This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Let's jump right into swamp Watch.
I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing that lollipop.
Here we got the real problem is that our leaders are done. The other side never quits what what.
I'm not going anywhere, So that now you train the squad, I.
Can imagine what can be and be unburdened by what has been. You know, Americans have always been going at president.
They're not stupid.
A political flunder is when a politician actually tells.
The truth, whether people voted for you were not. Swamp Watch, they're all counting on it.
So we have been listening in on this floor of the Senate. There is a confirmation vote that's going on right now for Cash Bettel to lead the FBI. This would solidify his nomination and confirm him as the director of the FBI. The nomination was advanced on a fifty one to forty seven party line votes to get to this point point where they're doing the full job. To deny him the job, more than three Republicans would have to vote no, which would be seen unlikely, even though
we know there is one. Susan Collins of Maine announced her opposition to cash Betel. So far, he's already secured the approval of most of the nominees. Trump has already secured the approval of his nominees, despite skepticism to several
of his choices. And remember a few weeks ago, there are a lot of questions about people like Tulci Gabbard and RFK Junior and Cash Battel and even Pete Hegseth as to whether or not they would be confirmed by the Senate because Republicans in the Senate had opposed some of those people. So at this point, I mean there's still, like I said, in the middle of voting, if there's only about half of the votes in the Senate that
have already been cast for Cash Pateel. Trump has said that he expects some of the agents who participated in the January sixth investigation to be fired. Cash Battel told senators during his confirmation hearing that he's not aware of any discussions about firing any agents, but then Dick Durbin released a letter last week that cited information he said came from inside sources that suggested that cash Betel had
been covertly involved in the process. Altogether, Democrats were worried about cash Battel as lack of management experience compared to others who've held the job as director of the FBI. They highlighted some of his past statements that they said were incendiary. They said that he doesn't have good judgment. A half a dozen Democrats on the Judiciary Committee gathered outside the FBI headquarters before the vote to speak out against him. Adam Schiff, the new Senator from California, said,
this is someone we cannot trust. They lacked the character to do this job, someone who lacks the integrity. We know that, and our Republican colleagues know that. But again it appears that as this Senate confirmation vote is happening, it is likely that it will be confirmed Cash Battel to.
Head the FBI.
While that's going on, in the background, Mitch McConnell has decided to retire. Mitch McConnell is one hundred and sixty seven years old. He wants to live out his last fifty years in peace.
I've never lost sight of the fact that without my mother's devoted care, a childhood encounter with polio could have turned out a lot worse.
He in his goodbye speech, or is an announcement that he was going to resign, He said, seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate. Think about that, seven consecutive six year terms. This guy's been in the Senate longer than some of us have been alive. The former leader thanked his wife. She was the Secretary of Transportation for a while. Elaine Chow called her his ultimate
teammate and confidant of the last thirty two years. He got a standing ovation from a colleagues from both sides of the aisle, and a nice show of composure. He mentioned that fight against polio. When he was a kid, he had polio, and for the rest of his life he had a weak leg. He had a bunch of notable health incidents in the last several years. He fractured
his shoulder during a fall five years ago. Six years ago in twenty three, he was hospitalized with a concussion after another fall that led to a stint at a rehab facility for physical therapy therapy. But July twenty three, remember that he's at the Capitol, he's speaking, and then the Bareris died and he just stopped speaking. He froze, steps away from the podium for a few minutes, shows up a few minutes later and says he's fine, and at the time one of the aides said he felt lightheaded.
And then he's speaking to the press in Kentucky about a month later, and then once.
Again the Briters died.
He's fallen several times over the capital since the once in December of last year that sprained his wrist. He had a cut on his face, and then he felled twice in one day earlier this month, he has been maneuvering through the Capitol in a wheelchair with a boot.
On his leg.
He's had to be helped to physically. This guy is ready to go, and apparently at the age of I believe he's eighty two, he's decided that sorry. He turned eighty three today and he has said he's not going to be running for reelection. And then finally a federal appellate court has appointed Trump. Pointed by Trump has a message for the administration.
How about this?
Judge Daniel Danielle Forrest, explaining why she and her appeals court colleagues were right to reject the government's emergency bid to enforce Trump's executive order against birthright citizenship, told them to relax, she wrote, just because of district court grants, preliminary relief, halting a policy advanced by one of the political branches does not in and of itself, and emergency make a controversy, yes, even an important controversy, yes, but
an emergency not necessarily. This all stems from the executive order against birthright citizenship, which appears to be guaranteed by the fourteenth Amendment, and apparently we're going to take this all the way to the Supreme Court.
Again.
The judge emphasized she's not weighing in on the ultimate constitutional question, but she merely concluded that emergency relief is not appropriate at this stage of the litigation. That's one of the hard things for people to understand. I think about how these court challenges have been going when it comes to all the executive orders and the court challenges that either state's attorney's general or unions or whoever it is, are fighting back against these Trump policies have been put
in place. When the court decides, for example, to not put a temporary injunction in place, like we saw Judge Tanya Chutcan in the DC District Court, it wasn't necessarily that she sided with the Trump administration, although it is technically arguably a win for them. It's not that she
sided with the administration. It's that she said that the plaintiffs in the case didn't show that they were going to be hurt by it, and that she couldn't issue the restraining order based on that information, not that she couldn't in the future.
And this is the same kind of situation.
These judges, this appellate panel from the Ninth Circuit isn't deciding whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. What they're saying is this is not the way to go about doing this, at least not yet. This is one of those that is going to go to the Supreme Court. I can't see it not going to the Supreme Court. Jay Ratliffe, the aviation analyst for iHeartRadio, is going to be joining us.
We're going to be.
Talking about this string of aircraft incidents including that flight in Toronto that flipped over. Once again, We'll talk to him about a whole series of these things and what impact, if any, of these cuts that the FAA have on flight safety. So the study out of the American Psychological Association says you probably do have a favorite child. And their findings when asking both parents and children is that daughters tend to be the ones favored by parents, and
children said it's the sons who were favored by the parents. Also, older children tend to be the ones that are favored in.
Haggary, this is ray for Mesida, Right, do you have a favorite child? Maybe I have an older boy, he's basically thirty six. I got a younger boy, he's basically thirty four. I treat him differently, but I guess I favor the younger one because he was born eleven weeks premature. Any weigh two pounds fourteen ounces, so he is the miracle baby. How can I say I love them both? I love the show.
Thank you. I don't know if you love the show as much as you.
Hey, Gary, it's not so much that I have a favorite child, it's I have an easier child. I have a boy and a girl. And the boy was just always logical, easygoing, very compliant child. But the girl that was a lot of pushback. There was a lot of emotion. So I don't have a favorite. I just have an easier one.
That's an interesting way to put it.
Hey, Gary, and well, Shannon's not there. I have four sisters. And when my dad passed away, he was preparing for the service and one of a mentioned Hey put in a program that I was his favorite. And we all looked around a team and say, well, he told me I was his favorite. He told me I was his favorite. So that was just like my dad. He told each and every one of us that we was his favorite. So he didn't he had a favorite child all of us.
Yeah, that's a good one.
By This is Chap one thousand Oaks and I five kids, and yes I do have a favorite.
I always tell them it's the one that's not annoying me that day. That's the way dads do it.
Gary, I got six grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Wow, and I tell each and every one of them that they are Grandpa's favorite. But don't tell the other one.
See, that's what dads do is we played mind games with our kids, Gary.
My favorite still can't feat itself.
We'll clean up after itself, but it'll always.
Be the dog, the dog.
Okay, Hey, Gary, I have three kids. I've always told my oldest that she was my favorite because I had her first. I tell my middle child, my son, because he's my only son, that he's my favorite. And I tell my youngest that she's my favorite because she's the baby. So they all think they're my favorites. And I also tell each one don't tell the other one. I said you were my favorite. Have a great day.
And I thought dads were the ones that played mind games.
H Gary. There were four kids in my family, two boys, two girls, and I knew that I was my dad's favorite. I knew it with everything I am. But when he died, I listened to my sister talking to friends, and I could tell she felt like she was the favorite. I was gonna correct her, but then I thought, what a neat dad I had, that he could make us both feel like we're favorites. I think my brothers did too, I miss Shannon.
We all do.
That's a great perspective to have. By the way, not that your tad lied to you or played mind games. That was my That was my perspective.
Gary, this is Dawn here, And like Forrest, I have two boys, and when my oldest one would complain about me favoring or loving the younger one more, my response was, well, Son, actually I have loved you the longest.
Which is true. Yeah, I guess Matt.
I love them both the same.
Yeah, thanks, thank you. I hope he's good at math.
Just got word out of Washington, DC that the Senate has confirmed Cash Betel as the Director of the FBI by a fifty one to forty nine vote, almost along party lines.
The machines are getting smarter.
This is tech Talk, brought to you by Skynette.
Mark Saltzman is our tech guy.
We talk all things well smart with Mark Saltzman. You can follow him on x Marc Underscore Saltzman for all the great tech tips of the day, and you can listen to him on the tech It Out podcast and
all of that good stuff. And we've talked before about technology that exists in cars these days, far and above what it was even even five years ago, the models that have come out, and now we're talking about some pretty incredible tech that is also attached to in some cases an internal combustion engine and sometimes a giant electric motor.
Yeah, I think a lot of the innovation is happening
in the EV space for sure. And so this week, I know, the LA Auto Show is at the end of the year, but we have the Canadian International Auto Show and so there's you know, a couple of dozen car makers here and yeah, there's been So I've been kicking the tires on some really cool vehicles, some of which are out now and some are coming down the road, and you know, they many of them, of course, have a lot of tech, which is was what piques my interest.
For EV's range is really getting up there. I know, the Lucid Error Grand Touring has over five hundred miles, but the yeah, the twenty twenty five Chevy Silverado EV does as well. So that's the equivalent of driving from LA to Vegas and back again without needing to charge up. Yeah, as the proclaimers once famously saying about going to be five hundred miles. So that's you can say goodbye to range anxiety with that. With that kind of range, that's great, right,
So every vehicle has that. That's kind of where we're capped out. I'll give it another couple of years and we'll see a thousand miles between charges as we see innovations in both the battery department as well as in the in the software to manage it all. But yeah, that was pretty cool. Then the pickup truck, the Chevy was pretty well. That's on one of their options, the
Rally Sport model it's called. It also has this sidewinder steering, so it's kind of like a crab walk where all four wheels can turn in the same direction, So that helps you over a rugged terrain or to sneak into.
A little tight part, little party lot.
Yeah, you know, I'm kind of surprised that that never really caught on. I remember back in the I want to say late eighties early nineties, Honda did that with four wheels steering where they would if you turn the wheel a little bit, it would kind of do that crab walk, and if you turn it all the way, the wheels would actually go stept the front wheels and the back wheels would go opposite directions for an even tighter turn.
You know.
And I think also when it comes to autonomous vehicles, which there's no shortage of those debuting this week here at.
The Auto Show as well.
You know, the first sort of sign of autonomous driving was the parallel parking feature I remember ten fifteen years ago. Easily you press a button and the vehicle assesses the distance between two cars and can squeeze between it. Not with the crab walk feature, but it just seems like that was like one of the first examples of autonomous technology.
And so yeah, don't you're right. I don't think the sidewinder or.
The crab walk feature has really taken off, but for those who want it, I guess, especially those in a pickup truck, I think it's kind of neat. And this isn't exactly new either, but BMW was showing off its new grill. It's at the front of the vehicle. It's like a self healing grill. It's been out for a couple of years, but it's getting better, so it's on the.
On some of their latest models.
So it's basically the way it works is that there's this I guess they call it a digital kidney grill, but it has this additional polyurethane coating that can repair itself, so you get scratches on it and within twenty four hours at room temperature, it could get rid of its scratches.
So that's kind of neat BMW. By the way, at the Consumer Electronics Show, over the last couple of years, they've shown color changing vehicles, first with grayscale, like going from black to white and kind of in between to full color. So I mean, they're really invested in technology, but that was kind of neat. We've seen some really cool gary some infotainment systems as big as forty eight inches for a panoramic display inside the distracting more than maybe,
so it's arguable. Yeah, this is the twenty twenty five Lincoln Navigator that I'm referring to. Yeah, I mean it's it's like a full on dashboard in there. Some people thought the Tesla's big tablet like display distracting, But the more the vehicles are driving for you, the more I guess you need to keep your eyes on the road.
I am kidding, but yeah, I mean, look, I as a geek, I like the innovations when it comes to technology and safety and range and some of the amenities, like you know, all the different kinds of cameras and sensors and autonomous driving that. That's excites me. I'm not a you know, I'm not a big car guy other than that.
But yeah, it does have to be safe to use. I'll give you that one hundred percent.
So that was pretty cool. So it's going on till the twenty third in Toronto. But we've had lots of visitors from the States. After all, we may be the fifty first state soon. Anyways, right, let's not go there.
Listen, we try to keep politics out of this set.
That is true.
That is true. Are you gonna watch that hockey game tonight?
By the way, I know that's a big one. Yeah, I've got a ideot it's gonna be a big one.
I know.
I even Trump posted about it. Yeah, we'll see.
But I hope that Canada does not reciprocate and boo the US national anthem. Disappointed that that happened at two previous games in Canada. But hopefully, you know, we'll see what happens in Boston. But yeah, it should be good, should be a great game.
Aim from X from Twitter, Elon Musk is Grock three And now they're saying it's available to everybody so temporarily.
Yeah, so on Monday, I believe. Elon Musk announced that Grock three, which is his large language model, his generative AI platform to compete against chat, GPT, his nemesis, and other players like Google Gemini. It is temporarily free to use, So if you go to x dot com and click on grock on the left hand side, that is the AI platform you can play around with. And it's pretty intelligent.
I've been using it this week, and you can have it do everything from create images for you royalty free that you can use I typed in show me an image of a peacock using a tablet sitting on the moon, you know, and it's like it's so fast too. But there are more practical applications. They have what's called the think option for deeper math and science encoding questions you may have. But this is just upping the AI arms race. Another feature called deep search is kind of like a
search engine on steroids. It'll immediately give you the summary of the results, not telling you where you'll find the results. And you can even attach a document like if you've got I don't know, a gym membership contract a PDF, right, you can upload it to grock and for free it will summarize it for you in plain English.
There's a lot of cool stuff.
You can add an audio file and say, translate this to another language, or give me a summary of this. I typed in as Gary and Shannon are they funny, and the answer was yes.
But there's styleleings.
So they say that your style liens on witty banter, playful chemistry, and an act for finding human excuse excuse me, finding humor in both the absurd and the every day, which helped them build a loyal audience in southern California's competitive talk radio scene. Yeah, and then it said that said their comedy is more morning coffee chuckle, then laugh out loud hysterics, which is tempered by their newsroom roots.
So giving you kudos, but you know.
Yeah, very accurate too. That's scary.
Yeah, and it gave it me that answer and like a split second, So yeah, you have.
Some fun with it.
If your listeners are on X there is going to be a Windows and Mac download like a separate application as well, but Grock three is free to try at x dot com.
Wow, that's very very cool.
We were doing a quick audience participation in asking if you had a favorite kid and I know you've got kids, so do you have a favorite.
I don't have a favorite.
We have twins, a boy girl twin who are turning twenty three and a younger boy.
Yeah.
I was listening to that and all the call in comments, which were great, We don't. My wife tells me she's got a favorite, but I don't play that game.
Now.
It's thirty three three percent love between them all night. Yeah. No, but genuinely, genuinely, I really don't have a favorite.
Oh that's too bad. I mean, hey, the day is young. Maybe one of them screws up. Yeah, yeah, exactly, give them time.
All right, Mark, thanks, great talk.
Trump's Justice Department has forced out a group of senior FBI officials made the unusual demand for the names of thousands of agents who participated in January sixth investigations to be released.
That one that case is actually in court right now.
A news conference that was supposed to follow talks between President Vladimir's Lensky and Ukraine and Trump's Ukraine envoy has been canceled. There was a meeting between President Zelenski and retired US Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, but at the end they didn't answer questions or make a statement or anything. They just posed for pictures. A Ukrainian presidential spokesman said that change was requested by the American side. The Pope's funeral is being practiced now.
The Pope's not.
Dead, but the Swiss Guard that is tasked with protecting popes has been rehearsing his funeral. Members of the Swiss Guard are under a curfew as they are quote preparing for the pontiff's death.
He's in the hospital.
The Vatican actually says Pope Francis is doing a bit better, but he has been diagnosed with a complex respiratory illness pneumonia as mattic bronchitis. All of that requires the use of Cortizon and antibiotic treatment. He's gonna be in the hospital for some time. As a kid, he had part of his lung removed. So players on both sides of this four nations face off final between USA and Canada today say this is the biggest hockey game of their lives.
Nine The last time they met was in the round robin portion of this international hockey tournament, and the first nine seconds saw three fights.
The puck drops.
Between those two teams again today at five on ESPN and in a few minutes actually spring training begins when the Cubs take on the Dodgers. Just after noon, we talked with Mark Saltzman there, our tech guy, about artificial intelligence, specifically the Grock product that's Elon Musk's company that's putting out its latest generative AI and making it available to everybody.
Here's a question that.
I don't think people are asking enough of, which is is artificial intelligence intelligence making us less intelligent? There are a lot of places that AI is being used. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't even thought of things like simple replying to emails. And there's some efficiencies that AI helps us with that can take some of the stuff off of our plate in the day, but there are other things that are problematic.
A quarter of thirteen to seventeen year olds, a quarter of them say they use chat GPT to write their homework. That's double the proportion from a year before. And about three percent are handing in Chat GPT answers without actually looking at them. They just stick it into Chat GPT. Whatever the output is, they turn that in without looking at it.
People have always cheated.
I remember I got caught cheating with a calculator in math when I was I don't know, fourth grade, something like that. But this is different, and they're saying that AI is actually different than some of those other tools.
If you look at people in fields like computer science or education, or business or administration, the use of AI tools is often associated with lower levels of critical thinking, which would be your ability to understand and question ideas and statements rather than just take them in without without critical thinking. And it's always been an issue. I think back to Socrates. Everybody remembers Socrates. He said, if you rely on writing, which at the time was sort of
a technological marvel. If you rely on writing, your memory is not going to be as good, and you're only going to have a mere surface level understanding of important logical arguments. The calculator, like I said, the pocket calculator. In the seventies, teachers were afraid kids were not going
to understand math. Search engines. Search engines in the nineties became a thing where you forgot how to use a library, whether it was the index card system that you had or even the computers that you that were sort of new at the time trying to find the book that you were looking for. You would forget things as soon as you were told them because you didn't actually do
the research to find them. But they're saying that AI is different than all of that because obviously Google or you know, a Safari or whatever you have on your smartphone, you can use your phone to store some of that stuff somewhere else. That frees your brain up for these other tasks. But AI is actually doing the thinking for you.
There is one profession, they said, that has been affected by AI chatbots the most, and that's computer programming, and some workers say they now feel just basically helpless if they can't use a chatbot to help them out. One programmer said he recently gave up a coding task on a flight because he didn't have Wi Fi connection to allow him to ask his virtual assistant how to do these things. Another one said, I just can't make myself code anymore because AI has taken over so much of
that at least at least as an assistant. People feel helpless without it, which means we're not thinking we're not creative enough to do some of that stuff ourselves.
That is weird.
All right trending stories. Jay Ratliffe, iHeartRadio's aviation analysts, is going to join us. We're going to talk a lot about the recent aircraft incidents and whether or not any of it has to do with the cuts at the FAA. That and strange science still to come. You miss any part of the show, go back and check out the podcast KFIAM six forty dot com, slash Gary Andshannon or anywhere you find your podcast. Just type in Gary and Shannon, but back right after this. 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 app.