Crypto jumps back up, Americans are more illiterate and who is the world's richest man?

Speaker 1 This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production.

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Speaker 2 What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's Friday the 13th.

Speaker 2 Friday, December 13th, 2024. Jason may not be here, but Brianna is.
What's up, Brianna?

Speaker 2 You're much lovelier than,

Speaker 2 and you look lovely there in your studio at home than Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, by the way.

Speaker 3 Yeah, hopefully. I hope so.
Although I am a little tired, so maybe I'm putting on the Jason look.

Speaker 2 That's what kids do to you, you know?

Speaker 2 They send you home. You got to pick them up early.

Speaker 2 oh Oh, god i remember the days i still happens my eight-year-old has it every now and then he's bad yeah oh he's a he's the worst kind of sick he's like me like men you know like one little stuffy oh i'm not feeling good dad

Speaker 2 he's the big baby suck it up suck it up then i'm the same way i'm like if i i don't get i knock on woods and say that i'm not gonna say that out loud but when i am sick which is not that often it uh i'm definitely a big baby i think men are worse yep Yeah.

Speaker 3 I never have time to be sick. So

Speaker 2 not to be.

Speaker 2 So we hope everyone is doing well wherever, whenever, however, you're listening here on Right About Now. We've got your weekly business news of the week and all kinds of good stuff.

Speaker 2 I'm going to start with the good news. So I've gotten into the crypto thing.
And let me just say this. This is not financial advice.

Speaker 2 Please go to your financial advisor for risk counsel, risk tolerance, and

Speaker 2 how much you can afford to lose. So that's not for me to determine.
I just want you to have a little fun with me testing the market. Brianna had something to say there.
I'm not sure what.

Speaker 2 Just laughing.

Speaker 3 I thought it was funny that you said, like, how much you're willing to lose.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, you never know. Or when.

Speaker 2 It's all about, hey, you cannot make any shots you don't take. So there you have it.

Speaker 2 I have been putting in a couple thousand dollars every week or two, just taking from other investments, doing it, and like taking, you know, moving over to the crypto now that we have a crypto-friendly president coming into office.

Speaker 2 And I am not the expert. Chris, who is on Escapade in Houston,

Speaker 2 is the more of the quote expert in-house, but you know, you can learn a lot. So, I'm on the Kraken

Speaker 2 The names of this stuff doesn't help with some of their legitimacy sometimes. Like, I'm on that Kraken.

Speaker 2 It starts with a K. So I'll give them some free support.
Maybe they should be a sponsor. Should be a good, that'd be a good one for Natalie to reach out to, get the cracking, get the kraken in here.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I'm on there. Very easy to buy and sell.
They make it super easy to take your money. Let me tell you.
So,

Speaker 2 one click away, your bank account, you know, whatever. You got your wallet going on.

Speaker 2 And again,

Speaker 2 much better than college football lately. So I, you know, I quit quitting bidding on college football probably 10 years ago.
So this is not a recent thing. But I will say it's riding the wave.

Speaker 2 And it's been an interesting week with crypto because I'm riding it. You know, I've bought, I probably have like 20 coins that I'm in now or different crypto, whatever.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of terminology again here. So I've been buying them.
XRP, that's what you need to get on. Let me go ahead and tell you that that's the one.
That one I bought for like 40 cents.

Speaker 2 It's up to like 250. So

Speaker 2 that's helping the old cause a lot. While some of these other coins are dragging a little bit, I'm smacking them across the room going, get your shit together.
The old XRP,

Speaker 2 up.

Speaker 2 But here's the thing: Monday and Tuesday, this is what happens with crypto. For no real, at least no reason that I understand, we took an old dip, like 20%, like off the top.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they say they do that because the big investors, like

Speaker 2 start, they sell something, they kind of create this swirl. And people,

Speaker 2 like the smaller buyers, like the people that have, you know, 300, 400, 500, a couple, few hundred dollars, but there's a lot of them, so it's a lot of money, they get nervous, they sell out of everything.

Speaker 2 As soon as they see it, start dropping. So they say they do that on purpose because then the big investors swoop in on the dip, buy the dip.
Chris has said that a lot. And so I just watched it.

Speaker 2 I didn't buy or sell. Just watched it because I know there's too many positives in this space happening that I knew the dip was temporary.
Oh, we're back, baby.

Speaker 2 We're back hard here today on the record day.

Speaker 3 I just finished reading a book all about like financial investing.

Speaker 3 And yeah, it's very interesting, like how anything that can happen, like probably like when big stuff in the news happens, things dip down or they jump, they skyrocket.

Speaker 2 Yep. And so the entire market was down.
I mean, a lot of the ones I had were down 10 to 20% Monday and Tuesday. I'm just going, all right, whatever.

Speaker 2 Again, I have in here what I can afford to lose. I don't want to lose it.

Speaker 2 I don't like to lose, but I'm not like, I'm not, you know, jeopardizing my, my, uh, my kids' future here on the, on the old Kraken. Uh, but I will say this.

Speaker 2 So the entire market here today, we recorded on a Wednesday.

Speaker 2 So it is Friday the 13th for you when you're listening, hopefully, because you do listen on record day, we know our release day, we know it. Our loyal ones do.

Speaker 2 Um, the entire market is up six percent today,

Speaker 2 and let's just say, um,

Speaker 2 I got 19 up, 20 up, 10, 12. Like, I'm averaging like a 10.2 percent up on every one of the ones that I own just today alone.

Speaker 2 And I'm just going to tell you that XRP is the one you want to get on. It's $2.43.
It's expected to like double or triple here, like next year.

Speaker 2 So we're all in on that one. XRP, Ripple.
And don't ask, don't be sitting there. Somebody's listening and judging already.
They're going, this guy's not a crypto expert. I am not a Crystal expert.

Speaker 2 I'm just telling you, if I was betting on certain coins, and I do like to read a lot, I research everything. My wife, whenever we're going to vacations, I do all the reviews.
I read every one of them.

Speaker 2 There'll be 4,322 reviews on TripAdvisor. I read 4,100 of them.
And so knowledge absorption, I am good at.

Speaker 2 So I've been reading a lot, absorbing a lot, trying to learn a lot because I like to make a lot. And

Speaker 2 so far, so good. We're up to about six grand.
I've put in about 3,500 and we're right about 5,800 today. That's over about a month.
So I've almost doubled.

Speaker 2 You know, that's not, hey, not typical. These results are not typical.

Speaker 2 But when you're the crypto-heavy guy like me, you know, you get lucky.

Speaker 2 No idea. I'm just, I sometimes choose the names because I like the name of it.
It's a brand marketing guy. I'm like, that's a pretty good branding decision.

Speaker 3 Oh, my gosh. You're just picking crypto because you're like, oh, that was a good idea.

Speaker 2 No, Chris will tell me if you, but then I pick the one of the three that he gives me based on if I like the name. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, then I'll go read some of the data. And hey, here's the trick.
Don't go to the first page of the search results on something good, like page five.

Speaker 2 Because the first page, I'm, here's my strategy: is the first page has been,

Speaker 2 let's just call it bought,

Speaker 2 which means they may not be giving, they might be giving you certain tips because they want you to take it as the sort of amateur hour investor.

Speaker 2 So I go to page five of the search results and see what they say about certain coins. Hey, just an odd tactic.
Don't know, but so far, so good. Up like 80%.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 suck it.

Speaker 3 Crypto is so interesting to me because like there's a whole demographic of people that like won't accept it as

Speaker 2 real currency. I don't know if I accept it or not.
I just accept that people smarter than me are standing behind it and holding it up to be a good investment.

Speaker 2 And there's there's so much money now in it by the bigger like bank and like institutions that I'm like, okay, if these guys could be in it, I can, you know, I need to be in this.

Speaker 2 It's not going to go to zero. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And again,

Speaker 2 you got to

Speaker 2 only bet or invest, whatever you want to call it, gamble, invest, whatever makes you feel warm and fuzzy,

Speaker 2 what you can afford to lose.

Speaker 3 Yep, 100%.

Speaker 2 What are you getting in, Brianna? You got to get in on this game.

Speaker 3 Guys, I have gotten my account on Coinbase, which was the one that Chris recommended, all the way to like the point where you have to like log into your bank account.

Speaker 2 But I don't know if I should say this on the podcast.

Speaker 3 I just don't know my passwords to anything.

Speaker 2 So I'm like, well, I can't log in because I don't know my password. It's just auto-saved.
Mason on our team and I had this discussion yesterday. We were doing something.

Speaker 2 The amount of time that I spend like looking at passwords and like dealing with like password management. And yeah, I know there's apps for that now, but they don't all solve all the issues.

Speaker 2 It's like, it's a pain in the ass. This two-factor stuff, I get it.
It's security. It's protecting us.
I don't want all my shit taken, but like, damn, how could

Speaker 2 2024? How can we solve the password stuff? Can we use retina? Like something that's only identified by us. You know, I'd probably give a blood sample to like in the morning, like a finger prick.

Speaker 2 Most people are babies about that. I don't care about that shit.
Give me that finger prick.

Speaker 2 If I could, if that would give me clear unlimited passwords for the week i'll prick the finger oh my gosh i would not i would not and also i need all of your passwords too so i can't be putting your finger every time i need you to sign into something oh damn it all right let's figure that out

Speaker 3 but yeah no i mean that's honestly my only hangup and it's just like i just need to sit down for 10 minutes and do it but you know i have other things going on but you got to do it like when you wake up in the middle of the the night, you need to, like, you know, and you can't go back to sleep.

Speaker 2 At least you do something productive. You want to get in on that money.
Exactly. Get in on that money.

Speaker 3 Well, what I've been working on every time I wake up and pick up my phone is I have a client right now that I'm like honed in on growing their social media.

Speaker 3 So every time I log in anything, I'm just like trying to grow this.

Speaker 2 We'll allow that. We'll allow that.

Speaker 2 It keeps the bills paid.

Speaker 2 This will be allowed.

Speaker 2 What's happening in the news?

Speaker 3 So a few different things. Looks like the big grocery store companies are suing each other.
Albertsons and Kroger, they were going to do a merger.

Speaker 3 And it sounds like, according to this article from NBR, on Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Oregon blocked the

Speaker 3 $24.6 billion deal, just basically saying it would monopolize the grocery industry and reduce competition, which would harm shoppers.

Speaker 3 As soon as, so that was on Tuesday, as soon as that merger was blocked by the judge, Albertsons abandoned the merger and filed a lawsuit against Kroger.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 interesting.

Speaker 2 You know, we don't even really have Kroger's or Albertsons around here. Like Kroger is in other parts of South Carolina.
Albertsons might be, but I don't think so.

Speaker 2 So this, like, I'm speaking like from pure local impact, very little. I do understand these are two of the largest chains.
I,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 who know

Speaker 2 what's what's your reaction to this? Like, do you think they should block it?

Speaker 3 I mean, we had an Albertsons

Speaker 3 where I lived in California, and it was fine. It says Albertsons owns Safeway and Vaughn's, Kroger owns Ralph's, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, and King Shopper.

Speaker 3 So you might recognize some of those names.

Speaker 3 So I think that's where it's more impactful. That's right.

Speaker 2 Kroger does own a bunch of the other names. That's right.
I forgot that.

Speaker 2 I've been on Albert since messing up. My hair is teeter now.

Speaker 2 I know. It's not jam.

Speaker 2 So, all right. This does impact me.
Damn it.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 The whole competition argument is a hard one to wrap your head around. And

Speaker 2 I do think choice is a good thing. I would need to see the list of like all grocery stores across the country, all the brand names that fall under each one of these.

Speaker 2 If there's a, obviously, Kroger has multiple and think about what that would mean.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I don't really like it. I just don't like the government getting involved in business for the most part.
So that's the thing.

Speaker 3 And here's what their

Speaker 3 argument for the merger was that they could

Speaker 3 only together, only as a merged conglomerate kroger and alversons only then would they be able to survive competing against walmart costco amazon um and all of those yeah and that's a that's a good point that's i mean amazon and walmart between dot-com and brick and mortar for walmart is

Speaker 2 they have such scale so to say that this

Speaker 2 you know, it puts them at some competitive advantage over them is hard to believe. I mean, who has more scale than Amazon or Walmart? So

Speaker 2 I don't think it, this is where I'd have to get into the data a little bit more.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 but now that they're like throwing mud at each other so fast, it's like that,

Speaker 2 I don't know that most people have a lot of tolerance for it. And it's like, it just seems so fucking petty.
Like,

Speaker 3 well, it is interesting here at the end of this article, it says the FTC's case prevailed in U.S.

Speaker 3 district court, delivering a big win to the outgoing Biden administration, who made tougher scrutiny of mergers a central plank of their administration.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let's see. I would be curious what Trump's position on this is.
Something tells me he wouldn't have fought it, being more pro-business and probably.

Speaker 2 more thoughtful of that Walmart, Amazon, everything else, reality.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 we'll see where it goes. I think we can all agree that groceries cost too much for the most part.

Speaker 2 So anything that can get it cheaper, if I, here's how I would pragmatically,

Speaker 2 I am for this or against this if it will lower grocery costs.

Speaker 2 You tell me which side it is. I'll support that because, hey, we can't do

Speaker 2 what the independent center is trying to do, and that's further the American dream if our grocery costs keep going up.

Speaker 2 We talk about the American dream a lot, and all I know,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I consider we're more well off than most Americans, but we feel it. I mean, it's expensive.

Speaker 2 I bought, I go to the grocery store, I feel like I walk in and it's like my, I got a $75 bill, like just to grab the shopping cart.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, I can't get out of there. I have four things in the cart, and it's like

Speaker 2 $43.79. What

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 3 I went into the grocery store last week and the brand of mayonnaise that I like to buy is almost nine dollars for a container. And so I sat there and I was like, hey, I have a coupon for this.

Speaker 3 Let me find it. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is crazy.
Like I'm having to like coupon, but get my groceries cheaper.

Speaker 3 And I feel like we are definitely living the American dream. And even then, it's like there, it's still tight.

Speaker 2 I ain't too proud to use a coupon, especially I'm not pulling out a 50 cent coupon, but I'll say

Speaker 2 four or three, four dollars off. I'll put that in my pocket.
Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2 you know, here's what will happen. I'm not too proud to use it, but I fucking forget it every time.

Speaker 2 I walk out of the store or get home, like, and I dig in my pocket or whatever I did with it. That's how they get you.
You know, not in the habit of like, I don't have the, man.

Speaker 2 Remember that woman that'd be in line at the shopping store? They'd bring out the wallet, you know, like that thing. Full of coupons, full of coupons, like a book.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I was probably, I haven't seen that in a long time, but I would probably, I didn't make fun of that.

Speaker 2 I was more annoyed because, like, I was like, oh, God, we got to wait on her to use her coupons. That wasn't, I didn't, it was not judging.

Speaker 2 It was more just like, I'm, we all want to get through the line as fast as possible. Yeah, that's going to be me.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 That thing adds up, though. It adds up.
And

Speaker 2 so, whatever brings grocery store costs down lower, I would vote for that side of it. We'll just keep it that simple.

Speaker 3 Yep. The American dream feels increasingly more complex in 2024.

Speaker 2 Yeah, hopefully it gets easier in 2025. We'll see.
If it will, if Independent Center has anything to do with it, go check out our partner, independentcenter.org. Again, it's not about the right.

Speaker 2 It's not about the left. It's not like blue.
It's not about red, all that shit. None of that matters.
Here's what matters. All that matters is that policy impacts your pocketbook in a positive way.

Speaker 2 And they're helping bring studies, surveys, voter data that kind of remove all the party bullshit and bring it to the people, which is what we need.

Speaker 2 Go to independentster.org, sign up for that newsletter. You'll be thankful that you did.
And let's get the politics out of the way. Let's get the policies at the forefront.
What's next?

Speaker 3 Elon Musk, who we talked about, I think last week on weekly business news, that we were talking about him not getting this paycheck.

Speaker 3 And then now we're talking about this week, he has surpassed the $400 billion net worth mark.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so this is mostly due to SpaceX. You know, it says, well,

Speaker 3 this is an article from NBC News, and the value in Tesla has gone up. It's Musk's privately held stake in SpaceX that has catapulted his wealth beyond this threshold of 400 billion.

Speaker 3 It says that SpaceX is the most valuable private startup in the world.

Speaker 2 Geez. I mean,

Speaker 2 in one way, I'm like, why is it worth so much? And then another way I get it because space is sort of the next frontier and where a lot of money is spent and a lot of like security with like U.S.

Speaker 2 I don't get it. I mean, I think it, but I think it's back to the

Speaker 2 a lot of the technology, the propulsion, rocket propulsion, all that stuff. I think the, I don't know, patents and everything that goes into whatever it takes.

Speaker 2 And the fact that, I don't know, maybe we are going to colonize somewhere one day.

Speaker 2 And it's, it's hard to know the economics, though, of why it's so valuable. Like, what, where is the revenue made? That's, that's past my pay grade.

Speaker 2 I know, I I think it's contracts with the government and the fact that the government and NASA are pretty much relying on SpaceX now in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 And you got to also remember, I mean, one trip up, baby, is like 10 million, you know? Like,

Speaker 2 it costs a lot of money to bring all that together. And

Speaker 2 all the fuel, everything else that gets, I mean, you talk about up and smoke, like jokingly, but like, is there anything more up and smoke than a rocket ship taking off? It's just like,

Speaker 2 it's all the money that's spent making that happen. And, but all, but what we don't realize is all the satellites, all the stuff that keeps us secure.
There's a lot of stuff that happens in space

Speaker 2 that we're probably a little,

Speaker 2 myself, certainly included, ignorant to, that keep us protected and control some of our military stuff.

Speaker 2 So I can't totally get my head around what makes it worth 300 billion or whatever. But

Speaker 3 it's crazy. It's hard for me to even imagine what

Speaker 3 people way smarter than me have figured out how to put satellites up there and control all sorts of things.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 They might be the ones sending all these crazy drones everywhere.

Speaker 2 That shit, that stuff's crazy. Like

Speaker 2 understanding how

Speaker 2 the most developed country in the world has things flying around that we don't know who and what it is.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Come on now. Like, we got all this technology.
You can't. And we can't shoot those.
I mean, I know it's illegal, like, shoot a drone down, I think. Obviously, for

Speaker 2 airspace, you can't, you're not like for me or you to shoot a drone down, I think it's illegal. But

Speaker 2 the government can shoot one of those things. Like, get out there and shoot it down and take it apart and figure out where it came from.

Speaker 3 So, the drones, so numerous sightings of drones have been reported hovering all over New Jersey. Is that what you're referencing? Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 3 So, local and federal law enforcement have worked together to find some answers, but it's still like kind of a mystery.

Speaker 2 I hadn't heard of this. Yeah, it's crazy.
And they're all over it, but it's they, and I read an article like right before we came in.

Speaker 2 I debated bringing it up, but we kind of were talking about spaceships and satellites and all that stuff. So

Speaker 2 it read,

Speaker 2 they assume now that it's adversarial.

Speaker 2 I'm like, great.

Speaker 3 This is the same thing that happened with that balloon, remember?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like we never got all the answers on that balloon either, other than it was China and got shot down. And somehow it was drifting over here.
A weather balloon.

Speaker 3 Shooting down a drone is illegal.

Speaker 2 See? I told you. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 2 you know why I know?

Speaker 2 I got my shotgun out to shoot one out that was over our house

Speaker 2 a couple weeks ago. It was because we had a huge parade here in Greenville, and there was one that was just hovering over our house because we're right downtown.

Speaker 2 And it was bothering me being right in my sort of airspace over my house. And I went out there.
I was going to shoot it.

Speaker 2 And my wife quickly corrected me and said, you know, it's illegal to shoot a drone now. I'm like, you're kidding, right?

Speaker 3 It's kind of crazy that that's illegal, especially on your own property, because they can be, they have cameras on them, so they can be taking care of them.

Speaker 2 But I guess, I mean, I don't own the air, so that would be the argument, yeah. But I'm like, well,

Speaker 2 what keeps some weirdos from just flying your drones right up in your shit, you know, like

Speaker 3 or what if you have like a property out somewhere and if I had a property out somewhere, let's just say my wife wouldn't stop me.

Speaker 2 If I didn't live in downtown Greenville, let's just say that drone would have seen about a thousand pieces.

Speaker 2 I would have been like, kids, got a gift for uh christmas it's called a jigsaw puzzle it's 1500 pieces

Speaker 2 oh look it's a

Speaker 2 dji drone

Speaker 2 you just got to put it back together yeah that's like flying over the top of my house like sitting like 30 feet up and i'm like i don't i knew he wasn't like careless about anything we were doing and we were doing nothing but sitting inside watching tv but i heard it and then but still what are you like walking around your house naked i might have been but you know

Speaker 2 I gave them a little show.

Speaker 2 I was naked when I had a shotgun out.

Speaker 2 Oh, God. I'm kidding.
Sort of. But no.
No one needs that visual. Yeah, I know.
Shotgun.

Speaker 2 Are you kidding? Hey,

Speaker 2 I'm like 25 pounds around here. I got a one pack.
Come on now.

Speaker 2 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 2 But yeah, that drone stuff in New Jersey, they,

Speaker 2 somehow,

Speaker 2 does it not blow your mind that

Speaker 2 we don't know what that is or who's called? It's a little weird.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And that the FBI is saying, like, hey, if you have any information, please report it to us.

Speaker 2 You're the FBI. You're supposed to know.
Like,

Speaker 2 come on, man. Let's get shit flying around.

Speaker 2 Oh, me. But luckily, Elon, back to the whole article, was worth 400 billion.
Congratulations. I was worried about where his next billion was going to come from.
And

Speaker 2 good for him, man. It's a lot of fucking money.

Speaker 3 I mean, what do you even do with 400? I would take, I was telling Sawyer before we launched, I would take one of those.

Speaker 2 Yeah, one bill.

Speaker 2 One billion, you'd be all right. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 A hundred million. Was it nobody? A thousand million is what it was.
You wouldn't even notice. Yeah, you wouldn't even notice.

Speaker 2 A million here, a million there.

Speaker 2 A lot of money.

Speaker 2 That's why what was he doing?

Speaker 2 Shows you that's how much money there there is to be made. You know,

Speaker 2 like, that's why this Kraken app is going to do it. You know, we're going to a billion, baby.

Speaker 3 It's that, or, I mean, for all of our listeners out there, there's so many different ways to make a million dollars and to launch, you know, businesses or drive your business forward or 4X your business in 2025.

Speaker 3 Yes. And we know a marketing agency that can help with that.

Speaker 2 Oh, yes, we do.

Speaker 2 Radical.company. But you know what? Do you know how we're able to do it? Because we stay energized.
You know how we stay energized?

Speaker 2 X marks the spot.

Speaker 2 Yes, exponent. Hey, this isn't energy.
This is fusion energy. You notice we're talking rocket ships, we're talking nuclear power, and we're talking fusion energy.

Speaker 2 Zero sugar, plant powered, adaptogens, nootropics, electrolytes, all the stuff you want, none of the stuff you don't.

Speaker 2 X marks the spot. Exponent, this is the sector C.
They got all the coolest names. Sector C here.
We got Eclipse. Everyone's favorite is the blue ones at the office.

Speaker 2 It's like blue raspberry or something. This is lemon, lime, and orange.
And we tried those new flavors on air. I'm ready for this.
Sargon, I were talking the other day.

Speaker 2 Ready for those new flavors to come out. Strawberry, lemon stuff, whatever.

Speaker 2 All kinds of new stuff. They can't be giving away trade secrets, but all kinds of flavors coming out.
And again, the best part is,

Speaker 2 and I've been bad about this. So, you know, I drink a lot of energy drinks.

Speaker 2 I just don't like coffee, really, and so got to get that pep, but you need it to be healthy, don't need all the bad stuff, got to stop, I got to wake up and read the labels.

Speaker 2 My good friend Jen Smiley tells me that, you know, you got to do that. So you read the labels and you go to exponent drink exponent.com as well as on Instagram.
Go give them some love. And look,

Speaker 2 I only promote the products that I like. and that I actually use.

Speaker 2 And there's no bigger user of energy drinks than this guy. So, where do you think all this energy comes from?

Speaker 3 Oh, I want one of those right now. I had a ice-cold orange one yesterday afternoon, and it just

Speaker 3 really helped me get it.

Speaker 2 Is there some vodka in it?

Speaker 2 No, I was at work.

Speaker 2 Was there some vodka in it?

Speaker 2 What's your point?

Speaker 2 Yes. Well,

Speaker 2 what's the final article today?

Speaker 2 A growing number of U.S.

Speaker 3 adults are lacking literacy skills, kind of a scary one coming to us from NBC News.

Speaker 3 It says,

Speaker 3 according to a study of adults by the National Center for Education Statistics, 28% of U.S. adults now perform at the lowest measured literacy levels,

Speaker 3 up 19% in 2017. Let's see.
Means we're using our phones too much.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's what it is, right? Or it's the YouTube nation, right? You're watching everything. You're not reading anything.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, if you're watching YouTube, that's fine. Just make sure you're watching the Radcast Network YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 That's right. You got to look that up.
You got to see all the shows on our network. And, but I will say

Speaker 2 my wife would probably,

Speaker 2 her school ranks one of the top 10 or 20 in the whole state. So she would call that out while also going.
This doesn't surprise her, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 With just that.

Speaker 2 It's sad, though. Yeah.
Like, what?

Speaker 2 Why is it? It makes you want to know the underlying reasons for this. Is it because of some variable?

Speaker 3 You know what? I, you know what I would consider? And I don't have all of the research on this, but how much of this is because of immigration?

Speaker 3 so maybe they are not illiterate maybe they just english is their second language and so maybe that could be part of it scoring low on these tests because it says um that those at the lowest levels struggle with tasks like reading instructions filling out forms or managing simple calculations so i'd be curious to see if there's any data on that

Speaker 2 Yeah, what's it said? Whether when asked about potential causes for the decline, Carr stated that it's difficult to say. So further read.

Speaker 2 pun intended.

Speaker 2 He didn't have the answer.

Speaker 2 He couldn't read it out loud. Oh, sorry.

Speaker 2 That's the worst quote. I know.
It's like I read that. I had a double take.
Like, even when I said it out loud, I was like, is this a joke?

Speaker 2 Did he say pun intended after it? Like,

Speaker 2 what's the reason for the decline? Ah, you'll read about it later. I couldn't really, I couldn't read the report.
Oh, geez. Who knows? So

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 I do think

Speaker 2 unrelated, related

Speaker 2 reform in exactly how and what we learn that better match the world we live in today is something I could get behind.

Speaker 2 I have had this discussion with my wife, and it's not because I feel like what she does and what teachers and administrators are doing every day is not highly important.

Speaker 2 I just think there could be a better alignment to what are the skills and learning that you need in the classroom. Yeah, I think it's somewhat related to this.
I mean,

Speaker 2 literacy and understanding the language, though, is a little different than what I'm suggesting, but it might go hand in hand in some ways because

Speaker 2 we evolve. And maybe we need to teach it differently.
I don't know. That's past my pay grade on how to teach it.

Speaker 2 I just think what we learn, though, needs to evolve with where AI and all the other things that are happening are taking us so that we are productive.

Speaker 3 Oh, I totally agree.

Speaker 3 And I think that there's, we have so much data and we have so much information, and there's no excuse for us not to be reforming the way that we're teaching things and giving students the best, you know, access to information and access to help and, you know, mental health resources, and, you know, all of these different resources that we have full access to with, you know, Chat GPT and AI and everything that exists now.

Speaker 3 And just making sure that, you know, young people also have that access and know where to find help and know, you know, how to, how to learn maybe for their own personality or their learning style.

Speaker 3 I think that there is so many ways that we can adapt to better serve our children. So I have big opinions on this.

Speaker 2 Yes, agreed.

Speaker 2 Oh, lastly, I want to say today, you know, it's the biggest news story in the U.S. has been

Speaker 2 the shooting and killing of the United Healthcare CEO. And that story is so, you know, we do one time a week.

Speaker 2 When we move to more, you know, multiple day news story, we'll probably cover more of that.

Speaker 2 There's definitely an impact business-wide, culturally, you know, everything becomes political today, including stuff like that.

Speaker 2 But the reality is that story is kind of unfolding so moment by moment i don't want to come on here when we record this and it's not live and news already be out because it seems to be

Speaker 2 a very developing story and so but my own thoughts are just

Speaker 2 some of the language and the reactions from certain news people and certain people about like in some way like thinking this is okay because they you know the healthcare healthcare system's broken and like all these things that taking another person's life and not

Speaker 2 honoring that in some way is just despicable behavior and unacceptable and

Speaker 2 i think

Speaker 2 this guy's complete if this guy that's luigi whoever that they got apprehended ends up being the one he's clearly lost the screw somewhere and and because nothing has made sense from what i've seen coming out on his background.

Speaker 2 But as a society,

Speaker 2 to in any way

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 acknowledge the crime when someone gets gunned down on the street and the severe, like just the lack of humanity in that act is

Speaker 2 just

Speaker 2 unforgivable.

Speaker 3 Well, I totally agree. And, you know, Brian Thompson is the man who passed away, who was killed, you know, and condolences to his wife and his family.

Speaker 3 I know he was married with young children, I think, or youngish children. And I totally agree.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I saw articles on it and, you know, I would go through the comments section of those articles. And the comments were very

Speaker 3 inappropriate on people saying, like, okay,

Speaker 3 what companies like CEO is next? Or, you know, just making comments on healthcare companies that they were saying that this should happen to them as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, reprehensible.
And so,

Speaker 2 yes, thoughts with his family and, you know, with the authorities that are trying to get this handled in the right way and to learn what we need to learn. But again,

Speaker 2 some things, there'll be things unfolded by the time this episode even goes live. So I don't want to pretend, you know, that we have the latest, the greatest, other than it's unacceptable

Speaker 2 and a true

Speaker 2 bad moment for us when people are getting gun i mean ceos of companies getting gunged down in the street i mean what is the we're a civilized nation and i know crimes happen every day um

Speaker 2 but this is unacceptable and needs to be handled swiftly in the right way so we'll see where it goes but that's all i got today anything else today for brianna

Speaker 2 nothing for me great well happy holidays keep saying it just hey you're halfway through december almost already already. You got 12 days.
If you're watching this or listening on the 13th,

Speaker 2 and so, hey, better get that shopping done.

Speaker 3 Just tell me. I'm not ready when you say it like that.

Speaker 2 12 days. 12 days of Christmas.

Speaker 2 Yes, left.

Speaker 3 Aye, aye.

Speaker 2 I know. RyanisRight.com.
Find the highlight clips, all the articles, everything that we do on this show. at the website.
We appreciate you for making us number one.

Speaker 2 We'll see you next time on Right About Now.

Speaker 1 This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening.