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This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.
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Broadcasting. Live from the Abraham Lincoln radio studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong and Getty. And now here's Armstrong and Getty. Live from Studio C. Si, senor.
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A dimly lit room deep within the bowels of the Armstrong and Yeti Communications compound.
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Kicking off a brand new week.
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Pregnant with possibilities. Who knows what's gonna happen with this week? It's the week you meet Mr. Or Mrs. Wright.
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It's the week you get your promotion. Oh, wow.
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It's the week she says, I've found someone else. It's the week I march you to your car with a cardboard box.
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What the. What whiplash.
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Life is funny that way. Anywho, today we're under the tutelage of our general manager.
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You know, it's got to be the NFL playoffs, which just been insanely exciting, but unbelievable. Before we get to that, my, my other general manager nominee, maybe the NFL playoffs will appoint chairman of the board. Our general manager is going to be K flicked or Khan.
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Oh, you're making up words though.
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Either K flicked or con. It's a combination of conflict and chaos.
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Oh, gotcha.
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And you can do. You can have them in what order you want. I was think thinking about that. I was reading about Trump's latest insane feud. This time he and Jerome Powell, chairman of the Fed, are practically gonna draw iron on Pennsylvania Avenue and shoot it out in the street. Big new dramatic, slandering each other in the media, blah, blah, blah. It fits in with the whole threatening war against Denmark. For the love of God. Trump's comfort zone is conflict and chaos.
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So Joe and I are old and when we were kids, I was a big NFL fan. Gladys. Talking about reminiscing. Gladys, that's when you play the harp. When we were kids, NFL was huge. But there was like one exciting game a month.
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I mean, oh yeah, I remember that was the 6 to 3 barn burner between the packers and the Bears.
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They were rarely close and there wasn't much scoring. It just very seldom was a game exciting. And if a game come down to the last like minute or something like that, oh, it stood out as just so exciting. Super Bowls were boring. I don't know how they tweaked the rules or did whatever they did in the NFL over the years. But now this weekend, the whole weekend was just nail biting barn burners down.
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To the last second.
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Stunning action if you like the sport. Just amazing, right?
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This is, this is crazy. And just the uniqueness of it, even if you're not a football fan. So since the league expanded to its current playoff system, which is five years ago, no wild card round. That's what we just had this weekend. Including tonight, by the way. Had ever had more than one fourth quarter lead change? Never more than one. As of last night it was 12. And we have one more game to go.
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That's. It's stunning.
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Just, it's.
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It's.
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It's like the fix is in. I mean, if you're conspiracy minded, never mind that it would be impossible to get this conspiracy going. But if you're a conspiracy minded, I would have to listen to you. Seriously. From 1 to 12. Wait a minute. What? You took stats class? That's. That's like four standard deviations or something.
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How are you gonna play 60 minutes of football with all the things going on, everything like that, and then it coming down to the last 30 seconds like every game. How are you gonna do that? But. And then you have to be a sports fan to enjoy this. Why does God hate Justin Herbert? He hates him for some reason. He gets the bejesus beaten out of him every time he makes it to the playoffs. For a guy. Jeez, that was rough.
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Any rough line of work, you get paid pretty well. But rough.
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Any who that was, that was a lot of fun. If you liked the football, certainly was.
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I.
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My town, USA had a decent size. One of the biggest protests, maybe the biggest protest I've ever seen in that little town's history. One of the 1,000 anti ICE protests that occurred across the country in various sized towns. Because that continues to go on. It's interesting that it's become a should ice do their job or not question. What's the alternative?
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Right. As always with these folks, I just would like them to spell out what they want in. In good adult sentences and then we can talk about it.
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Something's heated up.
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I want the end to oppression. Okay, all right.
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Something is definitely heated up. I got flipped off three times this weekend in my cybertruck. Three times.
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And those were your close friends? Yeah.
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It's amazing. I mean, and with the angry face too. Woman in her car yesterday. Both fingers just.
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Oh, her face was just. Oh, she's so mad as a mentally ill person.
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That's nuts.
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Yeah, that's nuts.
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You shouldn't encounter people like that very often who are that angry about what someone else drives.
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I know.
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That's crazy. I was. I think I tweeted about this on Friday. The first time I got flipped off over the weekend. A guy in A motorcycle. He's riding at me and he's just flipping me off. Riding with one hand. And, and I thought, or I tweeted that I've known that most people in a Subaru or a Volvo or a Progressive for decades. It's never. I don't agree with their politics. It's never across my mind to flip them off.
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I mean, that would make you an angry crazy.
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That would make me crazy. Like actually nuts.
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Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm not trying to be funny. I'm not. They have a mental imbalance that's significant and I guarantee you it affects their lives.
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And I guess my point is how are there that many people that are mentally ill and how.
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It just.
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I know I'm, I know I'm biased on this, but it really seems to me like there's more take their politics to the point of being crazy on the left than there are on the right.
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I guarantee you that's true. By the numbers. I absolutely guarantee you. Yeah. It's not unknown on the right, but please, please, I know so many staunch conservatives from the like boardroom, country club type to the redneck, they go hunting every weekend type and all points in between, and not a single one of them sees a liberal and say, God, that makes me so angry. They just roll their eyes and chuckle.
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If you think about it at all, it's something and it's not good. It's not a minor thing. It's. It's, it's not good. I was trying to think, I wonder if this was like, I'm not really old enough for this, but like way back in the day when right wingers would beat up hippies just, you know, just that they saw them. I wonder if this is the reverse of that. Now it's, now it's on the lefty side where you, you're so angry at the mere existence of the other side.
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You'Ve bought the, the worst descriptions of your own side and have become convinced. Yeah. That they're, they're evildoers amongst us.
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It's not good. Not gonna help us solve anything. And, you know, it fits in with the, with the, the whole Minnesota thing and everything.
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Wild.
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I'm royal times.
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It's all the K flicked or. Or Kanas.
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Yeah. And then. Yeah, I got the problem of. Our politicians think this is awesome and stoke it on a regular basis on both sides because there's no more money to be made in it. That doesn't help either.
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Right. And occasionally you get the grown up in the room who says, hey, can everybody calm down? Let's talk about this like adults. You know how much they raise. Having said that, jack squat.
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Yeah.
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Nothing. It's fever pitch. Anger and angst. That's what sells, baby. Yes, Michael. No, I'm just thinking when I'm driving, I'm listening, you know, to music. Or I'm thinking about what my days.
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Occurs to me, you're listening to the.
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Armstrong and Getty podcast cast. It's in your contract. Nothing but that. But it never occurs to me what politics is the person in front of me driving. I know.
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And I. I was thinking about this yesterday, too. Joe mentioned boardrooms. I thought, okay, so this is all based on the. Who's the largest shareholder in the car company for the car that I drive. I'm thinking because a lot of business people lean right are conservative. I'm thinking a lot of the people at the top running Subaru, Toyota, Ford, whoever the hell, are probably conservative. And you would hate their politics. They're just not out there talking about it.
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No, they keep a low profile because they saw what happened.
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Old Elon, you think all these businessmen who run all these companies are progressives. You nut jobs.
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Right. Exactly.
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Let's start the show. Officially. I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty on this. How in the world did it get to be. Already we're halfway through the month, practically Monday, January 12, the year 2026, where Armstrong and getting. We approve of this program.
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Wow. Let's swing into action. Now, according to FCC rules and regulations, here we go at Mark.
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That small population out there that's already half nuts.
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They hear this rhetoric that ISIS racist.
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And the Nazis and they're disappearing people that empowers them to do stupid things. This is true.
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Tom Holman is the voice of calm and compromise. He's the adult in the room. That's interesting.
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There's not a lot of that, though.
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No, no, this is.
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This is gonna end well. Nothing ever ends. The history just continues. But this is going to peak with a really violent scene at some point. I think that really gets everybody's attention. Although, you know, the president almost had his head blown off, so I don't know what it would take to get us all to think, okay, I think maybe we've gone too far. Nothing seems to do it well.
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And then you get to, like, the top of the crazy pyramid. There's no reaching those people anyway. And so if they are willing to, you know, commit an act of violence, like trying to blow the president's Head off, for instance, and then that just steams things up again. I don't, I don't know where it ends unless there's by popular acclaim, just a cultural norm that comes in. And it exists actually in some cultures. Hey, no, you make it a big loud display over there. That's uncool. We don't. We're not those people around here. But we are, unfortunately.
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Yeah, we're a long way from that one. Okay, we got Katie's headlines on the way and more news of the day. Are we going to war with Iran? Trump's talking pretty tough and maybe rightfully so. So lots today. Stay with us. Text line 415295 KFTC Armstrong and Getty. So Trump said Iran is close to crossing his red line. You don't like to draw red lines as a president or a parent or a boss and let people go by them because then your future red lines tend to not have a lot of meaning. But Trump say, Trump said, you start killing protesters and you've crossed my red line. He said that, what, a week ago? There are quite a few dead people in Iran after this weekend.
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Yeah, hundreds or thousands, depending on who you believe. It's difficult to get the accurate numbers. And frankly, you know, if I want to overthrow the mullahs and Trump says if a thousand people die, I'm coming in. I'm saying a thousand people are dead. Their intentions are good, but who knows how true it is. Lot to talk about today as always. Let's figure out who's reporting what. It's the lead story with Katie Green. Katie?
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Well, that exact topic is at the top of the Alphabet Network.
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So here we go.
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Abc, Iranian leader and Trump trade threats as activists say protest deaths are rising. NBC, Trump says Iran wants to negotiate ways, quote, strong options to respond to deadly protest crackdown. And CNN, Iran, quote, prepared for war, but open to U.S. talks as hundreds reported killed.
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They're prepared for war in the same way I'm prepared to fight the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Please, Iran.
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Iran says our military bases are targets if we attacked them. Okay, I'm sure they were targets after we blew the bejesus out of you last year and you didn't do anything. Not only have they killed, who knows, 500, a thousand or more, they've detained many, many, many thousands or snatching them out of hospitals, as we talked about last week, sending them off to prisons to be tortured and die. So, yeah, Trump's got some big decisions to make. And he's meeting with his.
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Advisers Tomorrow.
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About the whole military reaction from the New York Times.
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Federal prosecutors open investigation into fed pair, Fed Chair Powell.
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I don't like this story.
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It's ridiculous, honestly. Come on. Donald J. Focus Focus.
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From Fox. Trump says Greenland's defense is, quote, two dog sleds as he pushes for US Acquisition of territory.
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Oh, my God.
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Now we're threatening our allies.
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Come on. Oh, my God. You've got at least four dog sleds. Oh, geez. That is horrible. And funny.
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From Reuters, Besant says US May lift more Venezuela sanctions this week.
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Yeah. How this goes forward is anybody's guess. I've never even heard like, you know, some sort of theoretical, you know, paper in a poly side class how this relationship is going to go forward.
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The oil, the whole oil company question is a big one, too. How are you going to get the oil companies in there and make sure that we don't get some oil company exec snatched or stuff blown up or whatever, and then we're really in it, all right?
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And the commies are still in charge. And, you know, Trump was making me insane over the weekend, so one of the, they had that big meeting with the oil execs and the guy from Exxon was especially skeptical about, look, we've had our, our entire operation confiscated twice in Venezuela. I just, I don't see it happening again. And so Trump now is pissed and says, yeah, we're not going to let Exxon in. The other oil companies could go in because the guy expressed skepticism.
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Come on, Financial Times. Can battery powered skis do for ski touring what E bikes did for cycling?
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What now? Battery powered skis?
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Now you're talking.
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Gravity is what takes you down a hill on skis. Is this to get you to go up the hill or is this for cross country skiing?
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Well, you got your cross country and then you got your, your flat land and uphill for downhill skiing. Tell you what, I ski downhill and I get the lifts over there. I got to do that whole awkward I'm skating on skis thing, or my power skis can take me there, make sure I get as little exercise as.
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Possible, which is the goal, apparently, right?
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From the New York Post, Latest Gen Z term chop old ganger is an insult.
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Okay, Tell me what it means in case somebody throws it at me.
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Means you're an ugly doppelganger. Apparently being chopped today means ugly.
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So you're a doppelganger for somebody. Like an uglier version.
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Yeah, you're an uglier version of someone that's.
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There's no need for that at all. There's plenty of ugly in the world. Yikes.
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Study finds young Americans are unplugging and it's making them happier.
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Yeah, no joke.
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You think?
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Yeah. There's some new science out. What's the headline? 3. Three arguments from science. Three science backed reasons to put down your phone and daydream instead.
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I want to talk about that later.
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And finally, the Babylon B NFL announces each quarter of the playoff games will be broadcast on different streaming services.
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No kidding. No kidding.
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End of the first quarter, if you want to catch the second quarter, you need to go over to Peacock Hulu. If you subscribe to that, you try to figure out where it is. That's pretty funny. We'll get to some of the news of the day. If you miss the segment, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand.
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And Getty. Our friend Tim Sandifer sent the proofs.
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Yesterday of his brand new book on the Declaration of Independence that is coming out in April. And I started reading it last night. Man, was it entertaining. I can't wait to get through this whole thing.
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Wow. Fantastic.
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I should have. The name of it proclaiming Liberty is the name of the book, comes out in April. Really good stuff about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the writing of the Declaration and this our anniversary year, you know, 2026. So 150 years ago, I just happened.
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To peruse a very brief, a long article, but very briefly about Thomas Paine and the character that he was and how he'd come to America penniless and had had to sell everything he owned in London to escape debtors prison. And as you know, he's a bit of a. A firebrand and half a nut. And In January of 1776, he was yelling for independence when very, very few people were. And how that became more and more influential.
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I'm looking forward to all of the founding stuff that we're going to hear about this year.
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Yeah. Yeah, I am too. Welcome to what I'm going to call Joe Getty's the Amazing Brain.
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That's our feature. Joe Getty's the Amazing Brain.
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The Amazing Brain. I was boring our daughter and her man with various descriptions of birds and natural phenomenon near our house. And realized my dream, really my dream career is to be the American David at Attenborough. You know, the Canada goose with its plaintive cry in the fall moves south for. You know, I haven't written it out, but you know, I think I could do that well because I really like nature, so I could really take like describing different Sorts of pine cones. Very serious. Well, anyway, so. Oh, the amazing Br. Joe Getty's the Amazing Brain. Why you should put your phone down and daydream instead. People consistently underestimate how much they would enjoy just thinking.
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I thought about this yesterday. I was. I don't remember what I was about to do. Maybe take a shower or something like that. I listened to. I listen to books when I'm showering and I enjoy it. But I have cut out almost all time where I'm not taking in content. It's good content, it's easily defendable content. It's not crap that I'm taking in. But there's not a lot of downtime for my brain.
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Right. So they mentioned that daydreaming has been the subject of scientific research for decades and we. I don't know if this is still currently true, but spend as much as half of our awake time daydreaming or listening to our own thoughts. Not always pleasant. In one famous study, which I didn't dig into, but participants preferred to get an electric shock rather than sit quietly with their own thoughts. Thoughts. Oh boy.
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Go ahead and shock me just so I know I'm alive. I can't sit here and listen to my own thoughts.
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Yeah. So this one professor at University of Florida said she compared idly scrolling on the phone to cognitive junk food, meaning it might feel good in the moment, but really doesn't do it much for us. So much of what we've accomplished as humans come from higher order thinking. So here are three reasons to leave your phone in your pocket, let your mind wander instead. Number one, you'll probably enjoy it more than you think. 2022 study researchers found that people consistently underestimated how much they would enjoy just thinking. They were asked to predict how they would feel, and then afterward they were asked how it went.
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I know my kids who have been trained by this their whole lives. You know, the bonded world, find it just intolerable. Absolutely intolerable. You would think that that wouldn't be a natural response. If it's so good for us.
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How quickly could you undo it, though, is my devil's advocate question.
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I have no idea.
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I don't. They've.
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They've never known a different thing, though. I mean, anybody younger than when the iPhone came out in 2007. So everybody under, what, 45 or something like that. Never, never done it any differently. Can't even imagine. It seems so strange that you would just have your own thoughts, but arguing with myself, as I said, you would think if it's good for us. We would be more inclined to enjoy it and want to do it.
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But potato chips are horrible for us.
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You'd think we'd be less inclined to eat potato chips, but we're not.
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Yeah, funny you should bring that up. Anyway, so this one scientist said, the ability to go elsewhere in our minds is what makes us human. And I find myself wondering, you know, because chimps. I was going to make a joke about, must mate, must eat. Must mate, must eat.
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Those are my thoughts.
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Must mate, right, Homer J. Armstrong. But then, you know, when chimps are resting and they're glancing around, they got to be thinking about something, right? Or their minds just completely blank.
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Man, is her ass red. She must want that.
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That's baboons. All right. Number two reason to put down your phone and just daydream. Daydreaming may help you solve problems. One of the most important reasons our minds wander is that this kind of free association thinking is effective for solving, often more than sitting down with the intention of figuring out a solution. People do this a lot when they're driving. And you know what? I am willing to bet every single person listening to these words is going to think, oh, yeah, that's true when I say this. Showering, putting on makeup, all of these kinds of things. When you're doing something in the external world, it's sort of automatic. Your thoughts are free to wander, and that's when you have great thoughts. I used to joke during the show that it's when I ran to the bathroom that I would have these great either ideas or put things together or come to a realization or what have you. It's just this undeniable.
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I don't know. I don't. I can't answer your question because I haven't done it in so long. I haven't taken a shower or gone to the gym and lifted weights or anything without listening to a podcast or something in a very, very long time. So I don't remember what that's like.
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Wow. Wow. Well, keep torturing your poor brain. Research suggests people are more likely to solve a problem after a period of mind wandering, even if. If they weren't consciously thinking about the issue at all.
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Yeah, I know that. I used to do that with term papers. Worked for me all the time through high school and college. I'd get stumped, and I just think, I'm gonna go to bed, and when I wake up, I'll have a. I'll have an idea. And I would wake up with an idea. And it was not like I was pondering it. My brain would work on it while I was asleep.
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A few weeks ago, some of you good folks with fabulous memories might be able to refresh mine, but we had a handful of quotes from the great thinkers of history talking about how a long walk was utterly just indispensable to them doing what they do. Let's see.
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I wonder how Elon does it because he's really big into taking in information and podcasts and all that sort of stuff and thinks we can do it at, you know, two times the speed if we practice and all that sort of stuff. I don't get the sense that he does a lot of mind wandering yet he comes up with all kinds of things, so I'd love to know how he approaches it.
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Yeah. Although that would be interesting. But he is absolutely an outlier neurologically to the rest of us.
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No doubt.
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So I'm not sure what it would have to do with me. Finally, Daydreaming makes you feel closer to people. I did not see this one coming. This other researcher has spent much of her research time exploring daydreaming and imagination has found surprising social and emotional benefits. In one study, participants were asked to imagine either a pleasant interaction with a loved one or another positive but non social event like getting a good grade. The people who imagine time with a loved one felt more connected to that person. Blah, blah, blah. You think about the people in your life and it makes you feel closer to them.
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Hanson and I have both had this experience recently with kids where they lost their screen time privileges and you notice a positive change in their demeanor very quickly. Wow. That is interesting.
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Yeah.
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I was surprised that it happened so fast. One of my kids lost all his screen time and he is clearly calmer and just, I don't know, like.
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Just.
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Seems freer more easily in the world without any screen time. Isn't that interesting?
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I don't doubt that for a second.
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I don't either.
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So there's more to Joe Getty's the Amazing Brain. I found this actually oddly disturbing or something. You know, when your mind goes blank temporarily.
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Yeah.
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Scientists think consciousness may actually pause while you're awake. The brain patterns during mind blanking resemble the markers seen in deep sleep or anesthesia, I think, but occur as brief lapses during otherwise normal wakefulness.
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I think I happened to Justin Herbert three times in the last two minutes of the game last night. Oh geez.
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It happens more than you might think. People experience complete mental blankness about 16% of the time during simple tasks. Nearly half as often as mind wandering. So I wonder if that varies, person to person, that their mind just goes completely blank and with their drool coming out of their lips or what.
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But I don't know that I drool very often, but my mind does go blank occasionally.
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So your brain shows opposite patterns for each of those two things. Mind wandering makes people faster and more impulsive their. Their minds. Mind blanking slows responses and creates absences where people miscues entirely as if mentally checked out.
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Well, like we've talked about many times, it's possible that staring at your phone is going to be looked at the same way. We look at smoking now, and people look back and say, like we do now. Doctors used to recommend smoking take the edge off after a long day. How crazy is that? And maybe, you know, 20 years from now, look back, people used to walk around, stare at their phone all the. All day long without any limits, and nobody thought there was anything wrong with it.
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How crazy is that? I wonder if people will start to look at it like you look at somebody who watches the view. There's a dullard with nothing else to do or think about.
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Right.
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They're just taking in mental anesthesia till the day they die.
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Or it'll be more like eating healthy. Where there are pocket cities, states, families, where you.
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You.
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You exercise and eat better. And then pocket city states, families where you take in all the crap and everybody's overweight and out of shape. Correct with smartphone usage.
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That one.
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That one, yeah. That's pretty interesting.
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Yeah.
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I don't think. I don't feel like we need any studies.
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Our own lives.
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My own life experience seems to make it pretty clear. Unlike smoking. It'd be like if smoking. You smoked your first pack of cigarettes and you got a tumor growing out of your neck. That's the way they're having smartphones is. It's like immediately, I can't read books, right?
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That's. That's why I'm such a zealot for it. What's happening in my own brain. I don't need anybody. I'm not trying to tell anybody how to live. But I'm just. And you and everybody else is just being honest about what they've observed in themselves. Just because a giant corporation thinks I ought to do something because they make more money if I do, doesn't mean I wanna. I'm not gonna eat it. I'm not gonna. Well, in some cases, I am gonna eat it, but we're talking aspirationally here. I'm not gonna eat it. I'm not gonna watch it, I'm not gonna stare at it just because it's been offered to me.
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I am 12 days with no desserts on my New Year's Eve. My New Year's resolution. So I'm pretty happy about that. We got Mailbag on the way and a lot of other stuff. Stay here.
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Armstrong and Getty.
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How you feeling about life? Pretty good, huh? A couple weeks into the New year, Feeling good about things. Personally speaking, I'm just asking the listener.
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Yeah, okay. I'll wait till they answer.
A
Somebody texted. Elon lays down on his back in a dark room to daydream without stimuli. I don't know if that's true or not, but. Sounds like something he might do.
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Yeah, sounds like a good idea. I'd probably nod off, but you, you do you in whatever manner you see fit.
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You wouldn't design a new rocket. You would just fall asleep. Yeah.
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Dream of stupid stuff, probably. Yeah, I need. I need something. I. I actually, I Seriously, I love sitting out back and just watching nature go by. That's how I daydream. Love it. Here's your freedom hating quot the day. We're back to that. From the great dictators and fiends of history shining a light from the other side of liberty to understand its threats and what keeps it safe. I've got a series from Vladimir Lenin that will chill you to the bone. Tomorrow's especially. Okay, but today's is a classic repeated by other fiends throughout history. A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
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Seems to be the case.
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Yep. Yeah, I know. Thomas Sowell has a version of that that I found very, very persuasive. I wish I had it in front of me because he is a gifted, gifted wordsmith and I am not worthy to lick his boots. It's hard to understand imagine why he would want me to do that. But he said essentially that people mistake familiarity for truth. They just heard something a bunch and figure it must be true anyway. Mailbag from snow mailbagarmstrongygetty.com the phrase you're looking for writes Diane in beautiful Chico, California. Last week we were discussing how sometimes the craziest, wildest thing you can do is nothing. The most iffy, chancy, long shot that it'll work out thing you can possibly do is not to make a choice. She said, the phrase you're looking for is not to decide. Is to decide.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Indeed. And all my fellow Rush fans, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Same idea My crazy liberal sisters writes Anonymous. Here's a picture of my crazy liberal sisters, twins, college educated, completely moronic, protesting in Washington, D.C. one's got a no ICE sign, the other has a sign that says abolish ICE. Well, would you suggest we not have immigration law and customs law, or we not enforce them having passed them, or put it in the hands of the Park Service? What's your solution anyway? These people are fools. Let's see. Tony wants to know the answer to this question. Trump says to walk peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol. Walt says we are at war with the federal government. Who is the insurrectionist now? Yeah, two wrongs, et cetera. But I see your point. Let's see. Kevin, the Texas Marine with a question about the clearly not a DEI hire in Philadelphia. Oh, that's the reference to the sheriff who announced that they will be arresting any ICE agents who come to Philadelphia. We will play that back and forth for you presently. He says, she called ICE Trump's wannabe army. Does she realize that as commander in chief, Trump actually has an army? An actual army, a navy, an Air force, even my beloved Marine Corps. Perhaps someone could pass that on to her as she may not be aware.
A
Yeah, that could be the big showdown. If they're serious. If surely no police chief is going to start arresting ICE agents. But that's what they said, and we'll get into that now.
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Or two and unrelated. Today is National Hot Tea Day. Former producer positive Sean would approve. I may enjoy a nice cup of Earl Grey this afternoon to celebrate National Hot Tea Day.
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What? How did you put that in mailbag lead?
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Well, it was Kevin, the Texas Marine threw it in. All right, I like Kevin, but you.
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Mock the idea of national this and that day all the time.
B
I do. I constantly, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I got these out of order. No, I didn't. That's right. I interrupted my own flow with the tea thing. Let's see. Rich says, I asked my. My cousin in Philadelphia about their sheriff and he said, oh, you mean our sheriff with no authority, no education and no clue. Hey.
A
Yeah.
B
She did not strike me as. Somebody referred to her as a DEI sheriff. I guess that was Kevin. And then this is interesting from Ryan in Houston. It was always thought provoking. The worst things that happened to Congress. Dear Cold Warrior, an old fancy Jack. The worst things that happened to the legislative branch was, number one, Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama in part because she voted for the Iraq war. And second, the Supreme Court decided gay marriage was legal. The first showed that you can lose your job as an elected grifter if you put your name to any controversial bill and second shows that if you don't vote the Supreme Court will eventually get to it. That means you can fundraise on what the Supreme Court has ruled on. So we have an entire legislative branch that is afraid to actually do anything and has an incentive not to but isn't afraid to say anything.
A
This is correct. That is a current dynamic and I don't know how we break out of it.
B
The legislative branch which used to jealously guard its constitutional prerogatives is now more than happy to give them away. They can't wait to give them away to the executive branch because then they never have anything to answer for and they can fundraise like crazy and stay.
A
In office which was ends up being the goal of many people. Yeah that controversy over arresting ICE agents. We'll get to an hour too.
B
If you miss it get the podcast Armstrong and Gettysburg.
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Episode: I Could Take Describing Different Types Of Pine Cones Very Seriously
Date: January 12, 2026
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts
This episode blends comic banter, sharp social commentary, and thoughtful discussions as Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty kick off a new week, reflecting on NFL playoff drama, the escalation of political conflict (their invented term “k-flict or k-on”), culture war rants, international crises, and the impact of phone addiction on our thinking. They also delve into recent headlines, generational slang, and the benefits of mind-wandering—plus a healthy dash of their signature asides and memorable moments.
The episode weaves together social satire, cultural criticism, sports, psychological science, and political analysis with trademark Armstrong & Getty wit and candor. Listeners who appreciate humorous, deeply human observations on modern society, informed by lived experience and a dash of cranky common sense, will find much to savor. Even pine cones aren’t safe from compelling description.
For more details or to catch missed content, the episode is available on Armstrong & Getty On Demand podcast platforms.