Morning Run with Amy and TJ and iHeartRadio Podcast.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to Morning Run. It is Monday, December twenty second. I'm Amy Robox.
And I'm TJ Holmes. Two days, right, you got two day used to get it under the tree.
Yes, that's it. Okay, we should be done by now.
What I haven't seen the numbers, the percentages of people who wait this long and still aren't done.
Yes, but I just remember this is anecdotal evidence. But when I was working in retail back in the day, it was very busy. The last two days before Christmas. Let me tell you it was probably the busiest, most frenzied time to be in a mall or to be working in sales, retail sales.
Well, folks, hopefully you are still having a good time around the holidays, not too stressed, and most of the list is taken care of. But yes, just a couple of days to go, and a lot of people, of course, are going to be traveling. We get those numbers from Triple A. It seems like every year they tell us
that there will be a record. Well, yes they are telling us once again, but not just that robe is kind of important, and they also highlight Maybe people know this generally speaking, but the times you don't want to be on the road. So some of this is interesting and helpful information. But yes, one hundred and twenty two million people are going to be traveling at least fifty miles from home. That's how many people traveling for the holiday.
But one hundred and ten million of them are driving, So yes, overwhelmingly robes, the roadways are going to be crowded's starting today.
I'm always curious, though, is this based on polling that they do? How do they know who they call people? Because like, how do they know who's going to be traveling when and where? So this is all the way they do it, but it still blows my mind. And they were able to actually predict that kind of thing. But the worst time to hit is usually we don't
need a prediction on this. We know when the worst time is to hit the road between one and seven pm today and tomorrow, and at least here in the Northeast, tomorrow is going to be a really rough weather day. This happened to us last year. We were traveling fifty miles outside of the city and had crazy snowy weaps their roads were shut down. That could possibly happen tomorrow as well.
Once we got where we're going. It was a beautiful, white, fun Christmas, but yeah, it could be treacherous. So something to keep an eye on there as we get close to Christmas Day, and folks, as we get going on this morning, Ron always want to remind you when our updates, make sure they come to you. You can subscribe top right corner of your Apple podcast app where you see our show page that little button says follow click that you can get our updates coming to you.
And there's been a lot of them, like yes, there have been so On the run this morning, we'll talk about the released but heavily redacted, long awaited Epstein files. They are out, at least some of them because lawmakers
are asking where's the rest of it. They're now threatening to take some serious action against Pam Bondi and James Ranson, who starred in The Wire and several blockbuster movies, who that we have loved, has unfortunately taken his own life at the age of forty six plus sixty minutes pulls a segment last minute, and the reporter is calling it a political.
Move and also running with us this morning will be Jake Paul, the Georgetown basketball coach, a Steelers receiver bohen Yang, and Jake Sully all along for the run this morning.
All right, next up on the run, though, some lawmakers are floating the idea of holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt because of the Justice Department's failure to release all of the Epstein files.
Yeah, they release thousands of documents, a huge dump on Friday, but admits it's not everything, which is what the law required the DOJ to do. Release everything by the Friday deadline.
So the DOJ is claiming that hundreds of lawyers are currently going through those documents ensuring that victims' names are protected and that certain things get redacted. But a bipartisan group of critics and a lot of people online are not buying that response at all.
Redactions are one thing, but some of these redactions were full pages just blank for the most part, that are blacked out some documents. Some are arguing or even missing. Some are arguing that some documents that were released previously all of a sudden disappeared. There were some pictures that were out that disappeared. Now we're back. So robes The fight was over getting this bill, what was it called the Transparency Transparency Act.
This was supposed to be it. The fight was to get the law passed so.
That the documents could come out. The deadline has come and gone, and this Epstein thing still.
It's an absolute mess that is far far from over. And yes, we're going to be doing a podcast on this in just a bit, so please look for that in the next couple of hours, because we're going to go through all of what we know and so much more of what we don't. And therein lies the rub all right. Next up on the Run, here we go again. Sixty Minutes is at the center of a censoring controversy
involving President Trump. The show pulled a plan segment that was supposed to air in last night's broadcast just a few hours before the show aired, and the reporter is calling it a political moods.
Yeah.
This segment was supposed to be about the brutal conditions at the prison in Ol Salvador where some people Trump has deported have ended up. CBS released a statement saying the story would air at a later date. They released that statement just a few hours before the show, but the new York Times and other outlets are reporting that the new CBS editor in chief made the decision to pull the segment, insisting that a senior White House official be interviewed for the second.
Correspondent Sharon Alfonsi wrote this in an email to her colleague, saying, pulling it now is not an editorial decision. It is a political one. We are trading fifty years of gold standard reputation for a single week of political quiet. And so now there's word that employees are threatening to quit CBS News. And look, this has been a whole issue over at that network, with Trump suing them, and certainly with the selling of their parent company and the ties
to Trump. It's a mess over there as well.
No, I didn't realize, but our first two stories, people could roll their eyes and so wait, this is still going on.
Yeah, the Epstein thing. Wait, this is still going on. Six.
This is the same story, in the same controversy. It seems we will continue here on this What day is it?
Monday?
Monday?
It's your favorite day of the weekdaye.
The Monday morning? Right, Yes, we say that because we get a reset. This will be a different kind of week for a lot of people, right, your routines are a little different.
Our routine is.
Going to be a little different as well as we get through this week. But something we want to share awful news here, folks, coming anytime, but certainly right before the holidays. Actor James Ranson has died at the age of forty six of an apparent suicide. And for some reason I call him actor James Ranson, I want to say husband, father of two. James Ranson has died at the age of forty six. Now the name, I think
for a lot of people it didn't immediately register. But you know his you know his face, and you actually probably know his acting style. Yet he has a unique type of thing that he does. But you know him from the wire. He was in season two. I wasn't very familiar, but a very popular character, Ziggy. He was on that with Black Phone, Black Phone two. He was in it too, and also Inside Man with Denzel Washington. So this guy to hear the I think it was
a hanging. They even said the medical examiner out there but found in la at the age of forty six.
It's sad because if you really start to look at his life. He did many interviews about his struggles. He had been addicted to heroin for a while, he was struggling with what to do with his life, and acting, he said, saved him. Ultimately, his mom got him into a school of the arts and he actually pursued that creative venture. But he did talk about how he's known for a lot of his horror movie depictions, and he said being or at least depicting dark characters weighed on
him certainly, and given his previous struggles. It's just incredibly sad, and our hearts go out to his family, because, yes, it's difficult at any time of the year when something like this happens, but certainly this time of year and this week.
You know, we obviously we love this guy because we're horror movie fans. We've seen him in all of these movies, but worlds that didn't realize and if you didn't realize that, you're really gonna get upset. Now the movie he was in and we love, It's nigh Here, and people don't realize he didn't even have a name in it.
Sinister, Yes, the Sinator movies, because he was the bright light in that movie actually didn't have that.
Now, given some of his dark characters he plays. That one was quirky and fun, and he stole every scene he was in.
And there we talked about him. We didn't know his name. He said, we love the detective in that movie. He played so well against the darkness of that film. Ethan Hawke's character he was. He was the light in that movie. He was the laughter in that movie, which was rare but interesting. Like his quote was, I don't end up playing a lot of likable characters, so I find myself living in a lot of unlikable skin. As a result
of that, I don't always feel good. But that was the That was the character that we really that we noticed, and that's where he stood out when he played that that fun, quirky detective.
But again, he wasn't a character we looked at and said, oh that's the guy from or Oh that's a star, Oh he has good credit. We look he was unreal and it's a very dark movie and we recommended on our list this year of horror movies and Sinister was a heavy one.
But he, like you said, wero, he is the relief we need in that movie. He was wonderful.
All right, Well, we hope he rests in peace, all right. Next up on the run, this is this is wild. Say it ain't so. Jim Beam has stopped making bourbon. The company says it is pausing production because get this, they have too much.
Yeah this that it hurts. The headline scared me. Wait, couldn't be waiting there? But no, their main distillery there in Kentucky. They are shutting down production because supplies in the state have hit it all time high this year. And yeah, you better believe it has everything to do with tariffs. They set off this trade war with other countries, but in particular, Canada had a ban this year on I remember that American Loka.
There were videos and pictures of Canadian liquor stores taking American alcohol off the shelves.
So that combined with the fact that they say a lot of young people just aren't drinking as much, We've done those stories.
And that's a good part of the headline.
It's good not good for Kentucky. I didn't realize ropes. If they have so many unsold barrels that are aging, they get taxed on it. What so the more they leave sitting in the state, Kentucky taxes that and it's costing them millions and millions and millions of dollars. So they have stopped until they can get rid of some of this inventory.
How wait, that makes it. That's wild to me that the state taxes you because you couldn't sell enough.
Because for whatever, if it's sitting there and not being sold, it's some kind of a fee they have. They've been doing it for years, but cost them seventy five million plus or something this year, which was up twenty five percent over the year before. Yes, things you learned, Yes, and they're crazy deep Wow.
Okay. Next up on the run Georgetown head basketball coach. He's been suspended for one game because he hit a kid in the stands with his water bottle. It was not at all you can tell he's but but he acted childishly.
Awful moment and the timing and the it was just terribly unfortunate. Ed Cooley is the name everybody in the end. He apologized immediately afterwards, knew what he had done. He actually said this was somebody affiliated with the school's programs. Well, he knows these folks. He apologized, But yes, he got mad because his team just lost by three and they missed eighteen free throws.
That'll piss you off. Wow.
So he turned at the end after they missed a three pointer to tie it, and he with force.
Was it not said?
He threw it as hard as he possibly could. Kid was in what third roll or second or third row and mom's lap.
And popped them. So that was in a really unfortunate moment. But he has been suspended, probably the right thing. But he has apologized, all right.
Another unfortunate incident this weekend, this one at an NFL game. A player appeared to take a jab a jack. It looked like a punch to me, baby, a punch, A swipe, A It looked like more than a swipe a grab. It was a punch.
We don't know how to describe it exactly. I was giving him the benefit of that.
I know. I saw you wrote swipe and I was like, hmm, you encouraged me, like, please watch both of these videos.
I don't know.
From my untrained eye, it looked like a punch, all right. This was in the second quarter of the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Detroit Lions.
Wait you say your untrained eye. The NFL has their trained eyes on it, and he could be hitting getting hit with a suspension or at least a fine. This is DK Metcalf, superstar receiver for the Steelers. Now the video here. Why in the second quarter is he interacting with a fan? We don't know, but he's on the sideline. The fan is up on the first row, but he
is leaning over the railing. It looks fine and cordial and normal for a moment, and then all of a sudden, yeah, he takes a swipe at the fan as it.
Appears, or a bunch or whatever. Now what star all does?
A local Lavillia caught up with the fan and said it was because he called Dkay by his real name and that set DK off.
What What's DK's real name.
Is Decaylin or something. I mean, it's just his name.
I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. I don't know if I'm buying that. It sounded it seemed as though when you watch it, it does seem like the conversation, for whatever reason there's even a conversation going on, appears fine. But yeah, something really pissed him off, Like it was an immediate kind of a knee jerk. Whoops. I didn't mean to let my emotions take over me, so I seems hard to believe that all the fan did was call him by his real name.
They're going to look, there's some precedent for this, but oftentimes when the fan initiates the problem, they not so hard on the athlete. But you can't They got you.
Can't match ugly words with a fist.
You cannot do that. There you go, good way to put it.
Continue on the run here now Jake Paul, the influencer turned pro boxer, Well, he got knocked out, but at the same time got the same time, he got woken up a rude awakening about what it's like to fight a real, big deal heavyweight. He fought Anthony Joshua, a huge match on Netflix, and this was a it was supposed to be roads an eight round match, but he was brutally beat down and he was hurt, and we
can say he was hurt pretty seriously. We know this now could have been more and more long term damage. But he this was the fear that he was stepping in with a big time guy. He has no business in the ring with.
Yeah, and that was proven in round six he revealed to everyone that Yeah, his jaw was broken in two places. He actually had to have titanium titanium pieces put in his mouth, and then he had to have several teeth pulled. He can't eat solid food for a week. Look, we raced home from where we were to try and watch this match. I actually fell asleep after round two or
three because they were just dancing. Basically, it was Jake Paul running from Yes, Anthony Joshua, and I just fell asleep, and then You're like, you missed it, so I had to rewatch it, and it was hard to watch.
It is and this was the fear. This is serious, it's dangerous, and people started saying afterwards, why did they even sanction this fight? Well, because a lot of money involved. But till he's okay, but some serious damage was done. Continuing here on the Run in just a moment, when we come back, folks, Saturday Night Live says goodbye to
a fan favorite mid season. We'll explain also what was supposed to be the biggest movie of the year, Avatar will tell you what kind of start it got off two and Powerball.
We're doing it again tonight.
Folks, welcome back to Morning Run and we continue with SNL fan favorite Bowen Yang signing off on Saturday Night Live. He confirmed just last week that this would be his final season. Ariana Grande hosted and Chaer was the musical guest.
That's a good group to go out.
On, right, pretty cool, pretty powerful female there alongside him on either side. But he joined SNL back in twenty eighteen as a writer. He became a part of the main cast just two seasons later and has gone on to become one of the fan favorites of that show and.
One of the most popular, and certainly in recent years were certainly with Wicked, just one of the most popular or successful outside of the show. Yeah, balancing the two things he's really taken off.
Los Culturitas Los Culturistas is his podcast that my oldest Ava says she listened to it every single day. She's obsessed with his podcast. So he's obviously got a lot of other phenomenal things going on. But he was the first Asian full time cast member. I hadn't realized that since SNL began, So he certainly made history. And he leaves out with the bag. He said, this was like
a dream to go out. The way he went out, It was beautiful, the way they paid tribute to him, and he will be certainly missed.
On that show, but we will see him plenty, it.
Seems, and hear him plenty two.
All right, continuing on the run here, now go to the box office. It was all about Avatar Fire and Ash. I keep calling it Avatar three. This is not I'm sure James Cameron doesn't appreciate that Avatar Fire and Ash. It opened this weekend. You expected to be number one, of course, so the question is only how well did it do? Eighty eight million in the US that's pretty damn good. It added another two hundred and fifty seven
million internationally, also pretty damn good. So your worldwide total for the opening weekend for the third installment of Avatar comes to three hundred and forty five million with robes. That all sounds great, but of course it's going to be compared to the first two.
Right, right, So the first Avatar made seventy seven million on its date weekend in the United States.
So this third one beat the first one.
It did? It beat the first one. That's pretty impressive, and ultimately made two point nine two billion worldwide? Is that ultimately? Left? After it all the box office results came in, Wow, and then the second iteration, wow, wow, one hundred and thirty four million for its US debut and ended up making two point three billion worldwide, So it.
Had the bigger US opening but did less than the first one. Oh, we're all inn't that crazy? But here's the thing. The eighty eight million isn't necessarily a disappointment.
It's great.
But both of the first two avatars were number one for seven weeks. Wow, So it's the holiday season? Is it going to have legs? To then get up and make that two billion number again? As what everybody is keeping an eye on. And these things caused a lot of money.
To make three one hundred and fifty million in the production.
Costs, and they always say that's before marketing, so wow, who knows. They have a long way to go to make up what they have had legs before.
All right? And then coming in at number two David? What is that?
This animated thing about David and Goliath?
Oh, my gosh, I made a movie never heard of it, kids film, like a little kid version of David.
Yes?
Number two?
Yes?
And then The Housemaid with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Ciphered. Yeah, number three. I just asked you if you wanted to see it, and you quickly said no and no. It was a complete sentence. I was like, wow, okay, I guess that is not up for discussion. For asking you follow up, I didn't even well you said it so sissin like you just went no, okay. I guess I'll wait till it starts streaming or find a girlfriend to go see it with both calls. All right, next up
on the run. Well, I'm almost sick of talking about this. Can someone please win the damn power ball? But it is pretty impressive. It's now at one point six billion, and yes, we did get our lottery tickets. We braided the cold yesterday. Yeah, that's it. I have it actually a pin cushion on our bulletin board with our powerball numbers. Yes, all set for tonight's jackpot. The cash payout, I like it when there's a seven seven that is really impressive.
Seven hundred and thirty five point three million dollars that is the cash option.
Wow, good luck to you all. Now I'm going to be I really hope somebody wins it before Christmas.
That would be really cool. A Christmas week lottery win that's about as cool as a guest.
So two chances Monday and Wednesday. So if it doesn't happen tonight, could happen on Wednesday. All right, folks. Something we'd like for you to consider it is our quote of the day before we let you go, This one from James Ransom. I plucked this one out and I thought this was sweet and it made me think for a moment. But he said, quote, I think all art, if it's good, is a result of really trying to create something that you can't put into words. Where language
ends is where good art begins. And that kind of for some and took my breath away thinking about the idea of good art taking your breath away. You're not supposed to be able to describe it, right, Sometimes you just you're just in all of it. And he put it as an artist in a way that made very much sense to me.
Yeah, from music to paintings to movies, all of that. Yes, you can say something and impact someone without necessarily using words. I love that.
But saying that art is where language ends, where good art begins, that was cool. Again, you will, James Ransong, We've done several stories. I guess we're all not just celebrities, but about deaths and tragedies, certainly Brown University, things like that happening so close to the holiday, and this is another gut punch and it sucks. And a lot of families are dealing with first Christmas without blank right, somebody in their family. A lot of people deal with that.
So just a reminder that so it's a tough time for a lot of.
Folks and that's something to keep in mind, and also a reminder to hug the people all around you who you do have with you today right now, because you don't know. So that's a good thing to remember on this holiday week. And with that, everyone, thank you for running with us. I'm Amy Robots and I'm TJ.
Holmes. Talk to Elsa