Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2: Mark Thompson's sitting in and just taking some time out
Speaker 2: of prepping for my big YouTube show, The Mark Thompson
Speaker 2: Show on YouTube, kind of a politics and news thing.
Speaker 2: You ever in the neighborhood of YouTube, Please subscribe. It's free,
Speaker 2: it's the it's price to move my show. I mentioned
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg and the fact that he's putting together these
Speaker 2: pay packages at Meta formerly Facebook, and you can guess
Speaker 2: where the emphasis is now at Meta. You know, the
Speaker 2: meta world is interesting to me because you remember when
Speaker 2: he put those billions of dollars it was tens of
Speaker 2: billions of dollars into the metaverse. The word meta and
Speaker 2: the rebranding of Facebook as Meta kind of came out
Speaker 2: of that metaverse craze. Everything was going to be in
Speaker 2: the metaverse. We were going to meet in the metaverse.
Speaker 2: There were going to be concert venues in the metaverse.
Speaker 2: The metaverse is going to be a place where they're
Speaker 2: going to be virtual cities. And that's still all maybe percolating,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but there was a time when it
Speaker 2: just seemed as though it was going to happen, like
Speaker 2: you know, at noon tomorrow. Now whenever it's going to happen,
Speaker 2: or the degree to which it's happening has sort of
Speaker 2: been put off. But what's replaced it is what AI.
Speaker 2: And AI is proving itself to be as transformational as
Speaker 2: everybody had said it would be. And so to Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: and these compensation packages. He's putting together huge compensation packages
Speaker 2: related to AI. Apparently he spent months putting together a
Speaker 2: list of the top AI engineers and researchers across the globe,
Speaker 2: and he wants to offer these people potential recruits, right,
Speaker 2: lucrative compensation packages. And he's trying to poach AI talent
Speaker 2: from a lot of competitors. So how do you put
Speaker 2: together the perfect package? You offer up to one hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars, which is what he's doing. He's personally reaching
Speaker 2: out to a lot of these most desirable AI developers.
Speaker 2: And you know this is a company Meta. Remember Meta
Speaker 2: owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and they are competing in this
Speaker 2: attempt to be AI dominant. The dominant AI engines really
Speaker 2: stand to control the future. See of open AI. Google
Speaker 2: has its own AI right, Microsoft, Amazon, and billions of
Speaker 2: dollars are being invested into AI research and product development,
Speaker 2: and it's being talked about Meta as being an also ran,
Speaker 2: like not really keeping up with the competition. They had
Speaker 2: a rollout scheduled and then it was delayed and so
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, that's their flagship AI model, and
Speaker 2: it seems like maybe it's still a little bit on
Speaker 2: the jankie side and that's the reason that you didn't
Speaker 2: roll it out on time. So again they invested fourteen
Speaker 2: billion for a steak in Scale AI. And Scale ai
Speaker 2: is an AI founded by a guy named Alexander Wang.
Speaker 2: Guess how old Alexander Wang is. He is the founder
Speaker 2: of this Scale AI. And again Meta just paid for
Speaker 2: a steak in AI. They don't own it. This is
Speaker 2: just a piece of the party. They paid fourteen billion.
Speaker 2: The founder Alexander Wang is how old? Twenty eight? And
Speaker 2: Meta wants to put Alexander Wang, twenty eight, eight year old,
Speaker 2: in charge of its super intelligence team. That's a lab team,
Speaker 2: an internal lab team that's going to focus on developing
Speaker 2: a hypothetical AI system that is smarter than humans. Google
Speaker 2: bought out the shares in Character ai. That's a chatbot
Speaker 2: service that just happened last year, So back to Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: and these compensation packages. He's trying to go after all
Speaker 2: of these recent graduate from top PhD programs at schools
Speaker 2: like cal in the Bay Area, Carnegie Mellon and more
Speaker 2: and more of these deep mind project like their Google's
Speaker 2: got a deep mind project and Open AI and you
Speaker 2: know you've heard all of these names. Well, Zuckerberg's going
Speaker 2: to poach all of these companies for some of their
Speaker 2: top people. And so somebody who spoke to Zuckerberg, a recruit,
Speaker 2: said that he's trying to essentially this is a quote,
Speaker 2: get a transfusion from the country's top AI labs. And
Speaker 2: so in that process, he's offering one hundred billion dollars
Speaker 2: to what he considers the best people in the field.
Speaker 2: On the other side of it are all of the
Speaker 2: creators who are being counterfeited and undercut by AI. And
Speaker 2: I'm talking about authors. An open letter written on Friday
Speaker 2: about the use of AI on in creating books. It
Speaker 2: showed up on the literary website lit hub. It's asking
Speaker 2: publishing houses to promise that they will never release books
Speaker 2: that were created by machines. I see that as a
Speaker 2: request that may not go honored. It's just so easy
Speaker 2: for these publishers to frankenstein together all kinds of book
Speaker 2: on any number of subjects. They addressed, these seventy authors
Speaker 2: did the big five US publishers Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins,
Speaker 2: Simon and Schuster, and they got more than eleven hundred
Speaker 2: signatures on the accompanying petition and their direct request to
Speaker 2: publishers on a number of different things. And AI may
Speaker 2: already or could soon be in this publishing world, and
Speaker 2: the letter asks them, along with the accompanying petition, hey,
Speaker 2: please don't do this. The writing that AI produces feels cheap,
Speaker 2: they say, because it is cheap, they continue, It feels
Speaker 2: simple because it is simple to produce. That is the
Speaker 2: whole point. AI is an enormously powerful tool here to
Speaker 2: stay with the capacity for real societal benefits, but the
Speaker 2: replacement of art and artists isn't one of them. And
Speaker 2: there have been lawsuits, as you know, from authors, mean
Speaker 2: big authors are going after publishers for having balkanized their work.
Speaker 2: You know, they take a piece of it and they
Speaker 2: are essentially guilty of potentially anyway copyright infringement. So these
Speaker 2: are ongoing cases from a lot of everybody from Sarah
Speaker 2: Silverman to Who's the Comedian? But she's also an author
Speaker 2: to some of the biggest names in writing. And some
Speaker 2: of these cases are already beginning to render rulings. Federal
Speaker 2: judges were handing down judgments in two cases like this
Speaker 2: just on Friday of this past week. They ruled in
Speaker 2: favor of the defendants. They ruled in favor of the
Speaker 2: AI companies Anthropic AI and Meta, So they dealt a
Speaker 2: blow to these authors. And this could give AI companies
Speaker 2: the legal right under the fair use doctrine to train
Speaker 2: their large language models on copyrighted work and do what
Speaker 2: I was just mentioning, essentially Frankenstein together bits of this work.
Speaker 2: AI is transforming everything, and that's why they're paying a
Speaker 2: premium for AI engineers, and it will change the way
Speaker 2: so much is done.
Speaker 3: Around the world.
Speaker 2: When we come back, the beach just got a whole
Speaker 2: lot more dangerous. And you'll never guess why.
Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 4: Hey Mark Luis here, good to hear you on a
Speaker 4: Sunday afternoon. Don't forget to promote the Mark Hanson Show
Speaker 4: on YouTube. Hey, I does have just caused because those
Speaker 4: people were picked up just because they happened to.
Speaker 5: Be at the home people on a Sunday afternoon. Anyway,
Speaker 5: good to hear from you, buddy, I get it, Louise. Yes,
Speaker 5: they picked up just cauts is what you're saying. Okay,
Speaker 5: Uh Yeah. The Mark Thompson Shows on YouTube. It's a
Speaker 5: daily show two hours live. But you can watch it
Speaker 5: anytime or listen to it anytime. We're also on the
Speaker 5: iHeartRadio app as a podcast. It's called the Mark Thompson Show. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we didn't spend a lot of time on the title,
Speaker 5: so but thanks for that. Speaking of ICE, I would
Speaker 5: just I think this one is related to ICE. Somebody
Speaker 5: called in and left to talk back on this. I say,
Speaker 5: called in, you know, use the talkback feature I just described.
Speaker 3: And here is that.
Speaker 6: In regards to I thought they were going to start
Speaker 6: with the criminals first.
Speaker 2: No, I was saying that, you know, in the articulated
Speaker 2: immigration strategy, it's we're going to start with the criminals.
Speaker 2: We're going to start with the you know, and you
Speaker 2: don't find them as day workers at home depot, at Low's,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And we're just kind of talking about the
Speaker 2: pushback on ICE, and so this gentleman is calling about
Speaker 2: that just to put it in contact.
Speaker 6: So in regards to I thought they were going to
Speaker 6: start with the criminals first, Well, when the governor refuses
Speaker 6: to allow ICE into the prisons to get the criminals,
Speaker 6: it forces them to go in the community. And they
Speaker 6: plainly stated, if we have to go in the community,
Speaker 6: anybody we find with these people are going to.
Speaker 3: That's just the result of non.
Speaker 2: Oh well that actually makes some sense, but it happens
Speaker 2: not to be true. I don't know if you Newsom
Speaker 2: said he's going to continue allowing the state prison system
Speaker 2: to cooperate with ICE. So when you say, well, if
Speaker 2: the governor would just let the ICE agents into the prisons,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have this problem with people going by a
Speaker 2: home depot. Well, he's been quite vocal about the fact
Speaker 2: that ICE and the prison system in California will cooperate
Speaker 2: with each other. And finally there is this let me
Speaker 2: find this talk back which was just left here.
Speaker 7: So good to hear Mark Thompson, love you, love you,
Speaker 7: love you, love you love you on Tuesdays.
Speaker 2: With Conway and I want to stop this for a second.
Speaker 2: Why can't we have more like this Ritchie. This is
Speaker 2: a very good talk back.
Speaker 3: Let's have him keep him coming. I am very hit
Speaker 3: that talk back. I'd like to hit this talk back.
Speaker 3: Play this every maybe seven or eight minutes on this show.
Speaker 7: You hear Mark Thompson love You, love you, love you,
Speaker 7: love you, love you, love you. You had a huge
Speaker 7: more of a presence on air on love.
Speaker 3: You all from that was big, big fan love your work.
Speaker 2: I got love you, love you, love you, love you,
Speaker 2: and then another thing and then love you.
Speaker 3: That was like huge six love you. That's more love
Speaker 3: yous and I've got on a whole year.
Speaker 2: If I love love you on Sundays, I really thank you, uh,
Speaker 2: thank you anonymous person.
Speaker 3: So we play it back again, No, no, we should not.
Speaker 2: I think I must tell you though, if you're headed
Speaker 2: to the beach and it did feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: we're getting into clearly some beach days, there is a bizarre,
Speaker 2: I consider it truly bizarre warning about the latest threat
Speaker 2: safety threat associated with going to the beach. Usually you
Speaker 2: associate going to the beach and those kind of safety
Speaker 2: warnings with what riptide is like one of the big
Speaker 2: ones to me anyway, sharks right. You know, there's also
Speaker 2: theft on the beach. I mean this kind of thing,
Speaker 2: but this is a threat to your physical person that
Speaker 2: emerges from beach umbrellas.
Speaker 8: A picturesque day on the Jersey Shore, beach goers taking
Speaker 8: cover from the hot summer sun.
Speaker 9: All shattered in a moment.
Speaker 3: The um in the rough, aren't it?
Speaker 8: After a nineteen year old lifeguard in Asbury Park was
Speaker 8: stabbed by her own beach umbrella.
Speaker 3: I gotten tailed by the umbrella.
Speaker 8: First responders rushing to the scene, power tools in hand.
Speaker 3: They need that band fall for sure.
Speaker 7: Here they cut the umbrella on both ends so they
Speaker 7: couldn't move that part of it.
Speaker 9: It was pretty ugly, but I said, I think she's
Speaker 9: gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: For her.
Speaker 8: It's a story all too familiar Forred Quigley.
Speaker 10: An umbrella is a javelin with a sale attached ed.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, never in a million years that I can see.
Speaker 2: We've all seen. All of us have seen umbrellas blowing
Speaker 2: down the beach, right and and I guess we know
Speaker 2: that the implied threat, But I never thought of it
Speaker 2: as like a jablin that potentially could spear someone. I
Speaker 2: mean again, I guess that's implied, but I'd never heard
Speaker 2: or seen or read about, it actually.
Speaker 9: Happened, tory all too familiar for d Quigley.
Speaker 10: An umbrella is a javelin with a sail attached.
Speaker 8: Ed nearly died after being struck in the eye by
Speaker 8: a rope. Beach umbrella twenty fifteen in brain surgery.
Speaker 1: I died on the operating table.
Speaker 3: Wow, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: This guy was speared in the eye by a beach
Speaker 2: umbrella and he went intobate brain surgery involving dying on
Speaker 2: the table in the oar.
Speaker 3: This is an extraordinary story.
Speaker 9: Beach umbrella twenty fifteen.
Speaker 10: In brain surgery. I died on the operating table. Took
Speaker 10: them twenty three minutes and seven cycles with the shock
Speaker 10: paddles bring me back.
Speaker 8: Since that day, he's made it his mission to improve
Speaker 8: beach umbrella safety. Everyone's just shocked that this is a
Speaker 8: thing that happened so regularly.
Speaker 10: I think the first question to ask is did you
Speaker 10: ever see an umbrella blowing down the beach? Everyone has, Well,
Speaker 10: everyone's seen it, then everyone's been in a potential danger situation.
Speaker 8: Now, as installing these warning signs at beaches up and
Speaker 8: down the East Coast, like here in Wildwood, New Jersey
Speaker 8: coining beachgoers.
Speaker 2: Wylwood, New Jerseys, where we used to vacation every summer.
Speaker 2: Loved it, especially as a kid. They've got a big
Speaker 2: boardwalk and all those rides and stuff. And I have
Speaker 2: to just say this speaking of my life is a
Speaker 2: kid at Wildwood Beaches. My mom, she grew up in
Speaker 2: the shadow of the Depression. They had no money. She
Speaker 2: would hoard like sugar packets from United Airlines. It was incredible,
Speaker 2: and I mean, I'm just kind of our life was
Speaker 2: informed by you know, my mother really not wanted to
Speaker 2: spend any money. We didn't have a lot of money,
Speaker 2: but she really grew up with nothing, so it was
Speaker 2: kind of anyway, My point is on the beach at Wildwood,
Speaker 2: this very beach, she would not ever dream about renting
Speaker 2: an umbrella. It was two dollars. I mean, she would
Speaker 2: never dream of it. I remember being scorched by the
Speaker 2: sun and begging her to get an umbrella. Nope, never
Speaker 2: even take a meeting on it. But wow, the idea
Speaker 2: that these umbrellas could blow down the beach and they
Speaker 2: could do the kind of damage that that guy was
Speaker 2: just describing.
Speaker 3: It's really truting.
Speaker 8: Like here in wild Wood New Jersey, pointing beachgoers to
Speaker 8: a new voluntary safety standard for beach umbrellas from the
Speaker 8: Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Speaker 10: So, over two years they tested beach umbrellas on beaches
Speaker 10: and in wind tunnels and develop the scientific data to say,
Speaker 10: this is what you need to keep an umbrella secure.
Speaker 10: And basically what it is is an anchor device that
Speaker 10: provides seventy five pounds of resistance to lift.
Speaker 2: That's what I was gonna suggest, Richie. I literally was
Speaker 2: gonna say, why do they just put weights on the
Speaker 2: bottom of it. I don't know, but they're already on it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right. Meanwhile, if you go to the beach, do
Speaker 2: be careful. You could end up like that guy in
Speaker 2: the or and in brain surgery. Very well sourced that story.
Speaker 2: That was a surprise to me. Thank you, producer, Richie.
Speaker 3: You're welcome. Yeah, when we come back.
Speaker 2: A crypto investment scheme revealed right here in southern California.
Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2: The operator and employee of a Bellflower financial services company
Speaker 2: accused of allegedly stealing more than a million dollars, mostly
Speaker 2: low income victims. It was a fraudulent crypto investment scheme.
Speaker 2: Two people again the operator and then the employee of
Speaker 2: this financial services company in Bellflower, Jone Rios of Rancho
Speaker 2: Cucamonga and Erwin Kavas of thirty five of Norwalk. Those
Speaker 2: are the two thirty felon accounts involving grand theft. There's
Speaker 2: also a forgery and another felon account with bouncing checks.
Speaker 2: But between twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, the two
Speaker 2: of them operated this scheme under the guise of a
Speaker 2: cryptocurrency mining business. This is what is alleged. The cryptocurrency
Speaker 2: mining business was known as Zukra Platform Corporation. Now this
Speaker 2: is what they say. This Zukray Platform Corporation was claiming
Speaker 2: they were going to install, maintain, and operate computing equipment
Speaker 2: to mine crypto. You know, crypto is this thing where
Speaker 2: its computations and computers and the more you mine it,
Speaker 2: the more you have. So if you can actually set
Speaker 2: up your computer to mine crypto, you can. Essentially it's
Speaker 2: almost like a printing press for money. But the company
Speaker 2: had no installation, maintenance, or operation of any computing equipment
Speaker 2: to mind cryptocurrency, and they were not a registered business
Speaker 2: in California, according to prosecutors, So the people who were
Speaker 2: operating this allegedly fraudulent business tried to get victims through
Speaker 2: their existing financial services business. And you know, you guys
Speaker 2: are already here, you're going through all these other steps
Speaker 2: to handle your finances investments. We've got something for you.
Speaker 2: We have this company, Zukra, and you should be part
Speaker 2: of that. So they also had them obtain high limit
Speaker 2: credit cards loans, and they were using the loan oftentimes
Speaker 2: to help them apply to pay into this scheme. Again,
Speaker 2: this is all alleged by the District Attorney's office. They've
Speaker 2: just leveled these charges against these two people from Bellflower.
Speaker 2: So they say they told victims that the investments were
Speaker 2: risk free, guaranteed and protected by insurance. They said to
Speaker 2: these clients again, quote, clients, here are written contracts. You're
Speaker 2: going to download this mobile app, this Zoukre mobile app,
Speaker 2: and the mobile app's going to show you all the
Speaker 2: ongoing profits from your investments. You know, again, all this
Speaker 2: crypto that is accumulating while you sleep, You're getting rich.
Speaker 3: They're saying.
Speaker 2: Individual investments range from forty five hundred dollars to two
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and despite repeated a hemps,
Speaker 2: none of the victims got any returns whatsoever. The whole
Speaker 2: thing was a fraudulent scheme and there were no ways
Speaker 2: in which they could even recover their principal investments, so
Speaker 2: they lost everything in addition to gaining nothing. Prosecutors are
Speaker 2: asking that bay will be set for each defendant at
Speaker 2: six hundred thousand dollars. If they are convicted, they could
Speaker 2: get what would you guess what should they get?
Speaker 3: In your view, the answer is twenty three years.
Speaker 2: I think that well, you know me, I'm tough on
Speaker 2: law and order.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you defraud people of that kind of money
Speaker 2: with that sort of BS story, you deserve to go away.
Speaker 2: So they're going after these people hard. From the LA
Speaker 2: District Attorney Nathan Hawkman comes this statement. My office will
Speaker 2: not tolerate financial predators who purport to offer legitimate services
Speaker 2: but instead offer lies and devastating financial loss. Let me
Speaker 2: be clear, if you steal from our communities, whether in
Speaker 2: the streets or through sophisticated investment or cryptos schemes, we
Speaker 2: will find you hold you accountable to the fullest extent
Speaker 2: of the law. So again, that's a court case that's
Speaker 2: being adjudicated, but that is the very latest. When we
Speaker 2: come back, there is a notable loss. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you'll know the name, but once I tell you
Speaker 2: the name, actually you'll put together the puzzle pieces and
Speaker 2: you may very well know the name. And then I'll
Speaker 2: kick open the door to everything this guy was all about.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that next.
Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2: Thanks everybody who is contributing today's show. The talkback feature
Speaker 2: is always fun, and Richie just came in here with
Speaker 2: another handful of talk pers. I think this is maybe
Speaker 2: related to the ice raids. Let's see, it's a.
Speaker 11: Hi, justin from West Covina.
Speaker 4: I don't think that the raids are fair.
Speaker 11: Basically, the government, federal and state have let them all
Speaker 11: come here for decades, and now they all of a
Speaker 11: sudden want to reverse that. No, they let them in,
Speaker 11: it's their fault, so now they need to make a
Speaker 11: way for them to become legal after working.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, he's not wrong, and the reality
Speaker 2: is there are a lot of ways to make this work.
Speaker 2: But the way that they're going about it, I think
Speaker 2: is just it's nonsensical. I mean, when you pick up
Speaker 2: a guy who's in his fifties, who has three kids,
Speaker 2: he's a gardener. Okay, you've seen this, and the guy
Speaker 2: was running with the weed whacker from them. He was
Speaker 2: just he's holding this with Let's just be fair about
Speaker 2: what it was. He's just being chased by these Ice
Speaker 2: agents and anyway, we'll leave let's just call it.
Speaker 3: We'll leave it at that. Just describe it that way.
Speaker 2: He's got three kids, all of them you know, serving
Speaker 2: in the military. Yeah, three veterans. His stay here in
Speaker 2: this country has been over decades. Now, all of a
Speaker 2: sudden he's being deported. He's been then. I mean, he
Speaker 2: had the stuffing beaten out of him. And I'd suggest
Speaker 2: that this guy who just came in on the talkback
Speaker 2: is right. I mean, this is quite sudden. Trump could
Speaker 2: be a hero if you would bring back something like
Speaker 2: the Brossero program, which was designed to accommodate workers that
Speaker 2: come here in all of these different professions. It was
Speaker 2: really Brossero, I think was focused mostly on aggregate culture.
Speaker 2: But the idea was that you're allowing these immigrants to
Speaker 2: come here understanding that they are in work programs, agriculture,
Speaker 2: you could have it anything, agriculture, car wash, landscaping, construction,
Speaker 2: whatever you want. All of a sudden you are able
Speaker 2: to track everybody, and everybody's still able to provide for
Speaker 2: their families in the ways in which they likely arrived
Speaker 2: in this country to begin with. That's just a thought
Speaker 2: as an aside. I mean, that's just you know, that's
Speaker 2: not even working through lunch, that idea. It's already existed.
Speaker 2: The PRASCO program was discontinued in the sixties.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I think something has to be worked out. It's
Speaker 2: not working the way they have it. What else there was? Oh,
Speaker 2: on the beach umbrella this is we had a story
Speaker 2: if you're just joining us. Apparently beach umbrellas, if they're
Speaker 2: blown down the beach can literally kill people. And so
Speaker 2: there are these advisories now on beaches coast to coast
Speaker 2: saying be very careful with the umbrella stand and making
Speaker 2: sure that it's secure in the sand. So this on
Speaker 2: the Attack of the Beach Umbrellas, so coming to.
Speaker 8: A theater near you.
Speaker 9: Attack of the Killer Beach Umbrellas.
Speaker 7: Yes, narrated by Mark Thomas.
Speaker 2: Oh I like it already yes, attack of the beach umbrellas.
Speaker 2: You worried about a riptide, you worried about a tsunami,
Speaker 2: You even worried about sharks. What you really should worry
Speaker 2: about is attack of the beach umbrellas.
Speaker 5: Coming to a theater near you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, and finally there were is this.
Speaker 3: I think it's a Mark.
Speaker 6: I love you also, and I've always enjoyed your very
Speaker 6: common sense reporting.
Speaker 7: You're a great voice at KFI.
Speaker 3: No, that's right.
Speaker 7: Against the storm of sometimes not great political views are
Speaker 7: ones that I don't necessarily agree with.
Speaker 3: But I have feelings of love for.
Speaker 7: What you do.
Speaker 5: Mark.
Speaker 4: I love, I appreciate you, and I glad to hear.
Speaker 3: You have love and appreciation for you.
Speaker 2: I take that love and appreciation, I reflect it back
Speaker 2: and enhance it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I love this self serving segment, Ritchie, It's perfect. I
Speaker 2: love it. A self aggrandizing few minutes. I wish you
Speaker 2: could do a full two hours of just self aggrandizement.
Speaker 2: There was a notable passing. John Robbins has passed away.
Speaker 2: The reason I mentioned to you before you might know
Speaker 2: his name is because you know the name Baskin and
Speaker 2: Robin's and that ice cream Empire is part of John
Speaker 2: Robbin's history. He's an heir to that Baskin Robbin's fortune,
Speaker 2: but he rejected the family business and wrote a seminal book,
Speaker 2: a cornerstone book advocating plant based nutrition. He was a
Speaker 2: big one of environmentalism, animal rights. And he just died
Speaker 2: here in California with seventy seven. His son and collaborator,
Speaker 2: Ocean Robbins I get his newsletter regularly, said that the
Speaker 2: cause of his father's death was complications from a post
Speaker 2: polio syndrome that resulted in muscle weakness and other symptoms,
Speaker 2: nearly seven decades after he originally got polio as a boy.
Speaker 2: His book, and this is the thing. His book is
Speaker 2: very famous. It's called Diet for a New America. It
Speaker 2: was published in nineteen eighty seven, and it sold more
Speaker 2: than a million copies. And it drew a link between
Speaker 2: heavy consumption of animal based products and the increased risk
Speaker 2: of chronic illnesses like heart disease and obesity. It looked
Speaker 2: at environmental damage caused by factory farming. It raised ethical
Speaker 2: questions about the treatment of animals in confined conditions. So
Speaker 2: you can see maybe why I like it because you
Speaker 2: kind of know where the way I lean on the
Speaker 2: environment and on animal welfare. But you can see also
Speaker 2: how it might have a broader audience because he spoke
Speaker 2: a very common sense message. The message was that the healthiest,
Speaker 2: tastiest and most nourishing way to eat is also the
Speaker 2: most economic and most compassionate and least polluting way to eat.
Speaker 2: That was Diet for a New America, John Robbins. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was, and he's compared this way. He's compared to
Speaker 2: Rachel Carson. She's the one who wrote that book Silent Spring,
Speaker 2: that warned about how the unlimited use of agricultural pesticides
Speaker 2: like DDT had contaminated the soil, the water, threatened the
Speaker 2: health of wildlife humans, and that created the modern environmental
Speaker 2: movement that was Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. This book,
Speaker 2: Diet for a New America is sort of the equivalent,
Speaker 2: and through the years, food writers have described this book,
Speaker 2: Diet for a New America as groundbreaking, the bible of
Speaker 2: the anti meat campaign.
Speaker 3: And I get it. I'm not on a jihad. You know,
Speaker 3: you eat anywhere you want.
Speaker 2: I'm just telling you why this person was of significance.
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney read his book, totally changed the way that
Speaker 2: he looked at factory farming, and he looked at as
Speaker 2: McCartney said, compassion and respect for life, the earth, and
Speaker 2: how much better off our world will be. But he
Speaker 2: got criticism. I mean, he was not as you might
Speaker 2: imagine whenever you're pitching this to a nation that's really
Speaker 2: not necessarily open to it.
Speaker 3: He got a lot of static, you know. But I'll
Speaker 3: tell you why.
Speaker 2: I also respect him, or at least I think this
Speaker 2: is a notable part of his bio as you look back,
Speaker 2: is now his Obit is that he was offered a
Speaker 2: bunch of money from this Baskin Robin's fortune. Again, he's
Speaker 2: related to this Baskin Robin's empire, and he pushed back
Speaker 2: on it because he didn't want that money, because of
Speaker 2: the fact that it was the industrial dairy process that
Speaker 2: created that fortune. And so at least, you know, you've
Speaker 2: got to give the guy the courage of his convictions.
Speaker 2: He very much lamented the way that cows are treated
Speaker 2: in the dairy business, and how Baskin Robbins is an
Speaker 2: ice cream company really was in a sense he looked
Speaker 2: at it as blood money. So I think this is
Speaker 2: an extraordinary guy, regardless of what you think of him
Speaker 2: ultimately or you know, how you integrate his message or
Speaker 2: don't integrate it into your life. But John Robbins, the grandfather,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the son of the originator, the founder of
Speaker 2: Baskin Robbins, and the author of Diet for a New America.
Speaker 2: John Robbins passes away here in California at the age
Speaker 2: of seventy seven. There's nothing I like more than going
Speaker 2: through a sad o bit, saying goodbye to someone who's
Speaker 2: made a great contribution to society, finishing that sad oh bit,
Speaker 2: and then pivoting immediately to the next host. And that's
Speaker 2: exactly what I am going to do. Now do we
Speaker 2: have there's no talkback?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well then he's off the hook, all right, no
Speaker 2: revn no no talkback. You don't have him raism on
Speaker 2: the line. No, no, okay? Well it was fun. All right,
Speaker 2: Thanks all for a great afternoon. I will see you
Speaker 2: soon and if you have a moment, you can check
Speaker 2: out my show Daily Live Show on YouTube, The Mark
Speaker 2: Thompson Show. Oh and I'll be here through Kofi this
Speaker 2: week too, doing the Cobalt Show. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: that as well. Ah, you're not really rid of me.
Speaker 1: Kf I am six forty on demand