Speaker 1: This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: There is an issue bubbling up locally that Robert Carvallo,
Speaker 2: LAUSD superintendent right now is speaking on. He says that
Speaker 2: federal officials showed up at two LA unified elementary schools
Speaker 2: this week. This would be the first reported instance, they said,
Speaker 2: of federal authorities trying to enter an LA public school.
Speaker 2: We haven't heard from the federal government exactly who they
Speaker 2: were or what they were doing, but an LAUSD spokesperson
Speaker 2: has confirmed that these two people showed up to Lillian
Speaker 2: Street Elementary School's main office and identified themselves as representatives
Speaker 2: of a federal agency. They also went to Russell Elementary School.
Speaker 2: The LAUSD says they were investigators from the Homeland Security
Speaker 2: Investigations Unit that's within Department of Homeland Security, but that
Speaker 2: they were not agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So
Speaker 2: a spokesperson for DHS, of course, hasn't commented specifically on
Speaker 2: what's going on.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: Carvallo says there's no reason why a first grader or
Speaker 2: a sixth grader would call it, would pose the threats
Speaker 2: to national security, So he's questioning why they were there.
Speaker 2: We simply don't know in terms of what Department of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security hasn't explained yet.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, a middle school girl gave one
Speaker 1: of her girlfriends a card for her fourteenth birthday, and
Speaker 1: then when the girl's birthday came around, the friend sent
Speaker 1: this same card back to her. Kind of an odd move.
Speaker 1: Right now, neither friend can remember.
Speaker 2: It's also nineteen forty four, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: that if.
Speaker 3: They're not, wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 4: I know what.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, they're not so rich they can't go
Speaker 2: out and buy another card. Are you saying it's weird
Speaker 2: to send the card back?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean why would you have that?
Speaker 1: I mean maybe it's a funny thing, like I'm sending
Speaker 1: you back the card.
Speaker 3: My grandma used to rip the cards in half.
Speaker 2: You'd have funny or nice picture on the front or
Speaker 2: something like that, and then when you open it, on
Speaker 2: the right hand side is whatever the printed poem or
Speaker 2: the happy birthday to you or whatever, and you sign it.
Speaker 2: She would rip the card in half so that it
Speaker 2: was like a postcard, where on the one side you
Speaker 2: still had the nice funny drawing of a monkey blowing
Speaker 2: out a birthday cake candle. But on the inside, what
Speaker 2: was the inside now is just the other side of
Speaker 2: the car. It was blank, so then you could write something.
Speaker 2: You could write your own note on there, and then
Speaker 2: that became the birthday card. What would she do with
Speaker 2: the other side? Did you throw it away? It's no good,
Speaker 2: it's already been used. But you basically get two full
Speaker 2: greetings out of one card.
Speaker 3: I have a question. Did she take cards that she
Speaker 3: had already gotten? That's what I mean. Oh, she had
Speaker 3: received a card. She didn't go get a perfectly known card.
Speaker 3: So if she received a card, she would tear the
Speaker 3: part off. I think. I think that's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 3: That's that's why she lived to be a ninety something.
Speaker 3: That's a great idea way to cut down on waste. Dixie. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's ahead of her time in this case.
Speaker 1: Seriously, I mean, that's a really smart move because first
Speaker 1: of all, cards have you gotten a card recently?
Speaker 3: It's like seven dollars big card industries. I'm going to
Speaker 3: start drawing my cards again like I did as a youth.
Speaker 3: My son's day mean he's twenty five and he still does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna start doing that because they're so stupid too,
Speaker 1: Like who writes this crap?
Speaker 3: Like whoever used to write that? Is it just me?
Speaker 3: Or of greeting cards gone to hell? They used to
Speaker 3: be a little clever.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's just more of them, better selection, maybe because
Speaker 1: people were sending them more. But it was before email
Speaker 1: and all the things, and this is what you had
Speaker 1: to send there was. It's just more variety and just
Speaker 1: say we're better written now it's just really bottom of
Speaker 1: the barrel stuff. In fact, if I'm going to go
Speaker 1: get my husband a card, who's the only person to
Speaker 1: really get cards for anymore.
Speaker 3: I'll try to.
Speaker 1: Find the worst one, and she gives funny no, just
Speaker 1: to be like look at.
Speaker 3: This, because I don't. I'll write my own.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's what I do too, but like I'll find
Speaker 1: like a really bad one, just to show, like, this
Speaker 1: is what we're dealing with now.
Speaker 2: You know, Pat and Mary sent back and forth the
Speaker 2: same card to each other on their birthdays. They would
Speaker 2: sign their names and they would date it each time.
Speaker 2: Dreamer opens it every year on her birthday, which is
Speaker 2: April first. Then she signs it mails it off back
Speaker 2: to Mary so that she can open it on her birthday,
Speaker 2: which is in May.
Speaker 3: Here's the funny part. So what's on this card?
Speaker 1: Well, on this card is a cartoon dog wearing a
Speaker 1: large red polka dot bow tie, and it reads, here's
Speaker 1: wishing you a birthday.
Speaker 3: That is really colossal.
Speaker 1: You open up the card and it says, because it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a long long time before you're and old fossil. Now,
Speaker 1: they started exchanging this card when they're fourteen. They're now
Speaker 1: one hundred, which makes the card even that much more prescient.
Speaker 2: Well, she Pat is now ninety five. Mary is just
Speaker 2: turned ninety four. Their families, of course, got into all
Speaker 2: of this. Their families got friendly. Pat apparently has been
Speaker 2: married three times and lost all three of her husband's
Speaker 2: to cancer. She got seven kids, Mary's got five.
Speaker 1: They've written all over the card, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: all over the envelope, all over the dog. They've also
Speaker 1: included separate notes and birthday wishes to another inside the card,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like a like a slip
Speaker 1: of paper that they put inside the cards. So they
Speaker 1: also have an oversized envelope along with the original envelope
Speaker 1: and a replacement one as well.
Speaker 3: In after sixty years.
Speaker 2: So just just right after the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: Pat's daughter in law applied for the Guinness World Record
Speaker 2: for the longest birthday card exchange, which they got. They
Speaker 2: were Eventually they got the title, though it was overtaken
Speaker 2: by a couple of women in Australia who had them
Speaker 2: beaten by about a year. Now I believe that those
Speaker 2: women in Australia have since kicked the bucket and gone
Speaker 2: to the Great card Store in the Sky. So now
Speaker 2: they're hoping that Pat and Mary can regain the title,
Speaker 2: but they haven't yet heard back from Guinness.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the city hall fight over the
Speaker 1: budget and how the dire straits down there. How are
Speaker 1: they going to balance a billion dollar budget?
Speaker 3: Mess?
Speaker 1: Oh easy, They're going to pass it on to you. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're learning how they're going to pass it on
Speaker 1: to you, Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: We'll tell you when we come back.
Speaker 4: You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Speaker 4: AM six.
Speaker 2: Forty Cabinet meeting continues at least the portion with reporters
Speaker 2: and cameras on it right now in the White House
Speaker 2: and We were kind of laughing about the lighting. It's
Speaker 2: now in the cabinet room where it's all lit from above,
Speaker 2: very similar to what the Apprentice was lit that the
Speaker 2: boardroom scene in The Apprentice, and there are portions of
Speaker 2: the table that you can't even see, like Tulsi Gabbard,
Speaker 2: the Director of National Intelligence, is sitting down at one
Speaker 2: end of the table. You can barely see her face
Speaker 2: because the a lighting is so weird.
Speaker 1: Like, look at I just pulled up a picture. This
Speaker 1: is from the New York Times from the apprentent. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's not coming up. It's just the smaller but
Speaker 1: it's exact same lighting that was in the boardroom. Like
Speaker 1: you say, when they had their elimination ceremonies on The Apprentice,
Speaker 1: it is the same thing, but it is a cabinet
Speaker 1: meeting in the White House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very very funny.
Speaker 2: We were talking about the fun story of the day.
Speaker 2: These two women in their nineties now who have been
Speaker 2: sending the same birthday card back and forth for decades.
Speaker 5: Hey, Garan Shanning, this is Rick and Tennessee. Hey we
Speaker 5: do that. So my wife and I, with her sister
Speaker 5: and our brother in law, we send them a card.
Speaker 5: It's how it started. And then they sent it back
Speaker 5: on one of our birthdays, and then we send it
Speaker 5: back to them on one of their birthdays. And we
Speaker 5: just do that four times a year. We write stupid things,
Speaker 5: that hilarious kind of card. You can barely read any
Speaker 5: of it now, it's like, but we do it four
Speaker 5: times a year and it's.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. But it's a birthday card.
Speaker 3: That's you know what. That is exactly what I was thinking, Hey, Gary.
Speaker 6: And Shannon Lisa here. So I recycle cards too, especially
Speaker 6: from Papyrus, because I always have that liner in the middle,
Speaker 6: So I usually tear it out the liner and becomes
Speaker 6: a brand new card because the back inside right is blank.
Speaker 6: So I just to use it because they're so.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, if you're getting.
Speaker 6: High five her, have a great day, guys.
Speaker 3: Five degree totally.
Speaker 1: Dixie is a we're big fans of Dixie on this show.
Speaker 3: She comes up quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But Papyrus, man, that's a that's a car payment. You
Speaker 1: buy a card from Papyrus.
Speaker 2: We had a Papyrus store in Petaluma when I was
Speaker 2: growing up, and if you got somebody a card from Papyrus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was serious.
Speaker 2: It was very serious, because you on a high school salary,
Speaker 2: you could not afford that.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 7: I always get my husband one that's like, it's Spanish
Speaker 7: or something, and we don't speak Spanish, and we've established
Speaker 7: that you are not, in fact married to a Hispanic guy,
Speaker 7: and so he probably doesn't speak Spanish either, although I'm
Speaker 7: Hispanic and I still don't speak Spanish.
Speaker 3: But whatever, have a great day. Yeah, I've done that
Speaker 3: many times.
Speaker 1: He'll speak Spanish perfectly if you give him a couple
Speaker 1: a shot a tequila. Who my husband, Oh really? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a fun party trick.
Speaker 2: My wife has been very deep into duo lingo and Spanish. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and every once in a while she'll throw a word.
Speaker 2: I haven't taken Spanish class since high school. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I remember a lot of it. And I mean, living here,
Speaker 2: it's not like there are plenty of places where you
Speaker 2: can practice.
Speaker 3: Spanish, right right.
Speaker 1: I just feel so not confident doing so. I feel
Speaker 1: so insecure and so not confident. And I also feel
Speaker 1: like Whitey mcwhiderson trying to speak Spanish, and I just
Speaker 1: look stupid and then I sound like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: speak Spanish, like I just hate everything about trying to learn.
Speaker 1: I've tried it. It's like quitting smoking. Trying to learn Spanish.
Speaker 1: For me, I've tried so many times and I like
Speaker 1: get into it and then I just feel stupid and
Speaker 1: then that's not the smoking thing. But you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, and you just give up and then you
Speaker 1: try again and one day it'll take.
Speaker 3: One day usually after some sort of a head trauma
Speaker 3: is when it started. Is that right?
Speaker 2: We're too old for this. Language centers in our rain
Speaker 2: don't work the way they used to.
Speaker 1: I was never good at learning languages, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if you did.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: I didn't retain as much as I wanted, but it came.
Speaker 2: It came to well, especially like when the kids were
Speaker 2: going through. My son took Spanish in high school and
Speaker 2: then transferred to sign language and but I but the
Speaker 2: summer before he started Spanish, we went through and did
Speaker 2: We bought a couple of goofy like learn Spanish on
Speaker 2: your own books, and he and I would go through
Speaker 2: that and it was super fun. It was refreshing, like
Speaker 2: to get all that stuff back you know, blow the
Speaker 2: dust off the old Espanol, and but I don't retain
Speaker 2: it the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just feel like I've got it in my head.
Speaker 1: You'll never learn to speak conversational Spanish, like you You're
Speaker 1: just never going to learn that because you don't have
Speaker 1: the confidence to do it and also don't have people
Speaker 1: to talk to that will talk to you conversationally and
Speaker 1: not like your dumb white girl trying to learn.
Speaker 3: So but if you immersed in it, like if you
Speaker 3: probably Spange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at least you'd be able to piece it together.
Speaker 1: But now if I speak Spanish to somebody who speak Spanish,
Speaker 1: they look at me like I'm a complete moron, and
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 3: Well, so I've seen I've.
Speaker 1: Seen people take pity on you when you try to exactly,
Speaker 1: and that's not what I'm looking for. I'm not looking
Speaker 1: for that feeling of where people pity me. It's an
Speaker 1: awful feeling. They say things like all I don't even
Speaker 1: know what you're trying to say?
Speaker 3: Is what they say? The dog is blue?
Speaker 2: Is that what you're trying to say, because that's what
Speaker 2: you're saying, all right, trash money when we come back,
Speaker 2: trash money for listen, if you work in the government
Speaker 2: in city, county, state, federal government. It's not your money.
Speaker 2: You might as well play with it like it's not
Speaker 2: your money. That's just exactly what they do.
Speaker 3: That's the way.
Speaker 2: That gratitude that you have, you might as well do
Speaker 2: it that way.
Speaker 3: And here's the latest example of that.
Speaker 4: When we come back, you're listening to Gary and Shannon
Speaker 4: on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq, the S and
Speaker 2: P five hundred, all down between four and five percent,
Speaker 2: because today it looks for a lot of people, it
Speaker 2: looks dangerous. There's talk of the stock market being oversold
Speaker 2: right now. We're actually going to be talking with Trader Merlin.
Speaker 2: Coming up at the top of the we get into
Speaker 2: swamp Watch a little bit more about what personal investors
Speaker 2: can do and things that we should since we're not
Speaker 2: necessarily trading on the industrial level, what we should be
Speaker 2: keeping our eyes on, or what we should not be
Speaker 2: paying attention to, Things that are going to sway your
Speaker 2: decisions that probably don't need to be paid attention to.
Speaker 1: We mentioned this when the news hit there is a
Speaker 1: billion dollar budget shortfall at La City Hall because they
Speaker 1: don't know how to manage money, asked an answered, We've
Speaker 1: known this for a long time, but a billion dollars
Speaker 1: is quite the number that is insurmountable. I think you
Speaker 1: could say this is the result of mismanagement for quite
Speaker 1: some time, and it's coming to a head. So yesterday
Speaker 1: two city council committees got together to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do. One focused on public works, the other specializes
Speaker 1: in environmental issues, and the two came up with the idea, Oh,
Speaker 1: we know what we'll do. We'll just pass on the
Speaker 1: cost to the people who live here in the form
Speaker 1: of trash fees. They are going to raise trash fees
Speaker 1: fifty four percent in the next fifty four percent. So
Speaker 1: if you're spending thirty six dollars for the City of
Speaker 1: Vli to pick up your trash a month, you'll be
Speaker 1: spending fifty six dollars because they can't get their act together.
Speaker 1: Part of what I've never understood about government is the
Speaker 1: idea of not attaching city service or county service fees
Speaker 1: to inflation. And part of what I guess, part of
Speaker 1: what the plan would be is we're going to set
Speaker 1: it at thirty six dollars a month, so you know,
Speaker 1: what you're paying for the for the foreseeable future, even
Speaker 1: if that handcuffs that municipal government from balancing its budget.
Speaker 1: For example, the Bureau of Sanitation in LA says, the
Speaker 1: cost of trash collection is going to increase to more
Speaker 1: than five hundred and fifty million dollars, So they've got
Speaker 1: to be able to catch up with and stay on
Speaker 1: top of how much it costs to provide the service.
Speaker 3: In the first world, that's one issue.
Speaker 1: If it's going to cost more to collect the trash,
Speaker 1: then that's an issue on its own. That's separate from
Speaker 1: the balancing the billion dollar budget shortfall.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can understand that both can.
Speaker 1: Be true, right But I mean, if I'm working on
Speaker 1: city hall pr and optics, I'm saying, well, this was
Speaker 1: already something that happened.
Speaker 3: I would separate these things.
Speaker 1: If trash is getting more expensive to pick up because
Speaker 1: of inflation or what have you, then then the rates
Speaker 1: are going to have to go up.
Speaker 3: That's natural, it's understandable, right.
Speaker 2: Well, My point is, then apply a simple formula of
Speaker 2: the cost of living. Raise it with the cost of living,
Speaker 2: raise it with the cost of inflation. Because everybody basically,
Speaker 2: you know, the tide is going to rise, raise all boats.
Speaker 2: There's you know, you can't simply lock something in and
Speaker 2: expect there to be a good.
Speaker 3: End to that.
Speaker 2: You know, we we all understand that the costs do
Speaker 2: go up when it comes to providing city services. The
Speaker 2: I think the other thing about this in terms of
Speaker 2: the mentality of people who spend other people's money, because
Speaker 2: that's exactly what government does. They do it many times
Speaker 2: on valuable services for the rest of us. It's that
Speaker 2: there's not what you don't see here is the headline
Speaker 2: from the La Times. Faced with a billion dollar budget crunch,
Speaker 2: LA seeks major trash fee increases. Where's the same headline,
Speaker 2: Where's the same story? The flip side of it, Faced
Speaker 2: with a billion dollar budget crunch, the City of La
Speaker 2: cuts a bunch of crappy services that no one uses
Speaker 2: or no one wants, or has some accounting for the
Speaker 2: billions of dollars that have been spent on homelessness, or.
Speaker 3: Cuts down on bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: You know, I really I feel for the people in
Speaker 1: the federal government who have lost their jobs or who
Speaker 1: are in danger of losing their jobs. And I get
Speaker 1: it on like a person a person basis that sucks.
Speaker 1: But what also can be true is that the government
Speaker 1: has taken advantage of the fact that it gets to
Speaker 1: be bloated and everybody looks the other way.
Speaker 3: Both can be true.
Speaker 1: You think there's not bloat at La City Hall and
Speaker 1: positions that don't need to be there, and I know
Speaker 1: that's awful. It means jobs lost and it means people's
Speaker 1: families and I get that that sucks, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that the government is.
Speaker 3: Is not bloated, right, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Both can be true that you have excessive growth and
Speaker 1: red tape and bureaucracy, and that it's going to be
Speaker 1: painful to cut it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The last time the La City Council, and this will
Speaker 1: go to a vote tomorrow, the last time the council
Speaker 1: hiked trash fees was seventeen years ago. But at the time,
Speaker 1: and I remember this, Antonio Viragosa was mayor, and it
Speaker 1: was because he wanted to hire more police officers. He
Speaker 1: wanted to get the LAPD back to that ten thousand threshold,
Speaker 1: which it's probably so far below that now, but at
Speaker 1: the time, that was the goal. Let's make the city say,
Speaker 1: let's get to ten thousand police officers.
Speaker 3: Let's have more visibility. Bill Bratton was here.
Speaker 1: It was all about broken windows and making sure that
Speaker 1: people know that we are there and we're developing the
Speaker 1: relationships and the communities and that people feel safe talking
Speaker 1: to the officers. And we were all for it at
Speaker 1: the time because because you'd get something for it. Right here,
Speaker 1: you're not getting anything for your trash fees. Get what
Speaker 1: you're getting is realizing that the people in charge of
Speaker 1: your money are doing a bad job being in charge
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: And the thing that's endemic to government is the knee
Speaker 2: jerk reaction whenever you're hit with a budget crunch is
Speaker 2: how do we generate revenue?
Speaker 3: How do we generate revenue?
Speaker 2: Well, either you sell off a portion of the city
Speaker 2: or you take it from the taxpayers. And that's I mean,
Speaker 2: this is exactly what they're doing, is they're they're simply
Speaker 2: adding more fees as opposed to spending the time cutting
Speaker 2: things that need to be cut or that are unsustainable.
Speaker 2: Just because you paid for it once doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: need to get to continue to pay for it in perpetuity.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about cards. The birthday cards were sent
Speaker 2: back and forth Chan.
Speaker 1: Not only do I do that for birthday cards, I
Speaker 1: do it for Christmas cards and save the pretty side,
Speaker 1: cut them up and make name tags for my gifts.
Speaker 3: Oh brilliant, that is hell, Yeah, that's brilliant. You're just
Speaker 3: getting all kinds of ideas.
Speaker 1: I sure, I am. Well, I feel bad after every
Speaker 1: Christmas when I'm throwing away pictures of people's families and
Speaker 1: their babies, just right into the trash you go, or
Speaker 1: the recycled bin. Your family got all dressed up, probably
Speaker 1: an acrimonious morning of fighting in tears, and you got
Speaker 1: that beautiful picture out of it, and here I am
Speaker 1: recycling it about a month after you sent it. Now,
Speaker 1: if I cut up the pictures of your beautiful children
Speaker 1: and I use them as tags on gifts the following year,
Speaker 1: it made me feel better.
Speaker 2: No, you're not going to use someone else's kids, well
Speaker 2: the back of the card, right tape.
Speaker 1: My grandmother did the same thing with birthday cards.
Speaker 5: Did she also wrap your presence in the comic strips?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: In fact, I started doing that when I was in
Speaker 2: high school and college. Whatever that was my go to
Speaker 2: was was pulling the Sunday comics because they were in color.
Speaker 3: And using that as wrapping paper. Yeah, that's a cool move.
Speaker 1: I love that move as an adult, when people use
Speaker 1: newspaper to wrap gifts, I love that really hell yeah sorry,
Speaker 1: stand by, Yeah, I love it. Note to syl because
Speaker 1: not only are you creative take newspaper, but you're smart
Speaker 1: because you're not buying wrapping paper out of bird cage.
Speaker 3: Well not used Fagarian Channon.
Speaker 5: My mother and I used to, oh for probably four
Speaker 5: or five years, exchange the same birthday card.
Speaker 3: So it does happen, and I love it. I think
Speaker 3: that we should start doing this, you and I.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Maybe not you and I. That's silly,
Speaker 1: but maybe, I don't know. Maybe with somebody who sends
Speaker 1: us a card, we'll send it back. I just saw
Speaker 1: a nightmare on the television on the NBC News Jenna
Speaker 1: Hagger Bush Show. Yeah, and the headline.
Speaker 3: Was that Jellies are back. What is that?
Speaker 1: Jellies the shoes? Do you remember the jellies the shoes?
Speaker 1: I remember them from my youth. All I see are
Speaker 1: pain and more pain when I look at the Apparently
Speaker 1: they've made a comeback. Old Navy is selling the jellies
Speaker 1: the shoes, and you know what I'm talking about. Right,
Speaker 1: they're like the plastic and it's like webbing, almost like
Speaker 1: the crisscross and it's like.
Speaker 3: The worst version of crocs. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Well they're so cute, but they're so painful. And when
Speaker 1: you have fat feet like these.
Speaker 3: Oh my, I know, are you bread? What imagine? Find
Speaker 3: any one of these with jelly shoes. It's so painful.
Speaker 3: It's like you're walking on marshalls.
Speaker 1: It's awful, like blocks, like two big blocks.
Speaker 4: You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Speaker 4: AM six forty.
Speaker 2: Stocks have surrendered most of their big gains from yesterday,
Speaker 2: the S and P five hundred, Dow, Jones, NASDAK, they're
Speaker 2: all down about five percent right now. The White House
Speaker 2: clarified the Chinese imports are going to be tariffed at
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty five percent, not the one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty five percent that Trump had written earlier about
Speaker 2: on truth social not even better than expected report on
Speaker 2: inflation could help stocks today.
Speaker 3: We'll keep an eye on those things.
Speaker 2: At the top of the hour, we're going to get
Speaker 2: more into sort of the personal finance aspect of whatever's
Speaker 2: going on in the world. Of tariffs and what you
Speaker 2: can look for with our friend Trader Merlin coming up
Speaker 2: at eleven.
Speaker 1: Saw this article in the San Francisco earlier this week
Speaker 1: about a teenager's college essay that went viral.
Speaker 3: It went viral.
Speaker 1: Because it was rejected by Stanford, Harvard, Yale, among many
Speaker 1: other prestigious universities. But a lot of essays, a lot
Speaker 1: of applications are rejected by those places, right, But the
Speaker 1: reason this is going viral is because of what this
Speaker 1: eighteen year old has already been able to accomplish. And
Speaker 1: the takeaway here is, oh my gosh, I can't believe
Speaker 1: they'd turn this kid away. What is wrong with the system?
Speaker 1: And for once, I'm kind of proud of the collegiate system.
Speaker 1: I mean for once recently, in recent days, I am
Speaker 1: proud that they're like, you know what, you have the
Speaker 1: wrong attitude. His name is zach Is Zach Yadegari. He's
Speaker 1: eighteen year old. He's an eighteen year old, and he
Speaker 1: has already started a found up, started a found up,
Speaker 1: founded a startup.
Speaker 3: Look at me? He gained school? Did you go to
Speaker 3: exactly public schools?
Speaker 1: I was also rejected from Stanford, Harvard and yelle, what
Speaker 1: is wrong with my mind? Am I having a stroke?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's like that woman Serene Branson.
Speaker 3: That is not true. That's just what happened. Go on, Okay, mean,
Speaker 3: I wasn't trying to be mean.
Speaker 1: That's literally what happened when she was misgetting words in
Speaker 1: her See, it's still happening.
Speaker 3: It's a real thing.
Speaker 2: Beant a rundown and get that automatic external defibrillator.
Speaker 3: That's not no you're doing You're not a doctor. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Zach has a perfect four point zero GPA. He
Speaker 1: has a super strong act score of thirty four, and
Speaker 1: he was rejected by fifteen of the eighteen colleges he
Speaker 1: applied to. Very great schools should be said. He founded
Speaker 1: cal Ai. It's a calorie tracking app that allows users
Speaker 1: to log their food intake by taking photos.
Speaker 3: Brilliant. The problem is with Zach's attitude here.
Speaker 1: His essay was kind of all about well, I'll just
Speaker 1: read from part of it. In his essay, he reflected
Speaker 1: on his initial reluctance to attend college. He noted that
Speaker 1: venture capitalists and mentors encouraged him that it was an
Speaker 1: unnecessary step, but he wanted the valuable life experience. He
Speaker 1: wrote in my rejection of the collegiate path, I had
Speaker 1: unwittingly bound myself to another framework of expectations. Instead of
Speaker 1: school teachers, it was vcs and mentorsdeering me toward a
Speaker 1: direction that was still not my own. His essay explained
Speaker 1: he had come to view college as more than just
Speaker 1: an academic pursuit.
Speaker 3: I realized, he wrote.
Speaker 1: That my life was not just about financial success. It's
Speaker 1: about relationships and being a part of a larger community.
Speaker 1: All true, but he went on to say, I can't
Speaker 1: believe that these colleges would reject me.
Speaker 3: Here is his quote that really sold it for me.
Speaker 1: Even if okay, because there was a lot of backlash saying, well,
Speaker 1: he's a high probability of being a dropout, he's already
Speaker 1: financially successful, he wants a college experience.
Speaker 3: And then he's out right, and.
Speaker 1: He wrote this, even if there's a one percent chance
Speaker 1: I continue my rate of success, wouldn't they want to
Speaker 1: take the risk of being able to use my name
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they'd be lucky to have me attitude. You're eighteen, Zach, Well,
Speaker 2: why what I would ask is what do you gain
Speaker 2: from going to Harvard? Or Yale or Princeton or Mit
Speaker 2: or Stanford. And I mean he's trying to lay it
Speaker 2: out there. He's talking about relationships, part of a larger community,
Speaker 2: things that maybe he doesn't feel he has right now.
Speaker 2: Join a club, right, No, I mean your league softball team.
Speaker 2: But I get it.
Speaker 1: My dad was a big proponent of this, of going
Speaker 1: to college just for the relationships, and they experience the
Speaker 1: personal you know, and the friendships that you build and
Speaker 1: the connections that you make networking and things like that.
Speaker 1: Being part of a larger community. That's all very very
Speaker 1: appealing and very fun and important at that age to
Speaker 1: learn how to meet people from other backgrounds, from other
Speaker 1: places that you didn't grow up and that's very essential
Speaker 1: and very key. And I like that he sees the
Speaker 1: value in that. But the attitude of I've already I
Speaker 1: don't need the academics, I've already achieved the more than
Speaker 1: anyone's ever achieved. I get my advice from VCS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like, eh, all right, then go
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: There is another guy, a nineteen year old from Palo
Speaker 2: al To, who is suing UC system saying that he
Speaker 2: was discriminated against because of practices where they discriminated against
Speaker 2: highly qualified Asian American applicants. Stanley Jong is his name,
Speaker 2: four point four to two GPA, a near perfect SAT
Speaker 2: of fifteen ninety, job offers from Google.
Speaker 3: That's where it's dad works anyway.
Speaker 2: But he said he received rejection letters from sixteen of
Speaker 2: the eighteen colleges he applied to, including rejections from MIT
Speaker 2: and Stanford, despite his I mean immaculate academic record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it happens to where these schools are
Speaker 1: getting everybody with perfect GPAs and great act scores and
Speaker 1: extracurriculars and all of that, and they're picking. They can
Speaker 1: be they can be choosy, they can be picky, but
Speaker 1: they can't discriminate based on race or anything. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they can be picky, of course, they're discriminating based on
Speaker 1: race and everything. Like, you can't tell what race somebody
Speaker 1: is from their essay. You can't tell what somebody's socioeconomic
Speaker 1: situation is from their essay.
Speaker 3: You can't tell. You can tell a lot of things,
Speaker 3: you can. The more I think about what a waste
Speaker 3: of money that is, though, what.
Speaker 2: Higher education, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Not the thing it used to be, had to have.
Speaker 2: It yeah, it had to be for everybody. Like the
Speaker 2: assumption was that you would go.
Speaker 3: But there was a there was a window where you
Speaker 3: had to go. It was like our.
Speaker 1: Window, right, it wasn't as essential. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: in the seventies where it's like you have to go
Speaker 1: to college. Where are you going to college? Put your
Speaker 1: list together?
Speaker 3: What have you done? Your site visit? Like that wasn't
Speaker 3: a thing.
Speaker 2: And not to tie it to the biggest story of
Speaker 2: the day being tariffs, but the economy change from the
Speaker 2: sixties seventies, we were still producing things.
Speaker 3: We in the United States.
Speaker 2: Still there were still manufacturing jobs that could you could
Speaker 2: make a good. You could try a house working in
Speaker 2: a factory. Right now, we've changed the way that we
Speaker 2: do thinks. I mean just the basic structure of the
Speaker 2: economies changed so that we provide services, but we don't
Speaker 2: provide the goods.
Speaker 3: No, we just provide the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: You get a fancy degree, fall in line for the government,
Speaker 1: they'll take you. They're ready to get even more bloated.
Speaker 1: That's what we've been doing for thirty years. True, do
Speaker 1: we have any more good stuff like that? But not
Speaker 1: all day.
Speaker 3: But man, we're gonna have to find something. Well.
Speaker 1: I do like I do like the payphone story. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Good, that's a fun that's coming up.
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about tarrifs. This cabinet
Speaker 1: meeting is still going on, by the way, at the
Speaker 1: White House. We'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 3: You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 2: You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
Speaker 2: forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.