Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. We've got 24 and a half minutes of news and information and insights, which you won't find anywhere else. And that may be a good thing. I don't know.

Tim Wildmon: I've got Steve and Ray. Ray's in Florida. The Three Blind Mice here, roaming around Mississippi.

Tim Wildmon: By the way, Florida and Ole Miss play Saturday. Did you know this, Ray?

Ray: Oh, I know that.

Tim Wildmon: I knew Ray knew it because he's an Ole Miss fan.

Ray: I knew it was going to be big time in the Swamp.

Tim Wildmon: Did you know, guys, Ole Miss is ranked, what, fourth?

Steve: Fourth, yep.

Tim Wildmon: Arguably could be ranked higher than that. Anyway, Ole Miss is ranked fourth. They're playing in Gainesville against the Gators on Saturday afternoon.

Tim Wildmon: So the Florida coach, I don't know, they're ranked, I don't know.

Steve: Twenty-first.

Tim Wildmon: Twenty-first, okay. So the Florida coach was asked on Monday, "Hey, you do realize that your team is favored against the number-four team in America, right?" To which the coach, whose name is Napier, formerly at Tulane, responded, quote, "Yes, there's some good drugs going around out there. There must be some good drugs going around out there," something to that effect. In other words, you have to be on drugs to believe that we should be favored against Ole Miss.

Steve: All week long, they have.

Tim Wildmon: Where are you playing?

Ray: In the Swamp.

Tim Wildmon: It's a hard place to win.

Ray: Hard place to win.

Tim Wildmon: Ole Miss has got a great team. They beat LSU last week. They beat Louisville the week before. But, you know, that 12-week gauntlet that you have to play in, well, in other conferences too, but especially the SEC, you're just not going to go unscathed.

Steve: No.

Tim Wildmon: So anyway, Florida's favored in that game. What were you going to say, Steve?

Steve: The AP Top 10 right now is Texas number one, followed by Georgia, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Indiana, Miami, Ohio State, Alabama, BYU, and LSU.

Tim Wildmon: Okay. The other thing is President Trump is going to be in Knoxville.

Steve: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: What time is that game?

Steve: Early. I'll tell you. It's UT versus UT, right? It's at 11 o'clock our time.

Tim Wildmon: Okay, so it's the University of Tennessee versus the University of Texas, Texas at Tennessee, at 10 in Knoxville, Tennessee. President Trump is going to be there. He's a big football fan.

Steve: He's been floating the idea that he might be the guest picker.

Tim Wildmon: Oh, really?

Steve: I guess ESPN is in Knoxville.

Tim Wildmon: Anyway, that'd be hilarious. I've been in that stadium twice in Knoxville.

Steve: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: When I went, this would have been the '90s and early 2000s, mid-2000s, we drove up there for a game. That's when the University of Tennessee Knoxville stadium was the largest stadium in America, college football capacity-wise. I think it was at that time like 106,000 or 107,000 or something like that.

Steve: It was the largest, and the University of Michigan also at that time was right there with them, over 100,000.

Tim Wildmon: Now you have a few stadiums in America that hold 100,000: Tuscaloosa, Texas A&M. I think the University of Texas at Austin also holds 100,000, and so does Baton Rouge.

Steve: What about Ohio State?

Tim Wildmon: Ohio State, I think they're around 90-something thousand. Maybe I could be wrong.

Steve: Now, Tennessee wanted to, because I know they have held college football games at Bristol Motor Speedway. They played Virginia Tech there to set a record, out of 160-some thousand people.

Tim Wildmon: I've been in that.

Steve: Yeah, I think I've been to Bristol, where they race NASCAR.

Tim Wildmon: Yes, sir. But anyway, President Trump will be in Knoxville for the UT versus UT game. Another interesting angle to that is you've got Arch Manning, the quarterback at Texas, going to play on the road against the college where his uncle became famous.

Steve: Yeah, Peyton Manning.

Tim Wildmon: Peyton Manning with the University of Tennessee.

Tim Wildmon: Speaking of Ole Miss, right?

Steve: Yeah, a story that's been going around on Fox News, especially. There are two students, an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old, who were found dead at Ole Miss, one on campus and one off campus, on Monday. They were unrelated, as far as they know.

Tim Wildmon: You mean unrelated family-wise, or unrelated as far as they weren't both killed?

Steve: The causes of death were not related, as far as they know. This wasn't like they went partying together.

Tim Wildmon: No.

Steve: Unrelated individuals who maybe didn't know each other died of the same thing the same night. I don't even know if they've established that it was the same thing. What they did is they found, in proximity to the bodies, this drug called kratom.

Tim Wildmon: Okay. The autopsies aren't done at the beginning.

Steve: Yeah, but we're just assuming, because of the evidence, that this is what happened. It has sparked a discussion about that because kratom is a very addictive substance. It's an herbal substance, so that's why it's a little deceptive. You think, "Oh, it's just an herbal substance. It's a plant," but it is highly addictive.

Tim Wildmon: Is this a problem nationwide, by the way? I'd never even heard of this before.

Steve: I believe it is, and I need to look. I know in Mississippi it's hit or miss, depending on what county you're in, whether or not you can purchase it. You cannot purchase it in the county that...

Tim Wildmon: I think some states have made it illegal.

Steve: I know Parish Alford said in Louisiana it's illegal to buy anywhere, anytime.

Tim Wildmon: Go ahead.

Steve: Well, you can buy it in several counties in Mississippi here.

Tim Wildmon: And while you cannot buy it in what county is Ole Miss?

Steve: Lafayette.

Tim Wildmon: You cannot buy it in Lafayette County, but you can buy it in Lee County, as you could, and you can buy it in Monroe County.

Steve: I don't think you can buy it in the city of Tupelo, but maybe Lee County. I don't know.

Tim Wildmon: Now, what's the name of this drug again?

Steve: Kratom, K-R-A-T-O-M.

Tim Wildmon: It's natural.

Steve: It is.

Tim Wildmon: Okay, so it's not synthetic.

Steve: No, but it's highly addictive. I had a discussion with a friend of mine that I go to church with who's a doctor, who sees addicts come through his office on a regular basis. It's a story that's running today, and his name is Dr. Neal Wayne. This was our discussion.

Reporter: The bodies of an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old Ole Miss student were found Monday in Oxford, Mississippi, and police are investigating whether the highly addictive substance kratom was involved in their deaths. The supplements are sold in certain Mississippi counties, and Dr. Neal Wayne says he sees a steady flow of kratom addicts in his practice.

Doctor: We find that it's highly addictive, and it depends on the form. Some of the more highly concentrated forms, especially the liquid, seem to be very powerful.

Reporter: He says the treatment is fairly simple.

Doctor: We generally use forms of buprenorphine, which is an opiate agonist and antagonist. People don't develop tolerance to it like they do other opiates. A course of buprenorphine breaks the addiction, but if the supplements were to be suddenly banned, hundreds of secret addicts would be forced out into the open.

Doctor: Definitely going to put people in the drawer, for sure, and they're going to be trying to get it anywhere they can get it. But if it were done nationally, it would create a huge need for addiction treatment.

Reporter: He says any licensed medical provider can prescribe buprenorphine for kratom addiction. Forcing addicts into treatment is a small price to pay to get such a dangerous drug off the market.

Reporter: Would you suggest that it be banned?

Doctor: Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

Reporter: I'm Steve Jordan.

Tim Wildmon: Well, what does this do to you, by the way? What's the attraction? It helps with pain, I understand.

Steve: It's a pain pill, and it can give you a high.

Ray: It gives you energy.

Tim Wildmon: Okay, energy. Yeah, okay. Anyway, that's so sad. These two students apparently died from an overdose of this drug. Death is final in terms of your physical life. So there are two parents struggling, and our hearts go out to the families.

Steve: Yeah, I know. That's what I'm thinking about. It is completely...

Tim Wildmon: Your kid goes off to college and then, boom.

Steve: You know, this just reminds us again, Tim, you go to some gas station somewhere and it's just kratom, right? You don't even know. You have no guarantee that what you think you're getting is what's actually inside the...

Tim Wildmon: You don't know. It's completely unregulated. With regular drugs, they have to list the ingredients, and they have to be approved by the FDA. They have to be tested and all of that. This is just some substance that somebody has found, and they are marketing it this way, and it's killing our kids. It's killing them.

Steve: It has a nickname: gas station heroin.

Ray: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: The city of Oxford, which is home to Ole Miss, has banned it. I'm hoping something good comes out of this. I think the governor of the state is now well aware of what has happened. He's sent his condolences to the families. But I hope something comes out of this regulation-wise, because it's hard to believe that a deadly substance like this is just sold in gas stations.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Wildmon: Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is visiting the United Nations today. Fred, is that right?

Fred: That is correct. In about two hours from now, Central Time, at one o'clock Central Time, two o'clock on the East Coast, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel will give his address. A bunch of world leaders have been doing this this week, over the last two or three days. He'll give his address to the United Nations.

Tim Wildmon: In past speeches, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made no secret of how he feels about the United Nations, because when it comes to resolutions condemning countries, I think Israel is number one on the United Nations list.

Steve: With a bullet.

Tim Wildmon: With a bullet. I'm sorry, that's probably the wrong analogy.

Steve: Yes.

Tim Wildmon: But we are told that this speech in particular, which is coming very close to the anniversary of the Hamas massacre of those 1,200 Israelis, men, women, and children, on October 7, 2023, will address that. He will talk about Hamas, the terrorists who carried out the massacre. He'll talk about those government heads that support Hamas. He'll talk about the false accusation that Israel, in its response to this, is committing genocide. He is also said in a video address that he gave before he left Israel that he's probably going to talk directly to the mayor of New York, Mamdani, who at one point said, "If Netanyahu comes to my city, New York City, then I'm going to arrest him," because the International Criminal Court has condemned Netanyahu.

Tim Wildmon: So it is going to be a very interesting speech, probably with a pretty good audience. Steve, anything?

Steve: No.

Tim Wildmon: I agree.

Steve: Both he and the ambassador to the U.N., whose name is Danny Danon, have said that they expect some surprises. They both used the word "surprise" when it came to Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, this is what Benjamin Netanyahu said. This is him speaking in Hebrew before he left the country, through a translator.

Benjamin Netanyahu: I'm leaving for New York tonight to defend the State of Israel and the idea of soldiers from the podium of the United Nations. You hear the terrible lies being spread there and elsewhere around the world. I will fight against those lies. I will fight for the truth of our soldiers, for the truth of our country, and yes, there will also be surprises.

Tim Wildmon: Don't know what that means?

Steve: Right.

Tim Wildmon: Anything?

Steve: You look at the thing about Prime Minister Netanyahu. When he comes to the U.N., he is a truth-teller. You hear a lot of guys get up there and blow smoke around. He doesn't do that. He calls it the way it is, which is why some people love him. I happen to love Mr. Netanyahu. I appreciate his leadership. He's going to be bold. He's going to tell the truth about Hamas, and some people are going to hate it. But at least he's going to expose, and maybe expose the lies from the other side, and maybe force some people to get off the fence and decide if they're going to support Israel or not.

Tim Wildmon: Mm-hmm.

Tim Wildmon: What's your next story, Steve?

Steve: We have talked a little bit about this before, but there is a company called Neuralink. It is an Elon Musk company, and they are putting brain implants into people. They are doing things like curing blindness. In this particular case, they are allowing a man with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, who has lost his voice, to communicate with his wife. This is a little piece that was put together by one of the journalists covering this.

Neuralink Representative: First, we're going to connect your implant. Every row on this view is one channel on the implant, and so there's 3,000 of those channels in this implant. As this thing sweeps across, it's populating new data in each column. This is a real-time view of the neural signals.

Neuralink Representative: Since we implanted this in the speech motor region, if you try and think or attempt speaking, we might be able to see some modulation. This is already super exciting to see how much activity lights up when you try and do different things.

Neuralink Representative: The next thing we want to do is collect data, and we'll actually build a decoder, taking your neural signals and translating them into your intended speech. You'll start with this. It'll turn blue. You'll say what you want to say, then you'll press this button, and that will say it out loud through the computer speakers.

Neuralink Participant: Oh, oh, oh, no, no. No, no, no.

Neuralink Representative: And, Chris, that's how it would work.

Neuralink Participant: Hello. How are you doing today?

Neuralink Representative: You just got your voice back.

Chris's Wife: For us, something that I know I took for granted, to just be able to have a conversation with my husband, this means the world to us, to be able to have that communication back.

Neuralink Representative: Is that all your brain waves?

Chris's Wife: Mm-hmm.

Chris's Wife: Oh, my gosh, that is so cool.

Neuralink Participant: I love you.

Tim Wildmon: Yeah, he thinks the words, and they show up on the computer screen.

Steve: And then they have a voice that can read it. It's not unheard of. They could use his voice. They could find a recording of his voice from before he got sick.

Tim Wildmon: What was the grunt?

Steve: That was him trying to speak.

Tim Wildmon: That was the man with ALS attempting to speak?

Steve: He can't speak, but he can think. His thoughts were communicated through the...

Tim Wildmon: Brain implant.

Steve: Because of the brain implant. First, it goes from that thought. This little chip takes the thought, and the way they've developed this chip is that it detects thoughts as words. It takes those thoughts, turns them into a scripted word, and then another piece of software picks up the words, and you have the audio. What you heard is this dear man, for the first time in I'm not sure how long, since he lost his speech, able to tell his wife, "I love you."

Tim Wildmon: Just amazing. We live in an age of miracles, of medical miracles and scientific miracles. This kind of thing, 15 years ago or 10 years ago, was in the realm of science fiction. This is going to give voice to so many people.

Steve: I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but I will tell you that there are potential drawbacks to being able to put a computer chip in one's brain and read one's thoughts.

Tim Wildmon: If you were to put it in there, what could that be, Steve?

Steve: Well, that's the other side, isn't it?

Tim Wildmon: Enlighten us, Steve.

Steve: Well, maybe Revelation would have something that we could...

Tim Wildmon: Revelation or not, who wants to sign up for every thought we have being communicated to the world?

Steve: No, but I mean...

Tim Wildmon: Well, there's a fact.

Steve: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: Yeah, you go first.

Steve: That's not me, you know.

Tim Wildmon: Right. And how do you know for a fact that it's generating the real thought of the person? I'm not saying that wasn't true right there. I'm just saying the individual could write, if they can write.

Steve: Well, there's a lot of control. We can't. He's, you know, he said...

Tim Wildmon: Well, how does the individual confirm that the thought was translated properly?

Steve: Well, he tells them the chip told them that it's right.

Tim Wildmon: I don't know. He can maybe nod his head. I mean, that's what I'm saying. How do you consent to that being accurate?

Steve: We don't know. We don't know. I suppose that...

Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I don't know. You thought you were Debbie Downer.

Steve: Well, and I don't think this thing, I don't know if I believe that Neuralink is exactly less than his wife. It's not just speech. Neuralink has been used to connect hearing loss, and it's been connected to sight. Blind people can see, and the deaf can hear again.

Tim Wildmon: Because it's clearly...

Steve: Yeah, the man is very, very sad.

Tim Wildmon: We do live in an era of miracles. With AI, it's only going to get better. By miracles, we're not talking about divine miracles, folks. Only God can do that. But we're talking about what God has enabled man to do through technology. It is miraculous, with a small "m."

Steve: For these families.

Tim Wildmon: For these families, yeah. An untold blessing.

Steve: I think, coming in the next couple of years, two to five years maybe, we're going to see miraculous advancements with AI in being able to treat and heal diseases that we thought were beyond the reach of modern medicine.

Tim Wildmon: Am I right? We'll keep reading about that.

Steve: Sure.

Tim Wildmon: Yeah. So praise the Lord for the technological advancements.

Steve: We have about two minutes left.

Tim Wildmon: Hey, you got anything? Because I've got something if you don't have anything.

Steve: Let's go.

Tim Wildmon: We've got some big college football games.

Steve: Yes, we do.

Tim Wildmon: And I want to know who's taking the points, so I'm going to listen.

Steve: I'm just kidding.

Tim Wildmon: Freaking people out. "Wait a minute. Christian radio's promoting gambling." Not.

Steve: No, I'm not.

Tim Wildmon: So we've got UT versus UT. That's a big one.

Steve: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: We've got Ole Miss versus Florida. That's a big one.

Steve: Yeah, we've got some others.

Tim Wildmon: We've got Oregon and USC out west. That's going to be a good one.

Steve: It's number 12 against number 20, I guess.

Tim Wildmon: For people who like it, we've got Iowa and Michigan. That's going to be a good one. Texas A&M and LSU.

Steve: This is a great weekend for people who love college football.

Tim Wildmon: Who's in LSU?

Steve: Texas A&M and LSU.

Tim Wildmon: Yeah.

Ray: Also, my alma mater, Mississippi State, has won three games in a row for the first time since 1980.

Tim Wildmon: I'm just kidding. Just kidding, people.

Ray: It just seems like it.

Tim Wildmon: You're a quarterback. I mean, you're a quarterback.

Ray: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: Hey, say something, Camario.

Ray: Camario Taylor. They call him Super Camario.

Tim Wildmon: Man.

Steve: Man, you're good.

Ray: Mississippi State now, my alma mater, plays Missouri, and Missouri's good too.

Tim Wildmon: Air Force is at Nevada, by the way. I saw Missouri. I watched them play Kansas, Ray, and they waxed Kansas. And now you guys are going down to start going for the cowbell record.

Ray: Yeah, I don't know if they go. Okay.

Tim Wildmon: Yeah, we're talking cowbells, but there's a report. I mean, they're saying that they're going to go for the record.

Ray: Cowbells. Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: I think they see 62,000 or something like that. So I imagine you'll have a thousand, a couple thousand Missouri fans who won't bring cowbells.

Ray: That's right.

Tim Wildmon: A lot of headaches coming out of that, I mean, don't you think, Steve?

Steve: There's a story behind that. Maybe I'll bring that forth, about the cowbell tradition at football games at Mississippi State.

Tim Wildmon: All right. We hope you have a great rest of your day. Trivia Friday tomorrow, everybody. We'll see you then.