Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: Handle here on a humpday, Wednesday, May seventh, and we
Speaker 2: finished it with our Pope news. We'll be talking about
Speaker 2: that for sure. I noticed that the popes take a
Speaker 2: new name, and that became really important back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties when Cardinal Secola became pope and he did
Speaker 2: not want to be known as Pope Scola, so he
Speaker 2: took a new name.
Speaker 1: I used that before. And by the way, I love that, truly.
Speaker 2: Okay, Will shaking his head and going, come on, seriously, Handle,
Speaker 2: all right, let me tell you what's going on in Altadena.
Speaker 2: And this is really good. And I think you're gonna
Speaker 2: be interested in the stats.
Speaker 1: You know. I like stats when they tell us something.
Speaker 2: There's a story in the La Times about this woman,
Speaker 2: Michelle Williams, who lived in a nineteen twenties cottage and
Speaker 2: it was destroyed and she was there for seventeen years.
Speaker 2: She rented, and she received a proposal from her landlord
Speaker 2: she could have the burn lot. All she would have
Speaker 2: to pay is five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: cash within fifteen days.
Speaker 1: That was a little tough.
Speaker 2: Obviously she couldn't qualify or she couldn't come up with money.
Speaker 2: And she's not alone. Thousands of homes were destroyed in Altadena,
Speaker 2: and this is a very special area because a lot
Speaker 2: of people don't have much money. They're living in homes
Speaker 2: at our generational grandparents bought these houses for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons. They were affordable, and a lot of African
Speaker 2: Americans bought these houses because the entire southern California was redlined,
Speaker 2: which means that you couldn't buy a house if you
Speaker 2: were black in neighborhoods, so you could in this island
Speaker 2: of homes, and they got nailed. These people are not
Speaker 2: of the same socioeconomic level as people in the Palisades.
Speaker 2: So how do these mainly homeowners, how can they stay there?
Speaker 2: Because the fear is and it's happening, And this is
Speaker 2: eighty already where property owners have simply sold the land.
Speaker 2: They just they don't want to build, they can't qualify,
Speaker 2: there's no way they can afford it. So developers come
Speaker 2: in and eighty of them have been bought so far,
Speaker 2: and a lot more being negotiated. And gentrification is going
Speaker 2: to happen because the land is several hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a lot. Today it costs seven hundred dollars a square
Speaker 2: foot to build, so if you're building a thousand square feet,
Speaker 2: that's seven hundred thousand dollars. So you're into this a
Speaker 2: million one, a million two. Who can afford it? So
Speaker 2: what happens the land? The landowner sells off to these
Speaker 2: developers who come in. So what is going on to
Speaker 2: save those neighborhoods? And they're trying for sure. So in
Speaker 2: terms of Aschelle, she went to the Neighborhood Housing Services,
Speaker 2: the Neighborhood Housing Services of La County, and they came
Speaker 2: up with the money and they're going to build it
Speaker 2: or give her enough money to build a house and
Speaker 2: then sell it to her an affordable price. The county
Speaker 2: is buying the property. Wow, that's a pretty good deal now.
Speaker 2: The chief executive of the Neighborhood Housing Services of La
Speaker 2: County said that their organization and a coalition of nonprofits
Speaker 2: are looking to raise more money.
Speaker 1: How much do they have, we don't.
Speaker 2: Know, to purchase a couple of hundred burned properties and
Speaker 2: then to build homes and ideally sell them to people
Speaker 2: from Altadena.
Speaker 1: At an affordable price to those people.
Speaker 2: And the numbers are staggering because so far they've been
Speaker 2: able to buy lots and arrange financing to rebuild and
Speaker 2: sell to the property owner, and they've hit the magic
Speaker 2: number of.
Speaker 1: Two lots two. How is that for a success story?
Speaker 2: There are thousands of lots of homes that were.
Speaker 1: Burned. And so if you're doing.
Speaker 2: Two every let's say six months, because this has been
Speaker 2: going on for a while, that's what for a year?
Speaker 2: At what point do you reach six thousand? That's a
Speaker 2: success story. Heart's in the right place. You can't argue
Speaker 2: with that. And this is not giving someone a couple
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars a food voucher or a snap you know,
Speaker 2: a food stamp.
Speaker 1: This is a million dollars.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this before and this is kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Every year there's something called the World Happiness Report and
Speaker 2: we talk about it and the United States has dropped
Speaker 2: to its lowest ranking. I think Sudan and Yemen are
Speaker 2: happier places than we are. We're pretty miserable. And here's
Speaker 2: what happens. How do they come up with this these figures,
Speaker 2: this ranking? Well, the question is what's the world's happiest country,
Speaker 2: and inevitably it's Finland or Denmark, Sweden. Those guys are
Speaker 2: at the top, and they get there by asking people
Speaker 2: in different countries to answer a single self assessment question,
Speaker 2: self assessment question about life satisfaction. However, some surveys are
Speaker 2: looking at this and it turns out people in different
Speaker 2: cultures answer in many different ways. Depends on where you live,
Speaker 2: depends on whether money is important, depends on culture.
Speaker 1: Depends on.
Speaker 2: Just the way people look at life. We, for example,
Speaker 2: look at money very differently than other countries do they
Speaker 2: pall for example, They just don't look at it the
Speaker 2: same way. So there is the Global Flourishing Study. It's
Speaker 2: a new study and it's based on a survey taken
Speaker 2: by a bunch of institutions, including Harvard at the Human
Speaker 2: Flourishing Program, and it uses self reporting and collects some
Speaker 2: real comprehensive data on well being from half a dozen
Speaker 2: dimensions in twenty two countries, two hundred thousand people it
Speaker 2: followed over five years. There is some serious research, it's
Speaker 2: not just a single question.
Speaker 1: And here's what they did find.
Speaker 2: Happiness declines gradually in young and middle adulthood. Then turns
Speaker 2: upward in life. Starting at about fifty, you get happier now.
Speaker 2: Of course they didn't ask me because I would skew
Speaker 2: it completely.
Speaker 1: Bill. Are you unhappy yes? Were you always unhappy? Yes?
Speaker 1: When did you start being unhappy?
Speaker 2: Uh? Probably at the age of two weeks? And are
Speaker 2: you going to stay unhappy?
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, fair enough. Now here comes the.
Speaker 2: Interesting part, and this is I think no surprise to kneel.
Speaker 2: And that is one of the facets of this. One
Speaker 2: of the happiness levels you can point to.
Speaker 1: Has to do with religion.
Speaker 2: The more people are involved in religion, not just religion,
Speaker 2: but being involved in churches and synagogues, the happier they are.
Speaker 2: There is a correlation between the US becoming secularized. We
Speaker 2: just don't go to church or synagogue anymore. After my
Speaker 2: girls were bought MITZVD, I stopped. I wasn't interested. And
Speaker 2: that's what happens to many many of us. And I
Speaker 2: don't know how it works in the Christian religion when
Speaker 2: people stop going to church in our cases because the
Speaker 2: kids were no longer involved because they went to the
Speaker 2: day school there. And so it's a direct correlation organized religion.
Speaker 2: People who are organized religion meet at church or synagogue
Speaker 2: or mosques where they have pot lucks. Do they have
Speaker 2: pot lu and mosques, by the way, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've often thought about that, huh. Anyway, certainly churches do,
Speaker 2: and there is just this camaraderie. There is just this
Speaker 2: connection with other people, and connections to humans is really
Speaker 2: important to lifestyle and happiness. For example, I was just
Speaker 2: talking to Anne about we are doing off the air
Speaker 2: about the pope and religion, and you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: very religious, and Neil, let me ask you, the more
Speaker 2: religious someone is, do you believe the happier someone is.
Speaker 4: I don't know about religious that means a particular thing
Speaker 4: to me, but I think that if you are faithful
Speaker 4: and dedicated to your faith, I think that it can
Speaker 4: be incredibly uplifting. I mean a lot of atheists that
Speaker 4: don't have understanding of hope. Genuinely, they don't understand. They're
Speaker 4: pretty dark outlook on things. And it doesn't mean they're
Speaker 4: bad people any way, shape or form, but there's nothing
Speaker 4: nowhere to put there's hope is part of faith. So
Speaker 4: I find faith is part of happiness. I think it
Speaker 4: can be. Yeah, absolutely, I was.
Speaker 2: I was talking to I mean one of the things
Speaker 2: that was talking to Anne, and then people do believe?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, obviously, and I don't understand it.
Speaker 2: You know, do I understand?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Did Jesus really feed the multitudes on one package of
Speaker 2: fish sticks?
Speaker 1: How the hell do I know?
Speaker 2: Did he walk across the Galilee without pontoon shoes on?
Speaker 1: How the hell do I know? Does it seem plausible?
Speaker 1: Not to me? But and I am miserable?
Speaker 2: Does that mean, Neil, you believe in a package of
Speaker 2: fish sticks and therefore you are happier?
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you for every reason.
Speaker 4: I am happier than you, for you are a miserable bastard.
Speaker 3: And I don't even think faith can help you. I
Speaker 3: think you're just done.
Speaker 1: That's probably true.
Speaker 5: It's like George and Michael said you got to have faith? Yeah,
Speaker 5: you got to have faith.
Speaker 1: Is that? Did Michael Bolton say that you have to
Speaker 1: have faith?
Speaker 3: George?
Speaker 1: Michael? It wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought there was Michael Bolton during a period
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 3: Do I have that right?
Speaker 2: By the way, as far as am I accusing Michael
Speaker 2: Bolton to do anything here, am I right on that
Speaker 2: that name?
Speaker 5: No Michael Bolton not at all different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I know that, but just uh, some reason
Speaker 2: that came to mind. And uh, I don't know why.
Speaker 3: I'm a big Bolton fan, but I agree with Neil.
Speaker 5: Faith is important. Faith and hope are both. They go
Speaker 5: hand in hand.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of fridge scaping? I hadn't, and
Speaker 2: then and pointed this out. The Wall Street Journal wrote
Speaker 2: about this because someone there realize there's something here that's fun.
Speaker 2: It took the internet by storm last year, or maybe
Speaker 2: you missed it.
Speaker 1: I certainly did.
Speaker 2: And fridge scaping is about sprucing up your refrigerator, the
Speaker 2: inside of your refrigerator, not putting magnets outside with.
Speaker 1: All those crazy places you've been to.
Speaker 2: No, it's to make every nook and cranny of their
Speaker 2: refrigerators look whimsical. And they looked pretty deeply in this
Speaker 2: into this and the Wall Street Journal talk to experts
Speaker 2: and they're looking at the reason to temporarily escape the
Speaker 2: current economic political uncertainties and what It's just a neat way.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a hobby, but it's your refrigerator, which
Speaker 2: is really very strange.
Speaker 1: I do this, do you?
Speaker 5: I do it, but not to that extreme. But there's
Speaker 5: something esthetically pleasing about having my refrigerator organized in a
Speaker 5: certain way. And like, you know, I don't put like
Speaker 5: other decorations and things in there, but I do enjoy
Speaker 5: a visually pleasing refrigerator.
Speaker 1: That's so bizarre. It's so bizarre now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one person interview said, well, manicuring the contents of
Speaker 2: myridge fridge is a fun way to spend.
Speaker 1: A few hours.
Speaker 2: The one downside is leaving the door open too much
Speaker 2: to look at the wonderful work that I've done. And
Speaker 2: some people see the shelves and drawers and a way
Speaker 2: to left to leave leftover chicken casseroles. And what they
Speaker 2: do is, in addition to leaving leftovers and buying new
Speaker 2: products of course, new produce and meats, et cetera, is
Speaker 2: that fridge scapers are decorating them with the same care
Speaker 2: that they wouldn't decorating a room.
Speaker 1: I mean, does that tell you have absolutely no life? Now?
Speaker 2: They tend to divide themselves into two categories. Oh no,
Speaker 2: this gets deeper, I'll believe me. Okay, there's the casual
Speaker 2: stylus who spends a few hours just jazzing up the
Speaker 2: inside of the refrigerator, you know, decanting the drinks and
Speaker 2: yogurt and jams into glass containers and playing placing fruits
Speaker 2: and veggies and bowls and vases and vases or vases,
Speaker 2: and just making it look clean and neat and just
Speaker 2: kind of you know, I have one of these at home,
Speaker 2: not the I'd live with one of these people, Okay.
Speaker 2: Then there are the decorators who decorate the inside of
Speaker 2: those refrigerators, lining the shells with baskets, photos next to
Speaker 2: the milk and cheese, twinkle lights when the door is open,
Speaker 2: and they choose a theme. Now there's one popular fridge scaper,
Speaker 2: Lindsay Judish.
Speaker 1: She did the fridge interior by themes.
Speaker 2: The Great Gatsby is one theme, Bridgerton another theme. The
Speaker 2: Winter Solsice is another theme. Now, the Gatsby one is
Speaker 2: art deco.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Aaron Pitpgrass is known for really intricate fridge scaping. She's
Speaker 2: forty four years old, described herself as a max maximalist,
Speaker 2: loves vintage decor. She stumbled across a social media video
Speaker 2: last year showing strings of lights in the fridge, and
Speaker 2: then it wasn't until an old Peewee's playhouse Christmas special.
Speaker 1: That's when inspiration took her. So what did she do?
Speaker 2: What does she do to decorate the inside of her
Speaker 2: vintage nineteen fifties refrigerator as an homage to Peewee's Food
Speaker 2: in refrigerator segment. Well, what people do is typically this
Speaker 2: is a big deal, is you open the door and
Speaker 2: there's your Peewee's Food refrigerator segment, and you uncontrollably start.
Speaker 1: Master bating pee wee Herman.
Speaker 2: The hell someone's not muting? Okay, moving on. She then
Speaker 2: began the fridge scaping. A string of color lights outlined
Speaker 2: the shelves. They were adorned with strands of garland. Then
Speaker 2: artificial fruit was scattered around, eggs and broccoli stocks and butter.
Speaker 2: Then there was a small metal stand that was the
Speaker 2: base for a Christmas tree made of green grapes, and
Speaker 2: there were plastic googly eyes that were put on a
Speaker 2: slab of meat and a wedge of cabbage. Wow, isn't
Speaker 2: that impressive. There was one Reddit user last year really
Speaker 2: limited the fact that their spouse had taken to fridge
Speaker 2: scaping and had taken over the world, and he posted
Speaker 2: that flowers, fancy baskets, jars were taking over at the
Speaker 2: expense of access to the food and adjusting the decor
Speaker 2: to even grab the leftovers was creating a strain in
Speaker 2: the household. Now that is and I'm looking at a picture.
Speaker 2: This is his insanity, is what this is. It's almost
Speaker 2: you go to one of those very high end grocery
Speaker 2: stores that take the produce and make this extraordinary, almost
Speaker 2: a sculpture of the produce.
Speaker 1: That's what these people do.
Speaker 2: Now, the people who are fridgescapers say, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this isn't just about aesthetics, because displaying fruits and vegetables
Speaker 2: rather than shoving them in drawers means less weight, less weights,
Speaker 2: healthier eating, better tracking of when food is ready to eat.
Speaker 1: That that's true.
Speaker 2: I mean i will take food and I'll put at
Speaker 2: the back of a drawer, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I'll realize that g I can make penicillin out of this.
Speaker 2: I mean it can get pretty rough, but that's a
Speaker 2: fascinating This is when you have too much time.
Speaker 1: This is when you know I'm thinking of taking this up.
Speaker 1: Let me talk about that all right.
Speaker 2: Well, today is the last day to have the real
Speaker 2: id or yesterday was the last day that you had
Speaker 2: the real ID, which allows you to get on airplanes
Speaker 2: and get into federal buildings. Otherwise you are not coming
Speaker 2: into a federal building. I wonder people who are arrested
Speaker 2: and going to trial for some criminal offense. Can they
Speaker 2: not go into a federal building and not be tried
Speaker 2: if they don't have a real Idly there's probably that's
Speaker 2: an excten, is my guess. In any case, the real
Speaker 2: ID you have to have. And how do you get
Speaker 2: the real ID. You go to the DMV and the
Speaker 2: issuing new a new driver's license and the real ID,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking at mine. There's usually a star in
Speaker 2: the right hand corner, and the technology is better, it's
Speaker 2: harder to forge. And in the case of California real ID,
Speaker 2: there's a little bear, California bear with a star in
Speaker 2: the middle, and there's your real ID. Okay, you have
Speaker 2: to have it, now, why don't you have it? Eighty
Speaker 2: one percent of travelers have real IDs. They met the
Speaker 2: requirements eighty one percent in the United States. That means
Speaker 2: twenty have not twenty percent.
Speaker 1: It's even better.
Speaker 2: In California, fifty eight percent have a real ID.
Speaker 1: That means forty two percent have not gotten it.
Speaker 2: So the lines that the DMV are long, long, long,
Speaker 2: because you have to have it the way you can't
Speaker 2: get on an airplane. Well, Christinome, who is head of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security, says, I'll tell you what We're going to,
Speaker 2: not stop you if we're getting on an airplane, but
Speaker 2: bring a passport that'll work, or bring a military idea.
Speaker 2: You have to have a picture on it, or tribal
Speaker 2: ID if you happen to be a Native American.
Speaker 1: And what makes this so funny, and.
Speaker 2: What makes people who have not yet done this such
Speaker 2: morons is the real ID law was passed by Well,
Speaker 2: was recommended by the nine to eleven Commission, and sign
Speaker 2: into law in two thousand and five, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be rolled out in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, and it was and you were supposed to well,
Speaker 2: actually you were supposed to have it done by two
Speaker 2: thousand eight.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 2: Well, since people weren't doing it, the implementation has been
Speaker 2: repeatedly delayed, over and over and over again. And at
Speaker 2: what point do Americans take this seriously? I mean, I
Speaker 2: complied early on because I was told and I believed it,
Speaker 2: We're not gonna let you get on airplanes at least domestically.
Speaker 1: So I got my my early ID or real ID
Speaker 1: early on.
Speaker 2: Have you seen the videos of hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 2: people that are circling Department of Motor Vehicle buildings all
Speaker 2: over the country. Come on, guys, you can't be that
Speaker 2: dumb and guess what they are. This is proof positive
Speaker 2: that if you look at the average IQ of Americans
Speaker 2: across the board, you get very close to par golf.
Speaker 2: Americans have a way of just not complying.
Speaker 1: Very often.
Speaker 2: They just don't. We're not really good at following the law.
Speaker 2: All right, we're done another day, another eighty cents because
Speaker 2: we work at iHeart should be a dollar, but it's not.
Speaker 2: And we're back again tomorrow. Neil is here with me
Speaker 2: starting at six o'clock. At five o'clock, it's Will Cole Scheiber.
Speaker 2: With Cole Schreiber, I always screw it up with not Amy.
Speaker 1: Amy's gone for the week. It'll be Heather Brooker.
Speaker 2: And then we got Kno and we have an everybody
Speaker 2: here as we start all over again and see if
Speaker 2: I can offend as many people as possible.
Speaker 1: How do I do today? Neil?
Speaker 3: Ten out of ten, sir, excellent?
Speaker 2: Okay, have a good one. Gary and Shannon up next.
Speaker 2: KFI AM. You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show.
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