The Mark Arum Show 08-13-26 HR 1

For the past 25 years, Appmex has been America's most trusted precious metals exchange. Whether as a hedge against inflation and uncertainty in the economy or thinking about the future and planning for your retirement, precious metals are safe haven assets that can help grow and secure your wealth for generations to come. At Atmex, we help you secure your tomorrow today. Get started on your precious metals investing journey by visiting us at appmex.com. That's APMex.com. Good Thursday morning, one and all. Got a fantastic edition of the Mark Aram show lined up. Hope you, some of you, maybe one of you, enjoyed the meteor shower last night. I talked to Christina Edwards after the show. She's like, it's going to be cloudy, Aram. Don't stay up for it. Yeah, let's cloudy. So maybe, I don't know, but maybe someone in the mountains saw it. Anyway, I hope you had a... I went on Twitter and saw it. I hope you had a great Perseid Meteor shower. We got a really, really big story, big show for you today. In one hour, we're going to talk to travel expert Peter Greenberg. Scott McFarlane, Washington correspondent, is going to join us live at 1035 to talk all things D.C. We got Corey Smith at News Nation, breaking down the latest in the Iran. a war. Deborah's got not won, but two prize packs to give away today, my friend. Tickets for Blackberry Smoke and tickets for Sugar Land. Two chances to win. Two amazing prize packs, two amazing musical shows here on this Thursday edition of the Mark Am show. In just a moment, we're going to go up to D.C. The big headline out of the nation's capital. You probably heard it on Atlanta's Morning News with Chris Chandler. Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary announced, hey, she's done. Just got back for maternity leave, worked for like a couple of months. It was like, you know what? I want to go back to the kids. Don't blame her. We're going to check in with Stephen Portnoy from ABC in just a second. But I do want to start with two big local stories in Georgia anyway that involved school kids, starting with a Georgia high school student was shot down in Houston County, Debra. That's kind of like southwest of Macon. What exactly went down here? Well, this is Warner Robbins High School, and it looks like two students got into an argument. Later in the day, it was already past 2 o'clock, which ended up for them going to the... bathroom. I guess that's where you fight in the bathroom now. We always did it behind the gym. We did it at the tea. There was a big stone tea as in Torrington. Oh. That was like, I'll meet you at the tea at three. Okay. Well, these two students went into a bathroom. One of them had a gun on them, pulled the gun and shot the other student. Oh my gosh. I know. I don't know if schools, not all schools might have metal detectors yet. I know they were trying to implement that. And. You know, student resources, safety resources were called, and they were able to get these injured student out of there. And then deputies were able to arrest that other student at the playground of the high school. So it doesn't give names, obviously, because they're both under 18 genders or anything like that. So Houston County, not exactly the metro area, but we talked, we've covered the stories, Deborah, metro area schools using like drones for active shooting. Yeah, this next year or this year maybe. Like shooting paint pellets and. tear gas. Something just to slow the students down. I'm sure it's different down in middle, Georgia. But we do have some audio. This is Sheriff Matt Seth Moulton from Houston County. What we know so far is there was a group of students inside the bathroom and a verbal altercation took place between two of the students.

That verbal altercation quickly escalated into a physical altercation, and at some point in time, a firearm was brandished by one of the students, and he shot another student. Unbelievable. The student was apprehended, apparently, without further incident. More from the sheriff at Houston County. Through the investigation and reviewing video, we were able to capture the suspect leaving the campus. And about 3.20 p.m. today he was... He was apprehended without further incident. The injured student was hospitalized. Obviously, like, the school year just started. This is, I mean, you hate to see any of this, but hopefully the student that was shot will be okay. But you're right, Deborah, like this wasn't, and I don't want to be like, oh, in my day, things were better. There's a lot of stuff that's better now than there were in the 80s, but there was never. And there was fights in school all the time. Sure, of course. And we had shotguns, not I personally, but in our cars, in the parking lot at my high school, at no point was there ever like, I'm going to go get my gun and settle this. No, you might have had someone carry a Swiss Army knife and that was a big deal, but nothing happened. But even in fights, no one would pull out a knife. No, never. They would just kind of yell and hit each other. You just fight it out. You would just brawl. But what's interesting, we both had the similar experiences. You know, you'd meet out at the T to fight. And where did it? Behind the gym. Behind the gym. I don't know if you've been on social media. I fall into this trap. I'll watch it. It's Twitter specifically. I'll watch a video on Twitter, X, if you prefer. And it could be like a baseball video. Like, oh, here's a Braves highlight. Oh, Michael Harris hit a home run. And then when the video stops, it just goes to the next video. Yeah. Not one that I. Clicked on. Whatever's next in the feed. But inevitably, the next video on the feed is some sort of a fight video. That's not my algorithm. It's like drunken people in New Orleans fighting outside of a brawl. And I'm like, all right, let me see how this fight ends. Once you see the beginning of like, hey, you're a jerk. No, you're a jerk. And there's pushing. It's like, all right, I got to see who wins this fight. And then that'll, and obviously Twitter's like, oh, Aram liked that. Let's show him another fight. And then inevitably goes, as I start scrolling these, it gets to kids fighting. And I just realized when you said this happened at the bathroom, that's like the preferred fighting venue. There's no cameras, right? He's got cameras in the hallways. You've got, you probably have cameras in every other place, but you probably cannot have it. Maybe it's right at the door, but you can't have them in the bathroom, right? Yeah, but everyone has a cell phone in the bathroom to fight. No, I know, but I just mean that's where there's no school cameras. You're brilliant. At 9-10, Deborah already gets started the show. Yeah, and there's no cameras in school when we were there. At all. Yeah. But all right, that makes a lot, because I'm like, because it's tight quarters. Yeah, they're not very big. School bathrooms are tiny. Yeah, there's not room to move. Oh, all right, that's why. But anyway, I don't know if I'm the only one that gets those.

Fight videos on Twitter. Yeah, that's not in my algorithm. I get rabbits. I'm not going to lie. I'm not proud of this. I'll spend an hour watching those. Really? Yeah. They're not, no one dies or anything. It just perpetuates the need for more videos, that's all. I guess. But they, they're like, I just feel like once I see the beginning of the fight, I've got to finish. I want to see who wins the fight. I'm like, all right, I predict who's going to win. All right, this kid's really tall. Take it to the Kalshi. This kid, exactly. This kid's short and stocky. I'm going to bet on the show. And then as soon as that video ends, Twitter's like, boom, here's the next one, Aaron. You're not going anywhere. Anyway, a sad story there in, I mean, to the school year just started. Unbelievable. This one closer to home up in Bartow County, almost overturned school bus crash in Bartow County. Actually, Barrow County is right. Barrow, I'm sorry. Yeah, so it looks like there was a school bus and it had a bit of an emergency. It accident happened on Highway 211. I don't know if you know where they is. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, 34 students and a driver when it somehow overturned and six students had to be taken to a hospital, but the rest of them were okay, so they were able to take those students to school for the rest of the day. I don't really have on, like, if there was a slick road. It wasn't raining yesterday, and it's not like it's icy in the winter, but it somehow just kind of like started to go towards the ditch. Yeah. And it overturned just enough. But again, most of all, everyone's okay, but they took some of the younger students to the hospital to make sure. Are there seatbelts in school buses? I don't think there are yet. I know we've talked about it. I don't think there are yet. Yeah, like that's the one vehicle. For whatever reason, school buses where there's not mandatory seatbelts or mandatory seatbelt wear. Didn't we talk to a driver once that said it'd be too hard if something happened to get them all out? Yeah, I understand the logic there. But all right, so a couple of back-to-school stories, not the kind of back-to-school stories we want to cover. All right, stunning announcement yesterday. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is going to vacate her position. Joining us from Washington, D.C. and covering the story, Stephen, good morning. What do we know about this? yesterday that one of his most trusted aides Karoline Leavitt will be departing her role at the end of the month so quote she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family a decision the president says he totally understands and respects Karoline Leavitt just three months ago gave birth to a baby girl. She has a two-year-old toddler son at home, and she's 28, the youngest person to ever hold the role of White House Press Secretary. It's been reported that during her brief maternity leave over the summer, the president reached out to her repeatedly to ask for advice, and she was also regularly posting on social media. She made a relatively... swift return back to the office and now she's decided to step away to spend more time with her children. The president says that Karoline Leavitt will continue to be one of his top outside advisors and an influential voice within the party is, quote, we work to defy history and conclusively win the midterm elections.

reference to the fact that the midterms are less than three months away and the president's losing his top spokesperson. Yeah, and a pretty remarkable run, too, and you mentioned the youngest ever, absolutely beloved by President Trump. And not only was she behind that podium at the White House at that time, but she was, you know, in the Oval, often giving President Trump advice and sitting in on big meetings. So, I mean, she really kind of expanded that role. The difficulty for any White House press secretary to Donald Trump is to effectively represent his thinking. He has said in the past, I believe it's true, that he's his own best spokesperson. Karoline Leavitt tried earnestly to spend time with him in the Oval Office to ask him questions about his thinking and his views so that she could represent those views to the country and to our press corps, which she also significantly worked to remake. Think of the changing contours of the press corps from era to era. And in the second term of Donald Trump, it has been significantly remade with the addition of new voices, outlets that had been non-existent, frankly, prior to this second term. at least in the public mind, very few people had heard of them, and now the regular features of the White House press room and even in the pool that is in tight quarters with the president. The press office will supplement an ad, invite in. friendly voices of the president can rely on to ask questions or make supportive statements. That's not something that we saw before Karoline Leavitt's time as press secretary. Yeah, it seems like if I'm watching a press event, I don't recognize half of the outlets that are called upon. So definitely a new era there. What's going to happen in the meantime? Is there going to be an interim press secretary? And do we have any idea who's going to replace Karoline Leavitt long term? Well, Trump's post says that Caroline will be staying around through the end of the month. As for whether she'll hold a another briefing again, I don't know. It'd be nice to have a sort of a swung song, a departing briefing. I'm sure she'll be applauded by many people in the room and thanked for her service. I would imagine that there's a list that the president's looking at. I dare not guess. But I also figure that it's probably not going to be someone who's currently serving in the press office because typically what we have seen in the past, in past administrations, is people who have sort of been groomed for the role, have been given tryouts to do gaggles or other things. And that really has not happened in his second term of Donald Trump. Trump has been his own gaggler, certainly on Air Force One, and he's interacted with the press on a regular basis. So I don't really see a very clear, natural second choice inside this administration. So he may choose to bring somebody in from the outside. Speaking of that, there are probably listeners right now going, oh, I can speak with the president's voice. I'm in lockstep with the president's views. Any idea of the salary range that the White House press secretary is earning?

For government work, it's not a bad salary. I think I saw something like $195,000 is what the press secretary makes. And a per diem and all the fringe benefits that go along with that and getting to hang in the White House, I would imagine. And access to the mass hall and all the fun features of being a White House senior advisor. All right. A lot of folks jumping on LinkedIn right now. Stephen Portnoy, ABC News. Stephen, great stuff, as always, my friend. You bet. Or mark the president. I think that, oh, hello, Stephen. Hang up. That's the next, that's, you know, you've got to go somewhere else, Stephen. I think I would be good at that job. I really do. The problem is, because I think I could, you know, answer questions. Yeah, I think that part you could do. I'm well-versed. But living in D.C., and I know, listen, $180,000, whatever, that's a lot of money. but not in the nation's capital. I would, I'd be the guy stealing, I'd give the press briefing that I'd go steal China from the Lincoln bedroom and take it to a pawn shop. Because you can't make ends meet. As scary as that sounds. Yeah, I have a friend in D.C. Yeah. You'd have to live in like Virginia or Maryland and commute. I'm not going to, Maya's not going to do that. But I think I'd be good at that job. And the fringe benefits alone. especially the access that Karoline Leavitt has had. Like, she's in that Oval Office. She can take advantage of the kitchen. You think she pushes a Diet Coke button? I don't know. Now when you're pregnant? Are you supposed to drink Diet soda? I don't drink soda at all. I don't know. 185. That's a hell of a salary. But in D.C., that's like making 60 grand. in Atlanta, 180 in D.C. But we'll see her places her. Steven says probably not anyone in the current press room for the president, maybe someone outside. I don't think Sean Spicer's coming back. I don't know. Interesting. That's one of the things. I mean, you know what? We're going to talk to Scott McFarland, Washington correspondent after the news at 1035. One of the things we'll ask him about.

924 on the Mark Am show coming back to this. Hello world. The song to the Partridge family for those that don't know, this is like the poor man's version of a whole lot of. Brady Bunch. Danny Banaducci played Danny Partridge. He turned 67 today. I'm going to go out of Limbethra. You at some point in your rock radio career met Danny Bonaducci. I have. I knew it. I knew it. Interesting character for sure. Very interesting character. Yeah. I watched the Partridge family as a kid. It was fine. Reruns here and there. Yeah, it was fine. It's basically a poor man's Brady Bunch. Welcome back to the Mark Aram show. Smart criminal, dumb criminal, Deborah. Let's go to the library for this. crime. What went down? All right. This is in Mesa, Arizona. A couple was arrested for stealing about $6,200 worth of books and trying to sell them at local book shops, like resellers, you know, secondhand books, things like that. So they would check out a ton of books from the library, even though they have stickers and stamps on them. But then they would take them to smaller bookstores. Like, oh, the library is getting rid of them or I had these and I don't want them anymore. Some of them they were able to sell. But a lot of the bookstores were like, no, this is. And of course, they reported it to the library and the police. They were busted. But yeah. So did the criminals check the books out? Yeah, they had 66, at least 66 outstanding books. So they didn't steal the books. They checked them out and then tried to sell them. But the selling them is the illegal part. All right. So, yeah, exactly. So I'm going to say, dumb criminal. I'm going to explain why. This is a dumb criminal. The execution is horrible. Horrible. You remember you've had that rare book expert on the show? Mitt Romney? Yes. Yes. She was on pawn stars. Rebecca. Rebecca Mitt Romney. And like there's a lot of valuable books. And I bet if you go to a library, there's like, I'm not telling anyone to do this. But I bet there's really like first edition valuable books in older libraries. You might not be able to check them out though. They might have to stay in the library. Sure. But that's when you steal them and you take off the library sticker on it and then you go on eBay. You don't sell it to the bookstore in the same town as the library. There is, if you are a criminal, there is money to be made, I think, in stealing library books, but not the way they did it. So definitely a dumb criminal there. One ticket in the Powerball was sold in Illinois. I asked my brother because he lives in Illinois. He didn't respond, so I don't know. I think four people in Georgia won like 50 grand. Good for you. I got one number. About $20 for the ticket, got one number. So back to the grindstone. We go. All right. Speaking of money. We know first-time homebuyers are just drowning this, struggling to get that first home purchase. There is a city in the Midwest, in Michigan, in fact, keeping the American dream alive for first-time homebuyers, what they are doing, and can we replicate it here in Georgia? Really, really interesting story from Bloomberg News. We'll go in-depth next on the Mark Air Show.

937 on the Markham show. What a great song. On this date in 1965, Jefferson Airplane made their live debut at the Matrix Club in Sanford. Oh, what? It's just a unique sound. Psychedelia Rock. Did they play at the River Birthday Bash last night? No, you know, Grace Lake doesn't really perform anymore. Did you go? Did you go to the birthday bag? There's a long story involved in that. I'll tell you later. We'll tell us off the air. Welcome back to the Mark Air Show. Coming up in 30 minutes, travel expert Peter Greenberg, 1035, Washington correspondent Scott McFarlane. Right now, though, I've been hyping the story all morning long and jumped off the page this morning doing my show prep at Bloomberg.com. The headline, the Midwest City, keeping the American dream alive for first time homebuyers, the author of the story from Bluebird News, joining us live in the Mark Graham show, Sejul Kushan. Sejul, good morning. Thanks so much for your time. It's good to be here, Mark. This is, I mean, this is such a pertinent story to all the listeners here in Metro Atlanta that are struggling to buy that first home, inventories down, interest rates are up. The average home price is through the roof, and it's Grand Rapids, Michigan, that's kind of found the hack to this. What are they doing? And can we do it here in Metro Atlanta? Well, it's the Midwest more broadly. We've seen incomes and home prices sort of like keep up. They're in pace with each other, unlike the coast like New York or California and even the Southway. You've obviously had that migration from the northeast and California to Georgia for many years now. But yeah, I mean, at the moment, we've got the average national home price. is around $404,000. But in Grand Rapids, we've got the average home price at about $368,000, which, yeah, makes it affordable for young people under 35. So is it the Midwestern region where costs of goods and services are generally lower than the coast? That gives first-time homebuyers an advantage? To an extent, but it's more that the incomes and the difference between the house price and the income is much narrower compared with elsewhere. And so it makes it more affordable. And, yeah, there is obviously a tightness of housing inventory over there, but it's not as acute as places like New York. And my colleague today has written a story about how the average rents in Manhattan has hit a record. $5,000 a month. Oh, my God. That's economical. That is, I just literally almost fell off my chair. All right. So I'm going to try to connect the dots here, Sajel, because I find this so fascinating. So a lot of the problem here in Metro Atlanta is folks are locked in, right? Older generations, they might want to downsize, but they're locked into a mortgage that's 3% and they don't want to take on a mortgage that's close to 7%. So those folks that are locked in have locked out inventory.

for the younger first-time homebuyers. But in the Midwest, and you mentioned it, all of the transplants that have moved here, a lot of them in Metro Atlanta anyway are from Michigan, are from Ohio, are from Wisconsin. I would imagine that means that there are more homes available with more people leaving those Midwestern areas. That's exactly right. I mean, the Midwest and Grand Rapids in particular, it wasn't like a magnet like Atlanta or Austin and Texas or, yeah, all these people, the transplants on the coast fleeing. You know, the Grand Rapids, there was some migration, but it tends to have been interstate. So other people leaving like Detroit or whatever. So it didn't suffer from that big rush up or run up in prices like, you know, Atlanta has, for instance, and New York. Let's stick with Grand Rapids since that's the headline of the story. In 2026, unfortunately here at the radio station, we can't partake in work from home. But that is a viable thing for a lot of big corporations. And if you can work anywhere in the world, why spend $5,000 in rent in Manhattan when you can get a nice house in Michigan for $280,000? I mean, what struck me was like, yeah, I'm here in New York. And you've got, you know, the average age or a first time by it nationally now was 40, 40 years at the high since the 80s. Wow. You've got many people, yeah, we're living in small apartments. And what struck me was like, you have these like late 20-somethings living or buying homes, which are like three bedrooms or two bedrooms, which for people, yeah, on the coasts and I'm sure even also in Atlanta, that's a luxury. For sure, more bang for the buck. Really interesting stuff. And obviously, you know, Bloomberg all over the real estate market and what the Fed's going to do with interest rates. But I'm calling it stagnation here in the real estate market in Metro Atlanta. But maybe somehow maybe in the suburbs of Atlanta, we can replicate what's going on in the Midwest because I really feel for the folks that are that just cannot afford that first time home. And it's not just Grand Rapids. I mean, there are other counties.

The counties in Iowa, in Indiana and Ohio, you know, the counties at home to, like, Fort Wayne, to Des Moines and to Cincinnati, there was affordability there as well. And obviously, those cities that are big, but they don't compare to Atlanta, which is like obviously a big, much bigger city. So, yeah, for now it's a good place to go and buy. Indeed. Sejel, Nixon, five. No? Are people still saying that in New York? Nixon 5? It's kind of gone away now, the whole Nick's celebration. I'm going to keep it alive. I'm going to keep it alive. Nixon 5. Sajal Kushan, Bloomberg News. Fantastic reporting on Bloomberg.com. Really appreciate your time. I don't see why people wouldn't do that. You're from the Midwest. I love the Midwest. Right? It's what's not to love, cheese and brots and beer. You know, the winter comes and it gets cold, and then we all remember why we left. Yeah, but winters aren't going to be a thing much longer. They're really not in the past couple years, even the lakes haven't really frozen over. Can we follow up the Danube story? So yesterday we were talking about the drought-like conditions around the globe, and so much so that the Danube River receded so much that there were. discovered on the riverbed sunken German warships from World War II. Like, they've never seen these. They were sunken World War II, but the Danube has receded so much that they're now visible. And I didn't even think I was just like, wow, that's crazy. And that stinks that Danube, one of the most famous rivers in the world. I didn't even think about the energy. loss that could be associated with the Danube River, but apparently there's a nuclear power plant that relies on the Danube. Yeah, so this is in Hungary and it still uses the Danube River to increase or to use the water. And so they're having to increase those water levels because of that historic drought and they've lost so much. They're basically building this bed sill along the river to kind of retain some of that water because the plant supplies one third of the nation's electricity. I mean, Hungary is a little bit smaller from the United States, but still one. third for the entire country runs off of this one plant. That's crazy. I need to Google picture. Because I still haven't seen the pictures of the German warships. Oh, you haven't? No, I got to... They're kind of cool. I mean, I don't like the symbols on them, but it's kind of cool to see me. You know, the history, you know, uncovered, receded because of the waterline. All right, I made a judgment on the smart criminal, dumb criminal. It came to the library book theft. Here's another crime. I'll determine whether it's a smart criminal or dumb criminal. A robbery at a shake shack. That's all I'm going to say, Deborah, you give us the rest of the story. Okay, this was not local. This was in Phoenix, Arizona. but a Shake Shack employee finished up his shift, right, went home, came back a couple days later and decided to rob the store, walked into the cooler, had a gun, knew exactly where everything was. He knew how much money was going to be there and tried to steal it. The only problem is people kind of knew who he was. Was wearing a mask or anything? He did have a mask on, but I mean, if you work with somebody, if I rolled in here with a mask, you could tell my voice.

You know how I walk. There's certain things like that. We do know how you walk. I'm just saying, you know, like if there's certain people in the building. We all have distinctive walks. Right. I do. Tad Lemire, just walking slumping by. Slumping. Alex Williams has this bouncy walk. Yep. Vinnie's got a certain walk. Yeah. Yeah. I think you, like your coworkers can kind of tell. Fred Blankenships got the cool sway. Yeah. All right. All right. So do I think this is a dumb criminal or a smart criminal? You've been hit my. You may have a dumb criminal. She's got that pep in her step. Austin Eller, a very confident walk. Anyway, obviously dumb criminal. And I'm not going to say just because he worked there and he knew where everything was. It's 2026. What percentage of people do you think going to shake shack and pay in cash? Five percent? It's a good point. Like how much cash is on hand at a fast food joint and nothing, no shade at Shake Shack, delicious, burgers and shakes, but everyone pays with a credit card now. When I worked at the bowling alley, no one paid with a credit card. It was cash and some random checks. No one went to the bowling alley and slapped the Amex on the counter and said, give me a size 12. He got about 2,800 bucks. Not worth it. That surprises me that shake check had that much money in their till $2,800. So in case you missed it, I'm going to be here by a dumb criminal. 947 on the Mark Aaron show. We're going to come back, talk about our top local stories, including Data Center. Yeah, shocking in the news, and Marietta. The United States will indeed get Michael Phelps a gold medal in the final. The greatest Olympian all time right there, Michael Phelps. That's him when he was 23rd gold medal in the Rio Olympics, the world's most decorated Olympian. But didn't he, once he retired, didn't he? Get back. Like, he endorsed, like, weed? He's like, yeah, I smoke weed all the time. Like some. Maybe the medicinal kind. Something like that, yeah. That's weed every day. Yeah. Yeah. But like a freak of nature. Like his lung capacity. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, on this date of 2016, Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time. Welcome back to the Mark Aram show. Debra's got two prize packs to give away Blackberry Smoke and Sugar Land. So two chances to win great prizes here on today's edition of the Mark Aram show. Mentioned before the break, more data centered. And this one in May Reda, Deborah. Yeah, so the Marietta City Council approved an 11-acre data center right there on Powers Ferry Place, even though there was a lot of pushback from the public. And there was a moratorium put on. Do you remember that? We talked about that. There's a six-month moratorium. Well, Marietta City Council says, no, it's okay. So they're going to go ahead and build this 11-acre data center. That's not small. 11 acres, that's not small. No, it's not. What does it say, the location, the actual address? Let's see. Not the actual address, but it. It says Interstate 75 in Delk Road. That's the primary group. Powers Ferry Place. Delk Road, Powers Ferry Place. It doesn't give me like a physical address. I just want to pull it up on G. What's there? Nothing. Powers Ferry Place. Oh, it's right off the interstate. Well, yeah, 75 in Delcourt. Okay. We'll not impact, should not impact the ride to either Truest Park, the Big Chicken, or the Marietta Diner.

If I'm looking at this map correctly, It's not too, it's across the interstate from the Dave and Busters. If you're, you're all familiar with the David Busters. Wait, there's no timeline for construction yet. Okay. 11 acre data center, Marietta, east of the interstate. I believe east of the interstate. Don't quote me there. One more story, Deborah, involving data centers because of the explosion in AI. AI can come in handy, makes funny pictures. Maya uses chat GPT all the time. This poor farmer in China, man, he went to AI. And he asked for advice on his crops. He's a farmer. He wanted some advice on what he was growing on his farm in China. And AI gave him detailed advice on what to do. If you've seen this commercial, there's actually a commercial of a local farm saying, hey, we use Chet GPT to figure out how much fertilizer and water we can use. And it's been great. So maybe he saw that commercial and said, hey, I'm a farmer. I'll try it. But this is in China. So he followed the advice of AI and tried this new herbicide on his plants, right? Very important if you want a healthy cramp to use some up. herbicide. Unfortunately, the next day, all of his crops died. The ratio that they told him to put on there basically killed everything overnight and he lost his 25 acres of his crop, which is twice the size of the data center. That's that you can't get that back farming. It's almost impossible to recoup those. Was it just the measurements were off? They always say when you use AI, double check their work. And it does say that the AI, the company came back. It says, oh, AI may be incorrect. Please verify. Yeah. But, you know, the whole point is you're supposed to be able to use this to get the best results. And they've used a commercial for it. My has been using AI, chat GPT in particular, dealing with Walter, our new dog training. And, um. But she's always, she always double checks. Like, oh, yeah. Absolutely. I asked, I had her asked, we were having a conversation. We didn't know the answer. I'm like, ask chat. That's what she calls him, chat. I'm like, just ask chat about that. This is a crazy story. One of the things we're going to talk to Scott McFarlane about a little later in the show, families and loved ones of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, raising concerns. On reported poor conditions on board, they say taking a toll on their loved ones. The Navy Times and Stars and Stripes report, multiple sailors have tried to jump overboard. One wife saying her husband reached a breaking point after his deployment kept getting extended. families reportedly confronted Navy leaders at town halls last week, describing moldy showers, broken toilets, food shortages, and no soap or toothpaste. In response, the Navy told ABC News, it concedes the war has disrupted supply lines, but says the ship now has clean water and healthy meals. Now that's what Secretary Hegesith and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Kane should have said to Congress when they were asking for the $1.5 billion, be like, hey,

These, you know, these poor sailors have been out to sea. We need money to get them in tip top shape and get them everything they need. People jumping off the carrier, though. Like, is that AWOL? Was that escape? Was that like, was that like, I need to cool off? I don't know. I think they were trying to leave. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Crazy stuff. One of the many things we're going to ask Scott McFarland, Washington correspondent. He's joining us after the news at 1035. After the news is at 10? Good update our top local stories and always a pleasure to pick his brain. Travel expert Peter Greenberg live next on the Mark Aram Show.