You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty. You are listening to the Bill Handle Show. Here's Wayne Resnick, kamv Iames is forty man Cono. You kill it with the bumps. It's a Bill Handle show. He's back after the new year. Wayne Resume here until nine o'clock. And speaking of California, Governor Newsom, when he took office five and a half six years ago, whenever it was, he said he would be California's healthcare governor.
And he has made a lot of stuff happen. And some of those things he made happen may have to go away because we have a new federal administration that is not going to be very friendly toward some of the things that Governor Newsom has made happen. I think I just I want to focus on two big ones.
One of them very quickly, because abortion. Enough with talking about abortion, but just to point out that under Governor Newsom, California gave the right to an abortion put into the state constitution and passed a law that allows out of state doctors to perform abortions in California, and we built a big stockpile of the abortion medicines because remember they were trying to ban overturn the FDA approval of mifapristone. Also, he created this twenty million dollar fund to help Californians
who can't afford an abortion get an abortion. So he did all those things, and I think that we know the incoming federal administration is not down with any of that. So that is something he's going to have to fight about come January twenty. And then the other thing I want to bring up, and this is this. These are two of certainly a dozen or more things that he's done.
He made an Office of Healthcare Affordability. Laws have been passed about generic drugs and general If you remember where he said the state is going to get into the business of manufacturing insulin. That's proved harder to spin up than maybe he thought it that it would be. But here's the one thing, because on the one hand, it sounds crazy, but then I will reveal something that if it's crazy, then everybody's crazy. There's a program called medicaid.
It is healthcare for poor people, and in California it's administered under medical but you get for about half of the money spent through medical on healthcare comes from the federal government. It's Medicaid money, and it's supposed to go for things like doctors in medicine and emergency room visits.
But California, under a friendly administration, has been able to get waivers that allow California to spend Medicaid money on, for example, housing, because there is a trend of thought that says housing is healthcare, that for vulnerable populations, that having stable housing is vitally important to them even being able to pursue, you know, getting their medical needs taken care of. So the idea of housing as healthcare and waivers from the federal government allowed Medicaid money to be
spent on homeless housing. Well, that's only because you had an administration that was friendly to the idea and granted those waivers. And I don't think there's a chance in hades that the incoming administration is going to continue allowing that use of Medicaid money. In fact, not only might Governor Newsom have to fight to be allowed to do that, he's gonna have to fight not to have Medicaid money cut drastically. So he's got a huge battle on his hands.
And it does maybe sound crazy that housing is healthcare, and you're gonna use Medicaid money for housing. And I just want to point out, because sometimes California gets pointed at as the birthplace of crazy ideas, there's nineteen stakes that have been doing the same thing. Sometimes it's not just us, and as soon it might not be any of these states being allowed to do it. Let's talk about gift giving, and let's talk about gift returning, because a lot of gifts are given at this time of year,
and ooh, a lot of gifts are returned. The National Retail Federation estimates about a trillion dollars worth of merchandise was sold over the holiday period and that about one hundred and fifty billion of it returned. You've got a consumer research firm called Civic Science, and so this is a survey they did, and twenty eight percent of respond and said they had returned or exchanged a gift last year.
Because this was taken before this holiday season, and according to Statista, I'm not as big a freak as I've been made out to be. I have been criticized roundly and incessantly by several people in my life because I happen to think I happened to think that cash or a gift card, the more generic the better, Like a Visa gift card is better than a Starbucks gift card, but a Starbucks gift card is still pretty good. I
think those are good gifts. And people tell me I have no imagination and I'm thoughtless and bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah. And yet, according to Statista, the most desired Christmas gift in the US is cash, and the second most popular gift from
the recipient's gift cards. So excuse me, I'm not a freak, I'm a basic be So in any event, I bet right now, if you think about your home, there's probably something in there that somebody gave you as a gift that you don't really use, maybe hadn't thought about till I just prompted you to. But you haven't gotten rid of it either, because man, there's a whole bunch of etiquette around what do you do when somebody gave you a gift and you don't want it and you're not
sure how to handle it. And I'm not here to tell you how to handle it, because I do not work for Emily Post. But why why do you get gifts from people that are not really in your mind good gifts, believe it or not. There has been significant deep research into this question and the lead person in that area in that field is Deborah Cone from the New York Institute of Technology, who published this exhaustive paper in a journal called and there is a journal called
the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior. Every issue has a centerfold of Bill Handle in it. And she looked at how this happens, what is the psychology behind the gift giving that doesn't work out, and has identified specific reasons that people sometimes when they give gifts, they're not being nice at all. The least benign, I'm sorry,
the least malicious. The most benign is when simply you don't know enough about the person and all you really remember is they said something once about the Miami Dolphins, so you thought it would be cool to get them Miami Dolphins jersey. But it turns out they don't really love the Miami Dolphins at all. It's just a thing they said once. Now that's not the selfish kind of gift giving. That's the trying to personalize a gift and not really realizing that you don't know as much about
the person as you should. Now we get into the bad stuff, the dark stuff. Here are some reasons that people will give you a crappy gift. One of them is they want bragging rights. They're not really giving the gift for you. They're giving the gift for the other people who see you open the gift, and maybe it's something very expensive or very elaborate, and that everybody else will go, WHOA, what a great gift, and they get all the kudos. Even though it might be expensive or elaborate,
it's not something that you're interested in having. And a related concept is the gift I give to you for me. This usually happens in marriages or partnerships, where for example, I really like a pair of headphones, So what I do is I give you the gift of those headphones, because hey, we live together, you're my wife. I know I'm gonna be using those headphones. It really wasn't for you, it was for me. There's also the I know better
than anyone else thing. You might have a gift registry, and there's a kind of person who will look at what's on your gift registry and deem them all to be blame or boring and instead get you something else, not because they really think you'll like it better, but because they're rejecting what you want for a gift and they're gonna show you. It's kind of a control thing.
And then you also have the downright aggressive gift. They're mad at you, and even though they don't realize that it's affecting their choice of gift, it is, and subconsciously, because they're so mad at you, they give you something crappy. So the next time, the next time you get a crappy gift from someone, I guess you have to ask yourself,
are they self absorbed, ignorant or mean? Imagine hearing two people argue a couple because somebody left a wet towel on a bathroom floor, and the other person hates that a wet towe was left on the bathroom floor, and they are going at it with this argument. Now imagine one person who's part of this argument that you're hearing is hundreds of miles away from you because the other person is having the argument on their phone on speaker phone.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is an epidemic in the United States of America anyway, where people have forgotten mass amnesia, as if some kind of radiation came down from space, targeting our brains and erasing the little part of the brain that holds the memory of earbuds that earbuds exist, because for some reason, you all stopped using earbuds, and you're walking around, standing around holding your phone not up to your head, holding your phone about a foot in
front of your face, talking at it, and someone else is talking out of it at you, and I'm hearing it now. I want to tell a little story because I didn't know. I didn't know that I was witnessing the birth of a problem at the time, but I think now that I was. There is a coffee shop in Larchmont called Go Get Them Tiger. I'm not endorsing them. I mean, I'm not not endorsing them. They're good, but
that's not why I'm bringing up. I'm bringing them up because they are the place that on Thanksgiving they have a tradition that on Thanksgiving Day they make a special menu of special coffee drinks that usually they are elevated versions of certain coffee drinks that other huge coffee chain sell and it's a big deal. The place is packed
all day and I went one Thanksgiving. I went over there and the place is packed, and I'm waiting for my order, and there's this kid and he is watching something on a phone on speed like with the speaker on, and it's loud, and I don't like it. And I looked at it. And here's the thing. At the time, I was on the phone with a friend, appropriately on earbuds and speaking very softly. So I look at this
kid and I just go, you got any earbuds? And it turns out he did, and he got them out of his pocket and he used them because hopefully I shamed him for listening to his phone audio without earbuds in a public place. Now, I didn't know at the time that one day everybody would be doing the same thing and I would have to have the travel skills of a Santa Claus to go all around the country and confront everybody who in any moment is yacking or watching a movie or a TikTok on their phone on
the speaker. If you've flown anytime in the last year, you've heard it or you've done it. I don't know which one you want. Airplane terminals are one of the worst places for this. I think part of it is you're not allowed, you know, to be on the phone on the flight, so everybody's got to get their stuff in before they board. But also where are your earbuds?
And maybe in an airplane terminal. The thinking is, I'll when I get on the plane, i won't be on the phone, I'll watch my tiktoks and I'll put in my earbuds. But I don't want to run the battery down, So in the terminal while we're all waiting to board, I'll blast my TikTok to the world. Do you know if you fly American Airlines or you fly Alaska Airlines, they make an announcement about, hey, you need to wear headphones or earbuds if you're going to listen to content
on this flight. And if you go to Delta's website, they have a section about their in flight entertainment and they've got a thing on that website now that says plays if you're gonna watch anything on a flight, use headphones. Flight attendants say every single flight there's at least one
person doing this. Also, the people who do it are getting more and more virulent because it used to be, let's say two years ago, when this was going on, if somebody was doing it and you just kind of gave them a look, they would cut it out and they would either mute the device or they'd put in earbudgs. Now people are talking back. Somebody's on a plane, they're watching a movie on their iPad with the with the you know, the speakers, and you say, hey, would you
mind using headphones? A lot of times they'll ignore you or even say you are being rude. Man. It used to be. Remember remember when everybody had earbuds. Remember when if you bought an iPhone, you got earbuds with the phone. And they stopped doing that. Uh in I think it was twenty twenty that they stopped including a pair of wired earbuds with an iPhone, and maybe that was the beginning of the end. Part of the problem too, is you might not be on it when people are not
on a call. It used to be when you had a phone, a cell phone, and you weren't on a call. If you were using it, it was something quiet. Maybe you were texting or checking email. That's about it. Now you're either on a phone call, yacking, or you're watching videos. Everybody's watching videos if they're not talking to somebody, because nobody knows how to be alone with themselves anymore. I still do not understand why, though people have no compunction
about doing it with the speakers on. And this happens everyone where I go supermarket. Yes, ah, they have Texas peats, and they have Tabasco and they have Tabasco green, and oh they have Tabasco scorpion pepper. That sounds good. Yeah, and take a scorpion pepper. Will try and see. It's too hot for us in the gym. You're supposed to be working your body in a gym, not watching tiktoks. For the entire cardio machine section to hear, we need lass man. I know I'm not a big government guy.
But here's the problem. Okay, it's not that we have big government and it's bad, or we don't have enough government and it's bad. It's that we have this bizarrely shaped government where parts of it are too big and controlling and other parts of it need to step it up. I'm not saying the death penalty for having a speakerphone call in public. I'm not saying death penalty that would almost certainly be unconstitutional. Twenty years sounds good to me. Are they great or do they suck? He knows? But
first animals in the news, but never upsetting. This is heavy petting. All right, Let's start with this year's American Humane Hero Dog Award winner. It is Bo, Bo, the blood hound from North Carolina who works with the Gastonia Police Department. Bo is a youngin at the tender age of just eighteen months, but he has already made a big difference in the lives of a lot of people.
And I'm about to tell you how. When he was just eight weeks old, Bo began training to be a bloodhound, which, as you know, is a dog that you say, here, here's a smell, Go find that smell out in the world. Apparently he took to it pretty rapidly, because he has already found a missing eleven year old, a seven year old who had been Uh, this part's not that fun,
but it turns out fine. A seven year old had been kidnapped, and they gave Bo a little piece of that boy's clothing, and Bo found that kid seven miles away, and the child was unharmed and returned to the delighted parents. He also has found a whole bunch of I don't even have the number, a whole bunch of seniors with dementia. You know, sometimes seniors with dementia, they end up getting
lost and he finds them. And even when and I am not trying to slight the other bloodhounds, but apparently sometimes other bloodhounds can't find them, BO can find them. So kudos to you and your sniffer, good boy. Now, speaking of heroes, there's this eight year old kid, his name is Zay and Barry, and one day who's out with his skateboard and he sees another group of kids and they they are teasing a little feral kitten and he's like, that's bogus. But there's multiple of them and
only one of me. I doubt they're gonna listen to my pleas for humanity, and there's no way I can take them all. So you know what he did. He said, Hey, if you leave this kitten alone, I will give you my skateboard. And they went for it must have been a pretty good skateboard, and he gave up his skateboard, oh to save this kitten. And then what happened. The kitten fell madly in love with Zay and Barry and is now the family pet at the Barry house. And
you may say, ah, but he he gave up his skateboard. Oh, no worries here, because guess what happened. They took the cat to the Humane Society be checked out, and everybody was so like, oh, this kid and he gave up his skateboard. So here's what happened. A manager at the Humane Society got in touch with with Zuomies, which you see in a lot of malls that sells, amongst other things,
skateboard stuff. And they got together and they gave him a big fat gift card which allowed him to go into the local Zuomies not only get a new skateboard, he was able to custom design to his specific specifications his dream skateboard. So he ended up with a better skateboard and a best friend. And that is cool. That's such a precious story. What a great kid, What a good kid. And then finally say happy birthday to Henry.
Henry is a crocodile and he lives at a conservation center on a private piece of land in South Africa. And guess who he lives with, Come and knock on a door. It's Henry and six lady crocodiles. Yeah, and he has lived a long time. He's huge, by the way, you want how big he is. He weighs over fifteen hundred pounds. He is over sixteen feet long. He is still growing because crocodiles are one of the animals that keep growing their whole life. You know, we grow until
seventeen eighteen sixteen depends and then we're done. You're not growing anymore. I mean maybe maybe, uh with wise, that's on you and me, but height wise, you're not growing anymore. Their whole life. He grows, and he is one hundred and twenty four years old. He's in perfect health. Getting older is not slowing him down, they claim. I don't know if this is true. Okay, maybe this number got a exaggerated, but they claim that he has fathered over
ten thousand little crocodiles. That's a busy boy. Of course, he's surrounded. I mean he's surrounded by women for exactly that reason, so they can keep, you know, pumping out crocodiles. So happy birthday to Henry the old big randy crocodile. And that is heavy petting for you. Almost certainly we'll do this again next week. This is KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening
to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app