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. Firestorm erupts last night in Malibu,
Speaker 1: just shy of eleven PM, and the pictures are incredible.
Speaker 1: The video that has come out, the video we talked
Speaker 1: about from inside the Pepperdine Library.
Speaker 2: Great job by firefighters.
Speaker 1: It was all hands on deck right away, about seven
Speaker 1: hundred firefighters on scene.
Speaker 2: Now the air.
Speaker 1: Show, as you referred to it earlier, was able to
Speaker 1: start when the sun began to come up, and now
Speaker 1: we're seeing the firefighting Chinook helicopters, the fixed wing aircraft,
Speaker 1: the DC ten, the Super scoopers, everybody attacking this thing
Speaker 1: from the air.
Speaker 3: Pepperdine has canceled classes. This is finals week, so it's
Speaker 3: going to be annoying for some people to figure out
Speaker 3: how to reschedule all of that. About twenty two hundred
Speaker 3: acres was the latest update as of eight o'clock during
Speaker 3: that news conference. And this all comes when we are
Speaker 3: in the midst of a particularly dangerous situation.
Speaker 4: Red flag warning.
Speaker 3: It's a very special delineation that the National Weather Service
Speaker 3: makes about how dangerous these conditions are.
Speaker 1: Henry de Carlo from KTLA does an exemplary job of
Speaker 1: handling all of this forecasting. When we do get these
Speaker 1: fires hitting us here in southern California, joins us now
Speaker 1: and Henry. They say this particularly dangerous wind event will
Speaker 1: last until two pm today and then the red flag
Speaker 1: warnings until six pm tomorrow, So I'm assuming we'll have
Speaker 1: maybe another particularly dangerous time frame tomorrow as well.
Speaker 5: Well, Gary and Channa, it is great to be with
Speaker 5: you and thanks for having me on. You know, it's
Speaker 5: very interesting when we get to the red flag warnings
Speaker 5: because obviously we have fire concerns out there with the winds,
Speaker 5: the dry weather, low humidity, all of that stuff, and
Speaker 5: generally speaking, we'll start losing the winds, which is probably
Speaker 5: the most important component to lose, but we still have
Speaker 5: dry conditions, breezy conditions. So the red flag warnings usually
Speaker 5: are extended out a little bit later than maybe when
Speaker 5: the end event itself will die down, and that's just
Speaker 5: kind of a little buffer to let people know even
Speaker 5: though the winds are starting to subside and things are
Speaker 5: looking a little bit better that you know, they dry
Speaker 5: conditions and breezy conditions still put us at risk. But
Speaker 5: you know, to your point, I think once we get
Speaker 5: to middle afternoon, I think we're going to feel a
Speaker 5: lot better. In many spots, we just still need to
Speaker 5: be concerned through tomorrow.
Speaker 3: This is the second particularly dangerous designation that the National
Speaker 3: Weather Service has used this year this particularly dangerous situation.
Speaker 3: Last one was the was the the wind event right
Speaker 3: around election day where we saw the mountain fire start
Speaker 3: up out in Ventura County.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is somewhat new. We used to you know,
Speaker 5: we have the fire weather warnings, red flag warnings, which
Speaker 5: we're familiar with. We've had those around for years. And
Speaker 5: now when it comes to weather, it seems like when
Speaker 5: I say, you know, this isn't my doing this, it
Speaker 5: just kind of meteorologically speaking, Weather Service or you know,
Speaker 5: we're trying to classify things a little bit more, just
Speaker 5: like we have category hurricanes, you know, one through five.
Speaker 5: So now we have red flag warnings, but now we're
Speaker 5: almost putting a little bit higher classification on them. So
Speaker 5: when we know, okay, if you get a red flag warning,
Speaker 5: this is an extreme red flag warning, it's going to
Speaker 5: cover more areas, it may last a little bit longer,
Speaker 5: and it really puts us on a higher alert. And
Speaker 5: I think the reason why that's somewhat going to that
Speaker 5: because so often we could have maybe six, seven, eight
Speaker 5: red flag warnings a year, and maybe if you only
Speaker 5: have one significant event, then people start hearing them and
Speaker 5: they start thinking that it's not a big deal. We
Speaker 5: seem like we get these all the time. But now
Speaker 5: at these classifications, we could sit there and say, you
Speaker 5: know what this is, Yes, the red flag warning, but
Speaker 5: this wind event, this low humidity is really extreme and
Speaker 5: in extra dangerous, so to speak. So you know, it's
Speaker 5: somewhat new classif find these red flag warnings this way.
Speaker 5: But I think it's just a way to get people
Speaker 5: to acknowledge, Okay, we've been through this before, chances are
Speaker 5: will be okay, but this one really poses a threat,
Speaker 5: and obviously it did.
Speaker 1: Henry, have you saved any owls on the side of
Speaker 1: the road on your way to work recently?
Speaker 5: No, I haven't. I haven't saved any any animals, but
Speaker 5: I'm always open to do that. So but no, I
Speaker 5: haven't done that, but I do. I do appreciate you
Speaker 5: shedding some light on that story, because you know, whatever
Speaker 5: we can do to say our little friends. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm all for it.
Speaker 4: The ones that are on the side of the road,
Speaker 4: I mean, they need more story.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 5: Who was kind of a random thing? But like I said,
Speaker 5: I just saw that owl and I was like, this
Speaker 5: is sitting in the middle of the road. Something not
Speaker 5: right here. So at least they were the happy ending there.
Speaker 3: Listen, it's not like a hundred people found broken owls
Speaker 3: on the side of the road last year. It's I've
Speaker 3: never heard of And you did it. Yeah, you were
Speaker 3: the one who didn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well.
Speaker 5: Till early in the morning. And i'd like to you know,
Speaker 5: I was probably the only one out on the road
Speaker 5: at that time, but I'd like to think others would
Speaker 5: do the same. And I know there's a lot of
Speaker 5: people like yourselves, always wanting to help out when we can.
Speaker 1: I would not have done that.
Speaker 3: It would have been too bleary eyed to even notice
Speaker 3: it on the side of the road. So quick question,
Speaker 3: just about rainfall in that area around the Malibu area,
Speaker 3: and I know that it's I mean, it's almost verboating
Speaker 3: to say something like, what's a normal rain year, because
Speaker 3: we haven't had one in a long time. It seems
Speaker 3: it's either feast or famine when it comes like that.
Speaker 3: But where are we this year in terms of rainfall
Speaker 3: in that area?
Speaker 5: You know the rain year, and you know it's not
Speaker 5: a calendar year going January to December, so we start
Speaker 5: October first, we've kind of reset into a new rain season. Traditionally,
Speaker 5: we don't get a lot of rains, you know, obviously
Speaker 5: during the summer months and even October November, so you know,
Speaker 5: we haven't seen much of anything, so we're behind, but
Speaker 5: it's not a significant value. We get the bulk of
Speaker 5: our rain typically December January is a good month. February
Speaker 5: is a good month, in March, so I don't think
Speaker 5: we need to be concerned at this point. You know,
Speaker 5: the last couple of years, we actually had an early
Speaker 5: rainfall in the season and then we had a pretty
Speaker 5: good couple of storms. We had that atmosphere river storm
Speaker 5: that dumped a lot of rain, and we kind of
Speaker 5: picked up a lot of ground. We came right around
Speaker 5: the average, and I believe don't quote me on this,
Speaker 5: but if memory is correct, I think three of the
Speaker 5: past five years we've either hit or gone above the average,
Speaker 5: which is a good trend of five years prior to that,
Speaker 5: it was, you know, let's raise water prices. We're in
Speaker 5: you know, full on drought, and but we've we've been
Speaker 5: doing a little bit better and we are looking for
Speaker 5: an average water the year this year. So with any luck,
Speaker 5: we'll get our thirteen fourteen fifteen inches of rain by
Speaker 5: the end of the next water year, and hopefully we
Speaker 5: won't be too concerned.
Speaker 1: Henry de Carlo, always a pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 1: You have a very calmon vibe about you when we're
Speaker 1: dealing with disasters.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Well, I appreciate you having me on anytime, and enjoy
Speaker 5: your day.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: That's very nice. We said that about to the owl
Speaker 3: when he rescued him. What he said to the owl,
Speaker 3: Hey like, hey who? No, I don't say who to
Speaker 3: an owl?
Speaker 4: Why not?
Speaker 1: That'd be like making fun of somebody to their face,
Speaker 1: like the way they talk.
Speaker 3: Like making fun of their accent or something. Minimal number
Speaker 3: of structures that have been lost in this We've did
Speaker 3: see some images early on of homes that went down,
Speaker 3: but we just simply do not know how many. At
Speaker 3: this point, the priority is not to count how many homes.
Speaker 3: The priority priority is to get some containment line and
Speaker 3: some retardant around this fire to keep it from spreading.
Speaker 1: It looks like right now the act of flame that
Speaker 1: I've seen is up on the ridges, away from homes,
Speaker 1: burning in that in that thick, dense brush, which is good.
Speaker 1: But again, the attack has been on fire. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to say that the air attack has been robust.
Speaker 2: Robust this morning.
Speaker 3: There are still plenty of people in that area, in
Speaker 3: the Malamu area don't have power because of the public
Speaker 3: safety power shut off. There were some others back east,
Speaker 3: back sort of in the Marongo Basin area, they had
Speaker 3: also had their power turned off because of public safety
Speaker 3: power shut offs. The ironic thing is, we were talking
Speaker 3: with Henry de Carlo just a short time ago from
Speaker 3: KTLA about the winds and drought conditions, etc. That have
Speaker 3: existed at times in the last couple of years. I
Speaker 3: just checked the drought monitor map in the state of California,
Speaker 3: and really the only area that is significant is that
Speaker 3: it is abnormally dry but not considered a drought in
Speaker 3: much of the central Valley just south of Sacramento County,
Speaker 3: sort of from Sacramento County down to about Kern County.
Speaker 3: But other than that, we're doing well in terms of
Speaker 3: the map from the US Drought Monitor.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, the shooter of the United Healthcare CEO,
Speaker 1: Luigi Mangioni had a stronghold in Maryland, a lot of
Speaker 1: family ties there, big family in Maryland, but he had
Speaker 1: some ties to California. And we'll tell you as close
Speaker 1: as Santa Monica. A good news story to tell you about.
Speaker 1: They finally got the awful people that were taking advantage
Speaker 1: of elderly people, using God essentially to get these people
Speaker 1: to be robbed. It's an Orange County based robbery crew
Speaker 1: that has been taken into custody after good Samaritans and
Speaker 1: Sam Bardino intervened to help an older lady.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thirty thirty three and thirty five years old. Maria,
Speaker 3: Machalia and Ovidio all residents of Fullerton.
Speaker 4: These are just their first names because the others are
Speaker 4: hard to say.
Speaker 3: A couple of them found to have warrants for their
Speaker 3: arrest in other counties for robbery, theft from elderly and
Speaker 3: grand theft from a person.
Speaker 4: And if you remember, yeah, they were they were was it?
Speaker 3: They were luring people to church or luring people with
Speaker 3: the they were going.
Speaker 1: Like outside of churches and talking to people and then
Speaker 1: having getting in their car and taking them to another
Speaker 1: location and then robbing them. So it looks like these
Speaker 1: two women and one man approached this woman on Foothill
Speaker 1: and Rancha Cucamonga, attempted to steal the jewelry she was wearing,
Speaker 1: including a necklace that she was wearing around her neck.
Speaker 3: Sheriff's department shows up reports of this attempt at robbing,
Speaker 3: and they figured out that they were They took off
Speaker 3: in a waiting car which was spotted just a couple
Speaker 3: of miles away at Foothill and Milliken, and all three
Speaker 3: of them were picked up. Is I don't understand the trio.
Speaker 3: That's what I don't get.
Speaker 2: The two women.
Speaker 3: It just seems like this is a one person thing.
Speaker 3: Unless if old video is the I'm assuming that's the
Speaker 3: guy is the mastermind of all of this. He does
Speaker 3: not have to be by any means, but he was
Speaker 3: using the women to make elderly people feel more.
Speaker 2: Comfortable, probably the old honey pot.
Speaker 3: Because he's not a gentle looking fellow than if you
Speaker 3: were to walk up to my grandma, she would tell me.
Speaker 2: But I love.
Speaker 1: That they tried to rob this woman, and that good
Speaker 1: Samaritans were there like ran to her to help out,
Speaker 1: and they took off. That's essentially what it was. So, yes,
Speaker 1: they're awful people. They should go straight to hell. But
Speaker 1: there are still good people out there.
Speaker 4: That is nice. You would help, I don't know if
Speaker 4: I would. I'd like to.
Speaker 3: Well, now you've put me on the hook to help
Speaker 3: out wounded owls on the side of the road, and
Speaker 3: now an elderly woman who's being robbed of her jewelry.
Speaker 1: Well, remember when you helped the traveling obg y n
Speaker 1: get back to Orange County to deliver the triplets?
Speaker 4: How much did I give him?
Speaker 1: Twenty dollars? Twenty dollars bill, twenty dollars? How much will
Speaker 1: that get you up with?
Speaker 2: Saint Peter? Probably get that spot on mine ahead.
Speaker 4: Where did he spend the twenty bucks that I gave him?
Speaker 2: Probably in an alley on fetanylar cracks.
Speaker 3: And remember I was so I felt good about myself.
Speaker 3: He did until you guys popped my balloon. You came in,
Speaker 3: You're like, this is what I did today.
Speaker 1: I ouped a traveling obgyn delivered triplets. He was out
Speaker 1: of money and all credit cards at the gas station
Speaker 1: and I gave him twenty dollars to get down there
Speaker 1: to birth the help with the birth of those triplets.
Speaker 2: And I said, sounds like a scam.
Speaker 1: Dude, You're like no, And I'm like that why traveling
Speaker 1: obg y N. If I was delivering triplets, I would
Speaker 1: make sure my doctor was in.
Speaker 4: The zip code.
Speaker 1: Well maybe not some charlatan freaking carnival doctor.
Speaker 3: A multiple birth doctor specialist multiple or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then we googled it Asian traveling obgyn and
Speaker 1: the stories were all.
Speaker 4: Over the place.
Speaker 3: They were ample, like whatever you do, do not give
Speaker 3: this guy twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Well, and the part that really smelled scam as he said,
Speaker 1: you give me the money, now, I'll give you like
Speaker 1: three times your money this afternoon, like and a set
Speaker 1: of steak knives.
Speaker 4: Okay, I get it.
Speaker 2: No, but you are a good person.
Speaker 1: And because of that story, I do believe you would
Speaker 1: save the owl and that you would have saved this
Speaker 1: elderly woman necklace in tow and remember when.
Speaker 2: You save the baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's that was incredible. Why didn't you punch
Speaker 3: the window of my fist or anything? You kind of
Speaker 3: cuckholded the dad he deserved it.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 3: He was walking around like a big old, like an idiot,
Speaker 3: just an idiot.
Speaker 4: It's your kid.
Speaker 1: You bursted through that window, you broke the glass. You
Speaker 1: and cured the baby. That was incredible.
Speaker 3: And when they came in and thanked me, like the
Speaker 3: woman brought the baby in and then thanked me later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I was looking around, like, where's your husband?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Where's that guy? I hope he's being questioned by the deputies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: or being a moron.
Speaker 1: You delivered more babies than that Asian obgin not delivered essentially,
Speaker 1: probably just like all hands on deck. La County fire
Speaker 1: and assisting fire crews have been overnight and into this morning.
Speaker 1: It looks like a lot of the active flame is
Speaker 1: burning on top of the ridges, not near neighborhoods. At
Speaker 1: this point, we do know some homes have been lost,
Speaker 1: minimal loss. According to the authorities at the latest press briefing,
Speaker 1: it is more than twenty two hundred acres. At this
Speaker 1: point it is zero percent contained. We are in the
Speaker 1: middle of what the National Weather Service calls a particularly
Speaker 1: dangerous Santa Anna wind event until two pm today, So
Speaker 1: this is very important hours ahead in terms of getting
Speaker 1: ahead of this thing and making that line, and that
Speaker 1: is hard work in this mountainous area.
Speaker 3: This is not necessarily in the same area that the
Speaker 3: Woolsey fire burned in twenty eighteen, but it is sort
Speaker 3: of on the very very eastern portions of where that
Speaker 3: fire burned. It was that one was ninety seven thousand
Speaker 3: acres and it burned all the way up over the hill
Speaker 3: in two thousand oaks across the one to one all that,
Speaker 3: so I mean to give you an idea the difference
Speaker 3: in the size. It went on forever too. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was particularly dangerous. So obviously there are closures. Pch closed
Speaker 3: between Carbon Canyon and Coral Canyon. Several of those areas
Speaker 3: to Panga Canyon is closed through traffic. They're only letting.
Speaker 3: And that was closed before the fire even started. That
Speaker 3: was closed yesterday just out of a precaution because they
Speaker 3: knew the conditions were going to be bad.
Speaker 1: The guy they say killed the United Healthcare CEO in
Speaker 1: New York City is said to appear in court this
Speaker 1: afternoon in Pennsylvania. This could be an extradition hearing for
Speaker 1: Luigi Mangioni, twenty six year old caught at that McDonald's
Speaker 1: in Altoona. I want to know about that McDonald's employee.
Speaker 1: Why haven't gotten that story yet. I want to know
Speaker 1: more about that guy slash girl who said you look
Speaker 1: like the guy on TV called in the cops. The
Speaker 1: cops say, hey, you've been to New York recently. He
Speaker 1: apparently starts shaking and they bring him in for questioning.
Speaker 1: They find the three D printed handgun, the silencer similar
Speaker 1: to the one used in the shooting the fake IDs,
Speaker 1: and that three page handwritten manifesto.
Speaker 3: If you're the cop and the guy starts shaking, yeah.
Speaker 1: That just seems like it's I don't know. I do
Speaker 1: that at a traffic stop. I get pulled over for it. Like,
Speaker 1: are you getting pulled over running a stop sign? And
Speaker 1: I start shaking?
Speaker 4: How often are you getting pulled over?
Speaker 2: I haven't been pulled over in years.
Speaker 4: You think you'd shake now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 1: Every time there's a cop behind me, I suddenly feel
Speaker 1: like I don't know.
Speaker 3: If there's dead bodies in the back of the truck,
Speaker 3: you know that they're there for you, and your mind
Speaker 3: starts racing. Yeah, I get that too, but I don't
Speaker 3: It's been all so Why do I think that, like
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to prison or something.
Speaker 1: I've done nothing wrong except for maybe sped or ran
Speaker 1: through a crosswalk or you know, a yellow light or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's not like I've killed someone and
Speaker 1: the rotting body is back there. Like, why do I
Speaker 1: get so nervous over a simple traffic stop?
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 2: Do you think I've killed people in past lives?
Speaker 4: You may have and driven with them. Maybe guilt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's a that's a good descriptor that's a
Speaker 3: good reason to be skincs it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this guy Luigi did have some ties to California.
Speaker 3: The According to public records, he actually spent time at
Speaker 3: Stanford back in twenty nineteen, and at one time was
Speaker 3: working for Truecar, the company True Car, the digital marketplace
Speaker 3: for cars out of Santa Monica. We don't know if
Speaker 3: he was actually living in Santa Monica at the time.
Speaker 3: He also spent time in Hawaii, and I guess in
Speaker 3: court last night said that Hawaii was his most recent
Speaker 3: permanent address, even though as we talked about last time
Speaker 3: we talked about this last hour, he had told friends
Speaker 3: that he was going to be back in Hawaii at
Speaker 3: some point, but was back east to see family and
Speaker 3: to take care of his spinal injury that he had suffered.
Speaker 3: So outside of that, we'll just continue to get more
Speaker 3: and more information about him and about his family. The
Speaker 3: family finally broke their silence on the arrest. They put
Speaker 3: a statement on the media profile social media profile for
Speaker 3: Nico Mangioni, who is a Republican delegate in the Maryland
Speaker 3: House of Delegates. He said, our family is shocked and
Speaker 3: devastated by Luigi's are We offer our prayers to the
Speaker 3: family of Brian Thompson. We ask people to pray for
Speaker 3: all involved.
Speaker 1: Felt some more about that back pain that led to
Speaker 1: the surgery that may have been the break in his life.
Speaker 1: On good Reads that's a book review website. This guy's
Speaker 1: got an extensive online footprint, fingerprint, whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1: He reported reading or wanting to read a number of
Speaker 1: books about coping with chronic back pain, and he talked
Speaker 1: about the spinal injury, the slippage of vertebrae, and the
Speaker 1: spine that he had been suffering from. It says that
Speaker 1: he had talked about suffering from backaches. This was on
Speaker 1: his Reddit account related to this condition. Since childhood, but
Speaker 1: aggravated the condition after that surfing lesson in Honolulu. He
Speaker 1: wrote in July of last year, my back and hips
Speaker 1: locked up after the accident, talking about intermittent numbness that
Speaker 1: had become constant, he wrote, I'm terrified of the implications,
Speaker 1: maybe worried about paralysis, I would imagine. He did not
Speaker 1: talk about health insurance related to the surgery or treatment
Speaker 1: related to United health Care, but did talk about past
Speaker 1: struggles with health issues like lime disease severe brain fog.
Speaker 1: He said that he started getting brain fog after losing
Speaker 1: sleep during his fraternities hell week, caused his college grades
Speaker 1: to fall, and he said they say he expressed frustration
Speaker 1: about how little was understood by the medical community about
Speaker 1: brain fog. He wrote that it's absolutely brutal to have
Speaker 1: such a life halting issue. The people around you probably
Speaker 1: won't understand your symptoms. They certainly don't for me. And
Speaker 1: again the report was he went silent about six months
Speaker 1: ago with friends and family.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's not.
Speaker 3: I mean, from everything that we've seen, we have yet
Speaker 3: to figure out if he had a problem with insurance,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, obviously there would be multiple things
Speaker 3: that he was dealing with.
Speaker 2: But when you.
Speaker 1: Come from that much money, you don't have an insurance problems?
Speaker 1: Do you have a concierge doctor.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that I've not quite you know, they
Speaker 3: haven't made that connection. I mean, it may simply be
Speaker 3: the Brian Thompson exemplified to him the healthcare industry and
Speaker 3: it wasn't specific an insurance issue that he was fighting
Speaker 3: back against.
Speaker 1: Right, and he was critical of AI and this guy
Speaker 1: that was shot and killed was very much into AI
Speaker 1: and using it in the healthcare industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are following the Franklin fire. There's fire burning
Speaker 3: out in the Malibu area. Just updated numbers from cal Fire.
Speaker 3: They've bumped up the acreage to twenty five hundred ninety
Speaker 3: three acres. Getting a little more specific because they have
Speaker 3: more information, it's a little easier during the daytime for
Speaker 3: them to actually map out exactly what has burned. So again,
Speaker 3: two five hundred ninety three acres have burned. Pepperdine University
Speaker 3: was on a shelter in place protocol overnight, but they
Speaker 3: have lifted that. They've said the conditions have I've shown
Speaker 3: that the fire itself is burning away from the campus.
Speaker 3: They said conditions are safer members of the community to
Speaker 3: return to student residences and on campus homes. And they
Speaker 3: said if you're not. If for some reason, you left
Speaker 3: campus overnight to simply get out of the area, they said,
Speaker 3: just wait, there will be a safer time for you
Speaker 3: to go in there, partly because so many roads are close.
Speaker 3: Pch we know is close through that area, so it's
Speaker 3: going to be harder to get back on campus if
Speaker 3: you in fact left overnight.
Speaker 1: May I please have some music, storytime music, like kind
Speaker 1: of sad storytime music. Yes, let me introduce you to
Speaker 1: eighty year old Raymond Hallly. Raymond was terribly lonely. He
Speaker 1: moved into a veteran's home in Bristol, Rhode Island. Pets
Speaker 1: were not allowed at this home, and so we had
Speaker 1: to give up his fourteen year old cat named Kevin.
Speaker 5: True.
Speaker 1: His mood, though, began to brighten when he was given
Speaker 1: a robotic cat. Now, this robotic cat resembles a stuffed animal,
Speaker 1: but looks and moves like the real thing. Raymond named
Speaker 1: it Franklin to honor his real cat. He had to
Speaker 1: give away both, named for his favorite president.
Speaker 2: By the way.
Speaker 1: Franklin moves, Meal's purrs like the live cat did. They
Speaker 1: have sensors AI. They respond to sounds, touch and light.
Speaker 1: Raymond says, even though I know my new pet isn't real,
Speaker 1: it gives me the opportunity to have a private bond
Speaker 1: once again. It's obvious to anyone who knows how to love.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about Alfred, I do, but I
Speaker 1: am this is on comfortable. Alfred Jarvis ninety two year
Speaker 1: old guy, retired salesman. He had become belligerent as a
Speaker 1: result of his Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 3: He would yell at his wife. He would curse at
Speaker 3: his wife of seventy two years. At one time he
Speaker 3: grabbed her arm so hard that he almost broke it.
Speaker 3: Put him into an assisted living facility because obviously it
Speaker 3: was getting dangerous. And his niece gave him a robotic cat,
Speaker 3: and she said almost immediately he began to stroke the cat,
Speaker 3: speaking into it and speaking to it in a soothing voice,
Speaker 3: saying things like, don't be scared, It's going to be okay, patches.
Speaker 2: So this is true. This happened in my life.
Speaker 1: My mother in law, when she was in the throes
Speaker 1: of Alzheimer's, was super belligerent, and a woman who did
Speaker 1: not curse began to curse personality GDSOB was her common refrain,
Speaker 1: but the whole thing. And you would give her a
Speaker 1: stuffed animal and she would do that.
Speaker 2: She would talk to it, she would pet it.
Speaker 1: She became very docile, demure, nice, caring for the stuffed animal,
Speaker 1: taking care of it, and the belligerence would go away.
Speaker 2: So we just filled the house with stuffed animals.
Speaker 4: But well, I don't know what. Why can't we give
Speaker 4: him a real cat?
Speaker 2: Because they can't take care of it.
Speaker 1: They have Alzheimer's or their mobility is limited at eighty
Speaker 1: five years old.
Speaker 4: I know, doctor, But listen, could you.
Speaker 1: Take care of your dog at ninety with Alzheimer's?
Speaker 2: No, you could not.
Speaker 1: And if you got the same benefits as a real
Speaker 1: dog as you get from a stuffed animal or a
Speaker 1: robot dog, hell yeah, I say give every.
Speaker 2: Old person one of these things.
Speaker 3: Are they incapable of seeing that it's not a real dog.
Speaker 1: No, Raymond knows that it's not real, but it gives
Speaker 1: him the same benefit.
Speaker 3: But Alfred believes it was a real dog because he
Speaker 3: would say he thinks it's real and it calms him down.
Speaker 4: And when we come to visit. He says, do you
Speaker 4: want to hold Mike?
Speaker 1: When you have someone with Alzheimer's. You'll let them believe
Speaker 1: anything if it calms them down. You don't care.
Speaker 4: I guess that's true.
Speaker 3: An associate professor University of Pittsburgh's Division of Geriatric Medicine says,
Speaker 3: the lovely thing about robotic pets is they don't bite.
Speaker 4: You don't have to clean up after him. You could
Speaker 4: take them anywhere.
Speaker 3: She says, I've seen older people take their pets finger
Speaker 3: quotes to the grocery store and.
Speaker 4: Talk to them about their lives.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They are a way for an older adult with or
Speaker 3: without dementia to have something to care for, and they
Speaker 3: provide meaningful interaction for those who may be homebound.
Speaker 4: We should get one. That's a great thing.
Speaker 1: We should get one for around here. Wouldn't that be fun?
Speaker 1: That would be fun.
Speaker 3: We've just now been making inroads into cleaning out our
Speaker 3: office and you want to buy more stuff.
Speaker 1: But the pet would would just walk around.
Speaker 2: I can get one on Amazon. Look at this. Look
Speaker 2: at this cat, Orange Tabby.
Speaker 4: Cat walks around. That one just sits there.
Speaker 1: Oh what wait, hold on, no, it says, cat like movements.
Speaker 4: That's not walking.
Speaker 5: It purrs.
Speaker 4: That's that's cat like.
Speaker 1: Oh, I wanted to walk around. I wanted to walk
Speaker 1: around the whole station. How much do those go for?
Speaker 3: You have to get like a Tesla robot dog. Look
Speaker 3: up Boston Scientific Robot Dogs. This one has a heart beat.
Speaker 4: No, it does not have a heartbeat. So we're not.
Speaker 2: Guys robot guys? Are we doing it?
Speaker 3: Please pull the trigger on this. I mean pull the no,
Speaker 3: pull the rug out from under this. That's what I
Speaker 3: meant to say.
Speaker 2: I'll pull the trigger on this.
Speaker 4: Geez. I think it's an awful idea.
Speaker 1: For the record, I know when you say the two things.
Speaker 1: I know when you say when I'm in trouble or
Speaker 1: you disagree with whatever it is, do.
Speaker 2: You want to know what they are?
Speaker 4: I do?
Speaker 1: Number one is jeez. Number two is if you say so,
Speaker 1: those are your tells.
Speaker 4: You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 3: You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
Speaker 3: forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
Speaker 3: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.