laundry room, I think. and he died several days later.
Sam: Let me ask a little bit more, not knowing pretty much anything about Hantavirus.
Sam: Is this something that would have, you know, is it,
Sam: Could it have been treatable? Like, is this something where she would have noticed
Sam: and gone to a doctor and it would have been fine? Or is this something that
Sam: comes on quickly and then it just overcame her?
Ed: Yeah. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I think it doesn't come out just bang and you drop dead.
Ed: There's some time. But as I said, if she was exhausted from taking care of him,
Ed: her own immune resistance would have been diminished.
Ed: And she probably didn't seek help when she got sick. She figured it was a cold,
Ed: upper respiratory illness, which is how it presents.
Ed: And I think it just got ahead of her and she died.
Sam: So this is one of those things where, you know, you sort of,
Sam: like you said, it's sort of like, oh, it's just a cold.
Sam: It's just a flu. I don't even have to worry about this. I'll just like push
Sam: my way through it. And then it gets worse, I guess, rapidly at some point.
Sam: And she fell or passed out or something. And that was it.
Ed: Yeah. Yeah, and as I said, even treated, it's got a fairly high mortality rate.
Ed: It's not a minor illness at all.
Ed: It's kind of one of those relatively rare things that a lot of people don't
Ed: ever encounter and don't think of it.
Ed: The sad part of this is that he then lived several days and apparently is far
Ed: enough gone with his Alzheimer's that he didn't realize that she was dead.
Ed: And he basically starved enough or got weaker and weaker and had a heart attack and died.
Ed: So it's kind of all around, if there's any take-home advice on this.
Sam: Just to complete the story, they also had several dogs.
Sam: One of the dogs was in a crate. The dogs that were not in a crate fended for themselves and lived.
Sam: The one that was in the crate with no food and no water expired after a few
Sam: days because no water. Yeah.
Ed: I think the biggest takeaway I can think on this is if you're taking care of
Ed: a relative or somebody with dementia,
Ed: progressive dementia, you need to have some time off now that you absolutely
Ed: have to find a place where you can have downtime.
Ed: When my father was fairly far gone and dementia, they had a bus that would come
Ed: around, pick people up and take them to the park downtown and they could be
Ed: entertained for several hours.
Ed: And my mother spent those four or five hours sleeping in bed because she knew
Ed: he was safe and she didn't have any.
Ed: And that saved her life because when he finally died of his dementia,
Ed: she was still going strong.
Sam: Right.
Ed: But it's just to think you can take care of somebody alone with dementia is
Ed: a bad mistake. People need to get help.
Ed: They need to get some time off at least a day or so a week in which you're on
Ed: your own and somebody else comes in, family member, nurse, whatever.
Sam: Right.
Ed: But they obviously had no help because they were dead for over a week before the bodies were found.
Ed: If they had had a visiting nurse, there would have been a different outcome there.
Sam: Right. Yeah. No, it's sad all around on that one. Just the sequence events that played out.
Sam: And like you said, there are a variety of opportunities where even if you just
Sam: had somebody else checking in occasionally to say hi.
Sam: Things could have turned out a little bit differently, you know, at various stages.
Sam: Could have saved the dog, could have saved Hackman a little longer,
Sam: maybe even could have saved her, like if, you know, depending.
Sam: So, yeah. So, okay. What other medical thing did you have in mind?
Ed: The next thing on my list is we have the measles epidemic going on in the States.
Sam: Yep.
Ed: And there's a couple observations on that. Number one, measles is probably one
Ed: of the top two or three most infectious diseases that we deal with.
Ed: There's a mathematical formula called R-naught, which is abbreviated with a
Ed: capital R and a zero, that measures how infectious diseases are.
Ed: It's a scale of zero to 16 or 17, something like that.
Ed: Measles comes in at 15, meaning that as a minimum, it means that if one person
Ed: is with a bunch of people who haven't been immunized, at least 15 of them will
Ed: become infected with measles.
Ed: To compare that, for instance, COVID, which we thought of as being a highly
Ed: contagious disease, has an R0 of two to three.
Ed: Polio has an R0 of two. Several other illnesses, I think even And smallpox,
Ed: they have to estimate, but it's our value somewhere in three to five, which is much lower.
Ed: So 15 is huge. Absolutely. And the only way to treat it is to not get it through vaccine.
Ed: If 95 or more percent of the population are vaccinated, that other 5% will be
Ed: likely to get measles because the virus is out there all the time.
Ed: But it won't spread as an epidemic like what's happening in Texas and New Mexico right now.
Ed: And the chances of people dying from it would be very little.
Ed: As a rule, about one out of every 1,200 kids who gets infected dies.
Ed: And we've had one already.
Sam: I think the latest update is one kid and one adult have now died.
Ed: Yeah, an adult. Neither of whom I think were vaccinated. I don't know if it's...
Sam: No, that's correct. No vaccinations.
Ed: Yeah. Now, the other thing is that,
Ed: There are some over-the-counter remedies pushed by the anti-vaxxers and other people.
Ed: One of those is vitamin A.
Ed: And there is a little science behind
Ed: that because in countries where malnutrition and health is very poor,
Ed: vitamin A supplements can help kids who get measles and maybe even lower the incidence slightly.
Ed: But in a country such as ours, where vitamin A deficiency is rare,
Ed: almost non-existent, getting extra vitamin A is not without hazard.
Ed: Because vitamin A is one of the fat-soluble vitamins, which means that it's
Ed: taken up in fat in the liver specifically and stored, and your body doesn't
Ed: get rid of an overdosage very rapidly.
Ed: So one of the side effects of an overdosage of vitamin A is liver failure and
Ed: death, which strikes me as not a great idea.
Ed: The other thing that's...
Sam: And especially, like you said, Americans typically have enough A anyway.
Sam: So even taking the supplement might already be more than you need.
Sam: But also there seems to be a tendency, and I'm not going to say this is universal,
Sam: but among the kind of people who would respond and say, hey,
Sam: I can avoid measles just by taking vitamin A to also just think,
Sam: hey, well, if a little bit is good, a lot must be better.
Ed: That is, we saw that during COVID with the, that, like, what's the hell,
Ed: the stuff they were taking was supposed to take care of parasites.
Sam: The invermicin or whatever it was?
Ed: Yeah, yeah, ivermectin, yeah.
Sam: Yeah, ivermectin.
Ed: Yeah, a little bit's good, taking an IV is even better.
Ed: And, you know, and then, of course, the side of, the other side of that,
Ed: cod liver oil has a lot of vitamin A in it.
Ed: So there are those out there. I'm not going to mention names,
Ed: but there is one fairly prominent citizen. I'll mention it.
Sam: It's RFK Jr.
Ed: Yeah. He is sending vitamin K saying this will help. It doesn't help.
Ed: There's absolutely no studies showing that cod liver oil is a benefit.
Ed: Maybe because it has the A in it, it would have a slight benefit.
Ed: Not enough to prevent death. Not enough to prevent infection.
Ed: It's quackery, basically. And it's kind of sad.
Ed: But what they need to do, and I don't see it happening, is they need to be getting
Ed: down there and having emergency vaccination of everybody who hasn't had the vaccines.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, like, this is one of those clear breaks that having someone like RFK Jr.
Sam: In charge of HNHS, which in turn has all of these health agencies under it.
Sam: Is clear immediately. Like if you had a flat out, like straight up science-based
Sam: response to this, it would be exactly what you said. It would be like, holy crap,
Sam: You know, we thought we had eliminated this disease in this country a while ago. Yep.
Ed: Actually, around 2000, they said it's not there anymore.
Sam: Yeah. And vaccination rates have dropped. We are now having an outbreak in a
Sam: part of the country that has low vaccination rates.
Sam: We are immediately going to go in there with a really strong campaign about
Sam: how you need to protect yourself. you need to protect your family, get the vaccine.
Sam: Here it is. It's free. There are clinics set up all over the place.
Sam: You can get it at your local drugstore or whatever, and just have a massive
Sam: campaign trying to get that to happen.
Sam: Now, we know from what happened with COVID that those kinds of things can get
Sam: politicized and people can be like, no, it's the government trying to control
Sam: me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But the one advantage of having somebody like Trump or even RFK Jr.,
Sam: if he'd actually like suck it up and just follow the science here,
Sam: is that you can perhaps get some of those skeptical people to trust you if you're
Sam: coming from that point of view, if you're someone who they trust anyway.
Sam: You know, and you don't let it become a wedge issue.
Sam: I mean, even during COVID, there's no reason that had to be a wedge issue.
Sam: That could have been a consistent bipartisan. And I mean, hell,
Sam: the vaccine came, you know, Donald Trump was a big pusher of getting the vaccine developed early.
Sam: And he was an early like proponent of it until like it was clear,
Sam: like various other people in his party were like, ah, we don't like this vaccine thing.
Sam: But yeah, no, that would be the approach. Instead, we've got RFK Jr.
Sam: Talking about like cod liver oil, vitamin A and various holistic things.
Sam: And it's just the result is going to be greater spread than we'd see otherwise
Sam: in more dead people. I mean, it's not.
Ed: The other thing we always forget in measles is that one out of every 1,200 kids dies.
Ed: Two or three out of every 1,200 kids has permanent brain, visual,
Ed: and hearing damage because it gets into the brain and does nasty things to them.
Ed: And it's a heartbreaking story early on in this thing of a man who works in
Ed: public health now, whose daughter came down with measles years ago before the vaccines were there.
Ed: And she was doing great. And he was reading her stories at night and entertaining her.
Ed: And then one night she seemed a little drowsy and not responding to well.
Ed: And she was dead 18 hours later.
Sam: Oh, this is Roald Dahl, right?
Ed: I don't remember who it was. It was an editorial. I didn't pay attention to
Ed: who it was. Maybe it was him.
Sam: Let me make. Yeah, this is a famous editorial, and I believe it is Roald Dahl,
Sam: but let me get the difference. Yeah.
Ed: But I think that was before vaccine. So this was like 60 years ago.
Sam: Yeah.
Ed: Yeah, that would be right his age. Yeah.
Sam: Roald Dahl. Okay. My spelling is my, like, my, my, I'm horrible.
Sam: I'm trying to like Google this and like, I can't spell the guy's name.
Sam: I can't spell measles. I can't. Anyway. Yes.
Ed: D-A-H-L.
Sam: It is indeed Roald Dahl. R-O-A-L-D-D-A-H-L. He's famously, he wrote Charlie
Sam: and the Chocolate Factory. He wrote Matilda.
Sam: The letter comes from 1988, which I hadn't realized it.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: Which is right before he died. And it's basically, like you said, it's begging.
Sam: I'll read a little bit of a quote from it that ties along with what you said.
Sam: The full letter is longer. You can find it on, if you just Google Roald Dahl
Sam: measles, you'll find it right away.
Sam: But the quote here, Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old.
Sam: As the illness took its usual course, I can remember reading to her often in
Sam: bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it.
Sam: Then one morning when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on
Sam: her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of colored pipe cleaners.
Sam: And when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers
Sam: and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.
Sam: Are you feeling all right? I asked her. I feel all sleepy. She said in an hour,
Sam: she was unconscious in 12 hours. She was dead.
Sam: So she died in 1962. Like you said, before the measles vaccine.
Ed: Yep. That's the year I started med school.
Sam: And he dedicated a couple of his later books to our James and the Giant Peach and the BFG.
Sam: And yeah, he was just a big...
Sam: He spent a lot of his life after this advocating for vaccines.
Sam: And he was of the opinion that refusal to vaccinate your kids was almost,
Sam: quote unquote, almost a crime.
Sam: And he was one that was pushing for mandatory vaccinations for a lot of things.
Sam: And what we see here is just like over the last couple of decades,
Sam: I mean, for something like measles specifically,
Sam: like independent of some of the misinformation about the risks of vaccines,
Sam: there's been also the sort of thing where, like, well, measles is gone.
Sam: Why, why do we need to vaccinate for it anymore?
Sam: You know, and so a lot of people think that way of like, you know,
Sam: well, this is, this is useless. And the thing is, it's because it's not really gone.
Sam: It's just very, very, very rare at this point.
Sam: And people are protected from it. And the reason it's gone is because everyone was vaccinating.
Sam: And for a lot of diseases, I'm not sure if this is the case with measles,
Sam: but even after you don't have human cases for a while,
Sam: you can have reservoirs hiding out in the animal population,
Sam: or you can have similar diseases that the vaccine would also protect against that could recur.
Sam: There are all kinds of ways for things to come back.
Sam: Now, if you really and truly get to the point where, hey, it's been 150 years
Sam: and there's nothing similar out there at all, okay, maybe you could consider that.
Sam: But take the scientific recommendation on that, not just be like,
Sam: oh, me as a lay person decides there's no risk anymore, so therefore I'm not
Sam: going to take it or have my kids take it.
Sam: Let me ask you one more question about measles before we move on to other stuff. Sure.
Sam: Given the, you know, like you were saying, this has an R0 of 15 compared to
Sam: like two or three for COVID.
Sam: So why do we only have two deaths so far? Why isn't this like going crazy?
Ed: Well, we've had only a thousand cases so far or it's getting close.
Ed: No, it is a couple hundred, I think, so far.
Sam: I know two deaths, but I'm not sure on number of cases.
Ed: The death rate usually is around one out of every 1,200. So we won't have that many deaths.
Ed: And I don't know if they if we haven't had any of the brain infections yet or
Ed: what, but it's it's a relatively small population there, apparently of one of
Ed: the I think of Mennonite sect that have decided they didn't need to vaccinate.
Ed: The majority of the infections have been in those people.
Sam: Well, the thing is, and maybe a majority of the cases are here too,
Sam: but the overall vaccination rate has dropped somewhat just because of the vaccine
Sam: skepticism stuff, like the stuff RFK Jr.
Sam: Is doing in terms of trying to scare people about side effects that don't really
Sam: exist or are incredibly rare. trying to connect things like this to autism, which, like, no, again.
Sam: And even if it were, by the way, with an entire family on the spectrum,
Sam: including myself, I believe, even though I've never been officially diagnosed,
Sam: like, you shouldn't be afraid of that like it's a death sentence anyway.
Sam: But it's not related to the vaccine. Yeah.
Ed: You know, this concept of it's all gone worked with smallpox because the only
Ed: reservoir for smallpox was human beings.
Ed: As far as we know, there aren't any animals that this monkeypox is a similar
Ed: infection, but a lot lower mortality rate.
Ed: Smallpox had 30 to 40 percent mortality rate.
Ed: But there is no smallpox in the world right now. So we don't need to vaccinate for it.
Sam: There's still a couple in vials in a lab somewhere, right? Like,
Sam: you know, somebody could like take one of those vials out and like intentionally
Sam: reintroduce it at some point.
Ed: Which is why for a long time, the military kept on vaccinating us.
Ed: And then somewhere around 1980, they said, we're hurting more soldiers than we're helping.
Ed: And so they quit vaccinating us. And I think that was a wise idea.
Ed: But we still have vaccines.
Sam: You have to do the math. You have to approach it like scientifically.
Sam: You have to say, you have to look at the probabilities correctly in terms of
Sam: like, and this is something that people have trouble with, with anything, right?
Sam: Like they're like, oh, there's a one in a gabillion chance of something really
Sam: awful happening if I take this medicine.
Sam: So I don't want to take it. Well, meanwhile, the chances of you getting some
Sam: disease and having a bad outcome are one in a thousand if you don't take the medicine.
Sam: So like it's, it's, you know, yes, there's a chance that something goes wrong,
Sam: but it's a much smaller chance than the chance of something going wrong if you
Sam: don't take it. So you have to do the math.
Sam: You have to figure this out. You have to like pay careful attention to the studies.
Sam: You also have to like know what the hell you're talking about.
Sam: Like, cause if you look at some of the data sheets on possible side effects
Sam: and stuff, you know, like even the stuff they list on the TV commercials and stuff, you know,
Sam: It's just like, hey, has anybody ever reported this alongside while they were taking the medicine?
Sam: There's not necessarily all the time. Sometimes there is, but there's not necessarily
Sam: proof of a cause effect relationship.
Sam: Those like warnings on the TV commercials don't give you numbers in terms of
Sam: like how likely particular outcomes are.
Sam: There are also certain things that are more or less likely depending on your
Sam: own current medical history. So like, if you've got X, Y, Z,
Sam: then this is counter indicated.
Sam: If you don't, then it's not, you know, it, the point is it's complex and there's
Sam: all kinds of information.
Sam: There's all kinds of uncertainty. And to make a rational decision,
Sam: you have to actually have some, have some expertise and know what the hell you're talking about.
Sam: And the danger is when people come in and see one thing, have no idea what they're
Sam: really looking at and make an off-the-cuff decision that, you know,
Sam: is not an educated decision and is often a bad decision.
Sam: Now, I'm not saying that, you know, patients shouldn't have some right in their
Sam: own treatment. Of course they should.
Sam: But it's important, like, you know, there's this whole death of expertise thing
Sam: going on where everybody thinks that they can figure out everything they need
Sam: and they don't have to pay attention to experts.
Sam: And, you know, I'm sorry, there is a reason you want to pay attention to people
Sam: who spend their whole lives studying something over somebody who spends five minutes, if that.
Sam: Pop and open a Wikipedia page, you know, or, or, or even worse.
Sam: Oh, well, Joe Rogan said so, or RFK Jr. Said so.
Ed: Yep.
Sam: Sorry. I went off for a second.
Ed: Yeah, no problem. I think the, the, the, the reason the justification for having
Ed: mandatory vaccines for kids to go to school is to prevent epidemics in schools,
Ed: obviously, but even beyond that is that there are all sorts of kids anymore
Ed: who have been treated for leukemia and various other things who have compromised immune systems.
Ed: And if your kid takes measles into school, even though that child might've been
Ed: vaccinated, their protection may not be very good and they may get it and die of it.
Ed: I said one patient die of chickenpox when I was in practice.
Ed: It was a little girl. This was before we had the vaccine for chickenpox.
Ed: And this little girl was treated for acute myelogenous leukemia, which I had diagnosed.
Ed: And we were treating her, I was treating her in conjunction with the real oncologist.
Ed: It was a hundred miles trip to the oncologist. So they would send the drugs
Ed: back and I would give them to her and she would see them once a month and me
Ed: a couple of times a month.
Ed: Anyway, her little brothers caught chickenpox at school and five days later
Ed: she was dead. And, you know, I'll never forget sitting there with her mother,
Ed: who's friends of ours, as a child died.
Ed: So, yeah, the vaccines prevent that.
Ed: If there had been a vaccine then and the brothers had been vaccinated,
Ed: that little girl would probably still be alive because she was just then going into remission.
Sam: Yeah.
Ed: Anyway, on that high note.
Sam: It is extremely frustrating when, you know, it's one thing like when COVID was
Sam: brand new, we didn't have treatments. We didn't have a vaccine.
Sam: We were still trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
Sam: There was a lot of people get, you know, informed people like doing their best
Sam: with very limited information.
Sam: And some of the things that were suggested at the beginning turned out to not be relevant.
Sam: For instance, you know, like in the end, it is absolutely clear COVID was airborne
Sam: and not really droplet based surfaces weren't really an issue.
Sam: So like, if you remember at the very beginning, everybody was talking about
Sam: cleaning all the surfaces.
Ed: You know, and we did that when he got back from the grocery store.
Sam: Wipe everything down, wipe everything down now.
Sam: That's good for some other diseases. You know, it's probably a good practice anyway.
Sam: But, you know, and like a lot of the protections that were advocated at the
Sam: beginning assumed droplet was the primary mode of transmission.
Sam: It turns out, no, it wasn't droplet.
Sam: It really was truly airborne, which is really, really fine particles as opposed to bigger droplets.
Sam: And so there, But at first we didn't know anything.
Sam: And so there was a lot of being, you know, we erred perhaps towards overprotection
Sam: or protecting the wrong things in some cases.
Sam: There was always sort of a reluctance to truly embrace the airborne thing.
Sam: I mean, even now people aren't doing what they need to with ventilation.
Sam: But the point is, though, now we do have treatments.
Sam: Now we do have vaccines for COVID, for measles, for chickenpox and all the other
Sam: things you're talking about and a whole host of childhood diseases.
Sam: And thankfully, most people still at this point follow the recommended guidelines
Sam: for young children and get all the vaccinations they're supposed to.
Sam: But the fact that there's a growing percentage who don't and are like,
Sam: yes, science has found good ways to avoid this disease, but we don't want to.
Sam: What? It's just incredibly frustrating.
Sam: Yep. Especially when, like you said, the fact that these,
Sam: the people who decide not to vaccinate are not just affecting themselves because
Sam: for all of these diseases, they can make it easier for it to transmit to other people.
Sam: They can, once they get sick, they get other people sick.
Sam: It's just, you know, it's, it's not, it's not a case where this decision only
Sam: affects you when you have things.
Sam: And measles is a primary example of this, where it really is like,
Sam: if you get that vaccination rate, like really high, like over 95%,
Sam: it makes a huge difference compared to if it's even 90, you know?
Ed: Absolutely.
Sam: So, okay. One more, one more health thing, or did you have another?
Sam: I have another, if you don't.
Ed: Well, I've got another quickie. What is it?
Sam: Well, it may be the same one. What's your, what's your last one?
Ed: Okay. Well, I was just going to comment that there's been some more uproar about
Ed: fentanyl deaths and importing of fentanyl.
Ed: And just, I think it was earlier today or last week, whatever,
Ed: the fentanyl deaths in the United States began dropping in January of 2024.
Ed: At this point, it's down about 60%.
Ed: Of what it was at the peak. It's unclear just what has caused that.
Ed: But one of the things is a drug called naloxone, which probably a lot of people
Ed: should just simply have it.
Ed: You don't know when you're going to be walking down the street and some guy
Ed: will collapse of an overdosage and you can save their life with a dose of naloxone.
Sam: Yeah. My wife is a big proponent of these kinds of things.
Sam: I believe she carries around some and we have some somewhere in the house.
Sam: I should know where it is.
Sam: Um, but, uh, like I don't carry it around, but this is definitely has made a
Sam: big difference in terms of, you know, a people carrying it around, but B just having it,
Sam: available quickly in certain places as well. This is the, it's the nasal spray, right?
Ed: Yeah. That's the one you can, it can be injectable or nasal spray.
Sam: Right.
Ed: A lot of people don't like give shots. So they have the nasal spray.
Sam: Right. And so this is, and basically, you know, Hey, if somebody is having an
Sam: overdose and you got this stuff, you can take it from being,
Sam: you know, an acute situation to a better situation quickly.
Sam: Like, uh, I, I'm not sure if it completely solves everything.
Sam: Like you don't even have to follow up, but I, you, you probably do.
Sam: Right. Ed, like it, it helps.
Ed: Uh, some people will need two or three doses because it wears off fairly quickly.
Ed: So yeah, no, you can't just give it and say, okay, you're cured and go away.
Ed: Uh, it doesn't obviously change the addiction, but it keeps people alive so
Ed: they can get treated for addiction, which is kind of neat.
Ed: So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's very few, the dangers from it are pretty minimal.
Ed: So, I mean, there, there are people out there who say, if you come across anybody
Ed: from any obvious reason, you should give them Naloxone.
Ed: It's not going to hurt them. It might save their life.
Sam: Right.
Ed: But anyway, it's kind of nice to see that we're winning that game even without tariffs.
Sam: Yeah. Well, the stupid tariffs.
Sam: Yes. The cross-border stuff of this, especially on the Canada side,
Sam: but even on the Mexico side, from what I hear, is not like the big problem. No.
Ed: Actually, I understand that the majority of the fentanyl coming in is carried by U.S.
Ed: Citizens with their passports coming through and not getting.
Ed: And in all honesty, when we came back from India and I went through what used
Ed: to be a fairly intensive, you know, inspection by the border patrol or whatever,
Ed: we walked up and I showed them my passport and they said goodbye.
Sam: Right.
Ed: I was, I was through that line in the, because I'm an old fart,
Ed: they, they grabbed me and put me at the front of the line.
Ed: I went into the room and was on my way to the baggage in less than two minutes.
Sam: Nice. Okay. The, the, the other health thing that since, since we have this
Sam: segment on health stuff, uh, what's the latest with bird flu, Ed?
Ed: Oh, God. It's still primarily a bird flu, and it's still hitting our chickens.
Ed: There is a vaccine for it, for chickens.
Ed: Our farmers apparently are resisting, the Farmers Association resisting using
Ed: that vaccine because they say that would hurt exports.
Ed: We've wiped out half of our crops now, so there's no exporting of eggs right
Ed: now. We're importing them.
Sam: Apparently, there are a bunch of countries that will not let you import birds
Sam: that have been vaccinated.
Ed: Well, do they want the eggs, though? I think it's because they won't even take the eggs.
Sam: They probably won't take anything. And, you know, you could probably have a
Sam: whole debate on that and, like, whether that's an appropriate restriction or not.
Ed: We've got a shortage of eggs. Who wants to export them? We'll buy any they can make.
Ed: But anyway, at this point, what they do is if your flock gets the bird poo,
Ed: you kill your whole flock. It's killing farmers.
Sam: That's one of the things the Trump administration is saying.
Sam: They're actively looking at how to change.
Sam: The protocol was exactly what you said for years and years and years.
Sam: This wasn't just a Joe Biden thing.
Sam: But for years and years, the protocol was if you get any infection whatsoever,
Sam: you kill them all to avoid spread.
Sam: And so what they're looking into now is whether you can look at physical isolation stuff as well.
Sam: Now, the notion was once you have one of your like commercial flock infected, the way people.
Sam: You know, and this gets to how inhumane American animal processes go anyway.
Sam: They're often extremely overcrowded in spaces that aren't well ventilated.
Sam: You know, and so basically it's a reasonable assumption that if you got one
Sam: sick bird, they're probably all infected.
Sam: But the notion of the physical barriers and such,
Sam: A, is that most of these flocks, the initial infection comes from the wild,
Sam: where they have a duck or a goose or something that's wild lands in with the chickens,
Sam: infects the chickens, and then takes off again.
Sam: So if you introduce physical barriers that basically make it so,
Sam: hey, the wild animals have no ability to contact the domestic flocks at all.
Ed: I think they still poop, though.
Sam: Well, you have to have roofs. You have to have physical barrier all the way
Sam: around, right? It's not just a wall.
Sam: And that's part of what they're thinking about this, but this is also very expensive.
Sam: And also even within the flocks, you know, I mentioned, you know,
Sam: big overcrowded, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You could also introduce more robust physical barriers between parts of your flock.
Sam: So it's not just like, you know, a million birds in one big space or whatever
Sam: you use, you separate them out and isolate them from each other.
Sam: So if you do get an infection, you don't have to kill all of them.
Sam: You kill a smaller group of them.
Sam: And then, you know, And of course, like you mentioned, there's the vaccine.
Sam: One thing, you know, people, people don't seriously consider treatment because
Sam: it doesn't scale as well. Right.
Sam: You know, it's like if you've, if you've got a flock of hundreds of thousands of birds, you know,
Sam: that only live a few weeks anyway, typically before you slaughter them or longer
Sam: for egg birds, but for meat birds, you know.
Sam: You're not going to go individually treating each chicken as if it was your family daughter.
Sam: With, you know, individual vet attention.
Sam: And I don't know, maybe we should, but that just isn't like what that industry would consider.
Sam: One thing that was brought up in terms of the egg shortage as well is one of
Sam: the reasons is it's like we're talking about egg shortages, but we're not talking
Sam: about chicken meat shortage is just how quick the turnaround is on meat birds.
Sam: Like literally they slaughter these birds after like a month to a month and a half.
Sam: Really uh in in often often
Sam: and so basically they're like look you know
Sam: we we lose an entire flock of meat birds we can
Sam: replenish that supply in six six to eight weeks
Sam: and be back where we were but for
Sam: laying hens we need
Sam: to wait until they're sexually mature and
Sam: laying eggs and that takes more
Sam: like six months and so you know if we you know if we slaughter a bunch of egg
Sam: laying hens then it's a lot longer before production capacity is back to where
Sam: it was yeah no you know so i don't see.
Ed: It ending very soon.
Sam: Now are we still there have been a handful of human cases apparently in people
Sam: who had contact with birds, there have been a handful, I believe some cats have died as well.
Sam: And I believe in cases, again, the cat was in contact with wild birds,
Sam: you know, that kind of thing.
Ed: I don't think there's any documented human to human cases yet. Right. Animal to human.
Sam: Is that still a worry or do we feel sort of at this point, we know what this
Sam: is and it's, it's, you know, it causes a problem to our, to our egg supply.
Sam: But it's not really a human concern directly.
Ed: I, I, I'm not enough of a biologist to answer, but I, I have heard at least
Ed: one person who was supposedly an expert say that it would take only one mutation
Ed: for it to become infectious to humans.
Ed: So yeah, I, it's probably a question of when does the time bomb go off?
Ed: If she was right. And I had no reason to question her. She knows a lot more about it than I do.
Sam: Well, and to keep in mind, yeah, it may only need one mutation,
Sam: but it needs the right mutation, right?
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: Mutations are happening all the time in viruses, but like most of them won't
Sam: have this effect. But if you get unlucky the one time.
Ed: Yeah. They apparently know which gene it is that would be affected.
Sam: And also, you have to add, not only does this mutation have to happen,
Sam: it has to happen in a bird that ends up infecting a human.
Sam: Or other birds.
Ed: If it infects another birds, they'll get to the humans.
Sam: Yeah. Or I suppose you could have one of the small handful of infected humans
Sam: could have the mutation there.
Sam: There are a number of mechanisms, but it hasn't happened yet. So cross your fingers.
Ed: Well, remember that COVID probably came from bats and it didn't infect any humans
Ed: until somewhere around 2019.
Sam: Right.
Ed: And then it took off after that.
Sam: Okay. Well, let's take a break. Okay. And when we get back, Ed,
Sam: have your next topic prepared.
Ed: Okay.
Sam: Back after this.
Sam: Okay, we are back.
Ed: I timed that perfectly. I went out and got a glass of water.
Sam: Okay, so Ed, next topic.
Ed: Have we talked at all about the private prison solutions to our crime problems?
Sam: We have not talked about private prisons. I'm not sure if we've ever talked
Sam: about it, to be honest. Certainly not recently.
Ed: Okay, well, just briefly. From something I read today, I think it was in the Times, New York Times,
Ed: the private prisons, as we all know, have become a much popular issue in the United States.
Ed: Rather than building new prisons, we hire it out to the private sector on contract.
Ed: Mr. Biden apparently started to cut back on that, but he never finished off,
Ed: really. I mean, he said, well, we want to get rid of all these private prisons.
Ed: And he decreased the number of people in them, but never got rid of it.
Sam: And just to be clear, this is something that's happening at all levels,
Sam: right? Like federal, state, local.
Ed: Yeah. And where it came up as an issue to me this time is that apparently,
Ed: because the private prisons have a fair number of empty beds right now,
Ed: our government has decided,
Ed: well, there's where we can put these immigrants.
Ed: And so they are letting out new contracts.
Ed: Several new contracts have been given and they're about to build some new prisons.
Ed: And it's a growth industry.
Ed: Again, the stock market, apparently, if you look for those contractors,
Ed: they're making big money and going to town.
Ed: I don't know if there's an answer to that, but I do know that that's a hell of a way to run a ship.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, there are so many problems with this. One is you create a natural
Sam: incentive for a whole industry who's based on they do better the more prisoners there are.
Sam: So like the notion of, hey, let's figure out the right way to deal with crime
Sam: in a way that, you know, rehabilitates people, avoids future crime, et cetera, et cetera,
Sam: you know, just easily turns into let's just jail as many people as possible
Sam: because that's how we make money.
Sam: And most of these are set up as well that
Sam: they're not the yeah there may be
Sam: some exceptions but for the most part they're not incentivized on
Sam: quote-unquote good outcomes you know where you do get the the rehabilitation
Sam: and the person coming out better for it and and not being you know not being
Sam: recidivist etc so it really does become warehousing as well and conditions aren't always great.
Sam: And, you know, and I know some people come in straight with a mindset,
Sam: well, they're prisoners, the condition shouldn't be great.
Sam: But at the same time, there's, you know, there's a basic level of humanity that
Sam: should exist, like even for our worst prisoners.
Sam: And I mean, occasionally you see like memes of like, you know,
Sam: is this a Scandinavian prison or like a British dorm room, college dorm room.
Sam: And like the British college dorm rooms are worse than the Scandinavian prisons
Sam: in terms of amenities for the prisoner and how they look and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I think, you know, fundamentally, a lot of this comes down to like,
Sam: what is our philosophy of dealing with crime in the first place?
Sam: And, you know, is it simply punishment.
Sam: And I think for the most part in the U.S., it's punishment and revenge sort
Sam: of lead the day in terms of what we're trying to do, rather than sort of an outcome-based.
Sam: Do we make the world better in the end after this sort of view of things?
Sam: And I, I think that's a problem, but like back to private prisons specifically,
Sam: I think the adding everything I just mentioned applies to public prisons too.
Sam: Uh, cause they're a reflection of like our societal societal attitudes,
Sam: but I think the problems are amped up to 11 on private prisons because then
Sam: you also add the profit motive and just like people trying to maximize the dollars no matter what.
Sam: And I think it's exactly the wrong incentive to have in this sort of situation.
Sam: There are a whole bunch of places where I think the profit motive helps in a lot of areas.
Sam: I mean, there's a reason why capitalism has been successful and has driven all kinds of innovation.
Sam: But there are certain areas where the profit motive provides really bad incentives
Sam: that produce bad outcomes.
Sam: We don't have to talk about all the others. I think there are plenty of others,
Sam: but I think this is definitely one of them.
Ed: Yeah. Oh, no question. I add to that that,
Ed: Many, maybe not most, but many public prisons have a fairly stringent policy
Ed: on how guards are hired, monitored, and checked out before they get the job.
Ed: The private prisons do not do a very good job of that.
Sam: Which means that the rate of— This is one of those things, at the very least,
Sam: if you're going to have a private prison, you would expect that the scenario
Sam: would be that they'd have to meet or exceed the standards of the public prisons. But no!
Ed: No, no, no, no. Because prison abuse has apparently become a real issue in a
Ed: lot of these private prisons because who is attracted to being a cop?
Ed: All too frequently, bad guys are attracted to that because I get to beat people up and carry a gun.
Sam: And probably even more so for prison guards.
Ed: Well, yeah, absolutely. A good system screens those people out.
Ed: And when they identify them, they kick them out. But I don't know that the private
Ed: prisons aren't doing that. They don't give a damn.
Ed: They get paid 500 bucks a prisoner a week or a month or whatever.
Ed: And it's just the wrong way to do things. Plus, an awful lot of these people
Ed: who are being picked up and kicked out of the country have not really committed crimes.
Ed: They committed the crime of coming here illegally.
Ed: Okay, that's a crime. They have not robbed people.
Sam: Which, by the way, although there are people looking to adjust this,
Sam: is at worst a misdemeanor and in many
Sam: cases is actually just a civil issue entirely. It's not even criminal.
Ed: Yeah, but very few of these people have committed violent crimes,
Ed: robberies, and other horseshit like that.
Ed: I mean, they've come here to try and make a living and they're willing to take
Ed: jobs that don't pay very much and are hard jobs.
Ed: But what we do is we arrest them and throw them in prison because we have a
Ed: quota that you got to arrest 700 people a day and they're not achieving it.
Ed: So there's all sorts of crap coming because they can't arrest enough people.
Sam: Yeah. And, uh, and look, everything they're doing with that, you know,
Sam: and is we're, you know, first of all, like they're not achieving the numbers
Sam: of the deportations that Donald Trump wanted.
Sam: And he's apparently getting madder and madder about that as the weeks go on.
Sam: Like, why aren't you getting rid of these people? You're supposed to get rid of these people.
Sam: And their deportation numbers are actually less than they were under Biden. um the biden.
Ed: Got rid of a bunch.
Sam: Now they have pointed out that intercepted border
Sam: crossings are way down so the
Sam: the thought is is donald trump
Sam: just being so hostile that he's actually discouraging people from trying maybe
Sam: apparently what happened last time donald was here was that there was a drop
Sam: like this at the very beginning of his administration while people sort of sussed
Sam: out the situation and understood what was going on.
Sam: And then it popped right back up again, uh, afterwards. So we'll see if we're
Sam: in that kind of a situation because you could see them declaring victory.
Sam: Some of them are already starting to like, Oh, look, the crossings are down so much.
Sam: Uh, that means this is all a success. We're doing great now.
Sam: You know, I, I, I would argue that even so, gaining the success by being inhumane
Sam: and brutal is not the right way to do it.
Sam: But yeah, we're certainly not achieving all of Trump's goals on this.
Sam: But if we are doing things by shipping people to inhumane situations in all
Sam: kinds of different ways, whether it be the private prisons or hell,
Sam: Guantanamo, we were doing for a little while.
Sam: Apparently, we're backing off from that because it turns out that was hard and
Sam: had all kinds of issues and was expensive.
Sam: We're shipping people to.
Sam: Foreign prisons, like I think El Salvador and Panama maybe both agreed.
Ed: El Salvador, which...
Sam: It was El Salvador.
Ed: Yeah, their prisons are not a place you want to be.
Sam: So they've apparently agreed to accept a whole bunch of people that we're expelling
Sam: and then figure out what to do with them separately.
Sam: But, you know, if we ship somebody to somewhere that treats them inhumanely, it's still on us.
Sam: You know i i think that the the
Sam: take that the administration has to be is
Sam: like we're just getting out of the country what happens after that is none of our
Sam: business we don't care you know but it it is our business and frankly even if
Sam: we even if we end up ship if someone's here looking for asylum and we ship them
Sam: back to some place that the reason they were looking for asylum was they were
Sam: in danger in that place and we ship them back and something happens to them yeah, that's on us.
Sam: I, you know, and of course there's a whole portion of the population that just
Sam: doesn't care, but we should care.
Sam: You know, I don't know. We're sort of pivoting from private prisons to,
Sam: to the immigration issue, but like, yeah.
Ed: Well, it's the reasons because the private prisons are now getting all these
Ed: immigrants because they can't, they can't put them in regular prisons. I don't think.
Ed: So they've, they're contracting with those private prisons to take on the immigrants and hold them.
Sam: Yeah. And like you said, they're building new facilities. They're doing all kinds of things.
Sam: There are some public facilities being built too, apparently,
Sam: and some things just being repurposed.
Sam: But all in all, it's not great.
Sam: And Donald Trump, if anything, is getting increasingly mad that they're not being inhumane enough.
Ed: Yeah. Oh, yeah. How many times did he say in the previous administration,
Ed: when you're arresting these guys, don't protect their head. Just show them in the car.
Ed: I don't want to talk about him. The guy makes me sick to my stomach.
Ed: It's hard to talk about anything without him.
Sam: Any more on the private prisons or anything else? Before we start wrapping things up.
Ed: Well, the only other thing along in the medical stuff that I thought is kind
Ed: of a good news story is the incidence of cancer of the cervix has been dropping a lot.
Sam: Hey, would this have anything to do with a vaccine?
Ed: It would indeed, because it began dropping when the vaccine was introduced. That's the good news.
Sam: That's the HPV vaccine.
Ed: Yeah, HPV. Actually, there's two strains, HPV-16, which is the really bad one.
Ed: And I forget the number of the other one, but there's two strains that are covered.
Ed: And the good news is that those people who get that are not getting cancer of
Ed: the cervix and presumably probably not going to get cancer of the mouth and
Ed: throat, although only about 50, 60 percent of cancer of the mouth and throat are from HPV.
Ed: But that's half of the cases of cancer of the mouth and throat,
Ed: which is a devastating cancer.
Sam: And just to be clear as well, like originally they were pushing this like for
Sam: girls and women because they have cervix.
Ed: It's for everybody now.
Sam: But it's for everybody now because males can be, can pass it along.
Sam: And, and so the recommendation is that, you know, you, kids should get the HPV
Sam: vaccine is what, right around puberty, right? Like.
Ed: 14 to 15, they're recommending before they become sexually active.
Sam: Before they become sexually active, which, you know, frankly can be before that.
Sam: So, so like, you know, get basically as soon as you're eligible, you should get that.
Sam: Now, there was a lot of pushback on that initially from people being like,
Sam: well, my kid's not sexually active.
Sam: They're not going to be sexually active anytime soon.
Ed: Well, then there were the others who said, if you give it, then the kid will
Ed: think that they can go out and be sexually active.
Sam: Yes. And yeah. And of course you got the usual people who are like concerned
Sam: about side effects that aren't really a concern as well, but like you had this
Sam: whole thing with people saying that, yeah, this was, this was being permissive.
Sam: And of course my kid's going to be like a good chaste Christian wait till marriage.
Sam: So there's no reason to have anything to do with this for years and years and years, if ever.
Sam: And, and even, even then they're only going to be with their wife or husband.
Sam: So, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And it's like, come on people, come on, you know, let, let's,
Sam: let's talk. Hey, let's talk about the real world.
Sam: You know, but even like, okay, fine. Your kid's not going to be doing that stuff.
Sam: What harm is it? Like it's, it's, it's only going to help.
Sam: You never know what situation is, how your kid could get raped,
Sam: you know, like get, get the protection in place. And like, you know,
Sam: And it's proved highly effective at preventing a very serious cancer, you know.
Ed: There used to be a little meme that said, you are not having sex with your sex partner.
Ed: You're having sex with everybody that person's ever been with.
Sam: Right.
Ed: And that's kind of covered. So anyway, the good news is that the incidence is
Ed: dropping. I think in a few more years, we'll probably see that the oropharyngeal
Ed: cancer is also dropping.
Ed: The bad news on that is that the incidence of women getting pap smears and checks
Ed: for cancer is going down.
Ed: Now, let's say we used to do a pap smear every damn year, and we wouldn't give
Ed: women their birth control until they came in and got it because we could make sure they got it done.
Ed: You only need a pap smear about every four or five years now.
Ed: It's just not an imposition. And I understand. I can't swear to this.
Sam: Well, just to be clear, any procedure like that is somewhat of an imposition,
Sam: whether it's a pap smear or whatever.
Sam: But it's not that it's not an imposition. It's that there are significant benefits
Sam: associated with it that you want to balance off against that.
Sam: It's preventative health care.
Sam: You would much rather have good preventative health care than have to deal with
Sam: the problem of a cancer or anything else after it's there.
Ed: Yeah. Well, the other thing I was going to say is that there is a test now that
Ed: you can do yourself at home for the HPV-16 strain, which is the most serious one.
Ed: So if your objection is having a doctor look at your private parts,
Ed: you can take care of that yourself. But God damn it, do it.
Ed: Don't just say, well, I don't need to do that because I've always been careful.
Sam: Right.
Ed: It just doesn't work. It's like I'll never get measles because I never get around
Ed: with anyone who's sick with measles.
Sam: Well, and like I said, more generally preventive care in general,
Sam: get your colonoscopies, take whatever tests they say you need to take,
Sam: if you do your vaccinations, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: If they're maintenance medications that your doctor recommends for chronic conditions,
Sam: actually take them, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know.
Ed: Can I tell you one advantage of being over 80 now? I don't have to get colonoscopies anymore.
Sam: They're like, if something happens, screw it. It's too late, basically.
Ed: Well, that's it. Because from the earliest detection, which is what you find
Ed: with colonoscopy, the dying of it is 15 to 20 years.
Ed: So, you know, if you're 80, you're going to die before you die. Anyway.
Sam: Oh, come on. You're going to make it to 120, 125, aren't you?
Ed: I doubt it. Not the way I feel this one. I,
Ed: just to add to the fun, you know, last year I did a, a year long walk,
Ed: run exercise program that was to have 2025 miles in the course of the year.
Ed: And I made it, I made, I think actually I made a little over 2,100 miles. So I was quite good.
Ed: However, in October I started to run and my knees started to hurt all of a sudden.
Ed: And I have what's basically a stress fracture in the tibial plateau.
Ed: And I think I'm through running forever. So I had to walk the rest of the year.
Ed: And now since the first of the year, I'm, I'm getting very, I'm not even going
Ed: to get a thousand miles this year.
Ed: I don't think I'm really slowing down this year, getting too old.
Sam: Well, I hear that happens.
Ed: It does. Yep. You know, I can still crack off. I mean, I can still crack.
Ed: I did four miles yesterday with a workout in the gym in the middle.
Ed: So I, I can still get four or five miles a day, which is enough.
Sam: You're getting more exercise than I get.
Sam: And I know I'm bad for that, but more power to you and I need to do better.
Ed: Anyway, I think that's pretty much, I mean, you got some other things,
Ed: but I think that's probably enough for this year.
Sam: Okay. For this year. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Well, yeah, let's wrap it up then.
Sam: Hey, everybody, as you know, go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can find all
Sam: our archive of shows. You can find transcript of recent shows.
Sam: You can find all the ways to contact us.
Sam: And if you want to get in contact with Ed, you can send it to us and we will relay appropriately.
Sam: You can find, I still have not linked to TikTok. I am still posting highlights
Sam: on TikTok every week. I am waiting for,
Sam: At this point, to see if TikTok continues to survive after the 90-day extension
Sam: that they were given earlier.
Sam: And okay, look, I'm just procrastinating. That's the real answer.
Sam: I'm procrastinating. I don't want to do the extra work.
Sam: But I will eventually add a link to TikTok as well. But you can search for Curmudgeons
Sam: Corner on TikTok and find us.
Sam: The website has links to our YouTube, our Facebook, et cetera.
Sam: We don't do much on Facebook.
Sam: It's just post-announcement of the episodes. There's a link to our Mastodon.
Sam: We don't do much on Maston.
Sam: It just posts links to the episodes and to the live streams when they come out.
Sam: YouTube has our live streams live when they come out, or you can watch video
Sam: of the whole unedited shows there.
Sam: It's a lot. It's fun. The podcast experience with audio is different than the
Sam: video experience. Take a dip at both.
Sam: Like, yeah, typically I do more like the video takes more commitment is the bottom line.
Sam: Like audio podcasts you put on
Sam: in the car while you're driving you put on on your headphones
Sam: while you're doing household chores stuff like that
Sam: does not require your full attention if you're going to put something on on
Sam: video and and actually watch it then you have to actually sit there and watch
Sam: it like which like i i admit i i i am not a fan of video podcasts but it's there if anybody wants,
Sam: you can do that. Lots of people do like the video podcast.
Sam: You can, of course, tune them out the same way as an audio podcast and do stuff
Sam: anyway. The video is just on in the background. But anyway, all that stuff is there.
Sam: Also, a link to our Patreon where you can give us cash money.
Sam: As I mentioned earlier in the show, if you would like to give me enough money,
Sam: that I don't have to go to a corporate job, I would really appreciate that.
Sam: That'd be fun. I would enjoy that I would appreciate it I would I would.
Sam: Consider doing stuff for you in return. I don't know what, but like,
Sam: you know, I would accept that, you know, maybe I had to do something in exchange
Sam: for that money other than just put out the show.
Sam: But although, you know, the show is worth tons, obviously.
Sam: Anyway, you can go to our Patreon at various levels of the Patreon.
Sam: I will send, send you a postcard, send you a mug, mention you on the show.
Sam: At this very moment, I owe Pete and Greg cards and I owe Ed a new mug.
Sam: And I have not done those things. Like I said, I'm kind of swamped right now.
Sam: I will get to them eventually, I promise.
Sam: But at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the
Sam: Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and others are chatting,
Sam: sharing links throughout the week.
Sam: And so let me, let me find something, you know, I will pick the article and
Sam: I will pick the most recently shared thing on the Slack, which was shared while we were recording.
Sam: Um, Yvonne, who was apparently too sick to join us to record the show,
Sam: but not too sick to be posting on the Slack, posted an article from The Register,
Sam: developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he let go,
Sam: when he was let go. And so.
Sam: Basically, let's see, a federal jury in Cleveland has found a senior software
Sam: developer guilty of sabotaging his
Sam: employer systems, and he's now facing a potential 10 years behind bars.
Sam: Davis Liu, 55, of Houston, Texas, was a seasoned coder employed by Power Management
Sam: Biz Eaton Corporation from 2007 to 2019.
Sam: In his last year, there was a corporate restructuring and he was demoted,
Sam: both in terms of job responsibilities and server access.
Sam: So he began introducing home-designed malware onto at least one of the employer's production systems.
Sam: He wrote a program that would, in an infinite loop, create more and more non-terminating
Sam: threads that would consume more and more resources until the computer running
Sam: the code crashed and prevented people from logging in and using the machine.
Sam: And basically, the account had been used to execute the malware,
Sam: and he was the only member of the team who had access privilege.
Sam: He set it up with a dead man switch that basically would lock every employee
Sam: out of their accounts if his credentials were revoked.
Sam: So basically, it checked periodically to see if he was still with the company.
Sam: And if he was no longer with the company, would start wreaking havoc.
Ed: Oh, dear.
Sam: So, yeah. So, folks, it may sound fun.
Sam: It may sound like a nice way to get petty revenge on your ex-employer.
Sam: But, no.
Sam: They will take it seriously for good reason. This guy's going to jail.
Ed: Good.
Sam: So, don't do stuff like that. That's in the same case. This should be obvious.
Sam: This should be obvious. Don't do stuff like this.
Ed: That's in the same category as these people who are firebombing Teslas and one
Ed: actually fired a rifle into a Tesla because a guy was driving a Tesla, right?
Ed: Those people need to have free room and board for years and years, not just a month or two.
Sam: Yeah, look, I am not a fan of Elon either, but yes, there have been incidents
Sam: of setting fire to Tesla chargers.
Sam: There have been many incidents of vandalism and property destruction to Tesla
Sam: vehicles. There have been cases of harassing the drivers of these vehicles.
Sam: The least obnoxious one I saw was pictures of somebody who's leaving essentially
Sam: pamphlets on the windshields of people driving Teslas basically saying, hey,
Sam: we know when you bought this, it was cool.
Sam: It was helping environmental causes.
Sam: You thought it was great. but now
Sam: it's not anymore so you really should consider getting
Sam: rid of this car here's some places go go
Sam: list it on car max go list it on whatever it listed
Sam: like three or four different sites that you can sell vehicles
Sam: on but they're like look it's changed everybody you know get out now before
Sam: the only people left driving these things are maga nazi wannabes and people
Sam: are justified in thinking badly for you for driving this car.
Sam: And that's still kind of obnoxious, but it's the least obnoxious I've seen.
Sam: The people who are actually like spray painting graffiti on these things or
Sam: breaking windows or setting fires.
Sam: No, no, no, no, no. It's not helpful.
Sam: You know, and that note is actually right.
Sam: I mean, a lot of the people who bought Tesla as several years ago,
Sam: are absolutely appalled by what Elon Musk has been doing more recently.
Sam: You know, I saw something today about someone talking about how they desperately
Sam: want to get rid of their cyber truck, you know, but they can't get rid of it.
Sam: Like they just can't find somebody to take it off their hands,
Sam: even at a significant discount to what they paid.
Sam: They like are failing to...
Sam: Have any way to get it off their hands. I mean, I guess absent abandoning it
Sam: on the street somewhere and somebody is eventually going to find them for if
Sam: they do that and because there are issues with that too, right?
Ed: Well, you know, you don't need to get violent and destructive to hurt them badly.
Ed: I see that in Germany, the Tesla sales are down 70 some percent,
Ed: but at the same time, EV vehicles, total sales are up 30 percent.
Ed: So they're saying, And screw it. We're not going to buy his stuff.
Ed: You don't have to go out and destroy him. Just quit buying his stuff.
Sam: Yeah. Well, and people are. I mean, because it's not about, I mean, it's not about the cars.
Sam: It's not about like the company even that in what they're doing.
Sam: It's about Elon and the fact that he's become toxic. And specifically,
Sam: he has become toxic to what was the target audience for his company.
Sam: Like the people who are buying Teslas were not mega conservatives who are buying big gas guzzler trucks.
Sam: You know, it was people who were concerned about the environment,
Sam: people who wanted to be like on the cutting edge of tech people.
Sam: It was a lot of liberals. It was a lot of rich left, left coast liberals,
Sam: you know, and other people too, but it was a lot of that and he has alienated
Sam: those people completely.
Sam: So yeah, his, his sales are, are, are dropping, but you know,
Sam: you also, I saw one, one person made a post on Mastodon just a little bit ago,
Sam: uh, Kasim Rashid, who I forget what exactly he does, but I, I followed him.
Sam: He's a, he's a human rights lawyer and a, and some other stuff.
Sam: But he posted, look, the fact that Musk has lost about $100 billion over the
Sam: last month with how the stock market has been doing and Tesla in specific has been doing,
Sam: but he's still the wealthiest person in the world after losing $100 billion in nominal income.
Sam: And not only that, but in terms of his day-to-day life, it doesn't even make a difference.
Sam: No like lost lost 100 billion dollars
Sam: like he's and i'm no longer quoting the
Sam: tweet but he's making the point it's like
Sam: because he goes on and talks about there shouldn't be billionaires and all that
Sam: kind of stuff and i don't necessarily i'm not necessarily one that says we need
Sam: to tax all billionaires out of existence completely or anything like that like
Sam: me i'm not like all billionaires are evil but at the same time the the notion
Sam: that he can lose 100 billion dollars,
Sam: essentially have it not impact his day-to-day life at all and still be the richest
Sam: person in the world by a decent margin is indicative of something.
Ed: On the other hand, if his market keeps going down like it is right now,
Ed: some of his margin loans are going to get called at some point.
Ed: And then he may not be the richest person.
Sam: Yeah, Yvonne has pointed that out a couple of times on the Curmudgeon's Corner
Sam: Slack. I don't know if you mentioned it on the podcast. But yeah,
Sam: apparently Musk is significantly leveraged in certain areas and using his stock
Sam: as collateral and stuff like that.
Sam: So there are certain circumstances that could cause a rapid deterioration in his situation.
Sam: However, I think you can safely say that even in the worst possible case for
Sam: Elon Musk, he's going to be doing pretty well.
Ed: I i'm not so sure anymore there.
Sam: Are there.
Ed: Are more than a few billionaires who ended up on the in the world.
Sam: I don't know i yeah i just do i have trouble envisioning a situation where you
Sam: end up passing elon on a street corner holding up the sign asking for five bucks for dinner.
Sam: I'm sorry. Like he will avoid that fate.
Ed: Yeah. You know, he's, he's got basically three companies.
Ed: He's got Tesla, he's got the rocket company and he's got X.
Ed: X is worthless. It's, it's still losing.
Ed: It has paper value, but nothing else. His Tesla stock is what he leveraged to buy X.
Ed: And the rocket company has now got two spectacular failures in a row.
Ed: I'm not sure that people are anxious to buy that stock.
Sam: Well, that one's private. There, you can't find it.
Ed: Is that privately owned? Okay.
Sam: SpaceX is private. But it does, and normally you'd say, well,
Sam: does this put his government contracts at risk?
Sam: Yep. But in the world we have now, Elon's hanging out in Novel Office every day.
Ed: Yep, that's true.
Sam: You know, and has a significant part in the decisions that will influence his
Sam: company in SpaceX and Tesla too.
Sam: Yep. So like, so I don't know that you can say, well, clearly NASA is going
Sam: to cancel the contracts they have, or at least put a hold on it or put something, you know,
Sam: maybe, maybe not like a pair, apparently even this time,
Sam: like you kind of would have expected that maybe the FAA would have put more
Sam: restrictions on after that first rocket blew up a month ago that would have
Sam: prevented the same thing from happening in the second.
Sam: And from what I've seen so far, they're still investigating.
Sam: It was essentially the same failure that happened a month ago,
Sam: you know, in terms of what physically happened to the rocket.
Sam: So they clearly did not take the amount of time necessary to fully address the situation.
Sam: Now, maybe I'm sure the situation is a little bit different.
Sam: They probably, you know, but, but nevertheless, yeah, who, who knows? Like, yeah.
Sam: It's probably still full speed ahead in terms of that.
Sam: Now, the Tesla stuff, on the other hand, you know, unlike SpaceX,
Sam: where the primary customer is going to be, I mean, there are corporate customers
Sam: too, but government makes a huge part of SpaceX's plans.
Sam: Tesla, you have to get people to buy the damn cars. And if less and less people
Sam: want the cars, that's a problem for you.
Sam: Now can, can Musk at some point sort of make up the people he's losing by getting
Sam: new people excited about the product?
Sam: Maybe. I don't know. We'll see.
Sam: Okay. I think that's it, Ed.
Ed: Yep.
Sam: Sounds good. Thank you for joining us yet again, Ed.
Sam: And we hope to see you again. You know, when I invite people,
Sam: when I need a co-host and I invite people, I always exclude the last few people.
Sam: Like Bruce did not get an invite here because he
Sam: did because he did it last time you know
Sam: he did it only a few weeks ago Ed now
Sam: will not get an invite the next couple of times that we
Sam: have an opening but you know he'll eventually come back around I
Sam: do that to try to enforce some variety because for a while it was just like
Sam: Ed and Bruce and Ed and Bruce and Ed and Bruce and Ed and Bruce they're the
Sam: only ones we ever got on but and it still kind of is that you two are my my
Sam: two most common co-hosts by a long margin, but, uh,
Sam: but I, I, you know, some variety is good too.
Ed: Maybe the next time I do it, I'll draft my son-in-law to come and join.
Ed: We can have a three-way again.
Sam: There, there you go. But yeah, no, it's a, it's a lot of fun to have you and,
Sam: uh, we really appreciate it when you do it. So thank you for coming, Ed.
Ed: My pleasure.
Sam: For everyone listening, have a great week. Stay safe, have fun,
Sam: but not too much fun. And, uh, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.
Ed: Goodbye.
Ed: Ha ha ha ha.
Sam: Thanks again, Ed, and stay healthy, and we'll talk to you next time.
Ed: Okay. Always a pleasure.
Sam: Yep. Bye.