In an emotional and eye-opening discussion, we explore a controversial custody battle surrounding a 12-year-old boy caught between parental disagreements over gender identity. We also touch upon the latest updates in the world of entertainment, as HBO stands its ground amid calls to cancel JK Rowling from the ongoing Harry Potter series project.
Some of the headlines I see, I’m like, what is your damage? What are you doing? All right. So let me get this lady out of the way. So this is apparently it was over at, I think this is over at Law and Crime. There was a Florida woman who apparently stole from the Target self-checkout. And then, you know how she got caught? She bragged about it on TikTok. TikTok. Yeah. Why do people do this? And also – hang on. I’m trying to pull this up and the story won’t pull up. This is like the fourth or fifth story that I’ve had where somebody was posting about the stuff that they stole on social media and then they get caught and they’re like, I can’t believe I got caught. This is crazy. What did you think you were doing when you posted about it? And when you’re at the Target self-checkout, I’m curious as to whether or not self-checkouts experience more theft than not. But don’t they have like a person there watching and like cameras and stuff?
SPEAKER 03 :
They do now more than ever.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. I can’t get this. I think there’s something wrong with this. I can’t pull this headline up. But I have a whole bunch of other stuff, so we’re going to get right into it. Let’s see. So in the meantime, I lost everything. I’ve lost everything. I’ll drop these in here. Yeah. Well, I apparently accidentally closed out all my headlines, all my – you know what? Please forgive us because it’s Monday and we’re crazy. This – This Florida man survived – this is an insane story – a 30-foot fall and over 100 bee stings. This is the second bee sting story that we had. This one guy was – he was doing post-hurricane cleanup. And he fell 30 feet and hit a roof, rolled to the ground, and the bees were stinging him the entire time. He had to actually go to the hospital to be treated because he does have some sensitivity to bee stings.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s kind of crazy.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m glad he’s okay. A guy in central Florida, he committed home burglary in boxer shorts. That seems dangerous and gross. And he tried to enter through a window in another house and a man with a firearm shot him. And when the deputies approached him, he began attacking the deputy. So, yeah, he was completely arrested. Yeah. Can I go back to this thing that I can’t… I don’t like Frank Luntz. I think he’s… I cannot stand Frank Luntz. I can’t stand him. I think that he is a giant meat sack of nothingness. I just… I don’t like him. I think he’s a doofus. His polling is ridiculous. And then he says stupid stuff like the story that he’s been pushing from CNBC. Oh, yeah, the average cost of the Thanksgiving dinner. It’s dropped 5% last year. Lowest since 2021. It’s historic.
SPEAKER 1 :
$58.08.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wait a minute. Has anybody been to McDonald’s? I saw someone saying that a family of four eats at McDonald’s for like $60. You’re telling me that an entire Thanksgiving dinner? No. No. I don’t think Frank… Frank is bougie. Frank does not cook. Frank does not shop. Okay? He’s very out of touch. You know, I mean, gosh, turkeys alone are super expensive this year. I mean, they’ve been every year since we’ve had Biden in office. And then the pandemic made everything heinous. Yeah, it’s a lot more than that. And I don’t know. And by the way, that’s $50 for a 10-person gathering is what they’re saying. That is a lot. It’s like $60 for a family to eat, a family of four anymore at McDonald’s. With tax and all that. Ten people eating a Thanksgiving dinner for $58. Sir, you are moronic. That is such a… Yeah, it’s not that much. It’s not that much. It’s more than that.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re saying ten people?
SPEAKER 04 :
Ten people.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, ten people… The turkey alone is 40-something bucks, depending where you get it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, exactly. I mean, I’m looking at my, some of this, just the stuff that I have to pick up still. And I don’t get like, you know, bougie green beans or anything. I get, you know, I’ve had same green beans that we all get, right? We all get the same stuff. And we have, we’re going to have eight people and yeah, we’re already like at eight people. We’re over what it would be even for eight people.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ve spent 60 bucks on just me and my son. What my son and I are going to do already. And that’s just two people.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. This idea that it’s $58.08 for 10 people. How many pounds of turkey is that? Hang on. Hang on. Let’s get into the meal part. This is important, guys.
SPEAKER 03 :
So the average weight of a family turkey for Thanksgiving? No, no, no.
SPEAKER 04 :
For 10 people.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. Right. We’d have to know what the weight.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’d have to be like, what, 13 away over that. What would you get for it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I’d get about a 14-pound bird, probably.
SPEAKER 04 :
Because you’ve got to figure maybe a little bit over a pound of turkey per person.
SPEAKER 03 :
There are bigger birds out there. There are smaller ones, but there are bigger ones.
SPEAKER 04 :
And then if you do anything, like if you bake and wrap it, or if you do any kind of, like if you’re just doing your typical base. Right. Because then you’ve got to factor in your other stuff and then you’ve got to factor in seasonings, your herbs and spices. I don’t know if you’ve bought fresh herbs. There’s some stuff that we just can’t grow and then some stuff we have just in spades. But if I have to get an herb at the store, oh my gosh. It is so much more. I mean you could probably get – What is it? Turkey is a little over – oh, let me pull this up. Isn’t it over like a couple bucks a pound depending on – like just like an average turkey median price?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, depending where you get it.
SPEAKER 04 :
You can get it around two bucks a pound if not – So Finance Buzz says it’s like $2.08 a pound. Right. So yeah, you could get a 15-pound turkey. That’s $31 right there.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s $30 right there.
SPEAKER 04 :
So how in the hell are you spending $58, Frank Luntz and CNBC? How are you spending $58.08 for a Thanksgiving meal for 10 people? Already, a 15-pound turkey, and this was the median price of all the average pound. We’re going to get no bougie turkeys, no artisanal turkeys, okay? That’s $31, and that’s probably not with tax.
SPEAKER 03 :
That highly prized cranberry sauce in the can also is not free.
SPEAKER 04 :
You can’t just shake someone’s hand for that? Hang on. I ordered an ocean cranberry slice. So, yeah, that’s like, depending on how many cans you get, that’s a couple bucks. And you got 10. Yeah. And that’s without tax. So you’re probably looking at easy almost what? Hitting towards the $4 territory per can. So already you’re getting up towards $40 just for some cranberry stuff, throwing some green beans, throwing a couple of cans of green beans.
SPEAKER 03 :
Taters aren’t free.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, taters aren’t free. You’re already over for 10 people. And you haven’t even gotten into like your sodas, your breads, none of that stuff. You ain’t even gotten into dessert yet. So who is saying this? Like what kind of meal are y’all eating where it’s only 10 people can eat for $58? I mean, is it potluck? No. Where do these people get this stuff? I don’t know. This is just infuriating. They’re still trying to gaslight us. Yeah, easily $50. I can’t believe the prices in McDonald’s even are like, gosh. Big Mac is $10 without tax. It’s $9.29. It’s a Big Mac meal. Quarter pounder with cheese, $5.39. 10-piece nug, $9.19. What if I want a McFlurry? I don’t even know, man. Don’t ask. The ice cream machine’s broken. Don’t ask. This is all ready. This is all ready. And everybody’s been saying, oh, man, you know, this is… I mean, the Big Mac went up 20% since 2019. So, yeah, four people easily over $58. And they’re trying to gaslight you and, oh, no, $58 for 10 people for Thanksgiving. Tell me you ain’t never been in the kitchen without telling me you ain’t never been in the kitchen. I’m going to turn into my grandmother here in a minute. I’m going to wrap a kerchief around my head.
SPEAKER 03 :
Were they using tofurkey in their estimate?
SPEAKER 04 :
What the hell kind of turkey is this? This is some like artisanal Vermont turkey. This is our artisanal turkey, our artisanal Thanksgiving turkey. Yeah, the turkeys listen to classical. Chopin is their favorite. And they relax and unwind and spend their days running through our meadows, which also double as the postcards we sell to help boost business. You know, the turkeys, they all have friends. That’s what I expect for that, you know. A bougie turkey. I don’t know. We were talking earlier. I said I set – well, World War III is going to be over the people – over people’s cranberry preferences. But I said sliced canned cranberry sauce is the only cranberry sauce worth having. And it is. Because it sounds great coming out of the can. And I always feel an immense, a lot of satisfaction sliding that, this is exactly what it sounds like too, out of that can. And it’s on the plate. And then when you’re able to lay it sideways and it’s just perfect, you can just slice it up. Your cranberry loaf, slice it up. It can be the moist maker on your sandwiches. It’s Cain’s favorite word, moist. That’s so good. And I don’t know the people who make the deer food that is the cranberry. That’s not a sauce. That’s like gobbledy granola gloop.
SPEAKER 03 :
The deer food?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it’s like what I actually reindeer. It’s what I respect reindeer to eat. It has like weird nuts and stuff in it. And it’s bitter and nasty. And people are like, it’s just tart. It’s just tart. I had an aunt that would make it. Nobody ate it. Every damn year, she’d make it. You think someone would want to go, now, Glinda, you don’t want to be making this. Nobody’s eating this cranberry sauce. Nobody’s eating it. It’s nasty. Everybody in our family was too polite. So that woman would make it every year. One year, I actually put some on my plate, and I dumped it in the trash immediately because I wasn’t going to eat it. But I felt bad because no one was eating it, and I heard some people talking. I don’t know what he’s saying. It’s disgusting. But man, you couldn’t get enough of that cranberry sauce, the sliced version. You couldn’t get enough. And then when you only had like that much left and everybody wants some, you got to slice it real thin. Got to get out the mandolin, you know, and like do it. Crazy. Yeah, that’s the best way to do it. But I don’t know. There are some people who prefer the granola hippie stuff. Some people prefer that. I’m not going to pretend to understand these people, but it is the wrong way to have your cranberries. It’s the wrong, you know, you get it. The way that they harvest those is unbelievable. I feel like I’m turning into a cooking show and I don’t mean to, but I just, it’s very important for me that we have the cranberry discussion. You agree with that too, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
What? With what? Would that, would that cans better than the make it yourself? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, it’s how I grew up.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. That’s how I grew up, eating cranberries the right way. Also, maybe, I don’t know, maybe that, can I just also say this? I always thought that the cranberry sauce that wasn’t the sliced, that was rich people’s cranberry. When I was growing up, that was rich people’s, that’s rich people food. I didn’t even know what it tasted like.
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t even know what it tastes like.
SPEAKER 04 :
What?
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t even know what the real cranberry sauce tastes like. Yeah, you’re not supposed to know.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s horrible. imagine like just straight cranberry juice with some more bitterness that’s just like that they have like walnuts or pecans in it or something oh yeah and then you get a weird like you’re like just as you’re trying to understand this weird tasting like hatefulness that you put in your mouth then you then it’s like here’s some nuts and you get to crunch on those that’s It’s so bad. Who eats this stuff? Some people put oranges in it. Kane just had a full stop. That literally was what you just did.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, maybe one day I’ll have the rich person’s cranberry sauce. I’ve never had it.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think life has to be so good for you to eat that cranberry sauce that you give yourself that hell on the table just so you know what it’s like for the folks who suffer.
SPEAKER 03 :
Do they have the rich person’s cranberry sauce in a can? Or is it just the jello kind of one that just plops out as a cylinder?
SPEAKER 04 :
I know all the cylindrical cranberry sauce.
SPEAKER 03 :
Which is my favorite. That’s the only one I know. That’s the only way to go. That’s the only one I know. But do they have the rich person kind in a can that comes out? I don’t think so.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’ve never seen it. Have you?
SPEAKER 03 :
That comes out like deer food?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, I don’t think they do. They probably sell it in a kit in the salad section. But no, I legit was like, that is rich people’s food. And I never, it looked pretty on the table, but that’s, you know, jokingly. That’s, you know, people who are happy and have, you know, and they have no complaints in life. They’re the people who invented that cranberry sauce. And they put it on the table because everything is so great. I just don’t know what suffering is like. Let me have a bite of this homemade cranberry sauce. Oh, my gosh. The devil is real. And that’s how that came to be. You know that, right? That’s the story of that sauce.
SPEAKER 03 :
I do love those details in history.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it’s a very important part of… I just feel like we don’t know enough about history. American history.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. It’s important to know.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. I mean, it’s very, very… It was created like you would whip yourself on your back. And I don’t do that, but that’s like a… That’s why people have that. So they can torture themselves. Oh! And remind themselves what good food tastes like because that ain’t it. All right. I’m almost done making fun of it. I’m going to get so much hate mail. It’s okay. It’s all right. I’m just going to eat my last cranberry sauce and not rate any of it. That’s what I’ll do. All right. We got more on the way.
SPEAKER 03 :
And now, all of the news you would probably miss. It’s time for Dana’s Quick Five.
SPEAKER 04 :
Let’s see here. So first up. Well, we told you the story. Harris is telling her advisors that they need to kind of keep her options open for her. Whether it’s maybe going for governor, going for Senate, something to that effect. This is crazy. Editorial, four in ten Chicago public school teachers were chronically absent last year. Their median salary is $95,000. Four in ten. Four in ten were absent. And that Last year, the median salary is $95,000. I know I’m without words. I don’t quite. That’s 21% more than teachers make in the suburbs. Yep. The median pay there is $78,000. These teachers are making $95,000. And CPS and Cook County Chicago Public Schools pays its teachers more than any other large school district in the nation.
SPEAKER 03 :
It just proves throwing more money at it doesn’t fix it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Completely. Totally not at all. It does not fix it at all. A unique cemetery says grieving relatives must pay for VIP passes to visit graves. What? This has to… So this is in Britain. It’s in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. And it’s like in a… It’s a… I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s anything but a normal cemetery. It costs $5 to visit a grave or a cremation plot, $10 to visit the Rose Garden. And they’re not going to come out and force with this. Well, it’ll be in January. And they have electric gates, so you have to have a VIP pass. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
But if I paid to have them buried there, that’s me paying to visit whenever I can.
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t know if you get the VIP pass, if you pay to do that, have them. I don’t know, but I mean, I don’t know of anybody who like goes and acts and looks like a veterans cemetery. People you don’t know.
SPEAKER 03 :
This reminds me of like in-game purchasing.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s in-game purchasing. You can pay to have someone buried here, but you have to pay for the access of getting to them. Yes. So this is, okay, speaking of dead stuff, oh gosh, a Colorado funeral homeowner was accused of letting 190 bodies decay. And they pled guilty to corpse abuse. That’s, oh my gosh. Apparently they began storing their bodies in a decrepit building near Colorado Springs in 2019. And they gave families dry concrete in place of cremated remains. So somebody probably has like grandma in a jar on their mantle and it’s not grandma. It’s just concrete. Yeah. So they’re in a lot of trouble. John and Carrie Halford. It’s called the Return to Nature Funeral Home. They begin storing the bodies in this, and then they would give families the dry concrete. They just had the discovery last year that this was happening. They apparently spent extravagantly. They did laser body sculpting, fancy cars, luxury items, all that stuff. They pled guilty to fraud. That is insane. This is an insane story, and I wanted to touch on this. I think I had it earlier in my rundown, but… I wanted to bring this up. Have you guys heard about this case with Jeff Younger? This is one of the wildest cases, I think, that I don’t know. He’s a Texas dad, actually. Wasn’t he in like Capel? Not too far from us. So this dad, him and his wife got divorced. His name is Jeff Younger. His wife is Ann Gorgoulis. And they had… They have a 12-year-old son that they got – he got – he was going to get granted a full custody of his 12-year-old son and he wanted to – well, the ex-wife is. She was just granted that in California court this past week. He has twins, twin boys, and one of the boys apparently is – from what they talked about in court – The 12-year-old boy would dress as a boy and do boy stuff at his dad’s house. And then when he was with his mom, it was like his mom was pushing this stuff on him. And so the mom insisted that the 12-year-old be transitioned because the mom decided that the son was transgender. And the 12-year-old, she wanted to put him on hormone blockers and all of this stuff. Chemical castration essentially is what she wants to do to him. And the dad had been fighting this for quite a long time, a couple of years had been fighting with him for a while. And so then she moved from from Texas to California and she’s raising the 12 year old boy. And again, he’s a twin. So she was she’s raising him as a girl. She’s been claiming that he is a girl since, I mean, for several years now. And when the dad, Jeff Younger, asked his son, you know, do you think that you’re a girl? And he goes, like, what do you think? And he was in the beginning when they were in court, it was like he, the son said he wanted to be a boy. And it was like he would only dress up when he was visiting, when he was at his mom’s house and with the mom. And so his ex-wife was wanting to do all of this hormone stuff and a court ruled that she could not seek transitioning treatment of their son previously. And she acknowledged the order. And then the Supreme Court of Texas ruled in December that she lacked the legal authority to consent to such therapy. And but she’s been pushing this this entire time. And now she he said she was transitioning him when she when he was two and the records support that she put him in a gender clinic when he was five. And then she relocated to California so she could basically be in a better position to fight to have him transitioned. And then in 21, the judge in California gave her full custody over the 12-year-old boy, including his medical care. But they said that the control did not extend to the hormone suppression therapy and the puberty blockers and the reassignment surgery. They said the boy’s dad had to sign off on that. Well, the mom didn’t like that. And they kept – they were pushing it. And now he lost all parental rights over him. And I read – because I think that they did IVF and apparently that’s not even her biological child because they – I think she had like a donor. I read a story where they had – one of the reports, it was in Texas media. Yeah. So I don’t know. That’s what I – the whole – this is an insane story to me for a number of different reasons. The California judge was the one who who granted the mom all authority. And the dad was, you know, he was a super involved dad. And then they had like an acrimonious divorce. And then the mom’s doing this. It makes me wonder, wonder if she’s not doing it to get at the dad. I don’t know. But he says that, I mean, he was supposed to have supervised supervision of or supervised, sorry, visitation. He said that he sends letters and stuff to his sons, but his ex-wife is not required to make sure that they receive them. But now she’s been released. She’s free to go and seek the experimental surgery and chemically castrate him and all this stuff, which is wild. I don’t know. Of course, she has her medical picture where she’s wearing a cross necklace, which even the devil can quote scripture. So it’s so sad to me. This kid’s 12 years old. She’s been brainwashing this kid since he was a toddler. Before he even understands concrete concepts or abstract concepts, she’s pushing this stuff on him. To me, I feel like that that’s a form of abuse. I can’t believe courtrooms don’t see that, especially when it involves a mom and a dad that are not on the same page. Wouldn’t you want to err on the side of caution? as opposed to just giving the mom the green light for chemical castration and then experimental surgery. I just feel like you would, you would want to err on the side of caution with us. That just blows the mind that that’s not what’s happening here. So that’s, I mean, it’s just so sad. It just, it makes, cause it’s just so sad. And, uh, I wrote they had they got divorced and then apparently it sounds like she’s just like she had. She purchased all girl toys for the for the son. So when he was at his mom’s house, he’s playing with girl toys. He’s got girl clothes. It really sounds like she was put. I mean, you’re two years old. This is this is entirely an adult concept that they’re transposing onto kids and then saying that the kids are actually choosing it because they feel like they have some greater purpose to help this child affirm who they think they are. it’s abusive. It’s incredibly abusive. I feel so bad for this dad. I mean, what I’m curious is to where some of the Texas leadership is on this. And a lot of, I was told by a friend that some of the churches in the, in our area, uh, but since he’s in Capel, that’s, that’s considered part of DFW, Dallas, Fort Worth. And, uh, There were apparently like churches that are afraid to speak out on this or help the dad because they don’t want to lose any kind of tax exempt status. I think a lot of things need to happen here. But I’m just curious as to why I never saw – I mean this feels like something Ken Paxton should be. I think Ken Paxton has mentioned this before. But a lot of these other lawmakers out there, where are they? Where are some of these lawmakers with us? I mean, I can’t. Can you imagine not being able to really have any kind of parental control over your child? And you know that they’re going to be chemically castrated and it’s not something they’ve ever had the freedom to come to a decision that they chose. They didn’t have the freedom to choose it. It was pushed on them from toddlerhood. It’s so abusive. Speaking of like related to this. So remember, they’ve been trying to cancel JK Rowling for I don’t know how long now, how long they’ve been trying to cancel this woman. I mean, years now, ever since she spoke up in favor of. Sanity in favor of women protecting women’s spaces and on sports teams and stuff. They’ve been trying to cancel her something fierce. So HBO has been forced into defending her because the the woke scolds were demanding that she be removed from her own Harry Potter TV series. That seems a little. Yeah, maybe not. That seems a little much. So HBO, to their credit, they’re actually standing by her. That’s kind of impressive because they had not – that was not something previously that I thought that they would – I mean it’s because it’s Disney. Because they’ve got the Disney – they have the Disney Harry Potter theme park. Apparently her name is on it, HBO. I guess everybody’s standing – or she has blank you money and she can’t be canceled and blank you power because she’s like a factory of stories. Yeah, they said that because they still have her name up on the stuff at Disney. They haven’t taken her name off that. And HBO said that they’re not taking her name off of the series because people are upset that she stuck up for women. Interesting.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for tuning in to today’s edition of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
