Sam: Okay, I think we're ready. Okay. Have you thought about what you want to talk about?
Ed: Yeah, I've got a couple of things written down here.
Sam: Okay, then... Lost my pen. Let's get going then. Tell me when you're seated comfortably.
Ed: I am, I think. The picture looks pretty good. So I think we're good to go.
Sam: Here we go. Transcription by CastingWords
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday,
Sam: February 7th, 2026.
Sam: It's just before 18 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter,
Sam: and Yvonne Bowe is not here this week.
Sam: He let me know a few days ago that his brother was coming in to help celebrate
Sam: his birthday, which was a few days ago, so happy birthday, Yvonne,
Sam: and that he'd be doing things with his brother this weekend and wouldn't be available.
Sam: So, we have Ed. Hello, Ed.
Ed: Good afternoon. Good afternoon.
Sam: And as usual, when we have a guest, the guest will mostly determine the agenda.
Sam: I'll probably still do a couple movies because we're desperately behind on movies.
Sam: So I'll do a couple of those. But otherwise, we'll let Ed control the agenda
Sam: and decide what we're going to talk about this week.
Sam: So first of all, for this segment, Ed, before we get to movies and before we
Sam: get to other stuff that you may have in mind later in the show,
Sam: do you have anything sort of of the light and frothy, not that serious variety
Sam: that you want to start with?
Ed: How would you start? The temperature here is seven degrees right now.
Sam: Now, where is here?
Ed: This is outside of Philadelphia, in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
Ed: which, interesting, by the way, in addition to being colder than you-know-what,
Ed: our representative, our district is going to be one of the swing ones for the
Ed: election because we presently have a Republican, and he may lose,
Ed: which event the House goes further to the left eventually.
Ed: But we'll see what happens on that.
Sam: Yeah, there are in general a lot more seats potentially in play than seemed
Sam: like there'd be even a year ago.
Sam: But, you know, there are a few near us as well that are sort of in that zone.
Sam: But just generally, I mean...
Sam: Okay, wait. I was about to start talking politics. You were talking weather.
Ed: We'll save it for later.
Sam: We'll save politics for later. That's for the later segments.
Ed: This is the coldest I've been since six years ago when my son and two of my
Ed: grandsons and I hiked to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Ed: The temperature there was zero with a 20 or 30 mile an hour wind at the top.
Ed: This is going to be one o'clock tomorrow. And I, there's a run that I participate
Ed: with a bunch of people every Sunday morning.
Ed: I'm not doing it tomorrow. I'm not, I'm too old to do that anymore.
Sam: Too cold.
Ed: Too cold by far.
Sam: Yeah, so, I mean, now here in the Pacific Northwest,
Sam: if anything, my understanding is that the West Coast has been warmer than usual so far this year.
Sam: Right now, at this exact moment while we're recording, it is 48 degrees Fahrenheit here where I am.
Sam: Um, but my understanding is in general, it's been so warm that people are worried that,
Sam: you know, the, the snow pack that is supplies water for the rest of the year
Sam: is not built up, you know, places that do skiing haven't really had a season,
Sam: you know, things like that.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: But I have read about this, you know, cold snap you folks in the rest of the
Sam: country have been having. How's it been?
Ed: It's been very cold.
Ed: My understanding of what's going on is that the polar vortex is being pushed
Ed: down by warm, clear weather up in the higher,
Ed: you know, in the far north, which means that Alaska and the Arctic Circle are
Ed: beginning to melt even faster than usual.
Ed: But that's pushing all this cold air down. So the folks who talk climate science
Ed: are not surprised that it's this cold here, and it is not proof against global
Ed: warming. It's proof of climate change.
Sam: Yes. Although I have seen people point
Sam: out, you know, there is a bit of misinformation going around that says,
Sam: hey, the climate change makes these kinds of cold snaps more severe as well
Sam: or more frequent or things like that.
Sam: And the answer is, although climate change very much sort of destabilizes and
Sam: some areas get warmer and some areas get colder and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: If you look at the overall trends, you know, the kind of cold snap that the
Sam: East Coast is having right now was commonplace 100 years ago.
Sam: Like this would like would happen everyone and would be normal and,
Sam: you know, things like that.
Sam: So when you when you look at the long term trends, it really is,
Sam: you know, these kinds of cold snaps are getting less frequent and less severe when they do happen.
Sam: But what that does mean is that when they do happen.
Sam: People notice a lot more because it's like, oh, wow, I haven't been this cold in decades.
Sam: Whereas, in fact, like if you talk to your grandparents, they'd be like, what do you mean?
Sam: This is like this is what every winter was like here, you know.
Sam: And so you have a bit of that. And but but yeah, you do have sort of these patterns
Sam: that happen and and all of this.
Sam: And, you know, spring will come soon enough. I was talking to my father,
Sam: who is now in Ohio, just, when was it, yesterday?
Sam: Yesterday morning, yes. And he also was complaining about the weather.
Sam: Basically, you know, it being so cold, he likes to, like, go on walks and stuff still, you know?
Sam: And basically, he's been stuck inside most of the time.
Sam: And when he does go outside, he has to bundle up or he has to rely on someone
Sam: to drive him somewhere because, you know, the places he would want to go are not.
Sam: Even if he would consider walking there in the summer, he's not going to walk
Sam: there when it's snowy and seven degrees or whatever, you know.
Ed: I have still been doing a fair amount of, that's my primary exercise is walking.
Ed: I try to get in about 100 to 130 miles a month.
Ed: But when I'm going out these days I have downfilled mittens four or five layers
Ed: plus a down jacket and a stocking cap and long johns and I'm fairly warm then that way but it's,
Ed: that's basically what I wore is I stood at the top of Kilimanjaro right and
Ed: it's you know you're comfortable warm like that on the other hand,
Ed: We got a couple feet of snow a couple weeks ago, and it's somewhat treacherous
Ed: walking because we haven't been above freezing for the past two and a half weeks now.
Ed: I think we got to 33 once or twice.
Sam: Meanwhile here, and I'm not going to claim, I mean, the Southern California
Sam: people, I've seen them online talking about how it's in the high 70s there, whatever.
Sam: And of course, Florida has been part of the cold snap too. Our co-host Yvonne
Sam: has been complaining on the curmudgeon's corner slack that, oh my God,
Sam: it dropped into the forties there and, and how horrible that is.
Sam: Uh, meanwhile here, like I said, it's 48 right now. Like if I was going to go
Sam: out and be out for a while, I'd throw on a jacket, but if I'm just like taking
Sam: out the trash or something, I don't even bother.
Sam: I go out on a t-shirt, you know, it's like I'm taking out the trash.
Sam: I'm coming back and I'll be outside for like 60 seconds maximum. It's not a big deal.
Ed: You know, I'm even putting on a coat to take the trash out.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: To celebrate all that, I wore this shirt today. This is from a run that I do
Ed: in June and July each year when it's nice and warm.
Sam: So describe in detail for the people who cannot see this because most people are listening.
Ed: This is a run that is a clothing optional one.
Ed: So we go out and run au naturel, as you will, do wear shoes.
Ed: And I always wear a hat so I don't burn my head anymore.
Ed: Otherwise, it's all skin for most of it. Not everybody. Some people still wear
Ed: some clothing, but I'd say about two-thirds, three-fourths.
Ed: A couple hundred people go out and run.
Sam: To be clear, this is not happening this week in the seven-degree temperatures.
Ed: I wore this shirt to remind me that someday it will be warmer again.
Sam: So to be clear, this is the Bouncing Buns Fun Run.
Sam: They have this in a few different places, but the one you went to,
Sam: reading your T-shirt, is at Sunny Rest Resort in Palmerton, PA.
Sam: And I will disclose that I went to Sunny Rest once,
Sam: 25 years ago. I did a day visit.
Sam: It was fun, but I never went back. I regret never having gone back. It's a nudist place.
Sam: I had fun. I will disclose that here.
Sam: I was by myself that time, which was one of the reasons I never went back.
Sam: I did that kind of thing a couple of times in my 20s, but for the most part,
Sam: I was solo, and that just wasn't fun.
Sam: I did, on later occasions, get people to come with me to a couple of those things,
Sam: but then that sort of faded out, and my wife was never really into it.
Sam: So I haven't been since, but it was an enjoyable experience.
Sam: Yeah so and yeah but i
Sam: don't know if i've said that out loud on this show before but yeah there there
Sam: you go i've implied it but i i have not done the bouncing buns fun run if if
Sam: i was on the east coast i know you and your son-in-law have done this for a
Sam: number of years if i was in pa i might join you but i'm not so there i think we're.
Ed: Up to 15 16 years now.
Sam: Wow we've done it. Yeah.
Ed: John, John did it one year more than I did. Uh, and then the last 15 or 16 years
Ed: now, we've both have done it.
Ed: So as I said, it's, it's, uh, probably as much fun as you can have and still be legal.
Sam: Yes. And to be clear to anybody wondering, this is one of the places that's
Sam: sort of family oriented and like clean.
Sam: And there, there, there are places out there that you can go that are really
Sam: just like, you know, sex resorts or swingers places or places like that.
Sam: This place and most like it are not at all like that.
Sam: In fact, like if you do anything, even remotely hinting,
Sam: being sexual, you will be tossed out of the place, you know?
Sam: So it's more about like lying by the pool and, and just chilling, read your book.
Sam: In this case, do a little fun run or hiking through the woods or whatever, things like that.
Ed: John gets a kick out of the, they have a volleyball game in the pool all the time.
Ed: And the referees wear a shirt, but everyone else is naked.
Sam: Yeah, of course. You know, so. Anyway, that is that.
Sam: Okay, with that transition, I will move to a couple of movies.
Sam: And the first is a... An...
Sam: There is a television series that went from, so I am doing a movie,
Sam: but the context is it's a follow-up movie to a TV series that I've talked about on here before.
Sam: The TV series was Psych, which ran from 2006 to 2014, okay?
Sam: And then after the series ended, they came back with a series of made-for-TV
Sam: movies that followed up on the series.
Sam: So Psych ran from 2006 to 2014. I will give Psych a big thumbs up.
Sam: I enjoyed the series. It was fun. The basic premise of the series is there is
Sam: a guy who runs a psychic detective agency,
Sam: and he supports the police.
Sam: The local police, and solves a bunch of crimes for them, basically.
Sam: Now of course part of the premise here
Sam: is he's not really psychic he's just
Sam: really gifted at noticing things so he's
Sam: like a sherlock holmes type character who
Sam: like you know will notice all the little details in
Sam: the scene and help and put the stuff together he's got his name's sean he's
Sam: got a a sidekick gus and they it's a comedy it's a well a dramedy it's so they
Sam: they're they're constantly making jokes and doing silly things and in an exaggerated way. And.
Sam: And anyway, the thing is, he's not really a psychic.
Sam: He just knows this stuff. But he pretends to be a psychic, and that gets him
Sam: into trouble sometimes.
Sam: And, you know, as it goes on, they sort of do a little less pretending that
Sam: they're psychic and a little more just doing their thing. But,
Sam: you know, it's whatever.
Sam: Anyway, it was followed up with Psych the Movie in 2017, followed by Psych 2
Sam: Lassie Come Home in 2020, which is the one I'm going to be speaking about today.
Sam: And finally, there is a third one, Psych 3 This Is Gus, that came out in 2021.
Sam: So Psych 2 Lassie Come Home is the one that I am going to talk about today.
Sam: Look, here's the thing. I liked the series. I think the movies, like...
Sam: Didn't quite live up to the series. And I said this a while back,
Sam: I reviewed the first movie and I said, I thought a big part of the problem was
Sam: that the characters were just a lot older.
Sam: And some of the hijinks that made sense when they were characters in their early
Sam: to mid twenties, when they're like pushing 40 or whatever, you're just like,
Sam: okay, come on, it's time to grow up.
Sam: You know, it's like, and I think that continues here, like some of the gags
Sam: and stuff, it's just like, okay, you know, you've been doing this for how many years now?
Sam: Like, just like, chill a little bit.
Sam: The one interesting thing I will say about Lassie Comes Home,
Sam: which I think was interesting,
Sam: is one of the supporting characters was played by Timothy Amundson,
Sam: okay, who's an actor, he's been in a bunch of stuff.
Sam: But in real life, the actor had a stroke.
Sam: And rather than recast him or write the character out or anything,
Sam: this movie is actually centered around that.
Sam: What happens in the movie the character's name is Lassiter and the movie starts
Sam: out with him being ambushed and left for dead and he's shot but then has a stroke
Sam: on the operating table and so then they actually you know,
Sam: make it a part where the actor,
Sam: in his condition where he was still fairly significantly affected by the stroke
Sam: he had suffered, plays his own character recovering from a stroke.
Sam: And I thought that was kind of classy, actually.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: You know, that they did that. And a little bit brave to do that as part of the story.
Sam: I mean, in this one of the three movies, he didn't have a huge part.
Sam: You know, he was shot at the beginning, and a couple moments in the middle,
Sam: they talked to him a little bit, and he gave some clues about what had happened
Sam: to him, and they talked to him a little bit at the end.
Sam: So his part was not big, and it was sort of clear that given his condition,
Sam: his part could not have been big.
Sam: But they still included him directly.
Sam: And, you know, overall, I'll still give it a thumbs up.
Sam: I will, I continue to say the movies do not live up to the standard of the TV
Sam: show, which also, like most long-running TV shows,
Sam: you know, it sort of, it started out good and sort of slowly declined over the
Sam: course of its run, but the TV show was good.
Sam: The movies are okay. and if if you watched the tv show i would give a thumbs
Sam: up go watch the movies i will say though that if you did not watch the tv show
Sam: the movies don't bother like it's you're not gonna they don't.
Sam: As a standalone, they would get a thumb sideways at best, maybe even a thumbs down.
Sam: They get their value from being a continuation of the TV show.
Sam: So like, if you're interested at all in the premise, watch the TV show first.
Sam: Then if you're still engaged at the end of the TV show, watch the movies.
Sam: But I wouldn't, I wouldn't just jump in.
Sam: Certainly not to psych two movie, you know, like, yeah, no, watch the TV show.
Sam: Then watch the three movies, et cetera.
Sam: And I'm not reviewing the third movie yet, but, you know, thumbs up.
Sam: I enjoyed seeing the characters again, et cetera.
Sam: Not quite up to the TV show, but still enjoyable, still thumbs up,
Sam: still worth the watch, if you liked the TV show. So, there you go.
Sam: You recognized the name when I said Psych. Did you ever watch that show?
Ed: Oh, we watched it a lot. I don't think we've seen the movies,
Ed: but the TV series we enjoyed a lot.
Sam: Okay. Well, in that case, there are three movies.
Sam: You should go check them out. They are, I am sure they, let's see,
Sam: where are they available on streaming? Let me check for you. Probably on Netflix.
Sam: I'll tell you in a second.
Sam: If I can spell Psyche. There we go. It is available on Peacock.
Ed: Oh, Peacock.
Sam: It is available on Peacock.
Ed: I'm not sure if we still get that one or not. We'll have to second see.
Sam: Yeah, so.
Ed: My spouse runs the TV for the most part.
Sam: Yes. So anyway, that's it for Psyche. And then one more movie to wrap this up.
Sam: Which is a kids movie called epic
Sam: from 2013 it is a it says it is a a fantasy adventure film loosely based on
Sam: william joyce's 1996 children's book the leaf men and the brave good bugs,
Sam: I will give this a thumbs up. It's a cute little movie.
Sam: Summarizing the plot, again reading the first couple paragraphs from the Wikipedia
Sam: summary, after her mother dies, you know, kids' movies always start with parents dying.
Sam: It just seems like it's a common theme. Not always, but like usually Disney
Sam: movies, both parents die and the kid is orphaned.
Sam: I mean, whether it's a human kid or an animal or whatever, you know,
Sam: going back all the way to Bambi or whatever, the parents always die.
Sam: And it seems to be a common trope in children's movies. I guess to get the kid
Sam: in a situation where they're acting independently and you can build a movie
Sam: around them, but it's still notable.
Sam: And it's not always the case, not always, like you said, but it happens enough to be noticeable.
Sam: Anyway, after her mother dies, 17-year-old Mary Catherine moves in with her
Sam: eccentric scientist father, Professor Bamba in Danbury, Connecticut.
Sam: So this one only had one parent die.
Sam: Bamba spent his life researching the Leaf Men, tiny humanoid soldiers who protect
Sam: the neighboring forest from wicked creatures called Boggins.
Sam: MK is irritated by her father's work, believing his theories to be nonsense.
Sam: And it's fairly clear, by the way, when you watch the movie,
Sam: that she's not the only one who thinks his theories are nonsense.
Sam: He's clearly like an isolated man off in the wilderness doing his research that
Sam: nobody in the world takes seriously and thinks he's out of his mind.
Sam: MK is irritated by her father's work, believing his theories to be nonsense.
Sam: Meanwhile, Nod, an independent yet rebellious young leafman,
Sam: decides to quit. So they are real.
Sam: Much to the ire of his no-nonsense leader, Ronan, who promised Nod's late father
Sam: he would look out for him.
Sam: The forest's benevolent ruler, Queen Tara, must choose her successor and arrives
Sam: at a pool of lily pads occupied by Mub, a laid-back slug, and Grub,
Sam: a wannabe leafman snail.
Sam: Immediately after she chooses a pod, the Boggins attack and overwhelm the leafman
Sam: while Tara flees with Ronan on his hummingbird mount.
Sam: The pair are pursued by the Boggins' leader, Mandrake and his son Dagda,
Sam: who is killed by Ronan, but it allowed Mandrake to badly wound Terra with an arrow.
Sam: So one more paragraph here. MK decides to leave after getting into an argument
Sam: with Bamba about his research.
Sam: Outside, MK encounters the falling Terra, who entrusts the pod to her,
Sam: shrinks her with magic, and tells her to take it to Nimgaloo,
Sam: a glowworm wizard, before finally dying.
Sam: MK is accompanied by Ronan, Mub, and Grub, while Ronan recruits a reluctant
Sam: nod after saving him from short-tempered toad gangster Bufo.
Sam: Okay, that description had a lot of character names. But in any case, you get the idea.
Sam: The human girl enters the world of these leaf men, and at a time where they
Sam: are in chaos, where the enemy has taken over,
Sam: the queen has died, she is entrusted with the pod that is supposed to be,
Sam: I guess, the new queen reincarnated thing or whatever.
Sam: It gives, the exact mechanism becomes clear later in the movie,
Sam: but whatever, you know, anyway, it's a cute movie.
Sam: It's, it's, it's, it's fun. It's nice.
Sam: And, you know, it is, I'd say one of these that is not just for kids.
Sam: The adults will enjoy it too. And,
Sam: It's not super deep. You know, it's not, they're not twists and turns that are going to shock you.
Sam: It ends the way you probably think it's going to end by my description so far.
Sam: But it was fun. It was cute. It was a nice little movie.
Sam: It was a fun, how long is it? 102 minutes. So it's not even that long.
Sam: It is a good movie. Thumbs up. I recommend. There you go.
Ed: There you go. All right.
Sam: So okay with that
Sam: we are going to take a break the first break
Sam: is an apple dream i've been promising this apple dream for
Sam: several weeks it is a really short apple dream and it is one that has been on
Sam: the show before although a long time ago i think it was apple dream 15 and then
Sam: when we get back we will have ed tell us what his first serious topic is going to be.
Ed: All right or.
Sam: I'm assuming it's serious it might not be maybe maybe
Sam: your topic is clowns is your topic clowns no no not not quite well yeah clowns
Sam: are serious to some people some people are deathly afraid of clowns some clowns
Sam: take themselves very seriously so i you know i don't know anyway here comes abel dream 15 i.
Break: Remember almost nothing but we were at the arctic circle and there was snow
Break: everywhere, and people were talking about the world's most northern ATM machine.
Break: Except, you shouldn't say machine because that's what the M's for.
Break: And I don't remember why we were there or what we were doing.
Break: I think that was earlier in the dream, but I no longer remember it. Bye.
Sam: Well, that was exciting, wasn't it? The world's most northern ATM machine. Uh...
Ed: I don't dream. Well, I dream, but I don't ever remember my dreams.
Sam: Right. So let's see.
Sam: Let's see if I can actually find it. Let's see. The world's most remote ATMs.
Sam: There's one at Mount Everest-based camp. That's high altitude.
Sam: There's one in remote part of the Amazon rainforest.
Sam: Forest this the highest atm
Sam: in the world is not the mount everest base camp
Sam: but is elsewhere in is in tibet there's a floating atm in indonesia here we
Sam: go the most northerly atm since i had that dream about it let's actually long
Sam: year be in the administrative center of the svalbard Archipelago in Norway,
Sam: boasts the most northerly ATM.
Sam: This location is one of the most remote inhabited places on earth,
Sam: with limited access to mainland Norway, making the ATM a vital service for residents
Sam: and visitors. There you go.
Ed: And, uh, I'll have to check that. My wife and I are taking a cruise this fall
Ed: in, uh, I don't know if we're going to Fallbard.
Ed: We're going to Norway and we're going to cruise up to Northern Norway. So maybe it'll be there.
Sam: You'll, you'll, you'll need to ask about it. It's in Longyearbyen,
Sam: which I presume means a place that has a long year because it's an Arctic circle.
Sam: So I don't know. Now, I imagine, too, this article was only from last year, but I would imagine,
Sam: maybe even especially in some of these more remote places, at least once they have internet,
Sam: there'll be a move, like everywhere else, to transactions that don't use cash
Sam: anymore, where you're doing an electronic transaction.
Sam: Action now there's sort of this intermediate ground
Sam: if you're remote but you
Sam: don't yet have reliable internet or
Sam: cell service or whatever then maybe you still need the cash because nobody's
Sam: going to have electronic transfers because they don't have the right equipment
Sam: for it but once but once you have got the cell service and a reliable connection
Sam: it seems like things would very rapidly move towards,
Sam: you know what? We can just do electronic transactions.
Sam: Don't worry about having the paper money.
Ed: I think Sweden is,
Ed: I think it was sweet. We were there a number of years ago, and they pretty much did not accept cash.
Ed: You had to use credit cards, and it was fine because I've got my credit card
Ed: and my watch, and I didn't even need to pull my billfold out.
Ed: We just went in a store, buy something, flash my watch, and go on our way.
Sam: This is rapidly accelerating, and I haven't done a lot of traveling,
Sam: but from what I understand,
Sam: Europe is one of the areas that's actually moving faster than the U.S.,
Sam: And there are several other parts of the world that are also moving faster with
Sam: a transition to doing almost everything,
Sam: not just electronically, but specifically through your mobile phone.
Sam: Whether it be purchases at stores or even person-to-person money transfers is
Sam: rapidly moving in that direction.
Sam: I think in the U S it's, you know,
Sam: I do, I, I sometimes use my phone for these transactions now,
Sam: but I probably still use my cards more, but more and more people are just using
Sam: their phones and watches and stuff for these transactions.
Sam: And use of cash is way, way down everywhere in the U S for sure.
Sam: It's not extinct, but I notice it when somebody uses cash.
Ed: When we were in Canada a couple of years ago, I never did pull out my billfold.
Sam: Everything the hotel.
Ed: Fees the restaurant the restaurants the the waitress would bring this this little
Ed: pocket held thing you'd clash your thing indicate how much tip you want and
Ed: go on your way it was all done with my with my phone.
Sam: Yeah i've said before i haven't i.
Ed: Mean not my phone.
Sam: Yeah i haven't made the full transition to using my phone and the watch i like
Sam: have to remember to do so and it's a little bit more convenient when it's attached
Sam: to a credit card than when it's attached to a debit card because when it's attached
Sam: to a debit card sometimes they They still make you put in your pen, which is annoying.
Sam: So right now...
Sam: And right now I have my, my Apple pay or whatever it is attached to like a debit card.
Sam: And so I don't know, but I, but I've, I've used it. I've definitely used it,
Sam: but I haven't carried cash in decades now.
Sam: Like the, the only time I have cash is if I am, if I know I am going somewhere
Sam: where I know I will need it, which at this point has not happened in years.
Sam: The last place that did it, that needed that was like a traditional barbershop I used to go to.
Sam: And I, and I don't think even that barbershop still requires cash.
Sam: Now they, they also take electronic payment, but also after pandemic,
Sam: I switched to a different one and they definitely are all electronic.
Sam: And so I haven't had a situation where I needed actual cash in a very,
Sam: very, very long time at this point.
Sam: So anyway, sorry, I was hijacked by the Apple Dream and remote ATMs and Northern
Sam: Dream, you know, whatever. So what's your first topic?
Ed: Well, I thought we ought to talk a little bit about the ketogenic diet.
Ed: My favorite health administrator, RFK Jr., came out this week and said that
Ed: schizophrenia can now be cured with a ketogenic diet.
Ed: And so a lot of people may not know what that is and why it,
Ed: he thinks it cures them. So I thought we might talk about that a little bit.
Ed: Just briefly, I don't know how much you know about it, but anyway,
Ed: a ketogenic diet is one in which 60% of your diet is fat, about 30% is protein,
Ed: and 5% to 10% only carbohydrates.
Ed: And what it does is that you deplete your body glycogen stores and you start burning fat for energy.
Ed: And the side effect or side product of burning fat for energy is ketones.
Ed: And that's why it's called a ketogenic diet.
Ed: It's been proven very effective as a weight loss mechanism, although like most
Ed: diets, you lose weight while you're on it, and then when you stop and take off
Ed: the diet, people gain their weight back usually, not always, but quite often do.
Ed: It has also been found fairly effective, especially in childhood seizure disorders,
Ed: for reasons that aren't entirely clear, but again, it's a pretty strict diet. It's hard to adhere to.
Ed: People who are on it need to have pretty close medical monitoring because the
Ed: ketones, if they get excessive, are not particularly healthy.
Ed: They're not good for you and moderately dangerous. Now, what has happened is
Ed: a couple people with psychoses have been under treatment.
Ed: And a few psychiatrists here and there have noticed that some of those,
Ed: like everyone else, a few people get onto a ketogenic diet.
Ed: And they find suddenly someone got better. So that gets reported.
Ed: And that's what we have at this point. There's a psychiatrist in,
Ed: I think he's at Mass General, Massachusetts General Brigham Hospitals.
Ed: And he had a number of people, psychotic, schizophrenia, who,
Ed: for whatever reason, a few of them started on a ketogenic diet.
Ed: And one of these guys came, oh, he was on it because he was obese.
Ed: That's what it was. And he came back after around eight weeks And he said,
Ed: I am not hearing voices And seeing things anymore So this became a case report
Ed: This psychiatrist has had two or three others,
Ed: That is what we have is a few incidental case reports, which is interesting
Ed: to medicine, but it sure as hell is not science.
Sam: Which is interesting and worth following up. Yeah, it's the kind of thing that
Sam: makes you curious and is worth following up.
Ed: Absolutely.
Sam: You need something, you know, a randomized control trial is not always the gold standard.
Sam: Sometimes you can look at populations, but you need to make sure you are looking
Sam: at comparable populations that did or did not do this and see if there's a significant
Sam: difference that you can actually measure, et cetera.
Sam: Or was it just that you happened to have a couple people who coincidentally
Sam: got better at the same time they were taking this diet, right?
Ed: Sure. And it happens with a lot of, I remember one of my surgery professors
Ed: when I was in my residency commented that he had a patient who was sent to him
Ed: for surgery for ulcerative colitis.
Ed: She was dying of severe hemorrhage and problems of the ulcerative colitis.
Ed: And she was sent from somewhere in Northern California to him in San Francisco.
Ed: They landed in San Francisco and she was better.
Ed: She not only got better, she basically got almost back to normal.
Ed: So she called her husband and she said, I'm not going back north.
Ed: San Francisco has cured me. And she didn't have the surgery.
Ed: And he thought, well, San Francisco did not cure.
Ed: Diseases have intermittent things. They go up and down and up and down.
Ed: But she was convinced, well, I don't even think anyone did a study on that.
Ed: This deserves some study, but chances are it's just incidental findings.
Ed: It would only take a non-scientist in what should be a scientist role to suddenly
Ed: proclaim this is the way to cure that disease.
Ed: That's RFK Jr. in a nutshell. A non-scientist in a scientist-appointed place
Ed: who doesn't listen to scientists because he thinks he's smarter than they are.
Ed: And he's appointed by an idiot in chief.
Sam: Right. And look, you know, who knows? Maybe they'll do follow-up studies and
Sam: there will be some sort of correlation and they'll figure out something.
Sam: But you don't want to act on these things prematurely as well.
Sam: Because like you said, this is a hard diet to be on and there are potentially
Sam: negative side effects if you do too much of it.
Ed: I have a friend who decided to go on a ketogenic diet to help him lose weight,
Ed: and he ended up in a hospital with severe diabetic ketoacidosis because he has diabetes.
Ed: And ketosis is not good for diabetics. And he damn near died.
Ed: I mean, his blood sugar was running 800 or 900.
Ed: It's just a bad scene. So, as I said, the physician who did the case reports
Ed: that caught Kennedy's attention has come out and said, this is not a cure.
Ed: I never said cure, but we are going to do a study on it because it is interesting.
Ed: So I think he's planning to try and do what will probably be a fairly limited
Ed: study, but at least it'll be looked at it scientifically.
Sam: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, continuing on this topic, just broadening it a little
Sam: bit, I know you are a retired military doctor.
Sam: So this is why, like, you know, some of the medical stuff.
Sam: Tell us, we've talked a few times about RFK Jr.
Sam: And the absolutely crazy stuff that's coming out of there.
Sam: Give us a few more. Well, first of all, is there anything RFK Jr. is doing right?
Sam: I have yet to identify anything, but is there anything he's doing right?
Ed: Like Klox, I think he's probably had a couple. I mean, the United States has
Ed: an overall population and not a good diet.
Sam: Yeah. The one thing I've heard him talking about that I think there is backup
Sam: for is discouraging highly processed foods, you know?
Sam: And I have heard other doctors, I have heard, I've seen articles about this
Sam: more in general, that highly processed foods, which now make up a huge portion of the American diet.
Sam: And there are a variety of reasons for that related to how food companies make
Sam: money and doing things intentionally to make certain kinds of foods more appealing
Sam: and cheaper and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Because highly processed foods, I hate to tell everyone, they're really yummy.
Sam: They taste great. They are addictive. They're fun.
Ed: That's because they have lots of sugar and salt in them.
Sam: Exactly. Lots of sugar and salt. It's amazing. It's good stuff.
Sam: And other yummy things too. But there is increasing evidence that,
Sam: a lot of these, and it probably varies based on exactly how it's processed and
Sam: exactly the ingredients, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: But these things are not great for health, you know?
Sam: And, and so RFK Jr.
Sam: Has initiated some degree of push to, hey, avoid the highly processed foods.
Sam: And that's probably not bad. Now, the details of his implementation of that
Sam: probably suck, you know, but the general theme of that is okay.
Sam: But almost everything else, I mean, come on.
Sam: I saw another thing, and I was trying to bring it up real quick, but I can't find it.
Sam: There was yet another vaccination thing this morning about one of the people who works for RFK Jr.
Sam: Basically, I don't know if they've officially changed recommendations or whether
Sam: this was just this guy talking in an interview or something,
Sam: but it was discouraging COVID vaccines during pregnancy.
Ed: Yeah, he's been after that for a while now.
Sam: And from what, well, he's anti-every vaccine, as far as I can tell.
Sam: But in this particular case, it's one of those things where,
Sam: you know, he's saying something unproven about side effects of the vaccine during
Sam: pregnancy and negative effects they could have.
Sam: Meanwhile, the known risks of actual COVID during pregnancy to both the mother
Sam: and the child are very well known and very serious, potentially.
Sam: And so it's one of these things where in almost all of these cases,
Sam: a big part of where folks like this seem to mess up, well, I almost don't want to,
Sam: like, part of it is just like they have a visceral negative reaction and they
Sam: don't want to think any further beyond that is really what's going on.
Sam: But if you try to go one step further than that, it's misunderstanding, like, you know,
Sam: statistics and math and proportions and, you know, OK, you have a rare risk
Sam: that one out of any every 10 billion times has a negative side effect that may
Sam: or may not even be proven because it's so rare.
Sam: Meanwhile, you have a well-known effect that happens almost all of the time.
Sam: And how do you balance those against each other? and,
Sam: The answer is all the time wins over, very rare.
Ed: Yeah, this is sort of one of the most dangerous things they'd come up with was
Ed: to stop recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for either when women are pregnant
Ed: or for the baby shortly after birth.
Ed: And God only knows how they decided that because there's very few side effects
Ed: of the hepatitis B vaccine.
Ed: The data are very clear that the incidence of hepatitis B in at least up through
Ed: teenage years since we started that vaccine, I think it started around 2005 or 2006,
Ed: it's a 99% reduction in the incidence of what is a dangerous damn disease.
Ed: One of the commoner causes of liver cancer, amongst other stuff,
Ed: and cirrhosis, they have said, well, if the mother doesn't have hepatitis B,
Ed: the baby doesn't need it.
Ed: Well, who knows if the mother has it, because not everybody gets a test for it.
Ed: Who knows what else is in the family, the babysitter, the teachers, you name it.
Ed: There is no such thing as a low risk. What there is is an absolutely almost
Ed: zero risk if you get that vaccine.
Ed: So bottom line is basically Bobby, by stopping that, and a lot of people won't
Ed: bother getting the shot now, he's killing a bunch of people in the next 10 to 20 years.
Ed: And I don't know any other way to put it other than to say he's killing them.
Ed: The measles vaccine we're having in the United States is no longer.
Ed: There's a definition somehow of you're measles free, and it has to be that there's
Ed: a certain number of cases that you're below a parameter.
Ed: We're no longer below that. We are now no longer measles free in our society,
Ed: which means there's several diseases that are going to come back.
Sam: Well, and on some of these things, to be clear, the trends have been going on
Sam: before RFK Jr. got into government. Absolutely.
Ed: He just accentuated it.
Sam: He is accelerating and accentuating and giving it sort of public validation.
Sam: So, like, you know, vaccination rates have been going down in the U.S.
Sam: For a while. And there's a variety of reasons for that. And part of it is RFK
Sam: Jr., even before a government, spreading anti-vaccine information.
Sam: But he was by no means the only one.
Sam: There was a lot of anti-vax.
Sam: Yeah, there's a general anti-vax movement that started on the left politically
Sam: with people who were otherwise on the left.
Sam: And then during COVID jumped over and a lot of right-wing folks got on board as well.
Sam: And and so that
Sam: has been going on but what he has been doing
Sam: since he got into government is basically realigning all of the government advice
Sam: to be more anti-vax i mean he hasn't he hasn't gone so far as to outlaw these
Sam: vaccines thank goodness but he's done essentially everything he would like to,
Sam: He's done everything short of that, removing recommendations,
Sam: saying that you shouldn't, you know, putting in more caveats,
Sam: putting all kinds of stuff that is not supported by the science.
Sam: They're, you know, Florida famously, just a couple of weeks ago,
Sam: announced that they're removing vaccine mandates for schools entirely.
Sam: Not, you know, we're not even just talking about COVID. We're talking about
Sam: all of the childhood vaccines, all the kind of stuff that in most places in
Sam: the country have been required for decades and decades with,
Sam: you know, a few limited exceptions,
Sam: religious exceptions, other that were allowed for one reason or another.
Sam: And, you know, so it's just all of these trends that were already underway will
Sam: be accelerated, whereas the previous public health regime was doing their best to stem that tide,
Sam: to get the, you know,
Sam: pro-vaccine information out there, make sure that people knew, etc.
Sam: Now this is just going to lead to more and more people skipping more and more
Sam: vaccines, which is going to result in, I mean, you mentioned that we've got
Sam: outbreaks of measles in several States at this point.
Sam: And it's like you said, no longer eradicated in the U S but we're going to see
Sam: the return of all kinds of childhood diseases that were basically, you know,
Sam: I mean, I remember I had chicken pox as a kid.
Sam: You've told on this show a story about a patient of yours that died, you know, from that.
Sam: You know, you look at, there are charts of various of these diseases over the
Sam: years and how they were very prominent and lots of people caught these diseases.
Sam: Lots of people died of these diseases and then a vaccine came out and they dropped
Sam: to near zero in a few years and we're undoing that and a big part of that.
Ed: The entire world incidence of polio has now dropped to, you know,
Ed: one or two cases a year in the whole world.
Ed: The virus is still there. We will be having children with polio.
Ed: The trouble is a lot of the illnesses that the vaccines present have a lag period
Ed: before when you stop, you know, preventing it.
Ed: And then you start seeing the disease might be several years.
Ed: So people have a hard time saying, well, the vaccine didn't work,
Ed: did it? But more important, there's some of them have an even longer lag period.
Ed: The German measles, the mild three-day measles, has about a 20-year lag period
Ed: until we see the problem.
Ed: Because the illness itself was very mild.
Ed: No one gets sick. Two, three days, and you're back to normal.
Ed: If you're pregnant and you get German measles, your child has terrible birth
Ed: defects caused by that virus. But that's 20, 30, 40 years before we see it.
Ed: You can't, and you can't, they always say, well, you need to have a double-blind scientific study.
Ed: You can't do a double-blind study and be ethical when the disease you're dealing
Ed: with is one that is devastating.
Ed: Hepatitis, meningitis, German measles.
Sam: These are one of the states where you have to do sort of population studies
Sam: and look at who has or has not been vaccinated already, rather than saying,
Sam: okay, you're getting a placebo, you know.
Sam: And it's harder to disentangle that with confounding factors,
Sam: but there are mathematical techniques to doing that.
Sam: The problem is, you know, again, the non-scientists often don't understand any of this.
Sam: It's all mumbo jumbo. And what I was going to say earlier is another big problem
Sam: is a lot of people react to this with, why does my kid need a measles vaccine?
Sam: I've never known anyone with measles.
Ed: Yeah, guess why?
Sam: Exactly. You don't know anyone with measles because for decades,
Sam: every child has gotten the measles vaccine.
Sam: Once you start not giving people the vaccine, these things will come back.
Sam: And yes, it's incredibly frustrating.
Ed: Case of polio never saw i never i think i may have seen one case of mumps the only chicken pox i saw,
Ed: was in the uh the 1980 70s i think it was i never saw another case of chicken
Ed: pox and and on and on and on these these diseases help we can't even diagnose
Ed: them anymore because we don't really know the symptoms that much,
Ed: But we're learning them.
Sam: Right. So I just did a news search for recent articles about RFK Jr.
Sam: So the most recent one is apparently he's talking at a convention called CattleCon
Sam: about the need to beef up red meat consumption amongst Americans.
Ed: He wants us to eat a lot more meat.
Sam: Which i i've
Sam: heard plenty of why actually reducing red
Sam: meat is good a for the environment and b for health i imagine this there's probably
Sam: conflicting information about some of that but anyway there's information about
Sam: him pushing an unproven autism treatment within the last day as Oh,
Sam: and apparently this also, this is not medically related, but one of the things
Sam: in the Epstein files is that RFK Jr.
Sam: Joined Epstein and Glenn Maxwell on a fossil hunting trip in the Dakotas decades
Sam: ago, illegally getting on an Indian reservation where collecting fossils was illegal.
Sam: And yeah those are those are the most recent
Sam: well he's oh and engaged and and information about
Sam: you know how he helped cause measles up the measles outbreak in samoa a few
Sam: years ago which we'd heard about but apparently there's new emails about that
Sam: and about how he lied to the senate during his confirmation hearings about that
Sam: trip to samoa um all all of this is within the last day Oh,
Sam: and the keto diet stuff you were talking about, where experts say there's no credible evidence.
Ed: I think that may be—I think he's outing that for autism also,
Ed: that he thinks a ketogenic diet will cure autism.
Sam: Oh, nice. You know, all of this, it's just having him in this particular role
Sam: is about the worst place you could possibly put him.
Sam: And of course, it's the place he cared a lot about.
Sam: But in Health and Human Services is just of RFK Jr.'s toxically incorrect, unscientific beliefs,
Sam: this is the worst possible place you could put him.
Sam: He's causing so much damage. You know, and, you know, and this is also someplace
Sam: where Donald Trump himself,
Sam: you know, he was one of the actual accomplishments of his first term was the COVID vaccine.
Sam: His administration did do a lot of things to streamline the process and get that out earlier.
Sam: And he was very proud of that.
Sam: He was not an anti-vax crazy person. Donald Trump wasn't.
Sam: But in order to get RFK Jr.'s support this last time around,
Sam: he's like, sure, you can do whatever you want on this stuff. Have fun.
Ed: So, fun. Anyway.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: Yeah, RFK is one of my favorite people.
Sam: Yeah, I can tell. Anything else on that or related topics before we take another
Sam: break and I ask you for another topic?
Ed: I think that pretty much covers it. As I said, I think the thing that's going
Ed: to be the most dangerous is that several of these diseases are really devastating.
Ed: And the lead-in until we realize how bad this has been is going to be between
Ed: a few years and a few decades.
Ed: But it'll be way too late than to say, oh, my God, we shouldn't have listened to him.
Ed: And it's just right. It's terrible. We shouldn't should not be doing that to ourselves.
Sam: Well, and more generally, Yvonne and I have talked a lot about delayed effects.
Sam: What you're pointing out is some very concrete examples in the health care space.
Sam: But this applies across the board to a lot of the things that the Trump administration is doing.
Sam: We've talked specifically about economic delayed effects, but there are delayed
Sam: effects and all kinds of other stuff, too, in terms of policy choices he is making now,
Sam: whether it be foreign policy, domestic policy, health care policy...
Sam: Many of the effects won't be fully felt for a decade, maybe longer in some cases.
Sam: You know, some things have, you know, some of the first things have immediate
Sam: effect or an effect that you can notice after six months or a year.
Sam: But there are a lot of things where the full extent of the damage won't be obvious for many years.
Sam: But then when you track it
Sam: down you'll be able to tell oh yes this
Sam: is because of that policy change back in
Sam: 2025 or whatever you know
Sam: and the the problem is that the experts will be able to go in and trace that
Sam: and and say oh yeah that's because whatever but the general population will
Sam: blame it on whoever's president then you know yeah because that's just how it works You know,
Sam: it's not you're not looking back and saying, hey, you know, the root cause of
Sam: problem X is this action that was taken by the president 20 years ago.
Sam: So, I mean, I've heard those kind of arguments.
Sam: I see every few months graphs recirculate showing how all kinds of things started
Sam: going wrong during the Reagan administration and that we can truly blame X, Y,
Sam: Z that's happening today on something that happened in the Reagan administration
Sam: 50 years ago. Is it 50 years ago?
Sam: Oh, 80, 30. Oh, God.
Ed: I think it was. Kennedy was assassinated in 63 1980.
Sam: Was that's 45 years 40 45 years
Sam: ago and that so for 40 45 years
Sam: ago uh 40 40 46 for
Sam: the beginning his term started in 81 ended in 89
Sam: you know what math math is hard don't ask
Sam: me to do math okay so not not 50 years more
Sam: like 40 something but whatever whatever and and you can you can look at those
Sam: arguments and sometimes they make sense sometimes they don't and again it's
Sam: a mix some things do have immediate effect and we are seeing some of the negative
Sam: impact of the Donald Trump presidency already for sure.
Sam: But there will be some things that get worse and worse and linger and some things
Sam: will be correctable and some things will not be.
Sam: And, you know, it's it. Life is messy. OK, let's let's take a break.
Sam: OK, and then I'll come back and ask you for a second topic and we'll go through
Sam: that and then we'll wrap it up okay back after all.
Ed: Right see you in a couple minutes.
Sam: Yep back after this.
Break: Okie dokie. Here it comes.
Break: It's just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make.
Break: Do you believe Come on, come on.
Break: I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired.
Break: It's amazing to get the show on the road. there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road.
Sam: Okay we are back so ed what is your second topic of the show i.
Ed: Got another quickie.
Sam: For a second quickie okay so we may need more than one additional topic.
Ed: A week ago tomorrow, my right hearing aid stopped working for reasons unclear.
Ed: And then so on Monday, then I
Ed: contacted the company that they have because they're still under warranty.
Ed: And I sent an email saying what had happened. It was it was working intermittently.
Ed: It worked for a couple minutes and then it stopped. Then it worked and stopped.
Ed: And and it was also if I use it as as a Bluetooth, it was working anyway.
Ed: So I wrote the company and they wrote back and asked, I got an email back that
Ed: asked me a couple questions.
Ed: So I responded to that email and almost immediately got another response telling
Ed: me I should read, reboot my hearing aids. And it told me how to do that.
Ed: And then to let them know how that turned out, didn't hold on the phone.
Ed: And so I did that and that didn't help. So I wrote back And then they had me
Ed: do one more test to describe how to do it.
Ed: And I did that one and it still didn't work. So suddenly it said,
Ed: okay, a new hearing aid will be shipped to you tomorrow.
Ed: Now the incidence of this thing, the thing that's interesting is that I think
Ed: this is all done with an AI bot.
Ed: Because I never talked to a human. In the past I've talked when I would call
Ed: in, I talked to a human being.
Ed: And if there were two or three calls, every time he had to start all over at
Ed: the beginning and go, this was all done within a course of about,
Ed: well, three messages and maybe an hour, hour and a half total time. It was incredible.
Ed: And the hearing aid just arrived, just as when I said, I'll see you in a minute.
Ed: I went out, it was on the front porch, delivered.
Ed: Okay. So AI is affecting our lives better than I thought.
Sam: Well, you know, one of the things here, and so I'll talk about AI stuff for a little while.
Sam: Look, a couple years back when ChatGPT first hit the scene,
Sam: you know, Yvonne and I spent a bunch of time on this show making fun of stupid
Sam: AI mistakes, whether it be ChatGPT or Google Gemini in their search results.
Sam: They famously had a whole bunch of really stupid things where they were telling
Sam: people to do potentially dangerous things. They were getting facts completely
Sam: and totally wrong, all kinds of stuff.
Sam: And basically we were saying, it's just not ready yet. Like,
Sam: this has a lot of promise, but people are putting it into production,
Sam: doing things prematurely that it's not actually good at yet.
Sam: And there are still people doing things prematurely with it.
Sam: But the rate of improvement has been absolutely insane over these last couple years.
Sam: Um it is it is
Sam: if you look at things that every
Sam: every three months things are noticeably
Sam: better than they were three months previously it's not even comparing year to
Sam: year at this point you can compare a few months apart the main thing i've been
Sam: using ai for at this point is working on the personal projects I've been mentioning here.
Sam: I've talked about, well, the biggest one I'm working on is this Robin Letter thing which is a.
Sam: Yeah, alternative to social media to keep track, to keep up with circles of
Sam: friends and family that you sort of want to keep up with, but you're not talking
Sam: to every day, et cetera, et cetera, which I haven't updated on here for a while.
Sam: So just real quick, I'm perpetually a few weeks away from being ready to do
Sam: my first tests with real people.
Sam: I had hoped to be done at the end of December.
Sam: Then I had hoped to be done at the end of January. But then I ended up in the
Sam: hospital and recuperating for a while.
Sam: And I keep having this problem where like, I know if I just worked on it straight
Sam: through, I could probably be finished and ready for that first test in a week or so.
Sam: But the problem is I've got other things that I need to be doing too.
Sam: I can't just do only this. And so I will like concentrate on this for like a day or two.
Sam: And in fact, after I get this podcast out, like I am due to spend a couple days on this.
Sam: And but then after a couple of days, I'm like, man, all this other stuff is
Sam: building up. I got to keep I got to do this other stuff.
Sam: And so I have to put it away and stop for a little while and then get back to
Sam: it like in another week or something. And that slows everything down.
Sam: So I'm disappointed by that because I'm really excited about it.
Sam: I want to test it. I want to get it out. The first test group is going to be my cousins.
Sam: And then I'm going to I've got a handful of people who've specifically asked
Sam: to be included in subsequent tests, and I'll try to include them as soon as possible.
Sam: And I was going to ask, I was probably going to set up one for people who are
Sam: on the curmudgeon score Slack just as a test. So you'll be in there, Ed.
Sam: I will. And then maybe ask on Facebook for,
Sam: you know, are there people who knew me in college who'd be willing to test in
Sam: a people who knew Sam in college test or a people who knew Sam in high school
Sam: or people who knew Sam at various jobs he had in the past or whatever.
Sam: We'll see. We'll see how that goes. But anyway, the point is,
Sam: I have been using AI assistance for this. I've been using Cursor for this.
Sam: And more recently, I've shifted to using Claude Code for most of this.
Sam: But the point is, even in the space of time that I've been working on this Robin
Sam: Letter project, robinletter.com, if you want more information,
Sam: which I really, like, I was doing a little bit of it going back all the way
Sam: to January 2025, very slowly because I didn't have time because I was still at work.
Sam: I wasn't unemployed yet, but I started way back then.
Sam: And when I started, I really had to really closely babysit the AI.
Sam: Like every single thing I asked it to do, I would have to like,
Sam: you know, I would have to check the code and I would have to ask it about stupid things.
Sam: And I would have to ask it to repeat. And I would, you know,
Sam: make sure that it was making documents to describe what it did so it didn't
Sam: forget. And I could tell it to continue later.
Sam: And frankly, some of the choices on Robin letter specifically,
Sam: I think I wasted months and months because the AI had me do some stuff first
Sam: that I should have waited to later to do.
Sam: Um, you know, I, I ended up doing a, a lot of.
Sam: Preliminary UI stuff that I'm not actually using at this point,
Sam: that took me a long time to do before I started building actual functionality.
Sam: And then at some point, I'm like, I'm sick of this. Let's move functionality
Sam: right away. And things started moving faster.
Sam: But also, at the same time, over the course of that little bit more than a year
Sam: on this one project, it's gotten noticeably smarter.
Sam: Things that I had to spell out explicitly or have it do wrong and then I would
Sam: tell it to correct and I'd have to take three or four attempts before it got
Sam: it right the way I wanted it to get right.
Sam: It's now getting right on the first shot.
Sam: A lot of the planning process that I was manually making it go through,
Sam: okay, write a doc that outlines all of this and And then we're going to iterate
Sam: on that doc until I'm happy with it.
Sam: And then we're going to do implementation based on that doc.
Sam: Now, it's like volunteering to make that doc without me prompting.
Sam: And then when I read through the doc the first time, it's got almost all of it right.
Sam: The last one of these I did on a Robin Letter feature I was working on a few
Sam: days ago, adding, like, actually, it wasn't Robin Letter. It was Juke Potter.
Sam: Juke Potter is another of my projects. Jukepotter.com. Go play with it.
Sam: But it was related to that, and I had it write the document,
Sam: and then I read over the document,
Sam: and I had, like, two really minor comments that weren't really consequential,
Sam: and everything else it had written, it had gotten right.
Sam: Like, from my initial description, which was, like,
Sam: hey, go look at what we've already done in place A and place B.
Sam: I want to do something similar in place C, but with these changes.
Sam: It wrote up a detailed description of exactly what needed to be done.
Sam: And again, other than two really minor, relatively inconsequential things,
Sam: its description was perfect out of the box.
Sam: And then I told it, go do it. And it sat and it thought for like 20 minutes and making changes.
Sam: And then it was basically done.
Sam: I mean, I then tested it and there were a couple of minor things that had to
Sam: be corrected, but they were minor things that had to be corrected.
Sam: For the most part, it had done exactly what I had described and done it right on the first shot.
Sam: And that was something that even six months ago, it would not have done.
Sam: Six months ago, I would have been iterating a lot longer to get the same result.
Sam: Now, even six months ago, even a year ago,
Sam: it was saving me time versus me doing it myself as someone who is not and has
Sam: never been a software developer,
Sam: but has dabbled enough to know a little and who has done a lot more of the program
Sam: management and requirements development than the actual coding.
Sam: It was already saving me time back then. It might not have fully saved time
Sam: a year and a half ago for someone who is actually a professional developer and
Sam: knew what the hell they were doing.
Sam: But for me, it certainly was. But now it's getting things right on the first
Sam: try and things are moving faster.
Sam: There's a lot. I still have to, like, make sure I can't skip testing.
Sam: Right. If I have it build something, I have to make sure to test it fairly thoroughly
Sam: and find all the edge cases, and it doesn't always get them all right on the
Sam: first try, and we fix those and go through them.
Sam: But compared to—again, the key here is the rate of improvement.
Sam: It is so much better now than it was even a few months ago, and that isn't even
Sam: comparable to where it was a year ago.
Sam: And most of my experience is on this sort of coding kind of thing where I'm
Sam: working with the AI to build something.
Sam: I'll be honest, I have not spent a lot of time just chatting with the chatbot.
Sam: You know, we will probably need to, at some point, do another experiment with
Sam: having me co-host the show with an AI.
Sam: But, you know, we did that once. I figure at least a year in between.
Sam: It was sort of, it wasn't great.
Sam: It was entertaining to do once. But, you know, I asked it to replicate Yvonne's
Sam: style, and it completely failed at that.
Ed: As I recall, it didn't have any curse words in it.
Sam: It didn't have any curse words. It was not very argumentative.
Sam: It was very agreeable, basically said, Sam, you're absolutely right a lot.
Sam: You know, so anyway, but I have not spent a lot of time with the pure chatbots.
Sam: I have not spent a lot of time with the image generation stuff,
Sam: although I've played with that and it's done some that honestly,
Sam: I know a lot of people slag it because it's imitating real artists styles.
Sam: And it's kind of derivative at times, but,
Sam: Frankly, when I've done it, it's done stuff that I could never do on my own,
Sam: and it's been perfectly acceptable for the one-off uses that I've had for it,
Sam: which are basically things like,
Sam: you know, somebody says something in a group family chat that I'm like,
Sam: oh, that would be interesting as an image.
Sam: And I'll go to chat GPT or whatever and ask it to make an image of that.
Sam: And kaboom, I've got like a little cartoonish image of whatever weird thing
Sam: it was like, you know, my dog piloting a spaceship or whatever.
Sam: And boom, it's done, you know, and I would not have been able to do that on my own.
Sam: And those are fun, but not super useful.
Sam: I've resisted using that for, like, my Juke Potter site needs a real logo. I am not an artist.
Sam: I know I could go into any one of half a dozen AI tools, describe what I wanted
Sam: for a logo, and it would spit one out, and I could use it.
Sam: But I've resisted using it for something like that because often the stuff is
Sam: recognizable as, oh, that looks like an AI did it.
Sam: But also that's the kind of thing where I feel like, hey, it would be nice to
Sam: like pay an actual artist to do that.
Sam: You know you'll get get somebody
Sam: i i've offered both my wife
Sam: and my son have better artistic skills than i have and i've asked them both
Sam: to make a logo for that site and neither one of them have it's been months i
Sam: just saw a facebook friend post online actually they they they just invited
Sam: me as a linkedin connection and their job description was freelance artist and i'm like oh.
Sam: I'll ask them too. I'll see how much they would charge me for a logo.
Sam: You know, so I've done that kind of stuff.
Sam: And I did ask one artist friend of mine to do it. So if you're listening,
Sam: Mark, I know you sometimes listen to the show.
Sam: I asked you like a year ago for a Juke Potter logo.
Sam: No, I asked you for a Robin Letter logo. I asked you for a Robin Letter logo.
Sam: I have a Robin Letter logo that I did myself now.
Sam: It's kind of corny. It's just a pixelated version of a picture I had of a robin.
Sam: Like a picture I actually took myself of a robin. I went and pixelated it by
Sam: hand painting pixels over, you know, I traced it and blah, blah,
Sam: blah. You know, whatever.
Sam: Anyway, Mark, if you want to do a Juke Potter logo for me, you know,
Sam: I will pay you for it. Just give me a price. Let me know.
Sam: Anyway, but yeah, I've avoided using it for things like that.
Sam: And I've avoided using it.
Sam: You know, people are talking about using these things for like,
Sam: I'm having a fight with my wife. What should I say?
Sam: Like, no, come on.
Sam: No, no, that's a bad idea. That's a bad idea.
Ed: I've heard of people use—,
Ed: The other place where it's clearly not ready to be used is lawyers have been
Ed: using it to write their briefs for the judge.
Ed: And it still has the same thing.
Ed: It makes things up. It gives citations in which it misquotes the authors.
Ed: And the judges apparently are getting kind of pissed off.
Sam: If the citation even exists at all, which it usually doesn't.
Ed: But the judges, some judges don't bother you against that thing and they, okay, that's my ruling.
Ed: Other judges who read through the thing and look up citations are more than a little angry.
Ed: The one I think threatened a guy with contempt of court.
Sam: Well, yeah, I know that's happened a couple of times now. And I mean,
Sam: this is just in general, like the other example I was giving,
Sam: because obviously I'm currently unemployed, I will be looking for a job, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: People are worried about people using AI on interviews to help them.
Sam: People are talking about how much AI to use in things like writing resumes and cover letters.
Sam: Now, I will admit, the last time I updated my resume, I did talk to the AI about it.
Sam: I gave it examples of things I had done and asked it to help summarize.
Sam: But I did not accept word for word anything it gave me. Like it would give me
Sam: a shortened version of it.
Sam: And then I would take that and recraft it, you know, to, to sound,
Sam: to, to be more like me and also to get rid of inaccuracies.
Sam: Cause it was getting things wrong, you know, and make it so like,
Sam: is this, is this actually true?
Sam: Is this actually what I did? Or is this like completely made up bullshit that
Sam: sounds good, but is wrong. Yeah.
Ed: If you're going to use it, you absolutely have to factor it.
Sam: Yeah, you have to fact check it. And, you know, like I said,
Sam: I wasn't even copying and pasting sentences or anything.
Sam: I'd be taking the sentence it gave as a suggestion and then writing my own for
Sam: the most part. Maybe I would take a phrase here or there.
Sam: But like, because, you know, it just, and would it actually work better if I
Sam: let the AI rewrite the whole thing?
Sam: I don't know, maybe. A lot of people are doing that now.
Sam: But does that actually, I don't know.
Sam: It seems disingenuous to me and it seems like it's important to have your own
Sam: voice there in that kind of thing.
Sam: But, you know, you mentioned the lawyers turning in their briefs.
Sam: I predict it won't be that long till we have a case where the judge's ruling
Sam: turns out to be AI written.
Sam: Where, you know, the judge just feeds in all the documents from all the people
Sam: and says, ah, write it for me.
Sam: You know, maybe he'll tell the AI what he wants the result to be,
Sam: but doesn't want to take the time to write the detailed whatever.
Sam: Now, most of them have clerks and stuff that help out anyway.
Sam: But, you know, you could easily see that coming.
Ed: I also, I could have saved me hours and hours when I was at the Pentagon because
Ed: I was mostly writing policy.
Ed: Imagine I could have just said to the AI, write this policy.
Ed: I'll be back after I have a drink.
Sam: Well, exactly. Well, the thing is, there is evidence that people at the Pentagon
Sam: actually are doing that right now.
Ed: Oh, I'm sure they are.
Sam: You know, and specifically like various members of the cabinet appear to be,
Sam: you know, using AI guidance.
Sam: We talked about the damn tariffs were determined by AI.
Sam: You know, and the thing is, with this growing, it's only a matter of time before
Sam: the whole loop in some of these cases is AI. I've joked before about people saying, you know,
Sam: having the AI take bullet points and expand it into a document and then sending
Sam: it to somebody who has an AI summarize that document as bullet points because
Sam: they don't want to read the whole document.
Sam: And what was the point of that whole thing? You could have just transferred
Sam: the bullet points across to begin with. But I think you're going to have those
Sam: kinds of cases where everybody involved is using an AI.
Sam: And so, you know, the AI is just actually introducing noise to the actual person-to-person
Sam: communication that was intended.
Sam: And who knows what results of that are. And I have also said,
Sam: you know, with this, I forget if we mentioned it in passing last week,
Sam: we've definitely mentioned it on the, on the curmudgeons course Slack.
Sam: There's this MaltBot thing. It has a new name now.
Sam: MaltBot was the same. It was ClawBot and then it was MaltBot and then it's something else.
Sam: Anyway, it's, it's this AI utility that people have been using in a way that
Sam: basically they They give it access to all their stuff, their email.
Sam: Some people have given it access to credit cards, the web, accounts to various
Sam: things. And then they just let it run wild.
Sam: And the idea is it can help optimize, act as a true digital assistant because
Sam: it has access to all your stuff.
Sam: Even the creators of this say, that's dangerous, don't do that.
Sam: Run it in a sandbox where it has limited access to specific things as a task.
Sam: But people have been going, woo, let it create, control everything.
Sam: But they created a social media place for these things to talk to each other. called Malt Book.
Sam: And basically, a whole bunch of these Malt Bots have been talking to each other
Sam: on here and having conversations.
Sam: Now, it's been pointed out that most of these conversations are probably fake
Sam: because the owners of the Malt Books could say things like.
Sam: Hey, go sign up for Maltbook and then make some posts about starting a new religion or whatever.
Sam: And so they start doing that. And so it's started by human prompts anyway.
Sam: But the point is, these things are talking to each other. I'm sure you'll see more about that.
Sam: And just generally, you know,
Sam: am I afraid of the singularity happening anytime soon and these things deciding
Sam: that they're better and to get rid of humanity, like so many science fiction
Sam: novels and movies have done over the years? Not immediately.
Sam: Might it happen someday? Sure. Might someday be in a few years? Maybe.
Sam: But I don't think this month, you know, they're not there yet.
Sam: But again, the progress has been incredibly fast.
Sam: I'm sure we have not hit a plateau yet, which is kind of scary because it's
Sam: still getting better really fast.
Sam: And so we'll see. And a lot of this is like, how fast can people adapt to this?
Sam: And at least one of the unstated reasons why so many companies are getting rid
Sam: of white-collar jobs like mine.
Sam: It's not the only reason. People have talked about culture and other things, too.
Sam: But is, hey, we're leaning into AI.
Sam: One, we need the money to invest in AI.
Sam: And two, a lot of these white-collar jobs can now be done by these AIs.
Sam: With a lot fewer actual human beings involved.
Sam: And I think that nobody's making, or I shouldn't say nobody.
Sam: Lots of companies are still in the mode where they're losing a lot of money
Sam: in order to lean into these concepts,
Sam: gambling that in a few years they'll come out of it way in the positive side
Sam: because they will have gotten in early and taken advantages of these technologies
Sam: and be where they need to be on this.
Sam: But there's, and I've heard one people say, one people, I've heard commentary saying that,
Sam: What AI is doing now to white-collar jobs is essentially the same thing that
Sam: globalization did to a lot of blue-collar jobs decades ago,
Sam: where we're taking the highly paid or relatively highly paid individuals and
Sam: we're finding a much cheaper way of doing it with fewer people or at least cheaper people.
Sam: You know, the globalization moved a lot to cheaper people in other countries.
Sam: In this case, it's moving it to, you know, a few people who are working with
Sam: the AIs rather than whole teams of people.
Sam: And, of course, the cost of running these AIs, which is still huge.
Sam: So we shall see this
Sam: definitely has the potential of being massively disruptive to all kinds of different
Sam: things over the next few years because you know lots of kinds of jobs you just
Sam: won't need anymore maybe including the kind of stuff i've done in the past so
Sam: like i'm looking at this and going like,
Sam: okay, if I was doing this today, a lot of the things could just be AI,
Sam: write me a status report, return.
Sam: And so, I don't know, we shall see.
Sam: But in the meantime, I'm hoping to use the AI to build my little Robin letter thing.
Sam: And I'm crossing my fingers that people will actually use it and I can find a way to monetize it.
Sam: And so that I can like, you know, not go back to that other kind of job,
Sam: but I know it's a long shot, but you know,
Sam: I got to give it a shot, right?
Ed: Yep, sounds right.
Sam: Okay, I know you said this would
Sam: be a short AI topic, and then I went rambling on for like half an hour.
Ed: Well, no, I think it's worth talking about because it's clearly a disrupt, as you said.
Ed: I'll have to say I'm kind of glad to be 84 years old because I'm not going to have to live.
Ed: I can live with the benefits of it, like the hearing aid thing.
Ed: Clearly was an AI, clearly a much less painful interaction, or at least a more
Ed: pleasant interaction than in the past.
Ed: But it's, you know, I don't have to write resumes. I don't have to write essays
Ed: for my college professors, only to have them say, that's a goddamn lie.
Ed: What's the matter with you.
Sam: Haynes?
Ed: You know, that's going to be a disruptive.
Ed: And the professors are faced with the thing of well was this written by my student
Ed: or was this written by his computer and is it true is it false uh you know at.
Sam: The very least and also you have to figure out
Sam: like the the way people react to these things like you can't put it back in
Sam: the bottle you know so so so the question is like how do you adapt to a world
Sam: where these things exist yeah both in terms of like you know So,
Sam: for instance, you mentioned a professor in teaching.
Sam: Okay, well, how are you going to switch to modes of evaluating teaching and
Sam: learning that can't be augmented by that?
Sam: Like, you want to know whether the person learned the material?
Sam: You can't ask them to write an essay anymore. You have to ask them to stand
Sam: up in class and tell you about it and have a conversation with you in some way.
Ed: Or write the essay in class.
Sam: Or write the essay in class. Some people are going back to handwritten essays
Sam: in blue books, absolutely.
Sam: Or, you know, back to the Socratic method for everything, where you're talking
Sam: back and forth to the kids in class, and you're evaluating them that way.
Sam: Now, of course, those things, you know, some people are good at that, some people aren't.
Sam: And, you know, you're going to have to find ways to adapt for different students as well.
Sam: But, of course, it won't be long before the students aren't talking to a professor
Sam: anyway, they're talking to an AI professor, you know?
Sam: So, you know, all of these things are going to adapt and you have to figure
Sam: out also, you know, just in terms of skill level, what's important to be taught
Sam: and what's important to not be taught anymore.
Sam: You know, just like teaching cursive isn't really relevant today,
Sam: unless you're a specialist who is looking at historical documents or anything.
Sam: You can argue that,
Sam: We really have to do a deep think about what places is it really important to
Sam: make sure that a human knows this within their own head and can do task X, Y,
Sam: or Z versus when is it important that they know the right way to use the technology
Sam: to get the result they want and know the right way to evaluate facts.
Sam: Like, we've been talking for years now how media literacy was important and
Sam: has been not taught appropriately. So people are not understanding what's true and what's not.
Sam: That's going to get so much worse, you know, in an AI inundated world. It already is worse.
Sam: There are already people falling for AI-generated video left, right, and center.
Sam: And, you know, it can be tricky. Some of them are obvious. Some of them are not.
Sam: And it's going to be tough. And I think a lot of this is actually going to be,
Sam: you know, there was this big push towards,
Sam: towards STEM and often at the expense of sort of traditional liberal arts.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: I think a lot of the traditional liberal arts needs to come back and come back
Sam: strong because that's where we, that's where we're teaching people how to think critically.
Sam: We're teaching people how to be creative, how to communicate,
Sam: how to be creative. I think, I mean, to some degree, creativity is an innate
Sam: thing, but it could be taught to some degree.
Sam: But, you know, you need to, you need to figure out, I think that's the,
Sam: and the more technology develops,
Sam: the more it's going to be that the critical skill is not going to be knowing some set of facts.
Sam: Because you'll be able to get
Sam: the, I mean, you already can get almost any facts at a moment's notice.
Sam: The trick is telling, okay, which
Sam: are the real facts and which is bullshit people, people, people made up.
Sam: Um, and even like knowing the specific, you know, in order to do task X,
Sam: you do these steps in this order and all that kind of stuff. You can look that up.
Sam: Now, if it's something critical.
Sam: You're going to want to practice a lot before you do it for real.
Sam: And so that kind of thing is still going to be important. But in some of those
Sam: cases, robots are going to be able to do those tasks.
Sam: So why does a human need to, you know?
Sam: And so there's a lot of how do we adapt to that world?
Sam: And does that world develop so fast we can't adapt effectively?
Sam: Because, you know, hey, if that kind of thing develops over the course of 200
Sam: years, you know, humans are pretty good at adapting.
Sam: If that kind of stuff develops over the course of five or 10 years—.
Sam: Humans are not that good at adapting in those short timescales, even 20.
Sam: And we've got a lot of things that are moving really quickly right now.
Sam: And, you know, and we may hit that plateau.
Sam: I still feel like there's a lot of place where we could hit a plateau and get
Sam: to, you know, the AI systems are doing it 99% correct.
Sam: But that last 1% is really, really, really hard.
Sam: Like, you know, it seems like we're there with self-driving right now,
Sam: even though it's gotten, it's still continuing to get better.
Sam: The last bit is hard. And I think that's true on all of these endeavors where,
Sam: you know, getting from zero to 50 goes pretty fast.
Sam: Getting from there to 70, okay. But then as you get to 90, 99,
Sam: 99.9, 99.99, it gets exponentially harder to bridge that last little gap.
Sam: But then even there, humans aren't necessarily the comparison.
Sam: If you're talking chess, no human alive at this point can beat even mediocre
Sam: average chess programs that you can buy, you know, retail,
Sam: let alone the best computers in the world, you know.
Sam: So anyway, things move fast. Okay, Ed, did you have one more topic that I've
Sam: ignored that we want to take a break and then do, or should we wrap it up?
Ed: Well, we can wrap it up. I thought we maybe ought to spend a couple minutes
Ed: talking about the START treaty that expired this week.
Ed: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or not.
Sam: You know, I haven't really been following it, but we can talk about it a little bit.
Sam: Let's take a break. We can bring that up and chat for a little bit and then wrap it up.
Ed: Call it a day. Okay. Sounds good. Okay.
Sam: Okay, we are back. So, Ed, salt. It was salt, right? Salt, salt, salt.
Ed: Or the start.
Sam: Which one? Which one is it? Which one is it?
Ed: I think it was the START Treaty that expired Thursday. It's our international
Ed: treaty with Russia that limited both of us to 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons.
Ed: Now, that's not all nuclears. That's just the ones that you're going to lob across the ocean.
Ed: Battlefield nuclear weapons are an addition to that, but they're not covered.
Ed: Well, that treaty expired this week, and Trump said he doesn't want to renegotiate
Ed: it because we need something that'll last longer than the 10 years of that one,
Ed: and they need to be more effective.
Ed: I think he's right in a couple things, one of which is that that treaty was
Ed: only between the Russia and the United States.
Ed: There have been attempts to talk China into joining it, but China says,
Ed: screw you guys, we only have something, I think they have something like 600
Ed: weapons, and they don't want to be that far behind.
Ed: So when they get up to having 1,500, 1,600 strategic weapons,
Ed: they might join us then, they'll see.
Ed: But we also have, you know, there's
Ed: something like at least eight or nine countries with nuclear weapons.
Ed: And most of them, they're not going to build huge numbers. I mean,
Ed: you know. Israel probably has 40 or 50.
Sam: One of the things with things like this is that, okay, yeah,
Sam: I can buy the notion that, oh, okay, we want something better.
Sam: But the reality is there's nothing active going on to do anything better. No. And...
Sam: You know, in that kind of situation, extending the status quo to kick things
Sam: down the road seems better than letting it expire and having nothing.
Sam: However, here's the thing. I don't buy anything the Trump administration is
Sam: saying about us really wanting something better.
Sam: I think both Russia and the U.S.
Sam: Were perfectly happy to let it expire and
Sam: start building more again yeah you know
Sam: donald trump has explicitly complained
Sam: about the age of
Sam: our nuclear weapons and that they need to be modernized he
Sam: has explicitly said things like what good is it having these if we're not going
Sam: to use them you know and and so i i fully believe that this is both sides really
Sam: had no interest in continuing this.
Sam: They really have no interest in treaties in general in the old-fashioned sense.
Sam: When we're talking about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin specifically.
Sam: These are people whose entire worldviews are based upon person-to-person,
Sam: individualized, informal deals or arrangements.
Sam: That is how they operate. They don't want anything in writing.
Sam: They don't want a formal treating.
Sam: They don't want anything that would potentially bind them above and beyond them
Sam: saying something to somebody else that, frankly, they both know they could change
Sam: their mind at any moment.
Sam: And I think that's what's really going on with things like this. Well, I think, you know.
Ed: We need to be a little bit afraid of the fact that there isn't any kind of a constraint any longer.
Ed: But I don't know that that's not going to I think you're right.
Ed: There's not going to be one.
Sam: I don't think there's going to be one. And I think, you know,
Sam: I was reading there's an NBC News article about this from a few days ago.
Sam: And it was definitely start and expired on the 5th. So two days ago.
Sam: And there's a quote from the U.N. Secretary General.
Sam: For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any
Sam: binding limits under strategic nuclear arsenals.
Sam: I think that is the word binding.
Sam: It's delusional. There were no binding limits before. Yes, they had both signed
Sam: a treaty that said they would behave.
Sam: And yes, for the most part, they had been behaving. You know,
Sam: both sides, you know, I believe this was an actual proper ratified treaty back
Sam: when the U.S. still did that.
Sam: And, you know, it was being followed. But if you look at the leadership involved on both sides,
Sam: neither one, neither Putin nor Trump would hesitate in the slightest on violating
Sam: a treaty if they felt it was in their best interest at the moment.
Ed: Which says a lot about why neither one of those guys should be major leaders.
Sam: Right. I mean, if you look back, if you look at our previous presidents,
Sam: you know, of both parties, they would have felt bound by this treaty.
Sam: Donald Trump, no. Vladimir Putin, no.
Sam: They would not feel bound in any way by any of this. I mean,
Sam: I think that's obvious with Trump domestically.
Sam: Like, does he pay attention to any law, anything that says it restricts his
Sam: power at all? No, of course not.
Sam: So, I mean, do I wish they had re-upped this?
Sam: Yes, it would have been better if they did than if they didn't,
Sam: even if Trump was going to ignore it and Putin.
Sam: But do I think it actually makes a significant difference to the reality of
Sam: how things are right now? I don't think it does.
Sam: I guess it potentially affects the next president.
Sam: You know, we're not going to have Trump forever. Maybe the next U.S.
Sam: President would feel bound by this.
Sam: Maybe the next Russian leader would feel bound by this.
Sam: I don't know. That's unpredictable at this stage. So it would have been better to keep it.
Sam: But at least in the short term, like, I don't feel like any treaties—.
Sam: Are worth very much right now when you have leaders who have openly stated that they don't care.
Sam: Now, having said that, I think Trump is still somewhat constrained.
Sam: He does feel like if he is going to cross one of these lines,
Sam: like we've talked about this in terms of NATO before too.
Sam: If he's going to cross one of these lines and officially do nothing,
Sam: or like in the case of NATO, if NATO was attacked, have the U.S.
Sam: Ignore them because they didn't pay their dues or whatever, even though that's not how it works.
Sam: I think there would be internal resistance. He would think twice.
Sam: He would figure that out.
Sam: But for the most part, it's a speed bump.
Sam: It's a little bit of additional resistance, and Trump wouldn't care.
Sam: But there we are. Any more thoughts on this, Ed?
Ed: No, not really. I just thought we'd touch on it briefly, but I think I agree
Ed: with pretty much everything you're saying there.
Ed: It's not going to change, is it?
Sam: Unfortunately. Well, yeah, let's be optimistic.
Sam: We've got, you know, to kick off, you started out talking congressional districts earlier in the thing.
Sam: It sounds like they're, at this point, they're...
Sam: Who knows? Things can always change in nine months. But it looks like the Democrats
Sam: will almost certainly take back the House.
Sam: The Senate was expected to be a real long shot for the Democrats.
Sam: It's looking more and more like it's a toss up at this point.
Sam: And the Democrats could very well take the Senate.
Sam: They might not. A toss up does not mean that they will. A toss-up means a toss-up,
Sam: but it has moved from the Senate being a super long shot to actually being in play.
Sam: The House looks like it's going to go Democrat.
Sam: The tone of the Trump administration will undoubtedly—the way things go will
Sam: work differently if you have a Congress that can actually do something.
Sam: Now, even then, you know, we know from the first Trump administration,
Sam: Congress subpoenaed people in the Trump administration and they just ignored them.
Sam: They asked for documents. They were ignored. They had hearings. They were ignored.
Sam: They impeached. They failed to convict, you know, all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: So it doesn't change anything, everything. But, you know, and of course,
Sam: we've got 2028 coming back.
Sam: And, you know, and while I 100 percent believe that Donald Trump will attempt
Sam: to cause chaos in both the 2026 and 2028 elections, I don't think he'll succeed.
Sam: So we shall see. We shall see. OK.
Ed: You mean you're not worried about him nationalizing our election process like he wants to?
Sam: I think...
Sam: I think this is one of those things where he will try but fail.
Ed: Hopefully. Hopefully. Although, you know, even there, if he were to be able
Ed: to nationalize even, say, 50, 60 districts, that could sway the election.
Sam: Well, there's also questions of what exactly it means.
Sam: Like, for instance, you know, the Constitution specifically states that the
Sam: states are in charge of their elections for House, for President,
Sam: for, you know, because election for President isn't really an election for President.
Sam: It's an election for elector, et cetera.
Sam: And those are state positions. Right.
Sam: For instance, the Democrats last time around, they tried to pass all kinds of
Sam: election reform laws. They failed.
Sam: But those would impose national standards on those elections in terms of what was required for ID,
Sam: what was required or not required, what was required or not required for ID.
Sam: Standards around mail-in voting standards
Sam: around all kinds of things um and
Sam: i would argue that those kinds of standards are actually desirable to regularize
Sam: things it would still have local control of the elections themselves but would
Sam: require them to follow these national standards in terms of how it was done.
Sam: The Republicans could do that. They still have the House.
Sam: They still have the Senate. They could override the filibuster if they needed
Sam: to, and they have Donald Trump's signature.
Sam: If they wanted to pass the evil version of the reforms the Democrats were trying
Sam: to do four years ago, then they theoretically could.
Sam: They could require voter ID nationwide. They could outlaw.
Sam: Mail-in ballots nationwide. They could do a bunch of stuff.
Sam: Now, every single bit of it would go to court, just as I'm sure if the Democrats
Sam: had got their reforms in, every single bit of it would go to court.
Sam: And the Supreme Court might or not back them up.
Sam: It doesn't look like they're actively trying to do that from a legislative point of view right now.
Sam: And they're running out of time to do so.
Sam: Yeah, hopefully. Well, certainly for 2026, you know, they're already in the
Sam: zone where it would be really hard to get anything through.
Sam: And even if they got something through, it would still be in court and it would
Sam: be hard to get it through court, you know, in time.
Sam: Who knows? But it doesn't look like they're even seriously taking that on.
Sam: Donald Trump has talked about it, but there's no motion.
Future Sam: Do, do, do. Hey, this is Sam from the future.
Future Sam: I was absolutely wrong there about saying that there wasn't an active effort going on, et cetera.
Future Sam: Shortly after we finished recording, I saw an article about the SAVE Act,
Future Sam: which is actively being worked on in both the House and the Senate, and they are pushing.
Future Sam: Apparently, they tried and failed it last year, but they're trying again.
Future Sam: It basically is what I was describing, sort of the Republican evil version of
Future Sam: the voting reforms that the Democrats tried four years ago.
Future Sam: It has a lot of voter IDs. It has a lot of other restrictions.
Future Sam: Basically, it would potentially block millions of people from voting or at least
Future Sam: make it more difficult for them to do so.
Future Sam: And it's got a shot. There still is the issue of time and lawsuits and blah, blah, blah.
Future Sam: But, you know, the Supreme Court could decline to stay it and just let it be in effect if it passed.
Future Sam: Now, the Democrats can block it with a filibuster unless the Republicans bypass the filibuster, etc.
Future Sam: So it's unclear whether or not it will actually become law, but the Republicans are trying actively.
Future Sam: So what I was saying about that there wasn't really any active effort. That is incorrect.
Future Sam: The SAVE Act bills are very much in play and the Republicans are trying.
Future Sam: Okay, back to the show. Do, do, do!
Ed: It's always hard with him to know how much of what he's prattling about is a
Ed: smokescreen over something else that he really intends to do and how much of
Ed: it is stuff he really wants to do.
Ed: You know, that picture he posted of the Obamas over the weekend.
Ed: What a disgusting thing that is.
Ed: And it's changed the whole tone of, all the conversations about that picture.
Ed: And so he's detracted us from all sorts of other things. Because we're not talking about Epstein.
Sam: We're not talking about the election stuff. We're not talking about this.
Sam: We're not talking about that.
Ed: He's an absolute genius in getting us to talk about what he wants us to talk about.
Sam: Absolutely. And just the flooding the zone with shit thing that Steve Bannon
Sam: said years ago is so true.
Sam: Because, you know, there are so many things that pre-Donald Trump,
Sam: individually would be scandals that would occupy us for months that now barely
Sam: make a splash on a single news day because by the end of the day,
Sam: something else outrageous has come up.
Sam: So, I mean, one example of that that was brought up is a week,
Sam: two weeks ago now, it came out that the UAE invested like billions of dollars
Sam: into Donald Trump's crypto company like a few weeks before the election.
Sam: And as soon as he became president, miraculously, several things that the UAE
Sam: wanted policy-wise came true instantly.
Sam: Was there a quid pro quo? Was there not a quid pro quo?
Sam: Is this inappropriate? Regardless, not only is there never going to be a serious
Sam: investigation into this, well, who knows?
Sam: Maybe it'll be one of the things that a Democratic House does next year. I don't know.
Sam: But attention has moved on.
Sam: That was barely in the news for a day. And now,
Sam: if you bring it up, people are like, oh yeah okay i i remember hearing about
Sam: that wasn't that last week or something you know and well you know whereas like
Sam: that that you know you compare it like.
Sam: Previous presidencies could have been brought down completely by that and certainly
Sam: you would have resignations and people leaving and and some people being investigated
Sam: and stuff like that and You know, here it's like, oh yeah,
Sam: I vaguely remember that happened.
Ed: I mean, as of this weekend or yesterday or whenever the hell it was,
Ed: he announced or didn't announce, but it's come out that he's trying to bribe
Ed: Schumer into approving, naming Dulles.
Ed: Is it Dulles? Yeah, it was.
Sam: No, Reagan.
Ed: Yeah, the national.
Sam: No, it was Dulles and it was also Penn Station in New York, I believe.
Sam: Yeah, to name them after him. Dulles and Penn Station.
Ed: In return for allowing them to drill some tunnels somewhere,
Ed: which I think those tunnels are being done by our favorite Tesla's owner.
Ed: I think it's his company.
Sam: I'm not sure about that part.
Ed: I'm not either.
Sam: But yes, it was reported that Donald Trump is asking for his name on things
Sam: in exchange for approval of various public works projects and other legislation
Sam: that in a normal administration, honestly,
Sam: would go through with huge bipartisan majorities because it's a general public
Sam: good and not controversial in any way.
Sam: It's like, yeah, they need a new tunnel.
Sam: Or, yeah, you need disaster relief for this. Or, yeah, you know, whatever.
Sam: These are things that would go through uncontroversially in administrations,
Sam: both Republican and Democrat, in previous years, that Donald Trump is holding
Sam: up because he wants, you know, his name on something or whatever, you know. So, okay.
Ed: This is an interesting man. Anyway But we're hardly talking about a lot of those
Ed: things Because that was yesterday's news.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. And there's so much more and so much outrageous, so much wild stuff.
Sam: I was going to say every single week, but it's practically every single day. It seems like it.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: There's outrageous new news about one thing or other. Okay, I think we're done, Ed.
Ed: Yeah, I think so, too.
Sam: Okay, so let me do the end of the show stuff.
Sam: Go to curmudgeons-corner.com to find out things about the show.
Sam: You can find ways to contact myself and Yvonne or just the general addresses
Sam: for the show you can find all of our old episodes, transcripts,
Sam: what else, what else, what else, what else, Ed, what else is there oh yes,
Sam: the Patreon where you can give us money money is important, give us money at
Sam: various levels there, we will mention you on the show We will ring a bell.
Sam: We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that sort of stuff.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the
Sam: Commudgeons Course Slack where Yvonne and I and Ed and various other people
Sam: are hanging out and chatting and sharing links and all of that kind of stuff all through the week.
Sam: So I don't know, Ed, do you have a highlight from the Slack that you would like to give?
Ed: I just panicked a minute ago. I forgot to look up anything. So no, I don't have anything.
Ed: Actually, the hearing aid thing I think I mentioned on Slack this week,
Ed: but we've already talked about it enough.
Sam: Well, let me give a couple. There were a couple of AI-related things that came
Sam: up, but we talked about that a lot.
Sam: There's apparently a trend going on. I've actually seen this come up.
Sam: This is like the second or third time I've seen this come up,
Sam: but people using AI and asking, if my dog was a human, what would they look like?
Sam: And they send it a picture of their dog, and it sends back a picture of a human
Sam: that vaguely looks like their dog.
Sam: We have that kind of thing. We had the lawyer thing and some other AI stuff.
Sam: Here, I will give you one that if Yvonne was here, I am sure he would share.
Sam: And is also somewhat, you know, medically related as well, which is the Winter
Sam: Olympics just kicked off.
Sam: And apparently there is already a scandal with ski jumpers, male ski jumpers.
Sam: Enhancing their penises to try to fly further.
Sam: Specifically, they are allegedly injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid
Sam: in order to fly a little bit further.
Sam: Now, supposedly, the science behind this is injecting the penis in such a way
Sam: increases the size somewhat to give them somewhat bigger genitalia at the point
Sam: that their suits are measured by 3D scanners,
Sam: which that temporary enhancement for measurement theoretically means that athletes
Sam: are being given a bigger, looser suit than they would otherwise.
Sam: And that suit acts like a sail catching wind, which could allow them to make
Sam: slightly longer jumps. So this is not...
Sam: You have a bigger penis, and therefore you're better long jumping on skis.
Sam: This is, you do this at the moment you're getting measured for your suit,
Sam: which gives you a slightly looser suit, which lets your suit act a little tiny
Sam: bit as a sail to get a slightly bigger jump out of this.
Sam: Now, the difference is undoubtedly tiny in the aerodynamics here,
Sam: But when you are talking Olympic-level performances,
Sam: tiny, tiny differences can make the difference between a gold and silver medal or whatever.
Sam: So apparently they are investigating this.
Sam: So, Ed, as a retired doctor, what do you think of this procedure?
Ed: I certainly would not do it. On the other hand, you know, Lindsey Vonn tore
Ed: her ACL two weeks ago, I think it was.
Ed: Obviously it can't have surgery on it that puts you
Ed: off the athletic list for a year and she's she
Ed: can't take a year off at her age or she's done
Ed: so she is going to ski with a
Ed: torn acl and i thought well that's not possible turns out though there was a
Ed: orthopedist wrote an article about this her quadriceps are so strong that she
Ed: doesn't need much acl and this guy thinks that She will perform at near peak,
Ed: maybe not zip peak, but near peak performance with no ACL.
Sam: Now, presumably with some sort, I don't know, do they still have like some bandages
Sam: or something at least helping hold things together?
Ed: I don't think so. I think it's, you know, when I was in my residency,
Ed: which is longer ago than I like to think, the orthopedists were constantly stressing
Ed: to us that the quadriceps is the key to the knee.
Ed: That if someone comes into surgery with a real strong quadriceps,
Ed: they're going to do well. and that in long term, even if they have knee injuries
Ed: with a strong quads, they'll do pretty well.
Ed: And I think that's been under stress, but this is the point they're making with
Ed: her is that the athletes doing the slalom courses, that sort of stuff,
Ed: are relying not on their ACLs, but on their quadriceps muscles and to a lesser
Ed: extent, the hamstrings.
Ed: And if you look at it, they ski most of that with their knees bent at around
Ed: a 90 degree angle, it seems like.
Sam: Right. I guess we'll find out like how she does.
Ed: Well, she already did her first, uh, the trial run that they're required to
Ed: do before they, she already did that. Well, the first one came down pretty good time.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: Okay. I guess, you know, I, I don't, I am not a sports follower.
Sam: Like decades ago, I think like with most, with most sports sometime in my twenties,
Sam: I decided, oh, let's give it a shot and watch once.
Sam: And for almost all of them, I have watched once and never again.
Sam: I think I probably watched like, I don't know, the 1984 Olympics or something.
Sam: And so I do not make a habit of watching any of these things,
Sam: but they end up being in the news enough that you sort of hear about the major events anyway.
Sam: I was sort of vaguely aware that the opening ceremonies happened,
Sam: you know but i don't know i i i haven't watched any visuals from it so i don't
Sam: know what it looked like i don't know what they did but i know what happened you.
Ed: Know i didn't watch the openings but i you know it's kind of interesting that
Ed: we keep coming back to some of the old basics that were thought and i know that
Ed: you know i do some weight work every week three or four times a week and i have
Ed: always stressed working on my
Ed: quads because i keep remembering those guys saying how important they are.
Ed: So I do weight work with my quads to keep my legs, my knees going, but for what it's worth.
Ed: Anyway, that's the only other thing I have.
Sam: I think we're done. Thank you very much, Ed, for joining us again as a sub.
Sam: Always love having you here.
Sam: And it's a bit of a different show than when Yvonne is here,
Sam: but that's okay. The variety is good.
Ed: It's fun.
Sam: And hopefully Yvonne will be back next week. And hopefully I will be gone.
Sam: No, hopefully I will be gone. Hopefully I will be back next week too and feel up to it.
Sam: I have my next procedure related to my various infections and kidney stones and stuff on Monday.
Sam: Oh, on Monday. And it is an outpatient procedure, but it will be under general anesthesia.
Sam: They're like going in and doing stuff and they're adding a stent and they're
Sam: digging around with a laser and they're going in with a camera and all kinds of fun stuff.
Ed: So they're going to try and break the stones up with a laser?
Sam: They're going to start with it. They're putting in an additional,
Sam: like I have a drain coming out of my right kidney right now.
Sam: They're going to add an additional stent going from my kidney to my bladder.
Sam: And they are going to go in with a laser to try to start breaking up the stone.
Sam: And then they're going to send me home again for what they said was at least two weeks,
Sam: but it might be more, before they bring me back in to hopefully take all the
Sam: stuff out of me and including whatever's left of the stone.
Sam: At least that's the intended plan right now. So there will be digging around
Sam: inside me doing all kinds of stuff.
Sam: And I will be thankfully asleep and unconscious while that is happening.
Sam: But hopefully I will come back out of that, you know, feeling good enough to
Sam: do a show by the end of the week.
Sam: So we'll see.
Ed: We'll send good vibes to you on Monday.
Sam: Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. I was going to say, I'm sure it'll be fun,
Sam: but I'm actually sure it won't be fun.
Sam: And again, I will be unconscious. So I'm probably very glad to be unconscious.
Sam: That's the kind of thing you don't want to be awake for.
Sam: Okay. Okay. With that, thanks everybody. Thanks Ed and Yvonne will be back.
Sam: I said all this stuff already. Hey, have a great week, people.
Sam: All the stuff I usually say. Have fun. Not too much fun. Be safe.
Sam: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And we'll see you next time. All right. Goodbye.
Ed: Bye-bye.
Sam: Okay, have a great rest of your day, Ed.
Ed: Okay.
Sam: And then I'll tell you when it's safe to hang up.
Ed: Okay.
Sam: Here we go.