Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ya Gotta Take It… | 6/26/23

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Recalls; Toys and Cars… Dog nanny gig… Columbian dad of rescued children, questionable… OceanGate Gate investigation… CNN for sale?... Geraldo out on The Five… chewingthefat@theblaze.com Van...na lawyers up… The IDOL on MAX… Hanna / Keep Breathing... Who Died Today: Oscar Cabrera 28 / Dean Smith 91 / unnamed man into plane engine / Unnamed person from derailed roller coaster… Montana train crash… Julian Sands found?... Velociraptor statue stolen… Goodwill ain't Goodwillin' no more… To Subtitle or Not Subtitle… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Boarding for Flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time. Play Ojo? Great idea. Feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games and with no wagering requirements. What you win is yours to keep groovy. Hey, I won! Boating will begin when passenger Fisher is done celebrating.
Starting point is 00:00:22 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned by your gambling or that if someone close, you call 186653300 or visit Comex Ontario.com. Blaze Radio Network And now, chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher. Once again, we start with recalls. Amazing. I don't know what's happening around the world, but everything is being recalled.
Starting point is 00:00:43 So now we have a recall of Honda vehicles because there's an issue with the rear-view camera image. That's according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall covers some 2018-2023 Odyssey's 2019-2020-22 pilots and 2019-2023 passport vehicles. Due to a faulty communications co-axle cable connector, the rear-view camera image may not appear on the display. Huh. So now they extended the warranty of the vehicles affected by the issue because they knew that there was an issue, but there hasn't been any reports of injuries.
Starting point is 00:01:28 or death related to the recall issue, but, hey, bring it in and we'll take care of it for you. Okay? So, apparently, the dealers will install an improved cable harness between the existing display audio and vehicle terminal connections and a
Starting point is 00:01:44 straightening cover over the vehicle cable connector to properly connect the audio display unit. So if you have a Honda in one of those years, just, it's only, you know, I don't know, it's a million, over a million vehicles in the United States.
Starting point is 00:02:01 So good luck. If you have one, get it taken care of, okay? This next recall is something I hesitate to talk about because it's going to do something that I don't want to do. But I'm going to do it because safety for the kids. It's all about the kids. So about 7.5 million singing and swimming baby shark bath toys are being recalled after multiple lacerations and puncture wounds were reported in children playing
Starting point is 00:02:35 with them. Those bastards, the California-based toy maker said it's recalling both the full-size and mini versions of its robotic baby shark toys that have hard plastic top fins, which pose the injury risk to children. Now, consumers in possession of the... recalled toys are instructed to stop using them immediately. There also have been injuries reported from the big one, the full-sized toy, but they're also recalling the Robo Alive Junior mini baby shark swimming bath toys out of say it with me now
Starting point is 00:03:18 and abundance of caution. So far, there have been 12 injuries reported. nine of these cases required stitches or medical attention. Wow, that's according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. So if you have one of these toys, I say get rid of it. Now, good luck getting rid of it. Do it while your kid is not around. You may, if you want to show the kid that, hey, this is a terrible toy.
Starting point is 00:03:48 Maybe when it starts up swimming in the bathtub and you hear and then you just pull out your weapon and you put the toy to rest I don't know that might have some sort of trauma for the kid but it may be worth it welcome welcome to chewing the fat
Starting point is 00:04:16 well it's all ready to tell you about a new gig that you could possibly have and then I find out that they've already taken it down because too many people have applied so there was a UK job posting for a full-time dog with the salary of $127,000.
Starting point is 00:04:41 And it had to be removed because, as I said, too many people wanted the job. The job was posted by Fairfax and Kensington, a high-end international recruitment agency for a billionaire American family, now based in London. That would be a good gig. They wanted someone that was exceptional
Starting point is 00:05:04 and highly experienced. and they wanted that person to provide top-tier care for their two beloved dogs. They are truly looking for someone at the top of their field who can ensure the overall well-being, happiness, and safety of their dogs. That, my friends, is a good gig. Just look after the dogs, $127,27,000 to be exact. But I hope you were one of the ones that got your application in, because once it was announced and it went viral,
Starting point is 00:05:38 they took it down because they had too many applications. So, oh, well, congratulations to the person who got the gig. I don't know how long you could do that job, though. I mean, all you're doing is taking care of the dogs, and then the dogs become attached to you, but you can't get them too attached to you because the owners are like, hey, those are my dogs. I want the dogs to be attached to me, too.
Starting point is 00:06:00 You're just supposed to take care of them. So that's a tough. That's, you know, for 127,000 a year, Yeah, I mean, that's good because you probably don't have to, they're not expecting you to live somewhere else. You've got to be there for the dog. So you're living in the guest house or a room upstairs. So you don't have to spend any money. I don't even know if you get any time off, right?
Starting point is 00:06:20 It's seven days a week job. Maybe they give you a day off to go out and, you know, gallivant around town a little bit. That's it because you have to take care of the dogs. So I don't know. I don't know. Does it sound like a good job? Yes. Is it? It's questionable.
Starting point is 00:06:36 So I'm reading about the four children who survived a plane crash in the Amazon rainforest. Remember, they were found by rescue teams after 40 days of surviving on their own in the jungle. The three adults were killed when the small passenger plane went down, including the children's mother and two pilots. Investigators who reached the crash site found only three deceased adults. Signs of the other four survived, including shoes and a disguised diaper. and so they were off looking for the children. And the children were aged 13, 9, 4, and 11.
Starting point is 00:07:10 And they survived in part by eating cassava root and fruit. Members of the children's community attributed their survival to knowledge and experience of the jungle. I mean, amazing, right? And the 13-year-old took care of the younger ones, and they survived for 40 days in the jungle. Incredible. Now, the dad of the kids is having to answer for his. cheating ways. Now apparently the reason the mother was on the flight with the kids is because she was
Starting point is 00:07:38 leaving because he had beaten her and was cheating on her. The brother-in-law talks about how he cheated on her and she was, you know, believing that they may be able to mend the relationship, but she was, you know, that's why she was on the flight. And he won't answer any of the questions because he has surrounded himself with minders. I want those. I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't I don't think that's, I don't think the minders are attorneys. The minders are just people that keep him in check. They've seen him coming out of the hospital, and he's all dressed in new clothes, and he's looking awful flashy, and he's got his little necklace on with the tiger and the
Starting point is 00:08:18 two cons, and, you know, he's part of the, I think they're all part of the Wittoto indigenous group, H-U-I-T-O-T-O-Indigenous group. So I believe that they're all part of the, Huitoto. I don't even know if it's Hui or if it's just Hui or it's just Huito.
Starting point is 00:08:41 That's where they apparently got their knowledge and experience of the jungle because they were part of the Huitoto indigenous group. So now the father, they're making claims against the father
Starting point is 00:08:51 and if he did beat the mom and cheated on her, I don't know what that means. So what? There's still his kids. So he said, when he was asked about it
Starting point is 00:09:02 on the streets, One of his minders shook his head and said, don't answer that. So he doesn't answer that. And his minders are keeping him on the straight and narrow while standing outside of the Bogota Hospital, where his children are recuperating. So I don't know if he gets the kids back or not. But after having such an amazing ride with these kids,
Starting point is 00:09:26 I know his minders will keep him on the straight and narrow at least until he gets his kids back. Good news as far as the Ocean Gate is the horrible tragedy of Ocean Gate. The Coast Guard announced that it's going to do an investigation into the deadly submersible implosion. Good. The Guard's Marine Board investigation will aim to uncover what caused the vessel to implode and kill all five people on board. Investigators have teamed up with Canadian authorities to collect evidence. Once the investigation is complete, the board can recommend civil or criminal sanctions to the necessary.
Starting point is 00:10:03 authorities. The chief investigator said the goal is to prevent a similar tragedy by enhancing safety. Is it? Is that your goal? Is it? Okay. All right. Yeah, by having more regulations. So, you know, they're studying the voice recordings and other data from the mothership to try determine what happened and whether there were any criminality that occurred. Well, the owner, the CEO of the company, was on the sub. And so, and so, So I'm guessing that everything that they normally do, they would have done that and more for the safety of the ride. So I know that everybody likes to jump on board and they're happy. I knew there was going to be a problem.
Starting point is 00:10:47 I took it. I knew there was going to be a problem. Did you? Okay. All right. All right. So we'll see what the outcome of that. I'm sure it's going to be more regulations for sure.
Starting point is 00:10:58 I saw where Mr. Beast said that he was invited to go on the trip and it probably would have. have been this trip and he declined. So he was probably pretty happy about that. And the teen, of course, the stepmom talked about the teen that went down in the sub, had brought a Rubik's Cube. He was going to try to set the world record for the Rubik's Cube underwater. No word yet whether the Guinness people were going to allow it. She said they took a camera down too.
Starting point is 00:11:28 Now, if they recover the camera and he took the photos, or the video and that survived, and he did it before it imploded. Does that still count as a world record? I don't know. But maybe something good will come out of the Ocean Gate Gate investigation. All right, let's go to the break room.
Starting point is 00:11:49 I need something cold to drink desperately. All right. Did you see where CNN might be for sale? Speculation is growing, apparently. that Warner Brothers Discovery is going to sell CNN in the coming year. And Jeff Zucker has emerged as the possible suitor. Zucker is among the contenders to buy the network. Despite, yeah, I mean, so what?
Starting point is 00:12:21 He got ousted from the company. So what? He, you know, still believes in the company and wants to take it over. And he sees a big opportunity ahead of the 2024 presidential election. I mean, I'm sure that Warner Brothers Discover receives that opportunity as well, but they may be sick of it and tired of trying to decide what goes on the air and what doesn't. So I'd be interesting if Zucker takes over CNN and purchases it. It'd like to be interesting to see what direction CNN goes in, although I think we know what
Starting point is 00:12:58 direction CNN goes in because Zucker is definitely anti-Trump. And so he'll be all in for anti-Trump because they he left and then the guy they took septin office they ran him out because he tried to be middle of the road and open the door to trump oh no cannot have that so it'll be kind of interesting to see what happens there i also see where uh haroldo rivaa speaking of networks uh is out on the five he had tweeted out that he's done with the five and so he's raldo's like what 79 now i mean he's still working all the He looks great. That's fine, but it's official. He's out at the five.
Starting point is 00:13:40 And so I guess his final days on the five are the end of this month, which is June of 2023. If you're listening live, today is the 26th of June, 2023. So we'll see. He said that he appreciates the opportunity. Being the odd man out isn't always easy. For the time being, I'm still correspondent at large. for the time being.
Starting point is 00:14:06 So if he's out on the five, he might be out at Fox altogether, which means, does he go over to CNN? That wouldn't surprise me at all, especially if Zucker gets in charge. Bring Geraldo over to CNN, and let's go. Okay, great, Geraldo. Good luck.
Starting point is 00:14:24 God bless. I see also interesting that Vanna White apparently has, you know, hooked up with attorneys and she's trying to negotiate a better deal for Wheel of Fortune. She should have that already. You know, Sejack was making, I don't know, 15 million a year for the show. And Vanna was only making, I think, three a year, which, I mean, it's still a good living.
Starting point is 00:14:52 Pretty good living. And so, and she's apparently has not had a pay increase in 18 years, which seems strange. But if she's just, you know, going through the motions and making in three million a year. That's from, you know, Wheel of Fortune. That's not from any of the sponsorships or anything. And, you know, Pat was still the anchor of the show. So he's gone.
Starting point is 00:15:16 Vanne needs more money. She deserves it. No question. One of the things I found interesting, and, you know, I hope that she gets everything that she deserves. No question. But I see in this story,
Starting point is 00:15:28 which I was like, no way. That's impossible. It talks about the people that, that they're thinking about replacing Pat Sejack with? Okay, so there's just no way that this is true. Well, all of them anyway. One of them is Ryan Seacrest, which I guess it's possible that he could be in talks for the gig.
Starting point is 00:15:53 The other was Whoopi Goldberg and Andy Cohen. No. Whoopi Goldberg is not going to take over Wheel of Fortune. I am sorry, no. That would not be good for the show. It wouldn't be good for her. Although it would be good for Mummo's by Jeffie, because that's what she would be sporting as she was hosting Wheel of Fortune.
Starting point is 00:16:17 And I am more than willing to let Whoopi continue to be a proud sponsor of Mummoos by Jeffie. Man, I wish that that was actually real because it should be. It should be. Anyway, there's no chance. There's no chance. chance if they want the show to survive that they would put whoopi goldberg in as host of the wheel of fortune okay i started uh watching the idol on hbo i thought uh i made it through three episodes and apparently there's only five episodes of the idol which is really disappointing uh there's
Starting point is 00:16:57 so for me i've got a couple episodes left but i believe the final episode has already aired in some places and it will be out July 2nd here so it's coming up next week anyway I've been kind of enjoying it I don't know why they've been saying that it was too much sex and too much darkness but I enjoyed it and I don't they claim that the show is with this aspiring pop star but she's already a star she's just trying to get back into it because her mom died and she freaked out after her mom died and had a nervous breakdown and they're trying to get her back to the top and the weekend is this self-help cult leader guy
Starting point is 00:17:44 who comes in and starts taking over everything so you know trying to get her straight although I don't know that that's actually going to work in the end fascinating and I don't know that they can get there in five episodes holy cow as slow as this show these shows have been moving there's no way they could get to the breakup of him and her and her group and his group and what happens to her as far as trying to make this comeback in another two episodes after the after the first three wow uh they'd have to really pick up the pace
Starting point is 00:18:19 and i don't see that happening i do not see that happening it is a big guy show though uh there's no question about that if you don't want uh sex and the talk of sex and the struggle that goes along with that, don't watch it. But I am. The promos were that there's too much of T&A. Yeah, well, I'm watching it. Don't you worry about it.
Starting point is 00:18:45 I also watched a couple other things this weekend. I didn't realize, and this is just me being an idiot, is that Hannah, the series that was on Prime, is really good. I really liked it a lot. Well, there was a movie in 2011, Hannah, based on,
Starting point is 00:19:03 the same story. And I thought, wow, I didn't know that. And it's on Netflix or Prime or one of the, one of the, one of the apps. And I thought, wow, that's the movie. So it had to have been, you know, based on that. And so I started to watch it. I've made it about halfway through and it's exactly
Starting point is 00:19:19 the same story. But the characters are not as good as the series on Prime. I'm sorry. The people that put together the show on Prime did a fantastic job. And the people from the movie was, okay. You know, It's okay, especially since I watched the series first.
Starting point is 00:19:36 Probably should have watched the movie first if I knew it was out there. I would have. So I'm a little disappointed in that. And then I watched, my wife was watching this show called Keep Breathing. And that was, I mean, I guess that came out last year on Netflix, which pretty fascinating. It was six episodes, right? I think it was, I think it's six episodes on Netflix. and it's fascinating.
Starting point is 00:20:04 This girl is struggling with her life and she gets in a plane crash and she's in the forest. I guess that the wilderness is in a Canadian wilderness and she has to survive whether she can or not. She's in this plane wreck. And as she's struggling in the wilderness,
Starting point is 00:20:20 she's having flashbacks to her life and what got her to the point she's at now. Pretty fascinating. It was really good. And honestly, I didn't know how it was going to end. Well, I kind of didn't know. I mean, I felt like it was going to end the way it ended. But as it got closer to the end, I thought, maybe not.
Starting point is 00:20:40 Maybe they're just going to end it like one way. And it'd be kind of a bummer if they ended it like that. And they didn't, of course. But it was pretty close to ending it as a bummer. And yet it wasn't because if they ended it as a bummer, we couldn't get season two. I don't know if Netflix has greenlit season two, for Keep Breathing. Yeah, keep breathing.
Starting point is 00:21:05 I just kept calling it Just Breathe all night last night, but it's Keep Breathing is the name of the show. So I'm with the writer's strike, who knows? We're ever going to get season two of anything anymore. Heck, the actors could go on strike at the end of the week
Starting point is 00:21:18 if they don't reach a deal with the union. So, I mean, we may never get new shows again, which is very disappointing. Although, how long can the strikes go on before someone says, you know what, screw the strike, we're going to start making our own work
Starting point is 00:21:34 and we don't care. I don't know. I don't know, but it's got to happen. We've got to have content and somebody needs to break through. Maybe it'll be me. Or not. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining
Starting point is 00:22:05 means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. So who died today? Who died today? Well, a basketball player from the Dominican Republic, his name was Oscar Cabrera, just died of a heart attack while performing a stress test at the age of 28. Now, Oscar had previously fell down on the court in the middle of a game, and he blamed the myocarditis that he had been diagnosed with on the COVID vaccine.
Starting point is 00:22:45 He said, I knew it. I got a damn myocarditis from taking an effing vaccine. I got two doses of Pfizer, and I knew it. Many people warned me. So it was a requirement for him to play professional basketball and that he had no pre-existing health conditions. Okay. So now he has dropped over on a treadmill while they were testing him,
Starting point is 00:23:11 dead at the age of 28. I didn't say it he did I didn't say it he did rest in peace Oscar also Dean Smith Olympic sprinter turned Hollywood stunt
Starting point is 00:23:26 performer died at the age of 91 he is from the great state of Texas he worked on screen with John Wayne John Ford Paul Newman
Starting point is 00:23:39 Dale Robertson the guy was in a lot of stuff in Hollywood. He also got help from James Garner, who got him a lot of work in Hollywood as well. So Dean Smith, famous Olympic sprinter and
Starting point is 00:23:56 stunt performer in Hollywood, dead at the age of 91. We also have an unnamed person at an airport in San Antonio, the San Antonio International airport. He's a ramp worker, He died after being ingested into a Delta plane engine that was taxing toward the gate. No, thank you.
Starting point is 00:24:23 No, thank you. Remember, we just had somebody else in Alabama, I think, last year that had that happen to. What is happening? Stay away from the ingestion into the airplane engines, please. Plus, you know how many planes got backed up on the runway because of that? A lot, a lot, I'll tell you that. So rest in peace, plain, ingested person. And we also have a one person killed, nine injured when a roller coaster train derailed in Stockholm.
Starting point is 00:24:57 They're going to close up the park for seven days, a whole seven days, to allow for an investigation. That doesn't sound like a fun way to go either. We're enjoying our life one second on the roller coaster, and then it derails, and then you're dead. Speaking of trains derailing that, we had the big train crash in Montana, right? And cars with hazardous materials plunged into the Montana River. I heard that. Okay, and I thought, okay, here we go. And then they said, well, yes, the bridge collapsed over the Yellowstone River,
Starting point is 00:25:28 causing at least seven train cars carrying hazardous materials to fall into the water. They said that one of the train cars had sodium hydro sulfate. and that did not leak into the river, which would have been the worst case scenario, I guess. That was averted, but cars carrying asphalt and molten sulfur had been compromised, so they were testing the water quality from them.
Starting point is 00:25:54 But on top of all of that, the collapse severed a main fiber optic cable that runs through Montana, hampering internet access for global net customers. So if you have internet access, listening to Chewing the Fat in Montana, man, good for you because you either didn't use Global Net
Starting point is 00:26:14 or they've got it back up and running. But, you know, thank you for listening to Chewing the Fat. I appreciate it. No matter what internet provider you're using. Thank you. And we may have found Julian Sands. The remains were found near a hiking
Starting point is 00:26:30 area where British actor Julian Sands went missing. Remember we talked last week about the search party going back out there looking for Julian I mean he's been missing since January and so they don't know where he is but an unidentified human remains were discovered by
Starting point is 00:26:49 hikers in the Mount Maldi Wilderness area in California and that's the according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff so the remains were discovered where it's possible Julius Sands went missing in January so we may have found him although he's missing since january i don't know how much human remains were found or what type of human remains were found so it could be something else we'll we'll see i mean i hope it's him
Starting point is 00:27:21 and the family could get closure on this really sad that uh they haven't been able to find him and then of course he's missing and hopefully you know i do i i guess they um they stopped searching because of and hazardous state trails were, you know, with the weather. So it's possible that the body was really, really decomposed. I don't know. I don't know. When they say human remains, I don't know what they mean by that. Was it an arm and a leg or was it a full body?
Starting point is 00:27:56 I don't know. Well, we should know in a week anyway. So they have enough remains to be able to identify whether it's him or not. So hopefully, I don't know what you wish for. Do you wish that it's him and so you have closure? Or do you wish that it's not him and you still hold out hope that he's alive? So whichever you wish to do, do. One of my favorite stories, police have hunted down the Velociraptor that was stolen outside of South Dakota Arts and Science Center.
Starting point is 00:28:27 This is awesome because who wouldn't want to take the Velociraptor outside of the South Dakota Arts and Science Center? So Friday, a security officer spotted three people carrying the statue away from the pavilion. They called police just after midnight. The surveillance video then helped officers track the statue to a nearby apartment. Ah, see? So when opening the door, the detectives could clearly see the velociraptor was sitting right inside. Oh, you think? So they got this giant statue.
Starting point is 00:28:59 So these three guys stole the statue. Thought it would be funny. the suspects are charged with grand theft okay i mean why did you just take it back and have them put it back at the at the pavilion at the arts center one was 18 one was 19 and one was a juvenile so the statue wasn't damaged and so just let them take it back and leave them alone they were just having some fun they thought it'd be funny to have the statue inside their apartment they probably would have it have taken it back sooner or later? I don't know. Come on. Do we need to actually charge these
Starting point is 00:29:38 kids? Because that's funny. I would love to have. Maybe not. It would have taken it back then. If they didn't get caught, would they have taken it back? I don't think so. So it was one of two Velasiraptors featured outside as part of the collection of dinosaur statues. One was perched on the roof of the building, looking out at the city, and the other was almost directly below, which is the one they took obviously so would they have brought it back
Starting point is 00:30:03 if they weren't caught? I don't know I'd like to think they would so I mean it would be really cool to have one in your house though I can understand why they took it why not it's Friday night we've got nothing else to do we're walking by the arts center let's take the Velociraptor
Starting point is 00:30:21 and they did and they almost got away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling kids This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. Built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans,
Starting point is 00:30:54 real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross-Trainting Tread Plus at OnePeloton.ca. So the story of a TikToker who donated something to Goodwill and is upset that what she donated is priced at a certain price is kind of interesting to me. Because I've talked on this show quite a bit about Goodwill changing its ways.
Starting point is 00:31:30 I love shopping at thrift stores. I spent a lifetime shopping at thrift stores. Love them. I loved, and I love the haggling. Those days you don't get back. Nobody haggles anymore. Everybody has a set price. They believe that what they have is, you know, an antique or a collectible.
Starting point is 00:31:50 And I told you about the one goodwill that I used to go to a lot here in a DFW where they have a separate section for the stuff that they believe is too good to goodwill. And so you have to put a price that you'll pay for it. And they have an auction for the stuff. They have it setting in a case. up front and you have to and they auction it off instead of setting it give you a price and then they have a room up front that's separate from the regular stuff that is the hoity tooty stuff of goodwill goodwill has their hoity tooty section okay enough already okay the point of thrifting is to get a
Starting point is 00:32:29 good deal on some of the hoity tooty stuff that's the point of thrifting and the point of haggling is always fun to me uh saying how much i'll give to you i talked about the days when i really was seriously, broker than I am now, which is saying a lot. And I used to go into a thrift store, St. Vincent DePaul's, and this is a hundred years ago. And the ladies that ran it would make it less for me because I used to just pay and change. It's all I had.
Starting point is 00:32:59 And so I would always go in with, you know, a pocketful of change. So that when I brought up shirts and pants, some of my favorite clothes came from that thrift store. and you know for sure the ladies how much is this and you pull out a handful of money coins from your pocket oh that's only 25 cents that's only 50 cents it was so much fun and still got some great clothes out of there but the idea of donating to these places and i have donated a whole bunch to goodwill over the years and what they charge they charge and you know i know that they think they have the antiques and the collectibles now it's very frustrating when i go in that store
Starting point is 00:33:38 so, you know, whatever. If I saw something that I donated and the price was something other than what I thought it should be, oh, well, you know, I donated to them. I hope they get it. I hope they get it. If you were to set it up in a yard sale, you're not going to pay the same price that you're paying at the thrift store or the Goodwill store because people buying stuff at a yard sale or a garage sale think that everything has to be, you know, cheap.
Starting point is 00:34:05 You know, I question that thinking, but that's the way it is. So the lady, big pressure, 854, I guess, is a content creator on TikTok. She said she will not be donating to Goodwill anymore. It's just crazy Goodwill. She said in her video, Goodwill ain't Goodwillin anymore. And I donated these a few weeks ago. And they got them here for $25. Goodwill it ain't goodwillin no more.
Starting point is 00:34:34 Goodwillin and goodwillin no more. Welcome to the party. So I was reading this article by Devin Gordon in the Atlantic, and it is a fascinating story. He's talking about closed captioned on our television screens. And the article talks about his story about the first time it happened. He assumed it was a millennial thing. Our younger neighbors had come over with their kids and a projector for the backyard movie night. And I said, as the opening scene began, you left the subtitles on.
Starting point is 00:35:09 And the husband said, oh, we always leave the subtitles on. Why? They don't, and he goes on. I mean, the article is really good if you have an opportunity to read the full article. I'll try to, you know, I'll try to get through it here without giving you the, you know, you can go read the whole article, but it's really good. And he asks why? They don't like missing any of the dialogue, he said.
Starting point is 00:35:31 And sometimes it's hard to hear. Someone is trying to sleep or they're only half paying attention. And the subtitles are right there waiting to be flipped on. so why not? Well, because now I'm reading TV, not watching it, because now instead of focusing my attention on the performances, the costumes, the cinematography, the painstakingly mixed sound, and how it all works together to tell the story
Starting point is 00:35:53 and transport me into an alternate world, my eyes keep getting yanked downward to read words I can already hear. My soul can't bear the notion of someone watching the Sopranos for the first time, and as Tony wades into the pool looking down to the bottom of the screen to read quacks, reading ducks quack. So I know that the subtitles serve an important purpose for people with hearing our cognitive impairments, but,
Starting point is 00:36:20 or for translation from a foreign language, they're not for fluent English speakers watching television in fluent English. Then the couple months later, he talks about on New Year's Eve. My wife and I were about to start watching Don't Look Up with another couple. And so both of them have spent their entire art life, working at movies, television, theater, visual arts,
Starting point is 00:36:42 where voice and imagery are sacrosanct tools of communication with the audience. Surely, a screen actor like Ken would be aghast at the notion of so many people choosing to miss so much of the detail and nuance that he builds into his performances. Nah, the following story is the most important thing. He told me recently when I asked him about it for this article, if you're getting knocked out of the story because you can't follow the dialogue, that by all means turn on the subtitles. It's fine. You have my permission.
Starting point is 00:37:12 That was alarming to my man, Devin Gordon. You know, subtitles are creeping into our homes. From TikTok, gets a lot of blame for that. It's conditioning multiple generations to watch content with text plastered all over it. And the war is raging throughout, you know, living rooms and bedrooms across America, the great subtitle war. So then he caught his wife watching a show with the subtitles. Doni realized I've lost her too.
Starting point is 00:37:41 And then we got three years ago, the South Korean filmmaker Bong Jong-ho took the stage at the Golden Globes to accept the best foreign language film award for Parasite and made a heartfelt speed urging us to watch more stuff with subtitles. So once you overcome the one-inch-tall
Starting point is 00:37:57 barrier, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films. And then Paraside won Oscar for Best Picture and the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus pandemic. Okay. So, and he talks about Squid Game, you know, making a breakthrough during the pandemic, and he didn't care about that. So now subtitles are everywhere.
Starting point is 00:38:19 And in fact, they may already be our default mode. This is some of the interesting stuff that's in the story that I found fascinating as he gets past his explaining of how it's now taken over our world. Subtitles are everywhere. They may already be the default mode. According to Preston Smalley, Roku's vice president of viewer product, a 2020, a 2020, internal survey revealed that 58% of subscribers use subtitles. 36% of them switched the subtitles on because of a diagnosed hearing impairment. 32% do it out of force of habit.
Starting point is 00:38:53 The remaining third site astute of situational issues, kids, you know, other people in the room, poor audio quality. Many of the people using subtitles, in other words, do not need them. As it turns out, it is a millennial thing, or at least millennials are leading the way. two-thirds of Roku's millennial customers use subtitles more than any other generation, including seniors. Though Smalley attributes that in part to technical hurdles, which is apparently a polite way of saying that the older users don't always know how to turn it on, which is kind of silly because I feel like they do, but, you know, whatever. And then the writer-director Hannah Fidel, he goes on in this story, whose Hulu series A Teacher, starring Kate Mara, said that Habits,
Starting point is 00:39:37 changing viewer habits with subtitles she would feel violated on behalf of the camera shots. But she was anything more aghast at trouncing her sound mix. Subtitles make you literal-minded and oftentimes descriptive words transcribed on the screen say one thing while the actor's performance of them says another. I asked Vidal how she would feel if a friend turned on subtitles while watching the pilot episode of a teacher. She went quiet for a moment. I would be so pissed.
Starting point is 00:40:07 But you know it's happening, okay? Now, it goes on some fascinating stuff about the subtitles, okay? And I know we're talking about, you know, how different shows have different audio qualities and some shows, you know, you feel like you have to have the subtitles on. I don't, I don't turn them on for every show, but if they're on a lot of times, I leave them on.
Starting point is 00:40:31 But apparently, they're working on this system. so you're going to be able to move the subtitles around on your screen, which I love, and you can write it into your own font, or you can have a font specifically made for the show. Like if the director or the showrunner of the show wants a certain font for their subtitles, they'll get it. They can build it in. Okay, that's kind of cool.
Starting point is 00:40:58 So according to Annalie Blank, the four-time Emmy Award-winning sound mixer on Game of Thrones, it's not your fault. you can't hear well enough to follow a lot of the stuff. It's not your TV's fault either or your speakers. Your sound system might be lousy, but that's not why you can't hear the dialogue. It's everything to do with the streaming services
Starting point is 00:41:17 and how they are chosen to air these shows. Specifically, it has everything to do with the LKFS, which stands for the loudness, K-weighted, relative to full scale, and which, for the sake of simplicity, is a unit for measuring loudness. Traditionally, it's been anchored for the dialogue, For years going back to the golden age of broadcast television and into the paid cable era,
Starting point is 00:41:40 audio engineers had to deliver sound levels within an industry standard, LKFS, or their work would get kicked back to them. That all changed when streaming companies sees control of the industry. A period of time that rather neatly matches Game of Thrones. According to Blank, Game of Thrones sounded fantastic for years. She got Emmys to prove it. And then in 2018, just prior to the show's final season, AT&T, bought HBO's parent company and overlaid its own.
Starting point is 00:42:05 own uniform loudness spec, which used was flatter and simpler to scale across a large library of content, but it was also crucially unanchored to the dialogue. So instead of this algorithm analyzing the loudness of the dialogue coming out of people's mouths,
Starting point is 00:42:21 it analyzes the whole show as loudness. So if you have loud music cue, that's going to be your loud point, and then when the dialogue comes, you can't hear it. Pretty incredible that it's because of that and how they're digitizing it into our system.
Starting point is 00:42:37 Netflix still uses a dialogue anchor spec. Okay. The silver lining, the companies are trying to fix the problems. In case you want to pay a second company to fix the own dialogues, you can just turn out the subtitles in any version of our streaming future. Subtitles will be the simplest, most cost-effective solution. So it's at the point now where they're either going to fix it and you're going to have it right, or you're just going to all be out with just,
Starting point is 00:43:05 use the subtitles and we don't care about that but that takes away from the music and the dialogue and what adds to the difference in the shows anyway so much is fascinating and i i've loved this article if you have a chance to read the full article from devon gordon i know i've gone on and on about this article it just fascinated me with the sound of these shows and you know how subtitles are used and why and how some of it we would think is our fault but it really isn't huh isn't it isn't that that the way things usually are. We feel like they're our fault, but it really isn't.
Starting point is 00:43:41 Okay, that's enough for today. Follow me on Twitter at Jeffrey JFR. Facebook and Instagram is Jeff Fisher Radio. You can follow me on YouTube, Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher. You can always email the show anytime, chewing the fat, no, yeah, chewing the fat at theblaze.com. I can remember my email address,
Starting point is 00:43:57 chewing the fat at theblaze.com. And you can order a cameo from me. Just, that's not free. at Jeffie JFR and Cameo I'll be happy, glad, sad, mean, whatever you want, just order the cameo and tell me what you want and that's what I do. That's what Cameo is at Jeffey JFR.
Starting point is 00:44:14 It's not free though. I know. I don't look at me like that. I get it. Enjoy yourselves. Stream and subscribe to more Blaze Media content at theblaze.com slash podcasts.

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