This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI A M six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Luigi Mangioni on Twitter on x This is a master's and a bachelor's in computer science from Penn and his Twitter profile is just a mostly retweets of other people are reposting from other people's posts.
Look how similar this mis Maryland State senator looks to him.
Wow, Yeah, that's got to be a family member.
That those are some strong, strong.
Italian genes eyebrows.
And one of the things that he talks about in some of these posts I thought was pretty interesting because he was talking about, for example, this would have been back in April, an ongoing discussion about the population of the native population of Japan and what's going wrong with it, and that Japanese Japanese politicians and culturalists were concerned that the Japanese culture was dying because native Japanese the population was falling. And he says the solution to falling birth
rates isn't immigration, it's cultural. This is Luigi Maanngioni writing, and he was talking about the encouragement of natural human interaction whether it's sex, physical, fitness, spirituality, et cetera, that we needed to in Japan's case, in particular, do away with cultural substitutes for the physical human interaction that takes place.
So do away with the porn shops, do away with the sex toys, do away with weird restaurants where guys pay girls to dress in anime costumes and dance for them, and actually encourage just simple old fashioned matchmaking conversations, relationships.
That may be why he wanted to study AI. Yeah, talked about how he would he would frequently quote or retweet or what have you. Jonathan Heite, who was, of course the author of all of the books we've referenced several times about AI and human connection, the generation was the one that generation.
There is also a question, obviously, if this was targeting a guy who is high up in the insurance industry. Was that person was Brian Thompson simply a symbol of the insurance industry or was it something specific to Brian Thompson, something specific to United Healthcare in I mean Trinia, something specific to United Healthcare, And a question would be did he Luigi Mangioni have some connection to United Healthcare was he denied care?
Was his a family member denied care? Something like that.
I don't know. If it was personal, I don't think so.
I mean, on his Twitter profile there are a few pictures and one of them is an X ray. It appears to be of a back with multiple screws in a spinal column repair or whatever, and there's no description of it or explanation as to who it is. But if that's him, and he's had ongoing back problems and may have been a member of United Healthcare insurance, then that would that at least gives us, you know, a potential.
But he comes from money. Though people with money don't have insurance problems, do they?
They don't.
Well, I mean, they could still have problems, but it wouldn't necessarily be as devastating as it would be if someone's going to end up in two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of medical debt.
So I don't know. Again.
This Luigi Manngioni is the twenty six year old who has been caught in Altuna, Pennsylvania. He has, according to Fox, been arrested on gun charges. They said that they did find him with a ghost gun capable of firing a nine millimeters round, But they have not yet said if that is the gun that they think he used for the murder or if this is just one he had.
We do know that dive teams were in Central Park today still looking for a murder weapon as of this morning, whether or not it means that they have given up that search because they believe this is the weapon or not. But one of the things that they found, of course, was this handwritten manifesto, if you will, a two page
note that reportedly rails against the healthcare industry. They said they also found a mask that would match one that they've seen in the pictures that were posted by the NYPD, and that this guy didn't put up any sort of a fight when they picked him up. So all of this they're waiting for the NYPD detect us to show up in I'll Tuna, Pennsylvania so that they can sit and interview with this guy.
So on this other social media site where you put your description of yourself basically with emojis, it is a computer happy face emoji, right, so you and then it's like a bunch of weight stuff, weightlifting books, happy nerd face, smiley emoji likes books, weightlifting, computers, and then there's also a mushroom next to a brain, wondering if he's into all.
Of those microdosing.
Micro dosing situations are macro dosing also a little yin yang as well. So I don't like learning about people through their emoji descriptions of themselves.
But here where here is where we are in twenty twenty four.
Yeah, it's very interesting to see this guy's personality play out in just sort of this social media breadcrumb trail that we have of him. And again, most of what we see on his Twitter posts are reposts of other people, and not much, if anything about the insurance industry itself, other than there's a one reference to a brain injury unit.
But other than that, his last reposts on Twitter were a podcast about smartphones and social media, the impact on mental health and brain plasticity with Jonathan Height, and then the one right before that was Peter Thiel on many great startups being run by people suffering from aspergers and how we should view this as an indictment of our society.
Wow.
Interesting, we'll find out more about this again. The New York City Mayor, the New York Police Commissioner, all came out and mentioned this twenty six year old Luigi Mangione, arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, believed to be the very strong suspect in the or a strong person of interest is the words that Mayor Eric Adams used in connection with
that murder of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO. So we get more information, we'll definitely bring it to you as we get to we get closer through the day.
This is going to be a fascinating trial because of the anti insurance company sentiment in this country. There's been so many people touched by healthcare companies, screwing somebody over in their family at some point or knowing somebody.
I think everyone's been touched.
By a vicious health care decision, whether it's denying coverage or you know what do they call them outstanding conditions?
What is it? You underground pre existing.
Pre existing conditions being denied coverage. Because of that, it's going to be interesting to get twelve jurors that don't have any connection to healthcare, insurance, the industry being on the bad side of one of those situations.
Yeah.
Again, the twenty six year old who's been picked up A guy named Luigi Mangioni in Altoona, Pennsylvania apparently made his where they are mad his way there after the murder of Brian Thompson. The United Healthcare CEO Police Commissioner said they arrested him. He was carrying a weapon consistent with the gun used in the killing of Brian Thompson, and the NYPD Chief of Detectives said that Luigi Mangioni
was taken into custody. That Mangioni was taken after police got a tip that he had been spotted at the McDonald's there in Altoona, PA at twelve thirty. We're going to get more into as we gather more and more information, We're going to get into some of the details about who this guy was, even just through his own words and his own posts on social media and thinks he's got a relatively healthy I mean, he's twenty six years old.
Of course he does profile on social media, so we can glean some information about him from that.
Very smart guy went to the best schools. It's obvious by it's not crazy smart. It may have taken a turn into crazy. He hasn't, at least on Twitter, hasn't
tweeted things for a while. But you know, I'm talking about that that the movie and the book, the John Grisham book Runaway Jury, come to mind with John Cusack in the theater production of it, of people that are so tied emotionally to the tobacco industry or the gun lobby or the healthcare industry, Like how how emotional and personal those topics are where you get clouded, you know, or you or you try to infiltrate the jury. Yeah, you want to get on that jury and there's a lot of money at stake.
You want to deliver justice. Yeah, there is.
All right, let's quickly jump into swamp.
Watch.
Swamp is horrible.
The government doesn't work.
Man, make it like a reality TV show, Bad Noos.
Always a pleasure to be anywhere from.
Washington, d C.
Hey, Joe.
A town hall too clearly built on a swamp and in so many ways still a swamp.
I have to watch make he.
Said, drained the swamp.
I said, oh, that's so he keep.
You know the thing.
Some interesting things took place in the Big Meet the Press interview to President elect Trump gave yesterday. Kristin Walker asked him about a lot of things. It was really the lengthiest interview we've seen with Trump in a while. It didn't generate as many headlines as I thought it would, But among other things, he did say that he wants to figure out something to do about the Dreamers. He says, people have been brought to here at a very young age.
Many of these are middle aged people now they don't even speak the language of their native country. Yes, we're going to do something about that, and he says I will work with Democrats on a plan and if we can come up with it, but Democrats have made it very difficult to do anything. But Republicans are very open
to the Dreamers. That even as he's talked about a record number of deportations that he has said that he wants to achieve early on, he also says he wants to end birthright citizenship and says that any American citizen that has family here illegally could be deported. Which it's just this is again, this is bluster, this is his he's throwing meat to the base. What we've seen him promise.
We saw this eight years ago, the things he promised he would do versus what he actually came up with and was able to do were very very different.
Laura Trump is stepping down as co chair of the RNC, and it's gotten some people to whisper about is this going to be.
The replacement for Marco Rubio?
Oh, that she would be appointed to the Senate.
Yeah, that is possible.
Of course.
Marco Rubio has been nominated to be that come the next Secretary of State, and surprisingly he's gotten a lot of support from Democrats. There were a lot of people who came out and spoke very highly of Marco Rubio, which I did not expect. I didn't know that he had that reputation in the Senate necessarily.
Oh yeah, that's why I thought he was such a good pick.
Yeah.
So she told the Associated Press that it was a role she would seriously consider.
This was an interview published yesterday.
But again that goes to Ronda Santis, the one who gets to make the final call on that, because the governor of Florida.
But she has the backing of Elon Musk as well, so there's money behind the push.
One of my favorite dramatic things that has gone on in all of Congress is former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his rivalry I guess you could say with now former Congressman Matt Gates. In an interview yesterday, Kevin McCarthy said no one thought that Matt gates nomination would pass, and he said, I blame Matt Gates for lying to the President about his ethics report. People know that that's why he made the motion against me. People know these
guys absolutely hate each other. And I'll watch every moment I can about these guys going after each other because Kevin McCarthy is convinced Matt Gates is the dirt bag that people suspect him of being. What that's what Kevin McCarthy feels about Matt Gates, And Matt Gates says, well, Kevin McCarthy's not Republican enough, or he's a Republican name only or whatever.
That's the reason that he's not.
In Congress anymore. But Kevin McCarthy said he's not capable of staying in Congress. He needed an excuse to resign because the ethics report would have been done in a couple of days.
And that's unfortunate.
But it is a better Congress today where they're going forward without Matt Gates.
Sorry, I've gone down a hole, which one.
And you know how I get because I am now literally wearing a tin hat every day. But I when we were talking about the suspect in New York, this Luigi Mangi, Luigi Mangione, great name. This is the guy who took out the United Healthcare CEO in As soon as I read that, he was interested in his Valedictorian speed or what have you, and he went to Penn
to study artificial intelligence. And then what you read about him talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence and lack of human to human contact and things in Jonathan Hate's
book and all that. I was reminded by something that came out after the CEO was shot and killed in Midtown last week, and it was that the United Healthcare had gotten a lot of press that had kind of snowballed in the past year over them using AI to deny claims like that's been the major knock on this guy, and it's gotten a bunch of attention in the past year.
Well, that's not down a hole. That's just connecting dots.
Right or same kind of same kind of thing.
You have to be in the hole to connect those dots.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, what if he's just like this super smart warrior against AI and wants more human connection and wanted to make a statement about.
It, and that a I is now planting this evidence again. It's like this show if we killed people if because we not that we would, but we vouched for this all the time. We feel very strongly.
About the lack of human to human interaction and what it does to society.
Uh, you went to peanuts?
Is that the peanuts?
The peanut?
Hey, this has been in Kansas City and Shannon, how dare you? That is a Kansas City institution? I got the delicious wings that said I have definitely gotten food poisoning there before.
Yeah, let's just say one of the people went back to the hotel and went straight to the bathroom.
That's part of the allure, is it not.
I mean, there's a if there's a possibility that you run the risk of you know, urgent.
It's the same reason we have a bacon wrapped hot dog outside the stadium on our way home, because you roll the dice, You roll the dice.
Guys. It's important to point out this is not a gay song.
It is not it.
It was kind of adopted by the gay community.
Could one argue.
That's one way to put it. But and I guess it's because maybe there was a lot of Mirando hookups at YMCA's around the world, and was there.
I thought it was a place for children.
The YMCA is it not?
Well?
I mean, I know it's young Man's.
Christian Association, but I don't I don't know if it meant like young child no Ah. I always assumed it was a you know, an adult thing, just young adults.
Interesting kids. Oh.
Victor Willis, the writer of the song, has clarified that the song is not gay themed. He says in a Facebook post, there's nothing gay about it.
He says he's thrilled.
Donald Trump likes the song because he's made since Trump started using it.
Which is funny because that's not the usual reaction anytime a musician or a band finds out that one politician or the other is using their their song as a walk up song or part of their parties of the rallies, they want to pull it. I don't support the even though they're making money on it. I'm glad that Victor at least understands where the money is coming from.
The way this is written is funny. He says, his wife will start suing people who insist the song is gay themed. They say, whoever his wife is, she's pretty pretty busy according to him, carrying out their efforts. He says my wife more often in his posts than the word fiance is used in that famous Seinfeld episode.
The key paragraph in this says the financial benefits have been great as well, as YMCA is estimated to grow several million dollars since the President Alex continued use of the song. Therefore, I'm glad I allowed the President Alex continued use of YMC, and I thank him for choosing my song. I've never quite wrapped my head around licensing
for music played in an event like that. I kind of get it when it comes to light music licensing and radio stations, and we've always dealt with those contracts because of our experience just in the industry. But for a live event like that, do.
You think that we're going to get in trouble from the trumpets of Jesus people?
I doubt it, but I mean, I mean, we'd play it enough.
It would be the songwriter.
That and I don't know who the songwriter is on trumpets of Jesus. But this is just one version of it by the Imperials, and I think there have been several different versions of it recorded by different groups.
Oh really, let's see, okay.
Russ Taff wrote the song Trumpet of Jesus, and.
It's a singular trumpet by the way.
Right, Russtaff the Jesus trumpet?
Yeah, I mean that's it sounds like he's saying the trump bets.
But it is just a singular trumpet. He's only got one.
Russ Staff, Russ taxcuse me, seventy one years old, grew up in Farmersville, California.
I bet we could get him on.
Not a problem. We start the new year with Russ Taft interviews.
What would you ask him?
How many songs he's written? Was this a one off? This is a pretty popular song. It'd be crazy if it was just a one off. I want to go through some of the lyrics though of YMCA, because I feel like there is something to be said about why people believe that it is a song. When it comes to a song that would be embraced perhaps by the gay A gay song. Go ahead, Well, I didn't say
gay song, but there's something wrong with that. Let's start out with the first two words of the song, young man, I rest my case.
That's the end of it.
No, And then the second line starts off there's with the two words young man, and then.
The third line starts with young man.
Well it it's all about mentorship.
Yes, young man, there's a place you can go, I said, young man, when you're short on your dough.
You could find many ways to have a good time.
Now, none of it has to be gay, but if you're looking for something to symbolize it, and you're looking for an anthem or a theme, this would fit everything. It's fun to stay at the YMCA, and they have everything for young men to enjoy.
You can hang out with all the boys.
Lots of boys like to do.
They like to hang out with other boys. And then this is where it kind of is like a life helper. Right. You can get yourself clean, you can have a good male, you can do whatever you feel.
You can have a good what meal meal?
Yeah?
Like, oh, I thought it sounded like you said you can have a good male.
No meal again me hot dog or whatever it is. Boys.
It's all about young men who are kind of bouncing around in life.
They might need friends.
They might need a nice warm place to say, a nice warm male and meal.
It's again, it sounds like you said mail, but you said a nice warm meal.
Meal right, right?
Okay, a nice warm male can really meal really set you?
Right? You know what I mean? Like, don't you feel better after you have a hot meal?
Yes, you're You're still saying that there's a little I have to be careful.
How I answer a love song about community.
I didn't realize the YMCA was started in Switzerland. I thought that was an America thing, all right. It's currently based in Switzerland. I guess it started in London and it was founded in eighteen forty four as the Young Men's Christian Association. The aim was to put Christian values into practic just by developing a healthy body, mind and spirit.
So it's almost a.
You could argue opposite of what a lot of people have thought have thought that it was.
And so did they.
Dress up as a Native American and the police officer and the construction worker and the bit to show that it's for everybody.
I don't know why the costumes came about.
Because like if I'm a firefighter, policeman or a Native American, I probably am not in need of staying with all the boys, right, Like I've I've I have a career, I have a pension. I mean, I don't know about the Native American, but he has a community, yes, reservation. But the cop and the firefighter, they've got pensions. They they don't need a warm mail. They've got one at home. Probably meal, meal, is what you're saying.
Right.
Do you know anybody who has a great memory. My dad did great memory.
Yes, could remember you know who played third base for the Cubs in nineteen sixty four, right, you know right away?
Ray Bell. By the way, I'm just kidding. I just made that name up.
It sounded like an early fifties anyway. Like super recognizers don't just have great memories. They specifically remember people's faces that they can identify unfamiliar faces at just a brief glimpse. And they say that by hoping, by studying these super recognizers, that researchers would understand how we in general recognize that a face belongs to someone we know, which is of course important when it comes to being a social species like we are, or hope to continue to be.
In that case, On the other end, are the two to three percent of people with face blindness who have trouble recognizing faces that should be familiar to them, including those of loved ones or even their own.
Developmental prosopagnosia is what that's called the face blindness. I've I've heard also of people with this, but I've never recognized I mean, I don't recognize them. No, I don't know anybody specifically that has face blindness.
Sometimes I think that if you're not paying attention to who you're talking to or meeting, they can go in one eye and out the other, so to speak.
Well, we were just we have we were just talking the other day about somebody we both know and have met multiple times. But put that person into a room, they fade into the Wallpa, man, just nothing there.
And it's not I don't know if it's you know that they're distinguishing or out.
Of there's nothing distinguishing about them, Yes, like your forehead distinguishes, right, Yes, I'm just kidding. Yeah, that was a stupid shot, but mildly amusing.
And your ankles, my ankles, they're probably a little fat actually after the plane.
I but that's not your face, that's true, But there were there's no distinguishing characteristics or something. There's no scar under the eye or a snaggle tooth or something like that that would make that person.
I didn't which one which one? So you're saying, I have multiple snaggles?
What are you pointing to? No.
Super recognizers they first came out, I'm uninteresting came up within two thousand and nine said that the excel at identifying matching faces, even those that would be unfamiliar with them strangers up until the experiment, whether they're flipped upside down, they have low resolution, sometimes the pictures are presented at a different angle.
They have the unique ability to derive a three dimensional representation of a face, even if they only see a picture of it a two D image of a person.
If they're like this with photographic memory and other things, not just faces.
Well, and they're saying no, they're saying that this is specific to faces because of how important recognizing someone has been over the course of our evolution as human beings. They said that when presented with even random pictures of everyday life, a beach, scene of traffic or something, super recognizers spend more time looking at faces, which is interesting because We've done stories before about people with autism spectrum
disorders who do the exact opposite. They spend time looking at the vehicles or the things, or the plants or the birds. They do not look at the faces. They said that eyes of super recognizers are immediately drawn to the face, regardless of where that face is in the picture, and mostly near the optimal place for identification, which is just below your eyes. Not the forehead, mind you, but just below the eyes. I was wondering about this and
I just found my answer. And I'm not trying to say that people are racist, but sometimes you look at someone who looks a certain.
Way and they you.
Don't really look at them, because you just kind of glance at them, and then you think you know exactly what their face looks like. For example, it doesn't have to just be black or Asian or what have you.
It could be it could be blonde white girl.
Because this happened to be this weekend, one of the security guys for the chargers says, I could have sworn I saw you at the lobby bar, so I want to go say hi, and it wasn't you.
But she has blonde.
Hair, so like it happens with everybody you know where you don't really You look at somebody and you think you take in all the information, but then you put them in a lineup and you don't. That's why lineups and six packs or whatever you want to call them are so traditional, not reliable sources of evidence because people don't really spend that time getting all the minutia of someone's face well.
And that's that kind of a criminal lineup. Like that, you're dealing most of the time with people who aren't professionals there. They don't know what to look for, what they recognize or anything. If you have a job where it's important for you to recognize faces, think of somebody like I don't know, a TSA agent or a security guard at some place where you have to keep an
eye on people's faces. You can you can train your way into some of those characteristics of super recognizers, but you're still far behind.
They said.
In many cases, forensic examiners, as an example, are very methodical, very systematic when they look at faces to determine identity, and they said they take longer to make decisions, sometimes up as many as long as thirty seconds, but they do pick up on some facial clues that most people
wouldn't be paying attention to. But when you do talk about those super recognizers, they have quicker, greater accuracy, and sometimes it takes them two seconds to make a decision about somebody as opposed to thirty seconds for someone who's professionally trained.
Just so we're clear, I do believe you have an average forehead.
That's not true.
It is true.
I have an average five head. It's a big forehead, it's an average five head.
It's not true.
Oh, I'm going to play this for you because this guy was very complimentary of you.
Every day I listened to you both, and you guys like the best best duel ever. And I'm just laughing my butt off, just like out loud, like they are stupid, like it just laughing, And that's like, you guys are my type with people like it's it's just so funny the way you guys work together. And for the record, Shannon was saying that you would get a nice hot nail.
She said it like four or five times. I was like, wait a minute, that's yeah, I did. Yeah. Weird, very weird. You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap