I'll Plant My Banana Tree Next To My Cow

Summary

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Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: "I'll Plant My Banana Tree Next To My Cow"

Date: October 15, 2025
Hosts: Jack Armstrong, Joe Getty, Katie

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Overview

This episode of Armstrong & Getty explores rising living costs in America (cars, groceries), cultural and social trends (decline in trans identification, viral youth memes), the impact of technological advances such as AI-generated videos, problems related to immigration and voting law, public health crises like the ‘tranq’ drug epidemic, and a humorous segment on non-alcoholic wine for pets. The episode’s tone is candid, witty, and often irreverent, as the hosts unpack heavy topics with a mix of data, anecdotes, and satirical commentary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Soaring Cost of Living in the US

[00:27-02:27]

• Car Prices & Loans:
  • The average price for a new car exceeds $50,000; loan rates up to 9%.
  • Used car prices dip slightly as sales slow.
  • Pre-COVID, new cars were about $35,000 and 0% financing was common.
  • Jack Armstrong: “9%. Oof.”
• Grocery Inflation:
  • Steaks selling at $32.99/lb; overall grocery inflation remains high.
  • Jack Armstrong: “I gotta start raising cattle. How would a cow do indoors?”
  • Bananas up 6.5%, coffee up 21%, beef up 13%.
  • Katie: Admits buying bananas often but ignoring the cost — “I have no idea, rich man. I haven’t got the slightest idea what that handful of bananas I buy costs.”
  • Humorous riff on growing bananas and coffee at home: Jack Armstrong: “Maybe in the same room I keep my cat.”

2. Historical Parallels: Inflation and Social Anxiety

[02:11-03:48]

• Reference to a 60 Minutes segment with Andrew Ross Sorkin about parallels to the 1929 stock market crash, credit card delinquencies, and financial instability.

3. The Decline of Trans Identification in Youth

[04:26-08:27]

• Multiple surveys cited:
  • Trans or queer identification among U.S. undergrads dropped from 6.8% (2022-23) to 3.5% (current).
  • At Brown University, rates went from 5% to 2.6% in one year.
  • Jack Armstrong: “The share of trans identified students has effectively halved in just two years.” [05:03]
  • Interpreted as evidence of social contagion abating, particularly among adolescent females.
  • Jack Armstrong: "Gay and lesbian are stable because gay people know they’re gay…It wasn’t hot like non-conforming was. And heterosexuality has rebounded by around 10 points since 2023." [08:06]
• Katie: Links this to historical mass hysteria like the Salem witch trials.
• Jack Armstrong: “It’s just a craze. … My heart breaks for the parents who got blackmailed, terrorized … now have done irreversible things to their children.” [09:31]

4. Voting Laws, Immigration, and Bureaucracy

[19:48-24:03]

• Discussion of Minnesota’s “licenses for all” law and committee hearings:

  • Non-citizens can obtain driver's licenses, raising concerns about potential for illegal voting.
  • Jack Armstrong: “Yeah, you can show up, show your driver’s license as an illegal with a license and they will let you vote. … Will anything be done about it?” [22:05]
  • Debate over whether this is intentional or bureaucratic oversight.
  • Reference to similar issues in California and so-called “voter harvesting.”

• Federal case on racial gerrymandering in Washington state:

  • Redistricting resulted in the dilution of the Hispanic conservative vote.
  • Hosts criticize Democrats for using race as cover for power grabs:
    • Jack Armstrong: "Dressed up in a moral argument that they don't mean. End of rant." [25:55]

5. Public Health Crisis: 'Tranq' Drug Epidemic

[25:55-30:00]

• Examines the 'tranq' (xylazine) crisis in Philadelphia:
  • Horrific injuries (“auto-amputation”), with almost 40% of overdose deaths involving ‘tranq’.
  • Katie: “Most recent studies show...even if you just do fentanyl, 30% of fentanyl powder has got tranq in it.”
  • Jack Armstrong: “So their limbs fall off?” [29:57]
  • Discussion of “bluetoothing” (injecting the blood of already-intoxicated users)—highlighted as a desperate practice in parts of Africa.

6. Artificial Intelligence: Animation & Adult Content

[13:41-16:19, 31:59-39:05]

• New AI tool (Grok by Elon Musk): allows users to animate family photos for comic or emotional effect.
  • Katie: “You can go back to pictures from many, many years ago...all of a sudden they're smiling and waving to you.”
• Discussion of ChatGPT (OpenAI) founder Sam Altman deciding to allow adult content, forecasting a “race to the bottom”.
  • Jack Armstrong (with wordplay): “Has he crossed the Boobicon?” [32:14]

7. Culture & Memes: The 6-7 Phenomenon and Collective Experience

[33:30-38:10]

• Viral youth meme "6-7":
  • Kids adopt the meaningless phrase for social bonding.
  • Some schools now ban the saying.
  • Katie: “We’ve created these things that have no meaning or value but just because you know what it means…Now we feel like we’re a part of something and it’s got no more meaning than that.” [34:16]
  • Jack Armstrong: “Our only real shared experience is designed to be as polarizing as possible.” [37:02]
• Listeners note lack of common culture beyond polarizing politics; meme culture fills the gap.

8. Humor & Oddities

• Non-Alcoholic Wine for Pets [16:27-17:44]:
  • New Zealand company makes pet “wines” with names like "Sauvignon Bark".
  • Joking about dogs joining in wine tastings and using Grok to make pets “talk”.
  • Jack Armstrong: “Now he can be, thanks to more money than Sense wines from New Zealand.” [17:12]
• Self-aware banter, riffing on advertising tropes, and playful audience interaction.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Jack Armstrong: “I gotta start raising cattle. How would a cow do indoors? ... I gotta have a cow.” [02:00]
• Katie: “Bananas, I buy bananas regularly, but I do not pay any attention to what they cost. I have no idea, rich man.” [03:48]
• Jack Armstrong on trans identification: “The share of trans identified students has effectively halved in just two years.” [05:03]
• Katie: “What’s the correct number? It should be close to zero, shouldn’t it?” [07:23]
• Jack Armstrong: “It’s just a craze. … And you shouldn’t be … taking them to the gender clinic to get pumped full of chemicals and get carved up … my heart breaks for the parents who … now have done irreversible things to their children.” [09:31]
• Jack Armstrong: “Yeah, you can show up, show your driver’s license as an illegal … and only if you know in the future somebody says, ‘Wait a minute…’ will anything be done about it.” [22:05]
• Katie: “This first sentence is super gross…Exposed tendons and bones, wounds that attract maggots and a foul smell for dead tissue.” [26:40]
• Jack Armstrong: “So their limbs fall off?” [29:57]
• Jack Armstrong: “Has he crossed the Boobicon?” [32:14]
• Katie on the 6-7 meme: “It’s both very meaningful and not the least bit meaningful at the same time.” [34:16]
• Jack Armstrong: “Our only real shared experience is designed to be as polarizing as possible…We’ve figured out the modern world.” [37:02]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:27] – New car prices & grocery inflation overview
• [03:28] – Food inflation statistics
• [04:26] – Positive story: decline in youth trans identification
• [09:31] – Commentary on social contagion, irreversible decisions
• [19:48] – Voting laws and Minnesota committee hearing
• [25:55] – "Tranq" zombie drug segment
• [33:30] – The 6-7 meme and collective experience
• [31:59, 32:14] – AI & adult content, “crossing the Boobicon” joke

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Tone & Style

The episode balances earnest concerns (rising costs, youth trends, addiction, policy critique) with dry humor, personal stories, and playful jabs—making for an engaging, fast-paced listen.

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For more, listen to Armstrong & Getty On Demand: “I'll Plant My Banana Tree Next To My Cow” (October 15, 2025).

Transcript

[Jack Armstrong]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Joe Getty]

Broadcasting live.

[Jack Armstrong]

From the Abraham Lincoln radio studio at.

[Joe Getty]

The George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.

[Katie]

Armstrong and Getty. And now here's Armstrong and Getty.

[Michael Linnell]

For the first time, the average price of a new car in the US.

[Katie]

Tops more than 50,000 doll thousand dollars.

[Michael Linnell]

That's according to Kelly Blue Book. The average loan rate was up to.

[Katie]

About 9% in August.

[Michael Linnell]

Used vehicle prices fell slightly as sales begin to slow.

[Katie]

The average new car now is $50,000 and the average loan rate is 9%. Wow. That's a different spot than we were in pre Covid. Wow. Wow. You could buy a car at 0% financing probably. And I don't know what the average new car price was at that time. It was prob 35 or something.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right? Right. Yeah. 9%. Oof. And this headline from the Journal, grocery prices keep rising. Frustrated consumers are trying to adapt. Shoppers say they're cutting back on purchases, stockpiling certain foods are exploring more affordable stores. We don't have the recent inflation numbers because that's because of the government shutdown. But yeah, groceries are crazy right now. They mentioned now this guy's in I think New York City. But he, he went to got buy some steaks and ribeye was 32.99 a pound.

[Katie]

Yipes. I know, I've been amazed when I see some of the more expensive steaks at the store and it's in the high 20s. I don't usually buy them but. How much was that one?

[Jack Armstrong]

32.99 a pound. Yeah, I mean that's. You're going out to a like high end steakhouse and I gotta cook it. Right, right.

[Katie]

$32 a pound and I'm cooking it. I don't really think of that.

[Jack Armstrong]

I got to start raising cattle. How would a cow do indoors? I'd probably have to get some area like a lot of area rugs to protect the hardwood. But I gotta have a cow.

[Katie]

I know the price of groceries isn't what caused the Great Depression, but did you happen to see the second story on 60 Minutes with Andrew Ross Sorkin? He's you know, a well respected financial writer of the left, but they featured him.

[Jack Armstrong]

He's got skipped it because it looked too scary.

[Katie]

He's got a new book out about 1929 and so he's got some reason selling his book about the Great Depression and the great crash that caused the Great Depression. You know, to talk about these times are similar to those because he's oh.

[Jack Armstrong]

It'S a great hook yeah, it's a.

[Katie]

Great hook to get on various shows and talk about his book. But he was going through a lot of the things that we were discussing last week. You know, the. Whenever you're setting a record in the stock market every single day, it's always, you know, probably a correction coming. And then you got like five companies are all responsible for it. Then you got people maxing out their credit cards and had the stat last week that the largest number of people ever since they've been keeping track. We're 60 days or more behind on their car payments. There's just lots of stats like that out there.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. Ooh, you're making me uncomfortable. Yikes. So over the 12 months that ended last month, price of coffee is up 21%, beef is up 13. Ground beef up 13%. Bananas up six and a half percent. Haven't bananas been like skyrocketing in price now for a couple of years?

[Katie]

I must admit, bananas, I buy bananas regularly, but I don't. Do not pay any attention to what they cost. I have no idea, rich man. I haven't got the slightest idea what that handful of bananas I buy costs.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, I got to plant a couple of banana plants. What do they grow on, trees or something? Right. Maybe in the same room I keep my cat.

[Katie]

You're going to have coffee beans and probably some young brown skinned person to harvest them.

[Jack Armstrong]

Probably.

[Katie]

And a banana tree or bush, whatever.

[Jack Armstrong]

However they grow, take care of the staples. That's right.

[Katie]

All in their living room. That's a good idea.

[Jack Armstrong]

I hope my wife is listening because I'm sure there'll be a long conversation about my plan. But anyway, I don't want to scare everybody to death. I promised that we would pay off Brian, the plucky correspondent who sent a positive story and challenged me to find a downside. And I'm not going to just because I'm so interested in it. There are a number of different polls and reports that make it clear that trans identification is in free fall among young people.

[Katie]

Interesting.

[Jack Armstrong]

Down to the various trends.

[Katie]

Interesting.

[Jack Armstrong]

Great news for young people. Great news for parents. Terrible news for the doctors who had begun to profit from this madness. Here's one. Account data from the new center for Heterodox Social Science report. The decline of trans and queer identity among young Americans shows that since 2023, both trans and queer identification. Of course, queer just means I'm fighting against the man. Look at me, I'm cool. So it really doesn't mean anything. But they've both dropped sharply within generation. X the foundation for Individual rights and expression. FIRE, which conducts a large annual survey of U.S. undergrads, polled over 60,000 students. And the analysis of the raw data shows that in that year just three and a half percent of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. By comparison, last year it was not three and a half, it was 5.2. And in 2022 and 2023 it was 6.8. In other words, the share of trans identified students has effectively halved in just two years.

[Katie]

That is amazing and not surprising.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right? It was a social contagion. There's more actually. But yeah, it was absolutely a social contagion. Largely among impressionable adolescent females. Here's another survey. In 2023, 9/plus was 9.2. You know what, I had this rule that I came up with that neither one of us ever does, but it's handy. Tell me what the stat is before you tell me the number.

[Katie]

Right, yeah. What are we talking about?

[Jack Armstrong]

You can't comprehend the significance of the number and then when you hear the topic you think, oh yeah, what was that number now Anyway, they polled students at a big school in Boston and 9.2% of them identified as neither male nor female. That number now sits at almost 1 in 10. That's correct.

[Katie]

1 in 10 identified adults said I'm neither male nor female. I mean that is unbelievable.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right, right. That number that was 9.2% is now 3%. Brown University saw similar numbers going from 5% to just 2.6% in a year. Not surprising.

[Katie]

What's the correct number? It should be close to zero, shouldn't it?

[Jack Armstrong]

Yes. Yeah. But you know, I think a significant chunk of that very small number is hardcore activists who are going down with the sinking ship. Yeah, you're super hardcore queer theory, you know, critical theory types. How about this? This is utterly, utterly unsurprising. And at the risk of wrenching my shoulder, patting myself and you and everybody listening on the back, this is precisely what we knew would happen. Non conforming, sexual identity, queer question, all that stuff is in sharp decline. Gay and lesbian are stable because gay people know they're gay. They were gay five years ago, they're gay now. It's. It wasn't hot like non conforming was. And heterosexuality has rebounded by around 10 points since 2023. Man.

[Katie]

We are going to look back on the three to five year period as, as and wonder how did that ever happen?

[Jack Armstrong]

Just call it the madness. I don't know. There are more stats.

[Katie]

It's got a, it's funny. Somebody texted me the other day who was reading about the Salem witch trials, and they're explaining how that contagion caught on. If you've never read about it, it's very interesting. I said, that sounds a lot like the whole trans thing.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right.

[Katie]

And it was similar in that it was a lot of younger women who were struggling with whatever and. And wanted to present as a witch and get their parents all worked up.

[Jack Armstrong]

Or a witch victim. So, you know, it's incredibly frustrating and. And I know a lot of you good people share this. This frustration is, you know, like, I'm trying to think of another trend or craze. Like the shoes, the high dollar. What do you call them? Tennis shoes, sneakers, whatever. Um, it's if. If all the Alphabet news networks were reporting as fact, these shoes are the coolest shoes ever. As if it's scientifically unquestionable.

[Katie]

No, they're not.

[Jack Armstrong]

It's just a craze. It's something the kids are into. And you shouldn't be, you know, mortgaging your house to buy them shoes, and you shouldn't be taking them to the gender clinic to get pumped full of chemicals and get carved up in my heart. D breaks for the parents who got blackmailed, terrorized, forced into, you know, pushing their kid along in their temporary mental, you know, struggles about gender and now have done irreversible things to their children. Yeah, my heart breaks for them.

[Katie]

We're clearly on the other side of the peak of this, but as you keep pointing out, it's pretty lodged in certain parts of the country. And then you got a bunch of young people who grew up with it. It's going to be pretty, pretty hard to turn them around at this point. As we had the story yesterday out of Washington with the poor girl that was expected to compete against an adult man in JV High School basketball.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right, right. And then when she said no, because that's a man, she was the one who was in trouble for being a bigot and a bully. One more interesting set of stats. What explains all of this? Eric Kaufman, who's writing about it, says it's not because the kids became less woke, more religious, or more conservative. Those beliefs seem to have remained stable throughout the 2000 and twenties. Is it improved mental health? Yes, in part. Less anxious and especially less depressed students are linked with a smaller share identifying as trans, queer, or bisexual.

[Katie]

Incredible.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. Yeah. And the vast majority of the media and all of our educational complex, well, virtually all of it, were supporting this as absolute undi. Un debatable scientific fact and anybody who debated a single aspect of it was a hater and a transphobe and gonna cause suicides, including our major medical associations which ought to be torn down and rebuilt again if there's any need to have them.

[Katie]

We out Europed Europe on this whole topic for whatever reason.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh yeah, yeah, Europe threw it into reverse and stomped on the gas several years back.

[Katie]

Having a lot of fun yesterday with a new AI tool that landed that I highly recommend. I'll tell you about that coming up among other things in the news. Stay tuned.

[Jack Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Joe Getty]

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[Jack Armstrong]

And a swing and a miss. And Yoshi Yamamoto with his crown jewel as a Dodger. It is a complete game.

[Katie]

Wow. You don't see see that very much in Major League Baseball anymore. They brought that guy over from Japan just like they brought over, you know, so many stars over the years and he threw a complete game last night and the Dodgers are up to nothing and now they come back to Los Angeles. So there you go. Might be Dodgers, Mariners who are up to nothing. The interesting part about that is the Dodgers have the highest payroll in baseball and the Mariners are less than half of the Dodgers salary. So if you like story that would be a good one.

[Jack Armstrong]

Find myself wondering what the pitch count was because I love the idea of a complete game so much I can't believe my ears.

[Katie]

So before we get to non alec non alcoholic wines for your pets, which is an hilarious idea, I wanted to tell you about this. So Grok is one of the AI apps you can get out there. I just have it on my phone as an app and it's I'M using the free version and like ChatGPT or, you know, any of them, Claude, any of them that you're using. But I have Grok, that's Elon's. And they launched their new video thing yesterday in which you can take any image and give it to Grok and it will put it in motion. And I started messing around with that. And we had so much fun with that at my house yesterday. I highly recommend it. You take an old family picture of all of you standing up against a wall with a smile on your face and give it to Grok and tell it what to do. And you have your whole family all of a sudden in a fight or, or dancing or whatever. It's hilarious.

[Jack Armstrong]

That's so funny. A friend of mine brought this up to me yesterday. It was the first time I knew it existed. They just done a little wine trip to Napa with some friends and had a picture of themselves in one of the like, cellar, wine cellar areas. And they animated it so that they did like an acrobat act.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

And the gals jumped up on the guy's shoulders and they formed a pyramid. I'm like, wait, what?

[Katie]

Well, and you know, it depends on the personalities of your family members and.

[Jack Armstrong]

All that sort of stuff.

[Katie]

But like, brother, who is as stoic as stoic can be, we had a video of him dancing around that was just so funny. We were sending around to every family member, his daughter, cousins, everyone. Everybody was loving it. And it's just. It's effortless to do. And I started going back through. It's also. Can be really like emotionally touching. You can go back to pictures from many, many years ago and you take a still photo and you put it in there and then all of a sudden they're smiling and waving to you and stuff. And it's like, whoa, it's mind blowing.

[Jack Armstrong]

Gosh, I've got to do that. Oh man, how I'd love to see my mom. Because we didn't. I gotta go back to some of the family videos. We don't have all that much and. Yeah, that'd be great. Wow. Amazing. But the, the silliness is just hilarious. It is great.

[Katie]

It is great. And I did it with we. At the radio station party we had a couple of weeks ago. I took the big photo we took and had us all. I don't know what we were doing. Got into a fight or something like that. But it's, it's just, it's. It's the technology where it is right now. I mean, for Free. If somebody wanted to spend money and time and had talent on it, obviously you could get any video to occur that you want as as we. All right.

[Jack Armstrong]

So right we are in a post. I have to see it to believe it world. I'd say it doesn't do you any good.

[Katie]

So I'll just read this as it's written here in the Dispatch newsletter. If you have a beloved dog or catch and more money than sense, here's the good news. A New Zealand wine company now sells. You might like this, Katie. You know how much you like your dog now sells non alcoholic wine for their pets. The bottles have names like Shampoo, Champagne spelled with a paw. Pearl.

[Jack Armstrong]

I get it.

[Katie]

Pearl. Nor I don't know how you pronounce outlines. Sauvignon Bark. That's cute. And other names I don't.

[Jack Armstrong]

But why is it juice? I don't understand.

[Katie]

If it's non alcoholic wine, I. Yeah, I assume it's either just juice or water.

[Jack Armstrong]

Katie, you wouldn't understand because you're not sophisticated. When Judy and I are tasting fine wines, Baxter is looking up at us with his sad eyes, wishing that he could be a part of it. And now he can be, thanks to more money than Sense wines from New Zealand.

[Katie]

Ah, you know, and getting back to the Grock video thing. My Henry, my 13 year old was taking pictures of our dog and making him talk. And that was pretty funny. You can just take a picture of your dog and have it say anything you want. It's. It's pretty hilarious. There you go.

[Jack Armstrong]

Since time immemorial, the.

[Katie]

The.

[Jack Armstrong]

The talking dog has been like the symbol of something that can't happen. Yeah, and now it can.

[Katie]

Trump threatened Hamas yesterday. We will disarm you if you do not disarm. Who's we in? This question is a good. Is a good thing to take a look at? Among other things. We can get to next hour. Sauvignon Bark. You see, it's a pun. It's kind of a plan.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, like Sauvignon Blanc, but with the reference. Yeah.

[Katie]

If you miss a second, we get the podcast. Armstrong and Getty on demand.

[Joe Getty]

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[Katie]

World of the chattering classes that usually lean left. Tom Friedman of the New York Times is a highly respected columnist about all things Middle East. His praise of what Trump has accomplished and optimism for how this is going to turn out is quite amazing and striking, even with what's happened in the last 24 hours. We'll get into that some in hour three of the Armstrong and Getty show.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, all sorts of interesting developments on that front. So looking forward to that. Hope you can stick around. If you can't, just subscribe to the podcast Armstrong and Getty on Demand. So what you're about to hear is the fabulously lame former vice presidential candidate, Mr. Walls of Minnesota, excuse me, Celebrating the signing of the licenses for all act in woke Minnesota. And then it will transition to a hearing before one of the committees there at their state house where a Republican is asking some very appropriate questions and holy cow, the answers. Hit it, Michael.

[Unknown Caller]

Okay, so the answer to my question is yes under that scenario.

[Jack Armstrong]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did somebody edit that or what? Okay, all right, never mind. So we don't get the Walls part of it. No problem. This is right to the hearing. Go ahead.

[Unknown Caller]

Okay, so the answer to my question is yes. Under that scenario, someone could they get their driver's license again because we give them to anybody here, they register to vote. It doesn't match with the Social Security number, so they're flagged, but they come in as long as they have an id, which is that driver's license, and they sign that, they're, you know, eligible to vote. They can vote and they're then no longer flagged. They're on the system. Is that correct, Mr. Linnell?

[Michael Linnell]

Madam Chair, if I could add the and maybe stepping back from those that are flagged as CID on the roster for anyone that's presenting documentation to register to vote, that is affirmation of their identity, the driver's license has not been used as proof of citizenship for the purposes of registering to vote. It's affirming that they are who they say they are. So in any of these cases where someone were to cast a ballot if they were ineligible to vote, There are also reports that are generated post election for voters that are challenged that counties will run to show status of voters that had been updated due to the fact that they've now cast a ballot that can be reviewed and referred to the county attorney.

[Unknown Caller]

Okay, so the answer is yes to my question.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, that's funny. That was not the clip that we were kicking around. Everybody. I'm a little confused. But yeah, you can show up, show your driver's license as an illegal with a license and they will let you vote. And only if you know in the future somebody says, wait a minute, that fellow, I met him last year and he said he's not a citizen and he mentioned voting. Will anything be done about it.

[Katie]

Do you think that's on purpose?

[Jack Armstrong]

I think for some activists, yes, it's on purpose. I think for others they just have the fuzzy headed emotional thinking of the progressive and they don't know how to square that circle. So they don't. All they know is that people have a right to drive because that guy.

[Katie]

Explaining it just seemed like he was caught up in the, I don't know, the bureaucracy of the way it works. And I don't know, I don't know what is on his mind, how he doesn't recognize what he was saying. So people can vote then if they're illegal. Right.

[Jack Armstrong]

And, and in another clip he says, well, you gotta sign a paper that says I'm eligible to vote. So I guess so that's the fence you have to clear. You have to be willing to lie or vote inappropriately.

[Katie]

Ah, you have to sign something. Well then.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, yeah. And please, how easy would it be in a world where the Democrats in California, for instance, vote harvest like maniacs blanketing apartment complexes with ballots than collecting them helpfully and turning them in. And maybe the signatures get checked, maybe they don't, et cetera, et cetera. How easy would it be to recruit a bunch of recent immigrants whose English ain't so bueno and and get them to sign it and show up and vote in in droves? And when was the last time anybody got busted for that? In Minnesota? Which reminds me of the great old lie that voter fraud is vanishingly small.

[Katie]

Yet that's cuz we have no mechanism.

[Jack Armstrong]

To check for it really in a systematic way anyway. So yeah, Illegals will be voting in Minnesota in a election soon to come. And then I thought this was an interesting story and kind of related. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in racial gerrymandering case out of Louisiana. And I came across a great opinion piece written by Nikki Torres who is I think the first Hispanic woman to represent her district in the eastern half of Washington, Washington state. And the district was 73% Hispanic with a Hispanic majority of eligible voters. And it leaned Republican. Well, Democrats in Washington state sued a couple of years ago claiming the district cracked the Latino vote, whatever that means, in violation of the Voting Rights act of 1965. In November of 22, she became the first ever elected in the conservative. First Hispanic state senator ever elected in the conservative rural of Washington. But a Democrat appointed federal judge ruled in flavor in favor of the plaintiffs. They, they carved that district up in a, in a really clever way and now it's Democrat. It went from a like half a percent or 1%, oh 1.8% Republican margin to a 12 point Democratic one and absolutely screwed all of the conservative leaning Hispanic people in that, in that district. So anytime a Democrat comes to you and says yes, we want to redraw the lines to ensure racial justice, bull crap. They just want to win elections. It's about the raw exercise of power, as usual, dressed up in a moral argument that they don't mean. End of rant.

[Katie]

So Katie brought us this story earlier about how tranq is still a thing on the streets. The drug which we've been talking about for a couple of years now.

[Jack Armstrong]

Do we have that, that headline she sentence.

[Katie]

Holy cow. The headline. Here's the headline from the story. Horrifying images show how flesh eating zombie drug mummifies addicts and causes their limbs to auto amputate.

[Jack Armstrong]

Brr.

[Katie]

A term I've never amputate term I'd never heard before. That would be arms and legs saying I'm getting out of here. Because you're.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, but it gets you really high.

[Katie]

Poisoning us.

[Jack Armstrong]

It's like a Mr. Potato Head situation.

[Katie]

Just pop them off. Yeah, I'll read the first sentence here. This is really gross if you're eating.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, but Mr. Potato Head can pop them back on Katie. Good point.

[Katie]

This first sentence is super gross. So if you're bothered by gross talker you're about to eat this. Exposed tendons and bones, wounds that attract maggots and a foul smell for dead tissue.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, you didn't lie.

[Katie]

Is the key that you've got somebody who's doing the tran. An Illegal sedative often mixed with fentanyl to enhance and extend highs. Most recent studies show a lot of it. A lot of. Even if you think you're like, I'm being a responsible drug user, trank, that's for weirdos. I just do fentanyl. Even if you just do fentanyl, 30% of fentanyl powder has. It's got tranq in it. And 6% of fentanyl pills have drank in it.

[Jack Armstrong]

Wow. Wow. So if you're intentionally taking fentanyl, it's infected with tranq. And if you don't think you're taking fentanyl and the excellent candidate for a fatal overdose, that fentanyl you don't know about is probably stepped on with tranq too. Beautiful.

[Katie]

So the most recent numbers they have in Philadelphia, which for some reason is ground zero for the tranq crisis, that's where it caught hold first. The most recent numbers they have are from 2023, two years ago, or a year and a half ago, year and three quarters ago. Of all unintentional overdose deaths, almost 40% involved tranq. Almost 40%. That is amazing. Anyway, Philadelphia orthopedic surgeon warning that the tranq crisis is showing no signs of abating, even as it continues to get mixed with other drugs and kills lots of people. We're seeing at the larger university hospitals around Philadelphia, lots of patients with these problems. It's found to cause severe side effects including central nervous system depression, Very low blood pressure. That's the least of my problems. My blood pressure seems kind of low. How about the fact that my lim are self amputating? That seems like the lead to me.

[Jack Armstrong]

Like blood pressure where it's not getting from your heart to your lungs is a problem.

[Katie]

Yeah. So within a few minutes of injecting this, in case you're wondering what it does for you, it releases. It relaxes all your muscles, relieves any discomfort you have, and triggers a zombie like trance by decreasing your fight or flight neurotransmitter system. So your fight or flight thing gets turned off. And apparently when you turn that off, you just get super relaxed and calm and feel good.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. High, in other words? Yeah.

[Katie]

Well, it must be in a way that other highs aren't though, right? Must be. Or somebody's been doing fentanyl and everything like that.

[Jack Armstrong]

What would.

[Katie]

What would bring you to tranq?

[Jack Armstrong]

I don't know. Some days you get tired of chardonnay. You want a sauvignon blanc.

[Katie]

Okay.

[Jack Armstrong]

I'm not a tranq addict. Well, at least they're not bluetoothing, Jack. Have you heard about Bluetoothing?

[Katie]

I have not. Can anything get worse than. Because it says here about the train. The worst case is the limbs literally auto amputate all of the soft tissue necrosises off the bones and patients will come in essentially mummified on their limbs as they're auto amputated before they even get to the hospital room.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh my God. So their limbs fall off.

[Katie]

Aha. Sounds like a party. Anyway, what was Bluetoothing, Jack?

[Jack Armstrong]

The practice in which users inject the blood of already intoxicated individuals has fueled one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the Pacific and grown widespread in South Africa. So your buddy is high, but you're not. So you take a syringe and suck blood out of him and inject it into yourself.

[Katie]

God, how broke are you? From what I understand, drugs are the. All these drugs are so cheap.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right?

[Katie]

Man, you're really, you're really lazy. You're almost passed out. Buddy, I'm going to suck some of your blood out, put it in me so I don't even have to go, you know, steal something from the target, I guess.

[Jack Armstrong]

This is getting hot in high poverty areas in Africa and Asia, driven by tougher policing, spiking prices, and falling drug supplies.

[Katie]

So wow. Want to tell you a way to protect yourself. Not from tranq, but from people trying to steal your identity or hack into your computer or do all that kind of stuff. You don't want that. That's why you want, during the cyber scaries month, you want to arm yourself with webroot Total protection.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, it seems like every day there's a new way to trick you. Text scams, data breaches. So much stuff going on. And that's why you need webroot Total.

[Katie]

Protection, which includes dark web monitoring. I love that they can go on the dark web and see if even your information is floating around out. That's a great thing to know. Up to $1 million in expense reimbursement.

[Jack Armstrong]

For stolen funds, secure VPN, unlimited cloud backup. I mean, it's, it's everything. It's amazing. It runs super fast, is not intrusive like other places or other, you know, services. You're going to love webroot. And you can get 60% off webroot total protection right now. Webroot.com armstrong that's 60% off for a limited time, but only when you go to webroot.comarmstrong at least check it out. Webroot.com/armstrong.

[Katie]

So has Sam Altman the guy who runs OpenAI's chat GPT crossed the Rubicon on adult content for AI. This may be a day historians look back on, among other things, the Boobicon.

[Jack Armstrong]

Huh? Has he crossed the Rubicon? Wow.

[Katie]

Hey, that is childish.

[Jack Armstrong]

I enjoyed it.

[Katie]

Speaking of childish, we got an update on something schools are banning. Stay tuned. All on the way.

[Joe Getty]

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[Unknown Caller]

Savannah 676 7.

[Joe Getty]

You've got the tone down and everything.

[Katie]

Good morning.

[Joe Getty]

You gotta do the hand motion with it. So this first went viral last year. Here's the thing though. It really means nothing at all. But unlike most Internet trends, this one seems to be sticking around, prompting some teachers to set some new rules in the classroom. 6 7. A meme kids can't get enough of and teachers can't get away from.

[Jack Armstrong]

We are not saying the word 67 anymore. If you do, you have to write.

[Unknown Caller]

A 67 word essay.

[Joe Getty]

Some schools even banning the phrase in classrooms.

[Katie]

You are no longer allowed to say what number do you think I'm gonna say?

[Joe Getty]

Caitlin Soriano is a seventh grade math teacher. How much are you hearing and seeing 67 in your classroom all day, every day?

[Katie]

All right. I just don't know what to do. Yeah, so we talked about this yesterday. I think we got it nailed down. It's human beings seek common experiences so that we feel like we're part of a community which makes us feel protected in our animal brain. We don't have shared experiences anymore because nobody watches the same TV shows, listens to the same music, blah blah blah. So we've created these things that have no meaning or value but be. Just because you know what it means if I say six. Well, not what it means, but you've heard it before. Six, seven. Now we feel like we're a part of something and it's got no more meaning than that. I mean, it's both very meaningful and not the least bit meaningful at the same time.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. It's like distilled down to its purest essence. It's merely a common experience. Not a common experience of enjoying a show or seeing a sunset or whatever. No, it's just a signal that I know what you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about. It's interesting, right? And I haven't heard anybody but really, you talking about that to explain the phenomena.

[Katie]

It's funny, I brought it up to my son last night and he said, it's just like skippity. And I said, that's what I said. Skibidi toilet from a couple of years ago. And so there's. There's gonna be no putting an end to this. We're gonna. Young people are gonna continue to seek out common experiences to bond around that are meaningless because they don't have any other common experiences to bond around.

[Jack Armstrong]

Got a great email from Kathy in Spain, as we are truly international now. You got Barry in Thailand, people all over the world.

[Joe Getty]

The world.

[Jack Armstrong]

Thank you for listening wherever. Wherever you are. Let's see, here it is. Listening to yesterday's time.

[Katie]

Foreigners, you talk slowly and loudly.

[Jack Armstrong]

Very loudly, but in English anyway. Talking about the lack of shared experience leading to the emergence of nonsense memes like 6, 7, Skibidi and my kids favorite chicken jockey can probably be applied to adults as well. Jack's point about not having a common show to watch, etc can expand to not going to the same church sermon on Sunday or the block party on Saturday. And that can certainly explain the country's obsession with politics. When I was younger, we never discussed politics. We had enough shared experiences to bond over. Now politics are one of the few things about which people can connect.

[Katie]

Yep, that's absolutely true. The, the Trump TV show is the one show everybody's watching so you can bond around that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right? Which is TV shows or movies that are described as polarizing. Very polarizing. Well, politics is by definition polarizing. So our only real shared experience is designed to be as polarizing as possible. I think we've solved it. We've figured out the modern world.

[Katie]

It's. Yeah, I, I agree. We have figured it out and solved it. But watching it, it's just so Weird because I saw the Skibidi thing in person where there'd be a group of kids like my, my, my son and his friend and somebody would just say, skibidi toilet. And everybody would burst out laughing. It's like, there's nothing. There's no there there. And the same thing with the 6, 7 as you just saw up there. Somebody in a classroom just says, six, seven, and everybody goes, ah, what are we doing here?

[Jack Armstrong]

Damn. It's very, very odd.

[Katie]

Again, we've explained it. It's both very meaningful and the least bit. Not the least bit meaningful, but I don't know.

[Jack Armstrong]

Banning from Kathy in Spain. Good. I mistakenly thought the pandemic. Pandemic would have a unifying effect, but it pushed the country further into silos.

[Katie]

We're screamed. We absolutely are.

[Jack Armstrong]

What are you gonna do?

[Katie]

Another follow up? Because we talked about 6, 7 yesterday. Follow up. Joe was talking about sex bots and all that sort of thing. Sam Altman of Chat GPT and Open AI has said that he's gonna allow adult contact on his AI platform and that popped into my head yesterday. I talked earlier about having fun with the Grok video thing. My brothers and I were taking family photos and having Grok turn the videos into fun stuff, but you couldn't do anything the least bit nasty. I thought it'd be funny to take our Christmas family picture and have everybody flipping off the camera. I mean, my mom flipping off the camera. My brothers and I would howl at laughter at that because it is so, you know, out of character. But it wouldn't allow it. Grok would not allow that or a bunch of other things I suggested. But Sam altman@chat GPT, the rival, is now allowing. Going to allow sexy stuff. So that's, you know, it'll be another race to the bottom because, you know, Elon can try to hold the line on decent content, but his competitors are not.

[Jack Armstrong]

All right, race to the bottom. Probably a poor choice of words, but I understand what you're saying. I see your point. Yeah. Cross the boubacar. Did you hear that one? I did.

[Katie]

Apparently you have to do your hands like this and the tone of voice is 6, 7. So if you want to be cool with A I don't 13 year old, then that's what you do.

[Joe Getty]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

This is an I Heart podcast.