BPR Full Show 8/18/26: Ukraine Demining Efforts

Support for Boston Public Radio comes from Bonsai Bar, hosting pop-up beginner bonsai workshops at breweries across New England. Come hang out, dig in, and discover the joy of tiny trees. More at bonsaibar.com. And the law firm of Davis-Malm. Employment laws are complex and ever-changing. Representing both employers and executives gives their attorneys a 360-degree view and a deep experience of every workplace situation. Learn more at davismalm.com. I'm Jim Browdy, head on BPR and GVH and EPM live from the library. Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff is going viral on social media for attacking the sleepy Trump, his decoy plane, and his young aide Natalie Hart, known as the human printer. Should the rest of the Dems take note of Osov's go-low strategy, and will it work? Then we'll talk with the UN's demining, as in landmine expert, Paul Hezlop, on how Ukraine is recovering from its ongoing war with Russia, plus Axios business. Dan Primack on Economic News. I'm Trini Casey in for Marjorie Egan. In the second hour today, it's CNN's John King on today's primary in Florida, what he sees in the Seth Moulton Ed Markey polls, and of course other political headlines. And we're going to end the show with you with a few more weeks until kids are tucked away in school. We want to hear from you on where it's okay to bring your children. Are there areas, though, public life that should just remain kid-free? Call or text next on BPR live. We're the BPL.

You're listening to BPR and GBAH and any p.m. I am Jim Browdy, which must mean since I'm speaking first that Margarigan is not here, which is correct. And in her place is NBC Sports Watson's training, Casey. Hi, Trene. How are you? Jimbo. I'm going to call you Jimbo when I co-host. Have we ever done this before? One time. Oh, thanks for remembering. One time, it was a long time ago. I thought it was so bad that you never asked me bad. But now when you're gone, I was. Well, let me just tell you, give you a little piece of advice since you asked you call me Jimbo, you won't be back again. So there you go. We're live at the library and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBMH News. Before we get started, there's actually a new show we want to alert you to. Our colleague Zoe Matthews has a new show. It's called Not My Politics. It's focused on young people in politics. First episode, which is terrific, by the way. It's available on GBH News YouTube channel or on our BPR podcast. Congratulations. It's really great, Zoe. Well done. I love this, Zoe. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff is getting millions of views for his in-your-face criticism of Donald Trump on social media and in campaign speeches. Here's Osov recently at a campaign rally. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless Flying Palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. Assoff is drawing public attention to Trump's so-called human printer. That's what Natalie Harp is called. Human printer, meaning part of her job is to print positive articles about Trump and hand him over to him. That's his 35-year-old executive assistant. She's a former One American News host. Seems Asaf is taking the opposite of the much-repeated Michelle Obama approach. When Trump goes low, Asaf has decided to go low with him. Is this the kind of response to Democrats? should have the Trump or you a go-high kind of person. And is Natalie Harp, again, the human printer, is she fair game for criticism? The number is 877-301-89-70. And by the way, while Assov says repeatedly, obviously he's running for reelection, so he can't say he's running for president, he denies it as any interest in running in 2028, but a lot of people, particularly after this kind of rhetoric, are suggesting, especially coming from a southern state from Georgia, that he's the right kind of guy. 877301-89-7. What do you think of Jon Ossoff's approach? So I'm going to be honest. I don't necessarily love it because I think... What differentiates the two parties is that by and large, the Democrats have tried to take the high road and maybe be critical. But I also don't think, at least that soundlight in particular, that's nothing compared to the way that the White House responded to Jon Ossoff. Well, they called him Pee Wee Herman. He was also, I don't even know if I can read the tweet that Stephen Chang put on, you know, the senior director of White House communications. I mean, there are words.

there. I mean, I'm being told that I can. Like, to me, there's a huge difference between saying, calling out what President Trump is doing, which is ignoring or bypassing what's happened on the USS Lincoln. I think Natalie is complete fair game. She works for him. He's there. And then you've got Stephen Chang tweeting this out. John Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hardworking people serving their country. John should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he's a miserable person who hates his country. Then Davis Engle wrote he's a cringeworthy feminine theater kid as a spokesman. Okay. Cosplaying as Barack Obama. So we. called someone a jackoff, used a slur. I don't even, I have an idea of what the CUC came. It's like it's a completely different type. No, it's not as bad as Trump. No, it's not. It's not close. But other than Gavin Newsom, nobody, the governor Cal, nobody talks about Trump in this kind of way. Nobody has mentioned Natalie a harp. And you say the difference between the two parties, I'll tell you one other difference between two parties, the Republicans win and the Democrats lose. And I have to say, this is exactly true. were talking about a vicious, sadistic, sexual-abusing, felonious president. You got to play his game. And as you said a minute ago, it's not nearly as low as Trump himself goes, but you've got to call him what he is. And he's not name-calling. And I love that Jon Ossoff's doing it. Yeah, he's not, Jon Ossoff isn't name-calling. He's calling out the president. Yes, he is. And that to me is the big distinction. So I don't even know that I would say that the Democrats here are going low. Like, I don't think by pointing out that he has a 35-year-old assistant. Who else has mentioned Natalie Harp? Name one of their Democrats. That is. And I do wonder why all of a sudden. Jon Ossoff is mentioning Natalie Harp. She hasn't really other than, and it was a while ago that the New York Times came out with that story where they released her very flowery emails. No, they're not emails. Here's the, in regime change. Are they letters? Are they actual letters? She leaves him notes around the White House that say things like, quote, you are all that matters to me. I want to bring you, I only want to bring you joy. And on and on like this, she lives. If I write you notes like that, can I call you Jimbo? That would not bring me joy. So the answer is no. 877-301-89-7. We agree it's not nearly as low as Trump. But I have to say, other than Gavin Newsom, who I don't think has had the same, at least on me, the same sort of impact that Asaf's recent statements have had, this is a different kind of politicking by a Democrat. Let me play one more sound before we get to the calls. Here is Asaph, again, doing what all of us, at least all of the people I know were thinking,

but not saying, Jay Clayton, who was the nominee for Director of National Intelligence, couldn't bring himself during his confirmation hearing to say that Biden won the election. He's dancing around this. And exactly what I was thinking before I heard Assov speak, Asaf says, here he is. Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president's delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows. Low key, but he really, he nailed him and he nailed it. 877301-80-970. Is this kind of politicking what you think the Democrats should be up to, or do you think it has potential to backfire? Where do you want to go first? Hello, Trenti. Oh, sorry. I thought you were going to go to Zach first. I thought we always went to the person who isn't read on the call screen. You go to Zach. You go to Zach. Okay. Zach is joining us from Springfield. Hi. Hello, everyone. So I absolutely think, honestly, that more Democrats should take after Ozoff in this point, because I don't think it's particularly low. I think it's somewhat tasteful, but it still highlights that Donald Trump is retreating into, like, the sycophantic figures around him. He's doing weird things, obsessing over relatively meaningless topics like the ballroom. When he is doing things with such terrible consequences, when you look at the Iran War, when you look at what he's done with tariffs, things are just hurting us in terms of cost of living. So I think that it's good to draw this sharp contrast. I think that'll be vital for Democrats going into the midterms. I think that when we get to 2028, any Republican time... Oh, we lost Zach. We didn't cut you off, Zach. I think you ended up cutting yourself off. But you made your point. Thank you much for the call. 877-301-89-70. I'm thinking about what you said. And it's interesting that, and I think you're right, when you say he's really not going that low. I approach this saying it's lower. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. But you're right. When you compare it to every word out of the mouth of Trump or Karoline Leavitt or Stephen Chung, who, by the way, if people don't know Stephen Chung, you never see him on camera. He's the communications director. He is far more disgusting. in terms of how he deals with people than Karoline Leavitt ever was. And the reason they're attacking Jon Ossoff is because he is pointing out what everyone knows. And I think more, truthfully, more Democrats should. More Democrats should be focusing on the economy and people's. I mean, that's what, right, money drives everything. And for too long, I think Democrats have focused on these peripheral social issues, which are important. I'm not saying they are not. But right now we're in such dire economic str.

or at least a lot of people are, he hammered that home. That was the opening part of what he talked about is how we're paying more for groceries and gas. And we, you know, that the people are hurting. And so that some people, you know, notice it, but others are hurting from these economic policies. That to me is all he's doing. He's only pointing out the obvious and doing it in very cultivated. targeted soundbites. Every Democrat is smart enough in 2026 to know the economy is the Achilles heel of this president, whether it's the economy caused by Iran, the failed promises to bring down prices on day one. But he says it so artfully. Can we hear us off one more time this clip we played in the lead? Here he is, again, talking about Donald Trump. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war. While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless Flying Palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. I think he was incredibly artful and just he nailed it. Brad, you're in Gloucester. You're next on BPR. Welcome to the show. Hi. Brad. Okay, Zach disappeared. Brad never shows up. 877. It's me. You can blame. This is happening with Marjorie's here. What does you say? Never happens in Marjorie's here? It happens occasionally. Okay. You try this one. You did better because Zach actually talked to you. Okay. Kim is in the car. Kim, what do you think about Jon Ossoff's approach to going against Trump? Here's what I think. I call in all the time. I love the show. My name is Jim. I live in New Hampshire. And I think that John Awesome is the real deal. And I've been paying attention to politics for a really long time. And John Awesome is the voice that the Democratic Party needs that hasn't had since Obama campaign. And I hope he goes all the way. And I hope that the Democratic establishment. doesn't jump all over him and kill it like they did to Bernie Sanders. John Arthur is way more effective of a politician than Bernie Sanders, and he could go all the way. I can't say enough about him. I don't have a television in my house. I watched one video of this recent speech. I knew where the position he was in. I knew he was a smart guy. He is one effective communicator, and he put it to them. And I was just telling my kid who works for me with driving home reports when you answered. What a response he got from the Republicans and the administration. They're pulling their hair out. They're attacking him for wear and makeup. It's like crazy. And they're so unaware and self-absorbed. They don't realize they're just adding fuel to the fire and making him look like a more effective leader. Hey, Jim, is your name Jim or Kim?

It's Jim. I always tell the calls come here. Okay, so here's your question. You're talking about your young assistant or your young aide. Has your young aide ever left a note for you saying you're all that matters to me? I want to bring you joy. Democrat or had the balls to attack Trump personally. As far as Gavin Newsom is concerned, I don't like the guy. John Awesome is a smart dude, and he uses this brain, and he is one effective communicator. He's the best. Jim, you and I have been talking on the radio for 15 years. We have? He is the best communicator I have heard in 15 years. You've made a huge impact on me today. I'll remember this. for a long time. Jim, thank you for your call. That was great. 877301. We've also gotten some great texts. Can I read a couple of texts from this? We've got Bob and Rohobah. This is my personal favorite. Jimbo, Natalie's a Bimbo, not to harp on this. That's not nice. Well played. Jeff and Andover, I don't see how speaking the truth is going low. But Cheryl in Boston, I think, really puts it perfectly. Yes and yes, if a Dem was running around with a young girl while married, the GOP and the Dems would be all over it. And Cheryl's completely right. If the roles were reversed, as soon as I saw the story, I immediately thought of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. And I know it's different because she, you know, she was, we didn't have social media back then. Well, we also have no idea what's going on behind the scenes as we. we learned later on with Bill Clinton. But because of what happened with Bill Clinton, I think any time there is an attractive young woman that's around a politician a lot, people take aim. Like they would use the, the GOP would use her as, if the roles were reversed, the GOP would use her as ammunition against Jon Ossoff in a second. How would you like to be known as the human printer, by the way? I mean, it's probably nicer than some of the things I've been called. So maybe it's not like the worst thing in the world. I mean, it's just, and by the way, if people who are listening heard her name for the first time, just Google Natalie Harp. And you will see her, she is literally glued to his shoulder. Do you have any issue with him? Let me just finish one thought. She is, when he does these lunatic, middle of the night, vicious true social post, 2 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, often she is with him typing away as he's dictating with him. the deal is. So do you have any problem with Jon Ossoff bringing her into this? If Trump was not president, the answer is I'd have a huge problem with it. But in light of the fact, this is the lowest, most vicious...

anti-woman human being. I mean, we're going to talk to John King yesterday. He once again treated a strong, smart, talented woman reporter for CNN like crap because he can't answer a hard question because he's a fool and he's done all the wrong things. By the way, Jamie just wrote me a note. He said, it's literally my new title at GBH Human Printer. I mean, you do print a lot, James. Yeah, but you're not at my house at 1.30 in the morning. Well, as far as I know, Tom in a car. What's up, Tom? I think the, I'm all for awesome, I think he's great. But I think the Democrats, you know, you're not running against Trump in this election. You're running against the Republicans. And if the Democrats don't hang all the policies of the Trump administration on the Republicans, then in three, in four more years, the Republicans, you've got to discredit them. So, and stop on them for being irresponsible. And because otherwise. Every say, oh, in four years, the economy's not too big. We'll go back to Republicans. The Republicans have always been against Social Security. They've always wanted to dismantle the government. They just found somebody in Trump who is able to do it. Tom, I want to make sure I understand you, because I think by going after Trump, as he did in that one statement, and as Trenti said, there was a lot more to it. I think he does go at the Republicans. He's basically saying the guy you have glommed on to Mr. and Ms. Republican. And while the sailors on Lincoln fight his war, and people know what's happening to them, even though Trump denies it, drains our munitions in oil reserves, and on and on. Building a ballroom, I think it was essentially an attack on all Republicans just through Donald Trump. You don't see it that way? Tom? We probably cut him off too. Tom, my apologies. It wasn't because of anything you said. I guess I interpreted Tom's comment more as why all Democrats follow John Awesome. Why is that not the messaging constantly to remind people where, like, Show people. Show people. That's why. They don't. It's been really disappointing. Yeah. They play by one set of rules and Trump and his allies played by another set of rules. And I don't know if people know Trump controls the Supreme Court, the presidency, the House, and the Senate. So obviously... It works. And I think Jon Ossoff here has proven that you don't need to resort to childlike name calling in order to get your message across. You can just point out the facts and it drives the right crazy. I agree. Josiah and Provincetown, one of my favorite people. I agree with Trene. It's not really going low. He's just describing the situations that everyone's aware of. You know, you both may be right, Josiah and Trinney, but again, others are not doing it. You know,

Gavin Newsom is too clever by half. You know, he tweets these things that are an attempt to go back at Trump like Trump goes at him, but it just doesn't work. This is like, sounded like a normal human being, just venting his anger at the way this guy is leading this country or not leading. I just thought it was beautiful and perfect. Robin O'Car, hi. On with Trinney Casey and me, Jim Browdy. Hi. Hey, long-time listener, repeat offender on the call. Thank you. I'm happy. I love this guy. He's finally reading Trump's receipts. He's not lying. He's not making anything up. He's reading Trump's receipts. I mean, I'm drag queen angry with this guy, and I'd like to stick a couple of my sisters on him. And about him going after the people that work for Trump, they're supporting Trump. They're valid targets. You don't flush half a toilet. There were a couple of good lines in there, Rob. Thank you. I like Rob. Very much. You know, he mentions they work for Trump. One of the things that drives me totally out of my mind is when all of these people who served Trump for almost the whole first term and then decided January 6th was too much, they basically try to rehab their reputation on CNN, all these places, when they were there for the crimes. Totally turned a blind eye until it was time to go to protect themselves. What also... Listen, you're anonymous, so I'm going to call you out a little bit. But we got an anonymous texter who says, you like his approach, meaning Jon Ossoff. He's accusing the president and a woman having an affair with absolutely no backup. I can't believe you're actually talking about this. It's just disgraceful. If you had called in, maybe we could have a conversation about this. I'd like to know where Jon Ossoff accused President Trump of having an affair with Natalie Hart. He doesn't. He does not. He just, he calls out the obvious, which is he has this right. hand person who's there by his side all of the time doing his dirty work for him, who is the one who gets to escape the plane while other staffers and journalists are sent up on Air Force One to go back in the air and just hope to God that it doesn't get shot down by an Iranian missile. Like that's what Jon Ossoff was doing. But I'm not surprised an anonymous textor won't put his name to that text because that's sort of status quo. Or her. But let me just say anonymous texter. The other thing, and I agree totally with what Trenton. he said, he doesn't say that what you suggest. You should just be aware that the guy that he's talking about was found by a jury in New York City to be a sexual abuser and attempted yet again yesterday to have the $5.5 million verdict to Eugene Carroll overturned unanimously, including his two sycophantic justices, Thomas and Samuel Alito rejected his case, and as Marjorie says all the time. 20-some other women, at least in our opinion, have credibly accused him of, and I'll be kind, sexual misconduct. So even if he had gone that far, this is who Donald Trump is. You know, it is who Donald Trump is. Where do you want to go next? You want to go to Karen in Shrewsbury? You have a minute, Karen. Take it away. Hi, God. This is my sister and I, Christian, Karen. Hi. Hi. Hi.

We just want to say, I guess we'd like the media to shout out a little bit more about what he's doing. The awesome was absolutely correct. He was just giving the truth. He was saying this is what Trump is up to. And the media should be doing it more as well. Because he is doing all that. He is playing ball. He was falling asleep in meetings. It's not like he's not saying something that's not true. So the media should be calling him out as well. Karen, if you're not already reading Margaret Dan Sullivan's brilliant substack, who we mention all the time, she is saying exactly what you are saying. Oh, she's going to be here Thursday. Margaret is? Margaret Dan Sullivan, who was just terrific. Check out her substack. Margaret Dan Sullivan, and she is exactly where you are. Karen, thank you much for the call. We appreciate it. What am I supposed to say? What am I here? Actually, that's a good question. The honest texts are running out of time. Did Natalie go with Trump on the catering van? The answer is yes, isn't it? I believe so. I'm 90% sure that she was... in the catering, very small catering. All right. Sorry, Jim, we're out of time. Can we check that just to make sure I didn't mislead people? All right. We're out of time. Thanks for your calls and text. A lively discussion. Come out of back to this quick break. We're going to speak with Paul Hezlob, the senior mine action advisor in Ukraine for the United Nations. He is Jim. Don't call him Jimbo Browdy. I'm Trini Casey in for Marjorie Egan. You're listening to BPR on GBAH and any PM live from the BPL and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH news.

Welcome back to BPR on GBA and NEPM. I am Jim Browdy. She is NBC Sports Boston's Trinity Casey sitting in for Marjorie Egan. We're live at the library streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News. And by the way, just to clarify, yes, Natalie Harp was in the catering truck with the president of the United States. We're going to do a check-in on Russia's war in Ukraine with Paul Hezlop. He joins us on Zoom. He's the senior mine action advisor at the UN resident coordinator office in Ukraine. Paul is a former British military officer who started his demining career over 30 years ago. Every country where there are landmines, Afghanistan, Sudan, Angola, and more. He has been there working to make the people there safe and leading what is essentially a recovery effort. He now leads the demining work in Ukraine where about 30% of that country is contaminated with these unexploded weapons, one of the most mine contaminated areas on the planet. Paul Haslop, it's great to have you. Thanks so much for your time. Hi, Jim. Good morning. Morning. Paul, it's great to have you with us. I'm just curious, how does one become, I don't even know if this is the right term, a deminer? Well, I just rang up and asked for a job. I was, I bumped into a friend who had started working for an organization called the Halo Trust that clears minds around the world. I was looking for something to do in the early 90s while I was waiting actually to go back into the military. And they offered me a job. I was in Mozambique two weeks later and I've been doing it ever since. You know, when I was reading about you the last couple of days, Paul, I'm embarrassed to say I've always looked at what you do as sort of an end. goal, removing these landmines so that people don't suffer catastrophic injuries or worse. But you make very clear, and everything I've heard you say and read, these aren't your words, but that it's a mean to an end. It's really about recovery, and the people in a particular country being able to go to school, hold jobs. Elaborate on that for a couple of seconds, if you can, please. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, the world thinks about mines as, you know, mine's bad, clearing mines is good. But in reality, you know, if we clear the land and it's not used, what was the point? So, you know, one of the things that we're really pushing in Ukraine and we've been pushing, or the UN's been pushing now for the last 10 years, is to move more from the output orientation of a number of mines cleared or number of square meters or even cost per square meter. So how is that land going to be used? So, you know, a great example of this, I think, was, you know, we were clearing a bridge in Fallujah. after the conflict in Iraq. And there was only one device on it, and it costs us about $100,000 to clear that device. But we cut down the travel time for a woman on the south of the river to get to the maternity ward from four hours to 15 minutes. So if you can imagine, you know, the impact of that in terms of maternal survivability during childbirth, child survivability from childbirth, access to hospitals and health posts. So it wasn't... the clearance of the device that was slow and expensive. It was the impact from clearing that device and the fact that now 10,000 vehicles a day use that bridge, saving hundreds of thousands of hours and the economic cost of that. So, yeah, and this is what we're trying to do in Ukraine is, you know, find ways that we can keep critical infrastructure working, keep power lines running, give farmers access to their land so that they can produce more crops and bring down global food and energy prices.

You know, Paul, you talked about it being slow and expensive, but I know that Ukraine has been on the front lines of creating technology that makes it faster, less expensive, more efficient. What are the mechanics of removing these landmines? I mean, the first thing is, you know... Is there actually a threat there and does it need to be cleared or could it be fenced and marked? But often, you know, a lot of it is, you know, one of the problems about mines is they're buried and often they're buried and you can't see them. So, you know, you can spend a lot of time clearing land that doesn't have any contamination. So one of the things that we've been finding in Ukraine with the development of AI processing tools, but particularly access to very high resolution imagery that perhaps was only available to the military or governments before through satellites, now you can mount a very high resolution camera on a drone and fly over the area. And then you can evaluate that, either a human being or using some software to help support that. And very quickly assess, you know, is there clearly no evidence of mines present? Is the suspicion that there may be mines there or is the direct evidence, you know, even mines laid on the surface or craters? bodies of animals destroyed vehicles so you know that that helps you um quickly assess whether that land is is contaminated potentially can't contaminated or there's no evidence and working with the ukrainian state emergency services we've released 30 000 square kilometers of land that was suspected that's 30 billion square meters um so you know if you were to work out the cost of clearing that at either cents or dollars per square meter. You know, we've saved a lot of money by using new technology to come back and make an assessment that that land is not contaminated and doesn't need an expensive deminer on it. Paul Heslop, is any of the technological advances that have happened in Ukraine? I assume it's replicable elsewhere, and specifically I'm thinking about... a mind area that we talk about every single day, the straight-of-form moves. Is anything that's being done in Ukraine have transferable value there or no? Yes. And I mean, one of the reasons I'm in Ukraine and I volunteered to go to Ukraine is that I think it's a pivot point in... the history of mine action or humanitarian mine action where we're seeing new technologies that will be replicatable in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia. Strait of Hormuz is slightly different because we deal with landmines and they talk about sea mines. But certainly, you know, underwater robotics, robotic mounted sonar, sensors. Sorry, I'm not really an expert on sea mines, but using LIDAR and radar and different things. So certainly the technologies and the techniques that have been developed in Ukraine will help. And actually my colleagues at UNDP, the UN Development Program, have just bought 60 underwater robots to support the Ukrainian police, the special transport service and emergency services to help clear harbors, rivers, under bridges and waterways. So some of the processes and techniques using underwater vehicles with support from the UN and Ukraine will definitely be transferable.

You know, I want to, we'll get back to current events in a second. I want to bring up something that happened almost 30 years ago that I'm guessing you've only talked about maybe 100,000 times. When you were in Angola with a relatively high-profile person who happened to be Princess Diana, here is Paul Heslop in Angola in 97 demonstrating to the princess how to safely detonate a landmine. As you can see, they've been working away here and they've uncovered a mine. What we're going to do now is place the charge here and you will detonate a mine. Just press a button and it'll be a bang and you've got rid of one of these things. One down, 17 million to go. She says one down, 17 million to go. We have a photograph of the two of the mayor. Your great line in a BBC interviewed not too long ago. I didn't want to be known as the man who blew up Princess Diana. I mean, landmines in and of themselves have to be unbelievably stressful work. How stressful was it working with her around landmines? Actually, you know, this again is a big misnomer that people think clear in minds is very dangerous and not. And stressful. Well, I don't find it. So, I mean, one of the things. That's you, Paul. Go ahead. But I mean, statistically, I mean, I've had more colleagues killed and injured in the last 10 years driving to and from the minefield in car crashes or from heart attacks, you know. Plenty of people like me in their 50s who are not as fit as they used to have drunk and smoke too much and not looked after themselves and have a heart attack. So, you know, I'm more likely to die from that than I am from a mine. Minefields themselves are very structured, you know, they're very well laid out, they're very organized, we have very standard procedures. The demines follow very standard drills. They wear very good protective equipment. They have very good equipment and detectors. And it's, you know, it's a very organized. So, you know, it's probably no different to any other high-risk job, such as being a lumberjack or a... a coal miner or working, you know, in, you know, oil and gas, for example. So, you know, it's very structured. It's got good health and safety. I never really feel concerned when I'm visiting a minefield or working with a device. Although, of course, when you do the long walk to go out and deal with an item, you do get a little bit of twitchy bum time. But it's all good. I've never used the expression. I'm going to use that twitchy bum time. I have to say, can we stay on the princess for a second? Did her willingness or interest in doing this, did it change the world's perception of this whole issue? Well, I mean, the thing was, I mean, what was unbelievable was just the amount of media attention we got from it. I mean, we'd had a visit from Madeline Albright a few weeks before, you know, and when she landed in, you know, sort of the smaller version of Air Force One and had a C-130 with vehicles landing behind, I thought, you know, oh my God, what's this? But when Diane arrived with 90 journalists in tow.

and we're in a live minefield and we're trying to do crowd control and there were not just mines but UXO and everything around it. The stress of the visit wasn't the problem. It was trying to manage the media and just making sure that one of them didn't run into a minefield and set something off. I mean, when Madeline Albright visited... Her security detail patrolled through the minefield to secure it. And it was a minefield full of bound in fragmentation mines and antipersonal mines with an anti-tank mine underneath. So that, you know, if you stepped on that, you became pink mist. And, you know, I'm just stood there. absolutely brick in it that, you know, somebody was going to trigger a fragmentation mine, take out Albright, and we all get engaged by the security detail. So it ended up me standing on top of a Land Rover screaming, a lot of expletives telling people to stand. fucking still because otherwise somebody was going to get killed. And, you know, having had that a few weeks before, that was that big concern with Diana that somebody would try and get that special shot or that angle and we'd just hear a bang and see a leg flying through the air. I mean, to that point, you sort of brush off the dangerous situation that it is to demine these, but you obviously, by that point, you are in a controlled environment, you know what you have found, you know what you're trying to go dismantle. But 90% of all recorded... casualties are civilians in these minefields. 40% of those are children. And what struck me, and I think Jim as well, is that a lot of these modern day bombs and IEDs that are being dropped and left, I hate to call it, it's a failure to explode, but 10% of what's dropped does not go off. How does that happen? How has technology increased so much to find these, whereas the technology of the explosive devices themselves are still so unreliable. I mean, it's a fantastic point, and it's something that I've been discussing for years. I mean, some of the North Korean stuff being used in Ukraine, there's a 40% fail rate. You know, and as somebody who's ex-military, you know, I have no problem with weapons and ammunition being delivered on a military target, and it functioning as designed, you know, that's the point. But where, you know, the humanitarian side of this, and I find this quite staggering, that those weapon systems, if they don't, don't fail and then don't get cleared up immediately afterwards can sit for 5, 10, 20 years, even longer. There's still munitions from the First and Second World War out there causing problems. And, you know, it's not the military target that was intended that gets killed or injured. It's a child or a woman collecting firewood, you know, who...

five, ten, twenty years later, picks it up, kicks it, sets fire to it, throws it at something. And, you know, the number of times we've investigated accidents where a group of children have thrown something onto a fire or thrown a rock at something. and it explodes, you know, and if you think a mortar is an anti-group device, it's designed to attack a section or a platoon, you know, and that goes off, and you've got a group of five or six kids around it, you're looking at five or six casualties, often very severely injured. So, I mean, I don't understand how, you know, if Toyota or Sony or General Electric produced fridges or cars where 10 to 20% failed, you know, they'd go out of business. So why is it that arms manufacturers are allowed to continue to... views things that fail at that rate. Let me give you my lay response to that maybe they want them to fail so they terrorize the country well beyond the combat itself. Is that not plausible for some of these monsters like Vladimir Putin? I think the intent of using the weapon system that way. But you can design a weapon system to be a delay to arm. And we see this in Ukraine where we're now seeing munitions being dropped, where you will have a mix of immediate impact, time delay that in effect create a double tap when the first responders go in and then victim operated in the form of anti-personnel mines. So that's a deliberate design of weapon system. What I'm talking about here are your mortars, your rockets, your RPGs, your grenades, that just haven't been produced to a good standard, or the soldiers haven't been trained to use them properly, and then they fail. And to me, I think, you know, if we were saying to the arms manufacturers, you know, you've got a 10% fail rate, you need to put aside 10% of your cost to pay for the clearance of this, or 10% of your revenue for the clearance of this, you know, you'd suddenly find that they didn't want to do that, and the fail rate would decrease very quickly. And, you know, to be honest, 10% of a trillion dollars, which is nothing in arms manufacturing terms, would pay for our operations probably for the next 10 years, next 20 years. We only have a couple of minutes left. A couple of things. When Pete Hegseth, Secretary of whatever he calls war, Pete Hegseth, said, I think it was in December, that he was pro-landmines, virtually anywhere he could use him. I started reading about this Ottawa treaty from also 30 years ago. The U.S. and Russia are not signatories. Does this anti-landmine convention of 30 years ago have any real-world impact in your work? Yeah, I mean, that was why Diana visited Angola was to highlight the need for that treaty to be signed. You know, over 160 countries have now signed it, and we've seen, you know, a massive reduction in the number of mines around the world as a result of stockpals being destroyed, it not being acceptable for mines to be used. And certainly, you know.

there weren't a lot of states-on-state conflicts between 1990 and 2020. And so, you know, we've seen a big impact. To such an extent, I think the treaty was so successful that, you know, the use of IEDs, particularly pressure-plate IEDs in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan were insurgents attempts to replicate an anti-personnel mine. at home or in the garage, so to speak, because they are an effective weapon when used indiscriminately as a terror weapon, but they're not very good for the civilian population during or after the conflict. Paul, I just want to mention, by the way, the woman who was kind enough to connect us, Liz Metro, M-E-T, R-A-U-X, has a beautiful piece that's coming out tomorrow about some of the workers in this plant in West Virginia who make these mine locators, and it's really powerful about these incredibly... caring, patriotic people. Before you go, tell us why we should care about your work. What's the self-serving importance of this to all the rest of us who aren't in Ukraine or Sudan or Angola? Why does this matter to us? I'd say two things. The first is, you know, and take it back to its simplest, you know, why do people become refugees? Because they, because their homes aren't safe. If you have mines in your garden or in the fields around you or on the way to the school or if your school or health post is contaminated with UXO, you can't live there. And so you become a migrant and you become a refugee. So, you know, so many of the people who've left Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and moved into Europe are a result of the presence of mines in UXO and the consequence of war. So if we want to either encourage people to go home or we want to stop people having to leave, clearing mines makes a massive difference to that and makes a massive impact. In Ukraine, the presence of mines in UXO is affecting global food prices. So everybody who's listening to this today, they're paying more for their gas, more for their food, more for their pasta, more for their bread because of the conflict in Ukraine and because of the perceived presence of minds in UXO across the fields of Ukraine, which is the breadbasket of Europe. So if we get those cleared, we'll bring down food prices, we'll bring down energy prices and the whole world benefits. But, you know, if you think for us in New York or Boston, you know, 10 cents on a loaf of bread is an... inconvenience. If you're an Afghan on a dollar a day or a Somali on a dollar a day and your price of bread has doubled because of food prices, people are going to start to starve. So it affects global food prices, global food security, and it's the poorest of the poor who are the most affected by it. Boy, the world could use a lot more of you, Paul, Haslop. Thank you so much for your time. If I could just make one final point, you know, if it wasn't for, you know, the Russian aggression of invading Ukraine. I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't be in Ukraine. So, you know, I'd rather be out of a job.

because there's no contamination. So, you know, I am directly employed as a result of unprovoked aggression in 2022. Let's hope it ends soon. Paul Heslop, thanks for your time. Really appreciate it. Paul, thank you. We have been speaking with Paul Hesl, the U.N. senior mine action advisor in Ukraine. Coming up after this quick break, we have Axios business editor, Dan Primmack. He is Jim Browdy. I'm Truny Casey. I'm in for Marjorie Egan. You are listening to BPR on GBAH and NEPM live from the BPL and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBM news. Support for Boston Public Radio comes from MIT Federal Credit Union. Mortgages designed to make your home financing journey effortless, federally insured by NCUA, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS No. 699-225. And Cambridge Savings Bank, where they are committed to your financial well-being and community is at the core of everything they do. Cambridge Savings Bank, always you. More at Cambridge Savings.com, member FDIC. Welcome back to BPR in 897GBH. I'm Jim Browdy, Trani Casey, from NBC Sports Boston. It's sitting in for Marjorie. We're live at the library streaming, YouTube.com slash GBH News. Join out live at the library by Dan ProMacDan. Dan is the business editor at Axios, all through the daily Axios Pro Rata newsletter, which you can subscribe to at axios.com slash signup slash pro-hyphen rata. That seems like way too much. Just getprorata.axios.com. There is. Get pro rata. Say the rest. Dot axios.com. Perfect. Nice to see you. Dan, nice to see you. Dan, nice to have you. I love Axios. I read it every morning. The economy is, I think, frustrating for everyone. Is it as frustrating as it seems? What is the state of the economy right now? I mean, the... You'd say the state of the economy is good except for one giant problem, which is everything costs too much, right? So, you know, when you look – and I think it's kind of – we use kind of antiquated numbers to a certain extent on this, right? Like GDP is very good. That's being driven a lot by AI and AI spend and the growth of these companies. The stock market is very good. If you've got a 401k, you're pretty happy with that. But if you would like to buy gas or maybe something like food, then you're frustrated and you've been frustrated for years. And even though, you know, the rate of inflation sometimes goes down and sometimes goes up, it's – still inflating. So for those of us who are totally clueless, I would be the head of that club. Why is the stock market doing so well while the prices of the grocery store and the gas pump are so outrageous? Largely because, I would say largely because of AI, because you've got this just massive boom. You're creating not just a new industry. And we've seen, you know, a new widget get built. Really the entire... economy, the business economy, the enterprise economy is getting re-architected, maybe even the consumer economy too. And so you've got an incredible amount of spending that goes into that, whether that be data centers or energy or the AI companies themselves. And when there's a lot of business spending, well, then stocks go up. Yeah, the reason I'm smiling here is not your reaction. If you read the Drudge Report, every day one of the top four articles is... AI bubble about to burst, question mark, every single day. Is it about to burst? I mean, individual companies may go down. There could be a burst, but the basic change, just a little bit maybe you could argue like dot-com days back in 98, 99, 2000, there was a dot-com bubble, right? There were certain stocks that were very overvalued. They went way down, some people lost money. But clearly, what was actually happening under the hood then, right? The internet re-architecting the way we all lived our lives, that was very real.

We're talking to Dan Premack. So, Dan, let's quote from a senator in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Trump's... What's the second? I've got it. President Trump is now the first president in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank. This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen. What she's talking about is World Liberty Financial, which is a crypto firm that Trump and his sons founded back in 2024. It's not going to be the kind of bank that we think of. Like if we go to Bank of America across the street where you deposit and take out money, but what is it and why is it being approved when he? is in office. Yeah, so the operate part, the Elizabeth Warren said, I'm not so sure. So basically, yeah, it was a crypto project created a couple years ago. There's been a lot of coverage of it. It was basically created by Trump's sons and actually by one of Steve Witkoff's sons. Steve Witkoff, who's kind of the envoy to everything for the Trump administration, former real estate guy. Again, it was a crypto project. There was a lot of talk about self-dealing with it because there was foreign countries that put big investment into it. The thing about getting a bank, a lot of crypto companies try to get bank charters, as you said, not so that we can go and get money out of the ATM or put our savings in it, but really because it provides kind of a little bit of a good housekeeping seal of approval, there's certain things they're allowed to do. It also means they'd be regulated, and in this case, obviously, be regulated by the Trump administration. You know, the Trump kids will say two things. They'll say, one, we don't really run it, but more importantly, this will be regulated by whatever the next administration is, and the one after that, big questions, will it really still be there at that point? No one knows. But, yeah, look, I mean, the self-dealing, the Trump family stuff, It's constant, right? There's so many different projects. The kids have started so many different projects. And there really aren't laws or rules to oversee this. We've just never had it before. By the way, Trump made, is he made, like, what, a half billion dollars from the crypto enterprise? More, I believe. More than a half billion. It says here, 526 million from the sale of cryptocurrency. Another 263 million from a sale of equity. So that's like $800 million. Plus stuff he's done off of social media. company, et cetera. I don't know if this is oxymoronic. I hope it's not. Do business people who actually care about the country and ethics? Are people working behind the scenes for when a new administration comes over to put safeguards in place so that there's not another – I mean, every day, there's another story. Well, I mean, this wouldn't be businesses that should be put in the safeguards. And in theory should be the senators and the Congress people. Well, they don't have the courage to do it. They don't have the courage. But there's no safeguards. Businesspeople can necessarily put in. I do – No, I didn't mean that. I mean – I'm sorry, I didn't mean implement themselves. I mean, proposed, since they know the industry, proposed to the next Congress. I don't mean, well, maybe this one, but clearly the one that starts in 29, because the only reason this hasn't happened is not because of formal, hard safeguards, but because of tradition. I mean, isn't that right? That is right. I do think that when you talk to business people, just about kind of the crony capitalism of the Trump administration.

The general response I think you get is the people view this is a one-off, that this is unusual, that if you look at who could be the contenders on both parties, you won't have this again because you just don't have this kind of family, this kind of existing wealth. Everyone's kind of writing it off a little bit, and there's not really, it doesn't seem much concern about the next one. But is there no trickle-down effect? Is there no lasting effect of him and his family getting this kind of power over financial institutions or money? Or is it really just a one-off and we have to deal with it for four years? years. It won't matter to anyone anymore. I mean, that's, I think that's kind of what the business world thinks. It won't matter to anyone. Obviously, there'll be trickle downs because of the Trump family legacy. There'll be lots of money. And, you know, does Donald Trump Jr. run for office, et cetera. So there could be, uh, you would hope or you would think that people would start to put rules in place. But remember, this is a Congress that hasn't passed its own stock trading ban. So the idea that they're going to be able to go and halt executive power, particularly in a country in which the Supreme Court has allowed more and more executive power, it seems unlikely. I'm talking to Dan Premack. On that up note, you wrote a piece about criticizing the Democrats for, I think your line was, Dem's AI strategy is MIA, fairly clever headline. I don't know if you're responsible for it. I'll take credit. It was quite good. Who cares? Why should we care in a midterm election if they don't have an AI strategy? Because to me, it is the single most important technological and economic change that everybody is going to face. When you hear people say, is this going to take jobs away? Is this going to change energy prices? It's extraordinary. And it's this fundamental things that Democrats are just kind of ignoring from a policy perspective. And it seems to me, and I know I'm a little polly on this, I have some colleagues who have told me the same thing. Who cares? I think it's kind of the job of politicians to, you know, propose the way they're either going to regulate or handle massive change. If this was something about national security, if this was something about taxes, if this was something about the environment, we'd say, well, of course you have to have a position. Same thing. Well, by the way, I should clarify, when I say, okay, I care deeply, but is it, but this is campaign time. So is your position sort of as an ethical thing that if you're running for office on this critical issue about workforce and everything else, you should be straight with the American public. Is that where you're coming from? You should be straight with the American public. And beyond that, you know, Democrats, leaving aside candidates who are running for office now, in office Democrats, in both the House and the Senate. There is no unified minority policy on this. And what I get into in the story was an anecdote, Ed Markey, because this is relevant because he's our senator here in Massachusetts, I was at a dinner and he came and he spoke and he just chatted with some folks. We were business folks. And I asked, I just said, you know, if Democrats regain any sort of power in Congress, can you name one thing that Democrats would do? It could be big, it could be small when it comes to AI policy that you would try to push through. His only answer was they would hold hearings. And then he went on a whole talk about telecom deregulation in the 90s. That's it. Hearings. That's it. We've had hearings. Can you identify? I've only quoted this a million times, so why not one more for a new listener? One of my favorite moments in congressional history is when Mark Zuckerberg was testifying before the Senate, I don't know, 10 years ago, eight years ago. And Orrin Hatch who has since died, Senator from, I think it was Orrin Hatch. You'll correct me if I'm wrong. I think so. Says to Mark Zuckerberg, how do you make money?

Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, and he looks back at Hatch with incredulity and goes, ads, Senator? Is the United States Congress ever proven and has the ability to catch up with a runaway technology? From a pure tech regulation standpoint, no, but I think this is a more, a bigger thing than that. I don't think this is just, you know, how do we regulate social media and the goods or the ills and the consequences? We're talking potentially about technology that could change or eliminate I mean massive swaths of jobs including kind of that of probably everybody in this room so it's like even if even if the tech genie is out of the bottle here There's then consequences that you have to at least be starting to talk about how we as a country will handle that. And are they not talking because they have no ideas? I think that's the take I get, yeah. That's good news. Someone who does have an idea is your boss. Axios on the front lines of everything AI. Right now, you guys are trying to save local news with AI. You have a deal with open AI. What is the premise behind this and how does this save? journalism jobs. So the premise, so my boss and Axios co-founder Jim Van de Haie sits and plays with AI on a constant basis. His general philosophy on this is, if you ignore this, you will be destroyed by it, so you need to be paying attention to it. On the local news site, so Axios now, and I'm going to screw up the number, I think we have local sites in 38 cities, I think at this point, including Boston. So this is not about replacing journalists. We have physical human beings on the ground, including here in Boston, and all of those cities, some more, some more. The idea on the AI side, though, is there's certain things within kind of local journalism that really are kind of data monkey jobs, right? Like, you know, theater listings or events happening around the city, things like that, that we can be using AI to save reporters time on. And I'll go a step further, which is, and people have started talking about this, we haven't really started employing it internally. One of the big problems with local news, no organization really has the manpower to sit at every school board meeting, every planning board meeting, et cetera. But all of those are recorded. All of those are taped. And if you can imagine local journalism, being able to take all of those meetings, all the stuff that's happening in local government, use AI to surface the stuff that's actually important, if something important happened in them. And then use humans to report that out. It could really, kind of from our perspective, kind of hypercharged local journalism and make it more responsible and more responsive. I mean, I think one of the ways you could use that is if you don't have to go back in a million years ago, I was a local news reporter and I sat, you know, you would sit in school board meetings and there would be nothing. You'd have to make a story out of nothing. You could theoretically flag certain words or certain topics and then see it as being. important to cover. The downside of it, though, and I think Jim says this, is that sometimes AI can write better stories than a human camp. Like, what's stopping companies like all of ours that we work for from using either AI-generated humans or AI-generated articles? From a journalism standpoint, right now, internally, just policy. Because there are certain organizations that are doing that. We're not. Everything's written by a human-ed-edited by a human. At some point, you could see it happen, but I do think that the

real journalism, which is that second piece, which is, okay, something interesting gets said at the school board meeting. If all you're looking to do is highlight that and transcribe it, you know, school committee member X said this, you're right, then probably AI could write that and it would work fine. But the real goal is to see, okay, they said this. Now let's report that out. Let's talk to teachers, parents, students in that case, or whatever it is. And for that, you still need a person to do it. Maybe not forever, but right now. One last AI thing. We mentioned this the other day, and I just read more about it in anticipation of you coming. Amazon is buying up books. They say rare books. You have to tell me what rare is. I don't know what that. I don't think they mean rare. I'm not a publishing person, but publishing people know what rare books are compared to others. And essentially what they do is they rip off the binder because it's a lot easier to input the stuff for AI use. And then they toss the books. Is this ultimately going to lead to a... book shortage? Or is this, I'm serious. No, no, they're doing this to be able to train on the books. The funny thing about this is Google tried to do this like 30 years ago, and they tried to do it by hand. There are stories of Marissa Péter Magyar, who was a very early Google employee, talks about for weeks, they would go to, I think it was Barnes & Noble, wherever their local bookstore in Palo Alto was. They would buy books, and they were doing it by scanning, scan by hand, page after page, because the idea of Google originally was to be the world's repository of all information. Well, you need to have all the books to do that. This is just a new version of that. Now, there's all sorts of fair use issues and questions of should they be doing it and authors aren't being compensated. But that's been true for kind of all content since AI began. Not to harp on AI, but we talk about the books and we talk about inputting things from journalism and working with Open AI to train it. I guess one of my issues too, and I guess we don't really have any privacy, but what about privacy? What about, you know, uploading interviews or something? That's so yesterday, but you don't. Does it just not, I guess it just doesn't matter? It exists. It depends on the, obviously, the terms of service. So, you know, so for example, if I was to do an interview with somebody and I was to use Open AI, it's not being fed into the training. It's not being fed into the system. So there's kind of, and this is very simplistic, but there's two parts of AI, right? There's what it trains on, but that's not necessarily the questions you ask. if that makes sense. So if you were to upload an X-ray or medical file, the system's not training on that. The system's training on different data. Okay. Dan Primack, it's nice to see you as always. Thanks for having me. You know almost everything. Do you know that? I know. I don't think that's true. The one sports story we had. We didn't get to the same. We didn't talk. We didn't talk. We didn't talk Lakers. You wrote about that, didn't. Cushner's buying the Lakers. Yeah. And now there's a family fight over it now. Yeah, Jeannie Buss just on CNN. She's not happy about it. Read Dan Primack. You'll learn everything you need to know. Nice to you. All right. We've been speaking with Dan Premak, business editor at Axios, and author of the Daily Axios ProRata newsletter, which you can subscribe to at Axios.com slash sign up, blah, blah, blah. What is it again? Get pro rata.axios.com. There you go. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Jim, for that. We say goodbye to you who are listening on NEPM, but be sure to tune in to the fabulous 413, which starts at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Show, though, here in Boston continues. Coming up after a quick break, we have CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. He's Jim Browdy. I'm Trenti Casey. I'm in for Marjorie Egan today. You're listening to BPR on GBIH and NEPM live from the BPL and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH News.

Welcome back to our number two of BPR on 897, GBAH. He is Jim Browdy. I am NBC SportsPostens, Tranny Casey. I'm in from Marjorie Egan. Today, we are live from the BPL streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH News. Jim, how are you? I'm Will. Hello again, Trene. Hello. By the way, I want to remind you again, one of our colleagues, Zoe Matthews, has a new show. It's called Not My Politics, focused on young people in politics. First episode, which is terrific, is available on GBAH News's YouTube channel. on our BPR podcast feed. Check it out. Join now on Zoom by John King. John, of course, is Chief National Correspondent at CNN, host of the reporting project all over the map. John, good to see you. I'm the old people in politics. Well, you don't know old, my friend, but welcome. It's good to see you. You listen to the young people, John. That's all that matters. We're going to hear your take on this in just a second. But once again, President Trump making news after lashing out at a female reporter. This time it's one of your colleagues, CNN reporter Kristen Holmes, after being asked a question yesterday on the Jon Ossoff.

Who are you with? I'm with CNN. Fake news. I just wanted to follow up on the South Korea question. You're a loud boisterous person. You're a fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. If he had asked you to scale back on those military exercises. Go ahead. And he goes on to say quiet, be quiet, be quiet, totally disrespectful as he loves to be to strong women's reporters. Yeah, just your, what do you think about this continually happening? It doesn't seem like any sort of public humiliation stops President Trump from doing this to women. But I guess on the plus side, it also doesn't stop women from asking difficult questions. I think you ended on the correct point where I'll begin. Number one, amen to the White House press corps when they do ask tough questions. And I think more often than not, if you look at it, as someone who covered the White House for 10 years, in this White House press corps, it is often the women leading the charge there asking relevant questions of the president, not disrespectful questions of the president, questions about the economy, questions about what Democrats say about him, questions about the war, you know, questions about his own unpopularity, which is profoundly low right now. What you hear there and what people around the country might not understand as much about just the reprehensible conduct of the president, forgive me, is that he knows Kristen Holmes. She has covered him for years. He says, who are you? Who are you with? He knows her. That's all part of his act and part of his schedct. And part of the contempt he shows for the news media, but especially for women who stand up to him. And look, it's very clear. In every dynamic of the president's life, we see this. He does not like to have strong women around him. He had a very dysfunctional relationship with Nancy Pelosi when she was speaker, and he has a very combative relationship with tough principled journalists who cover the White House, especially the women who are not afraid to stand there knowing what's coming. and knowing what's going to happen to them on social media, and knowing the threats they're going to receive, and knowing the mocking, horrible comments they're going to receive both publicly and privately from people loyal to this president. So amen to my colleague, Kristen. He goes after my colleague, Caitlin, but there are a number of other fierce, strong, great women reporters covering this White House, and God bless them. You know, one of the things that got him bent out of shape was not just the question about his kind words about Kim Jong-un and abandoning South Korea and these exercises, but was also being asked about what Jon Ossoff said about him in general, but specifically about Natalie Harp, the so-called human printer, who's by his side all the time. We talk to our listeners about this at the top of the show, John, and while it is not exactly a scientific sample, Every single caller loved how Jon Ossoff dealt with this thing. What are people in democratic circles saying about Jon Ossoff's approach to dealing with Donald Trump? There's a lot of talk, a lot of buzz about Jon Ossoff right now, who has to win his own Senate race in Georgia this year, you know, be reelected first. But there's a lot of 28, 2028 talk about Jon Ossoff and about, you know, Donald Trump won't be on the ballot in 2008.

You know, we've had this debate, Jim, for how many years? We're in a decade of Trump now. And one of the big conversations among Democrats from the very beginning, but including now that he's back in in this second term, which is very different from the first term, is how to handle Trump. And whether to just focus on policy or whether to try, like he does, but to get under his skin sometimes, to be a little personal sometimes, to drop, dropping the Natalie bomb was not by accident. And Jon Ossoff knew that he would get a response. And if you look at, you know, what White House aides have said on the record and what other people are trying to do, and the same thing about him being trolled and threatened and social media and the like. So, look. When I covered the White House, there was more of a line between certain things, I guess. Trump has obliterated the lines, and there will be some people out there who say, ooh, I don't know, do you want to bring a young aide into this conversation? But as you note, what Democrats are desperate for is people who are willing to fight him and fight him on his terms and not afraid to get muddy and dirty and to, frankly, forgive my language, piss him off. And guess what? In this case, it worked. John, we're talking to John King from CNN. Are you okay with his tactics? In my personal opinion, to me, he didn't necessarily go low. He just pointed out the obvious of what's happening. Is that the best tactic where they're not stooping to Trump or his administration's level by name calling? They're just simply pointing out the obvious of what's happening in front of everyone's very eyes. I always say that I've done this a long time, and Jim tries to take me off the cliff on occasion. My job is to cover them or to watch them and to be a student of the system. So I don't say whether I think this is great or that is great. I will say that it's different, right? It's different that you have this happening right now. But Jon Ossoff is trolling Trump, like Trump and his people troll everybody. And he's trolling him in the case of dropping the name Natalie Harp with someone who is fiercely loyal to the president, always at his side, and who is without a doubt just a subject of conversation around the White House about this unique way Trump operates and the small circle he has that is always with him. And so Jon Ossoff knew exactly what he was doing here. And again, you know, we're 11 weeks away. 11 weeks from tonight will be counting votes in the midterm election. I can tell you from my travels, I think this is going to be a much more consequential big election than even a lot of people in Washington think because people of all persuasions are ticked off. But when you get to the Democrat slice of the pie, we're watching this play out in the primaries that, you know, the Democratic Socialists versus the establishment and everything in between. But at the core of that, are a number of Democrats, not just younger Democrats, but especially younger Democrats, who just want to see more fight and more moxie and more modern warfare, if you will. And what Jon Ossoff is doing is using social media, very viral images, very little campaign nuggets. And it's working so far. So people like it. The question is, you know, we're in 2026. Who knows how this escalates as we move forward? You know, John, speaking of primaries, I know there's Florida, Wyoming. I can't remember the third state. You'll tell me in a second. What are you looking, what are you watching tonight of particular interest? The race that I'm most interested in actually is Debbie Wasserman Schultz moving into a new district, which is a majority black district and running against four other people in a primary, all of whom are black and choosing not to run in her own district, which is more Republican it was than it was before redistricting.

What's of particular interest to you? I think watching Florida in the sense that, to me, Florida should be a much more competitive state. If you look at the demographics of Florida, it should be a much more competitive state than it has been over the last decade. The Democratic Party has just collapsed there. So watching them pick a successor to Ron DeSantis, who wins that Republican primary is important because it's a big state. It's one of the states that potentially, it hasn't been lately, but potentially could be competitive in 2028. I think these gubernatorial elections, who will be the governor who has to sign off on the 2026? That will be Ron DeSantis in Florida. and then 2028 election results in these states if we're going to continue to be in this climate, even without Trump on the ballot, where people are questioning the integrity of elections. So winning a governor's race is very important. To your point about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, she gets back to a little bit about, it's a little slice of what we were talking about earlier in the sense of Jon Ossoff and where the passion is in the Democratic Party. I think that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is running against the will of the people at the moment, if you will, who want new, younger, fresher voices. And she is the very establishment, the former Democratic National Committee. committee chairwoman, you know, moving to another district to try to protect yourself. We'll see if it works. She can raise a lot of money. She's in a very effective communicator and politician. But when you travel, a lot of people, the one interesting thing that you hear from the most Trumpy person to the most Bernie Sanders person out there is this quest for reform, get money out of politics, term limits, get new faces, younger faces. So I'll watch the Wasserman Schultz primary tonight just for the idea that it is running counter to where the energy in her party is right now. Go ahead. Can we stay on that theme just for a second? There is a race in Massachusetts. There are a bunch of races where there are young, progressive candidates, challenging and incumbent. But one race where one of the major themes is the other guy's been there 50 years and it's time to go is Seth Moulton's challenge to Ed Markey. I'm sure you know two polls in two days. Yesterday, a UMass poll had... Ed Markey up 28 points, a Suffolk Globe poll this morning, had him up 14. Seth Moulton's reaction is primary polls have been atrocious, and he cites Hong, the loser of the primary there in Wisconsin, Trenti's home state, who in polls was up 20 to 40 points before she lost. Who's right here? Is this a, are we waiting for a walkover election for primary for Ed Markey or is this still up for grabs? Look, I think in this environment, the volatility age we're living in, the disruption age we're living in, you should leave everything up for grabs until people vote. I would say that Seth Moulton is not wrong when he says that a lot of the polling has been off in that the progressives have been running much higher in the polls than they perform on primary day. I would also say that the polls in this, not just these two new ones, if you go back for quite some time. Senator Ed Markey has had a consistent lead. I would say this. There is no question.

that the passion in the party, the energy in the party, look at the turnout in the Democratic primaries. It's across the party, but it is especially among the progressive movements, which Senator Ed Markey, he's sort of running into two breezes at once. One is a wind at his back, which is the energy of progressives. Yeah. Energy of the, you know, they have the text communications. They're engaged. They're communicating on social media. You know, it's not maybe his generation, but he has that oomph behind him because back him as the progressive candidate. The wind he's running into is the quest for new blood in the party. And, you know, thank you for your service. We just saw that John Larson, Congressman outside of Hartford. You know, just lost a primary last week. But everything I've seen in the data says that Ed Markey has been consistently ahead in that race. I would. agree with Seth Moulton that I wouldn't necessarily buy 20 plus points. But if, you know, so assume it's not 20. That doesn't mean it's two. Yeah, one last thing based on what you said, why are polls showing progressives doing better in the polling than they actually do on primary day, John King? What's the analysis of that? I've been trying to sort this out. Number one. younger, more progressive, Bernie Sanders types, not all Democratic Socialists, but those types of voters are more engaged right now. They're more likely to take that phone call. There's a lot of online polling done now, less phone polling done now. They're more engaged in that community. I do think we saw in Michigan, the pollsters are having a hard time polling in the black community right now. That's not a huge slice of the Massachusetts electorate, not as big a slice as the Massachusetts Democratic electorate as it is in... It wasn't Wisconsin or in Michigan, but there is an issue there polling working class people. The biggest problem right now is when you talk to pollsters is on the Republican side, where they say their base is so demoralized that they can't get them to participate in the polls. Or a lot of Republicans who, if they were calling from voter lists, you know their Republicans are now identifying themselves as independents because they're alienated with the war or something and they don't even want to be called Republicans right now. But we have seen, you know, in Michigan and Wisconsin, there's no doubt. I would also say this, though, that a lot of the polling you saw in those places, you didn't see on CNN because it doesn't meet our standards. There's a lot of private polling going on. There's a lot of online polling going on that has shown these big progressive leads. I think for some of the reasons I articulated and for some mysterious reasons, probably. But be careful about these polls. Because where do you see them? What's the methodology? Because it's easy to... It's a swing data, too, if you will, if you want to. And stay away completely from these prediction markets, which I think is just ridiculous. No one should be calling political races or handicapping political races based on these predictive markets because they can be raped or heavily influenced. We're talking to John King from CNN. who also has a great show called All Over the Map. You were recently in Iowa. In my lifetime, Iowa has always been the place that every politician goes. It's where the election cycle begins. It doesn't seem like it's going to be that way, at least on the Democratic side. What are you finding? What are some interesting things you found out on your trip to Iowa? Close to my own home state. Yeah, I have an affinity for Iowa because it's the first place I was sent with Michael Dukakis back in 1987.

when I was a young AP reporter and they asked me if I want to cover the guy running for president. So I love going back to Iowa. Back then, you know, Michael Takakis only won 10 states. One of them was Iowa. And one of them was West Virginia. Think about that. Think about that in 36 years, 38 years, how heavily Republican those states have become. Iowa to me is two big things. Number one, like Ohio in the Midwest, Republicans have been in charge for a very long time and yet. Democrats have a shot for governor. Democrats have a shot for United States Senate. Democrats have a shot in Iowa of flipping maybe two. Some Democrats think even three of the House seats. I would think two is probably a safer target. But think about that. The Republicans have had the governor's office in Iowa for 15 years. They haven't elected a Democratic senator in a long time. What does that tell you? Trump's unpopular. The Midwest, especially, you're dealing with, you know, these big rural states, you have to drive a lot. You have a farm. You use diesel. fertilizer, your combine, your trailers. So there's a Trump drag out in rural America and in middle America where the Democrats have a chance to rebound. I think one of the defining questions in this election, especially as we use it as a springboard into 2028, as can Democrats begin to make just a modest comeback in rural America? They've been getting pummeled in the age of Trump. They were losing in rural America even before Trump, but he has put it on steroids. And how can you be competitive in Ohio, in Iowa, in a North Carolina, in a Texas, you know, in a lot of other places, even up in Maine, right above you guys, unless you can compete in these heavily rural areas. The Democrats have almost surrendered. rural America in the last decade. But there are some signs of a modest comeback. In Iowa is one of the places, Ohio and another. There's a couple of congressional races in Tennessee and North Carolina. I'm keeping eye on, obviously the Texas Senate race. Can the Democrats begin to have a comeback in rural America? They're farmers. There are people who work with their hands. The Democrats have lost them for well more than a decade. And there's a possibility there. If that's the case this year, forgive me for rambling. It will mean a lot about the electoral college map is beginning to trend away from the Democrats because of the population ships in the country. And if they want to be competitive not only in 2028 but beyond that at the presidential level, they have to start to rebuild in rural America. Which for me then begs the question, why would the Democrats sort of abandon Iowa early? To me, that doesn't feel like a necessarily prudent political move. It's so they, I think that. Can they find a sweet spot, right? Because Iowa and New Hampshire, you know, they're stubborn, their pride. It's their thing, right? Republicans have not yet, so we'll see what happens there. The argument that Democrats make is that Iowa is 90% white. It's more than that. It's 95, 96% white. And that's not the base of the Democratic Party. And it's disrespectful to the diversity of the Democratic Party to give Iowa so much influence overwinnowing the field. Because, you know, 10 people are running. And after Iowa, you know, two, three or four drop out. That has been the history of it. So the Democrats want to have South Carolina. They want to have Nevada. They want to have Michigan bigger or more diverse states move up. Is there a way? Could there have been a way to massage the Iowa and New Hampshire thing? They tried for several years. So there's some bad blood in the Democratic Party. So I get it from a...

base of the party demographics of the party question, I think you raise the key point. Now, there's a lot of rural parts of South Carolina. There's a lot of rural parts of Nevada, for that matter. But it's different. And I do think that the Democrats should be aware that... They've heard some feelings in Iowa. You know, speaking of the presidential calendar, presidential nominating calendar for the Democrats, obviously New Hampshire is no longer first, as you and Trini were discussing. They're now into the second round. And I think we've all memorized the fact that there's a state law in New Hampshire that says they have to be the first primary by at least seven days. So if they comply with their law and... hold a primary seven days before South Carolina does the Democratic Party disqualify all the the delegates who were elected in New Hampshire here we go again right this has been a conversation for some time do you um Do you penalize them, right? There have been in the past where you only get a partial number of delegates. The party could say you don't get any delegates to the convention. The party could say you get some delegates to the convention. You're paying some kind of a penalty for it. Or you come up with a process where you have that first primary, which is a showcase. It's symbolic. And then you pick the delegates at a convention or some other event later. There are ways around it that New Hampshire Democrats are going to have to decide. conceivably in negotiations with national party officials about, you know, is there a way we can work this out or we can have our primary and then maybe do something later? Or maybe the New Hampshire Democrats will just say, you know, no, we're doing, we're just, you know, to hell with you. We're going to have our primary. And if you want to penalize us, then go for it. You know, John, speaking of the states that are not on the top of the list, I am obsessed with this Mitch McConnell thing. And, you know, it's one thing to hear every one of his allies say, well, he's a private person. I mean, arguably one of the most powerful leaders of the Senate, just look at the Supreme Court of the United States in our lifetime. Andy Beshear, Marjorie's favorite governor, I think, are pretty close to her favorite governor from Kentucky, has been saying repeatedly. Say something to somebody other than one of your friends. Call a reporter. Call me on the phone. Call into a television show, even Fox News. The governor of the state has no information on the health or life for that matter of Mitch McConnell. Do you have any insight as to what the hell's going on there? None. None. And it's, look, I have a great respect for privacy. We talked about this in the context of Tom Kane, the Republican Congress being treated for severe depression. On the one hand, you want to give as wide a lane of grace as you can to somebody like that who's dealing with a profound mental health crisis. However, you know, they're also paid by the taxpayers. And so there has to be a better, you know, reporters will never be happy because we want to know everything.

But there has to be a better spot where you come down on the transparency piece of it, where you have to disclose more information. To your point about Mr. Mitch McConnell, he's not the Senate Republican leader anymore. If he were, I think there would be more outrage about this. But he's still very, very influential. You're absolutely right. And so, look, I think it is just a failure of leadership. It's not a political thing. It's not Republican or Democrat. It's a failure of leadership. You're elected to a position. you owe the taxpayers who support you more of an explanation than we've essentially gotten nothing from Mitch McConnell. John, can we have one more, do you mind if we bring up one more depressing note? Oh, the USS Abraham Lincoln? Do you want to do that or do you want to do something? You pick whatever you want. They're all depressing. Yeah, they are all depressing. What is going on on the USS Abraham Lincoln and maybe, thankfully, because it's gotten so much media attention, will these men and women serving our country finally get suitable living conditions and get off the boat? Well, it's, having been on aircraft carriers and been on naval vessels, it's been a long time, but some of those vessels were back there, too. I spent a lot of time on naval vessels back in the... first Persian Gulf War, back when George H.W. Bush was president of the United States. It's tough. I mean, even if you spend a week or so, as I did, you go onto vessels for a week or so, it's very cramped. It's very different. So they've been out for months on an aircraft carrier. My colleague Pamela Brown spent quite a bit of time on the Lincoln, by the way. She's written a couple pieces about it on CNN.com explaining if anyone wants to understand what it's like, you should go see those pieces. I do believe it's now being replaced in theater by the USS George Washington and should be heading out of theater. I'm not on that ship. God bless anyone who serves in our military, whether you agree or disagree with what the president's doing and around, you know, these men and women have nothing to do with that they're following orders and they're doing their jobs and they're casually and dismissively say their deployment should be even longer. There's nothing going on there. And I think that's a reflection of the president's character and his disrespect for people who give their lives and follow his orders. So I hope that the conditions improve. Again, this is a transparency question. You know, the military is not supposed to tell us everything. Of course they're not. They have to protect operational security. At the same time, you wish they were not so publicly dismissive in their comments when people, including families of the sailors.

on that ship are raising questions about living conditions and potential mental health crises. You would hope that people in public office all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief would be much more respectful of those voices. John, before you go, I have two much lighter things. One, the reason I was smiling while you were talking about something so serious. is the listener just sent me a photograph from this interview of your son walking up the stairs behind you in a towel. That's number one. That was excellent television. I did see that, but I didn't want to point it out. That was excellent. He was great. It was very nice to almost meet him. Can I go back in history for a second? I've mentioned this before. Young cub reporter, John King, working for Associated Press, was the reporter who broke the story that Lloyd Guy Benson was Michael Dukakis' running mate way back in 87, 88, whatever. Were you there for the Belgian Endive moment with... I love Michael Dukakis. I should be clear. I really love him and admire him. Were you there for the Belgian Endive moment? I was not. That was the colleague of mine, Bill Welch, I believe, at the time, of the alternative crops. They were having a farm crisis, and he said, you really need to think about alternative crops like Belgian end up. That was like John Kerry and the cheese steak. We tend to do that in Massachusetts, right? Our politicians tend to mess up the rest of America somewhere. Yeah, that was a dozy. And yet he went on to be the Democratic nominee. I remember well in the course of history might have changed. I don't remember that, but having grown up in the Midwest, I can tell you we do not grow a lot of Belgian endives in our fields. Hey, Jon Ossoff always, it's wonderful to talk to you. Take care of yourself. We're watching tonight. Textor just let me know. I had no idea that John King was a graduate of St. Mark's. St. Mark's school. Yeah. My husband is also a graduate of St. Marks. That's why that's my eye. I didn't graduate because I went to Boston Latin school, about six years. Six years. I still got, my left hand still hurts. John, good luck tonight. We'll be watching. Take care of yourself. John King. We have been speaking with John King, CNN, Chief National Correspondent and host of the reporting project all over the map. John is always, thank you. He is great. I love that he's also a big Boston sports fan. Coming up after this quick break, we'll open the phone and text lines to get your thoughts on proper etiquette when taking kids out to eat. And more broadly, should there be places where kids should. and should not be allowed. He is Jim Browdy. I'm Trini Casey in for Marjorie Egan. You're listening to BPR on 897GBH live from the BPL and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH News. Funding for our...

Welcome back to BPR and 897 GBIH. Jim Browdy and NBC Sports Boston's Trent and Casey sitting in from Marjorie. We're live at the library streaming at YouTube.com slash GBHUZ. Dining out at a restaurant, as I'm sure you know, if you listen to the show, is one of the great joys of life. Unless that is, you're seated next to a table with anywhere from one to six kids at it. Nothing, and I mean nothing. Not even a mediocre meal can ruin a dinner more than a bunch of screaming little kids running around, throwing crayons, whatever. There's a piece in the Washington Post out this week that attempts to give parents a how-to guide for bringing children out to eat. Things like choose the restaurant wisely, call ahead to talk to the owner saying you're bringing kids, pay attention to your kids, really? I mean, really. But I've got to admit. I don't even think the kids should be allowed at a restaurant past, I don't know, 5.30 in the afternoon. The lines are, I do. I really, I'm sorry. Lines are open at 877301-897. In Colore Tex, how do you navigate going out to eat with your own kids? And if you're a, can I say what you said about yourself this morning at this? Yeah, go ahead. And if you're a, quote, barren heathen, like my co-host described yourself this morning. Baron, childless heathen. Excuse me, childless heathen. I don't know if I'm barren. I never tried. How do you get over the irrational rage you feel sitting down for, let's say, cocktails with friends only to be interrupted by a drooling, whining, walking diaper? And beyond restaurants, there are other spaces that should be children free. I think there should be separate planes where people ride with their children. Other planes where children are not allowed. 877301.8970. What's the appropriate way to integrate kids into restaurants and other places where non-kids, otherwise known as adults, go to... have peace and enjoy themselves. Were you childless barren heathen? So I thought that I would be the one who would come across this conversation as a terrible human because I don't have children and you do. I do. But like you don't want kids anywhere after 530. Like even that seems like a little wild to me. Like tonight I have some friends. They're visiting from Washington State. They're heading up to a family home in Vermont. That's nice. And we have 6 p.m. dinner reservations at the Boston Sailoft. It's got a kids menu. It's a last. you know, boisterous restaurant with a children's menu and crayons. Like that is fine. If I'm going somewhere like that that's already loud and there's kids and there's lots of people, like that is an appropriate place to take some, you know, a five and a seven year old or an eight and a six year old to dinner where I don't want children. But I don't want children on my planes, at least not like in the near vicinity, because I've seen them barf and kick my seat and scream the whole time. So I'm all for childless planes and flights. And I would pay a premium. I do want to point out, I would pay if you gave me the option to take a flight and it was $100 or $200 or $200 for that flight, for that piece of mind, I would 100% pay it. Heck, I probably wouldn't even stop at $200. I'd probably be like $1,000 more to not have a screaming child on my flight. Also, I feel like really nice restaurants.

Like, if you go eat at, we're in the back bay, we just ate here with another couple of few weeks ago. I'm going to throw the name out. Sorrelina. It's a lovely, beautiful, like my scallops were like $64. Like, and I'm paying $64 for scallops. How many scallops you get? I think we got four. Oh, my God. I know, whoa is right. But listen, like, hey, you know, prices have gone up. Leanne and I shared some scallops in another thing. It was fine, whatever. We're all dinks. We're all dual income, no kids, so we can afford to have $64 scallops. I don't want, like, a seven-year-old throwing a temper tantrum at a, as I'm trying to enjoy, like, my nice red wine and scallops. Can I tell you why your thing doesn't work? You have decided. You have decided that the sale loft is an appropriate place to have kids. Well, somebody else may decide an appropriate place to have kids. Is it Sorrelinas? What is wrong with saying if you have young kids, you have your reservation by 530, you're out of there by 540, and you go home. Well, maybe enough. You know what I mean? I'm totally serious about this. Young kids, I'm talking about teenagers and that sort of thing. So you think there should be, you should say like, you. You, by seven, sort of like, this is, okay, so I'm from Wisconsin. Everybody knows that. It's no secret now. In Wisconsin, you can bring kids to bars. They can sit at bars. In fact, there is a rule in Wisconsin that you can drink. My parents could legally order a drink for me up to the age of 18. But after you turn 18, you're an adult, so you can't anymore. So, like, we can go to a bar and give my 16-year-old niece, like a beer if she wants a beer. I come from the wildest west of state. But if you're 18, you can't because then you're an adult and your parents can't consent for you anymore. Anyway, it's a wild weird thing. But most bars and places there will say no children after 7 p.m. But if we want to. go day drink, we can take the kids to day drink. Like, I see that as a viable solution. Like, it's kind of a cutoff time. One of the things, you don't work with me enough to know that one of my great skills is math. I listen to you almost every day, though, so I know. Well, you didn't hear me say this. I just did the math based on what you're going to get for filling in for Marjorie today, you can buy one scallop. It's sorrelina. Well, I'm getting, I'm getting, someone in here is like red wine with scallops. I'm like, oh, he also had other things. Okay. And my friend who was into wine picked it. So just calm. Trust me. It was a light bodied red. Can I tell you, you don't know the show well enough. When you say something like $64 for scallops, You could be on the show in 20 years, and people will be talking about your scalps. By the way, Derek, our buddy over there, who keeps us safe, said, we should have children in the old smoking sections of the restaurant. I am totally with you, Derek's got some hot takes today. You're totally right. 877-301.89. Would you be okay with a children section at a restaurant? Because, like, for those of us of a certain age, like when I worked at Chee-Chi's, there was a smoking section. You're okay with the smoking section? You're okay with this?

Smoking section at the back of an airplane? Oh, no, not anymore. Obviously not. It's the same thing. If they're screaming, they're screaming. No, is the answer to the question. Okay, wow. And by the way, what I'm not going to do, and I'm doing this, I'm not doing this in honor of Marjorie, because if I did it with Marjorie here, she'd yell at me. I'm not going to tell the whole story about being told that if I don't stop... pushing the seat up with a little four-year-old, four-foot eight-year-old kid in front of me coming back from London, the air marshals would greet me at Logan. One of the worst experiences in my whole life. They shouldn't be on the same plane. And by the way, let me be clear. I'm not saying they can't fly. Why can't airlines have flights where families go? That's flight A. Flight B is for adults. Listen, again, I don't have kids, but I have heard from parents who say they wouldn't mind that because of the stress of, and I think you could have an age restriction on it as well like children 10 and over can fly on Ten and over, you tie him to the wing. Other than ten, you put them on the separate. I mean, by ten years old, although I'm my nephew. What are you talking about? I really did not think I was going to be the more accepting of this. No, by the way, and again, I have kids. But here's how I feel about, too. If you can bring, like, I can't bring my well-trained, well-behaved. Well, Wally's not well-behaved, but Winnie. My first dogs are dogs. I can't bring Winnie on a plane. Winnie would lay at my feet the whole entire time and sleep, and I can't bring her on a plane. but you can bring your screaming four-year-old who's going to kick my seat and then barf all over me? Can I tell you something? You can bring a dog on my plane before you can bring a kid on my plane. Thanks, Jim. I can't wait to fly on your plane. Let's go to John who's in his car. He's first with Trenny Casey and me, Jim Browdy. Hi. Hey, Jim and Trini. How are you? We're good. Trini, love you on this show. You're doing fantastic. Thanks, John. She is, actually. She's great. I didn't mean actually. I knew what I made a mistake there. Sorry, John, go ahead. Why, John, before you go ahead, what do you think of her having four scallops for $64? What do you think? You know, she doesn't have kids. She can afford that. There you go, John. Thank you very much. Take it away, John. Go ahead. So my kids are grown now, 28 and 23. But my wife and I, you know, our biggest thing was we always like to go to dinner. We still do. And we just brought the kids from when they were very, very young. They get used to the noise right away. And we never had an issue. They color with crayons and colors they gave them. And they stay entertained. And we never had an issue. And we would go to, you know. Not McDonald's or stuff, not Capitol Grill, but in between, you know, Burton's Grill and, you know, caravas and for two or two places like that. And they were fantastic. Get them used to it in an early age. And, you know, as they get a little older, they know their manners. And we never had a problem at all. It's always a joy. Okay, John, before you go, you're an excellent caller, it doesn't, if you're going out to a nice meal.

And you're sitting there with your wife, hopefully for a romantic dinner. And there's three little kids sitting at the next table, even if they're well-behaved. That doesn't destroy the mood for you. Well, I'll tell you, here's the other thing. My wife is a kindergarten teacher. Okay, okay. And if they're misbehaving at the table there by it, she goes bananas because she deals with it all day and, you know, she likes the discipline in the classroom and everything, so she sees that. That kind of woman. Right these kids in. Where are these parents? John, that was a great call. Thank you very much for the call. We appreciate it. I mean, to John's point, I have a friend who just had a baby. I think she's about 18. She'll be two years in December, so whatever that makes her now. And our friends have been taking her places since she was little. Not she's an only child that's the only kid they're going to have. But their theory is get her exposed to different things so that she knows how. Even at a young age, and if she starts to act up, scooped up, like, I remember going to dinner with her. She was like a two-month-old baby, and she had the teeniest, tiniest, tiniest, little cry. And my friend Sarah was mortified, and I was like, Sarah, you can't even hear her crying. So I think that there is different. It's sort of like people always say there are no bad dogs. They're just bad dog owners. I think there's not a lot of bad kids. There's just bad parents. Yeah, but again, if you want to train them, and you should. Train, they're a decent word. I think it is. Well, whatever. Maybe raise them. What's the word? Teach. Thank you, Jamie. Slap a collar on them. Okay, if you want to teach them, why can't, I mean this, teach them at 4.30 in the afternoon. Fair? Obviously, get them ready, and then when they're like 30, they can go to a restaurant with adults. Okay, no, take Dan, and then I got a question for you. Dan and Dorchester. Hello there. Hey, so my wife and I are child. free. Many of our friends are time of free. And we are out at a restaurant recently. And this poor waitress, this table had a bunch of adults and a bunch of children. And the children... Oh, that was the call. I was waiting for... Oh, wait, wait, we lost you. Say it again. The children, what? They're running all around the table. They're grabbing a fire extinguisher off the wall. I go to look over to the parents, and my buddy looks at me, and he goes, don't, because if you complain, I'm going to complain. It was horrendous. You guys actually just made a great idea. We need to have child zones, like, you know, like the old cigarette zone. That was Derek. That wasn't me. Yeah, that was a good. Dan, you are excellent. You have exactly the right attitude about life. Thank you very much for your call. What do you want to ask? Well, I want to ask. So I'm sure you guys have talked about this, but the influencers on Nantucket, right, the one, these people who everywhere you go, whether it's in the city or at a restaurant, they're taking pictures of everything and they've got their tripods and their lights, would you rather sit next to a group of 24-year-olds who are taking pictures of everything they do?

vis-a-vis that means you're in their picture or a five and seven-year-old who are like coloring and sitting there quietly. Why do I have to choose? The answer is none of the above. I mean, you just don't. By the way, you're talking to somebody. There is nothing in the world that I enjoy more than a nice meal. Oh, I love eating out. At a decent or better than decent restaurant. It's just, it's a wonderful experience and you don't want it ruin. We've got to take a break, Trani, if you want to. Oh, I got to read this. Okay. Time for a quick break. We'll be right back, taking more of your calls and text. 87730. 18970, fully filling the Marjorie role here today. He's Jim Rowdy. I'm Trini Casey in from Marjorie Egan. You're listening to BPR on 897GBH live from the BPL and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH News.

Welcome back to BPR 897 GBH, Trenti Casey from NBC Sports Watson sitting in for Marjorie. I'm Jim Browdy. We're live with the library streaming at YouTube.com slash Gbh. If you just tune in, we're talking about the etiquette of... taking your kids out to restaurants on a plane? What should the rules of the roads, so to speak, be? Now, anonymous texts, a lot of them, says, after listing to Jim views about children in public places, it makes me want to find restaurants and airplanes that bans stuffy elitists like him. I can picture his attitude and grumpy face ruining my appetite. There are more than one. person that feels that way. Now, there are some abusive comments which we will not read. On the border is Andrew and Gloucester who says aircraft and restaurants shove shock collars for children. That even I would say is a bit much. But separate dining times, separate planes is not that unreasonable. It's great for the family. By the way, let me tell you another thing. As someone who had young kids on planes when my kids were young, You go on a plane in total anxiety that you're otherwise well-behaved kid. is going to act up. So it's not only stressful for the not people who are not the parents of the little kid. It's stressful for the parent of the kid who actually cares about other people and doesn't want them horribly disturb. So the perfect solution is just don't have them there. Well, that's, well, no, that's why I've said some of my friends who are moms have said they would happily fly on a plane where they knew it was all other families because then they would know that everybody's in the same boat and they don't feel like they're disturbing anyone. And by the way, if you're an adult without a... kid who wants to fly on a flight with kids then go fly on a fight with kids i mean that's fine me tj and boston hey you're all with trenny and me hi hi hi this is where you say something okay hi tj hey how are you sorry that's okay hey how's it was somebody else that's you um On the airplane topic, absolutely. Like recently I saw like maybe a four-year-old in a first-class seat and that literally offended me to my core. TJ, if I wasn't married, I'd marry you right now. Go ahead. Go ahead. Absolutely. But I called in because of brewery, my buddy was in town this weekend. We went to a brewery. When you go to a bar at brewery and you see families there with kids, and even in the middle of the afternoon, I get they have to go somewhere. But like kids are screaming and the whole purpose is drinking alcohol. I don't think brewery show wow kids in. Absolutely not.

I love your line, by the way, in the middle of that, TJ, you say, I know kids got to go somewhere. Exactly. Just not there. Just not there. Hey, excellent call, TJ. Thanks for doing it. So the one area I do disagree, TJ, like breweries to me are sort of open. They've got music. They've got inside. They've got outside. They're loud. They're big. Like, to me, it's hard having kids somewhere that... are obviously dedicated to just adults. Like you can take your, basically I feel this way. If I can bring my dog there, you can bring your kid there. If I can't bring my dog there, you shouldn't be able to bring your kid there. I don't know why kids get all these special treatment. Here's a good one. This is a Salomonic split the baby literally and figuratively kind of thing. Pull from Salem. Generally your touch on what I think represents a solution of the restaurant conundrum. I didn't even know it was a solution. If they have a children's menu, go there with your kids with reckless abandon, meaning and the other people know they're going to be kids there. Otherwise, time limit yourself to early dinner. If you're picking a restaurant for a child-free experience, stay away if they have a children's menu at all times. That's not a horrible compromise. I could maybe live with that. Where do you want to go? Let's go to David in Hancock, New Hampshire. Hey, David, we love Hancock. As you know, welcome. Hey, guys, we love you too. Thanks. And Trini, I especially love the spotted cow in Wisconsin. It's a good beer. It's a good beer, New Glaris. But I think, Jim, if you don't want to eat with children, you should move to the villages. They don't allow children there. But all they do is have sex. You can't do anything else there. And listen to Jimmy Buffett. That's a good point, actually. But I think there's a problem with both of your guys' overall premise. And that problem is that you seem to assume that grown-ups behave incredibly well all the time. And they don't. On the airplane, they don't behave. They get drunk. They take a dump on the drinks card. They yell. They scream. At restaurants, they're obnoxious. All kinds of stuff. And what do we do with those grownups? We kicked them out of the restaurant. We gag them and strapped them to their seat on the plane. And so I don't think we can have a blanket rule for some children are incredibly well-behaved. And so I think if they're not well-behaved, then kick them out of the restaurant. And if they're not well-behaved on the plane, gag them and strap them to the seat. So you think we should treat kids just like adults? Exactly. All right. David, thank you. Say hi everybody up there for us. We appreciate your call. 877. Well, I don't know why I'm giving the number. The lines are full. You want to, you go. Oh, Bonnie and downtown Boston. Hi, Bonnie. What's up? Hi. I'm originally from Connecticut, but I lived in Vermont for about 10 years. I was a mortgage broker. I was a ski instructor and a bartender and waiter in very nice restaurants up there. And when I was tending bar, the people would come off the mountain and then they'd come in and they'd have their two-year-old have crawling over the bar and who's fitting up and the kids that want to play games on the bar. I said, I'm sorry.

There's no children allowed at the bar, but the hostess would be glad to see you in the other dining room, right? And so at the end of the night, the hostess would say, she was getting all these people that were coming up to me for a table. I said, I guess they were just looking for a table. There was no room at the bar, you know? But the other thing is this gentleman that was just talking, there is something about a child's voice that is like a thousand times higher in pitch. I don't know if you ever notice this. You could have a whole room of adults many times, and there's exceptions. But when a child starts to talk, that pitch of their voice kind of goes right through my eyeballs. And my mother was all Italian. And she would say before we went out to dinner, you will act like little young ladies. You will be polite, and you will put your napkin on your lap. And there is no high voices. And people in the restaurant would come over and they'd say, your girls are so well-being. And my mother said, oh, thank you so much. And then the woman would leave. She goes, she'd see how people notice this. So my mother, all she had to do was give us the look. By the way, that's what Marjorie says. Marjorie says her mom had the look thing. Oh, all moms have the look. And she and her sister knew right away. Act right. Hey, Bonnie, that was excellent. Bonnie, great call. Thank you. She's almost as misanthropic as I am, actually. And an anonymous texter says, and I got to pronounce this right, Jim, because we're getting taken to task for how we pronounce scallops. I guess you guys call them, someone called a scummy out-of-towners because we're not from here. Wait, what did we say? Even though we've both been here probably for like almost 20 years. I've been here almost as long as you've lived. How long have you been here? I've been here 40 years, I think. I'm 49. So close. I've been here 14 years. I can pronounce scallops however I want. Any, scallops. They said we say scallops. It's not scallops. I meant to say scallops. The high-end restaurant should have a sign out saying scallops for adults only. I like that. Is Edgar with us? Okay. Edgar is not quite with us. I would bet that Edgar has a very strong opinion about this. I would too. Do you know, we did not allow. We did not invite. He's running into the studio. We did not invite, this was sort of controversial, but we did not invite children to our wedding. You did not? We did not. You explicitly, if someone called you and said, want to bring the kid, you'd say no. We said no. We, and the only children we allowed it are, and there were reasons for it. One, you don't get to eat for free just because you're under 12. It's not the ground round. Like, it still was like $60 or $70 ahead for a little kid. Who do you know at a wedding at the ground around? Well, no one, but I'm saying it's people, our thing was I did not want. Fine. We did not, I got married to another person. We did not want children taking over the dance floor and taking over the wedding. So the only children we allowed at our wedding were our, we had a niece and a nephew, and my husband had a nephew who were under 18. Those were the only children we allowed. And it was a hard conversation to have with some friends and family members. Blame it on the husband.

I was like, no, we're not doing it. No kids. Hey, Edgar, what do you think of this extreme position? This is, what is wrong with everybody? These are children. They are children. They're going to be paying all of our social security. I think, you know, like, they're going to pay our social security. I'll be dead. And there won't be social security anymore. You know, we should do. We should stop spending all that money on public schools to, like, teach these children. And, like, I mean, these are kids. What are you talking about? So you like to go to a really nice, quiet restaurant and have a four. and six-year-old next to you, one throwing a temper tantrum halfway through your very expensive shrimp cocktail and martini? So I am literally going to ask the question, how often does that really happen? Honestly. And if it does, it's a couple of kids. I'm sorry you're on the show today. Okay. Enough out of you. What are you doing on the show thing? All right. Well, I'll ask you a question. Have you ever been driving? Do you drive anywhere regularly, Jim? It's all I do. I walk to my car. I tried to take the tea today. I couldn't get on it. It was packed. So, yeah, I drive back. Around here, everybody drives. What's the question? You're commuting to work. You're not even thinking about where you're going. Your mind wanders away. And yet you still get there. Right. Yep. How does that work? Actually, I have thought about that is a really interesting topic. So we're going to get into it. That is excellent. We'll be listening. You know who has a drive. Edgar? Kids. Kids. Kids, yeah. Thanks for listening to another. Kids to drive. I'm sure. It does. Kids are people, too. You can drive an ATV in the state of Wisconsin at age 12. Everybody, don't worry. All right. Thanks for listening to another edition of BPR at 897 GBA. Thanks to everyone who came down to see the show at the BPL. Keep up with us 24-7 by way of our podcast. Check out our TikTok page, Boston Public Radio. Tune in tomorrow. Jim and Juliet, Kayam, are going to be here. They're going to speak. They'll be right here at the BPL, by the way. They're going to speak with the people behind the new Boston Globe newsletter, College Town, all about higher ed, plus travel writer Christopher Muther and E-Bike Sam. safety panel with MGH pediatric surgeon Dr. Cornelia Griggs and state rep James Arcerio, chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation. Crew, Zoe Matthews, Hannah Loss, or Ariana Gonzalez, our engineer John McLaugh Parker, executive producers, Jamie Bologna. I'm trying to get this done in 42 seconds. Special thanks to our BPL staff, Mattie Geier, Patrick Lally, Glenn Heath, and Juan Jose Cadena. Thanks to our security team, Darius, Darius and Derek, and our host of the News Feed Cafe and across the street of the Lenox Hotel. Stay tuned to the Curiosity Desk, starting immediately after us, 89. 7GBH and the culture show with Jared starting at 2. He'll speak with Pulitzer. Okay. Enough. You were fabulous. I was really just trying. I was almost to the whole thing. Did we really work together before? We've done this before, really? Do we get to do it again? I think we actually might. Just don't call me Jimbo. She's training. I'm Jim. Thanks so much for being here. See you tomorrow. Bye. I picked the wrong week. Quit sniffing blue.