Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildman

Steve Jordahl Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.

Tim Wildmon Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to afr, wherever you may be. I'm Tim Wildmon with Ed Battagliano. And now joining us in studio is our newsman, Steve Paisley. Jordan. Good morning, brother Steve.

Steve Jordahl Morning, everybody.

Tim Wildmon so, guys, ah, there we went to the break, and you came into the studio, and Ed and I took a break and went out and I got some more coffee.

Steve Jordahl There you go.

Tim Wildmon They ever determined coffee's bad for you, I'm in trouble. I don't want to know about it. Okay. so, but they. Somebody had, brought some, one of our staff members. Who? I don't know.

Steve Jordahl You don't know the staff? You don't. But I don't know.

Tim Wildmon I don't know who brought the little cupcakes.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, right.

Tim Wildmon There's some little cupcakes out there.

Ed Vitagliano There were in the little kitchen just down the hall.

Tim Wildmon Kitchen down the hall. There's about a little box that looked like me, about 12 cupcakes. I'm talking about the mini pup.

Steve Jordahl 21 bite.

Tim Wildmon Okay, so there were two left. All right, now, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people who work here. So, you know, it's not, it's not surprising. but I looked on the back. I, I confess I look at calories now.

Ed Vitagliano Yes, I do.

Tim Wildmon Don't you?

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon I mean, you can't. You got to.

Ed Vitagliano You have to.

Tim Wildmon Otherwise you end up.

Ed Vitagliano Unless you don't care.

Tim Wildmon You don't care.

Ed Vitagliano You get home at night and you've already.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano used up 2000.

Tim Wildmon You don't care long enough. It shows.

The problem with those little mini cupcakes is the calories

Ed Vitagliano Okay, so the little mini cup.

Tim Wildmon Well, somebody torn the calorie sign off.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, that's not right.

Tim Wildmon That's. What. Well, I think they just try to say if I don't see it, it doesn't, it isn't real. It's kind of like covering your head at night.

Ed Vitagliano I've told myself that. And the next morning, guess what's real? The scale. The scale doesn't care what you said.

Tim Wildmon Anyway, I wanted to see, you know, how many of my daily calories am I taking up with this? If I do take one of these little mini. Many cupcakes, and, I'm a guess they'd be a hundred. They had some.

Ed Vitagliano That's probably 150 on top. Yeah. With the icing. That's. That's Pure sugar here.

Tim Wildmon So you do. You do the sort of the.

Ed Vitagliano I always, always look at the calories.

Tim Wildmon I don't have a calculator in my hand.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon I just sort of mentally do it. because really, as you get, as you get older, you, you have to watch, you know, you, you can put on a lot of pounds in a short period of time.

Ed Vitagliano So it's unfair. Totally unfairly. That works. And I. This. The problem with those little mini cupcakes.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Okay. Is you. You may say, well, at least it's not a big cupcake. But guess what? You eat that one little cupcake and your brain. We were talking about the devil.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Speaker D Last segment.

Ed Vitagliano The devil whispers in your brain. It's only a little cupcake. You can have two.

Tim Wildmon And there is two.

Ed Vitagliano And there.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, there are two.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Whatever the right verb is there. So there are two.

Ed Vitagliano There are.

Tim Wildmon Maybe they'll be gone when we leave this. We get off the show.

Ed Vitagliano Just look, just don't even walk down.

Tim Wildmon I didn't, I didn't get it. because it doesn't even have the calorie.

Ed Vitagliano We get out here at the end of the show. Take a right.

Tim Wildmon Too close to lunch.

Ed Vitagliano Don't go down there.

Tim Wildmon I'm not. I already had popcorn. Whatever.

Steve Jordahl That according to the, Internet.

Tim Wildmon Okay.

Steve Jordahl Never wrong.

Tim Wildmon We giving a mini cupcake. Calorie count update.

Steve Jordahl A mini cupcake from Walmart, which is what I'm assuming these are. But 93 calories.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. Right around.

Ed Vitagliano You're right on.

Tim Wildmon Round that up to 100.

Ed Vitagliano Yep.

Steve: You can burn 2,000 calories a day if you try

Tim Wildmon so anyway, so how many. How many of you. Not to get too personal, how many do you try to stay. Stay under for a day? 24,000 or 2,000 for a male, in the 60s, I think I read that, you know, you burn about 2,000 calories a day. Naturally.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon You can just sit there and stare at the TV. You can burn 2,000 calories. Amazing.

Ed Vitagliano Especially if my team's losing.

Tim Wildmon Hey, if you get.

Steve Jordahl That's my exercise plan right there.

Tim Wildmon And if you get up, go to the refrigerator. Well, you might burn 20, 50.

Steve Jordahl That's right.

Tim Wildmon Calories.

Ed Vitagliano So, I heard a comedian, say, I'm, not even sure who was this? Clean. Com. He said, I'm just going to tell you how, how bad it's getting for me in terms of being in shape. He said, but I was watching a football game and they kicked off to the other team, and I went to the refrigerator to get something to drink. And by the time I walked back to my chair, that guy had already run 100 yards in the time it took me to walk to the refrigerator back. He said, I am so slow. I just thought that was funny.

Tim Wildmon So football players are known for their 40s. 40 yard dash is a 4.5 or something like that. So this guy ran a five minute. It's refrigerator dash.

Ed Vitagliano It's totally understandable that a football player would beat you sure. The end zone. But it was funny. He said, all I did was walk to the refrigerator and back. And this guy ran 100 yards, he said, with other guys trying to stop him. He, still beat me.

Steve Jordahl Sometimes my wife tries to stop me going through the refrigerator.

Tim Wildmon So 100 calories.

Steve Jordahl Dog blocks for a.

Tim Wildmon One bite cupcake.

Steve Jordahl One bite.

Tim Wildmon It's a hundred calories. All right, I got you. So you. So theoretically, I could have 20 of those in a day and not gain.

Steve Jordahl A pound and sit and watch tv.

Ed Vitagliano That's all. If that's all you ate, your arteries.

Tim Wildmon Would probably scream out, what are you trying to do to us? But anyway. All right, Steve, what's your first.

Ed Vitagliano And that is our nutrition moment. Okay, we got American Family Radio.

Spain, Portugal and parts of France experiencing nationwide power failure

Steve Jordahl Spain, Portugal and parts of France are, as we speak, trying to pull out of a catastrophic power failure.

Tim Wildmon Seriously? Yes, I've heard of this.

Steve Jordahl Broke.

Ed Vitagliano This is breaking news.

Steve Jordahl So a nationwide power outage in Spain. Nationwide. In Portugal and parts of France, and everything went down. No trains, no planes, no kidding. Hospitals? No. Hospitals are on generators. No. Cell phones, networks, everything.

Tim Wildmon Wow.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon This is going on. Going right now.

Steve Jordahl They're recovering from it. Yeah, they're. They're.

Tim Wildmon Are they back up?

Steve Jordahl Not yet. Not all together as far as I know. Yeah, they're still.

Tim Wildmon How do you. How do you. How do, How do you say preppers in Spanish?

Steve Jordahl I know.

Tim Wildmon I don't know, because they're, they're, they're saying. Who's laughing now?

Ed Vitagliano This Spanish, power grid. I'm looking at a story on c. Wow. Spanish power grid operator, Red Electrica. I'm guessing that's the name of the company and not the guy who does. It said power is starting to return, but earlier it said restoring power could take between six and 10 hours.

Tim Wildmon How long was it off?

Steve Jordahl I. I just. I don't know. Let me m. See if I. I.

Ed Vitagliano Guess it was sometime in the morning.

Steve Jordahl Yeah. Mid morning is when it. At local time. Is when?

Tim Wildmon A few hours. Yeah, a few hours. Now, let me ask you this. You mentioned what. What countries were affected?

Steve Jordahl Spain and Portugal, all of the Iberian Peninsula, parts of French, which I'm Assuming southern France.

Tim Wildmon M. Okay, well, let me tell you, that's a, warning that I think we all have a. In the back of our mind, we have a fear that that kind of thing could happen to us in the US And I'm not talking because of a hurricane or an earthquake or a, you know, something like that. I'm talking about a cyber attack by another country or an emp. Or an emp, which, in shorthand, tell folks what the.

Ed Vitagliano What that is pulse, which could be triggered by a. A nuclear detonation up in the atmosphere.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Steve Jordahl Or an emp. An EMP One is the. The nuclear bomb. Without the bomb, it's just.

Ed Vitagliano Well, it's. It's okay. So if a nuclear, device detonates, usually it's just above a city, and then you get that fireball. You get the shock wave and the fireball, heat radiation, all that. But if you detonate it, I forget how far up, you know, whatever it is like a mile above the city.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Ed Vitagliano The electromagnetic pulse fries.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Ed Vitagliano All fries the grid. And. And it could. It could knock out the entire Eastern seaboard. or the.

Tim Wildmon It would be an act of war.

Ed Vitagliano And it would be devastating.

Steve Jordahl And you have to wonder. I mean, that's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear all of Spain and all of Portugal and parts of France are completely shut down. You think, m. Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano If they're restoring power this quickly, it's not an end.

Tim Wildmon But they're not at war.

Steve Jordahl No, I. No.

Tim Wildmon No one said Portugal never goes to war.

Steve Jordahl By the way, if it was an emp, don't you think someone would have noticed an atomic bombs.

Tim Wildmon Right, right.

Steve Jordahl Going off.

Tim Wildmon Stuff is falling out of the sky here, but we're not sure what. What's going on.

Ed Vitagliano Well, plus an emp, when it fries, you know, when it fries, the grid, the power grid. There's no easy fix of that. You don't just go, you know, plug a few things back in. All that stuff has to be. If it's not in a.

There's one element of our daily lives that we take for granted

But, you know, supply closet somewhere, you've got to replace all that. And it could take. Could take years.

Tim Wildmon You know. Worst case, there's one element of our daily lives that I think we all take for granted, that if you had a, power grid go out for even a day or two or three, it would, it would. It would be really bad. I was getting simple with my language there. You know what? You know what that would be? It would be red lights.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, yeah. All of the, all the Things that we take for granted.

Tim Wildmon Traffic lights.

Ed Vitagliano Your refrigerator no longer works. Your food spoils. You can't, you can't charge phones. I'm not talking to play games on it. You can't communicate with anyone.

Tim Wildmon But you know, I was just thinking the other day, I was driving down the road and I thought, you know what? We all depend on this traffic light to protect our lives. And now, so, we don't think anything about driving through intersections based on whether the light's green or yellow. And you, know, I'm just saying that you talk about something that's a necessity of life, especially in urban areas, that you don't really think about too much, but that Now you, we've all known when the power goes out, people stop at 4. Like people do comply, but it's still, still dangerous when you have that happen.

Steve Jordahl Probably the first guy would know.

Tim Wildmon That's right. That's true.

Every time we hear a Hispanic name on TV, we suddenly have to shapeshift

All right, next story.

Steve Jordahl Hey, I want to, talk about something that as a reporter has kind of bugged me for a while. Maybe it's bugged you guys too. You ever notice when you're stepping, listening, to some networks, and they go to talk about something going on in Central America, the reporter will go and down in Guatemala. Guatemala or El Salvador. Huh?

Tim Wildmon You mean they change up?

Steve Jordahl They have the accent?

Ed Vitagliano They try to say it with an accent.

Steve Jordahl Well, Rob Finnerty, who's on Newsmax, notice this to cut for 12.

Speaker D Every time we hear a Hispanic name on TV, whether or not the anchor is Hispanic, we suddenly have to shapeshift into a perfect Hispanic accent. Police arrested 25 year old Elan Alain Sanchez. And I mean that honestly. Why do we do that? When I say Alejandro Mayorkas, I just say Alejandra Mayorkas. But on CNN it's Alejandro Mayorkas. I'm Irish. When police arrest someone with an Irish name, I don't say Police just arrested 25 year old Charlie McLaughlin. I just say police arrested Charlie McLaughlin. stop that. Stop.

Ed Vitagliano That's funny because that is true.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, yeah, that'll bug me as a reporter.

Ed Vitagliano They don't do the lucky Ch Charms accent if it's somebody who's Irish.

Tim Wildmon I think it's just trying to be PC.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Trying to be politically correct and, and, and you know, pronounce a foreign name in a, in a way that is respectful.

Ed Vitagliano I, I love the Spanish language. It's a, it's a beautiful language. I just like, I just like saying stuff in it, you know?

Tim Wildmon Like what stuff?

Ed Vitagliano Like, can we have some more cheaps, you know.

Tim Wildmon Oh, wow. More chiefs.

Steve Jordahl You and you and AOC and, Was it Hillary that did that?

Ed Vitagliano Oh, some more cheaps. That's my. My one. I, have a story on that, but I've told it before. Nobody wants to hear it.

Tim Wildmon No, we do. Go ahead.

When I'm around foreign accents, I slip into a foreign accent

Ed Vitagliano All right, well, I was out. And, for those of you who have heard this before, and I know some of you have, I was out. This is before my kids were married, but they were grown, I think. My daughter's in college. My son was in high school. So my wife and I, the four of us, are at a Mexican restaurant, our favorite Mexican restaurant in the town. We live Pontotoc, Muy Pueblo. Okay. And my, My. I have always had a bad habit. I got this from my dad. When I'm around a foreign accent, I slip into the accent without knowing it. And so the waiter came by and, took our order. And I said to the waiter, could you. Could you please bring some more cheaps? And he see, you know, yes, he left. And my. My wife and kids were looking at me like I had just coughed up a hairball. And I said, what? What? And they said, you asked for more cheaps. I said, no, I did not. They all three of them said, yes, you did. And it was unintentional. I wasn't trying to do it, but I had slipped into that m. Please bring some more cheaps.

Tim Wildmon That's funny.

Ed Vitagliano If that, that waiter is listening now.

Tim Wildmon Right? You tip well, though.

Ed Vitagliano I do.

Tim Wildmon You did give him a tip, right? Good tip. Good teeth. You want a tea? Bring me some more cheap.

Ed Vitagliano No disrespect. I'm gonna get myself in trouble.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, all right, all right, go ahead.

The crash between an army helicopter and a passenger jet happened last month

Steve Jordahl All right, the, we're learning new details about the horrific crash between that army helicopter and jet, passenger, plane outside of Reagan National Airport, a month or so ago. And what we're learning, from, audio recordings and. And such, is that the helicopter was at risk, at fault. The, pilot of that helicopter, a woman, was being re. Rated. In other words, she. You. Every so often you have to fly a plane with an instructor just to make sure that you're current. She had some 5,000 hours in this helicopter. She was not a new pilot.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Steve Jordahl and apparently what happened is, the control tower told them there's a passenger jet in your area. And the pilot said, can we go by visual reckoning? In other words, we. We want to look at it. We want to see it and avoid it with our Eyes instead of you telling us altitudes. And generally that happens. They did tell this pilot, to about 30 seconds I think before the crash to, to banker to go a different direction. The helicopter, helicopter pilot didn't do it. And and then we all saw what happened. The accident happened. So, sad. But that's, that's what we're learning about this this crash.

Ed Vitagliano Well, the cut, the speeds you're talking about, especially the passenger jet and being over, I, you know, being over a major city like that, we were talking about that in our story meeting this morning. Don't know how wise that is. I guess you have to, I guess you have to be trained if you're going to fly over a major metropolitan area to know how to do that.

Steve Jordahl But well, if your base, your helicopter base. And so, ah, some of the military bases I've seen. For example, we mentioned the raid in Colorado Springs. I lived there for a while. There are military bases all over the place. The Air Force has, Peterson Air Force Base and they share an airport with Colorado Springs International Airport. In other words, it's divided in half. Half of the, half of the airport is the military and the other half is civilian. So it's kind of hard in that point to avoid the area because that's your area. But Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Well that is sad. Anytime you hear about, you know, pilot, error, you know, it's, it's sad because you want to say, well, if only. But complicated, machinery, high speeds or whatever, those things happen.

Tim Wildmon So also, like Fred's pointed out before, if you look at this, if you ever want to look at something and be amazed, this. Flight Tracker.

Steve Jordahl Flight Tracker, yeah. Yeah.

Tim Wildmon All over the U.S. you know, there are hundreds and hundreds, well, maybe a thousand or more planes in the air at the same time crisscrossing the United States. Small, large aircraft.

Ed Vitagliano I mean, it gives me a headache just looking at it.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. But it's a, it's a miracle that no more, no, no more accidents happen than do.

Steve Jordahl Well on Flight Tracker, every plane looks like they're the size of New Jersey.

Tim Wildmon That's true. That's true.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Steve Jordahl which makes it a lot of space out there. This is a huge country. That's what Europeans say when they come and visit for vacation. Everything. They cannot believe how massive this country is. Because of course in Europe when you have power, you can get, you can cross a country by train in an hour or two.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah. My understanding is sometimes people will come to this country and they'll say, all right, we're going to spend one day in New York and then we're going to spend. Then the next day we're going to D.C. and then the next day we're going to go to Disney World. And people are going. Do you know they're driving?

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano You know how far it is from.

Steve Jordahl They have no clue.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Steve Jordahl So a lot of space in this.

Ed Vitagliano And then we're going to drive to the Grand Canyon.

Steve Jordahl That's right.

Ed Vitagliano No, you're not.

Steve Jordahl All right. hey.

There is a 10 to 20% chance that artificial intelligence will take over humanity

Well, we've been talking a little bit about, artificial intelligence and its potential, for good and bad.

Tim Wildmon We've picked on the Democrats part enough this morning. I don't think you need to keep on bashing article.

Ed Vitagliano Artificial intelligence.

Steve Jordahl That's funny. Well, there's a researcher named Jeffrey Hinton, by the way, he just won the Nobel Prize in physics. I listened to him. He says, I'm not a physicist. I don't know why they chose. he says, I'm a philosopher who has head in tech.

Tim Wildmon But they never did contact me.

Steve Jordahl No.

Tim Wildmon I entered my project, your science project. It was a physics, project and I sent it in and I never heard back from you telling me now they've already announced the winner and it wasn't even. I didn't even get the courtesy of a. You didn't. You finished third or.

Steve Jordahl It wasn't even. It wasn't even a physicist. Honor to a non physicist.

Tim Wildmon Honorable mention. Nothing. Okay, so the guy I lost to a guy who isn't even a physicist.

Steve Jordahl No, no, just.

Ed Vitagliano That's just unfair.

Steve Jordahl Yeah. He's a philosopher who goes. You do in, tech. Anyway, sorry. He was talking on CBS Saturday Morning and his name is Jeffrey Hinton and he was. I'm going to have you listen to, the. This was, I didn't put her name. This is, Savannah Godfrey, I think, and, and Jeffrey Hinton talking about, AI and its potential. And so let's, let's hear cut. 10, 11.

Speaker D He believes there is a 10 to 20% chance that AI artificial intelligence will take over humanity and big tech is failing to get a hold of it.

Speaker E The best way to understand it emotionally is we're like somebody who has this really cute tiger cub. It's just such a cute tiger cub. Unless you can be very sure that it's not going to want to kill you when it's grown up.

Steve Jordahl 10 to 20% chance that artificial intelligence eventually takes control from humans.

Ed Vitagliano Ah. As a 66 year old man, I, I'm I'm good with those odds. You know what? I'll be gone by the time it takes over. I'm just, I'm just kidding. I have kids and grandkids. listen, I, ah, at the same time I'm looking at a story where this is from Fox News. Billionaire, business magnate, magnet, Elon Musk declared in a post on X that robots will outmatch surgeons in a matter of years. He says robots will surpass good human surgeons within a few years and the best human surgeons within five. Less than five years or about five years. So I, this is one of those things where I don't know if that's true or not. He's smarter than I am. But where AI could be a wonderful thing for humanity or it could take us over and enslave the human race.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano And to the point that's being made in your story Steve, people need to pay attention to this threat and take steps to prevent it. That's what the, the person's saying now.

Steve Jordahl You know, kind of ironically what the biggest hindrance to AI is it's computing power. They have to have so many computers to run an artificial int. The farms of them and they're building Musk is building a huge data center to hold hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of computers to do his, his AI. And there's. So they say that if it got to the point where it was like controlling people, it would take the output of half of our, half of our energy use in the United States would go to that. We can't do that. No one's going to do that. So that's going to kind of put a little break on it.

Ed Vitagliano Listen, I, I also did a science project with, with with you know, with Tim.

Steve Jordahl The volcano.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, the volcano. No, I had a potato and I just let it grow little strands out of it. Now listen, so this is a completely non scientific belief, that I have, I have read a lot about, this from a science fiction perspective because well anyway, that's not important. But so let me just say this. I, I question what they're saying about AI taking over. I think all of that is built upon the belief that the human brain is a machine and it's not. And I, I'm not sure that AI can make that jump and become self aware.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, ah, because somebody has to program the AI.

Steve Jordahl Well the point of AI is it takes what you program it and it.

Ed Vitagliano Builds on it and it begins to program itself.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano That's. That's the.

Tim Wildmon So you had the potato project.

Ed Vitagliano The potato prior. You know, it has, you know.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano All the eyes.

Tim Wildmon I did the paper mache volcano. I was worried that you did that, too.

Steve Jordahl No idea why? You didn't get a Nobel Prize for that.

Tim Wildmon Well, I want them. I want the Nobel people to send me my volcano back. And the baking soda.

Steve Jordahl That's right.

Tim Wildmon Okay. Because I need it. All right. See you tomorrow, everybody.