Speaker 1: And hello, how are you Welcome to the program. Welcome
to the Big Podcast. It is Wednesday. Today is the
eighteenth day of February year of all the over twenty
twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan, and well we'll
start with we actually have some breaking news today. You
may have seen the story about there was an avalanche
up by Lake Tahoe on the California side of the
Sierra Nevada Mountain range. And there were a number well,
there was a bat Country skiers that had been on
a three day trip. So these were not your weekend skiers.
These were serious outdoor venture people. And they had fifteen
people involved. Here, three guides and the rest of them
were people that signed up for the three day trip. Well,
the avalanche hit, nine of the skiers were trapped, six
of them were rescued. That was the news we had
this morning. Late this afternoon, the Nevada County Sheriff's office
announced that eight skiers have been found dead, that one
is missing, and the rest of them had previously been rescued.
So eight dead, one missing. Here's the sheriff of Nevada County, California.
Speaker 2: Everything that they could to assist.
Speaker 1: Cause of death.
Speaker 2: Clearly will not be able to be confirmed one. We
still have to UH get to the to the decedents.
We still have to be able to identify those decedents UH,
and then we will determine UH through contract with Placer County.
We contract with them for all of our pathology UH
that that should take some time to determine mechanism of
injury and and truly the cause of death for for
these individuals. The avalanche yesterday UH was about one mile
away from a different avalanche that occurred at the beginning
of January in that same Castle Peak area. Please understand
that this incident remains ongoing. Our focus remains on recovering UH,
but the snow and the unsure conditions are creating an
issue to making sure that we can safely do that.
We did have a conversation with the families of the
folks that are that are still outstanding UH and let
them know that our mission has went from a rescue
to a recovery. It's a difficult conversation to have with
loved ones, so I please ask for your patients with
the family members. This is ongoing and I can't even
imagine the amount of questions and stress that those families
are going through right now as we move forward through.
Speaker 1: This, well, I know she has to say that they're
going to have to have a medical examiner determined the
cause of death and everything else. But I mean, it's
an avalanche. They got buried. And it's interesting because these,
like I said, were not weakend skiers. These people were
serious outdoorsmen and they go into the back country like
that with technology that supposedly is to keep them safe.
But they have beepers and they have things that if
you do get buried by an avalanche, that will stand
out a signal and they can find exactly what where
you are. There's a guy named Mike Duffy who is
an expert regarding avalanches. This is before the announcement that
they found eight dead one missing, but he talks about
the technology that backcountry skiers have with them.
Speaker 3: You know, just getting into this scene is really tough.
A lot of very impressive what the rescue teams have done.
Hopefully everybody has a transceiver, an avalanche transceiver like this
which most people wear in the back country. They should wear.
You're sending a signal when some one gets buried, you
switch it to search and can also pick up that
signal and pinpoint the person. And if it's a deeper burial,
you're using a probe to get a strike, and then
when you're shoveling, you're following the probe to get to
the person. The density of the debris can be very
hard and it's very hard to shovel through it. It's
very time consuming and it depends on the depth of
the burial also.
Speaker 1: So yeah, time obviously is of the essence. I've seen
reports that say if you're buried down there for fifteen minutes,
it may be curtains because there's nowhere. You are packed in.
It's not just sitting in soft snow. You are packed
in like a concrete vault. But he talks about some
of the some of the ways they rescue people.
Speaker 3: You know, there's techniques to survive. Some people have avalanche
airbag packs. It's like being in an avalanche is like
being in a difficult whitewater river, a class five river.
You don't have much control. You try to get onto
your back, you try to backstroke out the side, grab
a tree if there's one possible. Before the avalanche picks
up speed, you can deploy your avalanche airbag pack which
inflates a balloon.
Speaker 1: An air bag.
Speaker 3: Increases your volume, decreases your density, and you have a
very good chance of being on the surface or close
to the surface.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. They have quite a bit of technology with
them if you're a backcountry skier, and I presume these
people did, because they had guides and everything else with them.
So still, with all of that, they did not make
it through this. And this was Mike Duffy gave us
those comments from this morning before we found out that
these skiers had passed away. There's a guy who was
in more than one avalanche. His name is Conrad Anchor,
and he goes around the world for backcountry skiing, and
this is how he describes the experience.
Speaker 4: My condolences go out to the families of the eight
deceased skiers and the one missing. Yeah, news like this
it's hard within our community. We go out to seek
adventure and solace in the mountains, yet at times, as
we see here, things can take a turn for the worse. Yeah,
the majority of avalanches happened between thirty and forty five
degrees angle on a slope steeper than that, it sloughs
off when it's less steep, the snow is a little
more stable due to the conditions. Two to three foot
snow event in a very short period of time. The
slopes were loaded and there could be a weak layer underneath,
so snow that's changed due to temperature. As we see
here in the image, there's a lot of wind. Wind
can transport the snow and increase the weight of it.
All skiers and backcountry enthusiasts that travel and conditions like
this carry an avalanche beacon which sends out a paying
of your location, and it also be switched to receiving.
Along with that, we carry shovels in an avalanche pro
and overall we probably on average there's three fatalities per
year in North America due to avalanches. This year there's
been seventy two in Europe, and so when people go
out to adventure in the mountains, they have to accept
that risk that something like this could happen. There's I've
had three close calls with avalanches, and I hope that
I don't have any other ones. I tried to be
aware of it. But the avalanche that you referenced in
nineteen ninety nine was on Shishapangba, the world's fourteenth highest peak.
We were in Tibet and we didn't trigger the avalanche.
So that is like we were on the slope and
the weight of our our activities triggered the avalanche. Rather
it released spontaneously, probably six thousand feet above us, and
increased in momentum as we came down. And when it strikes,
you go from sort of rational thinking to survival, and
so that ancient part of our brain is like, how
do we get out of this, and so not necessarily
kind of weighing the pros and cons there, you come
immediately to survival. And something like this is very immediate
where things are tranquil, you're having a good time, you're
in the mountains, and all of a sudden things are
not safe and there's a rush of emotions that go
through and you want to you try to make sense
of it. But the power of snow combined with gravity
on a slope like this is much stronger than what
humans can endure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mother nature is stronger than you think. So sad news,
but I mean is He went on to talk about
the fact that he loves going out in the back
country where it's so peaceful and so beautiful, and I'm
sure it is is. But like he said, you have
to accept the risk of avalanches happen. They're they're not
uncommon so in any case, So the news is eight dead,
one still missing. Six were rescued, uh and they're doing
what they have to do to try to get the
bodies out of it. But the storms hitting the West coast.
California is getting absolutely whacked. Los Angeles is getting I
think I thought we're getting they're getting bracing for a
for a second wave of one that hit yesterday. Northern
California where Lake Tahoe is, they're getting really hard storms
hitting them and there's a bunch of waves as well.
So that's that's the news from from avalanche world. We
have another item in the news today. It's the social
media trial. It's in Los Angeles. Mark Zuckerberg showed up
today not only against Meta, but it's also YouTube as well.
But the accusation is is that Meta and YouTube have
intentionally designed Instagram to be addictive. And so it's before
a jury, and these are claims made by parents that
their children became addicted to some sort of social media.
Here's a couple of them. You listen to their sad comments.
Speaker 5: I would get anything to have my slam pack. And
if they have to learn, if they have to see
James faith, if they have to see my tears, I'm
gonna make sure that it happens. If it means that
I can save your grandchildren, I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 6: Ironically, this court case is happening during her birthday next week.
She would be twenty one years old, and I'm going
to be in this courtroom representing her and all the
other kids that have been harmed and died due to
social media platforms. They're putting profits over our kids' lives.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to not feel sad for these parents. They
lost their children. They have died, I presume via suicide.
And so of course the parents are looking for somebody
to blame, but they're not looking in the mirror. They
got to find somebody with deep pockets in theirs and lawyers,
Oh yeah, they will find the deep pockets for you.
So one of them is a twenty year old and
her mother were at the trial there today and they're
again saying that companies are creating addictive features. And I'm
thinking to myself, well, every product is made that way.
Hershey makes chocolate bars that I love I made. Yes,
they've made it so that you will love their product.
It doesn't matter what product we're talking about. Disneyland made
it so that it's so much fun you'll want to
go back. I don't know if addictive is the right word,
but I have certainly found myself going looking around through
YouTube and going down one rabbit hole after another. You
look up and go, man, where did the hour go? So, yes,
they are designed to get your attention and for you
to use their product, and the longer you use it,
the better off because then they get more ads to
play for you that they charge money for. So I
don't know if you think your child is being harmed
by social media, and if so, what are you doing
about it? Did did these parents just absolve themselves with
parental responsibilities? I know, seriously. When I was a young child,
Superman was a television show and I wanted to watch
that in the worst way. I thought Superman was the
coolest show ever, and my parents would not let me
watch Superman because there were kids jumping off of roofs
of home of their home thinking that they could fly.
So I wasn't allowed to watch Superman. But I don't
know if I would have jumped off a roof, but maybe.
But yes, television shows end up. Remember they blamed video
games for every bad thing the teenagers did for decades.
So now they're using social media and I'm sorry. I've
met the lawyer in this. His name is Mark Lanier.
Mark's been around for a lot. I thought he was
from Texas, but he used to try to get on
Fox a lot, and he would come into New York
and try to and we put him on a number
of times. But he's basically kind of, in my humble opinion,
an ambulance chaser. He's a hustler and he's done very well.
He's a very successful lawyer, There's no question about it.
But I'm looking at this and going, why don't you,
why don't you take some responsibility your self? Parents? And
if you know anything about how your iPhone works or
your Android phone, both of them are full of features
built in parent controls. They have. iPhones, I know, use
Apple screen time and family Sharing to manage the apps
in this green time and the content. Google phones use
family Link to monitor apps and screen time limits and
restrict content I mean it's up to the parents to
set to look over the phones and make sure that
you've got it set up right, and then to supervise
be a parent to your child. So I really do
feel like some sort of terrible person, but i'm because
these people are obviously devastated with the deaths of their children.
But I guess it's human nature that you don't blame yourself.
You've got to find somebody to blame. So they're blaming
social media. The problem with this is if this jury
rules against meta and YouTube, then there's going to be
thousands of cases that will come along. And I can
Meta and YouTube pay a lot of money short, but
it's going to be the scapegoat that I'll let them
babysit my children so I don't have to ask a teacher.
People send their kids to school so the teacher can
babysit their children because they don't want to in any case.
So that's going on today in LA. We'll see. I
hope the jury tells them to go take a flying leap.
And speaking of entertainment, I guess this is this is
not entertainment to me, but as talking about whiners out there,
Stephen Colbert is, I'm sorry. I thought he was a
little more adult than he's been acting. He's acting like
a child. He's throwing a temper fit tantrum because of
the fact that the CBS lawyers he wanted to have
a guy on his show. What's his name, tall Rico?
Know his first name, James taller Rico. Tatler Rico is
a candidate for the Democrat nomination for the US Senate
race in the state of Texas. He's going up against
Jasmine Crockett and taller Rico was supposed to be on
his Colbert's show last night, and the lawyer said, you
can't have him on because of the equal time rule.
So here's Stephen Colbert whining like a baby.
Speaker 7: We were told in no uncertain term by our network's lawyers,
who called us directly, that we could not have him
on the broadcast. Then then I was told in some
uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on,
I could not mention me not having him on. And
because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this,
let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: I have a ton to say on this topic. First
of all, I've been in broadcasting for a long time
forty six years and one of the they used to
have a fairness rule, and they did away with that
back in the mid eighties. And Rush Limbaugh credited the
demise of that rule that was done during the Reagan
administration with his success because he did not have to
have on. It used to be you have a Democrat on,
you have to have a Republican on, and vice versa.
And they did away with the fairness rule because they
determined that there were enough broadcasters, enough radio stations, enough
TV stations. Podcasts didn't even exist back in the eighties,
that people can sample around and get their information about
what they want to listen to and what they want
to believe and what they don't want to believe. But
when it came to politicians actively campaigning during a campaign,
and in Texas, the primary is March third, but early
voting has already started, so the voting is underway. And
what I was told this back in the nineteen eighties
by the lawyers, that if you're going to have somebody
on that's campaigning, you have to offer equal time to
their opposition. Okay, that those were the rules. So you
either invited nobody on or you had to invite all
of them on for some particular race that's been around
for a long time. So for Stephen Colbert to whine
about it in twenty twenty six, I'm going, okay, so
maybe he's not all that well informed. Seemed like a
smart guy but apparently did not know about this. But
the other part about this, and I said this when
CBS cut his show loose and said we're going to
get rid of you. One of the rules in broadcasting
when you give somebody the pink slip, you never let
them go back into a studio because they're going to
whine and complain and throw the company under the bus.
And that's exactly what Colbert is doing. So shame on
CBS for basically taking his key away from him. They
led him back into the studios. So stand by because
he's got something like forty more shows before his tenure
is over with the Late Show. But it's CBS, shame
on you, Stephen Colbert. You sound like a whiny little
kid having a temper tantrum. In my humble opinion, and
speaking of CBS, there was a big ruckus. You probably
didn't know, but being in the media, I really picked
up on it. There was a segment that was scheduled
to run on sixty minutes on CBS about a month ago,
and Barry Weiss, the new head of CBS News x NATed,
said no, you can't run that. And so the spoiled
staff over at sixty minutes said that censorship. How can
you possibly do that? And Barry Weiss came out and said,
you never asked the other side there was. It was
something about the Trump administration, and they never went to
the Trump administration to get their side of the story.
So Barry Weiss said, until you go get the other
side of the story, which journalists are supposed to do,
we're not going to run this. And you heard they
were squealing like stuck pigs over there at sixty minutes.
So they're all upset about Barry Weiss. But I think
Barry Weiss is a breath of fresh air. She is
requiring them to do journalism, something that they have gotten
away with for decades. They just did one side of
the story and that was it. So sixty minutes I
think I don't know if that. I presume it will survive,
but thank goodness that Barry Weiss is there to be
secretly right the ship at CBS. She's got her work
cut out for her. Let's get to the talks. There's talks,
well her word, talks going on regarding Iran in the
U West, and there was also talks about Russia and Ukraine.
Let's start with Iran those talks. Iron said, okay, well,
thanks so much. We're going to go back to Tehran
and we'll think about this and get back to you
in a couple of weeks. So Dan Hoffman, former CIA
station chief in Moscow, he was asked, what do you
make of that latest chess move by Iran?
Speaker 8: Well, I think Iran is trying to deter the United
States from launching attacks connectic attacks on their territory, as
the Trump administration did back in June of last year.
The sticking point in these talks, and we aren't privy
to all of the details, but it appears that they're
discussing only Iran's nuclear program. And remember that President Trump
withdrew from the JCPOA because of the sun clauses on
Iran's nuclear program and the fact that the JCPOA never
addressed Iran's ballistic missile program or Iran's material support to
their proxy terrorists. And so I think that's the concern
for the Trump administration if Iran doesn't come to the
negotiating table serious about negotiating. Iran put out a rosy
picture of the discussions thus far, but I don't think
that President Trump has taken that at face value. And
if the Iranians are doubting whether this president is serious
about launching kinetic strikes, they can just go back and
rewind the tapes on the strike against the IRGC commander
Solamani or again those strikes against Iran's.
Speaker 1: Nuclear facilities last year.
Speaker 8: So I think, based on my experience at CIA and
there are probably some backchannel messages being delivered toere Iran
emphasizing that we are indeed serious about launching kinetic strikes
if Iran isn't coming to the negotiating table and good faith,
and then concurrently I would expect that our intelligence community
is on full alert, mounting a full court press. See
reflections around Iranian leadership, especially the IRGC and iron Security Services,
just to see how they're responding. Are they taking these
threats seriously or not? Are they coming to the negotiating
table really with an interest in dealing with these overriding
issues of concern to the region and the United States.
I think that's what we're going to see, but don't
expect that it's just a two week period. For sure,
the Trump administration may decide that they want to launch
strikes earlier than that. There's always that possibility as well,
and there's more and more people that think that's exactly
what will happen. Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State in
Trump one point zero, thinks that may be a possibility.
Speaker 9: Remember, they don't think the way we do. They're not logical.
This isn't about a business deal for them. This is
about protection of a regime, the theocracy that's been in
place now for forty seven years, and so they are
willing to make enormous sacrifices of their own people. Best
evidence of that is killed tens of thousands of their
own citizens just in the last thirty days. So we
tend to think about this in the West as a
logical business and negotiation. For them, this is about regime
protection and sustainability. They're prepared to go down with the
ship this time, it appears. I think President Trump and
the Israelis understand that this is a moment where Iran
is at its weakest point, not its strongest. And I
can't imagine this much build up of military power in
the region without President Trump actually taking action that leads
to an outcome that he's been seeking for an awfully
long time against the Iranians.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so standby because there's a huge military build up
over there near Iran, And like Dan Hoffman said, President
Trump may just go quiet and just take action, just
absolutely take action. Pompeo also was asked about the talks
between Russia and Ukraine and how he thinks that's going.
Speaker 9: Look, I think the end of this war actually takes
place only when Vladimir Putin feels pressure sufficient to give
up the ship. He doesn't feel that today, so he's
going to stay at this. I don't think there's any
land deal today. Vladimir Putin would actually take short of
all of Ukraine falling under Russian influence, if not Russian control.
Speaker 1: I literally I've watched this.
Speaker 9: We're now coming what were two three days from the
fourth anniversary of this conflict. The Ukrainians have agreed to
many concessions, things that Putin has wanted that they didn't
want to give up. Vladimir Putin has given not a
single concession to date. This is what's going to have
to change. It's going to require more time and more pressure.
I think the Ukrainian population is both tired and yet committed.
They've demonstrated they're willing to fight for their own land
and their own country and their political independence. I don't
see that changing.
Speaker 1: And an update for you on day eighteen for the
search for Nancy Guthrie, TMZ is saying that they have
obtained yet another ransom note today. This one, they say,
is a highly sophisticated demand involving a cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.
They're demanding a dollar amount similar to the six million
that previously asked for a previous email, and the email
graphically describes the consequences if the ransom isn't paid. So
they're threatening now and that's been sent on from TNZ
to the folks over at the FBI. The latest investigator
on this, Detective John Bueller, talking about the reports that
the FBI is going around to gun stores in Tucson
with names of people and wanting to know if the
gun store had sold a gun to any of these
people on this list. And apparently the list comes from
people that have bought that holster. It's a unique holster,
and the FBI has the names of everybody who bought
that holster recently in the Tucson area apparently, and so
they're showing the names to the gun shop owners in Tucson.
So John Bueller says, yeah, that's not uncommon.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's a common tactic that detectives will do when
they're tracing down leads because they're looking for somebody that
may have made a recent firearms purchase that could be
related by physical build to the suspect that we see
in the doorbell camera. The standard tactics, standard things that
they do. Of course, it doesn't rule out the possibility
that the guy didn't have the gun for several months
or several years and he's been involved in other stuff.
But at this time, really the big thing that would
help with us is that genetic genealogy DNA stuff, the
foreign blood or the foreign DNA that was found there
at the residence seems to be the key to identify
this guy. Now, of course, the sheriff hasn't released any
information about how the subject got into the house and
how Nancy was abducted, and that's wise because you don't
want that out there. But that's the one thing that
if we had, if he released that, we'd have a
lot more to talk about then, just trying to guess
that things on a limited amount of information that they're
giving out.
Speaker 1: Well, all that DNA is being sent over to the
genealogy genetics and doctor calling Fitzpatrick is one of the
people that does that for a living.
Speaker 11: They all share certain amounts of DNA with mister X
and the more they share, the closer they're related. The
less they share, the more distant. So we look at
the matches hoping, you know, we get somebody close enough,
like you share half and half the match is going
to be that guy's parent or child. Ten percent he's
probably a first cousin or an uncle.
Speaker 1: So they're busy on on doing that, looking at building
family trees. So we'll see if something comes out of that.
Probably the most prom a person in genetic genealogy is
a woman by the name of C. C. Moore, And
she was asked about all of this today and she
says it can take She's solved the case in twenty minutes.
That's the fastest she's done it. But others she said
could take years, so we don't know obviously how long
it's going to take. But the DNA that they have
in Tucson is off on its way to genetic genealogist
to take a look at what all that is about.
So Wall Street today everything had a green arrow. The
Dow was up one hundred twenty nine. That finished at
forty nine thousand and six. Sixty two has to be
up a little, up thirty eight points. Nazdak up one
hundred and seventy eight points, I'm sorry, up one hundred
seventy five. The price of gold up ninety five dollars
right at five thousand, and the price of oil was
up two dollars and seventy cents. It's a sixty five dollars.
Part of that is the Iranians are holding military exercises
in the Strait of Hormuz, which is disrupting the busiest
oil lane in the world. So oil is getting a
little rattled on that. So that's it for today. Thank
you for coming by. We will be back again tomorrow.
I hope you are with me then as well. I'll
see you then.